CHAPTER IX

THE WORLD-WIDE MOVEMENT: ITS STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS

East and West--Tyranny under Democratic Forms--The Obvious Dangers--Party

Government--Bureaucracy--Working-Class Ascendancy--On Behalf of Democracy

LIST OF PLATES

KING JOHN GRANTING MAGNA CHARTA

MAGNA CHARTA--A FACSIMILE OF THE ORIGINAL IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

SIR JOHN ELIOT

JOHN HAMPDEN

THE GORDON RIOTS

THE RIGHT HON. JOHN BURNS, M.P.

THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P.

THE PASSING OF THE PARLIAMENT BILL IN THE HOUSE OF LORDS

THE RISE OF THE DEMOCRACY

INTRODUCTION

THE BRITISH INFLUENCE

Our business here is to give some plain account of the movement towards

democracy in England, only touching incidentally on the progress of that

movement in other parts of the world. Mainly through British influences the

movement has become world wide; and the desire for national

self-government, and the adoption of the political instruments of

democracy--popular enfranchisement and the rule of elected

representatives--are still the aspirations of civilised man in East and

West. The knowledge that these forms of democratic government have by no

means at all times and in all places proved successful does not check the

movement. As the British Parliament and the British Constitution have in

the past been accepted as a model in countries seeking free political

institutions, so to-day our Parliament and our Constitutional Government

are still quoted with approval and admiration in those lands where these

institutions are yet to be tried.

The rise of democracy, then, is a matter in which Britain is largely

concerned; and this in spite of the fact that in England little respect and

less attention has been paid to the expounders of democracy and their

constructive theories of popular government. The notion that philosophers

are the right persons to manage affairs of state and hold the reins of

Government has always been repugnant to the English people, and, with us,

to call a man "a political theorist" is to contemn him. The English have

not moved towards democracy with any conscious desire for that particular

form of government, and no vision of a perfect State or an ideal

commonwealth has sustained them on the march. Our boast has been that we

are a "practical" people, and so our politics are, as they ever have been,

experimental. Reforms have been accomplished not out of deference to some

moral or political principle, but because the abuse to be remedied had

become intolerable. Dissatisfaction with the Government and the conviction

that only by enfranchisement and the free election of representatives can

Parliament remove the grounds of dissatisfaction, have carried us towards

democracy.

GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE

We have been brought to accept Abraham Lincoln's famous phrase, "Government

of the people, by the people, for the people," as a definition of

democracy; but in that acceptance there is no harking back to the early

democracies of Greece or Rome, so beloved by the French democrats of the

eighteenth century, who, however, knew very little about those ancient

states--or any vain notion of restoring primitive Teutonic democracy.

The sovereign assemblies of Greece--the Ecclesia of Athens, and the Apella

of Sparta--the Comitia Centuriata of Rome, have no more resemblance to

democracy in the twentieth century than the Witenagemot has to the British

Parliament; and the democracy which has arisen in modern times is neither

to be traced for its origin to Greece or Rome, nor found to be evolved from

Anglo-Saxon times. The early democracies of Athens and Sparta were confined

to small states, and were based on a slave population without civic rights.

There was not even a conception that slaves might or should take part in

politics, and the slaves vastly outnumbered the citizens. Modern democracy

does not tolerate slavery, it will not admit the permanent exclusion of any

body of people from enfranchisement; though it finds it hard to ignore

differences of race and colour, it is always enlarging the borders of

citizenship. So that already in the Australian Commonwealth, in New

Zealand, in certain of the American States, in Norway, and in Finland, we

have the complete enfranchisement of all men and women who are of age to

vote.

Apart from this vital difference between a slave-holding democracy and a

democracy of free citizens--a difference that rent the United States in

civil war, and was only settled in America by democracy ending

slavery--ancient democracy was government by popular assembly, and modern

democracy is government through elected representatives. The former is only

possible in small communities with very limited responsibilities--a parish

meeting can decide questions of no more than strictly local interest; for

our huge empires of to-day nothing better than representative government

has been devised for carrying out the general will of the majority.

As for the early English Witenagemot, it was simply an assembly of the

chiefs, and, though crowds sometimes attended, all but the great men were

the merest spectators. Doubtless the folk-moot of the tribe was democratic,

for all free men attended it, and the English were a nation of freeholders,

and the slaves were few--except in the west--and might become free men.[1]

The shire-moot, too, with its delegates from the hundred-moots, was equally

democratic. But with feudalism and the welding of the nation, tribal

democracies passed away, leaving, however, in many places a valuable

tradition of local self-government.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF DEMOCRACY

A steady and invincible belief that those who maintain the defence of the

country and pay for the cost of government should have a voice in the great

council of the nation, and the conviction that effective utterance can be

found for that voice in duly chosen representatives, are the foundations on

which democracy has built. Democracy itself comes in (1) when it is seen

that all are being taxed for national purposes; and (2) the opinion finds

acceptance that responsibilities of citizenship should be borne by all who

have reached the age of manhood and are of sound mind.

To sketch the rise of democracy in England is to trace the steady

resistance to kings who would govern without the advice of counsellors, and

to note the growing determination that these counsellors must be elected

representatives. Only when the absolutism of the Crown is ended and a

Parliament of elected members has become the real centre of government, is

it possible, without a revolution, for democracy to be established.

Much of this book is given up, then, to the old stories of kingly rule

checked and slowly superseded by aristocracy. And all the old attempts at

revolution by popular insurrection are again retold, not only because of

the witness they bear to the impossibility in England of achieving

democracy by the violent overthrow of government, but because they also

bear witness to the heroic resolution of the English people to take up arms

and plunge into a sea of troubles rather than bear patiently ills that were

unseemly for men to endure in silence. Popular insurrection failed, but

over and over again violence has been resorted to in the resistance to

tyranny, and has been justified by its victory. If Wat Tyler, Jack Cade,

and Robert Ket are known as beaten revolutionaries, Stephen Langton, Simon

of Montfort, and John Hampden are acclaimed as patriots for not disdaining

the use of armed resistance.

The conclusion is that a democratic revolution was not to be accomplished

in England by a rising of the people, but that forcible resistance even to

the point of civil war was necessary to guard liberties already won, or to

save the land from gross misgovernment. But always the forcible resistance,

when successful, has been made not by revolutionaries but by the strong

champions of constitutional government. The fruit of the resistance to John

was the Great Charter; of Simon of Montfort's war against Henry III., the

beginning of a representative Parliament; of the war against Charles, the

establishment of Parliamentary government. Lilburne and his friends hoped

that the civil war and the abolition of monarchy would bring in democracy,

though democracy was never in the mind of men like Hampden, who made the

war, and was utterly uncongenial to Cromwell and the Commonwealth men. But

the sanctity of monarchy received its death-blow from Cromwell, and

perished with the deposing of James II.; and there has been no

resurrection. To the Whig rule we owe the transference of political power

from the Crown to Parliament. Once it is manifest that Parliament is the

instrument of authority, that the Prime Minister and his colleagues rule

only by the permission and with the approval of the House of Commons, and

that the House of Commons itself is chosen by a certain number of electors

to represent the nation, then it is plain that the real sovereignty is in

the electors who choose the House of Commons. As long as the electors are

few and consist of the great landowners and their satellites, then the

constitutional government is aristocracy, and democracy is still to come.

And just as discontent with monarchy, and its obvious failure as a

satisfactory form of government, brought in aristocracy, so at the

beginning of the nineteenth century discontent with aristocracy was rife,

and a new industrial middle-class looked for "Parliamentary reform," to

improve the condition of England.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY EXPERIMENTAL, NOT DOCTRINAIRE

Resistance to royal absolutism, culminating in the acknowledged ascendancy

of Parliament and the triumphant aristocracy of 1688, was never based on

abstract principles of the rights of barons and landowners, but sprang from

the positive, definite conviction that those who furnished arms and men for

the king, or who paid certain moneys in taxation, were entitled to be heard

in the councils of the king; and the charters given in the twelfth and

thirteenth centuries--from Henry I. to Henry III.--confirmed this

conviction. The resistance to the Stuarts was still based on the conviction

that direct taxation conferred political privileges, but now the claim to

speak in the great council of the realm had become a request to be listened

to by the king, and passed rapidly from that to a resolution that the king

should have no money from Parliament if he refused to listen. The practical

inconvenience of a king altogether at variance with Parliament was held to

be sufficient justification for getting rid of James II., and for hobbling

all future kings with the Bill of Rights.

The dethronement of aristocracy in favour of democracy has proceeded on

very similar lines. The mass of English people were far too wretched and

far too ignorant at the end of the eighteenth century to care anything

about abstract "rights of man," and only political philosophers and a few

artisans hoped for improvement in their condition by Parliamentary reform.

Agricultural England accepted the rule of landowners as an arrangement by

providence. It was the industrial revolution that shattered the feudal

notions of society, and created a manufacturing population which knew

nothing of lowly submission to pastors and masters. A middle-class emerged

from the very ranks of the working people. The factory system brought

fortunes to men who a few years earlier had been artisans, and to these new

capitalists in the nineteenth century the aristocracy in power was as

irksome as the Stuarts had been to the Whigs. If, as the Whigs taught,

those who paid the taxes were entitled to a voice in the government, then

the manufacturing districts ought to send representatives to Parliament. It

seemed monstrous that places like Manchester, Leeds, and Birmingham had no

one in the House of Commons to plead for the needs of their inhabitants.

The manufacturer wanted Parliamentary representation because he hoped

through Parliament to secure the abolition of the political disabilities of

Nonconformists, and to get financial changes made that would make the

conditions of trade more profitable. And he felt that it would be better

for the country if he and the class he represented could speak freely in

Parliament.

The workman wanted the vote because he had been brought to believe that,

possessing the vote, he could make Parliament enact laws that would lighten

the hardships of his life. The whole of the manufacturing class--capitalist

and workman alike--could see by 1820 that the House of Commons was the

instrument of the electorate, and that to get power they must become

electors. (Yet probably not one per cent. of them could express clearly any

theory of popular sovereignty.) The old Whig families, kept out of office

by the Tories whom George III. had placed in power, and who now controlled

the House of Commons, supported reform and the enfranchisement of the

middle class because they saw no way of getting back into power except by a

new electorate and a redistribution of Parliamentary seats. At the

beginning of the twentieth century the landowner, still Whig, though now,

as a general rule enrolled with the Unionist Party, has not been excluded

from political power, but the representatives of the middle-class and of

the working people are predominant in the House of Commons. The claim of

the House of Lords to reject the bills of the Commons has been, in our

time, subjected to the criticism formerly extended to the royal

prerogative, and an Act--the Parliament Act--has now been passed which

formally requires the Lords to accept, without serious amendment, every

Bill sent up from the Commons in three successive sessions.

The transition from monarchy to aristocracy in England was brought about at

the price of civil war. In many countries democracy has been born in

revolution, and the birth pains have been hard and bitter. But in England

in the nineteenth century democracy was allowed to come into being by

permission of the aristocracy, and has not yet reached its full stature. It

is true that violence, bloodshed, loss of life, and destruction of property

marked the passage of the great Reform Bill; that more than once riots and

defiance of law and order have been the expression of industrial

discontent; but on the whole the average Englishman is content to wait for

the redress of wrongs by Parliamentary action. Women have quite recently

defied the law, refused to pay taxes, and made use of "militant methods" in

their agitation for enfranchisement. But the women's plea has been that, as

they are voteless, these methods have been necessary to call attention to

their demands. Democratic advance has often been hindered and delayed by

government, and by a national disinclination from rapid political change;

but as the character of government has changed with the changed character

of the electorate and the House of Commons, so resistance to democracy has

always been abandoned when the advance was widely supported, and further

delay seemed dangerous to the public order.

The House of Lords is thus seen to yield to the popular representatives in

the House of Commons, and the government, dependent on the House of

Commons, to listen to the demand of women for enfranchisement.

While the House of Commons completes its assertion of political supremacy,

and insists on the absolute responsibility of the chosen representatives of

the electorate, the agitation for the enfranchisement of women is the

reminder that democracy has yet to widen its borders. Progress to democracy

in the last one hundred years is visible not only in the enlarged number of

enfranchised citizens, but in the general admission that every extension of

the franchise has been to the public good; not only in the fact that men of

all classes and trades now have their representatives in Parliament, but in

the very wide acknowledgment that women without votes cannot get that

attention by members of the House of Commons that is given to male

electors. That the majority of electors have expressed a decided opinion

that the power of the House of Lords should be curtailed, as the power of

the monarchy has been curtailed, and that the decisions of the House of

Commons are only to be corrected by the House of Commons, is evidence that

under our obviously imperfect Parliamentary system the will of the electors

does get registered on the Statute Book.

EDUCATION TO DEMOCRACY

Apart from the direct political education to democracy, it is well to note

the other agencies that have been at work, preparing men and women for the

responsible task of national self-government.

In the Middle Ages the religious guilds and the trade guilds, managed by

their own members, gave men and women a training in democratic government.

The parish, too, was a commune, and its affairs and finances were

administered by duly elected officers.[2]

But the guilds, with their numerous almshouses and hospitals, were all

suppressed early in Edward VI.'s reign, and their funds confiscated. As for

the parish, it was shorn of all its property, save the parish church, in

the same reign, and its old self-governing life dwindled away to the

election of churchwardens.

It was not till the beginning of the nineteenth century that the working

classes, by the formation of trade unions, once more took up the task of

education in self-government. From that time onward, through trade unions,

co-operative societies, and friendly societies, with their annual

conferences and congresses, a steady training in democracy has been

achieved; and our Labour Party of to-day, with its Members of Parliament,

its members of county and district councils, and its Justices of the Peace,

would hardly have been possible but for this training. Other agencies may

be mentioned. The temperance movement, the organisation of working-men's

clubs, and the local preaching of the Nonconformist Churches--particularly

the Primitive Methodist denomination--have all helped to educate workmen in

the conduct of affairs, and to create that sense of personal responsibility

which is the only guarantee of an honest democracy.

* * * * *

CHAPTER I

THE EARLY STRUGGLES AGAINST THE ABSOLUTISM OF THE CROWN

THE GREAT CHURCHMEN

We are far from any thoughts of democracy in the early struggles against

the absolutism of the Crown. The old love of personal liberty that is said

to have characterised the Anglo-Saxon had no political outlet under Norman

feudalism. What we note is that three Archbishops of Canterbury were strong

enough and brave enough to stand up against the unchecked rule of kings,

and the names of these great Archbishops--Anselm, Thomas à Becket, and

Stephen Langton--are to be honoured for all time for the services they

rendered in the making of English liberties. Not one of the three was in

any sense a democrat. It is not till the latter part of the fourteenth

century that we find John Ball, a wandering, revolutionary priest, uttering

for the first time in England a democratic doctrine. Anselm, Becket, and

Langton did their work, as Simon of Montfort, and as Eliot and Hampden

worked later, not for the sake of a democracy, but for the restriction of

an intolerable autocracy. All along in English history liberties have been

gained and enlarged by this process of restriction, and it was only when

the powers of the Crown had been made subject to Parliament that it was

possible, at the close of the nineteenth century, for Parliament itself to

become converted from an assembly of aristocrats to a governing body that

really represented the nation.

But in considering the rise of democracy we can no more omit the early

struggles against the absolutism of the Crown than we can pass over Simon

of Montfort's Parliament, or the unsuccessful popular revolts, or the war

with Charles I., or the Whig revolution of 1688. They are all incidents of

pre-democratic days, but they are all events of significance. Democracy is

no new order of society, conceived in the fertile mind of man; it has been

slowly evolved and brought to birth after centuries of struggle, to be

tried as a form of government only when other forms are outgrown, and cease

to be acceptable.

All the great men--heroic and faulty--who withstood the tyranny of their

day, not only wrested charters from kings, they left a tradition of

resistance; and this tradition has been of incalculable service to a nation

seeking self-government. It is easy to dismiss the work of Anselm and

Becket as mere disputes between monarch and Churchman, to treat lightly the

battle for the Great Charter as a strife between king and barons. Just as

easy is it to regard the Peasant Revolt of the fourteenth century and Jack

Cade's rebellion in the fifteenth century as the tumults of a riotous mob.

The great point is to see clearly in all these contests, successful and

unsuccessful, the movement for liberty, for greater security and expansion

of life in England, and to note that only by a stern endurance and a

willingness not to bear an irksome oppression have our liberties been won.

In the winning of these liberties we have proved our fitness for democracy,

for a government that will allow the fullest measure of self-development.

Now, what was it that Anselm contended for, first with William II. and then

with Henry I.?

ARCHBISHOP ANSELM AND NORMAN AUTOCRACY

Anselm was sixty when, in 1093, William II. named him for the Archbishopric

of Canterbury. In vain Anselm, who was Abbot of the famous monastery of

Bec, in Normandy, protested that he was too old, and that his business was

not with high place and power in this world. The King seemed to be dying,

and the bishops gathered round the sick bed would not hear of any refusal

on Anselm's part. They pushed the pastoral staff into his hands, and

carried him off to a neighbouring church, while the people shouted "Long

live the bishop!"

What everybody felt was that with Anselm as Archbishop things might be

better in England, for Anselm's reputation stood very high. He had been the

friend of Lanfranc, the late Archbishop; he had been an honoured guest at

the Court of William the Conqueror; and he was known for his deep learning,

his sanctity of life, and simple, disinterested devotion to duty. It was

hoped that with a man of such holiness at Canterbury some restraint might

be placed on the lawless tyranny of the Red King. Lanfranc had been the

trusted counsellor and right hand of the Red King's father: why should not

Anselm bring back the son to the paths of decency--at least? The Archbishop

of Canterbury was the chief man in the realm next to the king, and for

three years since Lanfranc's death the see had been kept vacant that

William Rufus might enjoy its revenues for his own pleasure. It was not

unreasonable that men should look to the appointment of Anselm as the

beginning of an amendment in Church and State. The trouble was that William

stuck to his evil courses.

The rule of William the Conqueror had been stern and harsh, and his hand

had been heavy on the English people. But there had been law and justice in

the rule; religion and morality had been respected, and peace and security

obtained.

The rule of the Red King was not only grievous, it was arbitrary,

capricious, cruel, and without semblance of law. The austerity of the

Conqueror had been conspicuous; equally conspicuous was the debauchery of

his son. The Conqueror had been faithful and conscientious in seeing that

vacancies in the Church were filled up quickly and wisely. The Red King

preferred to leave bishoprics and churches empty so that he might annex the

profits. Lanfranc, a wise and just man, had been the Minister of the

Conqueror; the Red King made Ranulf (nicknamed the Torch or Firebrand)--a

clever, unprincipled clerk--Bishop of Durham and Justiciar. It was Ranulf

who did the King's business in keeping churches and bishoprics vacant, in

violation of law and custom; it was Ranulf who plundered the King's vassals

and the people at large by every kind of extortion, thwarted the protests

of Anselm, and encouraged William in his savage profligacies.

Meek and gentle as Anselm was, he had all the courage that comes of a lofty

sense of responsibility to God, and he stood before kings as the Hebrew

prophets of old had stood, calm and fearless. At Christmas, 1092, three

months before his nomination to the See of Canterbury, Anselm was in

England over the affairs of his monastery, and William invited him to Court

and treated him with great display of honour. Then some private talk took

place between the two, and Anselm said plainly that "Things were spoken

daily of the King, openly or secretly, by nearly all the men of his realm,

which were not seemly for the King's dignity." From that time Anselm stayed

in England, for William refused to give him leave to return to Normandy.

Then in March, 1093 came the King's sickness, which most men expected to be

mortal. Anselm was summoned, and on his arrival bade the King "make a clean

confession of all that he knows that he has done against God, and promise

that, should he recover, he will without pretence amend in all things. The

King at once agreed to this, and with sorrow of heart engaged to do all

that Anselm required and to keep justice and mercy all his life long. To

this he pledged his faith, and made his bishops witness between himself and

God, sending persons in his stead to promise his word to God on the altar.

An edict was written and sealed with the King's seal that all prisoners

should be set free in all his dominions, all debts forgiven, all offences

heretofore committed pardoned and forgotten for ever. Further, good and

holy laws were promised to the whole people, and the sacred upholding of

right and such solemn inquest into wrongdoing as may deter others."[3]

William did not die, and his repentance was short-lived; but the one act of

grace he did before leaving his sick bed was to fill up the empty throne at

Canterbury by the appointment of Anselm--Anselm's protests of unfitness

notwithstanding. Then, on the King's recovery, as though to make up for the

penitence displayed, all the royal promises of amendment were broken

without shame, and "all the evil which the King had wrought before he was

sick seemed good by the side of the wrong which he did when he was returned

to health." The prisoners who had been pardoned were sent back to prison,

the debts which had been cancelled were re-claimed, and all legal actions

which had been dropped were resumed. Anselm was now enthroned at

Canterbury, and his appointment could not be revoked; but the King was

quick to show his displeasure at the new Archbishop.

The first point raised by William was that those lands belonging to the See

of Canterbury, which had been made over to military vassals of the Crown

while the archbishopric was vacant, should remain with their holders.

Anselm said at once that this was impossible. He was responsible for the

administration of all the estates of Canterbury, and to allow these lands

to be alienated to the Crown was to rob the poor and needy who, it was

held, had a just claim on the property of the Church. Besides, Anselm saw

that the lands would never be restored once an Archbishop confirmed their

appropriation by the King's military tenants. There was no one in all

England save Anselm who dared withstand the Crown, and had he yielded on

this matter resistance to the tyranny of the Red King would only have been

harder on the next occasion.

Then came the question of a present of money to the King, the customary

offering. Anselm brought five hundred marks (£333), a very considerable sum

in those days, and William, persuaded by some of his courtiers that twice

the amount ought to have been given, curtly declined the present. Anselm,

who disliked the whole business of these gifts to the Crown, for he knew

that many a Churchman bought his office by promising a "free" gift after

institution, solemnly warned William that money given freely as his was

given was better than a forced tribute, and to this William answered that

he wanted neither the Archbishop's money nor his preaching or company.

Thereupon Anselm retired and gave the money to the poor, determined that

he, for his part, would make no attempt to purchase William's goodwill.

Henceforth William was equally determined that Anselm should have no peace

in England. It was hateful to the King that there should be anyone in the

realm who acknowledged a higher authority than the Crown, and Anselm made

it too plain that the Archbishop rested his authority not on the favour of

the Crown, but on the discipline of the Christian religion. William was

King of England indisputably, but there was a higher power than the King,

and that was the Pope. William himself never dreamed of denying the divine

authority of the Pope in spiritual matters; no one in all Christendom in

the eleventh and twelfth centuries questioned that at Rome was a court of

appeal higher than the courts of kings. Strong rulers like William the

Conqueror might decline to submit to Rome on a personal question of

marriage, but Rome was the recognised centre of religion, the headquarters

of the Christian Church, and the supreme court of appeal. Apart from Rome

there was no power that could curb the fierce unbridled tyranny of the

kings of the earth, and the power of Rome was a spiritual weapon, for the

Pope had no army to enforce his decisions. So Anselm, conscious of this

spiritual authority, refused to bow to the lawless rule of the Red King;

and his very attitude, while it encouraged men to lift up their hearts who

erstwhile had felt that it was hopeless and useless to strive against

William,[4] enraged the Red King to fury.

The things he wanted to forget were that the chief representative of the

Christian religion was a greater person than the King of England, and that

the Archbishop of Canterbury could be a Christian minister rather than a

King's man.[5] And Anselm was the constant witness to the Christian

religion, and, by his very presence, a rebuke to the crimes and cruelties

of the Court of the Red King. William actually wrote to the Pope, naturally

without any success, praying him to depose Anselm, and promising a large

annual tribute to Rome if the request was granted.

For years the uneven contest was waged. The bishops generally avoided

Anselm, and were only anxious to be accepted by the King as good servants

of the Crown, with the result that William despised them for their

servility. But the barons began to declare their respect for the brave old

man at Canterbury.

At last, when Anselm was summoned to appear before the King's Court, to "do

the King right," on a trumped-up charge of having failed to send an

adequate supply of troops for the King's service, he felt the position was

hopeless. Anselm's longing had been to labour with the King, as Lanfranc

had laboured, to promote religion in the country, and he had been

frustrated at every turn. The summons to the King's Court was the last

straw, for the defendant in this Court was entirely at the mercy of the

Crown. "When, in Anglo-Norman times you speak of the King's Court, it is

only a phrase for the King's despotism."[6] Anselm took no notice of the

King's summons, and decided to appeal to Rome. For a time William refused

permission for any departure from England, but he yielded in 1097, and

Anselm set out for Rome.

He stayed at Rome and at Lyons till William was dead, for the Pope would

not let him resign Canterbury, and could do nothing to bring the King to a

better mind. Then, on the urgent request of Henry I., he returned to

England, and for a time all went well. Henry was in earnest for the

restoration of law and religion in England, and his declaration, at the

very beginning of his reign--the oft-quoted "charter" of Henry I.--to stop

the old scandals of selling and farming out Church lands, and to put down

all unrighteousness that had been in his brother's time, was hailed with

rejoicing.

Anselm stood loyally by Henry over the question of his marriage with Edith

(who claimed release from vows taken under compulsion in a convent at

Romsey), and his fidelity at the critical time when Robert of Normandy and

the discontented nobles threatened the safety of the Crown was invaluable.

But Henry was an absolutist, anxious for all the threads of power to be in

his own hands; and just when a great Church Council at the Lateran had

decided that bishops must not be invested by kings with the ring and staff

of their office, because by such investiture they were the king's vassals,

Henry decided to invite Anselm to receive the archbishopric afresh from the

King's hands by a new act of investiture. To Anselm the abject submission

of the bishops to the Red King had been a painful spectacle; and now Henry

was making a demand that would emphasise the royal supremacy, and the

demand was intolerable and impossible. Again Anselm stood practically alone

in his resistance to the royal will, and again the question in dispute was

whether there was any power in England higher than the Crown. The papal

supremacy was no more under discussion than it had been under William. All

that Henry wanted was that the archbishops and bishops should acknowledge

that their authority came from the Crown; and at Henry's request Anselm,

then 70 years old, again journeyed to Rome to lay the matter before the

Pope.

Pope Paschal was fully alive to the mischief of making the bishops and

clergy mere officers of kings, and it was soon seen there could be no

dispensations from Rome even for Henry. All that the Pope would allow was

that bishops might do homage to the Crown for their temporal rights, and

with this Henry had to be content.

It was three years later before Anselm returned, and his course was now

nearly run. He died at peace on April 21st, 1109, having wrought to no

small purpose for religious liberty and the independence of the clergy.

(The demand for political and social independence always follows the

struggle for independence in religion.) Anselm spent the greater part of

his life after his enthronement at Canterbury in battling for independence

of the Crown; a century later Archbishop Stephen was to carry the battle

still further, and win wider liberties for England from the Crown.

Of Anselm's general love of liberty and hatred of all tyranny many stories

are told. One fact may be recalled. The Church Synod, which met at

Westminster in 1102, at Anselm's request, attacked the slave trade as a

"wicked trade used hitherto in England, by which men are sold like brute

animals," and framed a Church rule against its continuance.

In spite of this decree, serfdom lingered in England for centuries, but

hiring superseded open buying and selling of men. (The African slave trade

was the work of the Elizabethan seamen, and was excused, as slavery in the

United States was excused, by the Protestant Churches on the ground of the

racial inferiority of the negro.)

THOMAS À BECKET AND HENRY II.

Resistance to autocracy is often more needed against a strong and just king

than it is against an unprincipled profligate. Henry II.'s love of order

and peace, the strength and energy he spent in curtailing the power of the

barons, and in making firm the foundations of our national system of petty

sessions and assize courts have made for him an enduring fame. Henry II.

was a great lawyer; he was "the flower of the princes of his world," in

contemporary eyes; but it was as an autocrat he would rule. Against this

autocracy Thomas à Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, protested, and the

protest cost him five years of exile, and finally his life. The manner of

his death earned for the Archbishop the title of martyr, and popular

acclamation required him to be canonised as a saint,[7] and his name to be

long cherished with deep devotion by the English people. Both Henry and

Thomas stand out honourably, but the former would have brought all England

under one great centralised authority, with the Crown not only predominant

but absolute in its supremacy, and the Archbishop contended for the great

mass of poor and needy people to mitigate the harshness of the law, and to

maintain the liberties of the Church against the encroachments of

sovereignty. "Nothing is more certain," as the old writer put it, "than

that both strove earnestly to do the will of God, one for the sake of his

realm, the other on behalf of his Church. But whether of the two was

zealous in wisdom is not plain to man, who is so easily mistaken, but to

the Lord, Who will judge between them at the last day."

Becket was the first English-born Archbishop of Canterbury since the Norman

Conquest. Henry, on his accession, clove to him in friendship, made him

Lord Chancellor in 1155, and on Archbishop Theobald's death, the monks of

Canterbury at once accepted Henry's advice and elected him to the vacant

see. Becket himself knew the King too well to desire the appointment, and

warned Henry not to press the matter, and prophesied that their friendship

would be turned to bitter enmity. But Henry's mind was made up. As

Chancellor, Becket had shown no ecclesiastical bias. He had taxed clergy

and laity with due impartiality, and his legal decisions had been given

without fear or favour. Henry counted on Becket to act with the same

indifference as Archbishop, to be the King's vicegerent during the royal

absence in France. And here Henry, wise as he was in many things, mistook

his man. As Chancellor of England Becket conceived his business to be the

administration of the laws: as Archbishop he was first and foremost the

champion of the Christian religion, the protector of the poor, and the

defender of the liberties of the Church. All unwilling, like his great

predecessor, St. Anselm, to become archbishop, from the hour of his

consecration to the See of Canterbury, in 1162, Becket was as firm as

Anselm had been in resisting the absolutism of the King. To the King's

extreme annoyance the Chancellorship was at once given up--the only

instance known of the voluntary resignation of the Chancellorship by layman

or ecclesiastic,[8] and all the amusements of the Court and the business of

the world were laid aside by the new archbishop. The care of his diocese,

the relief of the poor and the sick, and attendance at the sacred offices

of the Church were henceforth the work of the man who had been Henry's

best-loved companion, and within a year of his enthronement friendship with

the King was broken.

The first point at issue was whether there should be one common

jurisdiction in all the land, or whether the Church courts should still

exist. These Church courts had been set up by William the Conqueror and

Lanfranc, in order that the clergy should not be mixed up in ordinary law

matters, and should be excluded strictly from the common courts. No penalty

involving bloodshed could be inflicted in the Church courts, and all the

savage barbarities of mutilation, common enough as punishments in the

King's court, were forbidden. Henry II., apart from his strong desire for

centralisation in government, wanted these Church courts abolished, because

every clerk who offended against the law escaped ordinary punishment, no

matter what the charge might be. Archbishop Thomas saw that in the Church

courts there was some protection, not only for the clergy, but for all

minor ecclesiastics, and for widows and orphans, against the horrible legal

cruelties of the age. "It must be held in mind that the Archbishop had on

his side the Church or _Canon Law_, which he had sworn to obey, and

certainly the law courts erred as much on the side of harshness and cruelty

as those of the Church on that of foolish pity towards evil doers."[9]

Before this dispute had reached its climax Thomas had boldly taken measures

against some of the King's courtiers who were defrauding the See of

Canterbury; and he had successfully withstood Henry's plan for turning the

old Dane-geld shire tax, which was paid to the sheriff for the defence of

the country and the up-keep of roads, into a tax to be collected by the

Crown as part of the royal revenue. Thomas told the King plainly that this

tax was a voluntary offering to be paid to the sheriffs only "so long as

they shall serve as fitly and maintain and defend our defendants," and said

point blank that he would not suffer a penny to be taken off his lands for

the King's purposes. Henry was obliged to yield, and this is the first case

known of resistance to the royal will in the matter of taxation.

The case of clerical offenders, and the jurisdiction of the courts came

before a great council at Westminster in 1163. Henry declared that

criminous clerks should be deprived of their office in the Church courts,

and then handed over to the King's courts for punishment. Thomas replied

that the proposal was contrary to the religious liberties of the land, but

he met with little support from the rest of the bishops. "Better the

liberties of the Church perish than that we perish ourselves," they cried

in fear of the King. Henry followed up his proposal by calling on the

bishops to abide by the old customs of the realm, as settled by his

grandfather, Henry I., and to this they all agreed, adding "saving the

rights of our order."

A list of the old customs was drawn up, and sixteen _Constitutions_, or

articles, were presented to the bishops at the Great Council of Clarendon,

in January, 1164. To many of these Constitutions Thomas objected; notably

(1) That clerks were to be tried in the King's courts for offences of

common law. (2) That neither archbishops, bishops, nor beneficed clerks

were to leave the kingdom without royal permission. (This would not only

stop appeals to Rome, it would make pilgrimages or attendance at General

Councils impossible without the King's consent.) (3) That no member of the

King's household was to be excommunicated without the King's permission.

(4) That no appeals should be taken beyond the Archbishop's court, except

to be brought before the King. (This definite prohibition of appeals to

Rome left the King absolute master in England.) The last article declared

that neither serfs nor the sons of villeins were to be ordained without the

consent of the lord on whose land they were born. Against his own judgment

Thomas yielded to the entreaties of the bishops, and agreed to accept the

Constitutions of Clarendon, but no sooner had he done so than he bitterly

repented, and wrote off to the Pope acknowledging his mistake. Pope

Alexander III. was mainly anxious to prevent open hostilities between Henry

and the Archbishop, and wrote calmly that he was absolved, without

suggesting any blame to the King.

Henry now saw that the Archbishop, and only the Archbishop, stood in the

way of the royal will, and when another Council met at Northampton, in

October, 1164, the King was ready to drive Thomas out of office. Before

this Council Thomas was charged with having refused justice to John, the

Treasury-Marshall, and with contempt of the King's court, and was heavily

fined. It was difficult to get sentence pronounced, for the barons declined

to sit as judges on an archbishop; but at length, Henry, Bishop of

Winchester, on the King's order, declared the sentence. Henry followed up

the attack next day by calling upon Thomas to account for 30,000 marks

spent by him while Chancellor. In vain he proved that the Justiciar had

declared him free of all claims when he laid down the Chancellorship, that

the charge was totally unexpected; the King refused to stay the proceedings

unless Thomas would sign the Constitutions of Clarendon.

Consultation with the bishops brought no help. "The King has declared, so

it is said, that he and you cannot both remain in England as king and

archbishop. It would be much safer to resign everything and submit to his

mercy"; thus spake Hilary, of Chichester, and his fellow-bishops all urged

resignation or submission.

Two days later the Archbishop came into the Council in full robes with the

Cross in his hand. Earl Robert, of Leicester, rose to pass sentence upon

him and at once the Archbishop refused to hear him. "Neither law nor reason

permit children to pass sentence on their father," he declared. "I will not

hear this sentence of the King, or any judgment of yours. For, under God, I

will be judged by the Pope alone, to whom before you all here I appeal,

placing the Church of Canterbury under God's protection and the protection

of the Pope."

There were shouts of anger at these words, and some tore rushes from the

floor and flung at him, but no one dared to stop the Archbishop's passage

as he passed from the hall. It was useless to look for help or justice in

England, and that very night Thomas left England for Flanders to appeal to

Rome.

But Pope Alexander could do no more for Thomas than his predecessor had

done for Anselm; only he would not allow any resignation from Canterbury.

Henry himself appealed to the Pope in 1166, fearing excommunication by the

Archbishop; "thus by a strange fate it happened that the King, while

striving for those 'ancient customs' by which he endeavoured to prevent any

right of appeal (to the Pope), was doomed to confirm the right of appeal

for his own safety." The Pope did what he could to arrange a

reconciliation, but it was not till 1170 that the King, seriously alarmed

that Thomas would place England under an interdict, agreed to a

reconciliation.

On December 1st the exile was over, and Thomas landed at Sandwich, and went

at once to Canterbury. There were many who doubted whether there could be

lasting peace between the King and the Archbishop, and while the bishops

generally hated the Primate's return, the nobles spoke openly of him as a

traitor to the King.

The end was near. Thomas, asked to withdraw the sentence of excommunication

he had passed against the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London and

Salisbury for violating the privileges of Canterbury, answered that the

matter must go before the Pope. The bishops, instead of going to Rome,

hastened to Henry, who was keeping his Court at Bur, in France.

Henry, at the complaint of the bishops, broke out into one of those

terrible fits of anger which overcame him from time to time, and four

knights left the Court saying, "All this trouble will be at an end when

Thomas is dead, and not before." On December 29th these knights were at

Canterbury, and at nightfall, just when vespers had begun, they slew

Archbishop Thomas by the great pillar in the Cathedral. So died this great

Archbishop for the liberties of the Church, and, as it seemed to him, for

the welfare of the people.

Henry was horrified at the news of the Archbishop's death, and hastened to

beg absolution from Rome for the rash words that had provoked the murder.

In the presence of the Papal legate he promised to give up the

Constitutions of Clarendon, nor in the remaining eighteen years of his

reign did Henry make any fresh attempt to bring the Church under the

subjection of the Crown.

To the great bulk of English people Thomas was a saint and martyr, and

numerous churches were dedicated in his name. More than three hundred years

later Henry VIII. decided that St. Thomas was an enemy of princes, that his

shrine at Canterbury must be destroyed, and his festival unhallowed. But

the fame of Thomas à Becket has survived the censure of Henry VIII., and

his name shines clearly across the centuries. Democracy has been made

possible by the willingness of brave men in earlier centuries to resist, to

the death, an absolutism that would have left England bound and chained to

the king's throne.

STEPHEN LANGTON AND JOHN

Stephen Langton was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in June, 1207, on

the nomination of Pope Innocent III.; the monks of Canterbury, who had

proposed their own superior, consenting to the appointment, for Langton had

a high reputation for learning and was known to be of exalted character.

But King John, who had wanted a man of his own heart for the

archbishopric--John of Gray, Bishop of Norwich, commonly spoken of as "a

servant of Mammon, and an evil shepherd that devoured his own sheep"--was

enraged, and refusing to acknowledge Langton, defied the Pope, drove the

monks out of the country, and declared that anyone who acknowledged Stephen

Langton as archbishop should be accounted a public enemy. So it came about

that the great English statesman who broke down the foulest and worst

tyranny the land had known, and won for England the Great Charter of its

liberties, was a nominee of the Pope, and was to find himself under the

displeasure of the Papal legate when the Charter had been signed! For six

years John kept Stephen out of Canterbury, while England lay under an

interdict, with its King excommunicate and outside the pale of the Church.

Most of the bishops fled abroad, "fearing the King, but afraid to obey him

for dread of the Pope," and John laid hands on Church property and filled

the royal treasury with the spoils of churchmen and Jews. But in 1213

John's position had become precarious, for the northern barons were

plotting his overthrow, and the Pope had absolved all his subjects from

allegiance, and given sentence that "John should be thrust from his throne

and another worthier than he should reign in his stead," naming Philip of

France as his successor. John was aware that he could not count on the

support of the barons in a war with France, and a prophecy of Peter, the

Wakefield Hermit, that the crown would be lost before Ascension Day, made

him afraid of dying excommunicate. Accordingly John decided to get the Pope

on his side. He agreed to receive Pandulf, the Papal legate; to acknowledge

Stephen; make good the damage done to the Church, and, in addition,

voluntarily ("of our own good free will and by the common counsel of our

barons") surrendered "to God and to the Holy Mother Church of Rome, and to

Pope Innocent and his Catholic successors," the whole realm of England and

Ireland, "with all rights thereunto appertaining, to receive them back and

hold them thenceforth as a feudatory of God and the Roman Church." He swore

fealty to the Pope for both realms, and promised a yearly tribute of 1,000

marks.

This abject submission to the Pope was a matter of policy. John cared

nothing for any appearance of personal or national humiliation, and as he

had broken faith with all in England, so, if it should suit his purpose,

would he as readily break faith with Rome. But the immediate advantage of

having the Pope for his protector seemed considerable. "For when once he

had put himself under apostolical protection and made his realms a part of

the patrimony of St. Peter, there was not in the Roman world a sovereign

who durst attack him or would invade his lands, in such awe was Pope

Innocent held above all his predecessors for many years past."[10]

Stephen landed in June, 1213, and at Winchester John was formally absolved

and the coronation oaths were renewed. It was very soon seen what manner of

man the Archbishop was. In August a great gathering of the barons took

place in St. Paul's, and there Langton recited the coronation charter of

Henry I., and told all those assembled that these rights and liberties were

to be recovered; and "the barons swore they would fight for these

liberties, even unto death if it were needful, and the Archbishop promised

that he would help with all his might." The weakness of the barons hitherto

had been their want of cohesion, their endless personal feuds, and the lack

of any feeling of national responsibility. Langton laboured to create a

national party and to win recognition of law and justice for all in

England; and the Great Charter was the issue of his work.

The state of things was intolerable. The whole administration of justice

was corrupt. The decisions of the King's courts were as arbitrary as the

methods employed to enforce sentence. Free men were arrested, evicted,

exiled, and outlawed without even legal warrant or the semblance of a fair

trial. All the machinery of government set up by the Norman kings, and

developed under Henry II., had, in John's hands, become a mere instrument

of despotic extortion, to be used against anybody and everybody, from earl

to villein, who could be fleeced by the King's servants.

John saw the tide rising against him, and endeavoured to divide barons from

Churchmen by proclaiming that the latter should have free and undisturbed

right of election when bishoprics and other ecclesiastical offices were

vacant. But the attempt failed. Langton was too resolute a statesman, and

his conception of the primacy of Canterbury was too high for any turning

back from the work he had set himself to accomplish. The rights of election

in the Church were important, but the restoration of justice and order and

the ending of tyranny were, in his eyes, hardly less important. John, who

had been at war in France, returned defeated from his last attempt to

recover for the Crown the lost Angevin provinces, to face a discontent that

was both wide and general. The people, and in especial the barons and

knights whom for fourteen years John had robbed, insulted, and spurned, and

whose liberties he had trampled upon, were ready at last under wise

leadership to end the oppression.

In November, 1214, the Archbishop saw that the time was come for action,

and again the barons met in council. Before the high altar in the Abbey

Church of St. Edmundsbury they swore that if the King sought to evade their

demand for the laws and liberties of Henry I.'s charter, they would make

war upon him until he pledged himself to confirm their rights in a charter

under royal seal. "They also agreed that after Christmas they would go all

together to the King and ask him for a confirmation of these liberties, and

that meanwhile they would so provide themselves with horses and arms that

if the King should seek to break his oath, they might, by seizing his

castles, compel him to make satisfaction. And when these things were done

every man returned to his own home."[11]

John now asked for time to consider these requests, and for the next six

months worked hard to break up the barons' confederacy, to gain friends and

supporters, and to get mercenaries from Poitou. It was all to no purpose.

As a last resource he took the Cross, expecting to be saved as a crusader

from attack, and at the same time he wrote to the Pope to help his faithful

vassal. The Pope's letters rebuking the barons for conspiracy against the

King were unheeded, and the mercenaries were inadequate when John was

confronted by the whole baronage in arms.

THE GREAT CHARTER

In May a list of articles to be signed was sent to John; and on his refusal

the barons formally renounced their homage and fealty and flew to arms.

John was forced to surrender before this host. On June 15th he met the

barons at Runnymede, between Staines and Windsor, and there, in the

presence of Archbishop Stephen and "a multitude of most illustrious

knights," sealed the Great Charter of the Liberties of England.

This Great Charter was in the main a renewal of the old rights and

liberties promised by Henry I. It set up no new rights, conferred no new

privileges, and sanctioned no changes in the Constitution. Its real and

lasting importance is due to its being a written document--for the first

time in England it was down in black and white, for all to read, what the

several rights and duties of King and people were, and in what the chief

points of the Constitution consisted.

[Illustration: MAGNA CHARTA

A facsimile of the Original in the British Museum.]

The Great Charter is a great table of laws. It marks the beginning of

written legislation, and anticipates Acts of Parliament. Unwritten laws and

traditions were not abolished: they remain with us to this day; but the

written law had become a necessity when "the bonds of unwritten custom"

failed to restrain kings and barons. The Great Charter also took into

account the rights of free men, and of the tenants of the King's vassals.

If the barons and knights had their grievances to be redressed, the commons

and the freeholding peasants needed protection against the lawless

exactions of their overlords.[12]

Sixty-three clauses make up Magna Charta, and we may summarise them as

follows:--

(1) The full rights and liberties of the Church are acknowledged; bishops

shall be freely elected, so that the Church of England shall be free.[13]

(2-8) The King's tenants are to have their feudal rights secured against

abuse. Widows--in the wardship of the Crown--are to be protected against

robbery and against compulsion to a second marriage.

(9-11) The harsh rules for securing the payment of debts to the Crown and

to the Jews (in whose debts the Crown had an interest) are to be relaxed.

(12-14) No scutage or aid (save for the three regular feudal aids--the

ransom of the King, the knighting of his eldest son, and the marriage of

his eldest daughter) is to be imposed except by the Common Council of the

nation; and to this Council archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and

greater barons are to be called by special writ, while all who held their

land directly from the King, and were of lesser rank, were to be summoned

by a general writ addressed to the sheriff of the county. Forty days'

notice of the meeting was to be given, and also the cause of the assembly.

The action of those who obeyed the summons was to be taken to represent the

action of all.[14] (This last clause is never repeated in later

confirmations of the Great Charter.)

(15-16) The powers of lords over their tenants are limited and defined.

(17-19) A Court of Common Pleas is to be held in some fixed place so that

suitors are not obliged to follow the King's Curia. Cases touching the

ownership of land are to be tried in the counties by visiting justices, and

by four knights chosen by the county.

(20-23) No freeman is to be fined beyond his offence, and the penalty is to

be fixed by a local jury. Earls and barons to be fined by their peers; and

clerks only according to the amount of their lay property.

(24-33) The powers of sheriffs, constables, coroners, and bailiffs of the

King are strictly defined. No sheriff is to be a justice in his own county.

Royal officers are to pay for all the goods taken by requisition; money is

not to be taken in lieu of service from those who are willing to perform

the service. The horses and carts of freemen are not to be seized for royal

work without consent. The weirs in the Thames, Medway, and other rivers in

England are to be removed.

(34-38) Uniformity of weights and measures is directed. Inquests are to be

granted freely. The sole wardship of minors who have other lords will not

be claimed by the King, except in special cases. No bailiff may force a man

to ordeal without witnesses.

(39-40) No free man is to be taken, imprisoned, ousted of his land,

outlawed, banished, or hurt in any way save by the judgment of his peers,

or the law of the land. The King is not to sell, delay, or deny right or

justice to anyone.

(41-42) Merchants may go out or come in without paying exorbitant customs.

All "lawful" men are to have a free right to pass in and out of England in

time of peace.

(44-47) An inquiry into the Forest Laws and a reform of the forest abuses

are promised. All forests made in present reign to be disforested, and all

fences in rivers thrown down.

(49-60) The foreign mercenaries of the King, all the detested gang that

came with horses and arms to the hurt of the realm, are to be sent out of

the country. The Welsh princes and the King of Scots (who had sided with

the barons) are to have justice done. A general amnesty for all political

offences arising from the struggle is made.

The last three articles appointed twenty-five barons, chosen out of the

whole baronage, to watch over the keeping of the Charter. They were

empowered to demand that any breach of the articles should at once be put

right, and, in default to make war on the King till the matter was settled

to their satisfaction. Finally there was the oath to be taken on the part

of the King, and on the part of the barons that the articles of the Charter

should be observed in good faith according to their plain meaning.

The Great Charter was signed, and then in a wild burst of rage John shouted

to his foreign supporters, "They have given me five-and-twenty over-kings!"

Within a week of Runnymede the Great Charter was published throughout

England, but neither King nor barons looked for peace. John was ready to

break all oaths, and while he set about increasing his army of mercenaries,

he also appealed to the Pope, as his overlord, protesting that the Charter

had been wrested from him by force.

Langton and the bishops left for Rome to attend a general council. Pope

Innocent declared the Charter annulled on the ground that both King and

barons had made the Pope overlord of England, and that consequently nothing

in the government could be changed without his consent. But with Langton,

the bishops, and the Papal legate all away at Rome, there was no one to

publish the Papal repudiation of the Charter, and the King and barons were

already at civil war. Pope Innocent III. was dead in the spring of 1216,

and John's wretched reign was over when the King lay dying at Newark in

October.

Stephen Langton was back again at Canterbury in 1217, and for eleven more

years worked with William the Marshall and Hubert of Burgh to maintain

public peace and order during Henry III.'s boyhood. At Oxford, in 1223, the

Charter was confirmed afresh, and two years later it was solemnly

proclaimed again when the King wanted a new subsidy. As long as the great

statesmen were in office Henry III. was saved from the weakness that cursed

his rule in England for nearly forty years. But William the Marshall died

in 1219, Archbishop Stephen in 1228, and Hubert was dismissed from the

justiciarship in 1234. A horde of greedy aliens from Poitou fed at the

Court of Henry and devoured the substance of England, until men arose, as

Langton had arisen, to demand the enforcement of charters and a just

administration of the laws.

Again a national party arises under the leadership of Simon of Montfort,

and in their victory over the King we get the beginnings of Parliamentary

government and popular representation. Every step forward is followed by

reaction, but the ground lost is recovered, and the next step taken marks

always a steady advance. Over and over again it has seemed that all the

liberties won in the past were lost, but looking back we can see that there

has been no lasting defeat of liberty. Only for a time have the forces of

oppression triumphed; it is soon found impossible in England to rest under

tyranny, or to govern without the consent of the governed. And every fresh

campaign for the restriction of kingly power brings us nearer the day of

democratic government.

* * * * *

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING OF PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION

DEMOCRACY AND REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

To-day democracy takes the form of representative government in civilised

countries; and for representative government contend the nations and

peoples seeking democracy.

The weak spots in all popular electoral systems are obvious, and the

election of representatives is always a subject for jokes and satire. It

could hardly be otherwise. For the best machinery in the world needs some

sort of sympathetic intelligence in the person who manipulates it, and the

machinery of popular elections can only be worked successfully with a large

measure of sincerity and good will. In the hands of the ambitious, the

self-seeking, and the unscrupulous, democratic politics are a machine for

frustrating popular representation, and as this state of things is always

prevalent somewhere, the humorist and the satirist naturally treat politics

without respect.

But in spite of all its faults and failings--glaring as these are--mankind

can at present devise nothing better than representative government, and

the abuse of power, the cunning, roguery, and corruption that too often

accompany popular elections and democratic administration, rather stir

honest men to action than make them incline to dictatorship and absolutism.

The present notion about representative government is that it makes

possible the expression of popular will, and can ensure the fulfilment of

that will. In the thirteenth century, when we get the beginnings of

representative government, there is no question of the people making

positive proposals in legislation, but there is a distinct belief that the

consent of the governed ought to be obtained by the ruling power. The mere

legal maxim from the Code of Justinian, that "that which touches all shall

be approved by all,"[15] "becomes transmuted by Edward I. into a great

political and constitutional principle."[16]

REPRESENTATIVE THEORY FIRST FOUND IN ECCLESIASTICAL ASSEMBLIES

More than a century earlier the first recorded appearances of town

representatives are found in the Spanish Cortes of Aragon and Castile.[17]

St. Dominic makes a representative form of government the rule in his Order

of Preaching Friars, each priory sending two representatives to its

provincial chapter, and each province sending two representatives to the

general chapter of the Order.

In England, Simon of Montfort, the son of Simon, the great warrior of the

Albigensian wars and the warm friend of Dominic, was in close association

with the friars. Hence there was nothing so very remarkable in Earl Simon

issuing writs for the Full Parliament of 1265 for the return of two

burgesses from each city and borough. He had seen representative government

at work among the friars in their chapters. Why should the plan be not

equally useful in the government of the country?[18] There is no evidence

that the summons to the burgesses was regarded as a revolutionary

proposal--so lightly comes political change in England.

The name of Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, must always be associated

with the beginning of representative government in England. Let us recall

how it was the great Earl came to be in power in 1265.

THE MISRULE OF HENRY III.

Henry III. was always in want of money, and his crew of royal parasites

from Poitou drained the exchequer. Over and over again the barons called on

the King to get rid of his favourites, and to end the misrule that

afflicted the country; and the King from time to time gave promises of

amendment. But the promises were always broken. As long as Henry could get

money he was averse from all constitutional reform. In 1258 the barons were

determined that a change must be made. "If the King can't do without us in

war, he must listen to us in peace," they declared. "And what sort of peace

is this when the King is led astray by bad counsellors, and the land is

filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?"

William of Rishanger, a contemporary writer, expressed the popular feeling

in well-known verses:

"The King that tries without advice to seek his country's weal

Must often fail; he cannot know the wants and woes they feel.

The Parliament must tell the King how he may serve them best,

And he must see their wants fulfilled and injuries redressed.

A King should seek his people's good and not his own sweet will.

Nor think himself a slave because men hold him back from ill."

"The King's mistakes call for special treatment," said Richard, Earl of

Gloucester.

SIMON OF MONTFORT, LEADER OF THE NATIONAL PARTY

So that year a Parliament met in Oxford, in the Dominican Priory. It was

called the "Mad Parliament," because the barons all came to it fully armed,

and civil war seemed imminent. But Earl Simon and Richard of Gloucester

carried the barons with them in demanding reform. Henry was left without

supporters, and civil war was put off for five years.

The work done at this Parliament of Oxford was an attempt to make the King

abide loyally by the Great Charter; and the Provisions of Oxford, as they

were called, set up a standing council of fifteen, by whom the King was to

be guided, and ordered that Parliament was to meet three times a year: at

Candlemas (February 2nd), on June 1st, and at Michaelmas. Four knights were

to be chosen by the King's lesser freeholders in each county to attend this

Parliament, and the baronage was to be represented by twelve commissioners.

It was an oligarchy that the Provisions of Oxford established, "intended

rather to fetter the King than to extend or develop the action of the

community at large. The baronial council clearly regards itself as

competent to act on behalf of all the estates of the realm, and the

expedient of reducing the national deliberations to three sessions of

select committees betrays a desire to abridge the frequent and somewhat

irksome duty of attendance in Parliament rather than to share the central

legislative and deliberative power with the whole body of the people. It

must, however, be remembered that the scheme makes a very indistinct claim

to the character of a final arrangement."[19]

For a time things went better in England. The aliens at Henry's Court fled

over-seas, and their posts were filled by Englishmen. Parliament also

promised that the vassals of the nobles should have better treatment, and

that the sheriffs should be chosen by the shire-moots, the county

freeholders.

But Henry's promises were quickly broken, and war broke out on the Welsh

borders between Simon of Montfort's friend Llewellyn and Mortimer and the

Marchers. Edward, Prince of Wales, stood by the Provisions of Oxford for a

few years, but supported his father when the latter refused to re-confirm

the Provisions in 1263. As a last resource to prevent civil war, Simon and

Henry agreed to appeal to King Louis of France to arbitrate on the

fulfilment of the Provisions. The Pope had already absolved Henry from

obedience to the Provisions, and the Award of Louis, given at Amiens and

called the _Mise of Amiens_, was entirely in Henry's favour. It annulled

the Provisions of Oxford, left the King free to appoint his own ministers,

council, and sheriffs, to employ aliens, and to enjoy power uncontrolled.

But the former charters of the realm were declared inviolate, and no

reprisals were to take place.

To Simon and most of the barons the Award was intolerable, and when Henry

returned from France with a large force ready to take the vengeance which

the Award had forbidden, civil war could not be prevented. London rallied

to Simon, and Oxford, the Cinque Ports, and the friars were all on the side

of the barons against the King.

On May 14th, 1264, a pitched battle at Lewes ended in complete victory for

Simon, and found the King, Prince Edward, and the kinsmen and chief

supporters of the Crown prisoners in his hands.

Peace was made, and a treaty--the _Mise of Lewes_--drawn up and signed.

Once more the King promised to keep the Provisions and Charters, and to

dismiss the aliens. He also agreed to live thriftily till his debts were

paid, and to leave his sons as hostages with Earl Simon.

Simon at once set about the work of reform. The King's Standing, or Privy,

Council was reconstituted, and the Parliamentary Commissioners were

abolished, "for Simon held it as much a man's duty to think and work for

his country as to fight for it." A marked difference is seen between

Simon's policy at Oxford and the policy after Lewes. The Provisions of 1258

were restrictive. The Constitution of 1264 deliberately extended the limits

of Parliament. "Either Simon's views of a Constitution had rapidly

developed, or the influences which had checked them in 1258 were removed.

Anyhow, he had genius to interpret the mind of the nation, and to

anticipate the line which was taken by later progress."[20] What Simon

wanted was the approval of all classes of the community for his plans, and

to that end he issued writs for the Parliament--the _Full Parliament_--of

1265.

The great feature of this Parliament was that for the first time the

burgesses of each city and borough were summoned to send two

representatives. In addition, two knights were to come from each shire, and

clergy and barons as usual--though in the case of the earls and barons only

twenty-three were invited, for Simon had no desire for the presence of

those who were his enemies. The Full Parliament sat till March, and then

two months later war had once more blazed out. Earl Gilbert of Gloucester

broke away from Simon, Prince Edward escaped from custody, and these two

joined Lord Mortimer and the Welsh Marchers.

On August 4th Edward surprised and routed the army of the younger Simon

near Kenilworth, and then advanced to crush the great Earl, who was

encamped at Evesham, waiting to join forces with his son. All hope of

escape for Earl Simon was lost, and he was outnumbered by seven to two. But

fly he would not. One by one the barons who stood by Simon were cut down,

but though wounded and dismounted, the great Earl "fought on to the last

like a giant for the freedom of England, till a foot soldier stabbed him in

the back under the mail, and he was borne down and slain." For three hours

the unequal fight lasted in the midst of storm and darkness, and when it

was over the Grey Friars carried the mangled body of the dead Earl into the

priory at Evesham, and laid it before the high altar, for the poorer clergy

and the common people all counted Simon of Montfort for a saint.

"Those who knew Simon praise his piety, admire his learning, and extol his

prowess as a knight and skill as a general. They tell of his simple fare

and plain russet dress, bear witness to his kindly speech and firm

friendship to all good men, describe his angry scorn for liars and unjust

men, and marvel at his zeal for truth and right, which was such that

neither pleasure nor threats nor promises could turn him aside from keeping

the oath he swore at Oxford; for he held up the good cause 'like a pillar

that cannot be moved, and, like a second Josiah, esteemed righteousness the

very healing of his soul.' As a statesman he wished to bind the King to

rule according to law, and to make the King's Ministers responsible to a

Full Parliament; and though he did not live to see the success of his

policy, he had pointed out the way by which future statesmen might bring it

about."[21]

In the hour of Simon's death it might seem that the cause of good

government was utterly lost, and for a time Henry triumphed with a fierce

reaction. But the very barons who had turned against Simon were quite

determined that the Charters should be observed, and Edward was to show, on

his coming to the throne, that he had grasped even more fully than Simon

the notion of a national representative assembly, and that he accepted the

principle, "that which touches all shall be approved by all."

Henry III. died in 1272, and it was not till two years later that Edward I.

was back in England from the crusades to take up the crown. It was an age

of great lawgivers; an age that saw St. Louis ruling in France, Alfonso the

Wise in Castile, the Emperor Frederick II.--the Wonder of the World--in

Sicily. In England Edward shaped the Constitution and settled for future

times the lines of Parliamentary representative government.

EDWARD I.'S MODEL PARLIAMENT, 1295

For the first twenty years Edward's Parliaments were great assemblies of

barons and knights, and it was not till 1295 that the famous Model

Parliament was summoned. "It is very evident that common dangers must be

met by measures concerted in common," ran the writ to the bishops. Every

sheriff was to cause two knights to be elected from each shire, two

citizens from each city, two burgesses from each borough. The clergy were

to be fully represented from each cathedral and each diocese.

Hitherto Parliament, save in 1265, had been little else than a feudal

court, a council of the King's tenants; it became, after 1295, a national

assembly. Edward's plan was that the three estates--clergy, barons, and

commons: those who pray, those who fight, and those who work--should be

represented. But the clergy always stood aloof, preferring to meet in their

own houses of convocation; and the archbishops, bishops, and greater abbots

only attended because they were great holders of land and important feudal

lords.

Although the knights of the shire were of much the same class as the

barons, the latter received personal summons to attend, and the knights

joined with the representatives of the cities and boroughs. So the two

Houses of Parliament consisted of barons and bishops--lords spiritual and

lords temporal--and knights and commons; and we have to-day the House of

Lords and the House of Commons; the former, as in the thirteenth century,

lords spiritual and temporal, the latter, representatives from counties and

boroughs.

The admission of elected representatives was to move, in course of time,

the centre of government from the Crown to the House of Commons; but in

Edward I.'s reign Parliament was just a larger growth of the King's

Council--the Council that Norman and Plantagenet kings relied on for

assistance in the administration of justice and the collection of revenue.

The judges of the supreme court were always summoned to Parliament, as the

law lords sit in the Upper House to-day.

Money, or rather the raising of money, was the main cause for calling a

Parliament. The clergy at first voted their own grants to the Crown in

convocation, but came to agree to pay the taxes voted by Lords and Commons,

And Lords and Commons, instead of making separate grants, joined in a

common grant.

"And, as the bulk of the burden fell upon the Commons, they adopted a

formula which placed the Commons in the foreground. The grant was made by

the Commons, with the assent of the Lords spiritual and temporal. This

formula appeared in 1395, and became the rule. In 1407, eight years after

Henry IV. came to the throne, he assented to the important principle that

money grants were to be initiated by the House of Commons, were not to be

reported to the King until both Houses were agreed, and were to be reported

by the Speaker of the Commons' House. This rule is strictly observed at the

present day. When a money bill, such as the Finance bill for the year or

the Appropriation bill, has been passed by the House of Commons and agreed

to by the House of Lords, it is, unlike all other bills, returned to the

House of Commons."[22] The Speaker, with his own hand, delivers all money

bills to the Clerk of Parliaments, the officer whose business it is to

signify the royal assent.

In addition to voting money, the Commons, on the assembly of Parliament,

would petition for the redress of grievances. In the thirteenth and

fourteenth centuries, they were not legislators, but petitioners for

legislation; and as it often happened that their petitions were not granted

in the form they asked, it became a matter of bitter complaint that the

laws did not correspond with the petitions. Henry V. in 1414 granted the

request that "nothing should be enacted to the petition of the Commons

contrary to their asking, whereby they should be bound without their

assent"; and from that time it became customary for bills to be sent up to

the Crown instead of petitions, leaving the King the alternative of assent

or reaction.

THE NOBILITY PREDOMINANT IN PARLIAMENT

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the power of Parliament was

strong enough to force the abdication of two kings--Edward II. and Richard

II.--but not strong enough to free the land of the turbulent authority of

the nobles. This authority went down in the struggles of the Lancastrians

and Yorkists.

"The bloody faction fights known as the Wars of the Roses brought the

Plantagenet dynasty to a close, weeded out the older nobility, and cleared

the way for a new form of monarchy."[23]

"The high nobility killed itself out. The great barons who adhered to the

'Red Rose' or the 'White Rose,' or who fluctuated from one to the other,

became poorer, fewer, and less potent every year. When the great struggle

ended at Bosworth, a large part of the greatest combatants were gone. The

restless, aspiring, rich barons, who made the civil war, were broken by it.

Henry VII. attained a kingdom in which there was a Parliament to advise,

but scarcely a Parliament to control."[24]

It is important to note the ascendancy of the barons in the medieval

Parliaments, and their self-destruction in the Wars of the Roses. Unless we

realise how very largely the barons were the Parliament, it is difficult to

understand how it came about that Parliament was so utterly impotent under

the Tudors. The Wars of the Roses killed off the mighty parliamentarians,

and it took a hundred years to raise the country landowners into a party

which, under Eliot, Hampden, and Pym, was to make the House of Commons

supreme.

"The civil wars of many years killed out the old councils (if I might so

say): that is, destroyed three parts of the greater nobility, who were its

most potent members, tired the small nobility and gentry, and overthrew the

aristocratic organisation on which all previous effectual resistance to the

sovereign had been based."[25]

To get an idea of the weakness of Parliament when the Tudors ruled, we have

but to suppose at the present day a Parliament deprived of all front-bench

men on both sides of the House, and of the leaders of the Irish and Labour

parties, and a House of Lords deprived of all Ministers and ex-Ministers.

THE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL ASSEMBLIES

Before passing to the Parliamentary revival of the seventeenth century,

there still remain one or two points to be considered relating to the early

national assemblies of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

(1) _Who were the electors in the Middle Ages?_--In the counties, all who

were entitled to attend and take part in the proceedings of the county

court had the right of electing the knight of the shire; and "it is most

probable, on the evidence of records, on the analogies of representative

usage, and on the testimony of later facts, that the knights of the shire

were elected by the full county court."[26]

The county court or shire-moot not only elected knights for Parliament; it

often enough elected them for local purposes as well. The county coroner

was elected in similar fashion by the county. All the chief tenants and

small freeholders were therefore the county electors; but the

tenants-in-chief (who held their lands from the Crown) and the knights of

the county had naturally considerably more influence than the smaller men.

"The chief lord of a great manor would have authority with his tenants,

freeholders as they might be, which would make their theoretical equality a

mere shadow, and would, moreover, be exercised all the more easily because

the right which it usurped was one which the tenant neither understood nor

cared for."[27]

It is difficult to decide to what extent the smaller freeholders could take

an active interest in the affairs of the county. As for the office of

knight of the shire, there was no competition in the thirteenth or

fourteenth century for the honour of going to Parliament, and it is likely

enough that the sheriff, upon whom rested the responsibility for the

elections, would in some counties be obliged to nominate and compel the

attendance of an unwilling candidate.

(2) _Payment of Parliamentary Representatives._--The fact that Members of

Parliament were paid by their constituents in the thirteenth, fourteenth,

and fifteenth centuries[28] made certain small freeholders as anxious not

to be included in the electorate as others were anxious not to be elected

to Parliament. It was recognised as "fair that those persons who were

excluded from the election should be exempt from contribution to the wages.

And to many of the smaller freeholders the exemption from payment would be

far more valuable than the privilege of voting."[29] But the Commons

generally petitioned for payment to be made by all classes of freeholders,

and when all allowance has been made for varying customs and for local

diversities and territorial influence, it is safe to take it that the

freeholders were the body of electors.

In 1430, the eighth year of Henry VI., an Act was passed ordering that

electors must be resident in the country, and must have free land or

tenement to the value of 40s. a year at least; and this Act was in

operation till 1831.

The county franchise was a simple and straightforward matter compared with

the methods of electing representatives from the boroughs. All that the

sheriff was ordered to do by writ was to provide for the return of two

members for each city or borough in his county; the places that were to be

considered as boroughs were not named. In the Middle Ages a town might have

no wish to be taxed for the wages of its Parliamentary representative, and

in that case would do its best to come to an arrangement with the sheriff.

(It was not till the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that a

considerable increase of boroughs took place. The Tudors created "pocket"

and "rotten" boroughs in order to have the nominees of the Crown in

Parliament.) The size of the borough bore no relation to its membership

till the Reform Act of the nineteenth century, and as the selection of

towns to be represented was arbitrary, so the franchise in the towns was

equally unsettled. One or two places had a wide franchise, others confined

the vote to freemen and corporation members. But in spite of the

extraordinary vagaries of the borough franchise, and the arbitrary

selection of towns to be represented, these early medieval Parliaments

really did in an imperfect way represent the nation--all but the peasants

and artisans.

"Our English Parliaments were _un_symmetrical realities. They were elected

anyhow. The sheriff had a considerable licence in sending writs to

boroughs, that is, he could in part pick its constituencies; and in each

borough there was a rush and scramble for the franchise, so that the

strongest local party got it whether few or many. But in England at that

time there was a great and distinct desire to know the opinion of the

nation, because there was a real and close necessity. The nation was wanted

to do something--to assist the sovereign in some war, to pay some old debt,

to contribute its force and aid in the critical juncture of the time. It

would not have suited the ante-Tudor kings to have had a fictitious

assembly; they would have lost their sole _feeler_, their only instrument

for discovering national opinion. Nor could they have manufactured such an

assembly if they wished. Looking at the mode of election, a theorist would

say that these Parliaments were but 'chance' collections of influential

Englishmen. There would be many corrections and limitations to add to that

statement if it were wanted to make it accurate, but the statement itself

hits exactly the principal excellence of these Parliaments. If not 'chance'

collections of Englishmen, they were 'undesigned' collections; no

administrations made them, or could make them. They were bona fide

counsellors, whose opinion might be wise or unwise, but was anyhow of

paramount importance, because their co-operation was wanted for what was in

hand."[30]

(3) _The political position of women in the Middle Ages._--Abbesses were

summoned to the convocations of clergy in Edward I.'s reign. Peeresses were

permitted to be represented by proxy in Parliament. The offices of sheriff,

high constable, governor of a royal castle, and justice of the peace have

all been held by women. In fact, the lady of the manor had the same rights

as the lord of the manor, and joined with men who were freeholders in

electing knights of the shire without question of sex disability.[31] (A

survival of the medieval rights of women may be seen in the power of women

to present clergy to benefices in the Church of England.)

In the towns women were members of various guilds and companies equally

with men, and were burgesses and freewomen. Not till 1832 was the word

"male" inserted before "persons" in the charters of boroughs. "Never before

has the phrase 'male persons' appeared in any statute of the realm. By this

Act (the Reform Bill), therefore, women were technically disfranchised for

the first time in the history of the English Constitution. The privilege of

abstention was converted into the penalty of exclusion."

NO THEORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE MIDDLE AGES

The years of Simon of Montfort and Edward I., which saw the beginnings of a

representative national assembly, were not a time of theoretical discussion

on political rights. The English nation, indeed, has ever been averse from

political theories. The notion of a carefully balanced constitution was

outside the calculations of medieval statesmen, and the idea of political

democracy was not included among their visions.

"Even the scholastic writers, amid their calculations of all possible

combinations of principles in theology and morals, well aware of the

difference between the 'rex politicus' who rules according to law, and the

tyrant who rules without it, and of the characteristics of monarchy,

aristocracy, and democracy, with their respective corruptions, contented

themselves for the most part with balancing the spiritual and secular

powers, and never broached the idea of a growth into political

enfranchisement. Yet, in the long run, this has been the ideal towards

which the healthy development of national life in Europe has constantly

tended, only the steps towards it have not been taken to suit a

preconceived theory."[32]

Each step towards democracy has been taken "to suit the convenience of

party or the necessities of kings, to induce the newly admitted classes to

give their money, to produce political contentment."

The only two principles that are apparent in the age-long struggles for

political freedom in England, that are recognised and acknowledged, are:

(1) That that which touches all shall be approved by all; (2) that

government rests on the consent of the governed. Over and over again these

two principles may be seen at work.

* * * * *

CHAPTER III

POPULAR INSURRECTION IN ENGLAND

GENERAL RESULTS OF POPULAR RISINGS

Popular insurrection has never been successful in England; a violent death

and a traitor's doom have been the lot of every leader of the common people

who took up arms against the Government. The Civil War that brought Charles

I. to the scaffold, and the Revolution that deposed James II. and set

William of Orange on the throne, were the work of country gentlemen and

Whig statesmen, not of the labouring people.

But if England has never seen popular revolution triumphant and democracy

set up by force of arms, the earlier centuries witnessed more than one

effort to gain by open insurrection some measure of freedom for the working

people of the land.

No other way than violent resistance seemed possible to peasants and

artisans in the twelfth, fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, if

their wrongs were to be mitigated and their rulers to be called to account.

Langton and Simon of Montfort had placed some check on the power of the

Crown, had laid the foundations of political liberty, and marked the road

to be travelled; but the lot of the labouring people remained unheeded and

voiceless in the councils of the nation. What could they do but take up

arms to end an intolerable oppression?

WILLIAM FITZOSBERT, CALLED LONGBEARD, 1196

The first serious protest came from the London workmen in the reign of

Richard I.; and FitzOsbert, known as Longbeard, was the spokesman of the

popular discontent.

The King wanted money, chiefly for his crusades in Palestine. He had no

inclination to personal government, and the business of ruling England was

in the hands of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury, the justiciar or

King's lieutenant. Richard left England for Normandy in 1194, and returned

no more. England to him was a country where money could be raised, a

subject-province to be bled by taxation. Archbishop Hubert did his best to

satisfy the royal demands; and though by his inquisitions "England was

reduced to poverty from one sea to the other"--it is estimated that more

than £1,000,000 was sent to Richard in two years--the King was left

unsatisfied. The nation generally came to hate the Archbishop's taxation,

the Church suffered by his neglect, and he was finally compelled to resign

the justiciarship.

It was the London rising, under FitzOsbert's leadership, that directly

caused Archbishop Hubert's retirement, and FitzOsbert is notable as the

first of the long line of agitators.

The political importance of the capital was seen in the reigns of Cnut and

William the Conqueror. It was conspicuous on the arrival of Stephen in

1135, and its influence on national politics lasted till the middle of the

nineteenth century.[33]

By its charter London had the right of raising taxes for the Crown in its

own way, and in 1196 the method proposed by the Corporation provoked the

outbreak. "When the aldermen assembled according to usage in full hustings

for the purpose of assessing the taxes, the rulers endeavoured to spare

their own purses and to levy the whole from the poor" (Hoveden).

The poorer citizens were voteless, and the plan of the aldermen was to levy

the tallages per head, and not in proportion to the property of the

inhabitants. This meant, practically, that the whole, except a very small

fraction of the sum to be raised, must be paid by the working people.

Thereupon FitzOsbert protested, and the people rose in arms against the

demand.

FitzOsbert was an old crusader, and he was something of a lawyer and a

powerful speaker. Not a rich man by any means, FitzOsbert was yet a member

of the city council when, "burning with zeal for justice and fair play, he

made himself the champion of the poor." To his enemies he was a demagogue

and disreputable--so Ralph de Diceto, Dean of St. Paul's at that time,

described him. To others of more popular sympathies he was heroic and died

a martyr's death. Across the centuries he is seen as "an agitator"--the

first English agitator, the first man to stand up boldly against the

oppression of the common people. This palpably unjust taxation of the poor

was intolerable to FitzOsbert.

Fifteen thousand men banded themselves together in London under an oath

that they would stand by each other and by their leader; and FitzOsbert,

after a vain journey to Normandy to arouse Richard's attention to the

wrongs of his subjects, bade open defiance to the justiciar and his

tax-gatherers.

For a time the Archbishop's men were powerless, but weakness crept in

amongst the citizens, and the aldermen were naturally on the side of

constituted authority. FitzOsbert's success meant a readjustment of

taxation quite unpalatable to the City Fathers.

In the end FitzOsbert was deserted by all but a handful of his followers

and fled with them for sanctuary to the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in

Cheapside. Pursued by the officers of the law, FitzOsbert climbed up into

the tower of the church, and to fetch him down orders were given to set the

church on fire. This was done, and the only chance of life that now

remained for the rebels was to get out of the church and cut their way

through the ranks of their enemies.

At the church door FitzOsbert was struck down, and his little company

quickly overpowered.

Heavily chained, and badly wounded, FitzOsbert was carried off to the

Tower, to be tried and sentenced to a traitor's death without delay.

A few days later--it was just before Easter--FitzOsbert was stripped naked,

and dragged at the tail of a horse over the rough streets of London to

Tyburn. He was dead before the place of execution was reached, but the

body, broken and mangled, was hung up in chains under the gallows elm all

the same; and nine of his companions were hanged with him.

The very people who had fallen away from their leader in the day of his

need now counted FitzOsbert for a saint, and pieces of his gibbet and of

the bloodstained earth underneath the tree were carried away and treasured

as sacred relics. It was alleged that miracles were performed when these

relics were touched--so wide was now the popular reverence for the dead

champion of the poor.

Archbishop Hubert put a stop to this devotion by ordering sermons to be

preached on FitzOsbert's iniquities; and an alleged death-bed confession,

containing an account of many evil deeds, was published. It is likely

enough that an old crusader had plenty of sins to answer for, but

FitzOsbert's one crime before the law was that he had taught the people of

London to stand up and resist by force of arms the payment of taxes--taxes

levied with gross unfairness in popular judgment.

The monks of Canterbury, to whom the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside

belonged, had long had their own quarrels with Archbishop Hubert, and on

this firing of their church, and the violation of sanctuary, they appealed

to the King and the Pope--Innocent III.--that Hubert should give up his

political work and attend exclusively to his duties as Archbishop. Both the

Pope and the great barons were against him, and in 1198 Archbishop Hubert

was compelled to resign the judiciarship.

THE PEASANT REVOLT AND ITS LEADERS, 1381

The great uprising of the peasants in 1381 was a very different matter from

the local insurrection made by FitzOsbert. Two centuries had passed, and in

those centuries the beginnings of representative government had been set up

and some recognition of the rights of the peasantry had been admitted in

the Great Charter.

The Peasant Revolt was national. It was carefully prepared and skilfully

organised, and its leaders were men of power and ability--men of character.

It was not only a definite protest against positive evils, but a vigorous

attempt to create a new social order--to substitute a social democracy for

feudal government.[34]

The old feudal order had been widely upset by the Black Death in 1349, and

the further ravages of pestilence in 1361 and 1369. The heavy mortality

left many country districts bereft of labour, and landowners were compelled

to offer higher wages if agriculture was to go on. In vain Parliament

passed Statutes of Labourers to prevent the peasant from securing an

advance. These Acts of Parliament expressly forbade a rise in wages; the

landless man or woman was "to serve the employer who shall require him to

do so, and take only the wages which were accustomed to be taken in the

neighbourhood two years before the pestilence." The scarcity of labour

drove landowners to compete for the services of the labourer, in spite of

Parliament.

Discontent was rife in those years of social change. The Statutes of

Labourers were ineffectual; but they galled the labourers and kept serfdom

alive. The tenants had their grievance because they were obliged to give

labour-service to their lords. Freehold yeomen, town workmen, and

shopkeepers were irritated by heavy taxation, and vexed by excessive market

tolls. All the materials were at hand for open rebellion, and leaders were

found as the days went by to kindle and direct the revolt.