This intricate subject has been illustrated, since the first publication

of these volumes, in an Essay upon the original Authority of the King's

Council, by Sir Francis Palgrave (1834), written with remarkable

perspicuity and freedom from diffusiveness. But I do not yet assent to

the judgment of the author as to the legality of proceedings before the

council, which I have represented as unconstitutional, and which

certainly it was the object of parliament to restrain.

"It seems," he says, "that in the reign of Henry III. the council was

considered as a court of peers within the terms of Magna Charta; and

before which, as a court of original jurisdiction, the rights of tenants

holding _in capite_ or by barony were to be discussed and decided, and

it unquestionably exercised a direct jurisdiction over all the king's

subjects" (p. 34). The first volume of Close Rolls, published by Mr.

Hardy since Sir F. Palgrave's Essay, contains no instances of

jurisdiction exercised by the council in the reign of John. But they

begin immediately afterwards, in the minority of Henry III.; so that we

have not only the fullest evidence that the council took on itself a

coercive jurisdiction in matters of law at that time, but that it had

not done so before: for the Close Rolls of John are so full as to render

the negative argument satisfactory. It will, of course, be understood

that I take the facts on the authority of Mr. Hardy (Introduction to

Close Rolls, vol. ii.), whose diligence and accuracy are indisputable.

Thus this exercise of judicial power began immediately after the Great

Charter. And yet, if it is to be reconciled with the twenty-ninth

section, it is difficult to perceive in what manner that celebrated

provision for personal liberty against the crown, which has always been

accounted the most precious jewel in the whole coronet, the most

valuable stipulation made at Runnymede, and the most enduring to later

times, could merit the fondness with which it has been regarded. "Non

super eum ibimus, nec super eum mittemus, nisi per legale judicium

parium suorum, vel per legem terrae." If it is alleged that the

jurisdiction of the king's council was the law of the land, the whole

security falls to the ground and leaves the grievance as it stood,

unredressed. Could the judgment of the council have been reckoned, as

Sir P. Palgrave supposes, a "judicium parium suorum," except perhaps in

the case of tenants in chief? The word is commonly understood of that

trial _per pais_ which, in one form or another, is of immemorial

antiquity in our social institutions.

"Though this jurisdiction," he proceeds, "was more frequently called

into action when parliament was sitting, still it was no less inherent

in the council at all other times; and until the middle of the reign of

Edward III. no exception had ever been taken to the form of its

proceedings." He subjoins indeed in a note, "Unless the statute of 5

Edw. III. c. 9, may be considered as an earlier testimony against the

authority of the council. This, however, is by no means clear, and there

is no corresponding petition in the parliament roll from which any

further information could be obtained" (p. 34).

The irresistible conclusion from this passage is, that we have been

wholly mistaken in supposing the commons under Edward III. and his

successors to have resisted an illegal encroachment of power in the

king's ordinary council, while it had in truth been exercising an

ancient jurisdiction, never restrained by law and never complained of by

the subject. This would reverse our constitutional theory to no small

degree, and affect so much the spirit of my own pages, that I cannot

suffer it to pass, coming on an authority so respectable, without some

comment. But why is it asserted that this jurisdiction was inherent in

the council? Why are we to interpret Magna Charta otherwise than

according to the natural meaning of the words and the concurrent voice

of parliament? The silence of the commons in parliament under Edward II.

as to this grievance will hardly prove that it was not felt, when we

consider how few petitions of a public nature, during that reign, are on

the rolls. But it may be admitted that they were not so strenuous in

demanding redress, because they were of comparatively recent origin as

an estate of parliament, as they became in the next long reign, the most

important, perhaps, in our early constitutional history.

It is doubted by Sir F. Palgrave whether the statute of 5 Edw. III. c.

9, can be considered as a testimony against the authority of the

council. It is, however, very natural so to interpret it, when we look

at the subsequent statutes and petitions of the commons, directed for

more than a century to the same object. "No man shall be taken," says

lord Coke (2 Inst. 46), "that is, restrained of liberty, by petition or

suggestion to the king or to his council, unless it be by indictment or

presentment of good and lawful men, where such deeds be done. This

branch and divers other parts of this act have been wholly explained by

divers acts of parliament, &c., quoted in the margent." He then gives

the titles of six statutes, the first being this of 5 Edw. III. c. 9.

But let us suppose that the petition of the commons in 25 Edw. III.

demanded an innovation in law, as it certainly did in long-established

usage. And let us admit what is justly pointed out by Sir F. Palgrave,

that the king's first answer to their petition is not commensurate to

its request, and reserves, though it is not quite easy to see what, some

part of its extraordinary jurisdiction.[472] Still the statute itself,

enacted on a similar petition in a subsequent parliament, is explicit

that "none shall be taken by petition or suggestion to the king or his

council, unless it be by indictment or presentment" (in a criminal

charge), "or by writ original at the common law" (in a civil suit), "nor

shall be put out of his franchise of freehold, unless he have been duly

put to answer, and forejudged of the same by due course of law."

Lord Hale has quoted a remarkable passage from a Year-book, not long

after these statutes of 25 Edw. III. and 28 Edw. III., which, if Sir F.

Palgrave had not overlooked, he would have found not very favourable to

his high notions of the king's prerogative in council. "In after ages,"

says Hale, "the constant opinion and practice was to disallow any

reversals of judgment by the council, which appears by the notable case

in Year-book, 39 Edw. III. 14." (Jurisdiction of Lords' House, p. 41.)

It is indeed a notable case, wherein the chancellor before the council

reverses a judgment of a court of law. "Mes les justices ne pristoient

nul regard al reverser devant le council, par ceo que ce ne fust place

ou jugement purroit estre reverse." If the council could not exercise

this jurisdiction on appeal, which is not perhaps expressly taken away

by any statute, much less against the language of so many statutes could

they lawfully entertain any original suit. Such, however, were the

vacillations of a motley assembly, so steady the perseverance of

government in retaining its power, so indefinite the limits of ancient

usage, so loose the phrases of remedial statutes, passing sometimes by

their generality the intentions of those who enacted them, so useful,

we may add, and almost indispensable, was a portion of those

prerogatives which the crown exercised through the council and chancery,

that we find soon afterwards a statute (37 Edw. III. c. 18), which

recognises in some measure those irregular proceedings before the

council, by providing only that those who make suggestions to the

chancellor and great council, by which men are put in danger against the

form of the charter, shall give security for proving them. This is

rendered more remedial by another act next year (38 Edw. III. c. 9),

which, however, leaves the liberty of making such suggestions untouched.

The truth is, that the act of 25 Edw. III. went to annihilate the legal

and equitable jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery--the former of which

had been long exercised, and the latter was beginning to spring up. But

the 42 Edw. III. c. 3, which seems to go as far as the former in the

enacting words, will be found, according to the preamble, to regard only

criminal charges.

Sir Francis Palgrave maintains that the council never intermitted its

authority, but on the contrary "it continually assumed more consistency

and order. It is probable that the long absences of Henry V. from

England invested this body with a greater degree of importance. After

every minority and after every appointment of a select or extraordinary

council by authority of the legislature, we find that the ordinary

council acquired a fresh impulse and further powers. Hence the next

reign constitutes a new era" (p. 80). He proceeds to give the same

passage which I have quoted from Rot. Parl. 8 Hen. VI., vol. v. p. 343,

as well as one in an earlier parliament (2 Hen. VI. p. 28). But I had

neglected to state the whole case where I mention the articles settled

in parliament for the regulation of the council. In the first place,

this was not the king's ordinary council, but one specially appointed by

the lords in parliament for the government of the realm during his

minority. They consisted of certain lords spiritual and temporal, the

chancellor, the treasurer, and a few commoners. These commissioners

delivered a schedule of provisions "for the good and the governance of

the land, which the lords that be of the king's council desireth" (p.

28). It does not explicitly appear that the commons assented to these

provisions; but it may be presumed, at least in a legal sense, by their

being present and by the schedule being delivered into parliament,

"baillez en meme le parlement." But in the 8 Hen. VI., where the same

provision as to the jurisdiction of this extraordinary council is

repeated, the articles are said, after being approved by the lords

spiritual and temporal, to have been read "coram domino rege in eodem

parliamento, in presentia trium regni statuum" (p. 343). It is always

held that what is expressly declared to be done in presence of all the

estates is an act of parliament.

We find, therefore, a recognition of the principle which had always been

alleged in defence of the ordinary council in this parliamentary

confirmation--the principle that breaches of the law, which the law

could not, through the weakness of its ministers, or corruption, or

partiality, sufficiently repress, must be reserved for the strong arm of

royal authority. "Thus," says Sir Francis Palgrave, "did the council

settle and define its principles and practice. A new tribunal was

erected, and one which obtained a virtual supremacy over the common law.

The exception reserved to their 'discretion' of interfering wherever

their lordships felt too much might on one side, and too much unmight on

the other, was of itself sufficient to embrace almost every dispute or

trial" (p. 81).

But, in the first place, this latitude of construction was not by any

means what the parliament meant to allow, nor could it be taken, except

by wilfully usurping powers never imparted; and, secondly, it was not

the ordinary council which was thus constituted during the king's

minority; nor did the jurisdiction intrusted to persons so specially

named in parliament extend to the regular officers of the crown. The

restraining statutes were suspended for a time in favour of a new

tribunal. But I have already observed that there was always a class of

cases precisely of the same kind as those mentioned in the act creating

this tribunal, tacitly excluded from the operation of those statutes,

wherein the coercive jurisdiction of the king's ordinary council had

great convenience, namely, where the course of justice was obstructed by

riots, combinations of maintenance, or overawing influence. And there

is no doubt that, down to the final abolition of the Court of Star

Chamber (which was no other than the _consilium ordinarium_ under a

different name), these offences were cognizable in it, without the

regular forms of the common law.[473]

"From the reign of Edward IV. we do not trace any further opposition to

the authority either of the chancery or of the council. These courts had

become engrafted on the constitution; and if they excited fear or

jealousy, there was no one who dared to complain. Yet additional

parliamentary sanction was not considered as unnecessary by Henry VII.,

and in the third year of his reign an act was passed for giving the

Court of Star Chamber, which had now acquired its determinate name,

further authority to punish divers misdemeanours." (Palgrave, p. 97.)

It is really more than we can grant that the jurisdiction of the

_consilium ordinarium_ had been engrafted on the constitution, when the

statute-book was full of laws to restrain, if not to abrogate it. The

acts already mentioned, in the reign of Henry VI., by granting a

temporary and limited jurisdiction to the council, demonstrate that its

general exercise was not acknowledged by parliament. We can only say

that it may have continued without remonstrance in the reign of Edward

IV. I have observed in the text that the Rolls of Parliament under

Edward IV. contain no complaints of grievances. But it is not quite

manifest that the council did exercise in that reign as much

jurisdiction as it had once done. Lord Hale tells us that "this

jurisdiction was gradually brought into great disuse, though there

remain some straggling footsteps of their proceedings till near 3 Hen.

VII." (Hist. of Lords' Jurisdiction, p. 38.) And the famous statute in

that year, which erected a new court, sometimes improperly called the

Court of Star Chamber, seems to have been prompted by a desire to

restore, in a new and more legal form, a jurisdiction which was become

almost obsolete, and, being in contradiction to acts of parliament,

could not well be rendered effective without one.[474]

We cannot but discover, throughout the learned and luminous Essay on

the Authority of the King's Council, a strong tendency to represent its

exercise as both constitutional and salutary. The former epithet cannot,

I think, be possibly applicable in the face of statute law; for what

else determines our constitution? But it is a problem with some, whether

the powers actually exerted by this anomalous court, admitting them to

have been, at least latterly, in contravention of many statutes, may not

have been rendered necessary by the disorderly condition of society and

the comparative impotence of the common law. This cannot easily be

solved with the defective knowledge that we possess. Sometimes, no

doubt, the "might on one side, and unmight on the other," as the answer

to a petition forcibly expresses it, afforded a justification which,

practically at least, the commons themselves were content to allow. But

were these exceptional instances so frequent as not to leave a much

greater number wherein the legal remedy by suit before the king's

justices of assise might have been perfectly effectual? For we are not

concerned with the old county-courts, which were perhaps tumultuary and

partial enough, but with the regular administration, civil and criminal,

before the king's justices of oyer and terminer and of gaol delivery.

Had not they, generally speaking, in the reign of Edward III. and his

successors, such means of enforcing the execution of law as left no

sufficient pretext for recurring to an arbitrary tribunal? Liberty, we

should remember, may require the sacrifice of some degree of security

against private wrong, which a despotic government, with an unlimited

power of restraint, can alone supply. If no one were permitted to travel

on the high road without a licence, or, as now so usual, without a

passport, if no one could keep arms without a registry, if every one

might be indefinitely detained on suspicion, the evil doers of society

would be materially impeded, but at the expense, to a certain degree, of

every man's freedom and enjoyment. Freedom being but a means to the

greatest good, times might arise when it must yield to the security of

still higher blessings; but the immediate question is, whether such were

the state of society in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Now,

that it was lawless and insecure, comparatively with our own times or

the times of our fathers, is hardly to be disputed. But if it required

that arbitrary government which the king's council were anxious to

maintain, the representatives of the commons in parliament, knights and

burgesses, not above the law, and much interested in the conservation of

property, must have complained very unreasonably for more than a hundred

years. They were apparently as well able to judge as our writers can be;

and if they reckoned a trial by jury at _nisi prius_ more likely, on the

whole, to insure a just adjudication of a civil suit, than one before

the great officers of state and other constituent members of the

ordinary council, it does not seem clear to me that we have a right to

assert the contrary. This mode of trial by jury, as has been seen in

another place, had acquired, by the beginning of the fifteenth century,

its present form; and considering the great authority of the judges of

assise, it may not, probably, have given very frequent occasion for

complaint of partiality or corrupt influence.

NOTE XII. Page 156.

The learned author of the Inquiry into the Rise and Growth of the Royal

Prerogative in England has founded his historical theory on the

confusion which he supposes to have grown up between the ideal king of

the constitution and the personal king on the throne. By the former he

means the personification of abstract principles, sovereign power, and

absolute justice, which the law attributes to the _genus_ king, but

which flattery or other motives have transferred to the possessor of the

crown for the time being, and have thus changed the Teutonic _cyning_,

the first man of the commonwealth, the man of the highest weregild, the

man who was so much responsible that he might be sued for damages in his

own courts or deposed for misgovernment, into the sole irresponsible

person of indefeasible prerogatives, of attributes almost divine, whom

Bracton and a long series of subsequent lawyers raised up to a height

far beyond the theory of our early constitution.

This is supported with great acuteness and learning; nor is it possible

to deny that the king of England, as the law-books represent him, is

considerably different from what we generally conceive an ancient

German chieftain to have been. Yet I doubt whether Mr. Allen has not

laid too much stress on this, and given to the fictions of law a greater

influence than they possessed in those times to which his inquiry

relates; and whether, also, what he calls the monarchical theory was so

much derived from foreign sources as he apprehends. We have no occasion

to seek, in the systems of civilians or the dogmas of churchmen, what

arose from a deep-seated principle of human nature. A king is a person;

to persons alone we attach the attributes of power and wisdom; on

persons we bestow our affection or our ill-will. An abstraction, a

politic idea of royalty, is convenient for lawyers; it suits the

speculative reasoner, but it never can become so familiar to a people,

especially one too rude to have listened to such reasoners, as the

simple image of the king, the one man whom we are to love and to fear.

The other idea is a sort of monarchical pantheism, of which the

vanishing point is a republic. And to this the prevalent theory, that

kings are to reign but not to govern, cannot but lead. It is a

plausible, and in the main, perhaps, for the times we have reached, a

necessary theory; but it renders monarchy ultimately scarcely possible.

And it was neither the sentiment of the Anglo-Saxons, nor of the Norman

baronage; the feudal relation was essentially and exclusively personal;

and if we had not enough, in a more universal feeling of human nature,

to account for loyalty, we could not mistake its inevitable connexion

with the fealty and homage of the vassal. The influence of Roman notions

was not inconsiderable upon the continent; but they never prevailed very

much here; and though, after the close alliance between the church and

state established by the Reformation, the whole weight of the former was

thrown into the scale of the crown, the mediaeval clergy, as I have

observed in the text, were anything rather than upholders of despotic

power.

It may be very true that, by considering the monarchy as a merely

political institution, the scheme of prudent men to avoid confusion, and

confer the _minimum_ of personal authority on the reigning prince, the

principle of his irresponsibility seems to be better maintained. But the

question to which we are turning our eyes is not a political one; it

relates to the positive law and positive sentiments of the English

nation in the mediaeval period. And here I cannot put a few necessary

fictions grown up in the courts, such as, the king never dies, the king

can do no wrong, the king is everywhere, against the tenor of our

constitutional language, which implies an actual and active personality.

Mr. Allen acknowledges that the act against the Despensers under Edward

II., and re-confirmed after its repeal, for promulgating the doctrine

that allegiance had more regard to the crown than to the person of the

king, "seems to establish, as the deliberate opinion of the legislature,

that allegiance is due to the person of the king generally, and not

merely to his crown or politic capacity, so as to be released and

destroyed by his misgovernment of the kingdom" (p. 14); which, he adds,

is not easily reconcilable with the deposition of Richard II. But that

was accomplished by force, with whatever formalities it may have been

thought expedient to surround it.

We cannot, however, infer from the declaration of the legislature, that

allegiance is due to the king's person and not to his politic capacity,

any such consequence as that it is not, in any possible case, to be

released by his misgovernment. This was surely not in the spirit of any

parliament under Edward II. or Edward III.; and it is precisely because

allegiance is due to the person, that, upon either feudal or natural

principles, it might be cancelled by personal misconduct. A contrary

language was undoubtedly held under the Stuarts; but it was not that of

the mediaeval period.

The tenet of our law, that all the soil belongs theoretically to the

king, is undoubtedly an enormous fiction, and very repugnant to the

barbaric theory preserved by the Saxons, that all unappropriated land

belonged to the folk, and was unalienable without its consent.[475] It

was, however, but an extension of the feudal tenure to the whole

kingdom, and rested on the personality of feudal homage. William

established it more by his power than by any theory of lawyers; though

doubtless his successors often found lawyers as ready to shape the acts

of power into a theory as if they had originally projected them. And

thus grew up the high schemes of prerogative, which, for many centuries,

were in conflict with those of liberty. We are not able, nevertheless,

to define the constitutional authority of the Saxon kings; it was not

legislative, nor was that of William and his successors ever such; it

was not exclusive of redress for private wrong, nor was this ever the

theory of English law, though the method of remedy might not be

sufficiently effective; yet it had certainly grown before the Conquest,

with no help from Roman notions, to something very unlike that of the

German kings in Tacitus.

NOTE XIII. Page 172.

The reduction of the free ceorls into villenage, especially if as

general as is usually assumed, is one of the most remarkable innovations

during the Anglo-Norman period; and one which, as far as our published

records extend, we cannot wholly explain. Observations have been made on

it by Mr. Wright, in the Archaeologia (vol. xxx. p. 225). After adverting

to the oppression of the peasants in Normandy, which produced several

rebellions, he proceeds thus:--"These feelings of hatred and contempt

for the peasantry were brought into our island by the Norman barons in

the latter half of the eleventh century. The Saxon laws and customs

continued; but the Normans acted as the Franks had done towards the

Roman coloni; they enforced with harshness the laws which were in their

own favour, and gradually threw aside, or broke through, those which

were in favour of the miserable serf."

In the Laws of Henry I. we find the weregild of the twyhinder, or

villein, set at 200 shillings in Wessex, "quae caput regni est et legum"

(c. 70). But this expression argues an Anglo-Saxon source; and, in fact,

so much in that treatise seems to be copied, without regard to the

change of times, from old authorities, mixed up with provisions of a

feudal or Norman character, that we hardly know how to distinguish what

belongs to each period. It is far from improbable that villenage, in the

sense the word afterwards bore, that is, an absolutely servile tenure of

lands, not only without legal rights over them, but with an incapacity

of acquiring either immovable or movable property against the lord, may

have made considerable strides before the reign of Henry II.[476] But

unless light should be thrown on its history by the publication of more

records, it seems almost impossible to determine the introduction of

predial villenage more precisely than to say it does not appear in the

laws of England at the Conquest, and it does so in the time of Glanvil.

Mr. Wright's Memoir in the Archaeologia, above quoted, contains some

interesting matter; but he has too much confounded the _theow_, or

Anglo-Saxon slave, with the _ceorl_; not even mentioning the latter,

though it is indisputable that _villanus_ is the equivalent of _ceorl_,

and _servus_ of _theow_.

But I suspect that we go a great deal too far in setting down the

descendants of these ceorls, that is, the whole Anglo-Saxon population

except thanes and burgesses, as almost universally to be counted such

villeins as we read of in our law-books, or in concluding that the

cultivators of the land, even in the thirteenth century, were wholly, or

at least generally, servile. It is not only evident that small

freeholders were always numerous, but we are, perhaps, greatly deceived

in fancying that the occupiers of villein tenements were usually

villeins. _Terre-tenants en villenage_ and tenants _par copie_, who were

undoubtedly free, appear in the early Year-books, and we know not why

they may not always have existed.[477] This, however, is a subject which

I am not sufficiently conversant with records to explore; it deserves

the attention of those well-informed and diligent antiquaries whom we

possess. Meantime it is to be observed that the lands occupied by

_villani_ or _bordarii_, according to the Domesday survey, were much

more extensive than the copyholds of the present day; and making every

allowance for enfranchisements, we can hardly believe that all these

lands, being, in fact, by far the greater part of the soil, were the

_villenagia_ of Glanvil's and Bracton's age. It would be interesting to

ascertain at what time the latter were distinguished from _libera

tenementa_; at what time, that is, the distinction of territorial

servitude, independent as it was of the personal state of the occupant,

was established in England.

NOTE XIV. Page 173.

This identity of condition between the villein regardant and in gross

appears to have been, even lately, called in question, and some adhere

to the theory which supposes an inferiority in the latter. The following

considerations will prove that I have not been mistaken in rejecting

it:--

I. It will not be contended that the words "regardant" and "in gross"

indicate of themselves any specific difference between the two, or can

mean anything but the title by which the villein was held; prescriptive

and territorial in one case, absolute in the other. For the proof,

therefore, of any such difference we require some ancient authority,

which has not been given. II. The villein regardant might be severed

from the manor, with or without land, and would then become a villein in

gross. If he was sold as a domestic serf, he might, perhaps, be

practically in a lower condition than before, but his legal state was

the same. If he was aliened with lands, parcel of the manor, as in the

case of its descent to coparceners who made partition, he would no

longer be regardant, because that implied a prescriptive dependence on

the lord, but would occupy the same tenements and be in exactly the same

position as before. "Villein in gross," says Littleton, "is where a man

is seised of a manor whereunto a villein is regardant, and granteth the

same villein by deed to another; then he is a villein in gross, and not

regardant." (Sect. 181.) III. The servitude of all villeins was so

complete that we cannot conceive degrees in it. No one could purchase

lands or possess goods of his own; we do not find that any one, being

strictly a villein, held by certain services; "he must have regard,"

says Coke, "to that which is commanded unto him; or, in the words of

Bracton, 'a quo praestandum servitium incertum et indeterminatum, ubi

scire non poterit vespere quod servitium fieri debet mane.'" (Co. Lit.

120, b.) How could a villein in gross be lower than this? It is true

that the villein had one inestimable advantage over the American negro,

that he was a freeman, except relatively to his lord; possibly he might

be better protected against personal injury; but in his incapacity of

acquiring secure property, or of refusing labour, he was just on the

same footing. It may be conjectured that some villeins in gross were

descended from the _servi_, of whom we find 25,000 enumerated in

Domesday. Littleton says, "If a man and his ancestors, whose heir he is,

have been seised of a villein and of his ancestors, as of villeins in

gross, time out of memory of man, these are villeins in gross." (Sect.

182.)

It has been often asserted that villeins in gross seem not to have been

a numerous class, and it might not be easy to adduce distinct instances

of them in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, though we should

scarcely infer, from the pains Littleton takes to describe them, that

none were left in his time. But some may be found in an earlier age. In

the ninth of John, William sued Ralph the priest for granting away lands

which he held to Canford priory. Ralph pleaded that they were his

freehold. William replied that he held them in villenage, and that he

(the plaintiff) had sold one of Ralph's sisters for four shillings.

(Blomefield's Norfolk, vol. iii. p. 860, 4to. edition.) And Mr. Wright

has found in Madox's Formulare Anglicanum not less than five instances

of villeins sold with their family and chattels, but without land.

(Archaeologia, xxx. 228.) Even where they were sold along with land,

unless it were a manor, they would, as has been observed before, have

been villeins in gross. I have, however, been informed that in

valuations under escheats in the old records a separate value is never

put upon villeins; their alienation without the land was apparently not

contemplated. Few cases concerning villeins in gross, it has been said,

occur in the Year-books; but villenage of any kind does not furnish a

great many; and in several I do not perceive, in consulting the report,

that the party can be shown to have been regardant. One reason why

villeins in gross should have become less and less numerous was that

they could, for the most part, only be claimed by showing a written

grant, or by prescription through descent; so that, if the title-deed

were lost, or the descent unproved, the villein became free.

Manumissions were often, no doubt, gratuitous; in some cases the villein

seems to have purchased his freedom. For though in strictness, as

Glanvil tells us, he could not "libertatem suam suis denariis quaerere,"

inasmuch as all he possessed already belonged to the lord, it would have

been thought a meanness to insist on so extreme a right. In order,

however, to make the deed more secure, it was usual to insert the name

of a third person as paying the consideration-money for the

enfranchisement. (Archaeologia, xxx. 228.)

It appears not by any means improbable that regular money payments, or

other fixed liabilities, were often substituted instead of uncertain

services for the benefit of the lord as well as the tenant. And when

these had lasted a considerable time in any manor, the villenage of the

latter, without any manumission, would have expired by desuetude. But,

perhaps, an entry of his tenure on the court-roll, with a copy given to

himself, would operate of itself, in construction of law, as a

manumission. This I do not pretend to determine.

NOTE XV. Page 179.

The public history of Europe in the middle ages inadequately represents

the popular sentiment, or only when it is expressed too loudly to escape

the regard of writers intent sometimes on less important subjects. But

when we descend below the surface, a sullen murmur of discontent meets

the ear, and we perceive that mankind was not more insensible to wrongs

and sufferings than at present. Besides the various outbreakings of the

people in several counties, and their complaints in parliament, after

the commons obtained a representation, we gain a conclusive insight into

the spirit of the times by their popular poetry. Two very interesting

collections of this kind have been lately published by the Camden

Society, through the diligence of Mr. Thomas Wright; one, the Poems

attributed to Walter Mapes; the other, the Political Songs of England,

from John to Edward II.

Mapes lived under Henry II., and has long been known as the reputed

author of humorous Latin verses; but it seems much more probable, that

the far greater part of the collection lately printed is not from his

hand. They may pass, not for the production of a single person, but

rather of a class, during many years, or, in general words, a century,

ending with the death of Henry III. in 1272. Many of them are

professedly written by an imaginary Golias.

"They are not the expressions of hostility of one man against an order

of monks, but of the indignant patriotism of a considerable portion of

the English nation against the encroachments of civil and ecclesiastical

tyranny." (Introduction to Poems ascribed to Walter Mapes, p. 21.) The

poems in this collection reflect almost entirely on the pope and the

higher clergy. They are all in rhyming Latin, and chiefly, though with

exceptions, in the loose trochaic metre called Leonine. The authors,

therefore, must have been clerks, actuated by the spirit which, in a

church of great inequality in its endowments, and with a very numerous

body of poor clergy, is apt to gain strength, but certainly, as

ecclesiastical history bears witness, not one of mere envious malignity

towards the prelates and the court of Rome. These deserved nothing

better, in the thirteenth century, than biting satire and indignant

reproof, and the poets were willing enough to bestow both.

But this popular poetry of the middle ages did not confine itself to the

church. In the collection entitled 'Political Songs' we have some

reflecting on Henry III., some on the general administration. The famous

song on the battle of Lewes in 1264 is the earliest in English; but in

the reign of Edward I. several occur in that language. Others are in

French or in Latin; one complaining of the taxes is in an odd mixture of

these two languages; which, indeed, is not without other examples in

mediaeval poetry. These Latin songs could not, of course, have been

generally understood. But what the priests sung in Latin, they said in

English; the lower clergy fanned the flame, and gave utterance to what

others felt. It may, perhaps, be remarked, as a proof of general

sympathy with the democratic spirit which was then fermenting, that we

have a song of exultation on the great defeat which Philip IV. had just

sustained at Courtrai, in 1302, by the burgesses of the Flemish cities,

on whose liberties he had attempted to trample (p. 187). It is true that

Edward I. was on ill terms with France, but the political interests of

the king would not, perhaps, have dictated the popular ballad.

It was an idle exaggeration in him who said that, if he could make the

ballads of a people, any one might make their laws. Ballads, like the

press, and especially that portion of the press which bears most analogy

to them, generally speaking, give vent to a spirit which has been at

work before. But they had, no doubt, an influence in rendering more

determinate, as well as more active, that resentment of wrong, that

indignation at triumphant oppression, that belief in the vices of the

great, which, too often for social peace and their own happiness, are

cherished by the poor. In comparison, indeed, with the efficacy of the

modern press, the power, of ballads is trifling. Their lively

sprightliness, the humorous tone of their satire, even their metrical

form, sheathe the sting; and it is only in times when political

bitterness is at its height that any considerable influence can be

attached to them, and then it becomes undistinguishable from more

energetic motives. Those which we read in the collection above mentioned

appear to me rather the signs of popular discontent than greatly

calculated to enhance it. In that sense they are very interesting, and

we cannot but desire to see the promised continuation to the end of

Richard II.'s reign.[478] They are said to have become afterwards less

frequent, though the wars of the Roses were likely to bring them,

forward.

Some of the political songs are written in France, though relating to

our kings John and Henry III. Deducting these, we have two in Latin for

the former reign; seven in Latin, three in French (or what the editor

calls Anglo-Norman, which is really the same thing), one in a mixture of

the two, and one in English, for the reign of Henry III. In the reigns

of Edward I. and Edward II. we have eight in Latin, three in French,

nine in English, and four in mixed languages; a style employed probably

for amusement. It must be observed that a large proportion of these

songs contain panegyric and exultation on victory rather than satire;

and that of the satire much is general, and much falls on the church; so

that the animadversions on the king and the nobility are not very

frequent, though with considerable boldness; but this is more shown in

the Latin than the English poems.

FOOTNOTES:

[460] This hypothetical clause is somewhat remarkable. Grand serjeanty

is of course included by parity under military service. But did any hold

of the king in socage, except on his demesne lands? There might be some

by petty serjeanty. Yet the committee, as we have just seen, absolutely

exclude these from any share in the great councils of the Conqueror and

his immediate descendants.

[461] Mr. Spence has ingeniously conjectured, observing that in some

passages of Domesday (he quotes two, but I only find one) the barons who

held more than six manors paid their relief directly to the king, while

those who had six or less paid theirs to the sheriff (Yorkshire, 298,

b), that "this may tend to solve the disputed question as to what

constituted one of the greater barons mentioned in the Magna Charta of

John and other early Norman documents; for, by analogy to the mode in

which the relief was paid, the greater barons were summoned by

particular writs, the rest by one general summons through the sheriff."

History of Equitable Jurisdiction, p. 40.

[462] See quotation from Spence's Equitable Jurisdiction, a little

above. The barony of Berkeley was granted in 1 Ric. I., to be holden by

the service of five knights, which was afterwards reduced to three.

Nicolas's Report of Claim to Barony of L'Isle, Appendix, p. 318.

[463] A charter of Henry I., published in the new edition of Rymer (i.

p. 12), fully confirms what is here said. Sciatis quod concedo et

praecipio, ut a modo comitatus mei et hundreda in illis locis et iisdem

terminis sedeant, sicut sederunt in tempore regis Edwardi, et non

aliter. Ego enim, quando voluero, faciam ea satis summoneri propter mea

dominica necessaria ad voluntatem meam. Et si modo exurgat placitum de

divisione terrarum, si est inter barones meos dominicos, tractetur

placitum in curea mea. Et si est inter vavassores duorum dominorum,

tractetur in comitatu. Et hoc duello fiat, nisi in eis remanserit. Et

volo et praecipio, ut omnes de comitatu eant ad comitatus et hundreda,

sicut fecerunt in tempore regis Edwardi. But it is also easily proved

from the Leges Henrici Primi.

[464] See the ensuing part of this note.

[465] This pedigree is elaborately, and with pious care, traced by Mr.

Stapleton, in his excellent introduction to the old chronicle of London,

already quoted. The name Alwyn appears rather Saxon than Norman, so that

we may presume the first mayor to have been of English descent; but

whether he were a merchant, or a landholder living in the city, must be

undecided.

[466] Hist. de Paris, vol. iii. p. 231.

[467] John of Troyes says, in 1467, that from sixty to eighty thousand

men appeared in arms. Dulaure (Hist. de Paris, vol. iii. p. 505) says

this gives 120,000 for the whole population; but it gives double, which

is incredible. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the houses

were still cottages: only four streets were paved; they were very narrow

and dirty, and often inundated by the Seine. Ib. p. 198.

[468] This doubt was soon afterwards changed into a proposition,

strenuously maintained by the supposed compiler of these Reports, lord

Redesdale, on the claim to the barony of L'Isle in 1829. The ancestor

had been called by writ to several parliaments of Edw. III.; and having

only a daughter, the negative argument from the omission of his

posterity is of little value; for though the husbands of heiresses were

frequently summoned, this does not seem to have been an universal

practice. It was held by lord Redesdale, that, at least until the

statute of 5 Richard II. c. 4, no hereditary or even personal right to

the peerage was created by the writ of summons. The house of lords

rejected the claim, though the language of their resolution is not

conclusive as to the principle. The opinion of lord R. has been ably

impugned by Sir Harris Nicolas, in his Report of the L'Isle Peerage,

1829.

[469] The Lords' committee (Second Report, p. 436) endeavour to elude

the force of this authority; but it manifestly appears that the Nevilles

were preferred to the Fanes for the particular barony in question;

though some satisfaction was made to the claimant of the latter family

by calling her to a different peerage.

[470] The continuance of barony by tenure has been controverted by Sir

Harris Nicolas, in some remarks on such a claim preferred by the present

earl Fitzharding while yet a commoner, in virtue of the possession of

Berkeley castle, published as an Appendix to his Report of the L'Isle

Peerage. In the particular case there seem to have been several

difficulties, independently of the great one, that, in the reign of

Charles II., barony by tenure had been finally condemned. But there is

surely a great general difficulty on the opposite side, in the

hypothesis that, while it is acknowledged that there were, in the reigns

of Edward I. and Edward II., certain known persons holding by barony and

called peers of the realm, it could have been agreeable to the feudal or

to the English constitution that the king, by refusing to the posterity

of such barons a writ of summons to parliament, might deprive them of

their nobility, and reduce them for ever to the rank of commoners.

[471] It has been doubted, notwithstanding the authority of Spelman, and

some earlier but rather precarious testimony, whether the chancellor

before the Conquest was any more than a scribe or secretary. Palgrave,

in the Quarterly Review, xxxiv. 291. The Anglo-Saxon charters, as far as

I have observed, never mention him as a witness; which seems a very

strong circumstance. Ingulfus, indeed, has given a pompous account of

chancellor Turketul; and, if the history ascribed to Ingulfus be

genuine, the office must have been of high dignity. Lord Campbell

assumes this in his Lives of the Chancellors.

[472] The words of the petition and answer are the following:--

"Item, que nul franc homme ne soit mys a respondre de son franc

tenement, ne de riens qui touche vie et membre, fyns ou redemptions, par

apposailles devant le conseil notre seigneur le roi, ne devant ses

ministres queconques, sinoun par proces de ley de ces en arere use."

"Il plest a notre seigneur le roi que les leies de son roialme soient

tenuz et gardez en lour force, et que nul homme soit tenu a respondre de

son fraunk tenement, sinoun par processe de ley: mes de chose que touche

vie ou membre, contemptz ou excesse, soit fait come ad este use ces en

arere." Rot. Par. ii. 228.

It is not easy to perceive what was reserved by the words "chose que

touche vie ou membre;" for the council never determined these. Possibly

it regarded accusations of treason or felony, which they might entertain

as an inquest, though they would ultimately be tried by a jury.

Contempts are easily understood; and by excesses were meant riots and

seditions. These political offences, which could not be always safely

tried in a lower court, it was the constant intention of the government

to reserve for the council.

[473] See Note in p. 145, for the statute 31 H. VI. c. 2.

[474] See Constitutional History of England, vol. i. p. 49. (1842.)

[475] It has been mentioned in a former note, on Mr. Allen's authority,

that the folcland had acquired the appellation _terra regis_ before the

Conquest.

[476] A presumptive proof of this may be drawn from a chapter in the

Laws of Henry I. c. 81, where the penalty payable by a villein for

certain petty offences is set at thirty pence; that of a _cotset_ at

fifteen; and of a theow at six. The passage is extremely obscure; and

this proportion of the three classes of men is almost the only part that

appears evident. The cotset, who is often mentioned in Domesday, may

thus have been an inferior villein, nearly similar to what Glanvil and

later law-books call such.

[477] The following passage in the Chronicle of Brakelond does not

mention any manumission of the ceorl on whom abbot Samson conferred a

manor:--Unum solum manerium carta sua confirmavit cuidam Anglico

natione, _glebae adscripto_, de cujus fidelitate plenius confidebat quia

bonus agricola erat, et quia nesciebat loqui Gallice. p. 24.

[478] Mr. Wright has given a few specimens in Essays on the Literature

and Popular Superstitions of England in the Middle Ages, vol. i. p. 257.

In fact we may reckon Piers Plowman an instance of popular satire,

though far superior to the rest.

CHAPTER IX.[479]

ON THE STATE OF SOCIETY IN EUROPE DURING THE MIDDLE AGES.

PART I.

Introduction--Decline of Literature in the latter Period of the Roman

Empire--Its Causes--Corruption of the Latin Language--Means by which

it was effected--Formation of new Languages--General Ignorance of the

Dark Ages--Scarcity of Books--Causes that prevented the total

Extinction of Learning--Prevalence of Superstition and Fanaticism--

General Corruption of Religion--Monasteries--their Effects--

Pilgrimages--Love of Field Sports--State of Agriculture--of Internal

and Foreign Trade down to the End of the Eleventh Century--Improvement

of Europe dated from that Age.

It has been the object of every preceding chapter of this work, either

to trace the civil revolutions of states during the period of the middle

ages, or to investigate, with rather more minute attention, their

political institutions. There remains a large tract to be explored, if

we would complete the circle of historical information, and give to our

knowledge that copiousness and clear perception which arise from

comprehending a subject under numerous relations. The philosophy of

history embraces far more than the wars and treaties, the factions and

cabals of common political narration; it extends to whatever illustrates

the character of the human species in a particular period, to their

reasonings and sentiments, their arts and industry. Nor is this

comprehensive survey merely interesting to the speculative philosopher;

without it the statesman would form very erroneous estimates of events,

and find himself constantly misled in any analogical application of them

to present circumstances. Nor is it an uncommon source of error to

neglect the general signs of the times, and to deduce a prognostic from

some partial coincidence with past events, where a more enlarged

comparison of all the facts that ought to enter into the combination

would destroy the whole parallel. The philosophical student, however,

will not follow the antiquary into his minute details; and though it is

hard to say what may not supply matter for a reflecting mind, there is

always some danger of losing sight of grand objects in historical

disquisition, by too laborious a research into trifles. I may possibly

be thought to furnish, in some instances, an example of the error I

condemn. But in the choice and disposition of topics to which the

present chapter relates, some have been omitted oh account of their

comparative insignificance, and others on account of their want of

connexion with the leading subject. Even of those treated I can only

undertake to give a transient view; and must bespeak the reader's

candour to remember that passages which, separately taken, may often

appear superficial, are but parts of the context of a single chapter, as

the chapter itself is of an entire work.

The Middle Ages, according to the division I have adopted, comprise

about one thousand years, from the invasion of France by Clovis to that

of Naples by Charles VIII. This period, considered as to the state of

society, has been esteemed dark through ignorance, and barbarous through

poverty and want of refinement. And although this character is much less

applicable to the last two centuries of the period than to those which

preceded its commencement, yet we cannot expect to feel, in respect of

ages at best imperfectly civilized and slowly progressive, that interest

which attends a more perfect development of human capacities, and more

brilliant advances in improvement. The first moiety indeed of these ten

ages is almost absolutely barren, and presents little but a catalogue of

evils. The subversion of the Roman empire, and devastation of its

provinces, by barbarous nations, either immediately preceded, or were

coincident with the commencement of the middle period. We begin in

darkness and calamity; and though the shadows grow fainter as we

advance, yet we are to break off our pursuit as the morning breathes

upon us, and the twilight reddens into the lustre of day.

[Sidenote: Decline of learning in Roman empire.]

No circumstance is so prominent on the first survey of society during

the earlier centuries of this period as the depth of ignorance in which

it was immersed; and as from this, more than any single cause, the moral

and social evils which those ages experienced appear to have been

derived and perpetuated, it deserves to occupy the first place in the

arrangement of our present subject. We must not altogether ascribe the

ruin of literature to the barbarian destroyers of the Roman empire. So

gradual, and, apparently, so irretrievable a decay had long before

spread over all liberal studies, that it is impossible to pronounce

whether they would not have been almost equally extinguished if the

august throne of the Caesars had been left to moulder by its intrinsic

weakness. Under the paternal sovereignty of Marcus Aurelius the

approaching declension of learning might be scarcely perceptible to an

incurious observer. There was much indeed to distinguish his times from

those of Augustus; much lost in originality of genius, in correctness of

taste, in the masterly conception and consummate finish of art, in

purity of the Latin, and even of the Greek language. But there were men

who made the age famous, grave lawyers, judicious historians, wise

philosophers; the name of learning was honourable, its professors were

encouraged; and along the vast surface of the Roman empire there was

perhaps a greater number whose minds were cultivated by intellectual

discipline than under the more brilliant reign of the first emperor.

[Sidenote: Its causes.]

It is not, I think, very easy to give a perfectly satisfactory solution

of the rapid downfall of literature between the ages of Antonine and of

Diocletian. Perhaps the prosperous condition of the empire from Trajan

to Marcus Aurelius, and the patron age which those good princes bestowed

on letters, gave an artificial health to them for a moment, and

suspended the operation of a disease which had already begun to

undermine their vigour. Perhaps the intellectual energies of mankind can

never remain stationary; and a nation that ceases to produce original

and inventive minds, born to advance the landmarks of knowledge or

skill, will recede from step to step, till it loses even the secondary

merits of imitation and industry. During the third century, not only

there were no great writers, but even few names of indifferent writers

have been recovered by the diligence of modern inquiry.[480] Law

neglected, philosophy perverted till it became contemptible, history

nearly silent, the Latin tongue growing rapidly barbarous, poetry rarely

and feebly attempted, art more and more vitiated; such were the symptoms

by which the age previous to Constantine announced the decline of human

intellect. If we cannot fully account for this unhappy change, as I have

observed, we must, however, assign much weight to the degradation of

Rome and Italy in the system of Severus and his successors, to the

admission of barbarians into the military and even civil dignities of

the empire, to the discouraging influence of provincial and illiterate

sovereigns, and to the calamities which followed for half a century the

first invasion of the Goths and the defeat of Decius. To this sickly

condition of literature the fourth century supplied no permanent remedy.

If under the house of Constantine the Roman world suffered rather less

from civil warfare or barbarous invasions than in the preceding age, yet

every other cause of decline just enumerated prevailed with aggravated

force; and the fourth century set in storms, sufficiently destructive in

themselves, and ominous of those calamities which humbled the majesty of

Rome at the commencement of the ensuing period, and overwhelmed the

Western Empire in absolute and final ruin before its termination.

The diffusion of literature is perfectly distinguishable from its

advancement; and whatever obscurity we may find in explaining the

variations of the one, there are a few simple causes which seem to

account for the other. Knowledge will be spread over the surface of a

nation in proportion to the facilities of education; to the free

circulation of books; to the emoluments and distinctions which literary

attainments are found to produce; and still more to the reward which

they meet in the general respect and applause of society. This cheering

incitement, the genial sunshine of approbation, has at all times

promoted the cultivation of literature in small republics rather than

large empires, and in cities compared with the country. If these are the

sources which nourish literature, we should naturally expect that they

must have become scanty or dry when learning languishes or expires.

Accordingly, in the later ages of the Roman empire a general

indifference towards the cultivation of letters became the

characteristic of its inhabitants. Laws were indeed enacted by

Constantine, Julian, Theodosius, and other emperors, for the

encouragement of learned men and the promotion of liberal education. But

these laws, which would not perhaps have been thought necessary in

better times, were unavailing to counteract the lethargy of ignorance in

which even the native citizens of the empire were contented to repose.

This alienation of men from their national literature may doubtless be

imputed in some measure to its own demerits. A jargon of mystical

philosophy, half fanaticism and half imposture, a barren and inflated

eloquence, a frivolous philology, were not among those charms of wisdom

by which man is to be diverted from pleasure or aroused from indolence.

In this temper of the public mind there was little probability that new

compositions of excellence would be produced, and much doubt whether the

old would be preserved. Since the invention of printing, the absolute

extinction of any considerable work seems a danger too improbable for

apprehension. The press pours forth in a few days a thousand volumes,

which, scattered like seeds in the air over the republic of Europe,

could hardly be destroyed without the extirpation of its inhabitants.

But in the times of antiquity manuscripts were copied with cost, labour,

and delay; and if the diffusion of knowledge be measured by the

multiplication of books, no unfair standard, the most golden ages of

ancient learning could never bear the least comparison with the three

last centuries. The destruction of a few libraries by accidental fire,

the desolation of a few provinces by unsparing and illiterate

barbarians, might annihilate every vestige of an author, or leave a few

scattered copies, which, from the public indifference, there was no

inducement to multiply, exposed to similar casualties in succeeding

times.

We are warranted by good authorities to assign, as a collateral cause of

this irretrievable revolution the neglect of heathen literature by the

Christian church. I am not versed enough in ecclesiastical writers to

estimate the degree of this neglect; nor am I disposed to deny that the

mischief was beyond recovery before the accession of Constantine. From

the primitive ages, however, it seems that a dislike of pagan learning

was pretty general among Christians. Many of the fathers undoubtedly

were accomplished in liberal studies, and we are indebted to them for

valuable fragments of authors whom we have lost. But the literary

character of the church is not to be measured by that of its more

illustrious leaders. Proscribed and persecuted, the early Christians had

not perhaps access to the public schools, nor inclination to studies

which seemed, very excusably, uncongenial to the character of their

profession. Their prejudices, however, survived the establishment of

Christianity. The fourth council of Carthage in 398 prohibited the

reading of secular books by bishops. Jerome plainly condemns the study

of them except for pious ends. All physical science especially was held

in avowed contempt, as inconsistent with revealed truths. Nor do there

appear to have been any canons made in favour of learning, or any

restriction on the ordination of persons absolutely illiterate.[481]

There was indeed abundance of what is called theological learning

displayed in the controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries; and

those who admire such disputations may consider the principal champions

in them as contributing to the glory, or at least retarding the decline,

of literature. But I believe rather that polemical disputes will be

found not only to corrupt the genuine spirit of religion, but to degrade

and contract the faculties. What keenness and subtlety these may

sometimes acquire by such exercise is more like that worldly shrewdness

we see in men whose trade it is to outwit their neighbours than the

clear and calm discrimination of philosophy. However this may be, it

cannot be doubted that the controversies agitated in the church during

these two centuries must have diverted studious minds from profane

literature, and narrowed more and more the circle of that knowledge

which they were desirous to attain.

The torrent of irrational superstitions which carried all before it in

the fifth century, and the progress of ascetic enthusiasm, had an

influence still more decidedly inimical to learning. I cannot indeed

conceive any state of society more adverse to the intellectual

improvement of mankind than one which admitted of no middle line between

gross dissoluteness and fanatical mortification. An equable tone of

public morals, social and humane, verging neither to voluptuousness nor

austerity, seems the most adapted to genius, or at least to letters, as

it is to individual comfort and national prosperity. After the

introduction of monkery and its unsocial theory of duties, the serious

and reflecting part of mankind, on whom science most relies, were turned

to habits which, in the most favourable view, could not quicken the

intellectual energies; and it might be a difficult question whether the

cultivators and admirers of useful literature were less likely to be

found among the profligate citizens of Rome and their barbarian

conquerors or the melancholy recluses of the wilderness.

Such therefore was the state of learning before the subversion of the

Western Empire. And we may form some notion how little probability there

was of its producing any excellent fruits, even if that revolution had

never occurred, by considering what took place in Greece during the

subsequent ages; where, although there was some attention shown to

preserve the best monuments of antiquity, and diligence in compiling

from them, yet no one original writer of any superior merit arose, and

learning, though plunged but for a short period into mere darkness, may

be said to have languished in a middle region of twilight for the

greater part of a thousand years.

But not to delay ourselves in this speculation, the final settlement of

barbarous nations in Gaul, Spain, and Italy consummated the ruin of

literature. Their first irruptions were uniformly attended with

devastation; and if some of the Gothic kings, after their establishment,

proved humane and civilized sovereigns, yet the nation gloried in its

original rudeness, and viewed with no unreasonable disdain arts which

had neither preserved their cultivators from corruption nor raised them

from servitude. Theodoric, the most famous of the Ostrogoth kings in

Italy, could not write his name, and is said to have restrained his

countrymen from attending those schools of learning by which he, or

rather perhaps his minister Cassiodorus, endeavoured to revive the

studies of his Italian subjects. Scarcely one of the barbarians, so long

as they continued unconfused with the native inhabitants, acquired the

slightest tincture of letters; and the praise of equal ignorance was

soon aspired to and attained by the entire mass of the Roman laity.

They, however, could hardly have divested themselves so completely of

all acquaintance with even the elements of learning, if the language in

which books were written had not ceased to be their natural dialect.

This remarkable change in the speech of France, Spain, and Italy is most

intimately connected with the extinction of learning; and there is

enough of obscurity as well as of interest in the subject to deserve

some discussion.

[Sidenote: Corruption of the Latin language.]

It is obvious, on the most cursory view of the French and Spanish

languages, that they, as well as the Italian, are derived from one

common source, the Latin. That must therefore have been at some period,

and certainly not since the establishment of the barbarous nations in

Spain and Gaul, substituted in ordinary use for the original dialects of

those countries which are generally supposed to have been Celtic, not

essentially differing from those which are spoken in Wales and Ireland.

Rome, says Augustin, imposed not only her yoke, but her language, upon

conquered nations. The success of such an attempt is indeed very

remarkable. Though it is the natural effect of conquest, or even of

commercial intercourse, to ingraft fresh words and foreign idioms on the

stock of the original language, yet the entire disuse of the latter, and

adoption of one radically different, scarcely takes place in the lapse

of a far longer period than that of the Roman dominion in Gaul. Thus, in

part of Britany the people speak a language which has perhaps sustained

no essential alteration from the revolution of two thousand years; and

we know how steadily another Celtic dialect has kept its ground in

Wales, notwithstanding English, laws and government, and the long line

of contiguous frontier which brings the natives of that principality

into contact with Englishmen. Nor did the Romans ever establish their

language (I know not whether they wished to do so) in this island, as we

perceive by that stubborn British tongue which has survived two

conquests.[482]

In Gaul and in Spain, however, they did succeed, as the present state of

the French and peninsular languages renders undeniable, though by

gradual changes, and not, as the Benedictine authors of the Histoire

Litteraire de la France seem to imagine, by a sudden and arbitrary

innovation.[483] This is neither possible in itself, nor agreeable to

the testimony of Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons at the end of the second

century, who laments the necessity of learning Celtic.[484] But although

the inhabitants of these provinces came at length to make use of Latin

so completely as their mother tongue that few vestiges of their original

Celtic could perhaps be discovered in their common speech, it does not

follow that they spoke with the pure pronunciation of Italians, far less

with that conformity to the written sounds which we assume to be

essential to the expression of Latin words.

[Sidenote: Ancient Latin pronunciation.]

It appears to be taken for granted that the Romans pronounced their

language as we do at present, so far at least as the enunciation of all

the consonants, however we may admit our deviations from the classical

standard in propriety of sounds and in measure of time. Yet the example

of our own language, and of French, might show us that orthography may

become a very inadequate representative of pronunciation. It is indeed

capable of proof that in the purest ages of Latinity some variation

existed between these two. Those numerous changes in spelling which

distinguish the same words in the poetry of Ennius and of Virgil are

best explained by the supposition of their being accommodated, to the

current pronunciation. Harsh combinations of letters, softened down

through delicacy of ear or rapidity of utterance, gradually lost their

place in the written language. Thus _exfregit_ and _adrogavit_ assumed a

form representing their more liquid sound; and _auctor_ was latterly

spelled _autor_, which has been followed in French and Italian. _Autor_

was probably so pronounced at all times; and the orthography was

afterwards corrected or corrupted, whichever we please to say, according

to the sound. We have the best authority to assert that the final _m_

was very faintly pronounced, rather it seems as a rest and short

interval between two syllables than an articulate letter; nor indeed can

we conceive upon what other ground it was subject to elision before a

vowel in verse, since we cannot suppose that the nice ears of Rome would

have submitted to a capricious rule of poetry for which Greece presented

no analogy.[485]

A decisive proof, in my opinion, of the deviation which took place,

through the rapidity of ordinary elocution, from the strict laws of

enunciation, may be found in the metre of Terence. His verses, which are

absolutely refractory to the common laws of prosody, may be readily

scanned by the application of this principle. Thus, in the first act of

the Heautontimorumenos, a part selected at random, I have found, I.

Vowels contracted or dropped so as to shorten the word by a syllable; in

_rei_, _via_, _diutius_, _ei_, _solius_, _eam_, _unius_, _suam_,

_divitias_, _senex_, _voluptatem_, _illius_, _semel_; II. The

proceleusmatic foot, or four short syllables, instead of the dactyl;

scen. i. v. 59, 73, 76, 88, 109; scen. ii. v. 36; III. The elision of

_s_ in words ending with _us_ or _is_ short, and sometimes even of the

whole syllable, before the next word beginning with a vowel; in scen. i.

v. 30, 81, 98, 101, 116, 119; scen. ii. v. 28. IV. The first syllable

of _ille_ is repeatedly shortened, and indeed nothing is more usual in

Terence than this licence; whence we may collect how ready this word was

for abbreviation into the French and Italian articles. V. The last

letter of _apud_ is cut off, scen. i. v. 120; and scen. ii. v. 8. VI.

_Hodie_ is used as a pyrrhichius, in scen. ii. v. 11. VII. Lastly, there

is a clear instance of a short syllable, the antepenultimate of

_impulerim_, lengthened on account of the accent at the 113th verse of

the first scene.

[Sidenote: Its corruption by the populace,]

[Sidenote: and the provincials.]

These licences are in all probability chiefly colloquial, and would not

have been adopted in public harangues, to which the precepts of

rhetorical writers commonly relate. But if the more elegant language of

the Romans, since such we must suppose to have been copied by Terence

for his higher characters, differed so much in ordinary discourse from

their orthography, it is probable that the vulgar went into much greater

deviations. The popular pronunciation errs generally, we might say

perhaps invariably, by abbreviation of words, and by liquefying

consonants, as is natural to the rapidity of colloquial speech.[486] It

is by their knowledge of orthography and etymology that the more

educated part of the community is preserved from these corrupt modes of

pronunciation. There is always therefore a standard by which common

speech may be rectified; and in proportion to the diffusion of knowledge

and politeness the deviations from it will be more slight and gradual.

But in distant provinces, and especially where the language itself is

but of recent introduction, many more changes may be expected to occur.

Even in France and England there are provincial dialects, which, if

written with all their anomalies of pronunciation as well as idiom,

would seem strangely out of unison with the regular language; and in

Italy, as is well known, the varieties of dialect are still more

striking. Now, in an advancing state of society, and especially with

such a vigorous political circulation as we experience in England,

language will constantly approximate to uniformity, as provincial

expressions are more and more rejected for incorrectness or inelegance.

But, where literature is on the decline, and public misfortunes contract

the circle of those who are solicitous about refinement, as in the last

ages of the Roman empire, there will be no longer any definite standard

of living speech, nor any general desire to conform to it if one could

be found; and thus the vicious corruptions of the vulgar will entirely

predominate. The niceties of ancient idiom will be totally lost, while

new idioms will be formed out of violations of grammar sanctioned by

usage, which, among a civilized people, would have been proscribed at

their appearance.

Such appears to have been the progress of corruption in the Latin

language. The adoption of words from the Teutonic dialects of the

barbarians, which took place very freely, would not of itself have

destroyed the character of that language, though it sullied its purity.

The worst law Latin of the middle ages is still Latin, if its barbarous

terms have been bent to the regular inflections. It is possible, on the

other hand, to write whole pages of Italian, wherein every word shall be

of unequivocal Latin derivation, though the character and personality,

if I may so say, of the language be entirely dissimilar. But, as I

conceive, the loss of literature took away the only check upon arbitrary

pronunciation and upon erroneous grammar. Each people innovated through

caprice, imitation of their neighbours, or some of those indescribable

causes which dispose the organs of different nations to different

sounds. The French melted down the middle consonants; the Italians

omitted the final. Corruptions arising out of ignorance were mingled

with those of pronunciation. It would have been marvellous if illiterate

and semi-barbarous provincials had preserved that delicate precision in

using the inflections of tenses which our best scholars do not clearly

attain. The common speech of any people whose language is highly

complicated will be full of solecisms. The French inflections are not

comparable in number or delicacy to the Latin, and yet the vulgar

confuse their most ordinary forms.

But, in all probability, the variation of these derivative languages

from popular Latin has been considerably less than it appears. In the

purest ages of Latinity the citizens of Rome itself made use of many

terms which we deem barbarous, and of many idioms which we should reject

as modern. That highly complicated grammar, which the best writers

employed, was too elliptical and obscure, too deficient in the

connecting parts of speech, for general use. We cannot indeed ascertain

in what degree the vulgar Latin differed from that of Cicero or Seneca.

It would be highly absurd to imagine, as some are said to have done,

that modern Italian was spoken at Rome under Augustus.[487] But I

believe it may be asserted not only that much the greater part of those

words in the present language of Italy which strike us as incapable of a

Latin etymology are in fact derived from those current in the Augustan

age, but that very many phrases which offended nicer ears prevailed in

the same vernacular speech, and have passed from thence into the modern

French and Italian. Such, for example, was the frequent use of

prepositions to indicate a relation between two parts of a sentence

which a classical writer would have made to depend on mere

inflection.[488]

From the difficulty of retaining a right discrimination of tense seems

to have proceeded the active auxiliary verb. It is possible that this

was borrowed from the Teutonic languages of the barbarians, and

accommodated both by them and by the natives to words of Latin origin.

The passive auxiliary is obtained by a very ready resolution of any

tense in that mood, and has not been altogether dispensed with even in

Greek, while in Latin it is used much more frequently. It is not quite

so easy to perceive the propriety of the active habeo or teneo, one or

both of which all modern languages have adopted as their auxiliaries in

conjugating the verb. But in some instances this analysis is not

improper; and it may be supposed that nations, careless of etymology or

correctness, applied the same verb by a rude analogy to cases where it

ought not strictly to have been employed.[489]

Next to the changes founded on pronunciation and to the substitution of

auxiliary verbs for inflections, the usage of the definite and

indefinite articles in nouns appears the most considerable step in the

transmutation of Latin into its derivative languages. None but Latin, I

believe, has ever wanted this part of speech; and the defect to which

custom reconciled the Romans would be an insuperable stumbling-block to

nations who were to translate their original idiom into that language. A

coarse expedient of applying _unus_, _ipse_, or _ille_ to the purposes

of an article might perhaps be no unfrequent vulgarism of the

provincials; and after the Teutonic tribes brought in their own grammar,

it was natural that a corruption should become universal, which in fact

supplied a real and essential deficiency.

[Sidenote: Pronunciation no longer regulated by quantity.]

That the quantity of Latin syllables is neglected, or rather lost, in

modern pronunciation, seems to be generally admitted. Whether, indeed,

the ancient Romans, in their ordinary speaking, distinguished the

measure of syllables with such uniform musical accuracy as we imagine,

giving a certain time to those termed long, and exactly half that

duration to the short, might very reasonably be questioned; though this

was probably done, or attempted to be done, by every reader of poetry.

Certainly, however, the laws of quantity were forgotten, and an

accentual pronunciation came to predominate, before Latin had ceased to

be a living language. A Christian writer named Commodianus, who lived

before the end of the third century according to some, or, as others

think, in the reign of Constantine, has left us a philological

curiosity, in a series of attacks on the pagan superstitions, composed

in what are meant to be verses, regulated by accent instead of quantity,

exactly as we read Virgil at present.[490]

It is not improbable that Commodianus may have written in Africa, the

province in which more than any the purity of Latin was debased. At the

end of the fourth century St. Augustin assailed his old enemies, the

Donatists, with nearly the same arms that Commodianus had wielded

against heathenism. But as the refined and various music of hexameters

was unlikely to be relished by the vulgar, he prudently adopted a

different measure.[491] All the nations of Europe seem to love the

trochaic verse; it was frequent on the Greek and Roman stage; it is more

common than any other in the popular poetry of modern languages. This

proceeds from its simplicity, its liveliness, and its ready

accommodation to dancing and music. In St. Austin's poem he united to a

trochaic measure the novel attraction of rhyme.

As Africa must have lost all regard to the rules of measure in the

fourth century, so it appears that Gaul was not more correct in the next

two ages. A poem addressed by Auspicius bishop of Toul to count

Arbogastes, of earlier date probably than the invasion of Clovis, is

written with no regard to quantity.[492] The bishop by whom this was

composed is mentioned by his contemporaries as a man of learning.

Probably he did not choose to perplex the barbarian to whom he was

writing (for Arbogastes is plainly a barbarous name) by legitimate Roman

metre. In the next century Gregory of Tours informs us that Chilperic

attempted to write Latin verses; but the lines could not be reconciled

to any division of feet; his ignorance having confounded long and short

syllables together.[493] Now Chilperic must have learned to speak Latin

like other kings of the Franks, and was a smatterer in several kinds of

literature. If Chilperic therefore was not master of these distinctions,

we may conclude that the bishops and other Romans with whom he conversed

did not observe them; and that his blunders in versification arose from

ignorance of rules, which, however fit to be preserved in poetry, were

entirely obsolete in the living Latin of his age. Indeed the frequency

of false quantities in the poets even of the fifth, but much more of the

sixth century, is palpable. Fortunatus is quite full of them. This seems

a decisive proof that the ancient pronunciation was lost. Avitus tells

us that few preserved the proper measure of syllables in singing. Yet he

was bishop of Vienne, where a purer pronunciation might be expected than

in the remoter parts of Gaul.[494]

[Sidenote: Change of Latin into Romance.]

Defective, however, as it had become in respect of pronunciation, Latin

was still spoken in France during the sixth and seventh centuries. We

have compositions of that time, intended for the people, in grammatical

language. A song is still extant in rhyme and loose accentual measure,

written upon a victory of Clotaire II. over the Saxons in 622, and

obviously intended for circulation among the people.[495] Fortunatus

says, in his Life of St. Aubin of Angers, that he should take care not

to use any expression unintelligible to the people.[496] Baudemind, in

the middle of the seventh century, declares, in his Life of St. Amand,

that he writes in a rustic and vulgar style, that the reader may be

excited to imitation.[497] Not that these legends were actually perused

by the populace, for the very art of reading was confined to a few. But

they were read publicly in the churches, and probably with a

pronunciation accommodated to the corruptions of ordinary language.

Still the Latin syntax must have been tolerably understood; and we may

therefore say that Latin had not ceased to be a living language, in Gaul

at least, before the latter part of the seventh century. Faults indeed

against the rules of grammar, as well as unusual idioms, perpetually

occur in the best writers of the Merovingian period, such as Gregory of

Tours; while charters drawn up by less expert scholars deviate much

further from purity.[498]

The corrupt provincial idiom became gradually more and more dissimilar

to grammatical Latin; and the lingua Romana rustica, as the vulgar

_patois_ (to borrow a word that I cannot well translate) had been

called, acquired a distinct character as a new language in the eighth

century.[499] Latin orthography, which had been hitherto pretty well

maintained in books, though not always in charters, gave way to a new

spelling, conformably to the current pronunciation. Thus we find lui,

for illius, in the Formularies of Marculfus; and Tu lo juva in a liturgy

of Charlemagne's age, for Tu illum juva. When this barrier was once

broken down, such a deluge of innovation poured in that all the

characteristics of Latin were effaced in writing as well as speaking,

and the existence of a new language became undeniable. In a council held

at Tours in 813 the bishops are ordered to have certain homilies of the

fathers translated into the rustic Roman, as well as the German

tongue.[500] After this it is unnecessary to multiply proofs of the

change which Latin had undergone.

[Sidenote: Its corruption in Italy.]

In Italy the progressive corruptions of the Latin language were

analogous to those which occurred in France, though we do not find in

writings any unequivocal specimens of a new formation at so early a

period. But the old inscriptions, even of the fourth and fifth

centuries, are full of solecisms and corrupt orthography. In legal

instruments under the Lombard kings the Latin inflections are indeed

used, but with so little regard to propriety that it is obvious the

writers had not the slightest tincture of grammatical knowledge. This

observation extends to a very large proportion of such documents down to

the twelfth century, and is as applicable to France and Spain as it is

to Italy. In these charters the peculiar characteristics of Italian

orthography and grammar frequently appear. Thus we find, in the eighth

century, diveatis for debeatis, da for de in the ablative, avendi for

habendi, dava for dabat, cedo a deo, and ad ecclesia, among many similar

corruptions.[501] Latin was so changed, it is said by a writer of

Charlemagne's age, that scarcely any part of it was popularly known.

Italy indeed had suffered more than France itself by invasion, and was

reduced to a lower state of barbarism, though probably, from the greater

distinctness of pronunciation habitual to the Italians, they lost less

of their original language than the French. I do not find, however, in

the writers who have treated this subject, any express evidence of a

vulgar language distinct from Latin earlier than the close of the tenth

century, when it is said in the epitaph of Pope Gregory V., who died in

999, that he instructed the people in three dialects--the Frankish or

German, the vulgar, and the Latin.[502]

[Sidenote: Ignorance consequent on the disuse of Latin.]

When Latin had thus ceased to be a living language, the whole treasury

of knowledge was locked up from the eyes of the people. The few who

might have imbibed a taste for literature, if books had been accessible

to them, were reduced to abandon pursuits that could only be cultivated

through a kind of education not easily within their reach. Schools,

confined to cathedrals and monasteries, and exclusively designed for the

purposes of religion, afforded no encouragement or opportunities to the

laity.[503] The worst effect was, that, as the newly-formed languages

were hardly made use of in writing, Latin being still preserved in all

legal instruments and public correspondence, the very use of letters, as

well as of books, was forgotten. For many centuries, to sum up the

account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a layman, of whatever

rank, to know how to sign his name.[504] Their charters, till the use of

seals became general, were subscribed with the mark of the cross. Still

more extraordinary it was to find one who had any tincture of learning.

Even admitting every indistinct commendation of a monkish biographer

(with whom a knowledge of church-music would pass for literature[505]),

we could make out a very short list of scholars. None certainly were

more distinguished as such than Charlemagne and Alfred. But the former,

unless we reject a very plain testimony, was incapable of writing;[506]

and Alfred found difficulty in making a translation from the pastoral

instruction of St. Gregory, on account of his imperfect knowledge of

Latin.[507]

Whatever mention, therefore, we find of learning and the learned during

these dark ages, must be understood to relate only to such as were

within the pale of clergy, which indeed was pretty extensive, and

comprehended many who did not exercise the offices of religious

ministry. But even the clergy were, for a long period, not very

materially superior, as a body, to the uninstructed laity. A cloud of

ignorance overspread the whole face of the church, hardly broken by a

few glimmering lights, who owe much of their distinction to the

surrounding darkness. In the sixth century the best writers in Latin

were scarcely read;[508] and perhaps from the middle of this age to the

eleventh there was, in a general view of literature, little difference

to be discerned. If we look more accurately, there will appear certain

gradual shades of twilight on each side of the greatest obscurity.

France reached her lowest point about the beginning of the eighth

century; but England was at that time more respectable, and did not fall

into complete degradation till the middle of the ninth. There could be

nothing more deplorable than the state of letters in Italy and in

England during the succeeding century; but France cannot be denied to

have been uniformly, though very slowly, progressive from the time of

Charlemagne.[509]

Of this prevailing ignorance it is easy to produce abundant testimony.

Contracts were made verbally, for want of notaries capable of drawing up

charters; and these, when written, were frequently barbarous and

ungrammatical to an incredible degree. For some considerable intervals

scarcely any monument of literature has been preserved, except a few

jejune chronicles, the vilest legends of saints, or verses equally

destitute of spirit and metre. In almost every council the ignorance of

the clergy forms a subject for reproach. It is asserted by one held in

992 that scarcely a single person was to be found in Rome itself who

knew the first elements of letters.[510] Not one priest of a thousand in

Spain, about the age of Charlemagne, could address a common letter of

salutation to another.[511] In England, Alfred declares that he could

not recollect a single priest south of the Thames (the most civilized

part of England), at the time of his accession, who understood the

ordinary prayers, or could translate Latin into his mother tongue.[512]

Nor was this better in the time of Dunstan, when, it is said, none of

the clergy knew how to write or translate a Latin letter.[513] The

homilies which they preached were compiled for their use by some

bishops, from former works of the same kind, or the writings of the

fathers.

[Sidenote: Scarcity of books.]

This universal ignorance was rendered unavoidable, among other causes,

by the scarcity of books, which could only be procured at an immense

price. From the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens at the beginning

of the seventh century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be

imported into Europe, to the close of the eleventh, about which time the

art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have been introduced,

there were no materials for writing except parchment, a substance too

expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of literature.[514]

Hence an unfortunate practice gained ground, of erasing a manuscript in

order to substitute another on the same skin. This occasioned the loss

of many ancient authors, who have made way for the legends of saints, or

other ecclesiastical rubbish.

[Sidenote: Want of eminent men in literature.]

If we would listen to some literary historians, we should believe that

the darkest ages contained many individuals, not only distinguished

among their contemporaries, but positively eminent for abilities and

knowledge. A proneness to extol every monk of whose production a few

letters or a devotional treatise survives, every bishop of whom it is

related that he composed homilies, runs through the laborious work of

the Benedictines of St. Maur, the Literary History of France, and, in a

less degree, is observable even in Tiraboschi, and in most books of this

class. Bede, Alcuin, Hincmar, Raban, and a number of inferior names,

become real giants of learning in their uncritical panegyrics. But one

might justly say that ignorance is the smallest defect of the writers of

these dark ages. Several of them were tolerably acquainted with books;

but that wherein they are uniformly deficient is original argument or

expression. Almost every one is a compiler of scraps from the fathers,

or from such semi-classical authors as Boethius, Cassiodorus, or

Martianus Capella.[515] Indeed I am not aware that there appeared more

than two really considerable men in the republic of letters from the

sixth to the middle of the eleventh century--John, surnamed Scotus or

Erigena, a native of Ireland; and Gerbert, who became pope by the name

of Silvester II.: the first endowed with a bold and acute metaphysical

genius; the second excellent, for the time when he lived, in

mathematical science and mechanical inventions.[516]

[Sidenote: Causes of the preservation of learning--religion.]

If it be demanded by what cause it happened that a few sparks of ancient

learning survived throughout this long winter, we can only ascribe their

preservation to the establishment of Christianity. Religion alone made a

bridge, as it were, across the chaos, and has linked the two periods of

ancient and modern civilization. Without this connecting principle,

Europe might indeed have awakened to intellectual pursuits, and the

genius of recent times needed not to be invigorated by the imitation of

antiquity. But the memory of Greece and Rome would have been feebly

preserved by tradition, and the monuments of those nations might have

excited, on the return of civilization, that vague sentiment of

speculation and wonder with which men now contemplate Persepolis or the

Pyramids. It is not, however, from religion simply that we have derived

this advantage, but from religion as it was modified in the dark ages.

Such is the complex reciprocation of good and evil in the dispensations

of Providence, that we may assert, with only an apparent paradox, that,

had religion been more pure, it would have been less permanent, and that

Christianity has been preserved by means of its corruptions. The sole

hope for literature depended on the Latin language; and I do not see why

that should not have been lost, if three circumstances in the prevailing

religious system, all of which we are justly accustomed to disapprove,

had not conspired to maintain it--the papal supremacy, the monastic

institutions, and the use of a Latin liturgy. 1. A continual intercourse

was kept up, in consequence of the first, between Rome and the several

nations of Europe; her laws were received by the bishops, her legates

presided in councils; so that a common language was as necessary in the

church as it is at present in the diplomatic relations of kingdoms. 2.

Throughout the whole course of the middle ages there was no learning,

and very little regularity of manners, among the parochial clergy.

Almost every distinguished man was either the member of a chapter or of

a convent. The monasteries were subjected to strict rules of discipline,

and held out, at the worst, more opportunities for study than the

secular clergy possessed, and fewer for worldly dissipations. But their

most important service was as secure repositories for books. All our

manuscripts have been preserved in this manner, and could hardly have

descended to us by any other channel; at least there were intervals when

I do not conceive that any royal or private libraries existed.[517] 3.

Monasteries, however, would probably have contributed very little

towards the preservation of learning, if the Scriptures and the liturgy

had been translated out of Latin when that language ceased to be

intelligible. Every rational principle of religious worship called for

such a change; but it would have been made at the expense of posterity.

One might presume, if such refined conjectures were consistent with

historical caution, that the more learned and sagacious ecclesiastics of

those times, deploring the gradual corruption of the Latin tongue, and

the danger of its absolute extinction, were induced to maintain it as a

sacred language, and the depository, as it were, of that truth and that

science which would be lost in the barbarous dialects of the vulgar.

But a simpler explanation is found in the radical dislike of innovation

which is natural to an established clergy. Nor did they want as good

pretexts, on the ground of convenience, as are commonly alleged by the

opponents of reform. They were habituated to the Latin words of the

church-service, which had become, by this association, the readiest

instruments of devotion, and with the majesty of which the Romance

jargon could bear no comparison. Their musical chants were adapted to

these sounds, and their hymns depended, for metrical effect, on the

marked accents and powerful rhymes which the Latin language affords. The

vulgate Latin of the Bible was still more venerable. It was like a copy

of a lost original; and a copy attested by one of the most eminent

fathers, and by the general consent of the church. These are certainly

no adequate excuses for keeping the people in ignorance; and the gross

corruption of the middle ages is in a great degree assignable to this

policy. But learning, and consequently religion, have eventually derived

from it the utmost advantage.

[Sidenote: Superstitions.]

In the shadows of this universal ignorance a thousand superstitions,

like foul animals of night, were propagated and nourished. It would be

very unsatisfactory to exhibit a few specimens of this odious brood,

when the real character of those times is only to be judged by their

accumulated multitude. In every age it would be easy to select proofs of

irrational superstition, which, separately considered, seem to degrade

mankind from its level in the creation; and perhaps the contemporaries

of Swedenborg and Southcote have no right to look very contemptuously

upon the fanaticism of their ancestors. There are many books from which

a sufficient number of instances may be collected to show the absurdity

and ignorance of the middle ages in this respect. I shall only mention

two, as affording more general evidence than any local or obscure

superstition. In the tenth century an opinion prevailed everywhere that

the end of the world was approaching. Many charters begin with these

words, "As the world is now drawing to its close." An army marching

under the emperor Otho I. was so terrified by an eclipse of the sun,

which it conceived to announce this consummation, as to disperse

hastily on all sides. As this notion seems to have been founded on some

confused theory of the millennium, it naturally died away when the

seasons proceeded in the eleventh century with their usual

regularity.[518] A far more remarkable and permanent superstition was

the appeal to Heaven in judicial controversies, whether through the

means of combat or of ordeal. The principle of these was the same; but

in the former it was mingled with feelings independent of religion--the

natural dictates of resentment in a brave man unjustly accused, and the

sympathy of a warlike people with the display of skill and intrepidity.

These, in course of time, almost obliterated the primary character of

judicial combat, and ultimately changed it into the modern duel, in

which assuredly there is no mixture of superstition.[519] But, in the

various tests of innocence which were called ordeals, this stood

undisguised and unqualified. It is not necessary to describe what is so

well known--the ceremonies of trial by handling hot iron, by plunging

the arm into boiling fluids, by floating or sinking in cold water, or by

swallowing a piece of consecrated bread. It is observable that, as the

interference of Heaven was relied upon as a matter of course, it seems

to have been reckoned nearly indifferent whether such a test was adopted

as must, humanly considered, absolve all the guilty, or one that must

convict all the innocent. The ordeals of hot iron or water were,

however, more commonly used; and it has been a perplexing question by

what dexterity these tremendous proofs were eluded. They seem at least

to have placed the decision of all judicial controversies in the hands

of the clergy, who must have known the secret, whatever that might be,

of satisfying the spectators that an accused person had held a mass of

burning iron with impunity. For several centuries this mode of

investigation was in great repute, though not without opposition from

some eminent bishops. It does discredit to the memory of Charlemagne

that he was one of its warmest advocates.[520] But the judicial combat,

which indeed might be reckoned one species of ordeal, gradually put an

end to the rest; and as the church acquired better notions of law, and a

code of her own, she strenuously exerted herself against all these

barbarous superstitions.[521]

[Sidenote: Enthusiastic risings.]

But the religious ignorance of the middle ages sometimes burst out in

ebullitions of epidemical enthusiasm, more remarkable than these

superstitious usages, though proceeding in fact from similar causes. For

enthusiasm is little else than superstition put in motion, and is

equally founded on a strong conviction of supernatural agency without

any just conceptions of its nature. Nor has any denomination of

Christians produced, or even sanctioned, more fanaticism than the church

of Rome. These epidemical frenzies, however, to which I am alluding,

were merely tumultuous, though certainly fostered by the creed of

perpetual miracles which the clergy inculcated, and drawing a legitimate

precedent for religious insurrection from the crusades. For these, among

other evil consequences, seem to have principally excited a wild

fanaticism that did not sleep for several centuries.[522]

The first conspicuous appearance of it was in the reign of Philip

Augustus, when the mercenary troops, dismissed from the pay of that

prince and of Henry II., committed the greatest outrages in the south of

France. One Durand, a carpenter, deluded it is said by a contrived

appearance of the Virgin, put himself at the head of an army of the

populace, in order to destroy these marauders. His followers were styled

Brethren of the White Caps, from the linen coverings of their heads.

They bound themselves not to play at dice nor frequent taverns, to wear

no affected clothing, to avoid perjury and vain swearing. After some

successes over the plunderers, they went so far as to forbid the lords

to take any dues from their vassals, on pain of incurring the

indignation of the brotherhood. It may easily be imagined that they were

soon entirely discomfited, so that no one dared to own that he had

belonged to them.[523]

During the captivity of St. Louis in Egypt, a more extensive and

terrible ferment broke out in Flanders, and spread from thence over

great part of France. An impostor declared himself commissioned by the

Virgin to preach a crusade, not to the rich and noble, who for their

pride had been rejected of God, but the poor. His disciples were called

Pastoureaux, the simplicity of shepherds having exposed them more

readily to this delusion. In a short time they were swelled by the

confluence of abundant streams to a moving mass of a hundred thousand

men, divided into companies, with banners bearing a cross and a lamb,

and commanded by the impostor's lieutenants. He assumed a priestly

character, preaching, absolving, annulling marriages. At Amiens,

Bourges, Orleans, and Paris itself, he was received as a divine prophet.

Even the regent Blanche, for a time, was led away by the popular tide.

His main topic was reproach of the clergy for their idleness and

corruption--a theme well adapted to the ears of the people, who had long

been uttering similar strains of complaint. In some towns his followers

massacred the priests and plundered the monasteries. The government at

length began to exert itself; and the public sentiment turning against

the authors of so much confusion, this rabble was put to the sword or

dissipated.[524] Seventy years afterwards an insurrection, almost

exactly parallel to this, burst out under the same pretence of a

crusade. These insurgents, too, bore the name of Pastoureaux, and their

short career was distinguished by a general massacre of the Jews.[525]

But though the contagion of fanaticism spreads much more rapidly among

the populace, and in modern times is almost entirely confined to it,

there were examples, in the middle ages, of an epidemical religious

lunacy, from which no class was exempt. One of these occurred about the

year 1260, when a multitude of every rank, age, and sex, marching two by

two in procession along the streets and public roads, mingled groans and

dolorous hymns with the sound of leathern scourges which they exercised

upon their naked backs. From this mark of penitence, which, as it bears

at least all the appearance of sincerity, is not uncommon in the church

of Rome, they acquired the name of Flagellants. Their career began, it

is said, at Perugia, whence they spread over the rest of Italy, and into

Germany and Poland. As this spontaneous fanaticism met with no

encouragement from the church, and was prudently discountenanced by the

civil magistrate, it died away in a very short time.[526] But it is more

surprising that, after almost a century and a half of continual

improvement and illumination, another irruption of popular extravagance

burst out under circumstances exceedingly similar.[527] "In the month

of August 1399," says a contemporary historian, "there appeared all over

Italy a description of persons, called Bianchi, from the white linen

vestment that they wore. They passed from province to province, and from

city to city, crying out Misericordia! with their faces covered and bent

towards the ground, and bearing before them a great crucifix. Their

constant song was Stabat Mater dolorosa. This lasted three months; and

whoever did not attend their procession was reputed a heretic."[528]

Almost every Italian writer of the time takes notice of these Bianchi;

and Muratori ascribes a remarkable reformation of manners (though

certainly a very transient one) to their influence.[529] Nor were they

confined to Italy, though no such meritorious exertions are imputed to

them in other countries. In France their practice of covering the face

gave such opportunity to crimes as to be prohibited by the

government;[530] and we have an act on the rolls of the first parliament

of Henry IV., forbidding any one, "under pain of forfeiting all his

worth, to receive the new sect in white clothes, pretending to great

sanctity," which had recently appeared in foreign parts.[531]

[Sidenote: Pretended miracles.]

The devotion of the multitude was wrought to this feverish height by the

prevailing system of the clergy. In that singular polytheism, which had

been grafted on Christianity, nothing was so conspicuous as the belief

of perpetual miracles--if indeed those could properly be termed miracles

which, by their constant recurrence, even upon trifling occasions, might

seem within the ordinary dispensations of Providence. These

superstitions arose in what are called primitive times, and are

certainly no part of popery, if in that word we include any especial

reference to the Roman see. But successive ages of ignorance swelled the

delusion to such an enormous pitch, that it was as difficult to trace,

we may say without exaggeration, the real religion of the Gospel in the

popular belief of the laity, as the real history of Charlemagne in the

romance of Turpin. It must not be supposed that these absurdities were

produced, as well as nourished, by ignorance. In most cases they were

the work of deliberate imposture. Every cathedral or monastery had its

tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, fabricated in order to enrich

the churches under his protection, by exaggerating his virtues, his

miracles, and consequently his power of serving those who paid liberally

for his patronage.[532] Many of those saints were imaginary persons;

sometimes a blundered inscription added a name to the calendar, and

sometimes, it is said, a heathen god was surprised at the company to

which he was introduced, and the rites with which he was honoured.[533]

[Sidenote: Mischiefs arising from this superstition.]

It would not be consonant to the nature of the present work to dwell

upon the erroneousness of this religion; but its effect upon the moral

and intellectual character of mankind was so prominent, that no one can

take a philosophical view of the middle ages without attending more than

is at present fashionable to their ecclesiastical history. That the

exclusive worship of saints, under the guidance of an artful though

illiterate priesthood, degraded the understanding and begot a stupid

credulity and fanaticism, is sufficiently evident. But it was also so

managed as to loosen the bonds of religion and pervert the standard of

morality. If these inhabitants of heaven had been represented as stern

avengers, accepting no slight atonement for heavy offences, and prompt

to interpose their control over natural events for the detection and

punishment of guilt, the creed, however impossible to be reconciled with

experience, might have proved a salutary check upon a rude people, and

would at least have had the only palliation that can be offered for a

religious imposture, its political expediency. In the legends of those

times, on the contrary, they appeared only as perpetual intercessors,

so good-natured and so powerful, that a sinner was more emphatically

foolish than he is usually represented if he failed to secure himself

against any bad consequences. For a little attention to the saints, and

especially to the Virgin, with due liberality to their servants, had

saved, he would be told, so many of the most atrocious delinquents, that

he might equitably presume upon similar luck in his own case.

This monstrous superstition grew to its height in the twelfth century.

For the advance that learning then made was by no means sufficient to

counteract the vast increase of monasteries, and the opportunities which

the greater cultivation of modern languages afforded for the diffusion

of legendary tales. It was now, too, that the veneration paid to the

Virgin, in early times very great, rose to an almost exclusive idolatry.

It is difficult to conceive the stupid absurdity and the disgusting

profaneness of those stories which were invented by the monks to do her

honour. A few examples have been thrown into a note.[534]

[Sidenote: Not altogether unmixed with good.]

Whether the superstition of these dark ages had actually passed that

point when it becomes more injurious to public morals and the welfare of

society than the entire absence of all religious notions is a very

complex question, upon which I would by no means pronounce an

affirmative decision.[535] A salutary influence, breathed from the

spirit of a more genuine religion, often displayed itself among the

corruptions of a degenerate superstition. In the original principles of

monastic orders, and the rules by which they ought at least to have been

governed, there was a character of meekness, self-denial, and charity

that could not wholly be effaced. These virtues, rather than justice

and veracity, were inculcated by the religious ethics of the middle

ages; and in the relief of indigence it may, upon the whole, be asserted

that the monks did not fall short of their profession.[536] This

eleemosynary spirit indeed remarkably distinguishes both Christianity

and Mohammedism from the moral systems of Greece and Rome, which were

very deficient in general humanity and sympathy with suffering. Nor do

we find in any single instance during ancient times, if I mistake not,

those public institutions for the alleviation of human miseries which

have long been scattered over every part of Europe. The virtues of the

monks assumed a still higher character when they stood forward as

protectors of the oppressed. By an established law, founded on very

ancient superstition, the precincts of a church afforded sanctuary to

accused persons. Under a due administration of justice this privilege

would have been simply and constantly mischievous, as we properly

consider it to be in those countries where it still subsists. But in the

rapine and tumult of the middle ages the right of sanctuary might as

often be a shield to innocence as an immunity to crime. We can hardly

regret, in reflecting on the desolating violence which prevailed, that

there should have been some green spots in the wilderness where the

feeble and the persecuted could find refuge. How must this right have

enhanced the veneration for religious institutions! How gladly must the

victims of internal warfare have turned their eyes from the baronial

castle, the dread and scourge of the neighbourhood, to those venerable

walls within which not even the clamour of arms could be heard to

disturb the chant of holy men and the sacred service of the altar! The

protection of the sanctuary was never withheld. A son of Chilperic king

of France having fled to that of Tours, his father threatened to ravage

all the lands of the church unless they gave him up. Gregory the

historian, bishop of the city, replied in the name of his clergy that

Christians could not be guilty of an act unheard of among pagans. The

king was as good as his word, and did not spare the estate of the

church, but dared not infringe its privileges. He had indeed previously

addressed a letter to St. Martin, which was laid on his tomb in the

church, requesting permission to take away his son by force; but the

honest saint returned no answer.[537]

[Sidenote: Vices of the monks and clergy.]

The virtues indeed, or supposed virtues, which had induced a credulous

generation to enrich so many of the monastic orders, were not long

preserved. We must reject, in the excess of our candour, all testimonies

that the middle ages present, from the solemn declaration of councils

and reports of judicial inquiry to the casual evidence of common fame in

the ballad or romance, if we would extenuate the general corruption of

those institutions. In vain new rules of discipline were devised, or the

old corrected by reforms. Many of their worst vices grew so naturally

out of their mode of life, that a stricter discipline could have no

tendency to extirpate them. Such were the frauds I have already noticed,

and the whole scheme of hypocritical austerities. Their extreme

licentiousness was sometimes hardly concealed by the cowl of sanctity. I

know not by what right we should disbelieve the reports of the

visitation under Henry VIII., entering as they do into a multitude of

specific charges both probable in their nature and consonant to the

unanimous opinion of the world.[538] Doubtless there were many

communities, as well as individuals, to whom none of these reproaches

would apply. In the very best view, however, that can be taken of

monasteries, their existence is deeply injurious to the general morals

of a nation. They withdraw men of pure conduct and conscientious

principles from the exercise of social duties, and leave the common mass

of human vice more unmixed. Such men are always inclined to form schemes

of ascetic perfection, which can only be fulfilled in retirement; but in

the strict rules of monastic life, and under the influence of a

grovelling superstition, their virtue lost all its usefulness. They fell

implicitly into the snares of crafty priests, who made submission to the

church not only the condition but the measure of all praise. "He is a

good Christian," says Eligius, a saint of the seventh century, "who

comes frequently to church; who presents an oblation that it may be

offered to God on the altar; who does not taste the fruits of his land

till he has consecrated a part of them to God; who can repeat the Creed

or the Lord's Prayer. Redeem your souls from punishment while it is in

your power; offer presents and tithes to churches, light candles in holy

places, as much as you can afford, come more frequently to church,

implore the protection of the saints; for, if you observe these things,

you may come with security at the day of judgment to say, Give unto us,

Lord, for we have given unto thee."[539]

With such a definition of the Christian character, it is not surprising

that any fraud and injustice became honourable when it contributed to

the riches of the clergy and glory of their order. Their frauds,

however, were less atrocious than the savage bigotry with which they

maintained their own system and infected the laity. In Saxony, Poland,

Lithuania, and the countries on the Baltic Sea, a sanguinary persecution

extirpated the original idolatry. The Jews were everywhere the objects

of popular insult and oppression, frequently of a general massacre,

though protected, it must be confessed, by the laws of the church, as

well as in general by temporal princes.[540] Of the crusades it is only

necessary to repeat that they began in a tremendous eruption of

fanaticism, and ceased only because that spirit could not be constantly

kept alive. A similar influence produced the devastation of Languedoc,

the stakes and scaffolds of the Inquisition, and rooted in the religious

theory of Europe those maxims of intolerance which it has so slowly, and

still perhaps so imperfectly, renounced.

From no other cause are the dictates of sound reason and the moral sense

of mankind more confused than by this narrow theological bigotry. For as

it must often happen that men to whom the arrogance of a prevailing

faction imputes religious error are exemplary for their performance of

moral duties, these virtues gradually cease to make their proper

impression, and are depreciated by the rigidly orthodox as of little

value in comparison with just opinions in speculative points. On the

other hand, vices are forgiven to those who are zealous in the faith. I

speak too gently, and with a view to later times; in treating of the

dark ages it would be more correct to say that crimes were commended.

Thus Gregory of Tours, a saint of the church, after relating a most

atrocious story of Clovis--the murder of a prince whom he had

previously instigated to parricide--continues the sentence: "For God

daily subdued his enemies to his hand, and increased his kingdom;

because he walked before him in uprightness, and did what was pleasing

in his eyes."[541]

[Sidenote: Commutation of penances.]

It is a frequent complaint of ecclesiastical writers that the rigorous

penances imposed by the primitive canons upon delinquents were commuted

in a laxer state of discipline for less severe atonements, and

ultimately indeed for money.[542] We must not, however, regret that the

clergy should have lost the power of compelling men to abstain fifteen

years from eating meat, or to stand exposed to public derision at the

gates of a church. Such implicit submissiveness could only have produced

superstition and hypocrisy among the laity, and prepared the road for a

tyranny not less oppressive than that of India or ancient Egypt. Indeed

the two earliest instances of ecclesiastical interference with the

rights of sovereigns--namely, the deposition of Wamba in Spain and that

of Louis the Debonair--were founded upon this austere system of

penitence. But it is true that a repentance redeemed by money or

performed by a substitute could have no salutary effect on the sinner;

and some of the modes of atonement which the church most approved were

particularly hostile to public morals. None was so usual as pilgrimage,

whether to Jerusalem or Rome, which were the great objects of devotion;

or to the shrine of some national saint--a James of Compostella, a

David, or a Thomas a Becket. This licensed vagrancy was naturally

productive of dissoluteness, especially among the women. Our English

ladies, in their zeal to obtain the spiritual treasures of Rome, are

said to have relaxed the necessary caution about one that was in their

own custody.[543] There is a capitulary of Charlemagne directed against

itinerant penitents, who probably considered the iron chain around their

necks an expiation of future as well as past offences.[544]

The crusades may be considered as martial pilgrimages on an enormous

scale, and their influence upon general morality seems to have been

altogether pernicious. Those who served under the cross would not indeed

have lived very virtuously at home; but the confidence in their own

merits, which the principle of such expeditions inspired, must have

aggravated the ferocity and dissoluteness of their ancient habits.

Several historians attest the depravation of morals which existed both

among the crusaders and in the states formed out of their

conquests.[545]

[Sidenote: Want of law.]

While religion had thus lost almost every quality that renders it

conducive to the good order of society, the control of human law was

still less efficacious. But this part of my subject has been anticipated

in other passages of the present work; and I shall only glance at the

want of regular subordination, which rendered legislative and judicial

edicts a dead letter, and at the incessant private warfare, rendered

legitimate by the usages of most continental nations. Such hostilities,

conducted as they must usually have been with injustice and cruelty,

could not fail to produce a degree of rapacious ferocity in the general

disposition of a people. And this certainly was among the

characteristics of every nation for many centuries.

[Sidenote: Degradation of morals.]

It is easy to infer the degradation of society during the dark ages from

the state of religion and police. Certainly there are a few great

landmarks of moral distinctions so deeply fixed in human nature, that no

degree of rudeness can destroy, nor even any superstition remove them.

Wherever an extreme corruption has in any particular society defaced

these sacred archetypes that are given to guide and correct the

sentiments of mankind, it is in the course of Providence that the

society itself should perish by internal discord or the sword of a

conqueror. In the worst ages of Europe there must have existed the seeds

of social virtues, of fidelity, gratitude, and disinterestedness,

sufficient at least to preserve the public approbation of more elevated

principles than the public conduct displayed. Without these imperishable

elements there could have been no restoration of the moral energies;

nothing upon which reformed faith, revived knowledge, renewed law, could

exercise their nourishing influences. But history, which reflects only

the more prominent features of society, cannot exhibit the virtues that

were scarcely able to struggle through the general depravation. I am

aware that a tone of exaggerated declamation is at all times usual with

those who lament the vices of their own time; and writers of the middle

ages are in abundant need of allowance on this score. Nor is it

reasonable to found any inferences as to the general condition of

society on single instances of crimes, however atrocious, especially

when committed under the influence of violent passion. Such enormities

are the fruit of every age, and none is to be measured by them. They

make, however, a strong impression at the moment, and thus find a place

in contemporary annals, from which modern writers are commonly glad to

extract whatever may seem to throw light upon manners. I shall,

therefore, abstain from producing any particular cases of dissoluteness

or cruelty from the records of the middle ages, lest I should weaken a

general proposition by offering an imperfect induction to support it,

and shall content myself with observing that times to which men

sometimes appeal, as to a golden period, were far inferior in every

moral comparison to those in which we are thrown.[546] One crime, as

more universal and characteristic than others, may be particularly

noticed. All writers agree in the prevalence of judicial perjury. It

seems to have almost invariably escaped human punishment; and the

barriers of superstition were in this, as in every other instance, too

feeble to prevent the commission of crimes. Many of the proofs by ordeal

were applied to witnesses as well as those whom they accused; and

undoubtedly trial by combat was preserved in a considerable degree on

account of the difficulty experienced in securing a just cause against

the perjury of witnesses. Robert king of France, perceiving how

frequently men forswore themselves upon the relics of saints, and less

shocked apparently at the crime than at the sacrilege, caused an empty

reliquary of crystal to be used, that those who touched it might incur

less guilt in fact, though not in intention. Such an anecdote

characterizes both the man and the times.[547]

[Sidenote: Love of field sports.]

The favourite diversions of the middle ages, in the intervals of war,

were those of hunting and hawking. The former must in all countries be a

source of pleasure; but it seems to have been enjoyed in moderation by

the Greeks and the Romans. With the northern invaders, however, it was

rather a predominant appetite than an amusement; it was their pride and

their ornament, the theme of their songs, the object of their laws, and

the business of their lives. Falconry, unknown as a diversion to the

ancients, became from the fourth century an equally delightful

occupation.[548] From the Salic and other barbarous codes of the fifth

century to the close of the period under our review, every age would

furnish testimony to the ruling passion for these two species of chace,

or, as they were sometimes called, the mysteries of woods and rivers. A

knight seldom stirred from his house without a falcon on his wrist or a

greyhound that followed him. Thus are Harold and his attendants

represented, in the famous tapestry of Bayeux. And in the monuments of

those who died anywhere but on the field of battle, it is usual to find

the greyhound lying at their feet, or the bird upon their wrists. Nor

are the tombs of ladies without their falcon; for this diversion, being

of less danger and fatigue than the chace, was shared by the delicate

sex.[549]

It was impossible to repress the eagerness with which the clergy,

especially after the barbarians were tempted by rich bishoprics to take

upon them the sacred functions, rushed into these secular amusements.

Prohibitions of councils, however frequently repeated, produced little

effect. In some instances a particular monastery obtained a

dispensation. Thus that of St. Denis, in 774, represented to Charlemagne

that the flesh of hunted animals was salutary for sick monks, and that

their skins would serve to bind the books in the library.[550] Reasons

equally cogent, we may presume, could not be wanting in every other

case. As the bishops and abbots were perfectly feudal lords, and often

did not scruple to lead their vassals into the field, it was not to be

expected that they should debar themselves of an innocent pastime. It

was hardly such indeed, when practised at the expense of others.

Alexander III., by a letter to the clergy of Berkshire, dispenses with

their keeping the archdeacon in dogs and hawks during his

visitation.[551] This season gave jovial ecclesiastics an opportunity of

trying different countries. An archbishop of York, in 1321, seems to

have carried a train of two hundred persons, who were maintained at the

expense of the abbeys on his road, and to have hunted with a pack of

hounds from parish to parish.[552] The third council of Lateran, in

1180, had prohibited this amusement on such journeys, and restricted

bishops to a train of forty or fifty horses.[553]

Though hunting had ceased to be a necessary means of procuring food, it

was a very convenient resource, on which the wholesomeness and comfort,

as well as the luxury, of the table depended. Before the natural

pastures were improved, and new kinds of fodder for cattle discovered,

it was impossible to maintain the summer stock during the cold season.

Hence a portion of it was regularly slaughtered and salted for winter

provision. We may suppose that, when no alternative was offered but

these salted meats, even the leanest venison was devoured with relish.

There was somewhat more excuse therefore for the severity with which the

lords of forests and manors preserved the beasts of chace than if they

had been considered as merely objects of sport. The laws relating to

preservation of game were in every country uncommonly rigorous. They

formed in England that odious system of forest laws which distinguished

the tyranny of our Norman kings. Capital punishment for killing a stag

or wild boar was frequent, and perhaps warranted by law, until the

charter of John.[554] The French code was less severe, but even Henry

IV. enacted the pain of death against the repeated offence of chasing

deer in the royal forests. The privilege of hunting was reserved to the

nobility till the reign of Louis IX., who extended it in some degree to

persons of lower birth.[555]

This excessive passion for the sports of the field produced those evils

which are apt to result from it--a strenuous idleness which disdained

all useful occupations, and an oppressive spirit towards the peasantry.

The devastation committed under the pretence of destroying wild animals,

which had been already protected in their depredations, is noticed in

serious authors, and has also been the topic of popular ballads.[556]

What effect this must have had on agriculture it is easy to conjecture.

The levelling of forests, the draining of morasses, and the extirpation

of mischievous animals which inhabit them, are the first objects of

man's labour in reclaiming the earth to his use; and these were

forbidden by a landed aristocracy, whose control over the progress of

agricultural improvement was unlimited, and who had not yet learned to

sacrifice their pleasures to their avarice.

[Sidenote: Bad state of agriculture;]

These habits of the rich, and the miserable servitude of those who

cultivated the land, rendered its fertility unavailing. Predial

servitude indeed, in some of its modifications, has always been the

great bar to improvement. In the agricultural economy of Rome the

labouring husbandman, a menial slave of some wealthy senator, had not

even that qualified interest in the soil which the tenure of villenage

afforded to the peasant of feudal ages. Italy, therefore, a country

presenting many natural impediments, was but imperfectly reduced into

cultivation before the irruption of the barbarians.[557] That revolution

destroyed agriculture with every other art, and succeeding calamities

during five or six centuries left the finest regions of Europe

unfruitful and desolate. There are but two possible modes in which the

produce of the earth can be increased; one by rendering fresh land

serviceable, the other by improving the fertility of that which is

already cultivated. The last is only attainable by the application of

capital and of skill to agriculture, neither of which could be expected

in the ruder ages of society. The former is, to a certain extent, always

practicable while waste lands remain; but it was checked by laws hostile

to improvement, such as the manerial and commonable rights in England,

and by the general tone of manners.