jury, and regular meetings of parliament. The natural consequence of these circumstances was the formation of a bold and independent character, among not only the landed proprietors but the peasantry, upon whose support the former daily depended for defence against a roving but indefatigable enemy. Accordingly, from the earliest times, the free tenants held an important place among the Anglo-Saxons, and were considered as the companions, rather than the followers, of their chieftains. Like the comites among the ancient Germans, they were the attendants of their leaders in peace, and their strength and protection in war. The infantry, in which the chiefs and their followers fought together, was, even before the Conquest, the chief strength of the English armies; while the cavalry, in whose ranks the nobles alone appeared, constituted the pride of the Continental forces; and this difference was so material, that it appears to this day in the language of these different states. In all the states of the Continent, the word chevalier is derived from and means a horseman; while in England, the corresponding word knight has no reference to any distinction in the mode of fighting, but comes from the German cnycht, a young man or companion.1 CHAP. Hume, 95, 96,102, 107, Thier. i. 182; ii. 180. Tac. Mor. 21, 14. Germ. c. 16. which was fatal to But notwithstanding the strong principles of freedom which the Saxons brought with them from their original Cause seats in Germany, the causes which have proved fatal beginning to its existence in so many other states were likewise to prove in operation in England, and would have destroyed all freedom. liberty in it, but for the occurrence which is usually considered as the most calamitous in its history. The Saxons imported from the Continent the usual distinction between freemen and slaves, and the number of the latter class augmented to a fearful degree during the long wars of the Heptarchy, in which the prisoners were almost universally reduced to servitude. At the time of the Conquest, in consequence, the greater part of the land in the kingdom was cultivated by serfs, who formed by I. CHAP. far the most numerous class in the community. The free tenants were extremely few in comparison. These slaves, in process of time, would have constituted the whole lower orders of the state, and the descendants of the freemen have gradually dwindled into an aristocratic order. The greatest increase of mankind is always found in the lowest class of society; because it is in them that the principle of population is least restrained by prudential considerations. The higher orders, so far from multiplying, are never able, from the extraordinary influence of the preventive check among them, to maintain their own numbers without additions from below. This is the fundamental principle which has rendered the maintenance of liberty for any long period so extremely difficult in all ages of the world. The descendants of the poor are ever increasing, except in circumstances so disastrous as to put an entire stop to the growth of population; while those of the middle or higher orders, if not aided by recruits from below, are uniformly diminishing. The humblest class, having least political weight, are overlooked in the first struggles for freedom; the free citizens, who have acquired privileges, resist the extension of them to their inferiors; the descendants of the freemen in one age 213, 216 become the privileged order in the next; and on the basis of pristine liberty the oppression of oligarchy is ultimately established.1 1 Hume, i. Brady, Pref. 7, 9. 17. aristocratic society Saxons. This change had already begun to take place in this Consequent island. The descendants of the first Anglo-Saxon tendency of settlers were now a distinct class of nobles; the unamong the happy race of slaves had immensely multiplied; and, Anglo- notwithstanding its original principles of freedom, the Anglo-Saxon constitution had become extremely aristocratic. No middle class was recognised in society; the peasants were all enrolled, for the sake of protection, under some chieftain whom they were bound to obey in preference even to the sovereign; and the industrial classes were so extremely scanty, that York, the second I. city in the kingdom, contained only fourteen hundred CHAP. families. The freedom of the Anglo-Saxons, therefore, was fast lapsing into oligarchy and their descendants, like the hidalgos of Spain, or the nobility of France, might have been left in the enjoyment of ruinous exclusive privileges, when the current of events was altered, and they were forcibly blended with their inferiors, by 1 one of those catastrophes which seem destined by Providence to arrest the course of human degradation.— This event was the NORMAN CONQUEST.1 Hume, i. Brady, 10. 210, 219. 18. of the Nor As this was the last of the great settlements which have taken place in modern Europe, so it was by far the Great effects most violent and oppressive. The first settlers in the man Conprovinces of the Roman empire, being ignorant of the quest. use of wealth, and totally unacquainted with the luxuries of life, deemed themselves fortunately established when they obtained a part of the conquered lands. But the needy adventurers who followed the standard of William had already acquired expensive habits; their desires were insatiable, and, to gratify their demands, almost the whole landed property of England was in a few years confiscated. Hardly any conquest since the fall of Rome has been so violent, or attended with such spoliation, contumely, and insult. The ancient Saxon proprietor was frequently reduced to the rank of a serf on his paternal estate, and nourished, in the meanest employments, an inextinguishable hatred of his oppressor: maidens of the highest rank were compelled to take the veil, in order to preserve their persons from Norman violence, or were glad to secure a legal title to protection by marrying the Norman nobles, and conveying to them the estates they had inherited from their fathers: tortures of the most cruel kind were invented, to extort from the miserable people their hidden treasures. In the suppression of the great rebellion in the north of England, the most savage measures were put in force. A tract eighty miles broad, to the north of the Humber, was laid waste, and above a CHAP. hundred thousand persons in consequence perished of I. famine; while in Hampshire, a district of country thirty miles in extent was depopulated, and the inhabitants expelled without any compensation, to form a forest for the royal pleasure. Nor were these grievances merely the temporary outburst of hostile revenge; they formed, on the contrary, the settled maxims by which the government for several reigns was regulated, and from which the successors of the Conqueror were driven by necessity alone. It was long an invariable rule to admit no native of the island to any office of importance, ecclesiastical, civil, or military. In the reign of Henry I. all places of trust were still in the hands of the Normans and so late as the beginning of the twelfth century, the same arbitrary system of exclusion seems to have been rigidly enforced. The dispossessed proprietors sought in vain to regain their estates. An An array of sixty thousand Norman horsemen was always ready to support the pre97,286, 303, tensions of the intruding barons. The throne is still filled by the descendants of the Conqueror, and the greatest families in the realm date their origin from the battle of Hastings.1 1 Hume, i. 260, 279, 283, 284, 318. Thierry, ii. 24, 27, 96, 304, 368. Guizot, Hist. Eur. ch. ii. 19. gin to the The English antiquarians, alarmed at the consequences It gave ori- which might be deduced from this violent usurpation, have yeomanry of endeavoured to soften its features, and to represent the England. Norman as reigning rather by the consent than the subjugation of the Saxon inhabitants. In truth, however, it was the severity and continued weight of this conquest, which was the real cause of the refractory spirit of the English people. The principles of liberty spread their roots the deeper, just because they were prevented from rising to the surface of society. The Saxon proprietors, having been almost every where dispossessed of their properties, were necessarily cast down into the lower stations of life. A foundation was thus laid for a middle rank in society, totally different from what obtained in any other state in Europe. It was not the native inhabitants, the pusillanimous subjects of the Roman empire, who from CHAP. that period composed the lower orders of the state, but the descendants of the free Anglo-Saxon and Danish settlers, who had acquired independent habits from the enjoyment of centuries of liberty, and courageous feelings from the recollection of a long series of successes. One defeat could not extinguish the recollection of a hundred victories. Habits, the growth of ages, survived the oppression of transient reigns. The power of the Normans prevented the dispossessed proprietors or their descendants from rising into the higher stations in society; the slaves already filled the lowest walks of life. Between the two extremes they formed a sturdy and powerful body, which neither was cast down in the contests of feudal power, nor 1 Blackst. perished in the obscurity of ignoble bondage. It was i. 27. from these causes that the yeomanry of England took their rise.1 20. of the insu on the con race. Had the kingdom of England been but an appanage to a monarchy of greater extent, the discontents of this Vast effect middle class would probably have been treated with con- lar situation of England tempt, or have been repressed by the stern hand of military power; and the Norman barons, residing in their castles quering in France, might have safely disregarded the impotent clamours of their English tenantry. But, by a fortunate combination of circumstances, this was rendered impossible. The military chieftains who followed the Conqueror were either possessed of no estates on the other side of the Channel, or their recent acquisitions greatly exceeded the value of their Continental possessions. The kingdom of England was too powerful to be treated as an appanage of a Norman duchy, and the English tenantry too formidable to be resigned to the oppressive government of an absent nobility. Hence, both the sovereign and his followers made England their principal residence; and the Norman nobility, who at first had flattered themselves that they had gained an appanage to their duchy, soon found, like the Scotch upon the accession of their monarchs VOL. I. E |