Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

I.

At the accession

CHAP. to the English throne, that they had changed places with their supposed subjects, and that the province was become the ruling power. The effects of this necessity soon appeared in the measures of government. of each successive monarch, and in every crisis of national danger, it was deemed indispensable to make some sacrifice to the popular wishes, and abate a little of the wonted severity of the Norman rule, to secure the fidelity of their English subjects. When Henry I. came to the throne, his first step was to grant the famous charter, which was long referred to as the foundation of English liberties, in order to secure the support of his insular subjects against the preferable claims of his brother Robert; and, in consequence, he was enabled to lead a victorious army into Normandy, and revenge, on the field of Tenchebray, the slaughter and the calamities of Hastings. When Stephen seized the sceptre, he instantly passed a charter confirming the grants of Henry, and promising to remit the Danish tax, and restore the laws of Edward the Confessor. Henry II. deemed it prudent, in the most solemn manner, to ratify the same instrument. The pusillanimity and 1 Eadmer, disasters of John led to the extortion of Magna Charta, by which the old charter of Henry I. was again confirmed, and the rights of all classes of freemen were enlarged and established; and the great charter itself was ratified no less than two-and-thirty different times in the succeeding reigns, on occasion of every extraordinary grant from the subjects, or unusual weakness of the crown.1

90. Hume,

1. 328, 351

ii. 74, 81.

W. Malms

bury, 179.

M. Paris,

38, 272. Hallam, i.

452.

21.

early strug

gles for freedom.

;

The effects of these circumstances on the character and And on the objects of the English struggles for freedom have been in the highest degree important. From perpetually recurring to the past, the habit was acquired of regarding liberty, not as a boon to be gained, but as a right to be vindicated; not as an invasion of the constitution, but a restoration of its pristine purity. The love of freedom came thus to be inseparably blended with the veneration for antiquity; the privileges of the people were sought for, not in the

I.

violation of present, but in the restitution of ancient right CHAP. -not by the work of destruction, but by that of conservation. The passion for liberty was thus divested of its most dangerous consequences, by being separated from the desire for innovation. The progress of the constitution was marked, not by successive changes, but by repeated confirmations of subsisting rights; and the efforts of freedom in England, instead of being directed, as in most other countries, to procure an expansion of the privileges of the people in proportion to the progress of society, have been almost entirely confined to an unceasing endeavour to prevent their contraction by the arbitrary disposition of successive monarchs. The same circumstances produced a remarkable effect on the current of public feeling in England, and the things which were regarded as the objects of national anxiety by the great body of the people. They mingled the recollection of their ancient laws with the days of their national independence, and looked back to the reign of Edward the Confessor as the happy era when their rights and properties were secure, and they had not yet tasted of the severity of foreign domination. Hence the struggles of freedom in England acquired a definite and practicable object; and, instead of being wasted in aspirations after visionary schemes, settled down into a strong and inextinguishable desire for the restoration of an order of things once actually established, and of which the experienced benefits were still engraven on the recollections of the people. For several centuries, accordingly, the continued effort of the English people was to obtain the restitution of their Saxon privileges: they were solemnly recognised in Magna Charta, and ratified in the different confirmations of that important instrument; 451, 452. and they are still, after the lapse of a thousand years, 272. looked back to with interest by historians, as the original foundations of English liberty.1

The effects of the same causes appeared in the most striking manner in the wars of the English, for several

1 Hallam, i.

M. Paris,

22.

CHAP. centuries after the Norman Conquest. Their neighbours, I. the French and the Scotch, brought into the field only the chivalry of the barons, and the spearmen of their And on the serfs. No middle order was to be found superior to wars of the the common billman, or foot-soldier, but inferior to the English.

national

mounted knight. But, in addition to these, the Plantagenet monarchs appeared at the head of a vast and skilful body of archers a force peculiar to England, because it alone possessed the class from whom it could be formed. It was the Saxon outlaws, driven by despair into the numerous forests with which the country abounded, who first from necessity obtained a perfect mastery of this weapon. And accordingly, the graphic novelist, with historic truth, makes Norman Richard the leader of English chivalry, and Robin Hood, the prince of Saxon outlaws, the first of British marksmen.* It was their descendants who swelled the ranks of the English yeomanry, and constituted a powerful body in war, formidable from their skill, their numbers, and their independent spirit. The bow continued for ages to be the favourite national weapon of the Saxons. They practised the art incessantly in their amusements, and regained, by its importance in the field of battle, their due weight in the government of the country. Not the Norman nobility, not the feudal retainers, as 75. Frois- Hallam observes, gained the victories of Cressy and Poictiers, for they were fully matched in the ranks of France; but the yeomen who drew the bow with strong and steady arms, accustomed to its use in their native fields, and rendered fearless by personal competence and civil freedom.1

1 Hallam, i.

sart, i. 16. Tytler's

Scotland, ii. 439, 440. Sism. France, xii. 51.

The Scotch government, whose armies had suffered so often from the English archers, in vain passed repeated

* Sir Walter Scott in Ivanhoe.-It is a curious circumstance, that Thierry mentions that it was this incomparable novel which first suggested to him the idea of writing an account of the Norman Conquest, since realised in his admirable history of that event. See THIERRY, Dix Ans d'Etudes Historiques, Preface, p. 17.

I.

of archery

France and

acts to compel the formation of a similar force in their CHAP. own country. All these measures proved ineffectual, because the yeomanry were wanting who filled the ranks 23. of the bowmen in the English armies. The French Total want kings endeavoured, by mercenary troops drawn from the as a force in mountains of Genoa, to provide a match for the English Scotland. archers; but the jealousy of their government, which prevented the middle orders from being allowed the use of arms, rendered all such attempts nugatory; and the Plantagenet kings, in consequence, twice vanquished their greatest armies, and marched boldly through the country, 1 Planta's at the head of the Saxon yeomanry. Even after the cessation of hostilities between the two monarchies, the Tytler's terrible English bands ravaged with impunity the provinces 439. Sism. of France; nor did they ever experience any considerable 51. Barante, check till they approached the Swiss mountains, and face. encountered, at the cemetery of Bâle, peasants as free, as sturdy, and as courageous as themselves."

1

Switzerland, ii. 321.

Scot. ii.

France, xii.

i. 80. Pre

combina

these re

sults in

England.

It was a singular combination of circumstances which 24. rendered the middle ranks under the Norman princes so Peculiar powerful, both in the military array of the state, and in tion which the maintenance of their civil rights. The Norman Con- produced quest had laid the foundation of such a class, by dispossessing the numerous body of Saxon proprietors; but it was the subsequent necessities of the sovereigns and the nobles, arising from their insular situation and their frequent contests with each other, which compelled them to foster the Saxon troops, and avail themselves of that powerful force which they found existing in such perfection among their native forests. Cut off by the ocean from their feudal brethren on the Continent, surrounded by a numerous and warlike people, the barons perceived that, without the support of their yeomanry, they could neither maintain their struggles with the sovereign, nor insure the possession of their estates. The privileges, therefore, of this class were anxiously attended to in all the renewals of the great charter; and their strength

СНАР.

I.

was carefully fostered, as the main security both of the crown and the barons, in their extensive and unsettled insular possessions. It is considered by William of Malmsbury as an especial work of Providence, that so great a people as the English should have given up all for lost after the destruction of so small an army as that which fought at Hastings; but it was precisely the magnitude of this disproportion which perpetuated and extended the freedom of the country. Had the Normans not succeeded, the free Saxons would have dwindled into a feudal aristocracy, and the peasantry of England been similar in their condition to the serfs of France: had an overwhelming power conquered, it would have utterly crushed the vanquished people; the Norman Conquest would have been similar in its effects to the subjugation of the neighbouring island, and the fields of England been now choked by the crowds and the wretchedness of Ireland. It was the conquest of the country by a force which, though formidable at first, became soon disproportioned to the strength of the subdued realm, which both created a middle class and secured its privileges; and, by blending of Malms the interests of the victor with those of the vanquished, Halli. 449. at length engrafted the vigour of Norman enterprise on the steady spirit of English freedom.1*

1 William

bury, 53.

25.

effect of

In this view, the loss of the Continental provinces in Important the reign of King John, and the subsequent long wars the loss of between France and England under the Plantagenet the English possessions princes, contributed strongly to the preservation of Engin France. lish liberty, by severing all connexion between the barons

and their kinsmen on the Continent, and throwing both

* Long after these pages were written, I had the high satisfaction of finding that, unknown to myself, M. Guizot had about the same time adopted a similar view of the effects of the Norman conquest, and illustrated it with the philosophical spirit and extensive research for which his historical works are so justly celebrated. See GUIZOT, Essais sur l'Histoire de France, pp. 373-400. It is singular how frequently, about the same period, the same ideas are suggested to different writers, in situations remote from each other, which never before occurred to those who have treated of the subject. It would appear that political seasons bring forth the same fruits in different parts of the world at the same time.

« AnteriorContinuar »