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 w 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 Switzer land, ii. 321. Scot. ii. France, xii. i. 80. Pre It was a singular combination of circumstances which 24. combina these re sults in 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 dispos- England. sessing 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 CHAP. 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, Hall. i. 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 Guizor, 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. CHAP. I. the sovereigns and the nobility, for their chief support, upon the tenantry of their estates. From the commencement of these contests, accordingly, the distinction between Norman and English disappeared; the ancient prejudices and pride of the former yielded to the stronger feeling of antipathy at their common enemies; English became the ordinary language both of the higher and lower orders, and the English institutions the object of veneration to the descendants of the very conquerors who had overturned them. The continual want of money, which the long duration of this desperate struggle occasioned to the crown, strengthened the growth of English freedom; each successive grant by the barons was accompanied by a confirmation of ancient rights; the commons, from the frequent use of arms, came to feel their own weight, and to assert their ancient privileges; and at 487, 488, length England, under the Plantagenet sovereigns, regained 78, 79. as much liberty as it had ever enjoyed under the rule of its Saxon monarchs.1 Three circumstances, connected with the Norman Conquest, contributed in a remarkable manner to the preservation of a free spirit among the barons and commons of England. Hume, ii. 492; iii. 4, 26. I. The first of these was the great weight which the crown acquired, from the ample share of the conquered Power of lands which were allotted to the sovereign at the Con- the crown quest. William received no less than fourteen hundred Norman and twenty-two manors for his proportion—a patrimony far greater than was enjoyed by any sovereign of Europe at the same period. The consequence was, that the turbulent spirit of the barons was far more effectually checked in this island than in the Continental states; the monarch could generally crush by his sentence any obnoxious nobleman; his courts of justice extended their jurisdiction into every part of the kingdom; and the essential prerogatives of the crown, those of coining money and repressing private wars, were never, except under the kings. I. CHAP. in reigns of unusual weakness, usurped by the subjects. For a century and a half after the Conquest, the authority of the Norman sovereigns was incomparably more extensive than that of any of the other monarchs who had settled on the ruins of the Roman empire. The industry and wealth of the commons was thus more completely protected in England than in the neighbouring kingdoms, where feudal violence, private wars, and incessant 371; ii. 73, bloodshed, crushed the first efforts of laborious freedom; and the middle ranks, comparatively free from oppression, gradually grew in importance with the extension of their numbers, and the insensible increase of their opulence.1 Hume, i. 353, 369, 74. Hall. ii. 427. Lyttleton, ii. 288. 27. Insular situation. II. The second was the insular situation of the country, and its consequent exemption from the horrors of actual warfare. With the exception of a few incursions of the Scottish monarchs into the northern counties, which were transient in their duration and partial in their effects, England has hardly ever been the seat of foreign war since the Conquest; and the southern counties, by far the most important both in riches and population, have not seen the fires of an enemy's camp for eight hundred years. Securely cradled in the waves, her industry has scarcely ever felt the devastating influence of foreign conquest; her arms have often carried war into foreign states, but she has never suffered from its havoc in her own. Periods of foreign hostility have been known to her inhabitants only from the increased excitation of national feeling, or the quickened encouragement of domestic industry. The effects of this happy exemption from the devastation of foreign invasion have been incalculable. It is during the dangers and the exigencies of war that military violence acquires its fatal ascendency; that industry is blighted by the destruction of its produce; labour deadened by the forfeiture of its hopes; pacific virtues extinguished by the insults which they suffer; warlike qualities developed by the eminence to which they lead. In every age the principles of liberty I. expand during the protection of peace, and are withered CHAP. by the whirl and the agitation of war. If this truth has been experienced in our own times, when military devastation is comparatively limited, and industry universally diffused, what must have been its importance in a barbarous age, when the infant shoots of freedom were first beginning to appear, and could expand only under the shelter of baronial or monastic power? It is accordingly observed by all our historians, that the feudal institutions of England were far less military than those which obtained in the Continental monarchies; that private wars were com paratively unknown, and that the armies of the kings 1 Hallam, i. were for the most part composed of levied troops, whose 479. unbroken experience soon acquired a decided superiority over the feudal militia of their enemies.1 28. Saxon in III. The third circumstance was the fortunate limitation of the privileges of nobility to the eldest son of the Anglofamily. This was owing to the weight of the commons stitutions. in the constitution, which arose from the number and opulence of the Saxon proprietors, who had been dispossessed by the Normans. of a privileged class, and suffered the prerogatives of nobility to exist only in that member of the family who inherited the paternal estate; and there is no single circumstance which has contributed more to confer its long permanence, its regular improvement, and its inherent vigour, on the English constitution. The descendants of the nobles were thus prevented from forming a caste, to whom, as in the Continental monarchies, the exclusive right of filling certain situations might be limited. The younger branches of the aristocracy, after a few generations, relapsed into the rank, and-became identified with the interests of the commons; and that pernicious separation of noble and plebeian, which has been the principal cause of the destruction of freedom in all the European states, was from the earliest times softened in this country. The nobility in the actual It prevented the formation 2 て |