as did his unnatural brother John, from selfish ambition; but he was at length ransomed by his subjects for the sum of 150,000 merks, and, after an absence of four years, returned to his dominions, 1194. His traitorous brother was pardoned after some submission; and Richard employed the short residue of his reign in a spirited revenge against his rival, Philip. A truce, however, was concluded, by the mediation of Rome; and Richard was soon after killed, while storming the castle of one of his rebellious vassals in the Limosin. He died without issue in the tenth year of his reign, and forty-second of his age, April 6, 1199.

9. John (surnamed Lackland, the landless,) succeeded to the throne on the death of his "brother, but found a competitor in his nephew Arthur, Duke of Bretagne, the son of Geoffrey, his elder brother, supported by Philip of France. War was, of course, renewed with that country: but Arthur, with fatal confidence, throwing himself into the hands of his uncle, was removed by poison or the sword; a deed which, joined to the known tyranny of his character, rendered John the detestation of his subjects. He was stripped by Philip of his Continental dominions, and he made the pope his enemy by an avaricious attack on the treasures of the church. After an ineffectual menace of vengeance, Innocent III. pronounced a sentence of interdict against the kingdom, which put a stop to all the ordinances of religion, to baptism, and the burial of the dead. He next excommunicated John, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance; and he finally deposed him, and made a gift of the kingdom to Philip. John, intimidated into submission, declared himself the pope's vassal, swore allegiance on his knees to the papal legate, and agreed to hold his kingdom tributary to the Holy See, 1213. On these conditions, which ensured the universal hatred and contempt of his people, he made his peace with the church. It was natural that his subjects, thus trampled upon and sold, should vindicate their rights. The barons of the kingdom assembled, and binding themselves by oath to an union of measures, they resolutely demanded from the king a ratification of the charter of privileges granted by Henry I. John appealed to the pope, who, in support of his vassal, prohibited the confederacy of the barons as rebellious. These were only the more resolute in their purpose, and the sword was their last resource. At length John was compelled to yield to their demands, and signed at Runymede, between Windsor and Staines, 15th of June, 1215, that solemn charter, which is the foundation and bulwark of English liberty, Magna Charta.

10. By this great charter,-1. The freedom of election to benefices was secured to the clergy; 2. The fines to the overlord on the succession of vassals (or tenants) were regulated; 3. No aids or subsidies were allowed to be levied from the subject, unless in a few special cases, without the consent of the great

council; 4. The crown shall not seize the lands of a baron for a debt, while he has personal property sufficient to discharge it; 5. All the privileges granted by the king to his vassals shall be communicated by them to their inferior vassals; 6. One weight and one measure shall be used throughout the kingdom; 7. All men shall pass from and return to the realm at their pleasure; 8. All cities and boroughs shall preserve their ancient liberties: 9. The estate of every freeman (freeholder) shall be regulated by his will, and, if he die intestate, by the law; 10. The king's court shall be stationary, and open to all; 11. Every freeman shall be fined only in proportion to his offence, and no fine shall be imposed to his utter ruin; 12. No peasant (freeman) shall, by a fine be deprived of his instruments of husbandry; 13. No person shall be tried on suspicion alone, but on the evidence of lawful witnesses; 14. No (free) person shall be tried or punished but by the judgment of his peers and the law of the land.

11. John granted at the same time the Charta de Foresta, which abolished the royal privilege of killing game over all the kingdom, and restored to the lawful proprietors their woods and forests, which they were now allowed to enclose and use at their pleasure. As compulsion alone had produced these concessions, John was determined to disregard them, and a foreign force was brought into the kingdom to reduce the barons into submission. These applied for aid to France, and Philip sent his son Louis to England with an army; and such was the people's hatred of their sovereign, that they swore allegiance to this foreigner. At this critical period John died at Newark (1216), and an instant change ensued. His son Henry III., a boy of nine years of age, was crowned at Bristol, and his uncle the earl of Pembroke appointed protector of the realm: the disaffected barons returned to their allegiance, the people hailed their sovereign, and Louis with his army, after an ineffectual struggle, made peace with the protector, and evacuated the kingdom.

THE CONDITION OF ENGLAND FROM THE CONQUEST TO THE DEATH OF KING JOHN, 1066 to 1216.

[THE Norman conquest was a fatal blow to Anglo-Saxon liberty. Doomsday book is an indisputable record of the vast territorial revolution that took place. Before the death of the Conqueror, the whole soil and all that was upon it with few exceptions, had been divided among foreigners, the native population deprived of all civil and political rights, of all offices of honour in the church and state, and reduced to the condition of their vassals, bondmen, and slaves. The name of Englishman became a term of reproach; their language was rejected as barbarous, and the laws were administered in NormanFrench. In short the foreign officers and soldiers became the earls, barons, and landholders, the ancestors of the ancient territorial families, and the English the poor, the miserable, and oppressed.

The government established by the Conqueror was a military despotism. And to maintain his conquest, the country was divided into districts which

were occupied by bodies of troops under their respective officers. The commanders becoming the counts or earls of counties; the next in command, the vice-counts, or viscounts; the inferior officers, the barons; and the soldiers, the freeholders of the counties. The Conqueror, the general in chief, retained extensive possessions in his own hands, and divided the remainder of England among his officers, to be governed by them subject to the regulations established by him, called the Feudal system. England was divided into about 60,000 fiefs or knights' fees, or quantities of land allowed for the maintenance of a soldier and his horse, each holder being bound to appear in the field or to send a substitute when called upon. These fiefs were granted by the king to about 700 officers of different ranks, to be held of him during pleasure, and were called his tenants in chief. These retained large possessions in their own hands, and granted to their soldiers fiefs to be held of them, on the same terms of military service and other payments as required by the king of them. What was the precise quantity of land, or the estimated annual value of a knight's fee, is not clear. According to some, it contained 800 acres, according to others, 680. Lord Coke is of opinion that it was to be computed by the quality, and not by the quantity, of the land, which in 1307 was assumed to be of the annual value of £20. But whatever might be the exact value of a knight's fee, he who held a portion of land so denominated, was bound, when called upon, to attend his lord to the wars on horseback, armed as a knight, for forty days in every year, at his own expense; which attendance or service was a part of the rent payable for the fand he held. The tenants in chief were the military and civil rulers of their districts or baronies, from which they derived the title of barons, and as they were of the same class as the sovereign, just as a subaltern officer is of his general, they were his peers, and as such entitled to attend the great council of the nation; while the military tenants, who held lands of them, equally free of servile conditions as themselves, were their peers in the courtsbaron where they assembled as often as it was held. Such was the principle of government as established by the Conqueror, and which continued in vigour until the time of Magna Charta. For a long time after the conquest, lands were only granted to be held at the pleasure of the sovereign, but they came to be claimed hereditarily, which the Great Charter guaranteed, subject to the customary feudal obligations.

As it is important to know the conditions on which about sixty thousand persons acquired the whole property of the kingdom, except what remained in the hands of the crown, they may be stated to have been subjected to forfeiture in addition to the military service referred to, if withheld.

1. AIDS-1st. To ransom the sovereign if taken prisoner; 2dly, To make his eldest son a knight; 3dly. To give a suitable portion to his eldest daughter on her marriage.

2. RELIEF:-Which consisted of a fine or composition paid to the sovereign by the heir, when of full age, for permission to take up the estate of his ancestor. In the time of Henry II. this relief was 100 shillings for each knight's fee, or one fourth or more of the annual value.

3. PRIMER SEISIN:- -Which gave the sovereign the right to one whole year's profits of the lands from the heir in addition to the relief, if the lands were in immediate possession; and half a year's profit, if the lands were in reversion expectant on an estate for life.

4. WARDSHIP:-Which gave the sovereign the wardship of the heir, without being accountable for the profits, till the age of 21 in males, and 16 in females. Then the heir or heiress was obliged to pay half a year's profits of the land by way of fine to be put in possession. This incident was a source of considerable revenue and patronage to the sovereign.

5. MARITAGIUM:- -Which gave the sovereign the right of disposing of his infant ward in marriage; that was, of tendering him or her, while in ward, a suitable match; which if the wards refused, they forfeited to their guardian the value of the marriage, or what would have been bona fide given to him

for such an alliance, as a jury should determine: and if the wards, after refusal of a suitable marriage, married without the consent of their guardian, then they forfeited double the value of the marriage. This incident was a source of considerable revenue.

6. FINES FOR ALIENATION:-These were often arbitrary, and unsettled until the statute 1. Edward III., c. 12, fixed them at one third of the annual value, with a license; and a full year's value without permission to alienate.

7. ESCHEAT:-When the tenant died without heirs of his blood, the lands reverted to the sovereign; or when the tenant was convicted of treason or felony.

Such were the original conditions upon which lands were held, the profits arising therefrom constituting the principal part of the public revenue, in addition to the profits of the crown lands, until the Restoration of Charles II. in 1660, when they were taken away without lands being charged with an equivalent.

For a long time after the conquest, the mass of the English people were held in a state of servitude. Only the tenants in chief and their military vassals were in the enjoyment of civil and political rights. The inhabitants of towns, in the demesnes of the sovereign or the barons, were at first in the nature of property, but they came to obtain from the sovereign charters of privilege, and afterwards from the barons. The country population were divided into Sockmen, Villeins regardant, and Villeins in gross. The Sockmen were the better class of Englishmen who had obtained small grants of land either out of compassion, on payment of a fixed sum of money, or on condition of performing some fixed servile employment to their superior lords. These were allowed to possess private property. The villeins regardant were those who cultivated the land and were permanently attached to manors, and bound to perform the most servile offices of agricultural labour for the benefit of the lords of manors. During the period from the conquest to the death of John, their labour was unlimited both with regard to its severity and duration, and they were not allowed to possess private property. The villeins in gross were those principally employed in menial services in the houses of the lords of manors. They were at the absolute disposal of their lords, and were transferred by deed, sale or conveyance, from one owner to another. Their exportation was not prohibited until the reign of Henry I., 1102. It was not until the reign of Richard I. that the English people began to escape from the servitude to which they had been reduced. The chivalrous character of that prince induced the barons to dispose of their lands, and to give a fixed tenure for small sums of money, to enable them to accompany him in the third crusade. Fee, or free farms were in that way obtained, which led to the formation of a middle class, the yeomanry of the next period of our history.

The contest between the barons and king John did not arise from any desire in the former to extend the liberties of the English people, but to obtain a confirmation of the privilege which they claimed and a hereditary succession in their families to their lands and dignities. By that time they considered themselves the hereditary owners of the estates which had been granted to held at the pleasure of the sovereign. And as the Saxon laws of Edward the Confessor, at once preserved all that was due to the tenant with the requisite powers to the lord of the fee, the Anglo Norman barons became as clamorous for their adoption as the English had been from the conquest. John drove them into rebellion through his favour to Poitevians and other foreigners, among whom he distributed the principal offices and fiefs that were held of him, and even dispossessed many of the Normans, to provide for them. He also married them to those heiresses of whom he had become guardian, according to the feudal law; and gave to them, under the title of guardians, the management and receivership of the estates

of minors and orphans. These foreigners, in their desire to acquire wealth, were more rapacious in the exaction of rents and fines on their domains, than the Anglo-Norman barons, who had become naturalized. Thus they agitated at the same time, and almost in an equal degree, the two races of men inhabiting England: the Anglo-Norman landholders, who spoke NormanFrench, and the mass of the people, who spoke English, who until then had had no sympathy or aversion in common. The English people were not entirely forgotten in the provisions of Magna Charta, but they were benefited rather indirectly than directly. The recognition of the Saxon common law having arisen out of it, which afterwards facilitated their acquiring civil and political rights. By one of the articles of the Great Charter, the foreigners that had been enriched by king John were sent out of the kingdom, which the country people zealously assisted in enforcing. From hence may be dated the birth of a new national spirit, common to all men born on the English soil; but it was not until more than a century after the death of John that any considerable number of the rural population had become freemen.]

SECTION XVII.

THE CRUSADES, OR HOLY WARS.

1. At the time of the first crusade, in the end of the eleventh century, Arabia, Persia, and the greater portion of Lesser Asia were in the possession of the Mohammedans. The Eastern Empire, thus abridged of its Asiatic territory, had also lost a great part of its dominions in Europe. It retained, however, Greece, Macedonia, Thrace, and Illyria; and Constantinople itself was populous, opulent, and luxurious. Palestine had been in the possession of the Mussulmans (true believers) since 637; and its capital, Jerusalem, fallen from its ancient consequence and splendour, was yet held in respect by its conquerors as a holy city, and constantly attracted the resort of Mohammedans to the mosque of Omar, as of Christian pilgrims to the sepulchre of our Saviour. [So long as the Caliphs of Bagdad and Egypt were the rulers of Palestine, they protected the Christian pilgrims that resorted to Jerusalem, on payment of a tax; but when the Seljukian Turks superseded them, the pilgrims were exposed to every kind of insult and oppression.]

2. Peter the Hermit, a native of Amiens, on his return from this pilgrimage, complained in loud terms of the grievances which the Christians suffered from the Turks; and Urban II. pitched on this enthusiast as a fit person to commence the execution of a grand design which the popes had long entertained, of arming all Christendom, and exterminating the Infidels from the Holy Land. The project was opened in two general councils held at Placentia in Lombardy, and Clermont in Auvergne, 1095. The French possessed more ardour than the Italians; and an immense multitude of ambitious and disorderly nobles, with all their dependants, eager for enterprise and plunder, and assured of eternal salvation, immediately took the cross. Peter the