Chapter IX: Part III: The English Constitution (7)

A very curious illustration of this feudal principle is found in the conduct of William earl of Pembroke, one of the greatest names in our ancient history, towards Henry III. The king had defied him, which was tantamount to a declaration of war; alleging that he had made an inroad upon the royal domains. Pembroke maintained that he was not the aggressor, that the king had denied him justice, and been the first to invade his territory; on which account he had thought himself absolved from his homage, and at liberty to use force against the malignity of the royal advisers. "Nor would it be for the king's honour," the earl adds, "that I should submit to his will against reason, whereby I should rather do wrong to him and to that justice which he is bound to administer towards his people; and I should give an ill example to all men in deserting justice and right in compliance with his mistaken will. For this would show that I loved my worldly wealth better than justice." These words, with whatever dignity expressed, it may be objected, prove only the disposition of an angry and revolted earl. But even Henry fully admitted the right of taking arms against himself if he had meditated his vassal's destruction, and disputed only the application of this maxim to the earl of Pembroke.[384]

These feudal notions, which placed the moral obligation of allegiance very low, acting under a weighty pressure from the real strength of the crown, were favourable to constitutional liberty. The great vassals of France and Germany aimed at living independently on their fiefs, with no further concern for the rest than as useful allies having a common interest against the crown. But in England, as there was no prospect of throwing off subjection, the barons endeavoured only to lighten its burthen, fixing limits to prerogative by law, and securing their observation by parliamentary remonstrances or by dint of arms. Hence, as all rebellions in England were directed only to coerce the government, or at the utmost to change the succession of the crown, without the smallest tendency to separation, they did not impair the national strength nor destroy the character of the constitution. In all these contentions it is remarkable that the people and clergy sided with the nobles against the throne. No individuals are so popular with the monkish annalists, who speak the language of the populace, as Simon earl of Leicester, Thomas earl of Lancaster, and Thomas duke of Gloucester, all turbulent opposers of the royal authority, and probably little deserving of their panegyrics. Very few English historians of the middle ages are advocates of prerogative. This may be ascribed both to the equality of our laws and to the interest which the aristocracy found in courting popular favour, when committed against so formidable an adversary as the king. And even now, when the stream that once was hurried along gullies and dashed down precipices hardly betrays upon its broad and tranquil bosom the motion that actuates it, it must still be accounted a singular happiness of our constitution that, all ranks graduating harmoniously into one another, the interests of peers and commoners are radically interwoven; each in a certain sense distinguishable, but not balanced like opposite weights, not separated like discordant fluids, not to be secured by insolence or jealousy, but by mutual adherence and reciprocal influences.

[Sidenote: Influence which the state of manners gave the nobility.]

From the time of Edward I. the feudal system and all the feelings connected with it declined very rapidly. But what the nobility lost in the number of their military tenants was in some degree compensated by the state of manners. The higher class of them, who took the chief share in public affairs, were exceedingly opulent; and their mode of life gave wealth an incredibly greater efficacy than it possesses at present. Gentlemen of large estates and good families who had attached themselves to these great peers, who bore offices which we should call menial in their households, and sent their children thither for education, were of course ready to follow their banner in rising, without much inquiry into the cause. Still less would the vast body of tenants and their retainers, who were fed at the castle in time of peace, refuse to carry their pikes and staves into the field of battle. Many devices were used to preserve this aristocratic influence, which riches and ancestry of themselves rendered so formidable. Such was the maintenance of suits, or confederacies for the purpose of supporting each other's claims in litigation, which was the subject of frequent complaints in parliament, and gave rise to several prohibitory statutes. By help of such confederacies parties were enabled to make violent entries upon the lands they claimed, which the law itself could hardly be said to discourage.[385] Even proceedings in courts of justice were often liable to intimidation and influence.[386] A practice much allied to confederacies of maintenance, though ostensibly more harmless, was that of giving liveries to all retainers of a noble family; but it had an obvious tendency to preserve that spirit of factious attachments and animosities which it is the general policy of a wise government to dissipate. From the first year of Richard II. we find continual mention of this custom, with many legal provisions against it, but it was never abolished till the reign of Henry VII.[387]

[Sidenote: Prevalent habits of rapine.]

These associations under powerful chiefs were only incidentally beneficial as they tended to withstand the abuses of prerogative. In their more usual course they were designed to thwart the legitimate exercise of the king's government in the administration of the laws. All Europe was a scene of intestine anarchy during the middle ages; and though England was far less exposed to the scourge of private war than most nations on the continent, we should find, could we recover the local annals of every country, such an accumulation of petty rapine and tumult as would almost alienate us from the liberty which served to engender it. This was the common tenor of manners, sometimes so much aggravated as to find a place in general history,[388] more often attested by records during the three centuries that the house of Plantagenet sat on the throne. Disseisin, or forcible dispossession of freeholds, makes one of the most considerable articles in our law-books.[389] Highway robbery was from the earliest times a sort of national crime. Capital punishments, though very frequent, made little impression on a bold and a licentious crew, who had at least the sympathy of those who had nothing to lose on their side, and flattering prospects of impunity. We know how long the outlaws of Sherwood lived in tradition--men who, like some of their betters, have been permitted to redeem by a few acts of generosity the just ignominy of extensive crimes. These, indeed, were the heroes of vulgar applause; but when such a judge as Sir John Fortescue could exult that more Englishmen were hanged for robbery in one year than French in seven, and that, "if an Englishman be poor, and see another having riches which may be taken from him by might, he will not spare to do so,"[390] it may be perceived how thoroughly these sentiments had pervaded the public mind.

Such robbers, I have said, had flattering prospects of impunity. Besides the general want of communication, which made one who had fled from his own neighbourhood tolerably secure, they had the advantage of extensive forests to facilitate their depredations and prevent detection. When outlawed or brought to trial, the worst offenders could frequently purchase charters of pardon, which defeated justice in the moment of her blow.[391] Nor were the nobility ashamed to patronise men guilty of every crime. Several proofs of this occur in the rolls. Thus, for example, in the 22nd of Edward III., the commons pray that, "whereas it is notorious how robbers and malefactors infest the country, the king would charge the great men of the land that none such be maintained by them, privily or openly, but that they lend assistance to arrest and take such ill-doers."[392]

It is perhaps the most meritorious part of Edward I.'s government that he bent all his power to restrain these breaches of tranquillity. One of his salutary provisions is still in constant use, the statute of coroners. Another, more extensive, and, though partly obsolete, the foundation of modern laws, is the statute of Winton, which, reciting that "from day to day robberies, murders, burnings, and theft be more often used than they have been heretofore, and felons cannot be attainted by the oath of jurors which had rather suffer robberies on strangers to pass without punishment than indite the offenders, of whom great part be people of the same country, or at least, if the offenders be of another country, the receivers be of places near," enacts that hue and cry shall be made upon the commission of a robbery, and that the hundred shall remain answerable for the damage unless the felons be brought to justice. It may be inferred from this provision that the ancient law of frank-pledge, though retained longer in form, had lost its efficiency. By the same act, no stranger or suspicious person was to lodge even in the suburbs of towns; the gates were to be kept locked from sunset to sunrising; every host to be answerable for his guest; the highways to be cleared of trees and underwood for two hundred feet on each side; and every man to keep arms according to his substance in readiness to follow the sheriff on hue and cry raised ofter felons.[393] The last provision indicates that the robbers plundered the country in formidable bands. One of these, in a subsequent part of Edward's reign, burned the town of Boston during a fair, and obtained a vast booty, though their leader had the ill fortune not to escape the gallows.

The preservation of order throughout the country was originally intrusted not only to the sheriff, coroner, and constables, but to certain magistrates called conservators of the peace. These, in conformity to the democratic character of our Saxon government, were elected by the freeholders in their county court.[394] But Edward I. issued commissions to carry into effect the statute of Winton; and from the beginning of Edward III.'s reign the appointment of conservators was vested in the crown, their authority gradually enlarged by a series of statutes, and their titles changed to that of justices. They were empowered to imprison and punish all rioters and other offenders, and such as they should find by indictment or suspicion to be reputed thieves or vagabonds, and to take sureties for good behaviour from persons of evil fame.[395] Such a jurisdiction was hardly more arbitrary than, in a free and civilized age, it has been thought fit to vest in magistrates; but it was ill endured by a people who placed their notions of liberty in personal exemption from restraint rather than any political theory. An act having been passed (2 R. II. stat. 2, c. 6), in consequence of unusual riots and outrages, enabling magistrates to commit the ringleaders of tumultuary assemblies without waiting for legal process till the next arrival of justices of gaol delivery, the commons petitioned next year against this "horrible grievous ordinance," by which "every freeman in the kingdom would be in bondage to these justices," contrary to the great charter, and to many statutes, which forbid any man to be taken without due course of law.[396] So sensitive was their jealousy of arbitrary imprisonment, that they preferred enduring riot and robbery to chastising them by any means that might afford a precedent to oppression, or weaken men's reverence for Magna Charta.

There are two subjects remaining to which this retrospect of the state of manners naturally leads us, and which I would not pass unnoticed, though not perhaps absolutely essential to a constitutional history; because they tend in a very material degree to illustrate the progress of society, with which civil liberty and regular government are closely connected. These are, first, the servitude or villenage of the peasantry, and their gradual emancipation from that condition; and, secondly, the continual increase of commercial intercourse with foreign countries. But as the latter topic will fall more conveniently into the next part of this work, I shall postpone its consideration for the present.

[Sidenote: Villenage of the peasantry. Its nature and gradual extinction.]

In a former passage I have remarked of the Anglo-Saxon ceorls that neither their situation nor that of their descendants for the earlier reigns after the Conquest appears to have been mere servitude. But from the time of Henry II., as we learn from Glanvil, the villein, so called, was absolutely dependent upon his lord's will, compelled to unlimited services, and destitute of property, not only in the land he held for his maintenance, but in his own acquisitions.[397] If a villein purchased or inherited land, the lord might seize it; if he accumulated stock, its possession was equally precarious. Against his lord he had no right of action; because his indemnity in damages, if he could have recovered any, might have been immediately taken away. If he fled from his lord's service, or from the land which he held, a writ issued de nativitate probanda, and the master recovered his fugitive by law. His children were born to the same state of servitude; and, contrary to the rule of the civil law, where one parent was free and the other in villenage, the offspring followed their father's condition.[398]

This was certainly a severe lot; yet there are circumstances which materially distinguish it from slavery. The condition of villenage, at least in later times, was perfectly relative; it formed no distinct order in the political economy. No man was a villein in the eye of law, unless his master claimed him: to all others he was a freeman, and might acquire, dispose of, or sue for property without impediment. Hence Sir E. Coke argues that villeins are included in the 29th article of Magna Charta: "No freeman shall be disseised nor imprisoned."[399] For murder, rape, or mutilation of his villein, the lord was indictable at the king's suit; though not for assault or imprisonment, which were within the sphere of his seignorial authority.[400]

This class was distinguished into villeins regardant, who had been attached from time immemorial to a certain manor, and villeins in gross, where such territorial prescription had never existed, or had been broken. In the condition of these, whatever has been said by some writers, I can find no manner of difference; the distinction was merely technical, and affected only the mode of pleading.[401] The term in gross is appropriated in our legal language to property held absolutely and without reference to any other. Thus it is applied to rights of advowson or of common, when possessed simply and not as incident to any particular lands. And there can be no doubt that it was used in the same sense for the possession of a villein.[402] But there was a class of persons, sometimes inaccurately confounded with villeins, whom it is more important to separate. Villenage had a double sense, as it related to persons or to lands. As all men were free or villeins, so all lands were held by a free or villein tenure. As a villein might be enfeoffed of freeholds, though they lay at the mercy of his lord, so a freeman might hold tenements in villenage. In this case his personal liberty subsisted along with the burthens of territorial servitude. He was bound to arbitrary service at the will of the lord, and he might by the same will be at any moment dispossessed; for such was the condition of his tenure. But his chattels were secure from seizure, his person from injury, and he might leave the land whenever he pleased.[403]

From so disadvantageous a condition as this of villenage it may cause some surprise that the peasantry of England should have ever emerged. The law incapacitating a villein from acquiring property, placed, one would imagine, an insurmountable barrier in the way of his enfranchisement. It followed from thence, and is positively said by Glanvil, that a villein could not buy his freedom, because the price he tendered would already belong to his lord.[404] And even in the case of free tenants in villenage it is not easy to comprehend how their uncertain and unbounded services could ever pass into slight pecuniary commutations; much less how they could come to maintain themselves in their lands, and mock the lord with a nominal tenure according to the custom of the manor.

This, like many others relating to the progress of society, is a very obscure inquiry. We can trace the pedigree of princes, fill up the catalogue of towns besieged and provinces desolated, describe even the whole pageantry of coronations and festivals, but we cannot recover the genuine history of mankind. It has passed away with slight and partial notice by contemporary writers; and our most patient industry can hardly at present put together enough of the fragments to suggest a tolerably clear representation of ancient manners and social life. I cannot profess to undertake what would require a command of books as well as leisure beyond my reach; but the following observations may tend a little to illustrate our immediate subject, the gradual extinction of villenage.

If we take what may be considered as the simplest case, that of a manor divided into demesne lands of the lord's occupation and those in the tenure of his villeins, performing all the services of agriculture for him, it is obvious that his interest was to maintain just so many of these as his estate required for its cultivation. Land, the cheapest of articles, was the price of their labour; and though the law did not compel him to pay this or any other price, yet necessity, repairing in some degree the law's injustice, made those pretty secure of food and dwellings who were to give the strength of their arms for his advantage. But in course of time, as alienations of small parcels of manors to free tenants came to prevail, the proprietors of land were placed in a new situation relatively to its cultivators. The tenements in villenage, whether by law or usage, were never separated from the lordship, while its domain was reduced to a smaller extent through subinfeudations, sales, or demises for valuable rent. The purchasers under these alienations had occasion for labourers; and these would be free servants in respect of such employers, though in villenage to their original lord. As he demanded less of their labour, through the diminution of his domain, they had more to spare for other masters; and retaining the character of villeins and the lands they held by that tenure, became hired labourers in husbandry for the greater part of the year. It is true that all their earnings were at the lord's disposal, and that he might have made a profit of their labour when he ceased to require it for his own land. But this, which the rapacity of more commercial times would have instantly suggested, might escape a feudal superior, who, wealthy beyond his wants, and guarded by the haughtiness of ancestry against the desire of such pitiful gains, was better pleased to win the affection of his dependants than to improve his fortune at their expense.

The services of villenage were gradually rendered less onerous and uncertain. Those of husbandry, indeed, are naturally uniform, and might be anticipated with no small exactness. Lords of generous tempers granted indulgences which were either intended to be or readily became perpetual. And thus, in the time of Edward I., we find the tenants in some manors bound only to stated services, as recorded in the lord's book.[405] Some of these, perhaps, might be villeins by blood; but free tenants in villenage were still more likely to obtain this precision in their services; and from claiming a customary right to be entered in the court-roll upon the same terms as their predecessors, prevailed at length to get copies of it for their security.[406] Proofs of this remarkable transformation from tenants in villenage to copyholders are found in the reign of Henry III. I do not know, however, that they were protected, at so early an epoch, in the possession of their estates. But it is said in the Year-book of the 42nd of Edward III. to be "admitted for clear law, that, if the customary tenant or copyholder does not perform his services, the lord may seize his land as forfeited."[407] It seems implied herein, that, so long as the copyholder did continue to perform the regular stipulations of his tenure, the lord was not at liberty to divest him of his estate; and this is said to be confirmed by a passage in Britton, which has escaped my search; though Littleton intimates that copyholders could have no remedy against their lord.[408] However, in the reign of Edward IV. this was put out of doubt by the judges, who permitted the copyholder to bring his action of trespass against the lord for dispossession.

While some of the more fortunate villeins crept up into property as well as freedom under the name of copyholders, the greater part enfranchised themselves in a different manner. The law, which treated them so harshly, did not take away the means of escape; nor was this a matter of difficulty in such a country as England. To this, indeed, the unequal progression of agriculture and population in different counties would have naturally contributed. Men emigrated, as they always must, in search of cheapness or employment, according to the tide of human necessities. But the villein, who had no additional motive to urge his steps away from his native place, might well hope to be forgotten or undiscovered when he breathed a freer air, and engaged his voluntary labour to a distant master. The lord had indeed an action against him; but there was so little communication between remote parts of the country, that it might be deemed his fault or singular ill-fortune if he were compelled to defend himself. Even in that case the law inclined to favour him; and so many obstacles were thrown in the way of these suits to reclaim fugitive villeins, that they could not have operated materially to retard their general enfranchisement.[409] In one case, indeed, that of unmolested residence for a year and a day within a walled city or borough, the villein became free, and the lord was absolutely barred of his remedy. This provision is contained even in the laws of William the Conqueror, as contained in Hoveden, and, if it be not an interpolation, may be supposed to have had a view to strengthen the population of those places which were designed for garrisons. This law, whether of William or not, is unequivocally mentioned by Glanvil.[410] Nor was it a mere letter. According to a record in the sixth of Edward II., Sir John Clavering sued eighteen villeins of his manor of Cossey, for withdrawing themselves therefrom with their chattels; whereupon a writ was directed to them; but six of the number claimed to be freemen, alleging the Conqueror's charter, and offering to prove that they had lived in Norwich, paying scot and lot, about thirty years; which claim was admitted.[411]

By such means a large proportion of the peasantry before the middle of the fourteenth century had become hired labourers instead of villeins. We first hear of them on a grand scale in an ordinance made by Edward III. in the twenty-third year of his reign. This was just after the dreadful pestilence of 1348, and it recites that, the number of workmen and servants having been greatly reduced by that calamity, the remainder demanded excessive wages from their employers. Such an enhancement in the price of labour, though founded exactly on the same principles as regulate the value of any other commodity, is too frequently treated as a sort of crime by lawgivers, who seem to grudge the poor that transient melioration of their lot which the progress of population, or other analogous circumstances, will, without any interference, very rapidly take away. This ordinance therefore enacts that every man in England, of whatever condition, bond or free, of able body, and within sixty years of age, not living of his own, nor by any trade, shall be obliged, when required, to serve any master who is willing to hire him at such wages as were usually paid three years since, or for some time preceding; provided that the lords of villeins or tenants in villenage shall have the preference of their labour, so that they retain no more than shall be necessary for them. More than these old wages is strictly forbidden to be offered, as well as demanded. No one is permitted, under colour of charity, to give alms to a beggar. And, to make some compensation to the inferior classes for these severities, a clause is inserted, as wise, just, and practicable as the rest, for the sale of provisions at reasonable prices.[412]

This ordinance met with so little regard that a statute was made in parliament two years after, fixing the wages of all artificers and husbandmen, with regard to the nature and season of their labour. From this time it became a frequent complaint of the commons that the statute of labourers was not kept. The king had in this case, probably, no other reason for leaving their grievance unredressed than his inability to change the order of Providence. A silent alteration had been wrought in the condition and character of the lower classes during the reign of Edward III. This was the effect of increased knowledge and refinement, which had been making a considerable progress for full half a century, though they did not readily permeate the cold region of poverty and ignorance. It was natural that the country people, or uplandish folk, as they were called, should repine at the exclusion from that enjoyment of competence, and security for the fruits of their labour, which the inhabitants of towns so fully possessed. The fourteenth century was, in many parts of Europe, the age when a sense of political servitude was most keenly felt. Thus the insurrection of the Jacquerie in France about the year 1358 had the same character, and resulted in a great measure from the same causes, as that of the English peasants in 1382. And we may account in a similar manner for the democratical tone of the French and Flemish cities, and for the prevalence of a spirit of liberty in Germany and Switzerland.[413]

I do not know whether we should attribute part of this revolutionary concussion to the preaching of Wicliffe's disciples, or look upon both one and the other as phenomena belonging to that particular epoch in the progress of society. New principles, both as to civil rule and religion, broke suddenly upon the uneducated mind, to render it bold, presumptuous, and turbulent. But at least I make little doubt that the dislike of ecclesiastical power, which spread so rapidly among the people at this season, connected itself with a spirit of insubordination and an intolerance of political subjection. Both were nourished by the same teachers, the lower secular clergy; and however distinct we may think a religious reformation from a civil anarchy, there was a good deal common in the language by which the populace were inflamed to either one or the other. Even the scriptural moralities which were then exhibited, and which became the foundation of our theatre, afforded fuel to the spirit of sedition. The common original and common destination of mankind, with every other lesson of equality which religion supplies to humble or to console, were displayed with coarse and glaring features in these representations. The familiarity of such ideas has deadened their effects upon our minds; but when a rude peasant, surprisingly destitute of religious instruction during that corrupt age of the church, was led at once to these impressive truths, we cannot be astonished at the intoxication of mind they produced.[414]

Though I believe that, compared at least with the aristocracy of other countries, the English lords were guilty of very little cruelty or injustice, yet there were circumstances belonging to that period which might tempt them to deal more hardly than before with their peasantry. The fourteenth century was an age of greater magnificence than those which had preceded, in dress, in ceremonies, in buildings; foreign luxuries were known enough to excite an eager demand among the higher ranks, and yet so scarce as to yield inordinate prices; while the landholders were, on the other hand, impoverished by heavy and unceasing taxation. Hence it is probable that avarice, as commonly happens, had given birth to oppression; and if the gentry, as I am inclined to believe, had become more attentive to agricultural improvements, it is reasonable to conjecture that those whose tenure obliged them to unlimited services of husbandry were more harassed than under their wealthy and indolent masters in preceding times.

The storm that almost swept away all bulwarks of civilized and regular society seems to have been long in collecting itself. Perhaps a more sagacious legislature might have contrived to disperse it: but the commons only presented complaints of the refractoriness with which villeins and tenants in villenage rendered their due services;[415] and the exigencies of government led to the fatal poll-tax of a groat, which was the proximate cause of the insurrection. By the demands of these rioters we perceive that territorial servitude was far from extinct; but it should not be hastily concluded that they were all personal villeins, for a large proportion were Kentish-men, to whom that condition could not have applied; it being a good bar to a writ de nativitate probanda that the party's father was born in the county of Kent.[416]

After this tremendous rebellion it might be expected that the legislature would use little indulgence towards the lower commons. Such unhappy tumults are doubly mischievous, not more from the immediate calamities that attend them than from the fear and hatred of the people which they generate in the elevated classes. The general charter of manumission extorted from the king by the rioters of Blackheath was annulled by proclamation to the sheriffs,[417] and this revocation approved by the lords and commons in parliament; who added, as was very true, that such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent; "which they would never give to save themselves from perishing all together in one day."[418] Riots were turned into treason by a law of the same parliament.[419] By a very harsh statute in the 12th of Richard II. no servant or labourer could depart, even at the expiration of his service, from the hundred in which he lived without permission under the king's seal; nor might any who had been bred to husbandry till twelve years old exercise any other calling.[420] A few years afterwards the commons petitioned that villeins might not put their children to school in order to advance them by the church; "and this for the honour of all the freemen of the kingdom." In the same parliament they complained that villeins fly to cities and boroughs, whence their masters cannot recover them; and, if they attempt it, are hindered by the people; and prayed that the lords might seize their villeins in such places without regard to the franchises thereof. But on both these petitions the king put in a negative.[421]

From henceforward we find little notice taken of villenage in parliamentary records, and there seems to have been a rapid tendency to its entire abolition. But the fifteenth century is barren of materials; and we can only infer that, as the same causes which in Edward III.'s time had converted a large portion of the peasantry into free labourers still continued to operate, they must silently have extinguished the whole system of personal and territorial servitude. The latter, indeed, was essentially changed by the establishment of the law of copyhold.

I cannot presume to conjecture in what degree voluntary manumission is to be reckoned among the means that contributed to the abolition of villenage. Charters of enfranchisement were very common upon the continent. They may perhaps have been less so in England. Indeed the statute de donis must have operated very injuriously to prevent the enfranchisement of villeins regardant, who were entailed along with the land. Instances, however, occur from time to time, and we cannot expect to discover many. One appears as early as the fifteenth year of Henry III., who grants to all persons born or to be born within his village of Contishall, that they shall be free from all villenage in body and blood, paying an aid of twenty shillings to knight the king's eldest son, and six shillings a year as a quit-rent.[422] So in the twelfth of Edward III. certain of the king's villeins are enfranchised on payment of a fine.[423] In strictness of law, a fine from the villein for the sake of enfranchisement was nugatory, since all he could possess was already at his lord's disposal. But custom and equity might easily introduce different maxims; and it was plainly for the lord's interest to encourage his tenants in the acquisition of money to redeem themselves, rather than to quench the exertions of their industry by availing himself of an extreme right. Deeds of enfranchisement occur in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth;[424] and perhaps a commission of the latter princess in 1574, directing the enfranchisement of her bondmen and bondwomen on certain manors upon payment of a fine, is the last unequivocal testimony to the existence of villenage;[425] though it is highly probable that it existed in remote parts of the country some time longer.[426]

[Sidenote: Reign of Henry VI.]

From this general view of the English constitution, as it stood about the time of Henry VI., we must turn our eyes to the political revolutions which clouded the latter years of his reign. The minority of this prince, notwithstanding the vices and dissensions of his court and the inglorious discomfiture of our arms in France, was not perhaps a calamitous period. The country grew more wealthy; the law was, on the whole, better observed; the power of parliament more complete and effectual than in preceding times. But Henry's weakness of understanding, becoming evident as he reached manhood, rendered his reign a perpetual minority. His marriage with a princess of strong mind, but ambitious and vindictive, rather tended to weaken the government and to accelerate his downfall; a certain reverence that had been paid to the gentleness of the king's disposition being overcome by her unpopularity. By degrees Henry's natural feebleness degenerated almost into fatuity; and this unhappy condition seems to have overtaken him nearly about the time when it became an arduous task to withstand the assault in preparation against his government. This may properly introduce a great constitutional subject, to which some peculiar circumstances of our own age have imperiously directed the consideration of parliament. Though the proceedings of 1788 and 1810 are undoubtedly precedents of far more authority than any that can be derived from our ancient history, yet, as the seal of the legislature has not yet been set upon this controversy, it is not perhaps altogether beyond the possibility of future discussion; and at least it cannot be uninteresting to look back on those parallel or analogous cases by which the deliberations of parliament upon the question of regency were guided.

[Sidenote: Historical instances of regencies:]

[Sidenote: during the absence of our kings in France;]

While the kings of England retained their continental dominions, and were engaged in the wars to which those gave birth, they were of course frequently absent from this country. Upon such occasions the administration seems at first to have devolved officially on the justiciary, as chief servant of the crown. But Henry III. began the practice of appointing lieutenants, or guardians of the realm (custodes regni), as they were more usually termed, by way of temporary substitutes. They were usually nominated by the king without consent of parliament; and their office carried with it the right of exercising all the prerogatives of the crown. It was of course determined by the king's return; and a distinct statute was necessary in the reign of Henry V. to provide that a parliament called by the guardian of the realm during the king's absence should not be dissolved by that event.[427] The most remarkable circumstance attending those lieutenancies was that they were sometimes conferred on the heir apparent during his infancy. The Black Prince, then duke of Cornwall, was left guardian of the realm in 1339, when he was but ten years old;[428] and Richard his son, when still younger, in 1372, during Edward III.'s last expedition into France.[429]

[Sidenote: at the accession of Henry III.;]

[Sidenote: of Edward I.;]

[Sidenote: of Edward III.;]

[Sidenote: of Richard II.;]

These do not however bear a very close analogy to regencies in the stricter sense, or substitutions during the natural incapacity of the sovereign. Of such there had been several instances before it became necessary to supply the deficiency arising from Henry's derangement. 1. At the death of John, William earl of Pembroke assumed the title of rector regis et regni, with the consent of the loyal barons who had just proclaimed the young king, and probably conducted the government in a great measure by their advice.[430] But the circumstances were too critical, and the time is too remote, to give this precedent any material weight. 2. Edward I. being in Sicily at his father's death, the nobility met at the Temple church, as we are informed by a contemporary writer, and, after making a new great seal, appointed the archbishop of York, Edward earl of Cornwall, and the earl of Gloucester, to be ministers and guardians of the realm; who accordingly conducted the administration in the king's name until his return.[431] It is here observable that the earl of Cornwall, though nearest prince of the blood, was not supposed to enjoy any superior title to the regency, wherein he was associated with two other persons. But while the crown itself was hardly acknowledged to be unquestionably hereditary, it would be strange if any notion of such a right to the regency had been entertained. 3. At the accession of Edward III., then fourteen years old, the parliament, which was immediately summoned, nominated four bishops, four earls, and six barons as a standing council, at the head of which the earl of Lancaster seems to have been placed, to advise the king in all business of government. It was an article in the charge of treason, or, as it was then styled, of accroaching royal power, against Mortimer, that he intermeddled in the king's household without the assent of this council.[432] They may be deemed therefore a sort of parliamentary regency, though the duration of their functions does not seem to be defined. 4. The proceedings at the commencement of the next reign are more worthy of attention. Edward III. dying June 21, 1377, the keepers of the great seal next day, in absence of the chancellor beyond sea, gave it into the young king's hands before his council. He immediately delivered it to the duke of Lancaster, and the duke to Sir Nicholas Bode for safe custody. Four days afterwards the king in council delivered the seal to the bishop of St. David's, who affixed it the same day to divers letters patent.[433] Richard was at this time ten years and six months old; an age certainly very unfit for the personal execution of sovereign authority. Yet he was supposed capable of reigning without the aid of a regency. This might be in virtue of a sort of magic ascribed by lawyers to the great seal, the possession of which bars all further inquiry, and renders any government legal. The practice of modern times requiring the constant exercise of the sign manual has made a public confession of incapacity necessary in many cases where it might have been concealed or overlooked in earlier periods of the constitution. But though no one was invested with the office of regent, a council of twelve was named by the prelates and peers at the king's coronation, July 16, 1377, without whose concurrence no public measure was to be carried into effect. I have mentioned in another place the modifications introduced from time to time by parliament, which might itself be deemed a great council of regency during the first years of Richard.

[Sidenote: of Henry VI.]

5. The next instance is at the accession of Henry VI. This prince was but nine months old at his father's death; and whether from a more evident incapacity for the conduct of government in his case than in that of Richard II., or from the progress of constitutional principles in the forty years elapsed since the latter's accession, far more regularity and deliberation were shown in supplying the defect in the executive authority. Upon the news arriving that Henry V. was dead, several lords spiritual and temporal assembled, on account of the imminent necessity, in order to preserve peace, and provide for the exercise of officers appertaining to the king. These peers accordingly issued commissions to judges, sheriffs, escheators, and others, for various purposes, and writs for a new parliament. This was opened by commission under the great seal directed to the duke of Gloucester, in the usual form, and with the king's teste.[434] Some ordinances were made in this parliament by the duke of Gloucester as commissioner, and some in the king's name. The acts of the peers who had taken on themselves the administration, and summoned parliament, were confirmed. On the twenty-seventh day of its session, it is entered upon the roll that the king, "considering his tender age, and inability to direct in person the concerns of his realm, by assent of lords and commons, appoints the duke of Bedford, or, in his absence beyond sea, the duke of Gloucester, to be protector and defender of the kingdom and English church, and the king's chief counsellor." Letters patent were made out to this effect, the appointment being however expressly during the king's pleasure. Sixteen councillors were named in parliament to assist the protector in his administration; and their concurrence was made necessary to the removal and appointment of officers, except some inferior patronage specifically reserved to the protector. In all important business that should pass by order of council, the whole, or major part, were to be present; "but if it were such matter that the king hath been accustomed to be counselled of, that then the said lords proceed not therein without the advice of my lords of Bedford or Gloucester."[435] A few more councillors were added by the next parliament, and divers regulations established for their observance.[436]

This arrangement was in contravention of the late king's testament, which had conferred the regency on the duke of Gloucester, in exclusion of his elder brother. But the nature and spirit of these proceedings will be better understood by a remarkable passage in a roll of a later parliament; where the house of lords, in answer to a request of Gloucester that he might know what authority he possessed as protector, remind him that in the first parliament of the king[437] "ye desired to have had ye governaunce of yis land; affermyng yat hit belonged unto you of rygzt, as well by ye mene of your birth as by ye laste wylle of ye kyng yat was your broyer, whome God assoile; alleggyng for you such groundes and motyves as it was yought to your discretion made for your intent; whereupon, the lords spiritual and temporal assembled there in parliament, among which were there my lordes your uncles, the bishop of Winchester that now liveth, and the duke of Exeter, and your cousin the earl of March that be gone to God, and of Warwick, and other in great number that now live, had great and long deliberation and advice, searched precedents of the governail of the land in time and case semblable, when kings of this land have been tender of age, took also information of the laws of the land, of such persons as be notably learned therein, and finally found your said desire not caused nor grounded in precedent, nor in the law of the land; the which the king that dead is, in his life nor might by his last will nor otherwise altre, change, nor abroge, without the assent of the three estates, nor commit or grant to any person governance or rule of this land longer than he lived; but on that other behalf, the said lords found your said desire not according with the laws of this land, and against the right and fredome of the estates of the same land. Howe were it that it be not thought that any such thing wittingly proceeded of your intent; and nevertheless to keep peace and tranquillity, and to the intent to ease and appease you, it was advised and appointed by authority of the king, assenting the three estates of this land, that ye, in absence of my lord your brother of Bedford, should be chief of the king's council, and devised unto you a name different from other counsellors, not the name of tutor, lieutenant, governor, nor of regent, nor no name that should import authority of governance of the land, but the name of protector and defensor, which importeth a personal duty of attendance to the actual defence of the land, as well against enemies outward, if case required, as against rebels inward, if any were, that God forbid; granting you therewith certain power, the which is specified and contained in an act of the said parliament, to endure as long as it liked the king. In the which, if the intent of the said estates had been that ye more power and authority should have had, more should have been expressed therein; to the which appointment, ordinance, and act, ye then agreed you as for your person, making nevertheless protestation that it was not your intent in any wise to deroge or do prejudice unto my lord your brother of Bedford by your said agreement, as toward any right that he would pretend or claim in the governance of this land; and as toward any pre-eminence that you might have or belong unto you as chief of council, it is plainly declared in the said act and articles, subscribed by my said lord of Bedford, by yourself, and the other lords of the council. But as in parliament to which ye be called upon your faith and ligeance as duke of Glocester, as other lords be, and not otherwise, we know no power nor authority that ye have, other than ye as duke of Glocester should have, the king being in parliament, at years of mest discretion: We marvailing with all our hearts that, considering the open declaration of the authority and power belonging to my lord of Bedford and to you in his absence, and also to the king's council subscribed purely and simply by my said lord of Bedford and by you, that you should in any wise be stirred or moved not to content you therewith or to pretend you any other: Namely, considering that the king, blessed be our Lord, is, sith the time of the said power granted unto you, far gone and grown in person, in wit, and understanding, and like with the grace of God to occupy his own royal power within few years: and forasmuch considering the things and causes abovesaid, and other many that long were to write, We lords aforesaid pray, exhort, and require you to content you with the power abovesaid and declared, of the which my lord your brother of Bedford, the king's eldest uncle, contented him: and that ye none larger power desire, will, nor use; giving you this that is aboven written for our answer to your foresaid demand, the which we will dwell and abide with, withouten variance or changing. Over this beseeching and praying you in our most humble and lowly wise, and also requiring you in the king's name, that ye, according to the king's commandment, contained in his writ sent unto you in that behalf, come to this his present parliament, and intend to the good effect and speed of matters to be demesned and treted in the same, like as of right ye owe to do."[438]

It is evident that this plain, or rather rude address to the duke of Gloucester, was dictated by the prevalence of cardinal Beaufort's party in council and parliament. But the transactions in the former parliament are not unfairly represented; and, comparing them with the passage extracted above, we may perhaps be entitled to infer: 1. That the king does not possess any constitutional prerogative of appointing a regent during the minority of his successor; and 2. That neither the heir presumptive, nor any other person, is entitled to exercise the royal prerogative during the king's infancy (or, by parity of reasoning, his infirmity), nor to any title that conveys them; the sole right of determining the persons by whom, and fixing the limitations under which, the executive government shall be conducted in the king's name and behalf, devolving upon the great council of parliament.

The expression used in the lords' address to the duke of Gloucester, relative to the young king, that he was far gone and grown in person, wit, and understanding, was not thrown out in mere flattery. In two years the party hostile to Gloucester's influence had gained ground enough to abrogate his office of protector, leaving only the honorary title of chief counsellor.[439] For this the king's coronation, at eight years of age, was thought a fair pretence; and undoubtedly the loss of that exceedingly limited authority which had been delegated to the protector could not have impaired the strength of government. This was conducted as before by a selfish and disunited council; but the king's name was sufficient to legalize their measures, nor does any objection appear to have been made in parliament to such a mockery of the name of monarchy.

[Sidenote: Henry's mental derangement.]

[Sidenote: Duke of York made protector.]