ANECDOTES OF FEUDAL TIMES IN ENGLAND. 155 



In stating 1 that the manners of our ancestors were greatly different 

 from those which prevail among the same classes in the present age, 

 perhaps I may not be altogether correct. Though differing in form, 

 they will probably on consideration be found agreeing in essentia. 

 If the gentleman of the present day do not recruit his finances by a 

 foray upon a neighbour, or by a forcible entry into the treasury of 

 a monastery, or half roasting a miscreant Jew, he has until lately 

 effected the same object by trading in boroughs ; if he can no longer 

 levy contributions upon hi? vassals in the form of reliefs, heriots, 

 wardships, and the other apparatus of the feudal laws, he can turn 

 his tenants out of their farms and do what he pleases with his own, 

 when they vote in opposition to his supposed interests. The loss of 

 the exquisite pleasure which attended the exercise of capital juris- 

 diction is inadequately compensated by the amusement which the 

 military gentleman finds in ordering and superintending the inflic- 

 tion of torture by the lash. Though the temper and opinions of the 

 times unhappily prohibit a gentleman from appearing, after the 

 fashion of his ancestors, in the capacity of a robber on the highway, 

 nothing precludes him from the safer course of purloining public 

 property, and revelling in the plunder of the exchequer, as a sine- 

 curist and pensioner. 



The passion for the chase might be supposed to have existed more 

 vigorously among the gentry of ancient than of modern times. To 

 the former the objects of pursuit, originally essential to the very 

 existence of the barbarian hunter, were partly necessary for the 

 support of the household, and for the recreations of those who, de- 

 spising the acquirements of the schools, were unable to fill up the 

 hours of vacancy with mental pleasures. Hence the extreme jea- 

 lousy which watched over the warren and the forest, the dreadful 

 severity of the Forest Laws, and the horrid enormities which re- 

 sulted from their operation.* The anxiety for the retention of the 

 privileges of warren and chase, which is every where manifested in 

 the pleadings on quo warranto in the reign of the first Edward, is 

 assignable to a rational motive. But for the existence of the mo- 

 dern game-laws, which have descended in an unbroken line from 

 the first code of Canute, through the edicts of Norman princes, 

 to the enactments of the statute book, what reason can be offered, 

 admissible by common sense, or satisfactory to common humanity 1 

 While the population of towns and cities are gradually discarding 

 the rude and boisterous diversions which delighted their semi- 

 barbarous ancestors, and substituting the pleasures of the under- 

 standing for those of the body, the higher classes, the senator and 

 the magistrate, neglect important duties, and periodically suspend 

 the business of a nation, that they may enjoy the sports of the field, 

 which the game-laws are claimed to protect. Of all the disgusting 

 legacies of ages of brutal ignorance, these alone remain almost in 

 their pristine vigour, a damning testimony of the low grade on the 

 scale of intellect occupied by that portion of the gentry who require 



* Vide Job. Sarisbur. Polycrat. 



