156 ANECDOTES OF FEUDAL TIMES IN ENGLAND. 



these enactments. The philosopher, however, sees that even these 

 persons are not doomed to perpetual darkness ; that they must even- 

 tually be stimulated by the rapid advances of the ** lower orders" 

 in the arts and embellishments of civilization ; and that, in time, the 

 discovery will be made, that providing for the cook and the poulterer, 

 or superseding the rat-catcher, are employments unworthy of a man 

 of sense whose necessary avocation they do not constitute. 



Among many points of resemblance between ancient and modern 

 times, a case is recorded on a roll of pleadings, exhibiting an offen- 

 sive fact, which would be incredible on other authority, of one baron 

 transferring his wife to another by a formal deed of conveyance, 

 for considerations duly had and delivered.* In the provincial news- 

 papers we often read of the sale of wives among the very dregs of 

 society ; and it is currently said that some such thing as an exchange 

 has been made between two men in the highest rank of the modern 

 peerage. It is to be hoped that this is as solitary an instance of de- 

 pravity as the conveyance. 



In policy the aristocracy, to maintain a selfish independence/have 

 ever vacillated between the two extremes of the state ; at one mo- 

 ment courting the people when the regal power was to be di- 

 minished ; at another, in close and natural alliance with the crown, 

 when a spark of public liberty was to be extinguished. All but 

 themselves can foretel the inevitable consequences. Their efforts 

 to preserve the odious powers conferred by the feudal system 

 exalted the monarch and more effectually depressed themselves : 

 their mean subservience to the crown, of which the necessity is in- 

 duced upon them by the principle of primogeniture, and their lavish 

 expenditure of public treasure to secure a monopoly in the mer- 

 chandise of boroughs, gave birth to the Reform Bill. The result of 

 the present contest between the people and the higher orders will 

 as assuredly terminate in the discomfiture of the latter, as if it were 

 to be decided by the arms to which their supporters madly recom- 

 mend an appeal. Do they form an exception to the rule, that fools 

 may learn wisdom by experience ? 



In fine, the more closely we observe the coincidences of ancient 

 and modern times in this light, the stronger will appear the propriety 

 of an emendation, formerly made by a correspondent of the Monthly 

 Magazine, in the classical line, which must now be read 



" Tempora mutantur, non mutamur in illis." 



" Pytte and Gallowes" To many baronies, both spiritual and 

 temporal, as well as to some corporations, was formerly annexed the 

 right of hanging male and drowning female delinquents. The ex- 

 tensive privileges claimed and exercised by the great feudatories, 

 within their respective jurisdictions, justify Spelman's description, 

 that every superior lord was a petty king over his dependents.* 

 The Regia Majestas of Scotland mentions certain criminal pleas be- 

 longing to some baronies, and particularly to such as had and held 



* Rotuli Parliament*, torn. i. p. 140. t Gloss, in v. Parliamentum. 



