MILLS AND MILLSTONES, 509 



had concluded a peace with the Scotch king, and had even 

 made alliance with him, and acknowledged his title, and had 

 given a daughter of the royal house to his son. Still all this 

 was likely to be at an end since Mortimer's righteous exe- 

 cution. The storm was gathering in Scotland which should 

 once more set Baliol on the throne, a tributary and vassal to 

 the English monarch, and displace the descendant of that 

 traitor and reputed leper, whom England at that time hated 

 with one heart. 



No one, I think, can doubt, who recalls how complete was 

 the communication effected between the malcontents of fifty 

 years later, and how energetic was the action taken upon the 

 disaffection entertained at that time, that political questions 

 were discussed as freely among the peasantry of the early part 

 of the fourteenth century as they confessedly were in the latter 

 half. In these days, as we have seen already, the mass of the 

 people had that interest in public affairs which is bred by the 

 possession of property, by the incidence of direct taxation, by 

 the contests which balanced party interests, and by the habits 

 of self-government in the manor-court. And when the villager 

 reached London upon business, and took up his temporary 

 abode in some common inn, debate ensued on such public 

 questions as those which occupied the action of parliament 

 five hundred and thirty-five years ago ; as, for instance, on the 

 wrongs which the king suffered in the unrighteous occupation 

 of Aquitaine by the French king, and on the wisdom of renew- 

 ing the Crusades, and on the best way of dealing with the 

 Scotch difficulty, and on the Irish disturbances; and, may be, 

 the gossips of the Tabard, or the Angel, or the Fleur de Lys, 

 or the Lion, concluded that the wisest way of dealing with the 

 last-named inconvenience was that which the parliament ad- 

 vised. " That the king in person shall go to Ireland, but that 

 cc to prepare his way, a certain number of forces, under able 

 " commanders, shall be sent before him, and that those espe- 

 " daily who hold any lands there shall go speedily over for the 

 " defence of that kingdom; that all learned men of the law, 



