6 INTRODUCTORY. 



mass for the soul of the deceased. Subject to this charge, the 

 officers of the guild were either at their discretion, or according 

 to the limitations of the donor's will, to maintain decayed 

 members of the guild, to educate their children, to portion their 

 daughters, or to give a pittance to their widows. The revenues 

 of the town guilds formed, in short, the benefit societies of the 

 Middle Ages, and obviated (till by the wanton and rapacious 

 act of Somerset, at the beginning of Edward the Sixth's reign, 

 they were destroyed, and their estates confiscated) the necessity 

 of legal relief to destitution. Somerset did not dare to attack 

 the London guilds, and they survive, though under strangely 

 altered conditions. But he spoiled the guilds of Eastern 

 England, and the people of Norfolk, Protestant-minded as they 

 were, rose in arms to put Mary Tudor on the throne, and to 

 frustrate the aims of that cabal of sham Protestants, who under 

 the guidance of the infamous Northumberland had made the 

 name of the English reformation odious to the burghers of the 

 towns. We owe the English poor-law to the greed of the 

 courtiers who surrounded the nonage of Edward the Sixth, the 

 plea for the confiscation having been the ' superstitious use ' 

 with which the guild-fellow had burdened his benefaction. 



The revolution of 1399 had placed Henry of Lancaster on 

 the throne. There is a marked resemblance between the 

 circumstances of this period and of those of 1688. In both 

 cases, misgovernment had forced all classes to make common 

 cause against the Crown. Richard, like James, was friendless. 

 The desertion of York to the side of Henry was like the 

 desertion of Anne, of the Hydes, and the dukes of Charles 

 the Second's harem to William. The treachery of Northum- 

 berland was like the treachery of Marlborough, was as base, 

 was as dangerous, was as selfish. In both cases, there was an 

 infant heir, the supercession of whom was, at the time, a matter 

 of absolute necessity. The revolution of 1 399 passed over the 

 heir of the house of March, not wholly in silence, for the claim 

 of Henry appears to have been meant to assert a higher title, 

 if one can interpret its ambiguous language to imply that Henry 



