INTRODUCTORY. 2$ 



obsolete at once. In the present year, 1880, we are finding 

 our administrative system strained to the uttermost, and are 

 invited to adopt the barbarism of a state of siege in one of 

 the three kingdoms, because Ireland is still writhing under 

 the consequences of parliamentary attainders, attainders which 

 are the double inheritance of the law of entail, and of the 

 evil days which the great war of succession induced. 



The English nation, I mean those who worked and saved, 

 was singularly prosperous during the period on which I am 

 dwelling. Obnoxious and intrusive sectaries were punished 

 with fire and faggot, there was no zeal, hardly any character, 

 no learning at all, no history, beyond the battle of the kites and 

 the crows, but there was solid, substantial, unbroken prosperity. 

 The fifteenth century, and the early years of the sixteenth, were 

 the golden age of the English husbandman, the artisan, and 

 the labourer. I cannot anticipate the particulars of this con- 

 dition of things at this stage of my enquiry, for they come 

 more naturally into that part of my work in which I deal with 

 particular prices. The war of succession was as distant in 

 its incidents, and it seemed to be in its effects, as summer 

 lightning. Even those who took part in the broil, when out 

 of the battle, were safe. ' Slay the nobles, and let the common 

 'sort go free,' was Edward the Fourth's prudent maxim in 

 combat. When the medieval church became contemptible, 

 as it had long been hateful, when the medieval noble was 

 cowed, and the great Earl of Warwick, who had been the 

 prime minister of sedition, was dead, and laid naked on 

 St. Paul's pavement in London, wisely put in sight of his city 

 admirers, when his family was proscribed, and the poor Duke 

 of Bedford was degraded from the peerage, because he was 

 poor, and Nevile, Archbishop of York, was allowed to retain 

 his dignity and his revenues, in order that one slave of the 

 family might walk in chains by the conqueror's chariot, the 

 triumph of Edward the Fourth was complete, and he became 

 the most popular, the most licentious, and the most despotic 

 monarch in Europe. 



