10 



THE POPULAR EDUCATOR. 



bodies in this world as well as with a solemn promise of eternal 

 damnation in the next. 



Henry II. munded matters a bit when he came to the throne 

 in 1154, and by persevering in a wise policy strove to reduce to 

 something like order the chaos into which society had fallen ; 

 but during the crusade which was led by Richard I. in 1190, 

 and especially during the king's captivity in Austria, selfishness 

 and wickedness in high places at home found scope for exercise, 

 and law became silent amid tho din of arms. From the Lion- 

 Hearted himself, peer and commoner were content to endure 

 much ; they saw in the fearless, generous, though Normanly 

 cruel King, qualities which commanded their affections if not 

 their judgments, and they bore with something like satisfaction 

 the continuous and heavy demands which he made upon their 

 blood and treasure. But the Lion being dead was succeeded by 

 one who had played tho traitor against him during his lifetime, 

 who had all the ferocity and all the cruelty of his brother with- 

 out one of his noble qualities, and who was already known to 

 the people by the utter depravity of his life. Here is his por- 

 trait, drawn by one of our ablest historians : " He stands before 

 us polluted with meanness, cruelty, perjury, and murder ; 

 uniting with an ambition, which rushed through every crime to 

 the attainment of its object, a pusillanimity which often, at the 

 sole appearance of opposition, sank into despondency. Arro- 

 gant in prosperity, abject in adversity, he neither conciliated 

 affection in the one, nor excited esteem in tho other." Nor was 

 this all. The man was the servant of a licentiousness which 

 recognised no bounds. There was scarcely one family, even 

 among the nobles, that did not smart under a keen sense of that 

 injury which no man pardons to another. The sin for which 

 Lucretia suffered and which drove tho kings from Rome, the 

 sin from the taint of which Virginias saved his daughter by 

 killing her ; that sin sat heavily on John's soul, and stirred to 

 their lowest depths tho hearts of all England against him. 



From such an one tho nation would endure nothing tamely, 

 not even those acts which former kings had done, and which by 

 prescription had almost obtained the semblance of law. The 

 barons were utterly enraged, the clergy were fixedly hostile, and 

 the people were suffering to that degree at which they sometimes 

 turn and teach their wrongers " in some wild hour how much 

 the wretched dare." The king was quite unable to ride on the 

 whirlwind he had brought about him, and everything was ready, 

 everybody was prepared, for a revolution. But one thing was 

 wanting to make the revolution successful. There was abun- 

 dance of muscle, enough and to spare of disposition to kick 

 against the tyrant, but there was not any one to gather the 

 headstrong passions into a focus whence they might act with 

 effect upon tho object of their wrath. The barons and those 

 under them the wrongs the barons suffered at the king's 

 hands taught them sympathy with those who whilom suffered 

 wrong at their own represented brute force as the untamed 

 elephant represents it ; they lacked the skilful guide who might 

 gather up their strength and lead it to the goal they wished to 

 attain. They wanted Geist.* 



Before we ascertain whence Gcist came, and the manner in 

 which it worked, let us see rather more particularly what it was 

 the barons and the people suffered that was so intolerable. 



When the Conqueror obtained possession of the island, 

 A.D. 1066, he gave the land to be divided among his followers 

 as a reward for their services. The only condition he imposed 

 upon them a very necessary one to a prince who was only in 

 military possession of the country was, that whenever sum- 

 moned they should attend him with so many men-at-arms, 

 archers, etc., according to the extent of their fees or holdings, 

 for six weeks at their own expense. This was the only strictly 

 feudal obligation ; but custom added a number of other obliga- 

 tions, which, though smaller, were more galling. If a baron 

 died, his heir had to pay a sum of money by way of "relief," as 

 it was called, or a fee to induce the king to accept him in hia 

 father's stead ; and if the heir were under age, the king had the 

 wardship of him, an office which enabled the king to put into 

 his own treasure tho difference between the youth's income and 

 the cost of his keep and education, for though the situation was 

 really one of trust, practically it was made the means of profit 



* The meaning of the word Geist is h;irdly to be rendered by 

 any single equivalent in our language. It embodies the meaning of 

 Brain, Sense, Discretion, Intelligence, and Will. 



to the trustee. If the ward were a woman, the warder could 

 marry her to whom he pleased. For the purpose of making the 

 king's eldest son a knight, and for providing a dower for his 

 eldest daughter, custom required that all the king's tenants 

 should subscribe; and when the king went on a journey through 

 any part of the country, his purveyors were in the habit of 

 taking for the royal use, cattle, provisions, horses, carts, and 

 whatever else might bo wanted. Though as a matter of pru- 

 dence the feudal prince summoned the grand council of all his 

 tenants if he wanted their advice, he was under no legal 

 obligation to summon them ; and they might not meet unless 

 he did so. While it was not supposed that a feudal prince 

 could want money, seeing he had large demesne lands specially 

 reserved to him, there was not any law forbidding him either to 

 ask for it or to take it from the tenants. 



Now it is easy to see that all the above-named institutions 

 were liable to great abuse ; and as a matter of fact they were 

 abused to an unbearable extent. Reliefs, wardship, purveyance, 

 the expensive military attendance, or the money commutation 

 for it all were made the means of screwing money or money's 

 worth out of the people, and the Church, which held a great 

 proportion of the land in the kingdom, was subject to spoliation 

 as well as the lay tenants. All were tarred with the same 

 brush. The sacred trust of guarding the infant orphan was 

 sold for a fixed sum, and the piirchaser of the trust got all he 

 could for his money out of the ward's estate ; men bought the 

 right to marry heiresses who were wards of tho king, and tho 

 right was sold to tho highest bidder, almost without reference 

 to personal qualifications. 



But this was not all. John gave that worst sign of an evil 

 government the sale of justice. Henry II. had sold decrees, 

 but the nuisance culminated under John. On the roll of tho 

 Exchequer are numerous entries of gifts, sometimes of money, 

 sometimes of goods, in consideration of the lung's influence to 

 get a verdict. The judges also took bribes, and that in cases 

 where the Crown was concerned. 



Lastly, there was the great grievance of tho forest laws, 

 those remote ancestors of our existing game laws. These laws, 

 made by the cruel Conqueror, who, says a Norman monk, 

 "loved the tall stags as if ho had been their father," made it a 

 felony, punishable with loss of limb for an unauthorised person 

 to be found in a forest, and by the same law it was made a 

 capital offence to kill a stag. 



If all these things were done in the green tree, what could 

 have been done in the dry ? If the king so acted towards the 

 barons, prelates, abbots, and other chief tenants, how did these 

 in their turn behave towards those under them ? Badly, it is to 

 be feared, though they made the best recompense they could, 

 under the dictation of Geist, by including them with themselves 

 in the charter of liberties. With the wretched labourers, the 

 villeins -the poor slaves who "knew not in the evening what 

 they were to do in the morning, but they were bound to do 

 whatever they were commanded," who were liable to beating 

 and imprisonment at the will of their lord, who were incapable 

 of acquiring property, or of giving freedom to their children - 

 we have not now anything to do. They, alas ! benefited but 

 slightly by Magna Charta ; their time of emancipation had not 

 yet come. 



Let us turn now to look at what Geist did to remedy, as 

 regarded freemen, the wrongs from which they suffered. 



Stephen de Langton was an Englishman who had been pro- 

 moted to the see of Canterbury by the Pope, in defiance and in 

 spite of the king. Before he gave John absolution, and took off 

 the ban under which England had lain for tho six years prior 

 to 1213, he made the penitent swear to abolish all unjust 

 | practices, to do right, and to govern according to law ; but a 

 short time afterwards, the barons having refused to follow the 

 king in an expedition to France, John turned his hired troops 

 loose on the barons' lands, and burned and pillaged right and 

 left. Langton met him at Northampton, and again at Notting- 

 ham, and by threatening to excommunicate every one of his 

 followers, compelled him to desist. But Geist, in the shape of 

 the Primate, knew that other means must be taken to prevent 

 a repetition of violence. At a meeting of the barons in St. 

 Paul's Cathedral, London, Langton said he had discovered a 

 charter of liberties which Henry I. had granted when he was 

 desirous of winning the support of the English against hi.H 

 brother Robert. He read the charter to them, and suggested 



