The Connection Between Land and Trade. 263 



R3verting once more to the land-holding class, we find a 

 marked alteration in their manners and social ethics. The 

 old feudal system survived, it is true, as a shadow ; but the 

 substance which called it into existence had dwindled away to 

 a mere nothing. The great lord might still aspire to lead his 

 tenantry whenever he went forth on parliamentary or other 

 state business, but it was a poor mimicry of the chivalric ser- 

 vices in the old war times. The man who sat in the ancient 

 judgment seat of the Court Baron was a feeble representative 

 of his forefather, the dread dispenser of a justice which included 

 the awful powers of life and death. The freeholders and copy- 

 holders who paid him the rents of assize were vastly superior 

 beings to the villein who tremblingly tendered his blanch- 

 farms and blackmail, and the hired labourer a different person 

 to the human chattel who performed menial service under the 

 fear of his lash. And yet naturally enough the great land- 

 owner clung to the old splendour of feudal associations ; and 

 though he could not demand the military services of his ten- 

 ants for the purposes of private war, he paid them handsomely 

 to wear his livery and become his armed retainers. By means 

 of this mimic army he occasionally found opportunity to bully 

 the judges on circuit, or arbitrarily usurp another's lands, or 

 bolster up a falling cause, whereby he fondly imagined that 

 he became once more the chivalrous and autocratic personage 

 of a bygone age.^ 



During the Wars of the Roses there had been sufficient rea- 

 son for the custom ; but as soon as they ceased the necessity 

 for these small domestic armies ceased too. In "Warwick's 

 castles and manors 30,000 men sat down to dinner each morn- 

 ing at their master's expense. Oxen sufficient to stock a small 

 farm were consumed each day at his town retinue's breakfasts.^ 

 All the London taverns were full of his men. All the streets 

 were thronged with those who wore the cognisance of the 

 bear. His privy counsellors, treasurers, marshalls, constables, 

 stewards, secretaries, heralds, pursuivants, pages, guards, and 



^ Stubbs, Constlt. Hi.st.^ cli. xxi. 



2 Stow mentions six oxen. See also Eulwer Lytton's novel, The Last 

 <)fthe Barons. 



