66 battle of Bosworth terminated the Civil Wars of the Roses, which with intermissions had lasted for a space of thirty years. It was a remarkable feature in these wars that the evils of them fell chiefly on the nobility; for with one exception the slaughter in the field was not considerable, and there was none of that petty warfare in different parts of the country by which in civil wars which interest the feelings and passions of the middle and lower orders so much more blood is shed than in regular battles. Successive generations of the houses of Neville, Pole and Clifford were cut off on the field or scaffold; many were reduced to the most abject state of poverty*. "I myself," says Comines, "saw the duke of Exeter, the king of England's brotherin-law, walking barefoot after the duke of Burgundy's train and earning his bread from door to door." "In my remembrance," says the same writer, "eighty princes of the blood royal of England perished in these convulsions; seven or eight battles were fought in the course of thirty years; their own country was desolated by the English as cruelly as the former generation had wasted France." In this however there seems to be some exaggeration; there certainly did not fall that number of princes of the blood, neither could the desolation have been so very great. *The story of the shepherd lord Clifford, to which Wordsworth's poetry has lent additional attractions, strongly resembles that of Feridoon in the romantic annals of Persia. 410 CHAPTER XIV. STATE OF THE CONSTITUTION. Nature of the Constitution.-Abuses of prerogative.—Wardship and escheat. -Forest-laws.-Constable's and Marshal's courts.-Purveyance.-Taxation. -Pardons.-Maintenance.-Army.-Navy.-Punishment of Crime.—Reli gion. We have thus brought our history to the end of the Plantagenet dynasty, a race of princes not excelled in intellectual vigour by any line of sovereigns. As with them the feudal and papal period of England may be said to terminate, the next period being one of transition to the present altered condition of society, we will conclude it by a sketch of the political and religious state of the country at this time. The constitution of England under the Plantagenets was a monarchy limited by law, which law the king could not alter at his will. "A king of England," says sir John Fortescue writing to the son of Henry VI., "cannot at his pleasure make any alterations in the law of the land, for the nature of his government is not only regal but political." Yet the king was not merely a hereditary executive magistrate, he had extensive prerogatives annexed to his dignity, and the great object of the patriots of this period was to limit these rights and restrain their abuse. The redress of grievances was usually a matter of bargain between the king and parliament, they giving a subsidy, and he engaging to correct what was complained of. Still the kings would, when they had the power, go on in their old course; but the parliament, by perseverance, and by taking advantage of foreign wars, disputed successions and other circumstances, gradually set limits to prerogative; and an able writer of the present day has with reason thus ex pressed himself*: "I know not whether there are any essential privileges of our countrymen, any fundamental securities against arbitrary power, so far as they depend upon positive institution, which may not be traced to the time when the house of Plantagenet filled the English throne." names The great cause of this rational limitation of power and establishment of the principles of true liberty seems to have been the peculiar situation of the English aristocracy. The nobles were not, like those of the continent, the lords of extensive continuous territories, who might singly set the crown at defiance. Their manors lay scattered through various counties; the power of the sovereign could at once crush any refractory vassal;, it was only by union among themselves, and by gaining the people to their side, that they could maintain their rights and limit the royal prerogative. In this manner the interests of the nobility became identified with those of the people, and hence their are associated with every struggle for liberty throughout our history. This was further increased by the remarkable circumstance that the English was the only nobility which did not form a peculiar class, or caste. In England the actual holder of the title alone was noble; his sons and brothers were simple commoners, and ranked with the people. Hence arose that melting into one another of the various grades of society only to be found in this country; and as the English nobles never claimed any exemption from taxes and other burdens, their privileges have never excited jealousy or hatred. For all these advantages we are mainly indebted to the high power of the crown established by the Anglo-Norman monarchs, combined with the free principles of government transmitted by our Saxon forefathers. The abuses of the prerogative against which the efforts *Hallam, iii. 301. of our patriots were directed from the period of Magna Charta were the following: 1. The feudal rights of wardship and escheat. Of the legality of these there could be no question, but the exercise of them gave occasion to much injustice and oppression. The royal officers, for example, often under the pretext of wardship took possession of lands not held immediately of the crown, or they claimed as escheats lands of which the right heir was in existence, or seized as forfeited lands which had been entailed. The remedy in such cases was usually slow and uncertain, and certainly expensive as neither costs nor damages could be recovered against the crown. 2. The Forest-laws though greatly tamed from their original ferocity were still a source of oppression. The king's officers were frequently attempting to recover the purlieus, or those lands adjoining the forests which had originally belonged to them but had been disafforested by the Charter of Forests; and though frequent perambulations had ascertained the proper limits of the forests, the holders of the purlieus were continually disturbed in their possessions. 3. The constable and marshal of England possessed a jurisdiction which within the realm only extended to military offences. They however frequently assumed the power of inquiring into treasons and felonies, which were offences at common law, and even took on them to decide cases of trespass and civil contracts. As their court was not, like those of law, regulated by fixed rules and principles, it was more easily converted into an instrument of oppression. 4. But no grievance seems to have been so galling as the abuse of Purveyance, that "outrageous and intolerable grievance and source of infinite damage to the people," as the parliament termed it in the reign of Edward III. Purveyance, of which traces may be discovered in the Anglo Saxon times, was the right of taking, even without the consent of the owner, but at a fair price, provisions and whatever else was requisite for the king and his household. It also extended to the right of impressing horses and carriages when the king was on a journey, and of providing lodgings for his train. As the purveyors set the prices of the articles which they took, and usually paid for them by tallies on the exchequer, the people had not only to endure their insolence, but to see too low a price set on their goods, often to see them taken without any payment at all, and very generally to find the exchequer empty when they presented their tallies. To aggravate the evil, not only the king but several of the great lords, especially in turbulent times, claimed the right of purveyance. The commons made every effort, but in vain, to restrain this oppressive prerogative; it continued till the final demise of feudalism. 5. The abuses of taxation. The principle of tallages and of the subsidies which succeeded them, was that a man should give a certain proportion of his moveable property to the crown. It was therefore the interest of the payer to estimate his property as low, of the tax-gatherer as high, as possible. Complaints were therefore continually made of the collectors entering men's houses and searching their most secret apartments. In the eighth year of Edward III. the king directed those who were to levy the subsidy then granted, to compound with the different townships for a certain sum, which they were to raise among themselves in what manner they pleased. This then became the rule, and henceforth tenths and fifteenths were regarded as fixed sums estimated by the assessment of 8 Edw. III. The other sources of revenue, namely, the duties on wool, hides and other exports, and the tonnage and poundage, or two shillings on every tun of wine and sixpence on every pound of other goods imported, and the tolls at fairs, markets, etc., gave abundant |