to enrich themselves at the expense of the suitors; and it was long before the remonstrances of the parliament procured any redress of such grievances. Edward at length consented that the sheriffs and coroners should not have a life-interest in their offices, but be annually elected from the wealthier classes, and that the salaries of the judges should be increased so as to put them above the reach of bribery. The pleadings were also to be in English, and not as formerly in French. The justices of the peace were further required to hold four sessions every year. The crime of treason was defined and limited, an improvement of the highest importance, as the offence carried with it the confiscation to the crown of all the property of the attainted criminal, and, in order to fill the king's treasury, the judges frequently convicted persons of treason whose crime did not exceed felony or trespass.

We

It was not so easy to set aside one of the most intolerable abuses of the sovereign power, the right of purveyance. All the expenses of the king and his household during his journeys were defrayed by the inhabitants of the districts through which he passed, and all the horses and carriages for several miles on each side of the road were put in requisition. may form some faint idea of the hardships arising out of this right of purveyance, by remembering that the magnificent structure of Windsor Castle was built and decorated by workmen of every class, pressed into the royal service from all parts of the kingdom, and that their wages, if they received. any, were paid by the earls of their respective counties. Edward would not give way on this point, and nothing more could be obtained than a few checks upon its abuse. three centuries longer this right was still in full exercise.

For

From this reign we must date the origin of many of the liberties of England, which the people gained by their perseverance. Although Edward exercised what were understood to be the privileges of the crown in the most arbitrary manner, he was denied the power of suspending the course of justice by his sole will, of seizing the merchant vessels for purposes of war, of pressing men for the service of his fleet, and of compelling the nation to supply him with soldiers. Parliament protested against forced loans, against the creation of monopolies, the imposition of exorbitant and unjust fines, the extension of the royal forests, the authority of the privy council or star-chamber in private causes, and the imprison

ment of members for expressing their sentiments too freely in either house of parliament.

The English parliament, after many vicissitudes, had at length assumed a regular form, and was composed of three estates, clergy, barons, and commons. The clergy were represented by the prelates and dignitaries of the church, who sat in the house of lords, and are believed to have done so, not on account of their spiritual dignities, but of their temporal baronies. The public at large were represented by the county members, called knights of the shire, and by a variable number of deputies from the cities and towns to which the king's writs were addressed, who were called burgesses. Each knight of the shire received four shillings, each city or town member two shillings a-day, at the expense of their constituents. Church matters were intrusted to the clergy; political interests to the barons; commercial subjects came within the province of the commons; but as a general rule, the three orders were not bound by a law passed by any of them separately. In practice, however, these limits were not always observed.

6. The extension of the papal power, and above all the immense amount of the taxes paid to the Roman see, had at different times attracted the attention and called forth the remonstrances of parliament. The English envoys to the A.D. council of Lyons solemnly asserted that Italian priests 1245. drew from England sixty or seventy thousand marks yearly- —a sum exceeding the whole revenue of the crown; and Gregory IX. is said to have extracted from the country, in the course of a very few years, 950,000 marks, a sum equi. valent, as is supposed, to fifteen million pounds of our money. In the reign of Edward III. the design of throwing off the yoke of pontifical authority began to assume a distinct form.

Of all the fiscal grievances that of first-fruits was held to be the most intolerable. This tax seems to have been unknown in England before the year .1246, when Boniface, archbishop of Canterbury, obtained from Innocent IV. the first year's income of every benefice that should fall vacant in his diocese for six years. Pandulph, bishop of Norwich, had already of his own will imposed a similar tax. Other prelates imitated this example, until Clement V., being informed of the wealth of the English benefices, reserved the first-fruits to himself, in which he was imitated by his successor John XXII. The

popes had not from the first possessed the right of filling up the vacant sees; this they usurped by slow degrees, and the acts by which they nominated to the vacant ecclesiastical dignities were called provisions, because the actual donation of the temporalities belonged to the king, who had the power of withholding it. This encroachment upon the rights of the chapters, in whom lay the choice of their bishop, was extended by the Roman court to the inferior benefices. Upon this the complaints became louder and more consistent. Most of these benefices were pious foundations, the patronage of which the donors had reserved for their descendants. These the popes conferred, not on resident priests, but often on foreigners who did not know the language of the country. It might be imagined that the kings, deprived of the right of appointment to the vacant sees, would have taken the part of the protesting patrons; but if they themselves were occasionally induced to protest, they often found it more advantageous to be silent, because the popes never, or at least very seldom, refused to induct the monarch's nominees; and the latter avoided those frequent discussions with the chapters, when they disagreed on the choice of a titular. Further, this concession of benefices, provisionally accorded by the pope, gave the king an opportunity of rewarding and enriching his chaplains or other servants, without touching the treasures of the state or the royal revenues. The produce of the first-fruits had become so important, that the court of Rome maintained agents in England for the express purpose of watching over the execution of the provisional bulls, of receiving claims regarding benefices, of deciding certain questions, and particularly of collecting the amounts of these first-fruits, and transmitting them to the papal treasury.

The evil had grown to such a height that the introduction of these provisional letters was forbidden by statute in 1343 and 1344, and severe penalties were pronounced against all who should act upon them. But the court of Rome found means to evade these acts; and in 1376, the English clergy and people were so exasperated, that, although Edward III. still endeavoured to temporize, he was under the necessity of enforcing the penal laws against provisors, and the vassalage and annual rent to which King John had subjected his kingdom were declared null and void.

7. WICKLIFFE. If we reflect upon all that must have been said on both sides during the important discussion which thus

limited the temporal power of the popes, we shall come to the conclusion that the seed was already sown that was to produce the reformation which occurred two centuries later. The preaching of a poor priest, and the persecutions of which he was the victim, began to open the eyes of the people, and were destined to change the religious aspect of England.

This priest was named Wickliffe, and he first attracted notoriety by the violence of his attacks upon the mendicant orders of friars, who had greatly multiplied during the preceding century. Many of these monks, notwithstanding the humility imposed upon them by the statutes of their respective orders, had crept into the closets of the sovereigns; all the secrets of state were known to them; they filled professorial chairs in the universities; and some of them had been raised even to the episcopal dignity. Wickliffe accused them of heresy, and loudly inveighed against that scandalous mendicity which extorted offerings by falsehood and importunity. Islep, archbishop of Canterbury, convinced by Wickliffe's arguments, appointed him warden of a college he had founded at Oxford, and named after his see. On Islep's death, his suc cessor Langham expelled Wickliffe, who appealed to the pope, and by him was condemned. This irritated the priest against the pontiff; he undertook the defence of the university and of the crown against the pretensions of Rome; he was honourably noticed by the king, was appointed one of his honorary chaplains, and after enjoying for a short time the living of Fylingham in Lincolnshire, exchanged it for that of Lutterworth in Leicestershire. He still held his professorship at Oxford, and although he inveighed constantly against the lives and austerities of the begging friars, he seemed willing to imitate them, by wearing garments of the homeliest texture, and by going barefoot. He attacked the pope and all the dignitaries of the church with the most biting sarcasm, styling them hypocrites fattened with the good things of this world, real antichrists, and traitors to God and their neighbour. In order to propagate his principles, he formed a body of clergy who were captivated by his eloquence, gave them the name of "poor priests," inspired them with the resolution to accept no benefice, and sent them to preach to the country people, following our Saviour's example in their virtue and their poverty. He was several times accused of heresy, and on one occasion was protected with a high hand by John of Gaunt. He died in peace at Lutterworth; but the council of Constance

declared him an obstinate heretic, and forty years after his death his bones were taken out of his grave and burnt, and the ashes thrown into a neighbouring brook. His opinions were adopted by Huss, from whom they were received and greatly modified by Martin Luther.

8. THE PLAGUE.-During the reign of Edward III., England was exposed to severe calamities. All the continent, from Calabria to the north of Poland, was shaken by a terrible earthquake; and though our island escaped its shocks, the heavens poured down incessant floods of rain during nearly six months, which entirely ruined the harvest. To complete the national distress, the Black Death burst out at Dover in the month of August 1348. Beginning in China and ravaging the whole Indian peninsula, it crossed the deserts of Asia, and was carried by a burning south wind from the banks of the Nile to Greece and the coasts of the Mediterranean. Rushing over Italy, unchecked by the eternal snows of the Alps, it fell upon France, where a great proportion of the people became its victims. Thence it passed into England, sometimes causing death in a few hours, but generally in two or three days. About the end of November, it reached London, where 200 perished every day. Superstitious people imagined that the end of the world was come. All the ties of family and friendship were broken. The parliament was prorogued, the courts of justice were closed, the churches resounded with groans and prayers. The inhabitants of the cities fled into the fields; the dwellers in the country fled for succour to the town; but neither could find the consolation and aid they so much needed. From man the scourge passed to the lower animals; horses, oxen, and sheep, infected with their rotting carcasses the fields left without cultivation; and famine in its turn failed not to sweep off those whom the pestilence had spared. For a time England alone was subject to the epidemic, but at length it extended to Scotland and Ireland.*

9. Society was almost disorganized by this terrible inflic

*The ravages of the cholera and of the plague are even at the present day not less dreadful in uncivilized countries, where the habits of the people are filthy, and their dwelling-places close, damp, and ill drained. The plague does not now reach Great Britain, and the cholera attacks but a small portion of the population; yet the numerous victims of the disastrous year 1849 show that with all our boasted civilisation we are in sanitary matters very little above the level of barbarism.