installation, as the heart of the man More is seen in the filial love and reverence which he cherished for his aged parent. With all More's infirmities and errors, making due deduction for his sympathy with a persecuting age-for alas! he did by his severity to some Protestants brought before him, practically deny the principles of tolerance which, with such fair and beautiful eloquence, he had illustrated in his "Utopia "-this upright chancellor, in the reign of the most tyrannical of monarchs, must impress us as an embodiment of high moral grandeur-as a really honest man. How all Wolsey's grandeur fades away, and his moral meanness comes out to the eye of posterity! How to the same eye, amidst the gloom of his affliction, emerges the radiant form of More! Time destroys many illusions, rectifies many errors, and often anticipates the judgments of another world.

IV. OLD PARLIAMENTS AND POLICY.

"A TOURIST," says Sir Francis Palgrave, in his interesting volume, "The Merchant and the Friar," "a tourist living in those happy days when a monkey who had seen the world was a rarer animal than any of the present tenants of the rival Zoological Gardens, and then enjoying much unmerited reputation, the author of Zeluco,' exemplifies the ignorance of the continental noblesse by telling an anecdote of a Neapolitan lady of high rank, who, hearing an Englishman discourse, with much animation, respecting parliament, exclaimed, in reply, 'Parliament! what is it? a corso? a horserace?' She was not able to suppose that any other matter could excite so much interest and be remembered with so much pleasure."

The story, as it is here told, certainly looks somewhat improbable; but that a good deal of ignorance about parliaments should exist in the kingdom of Naples, is by no means surprising. What parliaments are, and the very great advantages which from them accrue to the public welfare, is happily known by most persons in this free country—parliaments being the palladium of our freedom; but what parliaments were in early days, when they used to meet in Westminster Hall, is perhaps by a good many persons quite unknown. We do not mean to draw a parallel between the Neapolitan lady and any of our readers: she had no idea of a parliament at all; but it is possible that some one reading these papers may imagine that parliaments at first were very much like what parliaments are now.

It is true we catch but very indistinct echoes of the voices and doings of the early parliaments in the hall of Rufus. The sounds are in themselves feeble, and then we have the difficulty of

catching them augmented by historical critics and legal commentators, who raise in our ears a loud buzz and bewildering din in their conflicts with each other, under pretence of clearly repeating to us what the echoes say.

Thus much is clear, that parliaments, in the very old time, were for a good while far more judicial than legislative. The writer just quoted describes in a lively manner a proclamation of the opening of parliament in the time of Edward II. A grave-looking personage, standing in the midst of a crowd in East Cheap, reads, with a loud voice from a parchment roll, the "crye" that on the octave of St. Hilary, now next ensuing, our lord the king will hold his high court of parliament at Westminster. All who had any grace to demand of the king in parliament, or any complaint to make to the king in parliament of matters which could not be redressed or determined by ordinary course of the common law; or who had been in any way aggrieved by any of the king's ministers, the king's justices, the king's sheriffs, or their bailiffs, or any other officer; or who had been unduly assessed, rated, charged, or surcharged, to aids, subsidies, or taxes, "are to deliver their petitions to the receivers whom for that purpose our lord the king hath appointed, and who will sit openly from day to day ready to listen to you, ready to attend to you, in the great hall of the king's palace of Westminster, at the foot of the staircase on the left hand side, just as ye enter the same." Whereat there is much rejoicing and throwing up of caps, and vociferous shouts of " Long life to his Majesty" and, perhaps, among the dirty boys and greasy butchers -the sooty smiths and begrimed cordwainers-among the fishermen and sailors that have just come from the river-side—among the men-at-arms and baronial retainers-among monks and friars, pretty plentifully sprinkled in all street gatherings-there are substantial citizens, and even humbler folk, who have some heavy wrong chafing their spirit, and who are panting for redress, and

who, as they hear the welcome "crye," resolve that, on the octave of St. Hilary, they will be at the foot of the staircase, on the left hand side of the great hall.

Let us go down ourselves on the appointed day. As well as the crowd about the door will let us, we elbow our way into the hall. Here are people of all sorts, come to ask for justice at the hands of the triers who are sitting, in the king's name, to hear complaints and give decisions in these cases of appeal. Here are people come to complain of some wrong done them in the exaction of dues by the officers of the king-of their being defrauded of their property through some misjudgment in the lower courts-of some loss for which they have in vain sought elsewhere for compensation-of some unfair outlawry, proclaimed by the coroner of a certain county-of some violence done by the lord of a manor to one of free birth and blood, under an assumed and illegitimate claim of villanage.

These parliaments have very extensive powers, and are very busy in putting everybody and everything to rights. But not to dwell any longer upon these judicial associations of the old parliaments in Westminster Hall, we would just remind the reader of the relic of these old usages in the existing authority of the House of Lords, as the final court of appeal in the English realm.

crown.

The Commons began to sit in parliament in Westminster Hall in the reign of Henry III., and their functions at first, it should be observed, were scarcely deliberative. They petitioned for the redress of grievances, and provided for the necessities of the Their hold of the purse gave them power as petitioners. There is the secret of many of the acquisitions on the side of popular liberty made in the history of the English constitution. The Commons and the Barons at the beginning sat together in the same great hall; but probably there always was some distinction made between them-the upper body of the great national council

sitting at the top, the lower at the bottom. The distinction becomes clear enough between Lords and Commons in the reign of Edward III., when the Speaker is mentioned, the first person in that office of whom we have any account being Sir Thomas de Hungerford. It is curious to notice that there occur among the early summonses to meet the barons at Westminster, writs addressed to certain ladies-Maria Countess of Norfolk, Eleanor Countess of Ormond, Philippa Countess of March, Agnes Countess of Pembroke, and Catherine Countess of Atholl, as well as to four abbessesthough it does not appear that any of these noble dames actually took their seats among the peers; and it is also curious to remark how the Commons were paid for their attendance in parliament -knights of the shire receiving, in the reign of Edward II., generally four shillings a day, but sometimes only three and fourpence and in one instance only two and sixpence. The charges of their coming to Westminster and returning home were also allowed.

The earliest echoes of parliamentary proceedings which ring in Westminster Hall on the side of legislation, have in them a decided tone of grumbling; but then it is that noble sort of grumbling to which our ancestors were addicted-grumbling about unquestionable grievances, grumbling against the encroachments of despotism on liberties solemnly conceded by charter and confirmed by oath. Westminster Hall witnessed many a scene of earnest complaint and firm resistance in the time of Henry III. for which Englishmen ought to be thankful. He gave his parliament an uncommon deal of trouble by his faithlessness. When his money was gone, he would call together the estates of the realm. In 1248 they met him when he was in deep pecuniary distress. He asked for a subsidy "in relief of the great charges which he had in divers ways sustained." But the barons, who looked for reformation in his doings, told his Majesty "that they would not impoverish themselves to enrich strangers, their enemies," upon