he had married the sister of Prince Arthur, whom John had murdered, and the barons may have thought the claim was just. But it was unwise to call in foreign help, and had not John died before, by the help of their foreign friends, the English barons had overcome him, England might have become a part of the dominions of the King of France. I have recalled these events to your minds, in order that you may remember what was going on in England, at the time to which I had come, at the end of my former lecture. But before I go on with the regular History of events, I wish to pause and take a Present general view of some of the institutions of the termediate. country, which existed at the death of King John, some of which, indeed, began much earlier, but many of which were greatly changed during his reign and that of his immediate successors. I shall, therefore, devote this lecture to that object, but in the next I shall proceed with the regular course of the History. In making this survey, I shall have to beg your carnest attention; I hope that young and old, men and women, will attend carefully. You must not expect that I am about to amuse you. You will, I hope, find much that is very interesting, but I intend to tell you about serious and important matters, which all Englishmen should understand, and which at these times, above all, should be brought before them. My subject to-night will be, The Ancient Laws and Customs of the Country. I wish to tell you who made our laws, how they were made, who put them in force, and thus I wish to enable you to understand the rights and privileges of Englishmen ; and while, on the one hand, I hope to make you fully value those Lecture in The preture a sent Lec summary of early institutions. Feudal which you now possess, I wish, on the other hand, to prepare you for the proper use of any greater privileges which hereafter may be yours. The Feudal System. You have already heard much, and in the reign of Henry the Third and his immediate successors you will hear more, of the barons, their castles, and their retainers; and of the King's castles, and of the King's demesnes. Besides the King's castles, the whole country was in those days covered with others, strongly fortified, belonging to the proud barons, who summoned their vassals to appear in arms at their side, whenever they wished to attack their neighbours, to resist the King, or to help him in his wars. You will hear that these barons sometimes went to Parliament, clothed in armour, each baron surrounded by his own vassals, all fully armed. Now to understand all these matters, I must explain to you that system which I mentioned in my former lecture, and which I told you was called The Feudal System. Under this system all ranks, from the King to the lowest labourer, were bound together; but under conditions that we should now call slavery. I begin my account of the ancient institutions of the country with the Feudal System, because this system was so mixed up with every relation of life, with the origin of the present ownership of land, with the making of our laws, with the putting those laws in force, and indeed lay so completely at the root of all that was thought or done in those days, that you cannot understand the History of England unless you know what the Feudal System means. Ownership of Land. land. The Feudal System rested entirely on the owner- Origin of ship of land, and the duties attending such ownership. property in It will be well, therefore, to begin by trying to find out how it was that any particular estate or portion of land belonged to any particular person. We know that in the present day many owners of land have bought it from others. But many have received their estates from their fathers, and they have come down from one generation to another. There must, however, have been a beginning of all this, and we must therefore try to find out how it was that the first owner got his land. How the land was owned before the Romans came, we have no means of finding out. But ownership there must have been, for the land was tilled. Flocks and herds might be led over a wild country without any part of it being especially the property of any one person. But no one would plough and sow, as the Ancient Britons did, unless they knew that they would reap the produce, and that they had a right in the land. Beyond this, we know nothing about the ownership of land before the Romans came, nor indeed do we know much more about the subject during their stay in England. The Romans lived Invaders chiefly in towns, which they built, leaving the na- land. tives in possession of the land. But, when we come to Anglo-Saxon times, we stand on firmer ground. We know that the Saxons, and all German invaders, seized the land, and kept it either wholly as their own, or gave the natives only a share in it. But the leaders of those Saxon tribes who invaded England were not Kings who ruled over seized the The leaders took the largest share. Allodial and feudal. soldiers whom they hired and paid, and who were bound to obey them. They were on the contrary a body of bold free rovers, united under a chief of their own choosing, bolder, abler, or more powerful than themselves. When, therefore, one of these chiefs, with his followers, had overcome a tribe of Britons, and was ready to settle in the land, each man obtained a share, which the chief was obliged to grant.' There can be but little doubt that the leader took the largest share of the land, or of the plunder. But this was not always yielded without strife. For instance, when Clovis, King of the Franks, invaded Gaul, the plunder taken was set out at Soissons for distribution. Among the things was a precious vessel, taken from the Church at Rheims. Clovis asked leave to take it, whereon a fierce soldier exclaimed, "You shall have nothing here but what falls to your share by lot," and, striking the vessel with his battleaxe, he dashed it to pieces. Still, without doubt, the leaders had the largest share, and it seems that wheresoever there was a division of land, there the leader took a portion. For, in the earliest records of authentic history, we find, that, generally throughout the different states, the King possessed ample domains.1 Allodial Lands and Feudal Lands. The lands that were divided among the followers of a chief were their own entirely. But the King, from time to time, granted portions of his land to his followers, as rewards for their fidelity, in return for acts of special service, or to attach them more closely to himself. These portions were granted on certain conditions, which gave rise to what is called |