fore, at the accession of Henry the Fourth, struggling with two great difficulties: a heresy subdued, but not exterminated; a schism open, bitter, and in its extent universal. Yet she was so far a great power, that kings found their best interests in courting her favor, and that to degrade her enemies was to exalt their own dominion.

The march of the laws of the realm, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, was in general rapid, and uniformly in a forward direction. Occasionally they were for a little retrograde, in consequence sometimes of wars and civil dissension, oftener of weak or despotic kings, and the all-absorbing tyranny of ecclesiastics. But it seems right to venerate the first Edward as the Justinian of England; for no sovereign, before or since, has been so solicitous for the institution of good laws, the due execution of justice, and the stability of the constitutional fabric. No one saw more clearly the injustice of baronial influence, and no one more successfully forwarded the downfall of feudalism. The barons were compelled to exhibit greater leniency to their vassals; to secure to them the rights of trial and protection; to use moderation in their claims for service and rent pay, and to require of them only those services which their rela tions justified.

Edward paid personal attention to his judges and sheriffs, looking to it that they were prompt and just in duty, and that they were empowered to execute their judgments by a sufficient force. So formidable had become the crimes of murder, robbery, and kindred evils, that in the plenitude of his administration he erected an absolute commission, who should summarily try and punish offenders of that nature. The

debasement of money was provided for by a prosecu tion of usurers which looked much like the persecu tion of a sect. The revenue of the Crown was systematized, and although Edward managed to obtain a greater than usual, he kept within the limits of conceded authority in its procurement. The jurisdiction of the various tribunals was settled; the office of justice of the peace created; suits for the recovery of debts, and for the preservation of private rights, instituted; the overbearing influence of the council in the judicial process restrained; the provisions of the Great Charter favorable to the lower classes impressed and enforced.

Edward did not confine his attacks to the barons; he struck many a sturdy blow at the temporal power of the Church. The great statute of Mortmain was the product of his effort, whereby no lands could pass to the clergy which should afterwards be unalienable. And the Pope found himself matched against a man of iron, when he strove to nominate to vacant dignities.

Indeed, this suddenly but securely erected fabric of the common law, which drew order and subordination from a chaotic disregard of civil authority, remained with but little modification down to the time and through the reigns of the Lancasters. Its founder was by no means a patron of freedom; his oppressions of the people were sore and frequent; his will was incorrigible: but he used tyranny with the honest desire of promoting the public good; he was ambitious to secure stability, to give his subjects a sense of protection by the equity and permanency of law, and to rear as his own monument a constitution which should live beyond the ephemeral distractions of his

age. Thus, outliving the effects of all the violent events of those centuries, remains to-day the system of Edward the Great, having received in its progress the accumulations of a constantly growing experience, yet in its essence the same which received its genius at his hands, raised by the almost silent, yet careful skill of the noble monarch, and taking its place as a noiseless and potent element in the transition of society.

We have now reviewed the more obtrusive elements which gave tone to the English monarchy at the time when Henry Bolingbroke, by the un heard of fiat of the popular will, overturned the rightful succession, and founded in his own person a new, powerful, and vigorous line of kings. We have observed the various courses which the military spirit, brought to system during the Crusades, took, after the Crusades ceased to elicit and guide it; how it developed in three forms, proceeding from the confined arena of local war to the pursuit of contiguous conquest; then, as it became more confident and more enduring, launching forth into the presumptuous ambition of foreign subjugation. We have remarked the continued vitality, resulting from these several phases, which rooted in the public mind the genius of chivalry. Having established the fact that this military spirit was without doubt the controlling and predominant feature of those times, we have seen that the grand movement in the direction of a novel system had commenced, was progressing, and was quietly approaching the consummation, by the modest origin and unheeded growth of the House of Commons; that, though apparently as often antagonistic as allied to the interests of the Crown, the influence of popular

opinion was on the whole combining with it to overthrow feudalism. We have found ourselves in the midst of that transition; and we shall be able to discern, as we proceed, that under a new and revolutionary dynasty, it kept its course almost without interruption, certainly without permanent retardation. Thence turning to the state of that potent and wonderful hierarchy the Papal Church-potent by reason of its superstitions, prestige, and wealth; and wonderful in the universality and completeness of its sway— we ascertain that at the time we have reached, though crippled by the double incubus of an unconquered heresy and a general and bitter schism, it is still the refuge of kings, the dictator of religious sentiment, and the arbiter of equal powers. We have seen that the common law, which at present holds its sway alike in England and America, was placed upon its broad foundation in the reign of Edward the Great, and was refining and completing the constitution in the era at which we have paused.

Commerce had increased despite the commotions of the times, and the ideas of political economy were becoming more definite and practical. Manufactures, more especially of woollen textures, were beginning to flourish, and to compete with soil profit. Many improvements in the art of war were naturally invented; among which the most important, perhaps, was that of artillery, used for the first time among English soldiers by Edward the Third, at the memorable battle of Crecy. Among the nobles, the arts of hospitality and the interchange of courtesies and visits had become far more frequent than in ancient times; and the Order of the Garter, a distinction which has down to this day been an object of ardent ambition

to the most illustrious generals and statesmen of Eng land, was founded in 1349 by Edward the Third. That King did a worthier thing when he limited the definition of treason, before uncertain, to distinct heads.

The English language, having been in process of formation ever since the mixture of races, had now become the recognized medium for the expression of thought, and had so far prevailed, that the use of French, even in the proceedings of courts, had ceased. The universities had only in the later reigns assumed a regular and systematic discipline, and become the recognized rendezvous of the religious and literary aristocracy. Chaucer and Gower, the fathers of English poetry, and Mandeville, the father of English prose, had already given fair promise of a noble literature.

Having thus noticed the general position of England up to the reign of Richard the Second, it is proper to proceed to those events which directly led to the usurpation of the Red Rose; which opened upon England the most dreadful of her civil wars, and the most splendid of her military triumphs; which gave her three kings, who, whatever their faults and crimes, have illumined that portion of her history with a heroism, ability, and chivalrous achievement, not surpassed by the age of Edward the Third, nor equalled by any later age.