96

96

DEATHS OF GLOUCESTER AND BEAUFORT.

1447.

for. he came without the large retinues which the great had generally in their train when danger was apprehended. At the end of seventeen days, Humphrey of Gloucester was found dead in his bed. His great adversary, Henry Beaufort, died six weeks after him, at the age of eighty years. His death-bed scene has been depicted by Shakspere with a terrible power which the soberer statement of the chronicler will not obliterate: "Why should I die, having so much riches? If the whole realm would save my life, I am able by policy to get it, or by riches to buy it.-Fye, will not death be hired, nor will money do nothing ?" These were not unlikely words in the mouth of a dying man who was undoubtedly of "covetise insatiable."

The death of the duke of Gloucester was accomplished, there can be little doubt, by secret murder. Hall has a reflection upon the event which exhibits more of the character of philosophical history than belongs to the old annalists: "There is an old said saw, that a man intending to avoid the smoke, falleth into the fire: so here the queen, minding to preserve her husband in honour, and herself in authority, procured and consented to the death of this noble man, whose only death brought to pass that thing which she would most fain have eschewed, and took from her that jewel which she most desired; for if this duke had lived, the duke of York durst not have made title to the crown: if this duke had lived, the nobles had not conspired against the king, nor yet the commons had not rebelled: if this duke had lived, the house of Lancaster had not been defaced and destroyed; which things happened all contrary by the destruction of this good man."

Social condition during the wars of the Roses-Degrees of Rank-Incomes-Forty-shilling freeholders-Statutes of Apparel-Distinction of Birth-The Gentleman and the Roturier -Administrative system-Royal revenue-Public functionaries-Military system-Defence of the Coast and Towns-Forcible entries upon estates-Liveries-Rent-Relations of Landlord and Tenant-Want of money by landowners-Prevalence of litigation-Occasional bribery-Petty law-suits-Number of attorneys limited-Offences against person and property-Hours of labour-Domestic manufactures-Interference of the State with industry.

In the progress of our narrative we have arrived at one of the most remarkable epochs of our eventful history. We have arrived at that period when we may turn aside from that great contest between England and France-" two so invincible nations, which never would yield or bow the one to the other, neither yet once hear of abstinence of fighting or refusing from war, so much were their hearts hardened, and so princely were their stomachs"* In this war, and in previous French wars, Comines tells us that the English "carried over a considerable booty into England, not only in plunder which they had taken in the several towns, but in the richness and quality of their

* Hall's Chronicle, 13th year of Henry VI.

VOL. II.

H

98

SOCIAL CONDITION DURING THE WARS OF THE ROSES.

[1450-1485.

A different war

prisoners, who paid them great ransoms for their liberty." * was at hand-a war in which the English lords would fight at intervals for thirty-five years upon their native soil, and only end this work of mutual destruction when one half of the old nobility of England was swept away. During these wars of York and Lancaster, of which the seeds were sown in the distracted councils of the minority of Henry VI., we have many scattered but authentic materials for viewing the social condition of the country. The first division of this extraordinary period opens with the insurrections of 1450; and then proceeds in showing the duke of York taking up arms in 1452, and his son Edward seated on the throne in 1461. The second embraces the perilous fortunes of Henry and his intrepid wife, and the overthrow of the Lancastrian party after that gleam of triumph, which was destroyed by the fatal battles of Barnet and Tewkesbury in 1471. Edward sits on the throne for thirteen years longer, in comparative tranquillity; then two more years of mysterious murder and fierce war; and then a dynasty with which the feudal system has practically come to an end. This is one great epic, which requires to be told without any material interruption to the relation of events, of which the links are welded in one continuous chain. But it may be desirable, before we enter upon this narrative, to endeavour to form a just estimate of the habits and condition of the people, while these battles and revolutions were carried forward at their own doors. During this troubled time, when we might naturally expect that the whole framework of society would be thrown into disorder, we find the internal administration of England proceeding with the same regularity as if the struggle for supremacy were raging on the banks of the Seine instead of the banks of the Thames. The uniform course of justice is uninterrupted. Men are litigating for disputed rights, as if there were no general peril of property. They are electing knights of the shire and burgesses, under aristocratical or popular influences, as if the real arbitrement of these contentions was to be in the parliament-house and not in the battle-field. They are buying and selling, growing and exporting, as if the producers looked on with indifference whilst the Warwicks and Somersets were slaying or being slain. They wear richer apparel, and strive more for outward distinctions, and build better houses, than when their fathers were fighting in France; and they are really prospering in an increase of material wealth, though they greatly lack the instrument of exchange, for the want of money is grievously felt from the peer to the huckster. They pursue their accustomed diversions; they hunt and they hawk; they gamble in public gardens; they gape at the players of interludes; they go on pilgrimage to Canterbury and Walsingham, and St. Jago-they take life easily, as if no danger were around them, when truly they might be in trouble for shouting for the White Rose on one day, and for the Red on the next. Their marriages go forward, with the keenest avidity amongst the gentry and the burgesses to make the best bargains for their sons and daughters; and whilst we know how many great houses were rendered desolate by these troubles, we have no satisfactory evidence that during their existence population had decreased. These appearances on the surface of things involve many important points of national character and

Memoirs of Philip de Comines, book vi. chap. ii.

1450-1485.]

DEGREES OF RANK.

99

66

social progress; and we therefore proceed to collect some leading traits of the people, as they show themselves in and near the stormy era which commenced with the commencement of the second half of the fifteenth century, and lasted till the quarrels of York and Lancaster came to an end upon Bosworth-field. During this period the condition of society appears to have undergone very slight change; for in whatever regarded the civil administration of the country, there was no revolutionary action connected with the sudden changes in the supreme power. It was of this period that Comines, one of the most accomplished statesmen of his age, thus wrote: "In my opinion, of all the countries in Europe where I was ever acquainted, the government is nowhere so well managed, the people nowhere less obnoxious to violence and oppression, nor their houses less liable to the desolations of war, than in England, for there the calamities fall only upon their authors."* In another part of the same chapter, he says, " England has this peculiar grace, that neither the country, nor the people, nor the houses, are wasted, destroyed, or demolished; but the calamities and misfortunes of the war fall only upon the soldiers, and especially the nobility." But we might still hesitate to believe that the government was well administered, and the people little disturbed by violence, if we were to regard the wars of the Roses as one continued series of exterminating slaughters. Comines, still speaking of these wars, says, "In England, when any disputes arise and proceed to a war, the controversy is generally decided in eight or ten days, and one party or other gains the victory." After the first battle, that of St. Albans, in 1455, there was outward peace for four years. York was in arms in 1459; gained the battle of Northampton in 1460; and was killed on the last day of that year. Within three months his son Edward was on the throne, and had gained the decisive victory of Towton. With the exception of the Lancastrian rising of 1464, the kingdom was at peace till 1470. The attempt then to restore Henry VI. was defeated in the fighting of two months. Warwick landed on the 13th September; Edward fled on the 3rd of October; on the 14th March, 1471, he was again in England; and after the great battle of Barnet, that of Tewkesbury decided the contest on the 4th of May. The remaining thirteen years of Edward saw no civil warfare. The landing of Richmond, and the fall of Richard III., was the affair of a fortnight. The actual warfare in England, from 1455 to 1485, included an aggregate space of time of something less than two years.

The statutes and other state documents which have regard to distinctions of rank, furnish some evidence of the increase of population, and of the divisions of society into more complex arrangements than those of the gentle, the free, and the servile. The Statute of Additions of 1413 declares that in every original writ of actions, appeals, and indictments, to the names of the defendants in such writs "Additions shall be made of their estate or degree or mystery, and of the towns or hamlets, or places or counties, of the which they were or be." It is affirmed by Fuller in his "Worthies," that such distinctions were not used, except in law process, until the latter end of the reign of Henry VI. In 1429 was passed the Statute of Elections for Knights of the Shire; which recited that the elections for many counties "have now of late been made by very great and excessive number of

Book v. chap. xviii.

Book vi. chap. ii.

2

100

INCOMES-FORTY-SHILLING FREEHOLDERS.

1450-1485.

people dwelling within the same counties, of which the most part was people of small substance and of no value, whereof every of them pretended a voice equivalent, as to such elections to be made, with the most worthy knights and esquires dwelling within the said counties." It was therefore enacted that the knights of the shires should be chosen in every county by "people dwelling and resident in the same, whereof every one of them shall have free land or tenement to the value of forty shillings by the year, at the least, above all charges." There can be no more distinct evidence than this statute-which was unchanged for four centuries, however the value of money had changed that the great bulk of the people, those of small substance, having passed out of the servile condition into the free, had become so numerous that they were the real constituencies of the country. Extensive suffrage was therefore held as dangerous as in recent times. A forty-shilling freeholder was then a person of some importance. In 1433, when commissioners were empowered to tender an oath to "persons of quality" to keep the peace, two inhabitants of Lyme were placed on the list," as considerable

LAM

Law Habits of the fifteenth century. From MSS, engraved in Strutt's "Angel-Cynnan."

men who were able to dispense 127. per annum.' ."* Any one who lived in a forty-shilling tenement, or derived profit from land of the clear rent of forty shillings, when a shilling an acre was a high rent,† was a person of substance. The qualification of a justice of the peace was twenty pounds in lands and tenements, and it was less in towns. In 1450 there was a subsidy granted, in the nature of an income-tax upon a graduated scale, persons holding in frank tenement from 20s. to 201. paying 6d. in the pound; from 201. to 2001., 12d.; and all upwards 2s. These graduations of tax exhibit a very unequal distribution of property. The immense landed possessions in the hands of the nobles and prelates, and the enormous payments to

*Roberts' "Social History of the Southern Counties," p. 194. 1856.

The rent of land had not increased in the middle of the 15th century above the 6d. or 9d.

per acre of 80 years before. Cullum's "Hawsted."

+ Stat-1445.