Throughout these letters the features of the times which present themselves most prominently are those indicative of the unsettled, insecure, and half-disorganised state to which society had been brought by the public distractions, and the double curse of a government at once weak and oppressive-powerless for good, and strong only for evil. The writers repeatedly advert in guarded, but not on that account the less expressive language, to what they call sometimes the " quavering," sometimes the " queasy" condition of the world, as if they felt all things to be giddy and reeling around them. A general sense of instability, and expectation of continued change, infested every man's mind. In the popular imagination this feeling, as might be expected, took a superstitious shape, disposing men to listen with gaping mouth to warnings and predictions, and to see the shadows of coming events in the clouds. "Here," writes a correspondent from London to the first John Paston, in October, 1455, a few months after the commencement of the civil war at the fight of St. Alban's," be many marvellous tales of things that shall fall this next month, as it is said; for it is talked that one Dr. Grene, a priest, hath calculated and reporteth, that before St. Andrew's day next coming shall be the greatest battle that was since the battle of Shrewsbury, and it shall fall between the Bishop's Inn of Salisbury and Westminster Bars; and there shall die seven lords, whereof three shall be bishops. All this and much more is talked and reported: I trust to God it shall not fall go!"* To the last hour of the long contest nobody felt any assurance or strong conviction as to how it would terminate. Sir John Paston fought on the side of the Lancastrians at the battle of Barnet, so disastrous for that party, in April, 1471. Four days after his escape from that field, and within sixteen days of Edward's crowning victory at Tewkesbury, he writes to his mother," God hath showed himself marvellously like him that made all, and can undo all when him list; and I can think that by all likelihood shall show himself as marvellous again, and that in short time; and, as I suppose, oftener than once in cases like."+ It could not happen otherwise in such chaotic and bewildering times, than that men should learn and practise caution, concealment, duplicity, and all the other arts by which the sudden jolts and revulsions of fortune were to be best sustained, including even that of dexterously shifting their position, and openly stepping over from one side to the other, at the proper moment. The letters before us are deeply marked by the traces of this prudential policy. "There is much ado in the north, as men say," writes Sir John Paston to his brother, after the apparently complete re-establishment of Edward: "I pray you beware of your guiding, and in chief of your language, so that from henceforth by your language no man perceive that ye favour any person contrary to the King's pleasure. And, in fact, as we have had occasion to notice above, Sir John is found soon after this figuring at court, and in the enjoyment of the marked favour of the Yorkist king. It would be affectation, in the circumstances, to censure this conduct very sternly; besides the rudeness of the age, which excuses any imperfection in the manner in which it may have been usually varnished over, it is to be observed that this contention of the Roses was really a mere personal affair after all: it was no struggle of principles, like the great civil war of the seventeenth century; no point either in the theory, or even in the practice of government, was involved in it; the whole matter of the dispute was merely whether the reigning king should be called by the name of Henry or Edward. We believe, as we have already said, that the mass of the people were generally very indifferent as to how this question might be decided; and, in truth, except in so far as the interests and partialities of individuals were concerned, it was not a very momentous one. It was right, no doubt, that even on such a question as this, men should be faithful to the side they had espoused, so long as the two parties were actually in the field, and the issue of the strife undetermined; the abandonment of his cause by any one while it could be hurt by his desertion, would have been here, as in other cases, base and criminal; but this was certainly not a case in which an enlightened patriotism would have prompted a man to disturb the peace of his country indefinitely for the chance of having the matter in dispute settled at last according to his own views. He might be excused for feeling quite contented if it were settled at all. • Paston Letters, i. 75. labouring class, when their countrywomen of | however, was not put down; and in 1376 the higher degree were emancipated altogether from the restraints of this impertinent kind of legislation. To the period immediately preceding the present belongs the origin of English pauperism, as well as of legislation on the subject of the poor. So long as the system of villenage was maintained in its integrity, there could be no paupers in the land, that is to say, no persons left destitute of all means of subsistence except beggary or public alms. The principle of that institution was, that every individual who had nothing else, had, at least, a legal right to food and shelter from the landed proprietor or other master whose bondsman he was. The master was not more entitled to the services of his villain than the villain was to the maintenance of himself and his family at the expense of his master. It cannot be doubted that even when the villain, whether from sickness or old age, became unfit for work, his master was still as much bound to support him as when he was in the vigour of his days, and his services were at their highest value. This has, of absolute necessity, been the law in every age and country in which slavery has existed. Although human beings may, by a sufficiently unnatural and infamous abuse of the powers of society, be converted into property, and treated as a species of cattle, they cannot be shot through the head like worn-out horses, or thrown out and left to perish, when all the service they are capable of yielding has been got out of them. But as soon as the original slavery of the English labouring population began to be exchanged for freedom, and villenage gradually and at last generally passed away in the manner stated in the last Book, the working man, now his own master, was of course left in all circumstances to his own resources; and, when either want of employment, or sickness, or the helplessness of old age, came upon him, if he had not saved something from his former earnings, and had no one to take care of him from motives of affection or compassion, his condition was as unprovided for as that of the fowls of heaven. But men will not starve while they can either beg or steal; hence the first appearance that the destitute poor, as a class of the community, make in our annals is in the characters of thieves and mendicants, sometimes enforcing their demands by threats or violence. The earliest notice of this state of things that we find on the Statute Book is in one of the chapters of the Ordinance of Labourers, enacted in 1349, in which it is commanded that, "because many valiant beggars, as long as they may live of begging, do refuse to labour, giving themselves to idleness and vice, and sometimes to theft and other abominations, none, upon pain of imprisonment, shall, under the colour of pity or alms, give anything to such which may labour, or presume to favour them in their sloth, so that thereby they may be compelled to labour for their necessary living."+ The nuisance, See vol. i. pp. 886, 887. This has escaped the research of Sir Frederick Eden, who places the first legislative notice of the prevalence of mendicity in 1376.See State of the Poor, i 43 and 61. Rolls of Parliament record a strong complaint on the subject by the Commons. It is alleged that, notwithstanding the great wages which masters were obliged to give their servants and labourers to prevent their running away, such encouragement was given to them in their evil practices, that they were wont to quit on the slightest cause; that they then led an idle life in towns, or wandered as vagabonds over the country, many of them, though sufficiently able to labour, turning beggars, others becoming "staff-strikers" (or cudgell-players), and wandering from village to village in parties of two, three, and four; but the greater number turning out" sturdy rogues," and taking to open robbery in all parts of the kingdom. To remedy these evils, the Commons proposed that a law should be passed, prohibiting the giving of any relief in the way of charity to persons who were able to work, making vagrant beggars and staff-strikers liable to be imprisoned till they consented to return home to work, and imposing a penalty of 101. upon any person detected in harbouring a runaway servant. No legislative measure, however, appears to have been actually adopted in consequence of this representation. It was not till 1383 that (by the 7th Rich. II. c. 5) it was ordained and assented, " to refrain the malice of divers people, feitors and wandering from place to place, running in the country more abundantly than they were wont in times past," that the justices of assize, the justices of peace, and the sheriffs, should have power to apprehend and examine diligently all such vagabonds, and to compel them to find surety for their good behaviour, or in default to commit them to the nearest gaol, "there to abide till the coming of the justices assigned for the deliverance of the gaols, who, in such case, shall have power to do upon such feitors and vagabonds so imprisoned, that that thereof to them best shall seem by the law." The indecision of this last vague phrase forcibly indicates the novelty of the evil to be corrected, and the want of any provision for it in the established law of the land, as well as the hesitation and perplexity which were now felt in devising a proper way of meeting it. The present statute was soon found to have provided no effectual remedy. The subject accordingly was again brought before the legislature in 1388, when it gave rise to a series of more elaborate enactments. First, it was ordered that no servant or labourer, whether man or woman, should depart out of the hundred, rape, or wapentake in which he had been dwelling, on pretence either of going to serve or dwell elsewhere, or of going on a pilgrimage, without carrying with him. a letter patent, containing the cause of his going, and the time of his return-if he ought to return -under the king's seal, which for this purpose was to be entrusted to the keeping of some "good man" in every hundred, rape, wapentake, city, and borough: if any one was found wandering about without such letter, he was to be immediately apprehended and put in the stocks, and kept till he found surety to return to his service, or obtained a letter authorising him to depart for a reasonable cause." * Next it was enacted, that every person found begging, and able to serve or labour, should be treated in the same manner as a servant who had left his proper district without the requisite testimonial. And now, for the first time, we find notice taken of that class of the destitute poor, whose case forms the most difficult problem which legislation has to solve in connexion with this subject-those who are willing to work, but either cannot find employment, or, from bodily weakness, are incapable of labour. That persons coming under this description must have existed in great numbers, ever since the breaking up of the system of villenage had thrown the greater part of the labouring population loose from the ancient connexion on which they had been wont to depend for support, cannot be doubted; but the legislature had shut its eyes to the perplexing evil as long as it could. Even now it only half opened them. "Beggars impotent to serve," it was ordained, "shall abide in the cities and towns where they be dwelling at the time of the proclamation of this statute; and if the people of the said cities or towns will not or may not suffice to maintain them, then the said beggars shall draw them to other towns within the hundred, rape, or wapentake, or to the towns where they were born, within forty days after the said proclamation made, and there shall continually abide during their lives."+ It may, perhaps, be inferred from these words, that a right to be supported at the expense of the inhabitants of the place in which they had been born was intended to be conferred by the statute upon the destitute poor; and if so, this is the earliest English law of settlement, and the proper commencement of our legislation on the subject of pauperism; but it will be observed, that the obligation upon the rape or hundred to support its own paupers, is enacted, if at all, only by implication. The legislature, as if even already in some degree apprehensive of what this beginning might lead to, seems to have shrunk from any express declaration of the novel principle. From the immediately succeeding chapter of the statute, which professes to direct how the several foregoing ordinances shall be executed, it might even be conjectured that it was really intended the paupers should be treated as a species of criminals. ordered that "the sheriffs, mayors, bailiffs, and keepers of the gaols, shall be holden and charged to receive the said servants, labourers, beggars, and vagabonds (there is no exception made with regard to the impotent), and to keep them in prison, without letting to mainprise or in bail, and without fee or any other thing taking of them. selves or by any other, as long as they may be so imprisoned, or at their entry, or at their going forth." Perhaps it was felt inexpedient to avow this scheme of general incarceration for all descriptions of mendicants in plainer terms. The plan † 12 Rich. 11. c. 7. 12 Rich. II. c. 3. It is probably was not found to answer very well; and, by a subsequent statute passed in 1391 (the 15th Rich. II. c. 6), we find it ordered, that in every future appropriation of any parish church the diocesan shall direct a convenient proportion of the fruits and profits of the benefice to be distributed yearly to the poor parishioners in aid of their subsistence and living for ever. This statute was confirmed in 1402 (by the 4th Hen. IV. c. 12). From that date we find no more mention of the poor in the Statute Book till after the close of the present period. It is not to be supposed, however, notwithstanding the circumstances in the course of events in England during the fifteenth century that were favourable to both the political and economical advancement of the great body of the people, that a period marked by such revolutions and scenes of violence, in the confused rush of which all government was repeatedly for a time overthrown, could fail to generate its abundant harvest both of poverty and of crime. The inattention of the legislature to the continued growth of these and other kindred evils must be attributed to the public distractions of the time. An unusually near view into the interior of English society at this period is afforded us by one of the most curious reliques of former times, the collection of papers known by the name of 'The Paston Letters,' published in the latter part of the last century.* The 'Paston Letters' consist principally of the correspondence, from about 1440 to 1505, between the members and connexions of the respectable Norfolk family of that name--afterwards Earls of Yarmouth-of which the head, till his death in 1444, was Sir William Paston, Knight, one of the justices of the Common Pleas, and popularly called the "Good Judge ;" and afterwards, in succession, his eldest son, John Paston, Esq., who died in 1466; and the eldest and next eldest sons of the latter, Sir John Paston, Knight, a distinguished soldier, who died in 1479; and John Paston, Esq., also a military man, and eventually made a knight banneret by Henry VII. at the battle of Stoke, in 1487, who survived till 1503. A few public documents are intermixed among the private letters; even the latter, however, written as they are by persons who, from their station, were involved in all the leading political movements of their day, often throw much light on the public transactions of this obscure period. We have repeatedly, in the preceding pages, had occasion to refer to their testimony in regard to events imperfectly related, or not noticed at all, by the professed annalists of the time, and they will still afford us some further assistance in a small portion of the next section of our narrative. But the chief mass of their contents consists of details of the affairs of private life, the principal interest of • Original Letters, written during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and Richard III., digested, with notes, by John Fenn, Esq., 2nd edit. 2 vols. 4to., 1787; vols. iii. and iv. by Sir John Fenn, Knight, 1789; and vol. 5 (including Letters during the reign of Henry VII.), by the late Sir John Fenn, Knight, 1823. GREAT SEAL OF HENRY VII. FTER the death of Richard, the person that gave most uneasiness to the conqueror of Bosworth Field was Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, son and heir to the late Duke of Clarence, who for some time had been kept a prisoner in the manor-house of Sheriff-Hutton, in Yorkshire, by the jealous fears of his uncle Richard. This unfortunate boy was indisputably the next heir of the House of York after the Princess Elizabeth; he had even at one time been treated by his uncle Richard III. as heir apparent; and as he was already in his fifteenth year, he was not likely to be overlooked by Henry, who had "the ingenious forecast of the subtle serpent." Before leaving Leicester, he sent Sir Robert Willoughby to remove the captive from Sheriff-Hutton to London, where the young prince, "born to perpetual calamity, was incontinent in the Tower of London put under safe and sure custody."* His heart VOL. II. • Hall. must have sunk as he saw the prison chosen for him by the new king, the walls of which had so recently heard (as was generally believed) the dying moans of his two cousins. At Sheriff-Hutton Edward Plantagenet had for a short time a fellow prisoner, if not a companion, in the Princess Elizabeth, who had been sent thither by her uncle Richard soon after the failure of his scheme for marrying her. This lady, not long after Edward Plantagenet's removal to the Tower, was brought up to London "with a numerous attendance as well of noblemen as honourable matrons," and was there lodged with her mother, the queen dowager, Elizabeth Woodville, who was quite ready to take another turn, and adapt herself to any circumstances, if they held out a prospect of gratifying her ambition. From Leicester Henry travelled by easy journeys towards the capital. The "rustical people" on every side of the way assembled in vast numbers, and with great joy clapped their hands and shouted, "King Henry! king Henry!" and when he approached the city on the 27th of August, five days after the battle of Bosworth Field, the mayor, aldermen, and companies, all clad in violet, met him at Hornsey Wood, and, with great pomp, conveyed him through the city to St. Paul's church, See ante, p. 128. 20 |