278 MURDER OF THOMAS A BECKET. to the king shall not be protected in churches or churchyards. 16. No villein shall be ordained a clerk without the consent of the lord on whose estate he was born. When the constitutions of Clarendon had once been adopted, the king required that the bishops should affix their seals thereto; all consented with the exception of Becket, who resisted for a long while, but yielded at length, and promised "legally, with good faith, and without fraud or reserve, to observe the constitutions. The king sent a copy of them to Pope Alexander, who approved only the last six articles, and annulled all the rest. Strong in the support of the Pope, Becket did penance' for his submission, and renewed the conflict. It soon became desperate. The king harassed Becket with persecutions of all kinds, requiring him to give an account of his administration while Chancellor, and charging him with embezzlement; the bishops became alarmed and deserted the cause of the primate. Becket resisted with indomitable courage; but he was finally compelled to fly to the Continent. Henry confiscated all his property, and banished all his relatives and servants, to the number of four hundred. Becket excommunicated the servants of the king, and, from his retirement in a French monastery, made Henry totter on his throne. At length, the Pope with his legates, and the King of France, interfered to put an end to this conflict. Henry, who was embarrassed by a multitude of other affairs, yielded, and Becket returned to his see. But his conscience united with his pride to rekindle the war. He censured the prelates who had failed to support him, and excommunicated some of the king's servants who had been active in their persecution of the clergy. "What!" cried Henry, in a transport of passion, "of the cowards who eat my bread, is there not one who will free me from this turbulent priest ?" He was then at Bayeux; four of his gentlemen set out at once for Canterbury, and assassinated Becket on the steps of the altar of his cathedral, on the 29th of December, 1170. The king dispatched a courier in pursuit of them, but he arrived too late to prevent the consummation of the deed. Henry manifested the utmost grief at the death of Becket; we may, however, suppose his sorrow to have been feigned. In order to avert the consequences, he at once sent envoys to Rome CONQUEST OF IRELAND. 279 to attest his innocence, and the Pope contented himself with fulminating a general excommunication against the authors, fautors, or instigators of the assassination. Other events, wars with Scotland and France, and an expedition into Ireland, diverted the public attention from Becket's death. In 1172, Henry resumed his negotiations with Rome, and concluded a treaty which, on the whole, ratified the enactments of the Council of Clarendon. When he had thus become reconciled with the Pope, he made his peace with his subjects, whose enmity he feared, by a public penance on the tomb of Becket, who was honoured by all England as a martyr. In 1172, some English adventurers conquered without difficulty, and almost without a battle, a part of Ireland. Henry led an expedition into that country, and his authority was recognized. The remainder of his life was agitated by continual wars in defence of his possessions on the Continent, and by the rebellions of his children, who were anxious to divide his power and dominions before his death. He died of grief at their conduct on the 6th of July, 1189, at Chinon, near Saumur; and the corpse of one of the greatest kings of England and of his age was left for some time, deserted and stripped, upon the steps of an altar. His eldest son, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, succeded him without difficulty. In every age, and at every great epoch of history, we almost invariably witness the appearance of some individuals who seem to be the types of the general spirit and dominant dispositions of their time. Richard, the adventurer-king, is an exact representation of the chivalrous spirit of the feudal system and of the twelfth century. Immediately upon his accession, his only thought was the accumulation of money for the Crusades; he alienated his domains; he publicly sold offices, honours, and even the loftiest dignities, to the highest bidder; he even sold permissions not to go on the Crusade; and he was ready to sell London, he said, if he could find a purchaser. And while he was sacrificing everything to his passion for pious adventures, his people massacred the Jews because some of them had appeared at the coronation of the king, notwithstanding the prohibition. Richard set out at length for the Crusades, leaving as Regent during his absence his mother Eleanor, who had 280 RICHARD CŒUR-DE-LION. excited the princes her sons to rebellion against the king their father; and he associated the Bishops of Durham and Ely with her in the regency. The tyranny of the Bishop of Ely spread confusion throughout England; he placed his colleague under arrest, and governed alone with boundless arrogance, until at last Prince John had him deposed by a council of barons and prelates. Richard, on his return from the Crusades, was, as is well known, detained prisoner in Austria, from the 20th of December, 1193, to the 4th of February, 1194, when he recovered his liberty by the devotedness of one of his vassals. The power of feudal feelings and ties was also manifested in the eagerness of his subjects to pay his ransom. Richard, when restored to his kingdom, spent the remainder of his life in continual wars in France, and died, on the 6th of April, 1199, of a wound received at the siege of the castle of Chalus, near Limoges, while endeavouring to gain possession of a treasure which, it was said, the Count of Limoges had found. During the reign of Richard, the liberties of the towns and boroughs, which had commenced under William Rufus, made considerable progress, and prepared the way for that decisive advance of national liberties and representative government in England-the Great Charter of King John. EFFECTS OF THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 281 LECTURE III. Anglo-Saxon institutions.-Effects of the Norman Conquest upon AngloSaxon institutions.-Effects of the Conquest upon Norman institutions. Causes which made the Norman Conquest favourable to the establishment of a system of free institutions in England. AFTER having given a summary, in the preceding lecture, of the principal historical facts, we are now about to survey Anglo-Norman institutions during the period to which we have just turned our attention, namely, from the middle of the eleventh century until the end of the twelfth. How came it that free institutions were established from this time forth among this people, and not in other countries? The answer to this question may be found in the general facts of English history, for institutions are much more the work of circumstances than of the texts of laws. The States which were founded in Europe, from the fifth to the seventh century, were established by hordes of wandering Barbarians, the conquerors of the degraded Roman population. On the side of the victors, there existed no fixed and determinate form of social life; on the side of the vanquished, forms and institutions crumbled into dust; social life died of inanition. Hence arose long disorders, ignorance and impossibility of a general system of organization, the reign of force, and the dismemberment of sovereignty. Nothing of the kind occurred in England in the eleventh century, in consequence of the Norman Conquest. A Barbarian people which had already been established in a country for two hundred years conquered another Barbarian people which had been territorially established for six hundred years. For this reason, many decisive differences may be observed between this conquest and those which took place on the Continent. 1. There was much more resemblance, and consequently much more equality, between the two peoples; their origin was the same, their manners and language were analogous, 282 RESEMBLANCE OF THE TWO PEOPLES. their civilization was almost identical, and the warlike spirit was as powerful among the vanquished as among the victors. Thus, two nations under almost similar conditions, found themselves in presence of one another, and the conquered nation was able, as well as disposed, to defend its liberties. Hence arose many individual evils, but no general and permanent abasement of one race before the other. Oppressed at first, but retaining its warlike character, the Saxon race offered an energetic resistance, and gradually raised itself from its inferior position. 2. The two peoples also possessed political institutions of a singularly analogous nature, whereas elsewhere, in France and in Italy, the Roman populations, to speak the truth, possessed no institutions at all. The communes and the clergy were required to maintain, even obscurely, the Roman law among societies on the Continent; whereas in England, Saxon institutions were never stifled by Norman institutions, but associated with them, and finally even changed their character. On the Continent, we behold the successful sway of barbarism, feudalism, and absolute power, derived either from Roman or ecclesiastical ideas. In England, absolute power was never able to obtain a footing; oppression was frequently practised in fact, but it was never established by law. 3. The two peoples professed the same religion; one had not to convert the other. On the Continent, the more Barbarian victor adopted the religion of the vanquished, and the clergy were almost entirely Romans; in England, they were both Saxons and Normans. Hence resulted an important fact. The English clergy, instead of enrolling themselves in the retinue of the kings, naturally assumed a place among the landed aristocracy, and in the nation. Thus the political order has almost constantly predominated in England over the religious order; and ever since the Norman Conquest, the political power of the clergy, always called in question, has always been on the decline. This is the decisive circumstance in the history of England -the circumstance which has caused its civilization to take an altogether different course to that taken by the civilization of the Continent. Of necessity, and at an early period, a compromise and amalgamation took place between the victors |