plague, and they were only able to succour his suffering army. Henry of Germany and others now determined to go home with the returning Frenchmen; but Prince Edward swore that if all left him, he and his groom Fowin would go on to Acre (which was being closely besieged by the Saracens) dead or alive, and so went his way with his faithful wife and his own men in thirteen ships only. Henry got as far as Viterbo, when Simon of Montfort and his brother Guy, who was living there with an Italian earl, his father-in-law, set upon him in the cathedral as he was praying after the mass and stabbed him as he clung to the altar praying for mercy. They then dragged him out of the holy place and mangled his body in revenge for the way the king's knights had treated their father's corpse. For this dreadful deed Guy was outlawed, but Simon died before he could be brought to justice. King Richard was ailing already, but when he heard of his son's murder he rapidly grew worse, and shortly afterwards died. He was buried at his church at Hales by the side of his wife Sanchia. He was a man who had given great promise of a finer career, and had he been content with his position in England might by his good influence over his weaker brother have prevented much of the trouble that fell upon the country during his life.

In Easter 1271 Edward reached Acre and raised the siege. He then pushed on to Nazareth and took it, and gained a battle over the Memlook army at Kakehow. In August, while he was staying at Acre, the Emir of Joppa sent him many messages pretending that he wished to become a Christian; and at last, as he was sitting on his bed in the heat of the day, a messenger bearing letters from the Emir was brought to talk with him. As the prince was listening to him the man suddenly drew a poisoned dagger and struck at him. The prince caught the blow on his arm, and thrust the assassin backwards with a blow of his foot, then leaping up, he wrested the knife from him and killed him before his chamberlains could run up. The wound grew worse, and it was feared that it might prove deadly, when an Englishman came forward and promised to cure him if he would let him cut out the poisoned sore. The princess wept for fear of the operation, but her brotherin-law Edmund and John of Vescy led her away, saying, "It is better, lady, that you should weep than that all England should have cause to mourn ;" and the surgeon treated the prince so skilfully that within a fortnight his arm was healed. However, having been called home by his father,

who was in his last illness, he stayed no longer in the Holy Land, and when he reached Sicily the news of the king's death at Bury, November 16, met him.

Henry was a good man, merciful, pious, brave, fond of learning and a lover of art and poetry, a kind father and a fond husband, and ever desirous of doing his duty to his people and his Church; but he had faults which made him unfit for the crown. He was extravagant, fickle, quicktempered, suspicious, yet easily led, and full of false ideas of his duties and rights as king; but above all, he set so little store by his plighted word that no man could depend upon his promises, and it was this sin that led him into misfortunes and brought upon him the contempt and dislike of those who would but for it have loved and respected him. Had not his finer qualities enabled him to gain the friendship of those wiser than himself and secure the love of his son and his brother, he would certainly have lost his kingdom, and most probably his life. In person he was like his father, of middle height, well made, and handsome (save that one of his eyelids drooped somewhat over the pupil of the eye), his manners were courteous and graceful, and he spoke well and readily.

CHAPTER V.

England under the Angevin Kings, 1154-1272.

1. During the hundred years that followed the restoring of law and order by Henry II. great changes had come about in England. English society, government, books, and speech, all alike showed deep marks of the new thoughts and feelings that, step by step, had spread over Western Europe, and set up that form of civilization which we call mediæval. A civilization which had Rome for its religious centre, and looked to Paris, Oxford, and Bologna for its learning, and the French and English courts for its literature. A knot of states whose commerce, regulated by self-governing guilds, flowed westward from the great Italian trading republics, through the fairs of France and Germany to the marts of Flanders and the ports of England and Gascony, till the circuit of trade ended

Mediaval
Europe.

in the counters of the mighty Hanse Company, the merchant principality of the Baltic. Europe was thus a set of kingdoms governed by curious half-feudal, half-free, half-despotic constitutions, in which local feelings were everywhere strong, but centralization everywhere welcome, under which slavery was still legal and a foreign churchman a recognised controlling power, but where the free yeoman and the tradesman of the chartered borough had their due place in the Parliament by the side of the wealthy prelate, the noble earl, and the anointed king. In these states dwelt a succession of generations who invented no single tool, implement, or art, who with rarest exceptions were wholly ignorant of the sciences of the past, and disliked the very dreams of the sciences that were to come, but who could build cathedrals which are "miracles in stone," forge metal-work which has never been surpassed, embroider raiment more splendid than that of the East, and show, amid squalor, dirt, and misery, a true and unfailing taste in every article of daily life. A state of society ignorant, cruel, and superstitious, whose pattern is to be found in marvellous and often unpleasant legends of anchorites and martyrs, and in the brilliant but misleading romances of chivalry, but withal a state of society in which men were earnest, dutiful, and hardworking, and which could display such noble types of character as the untiring and unselfish Francis, the friend of the poor and helpless, the brave and holy bishops Hugh and Grossetête, the faithful Earl Simon, and the saintly King Louis. Such was that medieval Europe of which England henceforward stood forth one of the foremost powers.

To bring England into this place many causes had wrought together first the stern order of the Norman kings and bishops, and the far-sighted decrees of Henry II. and his ministers, who had not only strengthened the king but had kept up free local government; then the loss of the North French provinces, which left English interests as the sole business for English kings; and, above all, the struggles in which churchmen, nobles, yeomen, and merchants had stood side by side for English freedom against foreign foes and royal misrule. And all these had made the nation more of a whole than it had ever been before. Then there were the Crusades and the wide interests they had roused, the spread of trade, and hence rise of towns under the favour of the French and English kings and bishops; the New Learning, which, starting from the Mahommedan courts of Bagdad and Cordova, brought morsels of the lost wisdom of heathen

Greece and Rome back to Christian Europe, and raised the palace and cathedral schools into noble universities where zeal for learning and orderly teaching paved the way for the Reformation and Renaissance centuries later.

Last, but not least, there were the friars at their lowly but most useful work, raising the poor and helpless, reproving cruelty and slavery, breaking down class-pride, spreading new knowledge and better ways among the meanest of the land.

The English Constitution of the thirteenth century.

2. The form of government which was set in working order by Henry II. lasted long, as it was not only well fitted for the wants of his day, but could easily be suited by slight changes to the shifting needs of later times. Edward I. revised it, and the statesmen of Edward III. made new use of it in the Good Parliament, but its main features remain even in our own times. The active power was in the hands of the king and his Council, and was carried out by ministers, officers, and judges chosen by the Crown. What the courts and boards were which made up the central administration may be best seen from Tables I., II., III. The great struggle of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in England was not the old one, whether the king was to rule at his will-for, since the Charters, all were agreed that "the Law was above the King"-but whether the Council, ministers, and officers were to be appointed by the Crown or by Parliament. In the end the king kept the right of naming them, but that they owed an account to Parliament as well as to the Law for all they did was clearly acknowledged; and kings found it best for themselves to dismiss unpopular ministers. The office of Grand Justiciar, the holder of which had been Prime Minister, President of the Council, and Chief Judge in one, was swept away after the barons' war in Henry III.'s later days, as the king would not have a nominee of the barons put in such a place of power, and the barons would not take any man the king might choose. The duties of the office were therefore shared out among the Treasurer, Chancellor, and the chief judges of the three Common Law Courts (as will be seen in Table II.)

The Great Council of the Realm, during the reign of John by the separate summons of knights of the shire (see Great Charter), and under Henry III. by the summons of burgesses, grew from a gathering of nobles and crown-tenants into a regularly-called representative assembly fully entitled to speak for the whole nation. The old belief that what touches all should be treated of by all" was held firmly by

the Elish statesmen of the day, and it only remained to be seen how far the control of taxation should lie with the nation, and this was in the days of Edward I. and Edward III. settled in favour of the Parliament.

Local government in the shires was carried on by the shire-moots and hundred-moots under the eye of the sheriff and hundred-elders. These were controlled in matters of justice by the Royal Judges, who went regular circuits through each county to hold courts of assize. In matters of revenue the sheriff was helped by coroners and escheators (officers chosen in the shire-moot to look after the king's rights over felons' land and the like), and had to give his account and pay his dues to the Exchequer Court twice a year. In matters of police and militia the new decrees as to the fyrd (see p. 33), the making of high constables of the counties, and the heavy fines of the king's judges had all bettered matters much. The sheriff was still the highest officer in the county, but he was chosen by the freeholders of the county (till Edward II.'s reign), and so carefully looked after that his means of misusing his power were slight, and the chief complaints from the counties now refer rather to the harshness or bribery of the royal officers and judges, and show little illwill to the sheriff or his officers.

An example of a criminal trial in Henry III.'s time will show best how like and how unlike the law system followed was to that of our own time. A man supposed to have committed a murder is taken by the village watchman and handed over to the sheriff for safe keeping till the king's judges come round and the assize courts are held. At a shire-moot then held, the grand jury having heard the proofs against the prisoner present him as guilty. He is now taken into the assize court before the king's judge and a sworn petty [small] jury of twelve of his neighbours (named by four knights chosen in the shire-moot for this duty); but if he pleads not guilty [claims to be innocent] after the indictment [accusation] is read to him, the jury, who are supposed to have personal knowledge of the matter, settle whether he is guiltless or not; if they give a verdict against him the judge gives sentence of death according to law, and this is shortly carried out; if, on the other hand, the jury hold him quit of the charge, he is set free. Witnesses were not often called on either side; the prisoner had to defend himself. The goods and lands of convict felons (persons found guilty of bad crimes) were forfeited to the Crown, hence prisoners, fearing lest their families should suffer, would sometimes

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