CHAPTER V.

England in the Fourteenth Century.

1. It was in the fourteenth century that the order of life and society which we call medieval reached its height in England. The Church was richer than ever, the division of classes more marked, the trading and commercial guilds thriving as they had never yet. All the forms of mediaval art and literature seem to have come into full flower, and the law and constitution were certainly in as perfect a state as the circumstances and ideas of the day allowed.

English constitu

tion and finance

century.

Taking the constitution first, one is especially struck_by the growth and strength of Parliament. For in England in the fourteenth century the clergy in the fourteenth did not become stronger though they grew richer, the kings fell more and more under the sway of Parliament; while it was in and through Parliament that the younger branches of the royal family, who headed the opposition to the Crown, contrived to get their way. It was in this century that the English Parliament took the form to which it has ever after kept, and in this century that it gained great part of the powers and privileges which it has maintained to this day. It now first set forth plainly its own rights of free speech and self-rule, and insisted that the claims of Pope and Church, the regaly or prerogative of the king, and the rights of the subject should be clearly marked off by statute. It clinched the work of Archbishop Stephen and the Righteous Earl by not allowing a penny to be raised in taxes from Englishman or alien in England without its consent, and it gained complete control over the moneys it voted. It decided between peace and war, and fixed the lines within which the country should be ruled, upholding in a striking way its right to punish unrighteous ministers, and to set up or pull down the king himself "for default of lawful governance." Great changes took place in its own composition. 1. To begin with the Clergy. The lower clergy, that is, the dean, archdeacon, and proctor [representative] for the chapter [cathedral body] who came from each cathedral, and the two proctors who represented the beneficed clergy in each see, about 100 members in all, soon ceased to sit with the Knights and Burgesses. For after the Bull Clericis Laicos they did not like to join laymen in voting money out of Church goods and lands. So it came about

that the kings allowed the archbishops to gather the bishops, abbots, and lower clergy in two separate bodies, called the Convocations of York and Canterbury, which were not Houses of Parliament at all, though in them the clergy used to make rules for their own order, subject to royal approval and the Church law, and were wont to vote gifts of money to the king in due proportion to the taxes voted in Parliament by the laymen. For as long as the clergy paid their fair share neither the king nor the people cared whether they taxed themselves in Parliament or out of it, especially as the bishops and abbots, as of old, still sat with the Lords in Parliament. 2. The House of Lords now often appears as a court in which great officers impeached [accused] by the Commons of state-offences are tried, and as the place of appeal to which knotty cases of the common law could finally be brought and settled. There were from 150 to 100 Lords, the numbers tending to lessen, but the greater part being always spiritual peers. About the end of the century the number of the latter was fixed as 21 bishops and 27 abbots and priors. Dukes and earls were made by the king with consent of Parliament till Richard II. took to making all peers by patent [open] letters under his seal. Bishops were chosen by the chapters of their sees, at the king's recommendation, and with the Pope's goodwill; abbots and priors were chosen by their monks and confirmed by the king. 3. The House of Commons now began to take up a wellmarked line of its own. Sitting apart under their own Speaker, the Commons refused to join in the law-work of the Upper House (though they sometimes accused State criminals before it), and chiefly busied themselves with the nation's money matters; for the burden of the taxes fell chiefly upon them, and it was their interest to see that the money they voted was carefully gathered and thriftily spent. They also in their petitions begged the king to have various laws made to remedy the evils they noticed in the realm. The king and the Lords sometimes disagreed with these petitions, but if they agreed, the petition was granted and enrolled as a Statute or Act of Parliament. The Lower House was made up of about 300 members (37 counties returning 2 knights apiece; London and York each sending 4 citizens; the Cinque Ports with their 16 barons; and about 150 boroughs with 2 burgesses each). It was by keeping the strings of the purse that Parliament was able to hold its own against king and Pope. Luckily the ordinary royal income, The king's own, was barely enough to keep him in time of peace; and when he was at

war, as he often was, he must needs seek help from Parliament at last, though he often tried to avoid this by various devices, taxing strangers or the Jews (till they were driven out), borrowing money from foreign merchants (which answered well enough till the Lombard bankers were ruined and the Flemings refused to lend any more) or getting loans from rich folk. Parliament was wise enough only to give money on condition that the king should rule to please them or that he should set his seal to laws they wanted, and in this way the Parliaments quietly bought many rights by gold which the barons in the foregoing century had shed their blood to secure.

The following table will show the state of the regular

revenue on an average :

£50,000 old crown dues, etc.,

paid through Exchequer.

10,000 old customs.

5,000 feudal dues, escheats, coinage, etc.

£20,000 storing and keeping up

castles.

10,000 soldiers' pay.

15,000 court expenses.

5,000 royal stables.

5,000 travelling expenses. 10,000 varying expenses, alms,

etc.

£65,000 outgoings.

In a year of war there would be extra expenses, from £60,000 to 100,000, to be met by taxation, this would be supplied by some of the

The control of the Law was still in the king's hands, but as the Parliament called unjust judges to account, the courts were on the whole freer than they had been before from the royal caprices. The three Common-Law Courts, with their regular staffs, were full of work, and cases they would not touch were regularly heard and settled by the Chancellor or Keeper of the Privy Seal. The Church Courts had their own business, cases relating to wills, marriages, tithes, and religious offences, and were not allowed to meddle with the common law. The Royal Council and the Courts of the Royal Officers were forbidden to judge any man to lose life, limb, or land, which could only be done before a jury in the Common-Law Courts. The Justices of the Peace were rapidly replacing the manor courts and hundred courts, and. checked as they were by the

royal Justices of Assize, gave better and fairer law than the old courts, which were mostly in the hands of the stewards of the king or the great lords, who often abused their power. In most of the towns the power was passing into the hands of the great trade-guilds, who named the town councillors for the different wards, and with the aldermen chose the burgesses, mayor, and other officers. The big towns were one by one, after the old example of London, freed from the control of the sheriff of their county, and left to choose their own sheriffs as counties corporate.

2. In spite of pirates, evil seasons, famines, and plagues, English trade grew steadily during this century, Trade, prices, and latterly the strong companies of the Staple and wages in and Merchant Adventurers did much to forward the fourteenth commerce where single traders would have century. failed. The fish trade with Norway; the hide, hemp, bullion, and timber trade with the North Sea and Baltic ports; the wine and salt trade with Gascony; the wool trade with Flanders, all flourished, and we were now setting up a new and well-paying business, by beginning to make up our own wool, thus saving the risks of double carriage and getting a profit we had hitherto left to foreigners. Edward III. wisely encouraged Flemish wool-workers to settle in the eastern counties and teach their trade to the people, and in like manner he welcomed all foreign craftsmen who could teach English artisans any hitherto-unknown ways of work, so that English cloth, metal-work, pottery, and glass soon showed much improvement.

The great fairs of Weyhill, Stourbridge, Abingdon, and St. Giles (Winchester) were still the marts for the midland counties, as the great staple-towns by the sea were for the east, west, and south coasts. The many royal merchants (such as Michael at Poole, or de la Pole of Hull) who became founders of noble families during this century and the next, show the great prizes which were open to far-seeing and industrious traders :

"And still with worship [honour] think I on that sun

Of merchant-hood, Richard of Whittingdon;
That lodestar and that chief and chosen flower.
What hath by him our England of honour!
And what profit hath been of his richesse,
And yet doth daily last in worthiness!"

A slight debasement of the money, a bad policy borrowed from France, was more than made up for by Edward III.'s care for the coinage, for plenty of money was needed for the