Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/58

44 form of law. Torture was also applied by him when he wished to have some evidence according to his own purpose. The famous rack in the Tower was invented by the Duke of Exeter when he was high constable, and thence was called "the Duke of Exeter's daughter."

But the "Paston Letters," which have let a flood of light in upon the social condition of the fifteenth century, show us that where great men desired to have their own will, they still occasionally passed entirely by all the forms and courts of law, and endeavoured to seize with the strong hand the property of their neighbours. These letters range over sixty years of the century, proceeding to its close. They reveal to us various modes by which the strong man was enabled to turn the scale against the weak one at law; but the most extraordinary relation concerning the family itself is one which occupies more than a volume, and details the actual war made upon them by the Duke of Norfolk. The celebrated general Sir John Fastolf left Sir John Paston the estate of Caistor, in 1459; but the Duke of Norfolk came forward and declared that Sir John Fastolf had given him the estate in his lifetime. Had he had a proper deed of gift, no doubt he would have produced it, and soon settled the matter in a court of law; but, instead of this, he marched out and laid regular siege to the place. For ten years this contest was carried on—each brought forward his tenants, and attacked and defended the place by cannon and hand-guns, and by every art and stratagem of war. By this time the duke had exhausted all the resources of his enemy. The gunpowder and the provisions for the garrison failed, and the place was surrendered. It was only recovered, after the death of the duke, by an appeal to the king in council.

The royal prerogative, especially as it regarded the raising of money, was much more limited in this century than it was in the former one. We hear no more of arbitrary subsidies imposed by the king's council. No legitimate tax could be imposed without the consent of Parliament. The king, indeed, could impress soldiers and sailors for his service, and even musicians, goldsmiths, embroiderers, and artificers of all kinds, but he could not touch their money, except by legislative means. We hear, moreover, far less of the nuisance of purveyance. That had been retained solely to supply the royal household, and the officers were bound to make prompt payment for whatever was taken. Hence the kings of this period were often reduced to great straits. We shall find them, when we come to speak of the coinage, debasing that, being slow to learn that a coin of less value can only purchase less goods.

The total revenue of Henry V. appears to have been only £55,754. After paying his civil and military expenses, his salaries to the collectors of taxes and customs, and his pensions to dukes, earls, knights, &c., the sole remainder was only £3,507. Out of this he had to defray the charges of his household, his wardrobe, his embassies, and various other matters, while his household alone required £20,000, or more than six times the amount. We cease, therefore, to wonder at the debts which he left to his son, after all his wars, which amounted to £372,000, or nearly £4,000,000 of our money.

Parliament having well secured the power of granting or withholding supplies, the monarchs were compelled to resort to what they call benefices, or free gifts. They saw that the merchants had become very wealthy, and they took this means of easing them of a part of their substance. It argues a strange state of affairs, however, when a monarch could intimidate wealthy men into ruining themselves; for, according to the Act of Richard III. for abolishing this system, this was the effect. "Many worshipful men of this realm," says the preamble to that Act, "were compelled, by occasion of that benevolence, to break up their households, and live in great penury and wretchedness, their debts unpaid, their children unpreferred, and such memorials as they had ordained to be done for the wealth of their souls, were neutralized and annulled," &c. There must have been great compulsion of some kind, in extracting these free gifts, for men do not ruin themselves voluntarily, and the injustice of it must have been crying; for Edward IV., on his deathbed, was woefully troubled by the memory of it, and wished restitution to be made.

The power of the crown at this period was widely diffused by the number of valuable offices in its gift, which, Sir John Fortescue says, were more than a thousand, besides those in the gift of the Prince of Wales. Yet, notwithstanding this power, and the sanguinary scenes we have had to describe, compared with all other countries at that time, the Government in this appeared to be conducted on very liberal principles. Philip de Comines, the minister and historian of France, after enumerating the miseries and the exactions of the people of that country, of Italy, and Germany, Says, "In my opinion, of all the states of the world that I know, England is the country where the commonwealth is best governed, and the people least oppressed."

The Government of Scotland received some marked improvements during this century. When James I. returned from his long captivity in England, he found his kingdom overrun with abuses, and the common people in particular groaning under the oppressions of the nobles. He set about the work of reformation with a vigour which ended in his own death, after thirteen years of assiduous labour for the benefit of his subjects. One of the first mischiefs which he attacked was that of crowds of "thiggers and sorners," as they were called, spreading themselves over the country. These were the same class as the "sturdy rogues" of England—vagabonds who, capable of work, preferred to beg, and, what was worse, to menace and intimidate the country people into compliance with their demands. James ordered all such fellows between the ages of fourteen and seventy, who were abroad without badges, which were granted by the sheriffs to infirm or superannuated people, and who were called gaberlunzies, to be compelled to work, or to be branded on the cheek and driven from the country. The evil was too deeply rooted, however, to be eradicated in James's time, though he greatly diminished it.

The three estates of Parliament in Scotland had always met in one house. The first estate consisted of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, and a few other dignitaries of the church; the second of the dukes, earls, barons, and presbytery; the third of the commissioners of the boroughs. Of these, the borough commissioners were so few in comparison with the others—being only fourteen or fifteen—that they had a mere nominal influence.