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] of England and France, ending at the twentieth of Henry VII., 1504. It is one of the most valuable works of the time, written in English, and with a great air of truth. Besides these, John Harding also wrote a chronicle. But the chief writers of this age are not our own, but three Frenchmen—Froissart, Comines, and Monstrellet—who wrote with great life and spirit, and give us a better account of our own affairs than all our own writers put together.

Amongst the professors of law, by far the two most distinguished were Sir Thomas Littelton and Sir John Fortescue. Sir Thomas Littelton, one of the judges of the Court of Common Pleas, is remembered for his work on the land tenures of England, which for ages remained an authority on that subject. We particularly mentioned Sir John Fortescue, lord high chancellor, for his faithful attachment to Margaret of Anjou in her exile, and for his famous work, "De Laudibus Legum Anglicæ," on which a writer in the "Biographia Britannica" has pronounced this eulogium:—"Take it altogether, and it will appear to be a work which affords as full evidence of the learning, wisdom, uprightness, public spirit, and loyal gratitude of its author, as in our own or any modern language."

James I. of Scotland was, perhaps, the most accomplished scholar and real genius of his age; but we shall speak of him when we notice the poetry of this century. Nor must we omit two other men, though they have already figured in the general history of the times—Tiptoft, the Earl of Worcester, and the Earl of Rivers. John Tiptoft was a fellow-student of John Rous of Warwick, at Oxford. He became lord high treasurer of England under Henry VI. During the troubles of the kingdom, and the depression of tho Lancastrian party, he went to Italy, and studied at Padua, under the most famous masters there—Carbo, Guarini, and Phrea. Previous to this he had visited the Holy Land. On the elevation of Edward IV. he returned home, submitted to him, and was made successively treasurer, Lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and Constable of England. In 1470, when Edward IV. was again obliged to abandon the kingdom, Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, was seized in the top of a tree at Weybridge, brought to London, and executed. He had acquired the reputation, whether justly or not, for great severity and even cruelty in the wars; but he was a great collector of books, which, to the value of 500 marks, he gave to the University library at Oxford. He made an oration before the Pope and cardinals, which was very famous in his time, and translated the orations of Publius Cornelius and Caius Flaminius, as well as the De Amicitia and De Senectute of Cicero.

Anthony Wydville, Earl of Rivers, the great patron of Caxton, and the mirror of chivalry of his time, wrote Ballads on the Seven Deadly Sins, and translated the Wise Sayings or Dictes of the Philosophers, the Proverbs of Christine of Pisa, and a work called Cordyale. He was beheaded at Pontefract by Richard III., and Rous of Warwick has preserved some verses which he is said to have composed in that prison a little before his death, which breathe a noble spirit of resignation to his fate. It has been thought a singular fact that the most illustrious characters of the age, the authors or the patrons of its literature, should all have suffered a violent death: Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, James I. of Scotland, the Earls of Worcester and Rivers. But where is the wonder when almost every prince and noble of those times fell amid the ever-fluctuating billows of civil carnage?



On everything which related to agriculture, gardening, and rural economy in general, the perpetual wars had a most depressing and deteriorating effect. The labourers were continually summoned from the fields to supply the waste of war, either by the king or by their own lords; and such was the destruction of this useful class of men, that labour grew deficient, and proportionately high in price. To remedy this, the rulers had recourse to their usual methods—of which no experience seems to have taught them the futility—that of issuing enactments to keep down labour to a certain price. When this did not avail they passed a law that no one who had been employed at the plough or other husbandry work till he was twelve years of age, should be allowed to follow any other calling; and that no man who had less than twenty shillings a year, equal to £10 at present, should put his sons apprentice to any other trade, but should bring them all up to husbandry.

These laws were enforced by severe penalties; but they could not all at once restore the slaughtered population, and the great landed proprietors, whether barons, prelates, abbots, knights, or gentlemen, were obliged to enclose large tracts of land round their castles, and allow them