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Rh defend and warn you to my power. So help me God and all his saints.'

Again, in the distribution of the produce of land, men dealt fairly and justly with each other; and in the material condition of the bulk of the people there is a fair evidence that the system worked efficiently and well. It worked well for the support of a sturdy high-hearted race, sound in body and fierce in spirit, and furnished with thews and sinews which, under the stimulus of those 'great shins of beef,' their common diet, were the wonder of the age. 'What comyn folke in all this world,' says a state paper in 1515, 'may compare with the comyns of England in riches, freedom, liberty, welfare, and all prosperity? What comyn folke is so mighty, so strong in the felde, as the comyns of England?' The relative numbers of the French and English armies which fought at Cressy and Agincourt