Page:Seventeen lectures on the study of medieval and modern history and kindred subjects.djvu/230

 would have Hd his diminished head at the first expression of the opinion of a competent counsel or an authorised judge; we know how often that is done in these days in quarrels great and small. But I make no such claim for these ages; I only say that, when a man coveted his neighbour's vineyard, he went as it were to law for it, and did not simply take it by force. The Norman Conquest of England, I need hardly say, is scarcely a fair illustration. It is at least as much a viking invasion as a war waged according to the international law of the age; yet the pleas of bequest, the legacy of Edward the Confessor, the papal sanction, the oath of Harold, the legal election by the witenagemot of the humbled race, alike the inventions and the ceremonial of the succession, were a concession to a public sense of right. Take the other great wars; of England first: we cannot doubt that in all the quarrels arising from the Norman, Angevin, and Poictevin inheritances, the right of proprietary succession was on both sides distinctly recognised: the wars arose not on account of the mere wish of France to revindicate her alienated provinces, but on account of the disputed right to a feudal superiority, or the possession of a debateable frontier, or the division between two co-heiresses, or the existence of a custom of representation. When, as under Philip Augustus, the design of aggression was strong enough to take a more decided line, still it was on no false pretext that war was waged, and on no merely imaginary process that forfeiture Was decreed; the barons of Poictou legally impleaded John for his treatment of the Count of la Marche, the barons of Brittany legally arraigned him for the destruction of Arthur: as his feudal lord, Philip summoned him, and John, as a contumacious vassal, suffered judgment by default. In the execution of the sentence Philip had on his side, not only the popular hatred of his competitor, but the conscious recognition that legally John had lost his cause. Normandy and Anjou were practically undefended; Philip's victories were justified by the recognition of the countries which renounced their old rulers for sound and lawful reasons. There were no nonjuring bishops in Normandy and Anjou. It would not be difficult to show how the legal aspect