Church.

gained.

Notwithstanding the fpiritual defpotifm which What was the Church would fain have established, we can- due to the not forget what the Church in those rude times represented and embodied; and for the utter difcomfiture and overthrow of which, any abfolute fupremacy of the State and the fword would have been but a poor compenfation. What it was well that the King should retain, What he did not lofe; and though neither did Henry II. Becket entirely forfeit what his arrogance too rafhly put in peril, fubftantially the victory remained with Henry. Afferting the neceffary rights of temporal princes, and upholding the independent vigour of civil government, he defended and maintained, in effect, religious liberty and equal laws; and the foil was not unprepared to receive that wholesome feed, even fo early as the reign of the first Plantagenet.

The most diftinguifhed affociate of Henry Ranulf de in his civil labours was the famous Ranulf de Glanvile, Tractatus

Glanvile, in whofe name is written the most de Legibus ancient and memorable treatise of the laws and et Confuetudinibus

customs of England; and the greatest act they Regni jointly performed was to give authority, uni- Anglia. verfality, and settled form and circumstance, to a practice which was only very imperfectly introduced in the time of Henry Beauclerc, and had been, fince then, carried out ftill lefs perfectly. In a Great Council at Northampton, 1176. Henry formally divided the kingdom into fix Appointdistricts, to each of which he affigned three itine-ment of rant judges, and from that time circuits have for judges. never ceased in England: carrying gradually with them (in confequence of other improvements introduced by this great and fagacious

circuits

Richard I

1189.

prince) the general adoption of juries, an elevation of the character of the judges, and other fettled advantages in jurifprudence as well as in legal administration, felt to this hour. The reign of the fecond of the Plantagenet family fupplies to our conftitutional hiftorian, in the fentence passed on the Chancellor of the abfent King by the convention of barons, the earlieft authority on record for the responsibility of Minifters to Parliament. The incident, however, important as it is, feems rather to take its place with others in the fame reign, New rela- which mark the fpringing up of a new conditions be- tion of relations between the baronage and throne and the throne. In the obftinate abfence of Cœurbarons. de-Lion on his hair-brained enterprises, the inaptitude and imbecility of his brother had thrown all the real duties of government into the hands of a council of barons; these again Independ- were opposed by men of their own clafs, as well ent oppo- for felf-intereft as on general and independent

tween

fition to

Crown.

grounds; and the result of a series of quarrels thus conducted between equals, as it were, in station, between forces to a great degree independent of each other-the Crown ftriving to maintain itself on the one hand, but no longer with the preftige of power it had received from the stronger kings; the Ariftocracy advancing claims on the other, no longer overborne or overawed by the present pressure of the throne Beginning led to what, in modern phrafe, might be of itrug- called a fyftem of unfcrupulous party ftruggle, in which royalty loft the exclufive pofition it had been the great aim of the Conqueror's family to fecure to it, and became an unguarded

gles of

party.

object of attack, thereafter, to whatever hoftile confederacy might be formed against it.

What there was of evil as well as of good in the contest became ftrongly manifest in the two fucceeding reigns.

the fuc

French

In the ftrict order of hereditary fucceffion Arthur's the crown, which on Richard's death was con- claim to ferred on John, would have fallen to Arthur, ceffion : the orphan of John's elder brother. But though the fubfequent misfortunes and forrowful death of this young prince largely excited fympathy in England, there was never any formidable stand attempted, here, on the ground of his right to the throne. The battle was fought fought in the foreign provinces. In England, only in while fome might have thought his hereditary provinces. claim fuperior to his uncle's, there was hardly a man of influence who would at this period have drawn the fword for him, on any fuch principle as that the crown of England was heritable property. The genius of the country had been The English repugnant to any fuch notion. The Anglo- Crown not Saxon fovereignty was elective; that people heritable never fanctioning a custom by which the then property. perfonal and most arduous duties of fovereignty, both in peace and war, might pass of right to an infant or imbecile prince; and to the strength Soveof this feeling in the country of their conqueft, reignty the Normans heretofore had been obliged to yield. At each fucceffive coronation following the defeat of Harold, including that of the Conqueror, the form of deferring to the peo- Normans ple's choice had been religiously adhered to; Saxon nay, of the five Norman kings on whom the principle. English crown had now defcended, four had

elective.

defer to

Corona

tion of

John.

1199.

been constrained to reft their strongest title on that popular choice or recognition: but its moft decifive confirmation was referved for the coronation of John. Till after the ceremony, his right was in no particular admitted. He was earl, until he affumed the ducal coronet; and he was duke, until the Great Council, fpeaking through the primate, invested him at Westminster with the English crown, accompanying it with the emphatic declaration that it was the nation's gift, and not the property of any particular perfon. Speed, with his patient industry and narrow vifion, calls this latter condition, "a fecond feed-plot of trea"fons;" but for the most part it has happened, Treafons throughout our English hiftory, that treafons the feed- have been the fecond feed-plot of liberty. plot of Liberty. Other hiftorical critics imagine John's coronation to have been a mere arrangement of conditional fealty specially reftricted to him; the fole temptation to elect him, in preference to his nephew, being the confideration that lefs was to be looked for in the way of civil restitution from a legitimate monarch, than from one who held by elective tenure. But these reafoners overlook, not only the fact that the Election? law of fucceffion as between a living brother and a dead brother's child was by no means fettled at this time, but that, as has just been pointed out, the choice of a monarch on grounds exclusively hereditary would have been Why John the exception and not the rule. If anything preferred beyond the objection to entrusting fovereignty to Arthur. to a child and a woman, induced the preference of John, it very probably was fome anticipation.

Legiti

macy or

of a poffible and not diftant ftruggle between the throne and its feudal dependencies, and the sense of how much the latter would be ftrengthened by an incompetent and feeble King. For, how ftood the government of England, when placed in John's keeping?

II.'s

and arif

tocracy in

The balance of power between the various Henry grades of feudal fociety, as in a great degree policy uneftablished by the difcreet and powerful policy fettled by of Henry the Second, had been wholly relaxed his fons." and unfettled by the lawless administration in Coeur-de-Lion's abfence. The powers which Henry centered in the throne for good purposes, were prostituted to evil by both his fons. The weakness which an able king, for wife and prudent purposes, had fought to introduce into the aristocratic element of the kingdom, had fince been used for the fuppreffion of all restraint upon monarchical tyranny. If fuch a Monarchy fovereign as Henry could have continued to reign, until a forced repreffion of the baronial conflict. feuds might have permitted a gradual and free reaction of the popular on the kingly power, the establishment of rational liberty would have been haftened by at least two centuries. But even as it was, there ftood the People between the two oppofing forces; alternately recognised in the neceffities of each, and by both made conscious of their power. In the Church questions, and People that of refiftance to invafion, which arofe in their fide the earlier portion of the reign, they took part alterwith John; in the queftions of civil freedom nately. which immortalifed its clofe, they joined the grand confederacy of his enemies. Of the character of this prince it is needless to speak.

choose