Brief as was the period during which he was | into Kent, Richard invited the humblest of his permitted to rectify the abuses and meet the people, who had been unlawfully wronged, to exigencies of those troubled times, he not only make his petiton "to his highness; and he shall revived the substance of many obsolete Saxon be heard, and without delay have such conlaws in all their original purity, but he in- venient remedy as shall accord with the laws." stituted fresh laws, based on such solid ground, This document concludes with the words,and framed with such legislative wisdom and "His grace is utterly purposed that all his true ability, that to this day many of the Statutes subjects shall live in rest and quiet, and of Richard III. remain in full force, and justify peaceably enjoy their lands and goods according the encomiums which even his enemies have to the laws:" As a means of checking the unpassed upon them. "In no king's reign," states just verdicts which had of late years prevailed, Baker, the chronicler of the English monarchs, bringing the courts of law into contempt, and "were better laws made than in the reign of frustrating the benefits designed by trial by this man:" "he took the ways of being a good jury, a blow was struck at the root of the evil king, if he had come to be king by ways that by an enactment that no individual but such as had been good." Even Lord Bacon, the possessed freehold property to the amount of biographer of his rival and successor, bears forty shillings a year should be deemed eligible testimony to "his politic and wholesome laws;" to be chosen a juror; and power was granted an admission of no small importance, as to every justice of the peace to bail such emanating from the highest legal authority in persons as were arrested for felony on suspicion. the realm, and from one of the most learned alone. The most beneficial of his enactments, of the lord chancellors of England; notwith- and that which afforded the greatest relief to standing which, so firmly established was the the community at large, was a law prohibiting belief in this sovereign's mal-practices that the seizure of property belonging to persons Bacon felt himself obliged to modify (in ac-imprisoned on a charge of felony before concordance with the prejudice of the age) the statement which his own sense of justice had drawn forth, by adding that "these laws were interpreted to be but the brocage of a usurper, thereby to woo and to win the hearts of the people." "He was a good law-maker for the ease and solace of the common people," further testifies this profound philosopher and statesman; yet, in summing up the "virtues and merits" of King Richard, he could not forbear adding that "even those virtues themselves were conceived to be feigned;" so hard is it to banish early impressions, so difficult to remove prejudices which have been long and steadily rooted in the minds even of the most discerning and erudite judges. Richard III. merited more generous treatment from his subjects, for amidst the tormoils and vexations, the mortifications and disappointments, which fell so thickly and so heavily upon him, his attention was unceasingly directed to one point, that of emancipating the great body of the people from the many oppressions under which they had so long and so painfully laboured, and diffusing a nobler and better spirit among all ranks, by the soundness of his edicts, and the high principles of justice on which they were based. "The king's highness is fully determined to an administration of justice to be had throughout his realm, and to reform and punish all extortion and oppression," were the words of the proclamation in which, during a brief progress

viction, a measure which was loudly called for in consequence of the opening which a contrary usage had long afforded to the powerful to oppress the poor, and by false indictment to set at defiance all principles of justice and humanity. Admirable laws were framed for the better regulation of the temporary courts held during fairs; courts, in themselves insignificant, but which, as instituted to do justice to buyers and sellers, and summarily to redress disorders committed during these chartered meetings, were invested with considerable powers, arising from the importance then attached to those periodical marts, which were founded as the only medium of bartering with the merchants of other lands, and diffusing throughout the kingdom the various manufactures and staple commodities of its more distant provinces. Great protection was afforded under King Richard to commerce and trade, and during the first twenty months of his reign the nation extended its commerce towards the North Pole as far as Iceland, and was peaceably trafficking with Denmark, Germany, Flanders, and the Netherlands, as also with those rich republics in the South of Europe, Genoa, and Venice, which were then in the zenith of their prosperity. The attention paid to the maritime interests of the country is abundantly shown by edicts tending to the safety and protection of those whose enterprise led them to brave the perils inseparable in those early days from long and distant voyages; while