him set or let, upon pain of forfeiture for every CH. 1. week that any person shall do the contrary to the tenor and true meaning hereof, twenty shillings.'

beings

A provision then follows, limiting weavers living in towns to two looms-the plain intention being to prevent the cloth manufacture from falling into the power of large capitalists employing 'hands;' and to enable as many persons as possible to earn all in their own homes their own separate independent living. I suppose that the parliament was aware that by pursuing this policy the cost of production was something increased; that cloth was thus made dearer than it would have been if trade had been left to follow its own course. It considered, however, that the loss was compensated to the nation by retaining its people in the condition not of 'hands,' but of Human men; by rendering them independent of masters, not to be who only sought to make their own advantage at treated as the expense of labour; and enabling them to continue to maintain themselves in manly freedom. The weak point of all such provisions did not lie, Inherent I think, in the economic aspect of them, but in a far deeper difficulty. The details of trade legislation, it is obvious, could only be determined by persons professionally conversant with those details; and the indispensable condition of success with such legislation is, that it be conducted under the highest sense of the obligations of honesty. No laws are of any service which are above the No system working level of public morality; and the deeper worked they are carried down into life, the larger become which is the opportunities of evasion. That the system

'hands.'

weakness of the system of inter

ference.

can be

above the level of

common

morality.

CH. 1. succeeded for centuries is evident from the organization of the companies remaining so long in its vitality; but the efficiency of this organization for the maintenance of fair dealing could exist only so long as the companies themselves-their wardens and their other officials, who alone, quisque in suá arte, were competent to judge what was right and what was wrong-could be trusted, at the same time being interested parties, to give a disinterested judgment. The largeness of the power inevitably committed to the councils was at once a temptation and an opportunity to abuse those powers; and slowly through the statute book we find the traces of the poison as it crept in and in. Already in the 24th of Henry VIII., we meet with complaints in the leather trade of the frauFrauds of dulent conduct of the searchers, whose duty was

searchers.

to affix their seal upon leather ascertained to be sound, before it was exposed for sale, 'which mark or print, for corruption and lucre, is commonly set and put by such as take upon them the search and sealing, as well upon leather insufficiently tanned, as upon leather well tanned, to the great deceit Oppression of the buyers thereof.' About the same time, the tices. 'craft wardens' of the various fellowships, 'out of

of appren

sinister mind and purpose,' were levying excessive fees on the admission of apprentices; and when parliament interfered to bring them to order, they compassed and practised by cautill and subtle means to delude the good and wholesome statutes passed for remedy.'* The old proverb, Quis

** 22 Hen. VIII. cap. 4; 28 Hen. VIII. cap. 5.

custodiat custodes, had begun to verify itself, and CH. г. the symptom was a fatal one. These evils, for

fall of trad

ing virtue.

the first half of the century, remained within compass; but as we pass on we find them increasing steadily. In the 7th and the 8th of Elizabeth, Decline and there are indications of the truck system; and towards her later years, the multiplying statutes and growing complaints and difficulties show plainly that the companies had lost their healthy vitality, and, with other relics of feudalism, were fast taking themselves away. There were no longer tradesmen to be found in sufficient numbers who were possessed of the necessary probity; and it is impossible not to connect such a phenomenon with the deep melancholy which in those years settled down on Elizabeth herself.

For, indeed, a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and direction of which even still is hidden from us, a change from era to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up; old things were passing away, and the faith and the life of ten centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a small atom in the awful vastness

CH. I. of the universe. In the fabric of habit in which they had so laboriously built for themselves, mankind were to remain no longer.

Purpose of

this book.

And now it is all gone-like an unsubstantial pageant faded; and between us and the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the aisles of the cathedral, only as we gaze upon their silent figures sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of what these men were when they were alive; and perhaps in the sound of church bells, that peculiar creation of mediaval age, which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world.

The transition out of this old state is what in this book I have undertaken to relate. As yet there were uneasy workings below the surface; but the crust was unbroken, and the nation remained outwardly unchanged as it had been for centuries. I have still some few features to add to my description.

Nothing, I think, proves more surely the mutual confidence which held together the government and the people, than the fact that all Every Eng-classes were armed. Every man, as I have already lishman a said, was a soldier; and every man was ready

trained

soldier.

equipped at all times with the arms which corresponded to his rank. By the great statute of Winchester,* which was repeated and expanded

*Statut. Winton. 13 Edw. I. cap. 6.

CH. I.

Statute of

ter.

on many occasions in the after reigns, it was enacted, 'That every man have harness in his house to keep the peace after the antient assise-that is Winchesto say, every man between fifteen years of age and sixty years shall be assessed and sworn to armour according to the quantity of his lands and goods —that is, to wit, for fifteen pounds lands and forty marks goods, a hauberke, a helmet of iron, a sword, a dagger, and a horse. For ten pounds of lands and twenty marks goods, a hauberke, a helmet, a sword, and a dagger. For five pounds lands, a doublet, a helmet of iron, a sword, and a dagger. For forty shillings lands, a sword, a bow and arrows, and a dagger. And all others that shall have bows and arrows. may Review of armour shall be made every year two times, by two constables for every hundred and franchise thereunto appointed; and the constables shall present, to justices assigned for that purpose, such defaults as they do find.'

archery en

statute.

As the archery was more developed, and the Practice in bow became the peculiar weapon of the Eng- joined by lish, regular practice was ordered, and shooting became at once the drill and the amusement of the people. Every hamlet had its pair of butts; and on Sundays and holidays* all able-bodied men were required to appear in the field, to employ their leisure hours 'as valyant Englishmen ought to do,' 'utterly leaving the play at the bowls, quoits, dice, kails, and other unthrifty games;' magistrates, mayors, and bailiffs being