on the people at the outset of his usurpation. But he could not depress the people for his pleasure, as he had raised them for his gain. He could not grant such a charter as this, and resume it as a waste piece of parchment. The provisions of which men had lost the memory, and were thought to have lost the record, reappeared at the time of vital need; and, the theft of a people's liberties confessed, the prince into whose violent keeping they had fallen was made subject to a sharp responsibility. In truth, we read history as imperfectly as we write it. Beneath that surface

to which we too commonly suffer ourselves to be restricted by the obscurity of imperfect records, there lies rich material to be yet brought to light, by patient thought and sound reflection. Conceding to the early chroniclers their particular cases of oppression, and subjection, and intolerable wrong,-let us well assure ourselves that these things will not be borne for any length of time by an entire and numerous people. If ever rulers might have hoped to measure their rights and immunities by the length and temper of their swords, it should have been these early Norman princes: yet at every turn in their story, at every slight and varying casualty in their chequered fortunes, they owe their safety to the flinging down their spoil. A something, which under various names still seems to represent The People, is still and ever upon their track ; and thus, over even our rudest and most unprofitable history, there lies at least the shadow of that substance which fills our later and nobler annals.

Henry added to his Charter (Lord Lyttelton had made close inquiry into it, I may add, and pronounced it 'more advantageous to liberty than Magna Charta itself ') a kind of apology for his retention of the royal forest and the fierce forest laws. He kept them, he said, under guidance of the advice and with the consent of his barons: but he threw in, by way of additional boon, a valuable local charter for London, in which, among other privileges, was the liberty to hunt in Middlesex and Surrey. Nor did he hesitate to curtail, for public and politic considerations, privileges and enjoyments of his own. He had himself counted first among the revellers at the court of Rufus. The worst effoeminati' of them all had been outstripped by Henry, in the peak of his shoes, and the length of his hair; and tunic had never deeper sleeves than his, nor mantle a longer train. But grave alterations might now be observed. He put away from him the various mistresses who had already borne him fifteen natural

children, and announced to his prelates and barons that he thought it right to marry.

Let the Saxon chronicler describe his popular choice. It was iaud, daughter of Malcolm, King of Scots, and of Margaret, the good Queen, the relative of King Edward, and of the right kingly heir of England;' and it was plainly the necessity to fortify his throne and his succession, which had turned the Norman's thoughts to this Saxon princess, the niece of the last legitimate heir to the native monarchy. 'Oh, most noble and 'fair among women, said her Saxon counsellors, when she would have declined the suit of Henry, if thou wilt, thou canst restore the ancient honour of England, and be a pledge of reconciliation and friendship; but if thou art obstinate in this refusal, the enmity between the two races will be everlasting, and the shedding of human blood know no end.' She yielded.

But other objections rose with the surrender of hers. Many a Norman captain had wistfully looked to this fair prize; already had her hand been solicited by Alan of Richmond and William Warrenne of Surrey; and what would have strengthened the baronage against the throne, was now to help the king to independence of the barons. They took objection through the church. The princess, they said, had worn the veil, and by the ecclesiastical canons was no longer at liberty to marry. A synod of prelates was called, and the case, after solemn argument, decided in favour of Henry, by the precedent of a former decision by Lanfranc. The princess had occasionally worn the veil, and frequented nuns' society; but always in strict obedience to her aunt the abbess of Wilton, never but against her own desire, and solely for protection of her chastity from the possibility of Norman outrage. Anselm reached England in time for the synod; explained the grounds of its judgment to several assemblages in the city; and afterwards married the Saxon to the Norman, amidst much popular rejoicing.

The marriage day was on the 11th of November, 1100; and its festive shouts might have mingled with the more elevated cries of welcome and enthusiasm, which just now rang throughout the continent on the return of celebrated crusaders. The First Crusade, begun three years before, had ended with the fall of Jerusalem, and the election of Godfrey of Bouillon to the crown of the Holy City.

It was a memorable incident in history, that First Crusade; and though the scorn and laughter of Rufus had for a time checked it's

growth in England, it imperceptibly won its way to recognition, and brought with it mighty influences for evil and for good. Where, indeed, in any such series of events or institutions as the it engendered, however rude their origin or fierce the tempo of their exercise, may we not with diligent search find elements of good, and lessons applicable to better times? Voltaire's clear intellect had assuredly not penetrated all the truth, when he called the crusaders cut-throat vagabonds, animated but by the hope of plunder and the love of blood. What there was of merit in the feudal institutions, had here at any rate taken a higher and more spiritual character; and the fantastical chivalric exaggerations which were destined to spring out of it, abated the ferocity and lessened the injustice of mere military feudalism. A troubadour of the century now begun, called Jerusalem a fief of Jesus Christ; and in the expression may be traced the origin of the crusader's sense of his bond and his vassalage to the Son of God. To his fancy, he was now firmly establishing a reciprocity of Obedience and Protection between himself and heaven. Nor, judging him by the temper and resources of his time, will it be just to call this a fancy altogether vain. The fine-hearted old preacher may justly feel that to connect any special locality with religion is to lower it; and may tell us that the angel sent the women away from looking into the sepulchre, with the divine words He is risen, He is not here. But with even all her later advantages from progress and civilisation, has Religion yet shown the entirely gracious heart to which all places are alike Jerusalem? Has she yet declared, that wherever the spirit of Christ abides, God may as well and as acceptably be worshipped? And by her tender and mild example, may the fierce old crusader indeed stand finally rebuked?

He did not begin the offensive, it should in fairness be added. The struggle, which took the later form of a lust of conquest, had begun in a defensive effort to have free passage to the Holy Sepulchre. It was a right the Arabs had guaranteed to Europe, for the good Haroun Al Raschid had even forwarded to Charlemagne the keys of the Saviour's tomb. But with the conquest and dynasty of the Turks there began a general plunder of the caravans of pilgrims; and those Armies of the Lord, as they were called, were everywhere scattered and overthrown. Then at last broke forth the wild enthusiasm of the first crusade, and Peter the Hermit recited insults offered to the Saviour till the frantic shouts

of Diex le Volt drafted off more terrible Armies to His succour. 'Go with confidence to attack the enemies of God! The cause of your labours will be charity; the wages of charity will be the 'favour of God; the favour of God is followed by eternal life. Go, and employ in noble warfare that valour and sagacity which you waste in civil broils. Do you fear death? Death hastens the entry of the good into their country. Death hinders the ungodly from adding to his wickedness!"

Marvellous was the wide response: not limited to the religious, the knightly, or the far-famed warrior. The ungodly and the good answered alike; and the robber and murderer, hand in hand with the saint and eremite, displayed the red cross upon his shoulder. So the debtor took acquittance of his debts, and the servant of his services. The thief escaped the gallows by the way of the cross; the adulterer did penance in his armour; and the devil's Black Guard, to use the quaint expression of Fuller, became God's soldiers.

Nor were these the only aids to the higher motive of Enthusiasm. There was the active impulse of a thirst for change. Where the monk failed of zeal, there was weariness of the monotony of his cloister; where the peasant could but reckon on wretchedness and death, there was at least the comfort to die in the service of the Lord. Wives sent their husbands from them, or travelled with their children on the way; and whole troops would set forth from towns and villages, ignorant of the very whereabout of Palestine, or through what countries they should reach it! Most affecting are the records of such adventure, though little noted in the songs of troubadours, or beside the dazzling achievements of knights. Since the Turks seized Asia Minor, the pilgrims had found their way by sea, and landtracks had fallen into oblivion: yet along the French frontier might be seen whole families setting forth upon the hopeless yet hopeful journey, in their slow carts with iron-shod oxen, and with children's eager cries at every town or fortress-Is THAT Jerusalem?

Such a spirit could not be called forth without enduring results of some kind; and large evil, doubtless, dashed and obscured the good. Millions of lives were sacrificed; the temporal power and ecclesiastical tyranny of the Popedom was enormously increased; and religious wars and persecutions followed in a frightful train. But, on the whole, there was a balance of advantage.

The union of different countries in a common object had a tendency to dissipate many narrow hindrances to a common civilisation; the intercourse of eastern and western nations gradually introduced larger and more humane views into religion, as well as into government; by the pecuniary claims on the feudal chiefs money became more widely extended, and there was gradual, but sure encroachment, on the dominion of feudalism; the enrichment of the ports of Italy by large and sudden avenues to trade became a most important element in the advance to a higher and more refined system of society; and through the wandering paths of Troubadour or Dominican, were sown the seeds of the Literature of nations.

So much digression here will be forgiven me, when these influare seen in silent, but continuous action, through the subsequent course of this History.

ences

Robert of Normandy's sluggish and careless nature had been stirred to temporary greatness in the wars of this First Crusade. He had done important service at Nice, Dorylæum, and Antioch; and shared with Godfrey the praise of the most daring prowess at the assault of Jerusalem. For, while Godfrey had divided the body of a Turk from the shoulder to the opposite haunch with one stroke of his sword, a single descent of Robert's falchion was seen to cleave the head and armour of an infidel adversary from the brain to the breast. But, on his return to Europe at the close of the Crusade, his easy and indolent temper also returned. Love and idleness engaged him, while the crown which priority of birth and the stipulation of treaties declared to be his, was seized by his youger brother; and, though he declared he was but postponing his claim to his English throne, and meant one day to enforce it, Ralf Flambard, escaping from England, found him occupied with nothing but the most joyous revelries; showing off a newly-married Italian wife to his Norman subjects, and spending her large fortune in pageants and festivity. But the unpopular minister of Rufus had come to justify his name, and with devouring torch set the kingdom again into a blaze. Thrown into the

Tower by Henry, he had escaped by means of a rope, sent to him in a pitcher of wine; and at his wily counsel on the state of England and the divisions of the Norman barons, Robert suddenly unfurled his standard and summoned his vassals.

The details of the strife which followed do not come within the province of this history. The principal barons who declared for