I do not know whether we should attribute part of this revolutionary concussion to the preaching of Wicliffe's disciples, or look upon both one and the other as phenomena belonging to that particular epoch in the progress of society. New principles, both as to civil rule and religion, broke suddenly upon the uneducated mind, to render it bold, presumptuous, and turbulent. But at least I make little doubt that the dislike of ecclesiastical power, which spread so rapidly among the people at this season, connected itself with a spirit of insubordination and an intolerance of political subjection. Both were nourished by the same teachers, the lower secular clergy; and however distinct we may think a religious reformation from a civil anarchy, there was a good deal common in the language by which the populace were inflamed to either one or the other. Even the scriptural moralities which were then exhibited, and which became the foundation of our theatre, afforded fuel to the spirit of sedition. The common original and common destination of mankind, with every other lesson of equality which religion supplies to humble or to console, were displayed with coarse and glaring features in these representations. The familiarity of such ideas has deadened their effects upon our minds; but when a rude peasant, surprisingly destitute of religious instruction during that corrupt age of the church, was led at once to these impressive truths, we cannot be astonished at the intoxication of mind they produced.[t]
Though I believe that, compared at least with the aristocracy of other countries, the English lords were guilty of very little cruelty or injustice, yet there were circumstances belonging to that period which might tempt them to deal more hardly than before with their peasantry. The fourteenth century was an age of greater magnificence than those which had preceded, in dress, in ceremonies, in buildings; foreign luxuries were known enough to excite an eager demand among the higher ranks, and yet so scarce as to yield inordinate prices; while the landholders were, on the other hand, impoverished by heavy and unceasing taxation. Hence it is probable that avarice, as commonly happens, had given birth to oppression; and if the gentry, as I am inclined to believe, had become more attentive to agricultural improvements, it is reasonable to conjecture that those whose tenure obliged them to unlimited services of husbandry were more harassed than under their wealthy and indolent masters in preceding times.
The storm that almost swept away all bulwarks of civilized and regular society seems to have been long in collecting itself. Perhaps a more sagacious legislature might have contrived to disperse it: but the commons only presented complaints of the refractoriness with which villeins and tenants in villenage rendered their due services;[] and the exigencies of government led to the fatal poll-tax of a groat, which was the proximate cause of the insurrection. By the demands of these rioters we perceive that territorial servitude was far from extinct; but it should not be hastily concluded that they were all personal villeins, for a large proportion were Kentish-men, to whom that condition could not have applied; it being a good bar to a writ de nativitate probandâ that the party's father was born in the county of Kent.[x]
After this tremendous rebellion it might be expected that the legislature would use little indulgence towards the lower commons. Such unhappy tumults are doubly mischievous, not more from the immediate calamities that attend them than from the fear and hatred of the people which they generate in the elevated classes. The general charter of manumission extorted from the king by the rioters of Blackheath was annulled by proclamation to the sheriffs,[y] and this revocation approved by the lords and commons in parliament; who added, as was very true, that such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent; "which they would never give to save themselves from perishing all together in one day."[z] Riots were turned into treason by a law of the same parliament.[a] By a very harsh statute in the 12th of Richard II. no servant or labourer could depart, even at the expiration of his service, from the hundred in which he lived without permission under the king's seal; nor might any who had been bred to husbandry till twelve years old exercise any other calling.[] A few years afterwards the commons petitioned that villeins might not put their children to school in order to advance them by the church; "and this for the honour of all the freemen of the kingdom." In the same parliament they complained that villeins fly to cities and boroughs, whence their masters cannot recover them; and, if they attempt it, are hindered by the people; and prayed that the lords might seize their villeins in such places without regard to the franchises thereof. But on both these petitions the king put in a negative.[c]
From henceforward we find little notice taken of villenage in parliamentary records, and there seems to have been a rapid tendency to its entire abolition. But the fifteenth century is barren of materials; and we can only infer that, as the same causes which in Edward III.'s time had converted a large portion of the peasantry into free labourers still continued to operate, they must silently have extinguished the whole system of personal and territorial servitude. The latter, indeed, was essentially changed by the establishment of the law of copyhold.
I cannot presume to conjecture in what degree voluntary manumission is to be reckoned among the means that contributed to the abolition of villenage. Charters of enfranchisement were very common upon the continent. They may perhaps have been less so in England. Indeed the statute de donis must have operated very injuriously to prevent the enfranchisement of villeins regardant, who were entailed along with the land. Instances, however, occur from time to time, and we cannot expect to discover many. One appears as early as the fifteenth year of Henry III., who grants to all persons born or to be born within his village of Contishall, that they shall be free from all villenage in body and blood, paying an aid of twenty shillings to knight the king's eldest son, and six shillings a year as a quit-rent.[d] So in the twelfth of Edward III. certain of the king's villeins are enfranchised on payment of a fine.[e] In strictness of law, a fine from the villein for the sake of enfranchisement was nugatory, since all he could possess was already at his lord's disposal. But custom and equity might easily introduce different maxims; and it was plainly for the lord's interest to encourage his tenants in the acquisition of money to redeem themselves, rather than to quench the exertions of their industry by availing himself of an extreme right. Deeds of enfranchisement occur in the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth;[f] and perhaps a commission of the latter princess in 1574, directing the enfranchisement of her bondmen and bondwomen on certain manors upon payment of a fine, is the last unequivocal testimony to the existence of villenage;[g] though it is highly probable that it existed in remote parts of the country some time longer.[h]
Reign of Henry VI.
From this general view of the English constitution, as it stood about the time of Henry VI., we must turn our eyes to the political revolutions which clouded the latter years of his reign. The minority of this prince, notwithstanding the vices and dissensions of his court and the inglorious discomfiture of our arms in France, was not perhaps a calamitous period. The country grew more wealthy; the law was, on the whole, better observed; the power of parliament more complete and effectual than in preceding times. But Henry's weakness of understanding, becoming evident as he reached manhood, rendered his reign a perpetual minority. His marriage with a princess of strong mind, but ambitious and vindictive, rather tended to weaken the government and to accelerate his downfall; a certain reverence that had been paid to the gentleness of the king's disposition being overcome by her unpopularity. By degrees Henry's natural feebleness degenerated almost into fatuity; and this unhappy condition seems to have overtaken him nearly about the time when it became an arduous task to withstand the assault in preparation against his government. This may properly introduce a great constitutional subject, to which some peculiar circumstances of our own age have imperiously directed the consideration of parliament. Though the proceedings of 1788 and 1810 are undoubtedly precedents of far more authority than any that can be derived from our ancient history, yet, as the seal of the legislature has not yet been set upon this controversy, it is not perhaps altogether beyond the possibility of future discussion; and at least it cannot be uninteresting to look back on those parallel or analogous cases by which the deliberations of parliament upon the question of regency were guided.
Historical instances of regencies:
during the absence of our kings in France;