After noticing the multiplied miseries under which the bulk of the people is involved by this wretched order of things, which forms an insuperable obstacle in the way of national happiness and prosperity, our author informs us, that, according to the original constitution of Sicily, the three houses of parliaments have the faculty of granting supplies to the Crown; but the majority of the two houses (he says) are sufficient; by which means the house of commons, or demesnial assembly becomes totally nugatory, and the lords and ecclesiastics, after generously granting the supplies, throw the whole burden of them on the commons. Whatever remonstrances are made, the matter is left to the decision of those who have done the evil, and the mischief is thus perpetuated: [333] for it seems they never think of yielding in the least to the remonstrances of the commons, or complaints of the people.
In Sicily the feudal system exists without its original energies; and it may be said to exist in its very worst state, so as to spend all its force in oppressing beyond measure the middle and lower orders of the community, or great body of the nation, without contributing to the real benefit of any. The consequence is that the people, for the most part, groan hopelessly under their burdens, and seem perfectly indifferent about the issue of the present contest with France. Yet some people seem to wonder at their supineness, and their not rising as one man in defence of their king and country. They might probably have done so, had their rulers been wise, and left them what would have been worth contending for, or defending. When rulers cease to feel for the people, it is not unnatural or unusual for the people also to cease to feel for them. This, perhaps, will apply to many of the recent changes among the European powers.
Beside the feudal system, our Norman conqueror introduced into this country divers other innovations—One of which was the separation of the Spiritual courts from the Civil; which was effected (says Blackstone) in order to ingratiate the new king with the popish clergy, who for sometime before had been endeavouring all over Europe to exempt themselves from the secular power; and whose demands the conqueror, like a politic prince, thought it prudent to comply with, by reason that their reputed sanctity had a great influence over the minds of the people; and because all the little learning of the times was engrossed into their hands, which made them necessary men, and by all means to be gained over to his interests. And this was the more easily effected, because the episcopal sees being then in the breast of the king, he had taken care to fill them with Italian and Norman prelates. This innovation produced very grievous consequences; so that by degrees the rights and privileges of the English clergy were delivered up into the hands of the Pope, who taxed them at his pleasure, and in process of time drained the kingdom of immense treasures: for besides all his other dues, arising from annates, first fruits, peter-pence, &c. he extorted large sums of money from the clergy for their preferments in the church. He advanced foreigners to the richest bishopricks, who never resided in their dioceses, nor so much as set foot upon English ground, but sent for all their profits to a foreign country; nay so covetous was his Holiness, that before livings became void, he sold them provisionally among his Italians, insomuch that neither the king nor his clergy had any thing to dispose of, but every thing was bargained before hand at Rome. [334]
Another grievous innovation, introduced at the same period, consisted in the depopulation of whole countries for the purposes of the king’s royal diversion; and subjecting both them and all the ancient forests of the kingdom to the unreasonable severities of forest laws imported from the continent, whereby the slaughter of a beast was made almost as penal as the death of a man. In the Saxon times, though no man was allowed to kill or chase the king’s deer, yet he might start any game, pursue, or kill it, upon his own estate. But the rigour of these new constitutions vested the sole property of all the game in England in the king alone; and no man was entitled to disturb any fowl of the air, or beast of the field, of such kinds as were specially reserved for the royal amusement of the sovereign, without express licence from the king, by a grant of a chase, or free warren: and those franchises were granted as much with a view to preserve the breed of animals as to indulge the subject. From a similar principle to which, though the forest laws are now mitigated, and by degrees grown entirely obsolete, yet from this root has sprung a bastard slip, known by the name of the game law, now arrived to and wantoning in its highest vigour: both founded upon the same unreasonable notions of permanent property in wild creatures; and both productive of the same tyranny to the commons; but with this difference, that the forest laws established only one mighty hunter throughout the land, the game laws have raised a little Nimrod in every manor. [335]
Another innovation produced by the conquest was, “narrowing the remedial influence of the country-courts, the great seats of Saxon justice, and extending the original jurisdiction of the king’s justiciaries to all kinds of causes arising in all parts of the kingdom. To this end the Aula-regis, with all its multifarious authority, was erected; and a capital justiciary appointed, with powers so large and boundless, that he became at length a tyrant to the people, and formidable to the crown itself. The constitution of this court, and the judges themselves who presided there, were fetched from Normandy: and the consequence naturally was, the ordaining that all proceedings in the king’s courts should be carried on in the Norman [or French] instead of the English language:—a provision the more necessary, because none of his Norman justiciaries understood English; but as evident a badge of slavery as ever was imposed upon a conquered people.” And yet the nation was obliged to submit to it and bear it, for ages. The former plainness and simplicity now gave way to the abstruseness, chicanery, and subtilty, which have ever since so unhappily characterized our legal proceedings. [338a]
Another of the hateful innovations of the same memorable period was, the introduction of the trial by combat, for the decision of all civil and criminal questions of fact in the last resort. This was the immemorial practice of all the northern nations, but first reduced to regular and stated forms among the Burgundi, about the close of the fifth century: and from them it passed to other nations, particularly the Franks and the Normans; which last had the honour to establish it here, though clearly an unchristian, as well as most uncertain method of trial. But it was a sufficient recommendation of it to the conqueror and his warlike countrymen, that it was the usage of their native duchy of Normandy. [338b] This vile remain of ancient barbarism, and foul disgrace of the legal polity of our ancestors, has long ceased to exist in our island.
As the general changes introduced by the conqueror must have affected the inhabitants of Lynn, in common with the rest of their countrymen, the above sketch of them became necessary, in order to give the reader some idea of the state of things here at and subsequent to the conquest. Before and at that period, as has been already observed, Lynn and its neighbourhood formed part of the possessions of Harold, of Stigand archbishop of Canterbury, and of Ailmar bishop of Elmham. All the possessions of the former, of course were forfeited by the conquest. Those of the two others soon followed; for being both Anglo-Saxons, (or Englishmen,) and deemed inimical to the Norman succession, they were both expelled, and their sees filled by foreigners. Ailmar’s power and possessions here were in right of his see, and of his lordship of Gaywode, which had been long attached to that see: those of Stigand were in his own right, or that of his lordship of Rising, and that of the hundred of Freebridge, which he held, (as well as the lordship of the hundred of Smithdon, and many other lordships,) as a lay fee. His possessions in these parts were bestowed by he conqueror on his half brother Odo, bishop of Bayeux, in Normandy, whom he created Earl of Kent. On his rebellion afterward against William Rufus, he was deprived of them, and they were bestowed on William de Albini, that king’s butler, whose son, of the same names, was created Earl of Sussex [of this more may be seen in the account of Castle Rising.]—Ailmar’s possessions here went to his successor Arfast or Herfast, who removed the see from Elmham to Thetford, in whose successors they continued for many generations.
Most, if not all the great gentry of England, in these parts, and throughout the whole kingdom, at or within a few years after the conquest, were deprived of their power, stript of their possessions, and completely humbled. Great numbers of them lost their lives under the charge of treason, sedition, or other crimes. Those who escaped with their lives were reduced to poverty, and obliged to occupy such humble stations as they could not one day have thought of without disdain. [340] This memorable revolution, (as such revolutions mostly do,) chiefly affected the higher orders. It affected them, indeed, with a vengeance. The middle classes seem to have felt but little of it, at least compared with their superiors. The lower orders felt it still less, or, perhaps, not at all. They were slaves before, and so they continued for several ages after, seemingly without any material change. Nor does their hard condition appear to have been at all ameliorated till after the civil wars broke out between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The fatal effects of those wars in reducing the numbers of each party, obliged the leaders (as has been before observed) to turn their attention to the lower orders, that is to the real slaves, great numbers of whom were then emancipated, to fill up the thinned and reduced ranks of their respective armies. And this seems to have been the only good that attended those bloody and destructive wars. It certainly proved of great national benefit, although, like the reformation of Henry VIII, it sprung from no virtuous or honourable motive. The proverb says, It is an ill wind that blows no good; and it may be very safely said, that seldom, if ever, have any calamitous occurrences been known, but what have been productive of some real benefit. This, doubtless, is owing to the overruling hand of providence, and ought to be acknowledged as such.
But though the manumission of great numbers of English slaves took place during those bloody and fatal wars, and also in consequence of the politic and wise measures adopted by Henry VII. Yet it does not appear to have been fully or universally effected, or that slavery was then totally eradicated in England. We find that there were here some slaves in the reign of Henry VIII. and of Edward VI. and even of Elizabeth: [341a] and it may be doubtful, if they had entirely ceased to exist here before the reign of Charles I. and the civil war. They abounded in the parts about Lynn for a very long period; but whether as late as in some other parts of the kingdom is rather uncertain. [341b]—In talking and boasting of our great charter, and of the unwearied and undaunted exertions of our ancient barons and patriots to obtain and enforce it, and how careful they were on every occasion to maintain inviolate the rights and liberties of the people of England, we are seldom aware that a great part of the nation was all the while in actual slavery, and not a soul among the whole host of contemporary patriots and redoubtable zealots for freedom, ever once thinking of pleading their cause, or commiserating their sufferings! So also in more recent times have we been congratulating ourselves on our national virtue and ardent love of liberty and justice, while we were every year dragging thousands and tens of thousands of the poor Africans into west-indian slavery!!