the state, the King must either submit to their claims, or by discontinuing parliaments, give fair warning to the people that the form of government was changed.

Secondly. The nobility were not separated from the people by odious distinctions, like the other feudal nobility of Europe. Various causes have been assigned for this difference; without discussing them, I shall content myself with stating the fact. It would not be correct to suppose, however, that the feudal system has not existed in England in a very odious shape. After the Conquest, the feudal tenure seems to have been adopted by all the principal landholders of England, in a great council held in the year 1086.* Wardships, liveries, primer seisins, and ouster-lemains, values and forfeitures of marriage, fines for alienation, tenures by homage, knight-service and escuage, as well as aids for marrying the King's daughter, and knighting his son, are all enumerated as part of the law of England, by the act of Charles II. which abolishes them. Happily, however, the system was not allowed to throw its roots very

* Blackstone, b. ii. c. 4.

deep in the soil. A practice, which was growing general, of sub-infeudations, or granting inferior feuds by the mesne lords, with the same conditions as the chief, was restrained by the act of Quia emptores (18 Edw. I.) which directs that upon all sales, or grants of land in fee, the sub-tenant shall hold, not of the immediate, but of the superior lord. A corrective to the tyranny of the feudal system was also to be found in the constitution of our county courts, the cradle of our liberties, in which are to be found the origin of our juries, and the model of our parliaments. Here the free tenants met to do justice between man and man; and here, it is probable, they deliberated on the means of affording the assistance they were bound to give, to defend him and themselves against an enemy.

Thus much with respect to the free tenants. The state of the villeins is, perhaps, a subject of still more importance. The main difference between the two classes was this. The free tenant held his land, on condition of performing certain fixed services; the villein also held land, but was bound to perform services,

base in their nature, and often undefined in their extent. Here was real servitude. How soon it began to be abrogated we know not, but we are told by Sir Thomas Smith, who was secretary to Edward VI. and Queen Elizabeth, that in all his time he never knew any instance of a villein in gross, that is, of a villein transferable by sale, and not attached to the soil, in the kingdom; and that the few villeins attached to the soil, who remained, were such only as had belonged to bishops, monasteries, and other ecclesiastical corporations. The last claim of villenage recorded in our courts, was in the fifteenth year of James I. This great change, which had been silently operating in the condition of the people of England, is probably to be attributed to various causes, the absence of foreign armies,—the necessity of conciliating the people during the civil wars, and above all, the inherent justice and piety of the nation,

There were several ways in which a villein attached to the soil could obtain his freedom. He might be manumitted. Or if his lord brought an action against him, it was supposed to allow his freedom. Or if he went into a

town and settled there, he instantly enjoyed its immunities, and became free. Or, lastly, if he could show that, for time out of mind, he and his ancestors had been registered in the roll of the Lord's court, as having possession of the land he held, he obtained a prescriptive right against his lord. This was done by producing a copy of the court-roll, and hence the term copyholder. It has been supposed by some that copyhold was known before the Conquest. At whatever time it originated, however, its early prevalence is nobly characteristic of the English nation. Villenage was known in France till near the end of the eighteenth century; in Spain it is newly abolished; in Germany it is not extinct; in Russia it is in full vigour. But the spirit of the English people, and the equality of the common-law have always been a just corrective of the degrading institutions and customs imported from other countries. Magna Charta itself is a noble and singular proof of the sympathy then existing between the barons and the people of England. Philippe de Comines speaks of the humanity with which the nobility treated the people in the civil wars. English

men have always felt that, if the order of civil society required the relations of superior and inferior ranks, nature conferred feelings and capacities with impartial justice upon all. Intimately connected with this spirit, is the absence of any distinction between gentleman and roturier. "The law," says Mr. Hallam, “has never taken notice of gentlemen.* From the reign of Henry III., at least, the legal equality of all ranks below the peerage was, to every essential purpose, as complete as at present. Compare two writers nearly contemporary, Bracton with Beaumanoir, and mark how the customs of England and France are distinguishable in this respect. The Frenchman ranges the people under three divisions,―the noble, the free, and the servile; our countryman has no generic class, but freedom and villenage. restraint seems ever to have lain upon marriage. The purchase of land held by knight-service

No

*The statute of Merton certainly affords an exception to this remark, when it speaks of the wards of noblemen being disparaged by marrying villeins, or others, as burgesses. But the same act allows that such marriages, if made by the ward's consent, after fourteen years of age, are legal. J. R.