SOCIAL ENGLAND.*
TnE second volume of Social England embraces a long and important period of English history—from the accession of Edward I. to the death of Henry VIL As the work advances, the task of the writers does not become lighter ; for the comparative sameness of the earlier civilisation gives place to more diversified forms of national life. In our review of the first volume we pointed out the drawbacks of an encyclo- 'medical social history ; the professed student finds it difficult to reconcile himself to the frequent change of author and subject. The general reader, however, accustomed to read contemporary history in the olla-podrida of the daily news- paper, will probably not feel the same objection. We are glad to learn that the first volume has found many readers ; for the work is painstaking and accurate, exceedingly tem- perate and fair, and fitted to exercise a sobering influence upon the extravagances of political opinion. One cannot review an encyclopaedia; and we must content ourselves with noticing only a few points in the varied discourses of Mr.
Traill's contributors. The editor, we regret to say, is absent from this volume; but we trust he will reappear in the subsequent volumes, where he will have an opportunity of writing upon subjects on which he has already earned a right to speak.
There are some pleasant and interesting chapters on the professional life of Medimval England. The physicians, who were for the most part monks, friars, or Jews, possessed a • Social England: a Record (Vas Progress of the People. By Various Writers. Edited by II. D. Traill, D.C.L. Vol. IL From the Accession of Edward I, to the Death of Henry VII. London; Cassell and Co. 1854. large amoLtment of remedies, some of them borrowed from the Byzantine physicians, others from the traditional practice of the people. Christian physicians, however, called religion to their aid. None of their remedies, writes Dr. Creighton, were administered without ceremonial. While the medicine was being compounded, the patient would say twelve times over one of the Psalms beginning Miserere mei Deus, then several Paternosters, "then drink the dose, and wrap thyself op warm ; " or he would sing the Psalm Salvurn Me Fac, Deus, then drink the draught out of a church bell, the priest
finishing the cure with prayer. Dr. Creighton remarks that as the maladies of the Middle Ages contained an unusual element of hysteria, the ceremonial may not have come amiss as an aid to the treatment. Physicians gained considerable fees by their practice, which the people appear to have
grudged them. The satirical writers constantly accuse them of greed; but these charges were probably owing to the prevalence of the idea, not yet extinct, that as "medicine is
from the Lord God," the leech was not entitled to a money payment.
Professor Maitland describes the growth of our legal system with great clearness, and with occasional touches of genuine humour. Several interesting illustrations are given of the ingenuity with which Englishmen contrived to get their way in matters of law and legal practice without making a formal breach with their civil or religious traditions. Many of the Judges were Churchmen, who could not pronounce sen- tence of death without involving themselves in blood-guiltiness. But this did not mean that the criminal escaped. Before sentence of death was pronounced, the ecclesiastical President left the court ; or he simply said, "Take the prisoner away and let him have a priest." Although an. ecclesiastical Bar existed at an early period, there were for a considerable time no attorneys or barristers in the King's Court, and there was a prejudice against their introduction ; for it was thought that litigants should be allowed to fight it out between them, and that every litigant had a legal interest in the ignorance or stupidity of his opponent, of which it was unfair to deprive him by bringing a trained expert into Court. The right to appoint an attorney, Mr. Maitland says, spread outwards from the King, who had always been represented by others in his numerous suits ; at first he conferred his right upon others as an exceptional favour, afterwards in return for a money payment. The other branch of the profession originated in the custom of litigants to bring friends into Court to take counsel with them. After a time it was permitted to a friend,
not only to prompt the litigant, but to speak in his stead. In a later chapter a most curious illustration is given of the English preference for evading rather than altering a trouble- some law. In the second half of the fourteenth century the landholders of England, to escape certain feudal burdens and
ancient restrictions, began to convey their lands to their friends who came under an honourable engagement to act as trustees for the real owners. Although the King was the loser by these illegal transactions, the Chancellor, and the King's Judges, and Parliament itself, seemed to enter into a conspiracy to render it safe, by promptly sending fraudulent trustees to prison. Professor Maitland does not regret that legal reform proceeded in this underhand and unsystematic fashion. A simpler and more logical system, he maintains.
would have been an apt instrument of despotic rule :—
"At times the Judges were subservient enough ; the King could dismiss them from their offices at a moment's notice ; but the clumsy, cumbrous system, though it might bend, would never break. It was ever awkwardly rebounding and confounding the statecraft which had tried to control it. The strongest King, the ablest Minister, the rudest Lord-Protector, could make little of this 'ungodly jumble.'"
The two democratic institutions in Meditoval England were the Church and the Universities. The degrees of the Universities, which were at first licenses to teach, were valid internationally ; and foreign scholars taught in Oxford and Cambridge, and English scholars in Paris, Cologne, and Bologna. As Latin was the sole language of the learned, there was no linguistic difficulty in the way of the foreign scholar. Even teachers who were not altogether welcome, were not prohibited from teaching. When in the thirteenth century the Dominicans and Franciscans invaded Oxford, the
University availed itself of their lectures and lecture-rooms, although the relations between the zealous Friars and the University authorities were not always harmonious; and the latter successfully resisted the pretensions of the Friars to be admitted to theological degrees withoth; the preliminary Arts' course. The undergraduates of the English Universities were for the most part lads of humble origin who received a gratuitous or assisted education. It was thus that the Uni- versities became democratic institutions, as they opened a path to the highest positions in the realm to men of lowly origin, and did something to abate the evils of hereditary castes.
Mr. Heath writes learnedly 'and well on the literature of England. His account of Chaucer and his writings is par- ticularly good ; but it would have been more in harmony with the purpose of the work had he made use of the literature to illustrate the manners and opinions of the people, who receive less attention throughout the work than might have been expected from its professed purpose. Mr. Smith's chapters on political history contain some striking personal sketches of English monarchs; for instance, that of Henry V., the wild Prince Hal of tradition, trans- formed by power into the "austere, coucentrated, and some- what self-righteous King." There is also a good portrait of Edward IV. Although he died a worn-out, worthless debauchee, at the opening of his reign he gave promise of a splendid career; for he was a born General and a born popular ruler, cultivated, courteous, and sagacious, with a keen eye for the trading and commercial interests of England. Full justice is done to the remarkable intellectual ability of the "Hell-Hound who doth hunt us all to death,"—Richard III. But so uncontrollable were his impulses of superhuman malignity and wickedness, that he shocked even a callous age, and brought about his own downfall. The best political por- trait is that of his successor, Henry VII. His was an age of beginnings, and the Xing was looking into the future with a more discerning gaze than any of his subjects. A French annalist in the reign of Edward IV. made the remark that no English King would reign long who did not engage in a foreign war, so strong WA the consciousness of the people that their own island was insufficient for their needs and their ambitions. The wars with France, however, instead of giving the English a Continental Empire, created French patriotism, and thus rendered France invincible. Henry VII. was the first English Monarch who perceived that the true path to Empire lay through trade, and by following the paths of the trader. He watched over trade and commerce with sleepless vigilance; merchants were his counsellors; he received in- formation from them of what was going on in other lands; and he steadily accumulated treasure. One of the most important acts of his reign was the conclusion of a treaty with Flanders —the Intercoms Magnus—by which all traffic was made free between the two countries. It was some time before people could be brought to believe that Henry's throne was stable. He was a usurper, and had been a refugee and an adventurer, but his cautious wisdom overcame all the difficulties in his path. He had about him a breadth and tolerance which were far from insular. He found England torn by factions, and he left her . peaceful, united, and .orderly. Mr. Smith says, with truth, that the great work he did for England is apt to be overlooked, because of the more stirring events which took place under his successors ; but he was the true originator of the peculiar Tudor character,— union of immovable resolution with unfailing tact. He was, as Bacon says, one of three Magi of those ages ; the other two were Louis XI. and Ferdinand of Aragon.
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