the chase. Many other acts of his might be mentioned, all tending to waste the people who were his victims from off the face of the land: and an infinitely larger number of cruel and destructive acts were perpetrated by him and his Norman followers, no special record of which has survived, but to which the lamentations of the old Saxon Chroniclers bear emphatic, though confused testimony. For instance: one of these old writers* tells us that he forbears narrating, in detail, the conduct of the Normans to the mass of the population, "because it was hard to express in words, and because it would appear incredible by reason of its excessive barbarity." Many more such phrases of the Saxon monks who saw and mourned over the miseries of their countrymen might be cited. And there is also the explicit proof which the figures in Domesday Book† supply of the decay of the populations of the great cities and towns, and it was during the first 20 years of the Norman rule in this country. Altogether, I believe that the old population of the island was diminished by, at least, a third, during the invasion and the reign of William the Conqueror.

It remains to be considered how far this gap was filled up by the Normans and their companions.

William's army at Hastings is said to have numbered 60,000 fighting men. Of these, a fourth fell in the fight; but we must add largely for the non-combatants who accompanied the troops. We have an account also of another even larger host, which he summoned over here from the Continent, in the 19th year of his reign,

*Hist. Eliens.

+ See Hallam's "Middle Ages," chap. 8, p. 2.

when he expected an invasion from Scandinavia; and a constant stream of new population from the Continent, was poured into England during the times of all her first. Anglo-Norman monarchs.

Few of these adventurers returned to their homes. So that it is probable that, during the reigns of the Conqueror and his sons, from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand Normans and other immigrants from the Continent became inhabitants of this country.

The accession of population to England from the Continent, continued during the reigns of Stephen and Henry II., especially the latter; when the Plantagenet heritage in the south of France, contributed to the influx. The introduction also of a large colony of Flemings, who were principally settled in the neighbourhood of Wales, is not to be omitted. I do not, however, think that the aggregate population of the various races in England was larger at the death of Richard I. than at the epoch of the Conquest. The misery which the country suffered during the reign of Stephen must fearfully have reduced the number of human beings in the land. No description of that misery can be more emphatic than that which the old chroniclers give. They tell us that, "The nobles and bishops built castles, and filled them with devilish and evil men, and oppressed the people, cruelly torturing them for their money. They made many thousands die. of hunger. They imposed taxes upon towns, and when they had exhausted them of everything, set them on fire. You might travel a day, and not find one man living in a town, or in the country one cultivated field. The poor died of hunger; and they who were once men of substance now begged their bread from door to door. Never did the country suffer greater evils. The very Pagans

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RISE AND PROGRESS OF THE CONSTITUTION.

did not more evil than those men did. If two or three men were seen riding up to a town, all its inhabitants left it, taking them for plunderers. To till the ground was as vain as to till the sand on the sea-shore. And this lasted, growing worse and worse, throughout Stephen's reign. Men said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep.”

During the long and prosperous reign of Henry II., the country recovered from "that shipwreck of the Commonwealth,” as one of Henry's Acts of State emphatically calls the condition of the land in the time of Stephen. But looking generally to the character of the other reigns, I do not think there is any reason to suppose that the total population of the realm, in the time of John, exceeded the largest census which is assigned to AngloSaxon England, namely, about two millions.

CHAPTER VII.

General View of the Feudal System.-Meaning of the terms "Feudal" and "Allodial."-General Sketch of the Progress of a Germanic Settlement in a Roman Province.-Causes of Feudalism. -Progress of "Subinfeudation."-Aristocratic Character of Feudalism.-Its Oppressiveness to the Commonalty.-Its brighter Features.

In order to understand the classes, into which the two millions of human beings, who dwelt here at the time of the grant of the Great Charter, were divided, and the system of government which then existed, a right comprehension of the principles of the Feudal System is indispensable. Even the state of the enslaved peasantry of England at the commencement of the 13th century, cannot be thoroughly discerned, unless we view the peasants in relation to their feudal lords. And, when we proceed to the great events of the century, it would be utterly impossible to give any intelligible account of the greatest of all, the acquisition of Magna Carta, without continually pausing to explain feudal terms and usages, if we should not have taken a preliminary survey of that strange body of social and political institutions, so long and so generally prevalent over Europe, to which historians and jurists have given the title of Feudal.

The inquiry is, indeed, far from being one of mere

E

antiquarian interest. The forms of our Constitution cannot be understood without it; and the student of our law, especially of the law of real property, must still resort to the feudal system for the principles, and even for the practice, of his art.*

I am not, however, going to discuss here, either the etymology, or the date of the birth, or the exact pedigree of Feuds. Suffice it, for the present occasion, to say generally, that the feudal system was gradually matured during the six or seven centuries of confusion, which followed the irruption of the Germanic nations into the Western Roman empire: and that, at the epoch which we treat as the dawn of complete English history (about A.D. 1215), the feudal system was established, though with different modifications, in every European country that had been a Roman province and had been overrun

by German conquerors. The feudal system was also then established in Germany itself.

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There are many things, which are the more easily understood by first obtaining an understanding of their opposites. This is the case with the word Feudal." The term used in contradistinction to it, by European jurists, is "Allodial." Allodial land was land in which a man had the full and entire property; which he held (as the saying is) out and out. But feudal land (and the land itself so held was called a Feud, or Fief) was land which a man held of some other man, from whom or whose ancestors the holder (or his ancestor) had received permission to possess and enjoy the fruits of the land; but the property and ultimate dominion of it remained in the giver, or, as

See "Hayes on Conveyancing," vol. i. p. 6.

Fifth

edition. See, also, Stephens' Blackstone," vol. i.

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