in modern parlance, a House, of their own, with a dumb president, called a Speaker, to give order and dignity to their proceedings.

I will give you a sample of a King's Speech in those days. In the year 1377, the last year of Edward's life, the session of Parliament was opened by Commission. The Bishop of St. David's was Chancellor. That sounds rather odd to us; but the opening sentence is, at least, as strange to our ears. It runs thus:-not," My Lords and Gentlemen, We are commanded to inform you that His Majesty continues to receive the most friendly assurances from Foreign Powers,"-that, perhaps, was hardly to be expected in Edward's reign, but something more professional, as follows;-" Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise, as the Scripture saith; in your wisdom, therefore, you will hear me, who do but speak according to my folly. Welcome should be the messenger of joyful tidings; and no less than joyful are those which I bring,namely, the King's happy recovery from a dangerous sickness. Herein it appeareth that God hath a favour to this realm, and to our Sovereign Lord; for 'whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth;' and, moreover, the Psalmist hath said of such, 'Thy wife shall be a fruitful vine;' and again, ‘Thou shalt see thy children's children;' which things, verily, have come to pass; and since this is the fiftieth year since our sovereign began to reign, and these things have happened to us besides, we may well call it a year of jubilee. Yet, remember, I pray you, that when the head is sound, and some member of the body is diseased, the weak part receiveth no virtue or benefit from the head; so, now, the king is well in body and will to show all grace and favour to his loving subjects; but, for your part, you must prove yourselves sound and uncorrupt, by loyalty towards your prince, and loving charity among yourselves;

for St. Paul bath taught us that without charity nothing will avail. My Lords, to you I say that the King hath been very gracious; for your request is heard, and the Lord Richard, here present, is advanced to be Prince of Wales." [The Black Prince was dead; and there the little gentleman, then ten years old, sat, right royally, in his grandfather's chair of state.] "Therefore, as now your eyes see that which your hearts have longed for, even as Simeon embraced in his arms the Lord of Life, so now, you ought to embrace your Prince with loyal and loving hearts; and bring gifts, moreover, at such a time as this, even as the wise men brought to the feet of Jesus their gold and myrrh." So much by way of compliment: then in a single sentence the Bishop dismisses the business part of the speech, telling Parliament that the King of France was gathering an army and munitions of war, to "blot out the English name and tongue from under heaven;" so, it was time for them to consult together, and advise the King for the public safety.*

There was another feature in the history of this reign, quite as remarkable as the growing power of Parliament, namely, our expanding trade. Edward III.'s wife, Philippa, has a good name among the Queens of England; but few, perhaps, understand how much England owes to her. The Princesses of France, when they intermarried with our Kings, sometimes brought us fierce wars, growing out of disputed titles. Philippa came from Flanders, and, on her invitation or encouragement, there came a colony of weavers, who settled at Norwich, and became the founders of a flourishing trade. Others followed in their track, settled in the towns of England, and not only plied their useful craft, but taught the natives too. "Before this time," says quaint old Fuller, "the English knew no more * Cobbett's Parliamentary History, i., 143-4.

L

what to do with their own wool than the sheep that wears it, as to any artificial and curious drapery." The King, he tells us, sent over emissaries to the Duke of Burgundy's country, to persuade the skilled artificers, who abounded there, to come and try there fortune here. They found the workmen used 66 'more like heathens than Christians,— more like horses than men," with long days of toil, and short nights for rest, and herrings and mouldy cheese for dinner and supper; so liberal promises were given of lighter labour and better fare, "fat beef and mutton," and plenty of it. Hints were added about the beauty of English lasses, and the possible advantages of emigration in the matrimonial line. "And now," the pleasant chronicler adds, "happy the yeoman's house into which any of these Dutchmen did enter, bringing industry and wealth along with them. Such, who came strangers, went out bridegrooms, and returned sons-in-law, having married the daughters of the landlords who first entertained them." So the courting and the weaving went on, and the manufacture grew, neither Dutchmen nor Englishmen having any guess in those days what it would become in the course of five hundred years. Certainly, Yorkshire knows pretty well, nowadays, what to do with the wool of a thousand flocks; and we have no need to bribe Dutchmen to wed our daughters because our sheepish countrymen have no skill to weave.

The King and Parliament meant very well by trade, and passed many Statutes which they meant to be of a fostering kind. But they were unskilful nurses; and had not the bantling been of a hardy nature, it could never have escaped the fate of over-dosed infants. For the convenience of collecting Customs, for instance, all the wool in the country, intended for exportation, had to be brought sometimes to one spot, sometimes to a few specified places, where the

King's Staple was held, that is, where it was weighed by the proper officers, and the legal duties were levied. Forestallers, as they were called,—that is, dealers in provisions, who stood between the grower, or importer, and the consumer, making a reasonable profit for their trouble,—were looked upon as public enemies, and the wit of legislators was busy in contriving expedients to proscribe a race whom public convenience was forbidding to die out. There is an old ordinance on this subject which reads so very like a good-humoured satire upon the legislation which was then common that I cannot forbear quoting it. Four years before, it had been ordered that herrings should not be sold at a higher price than forty shillings the last. But lo! says the later decree, "the sale of herrings is much decayed, and the people greatly endamaged; that is to say, many merchants coming to the fair, labourers, servants and other, do bargain for herring, and every of them, by malice and envy, increase upon other, and if one proffer forty shillings, another will proffer ten shillings more, and the third sixty shillings, and so every one surmounteth other in the bargain, and such proffers extend to more than the price of the herring upon which the fishers proffered to sell it at the beginning. Wherefore," say the Law-makers most graciously, "we, perceiving the mischief and grievances aforesaid, will and grant that it shall be lawful to every man, of what condition that he may be, merchant or other, to buy herring openly and not privily, at such price as may be agreed betwixt him and the seller of the same herring."

Restrictions on the home trade were rather arbitrary; but foreign merchants fared still worse. One Act of Parliament forbade them to carry bullion out of the country, and another required them to invest at least half the proeeeds of their sales in articles of English manufacture. Till the middle of the century, if a Frenchman turned rogue,

any other Frenchman, whom the creditors could seize, might be made responsible for his debts; and the same of other foreigners; but the sponsorship was all on one side; the poor foreigners might not retort, when defrauded, and claim payment of some honest Englishman. The marvel is that traders came on such terms; but doubtless they came faster, and stayed longer, when the iniquitous custom was abolished by Act of Parliament.

And what of England's ships meanwhile. A word or two must be spent on the wooden walls, and the flag that has

"Braved for a thousand years

The battle and the breeze.

Italy has gone back since those days, and our country has outstripped her in the race for maritime ascendancy; since Genoa and Venice were then contending for the mastery, while an English vessel was seldom seen in the Mediterranean. Still, at the memorable siege of Calais, which followed the victory of Crecy, Edward's fleet numbered seven hundred vessels. These were most of them merchant vessels, sent from different ports; and the crews averaged only a little more than twenty men for each ship. Edward III. had a taste for fighting in both kinds, and Froissart has a notable Chapter, describing the great naval victory which he gained in the year 1340. The King, accompanied with many noble ladies, Countesses, Baronesses, and Knights' and gentlemen's wives, was on his way to join his Queen at Ghent, and had almost got to land when, off Sluys, near the mouth of the Scheldt, he spied so many masts before him "that they looked like a wood." Being told that this was the French fleet which had lately burnt Southampton, his courage was fired, and, without counting the odds (for the enemy were four to one), he gave orders for the attack. The tactics were very simple, much like Nelson's at the Nile.