en to a considerable extent arbitrary. Nor
can we be perfectly certain of the principles on which writs were issued
for attendance in the upper house. We find that for some time the lower
clergy as well as the higher were summoned to attend Parliament; but
presently, sitting in a separate chamber, they ceased to take part in
Parliamentary business.

We have seen the King's Court divided into three courts of justice. The
court itself, however, as the king's Council, continued to exercise a
juridical as well as a deliberative and administrative function. In
spite of the charter, it possessed an effective if illegal power of
arbitrary imprisonment.

So far the essential character of our constitution appears to be a
monarchy greatly limited by law but swerving continually into irregular
courses which there was no constraint adequate to correct. There is
absolutely no warrant for the theory that the king was merely a
hereditary executive magistrate, the first officer of the State. The
special advantage enjoyed by England lay in the absence of an
aristocracy with interests antagonistic to those of the people. It would
be truer to say that the liberties of England were bought by money than
by the blood of our forefathers.

The process by which the villein became a hired labourer is obscure and
an attempt was made to check it by the Statute of Labourers at the time
of the Black Death. This was followed by the peasant's revolt of 1382,
which corresponded to the far worse horrors of the French Jacquerie.
Sharply though this was suppressed, the real object of the rising seemed
to have been accomplished. Of the period of the Wars of the Roses it is
here sufficient to say that it established the principle embodied in a
statute of Henry VII. that obedience to the _de facto_ government is not
to be punished on the ground that government is not also _de jure_.

_V.--Europe_

In spite of the Teutonic incursion, Latin remained the basis of language
as it survived in Italy, France, and Spain. But the pursuit of letters
was practically confined to the clergy and was by them employed almost
exclusively in the interests of clerical authority. To this end a
multitude of superstitions were encouraged; superstitions which were the
cause of not a few strange and irrational outbursts of fanaticism. The
monasteries served indeed a useful purpose as sanctuaries in days of
general lawlessness and rapine; but the huge weight of evidence is