art, "their king can do nothing, unless what he wants is
what they will."[423]

III.

Now are the vanquished and the victors of Hastings blended into one
nation, and they are endowed with a Parliament as a safeguard for their
liberties. "This is," Montesquieu said later, "the nation in the world
that has best known how to avail itself at the same time of those three
great things: religion, trade, and liberty."[424] Four hundred years
before Montesquieu it already availed itself of these three great
things; under Edward and Richard Plantagenets, England was what it has
ever been since, a "merchant island."[425]

Its mines are worked, even those of "sea-coal," as it was then called,
"carboun de meer."[426] It has a numerous mercantile navy which carries
to the Baltic, to Iceland, to Flanders, to Guyenne, and to Spain, wool,
skins, cloth, wheat, butter and cheese, "buyre et furmage." Each year
the galleys of Venice come laden with cotton, silks from Damascus,
sugar, spices, perfumes, ivory, and glass. The great commercial houses,
and the merchant corporations are powers in the State; Edward III.
grants to the London gilds the right of electing members to Parliament,
and they preserved this right until the Reform Bill of 1832. The wealthy
merchants lent money to the king; they were called to his councils; they
behaved as great citizens. Anthony Blache lends Edward III. 11,720
pounds; the Blankets of Bristol gather enormous wealth; John Blanket
dies in 1405, bequeathing a third of his fortune to his wife, a third to
his children, and a third to the poor; John Philpot, a grocer of London,
embarks on his ships and fights for the kingdom; Richard Whittington, he
of the legendary cat, is famed in history for his wealth and liberality,
and was mayor of London in 1398, 1406, and 1419. These merchants are
ennobled, and from their stock spring earls and dukes; the De la Poles,
wool-merchants of Hull, mortgage their property for the king. William de
la Pole rescues Edward III., detained in Flanders by want of money, and
is made a knight-banneret; his son Michael is created earl of Suffolk;
one of his grandsons is killed at Agincourt; another besieges Orleans,
which is delivered by Joan of Arc; he becomes duke of Suffolk, is
impeached in 1450 for high treason and beheaded; no honour is lacking to
the house.

From the time of the Edwards, the Commons are very touchy upon the
subject of the maritime power and glory of their countr