parts of Europe, where they seem to have
risen to any tolerable degree of improvement, was Flanders. When Robert,
earl of that country, was applied to by the king, and was desired to
break off commerce with the Scots, whom Edward called his rebels, and
represented as excommunicated on that account by the church, the earl
replied, that Flanders was always considered as common, and free and
open to all nations.[*]

The petition of the elder Spenser to parliament, complaining of the
devastation committed on his lands by the barons, contains several
particulars which are curious, and discover the manners of the age.[**]

* Rymer, vol. iii. p. 770.

** Brady's Hist. vol. ii. p. 143, from Claus. 15 Edw-II. M,
14 Dors. in cedula.

He affirms, that they had ravaged sixty-three manors belonging to him,
and he makes his losses amount to forty-six thousand pounds; that is, to
one hundred and thirty-eight thousand of our present money. Among other
particulars, he enumerates twenty-eight thousand sheep, one thousand
oxen and heifers, twelve hundred cows with their breed for two years,
five hundred and sixty cart-horses, two thousand hogs, together with six
hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, and six hundred muttons in the
larder; ten tuns of cider, arms for two hundred men, and other warlike
engines and provisions. The plain inference is, that the greater part of
Spenser's vast estate, as well as the estates of the other nobility, was
farmed by the landlord himself, managed by his stewards or bailiffs,
and cultivated by his villains. Little or none of it was let on lease to
husbandmen: its produce was consumed in rustic hospitality by the
baron or his officers: a great number of idle retainers, ready for any
disorder or mischief, were maintained by him: all who lived upon his
estate were absolutely at his disposal: instead of applying to courts of
justice, he usually sought redress by open force and violence: the great
nobility were a kind of independent potentates, who, if they submitted
to any regulations at all, were less governed by the municipal law than
by a rude species of the law of nations. The method in which we find
they treated the king's favorites and ministers, is a proof of their
usual way of dealing with each other. A party which complains of the
arbitrary conduct of ministers, ought naturally to affect a great regard
for the laws and constitution, and maintain at least the appearance of
jus