the old
archery.[70] No measures could have been invented more effective than this
vigorous arming to repress the self-seeking tendencies in the mercantile
classes which I have mentioned as beginning to show themselves. Capital
supported by force may make its own terms with labour; but capital lying
between a king on one side resolved to prevent oppression, and a people on
the other side in full condition to resist, felt even prudence dictate
moderation, and reserved itself for a more convenient season.

Looking, therefore, at the state of England as a whole, I cannot doubt that
under Henry the body of the people were prosperous, well-fed, loyal, and
contented. In all points of material comfort they were as well off as they
had ever been before; better off than they have ever been in later times.

Their amusements, as prescribed by statute, consisted in training
themselves as soldiers. In the prohibitions of the statutes we see also
what their amusements were inclined to be. But besides "the bowles and the
claish," field sports, fishing, shooting, hunting, were the delight of
every one, and although the forest laws were terrible, they served only to
enhance the excitement by danger. Then, as now, no English peasant could be
convinced that there was any moral crime in appropriating the wild game. It
was an offence against statute law, but no offence against natural law; and
it was rather a trial of skill between the noble who sought to monopolise a
right which seemed to be common to all, and those who would succeed, if
they could, in securing their own share of it. The Robin Hood ballads
reflect the popular feeling and breathe the warm genial spirit of the old
greenwood adventurers. If deer-stealing was a sin, it was more than
compensated by the risk of the penalty to which those who failed submitted,
when no other choice was left. They did not always submit, as the old
northern poem shows of _Adam Bell, Clym of the Clough, and William of
Cloudislee_, with its most immoral moral; yet I suppose there was never
pedant who could resist the spell of those ringing lines, or refuse with
all his heart to wish the rogues success, and confusion to the honest men.

But the English peasantry had pleasures of less ambiguous propriety, and
less likely to mislead our sympathies. The chroniclers have given us many
accounts of the masques and plays which were acted in the court, or in the
castles of the noblemen. Such pageants were but