struction of law, as a
manumission. This I do not pretend to determine.

NOTE XV. Page 179.

The public history of Europe in the middle ages inadequately represents
the popular sentiment, or only when it is expressed too loudly to escape
the regard of writers intent sometimes on less important subjects. But
when we descend below the surface, a sullen murmur of discontent meets
the ear, and we perceive that mankind was not more insensible to wrongs
and sufferings than at present. Besides the various outbreakings of the
people in several counties, and their complaints in parliament, after
the commons obtained a representation, we gain a conclusive insight into
the spirit of the times by their popular poetry. Two very interesting
collections of this kind have been lately published by the Camden
Society, through the diligence of Mr. Thomas Wright; one, the Poems
attributed to Walter Mapes; the other, the Political Songs of England,
from John to Edward II.

Mapes lived under Henry II., and has long been known as the reputed
author of humorous Latin verses; but it seems much more probable, that
the far greater part of the collection lately printed is not from his
hand. They may pass, not for the production of a single person, but
rather of a class, during many years, or, in general words, a century,
ending with the death of Henry III. in 1272. Many of them are
professedly written by an imaginary Golias.

"They are not the expressions of hostility of one man against an order
of monks, but of the indignant patriotism of a considerable portion of
the English nation against the encroachments of civil and ecclesiastical
tyranny." (Introduction to Poems ascribed to Walter Mapes, p. 21.) The
poems in this collection reflect almost entirely on the pope and the
higher clergy. They are all in rhyming Latin, and chiefly, though with
exceptions, in the loose trochaic metre called Leonine. The authors,
therefore, must have been clerks, actuated by the spirit which, in a
church of great inequality in its endowments, and with a very numerous
body of poor clergy, is apt to gain strength, but certainly, as
ecclesiastical history bears witness, not one of mere envious malignity
towards the prelates and the court of Rome. These deserved nothing
better, in the thirteenth century, than biting satire and indignant
reproof, and the poets were willing enough to bestow both.

But this popular poetry of the middle ages did not confine itself to