ART. III.-1. State Papers-Pre-Reformation Period-Calendars of State Papers-The Reigns of Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth, 1547-80. Edited by R. LEMON, Esq.

2. Historical Notes relative to the History of England, from the Accession of Henry VIII. to the Death of Anne (1509 to 1714). Compiled by F. S. THOMAS, Esq.

3. Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages. Published by the Authority of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls.

THE elucidation of national history has for many years been recognised as an object worthy of national effort. And it would not be too much to say, that every step taken towards its attainment, gives proof of the value of the effort.

Never, for instance, was a greater boon given to the English historian, than in the volumes of the Statutes of the Realm, published between 1810 and 1822, under the authority of a royal commission. In them lies a mine of facts, which, in spite of recent efforts, has not yet been half quarried. And now the magic wand of the Master of the Rolls is at work, steadily reducing into order the chaos of our national archives. Mountains of dingy and decaying State papers and manuscripts, buried in the oblivion of the Record Office, and of our national libraries, have for centuries, and some of them for ages, remained sacred "to the moles and bats," accessible only to a few daring and intrepid historians, who have had zeal enough to descend into the chaos, and to dig through the dust. But this is no longer to continue. By slow and sure degrees these hidden treasures are all to be ushered into daylight, and so classified as to yield ready material for future historians.

With such a work in prospect, by necessity long and laborious, it were in vain to expect or to ask for speed. To have begun is something. To have some work always upon the wheel is more ; and such seems to be the aim of the Master of the Rolls.

Since he first took the matter in hand, in 1854, three volumes of a proposed series of Calendars of State Papers have been issued, relating to the intervals between the years 1547 and 1580, 1611 and 1618, and 1625 and 1626.

Good cannot but result from the publication of these calendars ; for, being chronologically arranged, and being each furnished with an alphabetical table of contents, they will form an invaluable Index Rerum to the history of any given period, or of any given subject. And after all, with the historian, as well as with

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the lawyer, the first great step towards a knowledge of the authorities bearing upon a particular point, is promptly to know where to find them.

But experience shows that much caution is needed in the use of State papers, for the writer who relies upon them alone will write but a meagre and partial history at best. The dry bones of history he may find there; but the life, the soul, of the history of an age lies far more in those innumerable "Chronicles and Memorials," in which the actors on the stage have left traces of their deepest thoughts, and tenderest hidden feelings.

Wisely then has the Master of the Rolls commenced an issue of these, along with the calendars. But the period chosen for the first series is that of the Middle Ages, ending with the reign of Henry VII.; so that the periods to which the chronicles and calendars respectively relate are not identical. This we regret; nevertheless, it is refreshing to see old MSS. histories, whatever may be the period to which they relate, rising like Rip Van Winkles, after centuries of oblivious sleep, into sunlight, in modern type and form, contrasting as strangely with the medieval tomes as do the fresh green leaves in spring with the blackened branches of the trees in a city square. Amongst those already issued we may notice, "Capgrave's Chronicle of England," the "Chronicon Monasterii de Abingdon," and the "Lives of Edward the Confessor;" while other volumes are in course of preparation.

But though we have headed our article with the "Calendars" and the "Chronicles and Memorials," the two great branches of the labours of the Master of the Rolls, our object is, not so much at this time to review them, as to point, for a few moments, to an unfortunate period which has for a time slipped through between them. We are told that the volumes of the "Calendars" relating to the first half of the 16th century will not, for some time to come, be ready for issue; and, as we have seen, the boundary line of the "Chronicles and Memorials" falls so as just to exclude the same period.

It is true that a selection from the strictly State papers of Henry VIII. has already been put into the hands of the public, having been published, in extenso, under royal commission; but we are informed, in the preface of the volume of "Calendars, 1547-1580," that there are many papers "of an extremely interesting character, which, either from their length, or from being irrelevant as State papers, were inadmissible in that work," and remain unpublished. It was with the avowed object of "acquainting the public, through some eligible channel, with the existence and nature of these papers" that the Commission of 1840 authorised the issue of the "Calendars." They were to com

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mence with the reign of Henry VIII., and it is only through some incidental matter of arrangement that the first volume of the series has been hitherto withheld.

The purely State papers, which have been in the hands of historians, have been well made use of, and hence the State history, with all its trials and divorces, and executions and changes, has been greatly elucidated; but the many errors, and counter-statements, and mistaken notions, which blemish attempts to depict the social condition of England at that epoch in her history, proclaim loudly the want of greater facilities of reference, better road-books, and better means of access to the yet unexplored niches and corners of this field of research. And we the more lament that no aid is, for some time at least, likely to be given in this direction, from the conviction that the period alluded to is that which, of all others, ought to be well known and understood, in that it formed the great watershed of European history which turned into their modern channels the culture and destinies of her great nations, and that, consequently, ignorance of its great features, and of the early course of the streams to which it gave rise, is an ignorance as great in the historian, as it would be in the geographer, if he knew no more with respect to the sources of the great stream upon whose banks he dwells, than we have hitherto known of the sources of the Niger or Zambesi.

The very key to the after history of the nation must lie hid in the chaos of this period; and a right appreciation and correct knowledge of the social condition of the people at this starting point of their modern progress, must underlie all correct appreciation and knowledge of the social problems which have since been raised or solved.

While, therefore, we must wait longer for any aid from the Master of the Rolls, we make no apologies for at once calling the attention of our readers to this subject.

First, then, by what standard are we to judge of the social condition of a people? It does not depend upon its material civilisation and prosperity; for a nation is not happy and great wholly in proportion to the advances it has made in either the one or the other. The standard by which nations are measured is, in these respects, relative and conventional. When a man's day is over, it matters little to himself whether he has basked in the sunshine, or struggled with the tempest, whether he has fed on the dainties or the very crumbs of the great world's table, if only his day's work has been nobly done. His very difficulties may have made him great. And so too it may be with the struggles of nations. But if the man has been thwarted and cramped in his work, by the wrong relations between him and his fellow-men; or if, worse than this, he has been prevented from

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living any noble life at all, if his life has been crushed and wasted, then there is evidence of a social evil at the root, much deeper and far more real than that which affects only his physical comfort. And so may a nation, or a class in a nation, be cramped and crushed in the midst of general prosperity. Hence, though, if the relations of man to his fellow-men were wholly set right, enough of physical comfort and material civilisation would follow, yet should we regard these rather as an index of the true prosperity of a people, than as the chief elements in which that prosperity consists. A nation approaches to its true condition, in proportion as each man is placed in such a relation to his fellowmen that no barrier stands between him and his life's work, so as to prevent his filling that place in the state which most tends to his own good and to the common weal.

Be it then our aim to glance at the social condition of England, at the period alluded to, from this point of view.

If we mistake not, we shall find abundant evidence as we proceed, that while acknowledging the advantages of material civilisation, the moral instincts of man are, not only the most important, but also the most powerful and the most practical, of the agencies which can affect the social condition of a country. Gradually had the feudal links between class and class fallen to pieces, and, of the old feudal gradations of rank, that only remained which kept apart the aristocracy and commons.

The higher vassals now took their place as the gentry and principal landholders of the country, and those, who had once owed them feudal service, now formed the class of the yeomanry or smaller landholders; while even the peasantry had risen above the badges of their former serfdom, and claimed legal equality with the rest. These smaller landholders had become very important. It was early found that the strength of the nation very much depended upon the healthy condition of its middle class, and of this they formed the embryo.

In an age of civil and international wars, it was soon seen that the strength of an army lay very much in its foot soldiery; and Bacon observes, that "a nation where in effect all is noblesse or peasantry "-i.e., without a middle class-is necessarily defective in this particular. And he also tells us, that, by enacting that "all houses of husbandry, used with twenty acres or more of ground, should be kept up for ever, together with a competent proportion of land to be occupied with them, and in no wise to be severed from them, and thus obliging the occupier to be, not a beggar or cottager, but a man of some substance, that might keep hinds and servants, and set the plough on going, the king (Henry VII.) did secretly sow Hydra's teeth, whereupon, accord

1 Bacon's Essay on "The True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates."

ing to the poet's fiction, should rise up armed men for the service of the kingdom."

1

And when, in time of peace, the attention of legislators was turned from international warfare to internal politics, and the principles of political economy began to dawn upon the minds of English statesmen, and they became aware that there is a great difference between the exportation of the produce of the country in its manufactured and in its unmanufactured state-that as the labour of each man is a source of wealth to him, so the labour of each nation may be made a source of wealth to it, the middle class rose in consequence by rapid steps into far greater power and influence.

A demand had arisen in other countries for English cloth, and great was the number of idle hands in England crying out for work. The only link which was wanted to complete the chain was an English middle class, to collect, so to speak, the labour of the multitude, export it, and bring back the equivalent; otherwise the wool itself would be exported instead of the cloth, which represented both the wool and the labour; and thus the price of the labour would be lost to England, while foreign merchants and foreign manufacturers would be enriched by developing her resources. True to the principles of political economy, the burgesses of the towns had already risen up to supply this want, and had turned their attention to commerce and manufacture; and it was not till, in spite of the vicissitudes of war, they had enriched themselves, and afforded employment and the means of living to thousands of the peasantry in the districts around them, that they were aided by the force of artificial enactments.2

It is true these were very numerous. One, for instance, prohibited the exportation of wool, or even undressed cloth; and another provided that, for the encouragement of the manufacture of linen, landholders occupying sixty acres of land and upwards, should devote half an acre at least to the growth of flax, "inestimable sums of money being spent," says the statute," in foreign countries by reason of the importation of linen cloth, and the people of the realm being idle when they might have been employed in its manufacture." The merchant navy of England, along with the seaport towns, being "marvellously decayed" (probably on account of the wars), it was provided by statute that alien merchants should import and export in English vessels.* We need not remind our readers of the jealousy which the foreign

'Bacon's Henry VII.

2 The manufactures of Worcestershire, Norfolk, Devonshire, and the North were already of sufficient importance to attract the attention of Parliament. And Manchester was, at this early period, among the foremost of the manufacturing towns of England.

'24 Henry VIII., c. 4.

▲ 32 Henry VIII., c. 14.