Edward Hallam

“ If in these later years of Edward's reign the king could venture on so strong a measure as the imposition of a tallage without consent of those on whom it was levied, it is less surprising that no representatives of the commons appear to have been summoned to one parliament, or perhaps two, in his twenty-seventh year, when some statutes were enacted. ”

“ A period of obscurity and confusion ensues, during which we have as little insight into constitutional as general history. There are no contemporary chroniclers of any value, and the rolls of parliament, by whose light we have hitherto steered, become mere registers of private bills, or of petitions relating to commerce. The reign of Edward IV. is the first during which no statute was passed for the redress of grievances or maintenance of the subject's liberty. Nor is there, if I am correct, a single petition of this nature upon the roll. ”

“ The policy adopted by the prince of Wales and earl of March, in employing the house of commons as an engine of attack against an obnoxious ministry, was perfectly novel, and indicates a sensible change in the character of our constitution. In the reign of Edward II. parliament had little share in resisting the government; much more was effected by the barons through risings of their feudal tenantry. Fifty years of authority better respected, of law better enforced, had rendered these more perilous, and of a more violent appearance than formerly. ”

“ The rolls of Henry VII.'s first parliament are full of an absurd confusion in thought and language, which is rendered odious by the purposes to which it is applied. Both Henry VI. and Edward IV. are considered as lawful kings; except in one instance, where Alan Cotterell, petitioning for the reversal of his attainder, speaks of Edward, "late called Edward IV." (vol. iv. p. 290.) But this is only the language of a private Lancastrian. And Henry VI. passes for having been king during his short restoration in 1470, when Edward had been nine years upon the throne. ”

“ Nor was Richard ever accused of illegal tallages, the frequent theme of remonstrance under Edward, unless we may conjecture that this charge is implied in an act (11 R. II. c. 9) which annuls all [Pg 85] impositions on wool and leather, without consent of parliament, if any there be. [f] Doubtless his innocence in this respect was the effect of weakness; and if the revolution of 1399 had not put an end to his newly acquired despotism, this, like every other right of his people, would have been swept away. ”

“ There is no great difficulty in answering the question why the deputies of boroughs were finally and permanently ingrafted upon parliament by Edward I. [n] The government was becoming constantly more attentive to the wealth that commerce brought into the kingdom, and the towns were becoming more flourishing and more independent. But chiefly there was a much stronger spirit of general liberty and a greater discontent at violent acts of prerogative from the era of Magna Charta ”

“ Edward III. dying June 21, 1377, the keepers of the great seal next day, in absence of the chancellor beyond sea, gave it into the young king's hands before his council. He immediately delivered it to the duke of Lancaster, and the duke to Sir Nicholas Bode for safe custody. Four days afterwards the king in council delivered the seal to the bishop of St. David's, who affixed it the same day to divers letters patent. [q] Richard was at this time ten years and six months old; an age certainly very unfit for the personal execution of sovereign authority. ”

“ I merely take notice of this change in the law between the reigns of Henry III. and Edward IV. as an instance of the bias which the judges showed in favour of personal freedom. Another, if we can rely upon it, is more important. In the reign of Henry II. a freeman marrying a nief, and settling on a villein tenement, lost the privileges of freedom during the time of his occupation; legem terræ quasi nativus amittit. Glanvil, 1. v. c. 6. This was consonant to the customs of some other countries, some of which went further, and treated such a person for ever as a villein. ”

“ But the original institution, having been designed for ends of state, police, and revenue, full as much as for the determination of private suits, still preserved the most eminent parts of its authority. For the king's ordinary or privy council, which is the usual style from the reign of Edward I., seems to have been no other than the king's court (curia regis) of older times, being composed of the same persons, and having, in a principal degree, the same subjects of deliberation. ”

“ The violence, if resistance to the usurpation of a subject is to be called such, was on the part of the king, who had just sent the earl of Lancaster to the scaffold, and the present enactment was levelled at the ordinances which had been forced upon the crown by his faction. The lords ordainers, nevertheless, had been appointed with consent of the commons, as has been mentioned in the text; so that this provision in 15 Edward II. seems rather to limit than to enhance the supreme power of parliament, if it were meant to prohibit any future enactment of the same kind by its sole authority. ”

“ If we judge, however, by the lists of those summoned, according to the best means in our power, it will appear, according at least to one of our most learned investigators of this subject, that the regular barons by tenure were all along very far more numerous than those called by writ; and that from the end of Edward III.'s reign no spiritual persons, and few if any laymen, except peers created by patent, were summoned to parliament who did not hold territorial baronies. ”

“ Among these the custom of setting tallages at discretion would naturally appear the most intolerable; and men were unwilling to remember that the burgesses who paid them were indebted for the rest of their possessions to the bounty of the crown. In Edward I.'s reign, even before the great act of Confirmation of the Charters had rendered arbitrary impositions absolutely unconstitutional, they might perhaps excite louder murmurs than a discreet administration would risk. ”

“ And upon this grant [Pg 45] divers merchants have made many advances to our lord the king in aid of his war; for which cause this subsidy cannot be repealed without assent of the king and his lords." [r]
It is probable that Edward's counsellors wished to establish a distinction, long afterwards revived by those of James I., between customs levied on merchandise at the ports and internal taxes. The statute entitled Confirmatio Chartarum had manifestly taken away the prerogative of imposing the latter, which, indeed, had never extended beyond the tenants of the royal demesne. ”

“ The charter of the forests, granted by Henry III. along with Magna Charta, [p] had been designed to crush the flagitious system of oppression which prevailed in those favourite haunts of the Norman kings. They had still, however, their peculiar jurisdiction, though, from the time at least of Edward III., subject in some measure to the control of the King's Bench. [q] The foresters, I suppose, might find a compensation for [Pg 151] their want of the common law in that easy and licentious way of life which they affected ”

“ A subsidy was granted at this parliament; so that, if the citizens and burgesses were really not summoned, it is by far the most violent stretch of power during the reign of Edward III. But I know of no collateral evidence to illustrate or disprove it.
[o] Tallages were imposed without consent of parliament in 17 E. I. Wykes, p. 117; and in 32 E. I. Brady's Hist. of Eng. vol. ii. In the latter instance the king also gave leave to the lay and spiritual nobility to set a tallage on their own tenants. This was subsequent to the Confirmatio Chartarum, and unquestionably illegal. ”

“ If we include those who held of the king ut de honore, that is, the tenants of baronies escheated or in ward, who [Pg 16] may probably have enjoyed the same privileges, being subject in general to the same burdens, their number will be greatly augmented, and form no inconsiderable portion of the freeholders of the kingdom. After the statute commonly called Quia emptores in the eighteenth of Edward I. they were likely to increase much more, as every licensed alienation of any portion of a fief by a tenant in chief would create a new freehold immediately depending upon the crown. ”

“ In business an Englishman throws over politeness. He says, “How do you do?” very much as if he was saying, “Leave me alone;” and he is not inclined to answer questions, save, by “yes” or “no.” Elizabeth perceived at once that tears or weakness would damage her cause, and that the only way to meet Antony’s wrong was to repair it, and to do this in the plainest and simplest manner possible.
“I am Miss Hallam.”
“Take a seat, Miss Hallam.”
“You hold two notes of my brothers, one purporting to be drawn by Lord Eltham for L9,000; the other by Squire Francis Horton for L9,600.” ”

“ Besides, it is plain, from the famous questions subsequently put by the king to his judges at Nottingham, that both the right of retiring without a regular dissolution, and the precedent of Edward II., had been discussed in parliament, which does not appear anywhere else than in Knyghton.
[d] Rot. Parl. vol. iii. p. 219.
[e] Articles had been exhibited by the chancellor before the peers, in the seventh of the king, against Spencer, bishop of Norwich, who had led a considerable army in a disastrous expedition against the Flemings, adherents to the anti-pope Clement in the schism. ”

“ And in the reign of Edward I. we find the king sending certain of the petitions addressed to him, praying extraordinary remedies, to the chancellor and master of the rolls, or to either separately, by writ under the privy seal, which was the usual mode by which the king delegated the exercise of his prerogative to his council, directing them to give such remedy as should appear to be consonant to honesty (or equity, honestati) . "There is reason to believe," says Mr. ”

“ Purveyance, as I have already said, may serve to distinguish the defects from the abuses of our constitution. It was a reproach to the law that men should be compelled to send their goods without their consent; it was a reproach to the administration that they were deprived of them without payment.
The right of purchasing men's goods for the use of the king was extended by a sort of analogy to their labour. Thus Edward III. announces to all sheriffs that William of Walsingham had a commission to collect as many painters as might suffice for "our works in St. ”

“ The dying man kissed it, and smilingly looked at Elizabeth. Then he let his eyes wander to Richard and his daughter-in-law.
“Good-bye, all!” he whispered, faintly, and almost with the pleasant words upon his lips he went away.
In a few hours the Christmas waits came singing through the park, and the Christmas bells filled the air with jubilant music; but Squire Henry Hallam had passed far beyond the happy clamor. He had gone home to spend the Christmas feast with the beloved who were waiting for him; with the just made perfect; with the great multitude which no man can number. ”

“ People are apt to suppose that in old countries and among the wealthy classes years come and go and leave few traces. The fact is that no family is precisely in the same circumstances after an interval of a year or two. Gold cannot bar the door against sorrow, and tapestry and eider-down have no covenant with change. Richard had not been many hours in Hallam when he felt the influence of unusual currents and the want of customary ones. The squire’s face no longer made a kind of sunshine in the big, low rooms and on the pleasant terraces. ”

“ Lord Egremont, a younger son of the Earl of Soho, controlled large amounts of railway stock, and it was said held a mortgage on the family castle. To prove to his father and mother that no law of primogeniture could disinherit him, appeared to George Eltham an object worth striving for.
With these thoughts simmering in his heart he met Antony Hallam at Oxford. They speedily became friends. Antony wanted money also. But in him the craving arose from a more domineering ambition. He wished to rule men, to be first every-where. ”

“ Hallam smiled, wanly, "I won't scare you by saying what then, girlie. If He did, I suppose it would all be right. Everything is right—to the folks who don't have to suffer the thing. Even the doctor—and I liked him as much as I envied him—even he preached to me and bade me not to mind, to 'forget.' Hmm, I wish he could feel, just for one little minute, the helplessness that I must feel always, eternally." ”

“ Hallam is, I suppose, about sixty [Pg 119] years old, gray-headed, hesitates a little in his speech, is lame, and has a shy manner which makes him blush frequently, when he expresses as decided an opinion as his temperament constantly leads him to entertain. Except his lameness, he has a fine dignified person, and talked pleasantly, with that air of kindness which is always so welcome to a stranger.... He is a wise man, a little nervous in his manner and a little fidgety, yet of a sound and quiet judgment.”—1838. ”

“ Hallam and had felt drawn to her, but was too much absorbed in her own matters to have any time for a stranger. She was a natural flirt, and, although so plain, always managed to have, as she said, two or three idiots dangling on her string. Just now it was a young Englishman, the grandson of old Lady Gresham, whom she had upon her string, greatly to the disgust of her mother, with whom she was not often in perfect accord.
Linking her arm in Bertha’s as they went down the stairs, she continued, “Are you going to walk? I am, up the hill. Come with me. ”