William, mounted on horseback, encouraged his men with a voice that seemed to breathe victory; and ordered the consecrated banner, sent him by the Pope, to be unfurled in front of his army. The Normans thought they marched under the protection of Heaven. They advanced to the attack in three bodies; the first composed of the troops of Bretagne, Anjou, Le Maine, and Perche; the second, of Poictevins and Germans; the duke himself led up the last division, consisting of his own Normans, and the flower of his nobility; and among all three divisions were interspersed flying bodies of archers, to serve as opportunity should offer. Taillefer, an old soldier, stepped out before the rest and sung, as was customary, the famous song of Rollo. His enthusiasm carried him still further: having obtained the Duke's permission to strike the first blow, he rushed upon a standard bearer, and run him through with his lance: another he killed with his sword, but before he could dispatch another he himself was slain.

The battle now commenced by a heavy discharge of arrows from the bows of the Norman archers, which a little disconcerted the English; and the enemy, taking advantage of their confusion, pressed upon them with the greatest impetuosity. The panic was but temporary; the English rallied and charged the Normans with such fury in return, that they were obliged to give way; their left was broken, and driven into some covered ditches, which in their advance to the assault they had not perceived. At the same

moment a report spread through the other corps that the Duke was slain, and the whole army was about to fly, when he, coming up at this crisis, dispelled their fears, rallied them, and led them again to the fight.

The English were so elated with this momentary triumph, that they forgot the orders of their leader, and left their strong position on the hill to pursue the discomfited enemy into the plain. As soon as William perceived this error, he brought up a body of Norman cavalry, from his right wing, and cut off the retreat of

3000 of the most advanced of the pursuers, consisting of the Kentish and Essex men, all of whom he put to the sword.

He then renewed the general attack against the main body of the English, by whom he was received by the same firmness and intrepidity as before. Thrice had he led up the charge, and each time the horse on which he rode was killed. He flew from rank to rank, from squadron to squadron; animating, by his words, and encouraging by his example, both the brave and irresolute; sometimes rushing on with a torrent of death in his rear, sometimes opposing his single authority to a crowd of runaways. But victory appeared to have chosen the side of the English: the drooping Normans staggered under the resistless shock, when William, failing in open force, resorted to stratagem. He sounded a retreat;-it proved the first note of his victory.

Harold's brave troops, thinking that nothing now remained but to satiate their vengeance, pursued the wily enemy with reckless ardour. At a given signal, the Normans rallied, faced about, and surrounding their pursuers with their cavalry, cut numbers of them to pieces; the rest, with great difficulty, regained the hill, which they ought never to have quitted, and maintained it against all the efforts of redoubled numbers. Once more the Normans tried the same stratagem, and again the English, by a most perverse fatality, were decoyed to their ruin; till weakened by these repeated losses, and deprived of their leader by an arrow, which laid their monarch breathless on the ground, their defeat was accomplished. The amazed English then thronged instinctively round the standard of their sovereign, but they could defend it no longer. Its place was speedily usurped by the Duke's, and at the close of the day, they were compelled to retreat. The two brothers of the King fell in each other's arms; and William, flushed with good fortune, pursued the remnant of his adversary's army in the darkness of night, till the perils of the ditches and morasses

obliged him to order the cessation of the combat, with permission to the English to retire. They accordingly drew off; and he thus saw himself master of the field of battle, and in possession of the prize for which he had been contending,-the crown of England.

K.

MAGNA CHARTA.

THE Conquest of England by the Normans produced the most rapid and important change in the condition of the people. Under the Anglo-Saxon government, the common principles of justice, and the ordinary rights of civil society, were observed amongst all above the degree of slaves; and the power of the King over his subjects was restrained and limited by the popular assemblies, and the confederations of the people in tithings and hundreds, which the wisdom of Alfred established, The freeholders appointed their own officers; and the King could not make laws, or levy taxes, without the consent of the Wittenagemote. The different degrees of rank were those of thanes, churles, and freedmen. The first were the nobility of the state-the second the yeomen and the third, constituting a small and inferior class, were principally mechanics. The great body of the labourers were slaves; and although the influence of Christianity had gradually ameliorated their condition, they were subject to the most ignominious restraints, and deprived of those privileges which are possessed by all classes, where knowledge and liberty have succeeded in establishing the equal rights and obligations of the humblest as well as the highest citizen.

The Norman Conquest at once destroyed those traces of a free government which the successors of Alfred had maintained; and it introduced the feudal

system, with its different degrees of military despotism, alike unjust, oppressive, and odious. William the Conqueror, by force of arms, and by forfeitures, soon became almost the sole possessor of the landed property of the kingdom. Having reserved an immense proportion of the cultivated land for the support of the crown, and devastated as large a quantity for the establishment of royal forests, he assigned the remainder to his followers, upon certain conditions of military service and homage, and with the right of exacting fines and other pecuniary acknowledgments. The absolute power of the crown was thus maintained over its dependents; and the great body of the people were linked into the chain of despotism, by the nobility assuming the same power over their vassals, in distributing to them estates which they could not occupy, subject to the same species of services and payments. The feudal Baron was a tyrant upon a smaller scale than the King;-and his power was generally exercised in that ferocious manner which proceeds from the want of one general system of equitable government that recognizes no distinctions. The Saxon courts of justice, where the ancient laws of England were equitably administered, were suffered to decay; and a more splendid judicature was established, called the King's Court. This was, in most cases, only an instrument of monarchical exaction. The Saxon oppression of slavery was still continued;-a large proportion of the people and their families were sold at the will of the lord.

During the course of a century from the invasion of the Normans, the feudal institutions had been maintained with very little relaxation. The corruptions of such a system had in some measure increased. The King had gradually made greater encroachments upon the power of the barons; who were content to submit to the oppression, as long as they could shift the burthen upon their vassals. There was an alternation of tyranny and slavery through every degree. The extravagance of the Crown was not only supplied by the produce of its lands, and by exactions from its

dependents, but the most unbounded rapacity was exercised towards the unprivileged classes. The Jews, who contrived to render themselves masters of great wealth, were persecuted for their riches with the most unprincipled barbarity. Upon the succession to the throne of John, in the 1199, the condition of the people was as wretched as could be imagined under such an arbitrary system of government; the unbounded vices of this weak and wicked monarch, casting off all restraints of moderation and prudence, produced that universal jealousy and disgust which at length established a better order of things. The capricious tyranny of John gave birth to a courageous resistance, which succeeded in procuring for the English nation that charter, which provides for the equal distribution of justice and the free enjoyment of property;-and to which we at this day refer with an honourable pride as the memorial of that love of freedom which has built up the British Constitution,— the most glorious example of well-regulated liberty which the world ever beheld.

John, from the commencement of his reign, had much to apprehend from the discontent and power of his Barons. They raised him, indeed, to the throne, but they knew their own importance; and were not willing to prostrate themselves before an unprincipled and cruel tyrant. The murder of his nephew, Arthur, was amongst the first acts which procured him the general detestation of his subjects. The weak King was constantly engaged in disputes for the maintenance of his dominion in France; and he at one time madly outraged the papal authority, which was then almost supreme throughout Europe; and at another made the most disgraceful compromises of his dignity, to avert the danger which his own rashness had provoked. His opposition to the Pope did not proceed from any just contempt of the intolerance and ambition of the chief priest of a religion of charity and humility, but from a daring and absurd impiety. Had his quarrel been grounded upon just principles, and had he been careful to have