without labour, and the yeomen, a word of German derivation, signifying commoners, who resided upon, and occupied their own land, by using which they were enabled to live without working for others. These two orders of freeholders became a very respectable class of men, and formed at home, and in the field, an industrious, frugal, hardy body. The gentleman had arms; these had no such distinction.

The domestic misfortunes which disgraced the reign of Henry VI., were continued during part of that of his successor, Edward IV. Few wars were so fatal to the ancient families as those in which he was engaged, it being, as he told de Comines, his policy to spare the common people, but cut off the gentry, so that the carnage after the battle was far greater than in the heat of the engagement. They who fled generally expiated their political sins upon a scaffold; their forfeited lands enriched the Yorkists. By this mean, landed property underwent a prodigious change; so much so, that the gentry, whose surnames were taken from places in England, who had always written their names with the article de before them, now dropped it, as their seat was possessed by others, and they, by the revolution of war, more than time, seated perhaps in another county. The other families, in imitation of these, also omitted the article la before their surname, unless either the one or the other could be united to it, if of French extraction, as d'Arcy and l'Isle. The change in the highest subjects was not less: the accomplished, the brave Edward, was cruel and unrelenting. Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter, the husband of this monarch's sister, being a Lancastrian, deserted by his wife, and proscribed by the King, gained his daily bread by begging from door to door, bare-footed and bare-legged, in the court of the Duke of Burgundy, who had married another sister of Edward : his person at last being known, that prince settled a very small pension upon him. The Earl of Oxford was also literally a beggar in a foreign land his countess obtained a scanty maintenance by her needle. So great a change was effected in the situation of many of the nobility, that a law passed, to degrade such of them to a lower rank, who had not estates sufficient to support them in their present one. Luxury had arrived to such an height, that it was necessary to enact sumptuary laws to suppress it the more so, as in the distracted state of the nation, it was impossible not to be ruinous. It was also done, no doubt, to prevent

that confusion of ranks, which a long and bloody civil war had occasioned; for numberless fortunate adventurers aspired to consequence in station, to which they had no pretension. Edward having been so much obliged by the Londoners declaring for him, he exceeded his predecessors in lavishing honors upon the chief citizens, creating several of them knights of the Bath; a certain proof of how much consequence they were become, and how necessary it was that they should retain their good opinion of him. Edward, with all his faults, was not unmindful of the best interests of his subjects. He saw that his dominions were by nature formed for commerce; he therefore encouraged trade, as much as possible, and set a noble example, in being the first merchant in his dominions. This monarch, in 1466, instituted an order of Knights of the Garter in Ireland; but it was prudently abolished by pliament, in

1494.

Passing over the reign of Edward V., it will be necessary to observe of that of Richard III., that it was spent, like all other usurpations, in violence and blood. Richard was a warrior and a statesman. Had he been legally seated upon the throne, he would have distinguished himself by the vigor of his administration, the boldness of his designs, and the wisdom of his laws. He was sanguinary, both from policy and inclination: though detestable as a man, he was respectable as a sovereign; if such language is allowable..

The battle of Bosworth conveyed the regal honors from the Plantagenets to the Tudors, maternally descended from an illegitimate stem of the Lancastrian branch. To cement the union of the contending houses, he received the hand of Edward IV.'s daughter, uniting by this mean the red and white roses. Henry was cruel, severe, morose, retired, mysterious, and unboundedly avaricious. So much of Henry's character is proper to be mentioned, as it explains the great alterations he effected in England. The ancient peers were shocked at the little respect they received, and hurt to observe their sovereign surrounded with a guard, which his predecessors had never used; but the spies who watched all their motions deterred them from forming plots against him, especially as they saw, by the death of Sir William Stanley, lord chamberlain, that no services would excuse the least fault. They, who had been treated by their Kings with condescension and confidence, now became mere shadows

E 2

shadows of their former greatness. It was in vain to look for foreign aid against him; the Continental powers were won to his interest, or frightened by his menaces. His riches, too, secured him foreign auxiliaries, if wanted; they therefore bent reluctantly to an authority they durst not provoke. Henry took advantage of his power to abridge their privileges, imprison their persons upon the slightest provocations, lessened their grandeur, by depriving them of their attendants, and emptied their purses to fill his own coffers: in return, they received no other recompense, than a permission to dispose of their baronial lands, which, as silently as slowly, caused a vast change in the landed property, and a more equal distribution in all orders of the subjects. There were some individuals of Wales, the place of his birth, who were advanced in his court; Sir Rheese ap Thomas, a knight banneret, was even honored with the order of the Garter. To Ireland he was a protector and benefactor, giving them the excellent laws of England.

Henry VIII. was brave, open, haughty, capricious, vain, lavish, vindictive, and far more cruel than his father. "He spared no man in his anger, nor woman in his lust." He was literally a most dread sovereign. All humbled themselves to his tyrannic power, against which neither beauty, age, rank, or affinity, was any protection. He drove out the regular clergy, as they were termed, the monks and nuns, and cut off the ancient nobility: with the possessions of these, he enriched new raised peers and gentry, taken sometimes from the lowest situations; but as an indispensable requisite, they must have given proofs of skill and bravery in arms. Even Henry's judges had been warriors. In his court and camp this monarch was magnificent, to a degree unknown in any former period. There was as much profusion in the commencement, as rapacity at the close of his reign: the ceremonial to the sovereign, and the blood royal, exceeded all example. Henry was completely despotic learned, haughty, valiant, stern, and inflexible, he never lost his reputation, nor fell into the contempt of his subjects. The parliament sanctioned his worst acts; the city of London murmured, but never resisted; and the provinces, when they revolted, expressed their devotion to the person of their King. Henry assumed the style of King of Ireland :" the Pope had given him that of " Defender of the Faith." The tilt and tournament were the entertainment of the court;

martial

martial sports of the whole nation. Splendor was visible every where ; commerce, however, was highly honored. Henry dubbed every sheriff nominated to the chief magistracy of London: he honored one of them with the order of the Bath; but there is no subsequent example of this title being given to a lord mayor. The opulence of the citizens was become so great, that the second of Henry's Queens was a descendant from one of them. The yeomen, by cultivating their paternal inheritance, became truly respectable, forming the best part of what was denominated the commonalty. Their eldest sons were placed in the van of the army, their younger ones filled the parochial pulpits. Many of these yeomen were enabled to purchase rich parcels of the dissolved monasteries, from those who had obtained grants of them from the Crown. The Welch were, by an act of the legislature, incorporated with England. Surnames were taken by this people, at the recommendation of those who presided in the courts of justice; leaving, therefore, their ancient method of giving a genealogy after their baptismal name, with ap between each of their ancestors, they dropped the a, and placed the p to the name they adopted for their family one: this is the reason why we have so many which begin with the letter p, as Parry, Price, Powell, Pugh, Prichard, Proger, &c. formed from Harry, Rheese, Howel, Hugh, Richard, and Roger *. There is scarce a surname in Wales, but what has been used as a christian one: the common people were slow in assuming them, and I believe there are some in the mountains yet, who never have. The arms of the gentry are the best criterion to know the origin of their families. The Welch are generous, happy, and contented; they still keep themselves unmixed, chusing to spend their days in their charming wild native valleys, rather than " join the crowd, and toil for gold."

Edward VI. was a child at his accession; a youth at his death. He was a prodigy of learning, knowledge, and prudence; but his courtiers were rapacious and ferocious. They had been, as Mary, afterwards Queen, told them, " raised by her father from almost nothing." After seizing the remainder of the lands of religious foundations, and the plate

* It was late in the seventeenth century, that many opulent families in Yorkshire took stationary surnames, having before that time used their father's christian one, with son

of

added to it. Still later, in and round Halifax in that county, surnames became in their dialect genealogical, as William a Bills, a Toms, a Luke.

of the churches, they quarrelled about the plunder, and one party destroyed the other. They were prodigal of honors, and lavish of the royal patrimony. Edward, had he lived, would have severely punished their ill conduct and temerity. It is with wonder we read the observations upon government of one so young as this prince. By it we see the avidity of a nation, rapidly emerging from the feudal yoke, to acquire wealth by industry; an industry which broke in upon that distinction of orders which had been kept with the nicest care. The King laments, that noblemen and gentlemen could not live so well as formerly, from the increase of the price of provisions, and rents not having been advanced : owing to the farmer's having land at a low rent, and letting it out at a treble one, which obliged the under-tenant to sell his commodities at an higher price, that he might be enabled to pay his rent to the upper-tenant. The grazier, farmer, or sheep-master, became landed-men, and called themselves gentlemen, though they were "churls." The farmer would have ten, some twenty farms, and be also a pedlar-merchant, The artificer left the town, and for "his more pastimes," would live in the country; would even become a justice of the peace, and would have thought himself scorned if denied. So "lordly" were they at that time, that they were not content with 2000 sheep, but must have 20,000, or else they thought themselves not well used. They chose to have twenty miles square their own land, or full of their farms, and four or five crafts to live by were too little: " such hell-hounds they were." His Majesty laments the dissensions of his subjects, the corruption and bribery of the lawyers and judges; forestalling; shipping the products of the country for a foreign market, and returning to London with a cargo of wine, sugar, dates, &c. and selling it for double the price; selling offices of trust, impropriate benefices; destroying timber: speaks of excess in apparel, diet, and inclosing wastes and commons: the poor, idle and disorderly. Such was the sad picture of the times. Bishop Latimer entirely coincides with his sovereign, in the truth and justness of the facts. A more profligate period history does not afford; but yet, as far as relates to merchandize, the King seems mistaken in a great measure. Let us see what his Majesty thinks would rectify these faults of the trading part of his subjects, and save the gentleman from turning farmer in his own defence. This country, he thought, could bear no merchant to have more land than £100 per annum; no husbandman nor farmer worth

above