other trade regulations in the interests of the consumers. With this end in view meat and corn were prohibited from being exported, elaborate statutes against fraud were enacted, and attempts were made to enforce a "just price." In the Middle Ages, before economists had discovered "time utilities" and "place utilities," by which the middleman and often the profiteer justify their existence, it was believed that every article had a just price, which would enable everyone who had contributed to the making of the article to get a return by which he could make a living suitable to his station, and neither more nor less. This just price was the one for which all goods should be sold, and various attempts were made to assure it. Bread and ale generally had prices fixed by the municipal authorities. In the case of other goods sentiment and law generally prohibited forestalling or the buying of goods before the market opened, engrossing or cornering the market, and regrating or purchasing large quantities of goods to sell at a higher price. The middleman had no place in the medieval system; and even the foreign merchant, who was recognized as rendering a service by carrying the goods from overseas, was allowed to make only fair, and not all possible, profits.

While it must always be recognized that the towns of the feudal period were all small, that the whole trade and industry of this time were insignificant in comparison with the agriculture of the nation, and that only a part of these was centered in the towns, since a great deal of wholesale business was carried on in fairs outside the control of town regulations, the towns play, nevertheless, a most important part in the feudal age. For with their narrow crooked streets, with houses crowding up into the air to get the utmost on every square inch of ground, they were the dwelling places of that part of society, artisans and merchants, for whom there was no place in the feudal system, which recognized only workers in agriculture, fighting men, and priests. They were not opposed to feudalism, but merely asked that feudalism make adjustments to suit their peculiar needs. In their growth they developed institutions and ideas, such as free contract, money economy, and capitalism or the use of money to make more money, which eventually destroyed feudalism.

SUGGESTED BOOKS FOR CHAPTER II

(See General Works)

POLITICAL AND NARRATIVE HISTORY.

G. B. Adams, The Political History of England, 1066-1216.
H. W. C. Davis, England under the Normans and Angevins.
E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England.
C. H. Haskins, The Normans in Europe.

FEUDALISM AND SERFDOM.

W. S. Davis, Life on a Medieval Barony.

N. J. Hone, The Manor and Manorial Records.

F. W. Maitland, Domesday and Beyond.

D. C. Munro, The Middle Ages.

J. H. Round, Feudal England.

C. Seignobos, The Feudal Regime.

P. Vinogradoff, English Society in the Eleventh Century.
The Growth of the Manor.
Villainage in England.

CONSTITUTIONAL AND INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.

G. B. Adams, Council and Courts in Anglo-Norman England.

G. B. Adams, The Origin of the English Constitution.

C. H. Haskins, Norman Institutions.

R. L. Poole, The Exchequer in the Twelfth Century.

ECONOMIC HISTORY.

W. J. Ashley, An Introduction to English Economic History and Theory. E. Lipson, Introduction to the Economic History of England in the Middle Ages; Vol. 1, Middle Ages.

J. H. Ramsay, A History of the Revenues of the Kings of England, 1066-1399.

SOCIAL HISTORY.

F. P. Barnard, Medieval England, Ed., H. W. C. Davis.

M. Bateson, Medieval England.

G. G. Coulton, Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation.

T. Wright, A History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments in England during the Middle Ages.

CHURCH HISTORY.

M. Deanesly, History of the Medieval Church.

W. R. W. Stephens, The English Church from the Norman Conquest to the Accession of Edward I.

BIOGRAPHY.

R. W. Church, St. Anselm.

C. W. David, Robert Curthose.

E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror.

A. J. MacDonald, Lanfranc.

J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville.

F. M. Stenton, William the Conqueror.

SOURCES.

W. Stubbs, Select Charters to the Reign of Edward I.

CHAPTER III

THE FRAMEWORK OF POLITICAL UNITY AND THE GROWTH OF THE CONSTITUTION

The kings of this period were

Henry II, 1154-1189

Richard I, 1189-1199
John, 1199-1216

Henry III, 1216-1272 16

12/65

Edward I, 1272-1307 Mi dil

dele ment

Henry II, the founder of the Plantagenet dynasty, was the son of Geoffrey of Anjou and Matilda, the daughter of Henry I. Before Stephen's death a treaty was made between him and Matilda under the terms of which Matilda's son Henry succeeded to the English throne. Richard and John were Henry II's sons; Henry III was the son of John; and Edward I, the son of Henry III.

Amid the growing prosperity of Norman England the feudal disorders of Stephen's reign were for most men a sharp retrogression, and the wretchedness of the times caused by the baronial struggle for independence justified the restoration of effective royal power as the great boon. The exorcism of anarchy was the first important task of Henry II after his accession in He was already one of the most powerful princes in Europe. From his father, he inherited Anjou, Normandy, and Touraine; from his mother, Maine; and by his marriage in 1152 to Duchess Eleanor, twelve years older than himself, he became ruler of the Duchy of Aquitaine, stretching from the Loire to the Pyrenees. He added Brittany and Ireland to his empire in later years, and still further increased his power by alliances with the most powerful princes of Europe; the King of Castile, who married his daughter Eleanor; the King of Sicily, who married his daughter Joan; and Henry the Lion, Duke of Bavaria, who married his daughter Matilda. When he came to England he found that hundreds of adulterine or illegal castles-one authority says 1115-had been built by feudal nobles as strongholds to flaunt the royal authority. With his great resources as ruler over more than half of France, Henry II had little diffi

culty in leveling these castles, humiliating the nobles, and restoring peace and quiet in the land.

Henry recognized that the mere destruction of feudal strongholds was not enough to guarantee the permanent suppression of baronial ambitions. There was need of improved royal institutions to keep the disorderly elements under such effective control that no disturbance might gain headway. Consequently Henry gave much attention to the perfection of efficient police measures for the detection and extirpation of crime. As early as 1164 reference is made to the use of the testimony of neighbors as a method of securing information against evil-doers. The practice seems to have been already in existence before this date, but two years later, in the Assize of Clarendon, it received great prominence through the provision that twelve men in every hundred and four men in every manor should be sworn to reveal any man known to them who was guilty of murder, larcency, robbery, or of harboring criminals. Ten years later, in the Assize of Northampton, forgery and arson were added to the list, and other additions were made afterwards. Out of this system of the jury of presentment was developed the modern grand jury, which presents indictments against men suspected of crime.

HENRY II AND THE CHURCH

The repression of disorder was but half of the problem of the restoration of the king's authority. The crown could never be dominant in England as long as the church maintained the position it had won in the days of Stephen's reign. It had not only received the charter of 1136 granting all its pretensions of sovereignty; but, with the failure of the royal courts, it had taken over many of the functions of the civil government. The church courts had sat uninterruptedly and even increased their business as men learned that, owing to the superior procedure of these courts and the more evolved system of law used in them, they afforded more exact justice than the royal courts.

As a beginning of recovering the royal jurisdiction, and the revenues which the courts brought in, Henry II chose as his chancellor Thomas à Becket, a brilliant clerk, who talked louder than all the rest of the bishop's oath of fealty to the king. In 1161 this appointment was followed by Becket's nomination as Archbishop of Canterbury. As archbishop, to Henry's chagrin, Becket espoused the cause of the church as warmly as he had