530 Constitutional History. [chap.
A source of
strength to
the crown.
no unimportant element of strength to them. The earldoms of
Leicester, Lancaster, Lincoln and Derby, conveyed not merely
the demesnes but the local influence which Simon de Montfort,
Edmund and Thomas of Lancaster, the Lacies and the Ferrers,
lɪad once wielded ; and, by lɪis marriage with the со-heiress of
Bohun, Henry secured during the whole of his life the supreme
influence in the earldoms of Hereford, Essex and Northampton.
Part of that influence was lost when Henry V divided the
Bohun estates with the countess of Stafford, his cousin ɪ ; but
in the duchy of Lancaster, as it was finally consolidated, he and
his son had a faithful and loyal, if somewhat lawless, body of
adherents. It was by the Lancashire and Yorkshire men that
Beaufort set duke Humfrey at defiance2 ; and by their aid
Margaret of Anjou was able to prolong the contest with Ed-
ward IV. It was in the halls of Lancashire gentlemen that
Henry VI wandered in his helplessness ; and in the minster of
York that prayers were offered before his image. The estates
of the duchy gave the house of Lancaster a hold on almost
every shire in England3 ; the palatine jurisdiction of the county
of Lancaster, the great honours of Knaresborough, Pomfret,
Tickhill, and Pickering in Yorkshire, of Derby, Leicester and
Lincoln, the castles and dependencies of Kenilworth, Hertford,
Newcastle-Under-Lyne, Hinckley, the Peak, and Monmouth, all
of them names resonant with ancient fame, were but a portion
of the great historical demesne which Edward IV took care to
annex, inseparably but distinctly ‘ amortized/ to the estates of
the crown as the personal demesne of the sovereign4. The
house of Lancaster inherited not only the estates and the prin-
ciples of the great party of reform, but the personal connexions
by marriage and blood with the baronage, of which so much
has been said already, and which, if they increased its strength
for a time, had the fatal result of dragging down the whole
1 Kot. ParI- ɪv. 135 sq. 2 See above, p. 104.
s Some notion of the enormous influence exercised by the house of
Lancaster may be derived from an examination of the charters of the
duchy, a kalendar of which has been published by the deputy keeper of
the Public Records in the 31st and 35th Reports.
4 See above, p. 251.
XXi.] Homage and Teallg, ɔɜɪ
accumulation of family alliances in the fall of the royal
house.
461. The elements of strength which the kings both before Theoiyand
and. after Henry IV derived from the more direct influences of king⅛.
personal activity and private wealth were effectual means of
bringing home to the subject the better side of the theory of
royalty ; but they had little connexion with the theory itself.
The king who was seen hurrying to and fro at the head of his
levies, or who once or twice in the year visited his demesne
manors, hunted in his private forests, and brought the mis-
chiefs of purveyance to every man’s door, was indeed the king
who was God’s minister, and wielded the temporal sword for
the punishment of evildoers, the king who could do no wrong,
against whom no prescription held good, and who never died ;
but a link was unquestionably wanting to attach the abstract
idea to its concrete impersonation. That link was supplied in Beiigious
early times by the clergy, and in later times by the lawyers. smcuS
The clergy had insisted on the religious duty of obedience, the
lawyers elaborated the system of allegiance, fealty, homage, and
the penalties of treason. True, the early clergy were supplying
the place of lawyers, and the early lawyers were clergymen,
but the weapons which they employed were in the first instance
drawn from the Scriptures and applied to the conscience; in
the latter they were drawn from natural or civil law and
applied to the sense of honour and self-preservation. From the
time of the Conquest, and still more from that of Henry I, the
two lines of influence diverged : the temporal sword came too
often into collision with the spiritual—the divine vicegerent at
Westminster with the divine vicegerent at Rome; the clergy
remembered that there were kings like Saul and Herod, and it
was less easy than it had been to determine what things were
to be given to Caesar. Hence even the best of the medieval
kings were treated by the higher schools of the clergy with
some reserve : to Peckham or Winchelsey Edward I was, in
spite of his piety and virtue, no ideal king; and, when the
unswervingly faithful house of Lancaster came to the throne,
they found it fenced about with the statutes of praemunire and