568
ConstitmtwrIial History.
[chap.
what of the adventurer with the country magnate, and, although
he did not crenellate his houses or inclose large parks, he lived
on terms of modest equality with those who did ; he could act
as steward to the neighbouring earl, whose politics he supported,
Thegreater and by wlιose help he meant to rise. Above him, yet still in
knights. rarιji- below the peerage, was the great country lord who, in all
but attendance in parliament, was a baron ; the lord of many
manors and castles, the courtier, and the warrior. There was no
insuperable barrier between these grades ; and there were many
influences that might lead them to combine.
Thepoiiticai 479. It may be asked to what cause we are to attribute the
the knights attitude of opposition in which, during the more bitter political
contests, we find the knights of the shire in parliament standing
with respect to the lords, the church and the crown, if the
gradations of class were so slight and the links of interest so
strong. The reply to the question must be worked out of the
history through which we have made our way1. It is too
much to say that the knights as a body stood in opposition or
hostility to the crown, church and lords ; it is true to say that,
when there was such opposition in the country or in the parlia-
ment, it found its support and expression chiefly in this body.
It must be remembered that the baronage was never a united
phalanx. Throughout the really important history of the four-
teenth and fifteenth centuries it was divided from head to foot
by the hereditary political divisions in which the house of
Lancaster was set against the crown, or the dynastic opposition
Attitude of against the Lancastrian king. When the nation was with the
mens liable constitutional baronage against the court, the knights of the
to change 1 . . . , _ π
from year shire were strong in supporting, and. were supported by, the
°year' constitutional baronage : but the court was strong too, and a
little dealing with the sheriffs could change the colour of the
parliament from year to year. The independent knights were
a majority in the parliament of 1376; they were reduced to
a dozen in that of 1377. There were subservient as well as in-
1 The first trace of this is seen in the Good Parliament of 1376 : ‘ Magna
Controversia inter dominos et communes ; ’ Mon. Evesham, p. 44. The
same writer in 1400 represents the ‘plebeii’ clamouring for the execution
of the degraded lords, but resisted by the king ; p. 165.
Country Politics.
569
XXI.]
dependent parliaments ; the subservient parliaments make little
figure in history, hut their members were drawn from the
same class, perhaps the same families, as the independent parlia-
ments. County politics, as we know so well from the Paston
Letters, were not less troubled and not less equally balanced
than were the national factions ; and many of the local rivalries
that originated in the fourteenth century waxed stronger as
they grew older, until the competitors were matched against
one another in the great war of the Rebellion. It is true then
that what was done in parliament for the vindication of
national liberties was mainly the work of the knights, but it
is not true that their policy was an independent or class policy,
or that their influence was always on the right side.
In one remarkable struggle, that of the Wycliffite party for illustration
the humiliation of the clergy, this conclusion should be carefully history of
θb, *z the Wycliff-
weighed. There was no point in which the proposals of a ite⅛
distinct policy were more pertinaciously put forward than that
of the confiscation of the temporalities of the clergy : so at least
we are told by the historians, and the same may be gathered
from the controversial theology of the time. It cannot bo
doubted that session after session the project was broached;
yet it never once reached the stage at which it would become
the subject-matter of a common petition of the house ; that is,
it never once passed the house of commons or was carried up to
the lords. It is easy to judge how it would have fared in the
upper house, where the lords spiritual formed a numerical
majority ; but it never was presented to them. Nor ought it
to be argued that, because it never appears on the Rolls of
Parliament, it was excluded by ecclesiastical trickery : a house
of commons such as that of which Arnold Savage was the
spokesman, a body of justices of whom Gascoigne was the chief,
could not have endured dishonest ecclesiastical manipulation of
their records ; such interference on the king’s part was one of
the points which contributed to the fall of Richard II. ArundeI
might persuade the king to decline a speaker like Cheyne, but
he could not have falsified or mutilated a record of the house
of commons. The conclusion is simply that the Wycliffite