king; and he, therefore, adjourned them to another parliament, to be holden in London on the morrow of St. Hilary (Jan. 14, 1297), that in the meantime they might deliberate, and consider better of their answer. When the day arrived, the clergy being assembled, Master Robert de Wynchelse, the archbishop of Canterbury, having consulted with the royal commissioners, returned answer in the following words: You well know, sirs, that, under Almighty God, we have two masters, a spiritual and a temporal; the spiritual master is our lord the pope, and the temporal our lord the king; and although we owe to both of them obedience, greater is due to the spiritual than to the temporal. Nevertheless, in order to please them both, we are willing, and agree to send at our own costs, special messengers to our spiritual father the lord pope, in order to obtain his permission to the grant, or at least to get his orders as to what we shall do for we are confident that our lord the king, not less than ourselves, both fears and would desire to avoid the sentence of excommunication which the Bull contains. To this the commissioners of the king replied: Our very dear sirs, we beg you to appoint certain of your own number to intimate this answer to our lord the king, since, as for ourselves, knowing as we do that his indignation is already roused, we cannot possibly venture to communicate your reply.' 6 : Upon their doing so, the fury of the king knew no bounds; and he forthwith put the archbishop and the whole English clergy out of his defence and protection; and ordered that all the lands and endowments of the whole English church should be seized into his hands. And it is believed to have happened miraculously, that, on the very day in which the king put the clergy out of his protection, the royal forces in Gascony were surprised and beaten by the French, as will afterwards appear. Moreover, the lord chief-justice in banco, sitting on the judgment-seat as the royal representative, thus publicly addressed those who surrounded him: Sirs, attorneys of the archbishops, bishops, abbots, and priors, and of all other persons of the clergy, announce this to your masters, and tell them, that, for the future, no justice shall be done them in the king's court in any matter, not even should the most atrocious injury be inflicted on them; while, on the other hand, justice shall be extended to all who complain or seek for it against them.' Marvellous to be told! that common justice which is accorded to the very multitude, is, in what spirit I know not, denied to the clergy; and mother church is treated as a handmaid and servant, who was wont formerly to be mistress over her sons! 'However, Henry de Newark, the archbishop elect of York, and the bishops of Durham, Ely, and Salisbury, with certain others, fearing the extreme anger of the king, and apprehensive of grievous peril impending over them, determined to lay down in the sanctuary a fifth part of the ecclesiastical revenues of that year, for the preservation of the English church, and their defence in this most urgent necessity; that by this means they might evade the king's anger, and at the same time not incur the sentence denounced in the Bull. Now, whatever the clergy laid down, was taken up by the Exchequer; and by this determination, and by thus under a disguise granting a fifth, they obtained the king's protection. However, the archbishop of Canterbury did not change his mind, and would neither grant nor lay down anything, choosing rather to incur Wherefore the anger of the king, than the sentence of excommunication. all his goods were seized, his gold and silver vessels were taken possession of, and all his horses; his very household forsook him, nor did anything remain by which Christ's poor servant might be sustained. Further, it was commanded, under pain of the king's grievous forfeiture, that no one should give him shelter either within a monastery or without, and the precept of the apostle was set at nought, 'Receive ye one another, as Christ also received you,' (Romans xv. 7). Thus being ejected, he remained in the house of a plain rector, with only one priest and one clerk, not having throughout his whole archbishopric, where he might lay his head nevertheless he was constantly employed in the word of the Lord, begging publicly, everywhere protesting that all who should grant anything to the king, or other secular person, without the consent of the lord pope, would without doubt fall under the sentence of excommunication; and being always prepared to die for the church of God. "The friends of Oliver, the bishop of Lincoln, (who likewise would not consent to the king's will,) managed so that the sheriff of Lincoln, having levied a fifth part of the bishop's goods, afterwards restored to him his possessions and lands. Moreover, the monasteries of that bishopric, and of the whole province of Canterbury, were seized into the king's hands, by whose command guardians were appointed, who should supply the brethren with bare necessaries, and transfer the remainder into the Exchequer. Wherefore the abbots and priors, being driven by necessity, went to the royal court, and redeemed, not, indeed, their sins, but their own goods with the gift of a fourth. During this time, no justice was done to the clergy, and they suffered numerous injuries. The religious were even plundered of their horses on the king's highway, and could not obtain any justice, until they had purchased his favour, and thus secured the royal protection.'-Vol. ii. pp. 116-118. In 1297, a dispute arose between the monarch and his barons, which is thus naïvely described : 'A Dissension between King Edward I. and his Peers. On the feast of St. Matthew the apostle, of the same year (Sunday, February 24, 1297), having assembled the nobles of the kingdom, but with the exception of the clergy, the king held his parliament at Salisbury, where he asked certain barons to pass over into Gascony; but they all began to make excuse; and the king, becoming angry, threatened some of them that, unless they went, he would give their lands to others who would go. At this speech, many were offended, and a dissension arose among them. The earl of Hereford and the earl-marshal (Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk) excused themselves, saying, that they would willingly fulfil the offices which they held by hereditary right in going with the king himself. The king, reiterating his request, asked the earl-marshal to go, who said :— Willingly will I go with thee, O king, marching before thy face in the front line of battle, as it is my duty by hereditary right. To whom the king said:-' But you will go with the others without me.' But he answered :-'I am not bound, O king, nor is it my pleasure, to take this journey without thee.' And the king being enraged, as it is said, broke out in these words:- By God! sir earl, thou shalt either go or hang! And he :- By the same oath, sir king, I will neither go nor hang.' And he departed without licence, and the council was broken up for that day. But the two earls, the earl of Hereford and the marshal, having presently gathered to themselves many nobles, and more than thirty chosen bannerets, their party increased to a considerable force, and were reckoned at 1500 well-armed horse, equipped ready for the war; and the king began to fear them, but dissembled. And they going to their territories, would not suffer the king's ministers to take either wool, hides, or any extraordinary, or to exact anything from such as were unwilling. They even forbade them to enter their lands under pain of decapitation and mutilation, and prepared themselves for resistance.' -Vol. ii. p. 121. One more specimen of the Historian's narrative, we take from a later period. It describes a naval engagement between the English and the French off Sluys, in the reign of Edward III. The king had set sail from Orwell on the 22nd of June, 1340, for Flanders. On the 24th, the engagement took place. 'Of the naval engagement between the English and the French. 'Edward [III.], king of England, prepared to sail for Flanders with but few ships and a small band of men. But, by the will of God, being forewarned of a French fleet which almost covered the sea near Sluys, during seven days, riding with but few attendants, and visiting in person different places and ports, he collected, as well as he could, a fleet and a force of soldiers and archers, and, with sails unfurled, committing his fleet to wind and wave, he arrived safely at the town called Ays, three miles from Sluys, about midday on Friday, the vigil of St. John the Baptist (June 23rd, 1340). The French with two hundred and fifty ships, manned with a multitude of armed soldiers and cross-bow men, stationed themselves in the sea, at the mouth of the river which runs by Sluys. And on Saturday, the feast of St. John the Baptist (June 24), when the sun had scarcely risen, having furled their sails, the French fleet formed in four lines, having fastened the ships together with great iron chains and cords, and suspending their small boats filled with stones about the middle of the mast, they erected wooden castles at the top. The king of England sent the bishop of Lincoln to the town of Ays, that he might collect the Flemings and the English who were there, and lead them out to battle when prepared, if a favourable occasion should occur for annoying the enemy while the king was charging the French; but his hope failed, for the Flemings stood on the sea-shore during the conflict, waiting only, as it was said, the issue of the battle, that they might join the victorious party. And on that day, a little before the vesper hour, the ship of lord Robert de Morlee made the first attack on the French fleet; after her, the ship of the earl of Huntingdon, then that of the earl of Northampton, and then the ship of Walter de Maunay; and in like manner all the ships which were hasting against the enemy were favoured by the sun and wind. Even in the very commencement of the action, they took three of the largest ships, called the Edward, Catherine, and Rose, which had formerly been taken at sea from the English. When the first line was overcome and the men put to the sword, they trampled on the standard of the king of France, and hoisted that of the king of England in the three ships which they had taken. The remaining ships then attempted to take to flight, but they were surrounded by the English, and the crews, throwing aside their arms, took to the boats; but before their frail craft, greatly overladen, could make the land, about 2000 of the men were drowned, and thus three lines were vanquished. In the fourth line, which consisted of about sixty vessels, there were many of the soldiers who had fled from the aforesaid ships, who were not easy to be overcome, and would hardly give in after midnight, when many thousands had been slain. In this last battle, the English lost one ship and a galley from Hull, every one of those who were in them being killed by the stones. All who were in the ship in which was the wardrobe of the king of England, were slain, excepting two men and a certain woman. The ship, however, fell again into the hands of the English. The loss on the side of the French, both of those who were killed and those who leaped into the sea, as well as those who, leaving the large ships and overcrowding the little boats, were drowned, was about 30,000 men; while, on the side of the English, not one nobleman was slain, excepting only sir Thomas de Monthermer.'-Vol. ii. p. 355. These extracts will, perhaps, lead many readers to wish that the work were rendered generally accessible by means of an English translation. We must not omit to thank the Editor for an excellent index to these volumes. ART. VII.-Memoirs of the Lives of Robert Haldane, of Airthrey, and of his brother, James Alexander Haldane. By Alexander Haldane, Esq., of the Inner Temple, Barrister-at-Law. London: Hamilton, Adams, and Co. It has been from no want of due appreciation of the merit of the work, that we have not, ere now, noticed these valuable memoirs of two of the most extraordinary men of this century. In thus designating the well-known brothers, Robert and James Haldane, of Scotland, we refer not merely to originality of personal character, as regards either their genius or moral excellence, but to their remarkable history, considered as a fine practical exemplification of the too much forgotten, if not despised, doctrine of a special Providence. The misty brilliance of philosophy, falsely so called, once more perplexes our intellectual and spiritual vision. It is much to be feared, that by men, in some sort evangelical, the good old truths of a sound scriptural religion are eloquently apologized for rather than cordially embraced. The humbling but sublime doctrines of inspired, authoritative revelation seem to be half denied by the affectedly patronizing mode of their reception. The divine idea' is, forsooth, piously discovered everywhere and in everything, while the distinct personality of the great and holy God is rather inferred than maintained. Much of our so-called religious literature is little better than a species of spiritual obscurantism. The school of the rationalists is becoming more and more irrational, even to a wild and almost canting fanaticism. We thus refer to what we must call the symptoms of the intellectual and religious degeneracy of the day, because we feel that such works as that now under review must and will be the most natural and effective antidote. What good have your conceited, everlasting eulogists of the earnest' themselves done, compared with the morally heroic achievements of such men as the Haldanes? 6 The ancestry, both paternal and maternal, of these distinguished men is traceable, by many a noble and brilliant name, for six centuries. It is interwoven with the history of Scotland, full as it is of romance, of misfortune, and of glory. Brave warriors, accomplished statesmen, and great lawyers of other days, illustrate the long ancestral roll. On the 15th of December, 1762, Captain James Haldane married his first cousin, Katharine, daughter of Alexander Duncan, of Lundie, and Helen Haldane, commonly called Lady Lundie, by the courtesy of Scotland then allowed to the wife of a minor baron. Of this marriage there were three children-namely, 1. Robert, who succeeded his father in the estate of Airthrey; 2. Helen, born in 1765, who died in childhood; and 3. James Alexander Haldane, his younger and posthumous son.' The biographer, after this closing paragraph of a brief genealogy of the family, remarks, with characteristic modesty and good taste:-'It was the privilege of the two brothers to be enabled practically to sympathise with the sentiments expressed in the noble lines of Cowper, when he exclaims: 'My boast is not, that I deduce my birth From loins enthroned, or rulers of the earth, Captain Haldane was an officer in the East India Company's naval service, and a man of exemplary character and ability. He was expecting soon to be elected a director, when, in June, |