already seen how cruelly the Jews were treated; how the kings extorted money from them, and how the people every now and then rose and massacred them. It was generally believed that they stole Christian children and murdered them in secret, and that they tried to get mysterious drugs from foreign lands to poison all Christendom. Though the kings of England had, more or less, protected them from the time of William the Conqueror onward, as being in some sort their own property, their protection did not go far, and many hard and tyrannical laws were enforced against them. We may wonder why they chose to live in England, since they met with such bad usage; but the fact was, that in other Christian countries their treatment was far worse. There appears to have been a religious frenzy in both king and people, moved by which Edward ordered all the Jews out of the country. Edward intended that they should leave in safety, and, as some say, gave them permission to take their property with them. The people, however, treated the poor Jews with shocking barbarity in their flight; and especially the sailors who carried them in their ships. Many of them were wrecked, others were robbed and flung overboard. One instance is given by an old chronicler, who says that he learned it from a manuscript written at the time. "Some of the richest of the Jews, being shipped in a mighty tall ship which they had hired, when the same was under sail, and had got down the Thames toward the mouth of the river, the master mariner bethought him of a wile, and caused his men to cast anchor, and so rode at the same, till the ship, by ebbing of the stream, remained on the dry sands. The master then enticed the Jews to walk out with him for recreation. And at length, when the Jews were on the sands, and he understood the tide to be coming in, he gat him back to the ship, whither he was drawn by a rope. The Jews made not so much haste, because they were not aware of the danger; but when they perceived how the matter stood they cried to the master for help. He, however, told them that they ought to cry rather upon Moses, by whose guidance their fathers had passed through the Red Sea. They cried indeed, but no succor appeared, and so they were swallowed up by the water." Edward severely punished these murderers; but it is to be feared that very few of the sixteen thousand Jews who were driven away reached the mainland in safety. It was about three hundred and fifty years from this time before any Jews were allowed to come back; but now, as we know, as many as like live peaceably in England; some very rich, some very poor, but all protected by the laws, and enjoying the same liberty, comfort, and safety as those of the English race. The inhabitants of Scotland. The old laws. Candidates for the crown. Edward claims the over-lordship. John Balliol. The first revolt. The first Conquest. The stone of destiny. land. The SCOTLAND, though much smaller than England, was far larger, more powerful, and more civilized than Wales. people also were very different. The Welsh, though The people brave, and fond of fighting, had not much perse- of Scotverance; they were easily daunted. There were a good many of the very same race in Scotland also, the Welsh of the northern part of Strathclyde, which was part of Scotland; and if the whole country had been peopled by them, perhaps England would, after a while, have subdued them all. But Scotland contained men who were by birth English, Irish, and Normans, though they were now all called Scotchmen. The real Scots were in fact Irish. In very old times Ireland, or part of Ireland, was called Scotia, and the Irish people were called Scots. A great many of these had crossed over the narrow sea which divides the two countries, and had settled in the northern part of what we now call Scotland. Here they found a great many wild people living, who were most likely a family of Celts, also called Picts, and the Romans tell us what trouble these two sets of wild men gave them.* It was to keep out the Picts and Scots that Agricola had built his great wall. When they were not fighting the Romans or the Britons, no doubt they spent most of their time in fighting each other; and in some way or other the Scots got the mastery of the Picts; a Scot king became king over them all, and the whole country north of the Forth and the Clyde was called Scotland. The people *The Celtic Picts (so called from painting their bodies-picta) were styled Caledonians by the Romans in the time of Agricola. — Ed. in this kingdom were therefore nearly related to the Irish, and spoke almost the same language. The Highland Scotch still have a language of their own, called "Gaelic," but it is almost exactly like the native Irish language, and both Irish and Gaelic are more like Welsh than like English; they are all three Celtic dialects. When the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain they not only took possession of what is now called England, but of a good part of what we now call Scotland also. The old Anglian kingdom of Northumberland stretched from the Humber to Agricola's wall. Edwin, the first Northumbrian king who became a Christian, had built a strong fortress on the northern boundary of his dominions to keep out the wild Scots, which was called Edwin's borough, or Edinburgh. Thus all this part of Scotland, except to the west, where the Welsh lived, was part of England, and full of Englishmen: the very same people whose descendants live there now. As is well known, there is to this day a great difference between the Scotch Highlanders and Lowlanders; the Highlanders being Celts, and speaking a Celtic language; and the Lowlanders, Anglo-Saxons, and speaking English, or a dialect of English. The English language is now spreading through the whole country, and all educated Highlanders, and many of the poor also, speak it; but it can hardly be called their native tongue. After a time the Danes and Northmen came and took possession of the islands and northern parts of Scotland, and many of their descendants still live there. By degrees the Scotch kings got the mastery over more and more of the Lowlands, both of Northumberland and of Strathclyde, as far as to the river Tweed and the Solway Firth, and Edwin's borough became the capital of Scotland, which would doubtless have surprised Edwin very much. After the Norman Conquest the Scotch king showed great kindness to the conquered English, and married the sister of Edgar the Etheling, who was so religious that she was afterwards called St. Margaret. A great many of the English who were driven out of their possessions by the Normans took refuge in Scotland and were warmly welcomed. Many Normans came there too, who were also kindly received. Some great Norman noblemen had large estates in Scotland, in England, and in France also; and it is hard to say whether they were Scotchmen, Englishmen, or Frenchmen. Strangely enough, Robert Bruce, who is the pride of the Scotch, and their ideal of a patriot, belonged to one of these families. Thus in the time of Edward I. the kingdom of Scotland was in size and boundaries just what it is now; and though it contained these different races of men, they all felt themselves, and were called, Scotchmen, and were much attached to their country. It was probably because there were so many of English race among them (who have the great quality of perseverance, and never know when they are beaten) that, instead of conquering Scotland, as he did Wales, Edward I. wholly lost even what he had at first. It would have been much to our advantage if the Archdeacon Gerald, who wrote such amusing and interesting accounts of Wales and Ireland, had travelled in Scotland also; but there does not seem to be any description of the country written at the time.* Still we can learn something about the manners and habits of the people from their own old laws, as well as from the English or other writers who saw them in England, even if they did not travel into Scotland to see them at home. A great part of Scotland is very beautiful, full of mountains and lakes and wild moors and heaths. This was the part where the wilder people, the Highlanders, lived. Many hundreds of years after this time they were still uncivilized, and had many singular customs. At this period even the Lowlands seem to have been far less civilized than England, though, at the same time, in some respects, Scotland was better off than England. The old Some of the old laws of Scotland, which were at this time still looked on as the law of the land, though the nation had in reality quite outgrown them, would appear to belong to a savage state of society. In England, as has been stated, in early times a man's life was estimated in money. Any one who killed him had to pay a certain sum to his family, according to his rank. A king was worth so much, an earl so much, and a plain man so much, The Scotch in the old times reckoned the value of a man in cows. The king was worth one thousand cows; a king's son or an earl, one hundred and fifty. The lowest mentioned laws. *Very graphic descriptions of life and manners in Scotland one hundred years later are to be found in Froissart. — ED. |