Selections from the Speeches and Writings of Edmund Burke [186]
the general rude and fierce society, and wholly to set a bar between them and the barbarous life of the rest of the world, in order to fit them for study, and the cultivation of arts and science. Accordingly, we find everywhere, in the first institutions for the propagation of knowledge amongst any people, that those, who followed it, were set apart and secluded from the mass of the community.
The great ecclesiastical chair of this kingdom, for near a century, was filled by foreigners; they were nominated by the popes, who were in that age just or politic enough to appoint persons of a merit in some degree adequate to that important charge. Through this series of foreign and learned prelates, continual accessions were made to the originally slender stock of English literature. The greatest and most valuable of these accessions was made in the time and by the care of Theodorus, the seventh archbishop of Canterbury. He was a Greek by birth; a man of a high ambitious spirit, and of a mind more liberal, and talents better cultivated, than generally fell to the lot of the western prelates. He first introduced the study of his native language into this island. He brought with him a number of valuable books in many faculties; and amongst them a magnificent copy of the works of Homer; the most ancient and best of poets, and the best chosen to inspire a people, just initiated into letters, with an ardent love, and with a true taste for the sciences. Under his influence a school was formed at Canterbury; and thus the other great fountain of knowledge, the Greek tongue, was opened in England in the year of our Lord 669.
COMMON LAW AND MAGNA CHARTA.
The common law, as it then prevailed in England, was in a great measure composed of some remnants of the old Saxon customs, joined to the feudal institutions brought in at the Norman conquest. And it is here to be observed, that the constitutions of Magna Charta are by no means a renewal of the laws of St. Edward, or the ancient Saxon laws, as our historians and law-writers generally, though very groundlessly, assert. They bear no resemblance, in any particular, to the laws of St. Edward, or to any other collection of these ancient institutions. Indeed, how should they? The object of Magna Charta is the correction of the feudal policy, which was first introduced, at least in any regular form, at the Conquest, and did not subsist before it. It may be further observed, that in the preamble to the Great Charter it is stipulated, that the barons shall HOLD the liberties, there granted TO THEM AND THEIR HEIRS, from THE KING AND HIS HEIRS; which shows, that the doctrine of an unalienable tenure was always uppermost in their minds. Their idea even of liberty was not (if I may use the expression) perfectly free; and they did not claim to possess their privileges upon any natural principle or independent bottom, but, just as they held their lands, from the king. This is worthy of observation. By the feudal law all landed property is, by a feigned conclusion, supposed to be derived, and therefore to be mediately or immediately held, from the Crown. If some estates were so derived, others were certainly procured by the same original title of conquest, by which the crown itself was acquired; and the derivation from the king could in reason only be considered as a fiction of law. But its consequent rights being once supposed, many real charges and burthens grew from a fiction made only for the preservation of subordination; and in consequence of this, a great power was exercised over the persons and estates of the tenants. The fines on the succession to an estate, called in the feudal language "Reliefs," were not fixed to any certainty; and were therefore frequently made so excessive, that they might rather be considered as redemptions, or new purchases, than acknowledgments of superiority and tenure. With respect to that most important article of marriage, there was, in the very nature of the feudal holding, a great restraint laid upon it. It was of importance to the lord, that the person,
The great ecclesiastical chair of this kingdom, for near a century, was filled by foreigners; they were nominated by the popes, who were in that age just or politic enough to appoint persons of a merit in some degree adequate to that important charge. Through this series of foreign and learned prelates, continual accessions were made to the originally slender stock of English literature. The greatest and most valuable of these accessions was made in the time and by the care of Theodorus, the seventh archbishop of Canterbury. He was a Greek by birth; a man of a high ambitious spirit, and of a mind more liberal, and talents better cultivated, than generally fell to the lot of the western prelates. He first introduced the study of his native language into this island. He brought with him a number of valuable books in many faculties; and amongst them a magnificent copy of the works of Homer; the most ancient and best of poets, and the best chosen to inspire a people, just initiated into letters, with an ardent love, and with a true taste for the sciences. Under his influence a school was formed at Canterbury; and thus the other great fountain of knowledge, the Greek tongue, was opened in England in the year of our Lord 669.
COMMON LAW AND MAGNA CHARTA.
The common law, as it then prevailed in England, was in a great measure composed of some remnants of the old Saxon customs, joined to the feudal institutions brought in at the Norman conquest. And it is here to be observed, that the constitutions of Magna Charta are by no means a renewal of the laws of St. Edward, or the ancient Saxon laws, as our historians and law-writers generally, though very groundlessly, assert. They bear no resemblance, in any particular, to the laws of St. Edward, or to any other collection of these ancient institutions. Indeed, how should they? The object of Magna Charta is the correction of the feudal policy, which was first introduced, at least in any regular form, at the Conquest, and did not subsist before it. It may be further observed, that in the preamble to the Great Charter it is stipulated, that the barons shall HOLD the liberties, there granted TO THEM AND THEIR HEIRS, from THE KING AND HIS HEIRS; which shows, that the doctrine of an unalienable tenure was always uppermost in their minds. Their idea even of liberty was not (if I may use the expression) perfectly free; and they did not claim to possess their privileges upon any natural principle or independent bottom, but, just as they held their lands, from the king. This is worthy of observation. By the feudal law all landed property is, by a feigned conclusion, supposed to be derived, and therefore to be mediately or immediately held, from the Crown. If some estates were so derived, others were certainly procured by the same original title of conquest, by which the crown itself was acquired; and the derivation from the king could in reason only be considered as a fiction of law. But its consequent rights being once supposed, many real charges and burthens grew from a fiction made only for the preservation of subordination; and in consequence of this, a great power was exercised over the persons and estates of the tenants. The fines on the succession to an estate, called in the feudal language "Reliefs," were not fixed to any certainty; and were therefore frequently made so excessive, that they might rather be considered as redemptions, or new purchases, than acknowledgments of superiority and tenure. With respect to that most important article of marriage, there was, in the very nature of the feudal holding, a great restraint laid upon it. It was of importance to the lord, that the person,