a bridge at Wrexham, he saw four brothers unjustly led to execution. He expostulated with the guards, and they called him, in derision, "A Heron !" whereupon he rushed upon them, slew several, put the rest to flight, and delivered the prisoners. With these men came to Hereward many of the children of the old Saxon nobility. Hereward was regarded as their captain and leader. The Isle of Ely, then an almost inaccessible spot, abounding in wild fens, was their camp of refuge; vast numbers of the soldiers in the army of the Conqueror were swallowed in the treacherous marshes.

The history of Hereward is told in the true spirit of the Monkish Historians; it is full of wonders: no doubt it gives to us a vivid and lively representation of the man. The Norman could not conquer him, but he fell at length before their perfidy and their snares. The life of Hereward is the history of the period. He was the last Saxon hero with whom William had to contend, and when we have made some allowance for the exaggerations surrounding his story, we may regard it as furnishing to us a picture, both of the hero and his times."

But Simon de Montford, the Earl of Leicester, was the first great constitutional hero of English freedom. He was the champion of the burghers and the citizens of the land. He must have had enlarged sympathies, indeed; who, although a nobleman, a courtier, and a legislator, could forfeit his advantages, in order that he might obtain for the people some equality of taxation,

and raise an elective body, really representing the great mass of the commercial industry, as well as the smaller landed proprietary of the country; and Montford triumphed, although compelled to take up arms against his king, Henry III., a weak and unready monarch.He fell at the Battle of Evesham. Not many months after his death the king conceded to his people, at the parliament at Marlborough, those very provisions for which the earl had contended. Until this time the Isle of Ely had, through many disasters and treacheries, continued the Home of exiled patriotism. The provisions of the laws for which De Montfort struggled, have given to the English people in succeeding ages, their power and control over the affairs of government; still much was left undone, the people still felt the brand of Serfdom; they might still be sold into slavery at the will of cruel masters and lords; and deeply they mourned over their departed leader.

An eloquent writer in the Westminster Review, from whom we freely quote in the following two or three pages, says,*

"Dark and heavy was the gloom which now settled on the spirits of the English nation. When, after fifty years of scarcely intermitted contest, they had seemed, in the opening of this year, 1265, to be on the very point of establishing those parliamentary securities, for want of which the Charter had hitherto been little else than a verbal illusion-when the

* Westminster Review, No. LXV., pp. 434-436.

direct and most perjured foes to their freedom seemed prostrate at their feet-in the moment of highest elation and brightest expectation; to receive such a blow, so sudden and so deadly, was doubly bitter-insupportably disheartening -a grief too deep for tears, that looked round in vain for consolation upon earth." But they lived in an age when, under great strokes of national as well as individual calamity, men cast their eyes to heaven undoubtingly—when the bruised spirit had a secure refuge and solace in religious faith and hope; and they belonged to a nation which had ever been remarkable for its fervent and intimate combination of religious with patriotic devotion-a combination which, in that Catholic time, necessarily concentred and embodied itself in the crown of martyrdom decreed by public opinion to such distinguished leaders as fell in the struggle for their country's welfare or defence. "On the death of De Montford," to borrow the eloquent language of M. Thierry," the old patriotic superstition of the English was awakened in his favour. Being an enemy to the foreigners, and, as a contemporary writer expresses it, a defender of the rights of lawful property, he was honoured with the same title as the popular gratitude had conferred upon those who, in the time of the Norman invasion, had devoted themselves in defence of their country. Simon, like them, received the appellation of defender of the natives. To call him traitor and rebel was declared to be a falsehood; and he was pro

claimed a saint and martyr as much as Thomas a Becket himself."

The contemporary ballad on the fall of De Montfort is one of those effusions which convey the peculiar tone of a nation's feelings under powerful excitement, with a depth and truth which no powers of dissertation, or even of narration, can adequately render. The original piece is in the Anglo-Norman French of the day, and was first printed by Mr. Ritson, in his collection of "Ancient Songs and Ballads," from a MSS. of Edward the Second's time, in the Bodleian Library. The following translation of it was made, at Mr. Ritson's request, by Mr. George Ellis, the able editor of Specimens of the Early English Poets:"

66

"In song my grief shall find relief,

Sad is my verse and rude;

I sing in tears our gentle peers
Who fell for England's good.

Our peace they sought, for us they fought,
For us they dared to die;

And where they sleep, a mangled heap,
Their wounds for vengeance cry.

On Evesham's plain is Montfort slain,
Well skill'd the war to guide;
Where streams his gore shall all deplore
Fair England's flower and pride.

Ere Tuesday's sun its course had run,
Our noblest chiefs had bled:
While rush'd to fight each gallant knight,
Their dastard vassals fled :

Still undismay'd, with trenchant blade
They hew'd their desperate way:
Not strength or skill to Edward's will,
But numbers gave the day.

Ön Evesham's plain, &c.

Yet, by the blow that laid thee low,
Brave earl, one palm was given;
Nor less at thine than Becket's shrine
Shall rise our vows to heaven!

Our church and laws, your common cause:
'Twas his the church to save;

Our rights restor'd, thou, generous lord,
Shalt triumph in thy grave.

On Evesham's plain, &c.

Despenser, true, the good Sir Hugh, *
Our justice and our friend.

Borne down with wrong, amidst the throng,
Has met his wretched end.
Sir Henry's fate need I relate,
Our Leicester's gallant son,

Or many a score of barons more,
By Gloucester's hate undone.

On Evesham's plain, &c.

Each righteous lord who brav'd the sword,
And for our safety died,

With conscience pure shall aye endure

Our martyr'd saint beside.

That martyr'd saint was never faint

To ease the poor man's care;

With gracious will he shall fulfil
Our just and earnest prayer.

On Evesham's plain, &c.

On Montfort's breast a hair cloth vest,
His pious soul proclaim'd;
With ruffian hand the ruthless band
That sacred emblem stained:
And, to assuage their impious rage,
His lifeless corpse defaced,

Whose powerful arm long saved from harm
The realm his virtues graced.

On Evesham's plain, &c.

EN PRISON DURE, says the ballad. alluding to the fate of the very few made prisoners at Evesham, in consequence of their having been found breathing among the slain after the general carnage.