View of the State of Europe During the Middle Ages, Volume 2

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J. Murray, 1837 - Europe

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Page 447 - No Freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful Judgment of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right.
Page 372 - No unbiassed observer, who derives pleasure from the welfare of his species, can fail to consider the long and uninterruptedly increasing prosperity of England as the most beautiful phenomenon in the history of mankind. Climates more propitious may impart more largely the mere enjoyments of existence ; but in no other region have the benefits that political institutions can confer been diffused over so extended a population ; nor have any people so well reconciled the discordant elements of wealth,...
Page 445 - The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the great charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than as a confirmation or commentary; and if every subsequent law were to be swept away, there would still remain the bold features that distinguish a free...
Page 434 - ... reigns we must have recourse to historians ; whose language, though vague, and perhaps exaggerated, is too uniform and impressive to leave a doubt of the tyrannical character of the government. The intolerable exactions of tribute, the rapine of purveyance, the iniquity of royal courts, are continually in their mouths. " God sees the wretched people," says the Saxon Chronicler, "most unjustly oppressed ; first they are despoiled of their possessions, then butchered.
Page 164 - O prophet, I am the man : whosoever rises against thee, I will dash out his teeth, tear out his eyes, break his legs, rip up his belly. O prophet, I will be thy vizir over them.
Page 371 - ... revive institutions which can be no longer operative, or principles that have died away, their defensive efforts will not be unnatural, nor ought to excite either indignation or alarm. A calm, comprehensive study of ecclesiastical history, not in such scraps and fragments as the ordinary partisans of our ephemeral literature obtrude upon us, is perhaps the best antidote to extravagant apprehensions. Those who know what Rome has once been are best able to appreciate what she is; those who have...
Page 449 - From this sera a new soul was infused into the people of England. Her liberties, at the best long in abeyance, became a tangible possession, and those indefinite aspirations for the laws of Edward the Confessor were changed into a steady regard for the Great Charter.
Page 436 - Men fined for the king's good- will ; or that he would remit his anger ; or to have his mediation with their adversaries. Many fines seem as it were imposed in sport, if we look to the cause ; though their extent, and the solemnity with which they were recorded, prove the humour to have been differently relished by the two parties.
Page 166 - Syria, though defended by numerous armies and fortified cities (AD 632639) ; and the khalif Omar had scarcely returned thanks for the accomplishment of this conquest, when Amrou, his lieutenant, announced to him the entire reduction of Egypt, After some interval the Saracens won their way along the coast of Africa as far as the Pillars of Hercules, and a third province was irretrievably torn from the Greek empire (AD 647-698).

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