se, a
peril to travellers. Half exultant, half disgusted, he wrote to More:
'These fellows were stripped before disbandment: so they will have all
the more excuse for fresh plundering. This is consideration for the
people! They were so hemmed in that not one of them could have
escaped: yet the Dukes were for letting them go scot-free. It was mere
chance that any of them were killed. Fortunately, a man blew his
trumpet: there was at once an uproar, and more than a thousand were
cut down. The Archbishop alone was sound. He said that, priest though
he was, if the matter were left to him, he would see that such things
should never occur again. The people understand the position, but are
obliged to acquiesce.' To Colet he exclaimed more bitterly: 'It is
cruel! The nobles care more for these ruffians than for their own
subjects. The fact is, they count on them to keep the people down.'
Let us be thankful that Europe to-day has no experience of such
mercenaries.

A sign of the troubles of the times was the existence of the French
order of Trinitarians for the redemption of prisoners. This need had
been known even when Rome's power was at its height, for Cicero[25]
specifies the redemption of men captured by pirates as one of the ways
in which the generously minded were wont to spend their money. The
practice lasted down continuously through the Middle Ages. Gaguin, the
historian of France, Erasmus' first patron in Paris, was for many
years General of the Trinitarians, and made a journey to Granada to
redeem prisoners who had been taken fighting against the Moors. Even
in the eighteenth century, church offertories in England were asked
and given to loose captives out of prison.

[25] _De Officiis_, 2. 16.

Where the king's peace is not kept and the king's writ does not run,
men learn to rely on themselves. Those who protect themselves with
strength, discover the efficacy of force, and soon are not content to
apply it merely on the defensive. It is not surprising, therefore, to
find in Erasmus' day many cases of resort to violence to remedy
defective titles. Nowadays we never hear of a defeated candidate for
a coveted post trying to obtain by force and right of possession the
position which has been given to another. It is unthinkable, for
instance, that a Warden of Merton duly elected should have to eject
from college some disappointed rival who had possessed himself of the
Warden's office and house: as actually happen