. Hallam, in his excellent _History of the Middle
Ages_, (vol. iii. p. 359), gives the following view of these
misconceived glories of history:--"The crusades may be considered as
martial pilgrimages on an enormous scale; and their influence upon
general morality seems to have been altogether pernicious. Those who
served under the cross would not indeed have lived very virtuously at
home; but the confidence in their own merits, which the principle of
such expeditions inspired, must have aggravated the ferocity and
dissoluteness of their ancient habits. Several historians attest the
depravation of morals which existed both among the crusaders, and in
the states formed out of their conquests."

_Slave Trade in England._--In England it was very common, even after
the conquest, to export slaves to Ireland; till, in the reign of Henry
II., the Irish came to a non-importation agreement, which put a stop
to the practice. William of Malmesbury accuses the Anglo-Saxon
nobility of selling their female servants as slaves to foreigners. In
the canons of a council at London, in 1102, we read--"Let no one from
henceforth presume to carry on that wicked traffic, by which men of
England have hitherto been sold like brute animals." And Giraldus
Cambrensis says that the English, before the conquest, were generally
in the habit of selling their children and other relations, to be
slaves in Ireland, without having even the pretext of distress or
famine, till the Irish, in a national synod, agreed to emancipate all
the English slaves in the kingdom.

_Opulent English Merchants._--Some idea of the ancient commercial
wealth of Great Britain may be gathered from a glance at the rapid
increase of English trade from about the middle of the fourteenth
century. Thus, in 1363, Ricard, who had been lord mayor, some years
before, entertained Edward III. and the Black Prince, the Kings of
France, Scotland, and Cyprus, with many of the nobility, at his own
house in the Vintry, and presented them with handsome gifts. This
eclipses the costliest entertainments of our times, at the public
expense. Philpot, another eminent citizen in Richard II.'s time, when
the trade of England was considerably annoyed by privateers, hired one
thousand armed men, and dispatched them to sea, where they took
fifteen Spanish vessels with their prizes. We find Richard obtaining a
great deal from private merchants and trading towns. In 1379, he got
5,000_l._ from London, 1,0