ional history that connects their
councils with a thing like our House of Commons is as far-fetched as it
would be to say that the Speaker wields a Mace like those which the
barons brandished in battle. Simon de Montfort was not an enthusiast for
the Whig theory of the British Constitution, but he was an enthusiast
for something. He founded a parliament in a fit of considerable absence
of mind; but it was with true presence of mind, in the responsible and
even religious sense which had made his father so savage a Crusader
against heretics, that he laid about him with his great sword before he
fell at Evesham.

Magna Carta was not a step towards democracy, but it was a step away
from despotism. If we hold that double truth firmly, we have something
like a key to the rest of English history. A rather loose aristocracy
not only gained but often deserved the name of liberty. And the history
of the English can be most briefly summarized by taking the French motto
of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," and noting that the English have
sincerely loved the first and lost the other two.

In the contemporary complication much could be urged both for the Crown
and the new and more national rally of the nobility. But it was a
complication, whereas a miracle is a plain matter that any man can
understand. The possibilities or impossibilities of St. Thomas Becket
were left a riddle for history; the white flame of his audacious
theocracy was frustrated, and his work cut short like a fairy tale left
untold. But his memory passed into the care of the common people, and
with them he was more active dead than alive--yes, even more busy. In
the next chapter we shall consider what was meant in the Middle Ages by
the common people, and how uncommon we should think it to-day. And in
the last chapter we have already seen how in the Crusading age the
strangest things grew homely, and men fed on travellers' tales when
there were no national newspapers. A many-coloured pageant of
martyrology on numberless walls and windows had familiarized the most
ignorant with alien cruelties in many climes; with a bishop flayed by
Danes or a virgin burned by Saracens, with one saint stoned by Jews and
another hewn in pieces by negroes. I cannot think it was a small matter
that among these images one of the most magnificent had met his death
but lately at the hands of an English monarch. There was at least
something akin to the primitive and epical romances of