(Vol. iii., p. 327.)

Your correspondent H. C. wishes to know whether bondage was a reality in the time of Philip and Mary; and, if so, when it became extinct. It was a reality much later than that, as several cases in the books will show. Dyer, who was appointed chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas in 1559, settled several in which man claimed property in his fellow-man, hearing arguments and giving judgment on the point whether one should be a "villein regardant" or a "villein in gross." Lord Campbell, in his Lives of the Chief Justices, gives the following, tried before Dyer, C.J.:

"A. B., seised in fee of a manor to which a villein was regardant, made a feoffment of one acre of the manor by these words: 'I have given one acre, &c., and further I have given and granted, &c., John S., my villein.' Question, 'Does the villein pass to the grantee as a villein in gross, or as a villein appendant to that acre?' The Court being equally divided in opinion, no judgment seems to have been given."—Dyer, 48 b. pl. 2.

Another action was brought before him under these circumstances:—Butler, Lord of the Manor of Badminton, in the county of Gloucester, contending that Crouch was his villein regardant, entered into certain lands, which Crouch had purchased in Somersetshire, and leased them to Fleyer. Crouch thereupon disseised Fleyer, who brought his action against Crouch, pleading that Butler and his ancestors were seised of Crouch and his ancestors as of villeins regardant, from time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary. The jury found that Butler and his ancestors were seised of Crouch and his ancestors until the first year of the reign of Henry VII.; but, confessing themselves ignorant whether in point of law such seisin be an actual seisin of the defendant, prayed the opinion of the Court thereon. Dyer, C.J., and the other judges agreed upon this to a verdict for the defendant, for "the lord having let an hundred years pass without redeeming the villein or his issue, cannot, after that, claim them." (Dyer, 266. pl. 11.)

When Holt was chief justice of the King's Bench, an action was tried before him to recover the price of a slave who had been sold in Virginia. The verdict went for the plaintiff. In deciding upon a motion made in arrest of judgment, Holt, C.J., said,—"As soon as a negro comes into England he is free: one may be a villein in England, but not a slave." (Cases temp. Holt, 405.)

As to the period at which villenage in England became extinct, we find in Litt. (sec. 185.):—

"Villenage is supposed to have finally disappeared in the reign of James I., but there is great difficulty in saying when it ceased to be lawful, for there has been no statute to abolish it; and by the old law, if any freeman acknowledged himself in a court of record to be a villein, he and all his after-born issue and their descendants were villeins."

Even so late as the middle of the eighteenth century, when the great Lord Mansfield adorned the bench, it was pleaded "that villenage, or slavery, had been permitted in England by the common law; that no statute had ever passed to abolish this status;" and that "although de facto villenage by birth had ceased, a man might still make himself a villein by acknowledgment in a court of record." This was in the celebrated case of the negro Somersett, in which Lord Mansfield first established that "the air of England had long been too pure for a slave." In his judgment he says,—

"... Then what ground is there for saying that the status of slavery is now recognised by the law of England?... At any rate, villenage has ceased in England, and it cannot be revived."—St. Tr., vol. xx. pp. 1-82.

And Macaulay, in his admirable History of England, speaking of the gradual and silent extinction of villenage, then, towards the close of the Tudor period, fast approaching completion, says:

"Some faint traces of the institution of villenage were detected by the curious as late as the days of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever to this hour been abolished by statute."

Tee Bee.

Villenage (Vol. iii., p. 327.).—In reply to the question put by H. C., I beg to say that in Burton's Leicestershire (published in 1622), a copy of which is now before me, some curious remarks occur on this subject. Burton says, under the head of "Houghton-on-the-Hill," that the last case he could find in print, concerning the claim to a villein, was in Mich. 9 & 10 Eliz. (Dyer, 266. b.), where one Butler, Lord of the Manor of Badminton in Gloucestershire, did claim one Crouch for his villein regardant to his said manor, and made an entry upon Crouch's lands in Somersetshire. Upon an answer made by Crouch, an ejectione firmÆ was brought in the King's Bench; and upon the evidence it was moved, that as no seizure of the body had been made, or claim set up by the lord, for sixty years preceding, none could then be made. The Court held, in accordance with this, that no seizure could be made. I do not know what the reference means; perhaps some of your legal correspondents may do so.

Jaytee.

MACLEAN NOT JUNIUS.

(Vol. iii., p. 378.)

Your correspondent Ægrotus (antÈ, p. 378.) is not justified in writing so confidently on a subject respecting which he is so little informed. He is evidently not even aware that the claims of Maclean have been ably and elaborately set forth by Sir David Brewster, and, as I think, conclusively, on the evidence, set aside in the AthenÆum. He has, however, been pleased to new vamp some old stories, to which he gives something of novelty by telling them "with a difference." I remember, indeed, four or five years since, to have seen a letter on this subject, written by Mr. Pickering, the bookseller, to the late Sir Harris Nicolas, in which the same statements were made, supported by the same authorities,—which, in fact, corresponded so exactly with the communication of Ægrotus, that I must believe either that your correspondent has seen that letter, or that both writers had their information from a common story-teller.

Respecting the "vellum-bound copy" locked up in the ebony cabinet in possession of the late Marquis of Lansdowne, Mr. Pickering's version came nearer to the authority; for he said, "My informant saw the bound volumes and the cabinet when a boy." The proof then rests on the recollection of an Anonymous, who speaks positively as to what took place nearly half a century since; and this anonymous boy, we are to believe, was already so interested about Junius as to notice the fact at the time, and remember it ever after. Against the probabilities of this we might urge, that the present Marquis—who was born in 1780, and came to the title in 1809, is probably as old, or older than Anonymous; as much interested in a question believed by many persons, Ægrotus amongst them, intimately to concern his father, and quite as precocious, for he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1805—never saw or heard of either the volumes or the cabinet; and, as Ægrotus admits, after a search expressly made by his order, they could not be found. Further, allow me to remind you, that it is not more than six weeks since it was recorded in "Notes and Queries" that a "vellum-bound" Junius was lately sold at Stowe; and it is about two months since I learnt, on the same authority, that a Mr. Cramp had asserted that vellum-bound copies were so common, that the printer must have taken the Junius copy as a pattern; so that, if Ægrotus's facts be admitted, they would prove nothing. There is one circumstance, however, bearing on this question, which perhaps Ægrotus himself will think entitled to some weight. It was not until 1812, when George Woodfall published the private letters of Junius, that the public first heard about "a vellum-bound" copy. If therefore the Anonymous knew before 1809 that some special interest did or would attach more to one vellum-bound book than another, he must be Junius himself; for Sampson Woodfall was dead, and when living had said nothing about it.

Ægrotus then favours us with the anecdote about "old Mr. Cox" the printer, and that Maclean corrected the proofs of Junius' Letters at his printing-office. Of course, persons acquainted with the subject have heard the story before, though not with all the circumstantialities now given. Where, I might ask, is the authority for this story? Who is responsible for it? But the emphatic question which common sense will ask is this: Why should Junius go to Mr. Cox's printing-office to correct his proofs? Where he wrote the letters he might surely have corrected the proofs. Why, after all his trouble, anxiety, and mystification to keep the secret, should he needlessly go to anybody's printing-office to correct the proofs, and thus wantonly risk the consequences?—in fact, go there and betray himself, as we are expected to believe he did? The story is absurd, on the face of it. But what authority has Ægrotus for asserting that Junius corrected proofs at all? Strong presumptive evidence leads me to believe that he did not: in some instances he could not. In one instance he specially desired to have a proof; but it was, as we now know, for the purpose of forwarding it to Lord Chatham. Junius was also anxious to have proofs of the Dedication and Preface, but it is by no means certain that he had them; the evidence tends to show that they were, at Woodfall's request, and to remove from his own shoulders the threatened responsibility, read by Wilkes: and the collected edition was printed from Wheble's edition, so far as it went, and the remainder from slips cut from the Public Advertiser, both corrected by Junius; but we have no reason to believe that Junius ever saw a proof, even of the collected edition,—many reasons that tend strongly to the contrary opinion. Under these circumstances, we are required to believe an anonymous story, which runs counter to all evidence, that we may superadd an absurdity.

Mr. Pickering further referred to Mr. Raphael West, as one who "could tell much on the subject." Here Ægrotus enlarges on the original, and tells us what this "much" consisted of. The story, professedly told by Benjamin West, about Maclean and Junius, on which Sir David Brewster founded his theory, may be found in Galt's Life of West. But Galt himself, in his subsequent autobiography, admits that the story told by West "does not relate the actual circumstances of the case correctly;" that is to say, Galt had found out, in the interval, that it was open to contradiction and disproof, and it has since been disproved in the AthenÆum. So much for a story discredited by the narrator himself. Of these facts Ægrotus is entirely ignorant, and therefore proceeds by the following extraordinary circumstantialities to uphold it. "The late President of the Royal Academy knew Maclean; and his son, the late Raphael West, told the writer of these remarks [Ægrotus himself] that when a young man he had seen him [Maclean] in the evening at his father's house in Newman Street, and once heard him repeat a passage in one of the letters which was not then published;" and Ægrotus adds, "a more correct and veracious man than Mr. R. West could not be." So be it. Still it is strange that the President, who was said to have told his anecdote expressly to show that Maclean was Junius, never thought to confirm it by the conclusive proof of having read the letters before they were published! Further,—and we leave the question of extreme accuracy and veraciousness to be settled by Ægrotus,—the President West was born in 1738; he embarked from America for Italy in 1759; on his return he visited England in 1763, and such was the patronage with which he was welcomed, that his friends recommended him to take up his residence in London. This he was willing to do, provided a young American lady to whom he was attached would come to England. She consented; his father accompanied her, and they were married on the 2nd of September, 1765, at St. Martin's Church. Now Maclean embarked for India in December, 1773, or January, 1774, and was lost at sea, when "the young man," Master Raphael, could not have been more than seven years of age,—nay, to speak by the card, as Master Raphael heard one of Junius' letters read before it was published, and as the last was published in January, 1772, it follows, assuming that he was the eldest child, born in nine months to the hour, and that it was the very last letter that he heard read, he may have been five years and seven months old—a very "young man" indeed; or rather, all circumstances considered, as precocious a youth as he who found out the vellum-bound copy years before it was known to be in existence.

I regret to have occupied so much of your space. But speculation on this subject is just now the fashion. "Notes and Queries" is likely hereafter to become an authority, and if these circumstantial statements are admitted into its columns, they must be as circumstantially disproved.

M. J.