from the general tendency to direct the energies of Englishmen into new paths. New and more nishments: There can be no doubt that the new discoveries led to new and more merciful punishments, and caused many men who would otherwise have found their way to the gallows, to seek a new home merciful puacross the seas. The ultimate effect on a transportation. nation of withdrawing its most enterprising spirits can hardly be unmixed benefit; but if England showed less signs of turbulence in the eighteenth century than in the sixteenth, the emigrations of the seventeenth may fairly be assumed to have contributed something toward that result. The sentence of transportation, which first became of importance after the Rebellion of 1715, and probably had a considerable influence upon the subsequent history of this country, was very intimately connected with the adventures and piracies of the time of Elizabeth. It is usual, indeed, to consider an Act passed in her reign. as the first statute by which transportation was authorised. But this opinion is not quite correct. Banishment did become one of the methods by which England was relieved of her rogues and vagabonds; but this was at most only an extension of the old law, according to which persons who had taken sanctuary might abjure the realm. They were not sent to a penal colony or to any particular place, but were cast adrift to live as best they might wherever they could. Many of them, however, would naturally associate themselves with naval adventurers in need of recruits, and many of them, no doubt, found a grave on American soil like criminals of a later age. A punishment still more closely associated with the maritime enterprise of the Tudor period is that of the hulks. In the statute by which it was enacted that rogues might be banished, it was enacted also that they might be sent to the galleys. This idea can also be traced to the customs of past times, when men required The hulks. for any service could be forced to perform it, and is closely associated also with the famous Act of Edward VI., by which a rogue could be made a slave. But the impulse given to the seafaring life had caused a scarcity of men for the performance of the humbler duties connected with it; and hence arose a punishment which has since been developed into the employment in dockyards enforced by our criminal law at the present day. Any change which relieved the eyes of the populace from some of the spectacles of men hanging in chains or suffering torture in the pillory must, of necessity, have been beneficial. A writer who lived under Queen Elizabeth describes an incredible decrease of capital punishment. He asserts that during the reign of Henry VIII. there were hanged nearly two thousand minor criminals a year, and that in his own time the number had fallen to about four hundred. As, however, he does not appear to have consulted those records from which the information might have been obtained, and which are now, unfortunately, not all in existence, his figures must be regarded as merely conjectural. It may, nevertheless, be most readily believed that there were fewer executions, and even less crime at the end of the sixteenth century than there had been at any previous time in English history. A great number of causes contributed towards the same result. The throne was more secure, the country had increased in wealth, there was a law for the relief of the poor, which, however imperfect, was better than none, and (most important of all) the restless spirits had learnt to seek adventures by sea rather than by land. general pro the end of the It is at the conclusion of the Tudor period that the effects of very remote causes begin at length to show themselves, and that the progress of great Effects of the sections of the human family in knowledge and gress seen at intercourse is seen to be accompanied by a Tudor period. change of manners. Had the mariner's compass never been invented, or never been made known to Europeans, Columbus could never have accomplished or even attempted his successful voyage to America. There had without doubt been many a slight improvement in shipbuilding from generation to generation, hardly noticed at each stage, but making in the whole a great difference between the sea-going capabilities of vessels in the twelfth century and vessels in the sixteenth. The father lifts the son on to his shoulder, and the son the grandson; and, when the climbers are not hurled down by political convulsions, a greater height is attained in each succeeding century. in internal tions. The higher the point reached the wider is the range of vision; and progress in one direction leads almost infallibly to progress in others. When some Improvement men improve the means of locomotion by sea, communicaothers improve the means of locomotion by land. Similar wants, similar intellectual development, similar impulses of every kind, act and re-act one on another, so that the characteristics of an age may be recognised in a great variety of forms. In the sixteenth century, which, in spite of most formidable obstacles, was a period of great advancement, the universal law held good. With the increase of commerce and of maritime enterprise there was, of necessity, an improvement in the internal communications. Particular highways became the subjects of statutes in the reign of Henry VIII.: and in the reign of Philip and Mary the first general Act was passed for the repair of the highways of the kingdom. This last statute is remarkable for the statement in the preamble that the roads were 'both very noisome and tedious to travel in, and dangerous to all passengers and carriages.' It is important to observe that carriages, though they must still have been very rarely used for travelling, were yet thought worthy of mention. Before the time of Henry VIII. the sufferers by defects of road are described as horsemen or foot-travellers. a happier It must not, however, be supposed that the long series of statutes for the improvement of highways, of Indications of which the Act passed in 1555 was the first, future. had an immediate effect in giving England a number of well-made roads. That higher stage of civilisation was as yet in the far distance, like the abolition of piracy. It is evident, both from statutes and from proclamations, that the highways were infested with robbers, and that nothing better than the old system of watch and ward had yet been devised. But among the indications of a happier future the beginning of improvement in internal communications was certainly one; and it was something that Edinburgh could be reached on horseback from London in five or six days. There was another such indication in an event which was to happen after the death of Elizabeth, and which, like improved. means of travelling, was to bring remote parts of the island closer together, but which, unlike the general progress of a nation, was wholly fortuitous. CHAPTER VII. FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I. TO THE DEATH OF CHARLES I. men. HE accessio. of the first Stuart to the throne of border at the union of the English England was one of the most important steps in the civilisation of Great Britain, as it was the Crimes on the first step towards the destruction of some of time of the the greatest hotbeds of crime-the Marches Scottish and towards Scotland.' An indication of their crowns. character has been given in a previous chapter; and they long retained that character from causes wholly independent of the disposition of either Scots or EnglishThese causes were of two kinds-one wholly distinct from the other. On the one hand the warlike spirit (which is always to be considered in the history of crime) was most keenly alive on the border; and as deeds of daring were, from one point of view, very commendable when directed against neighbours who were or might at any moment become enemies, there was no very scrutinising enquiry into the motives with which they were done. On the other hand there was a fellow-feeling among some of the worst malefactors of the debateable land and the land adjoining it. As the writs of the English king were useless in Scotland, and the writs of the Scottish king in England, a horde of outlaws on one side of the boundary could give a friendly shelter to outlaws |