Ivanhoe

Knights, with a long retinue of their squires,

In gaudy liveries march and quaint attires;

One laced the helm, another held the lance,

A third the shining buckler did advance.

The courser paw'd the ground with restless feet,

And snorting foam'd and champ'd the golden bit.

The smiths and armourers on palfreys ride,

Files in their hands, and hammers at their side;

And nails for loosen'd spears, and thongs for shields provide.

The yeomen guard the streets in seemly bands;

And clowns come crowding on, with cudgels in their hands.

--Palamon and Arcite

The condition of the English nation was at this time sufficiently

miserable. King Richard was absent a prisoner, and in the power of

the perfidious and cruel Duke of Austria. Even the very place of his

captivity was uncertain, and his fate but very imperfectly known to the

generality of his subjects, who were, in the meantime, a prey to every

species of subaltern oppression.

Prince John, in league with Philip of France, Coeur-de-Lion's mortal

enemy, was using every species of influence with the Duke of Austria, to

prolong the captivity of his brother Richard, to whom he stood indebted

for so many favours. In the meantime, he was strengthening his own

faction in the kingdom, of which he proposed to dispute the succession,

in case of the King's death, with the legitimate heir, Arthur Duke of

Brittany, son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, the elder brother of John. This

usurpation, it is well known, he afterwards effected. His own character

being light, profligate, and perfidious, John easily attached to his

person and faction, not only all who had reason to dread the resentment

of Richard for criminal proceedings during his absence, but also the

numerous class of "lawless resolutes," whom the crusades had turned back

on their country, accomplished in the vices of the East, impoverished

in substance, and hardened in character, and who placed their hopes

of harvest in civil commotion.

To these causes of public distress and

apprehension, must be added, the multitude of outlaws, who, driven

to despair by the oppression of the feudal nobility, and the severe

exercise of the forest laws, banded together in large gangs, and,

keeping possession of the forests and the wastes, set at defiance the

justice and magistracy of the country. The nobles themselves, each

fortified within his own castle, and playing the petty sovereign over

his own dominions, were the leaders of bands scarce less lawless and

oppressive than those of the avowed depredators. To maintain these

retainers, and to support the extravagance and magnificence which their

pride induced them to affect, the nobility borrowed sums of money from

the Jews at the most usurious interest, which gnawed into their estates

like consuming cankers, scarce to be cured unless when circumstances

gave them an opportunity of getting free, by exercising upon their

creditors some act of unprincipled violence.