CLERICAL TYRANNY.

The oppression of the people by the clergy, during the reign of St Louis, was lamentable. A vigorous action was done by his mother, Queen Blanche, to

cure it in some measure. The Chapter of Paris had imprisoned all the inhabitants of Chatenai, and of some other places, for divers things which were imputed to them, and which were forbidden to bondmen; for such was then the people’s condition, and especially the inhabitants of the country. They were sold with the lands, as a dependance which belonged to it; so that a crowd of those miserable people languished in the prisons of the chapter, where, wanting necessaries for life, they were in danger of being starved to death. Blanche, moved to compassion by the complaints which she received from them, sent to desire that, in consideration of her, they might be released upon bail, assuring, that she would inform herself of the matters, and would do all manner of justice. But the chapter, after having answered, that nobody had anything to do with their subjects, and that they might put them to death if they pleased, sent again to seize the women and the children, whom they had spared at first. Then, in hatred to see them honoured with such a protection, they were used in such a manner that many of them died, either through famine, or the inconveniences they suffered by heat, in a place hardly able to contain them. Blanche, full of indignation at an action no less insolent than inhuman, went with main force to the prison of the chapter, and ordered the gates of it to be broken open: and, because some difficuly might have been made about it, for fear of the censures so common in those times, she gave the first stroke with a stick she had in her hand. That stroke was so well seconded that the gate was broken down in an instant, and a crowd of men, women, and children, came out with disfigured faces, who, casting themselves at her feet, prayed her to take them under her protection, without which the favour that she had done them would cost them very dear. She did it, and so effectually, that, after having seized on the revenues of the chapter, till they had submitted to the authority wherewith she was entrusted, she even obliged them to affranchise those inhabitants for a certain yearly sum. It was almost at that time that those kind of affranchisings began, or at least, that they became very common.—Art.Castile.