The Leading Facts of English History

by D. H. Montgomery

EIGHTH PERIOD[1]

"One half her soil has walked the rest
In poets, heroes, martyrs, sages!"
O. W. Holmes

Political Reaction—Absolutism of the
Crown—The English Reformation and the New Learning

Crown or Pope?

House of Tudor (1485-1603)

Henry VII, 1485-1509
Henry VIII, 1509-1547
Edward VI, 1547-1553
Mary, 1553-1558
Elizabeth, 1558-1603

[1] Reference Books on this period will be found in the Classified List of Books in the Appendix. The pronunciation of names will be found in the Index. The Leading Dates stand unenclosed; all others are in parentheses.

327. Union of the Houses of Lancaster and York.

Before leaving the Continent Henry Tudor (S314) had promised the Yorkist party that he would marry Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Edward IV (see Genealogical Table, p. 179), and sister to the young Princes murdered by Richard III (S310). Such a marriage would unite the rival houses of Lancaster and York, and put an end to the civil war.

A few months after the new King's accession the wedding was duly celebrated, and in the beautiful east window of stained glass in Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, the Roses are seen joined; so that, as the quaint verse of that day says:

"Both roses flourish—red and white—
In love and sisterly delight;
The two that were at strife are blended,
And all old troubles now are ended."

Peace came from the union, but it was peace interrupted by insurrections which lasted for several years.

Origin of the House of Tudor

Edward III
1 2 3 | 4 5
—————————————————————————
| | | | |
Edward William, Lionel, Duke John of Gaunt, Edmund, Duke of York
(the Black no of Clarence, Duke of |
Prince) issue from whom Lancaster /————————-\
| descended in | Edward, Duke of Richard,
Richard II the fourth Henry IV York, no issue Earl of
generation | Cambridge,
*Richard, Henry V (Catharine, m. Anne
Duke of York | his widow, Mortimer, great-
| Henry VI married granddaughter of
——————————- Owen Tudor, Lionel, Duke of
| | a Welsh gentleman) Clarence; their
Edward IV Richard III | son was
| Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richard,
—————————————- Richmond, m. Margaret Duke of York
| | | Beaufort, a descendant
+Edward V +Richard, Elizabeth of John of Gaunt, Duke
Duke of York of York, of Lancaster, see
m. Henry VII pages 161, 172
(of Lancaster) |
Henry (Tudor) VII (formerly
Earl of Richmond), m. Elizabeth of
York, thus uniting the House of
Lancaster (Red Rose) and York
(White Rose) in the new royal
House of Tudor

*Inherited the title Duke of York from his uncle Edward. See No. 5.
+The Princes murdered by Richard III.

328. Condition of the Country; Power of the Crown.

Henry, it is said, had his claim to the throne printed by Caxton, and distributed broadcast over the country (S306). It was the first political appeal to the people made through the press, and was a sign of the new period upon which English history had entered. Since Caxton began his great work, the kingdom had undergone a most momentous change.

The leading nobles, like the Earl of Warwick (SS296, 303), were, with few exceptions, dead. Their estates were confiscated, their thousands of followers either buried on the battlefield or dispersed throughout the land (S316). The small number of titled families remaining was no longer to be feared. The nation itself, though it had taken comparatively little part in the war, was weary of bloodshed, and ready for peace on any terms.

The accession of the Welsh house of Tudor (S39) marks the beginning of a long period of almost absolute royal power. The nobility were too weak to place any check on the King. The clergy, who had not recovered from their dread of Lollardism (SS255, 283) and its attacks on their wealth and influence, were anxious for a strong conservative government such as Henry promised. The House of Commons had no clear united policy, and though the first Parliament put certain restrainst on the Crown, yet they were never really enforced.[1] The truth is, that the new King was both too prudent and too crafty to give them an opportunity. By avoiding foreign wars he dispensed with the necessity of summoning frequent Parliaments, and with demanding large sums of money from them.

[1] At the accession of Henry VII, Parliament imposed the following checks on the power of the King: (1) No new tax to be levied without consent of Parliament; (2) No new law to be made without the same consent; (3) No committal to prison without a warrant specifying the offense, and the trial to be speedy; (4) Criminal charges and questions of fact in civil cases to be decided by jury; (5) The King's officers to be held responsible to the nation.

By thus ruling alone for a large part of the time, Henry got the management of affairs into his own hands, and transmitted the power to those who came after him. In this way the Tudors with their successors, the Stuarts, built up a system of "personal sovereignty"— or "one-man power"—unchecked by constitutional restraints. It continued for a hundred and fifty years, when the outbreak of the great Civil War brought it to an end forever.

329. Growth of a Stronger Feeling of Nationality.

It would be an error, however, to consider this absolutism of the Crown as an unmitigated evil. On the contrary, it was in one important direction an advantage. There are times when the great need of a people is not more individual liberty, but greater national unity. Spain and France were two countries consisting of a collection of petty feudla states. Their nobility were always trying to steal each other's possessions and cut each other's throats.

But the rise in each country of a royal despotism forced the turbulent barons to make peace, and to obey a common central law. By this means both realms ultimately developed into great and powerful kingdoms.

When the Tudors came to the throne, England was still full of rankling hate engendered by the Wars of the Roses (S299). Held down by the heavy hand of Henry VII, and later, by the still heavier one of Henry VIII, the country learned the same salutary lesson of growth under repression which had benefited Spain and France.

Henceforth Englishmen of all classes no longer boasted that they belonged to the Yorkist or the Lancastrian faction (S300), but began to pride themselves on their loyalty to Crown and country, and their readiness to draw their swords to defend both.[1]

[1] But the passage of Poyning's Act (1494) in Ireland prohibited the Irish Parliament from passing any law which did not receive the sanction of the English Council. This act was not repealed until 1782.

330. Henry's Methods of raising Money; the Court of Star Chamber.

Henry's reign was in the interest of the middle classes,—the farmers, tradesmen, and mechanics. His policy was to avoid heavy taxation, to exempt the poor from the burdens of state, and so ingratiate himself with a large body of the people.

In order to accomplish this, he revived "benevolences" (SS307, 313), and by a device suggested by his chief minister, Cardinal Morton, and hence known and dreaded as "Morton's Fork," he extorted large sums from the rich and well-to-do.[2]

[2] Those whose income from land was less than $2, or whose movable property did not exceed 15 pounds (Say 150 pounds and $1125 now), were exempt. The lowest rate of assessment for the "benevolences" was fixed at twenty pence on the pound on land, and half that rate on other property.

The Cardinal's agents made it their business to learn every man's income, and visit him accordingly. If a person lived handomely, the Cardinal would insist on a correspondingly liberal gift; if, however, a citizen lived very plainly, the King's minister insisted none the less, telling the unfortunate man that by his economy he must surely have accumulated enough to bestow the required "benevolence."[3] Thus on one prong or the other of his terrible "fork" the shrewd Cardinal impaled his writhing victims, and speedily filled the royal treasury as it had never been filled before.[4]

[3] Richard Reed, a London alderman, refused to contribute a "benevolence." He was sent to serve as a soldier in the Scotch wars at his own expense, and the general was ordered to "use him in all things according to sharp military discipline." The effect was such that few after that ventured to deny the King what he asked. [4] Henry is said to have accumulated a fortune of nearly two millions sterling, an amount which would perhaps represent upwards of $90,000,000 now.

But Henry VII had other methods for raising money. He sold offices in Church and State, and took bribes for pardoning rebels. When he summoned a Parliament he obtained grants for putting down some real or pretended insurrection, or to defray the expenses of a threatened attack from abroad, and then quietly pocketed the appropriation,—a device not altogether unknown to modern government officials.

A third and last method for getting funds was invented in Henry's behalf by two lawyers, Empson and Dudley, who were so rapacious and cut so close that they were commonly known as "the King's skin shearers." They went about the country enforcing old and forgotten laws, by which they reaped a rich harvest.

Their chief instrument for gain, however, was a revival of the Statute of Liveries. This law imposed enormous fines on those noblemen who dared to equip their followers in military garb, or designate them by a badge equivalent to it, as had been the custom during the late civil wars (S296).

In order to thoroughly enforce the Statute of Liveries, Henry organized the Court of Star Chamber, so called from the starred ceiling where the tribunal met. This court had for its object the punishment of such crimes committed by the great families, or their adherents, as the ordinary law courts could not, or through intimidation dared not, deal with. It had no power to inflict death, but might impose long terms of imprisonment and ruinous fines. It, too, first made use of torture in England to extort confessions of guilt.

Henry seemed to have enforced the Law of Livery against friend and foe alike. Said the King to the Earl of Oxford, as he left his castle, where a large number of retainers in uniform were drawn up to do him honor, "My lord, I thank you for your entertainment, but my attorney must speak to you." The attorney, who was the notorious Empson, brought suit in the Star Chamber against the Earl, who was fined fifteen thousand marks, or something like $750,000, for the incautious display he had made.

331. The Introduction of Artillery strengthens the Power of the King.

It was easier for Henry to pursue this arbitrary course because the introduction of artillery had changed the art of war. Throughout the Middle Ages the call of a great baron had, as Macaulay says, been sufficient to raise a formidable revolt. Countrymen and followers took down their tough yew long bows from the chimney corner, knights buckled on their steel armor, mounted their horses, and in a few days an army threatened the holder of the throne, who had no troops save those furnished by loyal subjects.

But since then, men had "digged villainous saltpeter out of the bowels of the harmless earth" to manufacture powder, and others had invented cannon (S239), "those devilish iron engines," as the poet Spenser called them, "ordained to kill." Without artillery, the old feudal army, with its bows, swords, and battle-axes, could do little against a king like Henry, who had it. For this reason the whole kingdom lay at his mercy; and though the nobles and the rich might groan, they saw that it was useless to fight.

332. The Pretenders Symnel and Warbeck.

During Henry's reign, two pretenders laid claim to the crown: Lambert Symnel, who represented himself to be Edward Plantagenet, nephew of the late King; and Perkin Warbeck, who asserted that he was Richard, Duke of York (S310), who had been murdered in the Tower by his uncle, Richard III. Symnel's attempt was easily suppressed, and he commuted his claim to the crown for the position of scullion in the King's kitchen.

Warbeck kept the kingdom in a turmoil for more than five years, during which time one hundred and fifty of his adherents were executed, and their bodies exposed on gibbets along the south coast of England to deter their master's French supporters from landing. At length Warbeck was captured, imprisoned, and finall hanged at Tyburn.

333. Henry's Politic Marriages.

Henry accomplished more by the marriages of his children and by diplomacy than other monarchs had by their wars. He gave his daughter Margaret to King James IV of Scotland, and thus prepared the way for the union of the two kingdoms in 1603. He married his eldest son, Prince Arthur, to Catharine of Aragon, daughter of the King of Spain, by which he secured a very large marriage portion for the Prince, and, what was of equal importance, the alliance of Spain against France.

Arthur died soon afterward, and the King got a dispensation from the Pope, granting him permission to marry his younger son Henry to Arthur's widow. It was this Prince who eventually became King of England, with the title of Henry VIII, and we shall hereafter see that this marriage was destined by its results to change the whole course of the country's history.

334. The World as known at Henry's Accession (1485).

The King also took some small part in certain other events, which seemed to him, at the time, of less consequence than these matrimonial alliances. But history has regarded them in a different light from that in which the cunning and cautious monarch considered them.

A glance at the map (opposite) will sho how different our world is from that with which the English were acquainted when Henry was crowned. Then the earth was generally supposed to be a flat body surrounded by the ocean. The only countries of which anything was certainly known, with the exception of Europe, were parts of western Asia, together with a narrow strip of the northern, eastern, and western coasts of Africa. The knowledge which had once existed of India, China, and Japan appears to have died out in great measure with the travelers and merchants of earlier times who had brought it. The land farthest west of which anything was then known was Iceland.

335. First Voyages of Exploration; the Cabots, 1497.

About the time of Henry's accession a new spirit of exploration sprang up. The Portuguese had coasted along the western shores of Africa as far as the Gulf of Guinea, and had established trading posts there. Later, they reached and doubled the Cape of Good Hope (1487). Stimulated by what they had done, Columbus, who believed the earth to be round, determined to sail westward in the hope of reaching the Indies. In 1492 he made his first voyage, and discovered a number of the West India Islands.

Five years afterward John Cabot, a Venetian residing in Bristol, England, with his son Sebastian, persuaded the King to aid them in a similar undertaking. They sailed from that port. On a map drawn by the father after his return we read the following lines: "In the year of our Lord 1497, John Cabot and his son Sebastian discovered that country which no one before his time had ventured to approach, on the 24th June, about 5 o'clock in the morning." That entry is supposed to record the discovery of Cape Breton Island; a few days later they set foot on the mainland. This made the Cabots the first discoverers of the American CONTINENT.

As an offset to that record we have the following, taken from the King's private account book: "10. Aug. 1497, To him that found the new isle 10 pounds."

Such was the humble beginning of a series of explorations which gave
England possession of the largest part of North America.

336. Henry VII's Reign the Beginning of a New Epoch.

A few years after Cabot's return Henry laid the corner stone of that "solemn and sumptuous chapel" which bears his own name, and which joins Westminster abbey on the east. There he gave orders that his tomb should be erected, and that prayers should be said over it "as long as the world lasted."

Emerson remarks in his "English Traits" that when the visitor to the Abbey mounts the flight of twelve black marble steps which lead from it to the edifice where Henry lies buried, he passes from the medieval to the beginning of the modern age,—a change which the different style of the architecture distinctly marks (S324).

The true significance of Henry's reign is, that it, in like manner, stands for a new epoch,—new in modes of government, in law, in geographical discovery, in letters, art, and religion.

The century just closing was indeed one of the most remarkable in history, not only in what it had actually accomplished, but still more in the seed it was sowing for the future. The celebrated German artist Kaulbach, in his fresco of "The Age of the Reformation," has summed up all that it was, and all that it was destined to become in its full development.

Therein we see it as the period which witnessed the introduction of firearms, and the consequent overthrow of feudal warfare and feudal institutions; the growth of the power of royalty and of nationality through royalty; the sailing of Columbus and of Cabot; the revival of classical learning; the publication of the first printed book; and finally, the birth of Martin Luther, the monk who broke away from the Catholic Church, and persuaded many people to become Protestants.

337. Summary.

Looking back, we find that with Henry VII the absolutism of the Crown, or "personal monarchy," began in England. Yet the repressive power of that "personal monarchy" procured peace for the English people and, despite "benevolences" and other exactions, they grew into a stronger national unity.

Simultaneously with this increase of royal authority came the discovery of a "New World," in which England and her colonies were to have the chief part. A century will elapse before those discoveries begin to bear fruit. After that, our attention will no longer be confined to the British Islands, but will be fixed as well on that western continent where British enterprise and English love of liberty were destined to find a new and broader field of activity.

Henry VIII—1509-1547

338. Henry's Advantages.

Henry VIII was not quite eighteen when he came to the throne. The country was at peace, was fairly prosperous, and the young King had everything in his favor. He was handsome, well educated, and fond of athletic sports. His frank disposition won friends everywhere, and he had inherited from his father the largest private fortune that had ever descended to an English sovereign. Intellectually, he was in hearty sympathy with the revival of learning, then in progress both on the Continent and in England.

339. The New Learning; Colet, Erasmus, More.

During the greater part of the Middle Ages the chief object of education was to make men monks, and originally the schools established at Oxford and Cambridge were exclusively for that purpose. In their day they did excellent work; but a time came when men ceased to found monasteries, and began to erect colleges and hospitals instead.[1]

[1] In the twelfth century four hundred and eighteen monasteries were founded in England; in the next century, only about a third as many; in the fourteenth, only twenty-three; after that date their establishment may be said to cease.

In the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries William of Wykeham and King Henry VI built and endowed colleges which were specially designed to fit their pupils to live in the world and serve the state, instead of withdrawing from it to seek their own salvation.

These new institutions encouraged a broader range of studies, and in Henry VI's time particular attention was given to the Latin classics, hitherto but little known. The geographical discoveries of Henry VII's reign, made by Columbus, Cabot, and others (S335), began to stimulate scientific thought. It was evident that the day was not far distant when questions about the earth and the stars would no longer be settled by a text from Scripture which forbade further inquiry.

With the accession of Henry VIII education received a still further impulse. A few zealous English scholars had just returned from Italy to Oxford, full of ardor for a new study,—that of Greek. Among them was a young clergyman named John Colet. He saw that by means of that language, of which the alphabet was as yet hardly known in England, men might put themselves in direct communication with the greatest thinkers and writers of the past.

Better still, they might acquire the power of reading the Gospels and the writings of St. Paul in the original, and thus reach their true meaning and feel their full influence. Colet's intimate friend and fellow worker, the Dutch scholar Erasmus, had the same enthusiasm. When in sore need of everything, he wrote in one of his letters, "As soon as I get some money I shall buy Greek books, and then I may buy some clothes." The third young man, who, with Erasmus and Colet, devoted himself to the study of Greek and to the advancement of learning, was Thomas More, who later became Lord Chancellor (SS145, 351).

The three looked to King Henry for encouragement in the work they had undertaken; nor did they look in vain. Colet, who had become a doctor of divinity and a dean of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, encountered a furious storm of opposition on account of his devotion to the "New Learning," as it was sneeringly called. His attempts at educational reform met the same resistance.

But Henry liked the man's resolute spirit, and said, "Let others have what doctors they will; this is the doctor for me." The King also took a lively interest in Erasmus, who was appointed professor of Greek at Cambridge, where he began his great work of preparing an edition of the Greek Testament with a Latin translation in parallel columns.

Up to this time the Greek Testament had existed in scattered
manuscripts only. The publication of the work in printed form gave an
additional impetus to the study of the Scriptures, helped forward the
Reformation, and in a measure laid the foundation for a revised
English translation of the Bible far superior to Wycliffe's (S254).
In the same spirit of genuine love of learning Henry founded Trinity
College, Cambridge, and at a later date confirmed and extended
Cardinal Wolsey's endowment of Christ Church College, Oxford.

340. Henry against Luther.

The King continued, however, to be a staunch Catholic, and certainly had no thought at this period of doing anything which should tend to undermine the authority of that ancient form of worship. In Germany, Martin Luther was making ready to begin his tremendous battle against the power and teachings of the Papacy. In 1517 he nailed to the door of the church of Wittenberg that famous series of denunciations which started the movement that ultimately protested against the authority of Rome, and gave the name of Protestant to all who joined it.

A few years later Henry published a reply to one of Luther's books, and sent a copy bound in cloth of gold to the Pope. The Pope was so delighted with what he termed Henry's "angelic spirit" that he forthwith conferred on him the title of "Defender of the Faith." The English sovereigns have persisted in retaining this title to the present time, though for what reason, and with what right, even a royal intellect might be somewhat puzzled to explain.

With this new and flattering title the Pope also sent the King a costly two-handed sword, intended to represent Henry's zeal in smiting the enemies of Rome. But it was destined by fate to become to tsymbol of the King's final separation from the power that bestowed it (S349).

341. Victory of Flodden (1513); "Field of the Cloth of Gold" (1520).

Politically, Henry was equally fortunate. The Scotch had ventured to attack the kingdom during the King's absence on the Continent. At Flodden, on the borders of Scotland and England, they were defeated by the Earl of Surrey, with great slaughter. (See map facing p. 120.) This victory placed Scotland at Henry's feet.[1]

[1] See Scott's "Marmion."

The King of France and the Emperor Charles V of Germany now vied with each other in seeking Henry's alliance. The Emperor visited England in order to meet the English sovereign, while the King of France arranged an interview in his own dominions, known, from the magnificence of its appointments, as the "Field of the Cloth of Gold." Henry held the balance of power by which he could make France or Germany predominate as he saw fit. It was owing to his able diplomatic policy, or to that of Cardinal Wolsey, his chief counsellor, that England reaped advantages from both sides, and advanced from a comparatively low position to one that was fully abreast of the foremost nations of Europe.

342. Henry's Marriage with his Brother's Widow.

Such was the King at the outset. In less than twenty years he had become another man. At the age of twelve he had married at his father's command, and solely for political and mercenary reasons, Catharine of Aragon, his brother Arthur's widow (S333), who was six years his senior. Such a marriage was forbidden, except in certain cases, by the Old Testament and by the ordinances of the Roman Catholic Church.

The Pope, however, had granted his permission, and when Henry ascended the throne, the ceremony was performed a second time. Several children were the fruit of this union, all of whom died in infancy, except one daughter, Mary, unhappily fated to figure as the "Bloody Mary" of later history (S374).

343. The King's Anxiety for a Successor; Anne Boleyn.

No woman had yet ruled in her own right, either in England or in any prominent kingdom of Europe, and Henry was anxious to have a son to succeed him. He could not bear the thought of being disappointed; in fact he sent the Duke of Buckingham to the block for casually saying, that if the King died without issue, he should consider himself entitled to receive the crown.

It was while meditating this question of the succession, that Henry became attached to Anne Boleyn, one of the Queen's maids of honor; she was a sprightly brunette of nineteen, with long black hair and strikingly beautiful eyes.

The light that shone in those eyes, though hardly that "Gospel light" which the poet calls it,[1] was yet bright enough to effectually clear up all difficulties in the royal mind. The King now declared that he felt conscientiously moved to obtain a divorce from his old wife, and to marry a new one. In that determination lay most momentous consequences, since it finally separated England from the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome.

[1] "When love could teach a monarch to be wise,
And Gospel light first dawned from Bullen's [Boleyn's] eyes."
—Gray.

344. Wolsey favors the Divorce from Catharine.

Cardinal Wolsey, Henry's chief counselor,—the man who thought that he ruled both King and Kingdom,[2]—lent his powerful aid to bring about the divorce, but with the expectation that the King would marry a princess from France, and thus form an alliance with that country. If so, his own ambitious schemes would be forwarded, since the united influence of the two kingdoms might elevate him to the Papacy.

[2] The Venetian ambassador in a dispatch to his government, wrote of Cardinal Wolsey: "It is he who rules both the King and the entire Kingdom. At first the Cardinal used to say, `His Majesty will do so and so'; subsequently he went on, forgetting himself, and commenced saying, `We shall do so and so'; at present (1519) he has reached such a pitch that he says, `I shall do so and so.'"

When Wolsey learned that the King's choice was Anne Boleyn (S343), he fell on his knees, and begged him not to persist in his purpose; but his entreaties had no effect, and the Cardinal was obliged to continue what he had begun.

345. The Court at Blackfriars (1529).

The King had applied to the Pope to annul the marriage with Catharine (S342) on the ground of illegality; but the Emperor Charles V, who was the Queen's nephew, used his influence in her behalf. Vexatious delays now became the order of the day. At last, a court composed of Cardinal Wolsey and Cardinal Campeggio, an Italian, as papal legates, or representatives, was convened at Blackfriars, London, to test the validity of the marriage.

Henry and Catharine were summoned. The first appeared and answered to his name. When the Queen was called she declined to answer, but throwing herself at Henry's feet, begged him with tears and sobs not to put her away without cause. Finding him inflexible, she left the court, and refused to attend again, appealing to Rome for justice.

This was in the spring (1529). Nothing was done that summer, and in the autumn, the court, instead of reaching a decision, dissolved. Campeggio, the Italian legate, returned to Italy, and Henry, to his disappointment and rage, received an order from Rome to carry the question to the Pope for settlement.

346. Fall of Wolsey (1529).

Both the King and Anne Boleyn believed that Wolsey had played false with them. They now resolved upon his destruction. The Cardinal had a presentiment of his impending doom. The French ambassador, who saw him at this juncture, said that his face had shrunk to half its size. But his fortunes were destined to shrink even more than his face.

By a law of Richard II no representative of the Pope had any rightful authority in England[1] (S265). Though the King had given his consent to Wolsey's holding the office of legate, yet now that a contrary result to what he expected had been reached, he proceeded to prosecute him to the full extent of the law.

[1] Act of Praemunire. See S243 and Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xiii, S14, and p. xxxii.

It was an easy matter for him to crush the Cardinal. Erasmus said of him, "He was feared by all, he was loved by few—I may say by nobody." His arrogance and extravagant ostentation had excited the jealous hate of the nobility; his constant demands for money in behalf of the King set Parliament against him; and his exactions from the common people had, as the chronicle of the time tells us, made them weep, beg, and "speak cursedly."

Wolsey bowed to the storm, and to save himself gave up everything; his riches, pomp, power, all vanished as suddenly as they had come. It was Henry's hand that stripped him, but it was Anne Boleyn who moved that hand. Well might the humbled favorite say of her:

"There was the weight that pulled me down.
… all my glories
In that one woman I have lost forever."[1]

[1] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act III, scene ii.

Thus deprived of well-nigh everything but life, the Cardinal was permitted to go into retirement in the north; less than a twelve-month later he was arrested on a charge of high treason. Through the irony of fate, the warrant was served by a former lover of Anne Boleyn's, whom Wolsey, it is said, had separated from her in order that she might consummate her unhappy marriage with royalty. On the way to London Wolsey fell mortally ill, and turned aside at Leicester to die in the abbey there, with the words:

"…O, Father Abbot,
An old man, broken with the storms of state,
Is come to lay his weary bones among ye:
Give him a little earth for charity!"[2]

[2] Shakespeare's "Henry VIII," Act IV, scene ii.

347. Appeal to the Universities.

Before Wolsey's death, Dr. Thomas Cranmer, of Cambridge, suggested that the King lay the divorce question before the universities of Europe. Henry caught eagerly at this proposition, and exclaimed, "Cranmer has the right pig by the ear." The scheme was at once adopted. Several universities returned favorable answers. In a few instances, as at Oxford and Cambridge, where the authorities hesitated, a judicious use of bribes or threats soon brought them to see the matter in a proper light.

348. The Clergy declare Henry Head of the Church, 1531.

Armed with these decisions in his favor, Henry now charged the whole body of the English Church with being guilty of the same crime of which Wolsey had been accused (S346). The clergy, in their terror, made haste to buy a pardon at a cost reckoned at nearly $5,000,000 at the present value of money.

They furthermore declared Henry to be the supreme head on earth of the Church of England, adroitly adding, "in so far as is permitted by the law of Christ." Thus the Reformation came into England "by a side door, as it were." Nevertheless, it came.

349. Henry marries Anne Boleyn; Act of Supremacy, 1534.

Events now moved rapidly toward a crisis. In 1533, after having waited over five years, Henry privately married Anne Boleyn (S343), and she was soon after crowned in Westminster Abbey. When the Pope was informed of this, he ordered the King, under pain of excommunication (S194), to put her away, and to take back Queen Catharine (S345).

Parliament met that demand by passing the Act of Supremacy, 1534, which declared Henry to be without reservation the sole head of the Church, making denial thereof high treason.[1] As he signed the act, the King with one stroke of his pen overturned the traditions of a thousand years, and England stood boldly forth with a National Church independent of the Pope.[2]

[1] Henry's full title was now "Henry VIII, by the Grace of God, King of England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith and of the Church of England, and also of Ireland, on earth the Supreme Head." [2] Attention is called to the fact that a controversy, more or less serious in its character, had been going on, at intervals for nearly five hundred years, between the English sovereigns (or the barons) and the popes. It began with William the Conqueror in 1076 (S118). It was continued by Henry I (S136), by Henry II (SS163-170), by John (S194), by the barons under Henry III (S211), by the Parliament of Merton (S211), by Edward I (S226), and it may be said to have practically culminated under Henry VIII in the Act of Supremacy of 1534 (S349). But after the formal establishment of Protestantism by Edward VI in 1549 (S362) we find the Act of Supremacy reaffirmed, in slightly different form, by Queen Elizabeth in 1559 (S382). Finally, the Revolution of 1688 settled the question (S497).

350. Subserviency of Parliament.

But as Luther said, Henry had a pope within him. The King now proceeded to prove the truth of Luther's declaration. We have already seen (S328) that since the Wars of the Roses had destroyed the power of the barons, there was no effectual check on the despotic will of the sovereign. The new nobility were the creatures of the Crown, hence bound to support it; the clergy were timid, the Commons anything but bold, so that Parliament gradually became the servile echo and ready instrument of the throne.

That body twice released the King from the discharge of his just debts. It even exempted him from paying certain forced loans which he had extorted from his people. Parliament also repeatedly changed the laws of succession to the Crown to please him. Moreover it promptly attainted and destroyed such victims as he desired to put out of the way (S351). Later (1539) it declared that proclamations, concerning religious doctrines, when made by the King and Council, should have the force of acts of Parliament. This new power enabled Henry to pronounce heretical many opinions which he disliked and to punish them with death.

351. Execution of More and Fisher (1535).

Thomas Cromwell had been Cardinal Wolsey's private secretary; but he had now become chief counselor to the King, and in his crooked and cruel policy reduced bloodshed to a science. He first introduced the practice of condemning an accused prisoner without any form of trial (by Act of Attainder), and sending him to the block[1] without allowing him to speak in his own defense (S356). No one was now safe who did not openly side with the King.

[1] Act of Attainder. See Constitutional Documents in Appendix, p. xxxii.

Sir Thomas More, who had been Lord Chancellor (S339), and the aged Bishop Fisher were executed because they could not affirm that they conscientiously believed that Henry was morally and spiritually entitled to be the head of the English Church (S349).

Both died with Christian fortitude. More said to the governor of the
Tower with a flash of his old humor, as the steps leading to the
scaffold shook while he was mounting them, "Do you see me safe up, and
I will make shift to get down by myself."

352. Destruction of the Monasteries; Seizure of their Property, 1536-1539.

When the intelligence of the judicial murder of the venerable ex-chancellor reached Rome, the Pope issued a bull of excommunication and deposition against Henry (S194). It delivered his soul to Satan, and his kingdom to the first invader.

The King retaliated by the suppression of the monasteries. In doing so, he simply hastened a process which had already begun. Years before, Cardinal Wolsey had not scrupled to shut up several, and take their revenues to found Christ Church College at Oxford. The truth was, that, in most cases, monasticism "was dead long before the Reformation came to bury it" (S339, note 1). It was dead because it had done its work,—in many respects a great and good work, which the world could ill have spared (SS43, 45, 46, 60). The monasteries simply shared the fate of all human institutions, however excellent they may be.

"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they."[1]

[1] Tennyson's "In Memoriam."

Henry, however, had no such worthy object as Wolsey had. His pretext was that these institutions had sunk into a state of ingnorance, drunkenness, and profligacy. This may have been true of some of the smaller monasteries, though not of the large ones. But the vices of the monasteries the King had already made his own. It was their wealth which he now coveted. The smaller religious houses were speedily swept out of existence (1536). This caused a furious insurrection in the North, called the "Pilgrimage of Grace" (1537); but the revolt was soon put down.

Though Parliament had readily given its sanction to the extinction of the smaller monasteries, it hesitated about abolishing the greater ones. Henry, it is reported, sent for a leading member of the House o Commons, and, laying his hand on the head of the kneeling representative, said, "Get my bill passed by to-morrow, little man, or else to-morrow this head of yours will come off." The next day the bill passed, and the work of destruction began anew (1539). Property worth millions of pounds was confiscated, and abbots like those of Glastonbury and Charter House, who dared to resist, were speedily hanged.[1]

[1] The total number of religious houses destroyed was 645 monasteries, 2374 chapels, 90 collegiate churches, and 110 charitable institutions. Among the most famous of these ruins are Glastonbury, Kirkstal, Furness, Netley, Tintern, and Fountains abbeys.

The magnificent monastic buildings throughout England were now stripped of everything of value, and left as ruins. (See map opposite.) The beautiful windowes of stained glass were wantonly broken; the images of the saints were cast down from their niches; the chimes of bells were melted and cast into cannon; while the valuable libraries were torn up and sold to grocers and soap boilers for wrapping paper.

At Canterbury, Becket's tomb (S170) was broken open, and after he had been nearly four centuries in his grave, the saint was summoned to answer a charge of rebellion and treason. The case was tried at Westminster Abbey, the martyr's bones were sentenceeed to be burned, and the jewels and rich offerings of his shrine were seized by the King.

Among the few monastic buildings which escaped was the beautiful abbey church, now the cathedral of Peterborough, where Catharine of Aragon (S345), who died soon after the King's marriage with her rival, was buried. Henry had the grace to give orders that on her account it should be spared, saying that he would leave to her memory "one of the goodliest monuments in Christendom."

The great estates thus suddenly acquired by the Crown were granted to favorites or thrown away at the gambling table. "It is from this date," says Hallam, "that the leading families of England, both within and without the peerage, became conspicuous through having obtained possession of the monastery lands." These were estimated to comprise about one fourth of the whole area of the kingdom.

353. Effects of the Destruction of Monasteries.

The sweeping character of this act had a twofold effect. First, it made the King more absolute than before, for, since it removed the abbots, who had held seats in the House of Lords, that body was made just so much smaller and less able to resist the royal will.

Next, the abolition of so many religious institutions necessarily caused much misery, for the greater part of the monks and all of the nuns were turned out upon the world destitute of means. In the end, however, no permanent injury was done, since the monasteries, by their profuse and indiscriminate charity, had undoubtably encouraged much of the very pauperism which they had relieved.

354. Distress among the Laboring Classes.

An industrial revolution was also in progress at this time, which was productive of widespread suffering. It had begun early in Henry's reign through the great numbers of discharged soldiers, who could not readily find work.

Sir Thomas More had given a striking picture of their miserable condition in his "Utopia," a book in which he urged the government to consider measures for their relief; but the evil had since become much worse. Farmers, having discovered that wool growing was more profitable than the raising of grain, had turned their fields into sheep pastures; so that a shepherd with his dog now took the place of several families of laborers.

This change brought multitudes of poor people to the verge of starvation; and as the monasteries no longer existed to hold out a helping hand, the whole realm was overrun with beggars and thieves. Bishop Latimer, a noted preacher of that day, declared that if every farmer should raise two acres of hemp, it would not make rope enough to hang them all. Henry, however, set to work with characteristic vigor and made away, it is said, with great numbers, but without materially abating the evil (S403).

355. Execution of Anne Boleyn; Marriage with Jane Seymour (1536).

Less than three years after her coronation, the new Queen, Anne Boleyn (SS343, 349), for whom Henry had "turned England and Europe upside down," was accused of unfaithfulness. She was sent a prisoner to the Tower. A short time after, her head rolled in the dust, the light of its beauty gone out forever.

The next morning Henry married Jane Seymour, Anne's maid of honor. Parliament passed an act of approval, declaring that it was all done "of the King's most excellent goodness." It also declared Henry's two previous marriages, with Catharine and with Anne Boleyn, void, and affirmed that their children, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth, were not lawfully the King's daughters. A later act of Parliament gave Henry the extraordinary power of naming his successor to the crown.[1] A year afterwards Henry's new Queen died, leaving an infant son, Edward. She was no sooner gone than the King began looking about for some one to take her place.

[1] By his last will he made Mary and Elizabeth heirs to the crown in case all male and female issue by himself or his son Edward failed (S361). Henry's eldest sister, Margaret (see No. 3 in Genealogical Table on page 207), was passed by entirely. But long after Henry's death, Parliament set his will aside (1603) and made James I (a descendent of Margaret) King of England.

356. More Marriages (1540).

Thomas Cromwell, the King's trusted adviser (S351), succeeded in persuading his master to agree to marry Anne of Cleves, a German Protestant Princess. Henry had never seen her, but her portrait represented her as a woman of surpassing beauty.

When Anne reached England, Henry hurried to meet her with all a lover's ardor. To his dismay, he found that not only was she ridiculously ugly, but that she could speak—so he said—"nothing but Dutch," of which he did not understand a word. Matters, however, had gone too far to retract, and the marriage was duly solemnized (1540). The King obtained a divorce within six months, and then took his revenge by cutting off Cromwell's head. What is more, he cut it off by virtue of that very Act of Attainder which Cromwell had used so unscrupulously in Henry's behalf (S351).

The same year (1540) Henry married Catharine Howard, a fascinating girl still in her teens, whose charms so moved the King that it is said he was tempted to have a special thanksgiving service prepared to commemorate the day he found her.

Unfortunately, Catharine was accused of having been guilty of misconduct before her marriage. She confessed her fault, but for such cases Henry had no mercy. The Queen was tried for high treason, and soon walked that fatal road in which Anne Boleyn had preceded her (S355).

Not to be baffled in his matrimonial experiments, the King took Catherine Parr for his sixth and last wife (1543). She was inclined to be a zealous Protestant, and she too might have gone to the block, on a charge of heresy, but her quick wit came to her rescue. She flattered the King's self-conceit as a profound theologian and the compliment saved her life.

357. Henry's Action respecting Religion.

Though occupied with these rather numerous domestic infelicities, Henry was not idle in other directions. By an act known as the Six Articles, or, as the Protestants called it, the "Bloody Act," or the "Whip with Six Lashes" (1539), the King established a new and peculiar form of religion. In words, at least, it seemed to be practically the same as that upheld by the Pope, but with the Pope left out.[1]

[1] The Six Articles: The chief article ordered that all persons who denied the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation should be burned at the stake as heretics and that all their possessions should be forfeited to the Crown. The remaining five articles affirmed the obligation of all persons to accept and obey certain other Catholic doctrines under pain of punishment for felony, if they refused.

Geographically, the country was about equally divided between Catholicism and Protestantism. The northwestern half clung to the ancient faith; the southeastern half, including most of the large cities where Wycliffe's doctrines had formerly prevailed was favorable to the Reformation.

On the one hand, Henry prohibited the Lutheran or Protestant doctrine (S340); on the other, he caused the Bible to be translated (SS254, 339), and ordered a copy to be chained to a desk in every parish church in England (1538); but though all persons might now freely read the Scriptures, no one but the clergy was allowed to interpret them. Later in his reign, the King became alarmed at the spread of discussion about religious subjects, and prohibited the reading of the Bible by the "lower sort of people."

358. Henry versus Treason.

Men now found themselves in a strange and cruel delimma. If it was dangerous to believe too much, it was equally dangerous to believe too little. Traitor and heretic were dragged to execution on the same hurdle; for Henry burned as heretics those who declared their belief in Protestantism, and hanged or beheaded, as traitors, those who acknowledged the authority of the Pope and denied the supremacy of the King (S349).

Thus Anne Askew, a young and beautiful woman, was nearly wrenched asunder on the rack, in the hope of making her implicate the Queen in her heresy. She was afterward burned because she insisted that the bread and wine used in the communion service seemed to her to be simply bread and wine, and not in any sense the actual body and blood of Christ, as the King's statute of the Six Articles (S357) solemnly declared.

On the other hand, the aged Countess of Salisbury suffered for treason; but with a spirit matching the King's, she refused to kneel at the block, and told the executioner he must get her gray head off as best he could.

359. Henry's Death.

But the time was at hand when Henry was to cease his hangings, beheadings, and marriages. Worn out with debauchery, he died at the age of fifty-six, a loathsome, unwieldy, and helpless mass of corruption. In his will he left a large sum of money to pay for perpetual prayers for the repose of his soul. Sir Walter Raleigh said of him, "If all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life out of the story of this king."

It may be well to remember this, and along with it this other saying of one of the ablest writers on English constitutional history, that "the world owes some of tis greatest debts to men from whose memory it recoils."[1] The obligation it is under to Henry VIII is that through his influence—no matter what the motive—England was lifted up out of the old medieval ruts, and placed squarely and securely on the new highway of national progress.

[1] W. Stubbs's "Constitutional History of England."

360. Summary.

In this reign we find that though England lost much of her former political freedom, yet she gained that order and peace which came from the iron hand of absolute power. Next, from the destruction of the monasteries, and the sale or gift of their lands to favorites of the King, three results ensued:

1. A new nobility was in great measure created, dependent on the Crown. 2. The House of Lords was made less powerful by the removal of the abbots who had had seats in it. 3. Pauperism and distress were temporarily increased. 4. Finally, England completely severed her connection with the Pope, and established for the first time an independent National Church, having the King as its head.

Edward VI—1547-1553

361. Bad Government; Seizure of Unenclosed Lands; High Rents; Latimer's Sermon.

Edward, son of Henry VIII by Jane Seymour (S355), died at sixteen. In the first part of his reign of six years the goverment was managed by his uncle, the Duke of Somerset, an extreme Protestant, whose intentions were good, but who lacked practical judgement. During the latter part of his life Edward fell under the control of the Duke of Northumberland, who was the head of a band of scheming and profligate men.

They, with other nobles, seized the unenclosed lands of the country and fenced them in for sheep pastures, thus driving into beggary many who had formerly got a good part of their living from these commons. At the same time farm rents rose in somee cases ten and even twenty fold,[1] depriving thousands of the means of subsistence, and reducing to poverty many who had been in comfortable circumstances.

[1] This was oweing to the greed for land on the part of the mercantile classes, who had now acquired wealth, and wished to become landed proprietors. See Froude's "England."

The bitter complaints of the sufferers found expression in Bishop Latimer's outspoken sermon, preached before King Edward, in which he said: "My father was a yeoman [small farmer], and had no lands of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds [rent] by year, and hereupon tilled so much as kept half a dozen men; he had walk [pasture] for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine.

"He was able and did find the King a harness [suit of armor] with himself and his horse, until he came to the place where he should receive the King's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went into Blackheath Field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds [dower] … apiece. He kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor.

"And all this he did off the said farm, where he that now hath it payeth sixteen pounds a year or more, and is not able to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." But as Latimer patheticall said, "Let the preacher preach till his tongue be worn to the stumps, nothing is amended."[1]

[1] Latimer's first sermon before King Edward VI, 8th of March, 1549.

362. Edward establishes Protestantism, 1549.

Henry VIII had made the Church of England independent of the Pope
(S349). His son took the next great step, and made it practically
Protestant in doctrine. At his desire, Archbishop Cranmer compiled a
book of Common Prayer in English. It was taken largely from the Roman
Catholic Prayer Book, which was in Latin (1549). The first Act of
Uniformity, 1549 (reenacted 1552), obliged all churches to use the new
English Prayer Book, thereby, (for the time) establishing a modified
form of Protestantism throughout England (S405).[2]

[2] On the Church of England, see Macaulay's "England," I, 40-42.

Edward's sister, the Princess Mary, was a most devout Catholic. She refused to adopt the new service, saying to Bishop Ridley, who urged her to accept it as God's word, "I cannot tell what you call God's word, for that is not God's word now which was God's word in my father's time." It was at this period (1552) that the Articles of Religion of the Church of England were first drawn up; but they did not take their final form until the reign of Elizabeth (S383).

363. King Edward and Mary Stuart.

Henry VIII had attempted to marry his son Edward to young Queen Mary Stuart, a daughter of the King of Scotland, but the match had been broken off. Edward's guardian now insisted that it should be carried out. He invaded Scotland with an army, and attempted to effect the marriage by force of arms, at the battle of Pinkie (1547).

The English gained a decided victory, but the youthful Queen, instead of giving her hand to young King Edward, left the country and married the son of the King of France. She will appear with melancholy prominence in the reign of Elizabeth. Had Mary Queen of Scots married Edward, we should perhaps have been spared that tragedy in which she was called to play both the leading and the losing part (SS394-397).

364. Renewed Confiscation of Church Property; Schools founded.

The confiscation of such Roman Catholic church property as had been spared was now renewed (S352). The result of this confiscation and of the abandonment of Catholicism as the established form of worship was in certain respects disastrous to the country. In the general break-up, many who had been held in restraint by the old form of faith now went to the other extreme, and rejected all religion.

Part of the money obtained from the sale of church property was devoted, mainly through Edward's influence, to the endowment of upwards of forty grammar schools, besides a number of hospitals, in different sections of the country. But for a long time the destruction of the monastic schools (SS45, 60), poor as many of them had become, was a serious blow to the education of the common people.

365. Edward's London Charities; Christ's Hospital.

Just before his death Edward established Christ's Hospital, or home for the support and education of fatherless children, and refounded and renewed the St. Thomas and St. Bartholomew hospitals for the sick in London. Thus "he was the founder," says Burnet, "of those houses which, by many great additions since that time, have risen to be amongst the noblest of Europe."

Christ's Hospital was, perhaps, the first Protestant charity school opened in England; many more were patterned on it. It, and others like it, are known as "Blue-Coat Schools," from the costume of the boys,—a relic of the days of Edward VI. This consists of a long, blue coat, like a monk's gown, reaching to the ankles, girded with a broad leather belt, long, bright yellow stockings, and buckle shoes. Most of the boys go bareheaded winter and summer.

An exciting game of football, played in the schoolyard in this peculiar medieval dress, used to seem strangely in contrast with the sights of modern London streets. It was as though the spectator, by passing through a gateway, had gone back over three centuries of time. Coleridge, Lamb, and other noted men of letters were educated there, and have left most interesting reminiscences of their school life, especially Lamb, in his delightful "Essays of Elia." Late in the nineteenth century this famous institution was removed to the country, and part of the site of the ancient school is now covered with a great business structure.

366. Effect of Catholicism versus Protestantism.

Speaking of the Protestant Reformation, of which Edward VI may be taken as a representative, Macaulay remarks that "it is difficult to say whether England received most advantage from the Roman Catholic religion or from the Reformation. For the union of the Saxon and Norman races, and the abolition of slavery, she is chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in the Middle Ages exercised over the people" (S47); "for political and intellectual freedom, and for all the blessings which they have brought in their train, she owes the most to the great rebellion of the people against the priesthood."

367. Summary.

The establishment of the Protestant faith in England, and of a large number of Protestant charity schools known as Edward VI's or "Blue-Coat Schools" may be regarded as the leading events of Edward's brief reign of six years.

Mary—1553-1558

368. Lady Jane Grey claims the Crown.

On the death of King Edward, Lady Jane Grey, a descendant of Henry VII, and a relative of Edward VI, was persuaded by her father-in-lawe, the Duke of Northumberland, to assume the crown, which had been left to her by the will of the late King.

Edward's object in naming Lady Jane was to secure a Protestant successor, since his elder sister, Mary, was a zealous Catholic, while from his younger sister, Elizabeth, he seems to have been estranged. By birth, though not directly by Henry VIII's will, Mary was without doubt the rightful heir.[1] Queen Mary received the support of the country, and Lady Jane Grey and her husband, Lord Dudley, were arrested and sent to the Tower of London.

[1] Table showing the respective claims of Queen Mary and Lady Jane Grey to the crown. By his last will Henry VIII left the crown to Edward VI, and (in case he had no issue) to his daughters, Mary and Elizabeth, followed by the issue of his sister Mary. Edward VI's will undertook to change this order of succession.

Henry VII
1 2 | 3 4
———————=——————————————————-
| H | |
Arthur, b. 1486 Henry VIII Margaret Mary, m.
d. 1502, no H | Charles Brandon
issue ======================= James V of |
H H H Scotland, Frances
Mary, b. Elizabeth, Edward VI, d. 1542 Brandon, m.
1516, d. 1558 b. 1533, b. 1538, | Henry Grey
d. 1603 d. 1553 Mary Queen |
of Scots, JANE GREY,
b. 1542, m. Lord
d. 1587 Guilford Dudley,
| beheaded 1554
|
James VI of Scotland
and I of England,
crowned 1603

369. Question of Mary's Marriage; Wyatt's Rebellion (1554).

While they were confined there, the question of the Queen's marriage came up. Out of several candidates for her hand, Mary gave preference to her cousin, Philip II of Spain. Her choice was very unpopular, for it was known in England that Philip was a selfish and gloomy fanatic, who cared for nothing but the advancement of the Roman Catholic faith.

An insurrection now broke out, led by Sir Thomas Wyatt, the object of which was to place the Princess Elizabeth on the throne, and thus secure the crown to Protestantism. Lady Jane Grey's father was implicated in the rebellion. The movement ended in failure, the leaders were executed, and Mary ordered her sister Elizabeth, who was thought to be in the plot, to be seized and imprisoned in the Tower (1554).

A little later, Lady Jane Grey and her husband perished on the scaffold. The name JANE, deeply cut in the stone wall of the Beauchamp Tower,[1] remains as a memorial of the nine days' Queen. She died at the age of seventeen, an innocent victim of the greatness which had been thrust upon her.

[1] The Beauchamp Tower is part of the Tower of London. On its walls are scores of names cut by those who were imprisoned in it.

370. Mary marries Philip II of Spain (1554); Efforts to restore Catholicism.

A few months afterward the royal marriage was celebrated, but Philip soon found that the air of England had too much freedom in it to suit his delicate constitution, and he returned to the more congenial climate of Spain.

From that time Mary, who was left to rule alone, directed all her efforts to the restoration of the Catholic Church. Hallam says her policy was acceptable to a large part of the nation.[2] On the other hand, the leaders in Scotland bound themselves by a solemn Covenant (1557) to crush out all attempts to reestablish the Catholic faith. Through her influence Parliament repealed the legislation of Henry VIII's and Edward VI's reigns, in so far as it gave support to Protestantism. She revived the persecuting statutes against heretics (S283). The old relations with the Pope were resumed but the monastic lands were left in the hands of their new owners (S352). To accomplish her object in supporting her religion, the Queen resorted to the arguments of the dungeon, the rack, and the fagot, and when Bishops Bonner and Gardiner slackened their work of persecution and death, Mary, half crazed by Philip's desertion, urged them not to stay their hands.

[2] See A. H. Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," and compare J. Lingard's excellent "History of England," to the same effect.

371. Devices for reading the Bible.

The penalty for reading the English Scriptures, or for offering Protestant prayers, was death. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin says that one of his ancestors, who lived in England in Mary's reign, adopted the following expedient for giving his family religious instruction. He fastened an open Bible with strips of tape on the under side of a stool. When he wished to read it aloud he placed the stool upside down on his knees, and turned the pages under the tape as he read them. One of the children stood watching at the door to give the alarm if any one approached; in that case, the stool was set quickly on its feet again on the floor, so that nothing could be seen.

372. Religious Toleration unknown in Mary's Age.

Mary would doubtless have bravely endured for her faith the full measure of suffering which she inflicted. Her state of mind was that of all who then held strong convictions. Each party believed it a duty to convert or exterminate the other, and the alternative offered to the heretic was to "turn or burn."

Sir Thomas More, who gave his life as a sacrifice to conscience in Henry's reign (S351), was eager to put Tyndale to the torture for translating the Bible. Cranmer (S362), who perished at Oxford (1556), had been zealous in sending to the flames those who differed from him. Even Latimer (S361), who died bravely at the stake, exhorting his companion Ridley (1555) "to be of good cheer and play the man, since they would light such a candle in England that day as in God's grace should not be put out," had abetted the kindling of slow fires under men as honest and determined as himself but on the opposite side.

In like spirit Queen Mary kept Smithfield, London, ablaze with martyrs, whose blood was the seed of Protestantism. Yet persecution under Mary never reached the proportions that it did on the Continent. At the most, but a few hundred died in England for the sake of their religion, while Mary's husband, Philip II, during the last of his reign, covered Holland with the graves of Protestants, who had been tortured and put to cruel deaths, or buried alive, by tens of thousands.

373. Mary's Death (1558).

But Mary's career was short. She died (1558) near the close of an inglorious war with France, which ended in the fall of Calais, the last English possession on the Continent (S240). It was a great blow to her pride, and a serious humiliation to the country. "After my death," she said, "you will find Calais written on my heart." Could she have foreseen the future, her grief would have been greater still. For with the end of her reign the Pope lost all power in England, never to regain it.

374. Mary deserving of Pity rather than Hatred.

Mary's name has come down to us associated with an epithet expressive of the utmost abhorrence (S342); but she deserves pity rather than detestation. Froude justly says, "If any person may be excused for hating the Reformation, it was Mary."

Separated from her mother, the unfortunate Catharine of Aragon, when she was only sixteen, Mary was ill-treated by Henry's new Queen, Anne Boleyn, and hated by her father. Thus the springtime of her youth was blighted.

Her marriage brought her no happiness; sickly, ill-favored, childless, unloved, the poor woman spent herself for naught. Her first great mistake was that she resolutely turned her face toward the past; her second, that she loved Philip II of Spain (S369) with all her heart, soul, and strength; and so, out of devotion to a bigot, did a bigot's work, and earned that execration which never fails to be a bigots reward. But the Queen's cruelty was the cruelty of sincerity, and never, like her father's hangings, beheadings, and burnings (S358), the result of tyranny, indifference, or caprice. A little book of prayers which she left, soiled by constant use and stained with many tears, tells the story of her broken and disappointed life.

375. Summary.

This reign should be looked upon as a period of reaction. The temporary check which Mary gave to Protestantism deepened and strengthened it. Nothing builds up a religious faith like martyrdom, and the next reign showed that every heretic that Mary had burned helped to make at least a hundred more.

Elizabeth—1558-1603

376. Accession of Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, the last of the Tudor family, was the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (S349). At the time of Mary's death she was living in seclusion in Hatfield House, near London, spending most of her time in studying Greek and Latin authors. When the news was brought to her, she was deeply moved, and exclaimed, "It is the Lord's doings; it is marvelous in our eyes." Five days afterwards she went up to London by that road over which the last time she had traveled it she was being carried a prisoner to the Tower (S369).

377. Difficulty of Elizabeth's Position.

An act of Parliament declared Elizabeth to be the true and lawful heir to the crown[1] (S355); but her position was full of difficulty, if not absolute peril. Mary Stuart of Scotland, now by marriage Queen of France (S363),[2] claimed the English crown through descent from Henry VII. She based her claim on the ground that Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, was not lawfully entitled to the throne, because the Pope had refused to recognize Henry's second marriage (S349). Both France and Rome supported Mary Stuart's claim.

[1] See Genealogical Table, p. 207. [2] After Elizabeth, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, stood next in order of hereditary succession. See Table, p. 207.

On the other hand, Philip II of Spain (SS370, 374) favored Elizabeth, but solely because he hoped to marry her and annex her kingdom to his dominions. Scotland was divided between two religious factions, the Catholics and the Protestants, and its attitude as an independent kingdom could hardly be called friendly. The Catholics in the greater part of Ireland were in a state bordering on rebellion, and were ready to join in any attack on an English sovereign.

378. The Religious Problem.

But the religious problem was more dangerous than any other, for England itself was divided in its faith. In the north, many noble families stood by the Catholic faith, and hoped to see the Pope's authority fully and permanently restored (S352). In the towns of the southeast, a majority favored the Church of England as it had been organized under the Protestant influence of Edward VI (S362).[1]

[1] See Goldwin Smith's "England."

Within these two great parties there were two more, who made up in zeal and determination what they lacked in numbers. One was the Jesuits; the other, the Puritans. The Jesuits were a new Roman Catholic order (1540), banded together by a solemn oath to restore the complete power of the Church and to extend it throughout the world. Openly or secretly their agents penetrated every country, and their opponents declared that they hesitated at nothing to gain their ends.

The Puritans were the extreme Protestants who, like John Calvin of Geneva and John Knox of Edinburgh, were bent on cleansing or "purifying" the reformed faith from every vestige of Catholicism. Many of them were what the rack and the stake had naturally made them,—hard, fearless, narrow, bitter.

In Scotland the Puritans had got possession of the government, while in England they were steadily gaining ground. They were ready to recognize the Queen as head of the Church of England, they even wished that all persons should be compelled to worship as the government prescribed, but they protested against what they considered the halfway form of Church which Elizabeth and the bishops seemed inclined to maintain.

379. The Queen's Choice of Counselors.

Elizabeth's policy from the beginning was one of compromise. In order to conciliate the Catholic party, she retained eleven of her sister Mary's counselors. But she added to them Sir William Cecil (Lord Burghley), who was her chief adviser,[2] Sir Nicholas Bacon, and, later, Sir Francis Walsingham, with others who were favorable to the Protestant faith.

[2] See Macaulay's essay on "Lord Burghley."

On his appointment, Elizabeth said to Cecil, "This judgment I have of you, that you will not be corrupted with any gifts, that you will be faithful to the State, and that without respect to my private will you give me that counsel which you think best." Cecil served the Queen until his death, forty years afterward. The almost implicit obedience with which Elizabeth followed his advice sufficiently proves that Cecil was the real power not only behind, but generally above, the throne.

380. The Coronation (1559).

The bishops were Roman Catholics, and Elizabeth found it difficult to get one to perform the coronation services. At length one consented, but only on condition that the Queen should take the ancient form of coronation oath, by which she virtually bound herself to support the Roman Catholic Church.[1] To this Elizabeth consented, and having consulted an astrologer, Dr. Dee, he named a lucky day for the ceremony, and she was crowned (1559).

[1] By this oath every English sovereign from William the Conqueror to Elizabeth, inclusive, and even as late as James II, with the single exception of Edward VI, swore "to preserve religion in the same state as did Edward the Confessor." The form of the coronation oath was changed to support Protestantism by the Revolution of 1688. Finally, under George V, in 1910, the phraseology of the oath was modified by Act of Parliament in order to make it less objectionable not only to English Catholics, but to a large majority of the people of the nation.

381. Changes in the Church Service (1559).

The late Queen Mary (S373), besides having repealed the legislation of the two preceding reigns, in so far as it was opposed to her own strong religious convictions (S370), had restored the Roman Catholic Latin Prayer Book (S362). At Elizabeth's coronation a petition was presented stating that it was the custom to release a certain number of prisoners on such occasions. The petitioners, therefore, begged her Majesty to set at liberty the four evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and also the apostle Paul, who had been for some time shut up in a strange language. The English Book of Common Prayer (S362), with some slight changes, was accordingly reinstated, Parliament repealed the laws by which the late Queen Mary had practically restored the Roman Catholic religion, and it authorized the publication of a new and revised edition of the English Bible (S357).

382. New Act of Supremacy; Act of Uniformity; High Commission Court, 1559.

No sooner was the Queen's accession announced to the Pope than he declared her illegitimate (SS349, 355), and ordered her to lay aside her crown and submit herself to his guidance. Such a demand was a signal for battle. However much attached a large part of the nation, especially the country people, may have been to the Catholic religion of their fathers (S370), yet the majority of them were loyal to the Queen and intended to stand by her.

The temper of Parliament manifested itself in the immediate reenactment of the Act of Supremacy. It way essentially the same, "though with its edge a little blunted," as that by which Henry VIII had freed England from the dominion of the Pope (S349). It declared Elizabeth not "supreme head" but "supreme governor" of the Church. Later, the act was made more stringent (1563).

To this act, every member of the House of Commons was obliged to subscribe; thus all Catholics were exclued from that body. The Lords, however, not being an elective body, were excused from the obligation at that time (S478).

In order to enforce the Act of Supremacy, Parliament passed a new Act of Uniformity (S362), which ordered the minister of every congregation in England, whether Catholic or Protestant, to use the services laid down in the recently established Book of Common Prayer, and to use no other. In fact the law forbade the holding of any other service, even in a room with closed doors. In case he failed to obey this law he would be severely punished, and for a third offense would be imprisoned for life. The same act imposed a heavy fine on all persons who failed to attend the Established Church of England on Sundays and holidays.

The reason for these stringent measures was that in that age Church and State were everywhere considered to be inseparable. No country in Europe—not even Protestant Germany—could then conceive the idea of their existing independently of each other. Whoever refused to support the established form of worship, whatever that might be, was looked upon as a "rebel" against the government.

In order to try such "rebels" Parliament now gave Queen Elizabeth power to organize the High Commission Court.[1] By that Court many Catholics were imprisoned and tortured for refusing to comply with the new Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity, and later on about two hundred priests and Jesuits were put to death on charges of treason. A number of Puritans, also, were executed for publishing books or pamphlets which attacked the government, and others were cast into prison or banished from the realm.

[1] High Commission Court: so called because originally certain church dignitaries were appointed commissioners to inquire into heresies and kindred matters. See, too, Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xiv, S15.

383. The Thirty-Nine Articles (1563); the Queen's Religion.

Four years later, the religious belief of the English Church, which had been first formulated under Edward VI (S362), was revised and reduced to the Thirty-Nine Articles which constitute it at the present time.[1] But the real value of the religious revolution which was taking place did not lie in the substitution of one creed for another, but in the new spirit of inquiry, and the new freedom of thought, which that change awakened.

[1] But the Clerical Subscription Act (1866) simply requires the clergy of the Church of England to make a general declaration of assent to the Thirty-Nine Articles and the Prayer Book.

As for Elizabeth herself, she seems to have had no deep and abiding convictions on these matters. Her political interests practically compelled her to favor Protestantism, but to the end of her life she kept up some Catholic forms. Though she upheld the service of the Church of England, yet she shocked the Puritans by keeping a crucifix, with lighted candles in front of it, hung in her private chapel, before which she prayed to the Virgin as fervently as her sister Mary had ever done.

384. The Nation halting between Two Opinions.

In this double course she represented a large part of the nation, which hesitated about committing itself fully to either side. Men were not wanting who were ready to lay down their lives for conscience' sake, but they do not appear to have been numerous.

Some sympathized at heart with the notorious Vicar of Bray, who kept his pulpit under the whole or some part of the successive reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth, changing his theology with each change of rule. When taunted as a turncoat, he replied, "Not so, for I have always been true to my principles, which are to live and die Vicar of Bray."[2]

[2] "For this as law I will maintain
Until my dying day, sir,
That whatsoever king shall reign,
I'll be Vicar of Bray, sir."

Though there was nothing morally noble in such halting between two opinions, and facing both ways, yet it saved England for the time from the worst of all calamities, a religious civil war. Such a conflict rent France in pieces, drenched her fair fields with the blood of Catholics and Protestants, split Germany and Italy into petty states, and ended in Spain in the triumph of the Inquisition and of intellectual death.[1]

[1] S. R. Gardiner's "History of England"; consult also J. F. Bright's "History of England" and L. Von Ranke's "History of England."

385. The Question of the Queen's Marriage.

Elizabeth showed the same tact with regard to marriage that she did with regard to religion. Her first Parliament, realizing that the welfare of the country depended largely on whom the Queen should marry, begged her to consider the question of taking a husband. Her reply was that she had resolved to live and die a maiden queen. When further pressed, she returned answers that, like the ancient Greek oracles, might be interpreted either way.

The truth was that Elizabeth saw the difficult of her position better than any one else. The choice opf her heart at that time would probably have been Robert Dudley, her "sweet Robin," the handsome but unscrupulous Earl of Leicester; but, as he called himself a Protestant, she knew that to take him as consort would be to incur the enmity of the Catholic powers of Europe. On the other hand, if she accepted a Catholic, she would inevitably alienate a large and influential number of her own subjects.

In this delimma she resolved to keep both sides in a state of hopeful expectation. Philip II of Spain, who had married her sister Mary (S370), made overtures to Elizabeth. She kept him waiting in uncertainty until at last his ambassador lost all patience, and declared that the Queen "was possessed with ten thousand demons."

Later, the Duke of Anjou, a son of Henry II of France, proposed. He was favorably received, but the country became so alarmed at the prospect of having a Catholic King, that Stubbs, a Puritan lawyer, published a coarse and violent pamphlet denouncing the marriage.[2] For this attack his right hand was cut off; as it fell, says an eyewitness,[3] he seized his hat with the other hand, and waved it, shouting, "God save Queen Elizabeth!" That act was an index to the popular feeling. A majority of the people, whether Catholics or Protestants, stood by the Crown even when they condemned its policy, determined, at all hazards, to preserve the unity of the nation. That spirit of intense loyalty and love of country without regard to creed or calling found perfect expression in Shakespeare's utterance:

"This England never did, nor never shall,
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror.
. . . . . . . .
Come the three corners of the world in arms,
And we shall shock them: nought shall make us rue,
If England to itself do but rest true."[4]

We shall see that this feeling showed itself still more unmistakably, when, years later, men of all classes and of widely different religious views rose to destroy the Armada,—that great fleet which Spain sent to subjugate the English realm (SS398-401).

[2] Stubbs's pamphlet was entitled "The Discovery of the Gaping Gulf, wherein England is likely to be swallowed up by another French marriage, unless the Lords forbid the bans by letting her see the sin and punishment thereof." [3] Camden's "Annals," 1581. [4] Shakespeare's "King John," Act V, scene vii; written after the defeat of the Armada.

386. The Queen a Coquette.

During all this time the court buzzed with whispered scandals. Elizabeth was by nature an incorrigible coquette. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Essex, and Sir Walter Raleigh were by turns her favorites. Over her relations with Dudley there hangs the terrible shadow of the suspected murder of his wife, the beautiful Amy Robsart.[3]

[3] See the "De Quadra Letter" in Froude's "England."

Elizabeth's vanity was as insatiable as it was ludicrous. She issued a proclamation forbidding any one to sell her picture, lest it should fail to do her justice. She was greedy of flattery even when long past sixty, and there was a sting of truth in the letter which Mary Queen of Scots wrote her, saying, "Your aversion to marriage proceeds from your not wishing to lose the liberty of compelling people to make love to you."

387. Violence of Temper; Crooked Policy.

In temper Elizabeth was arbitrary, fickle, and passionate. When her blood was up, she would swear like a trooper, spit on a courtier's new velvet suit, beat her maids of honor, and box Essex's ears. She wrote abusive and even profane letters to high Church dignitaries,[1] and she openly insulted the wife of Archbishop Parker, because she did not believe in a married clergy.

[1] For the famous letter to the bishop of Ely attributed to Elizabeth, see Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," Froude, or Creighton; but the "Dictionary of National Biography" ("Elizabeth") calls it a forgery.

The age in which Elizabeth reigned was preeminently one of craft and intrigue. The Kings of that day endeavored to get by fraud what their less polished predecessors got by force. At this game of double dealing Elizabeth had few equals and no superior. So profound was her dissimulation that her most confidential advisers never felt quite sure that she was not deceiving them. In her diplomatic relations she never hesitated at an untruth if it would serve her purpose, and when the falsehood was discovered, she always had another and more plausible one ready to take its place. In all this her devotion to England stands out unquestioned and justifies the saying, "She lived and lied for her country."

388. Her Knowledge of Men; the Monopolies.

The Queen's real ability lay in her instinctive perception of the needs of the age, and in her power of self-adjustment to them. Elizabeth never made public opinion, but watched it and followed it. She knew an able man at sight, and had the happy faculty of attaching such men to her service. By nature she was both irresolute and impulsive; but her sense was good and her judgment clear. She could tell when she was well advised, and although she fumed and blustered, she yielded.

It has been said that the next best thing to having a good rule is to know when to break it. Elizabeth always knew when to change her policy. No matter how obstinate she was, she saw the point where obstinacy became dangerous. In order to enrich Raleigh and her numerous other favorites, she granted them the exclusive right to deal in certain articles. These privileges were called "monopolies."

They finally came to comprise almost everything that could be bought or sold, from French wines to secondhand shoes. The effect was to raise prices so as to make even the common necessaries of life excessively dear. A great outcry finally arose; Parliament requested the Queen to abolish the "monopolies"; she hesitated, but when she saw their determined attitude she gracefully granted the ptition (S433).

389. The Adulation of the Court.

No English sovereign was so popular or so praised. The great writers and the great men of that day vied with each other in their compliments to Elizabeth's beauty, wisdom, and wit. She lived in an atmosphere of splendor, of pleasure, and of adulation. Her reign was full of pageants, progresses, or journeys made with great pomp and splendor, and feasts, like those which Scott describes in his delightful novel, "Kenilworth."

Spenser composed his poem, the "Faerie Queen," as he said, to extol "the glorious person of our sovereign Queen." Shakespeare is reported to have written the "Merry Wives of Windsor" for her amusement, and in his "Midsummer Night's Dream" he addresses her as the "fair vestal in the West." The translators of the Bible spoke of her as "that bright Occidental Star," and the common people loved to sing and shout the praises of their "good Queen Bess." After her death at Richmond, when her body was being conveyed down the Thames to Westminster, one extravagant eulogist declared that the very fishes that followed the funeral barge "wept out their eyes and swam blind after!"

390. Grandeur of the Age; More's "Utopia."

The reign of Elizabeth was, in fact, Europe's grandest age. It was a time when everything was bursting into life and color. The world had suddenly grown larger; it had opened toward the east in the revival of classical learning; it had opened toward the west, and disclosed a continent of unknown extent and unimaginable resources.

About twenty years after Cabot had discovered the mainland of America (S335), Sir Thomas More (SS339, 351) wrote a remarkable work of fiction, in Latin (1516), called "Utopia" (the Land of Nowhere). In it he pictured an ideal commonwealth, where all men were equal; where none were poor; where perpetual peace prevailed; where there was absolute freedom of thought; where all were contented and happy. It was, in fact, the Golden Age come back to earth again.

More's book, now translated into English (1551), suited such a time, for Elizabeth's reign was one of adventure, of poetry, of luxury, of rapidly increasing wealth. When men looked across the Atlantic, their imaginations were stimulated, and the most extravagant hopes did not appear too good to be true. Courtiers and adventurers dreamed of fountains of youth in Florida, of silver mines in Brazil, of rivers in Virginia, whose pebbles were precious stones.[1] Thus all were dazzled with visions of sudden riches and of renewed life.

[1] "Why, man, all their dripping-pans [in Virginia] are pure gould; … all the prisoners they take are feterd in gold; and for rubies and diamonds, they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'hem by the sea-shore, to hang on their children's coates."—"Eastward Hoe," a play by John Marston and others, "as it was playd in the Blackfriers [Theatre] by the Children of her Maiesties Revels." (1603?)

391. Change in Mode of Life.

England, too, was undergoing transformation. Once, a nobleman's residence had been simply a square stone fortress, built for safety only; but now that the Wars of the Roses had destroyed the old feudal barons (SS299, 316), there was no need of such precaution. Men were no longer content to live shut up in somber strongholds, surrounded with moats of stagnant water, or in meanly built houses, where the smoke curled around the rafters for want of chimneys by which to escape, while the wind whistled through the unglazed latticed windows.

Mansions and stately manor houses like Hatfield, Knowle, parts of Haddon Hall, and the "Bracebridge Hall" of Washington Irving,[2] rose instead of castles, and hospitality, not exclusion, became the prevailing custom. The introduction of chimneys brought the cheery comfort of the English fireside, while among the wealthy, carpets, tapestry, and silver plate took the place of floors strewed with rushes, of bare walls, and of tables covered with pewter or woooden dishes.

[2] Aston Hall, Birmingham, is the original of Irving's "Bracebridge Hall." It came a little later than Elizabeth's time, but is Elizabethan in style.

An old writer, lamenting these innovations, says: "When our houses were built of willow, then we had oaken men; but, now that our houses are made of oak, our men have not only become willow, but many are altogether of straw, which is a sore affliction."

392. An Age of Adventure and of Daring.

But they were not all of straw, for that was a period of daring enterprise, of explorers, sea rovers, and freebooters. Sir Walter Raleigh planted the first English colony in America, which the maiden Queen named Virginia, in honor of herself. It proved unsuccessful, but he said, "I shall live to see it an English nation yet"; and he did.

Frobisher explored the coasts of Labrador and Greenland. Sir Francis Drake, who plundered the treasure ships of Spain wherever he found them, sailed into the Pacific, spent a winter in or near the harbor of San Francisco, and ended his voyage by circumnavigating the globe. (See map facing p. 222.) In the Far East, London merchants had established the East India Company, the beginning of English dominion in Asia; while in Holland, Sir Philip Sydney gave his lifeblood for the cause of Protestantism.

393. Literature and Natural Philosophy.

It was an age, too, not only of brave deeds but of high thoughts. Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson were making English literature the noblest of all literatures. Furthermore, Shakespeare had no equal as a teacher of English history. His historical plays appealed then, as they do now, to every heart. At his touch the dullest and driest records of the past are transformed and glow with color, life, movement, and meaning.[1] On the other hand, Francis Bacon, son of Sir Nicholas Bacon, of Elizabeth's council, was giving a wholly different direction to education. In his new system of philosophy,[2] he taught men that in order to use the forces of nature they must learn by observation and experiment to know nature herself; "for," said he, "knowledge is power."

[1] On the value of Shakespeare's Historical Plays, see S298, note 1; S313, note 2; and S410. [2] In his tract on "The Greatest Birth of Time," in 1582.

394. Mary Queen of Scots claims the Crown (1561).

For England it was also an age of great and constant peril. Elizabeth's entire reign was undermined with plots against her life and against the life of the Protestant faith. No sooner was one conspiracy detected and suppressed than a new one sprang up. Perhaps the most formidable of these was the effort which Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, made to supplant her English rival. Shortly after Elizabeth's accession, Mary's husband, the King of France, died. She returned to Scotland (1561) and there assumed the Scottish crown, at the same time asserting her right to the English throne.[3]

[3] See Genealogical Table (p. 207). Mary's claim was based on the fact that the Pope had never recognized Henry VIII's marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, as lawful, while she, herself, as the direct descendant of Henry's sister, Margaret, stood next in succession.

395. Mary marries Darnley; his Murder.

A few years later Mary married Lord Darnley. He became jealous of Rizzio, her private secretary, and, with the aid of accomplices, seized him in her presence, dragged him into an antechamber, and there stabbed him. The next year Darnley was murdered. It was believed that Mary and the Earl of Bothwell, whom she soon married, were guilty of the crime. The people rose and cast her into prison, and forced her to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James VI, who eventually became King of England and Scotland (1603).

396. Mary escapes to England (1568); plots against Elizabeth and Protestantism.

Mary escaped and fled to England. Elizabeth, fearing she might pass over to France and stir up war, confined her in Bolton Castle, Yorkshire. During her imprisonment in another stronghold, to which she had been transferred, she was accused of being implicated in a plot for assassinating the English Queen and seizing the reins of government in behalf of herself and the Jesuits (S378).

It was, in fact, a time when the Protestant faith seemed everywhere marked for destruction. In France evil counselors had induced the King to order a massacre of the Reformers, and on St. Batholomew's Day thousands were slain. The Pope, misinformed in the matter, ordered a solemn thanksgiving for the slaughter, and struck a gold medal to commemorate it. Philip II of Spain, whose cold, impassive face scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, now laughed outright. Still more recently, William the Silent, who had driven out the Catholics from a part of the Netherlands, had been assassinated by a Jesuit fanatic. Meanwhile the Pope had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth (1570) and had released her subjects from allegiance to her. A fanatic nailed this bull of excommunication to the door of the Bishop of London's palace. This bold act, for which the offender suffered death, brought matters to a crisis.

Englishmen felt that they could no longer remain halting between two opinions. They realized that now they must resolve to take their stand by the Queen or else by the Pope. Parliament at once retaliated against the Pope by passing two stringent measures which declared it high treason for any one to deny the Queen's right to the crown, to name her successor, to denounce her as a heretic, or to say or do anything which should "alienate the hearts and minds of her Majesty's subjects from their dutiful obedience" to her. Later, the "Association," a vigilance committee, was formed by a large number of the principal people of the realm to protect Elizabeth against assassination. Not only prominent Protestants but many Catholic noblemen joined the organization to defend the Queen at all hazards.

397. Elizabeth beheads Mary, 1587.

The ominous significance of these events had their full effect on the
English Queen. Aroused to a sense of her danger, she signed the
Scottish Queen's death warrant, and Mary, after nineteen years'
imprisonment, was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle.[1]

[1] Fotheringay Castle, Northamptonshire, demolished by James I.

As soon as the news of her execution was brought to Elizabeth, she became alarmed at the political consequences the act might have in Europe. With her usual duplicity she bitterly upbraided the minister who had advised it, and throwing Davidson, her secretary, into the Tower, fined him 10,000 pounds, the payment of which reduced him to beggary.

Not satisfied with this, Elizabeth even had the effrontery to write a letter of condolence to Mary's son, James VI, declaring that his mother had been beheaded by mistake! Yet facts prove that Elizabeth had not only determined to put Mary to death, but that she had urged those who held Mary prisoner to kill her privately.[2]

[2] See "Elizabeth" in the "National Dictionary of (British) Biography."

398. The Spanish Armada.

Mary was hardly under ground when a new and greater danger threatened the country. At her death, the Scottish Queen, disgusted with her mean-spirited son James,[3] bequeathed her dominions, including her claim to the English throne, to Philip II of Spain (S370). He was then the most powerful sovereign in Europe, ruling over a territory equal to that of the Roman Empire in its greatest extent.

[3] James had deserted his mother and accepted a pension from Elizabeth.

Philip II, with the encouragement of the Pope, and with the further help of the promise of a very large sum of money from him, resolved to invade England, conquer it, annex it to his possessions, and restore the religion of Rome. To accomplish this, he began fitting out the "Invisible Armada," an immense fleet of warships, intended to carry twenty thousand soldiers, and to receive on its way reenforcements of thirty thousand more from the Spanish army in the Netherlands.

399. Drake's Expedition; Sailing of the Armada (1588).

Sir Francis Drake (S392) determined to check Philip's preparations. He heard that the enemy's fleet was gathered at Cadiz. He sailed there, and in spite of all opposition effectually "singed the Spanish King's beard," as he said, by burning and otherwise destroying more than a hundred ships.

This so crippled the expedition that it had to be given up for that year, but the next summer a vast armament set sail. Motley[1] says it consisted of ten squadrons, of more than one hundred and thirty ships, carrying upwards of three thousand cannon.

[1] Motley's "United Netherlands," II, 465; compare Froude's "England," XII, 466, and Laughton's "Armada" (State Papers), pp. xl-lvii.

The impending peril thoroughly roused England. Both Catholics and
Protestants rose to defend their country and their Queen.

400. The Battle, 1588.

The English sea forces under Lord High Admiral Howard, of Effingham, a zealous patriot, with Sir Francis Drake, who ranked second in command, were assembled at Plymouth, watching for the enemy. Whe nthe long-looked-for Spanish fleet came in sight, beacon fires were lighted on the hills to give the alarm.

"For swift to east and swift to west the ghastly war flame spread;
High on St. Michael's Mount it shone: it shone on Beachy Head.
Far on the deep the Spaniard saw, along each southern shire,
Cape beyond cape, in endless range, those twinkling points of fire."
—Macaulay's "Armada."

The enemy's ships moved steadily toward the coast in the form of a crescent seven miles across; but Howard, Drake, Hawkins, Raleigh, and other noted captains, were ready to receive them. With their fast-sailing cruisers they sailed around the unwieldy Spanish warships, firing four shots to the enemy's one, and "harassing them as a swarm of wasps worry a bear." Several of the Spanish vessels were captured and one blown up. At last the commander sailed for Calais to repair damages and take a fresh start. The English followed. When night came on, Drake sent eight blazing fire ships to drift down among the Armada as it lay at anchor. Thoroughly alarmed at the prospect of being burned where they lay, the Spaniards cut their cables and made sail for the north.

401. Destruction of the Armada, 1588; Elizabeth at Tilbury and at St. Paul's.

They were hotly pursued by the English, who, having lost but a single vessel in the fight, might have cut them to pieces, had not Elizabeth's suicidal economy stinted them in body powder and provisions. Meanwhile the Spanish fleet kept moving northward. The wind increased to a gale, the gale to a furious storm. The commander of the Armada attempted to go around Scotland and return home that way; but ship after ship was driven ashore and wrecked on the wild and rocky coast of western Ireland. On one strand, less than five miles long, over a thousand corpses were counted. Those who escaped the waves met death by the hands of the inhabitants. Of the magnificent fleet which had sailed so proudly from Spain only fifty-three vessels returned, and they were but half manned by exhausted crews stricken by pestilence and death. Thus ended Philip II's boasted attack on England.

When all danger was past, Elizabeth went to Tilbury, on the Thames below London, to review the troops collected there to defend the capital. "I know," said she, "that I have but the feeble body of a woman, but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England too." Unhappily the niggardly Queen had half starved her brave sailors, and many of them came home only to die. None the less Elizabeth went with solemn pomp to St. Paul's Cathedral to offer thanks for the great victory, which was commemorated by a medal bearing this inscription: "God blew with his winds, and they were scattered." The date of the defeat of the Armada, 1588, was a turning point in English history. From that time England gradually rose, under the leadership of such illustrious commanders as Drake, Blake, and Nelson, until she became what she has ever since remained—the greatest sea power in the world (SS459, 557).

402. Insurrection in Ireland (1595).

A few years later a terrible rebellion broke out in Ireland. From its partial conquest in the time of Henry II (S159), the condition of that island continued to be deplorable. First, the chiefs of the native tribes fought constantly among themselves; next, the English attempted to force the Protestant religion upon a people who detested it; lastly, the greed and misgovernment of the rulers put a climax to these miseries. Sir Walter Raleigh said, "The country was a commonwealth of common woe." What made this state of things still more dangerous was the fact that the Catholic rulers of Spain considered the Irish as their natural allies, and were plotting to send troops to that island in order to strike England a deadly side blow when she least expected it.

Elizabeth's government began a war, the object of which was "not to subdue but to destroy." The extermination was so merciless that the Queen herself declared that if the work of destruction went on much longer, "she should have nothing left but ashes and corpses to rule over." Then, but not till then, the starving remnant of the Irish people submitted, and England gained a barren victory which has ever since carried with it its own curse.

403. The First Poor Law (1601).

In Elizabeth's reign the first effective English poor law was passed. It required each parish to make provision for such paupers as were unable to work, while the able-bodied were compelled to labor for their own support. This measure relieved much of the distress which had prevailed during the three previous reigns (S354), and forms the basis of the law in force at the present time (S607).

404. Elizabeth's Death (1603).

The death of the great Queen (1603) was as sad as her life had been brilliant. Her favorite, Essex, Shakespeare's intimate friend, had been beheaded for an attempted rebellion against her power. From that time she grew, as she said, "heavy-hearted." Her old friends and counselors were dead, her people no longer welcomed her with their former enthusiasm. She kept a sword always within reach. Treason had grown so common that Hentzner, a German traveler in England, said that he counted three hundred heads of persons, who had suffered death for this crime, exposed on London Bridge. Elizabeth felt that her sun was nearly set; gradually her strength declined; she ceased to leave her palace, and sat muttering to herself all day long, "Mortua, sed non sepulta!" (Dead, but not buried).

At length she lay propped up on cushions on the floor,[1] "tired," as she said, "of reigning and tired of life." In that sullen mood she departed to join that "silent majority" whose realm under earth is bounded by the sides of the grave. "Four days afterward," says a writer of that time, "she was forgotten."

[1] See in the works of Delaroche his fine picture of "The Death of Queen Elizabeth."

One sees her tomb, with her full-length, recumbent effigy, in the north aisle of Henry VII's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, while in the south aisle he sees the tomb and effigy of her old rival and enemy, Mary Queen of Scots (S397). The sculptured features of both look placid. "After life's fitful fever they sleep well."

405. Summary.

The Elizabethan period was in every respect remarkable. It was great in its men of thought, great in its literature, and equally great in its men of action. It was greatest, however, in its successful resistance to the armed hand of religious oppression. "Practically the reign of Elizabeth," as Bishop Creighton remarks, "saw England established as a Protestant country."[2]

[2] See "The Dictionary of English History" ("The Reformation"), p. 860.

The defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 gave renewed courage to the cause of the Reformation, not only in England, but in every Protestant country in Europe. It meant that a movement had begun which, though it might be temporarily hindered, would secure to all civilized countries, which accepted it, the right of private judgment and of liberty of conscience in matters of religion.

General Reference Summary of the Tudor Period (1485-1603)

I. Government II. Religion III. Military Affairs. IV. Literature,
Learning and Art. V. General Industry and Commerce. VI. Mode of
Life, Manners, and Customs

I. Government

406. Absolutism of the Crown; Free Trade; the Post Office.

During a great part of the Tudor period the power of the Crown was well-nigh absolute. Four causes contributed to this: (1) The destruction of a very large part of the feudal nobility by the Wars of the Roses.[1] (2) The removal of many of the higher clergy from the House of Lords.[2] (3) The creation of a new nobility dependant on the king. (4) The desire of the great body of the people for "peace at any price."

[1] In the last Parliament before the Wars of the Roses (1454) there were fifty-three temporal peers; at the beginning of the reign of Henry VII (1485) there were only twenty-nine. [2] Out of a total of barely ninety peers, Henry VIII, by the suppression of the monasteries, removed upwards of thirty-six abbots and priors. He, however, added five new bishops, which made the House of Lords number about fifty-nine.

Under Henry VII and Elizabeth the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission exercised arbitrary power, and often inflicted cruel punishments for offenses against the government, and for heresy or the denial of the religious supremacy of the sovereign.

Henry VII established a treaty of free trade, called the "Great Intercourse," between England and the Netherlands. Under Elizabeth the first postmaster-general entered upon his duties, though the post office was nott fully established until the reign of her successor.

II. Religion

407. Establishment of the Protestant Church of England.

Henry VIII suppressed the Roman Catholic monasteries, seized their property, and ended by declaring the Church of England independent of the Pope. Thenceforth he assumed the title of Supreme Head of the National Church. Under Edward VI Protestantism was established by law. Mary led a reaction in favor of Roman Catholicism, but her successor, Elizabeth, reinstated the Protestant form of worship. Under Elizabeth the Puritans demanded that the National Church be completely "purified" from all Catholic forms and doctrines. Severe laws were passed under Elizabeth for the punishment of both Catholics and Puritans who failed to conform to the Church of England.

III. Military Affairs

408. Arms and Armor; the Navy.

Though gunpowder had been in use for two centuries, yet full suits of armor were still worn during a great part of the period. An improved matchlock gun, with the pistol, an Italian invention, and heavy cannon were introduced. Until the death of Henry VIII foot soldiers continued to be armed with the long bow; but under Edward VI that weapon was superseded by firearms. The principal wars of the period were with Scotland, France, and Spain, the last being by far the most important, and ending with the destruction of the Armada.

Henry VIII established a permanent navy, and built several vessels of upwards of one thousand tons register. The largest men-of-war under Elizabeth carried forty cannon and a crew of several hundred men.

IV. Literature, Learning, and Art

409. Schools. The revival of learning gave a great impetus to education. The money which had once been given to monasteries was now spent in building schools, colleges, and hospitals. Dean Colet established the free grammar school of St. Paul's, several colleges were endowed at Oxford and Cambridge, and Edward VI opened upwards of forty charity schools in different parts of the country, of which the Christ's Hospital or "Blue-Coat School," originally established in London, is one of the best known. Improved textbooks were rpepared for the schools, and Lily's "Latin Grammar," first published in 1513 for the use of Dean Colet's school, continued a standard work for over three hundred years.

410. Literature; the Theater.

The latter part of the period deserves the name of the "Golden Age of English Literature." More, Sydney, Hooker, Jewell, and Bacon were the leading prose writers; while Shakespeare, Spenser, Marlowe, and Jonson represented the poets.

In 1574 a public theater was erected in London, in which Shakespeare was a stockholder. Not very long after, a second was opened. At both these, the Globe and the Blackfriars, the great dramatist appeared in his own plays, and in such pieces as "King John," "Richard the Third," and the Henrys, he taught his countrymen more of the true spirit and meaning of the nation's history than they had ever learned before. His historical plays are chiefly based on Holinshed and Hall, two noted chroniclers of the period.

411. Progress of Science; Superstitions.

The discoveries of Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, and other navigators, had proved the earth to be a globe. Copernicus, a Prussian astronomer, now demonstrated the fact that it both turns on its axis and revolves around the sun, but the discovery was not accepted until many years later.

On the other hand, astrology, witchcraft, and the transmutation of copper and lead into gold were generally believed in. In preaching before Queen Elizabeth, Bishop Jewell urged that stringent measures be taken with witches and sorcerers, saying that through their demoniacal acts "your Grace's subjects pine away even unto death, their color fadeth, their flesh rotteth." Lord Bacon and other eminent men held the same belief, and many persons eventually suffered death for the practice of witchcraft.

412. Architecture.

The Gothic, or Pointed, style of architecture reached its final stage (the Perpendicular) in the early part of this period. The first examples of it have already been mentioned at the close of the preceding period (S324). After the close of Henry VII's reign no attempts were made to build any grand church edifices until St. Paul's Cathedral was rebuilt by Wren, in the seventeenth century, in the Italian, or classical, style.

In the latter part of the Tudor period many stately country houses[1] and grand city mansions were built, ornamented with carved woodwork and bay windows. Castles were no longer constructed, and, as the country was at peace, many of those which had been built were abandoned, though a few castellated mansions like Thornbury, Gloucestershire, were built in Henry VIII's time. The streets of London still continued to be very narrow, and the houses, with their projecting stories, were so near together at the top that neighbors living on opposite sides of the street might almost shake hands from the upper windows.

[1] Such as Hatfield House, Knowle Hall, Hardwick Hall, and part of Haddon Hall; and, in London, Crosby Hall and other noble mansions.

V. General Industry and Commerce

413. Foreign Trade.

The eographical discoveries of this period gave a great impulse to foreign trade with Africe, Brazil, and North America. The wool trade continued to increase, and also commerce with the East Indies. In 1600 the East India Company was established, thus laying the foundation of England's Indian empire, and ships now brought cargoes direct to England by way of the Cape of Good Hope.

Sir Francis Drake did a flourishing business in plundering Spanish settlements in America and Spanish treasure ships on the sea, and Sir John Hawkins became wealthy through the slave trade,—kidnaping negroes on the coast of Guinea, and selling them to the Spanish West India colonies. The domestic trade of England was still carried on largely by great annual fairs. Trade, however, was much deranged by the quantities of debased money issued under Henry VIII and Edward VI.

Elizabeth reformed the currency, and ordered the mint to send out coin which no longer had a lie stamped on its face, thereby setting an example to all future governments, whether monarchical or republican.

VI. Mode of Life, Manners, and Customs

414. Life in the Country and the City.

In the cities this was an age of luxury; but on the farms the laborer was glad to get a bundle of straw for a bed, and a wooden trencher to eat from. Vegetables were scarcely known, and fresh meat was eaten only by the well to do. The cottages were built of sticks and mud, without chimneys, and were nearly as bare of furniture as the wigwam of an American Indian.

The rich kept several mansions and country houses, but paid little attention to cleanliness; and when the filth and vermin in one became unendurable, they left it "to sweeten," as they said, and went to another of their estates. The dress of the nobles continued to be of the most costly materials and the gayest colors.

At table a great variety of dishes were served on silver plate, but fingers were still used in place of forks. Tea and coffee were unknown, and beer was the usual drink at breakfast and supper.

Carriages were seldom used, except by Queen Elizabeth, and most journeys were performed on horseback. Merchandise was also generally transported on pack horses, the roads rarely being good enough for the passage of wagons. The principal amusements were the theater, dancing, masquerading, bull and bear baiting (worrying a bull or bear with dogs), cockfighting, and gambling.

Ninth Period[1]

"It is the nature of the devil of tyranny to tear and rend the body which he leaves."—Macaulay

Beginning with the Divine Right of Kings and Ending with the Divine
Right of the People

King or Parliament?

House of Stuart (1603-1649, 1660-1714)

James I, 1603-1625
Charles I, 1625-1649
"The Commonwealth and Protectorate," 1649-1660
Charles II, 1660-1685
James II, 1685-1689
William and Mary,[2] 1689-1702
Anne, 1702-1714

[1] Reference Books on this Period will be found in the Classified List of Books in the Appendix. The pronunciation of names will be found in the Index. The Leading Dates stand unenclosed; all others are in parentheses. [2] House of Orange-Stuart.

415. Accession of James I.

Elizabeth was the last of the Tudor family (S376). By birth, James Stuart, only son of Mary STuart, Queen of Scots, and great-grandson of Margaret, sister of Henry VIII, was the nearest heir to the crown.[3] He was already King of Scotland under the title of James VI. He now, by act of Parliament, became James I of England. By his accession the two countries were united under one sovereign, but each retained its own Parliament, its own National Church, and its own laws.[4] The new monarch found himself ruler over three kingdoms, each professing a different religion. Puritanism prevailed in Scotland, Catholicism in Ireland, Anglicanism or Episcopacy in England.

[3] See Genealogical Table, p.207. [4] On his coins and in his proclamations James styled himself King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. But the term "Great Britain" did not properly come into use until somewhat more than a hundred years later, when, by an act of Parliament under Anne, Scotland and England were legally united. The English Parliament refused to grant free trade to Scotland and denied to the people of that counttry, even if born after James I came to the English throne (or "Post Nati," as they were called), the rights and privileges possessed by natives of England.

416. The King's Appearances and Character.

James was unfortunate in his birth. Neither his father, Lord Darnley, nor his mother had high qualities of character. The murder of Mary's Italian secretary in her own palace, and almost in her own presence (S395), gave the Queen a shock which left a fatal inheritance of cowardice to her son. Throughout his life he could not endure the sight of a drawn sword. If we can trust common report, his personal appearance was by no means impressive. He had a feeble, rickety body, he could not walk straight, his tongue was too large for his mouth, and he had goggle eyes. Through fear of assassination he habitually wore thickly padded and quilted clothes, usually green in color. He was a man of considerable shrewdness, but of a small mind, and of unbounded conceit. His Scotch tutor had crammed him with much ill-digested learning, so that he gave the impression of a man educated beyond his intellect. His favorites used to flatter him by telling him that he was the "British Solomon"; but the French ambassador came nearer to the mark when he called him "the wisest fool in Christendom."

The King wrote on witchcraft, kingcraft, and theology, and composed numerous commonplace verses. He also wrote a sweeping denunciation of the new plant called tobacco, which Raleigh (S392) had brought from America, and whose smoke now began to perfume, or, according to James, to poison, the air of England. His Majesty had all the superstitions of the age, and one of his earliest acts was the passage of a statute punishing witchcraft with death. Under that law many a wretched woman perished on the scaffold, whose only crime was that she was old, ugly, and friendless.

417. The Great Puritan Petition (1603).

During the latter part of Elizabeth's reign, the Puritans (S378) in England had increased so rapidly that Archbishop Whitgift told James he was amazed to find how "the vipers" had multiplied. The Puritans felt that the Reformation had not been sufficiently thorough.

They complained that many of the forms and ceremonies of the Church of Engalnd were by no means in harmony with the Scriptures. Many of them wished also to change the Episcopal form of Church government, and instead of having bishops appointed by the King, to adopt the more democratic method of having presbyters or elders chosen by the congregation.

While James was on the way from Scotland to London to receive the crown, the Puritans presented the "Millenary Petition" to him. It was so called because it purported to have a thousand signers. The ministers presenting it asked that they might be permitted to preach without wearing the white gown called a surplice, to baptize without making the sign of the cross on the child's forehead, and to perform the marriage ceremony without using the ring. Bishop Hooker and Lord Bacon had pleaded for a certain degree of toleration for the Puritans. They even quoted the words of Christ: "He that is not against us is for us." But the King had no patience with such a plea.

418. Hampton Court Conference (1604).

The King convened a conference at Hampton Court, near London, to consider the Petition, or rather to make a pedantic display of his own learning. The probability that he would grant the petitioners' request was small. James had come to England disgusted with the violence of the Scotch Presbyterians or Puritans (S378), especially since Andrew Melville, one of their leading ministers in Edinburgh, had seized his sleeve at a public meeting and addressed him, with a somewhat brutal excess of truth, as "God's silly vassal."[1]

[1] Gardiner in the "Dictionary of National (British) Biography," "James I," thinks that by "silly" Melville meant "weak." But that is not much improvement.

But the new sovereign had a still deeper reason for his antipathy to the Puritans. He saw that their doctrine of equality in the Church naturally led to that equality in the State. If they objected to Episcopal government in the one, might they not presently object to royal government in the other? Hence to all their arguments he answered with his favorite maxim, "No bishop, no king," meaning that the two must stand or fall together.

At the Hampton Court Conference all real freedom of discussion was practically prohibited. The Conference, however, had one good result, for the King ordered a new and revised translation of the Bible to be made (SS254, 357). It was published a few years later (1611). This translation of the Scriptures excels all others in simplicity, dignity, and beauty of language. After more than three hundred years it still remains the version used in the great majority of Protestant churches and Protestant homes wherever English is spoken.

James regarded the Conference as a success. He had refuted the Puritans, as he believed, with much Latin and some Greek. He ended by declaiming against them with such unction that one enthusiastic bishop declared that his Majesty must be specially inspired by the Holy Ghost!

He closed the meeting by imprisoning the ten persons who had presented the petition, on the ground that it tended to sedition and rebellion. Henceforth, the King's attitude toward the Puritans (S378) was unmistakable. "I will make them conform," said he, "or I will harry them out of the land" (S422).

Accordingly, a law was enacted which required every curate to accept the Thirty-Nine Articles (S381) and the Prayer Book of the Church of England (S381) without reservation. This act drove several hundred clergymen from the Established Church.

419. The Divine Right of Kings, 1604; the Protest of the Commons; "Favorites."

As if with the desire of further alienating his people, James now constantly proclaimed the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. This theory, which was unknown to the English constitution, declared that the King derived his power and right to rule directly from God, and in no way from the people.[1] "It is atheism and blasphemy," he said, "to dispute what God can do, … so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute what a king can do."

[1] James's favorite saying was, "A Deo rex, a rege lex" (God makes the king, the king makes the law). He boasted that kings might, as he declared, "make what liked them law and gospel."

In making these utterances James seems to have entirely forgotten that he owed his throne to that act of the English Parliament which accepted him as Elizabeth's successor (S415). In his exalted position as head of the nation, he boasted of his power much like the dwarf in the story, who, perched on the giant's shoulders, cries out, "See how big I am!"

Acting on this assumption, James levied customs duties on goods without asking the consent of Parliament; violated the privileges of the House of Commons; rejected members who had been legally elected; and imprisoned those who dared to criticize his course. The contest was kept up with bitterness during the whole reign.

Toward its close James truckled meanly to the power of Spain, hoping thereby to marry his son Charles to a Spanish princess. Later, he made a feeble and futile effort to help the Protestant party in the great Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), which had begun between the Catholics and Protestants in Germany. The House of Commons implored the King not to humiliate himself and the nation at the feet of Spain. The King replied by warning the House not to meddle with matters which did not concern them, and denied their right to freedom of speech. The Commons solemnly protested, and James seized their official journal, and with his own hands tore out the record of the protest (1621).

Yet, notwithstanding his arbitrary character, James was easily managed by those who would flatter his vanity. For this reason he was always under the control of worthless favorites like Carr, Earl of Somerset, or Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. These men were the secret power behind the throne, and they often dictated the policy of the Crown.

420. The Gunpowder Plot (1605).

The King's arbitrary spirit angered the House of Commons, many of whom were Puritans (S378). They believed that the King secretly favored the Roman Catholics; and for this reason they increased the stringency of the laws against persons of that religion. To vindicate himself from this suspicion, the King proceeded to execute the new statutes with rigor. As a rule, the Catholic were loyal subjects. We have seen that when Spain threatened to invade the country, they fought as valiantly in its defense as the Protestants themselves (SS399, 400). Many of them were now ruined by enormous fines, while the priests were driven from the realm.

One of the sufferers by these unjust measures was Robert Catesby, a Catholic gentleman of good position. He, with the aid of a Yorkshire man, named Guy Fawkes, and about a dozen more, formed a plot to blow up the Parliament House on the day the King was to open the session (November 5, 1605). Their intention, after they had thus summarily disposed of the government, was to induce the Catholics to rise and proclaim a new sovereign. The plot was discovered, the conspirators were executed, and the Catholics treated with greater severity than ever (S382).

421. American Colonies, Virginia, 1607.

A London joint-stock company of merchants and adventurers, or speculators, established the first permanent English colony in America, on the coast of Virginia, in 1607, at a place which they called Jamestown, in honor of the King. (See map facing p. 222.) The colony was wholly under the control of the Crown.

The religion was to be that of the Church of England. Most of those who went out were described as "gentlemen," that is, persons not brought up to manual labor. Fortunately the eneergy and determined courage of Captain John Smith, who was the real soul of the enterprise, saved it from miserable failure.

Negro slavery, which in those days touched no man's conscience, was introduced, and by its means great quantities of tobacco were raised for export. The settlement grew in population and wealth, and at the end of twelve years (1619) it had secured the privilege of making its own local laws, thus becoming practically a self-governing community.

422. The Pilgrims; the New Power.

The year after the Virginia legislature was established, another band of emigrants went out from England, not west, but east; not to seek prosperity, but greater religious freedom. James's declaration that he would make all men conform to the Established Church, or drive them out of the land, was having its due effect (S418).

Those who continued to refuse to conform were fined, cast into filthy prisons, beaten, and often half starved, so that the old and feeble soon died. Strange to say, this kind of treatment did not win over the Puritans to the side of the bishops and the King. On the contrary, it set many of them to thinking more seriously than ever of the true relations of the government to religion.

The result was that not a few came to the conclusion that each body of Christians had the right to form a religious society of its own, wholly independent of the state. That branch of the Puritans (S378) who held this opinion got the name of Independents, or Separatists, because they were determined to separate from the Established Church of England and conduct their worship and govern their religious societies as they deemed best.

In the little village of Scrooby, Nottinghamshire (see map opposite), Postmaster William Brewster, William Bradford, John Carver, and some others, mostly farmers and poor men of the neighborhood, had organized an independent religious society with John Robinson for its minister. After a time they became convinced that so long as they remained in England they could never be safe from persecution. They therefore resolved to leave their native country. They could not get a royal license to go to America, and for this reason they emigrated to Holland, where all men were free to establish societies for the worship of God in their own manner. With much difficulty and danger they managed to escape to that country.

After remaining in Holland about twelve years, a part of them succeeded in obtaining from King James the privilege of emigrating to America.[1] A London trading company, which was sending out an expedition for fish and furs, agreed to furnish the Pilgrims passage by the Mayflower, though on terms so hard that the poor exiles said the "conditions were fitter for thieves and bondslaves than for honest men."

[1] See "Why did the Pilgrim Fathers come to New England?" by Edwin D. Mead, in the New Englander, XLI, 711.

These Pilgrims, or wanderers, set forth in 1620 for that New World beyond the sea, which they hoped would redress the wrongs of the Old. Landing at Plymouth, in Massachusetts, they established a colony on the basis of "equal laws for the general good." Ten years later, John Winthrop, a Puritan gentleman of wealth from Groton, Suffolk (see map opposite), followed with a large number of emigrants and settled Boston (1630). During the next decade no less than twenty thousand Englishmen found a home in America. But to the little band that embarked under Bradford and Brewster in the Mayflower, the scene of whose landing at Plymouth is painted on the walls of the Houses of Parliament, belongs the first credit of the great undertaking.

Of that enterprise one of their brethren in England wrote in the time of their severest distress, with prophetic foresight, "Let it not be grievous to you that you have been instruments to break the ice for others; the honor shall be yours to the world's end." From this time forward the American coast south of the Bay of Fundy was settled mainly by English emigrants, and in the course of a little more than a century (1620-1733), the total number of colonies had reached thirteen. Thus the nation of Great Britain was beginning to expand into that *greater* Britain which it had discovered and planted beyond the sea.

Meanwhile a new power had arisen in England. It was mightier even than that of kings, because greater for both good and evil. Its influence grew up very gradually. It was part of the fruit of Caxton's work undertaken nearly two centuries earlier (S306). This power appeared in the spring of 1622, under the name of the Weekly News,—the first regular newspaper.

423. The Colonization of Ireland (1611).

While the colonization of America was going on, King James was himself planning a very different kind of colony in the northeast of Ireland. The greater part of the province of Ulster, which had been the scene of the rebellion under Elizabeth (S402), had been seized by the Crown. The King now granted these lands to settlers from Scotland and England. The city of London founded a colony which they called Londonderry, and by this means Protestantism was firmly and finally established in the north of the island.

424. The "Addled Parliament"; the New Stand taken by the House of Commons (1610-1614).

The House of Commons at this period began to slowly recover the power it had lost under the Tudors (S350). James suffered from a chronic lack of money. He was obliged to apply to Parliament to supply his wants (1614), but that body was determined to grant nothing without reforms. It laid down the principle, to which it firmly adhered, that the King should not have the nation's coin unless he would promise to right the nation's wrongs.

After several weeks of angry discussion the King dissolved what was nicknamed the "Addled Parliament," because its enemies accused it of having accomplished nothing. In reality it had accomplished much for though it had not passed a single bill, it had shown by its determined attitude the growing stregnth of the people. For the next seven years James ruled without summoning a Parliament. In order to obtain means to support his army in Ireland, the King created a new title of rank, that of baronet,[1] which he granted to any one who would pay liberally for it. As a last resort to get funds he compelled all persons having an income of forty[2] pounds or more a year, derived from landed property, to accept knighthood (thus incurring feudal obligations and payments [S150]) or purchase exemption by a heavy fine.

[1] Baronet: This title (S263, note 1) does not confer the right to a seat in the House of Lords. A baronet is designated as "Sir," e.g. Sir John Franklin. [2] This exaction was ridiculed by the wits of the time in these lines:

"He that hat forty pounds per annum
Shall be promoted from the plow;
His wife shall take the wall of her grannum*—
Honor's sold so dog-cheap now."

The distraint of knighthood, as it was called, began at least as far back as Edward I, 1278. *Take precedence of her grandmother.

425. Impeachment of Lord Bacon (1621).

When James did finally summon a Parliament (1621), it met in a stern mood. The House of Commons impeached Lord Bacon (S393) for having taken bribes in lawsuits tried before him as judge. The House of Lords convicted him. He confessed the crime, but pleaded extenuating circumstances, adding, "I beseech your lordships to be merciful unto a broken reed"; but Bacon had been in every respect a servile tool of James, and no mercy was granted. Parliament imposed a fine of 40,000 pounds, with imprisonment. Had the sentence been fully executed, it would have caused his utter ruin. The King, however, interposed, and his favorite escaped with a few days' confinement in the Tower.

426. Execution of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Meanwhile Sir Walter Raleigh (S392) had been executed on a charge of treason. He had been a prisoner in the Tower for many years (1603-1616), accused of having plotted against the King.[3] Influenced by greed for gain, James released him to go on an expedition in search of gold to replenish the royal coffers. Raleigh, contrary to the King's orders, came into collision with the Spaniards on the coast of South America.[1] He failed in his enterprise, and brought back nothing. Raleigh was especially hated by Spain, not only on account of the part he had taken in the defeat of the Armada (S400), but also for his subsequent attacks on Spanish treasure ships and property.

[3] At the beginning of the reign two plots were discovered: one, called the "Main Plot," aimed to change the government and perhaps to place Arabella Stuart, cousin of James, on the throne. The object of the second conspiracy, called the "Bye Plot," was to obtain religious toleration. Raleigh was accused of having been implicated in the Main Plot. [1] It is said that James had treacherously informed the Spanish ambassador of Raleigh's voyage, so that the collision was inevitable.

The King of that country now demanded vengeance, and James, in order to get a pretext for his execution, revived the sentence which had been passed on Raleigh fifteen years before. He doubtless hoped that, by sacrificing Raleigh, he might secure the hand of the daughter of the King of Spain for his son, Prince Charles. Raleigh died as Sir Thomas More did (S351), his last words a jest at death. His deeper feelings found expression in the lines which he wrote on the fly leaf of his Bible the night before his judicial murder:

"Even such is Time, that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.
Buy from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust!"

427. Death of James.

James died suddenly a few years later, a victim of sloth, drunkenness, and gluttony. He had taught his son, Prince Charles, to believe that the highest power on earth was the royal will. It was a terrible inheritance for the young man, for just as he was coming to the throne, the people were beginning to insist that their will should be respected.

428. Summary.

Three chief events demand our attention in this reign. First, the increased power and determined attitude of the House of Commons. Secondly, the growth of the Puritan and Independent parties in religion. Thirdly, the establishment of permanent, self-governing colonies in Virginia and New England, destined in time to unite with others and become a new and independent nation,—the American Republic.

Charles I—1625-1649

429. Accession of Charles; Result of the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings.

The doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, which had been so zealously put forth by James (S419), bore its full and fatal fruit in the career of his son. Unlike his father, Charles was by nature a gentleman. In his private and personal relations he was conscientious and irreproachable; in public matters he was exactly the reverse.

This singular contrast—this double character, as it were—arose from the fact that, as a man, Charles felt himself bound by truth and honor, but, as a sovereign, he considered himself superior to such obligations. In all his dealings with the nation he seems to have acted on the principle that the people had no rights which kings were bound to respect.

430. The King's Two Mistakes at the Outset.

Charles I began his reign with two mistakes. First, he insisted on retaining the Duke of Buckingham, his father's favorite (S419), as his chief adviser, though the Duke was, for good reasons, generally distrusted and disliked. Next, shortly after his accession, Charles married Henrietta Maria, a French Catholic princess. The majority of the English people hated her religion, and her extravagant habits soon got the King into trouble.

To meet her incessant demands for money, and to carry on a petty war with Spain, and later with France, he was obliged to ask Parliament for funds. Parliament declined to grant him the supply he demanded unless he would redress certain grievances of long standing. Charles refused and dissolved that body.

431. The Second Parliament (1626); the King extorts Loans.

Necessity, however, compelled the King to call a new Parliament. when it met, the Commons, under the lead of Sir John Eliot and other eminent men, proceeded to draw up articles of impeachment, accusing the Duke of Buckingham of mismanagement (SS243, 425). To save his favorite from being brought to trial, the King dissolved Parliament (1626), and as no supplies of money had been voted, Charles now proceeded to levy illegal taxes and to extort illegal loans. Sir John Eliot, Sir Edmund Hampden, cousin of the famous John Hampden (S436), and Thomas Wentworth refused (1627) to lend his Majesty the sum asked for. For this refusal they were thrown into prison. This led to increased agitation and discontent. At length the King found himself again forced to summon Parliament; to the Parliament, Eliot and Wentworth, with others who sympathized with them, were elected.

432. ThePetition of Right, 1628.

Shortly after assembling, the House of Commons, led by Sir Thomas Wentworth and John Pym, drew up the Petition of Right, which passed the Lords and was presented to the King for his signature. The Petition was a law reaffirming some of the chief provisions of the Great Charter, which the nation, more than four centuries earlier, had extorted from King John (S199). It stipulated in particular, that no taxes whatever should be levied without the consent of Parliament, and that no one should be unlawfully imprisoned for refusing to pay such taxes. In the petition there was not an angry word, but as a member of the Commons declared, "We say no more than what a worm trodden upon would say if he could speak: I pray thee tread on me no more."

433. Charles signs the Petition of Right, 1628; but he revives Monopolies.

Charles refused to sign the Petition; but finding that money could be got on no other terms, he at length gave his signature, 1628.[1] But for Charles to pledge his royal word to the nation meant its direct and open violation. The King now revived the "monopolies," which had been abolished under Elizabeth (S388).

[1] Petition of Right: See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xvi, S17, and p. xxix.

By these grants certain persons bought the sole right of dealing in nearly every article of food, drink, fuel, and clothing. The Commons denounced this outrage. One member said: "The `monopolists' have seized everything. They sip in our cup, they sup in our dish, they sit by our fire."

434. Eliot's Remonstrance (1629).

Sir John Eliot (S431) drew up a remonstrance against these new acts of royal tyranny, but the Speaker of the House of Commons, acting under the King's order, refused to put the measure to vote, and endeavored to adjourn.

Several members sprang forward and held him in his chair until the resolutions were passed, which declared that whoever levied or paid any taxes not voted by Parliament, or attempted to make any change in religion, was an enemy to the kingdom. In revenge Charles sent Eliot to close confinement in the Tower. He died there three years later, a martyr in the cause of liberty.

435. The King rules without Parliament; "Thorough."

For the next eleven years (1629-1640) the King ruled without a Parliament. The obnoxious Buckingham (S431) had led an expedition against France which resulted in miserable failure. He was about setting out on a second expedition to aid the Huguenots, who had rebelled against the French King, when he was assassinated (1628). His successor was Sir Thomas Wentworth, who later (1640) became Earl of Strafford. Wentworth had signed the Petition of Right (S432), but he was now a renegade to liberty, and wholly devoted to the King. By means of the Court of Star Chamber (S330) and his scheme called "Thorough," which meant that he would stop at nothing to make Charles absolute, Strafford labored to establish a complete despotism.

Archbishop Laud worked with Strafford through the High Commission Court (S382). Together, the two exercised a crushing and merciless system of political and religious tyranny; the Star Chamber fining and imprisoning those who refused the illegal demands for money made upon them, the High Commission Court showing itself equally zealous in punishing those who could not conscientiously conform to the Established Church of England.[1]

[1] To strengthen the hands of Archbishop Laud and to secure absolute uniformity of faith, Charles issued (1628) a Declaration (still found in the English editions of the Book of Common Prayer), which forbade any one to understand or explain the Thirty-Nine Articles (S383) in any sense except that established by the bishops and the King.

Charles exasperated the Puritans (S378) still further by reissuing (1633) his father's Declaration of Sunday Sports, which had never really been enforced. This Declaration encouraged parishioners to dance, play games, and practice archery in the churchyards after divine service. Laud used it as a test, and turned all clergymen out of their livings who refused to read it from their pulpits. When the Puritans finally got the upper hand (1644) they publicly burned the Declaration.

436. "Ship Money"; John Hampden refuses to pay it, 1637.

To obtain means with which to equip a standing army, the King forced the whole country to pay a tax known as "ship money," on the pretext that it was needed to free the English coast from the depredations of Algerine pirates. During previous reigns an impost of this kind on the coast towns in time of war might have been considered legitimate, since its original object was to provide ships for the national defense.

In time of peace, however, such a demand could not be rightfully made, especially on the inland towns, as the Petition of Right (S432) expressly provided that no money should be demanded from the country without the consent of its representatives in Parliament. John Hampden, a wealthy farmer in Buckinghamshire, refused to pay the twenty shillings required from him. He did not grudge the money, but he would not tamely submit to have even that trifling sum taken from him contrary to law. The case was brought to trial (1637), and the corrupt judges decided for the King.

437. Hampden and Cromwell endeavor to leave the Country.

Meanwhile John Winthrop with many other Puritans emigrated to America to escape oppression. According to tradition John Hampden (S436) and his cousin, Oliver Cromwell, who was a member of the last Parliament, embarked on a vessel in the Thames for New England. But it is said that they were prevented from sailing by the King's order. The two friends remained to teach the despotic sovereign a lesson which neither he nor England ever forgot.[1]

[1] Macaulay's "Essay on Hampden," Guizot's "English Revolution," and other well-known authorities, relate the proposed sailing of Hampden and Cromwell, but several recent writers question its truth.

438. The Difficulty with the Scottish Church (1637).

The King determined to force the use of a prayer book, similar to that used in the English Church (S381), on the Scotch Puritans. But no sooner had the Dean of Edinburgh opened the book than a general cry arose in the church, "A Pope, a Pope! Antichrist! Stone him!" When the bishops endeavored to appease the tumult, the enraged congregation clapped, stamped, and yelled.

Again the dean tried to read a prayer from the hated book, when an old woman hurled her stool at his head, shouting, "D'ye mean to say mass[1] at my lug [ear]?" Riots ensued, and eventually the Scotch solemnly bound themselves by a Covenant to resist all attempts to change their religion. The King resolved to force his prayer book on the Covenanters[2] at the point of the bayonet.

[1] Mass: here used for the Roman Catholic church service. [2] The first Covenanters were the Scottish leaders, who, in 1557, bound themselves by a solemn covenant to overthrow all attempts to reestablish the Catholic religion in Scotland; when Charles I undertook to force the Scotch to accept Episcopacy the Puritan party in Scotland drew up a new covenant (1638) to resist it.

But he had no money to pay his army, and the "Short Parliament," which he summoned in the spring of 1640, refused to grant any unless the King would redress the nation's grievances.

439. The "Long Parliament," 1640; Impeachment of Strafford and Laud; the "Grand Remonstrance."

In the autumn Charles summoned that memorable Parliament which met in November of 1640. It sat almost continuously for thirteen years, and so got the name of the "Long Parliament."[3] This new Parliament was made up of three parties: the Church of England party, the Presbyterian party, and the Independents (S422). The spirit of this body soon showed itself. John Pym (S432), the leader of the House of Commons, demanded the impeachment of Strafford (S435) for high treason and despotic oppression. He was tried and sentenced to execution. The King refused to sign the death warrant, but Strafford himself urged him to do so in order to appease the people. Charles, frightened at the tumult that had arisen, and entreated by his wife, finally put his hand to the paper, and thus sent his most faithful servant to the block.

Parliament next charged Archbishop Laud (S435) with attempting to overthrow the Protestant religion. It condemned him to prison, and ultimately to death. Next, it abolished the Star Chamber and the High Commission Court (S435). It next passed the Triennial Act,[1] a bill requiring Parliament to be summoned once in three years, and also a statute forbidding the collection of "ship money" unless authorized by Parliament.

[1] The Triennial Act was repealed (in form only) in 1664; it was reenacted in 1694; in 1716 it was superseded by the Septennial Act (S535).

Under the leadership of Pym, it followed this by drawing up the "Grand Remonstrance,"[2] which was printed and circulated throughout the country. The "Remonstrance" set forth the faults of the King's government, while it declared utter distrust of his policy. Cromwell did not hesitate to say that if the House of Commons had failed to adopt and print the "Remonstrance," he would have left England never to return. The radicals in the House next made an ineffectual attempt to pass the "Root and Branch Bill," for the complete destruction— "root and branch"—of the Established Church of England. Finally, the House enacted a law forbidding the dissolution of the present Parliament except by its own consent.

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xvii, S19.

440. The King attempts to arrest Five Members (1642).

The parliamentary leaders had entered into communication with the Scots and so laid themselves open to a charge of treason. It was rumored, too, that they were about to take a still bolder step and impeach the Queen for having conspired with the Catholics and the Irish to destroy the liberties of the country. No one knew better than Charles how strong a case could be made out against his frivolous and unprincipled consort.

Driven to extremities, Charles determined to seize the five members, John Pym, John Hampden (SS432, 436), and three others, who headed the opposition.[3] The King commanded the House of Commons to give them up for trial. The request was not complied with and the Queen urged Charles to take them by force, saying, "Go along, you coward, and pull those rascals out by the ears!" Thus taunted, the King went on the next day to the House of Parliament with a company of soldiers to seize the members. They had been forewarned, and had left the House, taking refuse in the "city," which showed itself then, as always, on the side of liberty (S34, note 1). Leaving his soldiers at the door, the King entered the House of Commons. Seeing that the five members were absent, the King turned to the Speaker and asked where they were. The Speaker, kneeling before the King, answered, "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me." Vexed that he could learn nothing further, Charles left the hall amid ominous cries of "Privilege! privilege!"[1]

[3] The full list was Hampden, Pym, Hollis, Haselrig, and Strode, to which a sixth, Mandeville, was added later. Copley's fine painting of the "Attempted Arrest" is in the Boston Public Library.[1] Privilege: the privilege of Parliament to debate all questions exempt from royal interference.

441. The Great Civil War, 1642-1649, between the King and Parliament.

The King, baffled in his purpose, resolved to coerce Parliament by military force. He left London in 1642, never to return until he came as a prisoner, and was delivered into the custody of that legislative body that he had insulted and defied. Parliament now attempted to come to an understanding with the King.

There was then no standing army in England, but each county and large town had a body of militia, formed of citizens who were occasionally mustered for drill. This militia was under the control of the King. Parliament insisted on his resigning that control to them. Charles refused to give up his undoubted constitutional right in the matter, and raised the royal flag at Nottingham, August, 1642. Parliament then organized an army of its own, and the war began.

442. Cavaliers and Roundheads.

It opened in the autumn of that year (1642) with the battle of Edgehill, Warwickshire, and was at first favorable to the King. On his side were a majority of the nobility, the clergy and the country gentlemen. They were mainly members of the Church of England and were known collectively as Cavaliers, from their dashing and daring horsemanship. Their leader was Prince Rupert, a nephew of Charles.[1]

[1] See "A charge with Prince Rupert," Atlantic Monthly, III, 725.

On the side of Parliament were the shopkeepers, small farmers and landowners, with a considerable number of men of high rank; as a rule they were Puritans (S378). The King's party nicknamed them "Roundheads," because, despising the long locks and effeminate ringlets worn by the Cavaliers, they cut their hair short so that it showed the shape of the head.[2] Essex and Fairfax were the first leaders of the "Roundheads"; later, Cromwell became their commander.

[2] "Those roundheaded dogs that bawled against bishops," said the Cavaliers.

443. How the Country was divided; Rise of Political Newspapers.

Taking England as a whole, we may say that the southeastern half, that is, what was then the richest part of England, with London and most of the other large towns, was against the King, and that the southwestern half, with most of the North, was for him. (See map opposite.) Each side made great sacrifices in carrying on the war. The Queen sold her crown jewels, and the Cavaliers melted down their silver plate to provide money to pay the King's troops.

On behalf of the People's army Parliament imposed heavy taxes, and levied now for the first time a duty on domestic products, especially on ales and liquors, known as the "Excise Tax." Furthermore, it required each household to fast once a week, and to give the price of a dinner to support the soldiers who were fighting against the King.

Parliament also passed what was called the "Self-denying Ordinance" (1644) (repeated in 1645). It required all members who had any civil or military office to resign, and, as Cromwell seaid, "deny themselves and their private interests for the public good." The real object of this measure was to get rid of incompetent commanders, and give the People's army (soon to be remodeled) the vigorous men that the times demanded.

With the outbreak of the war great numbers of little local newspapers sprang into short-lived existence in imitation of the first publication of that sort, the Weekly News, which was issued not quite twenty years before in the reign of James I (S422). Each of the rival armies, it is said, carried a printing press with it, and waged furious battles in type against the other. The whole country was inundated with floods of pamphlets discussing every conceivable religious and political question.

444. The "New Model"; Death of John Hampden; the Solemn League and Covenant (1642-1645).

At the first battle fought, at Edgehill, Warwickshire (1642), Cromwell saw that the Cavaliers (S442) had the advantage, and told John Hampden (SS436, 440) that "a set of poor tapsters [drawers of liquor] and town apprentices would never fight against men of honor." He forthwith proceeded to organize his regiment of "Ironsides," a "lovely company," he said, none of whom swore or gambled.

After the first Self-denying Ordinance was passed (S443), Cromwell and Fairfax formed a new People's army of "God-fearing men" on the same pattern, almost all of whom were Independents (S439). This was called the "New Model" (1645) and was placed under the joint command of the men who organized it. Very many of its officers were kinsmen of Cromwell's, and it speedily became the most formidable body of soldiers of its size in the world,—always ready to preach, pray, exhort, or fight.[1]

[1] "The common soldiers, as well as the officers, did not only pray and preach among themselves, but went up into the pulpits in all churches and preached to the people."—Clarendon, "History of the Rebellion," Book X, 79.

Meanwhile John Hampden (SS436, 440) had been mortally wounded in a skirmish at Chalgrove Field, Oxfordshire. His death was a terrible blow to the parliamentary army fighting in behalf of the rights of the people.[2]

[2] See Macaulay's "Essay on Hampden." Clarendon says that Hampden's death produced as great consternation in his party "as if their whole army had been cut off."

Parliament endeavored to persuade the Scotch to give their aid in the war against the King. The latter finally agreed to do so (1643) on condition that Parliament would sign the Solemn League and Covenant (S438). Parliament signed it, and so made the Scotch Presbyterian worship the state religion of England and Ireland (1647). In reality only a small part of the English people accepted it; but the charge forced a large number of Episcopal clergymen to leave their parishes.

445. Marston Moor and Naseby, 1644, 1645.

On the field of Marston Moor, Yorkshire, 1644, the north of England was conquered by Cromwell with his invincible little army. The following year Cromwell's "Ironsides," who "trusted in God and kept their powder dry," gained the decisive victory of Naseby, 1645, in the Midlands. (See map facing p. 252.) After the fight papers belonging to the King were picked up on the battlefield. They proved that Charles intended betraying those who were negotiating with him for peace, and that he was planning to bring foreign troops to England. The discovery of these papers, which were published by Parliament, was more damaging to the royal cause than the defeat itself.

446. The King and Parliament.

Standing on the walls of the ancient city of Chester, Charles saw his last army utterly routed (1645). Shortly afterwards he fled to the Scots. Oxford, the King's chief city in the Midlands, surrendered to Fairfax (1646). The first civil war was now practically over. The Scots gave up the King (1647) to the parliamentary commissioners, and he was taken to Holmby House, Northamptonshire. There Cromwell and the army made overtures to him, but without effect. He was then brought by the Parliamentary or People's army to Hampton Court, near London.

Here, and elsewhere, the army again attempted to come to some definite understanding with the King, but all to no purpose. Politically speaking, Charles was his own worst enemy. He was false to the core, and, as Carlyle has said: "A man whose word will not inform you at all what he means, or will do, is not a man you can bargain with. You must get out of that man's way, or put him out of yours."

447. The Second Civil War (1648); Pride's Purge (1648); the "Rump Parliament."

After two years spent in fruitless negotiations, Charles, who had fled to Carisbrooke Castle in the Isle of Wight, made a secret treaty with the Scots (1648), promising to sanction the establishment of the Scotch Presbyterian Church in England (S444), if they would send an army into the country to restore him to the throne.[1]

[1] When Cromwell found out that Charles had resolved to destroy him and the Independent army, he apparently made up his mind to put the King to death. See Lord Broghill's story in S. R. Gardiner's "History of the Great Civil War," III, 259.

The Scots marched into England, the Royalists rose to aid them, and the second civil war began. It speedily ended in the utter defeat of the King's forces. The People's army now vowed that they would bring the King to justice. To this neither the Presbyterians in the House of Commons nor the members of the House of Lords would agree.

Colonel Pride then proceeded (1648), as he said, to purge the "Long Parliament" (S439) by driving out all who were opposed to this measure. Cromwell had no part in Pride's expulsion of members, though he afterwards expressed his approval of it. Those who remained were a small body of Independents only (SS422, 439). They did not number sixty; they became the mere tool of the Parliamentary or People's army and were called in derision the "Rump Parliament."

448. Execution of King Charles, 1649.

This so-called "Rump Parliament" named one hundred and thiry-five persons to constitute a high court of justice to try the King on a charge of treason against the nation; the chief judge or presiding officer was John Bradshaw. Less than half of these judges were present throughout the trial. Of those who signed the death warrant Oliver Cromwell was one. Prince Charles, the King's son, then a refugee in France, made every effort to save his father. He sent a blank paper, bearing his signature and seal, to the judges, offering to bind himself to any conditions they might insert, provided they would spare his father's life; but no answer was returned.

The King was brought into court in Westminster Hall, London; a week later the trial was over. The judges pronounced sentence of death on "Charles Stuart, King of England," as a "tyrant, traitor, murderer, and public enemy."

Throughout the trial Charles bore himself with dignity and self-possession. The crisis had brought out the best elements of his nature. He was beheaded January 30, 1649, in London in front of the royal palace of Whitehall. "A great shudder ran through the crowd that saw the deed, then came a shriek, and all immediately dispersed." Tradition declares that Cromwell went secretly that night to see the beheaded corpse. He looked steadfastly at it, shook his head, sighed out the words "Cruel necessity!" and departed.[1]

[1] S. R. Gardiner's "Great Civil War," III, 604; and see in Delaroche's works the picture of Cromwell looking at the King's corpse.

449. Summary.

The whole of Charles I's reign must be regarded as a prolonged struggle between the King and the nation. Under the Tudors and James I the royal power had been growing more and more despotic, while at the same time the progress of the Protestant Reformation and of Puritanism had encouraged freedom of thought.

Between these opposite forces a collision was inevitable, since religious liberty always favors political liberty. Had Charles known how to yield in time, or been sincere in the concessions which he did make, all might have gone well. His duplicity was his ruin. Though his death did not absolutely destroy the theory of the Divine Right of Kings, yet it gave it a blow from which it never recovered.

The Commonwealth and Protectorate—1649-1660

450. Establishment of the Commonwealth, or Republic, 1649.

While the crowd that had witnessed the execution of Charles I was leaving the spot (S448), the remnant of the House of Commons met. This "Rump Parliament" (S447), composed of only about fifty members, claimed the right to act for the whole nation. A few days later it abolished the House of Lords as "useless and dangerous." Next, for similar reasons, it abolished the office of king, and declared that "The People are, under God, the origin of all just power."

England was now a commonwealth or republic, governed, in name at least, by a Council of State. Of this Council John Bradshaw (S448) was president, and the poet Milton was foreign secretary, while General Fairfax with Oliver Cromwell had command of the army. The real power was in the army, and the true head of the army was Cromwell. Without him the so-called republic could not have stood a day.

451. Radical Changes.

All members of the House of Commons, with those who held any civil or military office, were required to swear allegiance to the Commonwealth "without King, or House of Lords." The use of the English church service was forbidden, and the statues of Charles I in London were pulled down and demolished.

The Great Seal of England (S145) had already been cast aside, and a new one adopted, having on one side a map of England and Ireland, on the other a representation of the House of Commons in session, with the words, "In the first year of freedom, by God's blessing restored 1648."[1]

[1] 1648 Old Style would here correspond to 1649 New Style. (See S545, note 2.)

452. Difficulties of the New Republic.

Shortly after the establishment of the Commonwealth, General Fairfax (S442) resigned his command, and Cromwell became the sole leader of the military forces of the country. But the new government, even with his aid, had no easy task before it.

It had enemies in the Royalists, who, since the King's execution, had grown stronger; in the Presbyterians, who hated both the "Rump Parliament" (S450) and the Parliamentary army; finally, it had enemies in its own ranks, for there were half-crazy fanatics. "Levelers,"[1] "Come-outers,"[2] and other "cattle and creeping things," who would be satisfied with nothing but destruction and confusion.

[1] "Levelers": a name given to certain radical republicans who wished to reduce all ranks and classes to the same level with respect to political power and privileges. [2] "Come-outers": those who abandoned all established ways in government and religion.

Among these there were socialists, or communists, who, like those of the present day, wished to abolish private property, and establish "an equal division of unequal earnings," while others declared and acted out their belief in the coming end of the world. Eventually Cromwell had to deal with these crack-brained enthusiasts in a decided way, especially as some of them threatened to assassinate him in order to hasten the advent of the personal reign of Christ and his saints on earth.

453. The Late King's Son proclaimed King in Ireland and Scotland; Dunbar; Worcester (1649-1651).

An attempt of the English Puritan party (S378) to root out Catholicism in Ireland (1641) had caused a horrible insurrection. The Royalist party in Ireland now proclaimed Prince Charles, son of the late Charles I, King. Parliament deputed Cromwell to reduce that country to order, and to destroy the Royalists. Nothing could have been more congenial to his "Ironsides" (S445) than such a crusade. They descended upon the unhappy island (1649), and wiped out the rebellion in such a whirlwind of fire and slaughter that the horror of the visitation has never been forgotten. To this day the direst imprecation a southern Irishman can utter is, "The curse of Cromwell on ye!"[3]

[3] At Drogheda and Wexford, Cromwell, acting in accordance with the laws of war of that day, massacred the garrisons that refused to surrender.

Several years later (1653-1654), Cromwell determined to put in practice a still more drastic policy. He resolved to repeople a very large section of southern Ireland by driving out the Roman Catholic inhabitants and giving their lands to English and Scotch Protestants. It seemed to him the only effectual way of overcoming the resistance which that island made to English rule. By the use of military power, backed up by an Act of Parliament, his generals forced the people to leave their houses and emigrate to the province of Connaught on the west coast. Part of that district was so barren and desolate that it was said, "it had not water enough to drown a man, trees enough to hang him, or earth enough to bury him." Thousands were compelled to go into this dreary exile, and hundreds of families who refused were shipped to the West Indies and sold to the planters as slaves for a term of years,—a thing often done in that day with prisoners of war.

In Scotland also Prince Charles was looked upon as the legitimate sovereign by a strong and influential party. He found in the brave Montrose,[1] who was hanged for treason at Edinburgh, and in other loyal supporters far better friends than he deserved. The Prince came to Scotland (1650); while there, he was crowned and took the oath of the Covenant (S438). It must have been a bitter pill for a man of his free and easy temperament. But worse was to come, for the Scottish Puritans made him sign a paper declaring that his father had been a tyrant and that his mother was an idolater. No wonder the caricatures of the day represented the Scots as holding the Prince's nose to a grindstone. Later, Prince Charles rallied a small force to fight for him, but it was utterly defeated at Dunbar (1650).

[1] See "The Execution of Montrose," in Aytoun's "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers." Prince Charles basely abandoned Montrose to his fate.

Twelve months afterward, on the anniversary of his defeat at Dunbar, the Prince made a second attempt to obtain the crown. At the battle of Worcester Cromwell again routed his forces and brought the war to an end. Charles escaped in Shropshire, where he hid for a day in an oak at Boscobel. After many narrow escapes he at length succeeded in getting out of the country.

454. Cromwell expels Parliament.

Cromwell now urged the necessity of dissolving the "Rump Parliament" (S450) and of electing a Parliament which should really represent the nation, reform the laws, and pass a general act of pardon. In his despatch to the House of Commons after the victory of Worcester, he called the battle a "crowning mercy." Some of the republicans in that body took alarm at this phrase, and thought that Cromwell used it to foreshadow a design to place the crown on his own head. For this reason, perhaps, they hesitated to dissolve.

But at last they could not withstand the pressure, and a bill was introduced (1653) for summoning a new Parliament of four hundred members, but with the provision that all members of the present House were to keep their seats, and have the right to reject newly elected members.

Cromwell, with the army, believed this provision a trick on the part of the "Rump" (S450) to keep themselves in perpetual power.

Sir Harry Vane, who was a leading member of the House of Commons, and who had been governor of the colony of Massachusetts, feared that the country was in danger of falling into the hands of Cromwell as military dictator. He therefore urged the immediate passage of the bill as it stood. Cromwell heard that a vote was about to be taken. Putting himself at the head of a squad of soldiers, he suddenly entered the House (1653). After listening to the debate for some time, he rose from his seat and charged the Commons with injustice and misgovernment. A member remonstrated. Cromwell grew excited, saying: "You are no Parliament! I say you are no Parliament!" Then he called in the musketeers. They dragged the Speaker from his chair, and drove the members after him.

As they passed out, Cromwell shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, "The House to let, unfurnished!"

455. Cromwell becomes Protector; the "Instrument of Government" (1653).

Cromwell summoned a new Parliament, which was practically of his own choosing. It consisted of one hundred and thirty-nine members, and was known as the "Little Parliament."[1] The Royalists nicknamed it "Barebone's Parliament" from one of its members, a London leather dealer named Praise-God Barebone. Notwithstanding the irregularity of its organization and the ridicule cast upon it, the "Barebone's Parliament" proposed several reforms of great value, which the country afterwards adopted.

[1] A regularly summoned Parliament, elected by the people, would have been much larger. This one was chosen from a list furnished by the ministers of the various Independent churches (S422). It was in no true sense a representative body.

A council of Cromwell's leading men now secured the adoption of a constitution entitled the "Instrument of Government."[1] It made Cromwell Lord Protector of England, Ireland, and Scotland.

[1] "Instrument of Government": The principal provisions of this constitution were: (1) the government was vested in the Protector and a council appointed for life; (2) Parliament, consisting of the House of Commons only, was to be summoned every three years, and not to be dissolved under five months; (3) a standing army of thirty thousand was to be maintained; (4) all taxes were to be levied by Parliament; (5) the system of representation was reformed, so that many large places hitherto without representation in Parliament now obtained it; (6) all Roman Catholics, and those concerned in the Irish rebellion, were disfranchised forever.

Up to this time the Commonwealth had been a republic, nominally under the control of the House of Commons, but as a matter of facct governed by Cromwell and the army. Now it became a republic under a Protector, or President, whowas to hold his office for life.

A few years later (1657), Parliament offered the title of King to Cromwell, and with it a new constitution called the "Humble Petition and Advice." The new constitution provided that Parliament should consist of two houses, since the majority of influential men felt the need of the restoration of the Lords (S450). For, said a member of "Barebone's Parliament," "the nation has been hopping on one leg" altogether too long. Cromwell had the same feeling, and endeavored to put an end to the "hopping" by trying to restore the House of Lords, but he could not get the Peers to meet. He accepted the new constitution, but the army objected to his wearing the crown, so he simply remained Lord Protector.

456. Emigration of Royalists to America.

Under the tyranny of the Stuart Kings, John Winthrop and many other noted Puritans had emigrated to Massachusetts and other parts of New England. During the Commonwealth the case was reversed, and numbers of Royalists fled to Virginia. Among them were John Washington, the great-grandfather of George Washington, and the ancestors of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, the Lees, Randolphs, and other prominent families, destined in time to take part in founding a republic in the New World much more democractic than anything the Old World had ever seen.

457. Cromwell as a Ruler; Puritan Fanaticism.

When Cromwell's new Parliament (S455) ventured to criticize his course, he dissolved it (1654) quite as peremptorily as the late King had done (S431). Soon afterwards, fear of a Royalist rebellion led him to divide the country into eleven military districts (1655), each governed by a major general, who ruled by martial law and with despotic power. All Royalist families were heavily taxed to support Cromwell's standing army, all Catholic priests wre banished, and no books or papers could be published without permission of the government.

Cromwell, however, though compelled to resort to severe measures to secure peace, was, in spirit, no oppressor. On the contrary, he proved himself the Protector not only of the realm but of the Protestants of Europe. When they were threatened with persecution, his influence saved them. He showed, too, that in an age of bigotry he was no bigot. Puritan fanaticism, exasperated by the persecution it had endured under James and Charles, often went to the utmost extremes, even as "Hudibras"[1] said, to "killing of a cat on Monday for catching of a rat on Sunday."

[1] "Hudibras": a burlesque poem by Samuel Butler (1663). It satirized the leading persons and parties of the Commonwealth, but especially the Puritans.

It treated the most innocent customs, if they were in any way associated with Catholicism or Episcopacy, as serious offenses. It closed all places of amusement; it condemned mirth as ungodly; it made it a sin to dance round a Maypole, or to eat mince pie at Christmas. Fox-hunting and horse-racing were forbidden, and bear-baiting prohibited, "not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."

In such an age, when a man could hardly claim to be religious unless he wore sad-colored raiment, talked through his nose, and quoted Scripture with great frequency, Cromwell showed exceptional moderation and good sense.

458. Cromwell's Religious Toleration.

He favored the toleration of all forms of worship not directly opposed to the government as then constituted. He befriended the Quakers, who were looked upon as the enemies of every form of worship, and who were treated with cruel severity both in England and America. He was instrumental in sending the first Protestant missionaries to Massachusetts to convert the Indiands, then supposed by many to be a remnant of the lost tribes of Israel; and after an exclusion of many centuries (S222), he permitted the Jews to return to England, and even to build a synagogue in London.

On the other hand, there are few of the cathedral or parish churches of England which do not continue to testify to the Puritan army's destructive hatred of everything savoring of the rule of either Pope or bishop.[1] The empty niches, where some gracious image of the Virgin or the figure of some saint once looked down; the patched remnants of brilliant stained glass, once part of a picture telling some Scripture story; the mutilated statues of noted men; the tombs, hacked and hewed by pike and sword, because they bore some emblem or expression of the old faith,—all these still bear witness to the fury of the Puritan soldiers, who did not respect even the graves of their ancestors, if those ancestors had once thought differently from themselves.

[1] But part of this destruction occurred under Henry VIII and Edward VI (SS352, 364)

459. Victories by Land and Sea; the Navigation Act (1651).

Yet during Cromwell's rule the country, notwithstanding all the restrictions imposed by a stern military government, grew and prospered. The English forces gained victories by land and sea, and made the name of the Protector respected as that of Charles I had never been.

At this period the carrying trade of the world, by sea, had fallen into the hands of the Dutch, and Amsterdam had become a more important center of exchange than London. The Commonwealth passed a measure called the "Navigation Act"[2] (1651) to encourage British commerce. It prohibited the importation or exportation of any goods into England or its colonies in Dutch or other foreign vessels.

[2] The Navigation Act was renewed later. Though aimed at the Dutch, this measure damaged the export trade of the American colonies for a time.

Later, war with the Dutch broke out partly on account of questions of trade, and partly because Royalist plotters found protection in Holland. Then Cromwell created such a navy as the country had never before possessed. Under the command of Admiral Blake, "the sea king," and Admiral Monk, the Dutch were finally beaten so thoroughly (1653) that they bound themselves to ever after salute the English flag wherever they should meet it on the seas. A war undertaken in alliance with France against Spain was equally successful. Jamaica was taken as a permanent possession by the British fleet, and France, in return for Cromwell's assistance, reluctantly gave the town of Dunkirk to England (1658), and the flag of the English Commonwealth was planted on the French coast. But a few years later (1662), the selfish and profligate Charles II sold Dunkirk back to Louis XIV in order to get money to waste on his pleasures.

460. Cromwell's Death; his Character (1658).

After being King in everything but name for five years, Cromwell died (September 3, 1658) on the anniversary of the victories of Dunbar and Worcester (S453). During the latter part of his career he had lived in constant dread of assassination, and wore concealed armor. At the hour of his death one of the most fearful storms was raging hat had ever swept over England. To many it seemed a fit accompaniment to the close of such a life.

In one sense, Cromwell was a usurper and a tyrant; but, at heart, his object was his country's welfare. In such cases the motive is all in all. He was a lonely man of rough exterior and hard manner.[1] He cared little for the smooth proprieties of life, yet he had that dignity of bearing which high moral purpose gives. In all that he did he was eminently practical. In an age of isms, theories, and experiments, he was never confused and never faltered in his course. To-day a colossal bronze statue of the great soldier and ruler stands in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament, where the English people, more than two hundred and forty years after his burial, voted to erect it.

[1] Cromwell was always a lonely man, and had so few real friends that Walter Scott may have expressed his true feeling when he makes him say in his novel of "Woodstock": "I would I had any creature, were it but a dog, that followed me because it loved me, not for what it could make of me."

461. The Times needed Such a Man.

There are emergencies when an ounce of decision is worth a pound of deliberation. When the ship is foundering or on fire, or when the crew have mutinied, it will not avail to sit in the cabin and discuss how it happened. Something must be done, and that promptly. Cromwell was the man for such a juncture. He saw clearly that if the country was to be kept together, it must be by decided measures, which no precedent, law, or constitution justified, but which stood justified none the less by exigencies of the crisis, by his own conscious rectitude of purpose, and by the result.

If there is any truth in Napoleon's maxim, that "The tools belong to him that can use them," then Cromwell had a God-given right to rule; for, first, he had the ability; and, next, though he used his power in his campaign in Ireland (S453) with merciless severity, yet the great purpose of his life was to establish order and justice on what seemed to him the only practical basis.

462. Summary.

Cromwell's original object appears to have been to organize a government representing the will of the nation more completely than it had ever been represented before. He strongly favored the restoration of the House of Lords, he endeavored to reform the laws, and he sought to secure religious toleration for the great body of Protestants. One who knew Cromwell intimately said, "A larger soul, I think, hath seldom dwelt in a house of clay, than his was."

Circumstances, however, were often against him; he had many enemies, and in order to secure peace he was obliged to resort to the exercise of absolute power. Yet the difference in this respect between Cromwell and Charles I was immense: the latter was despotic on his own account, the former for the advantage of those he governed.

RICHARD CROMWELL—September 3, 1658-April 22, 1659

463. Richard Cromwell's Incompetency.

Richard Cromwell, Oliver's eldest son, now succeeded to the Protectorate (S455). He was an amiable individual, as negative in character as his father had been positive. With the extreme Puritans (S457), known as the "godly party," he had no sympathy whatever. "Here," said he to one of them, pointing to a friend of his who stood by, "is a man who can neither preach nor pray, yet I would trust him before you all." Such frankness was not likely to make the new ruler popular with the army, made up of men who never lacked a Scripture text to justify either a murder or a massacre. Moreover, the times were perilous, and called for a decided hand at the helm. After a brief reign of less than eight months the military leaders requested Richard to resign, and soon afterwards recalled the "Rump Parliament" (S447).

464. Richard retires.

The Protector retired not only without remonstrance, but apparently with a sense of relief at being so soon eased of a burden too heavy for his weak shoulders to carry. To the people he was hereafter familiarly known as "Tumbledown-Dick," and was caricatured as such on tavern signboards.

The nation pensioned him off with a moderate allowance, and he lived in obscurity to an advanced age, carrying about with him to the last a trunk filled with the congratulatory addresses and oaths of allegiance which he had received when he became Protector.

Years after his abdication it is reported that he visited Westminster, and when the attendant, who did not recognize him, showed him the throne, he said, "Yes; I have not seen that chair since I sat in it myself in 1659."

465. The "Convention Parliament."

The year following Richard Cromwell's withdrawal was full of anxiety and confusion. The army of the Commonwealth had turned Parliament out of doors (1659). There was no longer any regularly organized government, and the country drifted helplessly like a ship without a pilot.

General Monk, then commander in chief in Scotland, now marched into England (1660) with the determination of calling a new Parliament, which should be full, free, and representative of the real political feeling of the nation. When he reached London with his army, the members of the "Rump Parliament" (S447) had resumed their sessions.

At Monk's invitation the Presbyterian members, whom Colonel Pride had driven from their seats eleven years before (S447), now went back. This assembly issued writs for the summoning of a "Convention Parliament" (so styled because called without royal authority), and then dissolved by their own consent. Thus ended that memorable "Long Parliament" (S439), which had existed nearly twenty years. About a month later the Convention, including ten members of the House of Lords, met, and at once invited Charles Stuart, then in Holland, to return to his kingdom. He had made certain promises, called the "Declaration of Breda,"[1] which were intended to smooth the way for his return.

[1] The Declaration of Breda, made by Charles in Holland (1660) promised: (1) free pardon to all those not excepted by Parliament; (2) liberty of conscience to all whose views did not disturb the peace of the realm; (3) the settlement by Parliament of all claims to landed property; (4) the payment of arrears to Monk's army.

466. Summary.

Richard Cromwell's government existed in name only, never in fact. During his so-called Protectorate the country was under the control of the army of the Commonwealth or of that "Rump Parliament" which represented nothing but itself.

The period which elapsed after Oliver Cromwell's death was one of waiting and preparation. It ended in the meeting of the free national Parliament, which put an end to the republic, and restored royalty in the person of Charles II.

CHARLES II—1660-1685

467. The Restoration of Monarchy; Accession of Charles; a New Standing Army, 1660.

The English army heard that Charles was coming, with sullen silence; the ex-members of the "Rump Parliament" (S465), with sullen dread; the rest of the nation, with a feeling of relief. However much they had hated the despotism of the two Stuart Kings, James I and Charles I, four fifths of the people stood ready to welcome any change which promised to do away with a government maintained by bayonets.

Charles II was received at Dover with the wildest demonstrations of joy. Bells pealed, flags waved, bonfires blazed all the way to London, and the King said, with characteristic irony, "It must have been my own fault that I did not come before, for I find no one but declares that he is glad to see me."

The existence of the late Republic and the Protectorate (SS450, 455) was as far as possible ignored. The House of Lords was restored (SS450, 455). The new reign was dated, not when it actually began, but from the day of Charles I's execution twelve years before. The troops of the Commonwealth were speedily disbanded, but the King retained a picked guard of five thousand men, which became the nucleus of a new standing army.

468. The King's Character.

The sovereign who now ascended the throne was in every respect the opposite of Cromwell. Charles II had no love of country, no sense of duty, no belief in man, no respect for woman. Evil circumstances and evil companions had made him "a good-humored lad but hard-hearted voluptuary." For twelve years he had been a wanderer, and at times almost a beggar. Now the sole aim of his life was enjoyment. He desired to be King because he would then be able to accomplish that aim.

469. Reaction from Puritanism.

In this purpose Charles had the sympathy of a considerable part of the people. The Puritan faith (S378), represented by such men as Hampden (S436) and Milton (S450), was noble indeed; but unfortunately there were many in its ranks who had no like grandeur of soul, but who pushed Puritanism to its most injurious and offensive extreme. That attempt to reduce the whole of life to a narrow system of sour self-denial had at last broken down.

Now, under the Restoration, the reaction set in, and the lower and earthly side of human nature—none the less human because it is at the bottom and not at the top—seemed determined to take its full revenge. Butler ridiculed religious zeal in his poem of "Hudibras" (S457), which ever courtier had by heart. Society was smitten with an epidemic of immorality. Profligacy became the fashion in both speech and action, and much of the popular literature of that day will not bear the light.

470. The Royal Favorites.

The King surrounded himself with men like himself. This merry gang of revelers vied with each other in dissipation and in jests on each other. Charles's two chief favorites were the Earl of Rochester, a gifted but ribald poet, and Lord Shaftesbury, who became Lord Chancellor. Both have left on record their estimate of their royal master. The first wrote on the door of the King's bedchamber:

"Here lies our sovereign lord, the King,
Whose word no man relies on;
He never says a foolish thing,
Nor ever does a wise one."

To which Charles, on reading it, retorted, "'Tis true! because while my words are my own, my acts are my ministers'."

A bright repartee tells us what the second favorite thought. "Ah!
Shaftesbury," said the King to him one day, "I verily believe you are
the wickedest dog in my dominions." "Yes, your Majesty," replied
Shaftesbury, "for a SUBJECT I think perhaps I may be."

471. The Clarendon Ministry; Punishment of the Regicides.

From a political point of view, the new reign began decently and ably under the direction of the Earl of Clarendon as leading minister or adviser to the King. The first act of Charles's first Parliament was to proclaim a pardon to all who had fought against his father in the civil war. The only persons excepted wre the members of that high court of justice (S448) which had sent Charles I to the block. Of these, ten were executed and nineteen imprisoned for life. Most of the other regicide judges were either already out of the country or managed to escape soon after.

Among these, William Goffe, Edward Whalley, and Colonel John Dixwell took refuge in Connecticut, where they remained concealed for several years. Eventually the first two went to Hadley, Massachusetts, where they lived in seclusion in the house of a clergyman until their death.

The bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, and Pride, all of whom had served as judges in the trial and condemnation of Charles (S448), were dug up from their graves in Westminster Abbey and hanged in chains at Tyburn.[1] They were then buried at the foot of the gallows along with he moldering remains of highway robbers and criminals of the lowest sort, but Cromwell's head was cut off and set up on a pinnacle of Westminster Hall.[2]

[1] Tyburn: near the northeast entrance to Hyde Park, London. It was for several centuries the chief place for the public execution of felons. [2] It has since been questioned whether Cromwell's body was disposed of in this manner or whether another body, supposed at that time to be his, was dealt with as here described. See the "Dictionary of National (British) Biography," under "Oliver Cromwell."

472. Religious Persecution; Covenanters; Bunyan.

The first Parliament that met (1661) commanded the common hangman to publicly burn the Solemn League and Covenant (S444); it restored the Episcopal form of worship and enacted four very severe laws, called the "Clarendon Code," against those Nonconformists or Dissenters who had ejected the Episcopal clergy (S444).[1]

[1] The chief Nonconformists then were: (1) the Presbyterians; (2) the Independents, or Congregationalists; (3) the Baptists; (4) the Society of Friends, or Quakers. Originally the name "Nonconformist" was given to those who refused to conform to the worship of the Church of England, and who attempted to change it to suit their views or else set up their own form of faith as an independent church. The name "Nonconformist" (or Dissenter) now applies to any Protestant outside the Established Church of England (SS496, 498).

The first of these new laws was entitled the "Corporation Act" (1661). It ordered all holders of municipal offices to renounce the Covenant[2] which had been put in force in 1647, and to take the sacrament of the Church of England. Next, a new Act of Uniformity (1662) (S382) enforced the use of the Episcopal Prayer Book upon all clergymen and congregations. This was followed by the Conventicle Act[3] (1664), which forbade the meeting of any religious assemblies except such as worshiped according to the Established Church of England. Lastly, the Five-Mile Act (1665) forbade all dissenting ministers to teach in schools, or to settle within five miles of an incorporated town.

[2] Covenant: the oath or agreement to maintain the Presbyterian faith and worship. It originated in Scotland (S438). [3] See, too, on these acts, the Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xix, S20.

The second of these stringent retaliatory statutes, the Act of Uniformity, drove two thousand Presbyterian ministers from their parishes in a single day, and reduced them to the direst distress. The able-bodied among them might indeed pick up a precarious livelihood by hard labor, but the old and the weak soon found their refuge in the grave.

Those who dared to resist these intolerant and inhuman laws were punished with fines, imprisonment, or slavery. The Scottish Parliament abolished Presbyterianism and restored Episcopacy. It vied with the Cavalier or King's party in England in persecution of the Dissenters,[4] and especially of the Covenanters (S438).

[4] The Scottish Parliament granted what was called the "Indulgence" to Presbyterian ministers who held moderate views. The extreme Covenanters regarded these "indulged Presbyterians" as deserters and traitors who were both weak and wicked. For this reason they hated them worse than they did the Episcopalians. See Burton's "Scotland," VII, 457-468.

Claverhouse, who figures as the "Bonny Dundee" of Sir Walter Scott, hunted the Covenanters with bugle and bloodhound, like so many deer; and his men hanged and drowned those who gathered secretly in glens and caves to worship God.[1] The father of a family would be dragged from his cottage by the soldiers, asked if he would take the test of conformity to the Church of England and the oath of allegiance to King Charles II; if he refused, the officer in command gave the order, "Make ready—take aim—fire!"—and there lay the corpse of the rebel.

[1] See the historical poem of the "Maiden Martyr of Scotland," in the collection of "Heroic Ballads," Ginn and Company.

Among the multitudes who suffered in England for religion's sake was a poor tinker and day laborer named John Bunyan. He had served against the King in the civil wars, and later had become converted to Puritanism, and turned exhorter and itinerant preacher. He was arrested, while preaching in a farmhouse, and convicted of having "devilishly and perniciously abstained from coming to church."

The judge sentenced him to the Bedford county jail, where he remained a prisoner for twelve years (1660-1672). Later on, he was again arrested (1675) and sent to the town jail on Bedford Bridge. It was, he says, a squalid "Denn."[2] But in his marvelous dream of "A Pilgrimage from this World to the Next," which he wrote while shut up within the narrow limits of that filthy prison house, he forgot the misery of his surroundings. Like Milton in his blindness, loneliness, and poverty, he looked within and found that

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a heaven of hell."[3]

[2] "As I walk'd through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where there was a Denn, and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream."—"The Pilgrim's Progress," 1678. [3] "Paradise Lost," Book I, 253.

473. Seizure of a Dutch Colony in America (1664).

While these things were going on in England, a strange event took place abroad. The Dutch had established a colony on the Hudson River. It was on territory which the English claimed (S335), but which they had never explored or settled. The Dutch had built a town at the mouth of the Hudson, which they called New Amsterdam. They held the place undisturbed for fifty years, and if "Possession is nine points of the law," they seem to have acquired it. Furthermore, during the period of Cromwell's Protectorate (S455), England had made a treaty with Holland and had recognized the claims of the Dutch in the New World.

Charles had found shelter and generous treatment in Holland when he needed it most. But he now cooly repudiated the treaty, and, though the two nations were at peace, he treacherously sent out a secret expedition to capture the Dutch colony for his brother James, Duke of York, to whom he had granted it.

One day a small English fleet suddenly appeared (1664) in the harbor of the Dutch town, and demanded its immediate and unconditional surrender. The governor was unprepared to make any defense, and the place was given up. Thus, without so much as the firing of a gun, New Amsterdam got the name of New York in honor of the man who had now become its owner. The acquisition of this territory, which had separated the northern English colonies from the southern, gave England complete control of the Atlantic coast from Maine to northern Florida.

474. The Plague and the Fire, 1665, 1666.

The next year a terrible outbreak of the plague occurred in London, 1665, which spread throughout the kingdom (S244). All who could, fled from the city. Hundreds of houses were left vacant, while on hundreds more a cross marked on the doors in red chalk, with the words "Lord have mercy on us," written underneath, told where the work of death was going on.[1]

[1] Pepys writes in his "Diary," describing the beginning of the plague: "The 7th of June, 1665, was the hottest day I ever felt in my life. This day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane see two or three houses with a red cross upon the door, and `Lord have mercy upon us' writ there, which was a sad sight."—Pepys, "Diary," 1660-1669. Defoe wrote a journal of the plague in 1722, based, probably, on the reports of eyewitnesses. It gives a vivid and truthful account of its horrors.

The pestilence swept off over a hundred thousand victims within six months. Among the few brave men who voluntarily remained in the stricken city were the Puritan ministers, who stayed to comfort and console the sick and dying. After the plague was over, they received their reward through the enforcement of those acts of persecution which drove them homeless and helpless from their parishes and friends (S472).

The dead cart had hardly ceased to go its rounds, when a fire broke out, 1666, of which Evelyn, a courtier who witnessed it, wrote that it "was not to be outdone until the final conflagration of the world."[1] By it the city of London proper was reduced to ruins, little more being left than a fringe of houses on the northeast.

[1] Evelyn's "Diary," 1641-1705; also compare Dryden's poem "Annus Mirabilis."

Great as the calamity was, yet from a sanitary point of view it did immense good. Nothing short of fire could have effectually cleansed the London of that day, and so put a stop to the periodical ravages of the plague. By sweeping away miles of narrow streets crowded with miserable buildings black with the encrusted filth of ages, the conflagration in the end proved friendly to health and life.

A monument near London Bridge still marks the spot where the flames first burst out. For many years it bore an inscription affirming that the Catholics kindled them in order to be revenged on their persecutors. The poet Pope, at a later period, exposed the falsehood in the lines:

"Where London's column pointing toward the skies
Like a tall bully lifts its head and lies."[2]

[2] "Moral Essays," Epistle III.

Sir Christopher Wren, the most famous architect of the period, rebuilt the city. The greater part of it had been of wood, but it rose from the ashes brick and stone. One irreparable loss was the old Gothic church of St. Paul. Wren erected the present cathedral on the foundations of the ancient structure. On a tablet near the tomb of the great master builder one reads the inscription in Latin, "Reader, if you seek his monument, look around."[1]

[1] "Lector, si monumentum requiris, circumspice."

475. Invasion by the Dutch (1667).

The new city had not risen from the ruins of the old, when a third calamity overtook it. Charles was at war with France and Holland. The contest with the latter nation grew out of the rivalry of the English and the Dutch to get the exclusive possession of foreign trade (S459). Parliament granted the King large sums of money to build and equip a navy, but the pleasure-loving monarch wasted it in dissipation. The few ships he had were rotten old hulks, but half provisioned, with crews ready to mutiny because they could not get their pay.

A Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames. It was manned in part by English sailors who had deserted in disgust because when they asked for cash to support their families they got only worthless government tickets. There was no force to oppose them. They burned some half-built men-of-war, blockaded London for several weeks, and then made their own terms of peace.

476. The "Cabal" (1667-1673); Treaty of Dover, 1670; the King robs the Exchequer (1672).

Shortly after this humiliating event the enemies of Clarendon drove him from office (S471). The fallen minister was accused of high treason. He had been guilty of certain arbitrary acts, and, rather than stand trial, he fled to France, and was banished for life. He sent a humble petition to the Lords, but they promptly ordered the hangman to burn it. Six years later the old man begged piteously that he might "come back and die in his own coutnry and among his own children." Charles refused to let him return, for Clarendon had committed the unpardonable offense of daring to look "sourly" at the vices of the King and his shameless companions flushed "with insolence and wine." Charles now formed a new ministry or "Cabal,"[1] consisting of five of his most intimate friends. Several of its members were notorious for their depravity, and Macaulay calls it the "most profligate administration ever known."[2] The chief object of its leaders was to serve their own private interests by making the King's power supreme. The "Cabal's" true spirit was not unlike that of the council of the "infernal peers" which Milton portrays in "Paradise Lost," first published at that time. There he shows us the five princes of evil, Moloch, Belial, Mammon, Beelzebub, and Satan, meeting in the palace of Pandemonium to plot the ruin of the world.[3] he chief ambition of Charles was to rule without a Parliament; he did not like to have that body inquire too closely how he spent the money which the taxpayers granted him. But his lavish outlays on his favorites made it more and more difficult for him to avoid summoning a Parliament in order to get supplies of cash. At length he hit on a plan for securing the funds he wanted without begging help from Parliament.

[1] This word was originally used to designate the confidential members of the King's private council, and meant perhaps no more than the word "cabinet" does to-day. In 1667 it happened, however, by a singular coincidence, that the initial letters of the five persons comprising it, namely, (C)lifford, (A)shley-Cooper [Lord Shaftesbury], (B)uckingham, (A)rlington, and (L)auderdale, formed the word "CABAL," which henceforth came to have the odious meaning of secret and unscrupulous intrigue that it has ever since retained. It was to Charles II's time what the political "ring" is to our own. [2] Macaulay's "Essay on Sir William Temple." [3] Milton's "Paradise Lost," Book II. The first edition was published in 1667, the year the "Cabal" came into power, though its members had long been favorites with the King. It has been supposed by some that the great Puritan poet had them in his mind when he represented the Pandemonic debate. Shaftesbury and Buckingham are also two of the most prominent characters in Dryden's noted political satire of "Absalom and Achitophel," published in 1681; and compare Butler's "Hudibras."

Louis XIV of France, then the most powerful monarch in Europe, wished to conquer Holland, with the double object of extending his own kingdom and the power of Catholicism. He saw in Charles the tool he wanted to gain this end. With the aid of two members of the "Cabal," Charles negotiated the secret Treaty of Dover, 1670. Thereby Louis bribed the English King with a gift of 300,000 pounds to help him carry out his scheme. Thus, without the knowledge of Parliament, Charles deliberately sold himself to the French sovereign, who was plotting to destroy the political liberty and Protestant faith of Holland.

In addition to the above sum, it was furthermore agreed that Louis should pay Charles a pension of 200,000 pounds a year from the date when the latter should openly avow himself a Roman Catholic. Later (1671), Charles made a sham treaty with Louis XIV in which the article about his avowing himself a Catholic was omitted in order to deceive Parliament.[1]

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xix, S21.

True to his infamous contract, Charles provoked a new war with the Dutch, but found that he needed more money to prosecute it successfully. Not knowing where to borrow, he determined to steal it. Various London merchants, bankers, and also persons of moderate means had lent to the government sums of money on promise of repayment from the taxes.

A part of the national revenue amounting to about 1,300,000 pounds, a sum equal to at least $10,000,000 now, had been deposited in the exchequer, or government treasury, to meet the obligation. The King seized this money,[2] partly for his needs, but chiefly to squander on his vices, and to satisfy the insatiate demands of his favorites,—of whom a single one, the Duchess of Portsmouth, had spent 136,000 pounds within the space of a twelvemonth! The King's treacherous act caused a financial panic which shook London to its foundatyions and ruined great numbers of people.

[2] "`Rob me the Exchequer, Hal,' said the King to his favorite minister in the `Cabal'; then `all went merry as a marriage bell.'"—Evelyn's "Diary."

477. More Money Schemes; Declaration of Indulgence; Test Act, 1673.

By declaring war against Holland Charles had now fulfilled the first part of his secret treaty with Louis (S476), but he was afraid to undertake the second part and openly declare himself a convert to the Church of Rome. He, however, did the next thing to it, by issuing a cautiously worded Declaration of Indulgence, 1673, suspending all penal laws affecting the religious liberty of Protestant Dissenters (SS382, 472) and Roman Catholics. Under cover of this act the King could show especial favor to the Catholics. Parliament issued such a vigorous protest, however, that the King withdrew the Declaration.

Parliament next passed the Test Act,[1] 1673, requiring every government officer to acknowledge himself a Protestant according to the rites of the Church of England. Charles became alarmed at this decided stand, and now tried to conciliate Parliament, and coax from it another grant of money by marrying his niece, the Princess Mary, to William of Orange, President of the Dutch republic, and head of the Protestant party on the Continent.

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xix, S21.

478. The So-Called "Popish Plot"; the Exclusion Bill, and Disabling Act, 1678.

While the King was playing this double part, a scoundrel, named Titus Oates, whose hideous face was but the counterpart of a still more hideous character, pretended that he had discovered a terrible plot. He declared that the Catholics had formed a conspiracy to burn London, massacre the inhabitants, kill the King, and restore the religion of Rome.

The news of this alleged discovery caused an excitement which soon grew into a sort of popular madness. The memory of the great fire (S474) was still fresh in people's minds. In their imagination they now saw those scenes of horror repeated, with wholesale murder added. Great numbers of innocent persons were thrown into prison, and many executed.

As time went on, the terror seemed to increase. With its increase, Oates grew bolder in his accusations. Chief Justice Scroggs showed himself an eager abettor of the miserable wretch who swore away men's lives for the sake of the notoriety it gave him. In the extravagance of his presumption Oates even dared to accuse the Queen of an attempt to poison Charles. The craze, however, had at last begun to abate somewhat, no action was taken, and in the next reign Oates got the punishment he deserved—or at least a part of it (S485).

An attempt was now made (1679) to pass a law called the "Exclusion Bill," debarring Charles's brother James, the Catholic Duke of York, from succeeding to the crown; but though voted by the Commons, it was defeated by the Lords. Meanwhile a second measure, called the "Disabling Act," had received the sanction of both Houses, 1678. It declared Catholics incapable of sitting in either House of Parliament (S382); and from this date they remained shut out from all legislative power and from all civil and corporate offices until 1829, a period of over a century and a half (S573).

479. Rise of Permanent Political Parties, 1678; the King revokes City Charters.

It was about this time that the names "Whig" and "Tory" (changed after 1832 to Liberal and Conservative) (S582) began to be given to two political parties, which soon became very powerful, and practically have ever since divided the government of the country between them.

The term "Whig" was originally given by way of reproach to the Scotch Puritans, or Covenanters, who refused to accept the Episcopacy which Charles I endeavored to impose upon them (S438). "Tory," on the other hand, was a nickname which appears to have first been applied to the Roman Catholic outlaws of Ireland, who were regarded by Elizabeth and by Cromwell as both robbers and rebels (S453).

The name of "Tory" was now given to those who supported the claims of the King's brother James, the Roman Catholic Duke of York, as successor to the throne; while that of "Whig" (or "Country Party") was borne by those who were endeavoring to exclude him (S478), and secure a Protestant successor.[1]

[1] Politically, the Whigs and Tories may perhaps be considered as the successors of the Roundheads and Cavaliers of the civil war, the former seeking to limit the power of the Crown, the latter to extend it. At the Restoration (1660), the Cavaliers were all-powerful; but at the time of the dispute on the Exclusiiion Bill (1679), the Roundhead, or People's party, had revived. On account of their petitioning the King to summon a new Parliament, by means of which they hoped to carry the bill shutting out the Catholic Duke of York from the throne, they were called "Petitioners," and later, "Whigs"; while those who expressed their abhorrence of their efforts were called "Abhorrers," and afterwards, "Tories." The more radical Whigs came to be known as the "Country Party," and at least one of their most prominent leaders, Algernon Sidney, was in favor of restoring the republican form of government in England.

The excitement over this Exclusion Bill (S478) threatened at one period to bring on another civil war. In his fury against the Whigs, Charles revoked the charters of London and many other cities, which were regranted only on terms agreeable to the Tories. An actual outbreak against the government would probably have occurred had it not been for the discovery of a new conspiracy, which resulted in a reaction favorable to the Crown.

480. The Rye-House Plot (1683).

This conspiracy, known as the "Rye-House Plot," had for its object the murder of Charles and his brother James at a place called the Rye House in Hertfordshire, not far from London. It was concocted by a number of violent Whigs, who, in their disappointment at their failure to secure the passage of the Exclusion Bill (S478), took this method of gaining their ends.

It is said that they intended placing on the throne James, Duke of Monmouth, a natural son of Charles, who was popularly known as the "Protestant Duke." Algernon Sidney, Lord Russell, and the Earl of Essex, who were prominent advocates of the Exclusion Bill (S478), were arrested for participating in the plot. Essex committed suicide in the Tower; Sidney and Russell were tried, convicted, and sentenced to death on insufficient evidence. They died martyrs to the cause of liberty,—Russell, with the fortitude of a Christian; Sidney, with the calmness of a philosopher. The Duke of Monmouth, who was supposed to be implicated in the plot, was banished to Holland (S486).

481. The Royal Society (1662).

Early in this reign the Royal Society was established for purposes of scientific research. In an age when thousands of well-informed people still cherished a lingering belief that lead might be changed into gold; that some medicine might be discovered which would cure every disease, (including old age, that worst disease of all); when every cross-grained old woman was suspected of witchcraft, and was liable to be tortured and hanged on that suspicion,—the formation of an association to study the physical facts was most significant.

It showed that the time had come when, instead of guessing what might be, men were at last beginning to resolved to know what actually is. In 1684 an English mathematician and philosopher demonstrated the unity of the universe by proving that the same law which governs the falling of an apple also governs the movements of the planets in their orbits. He published his great work on this subject a few years later.

It was with reference to that wonderful discovery of the all-pervading power of gravitation, which shapes and holds in its control the drop of dew before our eyes, and the farthest star shining in the heavens, that the poet Pope suggested the epitaph which should be graven on the tomb of the great thinker in Westminster Abbey:

"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said, `Let Newton be!' and all was light."

482. Chief Political Reforms; Abolition of Feudal Dues, 1660; the Habeas Corpus Act, 1679.

As the age did not stand still with respect to progress in knowledge, so it was not wholly unsuccessful in political progress. A great reform inaugurated in the outset of Charles's reign was the abolition, 1660, of the King's right to feudal dues and service, by which he was accustomed to extort as much as possible from his subjects[1] (S150), and the substitution of a fixed yearly allowance, raised by tax, of 1,200,000 pounds on beer and liquor.[2] This change may be considered to have practically abolished the feudal system in England, so far as the Crown is concerned, though the law still retains some remnants of that system with respect to the relation of landlord and tenant.[3]

[1] See Blackstone's "Commentaries," II, 76. [2] This tax should have been levied on the landed proprietors who had been subject to the feudal dues, but they managed to put it on beer and spirits; this compelled the body of the people to bear the burden for them. [3] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xviii, S20.

The second great reform measure was the Habeas Corpus Act,[4] 1679, which provided that no subject should be detained in prison except by due process of law, thus putting an end to the arbitrary confinement of men for months, and years even, without conviction of guilt or even form of trial.

[4] Habeas Corpus (1679) (you may have the body): This writ is addressed by the judge to him who detains another in custody, commanding him to bring him into court and show why he is restrained of his liberty. The right of Habeas Corpus was contained in germ in the Great Charter (S199, Article 2); and see Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xix, S21, and p. xxxii.

483. Death of Charles.

The reign came suddenly to an end (1685). Evelyn, one of the courtiers of the day, tells us in his "Diary" that he was present at the palace of Whitehall on Sunday morning, the last of January of that year. There he saw the King sitting in the grand banqueting room, chatting gayly with three famous court beauties,—his special favorites,—while a crowd of richly dressed nobles were gathered around a gambling table heaped with gold. Six days after, as he expresses it, all was "in the dust."

Charles died a Roman Catholic, his Catholic brother James (S478) having quietly brought a priest into the King's chamber in time to hear his confession and grant him absolution. Certainly few English rulers ever stood in greater need of both.

484. Summary

The chief events of the period were the persecution of the Puritans, the Plague and Great Fire of London, the Secret Treaty of Dover, the Test Act, the Disabling Act, the so-called "Popish Plot," the Rye-House Plot, the Dutch Wars, the Abolition of Feudal Dues, the Habeas Corpus Act, the rise of permanent Political Parties, and Newton's Discovery of the Law of Gravitation. Aside from these, the reign presents two leading points: (1) the policy of the King; (2) that of the nation.

Charles II, as we have seen, lived solely to gratify his inordinate love of pleasure. For that, he wasted the revenue, robbed the exchequer, and cheated the navy; for that, he secretly sold himself to France, made war on Holland, and shamefully deceived both Parliament and people.

In so far, then, as Charles II had an object, it began and ended with himself. Therein he stood lower than his father, who at least conscientiously believed in the Divine Right of Kings (S429) and their accountability to the Almighty.

The policy of the nation, on the other hand, was divided. The Whigs were determined to limit the power of the Crown, and secure at all hazards a Protestant successor to the throne. The Tories were equally resolved to check the growing power of the people, and preserve the hereditary order of succession (then in the Stuart family) without any immediate regard to the religious question involved in the Exclusion Bill (S478).

Beneath these issues both parties had a common object, which was to maintain the National Episcopal Church and the monarchical system of government. Whigs and Tories alike detested the principles of the late Commonwealth period. They preferred to cherish patriotism through loyalty to a personal sovereign rather than patriotism through devotion to a democratic republic.

James II—1685-1689

485. James II; his Proclamation; his Two Objects; Titus Oates again.

James, Duke of York, brother of the late Charles II, now came to the throne. He at once issued a Proclamation pledging himself to "preserve the government in both Church and State as it is now by law established." This solemn declaration was welcomed as "the word of a king," but unfortunately that king did not keep his word. His first great ambition was to rule independently of Parliament, so that he might have his own way in everything; his second, which was, if possible, still nearer his heart, was to restore the Roman Catholic religion in England (SS370, 382, 477).

He began that restoration at once; and on the Easter Sunday preceding his coronation, "the worship of the Church of Rome was once more, after an interval of a hundred and twenty-seven years, performed at Westminster with royal splendor."[1]

[1] Macaulay's "England."

Not long afterwards James brought the miscreant Oates to trial for the perjuries he had committed in connection with the so-called "Popish Plot" (S478). He was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment for life; in addition he was publicly whipped through London with such terrible severity that a few more strokes of the lash would have ended his worthless life (1685). But in the next reign Oates was liberated and a pension was granted him.

486. Monmouth's Rebellion; Sedgemoor, 1685.

At the time of the discovery of the Rye-House Plot (S480) a number of Whigs (S479) who were implicated in the conspiracy fled to Holland, where the Duke of Monmouth had gone when banished. Four months after the accession of James, the Duke, aided by these refugees and by a small force which he had gathered in the Netherlands, resolved to invade England and demand the crown. He believed that a large part of the nation would look upon him as representing the cause of Protestantism, and would therefore rally to his support. He landed at Lyme on the coast of Dorsetshire (1685), and there issued an absurd proclamation declaring James to be a usurper, tyrant, and murderer, who had set the great fire of London (S474), cut the throat of Essex (S480), and poisoned Charles II!

At Taunton, in Somersetshire, a procession of welcome, headed by a lady carrying a Bible, met the Duke, and presented him with the book in behalf of the Protestant faith. He received it, saying, "I come to defend the truths contained in this volume, and to seal them, if it must be so, with my blood." Shortly afterwards he proclaimed himself sovereign of Great Britain. He was popularly known as "King Monmouth." Many of the country people now joined him, but the Whig nobles (S479), on whose help he had counted, stood aloof, alienated doubtless by the ridiculous charges he had made against James.

At the battle of Sedgemoor, in Somersetshire (1685), "King Monmouth," with his hastily gathered forces, was utterly routed. He himself was soon afterwards captured, hiding in a ditch. He desired to be taken to the King. His request was granted. When he entered his uncle's presence, he threw himself down and crawled to his feet, weeping and begging piteously for life—only life—on any terms, however hard.

He denied that he had issued the lying proclamation published at Lyme; he denied that he had sought the crown of his own free will; finally, in an agony of supplication, he hinted that he would even renounce Protestantism if thereby he might escape death. James told him that he should have the service of a Catholic priest, but would promise nothing more. Monmouth groveled and pleaded, but the King's heart was like marble, and he turned away in silence. Then the Duke, seeing that all his efforts were vain, rose to his feet and regained his manhood.

He was forthwith sent to the Tower, and shortly afterwards to execution. His headless body was buried under the communion table of that little chapel of St. Peter within the Tower grounds, where the remains of Anne Boleyn, Lady Jane Grey, Sir Thomas More, and many other royal victimsf, are gathered. No sadder spot exists on earth, "since there death is associated with whatever is darkest in human nature and human destiny."[1]

[1] Macaulay's "England."

After Monmouth's death there were no further attempts at insurrection, and the struggle at Sedgemoor remains the last encounter worthy of the name of battle fought on English soil.

487. The "Bloody Assizes" (1685).

The defeat of the insurgents who had rallied under Monmouth's flag was followed by a series of trials known, from their results, as the "Bloody Assizes" (1685). They were conducted by Judge Jeffreys, assisted by a band of soldiers under Colonel Kirke, ironically called, from their ferocity, "Kirke's Lambs." Jeffreys was by nature cruel, and enjoyed the spectacle of mental as well as bodily anguish. As he himself said, he delighted to give those who had the misfortune to appear before him "a lick with the rough side of his tongue," preparatory to roaring out the sentence of torture or death, in which he delighted still more.

All who were in the remotest way implicated in the late rebellion were now hunted down and brought to a trial which was but a mockery of justice. No one was permitted to defend himself. In fact, defense would have been useless against the blind fury of such a judge. The threshold of the court was to most that crossed it the threshold of the grave. A gentleman present at one of these scenes of slaughter, touched with pity at the condition of a trembling old man called up for sentence, ventured to put in a word in his behalf. "My Lord," said he to Jeffreys, "this poor creature is dependent on the parish." "Don't trouble yourself," cried the judge; "I will soon ease the parish of the burden," and ordered the officers to execute him at once.

Those who escaped death were often still more to be pitied. A young man was sentenced to be imprisoned for seven years, and to be whipped once a year through every market town in the county. In his despair, he petitioned the King to grant him the favor of being hanged. The petition was refused, but a partial remission of the punishment was at length gained by bribing the court; for Jeffreys, though his heart was shut against mercy, always had his pockets open for gain. Alice Lisle, an aged woman, who, out of pity, had concealed two men flying from the King's vengeance, was condemned to be burned alive; and it was with the gratest difficulty that the clergy of Winchester Cathedral succeeded in getting the sentence commuted to beheading.

As the work went on, the spirits of Jeffreys rose higher and higher. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore like a drunken man. When the court had finished its sittings, more than a thousand persons had been brutally scourged, sold as slaves, hanged, or beheaded. The guideposts of the highways were converted into gibbets, from which the blackened corpses swung in chains, and from every church tower in Somersetshire ghastly heads looked down on those who gathered there to worship God; in fact, so many bodies were exposed that the whole air was "tainted with corruption and death."

Not satisfied with vengeance alone, Jeffreys and his friends made these trials a means of speculation. Batches of rebels were given as presents to courtiers, who sold them for a period of ten years to be worked to death or flogged to death on West India plantations; and the Queen's maids of honor extorted large sums of money for the pardon of a number of country schoolgirls who had been convicted of presenting Monmouth with a royal flag at Taunton.

On the return of Jeffreys to London after this carnival of blood, his father was so horrified at his cruelty that he forbade him to enter his house. James, on the contrary, testified his approval by making Jeffreys Lord Chancellor of the realm, at the same time mildly censuring him for not having shown greater severity!

The new Lord Chancellor testified his gratitude to his royal master by procuring the murder, by means of a packed jury, of Alderman Cornish, a prominent London Whig (S479), who was especially hated by the King on account of his support of that Exclusion Bill (S478) which was intended to shut James out from the throne. On the same day on which Cornish was executed, Jeffreys also had the satisfaction of knowing that Elizabeth Gaunt was burned alive at Tyburn, London, for having assisted one of the Rye-House conspirators, who had fought for Monmouth at Sedgemoor, to escape.

488. The King makes Further Attempts to reestablish Catholicism; Second Declaration of Indulgence (1687); Oxford.

An event occurred about this time which encouraged James to make a more decided attempt to restore Catholicism. Henry IV of France had granted the Protestants of his kingdom liberty of worship, by the Edict of Nantes (1598). Louis XIV deliberately revoked it (1685). By that shortsighted act the Huguenots, or French Protestants, were exposed to cruel persecution, and thousands of them fled to England and America.

James, who, like his late brother Charles II, was "the pensioned slave of the French King" (S476), resolved to profit by the example set him by Louis. He did not expect to drive the Protestants out of Great Britain as Louis had driven them from France, but he hoped to restore the country to its allegiance to Rome (SS370, 382, 477). He began by suspending the Test Act (S477) and putting Catholics into important offices in both Church and State.[1] He furthermore established an army of 13,000 men on Hounslow Heath, just outside London (1686), to hold the city in subjection in case it should rebel.

[1] The Dispensing Power and the Suspending Power were prerogatives by which the King claimed the right of preventing the enforcement of such laws as he deemed contrary to public good. A packed bench of judges sustained the King in this position, but the power so to act was finally abolished by the Bill of Rights (1689). See S497 and top of page xxxii, Article XII.

He next recalled the Protestant Duke of Ormonde, governor of Ireland, and put in his place Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, a Catholic. Tyrconnel had orders to recruit an Irish Roman Catholic army to aid the King in carrying out his designs (1687). He raised some soldiers, but he also raised that famous song of "Lilli Burlero," by which, as its author boasted, James was eventually "sung out of his kingdom."[2]

[2] Lord Wharton, a prominent English Whig (S479), was the author of this satirical political ballad, which, it is said, was sung and whistled from one end of England to the other, in derision of the King's policy. It undoubtably had a powerful popular influence in bringing on the Revolution of 1688. The ballad began: "Ho, Brother Teague, dost hear de decree? Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la, Dat we shall have a new deputie, Lilli Burlero, bullen a-la." The refrain, "Lilli Burlero," etc. (also written "Lillibullero"), is said to have been the watchword used by the Irish Catholics when they rose against the Protestants of Ulster in 1641. See Wilkins's "Political Songs," Vol I.

Having got the courts completely under his control through the appointment of judges in sympathy with Jeffreys (S487) and with himself, the King issued a Declaration of Indulgence similar to that which his brother Charles II had issued (S477).[1] It suspended all penal laws against both the Roman Catholics on the one hand, and the Protestant Dissenters (S472) on the other. The latter, however, suspecting that this apparently liberal measure was simply a trick to establish Catholicism, refused to avail themselves of it, and denounced it as an open violation of the Constitution.

[1] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxi, S23.

James next proceeded, by means of the tyrannical High Commission Court, which he had revived (S382), to bring Magdalen College, Oxford, under Catholic control. The President of that college having died, the Fellows were considering the choice of a successor. The King ordered them to elect a Catholic. The Fellows refused to obey, and elected a Protestant. James ejected the new President, and drove out the Fellows, leaving them to depend on the charity of neighboring country gentlemen for their support.

But the King, in attacking the rights of the college, had "run his head against a wall,"[2] as he soon discovered to his sorrow. His temporary success, however, emboldened him to reissue the first Declaration of Indulgence (1688). Its real object, like that of the first Declaration (S477), was to put Roman Catholics into still higher positions of trust and power.

[2] "What building is that?" asked the Duke of Wellington of his companion, Mr. Croker, pointing, as he spoke, to Magdalen College wall, just as they entered Oxford in 1834. "That is the wall which James II ran his head against," was the reply.

489. The Petition of the Seven Bishops, 1688.

James commanded the clergy throughout the realm to read this Declaration (S488) on a given Sunday from their pulpits. The clergy were by nature conservative. They still generally upheld the theory of the "Divine Right of Kings" and of "Passive Obedience." A majority of them taught the doctrine which James I had proclaimed: "God makes the King; the King makes the law; his subjects are bound to obey the law" (SS419, 429). Now, however, nearly all of them revolted. They felt that to comply with the mandate of the King would be to strike a blow at the supremacy of the Church of England. In this crisis the Archbishop of Canterbury, accompanied by six bishops, petitioned the King to be excused from reading it from their pulpits. The King refused to consider the petition. When the day came, hardly a clergyman read the paper, and in Westminster Abbey the entire congregation rose in a body and left rather than listen to it. Furious at such an unexpected result, James ordered the refractory bishops to be sent to the Tower and kept prisoners there.

The whole country now seemed to turn against the King. By his obstinate folly James had succeeded in making enemies of all classes, not only of the Whig Roundheads (S479) who had fought against his father in the civil war, but also of the Tory Cavaliers (S479) who had fought for him, and of the clergy who had taught the duty of obedience to him.

One of the bishops sent to the Tower was Trelawney of Bristol. He was a native of Cornwall. The news of his imprisonment roused the rough, independent population of that country. From one end of it to the other the people were now heard singing:

"And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die?
There's thirty thousand Cornishmen will know the reason why."

Then the miners took up the words, and beneath the hills and fields the ominous echo was heard:

"And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney die?
There's twenty thousand underground will know the reason why."

When the seven bishops were brought to trial the popular feeling in their favor was so strong that not even James's servile judges dared use their influence to convict them. After the case was given to the jury, the largest and most robust man of the twelve rose and said to the rest: "Look at me! I am bigger than any of you, but before I will bring in a verdict of guilty, I will stay here until I am no thicker than a tobacco pipe." That decided the matter, and the bishops were acquitted (1688). The news was received in London like the tidings of some great victory, with shouts of joy, illuminations, and bonfires.

490. Birth of a Prince; Invitation to William of Orange (1688).

But just before the acquittal an event took place which changed everything and brought on the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688,—for such was the title which was solemnly given to it after William and Mary had come to the throne (SS491, 494).

Up to this time the succession to the throne after James rested with his two daughters,—Mary, who had married William, Prince of Orange (S477), President of the Dutch republic, and resided in Holland; and her younger sister Anne, who had married George, Prince of Denmark, and was then living in London. Both of the daughters were zealous Protestants, and the expectation that one of them would receive the English crown on the King's death had kept the people quiet while James was endeavoring to restore Catholicism.

But while the seven bishops were in prison awaiting trial (S489) the alrming intelligence was spread that a son had been born to the King (1688). If true, he would now be the next heir to the crown, and would in all probability be educated and come to power a Catholic. This prospect brought matters to a crisis.

Many people, especially the Whigs (S479), believed the whole matter an imposition, and it was reported that the young Prince was not the true son of the King and Queen, but a child that had been smuggled into the palace to deceive the nation. For this report there was absolutely no foundation in fact.

On the very day that the bishops were set at liberty (S489) seven of the leading nobility and gentry, representing both the Whigs and the Tories (S479),[1] seconded by the city of London, secretly sent a formal invitation to William, Prince of Orange, "the champion of Protestantism on the Continent and the deadly foe of James's ally, the King of France." Admiral Herbert, disguised as a common sailor, set out on the perilous errand to the Prince. The invitation he carried implored William to come over with an army to defend his wife Mary's claim to the English throne, and to ensure "the restoration of English liberties and the protection of the Protestant religion."

William decided to accept the invitation, which was probably not unexpected on his part. He was confirmed in his decision not only by the cordial approval of the leading Catholic princes of Europe, except, of course, Louis XIV of France, but also by the Pope himself, who had more than once expressed his emphatic disgust at the foolish rashness of King James.[2]

[1] The seven gentlemen who signed in cipher the secret letter to
William, Prince of Orange, were Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon
Sidney (S480); Edward Russell, a kinsman of Lord Russell, beheaded by
Charles II (S480); the Earl of Devonshire, chief of the Whig party;
Lord Shrewsbury; Danby, the old Tory minister of Charles II; Compton,
Bishop of London, whom James II had tyrannically suspended; and Lord
Lumley. See the letter in J. Dalrymple's "Memoirs of Great Britain,"
II, Appendix, p. 228.
[2] Bright's, Guizot's, Lingard's, and Von Ranke's Histories of
England.

491. The "Glorious Revolution of 1688; William comes, James goes.

William's ship, which led his fleet, displayed this flag.

I WILL MAINTAIN THE LIBERTIES OF ENGLAND AND THE PROTESTANT RELIGION

He landed with 14,000 troops on the shore of Torbay, Devonshire. (See map facing p. 334.) It was the fifth and last rgeat landing in the history of England.[1] He declared that he came in the interest of his wife Mary, the heir to the throne (S477), and in the interest of the English nation, to secure a free and legal Parliament which should decide the question of the succession. James endeavored to rally a force to resist him, but Baron Churchill, afterwards Duke of Marlborough (S509), and the King's son-in-law, Prince George, both secretly went over to William's side.

[1] The first being that of the Romans, the next that of the Saxons, the third that of St. Augustine, the fourth that of William he Conqueror, the fifth that of the Prince of Orange.

His troops likewise deserted, and finally even his daughter Anne went over to the enemy. "Now God help me!" exclaimed James, in despair; "for my own children forsake me!" The Queen had already fled to France, taking with her her infant son, the unfortunate Prince James Edward, whose birth (S490) had caused the revolution. Instead of a kingdom, he inherited nothing but the nickname of "Pretender," which he in turn transmitted to his son.[2] King James soon followed his wife.

[2] Prince James Edward Stuart, the so-called "Old Pretender," and his son, Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the so-called "Young Pretender." See, too, Genealogical Table, p. 323.

As he crossed the Thames in a boat by night, James threw the Great Seal of State into the river, in the vain hope that without it a Parliament could not be legally summoned to decide the question which his adversary had raised.[3] The King got as far as the coast, but was discovered by some fishermen and brought back. William reluctantly received him, and purposely allowed him to escape a second time. He reached France, and Louis XIV, who had long had the treacherous King in his secret pay, received him at the court of Versailles. There could be now no reasonable doubt that James's daughter Mary (S477) would receive the English crown.

[3] On the Great Seal of State (S145).

492. Character of the Revolution of 1688.

Never was a revolution of such magnitude and meaning accomplished more peacefully. Not a drop of blood had been shed. There was hardly any excitement or uproar. Even the bronze statue of the runaway King was permitted to stand undisturbed in the rear of the palace of Whitehall, London, where it remains to this day.

The great change had taken place thus quietly because men's minds were ripe for it. England had entered upon another period of history, in which old institutions, laws, and customs were passing away and all was becoming new.

Feudalism had vanished under Charles II (S482), but political and religious persecution had continued. In future, however, we shall hear no more of the revocation of city charters or other punishments inflicted because of political opinion (SS479, 487), and rarely of any punishment for religious dissent.

Courts of justice will undergo reform. They will cease to be "little better than caverns of murderers,"[1] where judges like Scroggs and Jeffreys (SS478, 487) browbeat the prisoners, took their guilt for granted, insulted and silenced witnesses for their defense, and even cast juries into prison under penalties of heavy fines, for venturing to bring in verdicts contrary to their wishes.[2]

[1] Hallam's "Constitutional History of England," p. 138. Hallam also says that the behavior of the Stuart judges covered them "with infamy," p. 597. [2] See Hallam, and also the introduction to Professor Adams's "Manual of Historical Literature." For a graphic picture of the times, see, in Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," Christian's trial before Lord Hategood.

The day, too, had gone by when an English sovereign could cast his subjects into fetid dungeons in the Tower and leave them to die there of lingering disease, in darkness, solitude, and despair. No future king like the marble-hearted James II would sit in the court room at Edinburgh, and watch with curious delight the agony inflicted by the Scotch instruments of torture, the "boot" and the thumbscrew, or like his grandfather, James I, burn Unitarian heretics at the stake in Smithfield market place in London (S518).

For the future, thought and discussion in England were to be in great measure free, as in time they would be wholly so. Perhaps the coward King's heaviest retribution in his secure retreat in the royal French palace of Versailles was the knowledge that all his efforts, and all the efforts of his friend Louis XIV, to prevent the coming of this liberty had absolutely failed.

493. Summary.

The reign of James must be regarded as mainly taken up with the attempt of the King to rule independently of Parliament and of law, and, apparently, he sought to restore the Roman Catholic faith as the Established Church of England.

Monmouth's rebellion, though without real justification, since he could not legitimately claim the crown, was a forerunner of that memorable Revolution which invited William of Orange to come to the support of Parliament, and which placed a Protestant King and Queen on the throne.

WILLIAM AND MARY (House of Orange-Stuart)—1689-1702

494. The "Convention Parliament"; the Declaration of Right. 1689.

After the flight of James II, a "Convention Parliament" met, and declared that, James having broken "the orginal contract between king and people," the throne was therefore vacant. The Convention next issued a formal statement of principles under the name of the "Declaration of Right," 1689.[1]

[1] It was called a "Convention Parliament" because it had not been summoned by the King (S491). Declaration of Right: see Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxii, S24. On the coronation oath see S380, note 1.

That document recited the illegal and arbitrary acts of the late King James II, proclaimed him no longer sovereign, and resolved that the crown should be tendered to William and Mary.[2] The Declaration having been read to them and having received their assent, they were formally invited to accept the joint sovereignty of the realm, with the understanding that the actual administration should be vested in William alone.

[2] William of Orange stood next in order of succession to Mary and Anne (provided the claim of the newly born Prince James, the so-called "Pretender," was set aside [SS490, 491]). See Genealogical Table, p. 323.

495. Jacobites and Nonjurors (1689).

At the accession of the new sovereigns the extreme Tories (S479), who believed the action fo the Convention unconstitutional, continued to adhere to James II as their lawful King. Henceforth this class became known as "Jacobites," from Jacobus, the Latin name for James. They were especially numerous and determined in the Highlands of Scotland and the south of Ireland. They kept up a secret correspondence with the refugee monarch, and were constantly plotting for his restoration.

About four hundred of the clergy of the Church of England, including the Archbishop of Canterbury and four more of the famous seven bishops (S489), with some members of the universities and also some Scotch Presbyterians, refused to take the oath of allegiance to William and Mary. They became known on this account as the "Nonjurors," and although they were never harshly treated, they were compelled to resign their positions.

496. The Mutiny Act and the Toleration Act, 1689.

We have seen that one of the chief means of despotism on which James II relied was the organization of a powerful standing army (S488), such as was unknown in England until Cromwell was compelled to rule by military force (S457). Charles II had perpetuated such an army (S467), but it was so small that it was no longer formidable.

It was now evident that owing to the abolition of the feudal levies (SS150, 482) a standing army under the King's command must be maintained, especially as war was impending with Louis XIV, who threatened by force of arms and with the help of the Jacobites (S495) to restore James II to the English throne. To prevent the sovereign from making bad use of such a power, Parliament passed a law called the "Mutiny Act," 1689, which practically put the army under the control of the nation,[1] as it has since remained. Thus all danger from that source was taken away.

[1] The Mutiny Act provides: (1) that the standing army shall be at the King's command—subject to certain rules—for one year only; (2) that no pay shall be issued to troops except by special acts of Parliament; (3) that no act of mutiny can be punished except by the annual reenactment of the Mutiny Bill.

James's next method for bringing the country under the control of Rome had been to issue Declarations of Indulgence (S488). It was generally believed that his object in granting these measures of toleration, which promised freedom to all religious beliefs, was that he might place Roman Catholics in power.

As an offset to these Declarations, Parliament now passed the Toleration Act, 1689, which secured freedom of worship to all religious believers except "Papists and such as deny the Trinity." This measure, though one-sided and utterly inconsistent with the broader and juster ideas of toleration which have since prevailed, was nevertheless a most important reform. It put an end at once and forever to the persecution which had disgraced the reigns of the Stuarts, though unfortunately it still left the Catholics, the Unitarians, and the Jews subject to the heavy hand of tyrannical oppression,[1] and they remained so for many years (SS573, 599).

[1] In 1663 Charles granted a charter to Rhode Island which secured religious liberty to that colony. It was the first royal charter recognizing the principle of toleration.

497. The Bill of Rights, 1689, and Act of Settlement, 1701.

Not many months later, Parliament embodied the Declaration of Right (S494), with some slight changes, in the Bill of Rights, 1689,[2] which received the signature of the King and became law. It constitutes the third and last great step which England has taken in making anything like a formal WRITTEN Constitution,[3]—the first being Magna Carta, or the Great Charter (S199), and the second the Petition of Right (S432). The Habeas Corpus Act (S482) was contained, in germ at least, in Magna Carta (S199 (2)); hence these three measures, namely, Magna Carta, 1215; the Petition of Right, 1628; and the Bill of Rights, 1689 (including the Act of Settlement to be mentioned presently), sum up the written safeguards of the nation, and constitute, as Lord Chatham said, "The Bible of English Liberty."

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxii, S25, and p. xxxi. [3] It should be borne in mind that a large part of the English Constitution is based on ancient customs or unwritten laws, and another part on acts of Parliament passed for specific purposes.

With the passage of the Bill of Rights,[4] the doctrine of the Divine
Right of Kings to govern without being accountable to their subjects
(SS419, 429), which James I and his descendants had tried so hard to
reduce to practice, came to an end forever.

[4] For summary of the bill, see Constitutional Documents in the
Appendix, p. xxxi. For the complete text, see Taswell-Langmead's
"Constitutional History of England" or Lee's "Source Book of English
History."

The chief provisions of the Bill of Rights were: (1) That the King should not maintain a standing army in time of peace, except by consent of Parliament. (2) That no money should be taken from the people save by the consent of Parliament. (3) That every subject has the right to petition the Crown for the redress of any grievance. (4) That the election of members of Parliament ought to be free from interference. (5) That Parliament should frequently assemble and enjoy entire freedom of debate. (6) That the King be debarred from interfering in any way with the proper execution of the laws. (7) That a Roman Catholic or a person marrying a Roman Catholic be henceforth incapable of receiving the crown of England.

Late in the reign (1701) Parliament reaffirmed and still further extended the provisions of the Bill of Rightss by the Act of Settlement, which established a new royal line of sovereigns confined exclusively to Protestants.[1] This Act with the preceding one may be said to have introduced that principle of the British Constitution which has been called "The Reign of Law." It practically abolished the principle of a fixed hereditary succession and reestablished in the clearest and most decided manner the right of the nation to choose its own rulers.

[1] Compare S349, note 2. The Act of Settlement (see p. xxxii of Appendix) provided that after Princess Anne (in default of issue by William or Anne) the crown should descend to the Electress Sophia of Hanover, Hermany, and her PROTESTANT DESCENDANTS. The Electress Sophia was the granddaughter of James I. She married Ernest Augustus, Elector (or ruler) of Hanover. As Hallam says, she was "very far removed from any hereditary title," as, aside from James II's son (S490), whose legitimacy no one now doubted, there were several who stood nearer in right of succession.

According to that measure, "an English sovereign is now as much the creature of an act of Parliament as the pettiest taxgatherer in his realm";[2] and he is dependent for his office and power on the will of the people as really, though of course not as directly as the President of the United States.

[2] Green's "Short History of the English People" and Bryce's "American Commonwealth."

Finally, the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement, by restricting the royal succession to Protestants, made it henceforth unconstitutional for the Crown to permit or invite the Papal Power to take any recognized part in the government of England. The enactment of these two measures, therefore, effectually put an end to that great conflict between England and Rome which had been going on, in some form, for more than six hundred years (S349, note 2).

To-day entire harmony exists. Catholics and Protestants "work together for good" in Parliament, in the Cabinet, in the Courts of Justice, in the Universities, in the Army and Navy, in the service of the Press, and in private life.[1]

[1] The names of many eminent Catholics might be cited, such as Professor Lingard, the historian (1851), the late Lord Chief Justice Russell, the late Lord Acton, Professor of History at Cambridge, and the late Sir Francis Burnand, editor of Punch.

498. Further Benefits of the Revolution.

Foremost in the list of other benefits which England gained by the Revolution of 1688 should be placed: 1. The Toleration Act already mentioned (S496), which gave a very large number of people the right of worshiping God according to the dictates of conscience, and which was the stepping-stone to later measures that completed the good work of extending religious liberty in England (SS573, 599). 2. Parliament now established the salutory rule that no money should be voted to the King except for specific purposes, and it also limited the royal revenue to a few years' supply instead of granting it for life, as had been done in the case of Charles II and James. Later the supply was limited to an annual grant. As the Mutiny Act (S496) made the army dependent for its existence on the annual meeting and action of the House of Commons, these two measures practically gave the people full control of the two great powers,—the purse and the sword,—which they have ever since retained. 3. Parliament next enacted that judges should hold office not as heretofore, at his Majesty's pleasure, but during good behavior (or until the death of the reigning sovereign vacated their commissions). This took away that dangerous authority of the King over the courts of justice, which had caused so much oppression and cruelty. 4. But, as Macaulay remarks, of all the reforms produced by the change of government, perhaps none proved more extensively useful than the establishment of the liberty of the press. Up to this time no book or newspaper could be published in England without a license.[2] In the period of the Commonwealth John Milton, the great Puritan poet, had earnestly labored to get this severe law repealed, declaring that "while he who kills a man kills a reasonable creature,…he who destroys a good book [by refusing to let it appear in print] kills reason itself."[3] But under James II, Chief Justice Scroggs had declared it a crime to publish anything whatever concerning the government, whether true or false, without a license. During that reign there were only four places in England—namely, London, Oxford, Cambridge, and York—where any book, pamphlet, or newspaper could be legally issued, and then only with the sanction of a rigid inspector.

[2] See Summary of Constitutional History in the Appendix, p. xxiii, S26. [3] Milton's "Areopagitica," or "Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing."

Under William and Mary this restriction was removed. Henceforth men were free not only to think, but to print and circulate their thought (subject, of course, to the law of libel and sedition). They could thus bring the government more directly before that bar of public opinion which judges all men and all institutions.

499. James II lands in Ireland (1689); Act of Attainder; Siege of Londonderry.

But though William was King of England, and had been accepted as King of Scotland, yet the Irish, like the Scotch Highlanders, refused to recognize him as their lawful sovereign. The great body of Irish population was then, as now, Roman Catholic. But they had been gradually dispossessed of their hold on the land (SS159, 402, 453), and the larger part of the most desirable portion of the island was owned by a few hundred thousand Protestant colonists.

On the other hand, James II had, during his reign, put the civil government and the military power in the hands of the Catholics. The Earl of Tyrconnel (S488) now raised the standard of rebellion in Ireland in the interest of the Catholics, and invited James II to come over from France (S491) and regain his throne. The Protestants of the north stood by William of Orange (S491), and thus got that name of Orangemen which they have ever since retained. James landed in Ireland in the spring (1689) with a small French force lent him by Louis XIV (S491).

He established his headquarters at Dublin. Not long afterwards he issued that great Act of Attainder (1689) which summoned all who were in rebellion against his authority to appear for trial on a given day, or be declared traitors, hanged, drawn, and quartered, and their property confiscated.[1] Next, the Protestant city of Londonderry (S423) was bebesieged (1689). For more than three months it held out against shot and shell, famine and fever.

[1] Attainder (S351): This act contained between two and three thousand names. It embraced all classes, from half the peerage of Ireland to tradesmen, women, and children. If they failed to appear, they could be put to death without trial.

The starving inhabitants, exceeding thirty thousand in number, were finally reduced to the last extremities. Nothing was left to eat but a few miserable horses and some salted hides. As they looked into each other's hollow eyes, the question came, Must we surrender? Then it was that an aged clergyman, the venerable George Walker, one of the governors of the city, pleaded with them, Bible in hand, to remain firm.

That appeal carried the day. They declared that rather than open the gates to the enemy, they would perish of hunger, or, as some voice whispered, that they would fall "first on the horses and the hides,—THEN ON THE PRISONERS,—then—ON EACH OTHER!" But at this moment, when all hope seemed lost, a shout of triumph was heard. An English force had sailed up the river, broken through all obstructions, and the valiant city was saved.

500. Battle of the Boyne, 1690; Treaty of Limerick.

A year later occurred the decisive battle of the Boyne,[1] 1690, at which King William commanded in person on one side, while James II was present on the opposite side. William had a somewhat larger force and by far the greater number of well-armed, veteran troops. The contest ended with the utter defeat of James. He stood on a hill at a safe distance, and when he saw that the battle was going against him, turned and fled to France. William, on the other hand, though suffering from a wound, led his own men. The cowardly behavior of James excited the disgust and scorn of both the French and Irish. "Change kings with us," shouted an Irish officer later, to one of William's men, "change kings with us, and we'll fight you over again."

[1] Fought in the east of Ireland, on the banks of the river of that name. (See map facing p. 358.)

The war was brought to an end by the treaty of Limerick (1691), when about ten thousand Irish soldiers who had fought for James, and who no longer cared to remain in their own country after their defeat, were permitted to go to France. "When the wild cry of the women, who stood watching their departure, was hushed, the silence of death settled down upon Ireland. For a hundred years the country remained at peace, but the peace was that of despair."[1] In violation of that treaty, a severe act was passed against Roman Catholics; they were hunted like wild beasts, and terrible vengeance was now taken for that Act of Attainder (S499) which James had issued. Furthermore, England selfishly closed her own ports and those of her colonies against Irish products; this policy starved the industry of that unfortunate island.

[1] Green's "Short History of the English People."

501. Massacre of Glencoe (1692).

Fighting against William and Mary had also been going on in Scotland; for Claverhouse, or "Bonny Dundee" (S472), was an ardent adherent of James II and vowed, "Ere the King's crown shall fall, there are crowns to be broke."[2] But the Jacobites, or adherents of James (S495), had been conquered, and a proclamation was sent out commanding all the Highland clans to take the oath of allegiance before the beginning of the new year (1692).

[2] Scott's Poems, "Bonny Dundee."

A chief of the clan of the Macdonalds of Glencoe, through no fault of his own, failed to make submission within the appointed time. Scotch enemies of the clan told the King that the chief had refused to take the oath, and urged William "to extirpate that set of thieves." The King signed an order to that effect, without clearly understnading what was intended.

Thereupon the Scotch authorities sent a body of soldiers to Glencoe, who were hospitably received by the Macdonalds. After stopping with them a number of days, they rose before light one winter morning, and, suddenly attacking their friendly hosts, murdered all the men who did not escape, and drove the women and children into the snowdrifts to perish of cold and hunger.

They finished their work of destruction by burning the cabins and driving away the cattle. By this act, Glencoe, or the "Glen of Weeping," was changed into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. The blame which attaches to William is that he did nothing toward punishing those who planned and carried out the horrible massacre.

502. La Hogue; the Peace of Ryswick, 1697.

The English naval commander, Admiral Russell, like many of William's pretended friends and supporters, had been engaged in treasonable correspondence with James II. If the latter succeeded in recovering his crown, the Admiral hoped to bask in the sunshine of royal favor; but he later changed his mind and fought so bravely in the sea fight off La Hogue that the French supporters of James were utterly beaten.

King William, however, continued his Continental wars for the next five years, until, by the Peace of Ryswick, in Holland, 1697, Louis XIV bound himself to recognize William as King of England, the Princess Anne[1] as his successor, to withdraw all support from James, and to place the chief fortresses of the Netherlands, or Low Countries, in the hands of the Dutch garrisons. The Peace of Ryswick marked the end of the conspiracy between Louis and the Stuarts to turn England into a Roman Catholic country dependent on France (SS477, 488). When William went in solemn state to return thanks for the conclusion of the war, it was to the new cathedral of St. Paul's, which Wren had nearly completed (S474), and which was then first used for public worship.

[1] The second (Protestant) daughter of James II. See Genealogical Table, p. 323.

503. The National Debt, 1693; the Bank of England, 1694.

William had now gained, at least temporarily, the object that he had in view when he accepted the English crown. He had succeeded in drawing the English into a close defensive alliance against Lois XIV,[2] who, as we have seen, was bent on destroying both the political and the religious liberty of the Dutch as a Protestant people (S476).

[2] Guizot's "History of Civilization," chap. xiii.

William's wars had compelled him to borrow large sums from the London merchants. Out of these loans sprang the permanent National Debt. That debt was destined to grow from less than a million of pounds to so many hundred millions that all thought of ever paying it has long since been given up. Furthermore, it became necessary to organize a Banking Company, 1694, for the management of this collosal debt; together the two were destined to become more widely known than any of William's victories.

The building erected by that Company covers not far from four acres of land in the very heart of London. In the first room which one enters stands a statue of the King, bearing this inscription: "To the memory of the best of Princes, William of Orange, founder of the Bank of England,"—the largest and most important financial institution in the world.

504. William's Death.

King William hasd a brave soul in a feeble body. All his life he was an invalid, but he learned to conquer disease, or at least to hold it in check, as he conquered his enemies. He was worn out by overwork, sickness, and the cares of office. If he could have been assured of the safety of his beloved Holland, death would have been welcome to one who had so long been stretched "upon the hard rack of this tough world." He was never popular in England, and at one time was kept from returning to his native country only through the earnest protestation of the Lord Chancellor, who refused to stamp the King's resignation with the Great Seal (S145).

There were plots to assassinate him, and many who pretended to be friends were treacherous, and only wanted a good opportunity to go over to the side of James II. Others were eager to hear of his death, and when it occurred, through the stumbling of his horse over a molehill, they drank to "the little gentleman in black velvet," whose work underground caused the fatal accident.

505. Summary.

William's reign was a prolonged struggle for the great Protestant cause and for the maintenance of political liberty in both England and Holland. Invalid as he was, he was yet a man of indomitable resolution as well as indomitable courage.

Though a foreigner by birth, and caring more for Holland than for any other country in the world, yet, through his Irish and Continental wars with James II and Louis XIV, he helped more than any other man of the seventeenth century, Cromwell alone excepted, to make England free.

ANNE—1702-1714

506. Accession and Character of Anne.

William (S504) left no children, and according to the provisions of the Bill of Rights (S497)[1] the Princess Anne, younger sister of the late Queen Mary, now came to the throne. She was a negative character, with kindly impulses and little intelligence. "When in good humor she was meekly stupid, and when in ill humor, sulkily stupid."[2] But if there was any person duller than her Majesty, that person was her Majesty's husband, Prince George of Denmark. Charles II, who knew him well, said, "I have tried Prince George sober, and I have tried him drunk, and drunk or sober, there is nothing in him."

[1] See the Bill of Rights (third paragraph) on page xxxi of the Appendix. [2] Macaulay's "England"; and compare Stanhope's "Reign of Anne."

Along with the amiable qualities which gained for the new ruler the title of "Good Queen Anne" her Majesty inherited the obstinacy, the prejudices, and the superstitions of the Stuart sovereigns. Though a most zealous Protestant and an ardent upholder of the Church of England, she declared her faith in the Divine Right of Kings (SS419, 429), which had cost her grandfather, Charles I, his head, and she was the last English sovereign who believed that the touch of the royal hand could dispel disease.

The first theory she never openly proclaimed in any offensive way, but the harmless delusion that she could relieve the sick was a favorite notion with her; and we find in the London Gazette (March 12, 1712) an official announcement, stating that on certain days the Queen would "touch" for the cure of "king's evil," or scrofula.

Among the multitudes who went to test her power was a poor Lichfield bookseller. He carried to her his little half-blind, sickly boy, who, by virtue either of her Majesty's beneficent fingers or from some other and better reason, grew up to be known as the famous author and lexicographer, Dr. Samuel Johnson.[2]

[2] Johnson told Boswell, his biographer, that he remembered the incident, and that "he had a confused, but somehow a sort of solemn recollection of a lady in diamonds and a long black hood."—Boswell's "Johnson."

507. Whig and Tory; High Church and Low.

Politically, the government of the country was divided between the two great parties of the Whigs and the Tories (S479), since uscceeded by the Liberals and Conservatives. Though mutually hostile, each believing that its rival's success meant national ruin, yet both were sincerely opposed to despotism on the one hand, and to anarchy on the other. The Whigs (S479), setting Parliament above the throne, were pledged to maintain the Act of Settlement (S497) and the Protestant succession; while the Tories (S479), insisting on a strict, unbroken line of hereditary sovereigns, were anxious to set aside that act and restore the excluded Stuarts (S494).

The Church of England was likewise divided into two parties, known as High Church and Low Church. The first, who were generally Tories, wished to exalt the power of the bishops and were opposed to the toleration of Dissenters (S472); the second, who were Whigs as a rule, believed it best to curtail the authority of the bishops, and to secure to all Trinitarian Protestants entire liberty of worship and all civil and political rights and privileges. Thus to the bitterness of heated political controversy there was added the still more acrid bitterness of theological dispute.

Addison illustrates the feeling that then prevailed by an amusing story of an earlier occurrence. A boy who had lost his way in London was called a "popish cur" by a Whig because he ventured to inquire for Saint Anne's Lane, while he was cuffed for irreverence by a Tory when, correcting himself, he asked bluntly for Anne's Lane.

The Queen, although she owed her crown mainly to the Whigs (S479), sympathized with the Tories (S479) and the High Church, and did all in her power to strengthen both. As for the leaders of the two parties, they seem to have looked out first for themselves, and afterwards— often a long way afterwards—for their country. During the whole reign they were plotting and counterplotting, mining and undermining. Their subtle schemes to secure office and destroy each other become as incomprehensible and fathomless as those of the fallen angels in Milton's vision of the bottomless pit.

508. The War of the Spanish Succession, 1702.

Anne had no sooner come to the throne than war broke out with France. It had its origin in the previous reign. William III had cared little for England compared with his native Holland, whose interests always had the first place in his heart. He had spent his life battling to preserve the independence of the Dutch republic and fighting Louis XIV of France, who was determined, if possible, to annex the Netherlands, including Holland, to his own dominions (S502).

During the latter part of William's reign the French King seemed likely to be able to accomplish his purpose. The King of Spain, who had no children, was in feeble health, and at his death it was probable that Louis XIV's grandson, Philip of Anjou, would receive the crown. If that happened, Louis XIV, who was then the most powerful prince in Europe, would obtain the control of the Spanish dominions, which, besides Spain, comprise a large part of the Netherlands,[1] parts of Italy, and immense provinces in South America. The possession of such an empire would make Louis irresistible in Europe, and the little, free Protestant states of Holland could not hope to stand before him.

[1] The whole of the Netherlands at one time belonged to Spain, but the northern part, or Holland, had succeeded in establishing its independence, and was protected on the southern frontier by a line of fortified towns.

Not long afterwards, the King of Spain died and bequeathed the crown to Philip of Anjou. When Philip left Paris for Madrid, Louis XIV exultingly exclaimed, "The Pyrenees no longer exist." That was simply his short way of saying, Now France and Spain are made one, and FRANCE is that one.[2]

[2] When Philip of Anjou went to Spain, Louis XIV, by letters patent, conditionally reserved the succession to the Spanish throne to France, thus virtually uniting the two countries, so that the Pyrenees Mountains would no longer have any political meaning as a boundary between the two countries.

Louis at once put French garrisons in the border towns of the Spanish Netherlands, and he thus had a force ready at any moment to march across the frontier into Holland. Finally, on the death of the royal refugee, James II (S9491), which occurred shortly before King William's death, Louis XIV publicly acknowledged the exiled monarch's son, James Edward, the so-called "Old Pretender" (SS490, 491), as rightful sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland.

This effectually roused the English people; they were prepared for hostilities when William's sudden death occurred (S504). Immediately after Anne came to the throne (1702) war with France was declared, and since it had grown out of Louis's designs on the crown of Spain, it was called the "War of the Spanish Succession."

The contest was begun by England, mainly to prevent the French King from carrying out his threat of placing the so-called "Pretender," son of the late James II, on the English throne and so overturning the Bill of Rights (S497) and the Act of Settlement (S497), and thereby restoring the country to the Roman Catholic Stuarts. Later, the war came to have two other important objects. The first of these was to defend Holland, now a most valuable ally; the second was to protect the colonies of Virginia and New England against the power of France, which threatened, through its own American colonies and through the extensive Spanish possessions it expected to acquire, to get control of the whole of the New World.[1]

[1] At this time England had twelve American colonies extending from New England to South Carolina, inclusive, with part of Newfoundland. France and Spain claimed all the rest of the continent.

Thus England had three objects at stake: (1) The maintenance of Protestant government at home. (2) The maintenance of the Protestant power of Holland. (3) The retention of a large part of the American continent.

For this reason the War of the Spanish Succession may be regarded as the beginning of a second Hundred Years' War between England and France (S237),[2] one destined to decide which was to build up the great empire of the future in the western hemisphere.[3]

[2] During the next eighty years fighting was going on between England and France, directly or indirectly, for a great part of the time. [3] Seeley's "Expansion of England."

509. Marlborough; Blenheim, Gibraltar, and Other Victories (1702-1709).

John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough (S491), commanded the English and Dutch forces, and had for his ally Prince Eugene of Savoy, who led the German armies. The Duke, who was known in the enemy's camps by the flattering name of "the handsome Englishman," had risen from obscurity. He owed the beginning of his success to his good looks and a court intrigue. In politics he sympathized chiefly with the Tories (S479), but his interests in the war led him to support the Whigs (S479).

He was avaricious, unscrupulous, and teacherous. James II trusted him, and he deceived him and went over to William (S491); William trusted him, and he deceived him and opened a treasonable correspondence with the dethroned James; Anne trusted him, and he would undoubtedly have betrayed her if the so-called "Pretender" (SS490, 491) had been able to bid high enough, or if he could have shown him that his cause was likely to be successful. In his greed for money the Duke hesitated at nothing; he took bribes from army contractors, and robbed his soldiers of their pay.[1]

[1] See Hallam, Macaulay; and Thackeray's "Henry Esmond."

As a soldier, Marlborough had no equal. Voltaire says of him with truth that "he never besieged a fortress which he did not take, nor fought a battle which he did not win." This man, at once so able and so false, to whom war was a private speculation rather than a contest for right or principle, now opened the campaign. He captured those fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands which Louis XIV had garrisoned with French troops to menace Holland, but he could not induce the enemy to rish a battle in the open field.

At length, Marlborough, by a brilliant movement (1704), changed the scene of the war from the Netherlands to Bavaria in southern Germany. There, at the little village of Blenheim,[2] he, with Prince Eugene, gained a victory over the French which saved Germany from the power of Louis XIV. (See map opposite.) England, out of gratitude for the humiliation of her powerful enemy, presented the Duke with the ancient royal Park of Woodstock, near Oxford, and built for him the palace of Blenheim, which the architect called "the biggest house for the biggest man in England." It is still occupied by descendants of the Duke's family. A few days before the battle of Blenheim, a powerful English fleet had attacked and taken Gibraltar (1704). England thus gained and still holds the command of the great inland sea of the Mediterranean. In the course of the next five years Marlborough fought three great battles,[3] by which he drove the French out of the Netherlands once for all, and finally beat them on a hotly contested field in northern France. The power of Louis XIV was now so far broken that England no longer felt any fear that he would overcome her colonies in America (S508).

[2] Blenheim: The palace grounds are nearly twelve miles in circumference. The Marlborough family hold Blenheim on condition that they present a flag every year (August 2) to the English sovereign at Windsor Castle. [3] Ramillies (1706); Oudenarde (1708); Malplaquet (1709).

510. The Powers behind the Throne; Jennings against Masham.

But if the Duke of Marlborough was remarkable, so too was his wife. While the war was going on, the real power of the Crown, though it stood in Anne's name, was practically in the hands of Sarah Jennings, Duchess of Marlborough, who held the office of Mistress of the Robes. She and the Queen had long been inseparable, and it was her influence that cause Anne to desert her father (S491) and espouse the cause of William of Orange.

The imperious temper of the Duchess carried all before it, and in her department she won victories which might well be compared with those the Duke, her husband, gained on the field of battle. In time her sway over her royal companion grew to be so absolute that she seemed to decide everything, from questions of state to the cut of a gown or the color of a ribbon. Finally, it became a common saying that "Queen Anne reigns, but Queen Sarah governs."[1]

[1] For years the Queen and the Duchess corresponded almost daily under the names of "Mrs. Morley" (the Queen) and "Mrs. Freeman" (the Duchess), the latter taking that name because, she said, it suited the frank and bold character of her letters.

While the Duchess continued in power, she used her influence to urge forward the war with France undertaken by England to check the designs of Louis XIV on Spain and Holland, and also to punish him for his recognition of the claim of the Pretender to the English crown (S491). Her object was to advance her husband, who, as commander in chief of the English and Dutch forces on the Continent, had won fame and fortune,—the first by his splendid ability, the second by his unscrupulous greed (S509).

After a number of years, the Queen and the Duchess quarreled, and the latter was superseded by her cousin, a Mrs. Masham (1711), who soon got as complete control of Anne as the former favorite had possessed. Mrs. Masham was as sly and supple as the Duchess had been dictatorial and violent. She was cousin to Robert Harley, a prominent Tory politician (S479). Through her influence Harley now became Prime Minister in everything but name. He succeeded in putting a stop to further fighting, and Marlborough was ordered home in disgrace on a charge of having robbed the government. Thus it was, as Hallam remarks, that "the fortunes of Europe were changed by the insolence of one waiting woman and the cunning of another."[1]

511. Dr. Sacheverell (1710).

An incident occurred about this time which greatly helped the Tories (S479) in their schemes. Dr. Sacheverell, a violent Tory and High Churchman (S507), began preaching a series of vehement sermons in London condemning the Whig policy which called for the reopening of the war. He also endeavored to revive the exploding theory of the Divine Right of Kings (S419, 429), and declared that no tyranny on the part of a sovereign could by any possibility justify a subject in resisting the royal will. The Whig leaders brought the preacher to trial for alleged treasonable utterances (1710). He was suspended from his office for three years, and his book of sermons was publicly burned by the common hangman.

This created intense popular excitement; Sacheverell was regarded as a political martyr by all who wished the war ended. A reaction against the Government set in; the Whigs (S479) were driven from power, and the Tories passed two very harsh laws[2] against Dissenters (S472), though they were repealed a few years later. The Duchess of Marlborough had to leave her apartments in the palace of St. James, and in her spite broke down marble mantels and tore off the locks from doors. Mrs. Masham's friends, the Tories (S479), or peace party, who had now triumphed, prepared to put a complete end to the fighting.

[2] These were the Occasional Conformity Act and the Schism Act (S518).

512. The Peace of Utrecht, 1713.

Not long after this change a messenger was privately dispatched to Louis XIV to ask if he wished for peace. "It was," says the French minister, "like asking a dying man whether he would wish to be cured."[3] Later, terms were secretly agreed upon between the Tories (S479) and the French, and in 1713, in the quaint Dutch city of Utrecht, the allies, together with France and Spain, signed the treaty bearing that name.

[2] Morris's "The Age of Anne."

By it Louis XIV bound himself: (1) To acknowledge the right of England to limit the succession to the crown to Protestant sovereigns (S497). (2) To compel Prince James Edward, the so-called "Pretender" (SS490, 491) to quit France. (3) To renounce the union of the crowns of France and Spain; but Philip was to retain the Spanish throne (S508). (4) To cede to England all claims to Newfoundland, Acadia, or Nova Scotia, and that vast region known as the Hudson Bay Company's Possessions.

Next, Spain was to give up: (1) The Spanish Netherlands to Austria, an ally of Holland, and grant to the Dutch a line of forts to defend their frontier against France. (2) England was to have the exclusive right for thirty-three years of supplying the Spanish-American colonists with negro slaves.[1]

[1] This right (called the "Assiento," or Contract) had formerly belonged to France. By its transfer England got the privilege of furnishing 4800 "sound, merchantable negroes "annually," "two thirds to be males" between ten and forty years of age.

This trade had long been coveted by the English, and had been carried on to some extent by them ever since Sir John Hawkins entered upon it in Queen Elizabeth's reign. Sir John grew very rich through his traffic in human flesh, and he set up a coat of arms emblazoned with a slave in fetters, so that all might see how he had won wealth and distinction.

513. Union of England and Scotland, 1707.

Since the accession of James I (1603), England and Scotland had been ruled by one sovereign, but each country retained its own Parliament and its own forms of worship. In 1707 the two countries were finally united under the name of Great Britain.

The Established (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland and the Scottish laws were to be preserved. The independent Parliament of Scotland was given up, and the Scotch were henceforth represented in the English Parliament by sixteen peers chosen by members of the Scottish peerage at the summoning of every Parliament; and by forty-five (now seventy- two) members returned by Scotland to the House of Commons.

With the consummation of the union between the two countries Great Britain adopted a new flag, the Union Jack, which was formed by the junction of the red cross of St. George of England and the white cross of St. Andrew of Scotland.[1]

[1] After Ireland was united to Great Britain (1800) the red cross of St. Patrick was added to the flag (1801). The first Union Jack was the work of James I, whose usual signature was Jacques (hence "Jack"), French for James.

514. Literature of the Period; the First Daily Paper.

The reign of Anne has been characterized as one of corruption in high places and of brutality in low, but in literature it takes rank next to that of Elizabeth (S393). There was indeed no great central luminary like Shakespeare, but a constellation of lesser ones,—such as Addison, Defoe, and Pope. They shone with a splendor of their own. The lurid brilliancy of the half-mad satirist Dean Swift was beginning to command attention; on the other hand, the calm, clear light of the philosopher John Locke was near its setting.

Aside from these great names in letters, it was an age generally of contented dullness, well represented in the good-natured mediocrity of Queen Anne herself. During her reign the first daily newspaper (SS422, 443) appeared in England,—the Daily Courant (1703); it was a dingy, badly printed little sheet, not much bigger than a man's hand. The publisher said he made it so small "to save the Publick at least one half the Impertinences of Ordinary News-Papers."

Perhaps it was well this journal set up no greater pretensions, for it had to compete with swarms of abusive political pamphlets, such as Swift wrote for the Tories and Defoe for the Whigs (S479). It had also to compete with the gossip and scandal of the coffeehouses and the clubs; for this reason the proprietor found it no easy matter either to fill it or to sell it.

A few years later (1711) a periodical appeared, called the Spectator. It was published daily, and Addison, its chief contributor, soon made it famous. Each number consisted of an essay hitting off the follies and foibles of the age, and it was regularly served at the breakfast tables of people of fashion along with their tea and toast.

One of the greatest merits of the Spectator was its happy way of showing that wit and virtue are after all better friends than wit and vice. Neither this little magazine nor the newspapers of that time dared to publish a single line of parliamentary debate. But they marked the humble beginning of that vast organized power, represented by the daily press of London, which discusses everything of interest throughout the world.

515. Death of the Queen.

The ingratitude of public men and the furious quarrels of politicians so teased and vexed the Queen that she at last fell into a fatal illness. Her physician wrote to Dean Swift, "I believe sleep was never more welcome to a weary traveler than death was to her." When she laid down the scepter (1714) she left no heir to the throne, and so the power of the Stuarts (S415) came to an end.

According to the terms of the Act of Settlement (S497) the crown now passed to George, Elector of Hanover, a Protestant descendant of James I of England. (See Table, p. 323.) James Edward, son of James II, believed to the last that his half-sister, Queen Anne, would name him her successor;[1] instead of that it was she who first dubbed him the "Pretender" (S491).

[1] Anne and the so-called "Pretender" were children of James II by different mothers.

516. Summary.

The whole reign of Anne was taken up with the strife of political parties at home, and the War of the Spanish Succession abroad. The Whigs (S479) were always intriguing through the Duchess of Marlborough and other leaders to keep up the war and to keep out the so-called "Pretender"; the Tories (S479), on the other hand, were just as busy through Mrs. Masham and her coadjutors in endeavoring to establish peace, and with it the Divine Right of Kings (SS419, 429).

The extreme Tories hoped for the restoration of the Roman Catholic
Stuarts in the person of James Edward, the so-called "Pretender." The
War of the Spanish Succession resulted in the defeat of Louis XIV and
the confirmation of that Act of Settlement (S497) which secured the
English crown to a Protestant prince.

GENERAL REFERENCE SUMMARY OF THE STUART PERIOD

1603-1714 (Commonwealth, 1649-1660)

I. Government. II. Religion. III. Military Affairs. IV. Literature and
Learning. V. General Industry and Commerce. Vi. Mode of Life,
Manners, and Customs

I. Government

517. The Divine Right of Kings; the Civil War; the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688.

The period began with the attempt of James I to carry out his theory that the King derives his right to rule directly from God, and in no wise from the people. Charles I adopted this disastrous theory, and was supported in it by Manwaring and other clergymen, who declared that the King represents God on earth, and that the subject who resists his will, or refuses a tax or loan to him, does so at the everlasting peril of his soul.

Charles I's arbitrary methods of government and levies of illegal taxes, with the imprisonment of those who refused to pay them, led to the meeting of the Long Parliament and the enactment in 1628 of the statue of the Petition of Right, or second great charter of English liberties.

The same Parliament abolished the despotic courts of Star Chamber and High Commission, which had been used by Strafford and Laud to carry out their tyrannical scheme called "Thorough."

Charles I's renewed acts of oppression and open violation of the laws, with his levies of "ship money," led to the Grand Remonstrance, an appeal to the nation to support Parliament in its struggle with the King. The attempt of the King to arrest five members who had taken a prominent part in drawing up the Remonstrance brought on the Civil War and the establishment of the Commonwealth. The new republic was utterly opposed to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. It declared "the People are, under God, the origin of all just power." Eventually Cromwell became Protector of the nation, and ruled by means of a strong military force.

On the restoration of the Stuarts, Feudal Tenure and the Right of Purveyance were abolished by Parliament (1660). Charles II endeavored to rule without Parliament by selling his influence to Louis XIV, by the secret Treaty of Dover. During his reign, the Habeas Corpus Act was passed and feudalism was practically abolished.

James II endeavored to restore the Roman Catholic religion. His treatment of the University of Oxford, and imprisonment of the Seven Bishops, with the birth of a son who would be educated as a Roman Catholic, caused the Revolution of 1688, and placed William and Mary on the throne.

Parliament now, 1689, passed the Bill of Rights, the third great charter for the protection of the English people, and later confirmed it, 1701, by the Act of Settlement, which secured the crown to a line of Protestant sovereigns. The Mutiny Bill, passed at the beginning of William III's reign, made the army dependent on Parliament. These measures practically put the government in the hands of the House of Commons, where it has ever since remained. The Long Parliament had passed a Triennial Act (1641) requiring a new Parliament to be summoned within three years from the dissolution of the last Parliament, which was to sit not longer than three years. This law was repealed in 1664 and reenacted under William III in 1694. William's wars caused the beginning of the National Debt and the establishment of the Bank of England.

In the reign of Anne, 1707, Scotland and England were united under the name of Great Britain. During her sovereignty the permanent Whig and Tory parties, which came into existence in the time of Charles II, became especially prominent. They have since continued to divide the parliamentary government between them,—the Whigs seeking to extend the power of the people; the Tories, that of the Crown and the Church. After the passage of the Reform Bill in 1832 (S582) the Whigs took the name of Liberals and the Tories that of Conservatives. The system of Cabinet Government, which now prevails, took its rise in 1721 under Robert Walpole, seven years after Anne's death (S534).

II. Religion

518. Religious Parties and Religious Legislation.

At the beginning of this period we find four religious parties in England: (1) the Roman Catholics; (2) the Episcopalians, or supporters of the National Church of England; (3) the Puritans, who wised to remain members of that Church, but who sought to "purify" it from certain Roman Catholic customs and modes of worship; (4) the Independents, who were endeavoring to establish independent congregational societies. In Scotland the Puritans established their religion in a Church governed by elders, or presbyters, instead of bishops, which on that account got the name of Presbyterians.

James I persecuted all who dissented from the Church of England; and after the Gunpowder Plot the Roman Catholics were practically deprived of the protection of the law, and subject to terrible oppression. In James's reign Bartholomew Legate, a Unitarian, was burned at West Smithfield Market, London (1612), for denying the doctrine of the trinity. He was the last English martyr. Charles I greatly exasperated the Puritans in the English Church by his Declaration of Sports, which recommended games in the churchyards after service on Sunday. Clergymen who refused to read the Declaration to their congregation were dismissed from their places.

During the period of the Civil War and the Commonwealth, Presbyterianism was established as the national worship of England and Scotland by the Solemn League and Covenant. A great many Episcopal clergymen were deprived of their parishes. At the Restoration several laws against the Scotch Covenanters and other Dissenters were enforced, and retaliatory legislation drove two thousand clergymen from their parishes to starve. On the other hand, the pretended Popish Plot caused the exclusion of Roman Catholics from both houses of Parliament, and all persons holding office were obliged to partake of the sacrament according to the Church of England. James II's futile attempt to restore Catholicism ended in the Revolution and the passage of the Toleration Act, granting liberty of worship to all Protestant Trinitarians. Stringent laws were passed against Catholics (1700), but they were not regularly enforced. Under Anne the Occasional Conformity Act (1711) and the Schism Act (1714) were aimed at Dissenters. The first of these laws punished officeholders who, during their term of office, should attend any dissenting place of worship; the second forbade any person's keeping a public or private school unless he was a member of the Church of England. Both laws were repealed a few years later (1718).

III. Military Affairs

519. Armor and Arms.

Armor still continued to be worn in some degree during this period, but it consisted chiefly of the helmet with breastplates and backplates. Firearms of various kinds were in general use; also hand grenades, or small bombs, and the bayonet. The chief wars of the period were the Civil War, the wars with the Dutch, William's war with France, which extended to America, and the War of the Spanish Succession.

IV. Literature, Learning, and Art

520. Great Writers.

The most eminent prose writers of this period were Sir Walter Raleigh, Lord Bacon, Sir Isaac Newton, John Bunyan, Bishop Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, John Locke, Hobbes, Dean Swift, Defoe, and Addison; the chief poets, Shakespeare and Jonson (mentioned under the preceding period), Milton, Dryden, Pope, Butler, and Beaumont and Fletcher, with a class of writers known as the "Comic Dramatists of the Restoration," whose works, though not lacking in genius, exhibit many of the worst features of the licentious age in which they were produced. Three other great writers were born in the latter part of this period,— Fielding, the novelist, Hume, the historian, and Butler,[1] the ablest thinker of his time in the English Church,—but their productions belong to the time of the Georges.

[1] Bishop Butler, author of "The Analogy of Religion" (1736), a work which gained for him the title of "The Bacon of Theology."

521. Progress in Science and Invention.

Sir Isaac Newton revolutionized natural philosophy by his discovery and demonstration of the law of gravitation, and Dr. William Harvey accomplished as great a change in physiological science by his discovery of the circulation of the blood. The most remarkable invention of the age was a rude steam engine, patented in 1698 by Captain Savery, and so far improved by Thomas Newcomen in 1712 that it was used for pumping water in coal mines for many years. Both were destined to be superseded by James Watt's engine, which belongs to a later period (1765).

522. Architecture.

The Gothic style of the preceding periods was followed by the Italian, or classical, represented in the works of Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren. It was a revival, in modified form, of the ancient Greek and Roman architecture. St. Paul's Cathedral, the grandest church ever built in England for Protestant worship, is the best example of this style. Many beautiful manor houses were built in the early part of this period, which, like the churches of the time, were often ornamented with the exquisite wood carving of Grinling Gibbons. There were no great artists in England in this age, though Charles I employed Rubens and other foreign painters to decorate the palace of Whitehall and Windsor Castle.

523. Education.

The higher education of the period was confined almost wholly to the study of Latin and Greek. The discipline of all schools was extremely harsh. Nearly every lesson was emphasized by a liberal application of the rod, and the highest recommendation a teacher could have was that he was known as "a learned and lashing master."

V. General Industry and Commerce

524. Manufactures.

Woolen goods continued to be a chief article of manufacture. Silks were also produced by thousands of Huguenot weavers, who fled from France to England in order to escape the persecutions of Louis XIV. Coal was now extensively mined, and iron and pottery works were giving industrial importance to Birmingham and other growing towns in the Midlands.

525. Commerce.

A permanent English colony was established in America in 1607, and by 1714 the number of such colonies had increased to twelve. During a great part of this period intense commercial rivalry existed between England and Holland, each of which was anxious to get the monopoly of the colonial import and export trade. Parliament passed stringent navigation laws, under Cromwell and later, to prevent the Dutch from competing with English merchants and shippers. The East India and South Sea companies were means of greatly extending English commercial enterprise, as was also the tobacco culture of Virginia.

526. Roads and Travel.

Good roads were still unknown in England. Stagecoaches carried a few passengers at exorbitant rates, requiring an entire day to go a distance which an express train now travels in less than an hour. Goods were carried on pack horses or in cumbrous wagons, and so great was the expense of transportation that farmers often let their produce rot on the ground rather than attempt to get in to the nearest market town.

In London a few coaches were in use, but covered chairs, carried on poles by two men and called "sedan chairs," were the favorite vehicles. They continued to be used for a century after this period closes. Although London had been in great part rebuilt since the Great Fire (1666), the streets were still very narrow, without sidewalks, heaped with filth, and miserably lighted.

527. Agriculture; Pauperism.

Agriculture generally made no marked improvement, but gardening did, and many vegetables and fruits were introduced which had not before been cultivated.

Pauperism remained a problem which the government had not yet found a practical method of dealing with. There was little freedom of movement; the poor man's parish was virtually his prison, and if he left it to seek work elsewhere, and required help on the way, he was certain to be sent back to the place where he was legally settled.

VI. Mode of Life, Manners, and Customs

528. Dress.

In the time of Charles II and his successors the dress of the wealthy and fashionable classes was most elaborate and costly. Gentlemen wore their hair long, in ringlets, with an abundance of gold lace and ruffles, and carried long, slender swords, known as rapiers. Sometimes indeed they outshone the ladies in the splendor of their costume, and in one instance the bride at a wedding burst into tears because her gorgeously dressed husband looked so much handsomer than she did that all eyes were fixed on him alone. Later on, large flowing wigs came into fashion, and no man of any social standing thought of appearing without one.

In Queen Anne's reign both ladies and gentlemen powdered their hair. The ladies also painted their faces and ornamented them with minute black patches, which served not only for "beauty spots," but showed, by their arrangement, with which political party they sympathized.

529. Coffeehouses.

Up to the middle of the seventeenth century ale and beer were the common drink of all classes; but about that time coffee was introduced, and coffeehouses became fashionable resorts for gentlemen and for all who wished to learn the news of the day. Tea had not yet come into use; but, in 1660, Pepys says in his diary: "Sept. 25. I did send for a cup of tee, a China drink, of which I never had drank before."

530. The Streets of London.

No efficient police existed in London; at night the streets were infested with brutal ruffians, and, as late as Queen Anne's time, by bands of "fine gentlemen" not less brutal, who amused themselves by overturning sedan chairs, rolling women downhill in barrels, and compelling men to dance jigs, under the stimulus of repeated pricks from a circle of sword points, until the victims fell fainting from exhaustion. Duels were frequent, on the slightest provocation. Highwaymen abounded both in the city and without, and, unless one went well armed, it was often dangerous to travel any distance in the country.

531. Brutal Laws.

Hanging was the common punishment for theft and many other crimes. The public whipping of both men and women through the streets was frequent. Debtors were shut up in prison, and left to beg from passers-by or starve; and ordinary offenders were fastened in a wooden frame called the "pillory" and exposed on a high platform, where they were pelted by the mob with mud, rotten eggs, and other unsavory missiles. In some cases their bones were broken with clubs and brickbats. The pillory continued in use until the accession of Victoria in 1837.