Little Arthur's history of England

by Lady Maria Callcott

FOOTNOTES:

[3] Armada is the Spanish word for Navy.

CHAPTER XLVI.
ELIZABETH.—Continued.
How Ireland was in an evil condition from the conquest; how Elizabeth tried to improve it by sending it wise governors; how the Earl of Desmond’s and the Earl of Tyrone’s rebellions were subdued; how the Earl of Essex behaved ill, and was put to death; and how Sir Philip Sidney was killed in battle.

It is a long time since I mentioned Ireland to you. You know that in the reign of King Henry the Second the English took a great part of it, and drove the old Irish away to the west side of the island.

Now the English, who settled in Ireland at that time, soon grew more like Irish than Englishmen, and they were as ready to quarrel with any new English that went to settle there as the old Irish had been to quarrel with them; so poor Ireland had never been quiet. The different lords of the new Irish, and the kings of the old were always fighting, and then they sent to England sometimes to ask for help, and often to complain of one another. Then the kings of England used to send soldiers, with private captains, who very often fought whoever they met, instead of helping one side or the other; and these soldiers generally treated the unhappy Irish as ill as the Danes used to treat the English.

In Queen Elizabeth’s time the miserable people in Ireland were never a day without some sad quarrel or fight in which many of them were killed; and though Ireland is a good country for corn and cattle, and all things useful, yet there was nothing to be had there but oatmeal; the people lived like wild savages, and even a good many of the English that had settled there wore the coarse Irish dress, used bows and arrows, and let their hair grow filthy and matted, more like the wild old Britons you read of in the first chapter, than like Christian gentlemen.

Ireland was strangely divided then; there was the part where the old Irish lived in huts among bogs and mountains; then the part with a few old castles that the first English settlers had built; and then that where fresh captains, who had come from time to time, had fixed themselves in forts and towns; and all these three parts were constantly at war.

Elizabeth, when she found how very ill Ireland was governed, wished to make it a little more like England, and to try to bring the people to live in peace. She sent a wise Governor there, called Sir Henry Sydney, and then another called Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton; but all that these good men could do was to keep the new English a little in order, and to try to do justice to the other people. By the queen’s orders they set up schools, and a college in Dublin, in hopes that the young Irishmen would learn to become more like the men of other countries.

But the bad way of governing Ireland had gone on too long to allow it to be changed all at once; and Elizabeth found she must send an army there to keep the different English and Irish chiefs in order, if she wished to have peace in the country.

Now these chiefs were all Roman Catholics, for I believe there were no Protestants in Ireland but the very newest of the English; and when the King of Spain made war against Queen Elizabeth, he sent some Spanish soldiers to Ireland to help the Irish chiefs to make war upon the English.

The story of these wars is long and very sad, and belongs rightly to the history of Ireland; but I must tell you what happened to one or two of the chief men of Ireland at this time.

The Earl of Desmond was one who joined the King of Spain’s people, and when Lord Grey drove the Spaniards out of Ireland, Desmond tried to hide himself among the woods and bogs in the wildest part of the country. But the English soldiers hunted him from place to place, so that he had no rest. One night he and his wife had just gone to bed in a house close by the side of a river; the English soldiers came, and the old Lord and Lady Desmond had just time to get up and run into the water, in which they stood up to their necks, till the English were gone. At last some soldiers, who were seeking for them, saw a very old man sitting by himself in a poor hut; they found out it was the Earl of Desmond, and they cut off his head directly, and sent it to queen Elizabeth.

But the most famous Irishman at this time was Hugh O’Neil, Earl of Tyrone. His uncle, Shane O’Neil, tried to make himself King of Ulster, and hated the English so that he killed some of his own family because they wanted to teach the Irish to eat bread like the English, instead of oat cakes.

This Hugh, Earl of Tyrone, had a large army of Irish, and fought all the queen’s officers for many years, though she sent many of the best and bravest there. Sir Henry Bagenal was one, and her greatest favourite, the Earl of Essex, was another. Two or three times, when Tyrone was near being conquered, he pretended to submit, and promised that if the queen would forgive him, he would keep his Irish friends quiet. He broke his word, however, and kept a civil war up in Ireland till very near the queen’s death, when, after being almost starved for want of food in the bogs near his own home, he made peace in earnest, and Ireland was quiet for a few years.

We are come now to the end of Queen Elizabeth’s long and famous reign. She died when she had been queen forty-five years, and was very unhappy at her death. Her favourite Lord Essex behaved so ill after he came from Ireland, that the queen’s counsellors ordered him to be put to death. Now, the queen had once given him a ring, when he was her greatest favourite, and told him, that if he would send it to her whenever he was in danger, she would save his life and forgive any of his faults. She thought he would send this ring to her, when he knew he was condemned to have his head cut off; and so he did; but a cruel woman to whom he trusted it, to give the queen, never did so till long after Essex was dead; and then Elizabeth, who was old and ill herself, was so vexed, that she hardly ever spoke to anybody again, and died in a few days afterwards at Richmond.

It would make our little history too long, if I tried to tell you of all the wise and good things done by Elizabeth, or if I told you the names of half the famous men who lived in her time.

Besides Essex, there was her other favourite, Leicester, a clever bad man.

Her god-son, Harrington, belonged to the learned men and poets of her time; but neither he nor any of the rest, though there were many, were to be compared to Shakespeare, whose plays everybody reads and loves, nor even to Spenser, who lived and died in Elizabeth’s reign.

Then there were her wise counsellors Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Burleigh, and Walsingham, and, all the generals and admirals I have told you about. I must just mention one more, because you will wish to be like him when you grow up. He was Sir Philip Sidney, the best and wisest, and most learned, and bravest. He was killed in battle. When he was lying on the ground, very hot and thirsty, and bleeding to death, a friend was bringing him a cup of water; but he happened to look round, and saw a poor dying soldier who had no friends near him, looking eagerly towards the cup. Sir Philip did not touch it, but sent to be given to that soldier, who blessed him as he was dying. And that act of self-denial and mercy makes all who hear the name of Philip Sidney bless him even now.

CHAPTER XLVII.
JAMES I.—1603 to 1625.
How the King of Scotland became King of England also; how he and the Queen behaved very unwisely; how he ill-treated the Papists and the Puritans; how the Papists intended to destroy the King and the Parliament, but were prevented; how Prince Charles and the Duke of Buckingham visited France and Spain: how King James did many foolish things, and left his subjects discontented.

James Stuart, the first King James of England, but the sixth of Scotland, was one of the most foolish and the most mischievous kings we ever had in England. He was the son of the unhappy Mary Queen of Scots, and after she was put in prison the first time, the Scotch lords made James king, though he was quite an infant. The lords gave him the best masters they could find to teach him, and he learned what was in books very well, but nobody could ever teach him how to behave wisely.

When Queen Elizabeth died, James, king of Scotland, became king of England, because he was Elizabeth’s cousin, and from that time England and Scotland have been under one king, and are called Great Britain.

As soon as James heard the queen was dead, he set out from Scotland to come to London; for as Scotland was then a very poor country, he and a great number of Scotchmen who came with him thought they had nothing to do but to come to England, and get all the money they could by all sorts of ways. Then he made so many lords and knights that people began to laugh at him and his new nobles. But, worst of all, he fancied that parliaments had no business to prevent kings from doing whatever they pleased, and taking money from their subjects whenever they liked.

You may think how vexed the English were when they found that they had a king so unfit for them, after their wise Queen Elizabeth.

The queen of James was Anne, the daughter of the King of Denmark. She was very extravagant, and loved feasts and balls, and acted plays herself, and filled the court with rioting, instead of the ladylike music and dancing, and poetry and needlework, that Queen Elizabeth and her ladies loved.

Instead of riding about among the people, and depending on their love and good will, James was always hiding himself; the only thing he seemed to love was hunting, and for the sake of that he neglected his people and his business.

The favourites he had were far from being useful, or wise, or brave. He chose them for their good looks and rosy cheeks, without inquiring anything about their behaviour.

He dealt severely with the Roman Catholics, whom he put in prison, and from whom he took a great deal of money. Then he disliked those Protestants who did not wish to have bishops as well as parish clergymen, and who are mostly called Presbyterians; but some were then named Puritans, and he would not let them alter the Prayer-book.

The Roman Catholics being tired of the ill usage they got from King James, some of them thought that, if they could kill him, they might take one of his young children to bring up themselves, and have a Roman Catholic king or queen, and get all England and Scotland for themselves. They thought besides, that they had better kill all the lords and all the gentlemen of the House of Commons too, and so get rid of the whole Protestant parliament.

From thinking wickedly they went on to do wickedly. They found there were some cellars under the houses of parliament, and they filled these cellars with gunpowder; and as they expected the parliament would meet in the house all together, with the king, on the fifth day of November, they hired a man called Guy Fawkes to set fire to the gunpowder, and so to blow it up, and kill everybody there at once.

Now, it happened that one of the lords, whose name was Mounteagle, had a friend among the Roman Catholics, and that friend wrote him a letter, without signing his name, to beg him not to go to the parliament that day, for that a sudden blow would be struck which would destroy them all. Lord Mounteagle took this letter to the king’s council. Some of the councillors laughed at it, and said it was only sent to frighten Lord Mounteagle. But the king took it, and after thinking a little, he said, the sudden blow must mean something to be done with gunpowder, and he set people to watch who went in and out of the vaults under the parliament-house; till at last, on the very night before the Roman Catholics hoped to kill the king and all those belonging to parliament, they caught Guy Fawkes with his dark lantern, waiting till the time should come for him to set fire to the gunpowder.

The king was very proud of having found out what the letter meant, and used to boast of it as long as he lived; but the truth is that the king’s clever minister, Sir Robert Cecil, had found out all about the plot, and managed to let James have all the credit.

So far I have only told you of the foolish behaviour of King James. I must now write about his mischievous actions.

His eldest son, Prince Henry, died very young; he was a sensible lad, and the people were sorry when he died, especially as his brother Charles was a sickly little boy.

Now, little Charles was a clever child, and had very good dispositions; and if he had been properly brought up, he would have been a good king, and a happy man. Instead of that, you will read that he was a bad king, and I daresay you will cry when you find how very unhappy he was at last.

James taught him that no power on earth had any right to find fault with the king, that the king’s power was given to him by God, and that it was a great sin to say that anything the king did was wrong. Thus he taught him to think that the people were made for nothing but to obey kings, and to labour and get money for kings to spend as they pleased, and that even the nobles were nothing but servants for kings; in short, he filled his poor little son’s mind with wrong thoughts, and never taught him that it was a king’s duty to do all the good he could, and to set an example of what is right.

Yet Charles had many good qualities, as you will read by-and-by. He was a good scholar, and loved books and clever men, and music, and pictures; and if he had only been taught his duty as a king properly, he would have done a great deal of good to England.

King James I. with Steenie and Baby Charles.

I have told you that James used to make favourites of people, without caring much about their goodness. One of his greatest favourites was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, and he gave his son Charles to the Duke to take care of, just when he was grown up. The silly king used to call Buckingham, Steenie, and the prince, Baby Charles, although he was almost as big and as old as a man.

When the prince was old enough to be married, his father wished him to marry the Infanta of Spain. (In Spain the princes are called Infants, and the princesses Infantas.) Now the Duke of Buckingham wanted very much to go abroad, and show himself to all the princes and nobles in France and Spain, for he was very vain of his beauty and his fine clothes; so he put it into the prince’s head, to tell his father he would not marry, unless he would let him go to Spain with the Duke of Buckingham, and see the Infanta before he married her.

The poor foolish king began crying like a child, and begged his dear Steenie and Baby Charles not to go and leave him; but they laughed at him, and went and borrowed all his fine diamonds and pearls, to wear in their hats and round their necks, and took all the money they could get, and set off to go to Spain. They called themselves John Smith and Thomas Smith, and first they went to France.

Prince Charles found the ladies in the French court very pleasant and entertaining. It is true that several of them were not very good, but then they amused Charles, and he was particularly pleased with the Princess Henrietta Maria, who was pretty and merry, and appeared to like Charles very much.

They quickly pursued their journey through France to go to Spain, and when Charles and Buckingham first got there everything seemed very pleasant. The Infanta was handsome, but very different from Henrietta Maria, for she was very grave and steady, and seemed as if she would be a fit wife for the prince, who was naturally grave and steady too.

But the Duke of Buckingham quarrelled with some of the great men of the court, and was so much affronted at not being treated rather like a king than only a plain English nobleman, that he made the prince believe that the King of Spain meant to offend him, and did not really intend his daughter to marry him; and, in short, he contrived to make Charles so angry, that he left Spain in a rage, and afterwards married that very French princess, Henrietta Maria, whom he had seen at Paris.

The bad education King James gave his son Charles, though it was the most mischievous of all his bad acts, was not the only one.

The King of Spain had taken a dislike to Sir Walter Raleigh, who had been so great a favourite of Queen Elizabeth, because Raleigh had beaten his sailors at sea, and his soldiers ashore. But Sir Walter’s men happened to kill some Spaniards when they were looking for a gold mine in South America; so the King of Spain demanded that James should put Raleigh to death, and James shamefully yielded to Spain, and ordered that great and wise man’s head to be cut off.

As to Scotland, King James’s own country, he behaved as ill in all things belonging to it as he did in England. But the thing that turned out worst for the country and his poor son Charles was his insisting on the Scotch people kneeling at the communion, keeping certain holy days, and having bishops, although the Scotch religion is presbyterian. This vexed the Scotch people very much indeed. And the Irish were not better pleased, because the Roman Catholics were ill-treated by James, and most of the Irish were Roman Catholics.

When James died, all the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland were discontented. Poor Ireland was even worse off than ever. Scotland had been neglected, and the people affronted about their religion; and, in England, James had taken money unlawfully, and behaved so ill, both to parliament and people, that everybody disliked him as a king, and he was so silly in his private behaviour, that everybody laughed at him as a gentleman.

In short, I can praise him for nothing but a little book-learning; but as he made no good use of it, he might as well have been without it. He reigned twenty-two years in England, during which there was no great war. But James had begun one against the Emperor of Germany and the King of Spain, just before his death.

I must tell you of one very great man who lived in his reign: Lord Bacon. He was one of the wisest men that ever lived, though not without his faults; but when you grow up you will read his books if you wish to be truly wise.

CHAPTER XLVIII.
CHARLES I.—1625 to 1649.
How Charles the First was governed by ill advisers; how he made the people pay taxes without the consent of Parliament; how the Earl of Strafford behaved very cruelly, and was beheaded; and how the King’s evil government caused a Civil War.

When Charles the First came to be king, all the people were in hopes that he would be a better king than his father, as they believed he was a better man, and so he really was.

He was young and pleasant-looking; he was fond of learning, and seemed inclined to show kindness to all clever men, whether they were poets or good writers in any way, or musicians, or painters, or architects.

Besides, the people hoped that he would manage his money better than James, and not waste it in clothes, and jewels, and drinking, and hunting, and giving it to favourites.

But, unhappily, Charles still allowed the Duke of Buckingham to advise him in everything; indeed, he was a greater favourite than before James’s death, for he had managed to get the French princess Henrietta Maria for a wife for Charles, who was so fond of her, that he thought he never could thank Buckingham enough for bringing her to England.

But the parliament, particularly the Commons, did not like the marriage so much. The new queen was a Roman Catholic, and she brought a number of Roman Catholic ladies and priests to be her servants, and she soon showed that she was greedy and extravagant.

Charles, who, as I told you, had been very badly taught by his father, desired the parliament to give him money in a very haughty manner. The parliament said the people should pay some taxes, but that they could not afford a great deal at that time, for James had been so extravagant that they had not much left to give. Charles, by the advice of Buckingham, sent away the parliament, and tried to get money without its leave, and sent officers about the country to beg for money in the king’s name. Most people were afraid to refuse, and so Charles and Buckingham got a good deal to do as they pleased with.

Buckingham persuaded King Charles to make war against France, because one of the great men in France had affronted him. King James had begun a war with Spain.

The people were now more and more angry, for though they might like to fight for the glory of England, or for the good of the king, they could not bear to think of fighting for a proud, cruel, and selfish man like Buckingham.

I do not know what might have happened at that very time, perhaps a civil war, if a desperate man named Felton had not killed the Duke of Buckingham at Portsmouth, when he was on the way to France to renew the war.

The people were again in hopes that the king would do what was right, and consult the parliament before he attempted to make war, or take money for his subjects, or put any man in prison, now that his bad adviser, Buckingham, was dead. But they were much mistaken. Charles found new advisers, and governed for eleven years without a parliament. The king wanted money, and tried to compel all who had land to pay a tax called Ship Money; but some gentlemen, one of whom was Mr. John Hampden, refused to pay it, and said it was unlawful for the king to take money without the consent of parliament. But the judges declared that the king could take Ship Money, and that the people must pay it. Two of them, however, felt compelled to say that Charles had broken the laws, and the promises made by the English kings in agreement with the Great Charter.

This made the people very angry. They said the worst times were come again, when the kings fancied they might rob their subjects, and put them in prison when they pleased.

Charles was a very affectionate man, and he could not help loving and trusting others instead of making use of his own sense and trusting his people, as Queen Elizabeth had done. So he allowed the queen to advise him in most things, and Laud, Bishop of London, in others; particularly in matters of religion. So he began to oppress the Puritans in England. In poor Ireland, a harsh man, the Earl of Strafford, a great friend and favourite of King Charles, governed in such a cruel manner that everybody complained.

He sent English clergymen to preach in those parts of Ireland where the poor people could only understand Irish, and punished the people for not listening: and when some of the bishops (particularly good Bishop Bedel) begged him to have mercy upon the Irish, he threatened to punish them most severely for speaking in their favour.

All this time the king and queen and their friends were going on taking money by unlawful means from the people, till he was obliged to call a parliament. Then the gentlemen of the Commons insisted on Lord Strafford and Archbishop Laud being punished. Indeed, they would not be satisfied until Charles consented that Strafford’s head should be cut off.

Now, though Strafford well deserved some punishment, he had done nothing which by law deserved death; and therefore Charles ought to have refused his consent. The king had often quarrelled with the parliament, and acted contrary to its advice when he was in the wrong; but now that it would have been right to resist he gave way, and Strafford, who loved Charles, and whose very faults were owing to the king’s own wishes and commands, was beheaded by his order.

Strafford going to Execution.

This was a sad thing for Charles. His friends found that he could not defend them, and many went away from England. The king still wanted to take money, and govern in all things, without the parliament; he even went so far as to send some of the Commons to prison. And the parliament became so angry at last that a dreadful civil war began.

The king put himself at the head of one army, and he sent to Germany for his nephew, Prince Rupert, a cruel and harsh man, to assist him. The queen went to France and Holland, to try to get foreign soldiers to fight in the king’s army against the parliament. The king’s people were called Cavaliers.

The parliament soon gathered another army together to fight the king, and made Lord Essex general; and the navy also joined the parliament: and all the parliament people were called Roundheads.

Now we will end this chapter. And I beg you will think of what I said about James the First, that he was a mischievous king. If he had not begun to behave ill to the people and parliament, and taught his son Charles that there was no occasion for kings to keep the laws, these quarrels with the parliament need not have happened, and there would not have been a Civil War.

CHAPTER XLIX.
CHARLES I.—Continued.
How, after many battles had been fought, King Charles went to Scotland; how the Scots sold him to the English parliament; how the army got the King into their power, and appointed judges to try him, who condemned him to death; how, after a sad parting from two of his children, he was beheaded.

A book twice as big as our little History would not hold all the story of the Civil Wars. England, Scotland, and Ireland were all engaged in them; and many dreadful battles were fought, where Englishmen killed one another, and a great deal of blood was shed.

The first great battle was fought at Edgehill, where many of the king’s officers were killed: then, at a less fight at Chalgrove, the parliament lost that great and good man Mr. Hampden. The battles of Newbury, of Marston Moor, and of Naseby, are all sadly famous for the number of brave and good Englishmen that were killed.

During this civil war, the parliament sent often to the king, in hopes of persuading him to make peace: and I believe that the parliament, and the king, and the real English lords and gentlemen on both sides, truly desired to have peace, and several times the king had promised the parliament to do what they lawfully might ask of him.

But, unhappily, the queen had come back to England, and the king trusted her and took her advice, when he had much better have followed his own good thoughts. Now, the queen and Prince Rupert, the king’s nephew, and some of the lords, were of James the First’s way of thinking, and would not allow that subjects had any right even to their own lives, or lands, or money, if the king chose to take them: and so they persuaded the king to break his word so often with the people and parliament, that at last they could not trust him any longer.

When the king found that the parliament would not trust him again, he determined to go to the Scottish army that had come to England to help the parliament, and he hoped that the Scots would take his part and defend him. But he had offended the Scots by meddling more than they liked with their religion, and some other things, and the leaders of their army agreed to give him up to the English parliament. You will hardly believe, however, that those mean Scots actually sold the king to the English parliament: but they did so. The unhappy king was sent back to England, and was now obliged to agree to what the parliament wished, and there seemed to be an end of the Civil War.

It was not long, however, before it began again; and this second time it ended in Cromwell and the other generals of the army becoming the most powerful men in England. These men now drove away almost all the lords and gentlemen from parliament, so there was nobody but the generals who had any power.

The wisest of the generals, Lord Essex, was dead. The next, General Fairfax, was a good man, but neither so clever nor so cunning as some of the others, particularly one whose name was Oliver Cromwell.

This Cromwell was a Puritan, or Roundhead. He was brave, and very sagacious, and very strictly religious, according to his own notions, though some men thought him a hypocrite; at all events he was always thinking how he could make himself the greatest man in England.

He may have thought that, though the army had got King Charles in its power, the people would never allow him to be put in prison for his lifetime, and that, if he were sent away to another country, he might come back sometime and make war again. So he said that the king had behaved so ill that he ought to be tried before judges. And he and the other generals named a great many judges to examine into all the king’s actions and words.

In the meantime King Charles had been moved from one prison to another, till at last he was brought to London to be tried.

I cannot explain to you, my dear, all the hard and cruel things that were done to this poor king, whose greatest faults were owing to the bad education given him by his father, and the bad advice he got from his wife, and those men whom he thought his best friends.

When his misfortunes came, his wife escaped to France with a few of her own favourites; and her eldest son, Charles, Prince of Wales, also escaped. Soon after his second son, James, Duke of York, also escaped to his mother; but the king’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, and the little Henry, Duke of Gloucester, remained in England.

When King Charles was brought to London, only two of his own friends could see him every day: one of these was Dr. Juxon, Bishop of London, and the other was Mr. Herbert, his valet, who had been with him ever since the army had made him prisoner.

Shortly after the king was brought to London the judges appointed by the army condemned him to death, and three days afterwards his head was cut off.

But those three days were the best and greatest of Charles’s life. In those he showed that, if he had been mistaken as a king, he was a good man and a right high-minded gentleman. One of these days you will read and know more about him. I will only tell you now about his taking leave of his children; and I will copy the very words of his valet, Mr. Herbert, who wrote down all that happened to his dear king and master, during the last part of his life.

The day after the king was condemned to die, “Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester, her brother, came to take their sad farewell of the king their father, and to ask his blessing. This was the twenty-ninth of January. The Princess, being the elder, was the most sensible of her royal father’s condition, as appeared by her sorrowful look and excessive weeping; and her little brother seeing his sister weep, he took the like impression, though, by reason of his tender age, he could not have the like apprehensions. The king raised them both from off their knees; he kissed them, gave them his blessing, and setting them on his knees, admonished them concerning their duty and loyal observance to the queen their mother, the prince that was his successor, love to the Duke of York and his other relations. The king then gave them all his jewels, save the George he wore, which was cut out in an onyx with great curiosity, and set about with twenty-one fair diamonds, and the reverse set with the like number; and again kissing his children, had such pretty and pertinent answers from them both, as drew tears of joy and love from his eyes; and then, praying God Almighty to bless them, he turned about, expressing a tender and fatherly affection. Most sorrowful was this parting, the young princess shedding tears and crying lamentably, so as moved others to pity that formerly were hard-hearted; and at opening the chamber-door, the king returned hastily from the window and kissed them and blessed them.” So this poor little prince and princess never saw their father again.

Parting of King Charles and his children.

The next morning very early, the king called Mr. Herbert to help him to dress, and said it was like a second marriage-day, and he wished to be well dressed, for before night he hoped to be in heaven.

While he was dressing, he said, “Death is not terrible to me! I bless God that I am prepared.” Good Bishop Juxon then came and prayed with Charles, till Colonel Hacker, who had the care of the king, came to call them.

King Charles I. on the Scaffold.

Then the king walked to Whitehall, and as he went one soldier prayed “God bless” him. And so he passed to the banqueting house, in front of which a scaffold was built. King Charles was brought out upon it; and, after speaking a short time to his friends, and to good Bishop Juxon, he knelt down and laid his head upon the block, and a man in a mask cut off his head with one stroke.

The bishop and Mr. Herbert then took their master’s body and head, and laid them in a coffin, and buried them in St. George’s Chapel at Windsor, where several kings had been buried before.

CHAPTER L.
THE COMMONWEALTH.—1649 to 1660.
How the Scotch chose Prince Charles to be their King; how Oliver Cromwell quieted Ireland; how the Scotch put the Marquis of Montrose to death; how Prince Charles’s army was beaten by Cromwell at Worcester; how the Prince escaped to France after many dangers; how the English went to war with the Dutch, and beat them; how Cromwell turned out the parliament, and was made Protector; and how he governed wisely till his death.

As none of the people either in England, Scotland, or Ireland, had expected King Charles would be put to death, you may suppose, my dear little Arthur, how angry many of them were when they heard what had happened.

In Ireland the Roman Catholics knew they should be treated worse by the Puritans than they had been by the king’s governors; and the English settlers expected to be no better used than the old Irish; so they all made ready to fight against the army of the English parliament, if it should be sent to Ireland.

In Scotland, those who had sold King Charles to the English parliament were so angry with the English Roundheads for killing the king, that they chose Prince Charles, the son of the poor dead king, for their king; and they got an army together to defend him and his friends.

As for England, the parliament (or rather the part of it that remained after the king’s death) chose a number of persons to govern the kingdom, and called them a council of state; and this council began to try to settle all those things quietly that had been disturbed by the sad civil war.

But the civil war in Ireland became so violent that the Council sent Oliver Cromwell, who was the best general in England, to that country; and he soon won a good many battles, and made great part of the country submit to the English. And he put his own soldiers into the towns, to keep them. As to the Irish who would have taken young King Charles’ part, and were Roman Catholics, he sent many of them abroad, and treated others so hardly that they were glad to get out of the country. So Cromwell made Ireland quiet by force, and left General Ireton to take care of it.

While Cromwell was in Ireland, a very brave Scotchman, whose name was James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, had gone to Scotland with soldiers from Germany and France, partly, as he said, to punish those who had allowed Charles the First to be beheaded, and partly to try to make Prince Charles king. This brave gentleman, whose story you will love to read some day, was taken prisoner by the Scotch army. The officers behaved very ill, for they forgot his bravery, and the kindness he had always shown to everybody when he was powerful. They forgot that he thought he was doing his duty in fighting for his king, and they put him to death very cruelly. They tied him to a cart, and dragged him disgracefully to prison. They hanged him on a tall gallows, with a book, in which his life was written, tied to his neck; then they cut off his head and stuck it up over his prison-door.

About a month after the Scotch had disgraced themselves by that cruel action, young Prince Charles, whom they called Charles the Second, arrived in Scotland. But he found that he was treated more like a prisoner than a king. The lords and generals of the Scotch army wanted him to be a presbyterian like them; but he liked better to go with the Scotch army into England, to try and persuade the English to fight for him, and to make him king.

But Cromwell, who had returned from Ireland, collected a large army in England, with which he marched into Scotland; and, finding that Charles meant to make war in England, he followed him back again with part of the army, and left General Monk in Scotland with the rest.

Cromwell found King Charles and his army at Worcester, and there he fought and won a great battle, in which a great many Scotch noblemen were killed, as well as several English gentlemen. Charles was obliged to run away and hide himself, and for this time he gave up all hopes of being really King of England.

You would like, I daresay, to hear how he contrived to escape from Cromwell, who would certainly have shut him up in prison if he had caught him.

I must tell you that the English generals had promised a great deal of money to anybody who would catch Charles and bring him to them; and they threatened to hang anybody who helped the poor young prince in any way; but there were some brave men and women too, who had pity on him, as you shall hear.

After the battle of Worcester, the first place he got to was a farm called Boscobel, where some poor wood-cutters, of the name of Penderell, took care of him, and gave him some of their own clothes to wear, that the soldiers might not find out that he was the prince. One evening he was obliged to climb up into an oak tree, and sit all night among the branches; it was well for him that the leaves were thick, for he heard some soldiers who were looking for him, say, as they passed under the tree, that they were sure he was somewhere thereabouts.

At that time his poor feet were so hurt with going without shoes, that he was obliged to get on horseback to move to another place, where the good wood-cutters still went with him. This time he was hidden by a lady, who called him her servant, and made him ride with her, in woman’s dress, to Bristol, where she was in hopes that she should find a ship to take him to France. But there was no ship ready to sail. Then he went to a Colonel Windham’s house, where the colonel, his mother, his wife, and four servants, all knew him; but not one told he was there. At last he got a vessel to take him at Shoreham, in Sussex, after he had been in more danger several times than I can tell you. He got safely to France, and did not come back to England for many years.

While Cromwell was following Charles to England, General Monk conquered the Scotch army, so that England, Scotland, and Ireland were all made obedient to the parliament about the time when the young king was driven out of the country.

But the parliament was obliged to attend to a war with the Dutch, who had behaved so very cruelly to some English people in India, that all England was eager to have them punished.

Accordingly the English and Dutch went to war, but they fought entirely on the sea. The Dutch had a very famous admiral named Tromp. The best English admiral was Blake; and these two brave men fought a great many battles. Tromp gained one or two victories; but Blake beat him often; and at last, on Tromp being killed, the Dutch were glad to make peace, and promised to punish all those persons who had behaved ill to the English in India, and to pay a great deal of money for the mischief they had done.

About four years after the death of King Charles I., the officers of the army thought themselves strong enough to govern the kingdom without the parliament; so one day Cromwell took a party of soldiers into the parliament-house, and turned everybody out, after abusing them heartily, and then locked up the doors. After this unlawful act, he soon contrived to get the people to call him the Protector of England, which was only another name for king; and from that time till his death he governed England as if he had been a lawful king.

Cromwell was very clever, and always chose the best generals and admirals, whenever he sent armies or fleets to fight. He knew how to find out the very best judges to take care of the laws, and the wisest and properest men to send to foreign countries, when messages for the good or the honour of England were required. He rewarded those who served the country well, but he spent very little money on himself or his family. He treated the children of Charles that had not fled away to France with kindness. The little Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Gloucester were allowed to live together at Carisbrook; and a tutor and attendants were appointed to teach them and watch over them. The little princess soon died; and then the young Duke was sent to France to his mother, and money was given him to pay the expenses of his journey.

Cromwell turns out the Parliament.

After such a dreadful civil war as had made England unhappy during the reign of Charles I., the peace which was in the land, after Cromwell was made Protector, gave the people time to recover. Scotland was better governed than it had ever been before. Only turbulent Ireland was kept quiet by such means as made everything worse than before.

In foreign countries the name of England was feared more in Cromwell’s time than it had ever been since the days of Henry V. And I must say of him that he used his power well.

He died when he had been Protector hardly five years.

There were a number of very great men in the times of the civil wars. But I will only tell you of one, whom I have not named yet. He was secretary to the Council of State, and to Cromwell. But what we best know him by, and love him for now, is his poetry. His name was John Milton; and every Englishman must be proud that he was born in the same land, and that he speaks the same tongue with John Milton.

CHAPTER LI.
CHARLES II.—1660 to 1685.
How Richard Cromwell was Protector for a short time; how the people chose to have a king again; how General Monk brought home Charles the Second; how there was again a war with the Dutch; how the great Plague was stopped by the great Fire; how the King chose evil counsellors; how the Scotch and Irish were treated with great cruelty; how the King caused Lord Russell and many more to be put to death.

After Cromwell’s death his friends wished his son, Richard Cromwell, to be Protector of England. But Richard, who was a shy, quiet man, did not like it, and after a very short trial went home to his house in the country, and left the people to do as they pleased about a Protector.

But the people were tired of being governed by the army, even under such a wise and clever man as Cromwell, and they chose to have a king and real parliament again.

Most men were glad to have bishops again, and to be allowed to have their own prayer-books and their own music in church, instead of being forced to listen for hours together to sermons from the Puritans, who called all pleasant things sin, and grudged even little children their play-hours.

But the really wise people of all kinds, the English Protestants, the Puritans, and the Roman Catholics, had another reason for being glad the king was come home. I will try to explain this reason. You have read that whenever there was any dispute about who should be king, there was always a war of some kind, and generally the worst of all, a civil war. Now, if the people had to choose who should be their new king every time an old one dies, so many men would wish to be king, that there would be disputes, and then perhaps war; and while the war was going on there would be nobody to see that the laws were obeyed, and all the mischief would happen that comes in civil wars.

Now in England, it is settled that when a king dies his eldest son shall be king next; or if he has no son, that his nearest relation shall be king or queen. You remember that after Edward the Sixth, his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, were queens, and then their cousin, James Stuart, was king. This rule prevents all disputes, and keeps the kingdom quiet.

After Oliver Cromwell died, the wisest people were afraid there would be war before another protector could be chosen, so they agreed to have Charles, the son of Charles the First for their king, and to get him to promise not to break the laws, or to oppress the people; and they thought they would watch him, to prevent his doing wrong to the country, and they hoped he might have a son to be king quietly after him.

General Monk, who had the care of all Scotland in Cromwell’s time, was the person who contrived all the plans for bringing Charles the Second to England. It was done very quietly. An English fleet went to Scheveling, in Holland, where Charles got on board, and landed at Dover: in a very short time he arrived in London, along with General Monk, on his birth-day, the 29th of May, and England has never been without a king or queen since.

Charles was a merry, cheerful man, and very good natured. He was fond of balls, and plays, and masques, and nobody could have thought that England was the same place, who had seen it in Cromwell’s time. Then, people wore plain black or brown clothes, stiff starched cravats or small collars, their hair combed straight down, and they all looked as grave as if they were walking to a funeral.

But when Charles came, the ladies and gentlemen put on gay-coloured silk and satin coats; they wore ribbons and feathers, and long curly wigs, and danced and sang as if they were at a wedding.

However, while Charles and the young men were so gay, there were a few old wise lawyers, and clergymen, and admirals, and generals, who managed the laws and other business very well, although there were a good many people who were sadly vexed to see a king again in England.

King Charles II. enters London at his Restoration.

The king soon married the Princess Catherine of Portugal, and her father gave her the island of Bombay, in the East Indies, as a wedding gift. It was almost the first place the English had in India, and now we have gained nearly all that large country, which is larger than England, and France, and Portugal, all put together.

While Charles the Second was king, there was a war with Holland, and another short one with France. Our battles with Holland were chiefly fought at sea: one of our best admirals was James, Duke of York, the king’s brother, who beat the Dutch admirals, Opdam, and the son of the famous Tromp. In another great battle, which lasted four days, General Monk, whom the king had made Duke of Albemarle, beat the great Admiral de Ruyter, and other English officers took several good towns which the Dutch had built in North America, especially New York.

Pleased with these victories, the king grew careless, and forgot to have the Dutch fleets properly watched, so one of them sailed into the river Medway, and burnt a number of English ships at Chatham, and did more mischief by landing at different places, and burning ships and houses, than had ever been done in the same way since the days of the old Danes.

This was near the end of the war. The English, Dutch, and French were equally glad to make peace.

The plague now broke out, first in Holland, then in England. Hundreds of people died every day, and it seemed shocking to be killing more men when so many were dying of that dreadful disorder.

Often when people did not know they had the plague they dropped down dead in the streets. Sometimes a friend would be talking to another and seem quite well and merry, and in a minute he would feel sick, and die before he could get home. Sometimes everybody in a house would die, and then the grave diggers had to go and get the dead out of the house, and put them in a cart at night, and carry them to a place near London, where a great grave was dug, so big that many hundred people were buried there together. Sometimes a poor mother would follow the dead-cart crying because all her children were in it, and she had nobody left alive to love. And often little children were found almost starved, because their fathers and mothers were dead and there was nobody to feed them. There was one lady whose name was North, who had a very little baby; that baby caught the plague. The mother sent all her other children, and her servants, and everybody else into the country, and stayed by herself with the baby and nursed him, and would not fear the plague while she was watching her sick child; and it pleased God to save her and the child too. I have read what he says of his dear mother’s love to him, in a book he wrote when he was an oldish man; and I think that the love he always kept for his mother, and the remembrance of her kindness, made him a good man all his life.

This sad plague was put an end to by a dreadful fire, which burnt down a great part of London. It lasted for four days; and though everybody tried to put an end to it, it still burned on, for there was a strong wind, which blew the flames from one house to another. At that time the streets were very narrow, and most of the houses were built of wood, so no wonder they burned fiercely.

But good arose from this evil: when London was built again the streets were made wider, and the houses were built of brick and stone, so they were not so apt to burn, and they could be kept cleaner; and as the plague seldom comes to clean places, it has never been in London since the fire.

But now we must think about the king. Though he was a very merry man, he was far from being a good one. In the first part of his reign he listened to good advice, especially that given to him by Lord Clarendon, who had stayed with him all the time he was unhappy and poor, and while he was forced to live out of England. But it was not long before he neglected all the good and old friends of his father or of the people, and began to keep company with a number of gay men, who were always laughing and making jokes when they were seen; but they gave the king bad advice in secret, and when they were trusted by him they behaved so ill to the people, that if it had not been for fear of another civil war, they would have tried to send Charles out of England again.

The Duke of Lauderdale, one of Charles’s greatest friends, was sent to Scotland to govern it for Charles. Perhaps there never was so cruel and wicked a governor anywhere before. He ordered everybody to use the English prayer-book, and to leave off their own ways of worshipping God, and to change their prayers. And when he found any persons who did not, he had them shot or hanged at their own doors; and what was worse, if anybody would not tell where the people he wanted to shoot or to hang were to be found, he would put them in prison, or torture them by putting their legs in wooden cases, and then hammering them so tight that the bones were broken; and this he did to children for saving their fathers and mothers, or to grown people for saving their children, or brothers, or sisters. I am sorry to say that another Scotchman, John Graham of Claverhouse, was his helper in all this wickedness.

Scotland was therefore very miserable under Charles, and you will read in larger histories that the Scotch rebelled, and fought against the king.

Ireland was treated, if possible, worse; and as to England, several parts were ready to rebel, especially when it came to be known that Charles and his four chief friends were so mean as to take money from the King of France to pay Charles for letting him conquer several other countries that England ought to have saved from him.

The king’s brother, James, Duke of York, was known to approve of all the king’s cruel and wicked actions; so that the English people found, after all they had suffered in hopes of getting back their freedom, that Charles the Second wished as much to take it away as his father and grandfather did.

I do not wonder, therefore, that some wise, and good, and clever men, who loved our dear England as they ought to do, met together to talk about the best means of having proper parliaments again, and preventing the cruel king from treating England, Scotland, and Ireland, so harshly.

One of these good men was William Lord Russell; and another was Algernon Sidney. The king and his wicked friends found out that they were considering how to save the country from the bad government of Charles and James. They took Lord Russell and Algernon Sidney, and put them in prison, and shortly after condemned them to have their heads cut off.

Lord Russell’s wife was one of the best women I ever read about. She went and knelt down at Charles’s feet to beg him to spare her husband. She even tried to save him by offering a great deal of money to the greedy king; but he would not save Lord Russell, and when Lady Russell found her dear husband must die, she attended him like a servant, she wrote for him like a clerk, she comforted him as none but a good wife can comfort a great man in his misfortunes; and after his death she brought up his children to know his goodness and try to be like him. The man who attended most to Lord and Lady Russell at that time was Bishop Burnet, who has written a true history of those things. He tells us that after Lord Russell had taken leave of his wife, he said, “The bitterness of death is past.” Lord Cavendish, a friend of Lord Russell’s, offered to save him by changing clothes with him, but Lord Russell refused, lest his friend should be punished for saving him. He behaved as an Englishman ought to do at his death, with courage, with gentleness to those people who were with him, even to the man who was to cut off his head, and with meekness and piety to God.

Algernon Sidney, who, though he wished for freedom, took money from the King of France, was the next man put to death by King Charles, and after him a great many who were either his friends or Lord Russell’s.

These were almost the last crimes Charles had time to commit. He died suddenly, disliked by most of his people, and that by his own fault. As I told you, they were ready to love him when he first came to be king; but his extravagance and harshness soon changed their love into dislike.

CHAPTER LII.
JAMES II.—1685 to 1688.
How the Duke of Monmouth rebelled against James the Second, and was beheaded; how Colonel Kirke and Judge Jeffries committed great cruelties; how the people wished to get rid of James on account of his tyranny; how the Prince of Orange came over to England, and was made King; and how James escaped to France.

The reign of James the Second was a very short one, but many things were done in it which we must remember. You know that he was son of King Charles the First, who sent him to his mother in France to be taken care of during the civil war. This was bad for James, who was taught in France to be a Roman Catholic, to hate the English parliaments, and to think that kings might do as they chose, and change the religion of the country they governed, or take money, or put men in prison, without thinking whether it was just or unjust.

James married, first, a daughter of that Lord Clarendon who would have given good advice to Charles the Second, as I told you; but neither Charles nor James would listen to him. James had two daughters when he came to be king; they were both married; the eldest to William, Prince of Orange, who was the king’s nephew, and the second to Prince George of Denmark. You will hear more of both these ladies by-and-by. King James’s second wife was an Italian lady, a princess of Modena, a Roman Catholic, proud and haughty, and disliked by the English.

Before James had been king a year, the Duke of Monmouth, a young prince, who was his nephew, landed in England with a small army, in hopes the people would make him king instead of James. But King James’s soldiers soon put an end to Monmouth’s army, and the young prince was sent to London, where his head was cut off.

The king sent two men to punish the rebels in the parts where Monmouth’s army was destroyed, Colonel Kirke and Judge Jeffries. These two men, by the king’s orders, committed the greatest cruelties; they hung some men on different church steeples; some they cut to pieces before they were quite dead. A kind and charitable old woman, Mrs. Gaunt, was burnt alive because she had once given shelter to a conspirator against King Charles; and Lady Lisle was put to death for the same reason. In short, King James soon showed that he was as cruel and wicked as any king that ever reigned in any country, and the people began to hate him.

The next things that made the English people wish to get rid of James as a king, were his trying to govern without a parliament; his trying to give all power in Church and State to the Roman Catholics; and his putting seven English bishops in prison because they entreated him not to make the clergy read in church during divine service an unlawful proclamation.

The king ordered the bishops to be tried, in hopes that the judges would condemn them to be punished; but the jury (which is, you know, made up of twelve or more men, appointed to help the judge to find out the TRUTH) said that the bishops were not guilty of anything for which the king could punish them; and as soon as the people heard this, all those who were in the street waiting to hear what the judges would say, and even the king’s own soldiers, set up such a shout for joy that the king heard it.

Instead of beginning a civil war, however, a number of the wisest and best English noblemen sent messages to William, Prince of Orange, who had married King James’s eldest daughter, Mary, and invited him to come and help them to put an end to James’s misrule and tyranny.

They asked William to come because he was a good Protestant, and the nearest relation to the king, next to his little son who was just born. Besides, William was a very brave prince, and had defended his own country against that grasping man, Louis the Fourteenth, King of France, who called himself Great because his army had won a great many battles and killed thousands of people.

William and Mary agreed to govern always by means of the parliament; to do equal justice to all their subjects; to listen to their complaints; and never to let the Pope have anything to do with the government of England.

When these things were agreed to, William came over to England with a great many ships, and a large army, and began to march from Torbay, where he landed, to London. In a few days the gentlemen and people, and most of the noblemen of England joined him. Even the king’s second daughter, the Princess Anne, with her husband, Prince George of Denmark, left King James, who found that he had hardly one friend in the world, no, not even his own children. The queen was hated even more than the king, so she made haste to run away, and the king put her, and a little baby boy that they had, into the care of a kind French nobleman, named Lauzun, who carried them to France, where King Louis received them kindly.

King James stayed a few days longer in England, in hopes to find some friends. But he had behaved too ill; no Englishman would take his part. So in less than four years from the time he became King of England he was obliged to leave it for ever, and William, Prince of Orange, was made king by the whole people. And Mary was made queen, to reign with him, not like a queen who is only called so because she is the king’s wife.

CHAPTER LIII.
WILLIAM III.—MARY II.—1688 to 1702.
How there were troubles in Scotland and in Ireland; how William the Third won the battle of the Boyne; how he fought against the French, till they were glad to make peace; how Queen Mary was regretted at her death; how the East India Company was established; and how King William did many good things for England.

The beginning of King William and Queen Mary’s reign was very full of trouble.

It was some time before the parliament could put right many of the things that had been so wrong while James the Second was king; and before everybody would agree how much money to give the king to spend upon the soldiers and sailors he might want in war, as well as upon judges and other persons whose duty it was to help the king to govern in peace as well as war.

Besides this, a great many people in Scotland liked James well enough to wish him to be their king still, because his grandfather came from Scotland; and there were great disputes about allowing William to be king there. Lord Dundee, that Claverhouse who behaved so cruelly to the people in the time of Charles the Second, began a civil war against the new king; but he was killed at the battle of Killicrankie, in the Highlands of Scotland; and, after a great deal of difficulty, William ruled as King of Scotland.

But William had more trouble with Ireland, as you shall read. When King James ran away from England he went to France, where his queen and little son were already. Louis, King of France, who hated King William because he had always defended the countries and the people that Louis wanted to oppress, gave King James a good deal of money, and many soldiers, and ships to carry them to Ireland where he landed with them, and where most of the Irish under Lord Tyrconnel joined him, as well as many of the old English settlers, who were all Roman Catholics, and who did not wish for a Protestant king.

As soon as King William had settled the government in England he went to Ireland, where he found all the country distressed with civil war. King James with his army, made up of French, Irish, and English was on one side of a river called the Boyne; and there King William attacked his army, and beat it; James stayed on the field watching the battle and giving advice until he saw the battle was lost; and then, taking the advice of his general, Lauzun, he fled away with the French guards, and went back to France.

After this King James had no hope of gaining anything by fighting in Ireland; but Ireland itself was much worse for a long while, for long years of quarrel began there at that time.

To the Protestants, who wished to have King William for their king, was given all the power in the country. They called themselves Orangemen because William was Prince of Orange; and made many cruel laws against the Roman Catholics. For many years after this they tried very hard to get the rest of the Irish to turn Protestants; and even now the Irish have not done disputing; but I hope by the time my little friend, Arthur, is grown up, that all the Irish will be friends, and live in peace. It is dreadful to think that, though it is nearly two hundred years since the battle of the Boyne, Ireland has been unhappy all that time. Sometimes one side, sometimes the other, has been cruel and revengeful; and unhappily, till the present century, it was hardly possible to make things better, because there were two separate parliaments, one in Ireland, the other in England; so what one did the other undid, and the quarrels were made worse. But now there is one parliament for both countries, the people in England begin to understand Ireland, and to love the Irish people for many good qualities, and to be sorry for the wrong things that have been done there. The Irish now enjoy the same freedom as the English, and we must hope in future they will listen to reason and wise advice, and obey the laws as the English do.

While King William was busy in Ireland, Queen Mary governed in England, and, by her gentle and kind behaviour to everybody, gained the love of the people; so that they were glad to have her to govern, whenever William was obliged to go to Holland, to carry on the war which had been begun by several countries, as well as England, against that proud and ambitious king, Louis the Fourteenth of France. Louis was one of those strange men who fancy that they are born better than others, and that people have nothing to do but obey them, and that every man and every country must be wicked that does not do exactly as they choose in everything, even in the way of worshipping God.

Now King William knew that kings are only to be better loved and obeyed than other men when they obey God themselves, and love mercy, and do right and justice to their subjects; and that men and countries have a right to be free, and to worship God as they please: and it was because King William knew this that the English chose him to be king when they sent away James the Second, because he wished to be like Louis the Fourteenth in most things.

The war the French king had begun went on for a good many years. Twice people made a plot to murder King William, but they were found out and punished, and the people in England were so angry at such wicked plans, that they gave William more money to pay soldiers and sailors for the war than they had ever given to any king before.

Our king used to go every spring, as long as the war lasted, to fight the French on the borders of France, and he came home in the autumn to see what had been done in England while he was away.

The bravest admiral in these times was Admiral Russell, who beat the French ships whenever he could find them, and who fought a very famous battle against the French Admiral Tourville, about which the English sailors sing some fine songs even now.

King William himself was so brave and skilful in war that he baffled the best French generals, and kept King Louis’s large armies from getting any decisive advantage for many years, till at last Louis was tired of war, and was glad to make peace. So he sent his ambassadors to a place called Ryswick, in Holland, where King William had a country-house and promised to give back all the places he had taken from his neighbours during the war, provided he might have peace.

But in the midst of the war, when everything seemed to be going on well, a great misfortune happened to both the king and people of England. Good Queen Mary died of the small-pox when she had been queen only six years. She was a very good and clever woman. She was not only a good wife to the king, but his best friend; and he trusted her, and took her advice in everything. She was a true Protestant, and very religious, which made her particularly fit to be Queen of England. She was a cheerful, good-tempered woman, which made the people love her; and the ladies who lived at her court were good wives and mothers, and spent part of their time in useful work and reading, like the queen, instead of being always at plays, or gaming, or dressing, as they used to be in the time of Charles and James.

King William lived seven years after the queen died. He was killed by a fall from his horse near Hampton Court.

He was not near so pleasant and cheerful as Queen Mary. But he was the very best king for England that we could have found at that time.

He was a very religious man, and he knew his duty, and loved to do it, both in England, where the people chose him for their king, and in Holland, his own country.

I must write down a few of the things that he did for England: perhaps you will not quite understand how right they were till you are older, but it is proper that you should remember them.

A law was made that no man or woman should ever be king or queen of England but a Protestant.

It was settled that there should be a new parliament very often, and that no year should pass without the meeting of a parliament.

The old money that had been used in England was so worn out, and there was so much bad among it, that the king ordered it to be coined, or made over again, of a proper size and weight, so that people might buy and sell with it conveniently.

A number of merchants agreed to call themselves the East India Company, and to pay a tax to the king and parliament, if the king would protect them, and not allow any nation with which England was at war to hurt or destroy the towns in India where they had their trade, or their ships when they were carrying goods from place to place. There was a small company of this kind in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, but the new one in William’s time, was of more use to the country as well as to the merchants.

We call the East India trade, not only the trade in things from India itself, such as pepper, cotton, muslin, diamonds, and other things that come from that country, but the trade in tea, and silk, and nankeen, and ivory, from China; and in spice of many kinds from the Spice Islands; and cinnamon, and gold, and precious stones, and many kinds of medicine from Ceylon. And all this trade came to be very great in King William’s reign.

The reign of King William will always be thought of gratefully by good Englishmen; because then the best things were done for the government, the religion, the laws, and the trade of our dear England.

CHAPTER LIV.
QUEEN ANNE.—1702 to 1714.
How Princess Anne became Queen because she was a Protestant; how the union of Scotland with England was brought about; how the Duke of Marlborough gained the battle of Blenheim; how Admiral Rooke took Gibraltar; how the Queen was governed by her ladies.

The Princess Anne, who was the second daughter of King James the Second, and sister to King William’s wife Mary, became Queen of England when King William died, because she had been brought up a Protestant; while her little brother was taught to be a Roman Catholic; so that by law he could never be king of England. He is commonly called the Pretender, and he and his son often gave trouble in England, as you will read by and by.

The first ten years of Queen Anne’s reign were very glorious; but the last part of her life was much troubled by the quarrels of some of the great men who wished to be her favourites, and to direct her affairs.

We will begin her history, however, with the most useful thing that was done in her reign; and that is, the union of Scotland with England.

You know that when Queen Elizabeth died, her cousin, James, king of Scotland, became king of England, so both countries had one king; but, as they had separate parliaments, and different ministers, and a different form of religion, they were always quarrelling, and many disputes, and even battles, took place, which were as bad as civil wars. These disputes were often on account of religion, because the king and his counsellors in England wanted to force the Scots to worship God in the same way, using the same words with the English. This was very unjust; so a great many Scotchmen joined together and made a COVENANT, or agreement, to preserve their own way of worship, even if they should be obliged to fight for it.

I told you that in William’s reign it was wisely settled by law that the Scotch should do as they chose about their religion; and that wise king saw that it would be better for both nations if they could be so united as to have but one parliament; and if he had lived longer, he meant to make this union. After his death Queen Anne and her friends were wise enough to desire the same thing; but it was several years before the Scotch and English people would agree to it. At last, however, it was settled; and now the Scotch must wonder that they ever thought it a bad thing. Since that time they have been equal in everything with England. They keep their own religion and laws, as well as the English; and when new laws are made, they are contrived to be fit for both countries; or, if they will only suit one, then they are made on purpose for the people in that one. As there are plenty of Scotch lords and gentlemen, as well as English, in the parliament, they are always ready to take care of their own country, which is right.

Although Queen Anne and her ministers were busy about this union of Scotland with England, they were obliged to attend to what the French, under their ambitious king, Louis the Fourteenth, were about. They had begun to attack the Protestants again, in so many ways, before King William died, that there was likely to be a war; and now he was dead, Louis thought there was no country in Europe strong enough, or with a good soldier enough, to fight him, or prevent his conquering as many countries as he pleased. But he was mistaken. The English were as much determined in Queen Anne’s time as in King William’s to prevent Louis from forcing upon them a Popish king and from oppressing the Protestants; and Queen Anne possessed in the Great Duke of Marlborough a far more skilful general than William had ever been. Indeed King William in the last year of his life intended to give him the command of the whole army, for he thought he should be too ill to command it himself. The English had a great many fine ships too, and Queen Anne’s husband, Prince George of Denmark, was admiral. So England was quite ready for war against King Louis, and the people and parliament were ready to give the queen all the money she wanted to pay the soldiers and sailors.

Besides this, the Dutch were glad to fight on our side, as well as some of the princes in Germany; and another firm ally of the English was Prince Eugene of Savoy, who was Queen Anne’s cousin, and was almost as good a general as the Duke of Marlborough.

When Anne had been queen about two years, the greatest battle that had ever been heard of was fought at a place called Blenheim, near the village of Hochstet, in Germany, between the English and French. The English had the Dutch and an army of Germans on their side; their generals were Marlborough and Prince Eugene. The French had a good many Germans and Spaniards and Italians with them; their generals were Marshals Marsin and Tallard, and the Elector of Bavaria.

Marlborough at Blenheim.

The English had to march through a little brook to attack the French, who stood very steady for a little while; but so many were killed, that the rest began to run away. Some were drowned in the great river Danube, which was very near them, and a great many were taken prisoners, with their general, Tallard amongst them. The fighting lasted six hours on a very hot day. A cannon-ball very nearly hit the Duke of Marlborough just as the fight began: it struck the earth so close to him that the cloud of dust it sent up hid him for some minutes from the sight of the people about him. The English and Dutch and Germans took all the guns, and money, and food of the French army, besides a very great number of prisoners. There were more than twelve thousand French killed, and a great many wounded; and about half as many English and Dutch and Germans.

So you see that, whichever side wins in a great battle, there is sure to be misery for a great many families on both, who have to grieve for their fathers, and sons, and brothers, killed or hurt.

This was a good battle, however, for it saved many countries from the cruel government which Louis the Fourteenth set up wherever he conquered.

Nearly at the same time with the battle of Blenheim, a place called Gibraltar was taken by the English Admiral Rooke, which is of great use to England.

If you look at the map of Europe, you will see that where the Mediterranean Sea joins the great Atlantic Ocean Gibraltar is placed. Now all captains of ships who want to go into the Mediterranean must pass that way. You would be surprised if you could see the number of ships of all sizes that pass there every day. They fetch figs, and currants, and silk, and fine wool, and shawls, and velvets, and wine, and oil, and a great many other useful things from the Mediterranean; and whoever Gibraltar belongs to can stop the ships going in and out. So the English were very glad that Admiral Rooke took Gibraltar for Queen Anne.

At last, after Marlborough had gained several other battles, peace was made with the French at a place called Utrecht, and Queen Anne died the very next year.

Queen Anne was kind and good-natured, but not very clever. She was rather lazy, and allowed the Duchess of Marlborough to govern her for several years. Afterwards she quarrelled with her, and then some other ladies governed her.

In the reign of Queen Anne there were a great many clever men in England, some poets, and many writers of other things. Pope was the great poet, and Addison wrote the most beautiful prose. But our little history would not hold an account of half of them.

Queen Anne’s husband and all her children died before her, and though she did not love any of her Protestant cousins, it was settled by law that the son of her cousin Sophia, who was married to the Elector of Hanover should be king after her.

CHAPTER LV.
GEORGE I.—1714 to 1727.
How the Elector of Hanover became George the First of England; how the Pretender tried to make himself King, but was defeated; how Lady Nithisdale saved her husband’s life; and how the Spaniards were beaten at sea.

George the First was Elector of Hanover, in Germany; and as it was settled in King William’s reign that nobody but a Protestant should be king of England, he was sent for and made king of England, rather than the son of James II., who was a Roman Catholic.

But a great many people in Scotland still wished to have a king of the old Scotch family of Stuart again; so they encouraged young James Stuart, that is the Pretender, whom they called King James, to come to Scotland, and promised they would collect men and money enough to make an army, and buy guns and everything fit for soldiers, and march into England, and make him king instead of George I. From this time all those who took the part of the Pretender against George were called Jacobites, from Jacobus, the Latin for the Pretender’s name, James.

James’s chief friend in Scotland was Lord Mar, and he was in hopes that a great many English gentlemen would join him, and send money from England, and get another army ready there to help him.

But the Pretender and his friends were disappointed. They lost a great many men in battle at the Sheriffmuir, near Dunblane, in Perthshire. Their English army was beaten at Preston in Lancashire, and the Pretender was obliged to get away as fast as he could to France again.

I wish King George had forgiven both the Jacobite officers and men, who thought they were doing right in fighting for the son of their old king: but he would not; and besides putting to death a few common soldiers and gentlemen, he ordered six lords to have their heads cut off. One of them escaped, however, and three were afterwards pardoned. Lord Nithisdale, who escaped, was saved by the devotion and courage of his wife. She had tried by every means to prevail upon the king to pardon him, but he would not; however, she had leave to visit him in prison. She went, you may be sure, often, and she took a friend with her, whom she called her maid, till she had used the jailers to see two people go in and out. Then she made her friend put on double clothes one day, and as soon as she got into Lord Nithisdale’s room half those clothes were taken off, and he was dressed in them, and so they managed that he should go out with one of the ladies, who pretended that her companion had so bad a toothache that she could not speak. Lady Nithisdale had a coach waiting at the prison-door, and they went to a safe place where her husband was hidden till he could get to France. And this was the end of the first civil war begun in Scotland for the sake of the Pretender. Although his friends often tried to begin another, they always failed, while George the First was king.

The King of Spain also tried to assist the Pretender, but he could only make war with England by sea, and his ships were always beaten; and so he made peace.

George the First died while he was visiting his own country of Hanover, after he had been King of England thirteen years. He was a brave and prudent man, but he was too old, when he came to be King of England, to learn English, or to behave quite like an Englishman; however, upon the whole, he was a useful king.

CHAPTER LVI.
GEORGE II.—1727 to 1760.
How George the Second went to war with Spain, and with the French and Bavarians; how the French were beaten by Lord Clive in India, and by General Wolfe in America; how the young Pretender landed in Scotland, and proclaimed his father King; how he was beaten, and after many dangers escaped to France.

The reign of George the Second was disturbed both by foreign and civil war, and by some disputes in his family at home. His eldest son, Frederick, Prince of Wales, married a German princess, and they both lived in London, but they were discontented with the money the king gave them to spend, so they quarrelled with him, and he ordered them to go and live at Kew, and would not do anything kind or good-natured for them. Two children were born to them, one of whom was afterwards King George the Third, but the Prince of Wales died before his father.

I will now tell you about King George’s foreign wars, and keep the story of the civil war to the last for you, because you will like it best, I think.

The Spaniards had built a great many towns in South America; and after they had got possession of the country, and killed many of the people, they took all the gold and silver that was found in the earth there for themselves. They were therefore obliged to have a great many ships to fetch it, and brave soldiers and sailors to guard it as it crossed the seas, and so Spain got more gold and silver than any other country.

But other countries wished for some of the useful things from South America too; and some English merchants wished very much to have several kinds of wood which are useful for dyeing cloth and wool and other things of different colours; but the Spaniards attacked them and ill-used them for trying to cut the wood, and behaved in other respects very ill, so England went to war with Spain.

The war was mostly by sea, and in the course of it the Spaniards were beaten, first by Admiral Vernon, and then by Admirals Hawke, Rowley, Warren, and particularly Anson, though they none of them did all they hoped to do.

Another admiral was very unfortunate. He had to fight a great many ships in the Mediterranean Sea, and because he did not do all that the people of England desired him to do, he was shot when he came to England. His name was Byng. I do not admire this admiral, but I think he was not justly treated.

Besides the Spaniards, George the Second was at war with the French and Bavarians. The Prince of Bavaria had been made Emperor, and tried to make himself King of Bohemia, in the room of the lawful queen, Maria Theresa, and her son, who was an infant. The English and Dutch took Maria Theresa’s part, the French took that of the Prince of Bavaria, and there was a very fierce war on that account, in which the English gained some battles, and lost some others, an account of which would be very tiresome to you, I am sure.

Though upon the whole the French had rather the best of the war in Europe, Lord Clive, who had an army of English in the East Indies, to take care of our merchants and our towns there, beat the French generals, and almost drove the French from India altogether. Some time afterwards the French sent an army under Count Lally to win back their power in India; but Lally was so beaten that the French have never had more than one or two small towns in that part of the world since.

If you look at the map of the world in this place, my dear little Arthur, you will wonder that two countries in Europe, so close together as England and France, should think or sending their soldiers and sailors so far off as India to fight their battles; but you will wonder still more when you learn that, not content with this, they sent other fleets and armies to North America, where they fought till the English conquered the greatest part of all the country that the French ever had in that part of the world. But the greatest victory we gained there was the battle of Quebec, where our brave and good General Wolfe was killed. Some day you will read his life, and then you will wish that all English soldiers could be like him.

We will now think about the civil war in King George the Second’s reign. You remember that in his father’s time the Pretender, whom the Scotch call James the Eighth, came from France to Scotland and thought he could get the kingdom for himself, but he was soon obliged to go back again.

After that he went and lived in Italy, and married a Princess of Poland, and had two sons. The eldest of these was a fine brave young man: the youngest became a clergyman, and the Pope made him a Cardinal; his name was Henry. The eldest, Charles Edward, who was called the Young Chevalier in Scotland and in England the Young Pretender, thought he would try once more to get the kingdom of Great Britain from the Protestant king; so, in spite of the good advice of his true friends, he would go from Italy first to France, and then to Scotland, to make war against King George.

The King of France lent him a ship and a few men and officers, and gave him a little money, for this purpose; and the young prince landed in Scotland, among the highlands, where the people were still fond of his family. In a very short time the highland chiefs, who had a great power over the poor people, gathered a great army, and marched to Edinburgh, which you know is the capital of Scotland.

There he had his father proclaimed King of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and gave titles of dukes and lords to the gentlemen who came to fight for him, and pretended to be the real Prince of Wales. And he lived in the old palace of the Scotch kings, called Holyrood House, and there he gave balls and concerts to the Scotch ladies, and they all fancied themselves sure that Charles Edward would be their king instead of George.

At first he gained two or three victories, the chief of which was at Preston Pans, near Edinburgh; and then he marched into England, where but few English gentlemen joined him; and when he got as far as Derby he found that he had better go back to Scotland, for the English would have nothing to do with him. On his way, the English army, commanded by the Duke of Cumberland, who was King George’s son, caught and beat part of his army, and took many prisoners.

From this time the French and Scotch officers of the Pretender quarrelled constantly, and the highland chiefs became jealous of the other generals, and everything began to be unfortunate for that unhappy prince, till at the battle of Culloden his whole army was destroyed, many officers were taken prisoners, and he was obliged to make his escape and hide himself till he could get back to France.

The Pretender at Holyrood House.

Sometimes the young prince was obliged to go many days without any food but wild berries in the woods, and to sleep in caves, or on the open ground. Sometimes he lay in bed, pretending to be a sick man, while the Duke of Cumberland’s soldiers were hunting for him, and he could hear them talking of him. Once he escaped from a great danger by being dressed in woman’s clothes, and seeming to be the maid-servant of a very kind and handsome young lady, called Flora MacDonald, who saved his life. At last he got safe away; and though he and his friends often threatened to make war in England again, they never could do any real mischief; and as he and his brother Henry both died without children, we have had no more Pretenders.

I am sorry to say that the Duke of Cumberland was very cruel to Prince Charles’s friends when the war was over. Three Scotch lords, a good many gentlemen, and a number of soldiers, were executed for having joined the Pretender.

There is nothing else to tell you about the reign of George the Second; he was a very old man when he died at Kensington. He had fought many battles in Germany, and was a brave soldier, and not a bad king; but having been brought up in Germany, like his father, he never either looked or talked like an English king.

CHAPTER LVII.
GEORGE III.—1760 to 1820.
How George the Third, after making a general peace, went to war with the Americans; how General Washington beat the English armies, and procured peace; why the King went to war with France; how Napoleon Buonaparte conquered many countries; how our Admirals and Generals won many battles; and how there were many useful things found out in George the Third’s reign.

The people of England were very glad when George the Third became king after his grandfather. You read in the last chapter that his father, Frederick, Prince of Wales, died in the life-time of George the Second.

George the Third was born in England, and brought up like an English gentleman. I think he was one of the best men that ever was a king; but I do not think that everything he did was wise or right. He reigned longer than any king ever reigned in England, and unhappily before he died he became blind, and he lost his senses.

He married a German princess named Charlotte, and they had a great many sons and daughters, and one of their grandchildren is our good Queen Victoria.

You must not expect me to tell you everything that happened in this long reign, which lasted sixty years, but you shall read of one or two things of most consequence, and that you can understand best.

When George had been king a little more than two years he made peace with all the world, but his reign was very far from being a peaceable one.

There were two wars in particular of great consequence; the first was the American war, and the second the French war. I will tell you a little about each of them.

You will remember that in Raleigh’s time the English built some towns in North America. Afterwards, during the civil wars in the time of Charles the First, many more English went there and took their families there to live, and by degrees they had taken possession of a very large country, and had got towns and villages and fields. These English states in America were called Colonies; but they were still governed by the King and Parliament of England. The English wanted the Americans to pay taxes. But the Americans said that, by Magna Charta and our old laws, no Englishman might be taxed without their own consent given in parliament. Now the American Colonies had no members in the British parliament; so they said the Parliament had no right to tax them. Then the king called them rebels, and threatened to punish them; and so, after many disputes, war broke out between the Americans and the King of England’s soldiers who were in America to guard the towns and collect the taxes. Then the Americans said they would have a government of their own. This war was thought little of at first, but it soon grew to be one of the greatest wars England had ever had. The French and Spaniards, who had not forgotten how the English had beaten them by sea and land in the last wars, joined the Americans; and although the English gained several victories by sea over the French and Spaniards, yet by land the Americans beat the English.

The chief man in America was General George Washington, one of the greatest men that ever lived. He commanded the American army, and as he and his soldiers were fighting in their own land for their own freedom, and for their own wives and children, it was not wonderful that at last they beat out the English soldiers, who did not like to be sent so far from home to fight against men who spoke the same language with themselves.

At last, when the King of England found the people were tired of this long war, he agreed to make peace with America, and since that time the United States of America have had a government of their own, and have become a great and powerful nation. They have a President instead of a king, and they call their parliament a Congress. You will understand these things in a few years.

The French war lasted even longer than the American war. This was the cause: for a long time the French kings had governed France very badly, and the French nobles oppressed the poor people, and the clergymen did not do their duty rightly, but left the people ignorant. At last the people could bear these bad things no longer, and King Louis the Sixteenth, who was a good king, would have made them better if he could. But the princes and nobles would not let him. Then a number of bad people collected in Paris, and they put the king and queen and all their family in prison, and they cut off the heads of the king and queen and the king’s sister, and of a great many lords and ladies, and after that of every clergyman they could find, and then of everybody who tried to save the life of another; in short, I believe the French people did more wicked things in about three years than any other nation had ever done in a hundred. The name of the most wicked of all was Robespierre. He was killed at last by some of those he meant to kill.

England and several other countries then went to war with the French because they had sent armies to attack the neighbouring countries, and had conquered many of them, and that war lasted about twenty-four years.

France would have been mastered, I think, if it had not been for a brave and clever but wicked man, called Napoleon Buonaparte, who, from being a simple lieutenant, rose to be Emperor of the French. He chose clever men for judges and generals. He conquered many countries, and used to threaten to come and conquer England. But we had brave sailors, and clever captains and admirals, who never let any of his ships come near us. Lord Howe won the first sea victory in the war; then we had Lord St. Vincent, Admirals Duncan, Hood, Collingwood, Cornwallis, Cochrane, Pellew, and many more, who gained battles at sea, besides more captains than I can tell you, who took parts of fleets or single ships. But the man that will be remembered for ever as the greatest English sailor was Admiral Lord Nelson. He gained three great victories,—at Aboukir in Egypt, at Copenhagen, and at Trafalgar near the coast of Spain. In that battle he was killed, but he knew his own fleet had conquered before he died. When he went into battle, the words he gave, to tell all the ships when to begin to fight, were, England expects every man will do his duty.

These words must never be forgotten by any Englishman.

Farmhouse of Hougoumont on the Field of Waterloo.

There were no more great sea-fights after Trafalgar, but many on land, where we had good generals and brave soldiers. The wise and good General Abercromby was killed just as he gained a victory in Egypt. His friend, the good and brave General Moore, was killed at Corunna in Spain, and many other brave officers and men died for the sake of England, but many lived to fight and to conquer. The greatest general in our time was the Duke of Wellington, who put an end to the sad long war by his great victory over the French, commanded by Napoleon himself, at Waterloo. I cannot tell you in this little book how many other battles he won, or how skilfully he fought them, or how well he knew how to choose the officers to help him. But he will have always a name as great as Nelson, by whose side he was buried in St. Paul’s.

After the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Buonaparte was kept a prisoner in the island of St. Helena till he died, and the brother of Louis the Sixteenth was King of France, under the title of Louis the Eighteenth.

Our good king, George the Third, died soon after. I have told you what kind of a man he was at the beginning of this chapter.

In his reign more things, useful to all men, were found out than in hundreds of years before. New countries were visited, new plants and new animals were brought to England. All the sciences received great encouragement. The arts that are needful in common life were improved. Steam engines were first made useful. The beautiful light given by gas was found out, and all sorts of machines to assist men in their labour were invented. Those arts called the fine arts, I mean such as sculpture, painting, and music, were encouraged by George the Third. But what is of more consequence, the science of medicine and the art of surgery were so improved in his time, that the sufferings of mankind from pain and sickness are much lessened.[4]

CHAPTER LVIII.
GEORGE IV.—1820 to 1830.
How it was this King ruled the kingdom before his father died; how some bad men planned to kill the King’s ministers; how the Princess Charlotte died; how the Turkish fleet was destroyed at Navarino; how the Roman Catholics were admitted into Parliament; and what useful things were done in this reign.

When George the Fourth came to the throne, he was fifty-eight years old, but he had been governing the kingdom for eight years before he was king, during which time he had been called the Prince Regent. The reason of this was, that the old king, who, as you read in the last chapter, had the misfortune to go out of his mind, never recovered his reason from the time his youngest daughter, the Princess Amelia, died, at least not sufficiently to be able to govern; so George, Prince of Wales, being the heir to the throne, governed for his father all that time.

George the Fourth had no sooner begun his reign than a dreadful plot was formed to kill all the cabinet ministers. The wicked men—about thirty, I believe—who contrived this plot, used to meet at a house in an out-of-the-way place called Cato Street, in the Edgware Road; and there they agreed to carry out their plan on a certain day, when the ministers were all expected to meet together and dine at Lord Harrowby’s house. Fortunately the plot was betrayed by one of the men, in time to prevent the murder: most of the conspirators were seized, and Thistlewood and four other ringleaders were hanged. This plot afterwards went by the name of the “Cato Street Conspiracy.”

About twenty-five years before George the Fourth came to the throne, he had married his cousin, the Princess Caroline of Brunswick. The marriage was not a happy one, and the Prince and Princess of Wales separated soon after the birth of their first and only child, the Princess Charlotte. This led to a sad quarrel, which I think it is no use for us to remember.

The Princess Charlotte, who would have succeeded her father on the throne if she had survived him, had married Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, but died the year after her marriage, to the great grief of the people. This happened before her father became king.

It was towards the middle of King George’s reign that a war broke out between the Greeks and Turks. A great many English gentlemen, amongst whom was the poet, Lord Byron, went to Greece to take the part of the Greeks. The struggle lasted several years, and was ended at length by a battle fought in the harbour of Navarino, where all the Turkish ships were sunk by the British fleet.—Navarino is at the south-west corner of the Morea in Greece.—The commander of the Turkish fleet was named Ibrahim Pacha, and the commander of the English fleet was Sir Edward Codrington. After this battle, Greece, which had been subject to Turkey, was made into an independent kingdom, and three German princes were invited in turn to be king; Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg (the same who had married our Princess Charlotte) declined the honour, but Prince Otho of Bavaria accepted the invitation, and became Otho the First, King of Greece. Lord Byron died in Greece three years before the war ended. Otho was afterwards sent away because he governed badly, and the crown was given to Prince George of Denmark, brother to our Princess of Wales.

A law was passed in this reign to allow Roman Catholics to sit in Parliament and help to make laws for the country. There was much talking and considering before this was done, for many people thought that if the Roman Catholics helped to make laws, they would try to change the religion of the country, and to bring back popery, which had in former times kept the people in darkness, and caused a great deal of misery and cruel persecution, as you have read in the former part of this History. Others, believing that the Roman Catholics of the present day were wiser, and that they would continue loyal to the Sovereigns and faithful to the laws of the land, consented to admit them to equal privileges with their Protestant fellow-countrymen. So at last this law was passed; and now Roman Catholics sit in Parliament, and are made Judges in courts of law.

About the same time the severe laws against Protestant Dissenters, which were made under Charles the Second, were done away with.

The king died at Windsor at the age of sixty-eight, after a reign of ten years.

George the Fourth was a very accomplished man, but he cared so much more for pleasing himself than for doing his duty and thinking of others, that he was not a favourite with his people.

Many new buildings were erected, and various improvements made in this reign. The New London Bridge and the Thames Tunnel were begun; the Menai Suspension Bridge, joining the Isle of Anglesey to North Wales, was completed; the Regent’s Park was laid out; the Zoological Gardens were opened; and Regent Street and other handsome streets were built.

One very great improvement was made by Sir Robert Peel in causing the streets and roads to be guarded night and day by active, well-drilled policemen, instead of by watchmen, who used to be on duty only at night, and who were very frequently feeble old men scarcely able to take care of themselves.