A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1.

by Carlton J. H. Hayes

Certain it is that the Parliament of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while wonderfully earnest and successful in enriching England's landlords and in demolishing every obstacle to British commerce, at the same time either willfully neglected or woefully failed to do away with intolerance in the Church and injustice in the courts, or to defend the great majority of the people from the greed of landlords and the avarice of employers.

Designed as it was for the protection of selfish class interests, the English government was nevertheless a step in the direction of democracy. The idea of representative government as expressed by Parliament and cabinet was as yet very narrow, but it was capable of being expanded without violent revolution, slowly but inevitably, so as to include the whole people.

[Illustration: THE HOUSE OF STUART]

[Illustration: THE HANOVERIAN SOVEREIGNS OF GREAT BRITAIN (1714-1915)]

ADDITIONAL READING

GENERAL. Brief surveys: A. L. Cross, History of England and Greater Britain (1914), ch. xxvii-xli; T. F. Tout, An Advanced History of Great Britain (1906), Book VI, Book VII, ch. i, ii; Benjamin Terry, A History of England (1901), Part III, Book III and Book IV, ch. i-iii; E. P. Cheyney, A Short History of England (1904), ch. xiv-xvi, and, by the same author, An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England (1901). More detailed narratives: J. F. Bright, History of England, 5 vols. (1884-1904), especially Vol. II, Personal Monarchy, 1485-1688, and Vol. III, Constitutional Monarchy, 1689-1837; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. IV (1906). ch. viii-xi, xv-xix, Vol. V (1908), ch. v, ix-xi, xv; H. D. Traill and J. S. Mann (editors), Social England, illus. ed., 6 vols. in 12 (1909), Vol. IV; A. D. Innes, History of England and the British Empire, 4 vols. (1914), Vol. II, ch. x-xvi; G. M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, 1603-1714 (1904), brilliant and suggestive; Leopold von Ranke, History of England, Principally in the Seventeenth Century, Eng. trans., 6 vols. (1875), particularly valuable for foreign relations; Edward Dowden, Puritan and Anglican (1901), an interesting study of literary and intellectual England in the seventeenth century; John Lingard, History of England to 1688, new ed. (1910) of an old but valuable work by a scholarly Roman Catholic, Vols. VII-X; H. W. Clark, History of English Nonconformity, Vol. I (1911), Book II, ch. i-iii, and Vol. II (1913), Book III, ch. i, ii, the best and most recent study of the role of the Protestant Dissenters; W. R. W. Stephens and William Hunt (editors), History of the Church of England, the standard history of Anglicanism, of which Vol. V (1904), by W. H. Frere, treats of the years 1558-1625, and Vol. VI (1903), by W. H. Hutton, of the years 1625-1714. On Scotland during the period: P. H. Brown, History of Scotland, 3 vols. (1899-1909), Vols. II, III; Andrew Lang, A History of Scotland from the Roman Occupation, 2d ed., 4 vols. (1901-1907), Vols. III, IV. On Ireland: Richard Bagwell, Ireland under the Tudors, 3 vols. (1885-1890), and Ireland under the Stuarts and during the Interregnum, 2 vols. (1909). Convenient source- material: G. W. Prothero, Select Statutes and Other Constitutional Documents Illustrative of the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I, 4th ed. (1913); S. R. Gardiner, The Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, 1628-1660, 2d ed. (1899); C. G. Robertson, Select Statutes, Cases, and Documents, 1660-1832 (1904); E. P. Cheyney, Readings in English History Drawn from the Original Sources (1908); Frederick York Powell, English History by Contemporary Writers, 8 vols. (1887); C. A. Beard, An Introduction to the English Historians (1906), a collection of extracts from famous secondary works.

THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. F. W. Maitland, The Constitutional History of England (1908), Periods III, IV, special studies of the English government in 1625 and in 1702 by an eminent authority; D. J. Medley, A Student's Manual of English Constitutional History, 5th ed. (1913), topical treatment, encyclopedic and dry; T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, 7th ed. rev. by P. A. Ashworth (1911), ch. xiii-xvi, narrative style and brief; Henry Hallam, Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII to the Death of George II, an old work, first pub. in 1827, still useful, new ed., 3 vols. (1897). The best summary of the evolution of English parliamentary government in the middle ages is A. B. White, The Making of the English Constitution, 449-1485 (1908), Part III. In support of the pretensions of the Stuart kings; see J. N. Figgis, The Divine Right of Kings, 2d ed. (1914); and in opposition to them, see G. P. Gooch, English Democratic Ideas in the Seventeenth Century (1898).

JAMES I AND CHARLES I. S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, 7th ed. (1887), a brief survey in the "Epochs of Modern History" Series by the most prolific and most distinguished writer on the period, and, by the same author, the elaborate History of England from the Accession of James I to the Outbreak of the Civil War, 10 vols. (1883-1884), History of the Great Civil War, 1642- 1640, 4 vols. (1893), and Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (1899); F. C. Montague, Political History of England, 1603-1660 (1907), an accurate and strictly political narrative; Cambridge Modern History, Vol. III, ch. xvi, xvii, on Spain and England in the time of James I. Clarendon's History of the Great Rebellion, the classic work of a famous royalist of the seventeenth century, is strongly partisan and sometimes untrustworthy: the best edition is that of W. D. Macray, 6 vols. (1886). R. G. Usher, The Rise and Fall of the High Commission (1913), is an account of one of the arbitrary royal courts. Valuable biographies: H. D. Traill, Strafford (1889); W. H. Hutton, Laud (1895); E. C. Wade, John Pym (1912); C. R. Markham, Life of Lord Fairfax (1870).

THE CROMWELLIAN RÉGIME. The standard treatise is that of S. R. Gardiner, The History of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, 4 vols. (1903). Among numerous biographies of Oliver Cromwell, the following are noteworthy: C. H. Firth, Cromwell (1900). in "Heroes of the Nations" Series; S. R. Gardiner, Cromwell (1899), and, by the same author, Cromwell's Place in History (1897); John (Viscount) Morley, Oliver Cromwell (1899); A. F. Pollard, Factors in Modern History (1907), ch. ix-x; Thomas Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, ed. by S. C. Lomas, 3 vols. (1904). The Diary of John Evelyn, a royalist contemporary, affords naturally a somewhat different point of view: the best edition is that of H. B. Wheatley, 4 vols. (1906). Various special phases of the régime: C. H. Firth, Cromwell's Army, 2d ed. (1912); Edward Jenks, The Constitutional Experiments of the Protectorate (1890); Sir J. R. Seeley, Growth of British Policy, Vol. II (1895), Part III; G. L. Beer, Cromwell's Policy in its Economic Aspects (1902); Sir W. L. Clowes, The Royal Navy: a History, Vol. II (1898); G. B. Tatham, The Puritans in Power, a Study of the English Church from 1640 to 1660 (1913); W. A. Shaw, History of the English Church, 1640-1660, 2 vols. (1900); Robert Dunlop, Ireland under the Commonwealth, 2 vols. (1913), largely a collection of documents; C. H. Firth, The Last Years of the Protectorate, 2 vols. (1909).

THE RESTORATION. Richard Lodge, The Political History of England, 1660-1702, a survey of the chief political facts, conservative in tone; J. N. Figgis, English History Illustrated from Original Sources, 1660-1715 (1902), a convenient companion volume to Lodge's; Osmund Airy, Charles II (1901), inimical to the first of the restored Stuart kings. Of contemporary accounts of the Restoration, the most entertaining is Samuel Pepys, Diary, covering the years 1659-1669 and written by a bibulous public official, while the most valuable, though tainted with strong Whig partisanship, is Gilbert (Bishop) Burnet, History of My Own Times, edited by Osmund Airy, 2 vols. (1897-1900). See also H. B. Wheatley, Samuel Pepys and the World he Lived In (1880). Special topics in the reign of Charles II: W. E. Sydney, Social Life in England, 1660-1660 (1892); J. H. Overton, Life in the English Church, 1663-1714 (1885); John Pollock, The Popish Plot (1903); G.B. Hertz, English Public Opinion after the Restoration (1902); C. B. R. Kent, The Early History of the Tories (1908).