History for ready reference, Volume 2, El Dorado to Greaves

by J. N. Larned

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HISTORY FOR READY REFERENCE
FROM THE BEST HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS, SPECIALISTS
THEIR OWN WORDS IN A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF HISTORY
FOR ALL USES, EXTENDING TO ALL COUNTRIES AND SUBJECTS,
AND REPRESENTING FOR BOTH READERS AND STUDENTS THE BETTER AND
NEWER LITERATURE OF HISTORY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
BY J.N.LARNED
WITH NUMEROUS HISTORICAL MAPS FROM ORIGINAL STUDIES
AND DRAWINGS BY ALAN C. REILEY
IN FIVE VOLUMES
VOLUME II-EL DORADO TO GREAVES
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
THE C. A. NICHOLS CO., PUBLISHERS
MDCCCXCV
COPYRIGHT, 1894.
BY J. N. LARNED.
The Riversider Press, Cambridge, Mass, U. S. A.
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
LIST OF MAPS.
Map of Europe at the close of the Tenth Century, ... To follow page 1020
Map of Europe in 1768, ... To follow page 1086
Four maps of France,
A. D. 1154, 1180, 1814 and 1860, ... To follow page 1168
Two maps of Central Europe, A. D. 848 and 888, ... On page 1404
Map of Germany at the Peace of Westphalia, ... To follow page 1486
Maps of Germany, A. D. 1815 and 1866;
of the Netherlands, 1880-1889; and
of the Zollverein, ... To follow page 1540
LOGICAL OUTLINES, IN COLORS.
English history, ... To follow page 730
French history, ... To follow page 1158
German history, ... To follow page 1428
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES.
The Fifth Century, ... On page 1433
The Sixth Century, ... On page 1434
{769}
EL DORADO,
The quest of.
"When the Spaniards had conquered and pillaged the civilized
empires on the table lands of Mexico, Bogota, and Peru, they
began to look round for new scenes of conquest, new sources of
wealth; the wildest rumours were received as facts, and the
forests and savannas, extending for thousands of square miles
to the eastward of the cordilleras of the Andes, were covered,
in imagination, with populous kingdoms, and cities filled with
gold. The story of El Dorado, of a priest or king smeared with
oil and then coated with gold dust, probably originated in a
custom which prevailed among the civilized Indians of the
plateau of Bogota; but El Dorado was placed, by the credulous
adventurers, in a golden city amidst the impenetrable forests
of the centre of South America, and, as search after search
failed, his position was moved further and further to the
eastward, in the direction of Guiana. El Dorado, the phantom
god of gold and silver, appeared in many forms. ... The
settlers at Quito and in Northern Peru talked of the golden
empire of the Omaguas, while those in Cuzco and Charcas dreamt
of the wealthy cities of Paytiti and Enim, on the banks of a
lake far away, to the eastward of the Andes. These romantic
fables, so firmly believed in those old days led to the
exploration of vast tracts of country, by the fearless
adventurers of the sixteenth century, portions of which have
never been traversed since, even to this day. The most famous
searches after El Dorado were undertaken from the coast of
Venezuela, and the most daring leaders of these wild
adventures were German knights."
C. R. Markham,
Introduction to Simon's Account of the
Expedition of Ursua and Aguirre
(Hakluyt Society 1861).
"There were, along the whole coast of the Spanish Main,
rumours of an inland country which abounded with gold. These
rumours undoubtedly related to the kingdoms of Bogota and
Tunja, now the Nuevo Reyno de Granada. Belalcazar, who was in
quest of this country from Quito, Federman, who came from
Venezuela, and Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada, who sought it by
way of the River Madalena, and who effected its conquest, met
here. But in these countries also there were rumours of a rich
land at a distance; similar accounts prevailed in Peru; in
Peru they related to the Nuevo Reyno, there they related to
Peru; and thus adventurers from both sides were allured to
continue the pursuit after the game was taken. An imaginary
kingdom was soon shaped out as the object of their quest, and
stories concerning it were not more easily invented than
believed. It was said that a younger brother of Atabalipa
fled, after the destruction of the Incas, took with him the
main part of their treasures, and founded a greater empire
than that of which his family had been deprived. Sometimes the
imaginary Emperor was called the Great Paytite, sometimes the
Great Moxo, sometimes the Enim or Great Paru. An impostor at
Lima affirmed that he had been in his capital, the city of
Manoa, where not fewer than 3,000 workmen were employed in the
silversmiths' street; he even produced a map of the country,
in which he had marked a hill of gold, another of silver, and
a third of salt. ... This imaginary kingdom obtained the name
of El Dorado from the fashion of its Lord, which has the merit
of being in savage costume. His body was anointed every
morning with a certain fragrant gum of great price, and gold
dust was then blown upon him, through a tube, till he was
covered with it: the whole was washed off at night. This the
barbarian thought a more magnificent and costly attire than
could be afforded by any other potentate in the world, and
hence the Spaniards called him El Dorado, or the Gilded One. A
history of all the expeditions which were undertaken for the
conquest of his kingdom would form a volume not less
interesting than extraordinary."
R. Southey,
History of Brazil,
volume 1, chapter 12.
The most tragical and thrilling of the stories of the seekers
after El Dorado is that which Mr. Markham introduces in the
quotation above, and which Southey has told with full details
in The Expedition of Orsua; and the Crimes of Aguirre. The most famous of the expeditions were those in which Sir
Walter Raleigh engaged, and two of which he personally led--in
1595, and in 1617-18. Released from his long imprisonment in
the Tower to undertake the latter, he returned from it, broken
and shamed, to be sent to the scaffold as a victim sacrificed
to the malignant resentment of Spain. How far Raleigh shared
in the delusion of his age respecting El Dorado, and how far
he made use of it merely to promote a great scheme for the
"expansion of England," are questions that will probably
remain forever in dispute.
Sir Walter Raleigh,
Discoverie of the Large, Rich and
Beautiful Empire of Guiana
(Hakluyt Society 1848).
ALSO IN:
J. A. Van Heuvel,
El Dorado.
E. Edwards,
Life of Raleigh,
volume 1, chapters 10 and 25.
P. F. Tytler,
Life of Raleigh,
chapters 3 and 6.
E. Gosse,
Raleigh,
chapters 4 and 9.
A. F. Bandelier,
The gilded man.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE, The Germanic:
Its rise and constitution.
Its secularization and extinction.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152,
and 1347-1493;
also, 1801-1803,
and 1805-1806.
ELECTORAL COMMISSION, The.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1876-1877.
ELECTORS,
Presidential, of the United States of America.
See PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION.
"Electricity, through its etymology at least, traces its
lineage back to Homeric times. In the Odyssey reference is
made to the 'necklace hung with bits of amber' presented by
the Phœnician traders to the Queen of Syra. Amber was highly
prized by the ancients, having been extensively used as an
ornamental gem, and many curious theories were suggested as to
its origin. Some of these, although mythical, were singularly
near the truth, and it is an interesting coincidence that in
the well-known myth concerning the ill-fated and rash youth
who so narrowly escaped wrecking the solar chariot and the
terrestrial sphere, amber, the first known source of
electricity, and the thunder-bolts of Jupiter are linked
together. It is not unlikely that this substance was indebted,
for some of the romance that clung to it through ages, to the
fact that when rubbed it attracts light bodies. This property
it was known to possess in the earliest times: it is the one
single experiment in electricity which has come down to us
from the remotest antiquity. ... The power of certain fishes,
notably what is known as the 'torpedo,' to produce
electricity, was known at an early period, and was commented
on by Pliny and Aristotle.
{770}
... Up to the sixteenth [century] there seems to have been no
attempt to study electrical phenomena in a really scientific
manner. Isolated facts which almost thrust themselves upon
observers, were noted, and, in common with a host of other
natural phenomena, were permitted to stand alone, with no
attempt at classification, generalization, or examination
through experiment. ... Dr. Gilbert can justly be called the
creator of the science of electricity and magnetism. His
experiments were prodigious in number, and many of his
conclusions were correct and lasting. To him we are indebted
for the name 'electricity,' which he bestowed upon the power
or property which amber exhibited in attracting light bodies,
borrowing the name from the substance itself, in order to
define one of its attributes. ... This application of
experiment to the study of electricity, begun by Gilbert three
hundred years ago, was industriously pursued by those who came
after him, and the next two centuries witnessed a rapid
development of science. Among the earlier students of this
period were the English philosopher, Robert Boyle, and the
celebrated burgomaster of Magdeburg, Otto von Guericke. The
latter first noted the sound and light accompanying electrical
excitation. These were afterwards independently discovered by
Dr. Wall, an Englishman, who made the somewhat prophetic
observation, 'This light and crackling seems in some degree to
represent thunder and lightning.' Sir Isaac Newton made a few
experiments in electricity, which he exhibited to the Royal
Society. ... Francis Hawksbee was an active and useful
contributor to experimental investigation, and he also called
attention to the resemblance between the electric spark and
lightning. The most ardent student of electricity in the early
years of the eighteenth century was Stephen Gray. He performed
a multitude of experiments, nearly all of which added
something to the rapidly accumulating stock of knowledge, but
doubtless his most important contribution was his discovery of
the distinction between conductors and non-conductors. ...
Some of Gray's papers fell into the hands of Dufay, an officer
of the French army, who, after several years' service, had
resigned his post to devote himself to scientific pursuits.
... His most important discovery was the existence of two
distinct species of electricity, which he named 'vitreous' and
'resinous.' ... A very important advance was made in 1745 in
the invention of the Leyden jar or phial. As has so many times
happened in the history of scientific discovery, it seems
tolerably certain that this interesting device was hit upon by
at least three persons, working independently of each other.
One Cuneus, a monk named Kleist, and Professor Muschenbroeck,
of Leyden, are all accredited with the discovery. ... Sir
William Watson perfected it by adding the outside metallic
coating, and was by its aid enabled to fire gunpowder and
other inflammables."
T. C. Mendenhall,
A Century of Electricity,
chapter 1.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1745-1747.
Franklin's identification of Electricity with Lightning.
"In 1745 Mr. Peter Collinson of the Royal Society sent a
[Leyden] jar to the Library Society of Philadelphia, with
instructions how to use it. This fell into the hands of
Benjamin Franklin, who at once began a series of electrical
experiments. On March 28, 1747, Franklin began his famous
letters to Collinson. ... In these letters he propounded the
single-fluid theory of electricity, and referred all electric
phenomena to its accumulation in bodies in quantities more
than their natural share, or to its being withdrawn from them
so as to leave them minus their proper portion." Meantime,
numerous experiments with the Leyden jar had convinced
Franklin of the identity of lightning and electricity, and he
set about the demonstration of the fact. "The account given by
Dr. Stuber of Philadelphia, an intimate personal friend of
Franklin, and published in one of the earliest editions of the
works of the great philosopher, is as follows:--'The plan
which he had originally proposed was to erect on some high
tower, or other elevated place, a sentry-box, from which
should rise a pointed iron rod, insulated by being fixed in a
cake of resin. Electrified clouds passing over this would, he
conceived, impart to it a portion of their electricity, which
would be rendered evident to the senses by sparks being
emitted when a key, a knuckle, or other conductor was
presented to it. Philadelphia at this time offered no
opportunity of trying an experiment of this kind. Whilst
Franklin was waiting for the erection of a spire, it occurred
to him that he might have more ready access to the region of
clouds by means of a common kite. He prepared one by attaching
two cross-sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not
suffer so much from the rain as paper. To his upright stick
was fixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp,
except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string
terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the
appearance of a thunder-gust approaching, he went into the
common, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated
his intentions, well knowing the ridicule which, too generally
for the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful experiments in
philosophy. He placed himself under a shed to avoid the rain.
His kite was raised. A thunder-cloud passed over it. No signs
of electricity appeared. He almost despaired of success, when
suddenly he observed the loose fibres of his string move
toward an erect position. He now pressed his knuckle to the
key, and received a strong spark. How exquisite must his
sensations have been at this moment! On his experiment
depended the fate of his theory. Doubt and despair had begun
to prevail, when the fact was ascertained in so clear a
manner, that even the most incredulous could no longer
withhold their assent. Repeated sparks were drawn from the
key, a phial was charged, a shock given, and all the
experiments made which are usually performed with
electricity.' And thus the identity of lightning and
electricity was proved. ... Franklin's proposition to erect
lightning rods which would convey the lightning to the ground,
and so protect the buildings to which they were attached, found
abundant opponents. ... Nevertheless, public opinion became
settled ... that they did protect buildings. ... Then the
philosophers raised a new controversy as to whether the
conductors should be blunt or pointed; Franklin, Cavendish,
and Watson advocating points, and Wilson blunt ends. ... The
logic of experiment, however, showed the advantage of pointed
conductors; and people persisted then in preferring them, as
they have done ever since."
{771}
P. Benjamin,
The Age of Electricity,
chapter 3.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1753-1820.
The beginnings of the Electric Telegraph.
"The first actual suggestion of an electric telegraph was made
in an anonymous letter published in the Scots Magazine at
Edinburgh, February 17th, 1753. The letter is initialed 'C.
M.,' and many attempts have been made to discover the author's
identity. ... The suggestions made in this letter were that a
set of twenty-six wires should be stretched upon insulated
supports between the two places which it was desired to put in
connection, and at each end of every wire a metallic ball was
to be suspended, having under it a letter of the alphabet
inscribed upon a piece of paper. ... The message was to be
read off at the receiving station by observing the letters
which were successively attracted by their corresponding
balls, as soon as the wires attached to the latter received a
charge from the distant conductor. In 1787 Monsieur Lomond, of
Paris, made the very important step of reducing the twenty-six
wires to one, and indicating the different letters by various
combinations of simple movements of an indicator, consisting
of a pith-ball suspended by means of a thread from a conductor
in contact with the wire. ... In the year 1790 Chappe, the
inventor of the semaphore, or optico-mechanical telegraph,
which was in practical use previous to the introduction of the
electric telegraph, devised a means of communication,
consisting of two clocks regulated so that the second hands
moved in unison, and pointed at the same instant to the same
figures. ... In the early form of the apparatus, the exact
moment at which the observer at the receiving station should
read off the figure to which the hand pointed was indicated by
means of a sound signal produced by the primitive method of
striking a copper stew pan, but the inventor soon adopted the
plan of giving electrical signals instead of sound signals.
... In 1795 Don Francisco Salva ... suggested ... that instead
of twenty-six wires being used, one for each letter, six or
eight wires· only should be employed, each charged by a Leyden
jar, and that different letters should be formed by means of
various combinations of signals from these. ... Mr.
(afterwards Sir Francis) Ronalds ... took up the subject of
telegraphy in the year 1816, and published an account of his
experiments in 1823," based on the same idea as that of
Chappe. ... "Ronalds drew up a sort of telegraphic code by
which words, and sometimes even complete sentences, could be
transmitted by only three discharges. ... Ronalds completely
proved the practicability of his plan, not only on [a] short
underground line, .... but also upon an overhead line some
eight miles in length, constructed by carrying a telegraph
wire backwards and forwards over a wooden frame-work erected
in his garden at Hammersmith. ... The first attempt to employ
voltaic electricity in telegraphy was made by Don Francisco
Salva, whose frictional telegraph has already been referred
to. On the 14th of May, 1800, Salva read a paper on 'Galvanism
and its application to Telegraphy' before the Academy of Sciences
at Barcelona, in which he described a number of experiments
which he had made in telegraphing over a line some 310 metres
in length. ... A few years later he applied the then recent
discovery of the Voltaic pile to the same purpose, the
liberation of bubbles of gas by the decomposition of water at
the receiving station being the method adopted for indicating
the passage of the signals. A telegraph of a very similar
character was devised by Sömmering, and described in a paper
communicated by the inventor to the Munich Academy of Sciences
in 1809. Sömmering used a set of thirty-five wires corresponding
to the twenty-five letters of the German alphabet and the ten
numerals. ... Oersted's discovery of the action of the
electric current upon a suspended magnetic needle provided a
new and much more hopeful method of applying the electric
current to telegraphy. The great French astronomer Laplace
appears to have been the first to suggest this application of
Oersted's discovery, and he was followed shortly afterwards by
Ampere, who in the year 1820 read a paper before the Paris
Academy of Sciences."
G. W. De Tunzelmann,
Electricity in Modern Life,
chapter 9.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1786-1800.
Discoveries of Galvani and Volta.
"The fundamental experiment which led to the discovery of
dynamical electricity [1786] is due to Galvani, professor of
anatomy in Bologna. Occupied with investigations on the
influence of electricity on the nervous excitability of
animals, and especially of the frog, he observed that when the
lumbar nerves of a dead frog were connected with the crural
muscles by a metallic circuit, the latter became briskly
contracted. ... Galvani had some time before observed that the
electricity of machines produced in dead frogs analogous
contractions, and he attributed the phenomena first described
to an electricity inherent in the animal. He assumed that this
electricity, which he called vital fluid, passed from the
nerves to the muscles by the metallic arc, and was thus the
cause of contraction. This theory met with great support,
especially among physiologists, but it was not without
opponents. The most considerable of these was Alexander Volta,
professor of physics in Pavia. Galvani's attention had been
exclusively devoted to the nerves and muscles of the frog;
Volta's was directed upon the connecting metal. Resting on the
observation, which Galvani had also made, that the contraction
is more energetic when the connecting arc is composed of two
metals than where there is only one, Volta attributed to the
metals the active part in the phenomenon of contraction. He
assumed that the disengagement of electricity was due to their
contact, and that the animal parts only officiated as
conductors, and at the same time as a very sensitive
electroscope. By means of the then recently invented
electroscope, Volta devised several modes of showing the
disengagement of electricity on the contact of metals. ... A
memorable controversy arose between Galvani and Volta. The
latter was led to give greater extension to his contact
theory, and propounded the principle that when two
heterogeneous substances are placed in contact, one of them
always assumes the positive and the other the negative
electrical condition. In this form Volta's theory obtained the
assent of the principal philosophers of his time."
A. Ganot,
Elementary Treatise on Physics;
translated by Atkinson, book 10, chapter 1.
Volta's theory, however, though somewhat misleading, did not
prevent his making what was probably the greatest step in the
science up to this time, in the invention (about 1800) of the
Voltaic pile, the first generator of electrical energy by
chemical means, and the forerunner of the vast number of types
of the modern "battery."
{772}
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1810-1890.
The Arc light.
"The earliest instance of applying Electricity to the
production of light was in 1810, by Sir Humphrey Davy, who
found that when the points of two carbon rods whose other ends
were connected by wires with a powerful primary battery were
brought into contact, and then drawn a little way apart, the
Electric current still continued to jump across the gap,
forming what is now termed an Electric Arc. ... Various
contrivances have been devised for automatically regulating
the position of the two carbons. As early as 1847, a lamp was
patented by Staite, in which the carbon rods were fed together
by clockwork. ... Similar devices were produced by Foucault
and others, but the first really successful arc lamp was
Serrin's, patented in 1857, which has not only itself survived
until the present day, but has had its main features
reproduced in many other lamps. ... The Jablochkoff Candle
(1876), in which the arc was formed between the ends of a pair
of carbon rods placed side by side, and separated by a layer of
insulating material, which slowly consumed as the carbons
burnt down, did good service in accustoming the public to the
new illuminant. Since then the inventions by Brush,
Thomson-Houston, and others have done much to bring about its
adoption for lighting large rooms, streets, and spaces out of
doors."
J. B. Verity,
Electricity up to Date for Light, Power, and Traction,
chapter 3.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1820-1825.
Oersted, Ampere, and the discovery of the Electro-Magnet.
"There is little chance ... that the discoverer of the magnet,
or the discoverer and inventor of the magnetic needle, will
ever be known by name, or that even the locality and date of
the discovery will ever be determined [see COMPASS]. ... The
magnet and magnetism received their first scientific treatment
at the hands of Dr. Gilbert. During the two centuries
succeeding the publication of his work, the science of
magnetism was much cultivated. ... The development of the
science went along parallel with that of the science of
electricity ... although the latter was more fruitful in novel
discoveries and unexpected applications than the former. It is
not to be imagined that the many close resemblances of the two
classes of phenomena were allowed to pass unnoticed. ... There
was enough resemblance to suggest an intimate relation; and
the connecting link was sought for by many eminent
philosophers during the last years of the eighteenth and the
earlier years of the present century."
T. C. Mendenhall,
A Century of Electricity,
chapter 3.
"The effect which an electric current, flowing in a wire, can
exercise upon a neighbouring compass needle was discovered by
Oersted in 1820. This first announcement of the possession of
magnetic properties by an electric current was followed
speedily by the researches of Ampere, Arago, Davy, and by the
devices of several other experimenters, including De la Rive's
floating battery and coil, Schweigger's multiplier, Cumming's
galvanometer, Faraday's apparatus for rotation of a permanent
magnet, Marsh's vibrating pendulum and Barlow's rotating
star-wheel. But it was not until 1825 that the electromagnet
was invented. Arago announced, on 25th September 1820, that a
copper wire uniting the poles of a voltaic cell, and
consequently traversed by an electric current, could attract
iron filings to itself laterally. In the same communication he
described how he had succeeded in communicating permanent
magnetism to steel needles laid at right angles to the copper
wire, and how, on showing this experiment to Ampere, the
latter had suggested that the magnetizing action would be more
intense if for the straight copper wire there were substituted
one wrapped in a helix, in the centre of which the steel
needle might be placed. This suggestion was at once carried
out by the two philosophers. 'A copper wire wound in a helix
was terminated by two rectilinear portions which could be
adapted, at will, to the opposite poles of a powerful
horizontal voltaic pile; a steel needle wrapped up in paper
was introduced into the helix.' 'Now, after some minutes'
sojourn in the helix, the steel needle had received a
sufficiently strong dose of magnetism.' Arago then wound upon
a little glass tube some short helices, each about 2¼ inches
long, coiled alternately right-handedly and left-handedly, and
found that on introducing into the glass tube a steel wire, he
was able to produce 'consequent poles' at the places where the
winding was reversed. Ampère, on October 23rd, 1820, read a
memoir, claiming that these facts confirmed his theory of
magnetic actions. Davy had, also, in 1820, surrounded with
temporary coils of wire the steel needles upon which he was
experimenting, and had shown that the flow of electricity
around the coil could confer magnetic power upon the steel
needles. ... The electromagnet, in the form which can first
claim recognition ... was devised by William Sturgeon, and is
described by him in the paper which he contributed to the
Society of Arts in 1825."
S. P. Thompson,
The Electromagnet,
chapter 1.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1825-1874.
The Perfected Telegraph.
"The European philosophers kept on groping. At the end of five
years [after Oersted's discovery], one of them reached an
obstacle which he made up his mind was so entirely
insurmountable, that it rendered the electric telegraph an
impossibility for all future time. This was [1825] Mr. Peter
Barlow, fellow of the Royal Society, who had encountered the
question whether the lengthening of the conducting wire would
produce any effect in diminishing the energy of the current
transmitted, and had undertaken to resolve the problem. ... 'I
found [he said] such a considerable diminution with only 200
feet of wire as at once to convince me of the impracticability
of the scheme.' ... The year following the announcement of
Barlow's conclusions, a young graduate of the Albany (N. Y.)
Academy--by name Joseph Henry--was appointed to the
professorship of mathematics in that institution. Henry there
began the series of scientific investigations which is now
historic. ... Up to that time, electro-magnets had been made
with a single coil of naked wire wound spirally around the
core, with large intervals between the strands. The core was
insulated as a whole: the wire was not insulated at all.
Professor Schweigger, who had previously invented the
multiplying galvanometer, had covered his wires with silk.
Henry followed this idea, and, instead of a single coil of
wire, used several. ... Barlow had said that the gentle
current of the galvanic battery became so weakened, after
traversing 200 feet of wire, that it was idle to consider the
possibility of making it pass over even a mile of conductor
and then affect a magnet.
{773}
Henry's reply was to point out that the trouble lay in the way
Barlow's magnet was made. ... Make the magnet so that the
diminished current will exercise its full effect. Instead of
using one short coil, through which the current can easily
slip, and do nothing, make a coil of many turns; that
increases the magnetic field: make it of fine wire, and of
higher resistance. And then, to prove the truth of his
discovery, Henry put up the first electro-magnetic telegraph
ever constructed. In the academy at Albany, in 1831, he
suspended 1,060 feet of bell-wire, with a battery at one end
and one of his magnets at the other; and he made the magnet
attract and release its armature. The armature struck a bell,
and so made the signals. Annihilating distance in this way was
only one part of Henry's discovery. He had also found, that,
to obtain the greatest dynamic effect close at hand, the
battery should be composed of a very few cells of large
surface, combined with a coil or coils of short coarse wire
around the magnet,--conditions just the reverse of those
necessary when the magnet was to be worked at a distance. Now,
he argued, suppose the magnet with the coarse short coil, and
the large-surface battery, be put at the receiving station;
and the current coming over the line be used simply to make
and break the circuit of that local battery. ... This is the
principle of the telegraphic 'relay.' In 1835 Henry worked a
telegraph-line in that way at Princeton. And thus the
electro-magnetic telegraph was completely invented and
demonstrated. There was nothing left to do, but to put up the
posts, string the lines, and attach the instruments."
P. Benjamin,
The Age of Electricity,
chapter 11.
"At last we leave the territory of theory and experiment and
come to that of practice. 'The merit of inventing the modern
telegraph, and applying it on a large scale for public use,
is, beyond all question, due to Professor Morse of the United
States.' So writes Sir David Brewster, and the best
authorities on the question substantially agree with him. ...
Leaving for future consideration Morse's telegraph, which was
not introduced until five years after the time when he was
impressed with the notion of its feasibility, we may mention
the telegraph of Gauss and Weber of Göttingen. In 1833, they
erected a telegraphic wire between the Astronomical and
Magnetical Observatory of Göttingen, and the Physical Cabinet
of the University, for the purpose of carrying intelligence
from the one locality to the other. To these great
philosophers, however, rather the theory than the practice of
Electric Telegraphy was indebted. Their apparatus was so
improved as to be almost a new invention by Steinheil of
Munich, who, in 1837 ... succeeded in sending a current from
one end to the other of a wire 36,000 feet in length, the
action of which caused two needles to vibrate from side to
side, and strike a bell at each movement. To Steinheil the
honour is due of having discovered the important and
extraordinary fact that the earth might be used as a part of
the circuit of an electric current. The introduction of the
Electric Telegraph into England dates from the same year as
that in which Steinheil's experiments took place. William
Fothergill Cooke, a gentleman who held a commission in the
Indian army, returned from India on leave of absence, and
afterwards, because of his bad health, resigned his
commission, and went to Heidelberg to study anatomy. In 1836,
Professor Mönke, of Heidelberg, exhibited an
electro-telegraphic experiment, 'in which electric currents,
passing along a conducting wire, conveyed signals to a distant
station by the deflexion of a magnetic needle enclosed in
Schweigger's galvanometer or multiplier.' ... Cooke was so
struck with this experiment, that he immediately resolved to
apply it to purposes of higher utility than the illustration
of a lecture. ... In a short time he produced two telegraphs
of different construction. When his plans were completed, he
came to England, and in February, 1837, having consulted
Faraday and Dr. Roget on the construction of the
electric-magnet employed in a part of his apparatus, the
latter gentleman advised him to apply to Professor Wheatstone.
... The result of the meeting of Cooke and Wheatstone was that
they resolved to unite their several discoveries; and in the
month of May 1837, they took out their first patent 'for
improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant
places by means of electric currents transmitted through
metallic circuits.' ... By-and-by, as might probably have been
anticipated, difficulties arose between Cooke and Wheatstone,
as to whom the main credit of introducing the Electric
Telegraph into England was due. Mr. Cooke accused Wheatstone
(with a certain amount of justice, it should seem) of entirely
ignoring his claims; and in doing so Mr. Cooke appears to have
rather exaggerated his own services. Most will readily agree
to the wise words of Mr. Sabine: "It was once a popular
fallacy in England that Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone were the
original inventors of the Electric Telegraph. The Electric
Telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up as
we have seen little by little."
H. J. Nicoll,
Great Movements,
pages 424-429.
"In the latter part of the year 1832, Samuel F. B. Morse, an
American artist, while on a voyage from France to the United
States, conceived the idea of an electromagnetic telegraph
which should consist of the following parts, viz: A single
circuit of conductors from some suitable generator of
electricity; a system of signs, consisting of dots or points
and spaces to represent numerals; a method of causing the
electricity to mark or imprint these signs upon a strip or
ribbon of paper by the mechanical action of an electro-magnet
operating upon the paper by means of a lever, armed at one end
with a pen or pencil; and a method of moving the paper ribbon
at a uniform rate by means of clock-work to receive the
characters. ... In the autumn of the year 1835 he constructed
the first rude working model of his invention. ... The first
public exhibition ... was on the 2d of September, 1837, on
which occasion the marking was successfully effected through
one third of a mile of wire. Immediately afterwards a
recording instrument was constructed ... which was
subsequently employed upon the first experimental line between
Washington and Baltimore. This line was constructed in 1843-44
under an appropriation by Congress, and was completed by May
of the latter year. On the 27th of that month the first
despatch was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. ... The
experimental line was originally constructed with two wires,
as Morse was not at that time acquainted with the discovery of
Steinheil, that the earth might be used to complete the circuit.
{774}
Accident, however, soon demonstrated this fact. ... The
following year (1845) telegraph lines began to be built over
other routes. ... In October, 1851, a convention of deputies
from the German States of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
Würtemberg and Saxony, met at Vienna, for the purpose of
establishing a common and uniform telegraphic system, under
the name of the German-Austrian Telegraph Union. The various
systems of telegraphy then in use were subjected to the most
thorough examination and discussion. The convention decided
with great unanimity that the Morse system was practically far
superior to all others, and it was accordingly adopted. Prof.
Steinheil, although himself ... the inventor of a telegraphic
system, with a magnanimity that does him high honor, strongly
urged upon the convention the adoption of the American
system." ... The first of the printing telegraphs was patented
in the United States by Royal E. House, in 1846. The Hughes
printing telegraph, a remarkable piece of mechanism, was
patented by David E. Hughes, of Kentucky, in 1855. A system
known as the automatic method, in which the signals
representing letters are transmitted over the line through the
instrumentality of mechanism, was originated by Alexander Bain
of Edinburgh, whose first patents were taken out in 1846. An
autographic telegraph, transmitting despatches in the
reproduced hand-writing of the sender, was brought out in
1850, by F. C. Bakewell, of London. The same result was
afterwards accomplished with variations of method by Charles
Cros, of Paris, Abbé Caseli, of Florence, and others; but none
of these inventions has been extensively used. "The
possibility of making use of a single wire for the
simultaneous transmission of two or more communications seems
to have first suggested itself to Moses G. Farmer, of Boston,
about the year 1852." The problem was first solved with
partial success by Dr. Gintl, on the line between Prague and
Vienna, in 1853, but more perfectly by Carl Frischen, of
Hanover, in the following year. Other inventors followed in
the same field, among them Thomas A. Edison, of New Jersey,
who was led by his experiments finally, in 1874 to devise a
system "which was destined to furnish the basis of the first
practical solution of the curious and interesting problem of
quadruplex telegraphy."
G. B. Prescott,
Electricity and the Electric Telegraph,
chapter 29-40.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1831-1872.
Dynamo
Electrical Machines, and Electric Motors.
"The discovery of induction by Faraday, in 1831, gave rise to
the construction of magneto-electro machines. The first of
such machines that was ever made was probably a machine that
never came into practical use, the description of which was
given in a letter, signed 'P. M.,' and directed to Faraday,
published in the Philosophical Magazine of 2nd August, 1832.
We learn from this description that the essential parts of
this machine were six horse-shoe magnets attached to a disc,
which rotated in front of six coils of wire wound on bobbins."
Sept. 3rd, 1832, Pixii constructed a machine in which a single
horse-shoe magnet was made to rotate before two soft iron
cores, wound with wire. In this machine he introduced the
commutator, an essential element in all modern continuous
current machines. "Almost at the same time, Ritchie, Saxton,
and Clarke constructed similar machines. Clarke's is the best
known, and is still popular in the small and portable
'medical' machines so commonly sold. ... A larger machine
[was] constructed by Stöhrer (1843), on the same plan as
Clarke's, but with six coils instead of two, and three
compound magnets instead of one. ... The machines, constructed
by Nollet (1849) and Shepard (1856) had still more magnets and
coils. Shepard's machine was modified by Van Malderen, and was
called the Alliance machine. ... Dr. Werner Siemens, while
considering how the inducing effect of the magnet can be most
thoroughly utilised, and how to arrange the coils in the most
efficient manner for this purpose, was led in 1857 to devise
the cylindrical armature. ... Sinsteden in 1851 pointed out
that the current of the generator may itself be utilised to
excite the magnetism of the field magnets. ... Wilde [in 1863]
carried out this suggestion by using a small steel permanent
magnet and larger electro magnets. ... The next great
improvement of these machines arose from the discovery of what
may be called the dynamo-electric principle. This principle
may be stated as follows:--For the generation of currents by
magneto-electric induction it is not necessary that the
machine should be furnished with permanent magnets; the
residual or temporary magnetism of soft iron quickly rotating
is sufficient for the purpose. ... In 1867 the principle was
clearly enunciated and used simultaneously, but independently,
by Siemens and by Wheatstone. ... It was in February, 1867,
that Dr. C. W. Siemens' classical paper on the conversion of
dynamical into electrical energy without the aid of permanent
magnetism was read before the Royal Society. Strangely enough,
the discovery of the same principle was enunciated at the same
meeting of the Society by Sir Charles Wheatstone. ... The
starting-point of a great improvement in dynamo-electric
machines, was the discovery by Pacinotti of the ring armature
... in 1860. ... Gramme, in 1871, modified the ring armature,
and constructed the first machine, in which he made use of the
Gramme ring and the dynamic principle. In 1872,
Hefner-Alteneck, of the firm of Siemens and Halske,
constructed a machine in which the Gramme ring is replaced by
a drum armature, that is to say, by a cylinder round which
wire is wound. ... Either the Pacinotti-Gramme ring armature,
or the Hefner-Alteneck drum armature, is now adopted by nearly
all constructors of dynamo-electric machines, the parts
varying of course in minor details." The history of the dynamo
since has been one of a gradual perfection of parts, resulting
in the production of a great number of types, which can not
here even be mentioned.
A. R. von Urbanitzky,
Electricity in the Service of Man,
pages 227-242.
S. P. Thompson,
Dynamo Electrical Machines.
ELECTRICITY:
Electric Motors.
It has been known for forty years that every form of electric
motor which operated on the principle of mutual mechanical
force between a magnet and a conducting wire or coil could
also be made to act as a generator of induced currents by the
reverse operation of producing the motion mechanically. And
when, starting from the researches of Siemens, Wilde, Nollet,
Holmes and Gramme, the modern forms of magneto-electric and
dynamo-electric machines began to come into commercial use, it
was discovered that any one of the modern machines designed as
a generator of currents constituted a far more efficient
electric motor than any of the previous forms which had been
designed specially as motors.
{775}
It required no new discovery of the law of reversibility to
enable the electrician to understand this; but to convince the
world required actual experiment."
A. Guillemin, Electricity and Magnetism,
part 2, chapter 10, section 3.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1835-1889.
The Electric Railway.
"Thomas Davenport, a poor blacksmith of Brandon, Vt.,
constructed what might be termed the first electric railway.
The invention was crude and of little practical value, but the
idea was there. In 1835 he exhibited in Springfield,
Massachusetts, a small model electric engine running upon a
circular track, the circuit being furnished by primary
batteries carried in the car. Three years later, Robert
Davidson, of Aberdeen, Scotland, began his experiments in this
direction. ... He constructed quite a powerful motor, which
was mounted upon a truck. Forty battery cells, carried on the
car, furnished power to propel the motor. The battery elements
were composed of amalgamated zinc and iron plates, the
exciting liquid being dilute sulphuric acid. This locomotive
was run successfully on several steam railroads in Scotland,
the speed attained was four miles an hour, but this machine
was afterwards destroyed by some malicious person or persons
while it was being taken home to Aberdeen. In 1849 Moses
Farmer exhibited an electric engine which drew a small car
containing two persons. In 1851, Dr. Charles Grafton Page, of
Salem, Massachusetts, perfected an electric engine of
considerable power. On April 29 of that year the engine was
attached to a car and a trip was made from Washington to
Bladensburg, over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track. The
highest speed attained was nineteen miles an hour. The
electric power was furnished by one hundred Grove cells
carried on the engine. ... The same year, Thomas Hall, of
Boston, Mass., built a small electric locomotive called the
Volta. The current was furnished by two Grove battery cells
which were conducted to the rails, thence through the wheels
of the locomotive to the motor. This was the first instance of
the current being supplied to the motor on a locomotive from a
stationary source. It was exhibited at the Charitable
Mechanics fair by him in 1860. ... In 1879, Messrs. Siemen and
Halske, of Berlin, constructed and operated an electric
railway at the Industrial Exposition. A third rail placed in
the centre of the two outer rails, supplied the current, which
was taken up into the motor through a sliding contact under
the locomotive. ... In 1880 Thomas A. Edison constructed an
experimental road near his laboratory in Menlo Park, N. J. The
power from the locomotive was transferred to the car by belts
running to and from the shafts of each. The current was taken
from and returned through the rails. Early in the year of 1881
the Lichterfelde, Germany, electric railway was put into
operation. It is a third rail system and is still running at
the present time. This may be said to be the first commercial
electric railway constructed. In 1883 the Daft Electric
Company equipped and operated quite successfully an electric
system on the Saratoga & Mt. McGregor Railroad, at Saratoga,
N. Y." During the next five or six years numerous electric
railroads, more or less experimental, were built." October 31,
1888, the Council Bluffs & Omaha Railway and Bridge Company
was first operated by electricity, they using the
Thomson-Houston system. The same year the Thomson-Houston Co.
equipped the Highland Division of the Lynn & Boston Horse
Railway at Lynn, Massachusetts. Horse railways now began to be
equipped with electricity all over the world, and especially
in the United States. In February, 1889, the Thomson-Houston
Electric Co. had equipped the line from Bowdoin Square,
Boston, to Harvard Square, Cambridge, of the West End Railway
with electricity and operated twenty cars, since which time it
has increased its electrical apparatus, until now it is the
largest electric railway line in the world."
E. Trevert,
Electric Railway Engineering,
appendix A.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1841-1880.
The Incandescent Electric Light.
"While the arc lamp is well adapted for lighting large areas
requiring a powerful, diffused light, similar to sunlight, and
hence is suitable for outdoor illumination, and for workshops,
stores, public buildings, and factories, especially those
where colored fabrics are produced, its use in ordinary
dwellings, or for a desk light in offices, is impractical, a
softer, steadier, and more economical light being required.
Various attempts to modify the arc-light by combining it with
the incandescent were made in the earlier stages of electric
lighting. ... The first strictly incandescent lamp was
invented in 1841 by Frederick de Molyens of Cheltenham,
England, and was constructed on the simple principle of the
incandescence produced by the high resistance of a platinum
wire to the passage of the electric current. In 1849 Petrie
employed iridium for the same purpose, also alloys of iridium
and platinum, and iridium and carbon. In 1845 J. W. Starr of
Cincinnati first proposed the use of carbon, and, associated
with King, his English agent, produced, through the financial
aid of the philanthropist Peabody, an incandescent lamp. ...
In all these early experiments, the battery was the source of
electric supply; and the comparatively small current required
for the incandescent light as compared with that required for
the arc light, was an argument in favor of the former. ...
Still, no substantial progress was made with either system
till the invention of the dynamo resulted in the practical
development of both systems, that of the incandescent
following that of the arc. Among the first to make
incandescent lighting a practical success were Sawyer and Man
of New York, and Edison. For a long time, Edison experimented
with platinum, using fine platinum wire coiled into a spiral,
so as to concentrate the heat, and produce incandescence; the
same current producing only a red heat when the wire, whether
of platinum or other metal, is stretched out. ... Failing to
obtain satisfactory results from platinum, Edison turned his
attention to carbon, the superiority of which as an
incandescent illuminant had already been demonstrated; but its
rapid consumption, as shown by the Reynier and similar lamps,
being unfavorable to its use as compared with the durability
of platinum and iridium, the problem was, to secure the
superior illumination of the carbon, and reduce or prevent its
consumption. As this consumption was due chiefly to oxidation,
it was questionable whether the superior illumination were not
due to the same cause, and whether, if the carbon were inclosed
in a glass globe, from which oxygen was eliminated, the same
illumination could be obtained.
{776}
Another difficulty of equal magnitude was to obtain a
sufficiently perfect vacuum, and maintain it in a hermetically
sealed globe inclosing the carbon, and at the same time
maintain electric connection with the generator through the
glass by a metal conductor, subject to expansion and
contraction different from that of the glass, by the change of
temperature due to the passage of the electric current. Sawyer
and Man attempted to solve this problem by filling the globe
with nitrogen, thus preventing combustion by eliminating the
oxygen. ... The results obtained by this method, which at one
time attracted a great deal of attention, were not
sufficiently satisfactory to become practical; and Edison and
others gave their preference to the vacuum method, and sought
to overcome the difficulties connected with it. The invention
of the mercurial air pump, with its subsequent improvements,
made it possible to obtain a sufficiently perfect vacuum, and
the difficulty of introducing the current into the interior of
the globe was overcome by imbedding a fine platinum wire in
the glass, connecting the inclosed carbon with the external
circuit; the expansion and contraction of the platinum not
differing sufficiently from that of the glass, in so fine a
wire, as to impair the vacuum. ... The carbons made by Edison
under his first patent in 1879, were obtained from brown paper
or cardboard. ... They were very fragile and short-lived, and
consequently were soon abandoned. In 1880 he patented the
process which, with some modifications, he still adheres to.
In this process he uses filaments of bamboo, which are taken
from the interior, fibrous portion of the plant."
P. Atkinson,
Elements of Electric Lighting,
chapter 8.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1854-1866.
The Atlantic Cable.
"Cyrus Field ... established a company in America (in 1854),
which ... obtained the right of landing cables in Newfoundland
for fifty years. Soundings were made in 1856 between Ireland
and Newfoundland, showing a maximum depth of 4,400 metres.
Having succeeded after several attempts in laying a cable
between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Field founded the
Atlantic Telegraph Company in England. ... The length of the
... cable [used] was 4,000 kilometres, and was carried by the
two ships Agamemnon and Niagara. The distance between the two
stations on the coasts was 2,640 kilometres. The laying of the
cable commenced on the 7th of August, 1857, at Valentia
(Ireland); on the third day the cable broke at a depth of
3,660 metres, and the expedition had to return. A second
expedition was sent in 1858; the two ships met each other
half-way, the ends of the cable were joined, and the lowering
of it commenced in both directions; 149 kilometres were thus
lowered, when a fault in the cable was discovered. It had,
therefore, to be brought on board again, and was broken during
the process. After it had been repaired, and when 476
kilometres had been already laid, another fault was
discovered, which caused another breakage; this time it was
impossible to repair it, and the expedition was again
unsuccessful, and had to return. In spite of the repeated
failures, two ships were again sent out in the same year, and
this time one end of the cable was landed in Ireland, and the
other at Newfoundland. The length of the sunk cable was 3,745
kilometres. Field's first telegram was sent on the 7th of
August, from America to Ireland. The insulation of the cable,
however, became more defective every day, and failed
altogether on the 1st of September. From the experience
obtained, it was concluded that it was possible to lay a
trans-Atlantic cable, and the company, after consulting a
number of professional men, again set to work. ... The Great
Eastern was employed in laying this cable. This ship, which is
211 metres long, 25 metres broad, and 16 metres in height,
carried a crew of 500 men, of which 120 were electricians and
engineers, 179 mechanics and stokers, and 115 sailors. The
management of all affairs relating to the laying of the cable
was entrusted to Canning. The coast cable was laid on the 21st
of July, and the end of it was connected with the Atlantic
cable on the 23rd. After 1,326 kilometres had been laid, a
fault was discovered, an iron wire was found stuck right
across the cable, and Canning considered the mischief to have
been done with a malevolent purpose. On the 2nd of August,

2,196 kilometres of cable were sunk, when another fault was
discovered. While the cable was being repaired it broke, and
attempts to recover it at the time were all unsuccessful; in
consequence of this the Great Eastern had to return without
having completed the task. A new company, the Anglo-American
Telegraph Company, was formed in 1866, and at once entrusted
Messrs. Glass, Elliott and Company with the construction of a
new cable of 3,000 kilometres. Different arrangements were
made for the outer envelope of the cable, and the Great
Eastern was once more equipped to give effect to the
experiments which had just been made. The new expedition was
not only to lay a new cable, but also to take up the end of
the old one, and join it to a new piece, and thus obtain a
second telegraph line. The sinking again commenced in Ireland
on the 13th of July, 1866, and it was finished on the 27th. On
the 4th of August, 1866, the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Line was
declared open."
A. R. von Urbanitzky,
Electricity in the Service of Man,
pages 767-768.
ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1876-1892.
The Telephone.
"The first and simplest of all magnetic telephones is the Bell
Telephone." In "the first form of this instrument, constructed
by Professor Graham Bell, in 1876 ... a harp of steel rods was
attached to the poles of a permanent magnet. ... When we sing
into a piano, certain of the strings of the instrument are set
in vibration sympathetically by the action of the voice with
different degrees of amplitude, and a sound, which is an
approximation to the vowel uttered, is produced from the
piano. Theory shows that, had the piano a much larger number
of strings to the octave, the vowel sounds would be perfectly
reproduced. It was upon this principle that Bell constructed
his first telephone. The expense of constructing such an
apparatus, however, deterred Bell from making the attempt, and
he sought to simplify the apparatus before proceeding further in
this direction. After many experiments with more, or less
unsatisfactory results, he constructed the instrument ...
which he exhibited at Philadelphia in 1876. In this apparatus,
the transmitter was formed by an electro-magnet, through which
a current flowed, and a membrane, made of gold-beater's skin,
on which was placed as a sort of armature, a piece of soft
iron, which thus vibrated in front of the electro-magnet when
the membrane was thrown into sonorous vibration.
{777}
... It is quite clear that when we speak into a Bell
transmitter only a small fraction of the energy of the
sonorous vibrations of the voice can be converted into
electric currents, and that these currents must be extremely
weak. Edison applied himself to discover some means by which
he could increase the strength of these currents. Elisha Gray
had proposed to use the variation of resistance of a fine
platinum wire attached to a diaphragm dipping into water, and
hoped that the variation of extent of surface in contact would
so vary the strength of current as to reproduce sonorous
vibrations; but there is no record of this experiment having
been tried. Edison proposed to utilise the fact that the
resistance of carbon varied under pressure. He had
independently discovered this peculiarity of carbon, but it
had been previously described by Du Moncel. ... The first
carbon transmitter was constructed in 1878 by Edison."
W. H. Preece, and J. Maier,
The Telephone,
chapter 3-4.
In a pamphlet distributed at the Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893, entitled "Exhibit of the American Bell
Telephone Co.," the following statements are made: "At the
Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia, in 1876, was given the
first general public exhibition of the telephone by its
inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. To-day, seventeen years
later, more than half a million instruments are in daily use
in the United States alone, six hundred million talks by
telephone are held every year, and the human voice is carried
over a distance of twelve hundred miles without loss of sound
or syllable. The first use of the telephone for business
purposes was over a single wire connecting only two
telephones. At once the need of general inter-communication
made itself felt. In the cities and larger towns exchanges
were established and all the subscribers to any one exchange
were enabled to talk to one another through a central office.
Means were then devised to connect two or more exchanges by
trunk lines, thus affording means of communication between all
the subscribers of all the exchanges so connected. This work
has been pushed forward until now have been gathered into what
may be termed one great exchange all the important cities from
Augusta on the east to Milwaukee on the west, and from
Burlington and Buffalo on the north to Washington on the
south, bringing more than one half the people of this country
and a much larger proportion of the business interests, within
talking distance of one another. ... The lines which connect
Chicago with Boston, via New York, are of copper wire of extra
size. It is about one sixth of an inch in diameter, and weighs
435 pounds to the mile. Hence each circuit contains 1,044,000
pounds of copper. ... In the United States there are over a
quarter of a million exchange subscribers, and ... these make
use of the telephone to carry on 600,000,000 conversations
annually. There is hardly a city or town of 5,000 inhabitants
that has not its Telephone Exchange, and these are so knit
together by connecting lines that intercommunication is
constant." The number of telephones in use in the United
States, on the 20th of December in each year since the first
introduction, is given as follows;
1877, 5,187;
1878, 17,567;
1879, 52,517;
1880, 123,380;
1881, 180,592;
1882, 237,728;
1883, 298,580;
1884, 325,574;
1885, 330,040;
1886, 353,518;
1887, 380,277;
1888, 411,511;
1889, 444,861;
1890, 483,790;
1891, 512,407;
1892, 552,720.
----------End: Electricity----------
ELEPHANT, Order of the.
A Danish order of knighthood instituted in 1693 by
King Christian V.
ELEPHANTINE.
See EGYPT: THE OLD EMPIRE AND THE MIDDLE EMPIRE.
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, The.
Among the ancient Greeks, "the mysteries were a source of
faith and hope to the initiated, as are the churches of modern
times. Secret doctrines, regarded as holy, and to be kept with
inviolable fidelity, were handed down in these brotherhoods,
and no doubt were fondly believed to contain a saving grace by
those who were admitted, amidst solemn and imposing rites,
under the veil of midnight, to hear the tenets of the ancient
faith, and the promises of blessings to come to those who,
with sincerity of heart and pious trust, took the obligations
upon them. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most imposing and
venerable. Their origin extended back into a mythical
antiquity, and they were among the few forms of Greek worship
which were under the superintendence of hereditary
priesthoods. Thirlwall thinks that 'they were the remains of a
worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and
its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less
fanciful, more earnest, and better fitted to awaken both
philosophical thought and religious feeling.' This conclusion
is still further confirmed by the moral and religious tone of
the poets,--such as Æschylus,--whose ideas on justice, sin and
retribution are as solemn and elevated as those of a Hebrew
prophet. The secrets, whatever they were, were never revealed
in express terms; but Isocrates uses some remarkable
expressions, when speaking of their importance to the
condition of man. 'Those who are initiated,' says he
'entertain sweeter hopes of eternal life'; and how could this
be the case, unless there were imparted at Eleusis the
doctrine of eternal life, and some idea of its state and
circumstances more compatible with an elevated conception of
the Deity and of the human soul than the vague and shadowy
images which haunted the popular mind. The Eleusinian
communion embraced the most eminent men from every part of
Greece,--statesmen, poets, philosophers, and generals; and
when Greece became a part of the Roman Empire, the greatest
minds of Rome drew instruction and consolation from its
doctrines. The ceremonies of initiation--which took place
every year in the early autumn, a beautiful season in
Attica--were a splendid ritual, attracting visitors from every
part of the world. The processions moving from Athens to
Eleusis over the Sacred Way, sometimes numbered twenty or
thirty thousand people, and the exciting scenes were well
calculated to leave a durable impression on susceptible minds.
... The formula of the dismissal, after the initiation was
over, consisted in the mysterious words 'konx,' 'ompax'; and
this is the only Eleusinian secret that has illuminated the
world from the recesses of the temple of Demeter and
Persephone. But it is a striking illustration of the value
attached to these rites and doctrines, that, in moments of
extremest peril--as of impending shipwreck, or massacre by a
victorious enemy,--men asked one another, 'Are you initiated?'
as if this were the anchor of their hopes for another life."
{778}
C. C. Felton,
Greece, Ancient and Modern,
chapter 2, lecture 10.
"The Eleusinian mysteries continued to be celebrated during
the whole of the second half of the fourth century, till they
were put an end to by the destruction of the temple at
Eleusis, and by the devastation of Greece in the invasion of
the Goths under Alaric in 395."
See GOTHS: A. D. 395.
W. Smith,
Note to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,
chapter 25.
ALSO IN:
R. Brown,
The Great Dionysiak Myth,
chapter 6, section. 2.
J. J. I. von Dollinger,
The Gentile and the Jew,
book 3 (volume 1).
See, also, ELEUSIS.
ELEUSIS.
Eleusis was originally one of the twelve confederate townships
into which Attica was said to have been divided before the
time of Theseus. It "was advantageously situated [about
fourteen miles Northwest of Athens] on a height, at a small
distance from the shore of an extensive bay, to which there is
access only through narrow channels, at the two extremities of
the island of Salamis: its position was important, as
commanding the shortest and most level route by land from
Athens to the Isthmus by the pass which leads at the foot of
Mount Cerata along the shore to Megara. ... Eleusis was built
at the eastern end of a low rocky hill, which lies parallel to
the sea-shore. ... The eastern extremity of the hill was
levelled artificially for the reception of the Hierum of Ceres
and the other sacred buildings. Above these are the traces of an
Acropolis. A triangular space of about 500 yards each side,
lying between the hill and the shore, was occupied by the town
of Eleusis. ... To those who approached Eleusis from Athens,
the sacred buildings standing on the eastern extremity of the
height concealed the greater part of the town, and on a nearer
approach presented a succession of magnificent objects, well
calculated to heighten the solemn grandeur of the ceremonies
and the awe and reverence of the Mystæ in their initiation.
... In the plurality of enclosures, in the magnificence of the
pylæ or gateways, in the absence of any general symmetry of
plan, in the small auxiliary temples, we recognize a great
resemblance between the sacred buildings of Eleusis and the
Egyptian Hiera of Thebes and Philæ. And this resemblance is
the more remarkable, as the Demeter of Attica was the Isis of
Egypt. We cannot suppose, however, that the plan of all these
buildings was even thought of when the worship of Ceres was
established at Eleusis. They were the progressive creation of
successive ages. ... Under the Roman Empire ... it was
fashionable among the higher order of Romans to pass some time
at Athens in the study of philosophy and to be initiated in
the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence Eleusis became at that time
one of the most frequented places in Greece; and perhaps it
was never so populous as under the emperors of the first two
centuries of our æra. During the two following centuries, its
mysteries were the chief support of declining polytheism, and
almost the only remaining bond of national union among the
Greeks; but at length the destructive visit of the Goths in
the year 396, the extinction of paganism and the ruin of
maritime commerce, left Eleusis deprived of every source of
prosperity, except those which are inseparable from its
fertile plain, its noble bay, and its position on the road
from Attica to the Isthmus. ... The village still preserves
the ancient name, no further altered than is customary in
Romaic conversions."
W. M. Leake,
Topography of Athens;
volume 2: The Demi, section 5.
ELGIN, Lord.
The Indian administration of.
See INDIA: A. D. 1862-1876.
ELIS.
Elis was an ancient Greek state, occupying the country on the
western coast of Peloponnesus, adjoining Arcadia, and between
Messenia at the south and Achaia on the north. It was noted
for the fertility of its soil and the rich yield of its
fisheries. But Elis owed greater importance to the inclusion
within its territory of the sacred ground of Olympia, where
the celebration of the most famous festival of Zeus came to be
established at an early time. The Elians had acquired Olympia
by conquest of the city and territory of Pisa, to which it
originally belonged, and the presidency of the Olympic games
was always disputed with them by the latter. Elis was the
close ally of Sparta down to the year B. C. 421, when a bitter
quarrel arose between them, and Elis suffered heavily in the
wars which ensued. It was afterwards at war with the
Arcadians, and joined the Ætolian League against the Achaian
League. The city of Elis was one of the most splendid in
Greece; but little now remains, even of ruins, to indicate its
departed glories.
See, also, OLYMPIC GAMES.
ELISII, The.
See LYGIANS.
ELIZABETH,
Czarina of Russia, A. D. 1741-1761..
Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and the Thirty Years War.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620; 1620; 1621-1623;
1631-1632, and 1648.
Elizabeth, Queen of England, A. D. 1558-1603.
Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain.
See ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735; and
SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725, and 1726-1731.
ELIZABETH, N. J.
The first settlement of.
See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667.
ELK HORN, OR PEA RIDGE, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-MARCH: MISSOURI-ARKANSAS).
ELKWATER, OR CHEAT SUMMIT, Battle of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (AUGUST-DECEMBER: WEST VIRGINIA).
ELLANDUM, Battle of.
Decisive victory of Ecgberht, the West Saxon king, over the
Mercians, A. D. 823.
ELLEBRI, The.
See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS.
ELLENBOROUGH, Lord, The Indian administration of.
See INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845.
ELLSWORTH, Colonel, The death of.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1861 (MAY: VIRGINIA).
ELMET.
A small kingdom of the Britons which was swallowed up in the
English kingdom of Northumbria early in the seventh century.
It answered, roughly speaking, to the present West-Riding of
Yorkshire. ... Leeds "preserves the name of Loidis, by which
Elmet seems also to have been known."
J. R. Green, The Making of England, page 254.
ELMIRA, N. Y. (then Newtown).
General Sullivan's Battle with the Senecas.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1779 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER).
ELSASS.
See ALSACE.
ELTEKEH, Battle of.
A victory won by the Assyrian, Sennacherib, over the
Egyptians, before the disaster befell his army which is
related in 2 Kings xix. 35. Sennacherib's own account of the
battle has been found among the Assyrian records.
{779}
A. H. Sayce,
Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments,
chapter 6.
ELUSATES, The.
See AQUITAINE, TRIBES OF ANCIENT.
ELVIRA, Battle of(1319).
See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460.
ELY, The Camp of Refuge at.
See ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.
ELYMAIS.
See ELAM.
ELYMEIA.
See MACEDONIA.
ELYMIANS, The.
See SICILY: EARLY INHABITANTS.
ELYSIAN FIELDS.
See CANARY ISLANDS.
ELZEVIRS.
See PRINTING: A. D. 1617-1680.
EMANCIPATION, Catholic.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829.
EMANCIPATION, Compensated;
Proposal of President Lincoln.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH).
EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS,
President Lincoln's.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1862 (SEPTEMBER), and 1863 (JANUARY).
EMANUEL,
King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-1521.
Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, A. D. 1553-1580.
EMBARGO OF 1807, The American.
See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.
EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-1204.
EMERITA AUGUSTA.
A colony of Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the
emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern Merida, in
Estremadura.
C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note.
EMESSA.
Capture by the Arabs (A. D. 636).
See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 632-639.
ÉMIGRÉS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791;
1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); and 1791-1792.
EMITES, The.
See JEWS: EARLY HEBREW HISTORY.
EMMAUS, Battle of.
Defeat of a Syrian army under Gorgias by Judas Maccabæus,
B. C. 166.
Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, book 12, chapter 7.
EMMENDINGEN, Battle of.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER). .
EMMET INSURRECTION, The.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803.
EMPEROR.
A title derived from the Roman title Imperator.
See IMPERATOR.
EMPORIA, The.
See CARTHAGE, THE DOMINION OF.
ENCOMIENDAS.
See SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS;
also, REPARTIMIENTOS.
ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The.
See IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848.
ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF 1864, The.
See PAPACY: A. D. 1864.
ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, The.
"French literature had never been so brilliant as in the
second half of the 18th century. Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert,
Rousseau, Duclos, Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Raynal,
Condorcet, Mably, and many others adorned it, and the
'Encyclopædia,' which was begun in 1751 under the direction of
Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual influence which
has rarely been equalled. The name and idea were taken from a
work published by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A noble
preliminary discourse was written by D'Alembert; and all the
best pens in France were enlisted in the enterprise, which was
constantly encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire. Twice
it was suppressed by authority, but the interdict was again
raised. Popular favour now ran with an irresistible force in
favour of the philosophers, and the work was brought to its
conclusion in 1771."
W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century,
chapter. 20 (volume 5).
ALSO IN:
J. Morley,
Diderot and the Encyclopædists,
chapter 5 (volume 1).
E. J. Lowell,
The Eve of the French Revolution,
chapter 16.
ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.
See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629, and after.
ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876).
See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876.
ENGADINE, The.
See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499.
ENGEN, Battle of (1800).
See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY).
ENGERN, Duchy of.
See SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY.
ENGHIEN, Duc d',
The abduction and execution of.
See FRANCE: 1804-1805.
ENGLAND:
Before the coming of the English.
The Celtic and Roman periods.
See BRITAIN.
ENGLAND: A. D.449-547.
The three tribes of the English conquest.
The naming of the country.
"It was by ... three tribes [from Northwestern Germany], the
Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, that southern Britain was
conquered and colonized in the fifth and sixth centuries,
according to the most ancient testimony. ... Of the three, the
Angli almost if not altogether pass away into the migration:
the Jutes and the Saxons, although migrating in great numbers,
had yet a great part to play in their own homes and in other
regions besides Britain; the former at a later period in the
train and under the name of the Danes; the latter in German
history from the eighth century to the present day."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
volume 1, chapter 3.
"Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some tribes stand out
conspicuously; Angles, Saxons, and Jutes stand out
conspicuously above all. The Jutes led the way; from the
Angles the land and the united nation took their name; the
Saxons gave us the name by which our Celtic neighbours have
ever known us. But there is no reason to confine the area from
which our forefathers came to the space which we should mark
on the map as the land of the continental Angles, Saxons, and
Jutes. So great a migration is always likely to be swollen by
some who are quite alien to the leading tribe; it is always
certain to be swollen by many who are of stocks akin to the
leading tribe, but who do not actually belong to it.
{780}
As we in Britain are those who stayed behind at the time of
the second great migration of our people [to America], so I
venture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on the continent
of Europe as those who stayed behind at the time of the first
great migration of our people. Our special hearth and cradle
is doubtless to be found in the immediate marchland of Germany
and Denmark, but the great common home of our people is to be
looked on as stretching along the whole of that long coast
where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue are spoken. If
Angles and Saxons came, we know that Frisians came also, and
with Frisians as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to
claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest sense Old
England, as the land of one part of the kinsfolk who stayed
behind. Through that whole region, from the special Anglian
corner far into what is now northern France, the true tongue
of the people, sometimes overshadowed by other tongues, is
some dialect or other of that branch of the great Teutonic
family which is essentially the same as our own speech. From
Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one which differs
from English only as the historical events of fourteen hundred
years of separation have inevitably made the two tongues--two
dialects, I should rather say, of the same tongue--to differ.
From these lands we came as a people. That was our first
historical migration. Our remote forefathers must have made
endless earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan body,
as parts of the smaller Teutonic body. But our voyage from the
Low-Dutch mainland to the isle of Britain was our first
migration as a people. ... Among the Teutonic tribes which
settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the Saxons, stood out
foremost. These two between them occupied by far the greater
part of the land that was occupied at all. Each of these two
gave its name to the united nation, but each gave it on
different lips. The Saxons were the earlier invaders; they had
more to do with the Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On
the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, the whole
of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain were known from the
beginning, and are known still, as Saxons. But, as the various
Teutonic settlements drew together, as they began to have
common national feelings and to feel the need of a common
national name, the name which they chose was not the same as
that by which their Celtic neighbours called them. They did
not call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony; they called
themselves English and their land England. I used the word
Saxony in all seriousness; it is a real name for the Teutonic
part of Britain, and it is an older name than the name
England. But it is a name used only from the outside by Celtic
neighbours and enemies; it was not used from the inside by the
Teutonic people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as they
took to themselves a common name, that name was English; as
soon as they gave their land a common name, that name was
England. ... And this is the more remarkable, because the age
when English was fully established as the name of the people,
and England as the name of the land, was an age of Saxon
supremacy, an age when a Saxon state held the headship of
England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew step by step to
be kings of the English and lords of the whole British island.
In common use then, the men of the tenth and eleventh
centuries knew themselves by no name but English."
E. A. Freeman,
The English People in its Three Homes
(Lectures to American Audiences,
pages 30-31, and 45-47).
See ANGLES AND JUTES, and SAXONS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473.
The Beginning of English history.
The conquest of Kent by the Jutes.
"In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors was drawn to the
shores of Britain by the usual pledges of land and pay. The
warriors were Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to
Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that projects from
the shores of North-Germany, but who were probably akin to the
race that was fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and
settling in the Danish Isles. In three 'keels'--so ran the
legend of their conquest--and with their Ealdormen, Hengest
and Horsa, at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in
the Isle of Thanet. With the landing of Hengest and his
war-band English history begins. ... In the first years that
followed after their landing, Jute and Briton fought side by
side; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the
winds in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But
danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the
Jutes themselves. Their numbers probably grew fast as the news
of their settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow
pirates who were haunting the channel; and with the increase
of their number must have grown the difficulty of supplying
them with rations and pay. The dispute which rose over these
questions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of
war." The threat was soon executed; the forces of the Jutes
were successfully transferred from their island camp to the
main shore, and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site of
modern Canterbury) was the first to experience their rage.
"The town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the
invaders pushed along the road to London. No obstacle seems to
have checked their march from the Stour to the Medway." At
Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford crossing the Medway,
"the British leaders must have taken post for the defence of
West Kent; but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells
... only that Horsa fell in the moment of victory; and the
flint-heap of Horsted which has long preserved his name ...
was held in aftertime to mark his grave. ... The victory of
Aylesford was followed by a political change among the
assailants, whose loose organization around ealdormen was
exchanged for a stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, was no
sooner won than 'Hengest took to the kingdom, and Ælle, his
son.' ... The two kings pushed forward in 457 from the Medway
to the conquest of West Kent." Another battle at the passage
of the Cray was another victory for the invaders, and, "as the
Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons' forsook
Kent-land and fled with much fear to London.' ... If we trust
British tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by a
political revolution in Britain itself. ... It would seem ...
that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt under Aurelius
Ambrosianus, a descendant of the last Roman general who
claimed the purple as an Emperor in Britain. ... The
revolution revived for a while the energy of the province."
The Jutes were driven back into the Isle of Thanet, and held
there, apparently, for some years, with the help of the strong
fortresses of Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two
mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet from the
mainland.
{781}
"In 465 however the petty conflicts which had gone on along
the shores of the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle.
... The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped'sfleet was so
terrible that all hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems
from this moment to have been abandoned; and ... no further
struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement.
It was only along its southern shore that the Britons now held
their ground. ... A final victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark
the moment when they reached the rich pastures which the Roman
engineers had reclaimed from Romney Marsh. ... With this
advance to the mouth of the Weald the work of Hengest's men
came to an end; nor did the Jutes from this time play any
important part in the attack on the island, for their
after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wight and a few
districts on the Southampton Water."
J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
J. M. Lappenberg,
History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,
volume 1, pages 67-101.
-----------------------------------------------------------
A Logical Outline of English History
IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND
INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS.
Physical or material (Orange).
Ethnological (Dark Blue).
Social and political (Green).
Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan).
Foreign (Black).
5th-7th centuries.
Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes.
The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe
by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy
and hostile invasion difficult;--its soil in great part
excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth
of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust
population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding,
moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron
and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like
utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern
Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in
courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring
adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the
decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it
could give.
7th-11th Centuries.
Fused, after much warring with one another and with their
Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five
centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and
independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the
primitive system of their social and political
organization--their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires,
and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and
administered law in each--was rooted fast; though their king's
power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther
apart.
A. D. 1066.--Norman conquest.
Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that
their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their
own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had
been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country
of the Franks.
11th-18th Centuries.
A new social and political system now formed itself in England
as the result:--Feudalism modified by the essential democracy
inherent in Old English institutions--producing a stout
commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to
curb the king.
A. D. 1215. Magna Oharta.
English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious
strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in
Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons
and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of
the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights.
A. D. 1265-1295--Parliament.
Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there
followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a
representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans
and the Witenagemot of the older English time.
A. D. 1337-1453--The Hundred Years War.
From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which
another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole,
suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in
many ways; but politically the people took some good from
the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on
them for money and men.
A. D. 1453-1485--War of the Roses
So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful
civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty
years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these
wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively
little, in numbers or estate.
A. D. 1348--The Great Plague.
But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of
the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living
among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the
small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing
the independent common class.
A. D. 1327-1377--Immigration of Flemish weavers.
Moreover, from the time of Edward III., who encouraged Flemish
weavers to settle in England and to teach their art to his
people, manufactures began to thrive; trade extended; towns
grew in population and wealth, and the great burgher
middle-class rose rapidly to importance and weight in the
land.
A. D. 1485-1603--Absolutism of the Tudors.
But the commons of England were not prepared to make use of
the actual power which they held. The nobles had led them in
the past; it needed time to raise leaders among themselves,
and time to organize their ranks. Hence no new checks on
royalty were ready to replace those constraints which had been
broken by the ruin of great houses in the civil wars, and the
crown made haste to improve its opportunity for grasping
power. There followed, under the Tudors, a period of
absolutism greater than England had known before.
15th-16th Centuries--Renaissance.
But this endured only for the time of the education of the
commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and
with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the
new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new
ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with
wings,--all these had now gained their most fertile planting
in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature
of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial
at a later day.
The intellectual development of the nation tended first toward
a religious independence, which produced two successive
revolts--from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy
that succeeded it.
This religious new departure of the English people gave
direction to a vast expansion of their energies in the outside
world. It led them into war with Spain, and sent forth Drake
and Hawkins and the Buccaneers, to train the sailors and pilot
the merchant adventurers who would soon make England mistress
of all the wide seas.
A. D. 1608-1688.
The Stuarts.
The Civil War.
The Commonwealth.
The Revolution.
Then, when these people, strong, prosperous and intelligent,
had come to be ripely sufficient for self-government, there
fell to them a foolish race of kings, who challenged them to a
struggle which stripped royalty of all but its fictions, and
established the sovereignty of England in its House of Commons
for all time.
18th-19th Centuries.
Science
Invention.
Material progress.
Economic enlightenment.
Unassailable in its island,--taking part in the great wars of
the 18th century by its fleets and its subsidies
chiefly,--busy with its undisturbed labors at home,--vigorous
in its conquests, its settlements and its trade, which it
pushed into the farthest parts of the earth,--creating wealth
and protecting it from spoliation and from waste,--the English
nation now became the industrial and economic school of the
age. It produced the mechanical inventions which first opened
a new era in the life of mankind on the material side; it
attained to the splendid enlightenment of freedom in trade; it
made England the workshop and mart of the world, and it spread
her Empire to every Continent, through all the seas.
--------- End: A Logical Outline of English History --------------------
ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527.
The conquests of the Saxons.
The founding of the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex.
"Whilst the Jutes were conquering Kent, their kindred took
part in the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North Sea,
filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now arrived--Ella and
his three sons landed in the ancient territory of the Regni
(A. D. 477-491). The Britons were defeated with great
slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose
extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and commons of the
Weald. A general confederacy of the Kings and 'Tyrants' of the
Britons was formed against the invaders, but fresh
reinforcements arrived from Germany; the city of
Andreades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabitants were
slain and the buildings razed to the ground, so that its site
is now entirely unknown. From this period the kingdom of the
South Saxons was established in the person of Ella; and though
ruling only over the narrow boundary of modern Sussex, he was
accepted as the first of the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of
the Isle of Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tidings
received from Ella, another band of Saxons, commanded by
Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the neighbouring shore,
in the modern Hampshire (A. D. 494). At first they made but
little progress. They were opposed by the Britons; but
Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers celebrate for his
nobility, and the British Bards extol for his beauty and
valour, was slain (A. D. 501). The death of the Prince of the
'Woodlands of Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged,
but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all opposition; and
Cerdic, associating his son Cynric in the dignity, became the
King of the territory which he gained. Under Cynric and his
son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily, gained ground.
The utmost extent of their dominions towards the North cannot
be ascertained; but they had conquered the town of Bedford;
and it was probably in consequence of their geographical
position (A. D. 571) with respect to the countries of the
Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was
given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon
lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the
successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend
their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old
Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have
been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of
Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the
country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or
border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric
were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony
was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom
which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of
East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons,
now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is
locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and
the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country,
certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in
the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever
incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must
view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able
to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain,
Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East
Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola,
daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the
superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was
King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of
government. This was the fate of Essex--it is styled a
kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence,
being always subject to the adjoining kings."
F. Palgrave,
History of the Anglo Saxons,
chapter 2.
"The descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cynric, in 495
at the mouth of the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Portchester
in 501, can have been little more than plunder raids; and
though in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the fall of
5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not till 514 that the
tribe whose older name seems to have been that of the
Gewissas, but who were to be more widely known as the West
Saxons, actually landed with a view to definite conquest."
J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 3.
"The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its
founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever importance Essex,
or its offshoot, Middlesex, could claim as containing the
great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find
London fluctuating between the condition of an independent
commonwealth, and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings.
Very different was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom.
Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain,
Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into
the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before
and since the eleventh century [the interval of the Danish
kings, Harold, son of Godwine, and William the Conqueror, who
were not of the West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic
the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the sixth century
Wessex had risen to high importance among the English
Kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were
still far distant."
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, section 1.
{782}
ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633.
The conquests of the Angles.
The founding of their kingdoms.
Northwards of the East Saxons was established the kingdom of
the East Angles, in which a northern and a southern people
(Northfolc and Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable
that, even during the last period of the Roman sway, Germans
were settled in this part of Britain; a supposition that gains
probability from several old Saxon sagas, which have reference
to East Anglia at a period anterior to the coming of Hengest
and Horsa. The land of the Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides ...
comprised the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and
Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of the East Angles
Wehwa, or Wewa, or more commonly his son Uffa, or Wuffa, from
whom his race derived their patronymic of Uffings or Wuffings,
is recorded as the first king. The neighbouring states of
Mercia originated in the marsh districts of the Lindisware, or
inhabitants of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of
Lincolnshire. With these were united the Middle Angles. This
kingdom, divided by the Trent into a northern and a southern
portion, gradually extended itself to the borders of Wales.
Among the states which it comprised was the little Kingdom of
the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later diocese of Worcester,
or the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and a part of
Warwick. This state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore
the common Germanic appellation of the land of the Magesætas.
... The country to the north of the Humber had suffered the
most severely from the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It
became at an early period separated into two British states,
the names of which were retained for some centuries, viz.:
Deifyr (Deora rice), afterwards Latinized into Deira,
extending from the Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna
rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the Clyde. Here
also the settlements of the German races appear anterior to
the date given in the common accounts of the first Anglian
kings of those territories, in the middle of the sixth
century."
J. M. Lappenberg,
History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe),
volume 1, pages 112-117.
The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia and East
Anglia, "are altogether much larger than the Saxon and Jutish
Kingdoms, so you see very well why the land was called
'England' and not 'Saxony.' ... 'Saxonia' does occur now and
then, and it was really an older name than 'Anglia,' but it
soon went quite out of use. ... But some say that there were
either Jutes or Saxons in the North of England as soon or
sooner than there were in the south. If so, there is another
reason why the Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us
Saxons. It is not unlikely that there may have been some small
Saxon or Jutish settlements there very early, but the great
Kingdom of Northumberland was certainly founded by Ida the
Angle in 547. It is more likely that there were some Teutonic
settlements there before him, because the Chronicle does not
say of him, as it does of Hengest, Cissa and Cerdie, that he
came into the land by the sea, but only that he began the
Kingdom. ... You must fully understand that in the old times
Northumberland meant the whole land north of the Humber,
reaching as far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part
of what is now Scotland, including the city of Edinburgh, that
is Eadwinesburh, the town of the great Northumbrian King
Eadwine, or Edwin [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. ... You
must not forget that Lothian and all that part of Scotland was
part of Northumberland, and that the people there are really
English, and still speak a tongue which has changed less from
the Old-English than the tongue of any other part of England.
And the real Scots, the Gael in the Highlands, call the
Lowland Scots 'Saxons,' just as much as they do the people of
England itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of the
greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was often divided into
two, Beornicia [or Bernicia] and Deira, the latter of which
answered pretty nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the
old Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English is Eoforwic,
and which we cut short into York. York was for a long time the
greatest town in the North of England. There are now many
others much larger, but York is still the second city in
England in rank, and it gives its chief magistrate the title
of Lord-Mayor, as London· does, while in other cities and
towns the chief magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any
Lord. ... The great Anglian Kingdom of the Mercians, that is
the Marchmen, the people on the march or frontier, seems to
have been the youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually
by joining together several smaller states, including all the
land which the West Saxons had held north of the Thames. Such
little tribes or states were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in
Lincolnshire, the Magesætas in Herefordshire, the Hwiccas in
Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick, and several
others. ... When Mercia was fully joined under one King, it
made one of the greatest states in England, and some of the
Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It was chiefly an
Anglian Kingdom; and the Kings were of an Anglian stock, but
among the Hwiccas and in some of the other shires in southern
and western Mercia, most of the people must really have been
Saxons."
E. A. Freeman,
Old English History for Children,
chapter 5.
ENGLAND: A. D. 560.
Ethelbert becomes king of Kent.
ENGLAND: A. D. 593.
Ethelfrith becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 597-685.
The conversion of the English.
"It happened that certain Saxon children were to be sold for
slaves at the marketplace at Rome; when Divine Providence, the
great clock-keeper of time, ordering not only hours, but even
instants (Luke ii. 38), to his own honour, so disposed it,
that Gregory, afterwards first bishop of Rome of that name,
was present to behold them. It grieved the good man to see the
disproportion betwixt the faces and fortunes, the complexions
and conditions, of these children, condemned to a servile
estate, though carrying liberal looks, so legible was
ingenuity in their faces. It added more to his sorrow, when he
conceived that those youths were twice vassals, bought by
their masters, and 'sold under sin' (Romans vii. 14), servants
in their bodies, and slaves in their souls to Satan; which
occasioned the good man to enter into further inquiry with the
merchants (which set them to sale) what they were and whence
they came, according to this ensuing dialogue:
Gregory.--'Whence come these captives?'
Merchants.--'From the isle of Britain.'
Gregory.--'Are those islanders Christians?'
Merchants.--'O no, they are Pagans.'
Gregory.--'It is sad that the author of darkness should
possess men with so bright faces. But what is the name of
their particular nation?'
Merchants.--'They are called Angli.'
Gregory.--'And well may, for their "angel like faces"; it
becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what
province of England did they live?'
Merchants.--'In Deira.'
Gregory.--'They are to be freed de Dei irâ, "from the anger of
God." How call ye the king of that country?'
Merchants.--'Ella.'
Gregory.--'Surely hallelujah ought to be sung in his kingdom
to the praise of that God who created all things.'

{783}
Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the sound of every word to
the time of spiritual goodness. Nor can his words be justly
censured for levity, if we consider how, in that age, the
elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the eloquence of
prose in allusions. And which was the main, where his pleasant
conceits did end, there his pious endeavours began; which did
not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real effects,
which ensued hereupon."
Thomas Fuller,
The Church History of Britain,
book 2, section 1.
In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop of Rome, or Pope, and
six years later, still retaining the interest awakened in him
by the captive English youth, he dispatched a band of
missionary monks to Britain, with their prior, Augustine, at
their head. Once they turned back, affrighted by what they
heard of the ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the
once-Christian island of Britain; but Gregory laid his
commands upon them again, and in the spring of 597 they
crossed the channel from Gaul, landing at Ebbsfleet, in the
Isle of Thanet, where the Jutish invaders had made their first
landing, a century and a half before. They found Ethelbert of
Kent, the most powerful of the English kings at that time,
already prepared to receive them with tolerance, if not with
favor, through the influence of a Christian wife--queen
Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks. The conversion and
baptism of the Kentish king and court, and the acceptance of
the new faith by great numbers of the people followed quickly.
In November of the same year, 597, Augustine returned to Gaul
to receive his consecration as "Archbishop of the English,"
establishing the See of Canterbury, with the primacy which has
remained in it to the present day. The East Saxons were the
next to bow to the cross and in 604 a bishop, Mellitus, was
sent to London. This ended Augustine's work--and Gregory's--
for both died that year. Then followed an interval of little
progress in the work of the mission, and, afterwards, a
reaction towards idolatry which threatened to destroy it
altogether. But just at this time of discouragement in the
south, a great triumph of Christianity was brought about in
Northumberland, and due, there, as in Kent, to the influence
of a Christian queen. Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles
and his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D. 627, and a new
center of missionary work was established at York. There, too,
an appalling reverse occurred, when Northumberland was
overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of Mercia; but the
kingdom rallied, and the Christian Church was reestablished,
not wholly, as before, under the patronage and rule of Rome,
but partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic Church, which
did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. In the end,
however, the Roman forms of Christianity prevailed, throughout
Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe. Before the end of the
7th century the religion of the Cross was established firmly
in all parts of the island, the South Saxons being the latest
to receive it. In the 8th century English missionaries were
laboring zealously for the conversion of their Saxon and
Frisian brethren on the continent.
G. F. Maclear,
Conversion of the West; The English.
ALSO IN:
The Venerable Bede,
Ecclesiastical History.
H. Soames,
The Anglo Saxon Church.
R. C. Jenkins,
Canterbury,
chapter 2.
ENGLAND:
End of the 6th. Century.
The extent, the limits and the character
of the Teutonic conquest.
"Before the end of the 6th century the Teutonic dominion
stretched from the German ocean to the Severn, and from the
English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of
the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes,
whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns
us. And the whole west side of the island, including not only
modern Wales, but the great Kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching
from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing
Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset, was still in the hands
of independent Britons. The struggle had been a long and
severe one, and the natives often retained possession of a
defensible district long after the surrounding country had
been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that,
at the end of the 6th century and even later, there may have
been within the English frontier inaccessible points where
detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious
independence. It is probable also that, within the same
frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the
conquerors rather than occupied by them. But by the end of the
6th century even these exceptions must have been few. The work
of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic
settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory
which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The
complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that
was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process. The
English Conquest of Britain differed in several important
respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people
within the limits of the Roman Empire. ... Though the literal
extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every
reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts
of Britain which had become English at the 6th century had
been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would
doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is
concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration or personal
slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found
at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic
element in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly
every Welsh word which has found its way into English
expresses some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves
would be concerned with."
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, section 1.
"A glance at the map shows that the mass of the local
nomenclature of England begins with the Teutonic conquest,
while the mass of the local nomenclature of France is older
than the Teutonic conquest. And, if we turn from the names on
the map to the living speech of men, there is the most
obvious, but the most important, of all facts, the fact that
Englishmen speak English and that Frenchmen speak French.
{784}
That is to say, in Gaul the speech of Rome lived through the
Teutonic conquest, while in Britain it perished in the
Teutonic conquest, if it had not passed away before. And
behind this is the fact, very much less obvious, a good deal
less important, but still very important, that in Gaul tongues
older than Latin live on only in corners as mere survivals,
while in Britain, while Latin has utterly vanished, a tongue
older than Latin still lives on as the common speech of an
appreciable part of the land. Here then is the final result
open to our own eyes. And it is a final result which could not
have come to pass unless the Teutonic conquest of Britain had
been something of an utterly different character from the
Teutonic conquest of Gaul--unless the amount of change, of
destruction, of havoc of every kind, above all, of slaughter
and driving out of the existing inhabitants, had been far
greater in Britain than it was in Gaul. If the Angles and
Saxons in Britain had been only as the Goths in Spain, or even
as the Franks in Gaul, it is inconceivable that the final
results should have been so utterly different in the two
cases. There is the plain fact: Gaul remained a Latin-speaking
land; England became a Teutonic-speaking land. The obvious
inference is that, while in Gaul the Teutonic conquest led to
no general displacement of the inhabitants, in England it did
lead to such a general displacement. In Gaul the Franks simply
settled among a subject people, among whom they themselves
were gradually merged; in Britain the Angles and Saxons slew
or drove out the people whom they found in the land, and
settled it again as a new people."
E. A. Freeman,
The English People in its Three Homes
(Lectures to American Audiences),
pages 114-115.
"Almost to the close of the 6th century the English conquest
of Britain was a sheer dispossession of the conquered people;
and, so far as the English sword in these earlier days
reached, Britain became England, a land, that is, not of
Britons, but of Englishmen. There is no need to believe that
the clearing of the land meant the general slaughter of the
men who held it, or to account for such a slaughter by
supposed differences between the temper of the English and
those of other conquerors. ... The displacement of the
conquered people was only made possible by their own stubborn
resistance, and by the slow progress of the conquerors in the
teeth of it. Slaughter no doubt there was on the battlefield
or in towns like Anderida, whose long defence woke wrath in
their besiegers. But for the most part the Britons cannot have
been slaughtered; they were simply defeated and drew back."
J. R. Green,
The Making of England,
chapter 4.
The view strongly stated above, as to the completeness of the
erasure of Romano-British society and influence from the whole
of England except its southwestern and north· western
counties, by the English conquest, is combated as strongly by
another less prominent school of recent historians,
represented, for example, by Mr. Henry C. Coote (The Romans of
Britain) and by Mr. Charles H. Pearson, who says: "We know
that fugitives from Britain settled largely during the 5th
century in Armorica and in Ireland; and we may perhaps accept
the legend of St. Ursula as proof that the flight, in some
instances, was directed to the more civilized parts of the
continent. But even the pious story of the 11,000 virgins is
sober and credible by the side of that history which assumes
that some million men and women were slaughtered or made
homeless by a few ship-loads of conquerors."
C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapter 6.
The opinion maintained by Prof. Freeman and Mr. Green (and, no
less, by Dr. Stubbs) is the now generally accepted one.
ENGLAND: 7th Century.
The so-called "Heptarchy."
"The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven
Kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single
over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light
of historic criticism. The English Kingdoms in Britain were
ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations
to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was
sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven,
and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation
did not admit the regular supremacy of any fixed and permanent
over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of
smaller and more obscure principalities, seven Kingdoms do
stand out in a marked way, seven Kingdoms of which it is
possible to recover something like a continuous history, seven
Kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of
the whole island." These seven kingdoms were Kent, Sussex,
Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, Northumberland and Mercia.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2.
"After the territorial boundaries had become more settled,
there appeared at the commencement of the seventh century
seven or eight greater and smaller kingdoms. ... Historians
have described this condition of things as the Heptarchy,
disregarding the early disappearance of Sussex, and the
existence of still smaller kingdoms. But this grouping was
neither based upon equality, nor destined to last for any
length of time. It was the common interest of these smaller
states to withstand the sudden and often dangerous invasions
of their western and northern neighbours; and, accordingly,
whichever king was capable of successfully combating the
common foe, acquired for the time a certain superior rank,
which some historians denote by the title of Bretwalda. By
this name can only be understood an actual and recognized
temporary superiority; first ascribed to Ælla of Sussex, and
later passing to Northumbria, until Wessex finally attains a
real and lasting supremacy. It was geographical position which
determined these relations of superiority. The small kingdoms
in the west were shielded by the greater ones of
Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, as though by
crescent-shaped forelands--which in their struggles with the
Welsh kingdoms, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, with Picts and
Scots, were continually in a state of martial activity. And so
the smaller western kingdoms followed the three warlike ones;
and round these Anglo-Saxon history revolved for two whole
centuries, until in Wessex we find a combination of most of
the conditions which are necessary to the existence of a great
State."
R. Gneist,
History of the English Constitution,
chapter 3.
ENGLAND: A. D. 617.
Edwin becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 634.
Oswald becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 655.
Oswi becomes king of Northumbria.
{785}
ENGLAND: A. D. 670.
Egfrith becomes king of Northumbria.
ENGLAND: A. D. 688.
Ini becomes king of the West Saxons.
ENGLAND: A. D. 716.
Ethelbald becomes king of Mercia.
ENGLAND: A. D. 758.
Offa becomes king of Mercia.
ENGLAND: A. D. 794.
Cenwulf becomes king of Mercia.
ENGLAND: A. D. 800.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ecgberht.
ENGLAND: A. D. 800-836.
The supremacy of Wessex.
The first king of all the English.
"And now I have come to the reign of Ecgberht, the great
Bretwalda. He was an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic, and he
is said to have been the son of Ealhmund, and Ealhmund is said
to have been an Under-king of Kent. For the old line of the
Kings of Kent had come to an end and Kent was now sometimes
under Wessex and sometimes under Mercia. ... When Beorhtric
died in 800, he [Ecgberht] was chosen King of the West-Saxons.
He reigned until 836, and in that time he brought all the
English Kingdoms, and the greater part of Britain, more or
less under his power. The southern part of the island, all
Kent, Sussex, and Essex, he joined on to his own Kingdom, and
set his sons or other Æthelings to reign over them as his
Under-kings. But Northumberland, Mercia, and East-Anglia were
not brought so completely under his power as this. Their Kings
submitted to Ecgberht and acknowledged him as their over-lord,
but they went on reigning in their own Kingdoms, and
assembling their own Wise Men, just as they did before. They
became what in after times was called his 'vassals,' what in
English was called being his 'men.' ... Besides the English
Kings, Ecgberht brought the Welsh, both in Wales and in
Cornwall, more completely under his power. ... So King
Ecgberht was Lord from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean, and
from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. So it is not
wonderful if, in his charters, he not only called himself King
of the West-Saxons or King of the West-Saxons and Kentishmen,
but sometimes 'Rex Anglorum,' or 'King of the English.' But
amidst all this glory there were signs of great evils at hand.
The Danes came several times."
E. A. Freeman,
Old English History for Children,
chapter 7.
ENGLAND: A. D. 836.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelwulf.
ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880.
Conquests and settlements of the Danes.
The heroic struggle of Alfred the Great.
The "Peace of Wedmore" and the "Danelaw."
King Alfred's character and reign.
"The Danish invasions of England ... fall naturally into three
periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the
English Conquest of Britain. ... We first find a period in
which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder.
They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to
secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they
equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they
have gathered. This period includes the time from the first
recorded invasion [A. D. 787] till the latter half of the
ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the
Northmen is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement.
... In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is
recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in
the Isle of Sheppey [A. D. 855]. This marks the transition
from the first to the second period of their invasions. ... It
was not however till about eleven years from this time that
the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the
West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. ... Four sons of
Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns of the first
three among them [Ethelbald, A. D. 858, Ethelberht, 860,
Ethelred, 866] make up together only thirteen years. In the
reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred I., the second
period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent
by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary
Kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival Kings,
fell an easy prey [867-869], and one or two puppet princes did
not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands of the
heathen invaders. They next entered Mercia [868], they seized
Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King hastening to the relief of
his vassals, was unable to dislodge them from that stronghold.
East Anglia was completely conquered [866-870] and its King
Eadmund died a martyr. At last the full storm of invasion
burst upon Wessex itself [871]. King Æthelred, the first of a
long line of West-Saxon hero-Kings, supported by his greater
brother Ælfred [Alfred the Great] met the invaders in battle
after battle with varied success. He died and Ælfred
succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year [871],
the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched
battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the
heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was made; the
Northmen retreated to London, within the Mercian frontier;
Wessex was for the moment delivered, but the supremacy won by
Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to
nothing more than temporary incursions, but Northumberland and
part of Mercia were systematically occupied by the Northmen,
and the land was divided among them. ... At last the Northmen,
now settled in a large part of the island, made a second
attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions [878]. For a
moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the
marshes of Somersetshire; men might well deem that the Empire
of Ecgberht and the Kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for
ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen,
the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried
his people safely through this most terrible of dangers.
Within the same year the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious
[at the battle of Ethandun, or Edington], and the Northmen
were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years
sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but
which might now be fairly looked upon as honourable and even
as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the
Northmen were to evacuate Wessex and the part of Mercia
south-west of Watling-Street; they, or at least their chiefs,
were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole
land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon King.
... The exact boundary started from the Thames, along the Lea
to its source, then right to Bedford and along the Ouse till
it meets Watling-Street, then along Watling-Street to the
Welsh border. See Ælfred and Guthrum's Peace,' Thorpe's 'Laws
and Institutes,' i. 152. This frontier gives London to the
English; but it seems that Ælfred did not obtain full
possession of London till 886."
{786}
The territory thus conceded to the Danes, which included all
northeastern England from the Thames to the Tyne, was
thenceforth known by the name of the Danelagh or Danelaw,
signifying the country subject to the law of the Danes. The
Peace of Wedmore ended the second period of the Danish
invasions. The third period, which was not opened until a full
century later, embraced the actual conquest of the whole of
England by a Danish king and its temporary annexation to the
dominions of the Danish crown.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 2, with foot-note.
"Now that peace was restored, and the Danes driven out of his
domains, it remained to be seen whether Alfred was as good a
ruler as he was a soldier. ... What did he see? The towns,
even London itself, pillaged, ruined, or burnt down; the
monasteries destroyed; the people wild and lawless; ignorance,
roughness, insecurity everywhere. It is almost incredible with
what a brave heart he set himself to repair all this; how his
great and noble aims were still before him; how hard he
strove, and how much he achieved. First of all he seems to
have sought for helpers. Like most clever men, he was good at
reading characters. He soon saw who would be true, brave, wise
friends, and he collected these around him. Some of them he
fetched from over the sea, from France and Germany; our friend
Asser from Wales, or, as he calls his country, 'Western
Britain,' while England, he calls 'Saxony.' He says he first
saw Alfred 'in a royal vill, which is called Dene' in Sussex.
'He received me with kindness, and asked me eagerly to devote
myself to his service, and become his friend; to leave
everything which I possessed on the left or western bank of
the Severn, and promised that he would give more than an
equivalent for it in his own dominions. I replied that I could
not rashly and incautiously promise such things; for it seemed
to be unjust that I should leave those sacred places in which
I had been bred, educated, crowned, and ordained for the sake
of any earthly honour and power, unless upon compulsion. Upon
this he said, "If you cannot accede to this, at least let me
have your service in part; spend six months of the year with
me here, and the other six months in Britain."' And to this
after a time Asser consented. What were the principal things
he turned his mind to after providing for the defence of his
kingdom, and collecting his friends and counsellors about him?
Law--justice--religion--education. He collected and studied
the old laws of his nation; what he thought good he kept, what
he disapproved he left out. He added others, especially the
ten commandments and some other parts of the law of Moses.
Then he laid them all before his Witan, or wise men, and with
their approval published them. ... The state of justice in
England was dreadful at this time. ... Alfred's way of curing
this was by inquiring into all cases, as far as he possibly
could, himself; and Asser says he did this 'especially for the
sake of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, he ever
was wonderfully attentive; for in the whole kingdom the poor,
besides him, had few or no protectors.' ... When he found that
the judges had made mistakes through ignorance, he rebuked them,
and told them they must either grow wiser or give up their
posts; and soon the old earls and other judges, who had been
unlearned from their cradles, began to study diligently. ...
For reviving and spreading religion among his people he used
the best means that he knew of; that is, he founded new
monasteries and restored old ones, and did his utmost to get
good bishops and clergymen. For his own part, he strove to
practise in all ways what he taught to others. ... Education
was in a still worse condition than everything else. ... All
the schools had been broken up. Alfred says that when he began
to reign there were very few clergymen south of the Humber who
could even understand the Prayer-book. (That was still in
Latin, as the Roman missionaries had brought it.) And south of
the Thames he could not remember one. His first care was to
get better-educated clergy and bishops. And next to get the
laymen taught also. ... He founded monasteries and schools,
and restored the old ones which had been ruined. He had a
school in his court for his own children and the children of
his nobles. But at the very outset a most serious difficulty
confronted Alfred. Where was he to get books? At this time, as
far as we can judge, there can only have been one, or at most
two books in the English language--the long poem of Cædmon
about the creation of the world, &c., and the poem of Beowulf
about warriors and fiery dragons. There were many English
ballads and songs, but whether these were written down I do
not know. There was no book of history, not even English
history; no book of geography, no religious books, no
philosophy. Bede, who had written so many books, had written
them all in Latin. ... So when they had a time of 'stillness'
the king and his learned friends set to work and translated
books into English; and Alfred, who was as modest and candid
as he was wise, put into the preface of one of his
translations that he hoped, if anyone knew Latin better than
he did, that he would not blame him, for he could but do
according to his ability. ... Beside all this, he had a great
many other occupations. Asser, who often lived with him for
months at a time, gives us an account of his busy life.
Notwithstanding his infirmities and other hindrances, 'he
continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting
in all its branches; to teach his workers in gold and
artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers, and
dog-keepers; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all
the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical
inventions; to recite the Saxon books (Asser, being a
Welshman, always calls the English, Saxon), and especially to
learn by heart the Saxon poems, and to make others learn them;
he never desisted from studying most diligently to the best of
his ability; he attended the mass and other daily services of
religion; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer; ... he
bestowed alms and largesses on both natives and foreigners of
all countries; he was affable and pleasant to all, and
curiously eager to investigate things unknown.'"
M. J. Guest,
Lectures on the History of England,
lecture 9.
"It is no easy task for anyone who has been studying his
[Alfred's] life and works to set reasonable bounds to their
reverence, and enthusiasm, for the man. Lest the reader should
think my estimate tainted with the proverbial weakness of
biographers for their heroes; let them turn to the words in
which the earliest, and the last of the English historians of
that time, sum up the character of Alfred.
{787}
Florence of Worcester, writing in the century after his death,
speaks of him as 'that famous, warlike, victorious king; the
zealous protector of widows, scholars, orphans and the poor;
skilled in the Saxon poets; affable and liberal to all;
endowed with prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance;
most patient under the infirmity which he daily suffered; a
most stern inquisitor in executing justice; vigilant and
devoted in the service of God.' Mr. Freeman, in his 'History
of the Norman Conquest,' has laid down the portrait in bold
and lasting colours, in a passage as truthful as it is
eloquent, which those who are familiar with it will be glad to
meet again, while those who do not know it will be grateful to me
for substituting for any poor words of my own. 'Alfred, the
unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect
character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince
who has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had
countless imaginary exploits attributed to him, but to whose
character romance has done no more than justice, and who
appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No
other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the
virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other
man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little
alloy. A saint without superstition, a scholar without
ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the
defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never
stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity,
never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph--there is
no other name in history to compare with his. Saint Lewis
comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic
piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues.
Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject
superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly
engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused
either to raise up heirs for their throne, or to strike a blow
on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a
disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the
sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious,
undertakings. The true duties of the King of the French
clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such
charge lies at the door of the great King of the West Saxons.
With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for
purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian
benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to
his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending
expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms
to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his
crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his
duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred,
like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous
displays of super-human genius, but in the simple,
straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But
Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has
no claim to Alfred's further characters of saint and scholar.
William the Silent, too, has nothing to set against Alfred's
literary merits; and in his career, glorious as it is, there
is an element of intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the
noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same union
of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of
the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of
action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire
to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendour of
conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of
personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust
aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own
later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment
the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by
such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we
do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which
so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional
acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we
cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike
disinterestedness which marks the character of Alfred.' Let
Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England, complete the
picture:
'Behold a pupil of the monkish gown,
The pious Alfred, king to justice dear!
Lord of the harp and liberating spear;
Mirror of princes! Indigent renown
Might range the starry ether for a crown
Equal to his deserts, who, like the year,
Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer,
And awes like night, with mercy-tempered frown.
Ease from this noble miser of his time
No moment steals; pain narrows not his cares--
Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem,
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem,
And Christian India, through her widespread clime,
In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.'"
Thomas Hughes,
Alfred the Great,
chapter 24.
ALSO IN:
R. Pauli,
Life of Alfred the Great.
Asser,
Life of Alfred.
See, also, NORMANS, and EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL.
ENGLAND: A. D. 901.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Elder.
ENGLAND: A. D. 925.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelstan.
ENGLAND: A. D. 938.
The battle of Brunnaburgh.
Alfred the Great, dying in 901, was succeeded by his son,
Edward, and Edward, in turn, was followed, A. D. 925, by his
son Athelstane, or Æthalsten. In the reign of Athelstane a
great league was formed against him by the Northumbrian Danes
with the Scots, with the Danes of Dublin and with the Britons
of Strathclyde and Cumbria. Athelstane defeated the
confederates in a mighty battle, celebrated in one of the
finest of Old-English war-songs, and also in one of the Sagas
of the Norse tongue, as the Battle of Brunnaburgh or
Brunanburh, but the site of which is unknown. "Five Kings and
seven northern Iarls or earls fell in the strife. ...
Constantine the Scot fled to the north, mourning his
fair-haired son, who perished in the slaughter. Anlaf [or
Olaf, the leader of the Danes or Ostmen of Dublin], with a sad
and scattered remnant of his forces, escaped to Ireland. ...
The victory was so decisive that, during the remainder of the
reign of Athelstane, no enemy dared to rise up against him;
his supremacy was acknowledged without contest, and his glory
extended to distant realms."
F. Palgrave,
History of the Anglo-Saxons,
chapter 10.
Mr. Skene is of opinion that the battle of Brunnaburgh was
fought at Aldborough, near York.
W. F. Skene,
Celtic Scotland,
volume 1, page 357.
ENGLAND: A. D. 940.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edmund.
ENGLAND: A. D. 946.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edred.
ENGLAND: A. D. 955.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edwig.
{788}
ENGLAND: A. D. 958.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edgar.
ENGLAND: A. D. 958.
Completed union of the realm.
Increase of kingly authority.
Approach towards feudalism.
Rise of the Witenagemot.
Decline of the Freemen.
"Before Alfred's son Edward died, the whole of Mercia was
incorporated with his immediate dominions. The way in which
the thing was done was more remarkable than the thing itself.
Like the Romans, he made the fortified towns the means of
upholding his power. But unlike the Romans, he did not
garrison them with colonists from amongst his own immediate
dependents. He filled them, as Henry the Fowler did afterwards
in Saxony, with free townsmen, whose hearts were at one with
their fellow countrymen around. Before he died in 924, the
Danish chiefs in the land beyond the Humber had acknowledged
his overlordship, and even the Celts of Wales and Scotland had
given in their submission in some form which they were not
likely to interpret too strictly. His son and his two
grandsons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred completed the work,
and when after the short and troubled interval of Edwy's rule
in Wessex, Edgar united the undivided realm under his sway in
958, he had no internal enemies to suppress. He allowed the
Celtic Scottish King who had succeeded to the inheritance of
the Pictish race to possess the old Northumbrian land north of
the Tweed, where they and their descendants learned the habits
and speech of Englishmen. But he treated him and the other
Celtic kings distinctly as his inferiors, though it was
perhaps well for him that he did not attempt to impose upon
them any very tangible tokens of his supremacy. The story of
his being rowed by eight kings on the Dee is doubtless only a
legend by which the peaceful king was glorified in the
troubled times which followed. Such a struggle, so
successfully conducted, could not fail to be accompanied by a
vast increase of that kingly authority which had been on the
growth from the time of its first establishment. The
hereditary ealdormen, the representatives of the old kingly
houses, had passed away. The old tribes, or--where their
limitations had been obliterated by the tide of Danish
conquest, as was the case in central and northern England--the
new artificial divisions which had taken their place, were now
known as shires, and the very name testified that they were
regarded only as parts of a greater whole. The shire mote
still continued the tradition of the old popular assemblies.
At its head as presidents of its deliberations were the
ealdorman and the bishop, each of them owing their appointment
to the king, and it was summoned by the shire-reeve or
sheriff, himself even more directly an officer of the king,
whose business it was to see that all the royal dues were paid
within the shire. In the more general concerns of the kingdom,
the king consulted with his Witan, whose meetings were called
the Witenagemot, a body, which, at least for all ordinary
purposes, was composed not of any representatives of the
shire-motes, but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the
bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose name, meaning
'servants', implied at least at first, that they either were
or had at one time been in some way in the employment of the
king. ... The necessities of war ... combined with the
sluggishness of the mass of the population to favour the
growth of a military force, which would leave the tillers of
the soil to their own peaceful occupations. As the conditions
which make a standing army possible on a large scale did not
yet exist, such a force must be afforded by a special class,
and that class must be composed of those who either had too
much land to till themselves, or, having no land at all, were
released from the bonds which tied the cultivator to the soil,
in other words, it must be composed of a landed aristocracy
and its dependents. In working out this change, England was
only aiming at the results which similar conditions were
producing on the Continent. But just as the homogeneousness of
the population drew even the foreign element of the church
into harmony with the established institutions, so it was with
the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round the king,
and it supplemented, instead of overthrowing, the old popular
assemblies. Two classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had
been marked out from their fellows at the time of the
conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed from both, but he
had some of the distinguishing marks of either. He was not
like the gesith, a mere personal follower of the king. He did
not, like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet his
relation to the king was a close one, and he had a hold upon
the land as firm as that of the older eorl. He may, perhaps,
best be described as a gesith, who had acquired the position
of an eorl without entirely throwing off his own
characteristics. ... There can be little doubt that the change
began in the practice of granting special estates in the
folkland, or common undivided land, to special persons. At
first this land was doubtless held to be the property of the
tribe. [This is now questioned by Vinogradoff and others. See
FOLCLAND.] ... When the king rose above the tribes, he
granted it himself with the consent of his Witan. A large
portion was granted to churches and monasteries. But a large
portion went in privates estates, or book land, as it was
called, from the book or charter which conveyed them to the
king's own gesiths, or to members of his own family. The
gesith thus ceased to be a mere member of the king's military
household. He became a landowner as well, with special duties.
to perform to the king. ... He had special jurisdiction given
him over his tenants and serfs, exempting him and them from
the authority of the hundred mote, though they still remained,
except in very exceptional cases, under the authority of the
shire mote. ... Even up to the Norman conquest this change was
still going on. To the end, indeed, the old constitutional
forms were not broken down. The hundred mote was not
abandoned, where freemen enough remained to fill it. Even
where all the land of a hundred had passed under the
protection of a lord there was little outward change. ...
There was thus no actual breach of continuity in the nation.
The thegnhood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst the
free classes. Nevertheless there was a danger of such a breach
of continuity coming about. The freemen entered more and more
largely into a condition of' dependence, and there was a great
risk lest such a condition of dependence should become a
condition of servitude. Here and there, by some extraordinary
stroke of luck, a freeman might rise to be a thegn. But the
condition of the class to which he belonged was deteriorating
every day.
{789}
The downward progress to serfdom was too easy to take, and by
large masses of the population it was already taken. Below the
increasing numbers of the serfs was to be found the lower
class of slaves, who were actually the property of their
masters. The Witenagemot was in reality a select body of
thegns, if the bishops, who held their lands in much the same
way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather an inchoate House of
Lords, than an inchoate Parliament, after our modern ideas. It
was natural that a body of men which united a great part of
the wealth with almost all the influence in the kingdom should
be possessed of high constitutional powers. The Witenagemot
elected the king, though as yet they always chose him out of
the royal family, which was held to have sprung from the god
Woden. There were even cases in which they deposed unworthy
kings."
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
part 1, chapter 2, section 16-21.
ENGLAND: A. D. 975.
Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Martyr.
ENGLAND: A. D. 979.
Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelred, called The Unready.
ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016.
The Danish conquest.
"Then [A. D. 979] commenced one of the longest and most
disastrous reigns of the Saxon kings, with the accession of
Ethelred II., justly styled Ethelred the Unready. The Northmen
now renewed their plundering and conquering expeditions
against England; while England had a worthless waverer for her
ruler, and many of her chief men turned traitors to their king
and country. Always a laggart in open war, Ethelred tried in
1001 the cowardly and foolish policy of buying off the enemies
whom he dared not encounter. The tax called Dane-gelt was then
levied to provide 'a tribute for the Danish men on account of
the great terror which they caused.' To pay money thus was in
effect to hire the enemy to renew the war. In 1002 Ethelred
tried the still more weak and wicked measure of ridding
himself of his enemies by treacherous massacre. Great numbers
of Danes were now living in England, intermixed with the
Anglo-Saxon population. Ethelred resolved to relieve himself
from all real or supposed danger of these Scandinavian
settlers taking part with their invading kinsmen, by sending
secret orders throughout his dominions for the putting to
death of every Dane, man, woman, and child, on St. Brice's
Day, Nov. 13. This atrocious order was executed only in
Southern England, that is, in the West-Saxon territories; but
large numbers of the Danish race were murdered there while
dwelling in full security among their Saxon neighbours. ...
Among the victims was a royal Danish lady, named Gunhilde, who
was sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, and who had married and
settled in England. ... The news of the massacre of St. Brice
soon spread over the Continent, exciting the deepest
indignation against the English and their king. Sweyn
collected in Denmark a larger fleet and army than the north
had ever before sent forth, and solemnly vowed to conquer
England or perish in the attempt. He landed on the south coast
of Devon, obtained possession of Exeter by the treachery of
its governor, and then marched through western and southern
England, marking every shire with fire, famine and slaughter;
but he was unable to take London, which was defended against
the repeated attacks of the Danes with strong courage and
patriotism, such as seemed to have died out in the rest of
Saxon England. In 1013, the wretched king Ethelred fled the
realm and sought shelter in Normandy. Sweyn was acknowledged
king in all the northern and western shires, but he died in
1014, while his vow of conquest was only partly accomplished.
The English now sent for Ethelred back from Normandy,
promising loyalty to him as their lawful king, 'provided he
would rule over them more justly than he had done before.'
Ethelred willingly promised amendment, and returned to reign
amidst strife and misery for two years more. His implacable
enemy, Sweyn, was indeed dead; but the Danish host which Sweyn
had led thither was still in England, under the command of
Sweyn's son, Canute [or Cnut], a prince equal in military
prowess to his father, and far superior to him and to all
other princes of the time in statesmanship and general
ability. Ethelred died in 1016, while the war with Canute was
yet raging. Ethelred's son, Edmund, surnamed Ironside, was
chosen king by the great council then assembled in London, but
great numbers of the Saxons made their submission to Canute.
The remarkable personal valour of Edmund, strongly aided by
the bravery of his faithful Londoners, maintained the war for
nearly a year, when Canute agreed to a compromise, by which he
and Edmund divided the land between them. But within a few
months after this, the royal Ironside died by the hand of an
assassin, and Canute obtained the whole realm of the English
race. A Danish dynasty was now [A. D. 1016] established in
England for three reigns."
Sir E. S. Creasy,
History of England,
volume 1, chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
J. M. Lappenberg,
England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings,
volume 2, pages 151-233.
See, also, MALDEN, and ASSANDUN, BATTLES OF.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1016.
Accession and death of King Edmund Ironside.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1016-1042.
The Reign of the Danish kings.
"Cnut's rule was not as terrible as might have been feared. He
was perfectly unscrupulous in striking down the treacherous
and mischievous chieftains who had made a trade of Ethelred's
weakness and the country's divisions. But he was wise and
strong enough to rule, not by increasing but by allaying those
divisions. Resting his power upon his Scandinavian kingdoms
beyond the sea, upon his Danish countrymen in England, and his
Danish huscarles, or specially trained soldiers in his
service, he was able, without even the appearance of weakness,
to do what in him lay to bind Dane and Englishman together as
common instruments of his power. Fidelity counted more with
him than birth. To bring England itself into unity was beyond
his power. The device which he hit upon was operative only in
hands as strong as his own. There were to be four great earls,
deriving their name from the Danish word jarl, centralizing
the forces of government in Wessex, in Mercia, in East Anglia,
and in Northumberland. With Cnut the four were officials of
the highest class. They were there because he placed them
there. They would cease to be there if he so willed it. But it
could hardly be that it would always be so. Some day or
another, unless a great catastrophe swept away Cnut and his
creation, the earldoms would pass into territorial
sovereignties and the divisions of England would be made
evident openly."
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
chapter 2, section 25.
{790}
"He [Canute] ruled nominally at least, a larger European
dominion than any English sovereign has ever done; and perhaps
also a more homogeneous one. No potentate of the time came
near him except the king of Germany, the emperor, with whom he
was allied as an equal. The king of the Norwegians, the Danes,
and a great part of the Swedes, was in a position to found a
Scandinavian empire with Britain annexed. Canute's division of
his dominions on his death-bed, showed that he saw this to be
impossible; Norway, for a century and a half after his strong
hand was removed, was broken up amongst an anarchical crew of
piratic and blood-thirsty princes, nor could Denmark be
regarded as likely to continue united with England. The
English nation was too much divided and demoralised to retain
hold on Scandinavia, even if the condition of the latter had
allowed it. Hence Canute determined that during his life, as
after his death, the nations should be governed on their own
principles. ... The four nations of the English,
Northumbrians, East Angles, Mercians and West Saxons, might,
each under their own national leader, obey a sovereign who was
strong enough to enforce peace amongst them. The great
earldoms of Canute's reign were perhaps a nearer approach to a
feudal division of England than anything which followed the
Norman Conquest. ... And the extent to which this creation of
the four earldoms affected the history of the next
half-century cannot be exaggerated. The certain tendency of
such an arrangement to become hereditary, and the certain
tendency of the hereditary occupation of great fiefs
ultimately to overwhelm the royal power, are well
exemplified. ... The Norman Conquest restored national unity
at a tremendous temporary sacrifice, just as the Danish
Conquest in other ways, and by a reverse process, had helped
to create it."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 7, section 77.
Canute died in 1035. He was succeeded by his two sons, Harold
Harefoot (1035-1040) and Harthacnute or Hardicanute
(1040-1042), after which the Saxon line of kings was
momentarily restored.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 6.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1035.
Accession of Harold, son of Cnut.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1040.
Accession of Harthacnut, or Hardicanute.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1042.
Accession of Edward the Confessor.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1042-1066.
The last of the Saxon kings.
"The love which Canute had inspired by his wise and
conciliatory rule was dissipated by the bad government of his
sons, Harold and Harthacnut, who ruled in turn. After seven
years of misgovernment, or rather anarchy, England, freed from
the hated rule of Harthacnut by his death, returned to its
old line of kings, and 'all folk chose Edward [surnamed The
Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready] to king,' as was his
right by birth. Not that he was, according to our ideas, the
direct heir, since Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, still
lived, an exile in Hungary. But the Saxons, by choosing Edward
the Confessor, reasserted for the last time their right to
elect that one of the hereditary line who was most available.
With the reign of Edward the Confessor the Norman Conquest
really began. We have seen the connection between England and
Normandy begun by the marriage of Ethelred the Unready to Emma
the daughter of Richard the Fearless, and cemented by the
refuge offered to the English exiles in the court of the
Norman duke. Edward had long found a home there in Canute's
time. ... Brought up under Norman influence, Edward had
contracted the ideas and sympathies of his adopted home. On
his election to the English throne the French tongue became
the language of the court, Norman favourites followed in his
train, to be foisted into important offices of State and
Church, and thus inaugurate that Normanizing policy which was
to draw on the Norman Conquest. Had it not been for this,
William would never have had any claim on England." The
Normanizing policy of king Edward roused the opposition of a
strong English party, headed by the great West-Saxon Earl
Godwine, who had been lifted from an obscure origin to vast
power in England by the favor of Canute, and whose son Harold
held the earldom of East Anglia. "Edward, raised to the throne
chiefly through the influence of Godwine, shortly married his
daughter, and at first ruled England leaning on the
assistance, and almost overshadowed by the power of the great
earl." But Edward was Norman at heart and Godwine was
thoroughly English; whence quarrels were not long in arising.
They came to the crisis in 1051, by reason of a bloody tumult
at Dover, provoked by insolent conduct on the part of a train
of French visitors returning home from Edward's Court. Godwine
was commanded to punish the townsmen of Dover and refused,
whereupon the king obtained a sentence of outlawry, not only
against the earl, but against his sons. "Godwine, obliged to
bow before the united power of his enemies, was forced to fly
the land. He went to Flanders with his son Swegen, while
Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland, to be well received by
Dermot king of Leinster. Many Englishmen seem to have followed
him in his exile: for a year the foreign party was triumphant,
and the first stage of the Norman Conquest complete. It was at
this important crisis that William [Duke of Normandy], secure
at home, visited his cousin Edward. ... Friendly relations we
may be sure had existed between, the two cousins, and if, as
is not improbable, William had begun to hope that he might
some day succeed to the English throne, what more favourable
opportunity for a visit could have been found? Edward had lost
all hopes of ever having any children. ... William came, and
it would seem, gained all that he desired. For this most
probably was the date of some promise on Edward's part that
William should succeed him on his death. The whole question is
beset with difficulties. The Norman chroniclers alone mention
it, and give no dates. Edward had no right to will away his
crown, the disposition of which lay with King and Witenagemot
(or assembly of Wise Men, the grandees of the country), and
his last act was to reverse the promise, if ever given, in
favour of Harold, Godwine's son. But were it not for some such

promise, it is hard to see how William could have subsequently
made the Normans and the world believe in the sacredness of
his claim. ... William returned to Normandy; but next year
Edward was forced to change his policy." Godwine and his sons
returned to England, with a fleet at their backs; London
declared for them, and the king submitted himself to a
reconciliation.
{791}
"The party of Godwine once more ruled supreme, and no mention
was made of the gift of the crown to William. Godwine, indeed,
did not long survive his restoration, but dying the year
after, 1053, left his son Harold Earl of the West-Saxons and
the most important man in England." King Edward the Confessor
lived yet thirteen years after this time, during which period
Earl Harold grew continually in influence and conspicuous
headship of the English party. In 1062 it was Harold's
misfortune to be shipwrecked on the coast of France, and he
was made captive. Duke William of Normandy intervened in his
behalf and obtained his release; and "then, as the price of
his assistance, extorted an oath from Harold, soon to be used
against him. Harold, it is said, became his man, promised to
marry 'William's daughter Adela, to place Dover at once in
William's hands, and support his claim to the English throne
on Edward's death. By a stratagem of William's the oath was
unwittingly taken on holy relics, hidden by the duke under the
table on which Harold laid hands to swear, whereby, according
to the notions of those days, the oath was rendered more
binding." But two years later, when Edward the Confessor died,
the English Witenagemot chose Harold to be king, disregarding
Edward's promise and Harold's oath to the Duke of Normandy.
A. H. Johnson,
The Normans in Europe,
chapters 10 and 12.
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapters 7-10.
J. R. Green,
The Conquest of England,
chapter 10.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066.
Election and coronation of Harold.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (spring and summer).
Preparations of Duke William to enforce his claim to the
English crown.
On receiving news of Edward's death and of Harold's acceptance
of the crown, Duke William of Normandy lost no time in
demanding from Harold the performance of the engagements to
which he had pledged himself by his oath. Harold answered that
the oath had no binding effect, by reason of the compulsion
under which it was given; that the crown of England was not
his to bestow, and that, being the chosen king, he could not
marry without consent of the Witenagemot. When the Duke had
this reply he proceeded with vigor to secure from his own
knights and barons the support he would need for the enforcing
of his rights, as he deemed them, to the sovereignty of the
English realm. A great parliament of the Norman barons was
held at Lillebonne, for the consideration of the matter. "In
this memorable meeting there was much diversity of opinion.
The Duke could not command his vassals to cross the sea; their
tenures did not compel them to such service. William could
only request their aid to fight his battles in England: many
refused to engage in this dangerous expedition, and great
debates arose. ...William, who could not restore order,
withdrew into another apartment: and, calling the barons to
him one by one, he argued and reasoned with each of these
sturdy vassals separately, and apart from the others. He
exhausted all the arts of persuasion;--their present courtesy,
he engaged, should not be tamed into a precedent, ... and the
fertile fields of England should be the recompense of their
fidelity. Upon this prospect of remuneration, the barons
assented. ... William did not confine himself to his own
subjects. All the adventurers and adventurous spirits of the
neighbouring states were invited to join his standard. ... To
all, such promises were made as should best incite them to the
enterprise--lands,--liveries,--money,--according to their
rank and degree; and the port of St. Pierre-sur-Dive was
appointed as the place where all the forces should assemble.
William had discovered four most valid reasons for the
prosecution of his offensive warfare against a neighbouring
people:--the bequest made by his cousin;--the perjury of
Harold;--the expulsion of the Normans, at the instigation, as
he alleged, of Godwin;--and, lastly, the massacre of the Danes
by Ethelred on St. Brice's Day. The alleged perjury of Harold
enabled William to obtain the sanction of the Papal See.
Alexander, the Roman Pontiff, allowed, nay, even urged him to
punish the crime, provided England, when conquered, should be
held as the fief of St. Peter. ... Hildebrand, Archdeacon of
the Church of Rome, afterwards the celebrated Pope Gregory
VII., greatly assisted by the support which he gave to the
decree. As a visible token of protection, the Pope transmitted
to William the consecrated banner, the Gonfanon of St. Peter,
and a precious ring, in which a relic of the chief of the
Apostles was enclosed."
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
volume 3, pages 300-303.
"William convinced, or seemed to convince, all men out of
England and Scandinavia that his claim to the English crown
was just and holy, and that it was a good work to help him to
assert it in arms. ... William himself doubtless thought his
own claim the better; he deluded himself as he deluded others.
But we are more concerned with William as a statesman; and if
it be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends
may be, if it be statesmanship to make men believe the worse
cause is the better, then no man ever showed higher
statesmanship than William showed in his great pleading before
all Western Christendom. ... Others had claimed crowns; none
had taken such pains to convince all mankind that the claim
was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one
side a great advance."
E. A. Freeman,
William the Conqueror,
chapter 6.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (September).
The invasion of Tostig and Harold Hardrada and their
overthrow at Stamford Bridge.
"Harold [the English king], as one of his misfortunes, had to
face two powerful armies, in distant parts of the kingdom,
almost at the same time. Rumours concerning the intentions and
preparations of the Duke of Normandy soon reached England.
During the greater part of the summer, Harold, at the head of
a large naval and military force, had been on the watch along
the English coast. But months passed away and no enemy became
visible. William, it was said, had been apprised of the
measures which had been taken to meet him. ... Many supposed
that, on various grounds, the enterprise had been abandoned.
Provisions also, for so great an army, became scarce. The men
began to disperse; and Harold, disbanding the remainder,
returned to London. But the news now came that Harold
Hardrada, king of Norway, had landed in the north, and was
ravaging the country in conjunction with Tostig, Harold's
elder brother. This event came from one of those domestic
feuds which did so much at this juncture to weaken the power
of the English.
{792}
Tostig had exercised his authority in Northumbria [as earl] in
the most arbitrary manner, and had perpetrated atrocious
crimes in furtherance of his objects. The result was an amount
of disaffection which seems to have put it out of the power of
his friends to sustain him. He had married a daughter of
Baldwin, count of Flanders, and so became brother-in-law to
the duke of Normandy. His brother Harold, as he affirmed, had
not done a brother's part towards him, and he was more
disposed, in consequence, to side with the Norman than with
the Saxon in the approaching struggle. The army with which he
now appeared consisted mostly of Norwegians and Flemings, and
their avowed object was to divide not less than half the
kingdom between them. ... [The young Mercian earls Edwin and
Morcar] summoned their forces ... to repel the invasion under
Tostig. Before Harold could reach the north, they hazarded an
engagement at a place named Fulford, on the Ouse, not far from
Bishopstoke. Their measures, however, were not wisely taken.
They were defeated with great loss. The invaders seem to have
regarded this victory as deciding the fate of that part of the
kingdom. They obtained hostages at York, and then moved to
Stamford Bridge, where they began the work of dividing the
northern parts of England between them. But in the midst of
these proceedings clouds of dust were seen in the distance.
The first thought was, that the multitude which seemed to be
approaching must be friends. But the illusion was soon at an
end. The dust raised was by the march of an army of West
Saxons under the command of Harold."
R. Vaughan,
Revolutions of English History,
book 3, chapter 1.
"Of the details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we have no
authentic record. We have indeed a glorious description [in
the Heimskringla of Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the
highest spirit of the warlike poetry of the North; but it is a
description which, when critically examined, proves to be
hardly more worthy of belief than a battle-piece in the Iliad.
... At least we know that the long struggle of that day was
crowned by complete victory on the side of England. The
leaders of the invading host lay each man ready for all that
England had to give him, his seven feet of English ground.
There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings,
yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many
forms and in so many lands. ... There Tostig, the son of
Godwine, an exile and a traitor, ended, in crime and sorrow a
life which had begun with promises not less bright than that
of his royal brother. ... The whole strength of the Northern
army was broken; a few only escaped by flight, and found means
to reach the ships at Riccall."
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 14, section. 4.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (October).
The Norman invasion and battle of Senlac or Hastings.
The battle of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, September
25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September
28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of
invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The
news of William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the
following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn
and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches,
over the route it had traversed no longer than the week
before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join
him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and
arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the
camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime
the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by
way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the
devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without
waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast
to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill
of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a
position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to
concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate
is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a
decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads
from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an
October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this
point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered
thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of
Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right. ... A general
charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the
minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching
it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first
of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall.
The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the
English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of 'Out,
Out,' and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by
the repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke
rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. ... His Breton
troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in
disorder, and a cry arose, as the panic spread through the
army, that the Duke was slain. 'I live,' shouted William as he
tore off his helmet, 'and by God's help will conquer yet.'
Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard;
unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's
brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of Godwine's sons,
beside him; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to
the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his
steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the
flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as
the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of
the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, when
William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force
from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly
pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the
abandoned line, and was master of the central plateau, while
French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At
three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around
the standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay
on the spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle
Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to
the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense
masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down, a shaft
pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns,
and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse."
J. R. Green,
A Short History of the English People,
chapter 2, section 4.
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 15, section 4.
E. S. Creasy,
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World,
chapter 8.
Wace,
Roman de Rou,
translated by Sir A. Malet.
{793}
England: A. D. 1066-1071.
The Finishing of the Norman Conquest.
"It must be well understood that this great victory [of
Senlac] did not make Duke William King nor put him in
possession of the whole land. He still held only part of
Sussex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom showed as
yet no mind to submit to him. If England had had a leader left
like Harold or Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many
battles as Cnut had, and that with much less chance of winning
in the end. For a large part of England fought willingly on
Cnut's side, while William had no friends in England at all,
except a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself
King till he was regularly crowned more than two months later,
and even then he had real possession only of about a third of
the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had full
possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none the
less settled the fate of England. For after that fight William
never met with any general resistance. ... During the year 1067
William made no further conquests; all western and northern
England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and
Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land
which had really submitted. The next two years were the time
in which all England was really conquered. The former part of
1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that year gave him
central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme
north and northwest being still unsubdued. The attempt to win
Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York.
Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms,
and the Danish fleet [of King Swegen, in league with the
English patriots] came. But the revolts were put down one by
one, and the great winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the
still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester.
Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in
Williams's possession; there was no more fighting, and he was
able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his
schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by
the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070
began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which
lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full
King everywhere without dispute. There was no more national
resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the
country. ... The conquest of the land, as far as fighting
goes, was now finished."
E. A. Freeman,
Short History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 8, section 9; chapter 10, section 16.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1067-1087.
The spoils of the Conquest.
"The Norman army ... remained concentrated around London [in
the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts
nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded
territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went
over the whole extent of country in which the army had left
garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every
kind, public and private, carefully registering every
particular. ... A close inquiry was made into the names of all
the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in
battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had
been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the
property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues,
furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first
class were declared forever disinherited; the second class,
were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their estates
and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman
writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain
their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also
despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention
of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to
entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and
devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their
sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion
of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest,
according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly
contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard
Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The
immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of
those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the
banner of the duke of Normandy. ... Some received their pay in
money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon
wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in
marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had
fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had
accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor
wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered.
His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had
accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but
that stolen goods had no attraction for him."
A. Thierry,
History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,
book 4.
"Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the
Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of
its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed
upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might
have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through
the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals,
partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious
of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon
became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled,
were subdued, and oppressed again. ... An extensive spoliation
of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the
great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the
close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of
the crown were generally foreigners. ... But inferior
freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the
higher. ... The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in
presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book,
afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the
time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative
numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the
immediate vassals of the crown. ... Though I will not now
affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English]
form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are
summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. ...
{794}
This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation
must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the
nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth,
there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers
who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury
and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just.
Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of
them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of
contemporary authorities."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages.
chapter 8, part 2.
"By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to
take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition
in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course
to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's
theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had
been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had
helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then
were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully
deal with the lands of all as his own. ... After the general
redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power
advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. ...
Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one
so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing
new in the thing itself. ... Confiscation of land was the
every-day punishment for various public and private crimes.
... Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and
bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly
little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror."
E. A. Freeman,
William the Conqueror,
pages 102-104, 126.
"After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more
heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the
change of owners the title changed. The complicated and
unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were
exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. ... It was
not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from
confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no
doubt greatest in the higher ranks."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 9, section. 95.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071.
The Camp of Refuge in the Fens.
"In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent
of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by
rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not
flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these
marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the
land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this
damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of
Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of
Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable
for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once
served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish
conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the
rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters,
assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now
dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with
their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of
the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and
wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took
the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first
hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and
thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction,
at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become
powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea,
or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy."
A. Thierry,
History of the Conquest of England by the Normans,
book 4.
"Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of
Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been
little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still
less. ... So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and
without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy
who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and
feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one
compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And
theirs was a land worth fighting for--a good land and large:
from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood,
across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five
burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and
Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman
town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land
of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England
slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings
of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible,
because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a
natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down
instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against
the French. ... Most gallant of them all, and their leader in
the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake,
Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms
of whom appear on the cover of this book."
C. Kingsley,
Hereward the Wake,
Prelude.
The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until
October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been
betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the
disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He
made his escape and various accounts are given of his
subsequent career and his fate.
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest of England,
chapter 20, section 1.
ALSO IN:
C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
first series, chapter 8.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086.
The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book.
"The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of
England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative
system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the
highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great
registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken
of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the
census of the entire population. The respective registers were
preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman
were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de
Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the
Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'"
E. Fischel,
The English Constitution,
chapter 1.
For a different statement see the following: "The recently
attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the
king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his
resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon
the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short
space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the
commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the
sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish
priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township.
{795}
The result of their labours was a minute description of all
the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four
northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland
and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates
the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins,
and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the
tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the
conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the
key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance
in the valuation could be made. ... The returns were
transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two
volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of
Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus
Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at
Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited."
T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
chapter 2.
"Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to
undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information,
and much that has been written on the subject savours more of
a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the
immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of
St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners
by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the
heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give,
and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of
inquiry, which sets forth as follows:
I. What is the manor called?
II. Who held it in the time of King Edward?
III. Who now holds it?
IV. How many hides?
V. What teams are there in demesne?
VI. What teams of the men?
VII. What villans?
VIII. What cottagers?
IX. What bondmen?
X. What freemen and what sokemen?
XI. What woods?
XII. What meadow?
XIII. What pastures?
XIV. What mills?
XV. What fisheries?
XVI. What is added or taken away?
XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now?
XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has?
All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King
Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and
if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is,
I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry,
and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns
as we now have them. ... An external evidence failing, we are
driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the
Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully
studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it
was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long
before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred
and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly
declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The
defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and
keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's
revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first
to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the
defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied
unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous
remissions of its liability, and its possessions were
constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further
remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected
and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor
tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a
small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be
collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had
probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately
remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion
appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror
was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides
by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects.
Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of
the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the
difficulties before him and to count the resources of his
kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at
hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman
mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken
(as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most
public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with
the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and
fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was
prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider
the liability of his subjects from every possible point of
view."
Stuart Moore,
On the Study of Domesday Book
(Domesday Studies, volume 1).
"Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and
economical history of our country, a mine almost
inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among
national documents it is unique. There is nothing that
approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók,
which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland
and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they
settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and
apportioned among them. Such a document for England,
describing the way in which our forefathers divided the
territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after
their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday
Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the
English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not
only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman
host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names
of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before
the great battle which changed all the future history of
England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of
the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the
earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration
of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans,
cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of
the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of
England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were
almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts
first subdued the British population was exterminated or
driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude."
I. Taylor,
Domesday Survivals
(Domesday Studies, volume 1).
ALSO IN:
E. A. Freeman,
History of the Norman Conquest,
chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5.
W. de Gray Birch,
Domesday Book.
F. W. Maitland,
Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.).
{796}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135.
The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns.
William the Conqueror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine
to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger
son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of
£5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The
Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to
persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William
Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of
Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the
respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown
had always been elective. ... Primogeniture ... gave at that
time no right to the crown of England, independent of the
election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this
title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most
congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation,
and from their partiality received a popular support, which
was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled
the king to court his people by promises to diminish their
grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his
banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated
Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English
people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. ...
The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some
time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's
activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in
its most vicious form. ... Odo's politics only facilitated the
Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not
completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of
Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both
countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and
combined their interest to persuade their respective
sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important
article of their reconciliation provided, that if either
should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his
dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies
ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The
mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It
had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric
character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring,
original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh,
tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in
its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. ... While
Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected,
and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. ... The
death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and
influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but
undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to
choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an
unprincipled man. ... The minister advised the king, on the
death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions.
... The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation,
tempted both the king and his minister to increase its
productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new
prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many
bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for
some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he
suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; ... His disagreement
with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the
battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions
of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc--a fair
request--but also the lands which had before that time
belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration
of property, could not be complied with without great
disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king
that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels
should be taken in preference to every other. ... Though
Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his
age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from
having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature,
that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild
management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to
have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind
of his sovereign. ... Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys
oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to
visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most
adapted to overawe the king. ... William threatened, that if
he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the
archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel
naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he
went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was
searched before his departure, that he might carry away no
money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king
immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands
and property. This was about three years before the end of the
reign. ... Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The
possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's
ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His
first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were
increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to
join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to
William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the
usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives
were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in
their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of
Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the
Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his
counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on
his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of
Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious
cruelty of the action. ... The government of William appears
to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the
church it was oppressive. ... He had scarcely reigned twelve
years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a
few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends
dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some
authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom
he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and
to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a
stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it.
... At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel
discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft
struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell,
without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. ...
It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel
actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most
prevalent at the time, both here and in France. ...
{797}
None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed
assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to
impute it to anyone. ... Henry was hunting in a different part
of the New Forest when Rufus fell. ... He left the body to the
casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately
to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. ... He obtained
the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the
following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected
king, and crowned. ... He began his reign by removing the
unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled
Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation,
by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign.
He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter,
signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people
their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his
father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his
brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the
nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect
very early; had given him the best education which the age
could supply. ... He became the most learned monarch of his
day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or
fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards
deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt
the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual
taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation
by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of
Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been
waylaid and killed."
S. Turner,
History of England during the Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapters 5-6.
The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were
soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who
had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went
on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was
defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The
duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy
led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused
Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119,
where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all
south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held
out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in
1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and
died.
E. A. Freeman,
The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I.
ALSO IN:
Sir F. Palgrave,
History of Normandy and England,
volume 4.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154.
The miserable reign of Stephen.
Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England.
The transition to hereditary monarchy.
After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne
was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or
William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk
(1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and
bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda,
widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of
Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very
unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party
refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly
called. This party maintained the superior claims of the
family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had
married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have
fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but
his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him.
Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens
of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a
council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war
ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which
long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in
England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles
with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their
extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by
Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of
churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of
building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their
donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the
happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles,
or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures
were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer
them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron
collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out
spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what
houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently
seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the
blackmail demanded from them were burned. ... Sometimes the
peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led
from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without
any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the
very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the
ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the
land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly
that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than
we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S.
Chronicle). ... Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural
war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler
battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry--afterwards
Henry II.--grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained
strength and his party made head against the weak and
incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about
under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till
his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns
of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and
Henry came to the throne with little further dispute.
C. H. Pearson,
History of England During the Early and Middle Ages,
chapter 28.
"Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot,
however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his
failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms
had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in
the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have
heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers,
not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think,
somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. ... His
weakness throughout his reign ... was due to two causes, each
supplementing the other.
{798}
These were--(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of
his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he
should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those
who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival
claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of
Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could
compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to
submit to further demands. ... The position of his opponents
throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two
assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the
'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second,
that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal
relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by
performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of
continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the
Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his
position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his
Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as
their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that
was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious
principle into England. ... Passing now to the other point,
the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great
interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at
what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle
of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary
right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this
subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual
sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:--'The crown
then continued to be elective. ... But whilst the elective
principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary
or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right
of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was
recognized as coordinate. ... The measures taken by Henry I.
for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove
the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the
importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the
elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong
bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in
his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the
sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges,
apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the
eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn
oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly
suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened
the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir
to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the
pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the
case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the
Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as
implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a
single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's
daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further
because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi
juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in
question can in no way be regarded in the light of an
election. ... The Empress and her partisans must have largely,
to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne
as her father's heir, and ... she and they appealed to the
oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather
than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a
free election. ... The sex of the Empress was the drawback to
her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question
that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his
father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough
to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have
done so. ... Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here
collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the
right of election to the English crown presents considerable
analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English
bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a
mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of
change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to
extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his
daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of
this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight
of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown,
not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's
heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when
Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by
Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that
election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his
succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether
the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere
ratification of a choice already made. ... In comparing
Stephen with his successor the difference between their
circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At
Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial
oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and
had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened
the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on
the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of
feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a
strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction
of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the
position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the
Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II.
derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered
from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance,
whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or
concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a
rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all
the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as
Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at
length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that
which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time
to break his power as effectually as the followers of the
Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have
owed his escape to that efficient administration which years
of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It

in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not
superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that
Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed
better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects."
J. H. Round,
Geoffrey de Mandeville,
chapter. 1.
ALSO IN:
Mrs. J. R. Green,
Henry the Second,
chapter 1.
See, also,
STANDARD, BATTLE OF THE (A. D. 1137).
{799}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189.
Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings (Plantagenets)
and his empire.
Henry II., who came to the English throne on Stephen's death,
was already, by the death of his father, Geoffrey, Count of
Anjou, the head of the great house of Anjou, in France. From
his father he inherited Anjou, Touraine and Maine; through his
mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he received the dukedom
of Normandy as well as the kingdom of England; by marriage
with Eleanor, of Aquitaine, or Guienne, he added to his empire
the princely domain which included Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge,
Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois, with claims of suzerainty over
Auvergne and Toulouse. "Henry found himself at twenty-one
ruler of dominions such as no king before him had ever dreamed
of uniting. He was master of both sides of the English
Channel, and by his alliance with his uncle, the Count of
Flanders, he had command of the French coast from the Scheldt
to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse would carry him
to the shores of the Mediterranean. His subjects told with
pride how 'his empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the
Pyrenees'; there was no monarch save the Emperor himself who
ruled over such vast domains. ... His aim seems to have been to rival in some sort the Empire of the
West, and to reign as an over-king, with sub-kings of his
various provinces, and England as one of them, around him. He
was connected with all the great ruling houses. ... England
was forced out of her old isolation; her interest in the world
without was suddenly awakened. English scholars thronged the
foreign universities; English chroniclers questioned
travellers, scholars, ambassadors, as to what was passing
abroad.' The influence of English learning and English
statecraft made itself felt all over Europe. Never, perhaps,
in all the history of England was there a time when Englishmen
played so great a part abroad." The king who gathered this
wide, incongruous empire under his sceptre, by mere
circumstances of birth and marriage, proved strangely equal,
in many respects, to its greatness. "He was a foreign king who
never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the
most part in a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of
Brabançons and hirelings. ... It was under the rule of a
foreigner such as this, however, that the races of conquerors
and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they were
one. It was by his power that England, Scotland and Ireland
were brought to some vague acknowledgement of a common
suzerain lord, and the foundations laid of the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Ireland. It was he who abolished
feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more
than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the
relations established between Church and State, and decreed
that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held
under the Common Law. ... His reforms established the judicial
system whose main outlines have been preserved to our own day.
It was through his 'Constitutions' and his 'Assizes' that it
came to pass that over all the world the English-speaking
races are governed by English and not by Roman law. It was by
his genius for government that the servants of the royal
household became transformed into Ministers of State. It was
he who gave England a foreign policy which decided our
continental relations for seven hundred years. The impress
which the personality of Henry II. left upon his time meets us
wherever we turn."
Mrs. J. R. Green,
Henry the Second,
chapters 1-2.
Henry II. and his two sons, Richard I. (Cœur de Lion), and
John, are distinguished, sometimes, as the Angevin kings, or
kings of the House of Anjou, and sometimes as the
Plantagenets, the latter name being derived from a boyish
habit ascribed to Henry's father, Count Geoffrey, of "adorning
his cap with a sprig of 'plantagenista,' the broom which in
early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze
of living gold." Richard retained and ruled the great realm of
his father; but John lost most of his foreign inheritance,
including Normandy, and became the unwilling benefactor of
England by stripping her kings of alien interests and alien
powers and bending their necks to Magna Charta.
K. Norgate,
England under the Angevin Kings.
ALSO IN:
W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets.
See, also,
AQUITAINE (GUIENNE): A. D. 1137-1152;
IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170.
Conflict of King and Church.
The Constitutions of Clarendon.
Murder of Archbishop Becket.
"Archbishop Theobald was at first the King's chief favourite
and adviser, but his health and his influence declining,
Becket [the Archdeacon of Canterbury] was found apt for
business as well as amusement, and gradually became intrusted
with the exercise of all the powers of the crown. ... The
exact time of his appointment as Chancellor has not been
ascertained, the records of the transfer of the Great Seal not
beginning till a subsequent reign, and old biographers being
always quite careless about dates. But he certainly had this
dignity soon after Henry's accession. ... Becket continued
Chancellor till the year 1162, without any abatement in his
favour with the King, or in the power which he possessed, or
in the energy he displayed, or in the splendour of his career.
... In April, 1161, Archbishop Theobald died. Henry declared
that Becket should succeed,--no doubt counting upon his
co-operation in carrying on the policy hitherto pursued in
checking the encroachments of the clergy and of the see of
Rome. ... The same opinion of Becket's probable conduct was
generally entertained, and a cry was raised that 'the Church
was in danger.' The English bishops sent a representation to
Henry against the appointment, and the electors long refused
to obey his mandate, saying that 'it was indecent that a man
who was rather a soldier than a priest, and who had devoted
himself to hunting and falconry instead of the study of the
Holy Scriptures, should be placed in the chair of St.
Augustine.' ... The universal expectation was, that Becket
would now attempt the part so successfully played by Cardinal
Wolsey in a succeeding age; that, Chancellor and Archbishop,
he would continue the minister and personal friend of the
King; that he would study to support and extend all the
prerogatives of the Crown, which he himself was to exercise;
and that in the palaces of which he was now master he would
live with increased magnificence and luxury. ... Never was
there so wonderful a transformation. Whether from a
predetermined purpose, or from a sudden change of inclination,
he immediately became in every respect an altered man.
{800}
Instead of the stately and fastidious courtier, was seen the
humble and squalid penitent. Next [to] his skin he wore
hair-cloth, populous with vermin; he lived upon roots, and his
drink was water, rendered nauseous by an infusion of fennel.
By way of further penance and mortification, he frequently
inflicted stripes on his naked back. ... He sent the Great
Seal to Henry, in Normandy, with this short message, 'I desire
that you will provide yourself with another Chancellor, as I
find myself hardly sufficient for the duties of one office,
and much less of two.' The fond patron, who had been so eager
for his elevation, was now grievously disappointed and
alarmed. ... He at once saw that he had been deceived in his
choice. ... The grand struggle which the Church was then
making was, that all churchmen should be entirely exempted
from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, whatever crime
they might have committed. ... Henry, thinking that he had a
favourable opportunity for bringing the dispute to a crisis,
summoned an assembly of all the prelates at Westminster, and
himself put to them this plain question: 'Whether they were
willing to submit to the ancient laws and customs of the
kingdom?' Their reply, framed by Becket, was: 'We are willing,
saving our own order.' ... The King, seeing what was
comprehended in the reservation, retired with evident marks of
displeasure, deprived Becket of the government of Eye and
Berkhamstead, and all the appointments which he held at the
pleasure of the Crown, and uttered threats as to seizing the
temporalities of all the bishops, since they would not
acknowledge their allegiance to him as the head of the state.
The legate of Pope Alexander, dreading a breach with so
powerful a prince at so unseasonable a juncture, advised
Becket to submit for the moment; and he with his brethren,
retracting the saving clause, absolutely promised 'to observe
the laws and customs of the kingdom.' To avoid all future
dispute, Henry resolved to follow up his victory by having
these laws and customs, as far as the Church was concerned,
reduced into a code, to be sanctioned by the legislature, and
to be specifically acknowledged by all the bishops. This was
the origin of the famous 'Constitutions of Clarendon.'''
Becket left the kingdom (1164). Several years later he made
peace with Henry and returned to Canterbury; but soon he again
displeased the King, who cried in a rage, 'Who will rid me of
this turbulent priest?' Four knights who were present
immediately went to Canterbury, where they slew the Archbishop
in the cathedral (December 29, 1170). "The government tried to
justify or palliate the murder. The Archbishop of York likened
Thomas à Becket to Pharaoh, who died by the Divine vengeance,
as a punishment for his hardness of heart; and a proclamation
was issued, forbidding anyone to speak of Thomas of Canterbury
as a martyr: but the feelings of men were too strong to be
checked by authority; pieces of linen which had been dipped in
his blood were preserved as relics; from the time of his death
it was believed that miracles were worked at his tomb; thither
flocked hundreds of thousands, in spite of the most violent
threats of punishment; at the end of two years he was
canonised at Rome; and, till the breaking out of the
Reformation, St. Thomas of Canterbury, for pilgrimages and
prayers, was the most distinguished Saint in England."
Lord Campbell,
Lives of the Lord Chancellors,
chapter 3.
"What did Henry II. propose to do with a clerk who was accused
of a crime? ... Without doing much violence to the text, it is
possible to put two different interpretations upon that famous
clause in the Constitutions of Clarendon which deals with
criminous clerks. ... According to what seems to be the
commonest opinion, we might comment upon this clause in some
such words as these:--Offences of which a clerk may be accused
are of two kinds. They are temporal or they are
ecclesiastical. Under the former head fall murder, robbery,
larceny, rape, and the like; under the latter, incontinence,
heresy, disobedience to superiors, breach of rules relating to
the conduct of divine service, and so forth. If charged with
an offence of the temporal kind, the clerk must stand his
trial in the king's court; his trial, his sentence, will be
like that of a layman. For an ecclesiastical offence, on the
other hand, he will be tried in the court Christian. The king
reserves to his court the right to decide what offences are
temporal, what ecclesiastical; also he asserts the right to
send delegates to supervise the proceedings of the spiritual
tribunals. ... Let us attempt a rival commentary. The author
of this clause is not thinking of two different classes of
offences. The purely ecclesiastical offences are not in
debate. No one doubts that for these a man will be tried in
and punished by the spiritual court. He is thinking of the
grave crimes, of murder and the like. Now every such crime is
a breach of temporal law, and it is also a breach of canon
law. The clerk who commits murder breaks the king's peace, but
he also infringes the divine law, and--no canonist will doubt
this--ought to be degraded. Very well. A clerk is accused of
such a crime. He is summoned before the king's court, and he
is to answer there--let us mark this word respondere--for what
he ought to answer for there. What ought he to answer for
there? The breach of the king's peace and the felony. When he
has answered, ... then, without any trial, he is to be sent to
the ecclesiastical court. In that court he will have to answer
as an ordained clerk accused of homicide, and in that court
there will be a trial (res ibi tractabitur). If the spiritual
court convicts him it will degrade him, and thenceforth the
church must no longer protect him. He will be brought back
into the king's court, ... and having been brought back, no
longer a clerk but a mere layman, he will be sentenced
(probably without any further trial) to the layman's
punishment, death or mutilation. The scheme is this:
accusation and plea in the temporal court; trial, conviction,
degradation, in the ecclesiastical court; sentence in the
temporal court to the layman's punishment. This I believe to
be the meaning of the clause."
F. W. Maitland,
Henry II. and the Criminous Clerks
(English Historical Review, April, 1892),
pages 224-226.
The Assize of Clarendon, sometimes confused with the
Constitutions of Clarendon, was an important decree approved
two years later. It laid down the principles on which the
administration of justice was to be carried out, in twenty-two
articles drawn up for the use of the judges.
Mrs. J. R Green,
Henry the Second,
chapters 5-6.
{801}
"It may not be without instruction to remember that the
Constitutions of Clarendon, which Becket spent his life in
opposing, and of which his death procured the suspension, are
now incorporated in the English law, and are regarded, without
a dissentient voice, as among the wisest and most necessary of
English institutions; that the especial point for which he
surrendered his life was not the independence of the clergy
from the encroachments of the Crown, but the personal and now
forgotten question of the superiority of the see of Canterbury
to the see of York."
A. P. Stanley,
Historical Memorials of Canterbury,
page 124.
ALSO IN:
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 12, sections 139-141.
W. Stubbs,
Select Charters,
part 4.
J. C. Robertson,
Becket.
J. A. Giles,
Life and Letters of Thomas à Becket.
R. H. Froude,
History of the Contest between Archbishop
Thomas à Becket and Henry II.
(Remains, part 2, volume 2).
J. A. Froude,
Life and Times of Thomas Becket.
C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 1, chapter 29.
See, also,
BENEFIT OF CLERGY,
and JURY, TRIAL BY.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1189.
Accession of King Richard I. (called Cœur de Lion).
ENGLAND: A. D. 1189-1199.
Reign of Richard Cœur de Lion.
His Crusade and campaigns in France.
"The Third Crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192], undertaken
for the deliverance of Palestine from the disasters brought
upon the Crusaders' Kingdom by Saladin, was the first to be
popular in England. ... Richard joined the Crusade in the very
first year of his reign, and every portion of his subsequent
career was concerned with its consequences. Neither in the
time of William Rufus nor of Stephen had the First or Second
Crusades found England sufficiently settled for such
expeditions. ... But the patronage of the Crusades was a
hereditary distinction in the Angevin family now reigning in
England: they had founded the kingdom of Palestine; Henry II.
himself had often prepared to set out; and Richard was
confidently expected by the great body of his subjects to
redeem the family pledge. ... Wholly inferior in statesmanlike
qualities to his father as he was, the generosity,
munificence, and easy confidence of his character made him an
almost perfect representative of the chivalry of that age. He
was scarcely at all in England, but his fine exploits both by
land and sea have made him deservedly a favourite. The
depreciation of him which is to be found in certain modern
books must in all fairness be considered a little mawkish. A
King who leaves behind him such an example of apparently
reckless, but really prudent valour, of patience under jealous
ill-treatment, and perseverance in the face of extreme
difficulties, shining out as the head of the manhood of his
day, far above the common race of kings and emperors,--such a
man leaves a heritage of example as well as glory, and incites
posterity to noble deeds. His great moral fault was his
conduct to Henry, and for this he was sufficiently punished;
but his parents must each bear their share of the blame. ...
The interest of English affairs during Richard's absence
languishes under the excitement which attends his almost
continuous campaigns. ... Both on the Crusade and in France
Richard was fighting the battle of the House which the English
had very deliberately placed upon its throne; and if the war
was kept off its shores, if the troubles of Stephen's reign
were not allowed to recur, the country had no right to
complain of a taxation or a royal ransom which times of peace
enabled it, after all, to bear tolerably well. ... The great
maritime position of the Plantagenets made these sovereigns
take to the sea."
M. Burrows,
Commentaries on the History of England,
book 1, chapter 18.
Richard "was a bad king; his great exploits, his military
skill, his splendour and extravagance, his poetical tastes,
his adventurous spirit, do not serve to cloak his entire want
of sympathy, or even consideration for his people. He was no
Englishman. ... His ambition was that of a mere warrior."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
section. 150 (volume 1).
ALSO IN:
K. Norgate,
England under the Angevin Kings,
volume 2, chapter 7-8.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1199.
Accession of King John.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1205.
The loss of Normandy and its effects.
In 1202 Philip Augustus, king of France, summoned John of
England, as Duke of Normandy (therefore the feudal vassal of
the French crown) to appear for trial on certain grave charges
before the august court of the Peers of France. John refused
to obey the summons; his French fiefs were declared forfeited,
and the armies of the French king took possession of them (see
FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224). This proved to be a lasting
separation of Normandy from England,--except as it was
recovered momentarily long afterwards in the conquests of
Henry V. "The Norman barons had had no choice but between John
and Philip. For the first time since the Conquest there was no
competitor, son, brother, or more distant kinsman, for their
allegiance. John could neither rule nor defend them. Bishops
and barons alike welcomed or speedily accepted their new lord.
The families that had estates on both sides of the Channel
divided into two branches, each of which made terms for
itself; or having balanced their interests in the two
kingdoms, threw in their lot with one or other, and renounced
what they could not save. Almost immediately Normandy settles
down into a quiet province of France. ... For England the
result of the separation was more important still. Even within
the reign of John it became clear that the release of the
barons from their connexion with the continent was all that
was wanted to make them Englishmen. With the last vestiges of
the Norman inheritances vanished the last idea of making
England a feudal kingdom. The Great Charter was won by men who
were maintaining, not the cause of a class, as had been the
case in every civil war since 1070, but the cause of a nation.
From the year 1203 the king stood before the English people
face to face."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 12, section 152.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1205-1213.
King John's quarrel with the Pope and the Church.
On the death, in 1205, of Archbishop Hubert, of Canterbury,
who had long been chief minister of the crown, a complicated
quarrel over the appointment to the vacant see arose between
the monks of the cathedral, the suffragan bishops of the
province, King John, and the powerful Pope Innocent III. Pope
Innocent put forward as his candidate the afterwards famous
Stephen Langton, secured his election in a somewhat irregular
way (A. D. 1207), and consecrated him with his own hands. King
John, bent on filling the primacy with a creature of his own,
resisted the papal action with more fury than discretion, and
proceeded to open war with the whole Church.
{802}
"The monks of Canterbury were driven from their monastery, and
when, in the following year, an interdict which the Pope had
intrusted to the Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester, was
published, his hostility to the Church became so extreme that
almost all the bishops fled; the Bishops of Winchester,
Durham, and Norwich, two of whom belonged to the ministerial
body, being the only prelates left in England. The interdict
was of the severest form; all services of the Church, with the
exception of baptism and extreme unction, being forbidden,
while the burial of the dead was allowed only in unconsecrated
ground; its effect was however, weakened by the conduct of
some of the monastic orders, who claimed exemption from its
operation, and continued their services. The king's anger knew
no bounds. The clergy were put beyond the protection of the
law; orders were issued to drive them from their benefices,
and lawless acts committed at their expense met with no
punishment. ... Though acting thus violently, John showed the
weakness of his character by continued communication with the
Pope, and occasional fitful acts of favour to the Church; so
much so, that, in the following year, Langton prepared to come
over to England, and, upon the continued obstinacy of the
king, Innocent, feeling sure of his final victory, did not
shrink from issuing his threatened excommunication. John had
hoped to be able to exclude the knowledge of this step from
the island ... ; but the rumour of it soon got abroad, and its
effect was great. ... In a state of nervous excitement, and
mistrusting his nobles, the king himself perpetually moved to
and fro in his kingdom, seldom staying more than a few days in
one place. None the less did he continue his old line of policy.
... In 1211 a league of excommunicated leaders was formed,
including all the princes of the North of Europe; Ferrand of
Flanders, the Duke of Brabant, John, and Otho [John's Guelphic
Saxon nephew, who was one of two contestants for the imperial
crown in Germany], were all members of it, and it was chiefly
organized by the activity of Reinald of Dammartin, Count of
Boulogne. The chief enemy of these confederates was Philip of
France; and John thought he saw in this league the means of
revenge against his old enemy. To complete the line of
demarcation between the two parties, Innocent, who was greatly
moved by the description of the disorders and persecutions in
England, declared John's crown forfeited, and intrusted the
carrying out of the sentence to Philip. In 1213 armies were
collected on both sides. Philip was already on the Channel,
and John had assembled a large army on Barhamdown, not far
from Canterbury." But, at the last moment, when the French
king was on the eve of embarking his forces for the invasion
of England, John submitted himself abjectly to Pandulf, the
legate of the Pope. He not only surrendered to all that he had
contended against, but went further, to the most shameful
extreme. "On the 15th of May, at Dover, he formally resigned
the crowns of England and Ireland into the hands of Pandulf,
and received them again as the Pope's feudatory."
J. F. Bright,
History of England (3d edition),
volume 1, pages 130-134.
ALSO IN:
C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 2, chapter 2.
E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,
Book 4, number 5.
See, also, BOUVINES, BATTLE OF.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1206-1230.
Attempts of John and Henry III. to recover Anjou and Maine.
See ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1215.
Magna Carta.
"It is to the victory of Bouvines that England owes her Great
Charter [see BOUVINES]. ... John sailed for Poitou with the
dream of a great victory which should lay Philip [of France]
and the barons alike at his feet. He returned from his defeat
to find the nobles no longer banded together in secret
conspiracies, but openly united in a definite claim of liberty
and law. The author of this great change was the new
Archbishop [Langton] whom Innocent had set on the throne of
Canterbury. ... In a private meeting of the barons at St.
Paul's, he produced the Charter of Henry I., and the
enthusiasm with which it was welcomed showed the sagacity with
which the Primate had chosen his ground for the coming
struggle. All hope, however, hung on the fortunes of the
French campaign; it was the victory at Bouvines that broke the
spell of terror, and within a few days of the king's landing
the barons again met at St. Edmundsbury. ... At Christmas they
presented themselves in arms before the king and preferred their
claim. The few months that followed showed John that he stood
alone in the land. ... At Easter the barons again gathered in
arms at Brackley and renewed their claim. 'Why do they not ask
for my kingdom?' cried John in a burst of passion; but the
whole country rose as one man at his refusal. London threw
open her gates to the army of the barons, now organized under
Robert Fitz-Walter, 'the marshal of the army of God and the
holy Church.' The example of the capital was at once followed
by Exeter and Lincoln; promises of aid came from Scotland and
Wales; the northern nobles marched hastily to join their
comrades in London. With seven horsemen in his train John
found himself face to face with a nation in arms. ... Nursing
wrath in his heart the tyrant bowed to necessity, and summoned
the barons to a conference at Runnymede. An island in the
Thames between Staines and Windsor had been chosen as the
place of conference: the king encamped on one bank, while the
barons covered the marshy flat, still known by the name of
Runnymede, on the other. Their delegates met in the island
between them. ... The Great Charter was discussed, agreed to,
and signed in a single day [June 15, A. D. 1215]. One copy of
it still remains in the British Museum, injured by age and
fire, but with the royal seal still hanging from the brown,
shriveled parchment."
J. R Green,
Short History of the England People,
chapter 3, sections 2-3.
"As this was the first effort towards a legal government, so
is it beyond comparison the most important event in our
history, except that, Revolution without which its benefits
would have been rapidly annihilated. The constitution of
England has indeed no single date from which its duration is
to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more
important changes which time has wrought in the order of
society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great
Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to
our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of
English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little
more than as confirmation or commentary. ... The essential
clauses of Magna Charta are those which protect the personal
liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from
arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation.
{803}
'No freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry III.'s charter,
which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of
John, the variations not being very material) shall be taken
or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties,
or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise
destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon, but by
lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We
will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man,
justice or right.' It is obvious that these words, interpreted
by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the
two main rights of civil society."
H. Hallam,
The Middle Ages,
chapter 8, part 2.
"The Great Charter, although drawn up in the form of a royal
grant, was really a treaty between the king and his subjects.
... It is the collective people who really form the other high
contracting party in the great capitulation,--the three
estates of the realm, not, it is true, arranged in order
according to their profession or rank, but not the less
certainly combined in one national purpose, and securing by
one bond the interests and rights of each other, severally and
all together. ... The barons maintain and secure the right of
the whole people as against themselves as well as against
their master. Clause by clause the rights of the commons are
provided for as well as the rights of the nobles. ... The
knight is protected against the compulsory exaction of his
services, and the horse and cart of the freeman against the
irregular requisition even of the sheriff. ... The Great
Charter is the first great public act of the nation, after it
has realised its own identity. ... The whole of the
constitutional history of England is little more than a
commentary on Magna Carta."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 12, section 155.
The following is the text of Magna Carta;
"John, by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland,
Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his
Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries,
Foresters, Sheriffs, Governors, Officers, and to all Bailiffs,
and his faithful subjects, greeting. Know ye, that we, in the
presence of God, and for the salvation of our soul, and the
souls of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of
God and the advancement of Holy Church, and amendment of our
Realm, by advice of our venerable Fathers, Stephen, Archbishop
of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Cardinal of the Holy
Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of Dublin; William, of London;
Peter, of Winchester; Jocelin, of Bath and Glastonbury; Hugh,
of Lincoln; Walter, of Worcester; William, of Coventry;
Benedict, of Rochester--Bishops; of Master Pandulph,
Sub-Deacon and Familiar of our Lord the Pope; Brother Aymeric,
Master of the Knights-Templars in England; and of the noble
Persons, William Marescall, Earl of Pembroke; William, Earl of
Salisbury; William, Earl of Warren; William, Earl of Arundel;
Alan de Galloway, Constable of Scotland; Warin FitzGerald,
Peter FitzHerbert, and Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou;
Hugh de Neville, Matthew FitzHerbert, Thomas Basset, Alan
Basset, Philip of Albiney, Robert de Roppell, John Mareschal,
John FitzHugh, and others, our liegemen, have, in the first
place, granted to God, and by this our present Charter
confirmed, for us and our heirs forever;
1. That the Church of England shall be free, and have her
whole rights, and her liberties inviolable; and we will have
them so observed, that it may appear thence that the freedom
of elections, which is reckoned chief and indispensable to the
English Church, and which we granted and confirmed by our
Charter, and obtained the confirmation of the same from our
Lord the Pope Innocent III., before the discord between us and
our barons, was granted of mere free will; which Charter we
shall observe, and we do will it to be faithfully observed by
our heirs for ever.
2. We also have granted to all the freemen of our kingdom, for
us and for our heirs for ever, all the underwritten liberties,
to be had and holden by them and their heirs, of us and our
heirs for ever; If any of our earls, or barons, or others, who
hold of us in chief by military service, shall die, and at the
time of his death his heir shall be of full age, and owe a
relief, he shall have his inheritance by the ancient
relief--that is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl, for a
whole earldom, by a hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a
baron, for a whole barony, by a hundred pounds; the heir or
heirs of a knight, for a whole knight's fee, by a hundred
shillings at most; and whoever oweth less shall give less,
according to the ancient custom of fees.
3. But if the heir of any such shall be under age, and shall
be in ward, when he comes of age he shall have his inheritance
without relief and without fine.
4. The keeper of the land of such an heir being under age,
shall take of the land of the heir none but reasonable issues,
reasonable customs, and reasonable services, and that without
destruction and waste of his men and his goods; and if we
commit the custody of any such lands to the sheriff, or any
other who is answerable to us for the issues of the land, and
he shall make destruction and waste of the lands which he hath
in custody, we will take of him amends, and the land shall be
committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who
shall answer for the issues to us, or to him to whom we shall
assign them; and if we sell or give to anyone the custody of
any such lands, and he therein make destruction or waste, he
shall lose the same custody, which shall be committed to two
lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall in like manner
answer to us as aforesaid.
5. But the keeper, so long as he shall have the custody of the
land, shall keep up the houses, parks, warrens, ponds, mills,
and other things pertaining to the land, out of the issues of
the same land; and shall deliver to the heir, when he comes of
full age, his whole land, stocked with ploughs and carriages,
according as the time of wainage shall require, and the issues
of the land can reasonably bear.
6. Heirs shall be married without disparagement, and so that
before matrimony shall be contracted, those who are near in
blood to the heir shall have notice.
7. A widow, after the death of her husband, shall forthwith
and without difficulty have her marriage and inheritance; nor
shall she give anything for her dower, or her marriage, of her
inheritance, which her husband and she held at the day of his
death; and she may remain in the mansion house of her husband
forty days after his death, within which time her dower shall
be assigned.
8. No widow shall be distrained to marry herself, so long as
she has a mind to live without a husband; but yet she shall
give security that she will not marry without our assent, if
she hold of us; or without the consent of the lord of whom she
holds, if she hold of another.
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9. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land or rent
for any debt so long as the chattels of the debtor are
sufficient to pay the debt; nor shall the sureties of the
debtor be distrained so long as the principal debtor has
sufficient to pay the debt; and if the principal debtor shall
fail in the payment of the debt, not having wherewithal to pay
it, then the sureties shall answer the debt; and if they will
they shall have the lands and rents of the debtor, until they
shall be satisfied for the debt which they paid for him,
unless the principal debtor can show himself acquitted thereof
against the said sureties.
10. If anyone have borrowed anything of the Jews, more or
less, and die before the debt be satisfied, there shall be no
interest paid for that debt, so long as the heir is under age,
of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt falls into our
hands, we will only take the chattel mentioned in the deed.
11. And if anyone shall die indebted to the Jews, his wife
shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if the
deceased left children under age, they shall have necessaries
provided for them, according to the tenement of the deceased;
and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, saving,
however, the service due to the lords, and in like manner
shall it be done touching debts due to others than the Jews.
12. No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless
by the general council of our kingdom; except for ransoming
our person, making our eldest son a knight, and once for
marrying our eldest daughter; and for these there shall be
paid no more than a reasonable aid. In like manner it shall be
concerning the aids of the City of London.
13. And the City of London shall have all its ancient
liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water:
furthermore, we will and grant that all other cities and
boroughs, and towns and ports, shall have all their liberties
and free customs.
14. And for holding the general council of the kingdom
concerning the assessment of aids, except in the three cases
aforesaid, and for the assessing of scutages, we shall cause
to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and
greater barons of the realm, singly by our letters. And
furthermore, we shall cause to be summoned generally, by our
sheriffs and bailiffs, all others who hold of us in chief, for
a certain day, that is to say, forty days before their meeting
at least, and to a certain place; and in all letters of such
summons we will declare the cause of such summons. And summons
being thus made, the business shall proceed on the day
appointed, according to the advice of such as shall be
present, although all that were summoned come not.
15. We will not for the future grant to anyone that he may
take aid of his own free tenants, unless to ransom his body,
and to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his
eldest daughter; and for this there shall be only paid a
reasonable aid.
16. No man shall be distrained to perform more service for a
knight's fee, or other free tenement, than is due from thence.
17. Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be
holden in some place certain.
18. Trials upon the Writs of Novel Disseisin, and of Mort
d'ancestor, and of Darrein Presentment, shall not be taken but
in their proper counties, and after this manner: We, or if we
should be out of the realm, our chief justiciary, will send
two justiciaries through every county four times a year, who,
with four knights of each county, chosen by the county, shall
hold the said assizes in the county, on the day, and at the
place appointed.
19. And if any matters cannot be determined on the day
appointed for holding the assizes in each county, so many of
the knights and freeholders as have been at the assizes
aforesaid shall stay to decide them as is necessary, according
as there is more or less business.
20. A freeman shall not be amerced for a small offence, but
only according to the degree of the offence; and for a great
crime according to the heinousness of it, saving to him his
contenement; and after the same manner a merchant, saving to
him his merchandise. And a villein shall be amerced after the
same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our
mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be
assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood.
21. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers,
and after the degree of the offence.
22. No ecclesiastical person shall be amerced for his lay
tenement, but according to the proportion of the others
aforesaid, and not according to the value of his
ecclesiastical benefice.
23. Neither a town nor any tenant shall be distrained to make
bridges or embankments, unless that anciently and of right
they are bound to do it.
24. No sheriff, constable, coroner, or other our bailiffs,
shall hold "Pleas of the Crown."
25. All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trethings, shall
stand at the old rents, without any increase, except in our
demesne manors.
26. If anyone holding of us a lay fee die, and the sheriff, or
our bailiffs, show our letters patent of summons for debt
which the dead man did owe to us, it shall be lawful for the
sheriff or our bailiff to attach and register the chattels of
the dead, found upon his lay fee, to the amount of the debt,
by the view of lawful men, so as nothing be removed until our
whole clear debt be paid; and the rest shall be left to the
executors to fulfil the testament of the dead; and if there be
nothing due from him to us, all the chattels shall go to the
use of the dead, saving to his wife and children their
reasonable shares.
27. If any freeman shall die intestate, his chattels shall be
distributed by the hands of his nearest relations and friends,
by view of the Church, saving to everyone his debts which the
deceased owed to him.
28. No constable or bailiff of ours shall take corn or other
chattels of any man unless he presently give him money for it,
or hath respite of payment by the good-will of the seller.
29. No constable shall distrain any knight to give money for
castle-guard, if he himself will do it in his person, or by
another able man, in case he cannot do it through any
reasonable cause. And if we have carried or sent him into the
army, he shall be free from such guard for the time he shall
be in the army by our command.
30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any other, shall take
horses or carts of any freeman for carriage, without the
assent of the said freeman.
31. Neither shall we nor our bailiffs take any man's timber
for our castles or other uses, unless by the consent of the
owner of the timber.
32. We will retain the lands of those convicted of felony only
one year and a day, and then they shall be delivered to the
lord of the fee.
33. All kydells (wears) for the time to come shall be put down
in the rivers of Thames and Medway, and throughout all
England, except upon the seacoast.
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34. The writ which is called prœcipe, for the future, shall
not be made out to anyone, of any tenement, whereby a freeman
may lose his court.
35. There shall be one measure of wine and one of ale through
our whole realm; and one measure of corn, that is to say, the
London quarter; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and russets,
and haberjeets, that is to say, two ells within the lists; and
it shall be of weights as it is of measures.
36. Nothing from henceforth shall be given or taken for a writ
of inquisition of life or limb, but it shall be granted
freely, and not denied.
37. If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or by socage, or by
burgage, and he hold also lands of any other by knight's
service, we will not have the custody of the heir or land,
which is holden of another man's fee by reason of that
fee-farm, socage, or burgage; neither will we have the custody
of the fee-farm, or socage, or burgage, unless knight's
service was due to us out of the same fee-farm. We will not
have the custody of an heir, nor of any land which he holds of
another by knight's service, by reason of any petty serjeanty
by which he holds of us, by the service of paying a knife, an
arrow, or the like.
38. No bailiff from henceforth shall put any man to his law
upon his own bare saying, without credible witnesses to prove
it.
39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or
outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pass
upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful
judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.
40. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man,
either justice or right.
41. All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct, to go
out of, and to come into England, and to stay there and to
pass as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by
the ancient and allowed customs, without any unjust tolls;
except in time of war, or when they are of any nation at war
with us. And if there be found any such in our land, in the
beginning of the war, they shall be attached, without damage
to their bodies or goods, until it be known unto us, or our
chief justiciary, how our merchants be treated in the nation
at war with us; and if ours be safe there, the others shall be
safe in our dominions.
42. It shall be lawful, for the time to come, for anyone to go
out of our kingdom, and return safely and securely by land or
by water, saving his allegiance to us; unless in time of war,
by some short space, for the common benefit of the realm,
except prisoners and outlaws, according to the law of the
land, and people in war with us, and merchants who shall be
treated as is above mentioned.
43. If any man hold of any escheat, as of the honour of
Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other
escheats which be in our hands, and are baronies, and die, his
heir shall give no other relief, and perform no other service
to us than he would to the baron, if it were in the baron's
hand; and we will hold it after the same manner as the baron
held it.
44. Those men who dwell without the forest from henceforth
shall not come before our justiciaries of the forest, upon
common summons, but such as are impleaded, or are sureties for
any that are attached for something concerning the forest.
45. We will not make any justices, constables, sheriffs, or
bailiffs, but of such as know the law of the realm and mean
duly to observe it.
46. All barons who have founded abbeys, which they hold by
charter from the kings of England, or by ancient tenure, shall
have the keeping of them, when vacant, as they ought to have.
47. All forests that have been made forests in our time shall
forthwith be disforested; and the same shall be done with the
water-banks that have been fenced in by us in our time.
48. All evil customs concerning forests, warrens, foresters,
and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, water-banks and
their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired into in each
county, by twelve sworn knights of the same county, chosen by
creditable persons of the same county; and within forty days
after the said inquest be utterly abolished, so as never to be
restored: so as we are first acquainted therewith, or our
justiciary, if we should not be in England.
49. We will immediately give up all hostages and charters
delivered unto us by our English subjects, as securities for
their keeping the peace, and yielding us faithful service.
50. We will entirely remove from their bailiwicks the
relations of Gerard de Atheyes, so that for the future they
shall have no bailiwick in England; we will also remove
Engelard de Cygony, Andrew, Peter, and Gyon, from the
Chancery; Gyon de Cygony, Geoffrey de Martyn, and his
brothers; Philip Mark, and his brothers, and his nephew,
Geoffrey, and their whole retinue.
51. As soon as peace is restored, we will send out of the
kingdom all foreign knights, cross-bowmen, and stipendiaries,
who are come with horses and arms to the molestation of our
people.
52. If anyone has been dispossessed or deprived by us, without
the lawful judgment of his peers, of his lands, castles,
liberties, or right, we will forthwith restore them to him;
and if any dispute arise upon this head, let the matter be
decided by the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned, for
the preservation of the peace. And for all those things of
which any person has, without the lawful judgment of his
peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by our father
King Henry, or our brother King Richard, and which we have in
our hands, or are possessed by others, and we are bound to
warrant and make good, we shall have a respite till the term
usually allowed the crusaders; excepting those things about
which there is a plea depending, or whereof an inquest hath
been made, by our order before we undertook the crusade; but
as soon as we return from our expedition, or if perchance we
tarry at home and do not make our expedition, we will
immediately cause full justice to be administered therein.
53. The same respite we shall have, and in the same manner,
about administering justice, disafforesting or letting
continue the forests, which Henry our father, and our brother
Richard, have afforested; and the same concerning the wardship
of the lands which are in another's fee, but the wardship of
which we have hitherto had, by reason of a fee held of us by
knight's service; and for the abbeys founded in any other fee
than our own, in which the lord of the fee says he has a
right; and when we return from our expedition, or if we tarry
at home, and do not make our expedition, we will immediately
do full justice to all the complainants in this behalf.
54. No man shall be taken or imprisoned upon the appeal of a
woman, for the death of any other than her husband.
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55. All unjust and illegal fines made by us, and all
amerciaments imposed unjustly and contrary to the law of the
land, shall be entirely given up, or else be left to the
decision of the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned for
the preservation of the peace, or of the major part of them,
together with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury,
if he can be present, and others whom he shall think fit to
invite; and if he cannot be present, the business shall
notwithstanding go on without him; but so that if one or more
of the aforesaid five-and-twenty barons be plaintiffs in the
same cause, they shall be set aside as to what concerns this
particular affair, and others be chosen in their room, out of
the said five-and-twenty, and sworn by the rest to decide the
matter.
56. If we have disseised or dispossessed the Welsh of any
lands, liberties, or other things, without the legal judgment
of their peers, either in England or in Wales, they shall be
immediately restored to them; and if any dispute arise upon
this head, the matter shall be determined in the Marches by
the judgment of their peers; for tenements in England
according to the law of England, for tenements in Wales
according to the law of Wales, for tenements of the Marches
according to the law of the Marches: the same shall the Welsh
do to us and our subjects.
57. As for all those things of which a Welshman hath, without
the lawful judgment of his peers, been disseised or deprived
of by King Henry our father, or our brother King Richard, and
which we either have in our hands or others are possessed of,
and we are obliged to warrant it, we shall have a respite till
the time generally allowed the crusaders; excepting those
things about which a suit is depending, or whereof an inquest
has been made by our order, before we undertook the crusade:
but when we return, or if we stay at home without performing
our expedition, we will immediately do them full justice,
according to the laws of the Welsh and of the parts before
mentioned.
58. We will without delay dismiss the son of Llewellin, and
all the Welsh hostages, and release them from the engagements
they have entered into with us for the preservation of the
peace.
59. We will treat with Alexander, King of Scots, concerning
the restoring his sisters and hostages, and his right and
liberties, in the same form and manner as we shall do to the
rest of our barons of England; unless by the charters which we
have from his father, William, late King of Scots, it ought to
be otherwise; and this shall be left to the determination of
his peers in our court.
60. All the aforesaid customs and liberties, which we have
granted to be holden in our kingdom, as much as it belongs to
us, all people of our kingdom, as well clergy as laity, shall
observe, as far as they are concerned, towards their
dependents.
61. And whereas, for the honour of God and the amendment of
our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that has
arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these
things aforesaid; willing to render them firm and lasting, we
do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security,
namely that the barons may choose five-and-twenty barons of
the kingdom, whom they think convenient; who shall take care,
with all their might, to hold and observe, and cause to be
observed, the peace and liberties we have granted them, and by
this our present Charter confirmed in this manner; that is to
say, that if we, our justiciary, our bailiffs, or any of our
officers, shall in any circumstance have failed in the
performance of them towards any person, or shall have broken
through any of these articles of peace and security, and the
offence be notified to four barons chosen out of the
five-and-twenty before mentioned, the said four barons shall
repair to us, or our justiciary, if we are out of the realm,
and, laying open the grievance, shall petition to have it

redressed without delay: and if it be not redressed by us, or
if we should chance to be out of the realm, if it should not
be redressed by our justiciary within forty days, reckoning
from the time it has been notified to us, or to our justiciary
(if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid
shall lay the cause before the rest of the five-and-twenty
barons; and the said five-and-twenty barons, together with the
community of the whole kingdom, shall distrain and distress us
in all the ways in which they shall be able, by seizing our
castles, lands, possessions, and in any other manner they can,
till the grievance is redressed, according to their pleasure;
saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our Queen
and children; and when it is redressed, they shall behave to
us as before. And any person whatsoever in the kingdom may
swear that he will obey the orders of the five-and-twenty
barons aforesaid in the execution of the premises, and will
distress us, jointly with them, to the utmost of his power;
and we give public and free liberty to anyone that shall
please to swear to this, and never will hinder any person from
taking the same oath.
62. As for all those of our subjects who will not, of their
own accord, swear to join the five-and-twenty barons in
distraining and distressing us, we will issue orders to make
them take the same oath as aforesaid. And if anyone of the
five-and-twenty barons dies, or goes out of the kingdom, or is
hindered any other way from carrying the things aforesaid into
execution, the rest of the said five-and-twenty barons may
choose another in his room, at their discretion, who shall be
sworn in like manner as the rest. In all things that are
committed to the execution of these five-and-twenty barons,
if, when they are all assembled together, they should happen
to disagree about any matter, and some of them, when summoned,
will not or cannot come, whatever is agreed upon, or enjoined,
by the major part of those that are present shall be reputed
as firm and valid as if all the five-and-twenty had given
their consent; and the aforesaid five-and-twenty shall swear
that all the premises they shall faithfully observe, and cause
with all their power to be observed. And we will procure
nothing from anyone, by ourselves nor by another, whereby any
of these concessions and liberties may be revoked or lessened;
and if any such thing shall have been obtained, let it be null
and void; neither will we ever make use of it either by
ourselves or any other. And all the ill-will, indignations,
and rancours that have arisen between us and our subjects, of
the clergy and laity, from the first breaking out of the
dissensions between us, we do fully remit and forgive:
moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said dissensions,
from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign till the
restoration of peace and tranquillity, we hereby entirely
remit to all, both clergy and laity, and as far as in us lies
do fully forgive. We have, moreover, caused to be made for
them the letters patent testimonial of Stephen, Lord
Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Lord Archbishop of Dublin,
and the bishops aforesaid, as also of Master Pandulph, for the
security and concessions aforesaid.
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63. Wherefore we will and firmly enjoin, that the Church of
England be free, and that all men in our kingdom have and hold
all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, truly
and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly to
themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things
and places, for ever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as
well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the
things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without
evil subtilty. Given under our hand, in the presence of the
witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called
Runingmede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June,
in the 17th year of our reign."
W. Stubbs,
Select Charters,
part 5.
Old South Leaflets,
General Series,
number 5.
Also IN:
E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,
book 1, number 7.
C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 2, chapter 3.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.
Character and reign of Henry III.
The Barons' War.
Simon de Montfort and the evolution of the English Parliament.
King John died October 17,1216. "His legitimate successor was
a child of nine years of age. For the first time since the
Conquest the personal government was in the hands of a minor.
In that stormy time the great Earl of Pembroke undertook the
government, as Protector. ... At the Council of Bristol, with
general approbation and even with that of the papal legate,
Magna Charta was confirmed, though with the omission of
certain articles. ... After some degree of tranquillity had
been restored, a second confirmation of the Great Charter took
place in the autumn of 1217, with the omission of the clauses
referring to the estates, but with the grant of a new charta
de foresta, introducing a vigorous administration of the
forest laws. In 9 Henry III. Magna Charta was again confirmed,
and this is the form in which it afterwards took its place
among the statutes of the realm. Two years later, Henry III.
personally assumes the reins of government at the Parliament
of Oxford (1227), and begins his rule without confirming the
two charters. At first the tutorial government still
continues, which had meanwhile, even after the death of the
great Earl of Pembroke (1219), remained in a fairly orderly
condition. The first epoch of sixteen years of this reign must
therefore be regarded purely as a government by the nobility
under the name of Henry III. The regency had succeeded in
removing the dominant influence of the Roman Curia by the
recall of the papal legate, Pandulf, to Rome (1221), and in
getting rid of the dangerous foreign mercenary soldiery
(1224). ... With the disgraceful dismissal of the chief
justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, there begins a second epoch of a
personal rule of Henry III. (1232-1252), which for twenty
continuous years, presents the picture of a confused and
undecided struggle between the king and his foreign favourites
and personal adherents on the one side, and the great barons,
and with them soon the prelates, on the other. ... In 21 Henry
III. the King finds himself, in consequence of pressing money
embarrassments, again compelled to make a solemn confirmation
of the charter, in which once more the clauses relating to the
estates are omitted. Shortly afterwards, as had happened just
one hundred years previously in France, the name
'parliamentum' occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1244;
Matth. Paris, 1246), and curiously enough, Henry III. himself,
in a writ addressed to the Sheriff of Northampton, designates
with this term the assembly which originated the Magna Charta.
... The name 'parliament,' now occurs more frequently, but
does not supplant the more definite terms concilium,
colloquium, etc. In the meanwhile the relations with the
Continent became complicated, in consequence of the family
connections of the mother and wife of the King, and the greed
of the papal envoys. ... From the year 1244 onwards, neither a
chief justice nor a chancellor, nor even a treasurer, is
appointed, but the administration of the country is conducted
at the Court by the clerks of the offices."
R. Gneist,
History of the English Constitution,
volume 1, pages 313-321.
"Nothing is so hard to realise as chaos; and nothing nearer to
chaos can be conceived than the government of Henry III. Henry
was, like all the Plantagenets, clever; like very few of them,
he was devout; and if the power of conceiving a great policy
would constitute a great King, he would certainly have been
one. ... He aimed at making the Crown virtually independent of
the barons. ... His connexion with Louis IX., whose
brother-in-law he became, was certainly a misfortune to him.
In France the royal power had during the last fifty years been
steadily on the advance; in England it had as steadily
receded; and Henry was ever hearing from the other side of the
Channel maxims of government and ideas of royal authority
which were utterly inapplicable to the actual state of his own
kingdom. This, like a premature Stuart, Henry was incapable of
perceiving; a King he was, and a King he would be, in his own
sense of the word. It is evident that with such a task before
him, he needed for the most shadowy chance of success, an iron
strength of will, singular self-control, great forethought and
care in collecting and husbanding his resources, a rare talent
for administration, the sagacity to choose and the
self-reliance to trust his counsellors. And not one of these
various qualities did Henry possess. ... Henry had imbibed
from the events and the tutors of his early childhood two
maxims of state, and two alone: to trust Rome, and to distrust
the barons of England. ... He filled the places of trust and
power about himself with aliens, to whom the maintenance of
Papal influence was like an instinct of self-preservation.
Thus were definitely formed the two great parties out of whose
antagonism the War of the Barons arose, under whose influence
the relations between the crown and people of England were
remodelled, and out of whose enduring conflict rose,
indirectly, the political principles which contributed so
largely to bring about the Reformation of the English Church.
The few years which followed the fall of Hubert de Burgh were
the heyday of Papal triumph. And no triumph could have been
worse used. ... Thus was the whole country lying a prey to the
ecclesiastical aliens maintained by the Pope, and to the lay
aliens maintained by the King, ... when Simon de Montfort
became ... inseparably intermixed with the course of our
history. ... In the year 1258 opened the first act of the
great drama which has made the name of Simon de Montfort
immortal. ... The Barons of England, at Leicester's
suggestion, had leagued for the defence of their rights. They
appeared armed at the Great Council. ...
{808}
They required as the condition of their assistance that the
general reformation of the realm should be entrusted to a
Commission of twenty-four members, half to be chosen by the
crown, and half by themselves. For the election of this body,
primarily, and for a more explicit statement of grievances,
the Great Council was to meet again at Oxford on the 11th of
June, 1258. When the Barons came, they appeared at the head of
their retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the plea; but
the real danger was nearer home. They seized on the Cinque
Ports; the unrenewed truce with France was the excuse; they
remembered too vividly King John and his foreign mercenaries.
They then presented their petition. This was directed to the
redress of various abuses. ... To each and every clause the
King gave his inevitable assent. One more remarkable
encroachment was made upon the royal prerogative; the election
in Parliament of a chief justiciar. ... The chief justiciar
was the first officer of the Crown. He was not a mere chief
justice, after the fashion of the present day, but the
representative of the Crown in its high character of the
fountain of justice. ... But the point upon which the barons
laid the greatest stress, from the beginning to the end of
their struggle, was the question of the employment of aliens.
That the strongest castles and the fairest lands of England
should be in the hands of foreigners, was an insult to the
national spirit which no free people could fail to resent. ...
England for the English, the great war cry of the barons, went
home to the heart of the humblest. ... The great question of
the constitution of Parliament was not heard at Oxford; it
emerged into importance when the struggle grew fiercer, and
the barons found it necessary to gather allies round them. ...
One other measure completed the programme of the barons;
namely, the appointment, already referred to, of a committee
of twenty-four. ... It amounted to placing the crown under the
control of a temporary Council of Regency [see OXFORD,
PROVISIONS OF]. ... Part of the barons' work was simple
enough. The justiciar was named, and the committee of
twenty-four. To expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de
Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the two castles
which he held, and called upon the rest to follow. They simply
refused. ... But the barons were in arms, and prepared to use
them. The aliens, with their few English supporters, fled to
Winchester, where the castle was in the hands of the foreign
bishop Aymer. They were besieged, brought to terms, and
exiled. The barons were now masters of the situation. ...
Among the prerogatives of the crown which passed to the Oxford
Commission not the least valuable, for the hold which it gave
on the general government of the country, was the right to
nominate the sheriffs. In 1261 the King, who had procured a
Papal bull to abrogate the Provisions of Oxford, and an army
of mercenaries to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the
sheriffs who had been placed in office by the barons. The
reply of the barons was most memorable; it was a direct appeal
to the order below their own. They summoned three knights
elected from each county in England to meet them at St. Albans
to discuss the state of the realm. It was clear that the day
of the House of Commons could not be far distant, when at such
a crisis an appeal to the knights of the shire could be made,
and evidently made with success. For a moment, in this great
move, the whole strength of the barons was united; but
differences soon returned, and against divided counsels the
crown steadily prevailed. In June, 1262, we find peace
restored. The more moderate of the barons had acquiesced in
the terms offered by Henry; Montfort, who refused them, was
abroad in voluntary exile. ... Suddenly, in July, the Earl of
Gloucester died, and the sole leadership of the barons passed
into the hands of Montfort. With this critical event opens the
last act in the career of the great Earl. In October he returns
privately to England. The whole winter is passed in the
patient reorganising of the party, and the preparation for a
decisive struggle. Montfort, fervent, eloquent, and devoted,
swayed with despotic influence the hearts of the younger
nobles (and few in those days lived to be grey), and taught
them to feel that the Provisions of Oxford were to them what
the Great Charter had been to their fathers. They were drawn
together with an unanimity unknown before. ... They demanded
the restoration of the Great Provisions. The King refused, and
in May, 1263, the barons appealed to arms. ... Henry, with a
reluctant hand, subscribed once more to the Provisions of
Oxford, with a saving clause, however, that they should be
revised in the coming Parliament. On the 9th of September,
accordingly, Parliament was assembled. ... The King and the
barons agreed to submit their differences to the arbitration
of Louis of France. ... Louis IX. had done more than any one
king of France to enlarge the royal prerogative; and Louis was
the brother-in-law of Henry. His award, given at Amiens on the
23d of January, 1264. was, as we should have expected,
absolutely in favour of the King. The whole Provisions of
Oxford were, in his view, an invasion of the royal power. ...
The barons were astounded. ... They at once said that the
question of the employment of aliens was never meant to be
included. ... The appeal was made once again to the sword.
Success for a moment inclined to the royal side, but it was
only for a moment; and on the memorable field of Lewes the
genius of Leicester prevailed. ... With the two kings of
England and of the Romans prisoners in his hands, Montfort
dictated the terms of the so-called Mise of Lewes. ... Subject
to the approval of Parliament, all differences were to be
submitted once more to French arbitration. ... On the 23d of
June the Parliament met. It was no longer a Great Council,
after the fashion of previous assemblies; it included four
knights, elected by each English county. This Parliament gave
such sanction as it was able to the exceptional authority of
Montfort, and ordered that until the proposed arbitration
could be carried out, the King's council should consist of
nine persons, to be named by the Bishop of Chichester, and the
Earls of Gloucester and Leicester. The effect was to give
Simon for the time despotic power. ... It was at length agreed
that all questions whatever, the employment of aliens alone
excepted, should be referred to the Bishop of London, the
justiciar Hugh le Despenser, Charles of Anjou, and the Abbot
of Bec. If on any point they could not agree, the Archbishop
of Rouen was to act as referee. ... It was ... not simply the
expedient of a revolutionary chief in difficulties, but the
expression of a settled and matured policy, when, in December
1264, [Montfort] issued in the King's name the ever-memorable
writs which summoned the first complete Parliament which ever
met in England.
{809}
The earls, barons, and bishops received their summons as of
course; and with them the deans of cathedral churches, an
unprecedented number of abbots and priors, two knights from
every shire, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or
borough in England. Of their proceedings we know but little;
but they appear to have appointed Simon de Montfort to the
office of Justiciar of England, and to have thus made him in
rank, what he had before been in power, the first subject in
the realm. ... Montfort ... had now gone so far, he had
exercised such extraordinary powers, he had done so many
things which could never really be pardoned, that perhaps his
only chance of safety lay in the possession of some such
office as this. It is certain, moreover, that something which
passed in this Parliament, or almost exactly at the time of
its meeting, did cause deep offence to a considerable section
of the barons. ... Difficulties were visibly gathering thicker
around him, and he was evidently conscious that disaffection
was spreading fast. ... Negotiations went forward, not very
smoothly, for the release of Prince Edward. They were
terminated in May by his escape. It was the signal for a
royalist rising. Edward took the command of the Welsh border;
before the middle of June he had made the border his own. On
the 29th Gloucester opened its gates to him. He had many
secret friends. He pushed fearlessly eastward, and surprised
the garrison of Kenilworth, commanded by Simon, the Earl's
second son. The Earl himself lay at Evesham, awaiting the
troops which his son was to bring up from Kenilworth. ... On
the fatal field of Evesham, fighting side by side to the last,
fell the Earl himself, his eldest son Henry, Despenser the
late Justiciar, Lord Basset of Drayton, one of his firmest
friends, and a host of minor name. With them, to all
appearance, fell the cause for which they had fought."
Simon de Montfort
(Quarterly Review, January, 1866).
See PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH:
EARLY STAGES OF ITS EVOLUTION.
"Important as this assembly [the Parliament of 1264] is in the
history of the constitution, it was not primarily and
essentially a constitutional assembly. It was not a general
convention of the tenants in chief or of the three estates,
but a parliamentary assembly of the supporters of the existing
government."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 14, section 177 (volume 2).
ALSO IN:
W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets.
G. W. Prothero,
Life of Simon de Montfort,
chapter 11-12.
H. Blaauw,
The Barons' War.
C. H. Pearson,
England, Early and Middle Ages,
volume 2.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1271.
Crusade of Prince Edward:
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1272.
Accession of King Edward I.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1275-1295.
Development of Parliamentary representation under Edward 1.
"Happily, Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a successor, and more
than a successor, in the king's [Henry III.'s] son. ... Edward
I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. ... He could do
that easily and without effort which Simon could only do
laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition.
Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by
the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary
representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of
warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. ...
Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only
to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who,
knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom
without thought of his own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too
prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which
Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the
constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom
summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes
the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the
knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone.
... In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's
reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of
national unity which would one day transfer the function of
regulation from the crown to the representatives of the
people."
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
chapter 4, section 17.
"In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both shires and
boroughs representatives to aid him in the new work of
government. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been
lasting. The task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by
gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, as a part
of a definite and orderly arrangement, according to which the
English parliament was to be the perfect representation of the
Three Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of
taxation, legislation and united political action. ...
Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a
great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of
Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool;
another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. ...
There is no evidence that the commons of either town or county
were represented. ... In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh
war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of
obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate
negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds
sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283,
two great assemblies, one at York and another at Northampton,
in which four knights from each shire and four members from
each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral
and conventual clergy also of the two provinces were
represented at the same places by their elected proctors. At
these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they
were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of
one-thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should do
the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same
year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this
the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and
all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another
step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again
summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect
parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for
legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were
summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting
a feudal aid and passing the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the
knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a law had
been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special
commissions. In 1294, ... under the alarm of war with France,
an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of
constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the
clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by
their representative knights in October.
{810}
The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect
and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops,
deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned
severally in person by the king's special writ, and the
commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing
them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two
elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from
each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to
this parliament contained a famous sentence taken from the
Roman law, 'That which touches all should be approved by all,'
a maxim which might serve as a motto for Edward's
constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew upon him, now
permanently and consistently completed."
W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets,
chapter 10.
"Comparing the history of the following ages with that of the
past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a definite idea of
government before his eyes, or that that idea was successful
because it approved itself to the genius and grew out of the
habits of the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the nation was
capable of, and adapted his constitutional reforms to that
capacity. But although we may not refuse him the credit of
design, it may still be questioned whether the design was
altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced upon him by
circumstances and developed by a series of careful
experiments. ... The design, as interpreted by the result, was
the creation of a national parliament, composed of the three
estates. ... This design was perfected in 1295. It was not the
result of compulsion, but the consummation of a growing policy.
... But the close union of 1295 was followed by the compulsion
of 1297: out of the organic completeness of the constitution
sprang the power of resistance, and out of the resistance the
victory of the principles, which Edward might guide, but which
he failed to coerce."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 15, section 244
and chapter 14, section 180-182.
W. Stubbs,
Select Charters,
part 7.
"The 13th century was above all things the age of the lawyer
and the legislator. The revived study of Roman law had been
one of the greatest results of the intellectual renaissance of
the twelfth century. The enormous growth of the universities
in the early part of the thirteenth century was in no small
measure due to the zeal, ardour and success of their legal
faculties. From Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great
impulse towards the systematic and scientific study of the
Civil Law of Rome. ... The northern lawyers were inspired by
their emulation of the civilians and canonists to look at the
rude chaos of feudal custom with more critical eyes. They
sought to give it more system and method, to elicit its
leading principles, and to coordinate its clashing rules into
a harmonious body of doctrine worthy to be put side by side
with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil and Canon Law.
In this spirit Henry de Bracton wrote the first systematic
exposition of English law in the reign of Henry III. The
judges and lawyers of the reign of Edward sought to put the
principles of Bracton into practice. Edward himself strove
with no small success to carry on the same great work by new
legislation. ... His well-known title of the 'English
Justinian' is not so absurd as it appears at first sight. He
did not merely resemble Justinian in being a great legislator.
Like the famous codifier of the Roman law, Edward stood at the
end of a long period of legal development, and sought to arrange
and systematise what had gone before him. Some of his great
laws are almost in form attempts at the systematic
codification of various branches of feudal custom. ... Edward
was greedy for power, and a constant object of his legislation
was the exaltation of the royal prerogative. But he nearly
always took a broad and comprehensive view of his authority,
and thoroughly grasped the truth that the best interests of
king and kingdom were identical. He wished to rule the state,
but was willing to take his subjects into partnership with
him, if they in return recognised his royal rights. ... The
same principles which influenced Edward as a lawgiver stand
out clearly in his relations to every class of his subjects.
... It was the greatest work of Edward's life to make a
permanent and ordinary part of the machinery of English
government, what in his father's time had been but the
temporary expedient of a needy taxgatherer or the last
despairing effort of a revolutionary partisan. Edward I.
is--so much as one man can be--the creator of the historical
English constitution. It is true that the materials were ready
to his hand. But before he came to the throne the parts of the
constitution, though already roughly worked out, were
ill-defined and ill-understood. Before his death the national
council was no longer regarded as complete unless it contained
a systematic representation of the three estates. All over
Europe the thirteenth century saw the establishment of a
system of estates. The various classes of the community, which
had a separate social status and a common political interest,
became organised communities, and sent their representatives
to swell the council of the nation. By Edward's time there had
already grown up in England some rough anticipation of the
three estates of later history. ... It was with no intention
of diminishing his power, but rather with the object of
enlarging it, that Edward called the nation into some sort of
partnership with him. The special clue to this aspect of his
policy is his constant financial embarrassment. He found that
he could get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his
financial condition before the representatives of his people.
... The really important thing was that Edward, like Montfort,
brought shire and borough representatives together in a single
estate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser
landowners, who, in a time when direct participation in
politics was impossible for a lower class, were the real
constituencies of the shire members, to look upon their
interests as more in common with the traders of lower social
status than with the greater landlords with whom in most
continental countries the lesser gentry were forced to
associate their lot. The result strengthened the union of
classes, prevented the growth of the abnormally numerous
privileged nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened
and deepened the main current of the national life."
T. F. Tout,
Edward the First,
chapter 7-8.
{811}
"There was nothing in England which answered to the 'third
estate' in France--a class, that is to say, both isolated and
close, composed exclusively of townspeople, enjoying no
commerce with the rural population (except such as consisted
in the reception of fugitives), and at once detesting and
dreading the nobility by whom it was surrounded. In England
the contrary was the case. The townsfolk and the other classes
in each county were thrown together upon numberless occasions;
a long period of common activity created a cordial
understanding between the burghers on the one hand and their
neighbours the knights and landowners on the other, and
finally prepared the way for the fusion of the two classes."
E. Boutmy,
The English Constitution,
chapter 3.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1279.
The Statute of Mortmain.
"For many years past, the great danger to the balance of power
appeared to come from the regular clergy, who, favoured by the
success of the mendicant orders, were adding house to house
and field to field. Never dying out like families, and rarely
losing by forfeitures, the monasteries might well nigh
calculate the time, when all the soil of England should be
their own. ... Accordingly, one of the first acts of the
barons under Henry III. had been to enact, that no fees should
be aliened to religious persons or corporations. Edward
re-enacted and strengthened this by various provisions in the
famous Statute of Mortmain. The fee illegally aliened was now
to be forfeited to the chief lord under the King; and if, by
collusion or neglect, the lord omitted to claim his right, the
crown might enter upon it. Never was statute more unpopular
with the class at whom it was aimed, more ceaselessly eluded,
or more effectual. ... Once the clergy seem to have meditated
open resistance, for, in 1281, we find the king warning the
bishops, who were then in convocation at Lambeth, as they
loved their baronies, to discuss nothing that appertained to
the crown, or the king's person, or his council. The warning
appears to have proved effectual, and the clergy found less
dangerous employment in elaborating subtle evasions of the
obnoxious law. At first fictitious recoveries were practised;
an abbey bringing a suit against a would-be donor, who
permitted judgment against him to go by default. When this was
prohibited, special charters of exemption were procured. Once
an attempt was made to smuggle a dispensing bill through
parliament. One politic abbot in the 15th century encouraged
his friends to make bequests of land, suffered them to
escheat, and then begged them back of the crown, playing on
the religious feelings of Henry VI. Yet it is strong proof of
the salutary terror which the Statute of Mortmain inspired
that even then the abbot was not quieted, and procured an Act
of Parliament to purge him from any consequences of his
illegal practices. In fact, the fear, lest astute crown
lawyers should involve a rich foundation in wholesale
forfeitures, seems sometimes to have hampered its members in
the exercise of their undoubted rights as citizens."
C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 2, chapter 9.
ALSO IN:
E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents.
K. E. Digby,
Law of Real Property (4th edition).
ENGLAND: A. D. 1282-1284.
Subjugation of Wales.
See WALES: A. D. 1282-1284.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1290-1305.
Conquest of Scotland by Edward I.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1290-1305.
ENGLAND: 14th Century.
Immigration of Flemish artisans.
The founding of English manufactures.
See FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1306-1393.
Resistance to the Pope.
"For one hundred and fifty years succeeding the Conquest, the
right of nominating the archbishops, bishops, and mitred
abbots had been claimed and exercised by the king. This right
had been specially confirmed by the Constitutions of
Clarendon, which also provided that the revenues of vacant
sees should belong to the Crown. But John admitted all the
Papal claims, surrendering even his kingdom to the Pope, and
receiving it back as a fief of the Holy See. By the Great
Charter the Church recovered its liberties; the right of free
election being specially conceded to the cathedral chapters
and the religious houses. Every election was, however, subject
to the approval of the Pope, who also claimed a right of veto
on institutions to the smaller church benefices. ... Under
Henry III. the power thus vested in the Pope and foreign
superiors of the monastic orders was greatly abused, and soon
degenerated into a mere channel for draining money into the
Roman exchequer. Edward I. firmly withstood the exactions of
the Pope, and reasserted the independence of both Church and
Crown. ... In the reign of the great Edward began a series of
statutes passed to check the aggressions of the Pope and
restore the independence of the national church. The first of
the series was passed in 1306-7. ... This statute was
confirmed under Edward III. in the 4th, and again in the 5th
year of his reign; and in the 25th of his reign [A. D. 1351],
roused 'by the grievous complaints of all the commons of his
realm,' the King and Parliament passed the famous Statute of
Provisors, aimed directly at the Pope, and emphatically
forbidding his nominations to English benefices. ... Three
years afterwards it was found necessary to pass a statute
forbidding citations to the court of Rome--[the prelude to the
Statute of Præmunire, described below]. ... In 1389, there was an
expectation that the Pope was about to attempt to enforce his
claims, by excommunicating those who rejected them. ... The
Parliament at once passed a highly penal statute. ... Matters
were shortly afterwards brought to a crisis by Boniface IX.,
who after declaring the statutes enacted by the English
Parliament null and void, granted to an Italian cardinal a
prebendal stall at Wells, to which the king had already
presented. Cross suits were at once instituted by the two
claimants in the Papal and English courts. A decision was
given by the latter, in favour of the king's nominee, and the
bishops, having agreed to support the Crown, were forthwith
excommunicated by the Pope. The Commons were now roused to the
highest pitch of indignation,"--and the final great Statute of
Præmunire was passed, A. D. 1393. "The firm and resolute
attitude assumed by the country caused Boniface to yield; 'and
for the moment,' observes Mr. Froude, 'and indeed for ever
under this especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was
rolled back.'"
T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History,
chapter 11.
"The great Statute of Provisors, passed in 1351, was a very
solemn expression of the National determination not to give
way to the pope's usurpation of patronage. ... All persons
procuring or accepting papal promotions were to be arrested.
... In 1352 the purchasers of Provisions were declared
outlaws; in 1365 another act repeated the prohibitions and
penalties; and in 1390 the parliament of Richard II. rehearsed
and confirmed the statute. By this act, forfeiture and
banishment were decreed against future transgressors."
{812}
The Statute of Præmunire as enacted finally in 1393, provided
that "all persons procuring in the court of Rome or elsewhere
such translations, processes, sentences of excommunication,
bulls, instruments or other things which touch the king, his
crown, regality or realm, should suffer the penalties of
præmunire"--which included imprisonment and forfeiture of
goods. "The name præmunire which marks this form of
legislation is taken from the opening word of the writ by
which the sheriff is charged to summon the delinquent."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 19, section 715-716.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1307.
Accession of King Edward II.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1310-1311.
The Ordainers.
"At the parliament which met in March 1310 [reign of Edward
II.] a new scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed
on the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions of Oxford. It
was determined that the task of regulating the affairs of the
realm and of the king's household should be committed to an
elected body of twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of
whom was Archbishop Winchelsey. ... The Ordainers were
empowered to remain in office until Michaelmas 1311, and to
make ordinances for the good of the realm, agreeable to the
tenour of the king's coronation oath. The whole administration
of the kingdom thus passed into their hands. ... The Ordainers
immediately on their appointment issued six articles directing
the observance of the charters, the careful collection of the
customs, and the arrest of the foreign merchants; but the
great body of the ordinances was reserved for the parliament
which met in August 1311. The famous document or statute known
as the Ordinances of 1311 contained forty-one clauses, all
aimed at existing abuses."
W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets,
chapter 12.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1314-1328.
Bannockburn and the recovery of Scottish independence.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1314; 1314-1328.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1327.
Accession of King Edward III.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1328.
The Peace of Northampton with Scotland.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1328.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1328-1360.
The pretensions and wars of Edward III. in France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339; and 1337-1360.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1332-1370.
The wars of Edward III. with Scotland.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1332-1333, and 1333-1370.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1333-1380.
The effects of the war in France.
"A period of great wars is generally favourable to the growth
of a nobility. Men who equipped large bodies of troops for the
Scotch or French wars, or who had served with distinction in
them, naturally had a claim for reward at the hands of their
sovereign. ... The 13th century had broken up estates all over
England and multiplied families of the upper class; the 14th
century was consolidating properties again, and establishing a
broad division between a few powerful nobles and the mass of
the community. But if the gentry, as an order, lost a little
in relative importance by the formation of a class of great
nobles, more distinct than had existed before, the middle
classes of England, its merchants and yeomen, gained very much
in importance by the war. Under the firm rule of the 'King of
the Sea,' as his subjects lovingly called Edward III., our
commerce expanded. Englishmen rose to an equality with the
merchants of the Hanse Towns, the Genoese, or the Lombards,
and England for a time overflowed with treasure. The first
period of war, ending with the capture of Calais, secured our
coasts; the second, terminated by the peace of Brétigny,
brought the plunder of half [of] France into the English
markets; and even when Edward's reign had closed on defeat and
bankruptcy, and our own shores were ravaged by hostile fleets,
it was still possible for private adventurers to retaliate
invasion upon the enemy. ... The romance of foreign conquest,
of fortunes lightly gained and lightly lost, influenced
English enterprise for many years to come. ... The change to
the lower orders during the reign arose rather from the
frequent pestilences, which reduced the number of working men
and made labour valuable, than from any immediate
participation in the war. In fact, English serfs, as a rule,
did not serve in Edward's armies. They could not be
men-at-arms or archers for want of training and equipment; and
for the work of light-armed troops and foragers, the Irish and
Welsh seem to have been preferred. The opportunity of the
serfs came with the Black Death, while districts were
depopulated, and everywhere there was a want of hands to till
the fields and get in the crops. The immediate effect was
unfortunate. ... The indifference of late years, when men were
careless if their villans stayed on the property or emigrated,
was succeeded by a sharp inquisition after fugitive serfs, and
constant legislation to bring them back to their masters. ...
The leading idea of the legislator was that the labourer,
whose work had doubled or trebled in value, was to receive the
same wages as in years past; and it was enacted that he might
be paid in kind, and, at last, that in all cases of contumacy
he should be imprisoned without the option of a fine. ... The
French war contributed in many ways to heighten the feeling of
English nationality. Our trade, our language and our Church
received a new and powerful influence. In the early years of
Edward III.'s reign, Italian merchants were the great
financiers of England, farming the taxes and advancing loans
to the Crown. Gradually the instinct of race, the influence of
the Pope, and geographical position, contributed, with the
mistakes of Edward's policy, to make France the head, as it
were, of a confederation of Latin nations. Genoese ships
served in the French fleet, Genoese bowmen fought at Crécy,
and English privateers retorted on Genoese commerce throughout
the course of the reign. In 1376 the Commons petitioned that
all Lombards might be expelled [from] the kingdom, bringing
amongst other charges against them that they were French
spies. The Florentines do not seem to have been equally
odious, but the failure of the great firm of the Bardi in
1345, chiefly through its English engagements, obliged Edward
to seek assistance elsewhere; and he transferred the privilege
of lending to the crown to the merchants of the rising Hanse
Towns."
C. H. Pearson,
English History in the Fourteenth Century,
chapter 9.
"We may trace the destructive nature of the war with France in
the notices of adjoining parishes thrown into one for want of
sufficient inhabitants, 'of people impoverished by frequent
taxation of our lord the king,' until they had fled, of
churches allowed to fall into ruin because there were none to
worship within their walls, and of religious houses
extinguished because the monks and nuns had died, and none bad
been found to supply their places. ...
{813}
To the poverty of the country and the consequent inability of
the nation to maintain the costly wars of Edward III., are
attributed the enactments of sumptuary laws, which were passed
because men who spent much on their table and dress were
unable 'to help their liege lord' in the battle field."
W. Denton,
England in the 15th Century,
introduction, part 2.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1318-1349.
The Black Death and its effects.
"The plague of 1349 ... produced in every country some marked
social changes. ... In England the effects of the plague are
historically prominent chiefly among the lower classes of
society. The population was diminished to an extent to which
it is impossible now even to approximate, but which bewildered
and appalled the writers of the time; whole districts were
thrown out of cultivation, whole parishes depopulated, the
number of labourers was so much diminished that on the one
hand the survivors demanded an extravagant rate of wages, and
even combined to enforce it, whilst on the other hand the
landowners had to resort to every antiquated claim of service
to get their estates cultivated at all; the whole system of
farming was changed in consequence, the great landlords and
the monastic corporations ceased to manage their estates by
farming stewards, and after a short interval, during which the
lands with the stock on them were let to the cultivator on
short leases, the modern system of letting was introduced, and
the permanent distinction between the farmer and the labourer
established."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 16, section 259.
"On the first of August 1348 the disease appeared in the
seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards
and northwards, through Devonshire and Somersetshire to
Bristol. In order, if possible, to arrest its progress, all
intercourse with the citizens of Bristol was prohibited by the
authorities of the county of Gloucester. These precautions
were however taken in vain; the Plague continued to Oxford,
and, travelling slowly in the same measured way, reached
London by the first of November. It appeared in Norwich on the
first of January, and thence spread northwards. ... The
mortality was enormous. Perhaps from one-third to one-half the
population fell victims to the disease. Adam of Monmouth says
that only a tenth of the population survived. Similar
amplifications are found in all the chroniclers. We are told
that 60,000 persons perished in Norwich between January and
July 1349. No doubt Norwich was at that time the second city
in the kingdom, but the number is impossible. ... It is stated
that in England the weight of the calamity fell on the poor,
and that the higher classes were less severely affected. But
Edward's daughter Joan fell a victim to it and three
archbishops of Canterbury perished in the same year. ... All
contemporary writers inform us that the immediate consequence
of the Plague was a dearth of labour, and excessive
enhancement of wages, and thereupon a serious loss to the
landowners. To meet this scarcity the king issued a
proclamation directed to the sheriffs of the several counties,
which forbad the payment of higher than the customary wages,
under the penalties of amercement. But the king's mandate was
every where disobeyed. ... Many of the labourers were thrown
into prison; many to avoid punishment fled to the forests, but
were occasionally captured and fined; and all were constrained
to disavow under oath that they would take higher than
customary wages for the future."
J. E. T. Rogers,
History of Agriculture and Prices in England,
volume 1, chapter 15.
ALSO IN:
F. A. Gasquet,
The Great Pestilence.
W. Longman,
Edward III.,
volume 1; chapter 10.
A. Jessop,
The Coming of the Friars, &c.,
chapter 4-5.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1350-1400.
Chaucer and his relations to English language and literature.
"At the time when the conflict between church and state was
most violent, and when Wyclif was beginning to draw upon
himself the eyes of patriots, there was considerable talk at
the English court about a young man named Geoffrey Chaucer,
who belonged to the king's household, and who both by his
personality and his connections enjoyed the favor of the royal
family. ... On many occasions, even thus early, he had
appeared as a miracle of learning to those about him--he read
Latin as easily as French; he spoke a more select English than
others; and it was known that he had composed, or, as the
expression then was, 'made,' many beautiful English verses.
The young poet belonged to a well-to-do middle-class family
who had many far-reaching connections, and even some influence
with the court. ... Even as a boy he may have heard his
father, John Chaucer, the vintner of Thames Street, London,
telling of the marvelous voyage he had made to Antwerp and
Cologne in the brilliant suite of Edward III. in 1338. When a
youth of sixteen or seventeen, Geoffrey served as a page or
squire to Elizabeth, duchess of Ulster, first wife of Lionel,
duke of Clarence, and daughter-in-law of the king. He bore
arms when about nineteen years of age, and went to France in
1359, in the army commanded by Edward III. ... This epoch
formed a sort of 'Indian summer' to the age of chivalry, and
its spirit found expression in great deeds of war as well as
in the festivals and manners of the court. The ideal which men
strove to realize did not quite correspond to the spirit of
the former age. On the whole, people had become more worldly
and practical, and were generally anxious to protect the real
interests of life from the unwarranted interference of
romantic aspirations. The spirit of chivalry no longer formed
a fundamental element, but only an ornament of life--an
ornament, indeed, which was made much of, and which was looked
upon with a sentiment partaking of enthusiasm. ... In the
midst of this outside world of motley pomp and throbbing life
Geoffrey could observe the doings of high and low in various
situations. He was early initiated into court intrigues, and
even into many political secrets, and found opportunities of
studying the human type in numerous individuals and according
to the varieties developed by rank in life, education, age,
and sex. ... Nothing has been preserved from his early
writings. ... The fact is very remarkable that from the first,
or at least from a very early period, Chaucer wrote in the
English language--however natural this may seem to succeeding
ages in 'The Father of English Poetry.' The court of Edward
III. favored the language as well as the literature of France;
a considerable number of French poets and 'menestrels' were in
the service and pay of the English king.
{814}
Queen Philippa, in particular, showing herself in this a true
daughter of her native Hainault, formed the centre of a
society cultivating the French language and poetry. She had in
her personal service Jean Froissart, one of the most eminent
representatives of that language and poetry; like herself he
belonged to one of the most northern districts of the
French-speaking territory; he had made himself a great name,
as a prolific and clever writer of erotic and allegoric
trifles, before he sketched out in his famous chronicle the
motley-colored, vivid picture of that eventful age. We also
see in this period young Englishmen of rank and education
trying their flight on the French Parnassus. ... To these
Anglo-French poets there belonged also a Kentishman of noble
family, named John Gower. Though some ten years the senior of
Chaucer, he had probably met him about this time. They were
certainly afterwards very intimately acquainted. Gower ... had
received a very careful education, and loved to devote the
time he could spare from the management of his estates to
study and poetry. His learning was in many respects greater
than Chaucer's. He had studied the Latin poets so diligently
that he could easily express himself in their language, and he
was equally good at writing French verses, which were able to
pass muster, at least in England. ... But, Chaucer did not let
himself be led astray by examples such as these. It is
possible that he would have found writing in French no easy
task, even if he had attempted it. At any rate his bourgeois
origin, and the seriousness of his vocation as poet, threw a
determining weight into the scale and secured his fidelity to
the English language with a commendable consistency."
B. Ten Brink,
History of English Literature,
book 4, chapter 4 (volume 2, part 1).
"English was not taught in the schools, but French only, until
after the accession of Richard II., or possibly the latter
years of Edward III., and Latin was always studied through the
French. Up to this period, then, as there were no standards of
literary authority, and probably no written collections of
established forms, or other grammatical essays, the language
had no fixedness or uniformity, and hardly deserved to be
called a written speech. ... From this Babylonish confusion of
speech, the influence and example of Chaucer did more to
rescue his native tongue than any other single cause; and if
we compare his dialect with that of any writer of an earlier

date, we shall find that in compass, flexibility,
expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of
poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection
which the materials at his hand would permit of. The English
writers of the fourteenth century had an advantage which was
altogether peculiar to their age and country. At all previous
periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a great degree
independently of each other, with little tendency to intermix;
but in the earlier part of that century, they began to
coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that
threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total
extinction of the Saxon element. ... When the national spirit
was aroused, and impelled to the creation of a national
literature, the poet or prose writer, in selecting his
diction, had almost two whole vocabularies before him. That
the syntax should be English, national feeling demanded; but
French was so familiar and habitual to all who were able to
read, that probably the scholarship of the day would scarcely
have been able to determine, with respect to a large
proportion of the words in common use, from which of the two
great wells of speech they had proceeded. Happily, a great
arbiter arose at the critical moment of severance of the two
peoples and dialects, to preside over the division of the
common property, and to determine what share of the
contributions of France should be permanently annexed to the
linguistic inheritance of Englishmen. Chaucer did not
introduce into the English language words which it had
rejected as aliens before, but out of those which had been
already received, he invested the better portion with the
rights of citizenship, and stamped them with the mint-mark of
English coinage. In this way, he formed a vocabulary, which,
with few exceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding
generations has approved; and a literary diction was thus
established, which, in all the qualities required for the
poetic art, had at that time no superior in the languages of
modern Europe. The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety
of his philological appreciation, and the delicacy of his
sense of adaptation to the actual wants of the English people,
are sufficiently proved by the fact that, of the Romance words
found in his writings, not much above one hundred have been
suffered to become obsolete, while a much larger number of
Anglo-Saxon words employed by him have passed altogether out
of use. ... In the three centuries which elapsed between the
Conquest and the noon-tide of Chaucer's life, a large
proportion of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of religion, of moral
and intellectual discourse, and of taste, had become utterly
obsolete, and unknown. The place of the lost words had been
partly supplied by the importation of Continental terms; but
the new words came without the organic power of composition
and derivation which belonged to those they had supplanted.
Consequently, they were incapable of those modifications of
form and extensions of meaning which the Anglo-Saxon roots
could so easily assume, and which fitted them for the
expression of the new shades of thought and of sentiment born
of every hour in a mind and an age like those of Chaucer."
G. P. Marsh,
Origin and History of the English Language,
lecture 9.
ALSO IN:
T. R. Lounsbury,
Studies in Chaucer.
A. W. Ward,
Chaucer.
W. Godwin,
Life of Geoffrey Chaucer.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1360-1414.
The Lollards.
"The Lollards were the earliest 'Protestants' of England. They
were the followers of John Wyclif, but before his time the
nickname of Lollard had been known on the continent. A little
brotherhood of pious people had sprung up in Holland, about
the year 1300, who lived in a half-monastic fashion and
devoted themselves to helping the poor in the burial of their
dead; and, from the low chants they sang at the
funerals--lollen being the old word for such singing--they
were called Lollards. The priests and friars hated them and
accused them of heresy, and a Walter Lollard, probably one of
them, was burnt in 1322 at Cologne as a heretic, and gradually
the name became a nickname for such people. So when Wyclif's
simple priests' were preaching the new doctrines, the name
already familiar in Holland and Germany, was given to them,
and gradually became the name for that whole movement of
religious reformation which grew up from the seed Wyclif
sowed."
B. Herford,
Story of Religion in England,
chapter 16.
{815}
"A turning point arrived in the history of the reforming party
at the accession of the house of Lancaster. King Henry the
Fourth was not only a devoted son of the Church, but he owed
his success in no slight measure to the assistance of the
Churchmen, and above all to that of Archbishop Arundel. It was
felt that the new dynasty and the hierarchy stood or fell
together. A mixture of religious and political motives led to
the passing of the well-known statute 'De hæretico comburendo'
in 1401 and thenceforward Lollardy was a capital offence."
R. L. Poole,
Wycliffe and Movements for Reform,
chapter 8.
"The abortive insurrection of the Lollards at the commencement
of Henry V. 's reign, under the leadership of Sir John
Oldcastle, had the effect of adding to the penal laws already
in existence against the sect." This gave to Lollardy a
political character and made the Lollards enemies against the
State, as is evident from the king's proclamation in which it
was asserted "that the insurgents intended to 'destroy him,
his brothers and several of the spiritual and temporal lords,
to confiscate the possessions of the Church, to secularize the
religious orders, to divide the realm into confederate
districts, and to appoint Sir John Oldcastle president of the
commonwealth.'"
T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Constitutional History (4th edition),
chapter 11.
"The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. ... He emerges into
distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing
of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a
great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity. ... He was
a man of most simple life; austere in appearance; with bare
feet and russet mantle. As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his
Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound
to imitate. By the contagion of example he gathered about him
other men who thought as he did; and gradually, under his
captaincy, these 'poor priests' as they were called--vowed to
poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no benefice
... spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to
preach the faith which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of
relics and of indulgences, but of repentance and of the grace
of God. They carried with them copies of the Bible which
Wycliffe had translated, ... and they refused to recognize the
authority of the bishops, or their right to silence them. If
this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been
succeeded by a prince less miserably incapable than his
grandson Richard, Wycliffe might have made good his ground;
the movement of the parliament against the pope might have
united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the
church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a
century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the
Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377. He appeared in court
supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster,
the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities
were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield. But the
'poor priests' had other doctrines. ... His [Wycliffe's]
theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ,
had led him to the near confines of Anabaptism." The rebellion
of Wat Tyler, which occurred in 1381, cast odium upon all such
opinions. "So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was
a guarantee for the conduct of his immediate disciples; and
although his favour had far declined, a party in the state
remained attached to him, with sufficient influence to prevent
the adoption of extreme measures against the 'poor priests.'
... They were left unmolested for the next twenty years. ...
On the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell
under the general ban which struck down all parties who had
shared in the late disturbances."
J. A. Froude,
History of England,
chapter 6.
"Wycliffe's translation of the Bible itself created a new era,
and gave birth to what may be said never to have existed till
then--a popular theology. ... It is difficult in our day to
imagine the impression such a book must have produced in an
age which had scarcely anything in the way of popular
literature, and which had been accustomed to regard the
Scriptures as the special property of the learned. It was
welcomed with an enthusiasm which could not be restrained, and
read with avidity both by priests and laymen. ... The homely
wisdom, blended with eternal truth, which has long since
enriched our vernacular speech with a multitude of proverbs,
could not thenceforth be restrained in its circulation by mere
pious awe or time-honoured prejudice. Divinity was discussed
in ale-houses. Popular preachers made war upon old prejudices.
and did much to shock that sense of reverence which belonged
to an earlier generation. A new school had arisen with a
theology of its own, warning the people against the delusive
preaching of the friars, and asserting loudly its own claims
to be true and evangelical, on the ground that it possessed
the gospel in the English tongue. Appealing to such an
authority in their favour, the eloquence of the new teachers
made a marvellous impression. Their followers increased with
extraordinary rapidity. By the estimate of an opponent they
soon numbered half the population, and you could hardly see
two persons in the street but one of them was a Wycliffite.
... They were supported by the powerful influence of John of
Gaunt, who shielded not only Wycliffe himself, but even the
most violent of the fanatics. And, certainly, whatever might
have been Wycliffe's own view, doctrines were promulgated by
his reputed followers that were distinctly subversive of
authority. John Ball fomented the insurrection of Wat Tyler,
by preaching the natural equality of men. ... But the
popularity of Lollardy was short-lived. The extravagance to
which it led soon alienated the sympathies of the people, and
the sect fell off in numbers almost as rapidly as it had
risen."
J. Gairdner,
Studies in English History, 1-2.
"Wyclif ... was not without numerous followers, and the
Lollardism which sprang out of his teaching was a living force
in England for some time to come. But it was weak through its
connection with subversive social doctrines. He himself stood
aloof from such doctrines, but he could not prevent his
followers from mingling in the social fray. It was perhaps
their merit that they did so. The established constitutional
order was but another name for oppression and wrong to the
lower classes. But as yet the lower classes were not
sufficiently advanced in moral and political training to make
it safe to entrust them with the task of righting their own
wrongs as they would have attempted to right them if they had
gained the mastery. It had nevertheless become impossible to
leave the peasants to be once more goaded by suffering into
rebellion. The attempt, if it had been made, to enforce
absolute labour-rents was tacitly abandoned, and gradually
during the next century the mass of the villeins passed into
the position of freemen.
{816}
For the moment, nobles and prelates, landowners and clergy,
banded themselves together to form one great party of
resistance. The church came to be but an outwork of the
baronage."
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
part 1, chapter 5, sections 14-15.
ALSO IN
L. Sergeant,
John Wyclif.
G. Lechler,
John Wiclif and his English Precursors.
See, also,
BOHEMIA; A. D. 1405-1415,
and BEGUINES.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1377.
Accession of King Richard II.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1377-1399.
The character and reign of Richard II.
"Richard II. was a far superior man to many of the weaker
kings of England; but being self-willed and unwarlike, he was
unfitted for the work which the times required. Yet, on a
closer inspection than the traditional view of the reign has
generally encouraged, we cannot but observe that the finer
qualities which came out in certain crises of his reign appear
to have frequently influenced his conduct: we know that he was
not an immoral man, that he was an excellent husband to an
excellent wife, and that he had devoted friends, willing to
lay down their lives for him when there was nothing whatever
left for them to gain. ... Richard, who had been brought up in
the purple quite as much as Edward II., was kept under
restraint by his uncles, and not being judiciously guided in
the arts of government, fell, like his prototype, into the
hands of favourites. His brilliant behaviour in the
insurrection of 1381 indicated much more than mere possession
of the Plantagenet courage and presence of mind. He showed a
real sympathy with the villeins who had undeniable grievances.
... His instincts were undoubtedly for freedom and
forgiveness, and there is no proof, nor even probability, that
he intended to use the villeins against his enemies. His early
and happy marriage with Anne of Bohemia ought, one might
think, to have saved him from the vice of favouritism; but he
was at least more fortunate than Edward II. in not being cast
under the spell of a Gaveston. When we consider the effect of
such a galling government as that of his uncle Gloucester, and
his cousin Derby, afterwards Henry IV., who seems to have been
pushing Gloucester on from the first, we can hardly be
surprised that he should require some friend to lean upon. The
reign is, in short, from one, and perhaps the truest, point of
view, a long duel between the son of the Black Prince and the
son of John of Gaunt. One or other of them must inevitably
perish. A handsome and cultivated youth, who showed himself at
fifteen every inch a king, who was married at sixteen, and led
his own army to Scotland at eighteen, required a different
treatment from that which he received. He was a man, and
should have been dealt with as such. His lavish and
reprehensible grants to his favourites were made the excuse
for Gloucester's violent interference in 1386, but there is
good ground for believing that the movement was encouraged by
the anti-Wicliffite party, which had taken alarm at the
sympathy with the Reformers shown at this time by Richard and
Anne."
M. Burrows,
Commentaries on the History of England,
book 2, chapter 5.
ALSO IN:
J. R. Green,
History of the English People,
book 4, chapter 4 (volume 1).
C. H. Pearson,
English History in the 14th Century,
chapter 10-12.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1381.
Wat Tyler's Rebellion.
"In June 1381 there broke out in England the formidable
insurrection known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion. The movement
seems to have begun among the bondmen of Essex and of Kent;
but it spread at once to the counties of Sussex Hertford,
Cambridge, Suffolk and Norfolk. The peasantry, armed with
bludgeons and rusty swords, first occupied the roads by which
pilgrims went to Canterbury, and made everyone swear that he
would be true to king Richard and not accept a king named
John. This, of course, was aimed at the government of John of
Gaunt [Duke of Lancaster], ... to whom the people attributed
every grievance they had to complain of. The principal, or at
least the immediate cause of offence arose out of a poll-tax
which had been voted in the preceding year."
J. Gairdner,
Houses of Lancaster and York,
chapter 2.
The leaders of the insurgents were Wat the Tyler, who had been
a soldier, John Ball, a priest and preacher of democratic and
socialistic doctrines, and one known as Jack Straw. They made
their way to London. "It ought to have been easy to keep them
out of the city, as the only approach to it was by London
Bridge, and the mayor and chief citizens proposed to defend
it. But the Londoners generally, and even three of the
aldermen, were well inclined to the rebels, and declared that
they would not let the gates be shut against their friends and
neighbours, and would kill the mayor himself if he attempted
to do it. So on the evening of Wednesday, June 13, the
insurgents began to stream in across the bridge, and next
morning marched their whole body across the river, and
proceeded at once to the Savoy, the splendid palace of the
Duke of Lancaster. Proclamation was made that any one found
stealing the smallest article would be beheaded; and the place
was then wrecked and burned with all the formalities of a
solemn act of justice. Gold and silver plate was shattered
with battle-axes and thrown into the Thames; rings and smaller
jewels were brayed in mortars; silk and embroidered dresses
were trampled under feet and torn up. Then the Temple was
burned with all its muniments. The poet Gower was among the
lawyers who had to save their lives by flight, and he passed
several nights in the woods of Essex, covered with grass and
leaves and living on acorns. Then the great house of the
Hospitallers at Clerkenwell was destroyed, taking seven days
to burn." The young king (Richard II.) and his court and
council had taken refuge in the Tower. The insurgents now
threatened to storm their stronghold if the king did not come
out and speak to them. The king consented and appointed a
rendezvous at Mile End. He kept the appointment and met his
turbulent subjects with so much courage and tact and so many
promises, that he persuaded a great number to disperse to
their homes. But while this pacific interview took place, Wat
Tyler, John Ball, and some 400 of their followers burst into
the Tower, determined to find the archbishop of Canterbury and
the Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert de Hales, who were the most
obnoxious ministers. "So great was the general consternation
that the soldiers dared not raise a hand while these ruffians
searched the different rooms, not sparing even the king's
bedroom, running spears into the beds, asked the king's mother
to kiss them, and played insolent jokes on the chief officers.
{817}
Unhappily they were not long in finding the archbishop, who
had said mass in the chapel, and was kneeling at the altar in
expectation of their approach." The Lord Treasurer was also
found, and both he and the archbishop were summarily beheaded
by the mob. "Murder now became the order of the day, and
foreigners were among the chief victims; thirteen Flemings
were dragged out of one church and beheaded, seventeen out of
another, and altogether it is said 400 perished. Many private
enmities were revenged by the London rabble on this day." On
the next day, June 15, the king, with an armed escort, went to
the camp of the insurgents, at Smithfield, and opened
negotiations with Tyler, offering successively three forms of
a new charter of popular rights and liberties, all of which
were rejected. Finally, Tyler was invited to a personal
conference, and there, in the midst of the king's party, on
some provocation or pretended provocation in his words or
bearing, the popular leader was struck from his horse and
killed. King Richard immediately rode out before the ranks of
the rebels, while they were still dazed by the suddenness and
audacity of the treacherous blow, crying "I will be your
leader; follow me." The thoughtless mob followed and soon
found itself surrounded by bodies of troops whose courage had
revived. The king now commanded the trembling peasants "to
fall on their knees, cut the strings of their bows, and leave
the city and its neighbourhood, under pain of death, before
nightfall. This command was instantly obeyed." Meantime and
afterwards there were many lesser risings in various parts of
the country, all of which were suppressed, with such rigorous
prosecutions in the courts that 1,500 persons are said to have
suffered judicially.
C. H. Pearson,
English History in the Fourteenth Century,
chapter 10.
The Wat Tyler insurrection proved disastrous in its effect on
the work of Church reform which Wyclif was then pursuing. "Not
only was the power of the Lancastrian party, on which Wyclif
had relied, for the moment annihilated, but the quarrel
between the Baronage and Church, on which his action had
hitherto been grounded, was hushed in the presence of a common
danger. Much of the odium of the outbreak, too, fell on the
Reformer. ... John Ball, who had figured in the front rank of
the revolt, was claimed as one of his adherents. ... Whatever
belief such charges might gain, it is certain that from this
moment all plans for the reorganization of the Church were
confounded in the general odium which attached to the projects
of the socialist peasant leaders."
J. R. Green,
Short History of the English People,
chapter 5, section 3.
"When Parliament assembled it proved itself as hostile as the
crown to the conceding any of the demands of the people; both
were faithful to all the records of history in similar cases;
they would have belied all experience if, being victorious,
they had consented to the least concession to the vanquished.
The upper classes repudiated the recognition of the rights of
the poor to a degree, which in our time would be considered
sheer insanity. The king had annulled, by proclamation to the
sheriffs, the charters of manumission which he had granted to
the insurgents, and this revocation was warmly approved by
both Lords and Commons, who, not satisfied with saying that
such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent,
added, that they would never give that consent, even to save
themselves from perishing altogether in one day. There was, it
is true, a vague rumour about the propriety and wisdom of
abolishing villanage; but the notion was scouted, and the
owners of serfs showed that they neither doubted the right by
which they held their fellow-creatures in a state of slavery,
nor would hesitate to increase the severity of the laws
affecting them. They now passed a law by which 'all riots and
rumours, and other such things were turned into high treason';
this law was most vaguely expressed, and would probably
involve those who made it in inextricable difficulties. It was
self-apparent, that this Parliament acted under the impulses
of panic, and of revenge for recent injuries. ... It might be
said that the citizens of the municipalities wrote their
charters of enfranchisement with the very blood of their lords
and bishops; yet, during the worst days of oppression, the
serfs of the cities had never suffered the cruel excesses of
tyranny endured by the country people till the middle of the
fifteenth century. And, nevertheless, the long struggles of
the townships, despite the bloodshed and cruelties of the
citizens, are ever considered and narrated as glorious
revolutions, whilst the brief efforts of the peasants for
vengeance, which were drowned in their own blood, have
remained as a stigma flung in the face of the country
populations whenever they utter a word claiming some
amelioration in their condition. Whence the injustice? The
bourgeoisie was victorious and successful. The rural
populations were vanquished and trampled upon. The
bourgeoisie, therefore, has had its poets, historians, and
flatterers, whilst the poor peasant, rude, untutored, and
ignorant, never had a lyre nor a voice to bewail his
lamentable sorrows and sufferings."
Prof. De Vericour,
Wat Tyler
(Royal Historical Society, Transactions,
number 8, volume 2).
ALSO IN:
G. Lechler,
John Wiclif,
chapter 9, section 3.
C. Knight,
Popular History of England,
volume 2, chapter 1.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1383.
The Bishop of Norwich's Crusade in Flanders.
See FLANDERS: A. D. 1383.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1388.
The Merciless or Wonderful Parliament.
See PARLIAMENT, THE WONDERFUL.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1399.
Accession of King Henry IV.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1399-1471.
House of Lancaster.
This name is given in English history to the family which
became royal in the person of Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of
Lancaster, who deposed his cousin, Richard II., or forced him
to abdicate the throne, and who was crowned king (Henry IV.),
Oct. 11, 1399, with what seemed to be the consent of the
nation. He not only claimed to be the next in succession to
Richard, but he put forward a claim of descent through his
mother, more direct than Richard's had been, from Henry III.
"In point of fact Henry was not the next in succession. His
father, John of Gaunt [or John of Ghent, in which city he was
born], was the fourth son of Edward III., and there were
descendants of that king's third son, Lionel Duke of Clarence,
living. ... At one time Richard himself had designated as his
successor the nobleman who really stood next to him in the
line of descent. This was Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the
same who was killed by the rebels in Ireland. This Roger had
left a son Edmund to inherit his title, but Edmund was a mere
child, and the inconvenience of another minority could not
have been endured."
J. Gairdner,
Houses of Lancaster and York,
chapter 2.
{818}
As for Henry's pretensions through his mother, they were
founded upon what Mr. Gairdner calls an "idle story," that
"the eldest son of Henry III. was not king Edward, but his
brother Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, who was commonly
reputed the second son; and that this Edmund had been
purposely set aside on account of his personal deformity. The
plain fact of the matter was that Edmund Crouchback was six
years younger than his brother Edward I.; and that his surname
Crouchback had not the smallest reference to personal
deformity, but only implied that he wore the cross upon his
back as a crusader." Mr. Wylie (History of England under Henry
IV., volume 1, chapter 1) represents that this latter claim
was put forward under the advice of the leading jurists of the
time, to give the appearance of a legitimate succession;
whereas Henry took his real title from the will and assent of
the nation. Henry IV. was succeeded by his vigorous son, Henry
V. and he in turn by a feeble son, Henry VI., during whose
reign England was torn by intrigues and factions, ending in
the lamentable civil wars known as the "Wars of the Roses,"
the deposition of Henry VI. and the acquisition of the throne
by the "House of York," in the persons of Edward IV. and
Richard III. It was a branch of the House of Lancaster that
reappeared, after the death of Richard III. in the royal
family better known as the Tudors.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1400-1436.
Relations with Scotland.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1400-1436.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1402-1413.
Owen Glendower's Rebellion in Wales.
See WALES: A. D.1402-1413.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1403.
Hotspur's Rebellion.
The earl of Northumberland and his son, Henry Percy, called
"Hotspur," had performed great services for Henry IV., in
establishing and maintaining him upon the throne. "At the
outset of his reign their opposition would have been fatal to
him; their adhesion ensured his victory. He had rewarded them
with territory and high offices of trust, and they had by
faithful services ever since increased their claims to
gratitude and consideration. ... Both father and son were
high-spirited, passionate, suspicious men, who entertained an
exalted sense of their own services and could not endure the
shadow of a slight. Up to this time [early in 1403] not a
doubt had been cast on their fidelity. Northumberland was
still the king's chief agent in Parliament, his most valued
commander in the field, his Mattathias. It has been thought
that Hotspur's grudge against the king began with the notion
that the release of his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer [taken
prisoner, the year before, by the Welsh], had been neglected
by the king, or was caused by Henry's claim to deal with the
prisoners taken at Homildon; the defenders of the Percies
alleged that they had been deceived by Henry in the first
instance, and only needed to be persuaded that Richard lived
in order to desert the king. It is more probable that they
suspected Henry's friendship, and were exasperated by his
compulsory economies. ... Yet Henry seems to have conceived no
suspicion. ... Northumberland and Hotspur were writing for
increased forces [for the war with Scotland]. ... On the 10th
of July Henry had reached Northamptonshire on his way
northwards; on the 17th he heard that Hotspur with his uncle
the earl of Worcester were in arms in Shropshire. They raised
no cry of private wrongs, but proclaimed themselves the
vindicators of national right: their object was to correct the
evils of the administration, to enforce the employment of wise
counsellors, and the proper expenditure of public money. ...
The report ran like wildfire through the west that Richard was
alive, and at Chester. Hotspur's army rose to 14,000 men, and
not suspecting the strength and promptness of the king, he sat
down with his uncle and his prisoner, the earl of Douglas,
before Shrewsbury. Henry showed himself equal to the need.
From Burton-on-Trent, where on July 17 he summoned the forces
of the shires to join him, he marched into Shropshire, and
offered to parley with the insurgents. The earl of Worcester
went between the camps, but he was either an impolitic or a
treacherous envoy, and the negotiations ended in mutual
exasperation. On the 21st the battle of Shrewsbury was fought;
Hotspur was slain; Worcester was taken and beheaded two days
after. The old earl, who may or may not have been cognizant of
his son's intentions from the first, was now marching to his
succour. The earl of Westmoreland, his brother-in-law, met him
and drove him back to Warkworth. But all danger was over. On
the 11th of August he met the king at York, and submitted to
him."
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 18, section 632.
ALSO IN:
J. H. Wylie,
History of England under Henry IV.,
volume 1, chapter 25.
W. Shakespeare,
King Henry IV.,
part 1.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1413.
Accession of King Henry V.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1413-1422.
Parliamentary gains under Henry V.
"What the sword had won the sword should keep, said Henry V.
on his accession; but what was meant by the saying has its
comment in the fact that, in the year which witnessed his
victory at Agincourt, he yielded to the House of Commons the
most liberal measure of legislation which until then it had
obtained. The dazzling splendour of his conquests in France
had for the time cast into the shade every doubt or question
of his title, but the very extent of those gains upon the
French soil established more decisively the worse than
uselessness of such acquisitions to the English throne. The
distinction of Henry's reign in constitutional history will
always be, that from it dates that power, indispensable to a
free and limited monarchy, called Privilege of Parliament; the
shield and buckler under which all the battles of liberty and
good government were fought in the after time. Not only were
its leading safeguards now obtained, but at once so firmly
established, that against the shock of incessant resistance in
later years they stood perfectly unmoved. Of the awful right
of impeachment, too, the same is to be said. It was won in the
same reign, and was never afterwards lost."
J. Forster,
Historical and Biographical Essays,
volume 1, page 207.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1415-1422.
Conquests of Henry V. in France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1415; and 1417-1422.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1422.
Accession of King Henry VI.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1431-1453.
Loss of English conquests and possessions in France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453,
and AQUITAINE: A. D. 1360-1453.
{819}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1450.
Cade's Rebellion.
A formidable rebellion broke out in Kent, under the leadership
of one Jack Cade, A. D. 1450. Overtaxation, the bad management
of the council, the extortion of the subordinate officers, the
injustice of the king's bench, the abuse of the right of
purveyance, the "enquestes" and amercements, and the
illegitimate control of elections were the chief causes of the
rising of 1450. "The rising was mainly political, only one
complaint was economical, not a single one was religious. We
find not a single demand for new legislation. ... The movement
was by no means of a distinctly plebeian or disorderly
character, but was a general and organized rising of the
people at large. It was a political upheaval. We find no trace
of socialism or of democracy. ... The commons in 1450 arose
against Lancaster and in favor of York. Their rising was the
first great struggle in the Wars of the Roses."
Kriehn,
Rising in 1450,
Chapter IV., VII.
Cade and his rebels took possession of London; but they were
beaten in a battle and forced to quit the city. Cade and some
followers continued to be turbulent and soon afterwards he was
killed.
J. Gairdner,
Houses of Lancaster and York,
chapter 7, section 6.
ALSO IN:
C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
3d series, chapter 7.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1455.
Demoralized state of the nation.
Effects of the wars in France.
"The whole picture of the times is very depressing on the
moral if not on the material side. There are few more pitiful
episodes in history than the whole tale of the reign of Henry
VI., the most unselfish and well-intentioned king that ever
sat upon the English throne--a man of whom not even his
enemies and oppressors could find an evil word to say; the
troubles came, as they confessed, 'all because of his false
lords, and never of him.' We feel that there must have been
something wrong with the heart of a nation that could see
unmoved the meek and holy king torn from wife and child, sent
to wander in disguise up and down the kingdom for which he had
done his poor best, and finally doomed to pine for five years a
prisoner in the fortress where he had so long held his royal
Court. Nor is our first impression concerning the
demoralisation of England wrong. Every line that we read bears
home to us more and more the fact that the nation had fallen
on evil times. First and foremost among the causes of its
moral deterioration was the wretched French War, a war begun
in the pure spirit of greed and ambition,--there was not even
the poor excuse that had existed in the time of Edward
III.--carried on by the aid of hordes of debauched foreign
mercenaries ... and persisted in long after it had become
hopeless, partly from misplaced national pride, partly because
of the personal interests of the ruling classes. Thirty-five
years of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortunate had
both soured and demoralised the nation. ... When the final
catastrophe came and the fights of Formigny [or Fourmigny] and
Chatillon [Castillon] ended the chapter of our disasters, the
nation began to cast about for a scapegoat on whom to lay the
burden of its failures. ... At first the unfortunate Suffolk
and Somerset had the responsibility laid upon them. A little
later the outcry became more bold and fixed upon the
Lancastrian dynasty itself as being to blame not only for
disaster abroad, but for want of governance at home. If King
Henry had understood the charge, and possessed the wit to
answer it, he might fairly have replied that his subjects must
fit the burden upon their own backs, not upon his. The war had
been weakly conducted, it was true; but weakly because the men
and money for it were grudged. ... At home, the bulwarks of
social order seemed crumbling away. Private wars, riot, open
highway robbery, murder, abduction, armed resistance to the
law, prevailed on a scale that had been unknown since the
troublous times of Edward II.--we might almost say since the
evil days of Stephen. But it was not the Crown alone that
should have been blamed for the state of the realm. The nation
had chosen to impose over-stringent constitutional checks on
the kingly power before it was ripe for self-government, and
the Lancastrian house sat on the throne because it had agreed
to submit to those checks. If the result of the experiment was
disastrous, both parties to the contract had to bear their
share of the responsibility. But a nation seldom allows that
it has been wrong; and Henry of Windsor had to serve as a
scapegoat for all the misfortunes of the realm, because Henry
of Bolingbroke had committed his descendants to the unhappy
compact. Want of a strong central government was undoubtedly
the complaint under which England was labouring in the middle
of the 15th century, and all the grievances against which
outcry was made were but symptoms of one latent disease. ...
All these public troubles would have been of comparatively
small importance if the heart of the nation had been sound.
The phenomenon which makes the time so depressing is the
terrible decay in private morals since the previous century.
... There is no class or caste in England which comes well out
of the scrutiny. The Church, which had served as the conscience
of the nation in better times, had become dead to spiritual
things. It no longer produced either men of saintly life or
learned theologians or patriotic statesmen. ... The baronage
of England had often been unruly, but it had never before
developed the two vices which distinguished it in the times of
the Two Roses--a taste for indiscriminate bloodshed and a turn
for political apostacy. ... Twenty years spent in contact with
French factions, and in command of the godless mercenaries who
formed the bulk of the English armies, had taught our nobles
lessons of cruelty and faithlessness such as they had not
before imbibed. ... The knights and squires showed on a
smaller scale all the vices of the nobility. Instead of
holding together and maintaining a united loyalty to the
Crown, they bound themselves by solemn sealed bonds and the
reception of 'liveries' each to the baron whom he preferred.
This fatal system, by which the smaller landholder agreed on
behalf of himself and his tenants to follow his greater
neighbour in peace and war, had ruined the military system of
England, and was quite as dangerous as the ancient feudalism.
... If the gentry constituted themselves the voluntary
followers of the baronage, and aided their employers to keep
England unhappy, the class of citizens and burgesses took a
very different line of conduct. If not actively mischievous,
they were solidly inert. They refused to entangle themselves
in politics at all. They submitted impassively to each ruler
in turn, when they had ascertained that their own persons and
property were not endangered by so doing. A town, it has been
remarked, seldom or never stood a siege during the Wars of the
Roses, for no town ever refused to open its gates to any
commander with an adequate force who asked for entrance."
C. W. Oman,
Warwick the King-maker,
chapter 1.
{820}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471.
The Wars of the Roses.
Beginning with a battle fought at St. Albans on the 23d of
May, 1455, England was kept in a pitiable state of civil war,
with short intervals of troubled peace, during thirty years.
The immediate cause of trouble was in the feebleness of King
Henry VI., who succeeded to the throne while an infant, and
whose mind, never strong, gave way under the trials of his
position when he came to manhood. The control of the
government, thus weakly commanded, became a subject of strife
between successive factions. The final leaders in such
contests were Queen Margaret of Anjou, the energetic consort
of the helpless king (with the king himself sometimes in a
condition of mind to cooperate with her), on one side, and, on
the other side, the Duke of York, who traced his lineage to
Edward III., and who had strong claims to the throne if Henry
should leave no heir. The battle at St. Albans was a victory
for the Yorkists and placed them in power for the next two
years, the Duke of York being named Protector. In 1456 the
king recovered so far as to resume the reigns of government,
and in 1459 there was a new rupture between the factions. The
queen's adherents were beaten in the battle of Bloreheath,
September 23d of that year; but defections in the ranks of the
Yorkists soon obliged the latter to disperse and their
leaders, York, Warwick and Salisbury, fled to Ireland and to
Calais. In June, 1460, the earls of Warwick, Salisbury and
March (the latter being the eldest son of the Duke of York)
returned to England and gathered an army speedily, the city of
London opening its gates to them. The king's forces were
defeated at Northampton (July 10) and the king taken prisoner.
A parliament was summoned and assembled in October. Then the Duke
of York came over from Ireland, took possession of the royal
palace and laid before parliament a solemn claim to the crown.
After much discussion a compromise was agreed upon, under
which Henry VI. should reign undisturbed during his life and
the Duke of York should be his undisputed successor. This was
embodied in an act of parliament and received the assent of
the king; but queen Margaret who had retired into the north,
refused to surrender the rights of her infant son, and a
strong party sustained her. The Duke of York attacked these
Lancastrian forces rashly, at Wakefield, Dec. 30, 1460, and
was slain on the field of a disastrous defeat. The queen's
army, then, marching towards London, defeated the Earl of
Warwick at St. Albans, February 17, 1461 (the second battle of
the war at that place), and recovered possession of the person
of the king. But Edward, Earl of March (now become Duke of
York, by the death of his father), who had just routed a
Lancastrian force at Mortimer's Cross, in Wales, joined his
forces with those of Warwick and succeeded in occupying
London, which steadily favored his cause. Calling together a
council of lords, Edward persuaded them to declare King Henry
deposed, on the ground that he had broken the agreement made
with the late Duke of York. The next step was to elect Edward
king, and he assumed the royal title and state at once. The
new king lost no time in marching northwards against the army
of the deposed sovereign, which lay near York. On the 27th of
March the advanced division of the Lancastrians was defeated
at Ferrybridge, and, two days later, their main body was
almost destroyed in the fearful battle of Towton,--said to
have been the bloodiest encounter that ever took place on
English soil. King Henry took refuge in Scotland and Queen
Margaret repaired to France. In 1464 Henry reappeared in the
north with a body of Scots and refugees and there were risings
in his favor in Northumberland, which the Yorkists crushed in
the successive battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham. The
Yorkist king (Edward IV.) now reigned without much disturbance
ntil 1470, when he quarreled with the powerful Earl of Warwick--
the "king-maker," whose strong hand had placed him on the
throne. Warwick then passed to the other side, offering his
services to Queen Margaret and leading an expedition which
sailed from Harfleur in September, convoyed by a French fleet.
Edward found himself unprepared to resist the Yorkist risings
which welcomed Warwick and he fled to Holland, seeking aid
from his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. For nearly six
months, the kingdom was in the hands of Warwick and the
Lancastrians; the unfortunate Henry VI., released from
captivity in the Tower, was once more seated on the throne.
But on the 14th of March, 1471, Edward reappeared in England,
landing at Ravenspur, professing that he came only to recover
his dukedom of York. As he moved southwards he gathered a
large force of supporters and soon reassumed the royal title
and pretensions. London opened its gates to him, and, on the
14th of April--exactly one month after his landing--he
defeated his opponents at Barnet, where Warwick, "the
king-maker"--the last of the great feudal barons--was slain.
Henry, again a captive, was sent back to the Tower. But
Henry's dauntless queen, who landed at Weymouth, with a body
of French allies on the very day of the disastrous Barnet
fight, refused to submit. Cornwall and Devon were true to her
cause and gave her an army with which she fought the last
battle of the war at Tewksbury on the 4th of May. Defeated and
taken prisoner, her young son slain--whether in the battle or
after it is unknown--the long contention of Margaret of Anjou
ended on that bloody field. A few days later, when the
triumphant Yorkist King Edward entered London, his poor,
demented Lancastrian rival died suddenly and suspiciously in
the Tower. The two parties in the long contention had each
assumed the badge of a rose--the Yorkists a white rose, the
Lancastrians a red one. Hence the name of the Wars of the
Roses. "As early as the time of John of Ghent, the rose was
used as an heraldic emblem, and when he married Blanche, the
daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, he used the red rose for a
device. Edmund of Langley, his brother, the fifth son of
Edward III., adopted the white rose in opposition to him; and
their followers afterwards maintained these distinctions in
the bloody wars of the fifteenth century. There is, however,
no authentic account of the precise period when these badges
were first adopted."
Mrs. Hookham,
Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou,
volume 2, chapter 1.
ALSO IN:
J. Gairdner,
Houses of Lancaster and York.
Sir J. Ramsay,
Lancaster and York.
C. W. Oman;
Warwick, the King-maker,
chapter 5-17.
See, also,
TOWTON, BARNET, and TEWKSBURY.
{821}
The effects of the Wars of the Roses.
"It is astonishing to observe the rapidity with which it [the
English nation] had settled down to order in the reign of
Henry VII. after so many years of civil dissension. It would
lead us to infer that those wars were the wars of a class, and
not of the nation; and that the effects of them have been
greatly exaggerated. With the single exception of Cade's
rebellion, they had nothing in common with the revolutions of
later or earlier times. They were not wars against classes,
against forms of government, against the order or the
institutions of the nation. It was the rivalry of two
aristocratic factions struggling for superiority, neither of
them hoping or desiring, whichever obtained the upper hand, to
introduce momentous changes in the State or its
administration. The main body of the people took little
interest in the struggle; in the towns at least there was no
intermission of employment. The war passed over the nation,
ruffling the surface, toppling down high cliffs here and
there, washing away ancient landmarks, attracting the
imagination of the spectator by the mightiness of its waves,
and the noise of its thunders; but the great body below the
surface remained unmoved. No famines, no plagues, consequent
on the intermittance of labour caused by civil war, are
recorded; even the prices of land and provisions scarcely
varied more than they have been known to do in times of
profoundest peace. But the indirect and silent operation of
these conflicts was much more remarkable. It reft into
fragments the confederated ranks of a powerful territorial
aristocracy, which had hitherto bid defiance to the King,
however popular, however energetic. Henceforth the position of
the Sovereign in the time of the Tudors, in relation to all
classes of the people, became very different from what it had
been; the royal supremacy was no longer a theory; but a fact.
Another class had sprung up on the decay of the ancient
nobility. The great towns had enjoyed uninterrupted
tranquility, and even flourished, under the storm that was
scourging the aristocracy and the rural districts. Their
population had increased by numbers whom fear or the horrors
of war had induced to find shelter behind stone walls. The
diminution of agricultural labourers converted into soldiers
by the folly of their lords had turned corn-lands into
pasture, requiring less skill, less capital, and less labour."
J. S. Brewer,
The Reign of Henry VIII.,
volume 1, chapter 2.
"Those who would estimate the condition of England aright
should remember that the War of the Roses was only a
repetition on a large scale of those private wars which
distracted almost every county, and, indeed, by taking away
all sense of security, disturbed almost every manor and every
class of society during the same century. ... The lawless
condition of English society in the 15th century resembled
that of Ireland in as recent a date as the beginning of the
19th century. ... In both countries women were carried off,
sometimes at night; they were first violated, then dragged to
the altar in their night-dress and compelled to marry their
captors. ... Children were seized and thrown into a dungeon
until ransomed by their parents."
W. Denton,
England in the 15th Century,
chapter 3.
"The Wars of the Roses which filled the second half of the
15th century furnished the barons with an arena in which their
instincts of violence had freer play than ever; it was they
who, under the pretext of dynastic interests which had ceased
to exist, of their own free choice prolonged the struggle.
Altogether unlike the Italian condottieri, the English barons
showed no mercy to their own order; they massacred and
exterminated each other freely, while they were careful to
spare the commonalty. Whole families were extinguished or
submerged in the nameless mass of the nation, and their
estates by confiscation or escheat helped to swell the royal
domain. When Henry VII. had stifled the last movements of
rebellion and had punished, through the Star Chamber, those
nobles who were still suspected of maintaining armed bands,
the baronage was reduced to a very low ebb; not more than
twenty-nine lay peers were summoned by the king to his first
Parliament. The old Norman feudal nobility existed no longer;
the heroic barons of the great charter barely survived in the
persons of a few doubtful descendants; their estates were
split up or had been forfeited to the Crown. A new class came
forward to fill the gap, that rural middle class which was
formed ... by the fusion of the knights with the free
landowners. It had already taken the lead in the House of
Commons, and it was from its ranks that Henry VII. chose
nearly all the new peers. A peerage renewed almost throughout,
ignorant of the habits and traditions of the earlier nobility,
created in large batches, closely dependent on the monarch who
had raised it from little or nothing and who had endowed it
with his bounty--this is the phenomenon which confronts us at
the end of the fifteenth century."
E. Boutmy,
The English Constitution,
chapter 5.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1461.
Accession of King Edward IV.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1461-1485.
House of York.
The House of York, which triumphed in the Wars of the Roses,
attaining the throne in the person of Edward IV. (A. D. 1461),
derived its claim to the crown through descent, in the female
line, from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward
III. (the second son who lived to manhood and left children);
while the House of Lancaster traced its lineage to John of
Gaunt, a younger son of the same king Edward III., but the
line of Lancastrian succession was through males. "Had the
crown followed the course of hereditary succession, it would
have devolved on the posterity of Lionel. ... By the decease
of that prince without male issue, his possessions and
pretensions fell to his daughter Philippa, who by a singular
combination of circumstances had married Roger Mortimer earl
of March, the male representative of the powerful baron who
was attainted and executed for the murder of Edward II., the
grandfather of the duke of Clarence. The son of that potent
delinquent had been restored to his honours and estates at an
advanced period in the reign of Edward III. ... Edmund, his
grandson, had espoused Philippa of Clarence. Roger Mortimer,
the fourth in descent from the regicide, was lord lieutenant
of Ireland and was considered, or, according to some writers,
declared to be heir of the crown in the early part of
Richard's reign. Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, in whom the
hereditary claim to the crown was vested at the deposition of
Richard, was then only an infant of ten years of age. ...
{822}
Dying without issue, the pretensions to the crown, which he
inherited through the duke of Clarence, devolved on his sister
Anne Mortimer, who espoused Richard of York earl of Cambridge,
the grandson of Edward III. by his fourth [fifth] son Edmund
of Langley duke of York." Edward IV. was the grandson of this
Anne Mortimer and Richard of York.
Sir J. Mackintosh,
History of England,
volume 1, pages 338-339.
The House of York occupied the throne but twenty-four years.
On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, the crown was secured by
his brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who caused Edward's
two sons to be murdered in the Tower. The elder of these

murdered princes is named in the list of English kings as
Edward V.; but he cannot be said to have reigned. Richard III.
was overthrown and slain on Bosworth field in 1485.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1471-1485.
The New Monarchy.
The rise of Absolutism and the decline of Parliamentary
government.
"If we use the name of the New Monarchy to express the
character of the English sovereignty from the time of Edward
IV. to the time of Elizabeth, it is because the character of
the monarchy during this period was something wholly new in
our history. There is no kind of sibilantly between the
kingship of the Old English, of the Norman, the Angevin, or
the Plantagenet sovereigns, and the kingship of the Tudors.
... What the Great Rebellion in its final result actually did
was to wipe away every trace of the New Monarchy, and to take
up again the thread of our political development just where it
had been snapped by the Wars of the Roses. ... The founder of
the New Monarchy was Edward IV. ... While jesting with
aldermen, or dallying with his mistresses, or idling over the
new pages from the printing press [Caxton's] at Westminster,
Edward was silently laying the foundations of an absolute rule
which Henry VII. did little more than develop and consolidate.
The almost total discontinuance of Parliamentary life was in
itself a revolution. Up to this moment the two Houses had
played a part which became more and more prominent in the
government of the realm. ... Under Henry VI. an important step
in constitutional progress had been made by abandoning the old
form of presenting the requests of the Parliament in the form
of petitions which were subsequently moulded into statutes by
the Royal Councils; the statute itself, in its final form, was
now presented for the royal assent, and the Crown was deprived
of its former privilege of modifying it. Not only does this
progress cease, but the legislative activity of Parliament
itself comes abruptly to an end. ... The necessity for
summoning the two Houses had, in fact, been removed by the
enormous tide of wealth which the confiscation of the civil
war poured into the royal treasury. ... It was said that
nearly a fifth of the land had passed into the royal
possession at one period or another of the civil war. Edward
added to his resources by trading on a vast scale. ... The
enterprises he had planned against France ... enabled Edward
not only to increase his hoard, but to deal a deadly blow at
liberty. Setting aside the usage of loans sanctioned by the
authority of Parliament, Edward called before him the
merchants of the city and requested from each a present or
benevolence in proportion to the need. Their compliance with
his prayer was probably aided by his popularity with the
merchant class; but the system of benevolence was soon to be
developed into the forced loans of Wolsey and the ship-money
of Charles I."
J. R. Green,
Short History of the English People,
chapter 6, section 3.
ALSO IN:
W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 18, section 696.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1474.
Treaty with the Hanseatic League.
See HANSA TOWNS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1476.
Introduction of Printing by Caxton.
See PRINTING, &c.: A. D. 1476-1491.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1483-1485.
Murder of the young king, Edward V.
Accession of Richard III.
The battle of Bosworth and the fall of the House of York.
On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, his crafty and
unscrupulous brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, gathered
quickly into his hands the reins of power, proceeding with
consummate audacity and ruthlessness to sweep every strong
rival out of his path. Contenting himself for a few weeks,
only, with the title of Protector, he soon disputed the
validity of his brother Edward's marriage, caused an
obsequious Parliament to set aside the young sons whom the
latter had left, declaring them to be illegitimate, and placed
the crown on his own head. The little princes (King Edward V.,
and Richard, Duke of York), immured in the Tower, were
murdered presently at their uncle's command, and Richard III.
appeared, for the time, to have triumphed in his ambitious
villainy. But, popular as he made himself in many cunning
ways, his deeds excited a horror which united Lancastrians
with the party of York in a common detestation. Friends of
Henry, Earl of Richmond, then in exile, were not slow to take
advantage of this feeling. Henry could claim descent from the
same John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., to whom the House of
Lancaster traced its lineage; but his family--the
Beauforts--sprang from the mistress, not the wife, of the
great Duke of Lancaster, and had only been legitimated by act
of Parliament. The Lancastrians, however, were satisfied with
the royalty of his blood, and the Yorkists were made content
by his promise to marry a daughter of Edward IV. On this
understanding being arranged, Henry came over from Brittany to
England, landing at Milford Haven on the 7th or 8th of August,
1485, and advancing through Wales, being joined by great
numbers as he moved. Richard, who had no lack of courage,
marched quickly to meet him, and the two forces joined battle
on Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire, on Sunday, August 21. At
the outset of the fighting Richard was deserted by a large
division of his army and saw that his fate was sealed. He
plunged, with despairing rage, into the thickest of the
struggle and was slain. His crowned helmet, which he had worn,
was found by Sir Reginald Bray, battered and broken, under a
hawthorn bush, and placed on the head of his rival, who soon
attained a more solemn coronation, as Henry VII.
C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
3d Series, chapters 19-20.
"I must record my impression that a minute study of the facts
of Richard's life has tended more and more to convince me of
the general fidelity of the portrait with which we have been
made familiar by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. I feel quite
ashamed, at this day, to think how I mused over this subject
long ago, wasting a great deal of time, ink and paper, in
fruitless efforts to satisfy even my own mind that traditional
black was real historical white, or at worst a kind of grey.
...
{823}
Both the character and personal appearance of Richard III.
have furnished matter of controversy. But with regard to the
former the day has now gone by when it was possible to doubt
the evidence at least of his principal crime; and that he was
regarded as a tyrant by his subjects seems almost equally
indisputable. At the same time he was not destitute of better
qualities. ... As king he seems really to have studied his
country's welfare, passed good laws, endeavoured to put an end
to extortion, declined the free gifts offered to him by
several towns, and declared he would rather have the hearts of
his subjects than their money. His munificence was especially
shown in religious foundations. ... His hypocrisy was not of
the vulgar kind which seeks to screen habitual baseness of
motive by habitual affectation of virtue. His best and his
worst deeds were alike too well known to be either concealed
or magnified; at least, soon after he became king, all doubt
upon the subject must have been removed. ... His ingratiating
manners, together with the liberality of his disposition, seem
really to have mitigated to a considerable extent the alarms
created by his fitful deeds of violence. The reader will not
require to be reminded of Shakespeare's portrait of a murderer
who could cajole the woman whom he had most exasperated and
made a widow into marrying himself. That Richard's ingenuity
was equal to this extraordinary feat we do not venture to
assert; but that he had a wonderful power of reassuring those
whom he had most intimidated and deceiving those who knew him
best there can be very little doubt. ... His taste in building
was magnificent and princely. ... There is scarcely any
evidence of Richard's [alleged] deformity to be derived from
original portraits. The number of portraits of Richard which
seem to be contemporary is greater than might have been
expected. ... The face in all the portraits is a remarkable
one, full of energy and decision, yet gentle and sad-looking,
suggesting the idea not so much of a tyrant as of a mind
accustomed to unpleasant thoughts. Nowhere do we find depicted
the warlike hard-favoured visage attributed to him by Sir
Thomas More. ... With such a one did the long reign of the
Plantagenets terminate. The fierce spirit and the valour of
the race never showed more strongly than at the close. The
Middle Ages, too, as far as England was concerned, may be said
to have passed away with Richard III."
J. Gairdner,
History of the Life, and Reign of Richard The Third,
introduction and chapter 6.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1485.
Accession of King Henry VII.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1485-1528.
The Sweating Sickness.
See SWEATING SICKNESS.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1485-1603.
The Tudors.
The Tudor family, which occupied the English throne from the
accession of Henry VII., 1485, until the death of Elizabeth,
1603, took its name, but not its royal lineage, from Sir Owen
Tudor, a handsome Welsh chieftain, who won the heart and the
hand of the young widow of Henry V., Catherine of France. The
eldest son of that marriage, made Earl of Richmond, married in
his turn Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter to John of
Gaunt, or Ghent, who was one of the sons of Edward III. From
this latter union came Henry of Richmond, as he was known, who
disputed the crown with Richard III. and made his claim good
on Bosworth Field, where the hated Richard was killed. Henry's
pretensions were based on the royal descent of his
mother--derived, however, through John of Gaunt's mistress--
and the dynasty which he founded was closely related in origin
to the Lancastrian line. Henry of Richmond strengthened his
hold upon the crown, though not his title to it, by marrying
Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., thus joining the white rose
to the red. He ascended the throne as Henry VII., A. D. 1485;
was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII., in 1509, and the latter
by his three children, in order as follows: Edward VI., 1547;
Mary, 1553; Elizabeth, 1558. The Tudor family became extinct
on the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603. "They [the Tudors]
reigned in England, without a successful rising against them,
for upwards of a hundred years; but not more by a studied
avoidance of what might so provoke the country, than by the
most resolute repression of every effort, on the part of what
remained of the peerage and great families, to make head
against the throne. They gave free indulgence to their tyranny
only within the circle of the court, while they unceasingly
watched and conciliated the temper of the people. The work
they had to do, and which by more scrupulous means was not
possible to be done, was one of paramount necessity; the
dynasty uninterruptedly endured for only so long as was
requisite to its thorough completion; and to each individual
sovereign the particular task might seem to have been
specially assigned. It was Henry's to spurn, renounce and
utterly cast off, the Pope's authority, without too suddenly
revolting the people's usages and habits; to arrive at blessed
results by ways that a better man might have held to be
accursed; during the momentous change in progress to keep in
necessary check both the parties it affected; to persecute
with an equal hand the Romanist and the Lutheran; to send the
Protestant to the stake for resisting Popery, and the Roman
Catholic to the scaffold for not admitting himself to be Pope;
while he meantime plundered the monasteries, hunted down and
rooted out the priests, alienated the abbey lands, and glutted
himself and his creatures with that enormous spoil. It was
Edward's to become the ready and undoubting instrument of
Cranmer's design, and, with all the inexperience and more than
the obstinacy of youth, so to force upon the people his
compromise of doctrine and observance, as to render possible,
even perhaps unavoidable, his elder sister's reign. It was
Mary's to undo the effect of that precipitate eagerness of the
Reformers, by lighting the fires of Smithfield; and
opportunely to arrest the waverers from Protestantism, by
exhibiting in their excess the very worst vices, the cruel
bigotry, the hateful intolerance, the spiritual slavery, of
Rome. It was Elizabeth's finally and forever to uproot that
slavery from amongst us, to champion all over the world a new
and nobler faith, and immovably to establish in England the
Protestant religion."
J. Forster,
Historical and Biographical Essays,
pages 221-222.
ALSO IN:
S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
chapter 6.
C. E. Moberly,
The Early Tudors.
{824}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1487-1497.
The Rebellions of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck.
Although Henry VII., soon after he attained the throne,
married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV., and thus
united the two rival houses, the Yorkists were discontented
with his rule. "With the help of Margaret of Burgundy, Edward
IV. 's sister, and James IV. of Scotland, they actually set up
two impostors, one after the other, to claim the throne. There
was a real heir of the House of York still alive--young
Edward, Earl of Warwick [son of the Duke of Clarence, brother
to Edward IV.], ... and Henry had taken the precaution to
keep him in the Tower. But in 1487 a sham Earl of Warwick
appeared in Ireland, and being supported by the Earl of
Kildare, was actually crowned in Dublin Cathedral. Henry soon
put down the imposture by showing the real earl to the people
of London, and defeating the army of the pretended earl at
Stoke, near Newark, June, 1487. He proved to be a lad named
Lambert Simnel, the son of a joiner at Oxford, and he became a
scullion in the king's kitchen." In 1492 another pretender of
like character was brought forward. "A young man, called
Perkin Warbeck, who proved afterwards to be a native of
Tournay, pretended that he was Richard, Duke of York, the
younger of the two little princes in the Tower, and that he
had escaped when his brother Edward V. was murdered. He
persuaded the king of France and Margaret of Burgundy to
acknowledge him, and was not only received at the foreign
courts, but, after failing in Ireland, he went to Scotland,
where James IV. married him to his own cousin Catharine
Gordon, and helped him to invade England in 1496. The invasion
was defeated however, by the Earl of Surrey, and then Perkin
went back to Ireland, where the people had revolted against
the heavy taxes. There he raised an army and marched to
Exeter, but meeting the king's troops at Taunton, he lost
courage, and fled to the Abbey of Beaulieu, where he was taken
prisoner, and sent to the Tower in 1497." In 1501 both Perkin
Warbeck and the young Earl of Warwick were executed.
A. B. Buckley,
History of England for Beginners,
chapter 13.
ALSO IN:
J. Gairdner, Story of Perkin Warbeck
(appendix to Life of Richard III.).
C. M, Yonge,
Cameos from English History,
3d series, chapters 21 and 24.
J. Gairdner,
Henry VII.,
chapters 4 and 7.
ENGLAND: 15th-16th Centuries.
The Renaissance.
Life in "Merry England."
Preludes to the Elizabethan Age of literature.
"Toward the close of the fifteenth century ... commerce and
the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such an enormous
one that corn-fields were changed into pasture-lands, 'whereby
the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and
come into riches and wealthy livings,' so that in 1553, 40,000
pieces of cloth were exported in English ships. It was already
the England which we see to-day, a land of meadows, green,
intersected by hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in
ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a people of
beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich
themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that
in half a century the produce of an acre was doubled. They
grew so rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles I.
the Commons represented three times the wealth of the Upper
House. The ruin of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma sent to
England 'the third part of the merchants and manufacturers,
who made silk, damask, stockings, taffetas, and serges.' The
defeat of the Armada and the decadence of Spain opened the
seas to their merchants. The toiling hive, who would dare,
attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was
about to reap its advantages and set out on its voyages,
buzzing over the universe. At the base and on the summit of
society, in all ranks of life, in all grades of human
condition, this new welfare became visible. ... It is not when
all is good, but when all is better, that they see the bright
side of life, and are tempted to make a holiday of it. This is
why at this period they did make a holiday of it, a splendid
show, so like a picture that it fostered painting in Italy, so
like a representation, that it produced the drama in England.
Now that the battle-axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten
down the independent nobility, and the abolition of the law of
maintenance had destroyed the petty royalty of each great
feudal baron, the lords quitted their sombre castles,
battlemented fortresses, surrounded by stagnant water, pierced
with narrow windows, a sort of stone breast-plates of no use
but to preserve the life of their masters. They flock into new
palaces, with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with
fantastic and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and
vast staircases, with gardens, fountains, statues, such as
were the palaces of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, half Gothic and
half Italian, whose convenience, grandeur, and beauty
announced already habits of society and the taste for
pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old manners;
the four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity
were reduced to two; gentlemen soon became refined, placing
their glory in the elegance and singularity of their
amusements and their clothes. ... To vent the feelings, to
satisfy the heart and eyes, to set free boldly on all the
roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this
was the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was
'merry England,' as they called it then. It was not yet stern
and constrained. It expanded widely, freely, and rejoiced to
find itself so expanded. No longer at court only was the drama
found but in the village. Strolling companies betook
themselves thither, and the country folk supplied any
deficiencies when necessary. Shakspeare saw, before he
depicted them, stupid fellows, carpenters, joiners,
bellow-menders, play Pyramus and Thisbe, represent the lion
roaring as gently as possible, and the wall, by stretching out
their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in which
townspeople, workmen, and children bore their parts. ... A few
sectarians, chiefly in the towns and of the people, clung
gloomily to the Bible. But the court and the men of the world
sought their teachers and their heroes from pagan Greece and
Rome. About 1490 they began to read the classics; one after
the other they translated them; it was soon the fashion to
read them in the original. Elizabeth, Jane Grey, the Duchess
of Norfolk, the Countess of Arundel, many other ladies, were
conversant with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero in the original,
and appreciated them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men
were raised to the level of the great and healthy minds who
had freely handled ideas of all kinds fifteen centuries ago.
They comprehended not only their language, but their thought;
they did not repeat lessons from, but held conversations with
them; they were their equals, and found in them intellects as
manly as their own. ...
{825}
Across the train of hooded school men and sordid cavillers the
two adult and thinking ages were united, and the moderns,
silencing the infantine or snuffling voices of the middle-age,
condescended only to converse with the noble ancients. They
accepted their gods, at least they understand them, and keep
them by their side. In poems, festivals, tapestries, almost
all ceremonies they appear, not restored by pedantry merely,
but kept alive by sympathy, and glorified by the arts of an
age as flourishing and almost as profound as that of their
earliest birth. After the terrible night of the middle-age,
and the dolorous legends of spirits and the damned, it was a
delight to see again Olympus shining upon us from Greece; its
heroic and beautiful deities once more ravishing the heart of
men, they raised and instructed this young world by speaking
to it the language of passion and genius; and the age of
strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, had only to
follow its own bent, in order to discover in them the eternal
promoters of liberty and beauty. Nearer still was another
paganism, that of Italy; the more seductive because more
modern, and because it circulates fresh sap in an ancient
stock; the more attractive, because more sensuous and present,
with its worship of force and genius, of pleasure and
voluptuousness. ... At that time Italy clearly led in every
thing, and civilisation was to be drawn thence as from its
spring. What is this civilisation which is thus imposed on the
whole of Europe, whence every science and every elegance
comes, whose laws are obeyed in every court, in which Surrey,
Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare sought their models and their
materials? It was pagan in its elements and its birth; in its
language, which is but slightly different from Latin; in its
Latin traditions and recollections, which no gap has come to
interrupt; in its constitution, whose old municipal life first
led and absorbed the feudal life; in the genius of its race,
in which energy and enjoyment always abounded."
H. A. Taine,
History of English Literature,
book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1).
"The intellectual movement, to which we give the name of
Renaissance, expressed itself in England mainly through the
Drama. Other races in that era of quickened activity, when
modern man regained the consciousness of his own strength and
goodliness after centuries of mental stagnation and social
depression, threw their energies into the plastic arts and
scholarship. The English found a similar outlet for their
pent-up forces in the Drama. The arts and literature of Greece
and Rome had been revealed by Italy to Europe. Humanism had
placed the present once more in a vital relation to the past.
The navies of Portugal and Spain had discovered new continents
beyond the ocean; the merchants of Venice and Genoa had
explored the farthest East. Copernicus had revolutionised
astronomy, and the telescope was revealing fresh worlds beyond
the sun. The Bible had been rescued from the mortmain of the
Church; scholars studied it in the language of its authors,
and the people read it in their own tongue. In this rapid
development of art, literature, science, and discovery, the
English had hitherto taken but little part. But they were
ready to reap what other men had sown. Unfatigued by the
labours of the pioneer, unsophisticated by the pedantries and
sophistries of the schools, in the freshness of their youth
and vigour, they surveyed the world unfolded to them. For more
than half a century they freely enjoyed the splendour of this
spectacle, until the struggle for political and religious
liberty replunged them in the hard realities of life. During
that eventful period of spiritual disengagement from absorbing
cares, the race was fully conscious of its national
importance. It had shaken off the shackles of oppressive
feudalism, the trammels of ecclesiastical tyranny. It had not
yet passed under the Puritan yoke, or felt the encroachments
of despotic monarchy. It was justly proud of the Virgin Queen,
with whose idealised personality the people identified their
newly acquired sense of greatness. ... What in those fifty
years they saw with the clairvoyant eyes of artists, the poets
wrote. And what they wrote, remains imperishable. It is the
portrait of their age, the portrait of an age in which
humanity stood self-revealed, a miracle and marvel to its own
admiring curiosity. England was in a state of transition when
the Drama came to perfection. That was one of those rare
periods when the past and the future are both coloured by
imagination, and both shed a glory on the present. The
medieval order was in dissolution; the modern order was in
process of formation. Yet the old state of things had not
faded from memory and usage; the new had not assumed despotic
sway. Men stood then, as it were, between two dreams--a dream
of the past, thronged with sinister and splendid
reminiscences; a dream of the future, bright with unlimited
aspirations and indefinite hopes. Neither the retreating
forces of the Middle Ages nor the advancing forces of the
modern era pressed upon them with the iron weight of
actuality. The brutalities of feudalism had been softened; but
the chivalrous sentiment remained to inspire the Surreys and
the Sidneys of a milder epoch. ... What distinguished the
English at this epoch from the nations of the South was not
refinement of manners, sobriety, or self-control. On the
contrary they retained an unenviable character for more than
common savagery. ... Erasmus describes the filth of their
houses, and the sicknesses engendered in their cities by bad
ventilation. What rendered the people superior to Italians and
Spaniards was the firmness of their moral fibre, the sweetness
of their humanity, a more masculine temper, less vitiated
instincts and sophisticated intellects, a law-abiding and
religious conscience, contempt for treachery and baseness,
intolerance of political or ecclesiastical despotism combined
with fervent love of home and country. They were coarse, but
not vicious; pleasure-loving, but not licentious; violent, but
not cruel; luxurious but not effeminate. Machiavelli was a
name of loathing to them. Sidney, Essex, Raleigh, More, and
Drake were popular heroes; and whatever may be thought of
these men, they certainly counted no Marquis of Pescara, no
Duke of Valentino, no Malatesta Baglioni, no Cosimo de' Medici
among them. The Southern European type betrayed itself but
faintly in politicians like Richard Cromwell and Robert
Dudley. . . . Affectations of foreign vices were only a
varnish on the surface of society. The core of the nation
remained sound and wholesome. Nor was the culture which the
English borrowed from less unsophisticated nations, more than
superficial. The incidents of Court gossip show how savage was
the life beneath.
{826}
Queen Elizabeth spat, in the presence of her nobles, at a
gentleman who had displeased her; struck Essex on the cheek;
drove Burleigh blubbering from her apartment. Laws in merry
England were executed with uncompromising severity. Every
township had its gallows; every village its stocks,
whipping-post and pillory. Here and there, heretics were
burned upon the market-place; and the block upon Tower Hill
was seldom dry. ... Men and women who read Plato, or discussed
the elegancies of Petrarch, suffered brutal practical jokes,
relished the obscenities of jesters, used the grossest
language of the people. Carrying farms and acres on their
backs in the shape of costly silks and laces, they lay upon
rushes filthy with the vomit of old banquets. Glittering in
suits of gilt and jewelled mail, they jostled with
town-porters in the stench of the bear-gardens, or the bloody
bull-pit. The church itself was not respected. The nave of old
S. Paul's became a rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes. ...
It is difficult, even by noting an infinity of such
characteristics, to paint the many-coloured incongruities of
England at that epoch. Yet in the midst of this confusion rose
cavaliers like Sidney, philosophers like Bacon, poets like
Spenser; men in whom all that is pure, elevated, subtle,
tender, strong, wise, delicate and learned in our modern
civilisation displayed itself. And the masses of the people
were still in harmony with these high strains. They formed the
audience of Shakspere. They wept for Desdemona, adored Imogen,
listened with Jessica to music in the moon-light at Belmont,
wandered with Rosalind through woodland glades of Arden. Such
was the society of which our theatre became the mirror."
J. A. Symonds,
Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama,
chapter 2, section 1, 2, and 5.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1497.
Cabot's discovery of the North American Continent.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1497.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1498.
Voyage and discoveries of Sebastian Cabot.
Ground of English claims in the New World.
See AMERICA: A. D. 1498.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1502.
The marriage which brought the Stuarts to the English throne.
See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1502.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1509.
The character and reign of Henry VII.
"As a king, Bacon tells us that he was 'a wonder for wise
men.' Few indeed were the councillors that shared his
confidence, but the wise men, competent to form an estimate of
his statesmanship, had but one opinion of his consummate
wisdom. Foreigners were greatly struck with the success that
attended his policy. Ambassadors were astonished at the
intimate knowledge he displayed of the affairs of their own
countries. From the most unpropitious beginnings, a proscribed
man and an exile, he had won his way in evil times to a throne
beset with dangers; he had pacified his own country, cherished
commerce, formed strong alliances over Europe, and made his
personal influence felt by the rulers of France, Spain, Italy,
and the Netherlands as that of a man who could turn the scale
in matters of the highest importance to their own domestic
welfare. ... From first to last his policy was essentially his
own; for though he knew well how to choose the ablest
councillors, he asked or took their advice only to such an
extent as he himself deemed expedient. ... No one can
understand his reign, or that of his son, or, we might add, of
his granddaughter Queen Elizabeth, without appreciating the
fact that, however well served with councillors, the sovereign
was in those days always his own Prime Minister. ... Even the
legislation of the reign must be regarded as in large measure
due to Henry himself. We have no means, it is true, of knowing
how much of it originated in his own mind; but that it was all
discussed with him in Council and approved before it was
passed we have every reason to believe. For he never appears
to have put the royal veto upon any Bill, as constitutional
usage both before and after his days allowed. He gave his
assent to all the enactments sent up to him for approval,
though he sometimes added to them provisos of his own. And
Bacon, who knew the traditions of those times, distinctly
attributes the good legislation of his days to the king
himself. 'In that part, both of justice and policy, which is
the most durable part, and cut, as it were, in brass or
marble, the making of good laws, he did excel.' This
statement, with but slight variations in the wording, appears
again and again throughout the History; and elsewhere it is
said that he was the best lawgiver to this nation after Edward
I. ... The parliaments, indeed, that Henry summoned were only
seven in number, and seldom did anyone of them last over a
year, so that during a reign of nearly twenty-four years many
years passed away without a Parliament at all. But even in
those scanty sittings many Acts were passed to meet evils that
were general subjects of complaint. ... He could scarcely be
called a learned man, yet he was a lover of learning, and gave
his children an excellent education. His Court was open to
scholars. ... He was certainly religious after the fashion of
his day. ... His religious foundations and bequests perhaps do
not necessarily imply anything more than conventional feeling.
But we must not overlook the curious circumstance that he once
argued with a heretic at the stake at Canterbury and got him
to renounce his heresy. It is melancholy to add that he did
not thereupon release him from the punishment to which he had
been sentenced; but the fact seems to show that he was afraid
of encouraging insincere conversions by such leniency. During
the last two or three years of the 15th century there was a
good deal of procedure against heretics, but on the whole, we
are told, rather by penances than by fire. Henry had no desire
to see the old foundations of the faith disturbed. His zeal
for the Church was recognised by no less than three Popes in
his time, who each sent him a sword and a cap of maintenance.
... To commerce and adventure he was always a good friend. By
his encouragement Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol and
discovered Newfoundland--The New Isle, as it at first was
called. Four years earlier Columbus had first set foot on the
great western continent, and had not his brother been taken by
pirates at sea, it is supposed that he too might have made his
great discovery under Henry's patronage."
James Gairdner,
Henry the Seventh,
chapter 13.
ALSO IN:
Lord Bacon,
History of the Reign of King Henry VII.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1509,
Accession of King Henry VIII.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1151-1513.
Enlisted In the Holy League of Pope Julius II. against France.
See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1513.
Henry's invasion of France.
The victory of the Battle of the Spurs.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.
{827}
ENGLAND: A. D. 1513-1529.
The ministry of Cardinal Wolsey.
From 1513 to 1529, Thomas Wolsey, who became Archbishop of
York in 1514, and Cardinal in 1515, was the minister who
guided the policy of Henry VIII., so far as that head-strong
and absolute monarch could be guided at all. "England was
going through a crisis, politically, socially, and
intellectually, when Wolsey undertook the management of
affairs. ... We must regret that he put foreign policy in the
first place, and reserved his constructive measures for
domestic affairs. ... Yet even here we may doubt if the
measures of the English Reformation would have been possible
if Wolsey's mind had not inspired the king and the nation with
a heightened consciousness of England's power and dignity.
Wolsey's diplomacy at least tore away all illusions about Pope
and Emperor, and the opinion of Europe, and taught Henry VIII.
the measure of his own strength. It was impossible that
Wolsey's powerful hand should not leave its impression upon
everything which it touched. If Henry VIII. inherited a strong
monarchy, Wolsey made the basis of monarchical power still
stronger. ... Wolsey saw in the royal power the only possible
means of holding England together and guiding it through the
dangers of impending change. ... Wolsey was in no sense a
constitutional minister, nor did he pay much heed to
constitutional forms. Parliament was only summoned once during
the time that he was in office, and then he tried to browbeat
Parliament and set aside its privileges. In his view the only
function of Parliament was to grant money for the king's
needs. The king should say how much he needed, and Parliament
ought only to advise how this sum might be most conveniently
raised. ... He was unwise in his attempt to force the king's
will upon Parliament as an unchangeable law of its action.
Henry VIII. looked and learned from Wolsey's failure, and when
he took the management of Parliament into his own hands he
showed himself a consummate master of that craft. ... He was
so skilful that Parliament at last gave him even the power
over the purse, and Henry, without raising a murmur, imposed
taxes which Wolsey would not have dared to suggest. ... Where
Wolsey would have made the Crown independent of Parliament,
Henry VIII. reduced Parliament to be a willing instrument of
the royal will. ... Henry ... clothed his despotism with the
appearance of paternal solicitude. He made the people think
that he lived for them, and that their interests were his,
whereas Wolsey endeavoured to convince the people that the
king alone could guard their interests, and that their only
course was to put entire confidence in him. Henry saw that men
were easier to cajole than to convince. ... In spite of the
disadvantage of a royal education, Henry was a more thorough
Englishman than Wolsey, though Wolsey sprang from the people.
It was Wolsey's teaching, however, that prepared Henry for his
task. The king who could use a minister like Wolsey and then
throw him away when he was no longer useful, felt that there
was no limitation to his self-sufficiency. ... For politics in
the largest sense, comprising all the relations of the nation
at home and abroad, Wolsey had a capacity which amounted to
genius, and it is doubtful if this can be said of any other
Englishman. ... Taking England as he found her, he aimed at
developing all her latent possibilities, and leading Europe to
follow in her train. ... He made England for a time the centre
of European politics, and gave her an influence far higher
than she could claim on material grounds. ... He was indeed a
political artist, who worked with a free hand and a certain
touch.. ... He was, though he knew it not, fitted to serve
England, but not to serve the English king. He had the aims of
a national statesman, not of a royal servant. Wolsey's
misfortune was that his lot was cast on days when the career
of a statesman was not distinct from that of a royal servant."
M. Creighton,
Cardinal Wolsey,
chapters 8 and 11.
ALSO IN:
J. S. Brewer,
The Reign of Henry VIII.
J. A. Froude,
History of England from the Fall of Wolsey,
chapters 1-2.
G. Cavendish,
Life of Wolsey.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1514.
Marriage of the king's sister with Louis XII. of France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1516-1517.
Intrigues against France.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1516-1517.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1519.
Candidacy of Henry VIII. for the imperial crown.
See GERMANY: A. D. 1519.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1520-1521.
Rivalry of the Emperor and the French King
for the English alliance.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1525.
The king changes sides in European politics and breaks his
alliance with the Emperor.
See FRANCE: A. D. 1525-1526.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1527.
New alliance with France and Venice against Charles V.
Formal renunciation of the claim of the English kings to the
crown of France.
See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1527-1534.
Henry VIII. and the Divorce question.
The rupture with Rome.
Henry VIII. owed his crown to the early death of his brother
Arthur, whose widow, Catharine of Aragon, the daughter of
Ferdinand, and consequently the aunt of Charles V. [emperor],
Henry was enabled to marry through a dispensation obtained by
Henry VII. from Pope Julius II.,--marriage with the wife of a
deceased brother being forbidden by the laws of the Church.
Henry was in his twelfth year when the marriage was concluded,
but it was not consummated until the death of his father. ...
The question of Henry's divorce from Catharine soon became a
subject of discussion, and the effort to procure the annulling
of the marriage from the pope was prosecuted for a number of
years. Henry professed, and perhaps with sincerity, that he
had long been troubled with doubts of the validity of the
marriage, as being contrary to the divine law, and therefore
not within the limit of the pope's dispensing power. The death
of a number of his children, leaving only a single daughter,
Mary, had been interpreted by some as a mark of the
displeasure of God. At the same time the English people, in
the fresh recollection of the long dynastic struggle, were
anxious on account of the lack of a male heir to the throne.
On the queen's side it was asserted that it was competent for
the pope to authorize a marriage with a brother's widow, and
that no doubt could possibly exist in the present case, since,
according to her testimony, her marriage with Arthur had never
been completed. The eagerness of Henry to procure the divorce
increased with his growing passion for Anne Boleyn. The
negotiations with Rome dragged slowly on. Catharine was six
years older than himself, and had lost her charms.
{828}
He was enamored of this young English girl, fresh from the
court of France. He resolved to break the marriage bond with
the Spanish princess who had been his faithful wife for nearly
twenty years. It was not without reason that the king became
more and more incensed at the dilatory and vacillating course
of the pope. ... Henry determined to lay the question of the
validity of his marriage before the universities of Europe,
and this he did, making a free use of bribery abroad and of
menaces at home. Meantime, he took measures to cripple the
authority of the pope and of the clergy in England. In these
proceedings he was sustained by a popular feeling, the growth
of centuries, against foreign ecclesiastical interference and
clerical control in civil affairs. The fall of Wolsey was the
effect of his failure to procure the divorce, and of the
enmity of Anne Boleyn and her family. ... In order to convict
of treason this minister, whom he had raised to the highest
pinnacle of power, the king did not scruple to avail himself
of the ancient statute of præmunire, which Wolsey was accused
of having transgressed by acting as the pope's legate in
England--it was dishonestly alleged, without the royal
license. Early in 1531 the king charged the whole body of the
clergy with having incurred the penalties of the same law by
submitting to Wolsey in his legatine character. Assembled in
convocation, they were obliged to implore his pardon, and
obtained it only in return for a large sum of money. In their
petition he was styled, in obedience to his dictation, 'The
Protector and Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of
England,' to which was added, after long debate, at the
suggestion of Archbishop Warham--'as far as is permitted by
the law of Christ.' The Church, prostrate though it was at the
feet of the despotic king, showed some degree of self-respect
in inserting this amendment. Parliament forbade the
introduction of papal bulls into England. The king was
authorized if he saw fit, to withdraw the annats--first-fruits
of benefices--from the pope. Appeals to Rome were forbidden.
The retaliatory measures of Henry did not move the pope to
recede from his position. On or about January 25, 1533, the
king was privately married to Anne Boleyn. ... In 1534 Henry
was conditionally excommunicated by Clement VII. The papal
decree deposing him from the throne, and absolving his
subjects from their allegiance, did not follow until 1538, and
was issued by Paul III. Clement's bull was sent forth on the
23 of March. On the 23 of November Parliament passed the Act
of Supremacy, without the qualifying clause which the clergy
had attached to their vote. The king was, moreover, clothed
with full power and authority to repress and amend all such
errors, heresies, and abuses as 'by any manner of spiritual
authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed.'
Thus a visitatorial function of vast extent was recognized as
belonging to him. In 1532 convocation was driven to engage not
'to enact or promulge or put in execution' any measures
without the royal license, and to promise to change or to
abrogate any of the 'provincial constitutions' which he should
judge inconsistent with his prerogative. The clergy were thus
stripped of all power to make laws. A mixed commission, which
Parliament ordained for the revision of the whole canon law,
was not appointed in this reign. The dissolution of the king's
marriage thus dissolved the union of England with the papacy."
G. P. Fisher,
History of the Christian Church,
period 8, chapter 6.
ALSO IN:
J. S. Brewer,
The Reign of Henry VIII.,
volume 2, chapters 27-35.
J. A. Froude,
History of England,
volume 1, chapter 2.
S. H. Burke,
Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty,
volume 1, chapters 8-25.
J. Lingard,
History of England,
volume 6, chapter 3.
T. E. Bridgett,
Life and Writings of Sir T. More.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1529-1535.
The execution of Sir Thomas More.
On the 25th of October, 1529, the king, by delivering the
great seal to Sir Thomas More, constituted him Lord
Chancellor. In making this appointment, Henry "hoped to
dispose his chancellor to lend his authority to the projects
of divorce and second marriage, which now agitated the king's
mind, and were the main objects of his policy. ... To pursue
this subject through the long negotiations and discussions
which it occasioned during six years, would be to lead us far
from the life of Sir Thomas More. ... All these proceedings
terminated in the sentence of nullity in the case of Henry's
marriage with Catherine, pronounced by Cranmer, the espousal
of Anne Boleyn by the king, and the rejection of the papal
jurisdiction by the kingdom, which still, however, adhered to
the doctrines of the Roman catholic church. The situation of
More during a great part of these memorable events was
embarrassing. The great offices to which he was raised by the
king, the personal favour hitherto constantly shown to him,
and the natural tendency of his gentle and quiet disposition,
combined to disincline him to resistance against the wishes of
his friendly master. On the other hand, his growing dread and
horror of heresy, with its train of disorders; his belief that
universal anarchy would be the inevitable result of religious
dissension, and the operation of seven years' controversy for
the Catholic church, in heating his mind on all subjects
involving the extent of her authority, made him recoil from
designs which were visibly tending towards disunion with the
Roman pontiff. ... Henry used every means of procuring an
opinion favourable to his wishes from his chancellor, who
excused himself as unmeet for such matters, having never
professed the study of divinity. ... But when the progress
towards the marriage was so far advanced that he saw how soon
the active co-operation of a chancellor must be required, he
made suit to 'his singular dear friend,' the duke of Norfolk,
to procure his discharge from this office. The duke, often
solicited by More, then obtained, by importunate suit, a clear
discharge for the chancellor. ... The king directed Norfolk,
when he installed his successor, to declare publicly, that his
majesty had with pain yielded to the prayers of sir Thomas
More, by the removal of such a magistrate. .... It must be
owned that Henry felt the weight of this great man's opinion,
and tried every possible means to obtain at least the
appearance of his spontaneous approbation. ... The king ...
sent the archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor, the duke of
Norfolk, and Cromwell, to attempt the conversion of More.
Audley reminded More of the king's special favour and many
benefits. More admitted them; but modestly added, that his
highness had most graciously declared that on this matter More
should be molested no more.
{829}
When in the end they saw that no persuasion could move him,
they then said, 'that the king's highness had given them in
commandment, if they could by no gentleness win him, in the
king's name with ingratitude to charge him, that never was
servant to his master so villainous, nor subject to his prince
so traitorous as he.'. . . By a tyrannical edict, mis-called a
law, in the same session of 1533-4, it was made high treason,
after the 1st of May, 1534, by writing, print, deed, or act,
to do or to procure, or cause to be done or procured, anything
to the prejudice, slander, disturbance, or derogation of the
king's lawful matrimony with queen Anne. If the same offences
were committed by words, they were only misprision. The same
act enjoined all persons to take an oath to maintain the whole
contents of the statute, and an obstinate refusal to make such
oath was subjected to the penalties of misprision. ... Sir T.
More was summoned to appear before these commissioners at
Lambeth, on Monday the 13th of April, 1534. ... After having
read the statute and the form of the oath, he declared his
readiness to swear that he would maintain and defend the order
of succession to the crown as established by parliament. He
disclaimed all censure of those who had imposed, or on those
who had taken, the oath, but declared it to be impossible that
he should swear to the whole contents of it, without offending
against his own conscience. ... He never more returned to his
house, being committed to the custody of the abbot of
Westminster, in which he continued four days; and at the end
of that time he was conveyed to the Tower on Friday the 17th
of April, 1534. ... On the 6th of May, 1535, almost
immediately after the defeat of every attempt to practise on
his firmness, More was brought to trial at Westminster, and it
will scarcely be doubted, that no such culprit stood at any
European bar for a thousand years. ... It is lamentable that
the records of the proceedings against such a man should be
scanty. We do not certainly know the specific offence of which
he was convicted. ... On Tuesday, the 6th of July (St.
Thomas's eve), 1535, sir Thomas Pope, 'his singular good
friend,' came to him early with a message from the king and
council, to say that he should die before nine o'clock of the
same morning. ... The lieutenant brought him to the scaffold,
which was so weak that it was ready to fall, on which he said,
merrily, 'Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up, and
for my coming down let me shift for myself.' When he laid his
head on the block he desired the executioner to wait till he
had removed his beard, for that had never offended his
highness."
Sir J. Mackintosh,
Sir Thomas More
(Cabinet Cyclopedia:
Eminent British Statesmen, volume 1).
ALSO IN:
S. R. Gardiner,
Historical Biographies,
chapter 3.
T. E. Bridgett,
Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More,
chapters 12-24.
S. H. Burke,
Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty,
volume 1, chapter 29.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1531-1563,
The genesis of the Church of England.
"Henry VIII. attempted to constitute an Anglican Church
differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the
supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this
attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the
singularly favorable situation in which he stood with respect
to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of
the ah beys placed at his disposal, and the support of that
class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to
bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics
those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as
traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But
Henry's system died with him. Had his life been prolonged, he
would have found it difficult to maintain a position assailed
with equal fury by all who were zealous either for the new or
for the old opinions. The ministers who held the royal
prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to
persist in so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture
to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The
government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain the aid
of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had
only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The
English reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on
the Continent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian
numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly
adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned. Many felt
a strong repugnance even to things indifferent which had
formed part of the polity or ritual of the mystical Babylon.
Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester for his
religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop
Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the
ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be
administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the
Papists irreverently termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel
pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a fool's
coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would
spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities.
Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from
dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration.
Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of
England would propose to herself the Church of Zurich as the
absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop Ponet was of
opinion that the word Bishop should be abandoned to the
Papist, and that the chief officers of the purified church
should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that
none of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the
Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general
sense of that party had been followed, the work of reform
would have been carried on as unsparingly in England as in
Scotland. But, as the government needed the support of the
Protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the
government. Much was therefore given up on both sides: an
union was effected; and the fruit of that union was the Church
of England."
Lord Macaulay,
History of England,
chapter 1.
"The Reformation in England was, singular amongst the great
religious movements of the sixteenth century. It was the least
heroic of them all--the least swayed by religious passion, or
moulded and governed by spiritual and theological necessities.
From a general point of view, it looks at first little more