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diff --git a/20897-8.txt b/20897-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3c5693e --- /dev/null +++ b/20897-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5792 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Short History of England, by G. K. +Chesterton + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: A Short History of England + + +Author: G. K. Chesterton + + + +Release Date: March 25, 2007 [eBook #20897] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND*** + + +E-text prepared by Sigal Alon, Martin Pettit, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from digital +material generously made available by Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries +(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto) + + + +Note: Images of the original pages are available through + Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See + http://www.archive.org/details/ashorthistory00chesuoft + + + + + +A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND + +by + +G. K. CHESTERTON + + + + + + + +London +Chatto & Windus +MCMXVII + +Printed in England by +William Clowes and Sons, Limited, +London and Beccles. +All rights reserved + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + I. INTRODUCTION 1 + + II. THE PROVINCE OF BRITAIN 6 + + III. THE AGE OF LEGENDS 19 + + IV. THE DEFEAT OF THE BARBARIANS 30 + + V. ST. EDWARD AND THE NORMAN KINGS 43 + + VI. THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES 58 + + VII. THE PROBLEM OF THE PLANTAGENETS 71 + + VIII. THE MEANING OF MERRY ENGLAND 86 + + IX. NATIONALITY AND THE FRENCH WARS 104 + + X. THE WAR OF THE USURPERS 119 + + XI. THE REBELLION OF THE RICH 133 + + XII. SPAIN AND THE SCHISM OF NATIONS 151 + + XIII. THE AGE OF THE PURITANS 163 + + XIV. THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHIGS 179 + + XV. THE WAR WITH THE GREAT REPUBLICS 195 + + XVI. ARISTOCRACY AND THE DISCONTENTS 209 + + XVII. THE RETURN OF THE BARBARIAN 223 + +XVIII. CONCLUSION 238 + + + + +A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND + + + + +I + +INTRODUCTION + + +It will be very reasonably asked why I should consent, though upon a +sort of challenge, to write even a popular essay in English history, who +make no pretence to particular scholarship and am merely a member of the +public. The answer is that I know just enough to know one thing: that a +history from the standpoint of a member of the public has not been +written. What we call the popular histories should rather be called the +anti-popular histories. They are all, nearly without exception, written +against the people; and in them the populace is either ignored or +elaborately proved to have been wrong. It is true that Green called his +book "A Short History of the English People"; but he seems to have +thought it too short for the people to be properly mentioned. For +instance, he calls one very large part of his story "Puritan England." +But England never was Puritan. It would have been almost as unfair to +call the rise of Henry of Navarre "Puritan France." And some of our +extreme Whig historians would have been pretty nearly capable of calling +the campaign of Wexford and Drogheda "Puritan Ireland." + +But it is especially in the matter of the Middle Ages that the popular +histories trample upon the popular traditions. In this respect there is +an almost comic contrast between the general information provided about +England in the last two or three centuries, in which its present +industrial system was being built up, and the general information given +about the preceding centuries, which we call broadly mediæval. Of the +sort of waxwork history which is thought sufficient for the side-show of +the age of abbots and crusaders, a small instance will be sufficient. A +popular Encyclopædia appeared some years ago, professing among other +things to teach English History to the masses; and in this I came upon a +series of pictures of the English kings. No one could expect them to be +all authentic; but the interest attached to those that were necessarily +imaginary. There is much vivid material in contemporary literature for +portraits of men like Henry II. or Edward I.; but this did not seem to +have been found, or even sought. And wandering to the image that stood +for Stephen of Blois, my eye was staggered by a gentleman with one of +those helmets with steel brims curved like a crescent, which went with +the age of ruffs and trunk-hose. I am tempted to suspect that the head +was that of a halberdier at some such scene as the execution of Mary +Queen of Scots. But he had a helmet; and helmets were mediæval; and any +old helmet was good enough for Stephen. + +Now suppose the readers of that work of reference had looked for the +portrait of Charles I. and found the head of a policeman. Suppose it had +been taken, modern helmet and all, out of some snapshot in the _Daily +Sketch_ of the arrest of Mrs. Pankhurst. I think we may go so far as to +say that the readers would have refused to accept it as a lifelike +portrait of Charles I. They would have formed the opinion that there +must be some mistake. Yet the time that elapsed between Stephen and Mary +was much longer than the time that has elapsed between Charles and +ourselves. The revolution in human society between the first of the +Crusades and the last of the Tudors was immeasurably more colossal and +complete than any change between Charles and ourselves. And, above all, +that revolution should be the first thing and the final thing in +anything calling itself a popular history. For it is the story of how +our populace gained great things, but to-day has lost everything. + +Now I will modestly maintain that I know more about English history than +this; and that I have as much right to make a popular summary of it as +the gentleman who made the crusader and the halberdier change hats. But +the curious and arresting thing about the neglect, one might say the +omission, of mediæval civilization in such histories as this, lies in +the fact I have already noted. It is exactly the popular story that is +left out of the popular history. For instance, even a working man, a +carpenter or cooper or bricklayer, has been taught about the Great +Charter, as something like the Great Auk, save that its almost monstrous +solitude came from being before its time instead of after. He was not +taught that the whole stuff of the Middle Ages was stiff with the +parchment of charters; that society was once a system of charters, and +of a kind much more interesting to him. The carpenter heard of one +charter given to barons, and chiefly in the interest of barons; the +carpenter did not hear of any of the charters given to carpenters, to +coopers, to all the people like himself. Or, to take another instance, +the boy and girl reading the stock simplified histories of the schools +practically never heard of such a thing as a burgher, until he appears +in a shirt with a noose round his neck. They certainly do not imagine +anything of what he meant in the Middle Ages. And Victorian shopkeepers +did not conceive themselves as taking part in any such romance as the +adventure of Courtrai, where the mediæval shopkeepers more than won +their spurs--for they won the spurs of their enemies. + +I have a very simple motive and excuse for telling the little I know of +this true tale. I have met in my wanderings a man brought up in the +lower quarters of a great house, fed mainly on its leavings and burdened +mostly with its labours. I know that his complaints are stilled, and +his status justified, by a story that is told to him. It is about how +his grandfather was a chimpanzee and his father a wild man of the woods, +caught by hunters and tamed into something like intelligence. In the +light of this, he may well be thankful for the almost human life that he +enjoys; and may be content with the hope of leaving behind him a yet +more evolved animal. Strangely enough, the calling of this story by the +sacred name of Progress ceased to satisfy me when I began to suspect +(and to discover) that it is not true. I know by now enough at least of +his origin to know that he was not evolved, but simply disinherited. His +family tree is not a monkey tree, save in the sense that no monkey could +have climbed it; rather it is like that tree torn up by the roots and +named "Dedischado," on the shield of the unknown knight. + + + + +II + +THE PROVINCE OF BRITAIN + + +The land on which we live once had the highly poetic privilege of being +the end of the world. Its extremity was _ultima Thule_, the other end of +nowhere. When these islands, lost in a night of northern seas, were lit +up at last by the long searchlights of Rome, it was felt that the +remotest remnant of things had been touched; and more for pride than +possession. + +The sentiment was not unsuitable, even in geography. About these realms +upon the edge of everything there was really something that can only be +called edgy. Britain is not so much an island as an archipelago; it is +at least a labyrinth of peninsulas. In few of the kindred countries can +one so easily and so strangely find sea in the fields or fields in the +sea. The great rivers seem not only to meet in the ocean, but barely to +miss each other in the hills: the whole land, though low as a whole, +leans towards the west in shouldering mountains; and a prehistoric +tradition has taught it to look towards the sunset for islands yet +dreamier than its own. The islanders are of a kind with their islands. +Different as are the nations into which they are now divided, the +Scots, the English, the Irish, the Welsh of the western uplands, have +something altogether different from the humdrum docility of the inland +Germans, or from the _bon sens français_ which can be at will trenchant +or trite. There is something common to all the Britons, which even Acts +of Union have not torn asunder. The nearest name for it is insecurity, +something fitting in men walking on cliffs and the verge of things. +Adventure, a lonely taste in liberty, a humour without wit, perplex +their critics and perplex themselves. Their souls are fretted like their +coasts. They have an embarrassment, noted by all foreigners: it is +expressed, perhaps, in the Irish by a confusion of speech and in the +English by a confusion of thought. For the Irish bull is a license with +the symbol of language. But Bull's own bull, the English bull, is "a +dumb ox of thought"; a standing mystification in the mind. There is +something double in the thoughts as of the soul mirrored in many waters. +Of all peoples they are least attached to the purely classical; the +imperial plainness which the French do finely and the Germans coarsely, +but the Britons hardly at all. They are constantly colonists and +emigrants; they have the name of being at home in every country. But +they are in exile in their own country. They are torn between love of +home and love of something else; of which the sea may be the explanation +or may be only the symbol. It is also found in a nameless nursery rhyme +which is the finest line in English literature and the dumb refrain of +all English poems--"Over the hills and far away." + +The great rationalist hero who first conquered Britain, whether or no he +was the detached demigod of "Cæsar and Cleopatra," was certainly a Latin +of the Latins, and described these islands when he found them with all +the curt positivism of his pen of steel. But even Julius Cæsar's brief +account of the Britons leaves on us something of this mystery, which is +more than ignorance of fact. They were apparently ruled by that terrible +thing, a pagan priesthood. Stones now shapeless yet arranged in symbolic +shapes bear witness to the order and labour of those that lifted them. +Their worship was probably Nature-worship; and while such a basis may +count for something in the elemental quality that has always soaked the +island arts, the collision between it and the tolerant Empire suggests +the presence of something which generally grows out of Nature-worship--I +mean the unnatural. But upon nearly all the matters of modern +controversy Cæsar is silent. He is silent about whether the language was +"Celtic"; and some of the place-names have even given rise to a +suggestion that, in parts at least, it was already Teutonic. I am not +capable of pronouncing upon the truth of such speculations, but I am of +pronouncing upon their importance; at least, to my own very simple +purpose. And indeed their importance has been very much exaggerated. +Cæsar professed to give no more than the glimpse of a traveller; but +when, some considerable time after, the Romans returned and turned +Britain into a Roman province, they continued to display a singular +indifference to questions that have excited so many professors. What +they cared about was getting and giving in Britain what they had got and +given in Gaul. We do not know whether the Britons then, or for that +matter the Britons now, were Iberian or Cymric or Teutonic. We do know +that in a short time they were Roman. + +Every now and then there is discovered in modern England some fragment +such as a Roman pavement. Such Roman antiquities rather diminish than +increase the Roman reality. They make something seem distant which is +still very near, and something seem dead that is still alive. It is like +writing a man's epitaph on his front door. The epitaph would probably be +a compliment, but hardly a personal introduction. The important thing +about France and England is not that they have Roman remains. They are +Roman remains. In truth they are not so much remains as relics; for they +are still working miracles. A row of poplars is a more Roman relic than +a row of pillars. Nearly all that we call the works of nature have but +grown like fungoids upon this original work of man; and our woods are +mosses on the bones of a giant. Under the seed of our harvests and the +roots of our trees is a foundation of which the fragments of tile and +brick are but emblems; and under the colours of our wildest flowers are +the colours of a Roman pavement. + +Britain was directly Roman for fully four hundred years; longer than she +has been Protestant, and very much longer than she has been industrial. +What was meant by being Roman it is necessary in a few lines to say, or +no sense can be made of what happened after, especially of what happened +immediately after. Being Roman did _not_ mean being subject, in the +sense that one savage tribe will enslave another, or in the sense that +the cynical politicians of recent times watched with a horrible +hopefulness for the evanescence of the Irish. Both conquerors and +conquered were heathen, and both had the institutions which seem to us +to give an inhumanity to heathenism: the triumph, the slave-market, the +lack of all the sensitive nationalism of modern history. But the Roman +Empire did not destroy nations; if anything, it created them. Britons +were not originally proud of being Britons; but they were proud of being +Romans. The Roman steel was at least as much a magnet as a sword. In +truth it was rather a round mirror of steel, in which every people came +to see itself. For Rome as Rome the very smallness of the civic origin +was a warrant for the largeness of the civic experiment. Rome itself +obviously could not rule the world, any more than Rutland. I mean it +could not rule the other races as the Spartans ruled the Helots or the +Americans ruled the negroes. A machine so huge had to be human; it had +to have a handle that fitted any man's hand. The Roman Empire +necessarily became less Roman as it became more of an Empire; until not +very long after Rome gave conquerors to Britain, Britain was giving +emperors to Rome. Out of Britain, as the Britons boasted, came at length +the great Empress Helena, who was the mother of Constantine. And it was +Constantine, as all men know, who first nailed up that proclamation +which all after generations have in truth been struggling either to +protect or to tear down. + +About that revolution no man has ever been able to be impartial. The +present writer will make no idle pretence of being so. That it was the +most revolutionary of all revolutions, since it identified the dead body +on a servile gibbet with the fatherhood in the skies, has long been a +commonplace without ceasing to be a paradox. But there is another +historic element that must also be realized. Without saying anything +more of its tremendous essence, it is very necessary to note why even +pre-Christian Rome was regarded as something mystical for long +afterwards by all European men. The extreme view of it was held, +perhaps, by Dante; but it pervaded mediævalism, and therefore still +haunts modernity. Rome was regarded as Man, mighty, though fallen, +because it was the utmost that Man had done. It was divinely necessary +that the Roman Empire should succeed--if only that it might fail. Hence +the school of Dante implied the paradox that the Roman soldiers killed +Christ, not only by right, but even by divine right. That mere law +might fail at its highest test it had to be real law, and not mere +military lawlessness. Therefore God worked by Pilate as by Peter. +Therefore the mediæval poet is eager to show that Roman government was +simply good government, and not a usurpation. For it was the whole point +of the Christian revolution to maintain that in this, good government +was as bad as bad. Even good government was not good enough to know God +among the thieves. This is not only generally important as involving a +colossal change in the conscience; the loss of the whole heathen repose +in the complete sufficiency of the city or the state. It made a sort of +eternal rule enclosing an eternal rebellion. It must be incessantly +remembered through the first half of English history; for it is the +whole meaning in the quarrel of the priests and kings. + +The double rule of the civilization and the religion in one sense +remained for centuries; and before its first misfortunes came it must be +conceived as substantially the same everywhere. And however it began it +largely ended in equality. Slavery certainly existed, as it had in the +most democratic states of ancient times. Harsh officialism certainly +existed, as it exists in the most democratic states of modern times. But +there was nothing of what we mean in modern times by aristocracy, still +less of what we mean by racial domination. In so far as any change was +passing over that society with its two levels of equal citizens and +equal slaves, it was only the slow growth of the power of the Church at +the expense of the power of the Empire. Now it is important to grasp +that the great exception to equality, the institution of Slavery, was +slowly modified by both causes. It was weakened both by the weakening of +the Empire and by the strengthening of the Church. + +Slavery was for the Church not a difficulty of doctrine, but a strain on +the imagination. Aristotle and the pagan sages who had defined the +servile or "useful" arts, had regarded the slave as a tool, an axe to +cut wood or whatever wanted cutting. The Church did not denounce the +cutting; but she felt as if she was cutting glass with a diamond. She +was haunted by the memory that the diamond is so much more precious than +the glass. So Christianity could not settle down into the pagan +simplicity that the man was made for the work, when the work was so much +less immortally momentous than the man. At about this stage of a history +of England there is generally told the anecdote of a pun of Gregory the +Great; and this is perhaps the true point of it. By the Roman theory the +barbarian bondmen were meant to be useful. The saint's mysticism was +moved at finding them ornamental; and "Non Angli sed Angeli" meant more +nearly "Not slaves, but souls." It is to the point, in passing, to note +that in the modern country most collectively Christian, Russia, the +serfs were always referred to as "souls." The great Pope's phrase, +hackneyed as it is, is perhaps the first glimpse of the golden halos in +the best Christian Art. Thus the Church, with whatever other faults, +worked of her own nature towards greater social equality; and it is a +historical error to suppose that the Church hierarchy worked with +aristocracies, or was of a kind with them. It was an inversion of +aristocracy; in the ideal of it, at least, the last were to be first. +The Irish bull that "One man is as good as another and a great deal +better" contains a truth, like many contradictions; a truth that was the +link between Christianity and citizenship. Alone of all superiors, the +saint does not depress the human dignity of others. He is not conscious +of his superiority to them; but only more conscious of his inferiority +than they are. + +But while a million little priests and monks like mice were already +nibbling at the bonds of the ancient servitude, another process was +going on, which has here been called the weakening of the Empire. It is +a process which is to this day very difficult to explain. But it +affected all the institutions of all the provinces, especially the +institution of Slavery. But of all the provinces its effect was heaviest +in Britain, which lay on or beyond the borders. The case of Britain, +however, cannot possibly be considered alone. The first half of English +history has been made quite unmeaning in the schools by the attempt to +tell it without reference to that corporate Christendom in which it took +part and pride. I fully accept the truth in Mr. Kipling's question of +"What can they know of England who only England know?" and merely differ +from the view that they will best broaden their minds by the study of +Wagga-Wagga and Timbuctoo. It is therefore necessary, though very +difficult, to frame in few words some idea of what happened to the whole +European race. + +Rome itself, which had made all that strong world, was the weakest thing +in it. The centre had been growing fainter and fainter, and now the +centre disappeared. Rome had as much freed the world as ruled it, and +now she could rule no more. Save for the presence of the Pope and his +constantly increasing supernatural prestige, the eternal city became +like one of her own provincial towns. A loose localism was the result +rather than any conscious intellectual mutiny. There was anarchy, but +there was no rebellion. For rebellion must have a principle, and +therefore (for those who can think) an authority. Gibbon called his +great pageant of prose "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire." The +Empire did decline, but it did not fall. It remains to this hour. + +By a process very much more indirect even than that of the Church, this +decentralization and drift also worked against the slave-state of +antiquity. The localism did indeed produce that choice of territorial +chieftains which came to be called Feudalism, and of which we shall +speak later. But the direct possession of man by man the same localism +tended to destroy; though this negative influence upon it bears no kind +of proportion to the positive influence of the Catholic Church. The +later pagan slavery, like our own industrial labour which increasingly +resembles it, was worked on a larger and larger scale; and it was at +last too large to control. The bondman found the visible Lord more +distant than the new invisible one. The slave became the serf; that is, +he could be shut in, but not shut out. When once he belonged to the +land, it could not be long before the land belonged to him. Even in the +old and rather fictitious language of chattel slavery, there is here a +difference. It is the difference between a man being a chair and a man +being a house. Canute might call for his throne; but if he wanted his +throne-room he must go and get it himself. Similarly, he could tell his +slave to run, but he could only tell his serf to stay. Thus the two slow +changes of the time both tended to transform the tool into a man. His +status began to have roots; and whatever has roots will have rights. + +What the decline did involve everywhere was decivilization; the loss of +letters, of laws, of roads and means of communication, the exaggeration +of local colour into caprice. But on the edges of the Empire this +decivilization became a definite barbarism, owing to the nearness of +wild neighbours who were ready to destroy as deafly and blindly as +things are destroyed by fire. Save for the lurid and apocalyptic +locust-flight of the Huns, it is perhaps an exaggeration to talk, even +in those darkest ages, of a deluge of the barbarians; at least when we +are speaking of the old civilization as a whole. But a deluge of +barbarians is not entirely an exaggeration of what happened on some of +the borders of the Empire; of such edges of the known world as we began +by describing in these pages. And on the extreme edge of the world lay +Britain. + +It may be true, though there is little proof of it, that the Roman +civilization itself was thinner in Britain than in the other provinces; +but it was a very civilized civilization. It gathered round the great +cities like York and Chester and London; for the cities are older than +the counties, and indeed older even than the countries. These were +connected by a skeleton of great roads which were and are the bones of +Britain. But with the weakening of Rome the bones began to break under +barbarian pressure, coming at first from the north; from the Picts who +lay beyond Agricola's boundary in what is now the Scotch Lowlands. The +whole of this bewildering time is full of temporary tribal alliances, +generally mercenary; of barbarians paid to come on or barbarians paid to +go away. It seems certain that in this welter Roman Britain bought help +from ruder races living about that neck of Denmark where is now the +duchy of Schleswig. Having been chosen only to fight somebody they +naturally fought anybody; and a century of fighting followed, under the +trampling of which the Roman pavement was broken into yet smaller +pieces. It is perhaps permissible to disagree with the historian Green +when he says that no spot should be more sacred to modern Englishmen +than the neighbourhood of Ramsgate, where the Schleswig people are +supposed to have landed; or when he suggests that their appearance is +the real beginning of our island story. It would be rather more true to +say that it was nearly, though prematurely, the end of it. + + + + +III + +THE AGE OF LEGENDS + + +We should be startled if we were quietly reading a prosaic modern novel, +and somewhere in the middle it turned without warning into a fairy tale. +We should be surprised if one of the spinsters in _Cranford_, after +tidily sweeping the room with a broom, were to fly away on a broomstick. +Our attention would be arrested if one of Jane Austen's young ladies who +had just met a dragoon were to walk a little further and meet a dragon. +Yet something very like this extraordinary transition takes place in +British history at the end of the purely Roman period. We have to do +with rational and almost mechanical accounts of encampment and +engineering, of a busy bureaucracy and occasional frontier wars, quite +modern in their efficiency and inefficiency; and then all of a sudden we +are reading of wandering bells and wizard lances, of wars against men as +tall as trees or as short as toadstools. The soldier of civilization is +no longer fighting with Goths but with goblins; the land becomes a +labyrinth of faërie towns unknown to history; and scholars can suggest +but cannot explain how a Roman ruler or a Welsh chieftain towers up in +the twilight as the awful and unbegotten Arthur. The scientific age +comes first and the mythological age after it. One working example, the +echoes of which lingered till very late in English literature, may serve +to sum up the contrast. The British state which was found by Cæsar was +long believed to have been founded by Brutus. The contrast between the +one very dry discovery and the other very fantastic foundation has +something decidedly comic about it; as if Cæsar's "Et tu, Brute," might +be translated, "What, _you_ here?" But in one respect the fable is quite +as important as the fact. They both testify to the reality of the Roman +foundation of our insular society, and show that even the stories that +seem prehistoric are seldom pre-Roman. When England is Elfland, the +elves are not the Angles. All the phrases that can be used as clues +through that tangle of traditions are more or less Latin phrases. And in +all our speech there was no word more Roman than "romance." + +The Roman legions left Britain in the fourth century. This did not mean +that the Roman civilization left it; but it did mean that the +civilization lay far more open both to admixture and attack. +Christianity had almost certainly come to Britain, not indeed otherwise +than by the routes established by Rome, but certainly long before the +official Roman mission of Gregory the Great. It had certainly been +largely swamped by later heathen invasions of the undefended coasts. It +may then rationally be urged that the hold both of the Empire and its +new religion were here weaker than elsewhere, and that the description +of the general civilization in the last chapter is proportionately +irrelevant. This, however, is not the chief truth of the matter. + +There is one fundamental fact which must be understood of the whole of +this period. Yet a modern man must very nearly turn his mind upside down +to understand it. Almost every modern man has in his head an association +between freedom and the future. The whole culture of our time has been +full of the notion of "A Good Time Coming." Now the whole culture of the +Dark Ages was full of the notion of "A Good Time Going." They looked +backwards to old enlightenment and forwards to new prejudices. In our +time there has come a quarrel between faith and hope--which perhaps must +be healed by charity. But they were situated otherwise. They hoped--but +it may be said that they hoped for yesterday. All the motives that make +a man a progressive now made a man a conservative then. The more he +could keep of the past the more he had of a fair law and a free state; +the more he gave way to the future the more he must endure of ignorance +and privilege. All we call reason was one with all we call reaction. And +this is the clue which we must carry with us through the lives of all +the great men of the Dark Ages; of Alfred, of Bede, of Dunstan. If the +most extreme modern Republican were put back in that period he would be +an equally extreme Papist or even Imperialist. For the Pope was what was +left of the Empire; and the Empire what was left of the Republic. + +We may compare the man of that time, therefore, to one who has left free +cities and even free fields behind him, and is forced to advance towards +a forest. And the forest is the fittest metaphor, not only because it +was really that wild European growth cloven here and there by the Roman +roads, but also because there has always been associated with forests +another idea which increased as the Roman order decayed. The idea of the +forests was the idea of enchantment. There was a notion of things being +double or different from themselves, of beasts behaving like men and not +merely, as modern wits would say, of men behaving like beasts. But it is +precisely here that it is most necessary to remember that an age of +reason had preceded the age of magic. The central pillar which has +sustained the storied house of our imagination ever since has been the +idea of the civilized knight amid the savage enchantments; the +adventures of a man still sane in a world gone mad. + +The next thing to note in the matter is this: that in this barbaric time +none of the _heroes_ are barbaric. They are only heroes if they are +anti-barbaric. Men real or mythical, or more probably both, became +omnipresent like gods among the people, and forced themselves into the +faintest memory and the shortest record, exactly in proportion as they +had mastered the heathen madness of the time and preserved the Christian +rationality that had come from Rome. Arthur has his name because he +killed the heathen; the heathen who killed him have no names at all. +Englishmen who know nothing of English history, but less than nothing of +Irish history, have heard somehow or other of Brian Boru, though they +spell it Boroo and seem to be under the impression that it is a joke. It +is a joke the subtlety of which they would never have been able to +enjoy, if King Brian had not broken the heathen in Ireland at the great +Battle of Clontarf. The ordinary English reader would never have heard +of Olaf of Norway if he had not "preached the Gospel with his sword"; or +of the Cid if he had not fought against the Crescent. And though Alfred +the Great seems to have deserved his title even as a personality, he was +not so great as the work he had to do. + +But the paradox remains that Arthur is more real than Alfred. For the +age is the age of legends. Towards these legends most men adopt by +instinct a sane attitude; and, of the two, credulity is certainly much +more sane than incredulity. It does not much matter whether most of the +stories are true; and (as in such cases as Bacon and Shakespeare) to +realize that the question does not matter is the first step towards +answering it correctly. But before the reader dismisses anything like an +attempt to tell the earlier history of the country by its legends, he +will do well to keep two principles in mind, both of them tending to +correct the crude and very thoughtless scepticism which has made this +part of the story so sterile. The nineteenth-century historians went on +the curious principle of dismissing all people of whom tales are told, +and concentrating upon people of whom nothing is told. Thus, Arthur is +made utterly impersonal because all legends are lies, but somebody of +the type of Hengist is made quite an important personality, merely +because nobody thought him important enough to lie about. Now this is to +reverse all common sense. A great many witty sayings are attributed to +Talleyrand which were really said by somebody else. But they would not +be so attributed if Talleyrand had been a fool, still less if he had +been a fable. That fictitious stories are told about a person is, nine +times out of ten, extremely good evidence that there was somebody to +tell them about. Indeed some allow that marvellous things were done, and +that there may have been a man named Arthur at the time in which they +were done; but here, so far as I am concerned, the distinction becomes +rather dim. I do not understand the attitude which holds that there was +an Ark and a man named Noah, but cannot believe in the existence of +Noah's Ark. + +The other fact to be remembered is that scientific research for the last +few years has worked steadily in the direction of confirming and not +dissipating the legends of the populace. To take only the obvious +instance, modern excavators with modern spades have found a solid stone +labyrinth in Crete, like that associated with the Minataur, which was +conceived as being as cloudy a fable as the Chimera. To most people this +would have seemed quite as frantic as finding the roots of Jack's +Beanstalk or the skeletons in Bluebeard's cupboard, yet it is simply the +fact. Finally, a truth is to be remembered which scarcely ever is +remembered in estimating the past. It is the paradox that the past is +always present: yet it is not what was, but whatever seems to have been; +for all the past is a part of faith. What did they believe of their +fathers? In this matter new discoveries are useless because they are +new. We may find men wrong in what they thought they were, but we cannot +find them wrong in what they thought they thought. It is therefore very +practical to put in a few words, if possible, something of what a man of +these islands in the Dark Ages would have said about his ancestors and +his inheritance. I will attempt here to put some of the simpler things +in their order of importance as he would have seen them; and if we are +to understand our fathers who first made this country anything like +itself, it is most important that we should remember that if this was +not their real past, it was their real memory. + +After that blessed crime, as the wit of mystics called it, which was for +these men hardly second to the creation of the world, St. Joseph of +Arimathea, one of the few followers of the new religion who seem to +have been wealthy, set sail as a missionary, and after long voyages came +to that litter of little islands which seemed to the men of the +Mediterranean something like the last clouds of the sunset. He came up +upon the western and wilder side of that wild and western land, and made +his way to a valley which through all the oldest records is called +Avalon. Something of rich rains and warmth in its westland meadows, or +something in some lost pagan traditions about it, made it persistently +regarded as a kind of Earthly Paradise. Arthur, after being slain at +Lyonesse, is carried here, as if to heaven. Here the pilgrim planted his +staff in the soil; and it took root as a tree that blossoms on Christmas +Day. + +A mystical materialism marked Christianity from its birth; the very soul +of it was a body. Among the stoical philosophies and oriental negations +that were its first foes it fought fiercely and particularly for a +supernatural freedom to cure concrete maladies by concrete substances. +Hence the scattering of relics was everywhere like the scattering of +seed. All who took their mission from the divine tragedy bore tangible +fragments which became the germs of churches and cities. St. Joseph +carried the cup which held the wine of the Last Supper and the blood of +the Crucifixion to that shrine in Avalon which we now call Glastonbury; +and it became the heart of a whole universe of legends and romances, not +only for Britain but for Europe. Throughout this tremendous and +branching tradition it is called the Holy Grail. The vision of it was +especially the reward of that ring of powerful paladins whom King Arthur +feasted at a Round Table, a symbol of heroic comradeship such as was +afterwards imitated or invented by mediæval knighthood. Both the cup and +the table are of vast importance emblematically in the psychology of the +chivalric experiment. The idea of a round table is not merely +universality but equality. It has in it, modified of course, by other +tendencies to differentiation, the same idea that exists in the very +word "peers," as given to the knights of Charlemagne. In this the Round +Table is as Roman as the round arch, which might also serve as a type; +for instead of being one barbaric rock merely rolled on the others, the +king was rather the keystone of an arch. But to this tradition of a +level of dignity was added something unearthly that was from Rome, but +not of it; the privilege that inverted all privileges; the glimpse of +heaven which seemed almost as capricious as fairyland; the flying +chalice which was veiled from the highest of all the heroes, and which +appeared to one knight who was hardly more than a child. + +Rightly or wrongly, this romance established Britain for after centuries +as a country with a chivalrous past. Britain had been a mirror of +universal knighthood. This fact, or fancy, is of colossal import in all +ensuing affairs, especially the affairs of barbarians. These and +numberless other local legends are indeed for us buried by the forests +of popular fancies that have grown out of them. It is all the harder for +the serious modern mind because our fathers felt at home with these +tales, and therefore took liberties with them. Probably the rhyme which +runs, + + + "When good King Arthur ruled this land + He was a noble king, + He stole three pecks of barley meal," + + +is much nearer the true mediæval note than the aristocratic stateliness +of Tennyson. But about all these grotesques of the popular fancy there +is one last thing to be remembered. It must especially be remembered by +those who would dwell exclusively on documents, and take no note of +tradition at all. Wild as would be the results of credulity concerning +all the old wives' tales, it would not be so wild as the errors that can +arise from trusting to written evidence when there is not enough of it. +Now the whole written evidence for the first parts of our history would +go into a small book. A very few details are mentioned, and none are +explained. A fact thus standing alone, without the key of contemporary +thought, may be very much more misleading than any fable. To know what +word an archaic scribe wrote without being sure of what thing he meant, +may produce a result that is literally mad. Thus, for instance, it would +be unwise to accept literally the tale that St. Helena was not only a +native of Colchester, but was a daughter of Old King Cole. But it would +not be very unwise; not so unwise as some things that are deduced from +documents. The natives of Colchester certainly did honour to St. Helena, +and might have had a king named Cole. According to the more serious +story, the saint's father was an innkeeper; and the only recorded action +of Cole is well within the resources of that calling. It would not be +nearly so unwise as to deduce from the written word, as some critic of +the future may do, that the natives of Colchester were oysters. + + + + +IV + +THE DEFEAT OF THE BARBARIANS + + +It is a quaint accident that we employ the word "short-sighted" as a +condemnation; but not the word "long-sighted," which we should probably +use, if at all, as a compliment. Yet the one is as much a malady of +vision as the other. We rightly say, in rebuke of a small-minded +modernity, that it is very short-sighted to be indifferent to all that +is historic. But it is as disastrously long-sighted to be interested +only in what is prehistoric. And this disaster has befallen a large +proportion of the learned who grope in the darkness of unrecorded epochs +for the roots of their favourite race or races. The wars, the +enslavements, the primitive marriage customs, the colossal migrations +and massacres upon which their theories repose, are no part of history +or even of legend. And rather than trust with entire simplicity to these +it would be infinitely wiser to trust to legend of the loosest and most +local sort. In any case, it is as well to record even so simple a +conclusion as that what is prehistoric is unhistorical. + +But there is another way in which common sense can be brought to the +criticism of some prodigious racial theories. To employ the same +figure, suppose the scientific historians explain the historic centuries +in terms of a prehistoric division between short-sighted and +long-sighted men. They could cite their instances and illustrations. +They would certainly explain the curiosity of language I mentioned +first, as showing that the short-sighted were the conquered race, and +their name therefore a term of contempt. They could give us very graphic +pictures of the rude tribal war. They could show how the long-sighted +people were always cut to pieces in hand-to-hand struggles with axe and +knife; until, with the invention of bows and arrows, the advantage +veered to the long-sighted, and their enemies were shot down in droves. +I could easily write a ruthless romance about it, and still more easily +a ruthless anthropological theory. According to that thesis which refers +all moral to material changes, they could explain the tradition that old +people grow conservative in politics by the well-known fact that old +people grow more long-sighted. But I think there might be one thing +about this theory which would stump us, and might even, if it be +possible, stump them. Suppose it were pointed out that through all the +three thousand years of recorded history, abounding in literature of +every conceivable kind, there was not so much as a mention of the +oculist question for which all had been dared and done. Suppose not one +of the living or dead languages of mankind had so much as a word for +"long-sighted" or "short-sighted." Suppose, in short, the question that +had torn the whole world in two was never even asked at all, until some +spectacle-maker suggested it somewhere about 1750. In that case I think +we should find it hard to believe that this physical difference had +really played so fundamental a part in human history. And that is +exactly the case with the physical difference between the Celts, the +Teutons and the Latins. + +I know of no way in which fair-haired people can be prevented from +falling in love with dark-haired people; and I do not believe that +whether a man was long-headed or round-headed ever made much difference +to any one who felt inclined to break his head. To all mortal +appearance, in all mortal records and experience, people seem to have +killed or spared, married or refrained from marriage, made kings or made +slaves, with reference to almost any other consideration except this +one. There was the love of a valley or a village, a site or a family; +there were enthusiasms for a prince and his hereditary office; there +were passions rooted in locality, special emotions about sea-folk or +mountain-folk; there were historic memories of a cause or an alliance; +there was, more than all, the tremendous test of religion. But of a +cause like that of the Celts or Teutons, covering half the earth, there +was little or nothing. Race was not only never at any given moment a +motive, but it was never even an excuse. The Teutons never had a creed; +they never had a cause; and it was only a few years ago that they began +even to have a cant. + +The orthodox modern historian, notably Green, remarks on the singularity +of Britain in being alone of all Roman provinces wholly cleared and +repeopled by a Germanic race. He does not entertain, as an escape from +the singularity of this event, the possibility that it never happened. +In the same spirit he deals with the little that can be quoted of the +Teutonic society. His ideal picture of it is completed in small touches +which even an amateur can detect as dubious. Thus he will touch on the +Teuton with a phrase like "the basis of their society was the free man"; +and on the Roman with a phrase like "the mines, if worked by forced +labour, must have been a source of endless oppression." The simple fact +being that the Roman and the Teuton both had slaves, he treats the +Teuton free man as the only thing to be considered, not only then but +now; and then goes out of his way to say that if the Roman treated his +slaves badly, the slaves were badly treated. He expresses a "strange +disappointment" that Gildas, the only British chronicler, does not +describe the great Teutonic system. In the opinion of Gildas, a +modification of that of Gregory, it was a case of _non Angli sed +diaboli_. The modern Teutonist is "disappointed" that the contemporary +authority saw nothing in his Teutons except wolves, dogs, and whelps +from the kennel of barbarism. But it is at least faintly tenable that +there was nothing else to be seen. + +In any case when St. Augustine came to the largely barbarized land, with +what may be called the second of the three great southern visitations +which civilized these islands, he did not see any ethnological problems, +whatever there may have been to be seen. With him or his converts the +chain of literary testimony is taken up again; and we must look at the +world as they saw it. He found a king ruling in Kent, beyond whose +borders lay other kingdoms of about the same size, the kings of which +were all apparently heathen. The names of these kings were mostly what +we call Teutonic names; but those who write the almost entirely +hagiological records did not say, and apparently did not ask, whether +the populations were in this sense of unmixed blood. It is at least +possible that, as on the Continent, the kings and courts were almost the +only Teutonic element. The Christians found converts, they found +patrons, they found persecutors; but they did not find Ancient Britons +because they did not look for them; and if they moved among pure +Anglo-Saxons they had not the gratification of knowing it. There was, +indeed, what all history attests, a marked change of feeling towards the +marches of Wales. But all history also attests that this is always +found, apart from any difference in race, in the transition from the +lowlands to the mountain country. But of all the things they found the +thing that counts most in English history is this: that some of the +kingdoms at least did correspond to genuine human divisions, which not +only existed then but which exist now. Northumbria is still a truer +thing than Northumberland. Sussex is still Sussex; Essex is still Essex. +And that third Saxon kingdom whose name is not even to be found upon the +map, the kingdom of Wessex, is called the West Country and is to-day the +most real of them all. + +The last of the heathen kingdoms to accept the cross was Mercia, which +corresponds very roughly to what we call the Midlands. The unbaptized +king, Penda, has even achieved a certain picturesqueness through this +fact, and through the forays and furious ambitions which constituted the +rest of his reputation; so much so that the other day one of those +mystics who will believe anything but Christianity proposed to "continue +the work of Penda" in Ealing: fortunately not on any large scale. What +that prince believed or disbelieved it is now impossible and perhaps +unnecessary to discover; but this last stand of his central kingdom is +not insignificant. The isolation of the Mercian was perhaps due to the +fact that Christianity grew from the eastern and western coasts. The +eastern growth was, of course, the Augustinian mission, which had +already made Canterbury the spiritual capital of the island. The western +grew from whatever was left of the British Christianity. The two +clashed, not in creed but in customs; and the Augustinians ultimately +prevailed. But the work from the west had already been enormous. It is +possible that some prestige went with the possession of Glastonbury, +which was like a piece of the Holy Land; but behind Glastonbury there +was an even grander and more impressive power. There irradiated to all +Europe at that time the glory of the golden age of Ireland. There the +Celts were the classics of Christian art, opened in the Book of Kels +four hundred years before its time. There the baptism of the whole +people had been a spontaneous popular festival which reads almost like a +picnic; and thence came crowds of enthusiasts for the Gospel almost +literally like men running with good news. This must be remembered +through the development of that dark dual destiny that has bound us to +Ireland: for doubts have been thrown on a national unity which was not +from the first a political unity. But if Ireland was not one kingdom it +was in reality one bishopric. Ireland was not converted but created by +Christianity, as a stone church is created; and all its elements were +gathered as under a garment, under the genius of St. Patrick. It was the +more individual because the religion was mere religion, without the +secular conveniences. Ireland was never Roman, and it was always +Romanist. + +But indeed this is, in a lesser degree, true of our more immediate +subject. It is the paradox of this time that only the unworldly things +had any worldly success. The politics are a nightmare; the kings are +unstable and the kingdoms shifting; and we are really never on solid +ground except on consecrated ground. The material ambitions are not only +always unfruitful but nearly always unfulfilled. The castles are all +castles in the air; it is only the churches that are built on the +ground. The visionaries are the only practical men, as in that +extraordinary thing, the monastery, which was, in many ways, to be the +key of our history. The time was to come when it was to be rooted out of +our country with a curious and careful violence; and the modern English +reader has therefore a very feeble idea of it and hence of the ages in +which it worked. Even in these pages a word or two about its primary +nature is therefore quite indispensable. + +In the tremendous testament of our religion there are present certain +ideals that seem wilder than impieties, which have in later times +produced wild sects professing an almost inhuman perfection on certain +points; as in the Quakers who renounce the right of self-defence, or the +Communists who refuse any personal possessions. Rightly or wrongly, the +Christian Church had from the first dealt with these visions as being +special spiritual adventures which were to the adventurous. She +reconciled them with natural human life by calling them specially good, +without admitting that the neglect of them was necessarily bad. She took +the view that it takes all sorts to make a world, even the religious +world; and used the man who chose to go without arms, family, or +property as a sort of exception that proved the rule. Now the +interesting fact is that he really did prove it. This madman who would +not mind his own business becomes the business man of the age. The very +word "monk" is a revolution, for it means solitude and came to mean +community--one might call it sociability. What happened was that this +communal life became a sort of reserve and refuge behind the individual +life; a hospital for every kind of hospitality. We shall see later how +this same function of the common life was given to the common land. It +is hard to find an image for it in individualist times; but in private +life we most of us know the friend of the family who helps it by being +outside, like a fairy godmother. It is not merely flippant to say that +monks and nuns stood to mankind as a sort of sanctified league of aunts +and uncles. It is a commonplace that they did everything that nobody +else would do; that the abbeys kept the world's diary, faced the plagues +of all flesh, taught the first technical arts, preserved the pagan +literature, and above all, by a perpetual patchwork of charity, kept the +poor from the most distant sight of their modern despair. We still find +it necessary to have a reserve of philanthropists, but we trust it to +men who have made themselves rich, not to men who have made themselves +poor. Finally, the abbots and abbesses were elective. They introduced +representative government, unknown to ancient democracy, and in itself a +semi-sacramental idea. If we could look from the outside at our own +institutions, we should see that the very notion of turning a thousand +men into one large man walking to Westminster is not only an act or +faith, but a fairy tale. The fruitful and effective history of +Anglo-Saxon England would be almost entirely a history of its +monasteries. Mile by mile, and almost man by man, they taught and +enriched the land. And then, about the beginning of the ninth century, +there came a turn, as of the twinkling of an eye, and it seemed that all +their work was in vain. + +That outer world of universal anarchy that lay beyond Christendom heaved +another of its colossal and almost cosmic waves and swept everything +away. Through all the eastern gates, left open, as it were, by the first +barbarian auxiliaries, burst a plague of seafaring savages from Denmark +and Scandinavia; and the recently baptized barbarians were again flooded +by the unbaptized. All this time, it must be remembered, the actual +central mechanism of Roman government had been running down like a +clock. It was really a race between the driving energy of the +missionaries on the edges of the Empire and the galloping paralysis of +the city at the centre. In the ninth century the heart had stopped +before the hands could bring help to it. All the monastic civilization +which had grown up in Britain under a vague Roman protection perished +unprotected. The toy kingdoms of the quarrelling Saxons were smashed +like sticks; Guthrum, the pirate chief, slew St. Edmund, assumed the +crown of East England, took tribute from the panic of Mercia, and +towered in menace over Wessex, the last of the Christian lands. The +story that follows, page after page, is only the story of its despair +and its destruction. The story is a string of Christian defeats +alternated with victories so vain as to be more desolate than defeats. +It is only in one of these, the fine but fruitless victory at Ashdown, +that we first see in the dim struggle, in a desperate and secondary +part, the figure who has given his title to the ultimate turning of the +tide. For the victor was not then the king, but only the king's younger +brother. There is, from the first, something humble and even accidental +about Alfred. He was a great understudy. The interest of his early life +lies in this: that he combined an almost commonplace coolness, and +readiness for the ceaseless small bargains and shifting combinations of +all that period, with the flaming patience of saints in times of +persecution. While he would dare anything for the faith, he would +bargain in anything except the faith. He was a conqueror, with no +ambition; an author only too glad to be a translator; a simple, +concentrated, wary man, watching the fortunes of one thing, which he +piloted both boldly and cautiously, and which he saved at last. + +He had disappeared after what appeared to be the final heathen triumph +and settlement, and is supposed to have lurked like an outlaw in a +lonely islet in the impenetrable marshlands of the Parret; towards those +wild western lands to which aboriginal races are held to have been +driven by fate itself. But Alfred, as he himself wrote in words that are +his challenge to the period, held that a Christian man was unconcerned +with fate. He began once more to draw to him the bows and spears of the +broken levies of the western shires, especially the men of Somerset; and +in the spring of 878 he flung them at the lines before the fenced camp +of the victorious Danes at Ethandune. His sudden assault was as +successful as that at Ashdown, and it was followed by a siege which was +successful in a different and very definite sense. Guthrum, the +conqueror of England, and all his important supports, were here penned +behind their palisades, and when at last they surrendered the Danish +conquest had come to an end. Guthrum was baptized, and the Treaty of +Wedmore secured the clearance of Wessex. The modern reader will smile at +the baptism, and turn with greater interest to the terms of the treaty. +In this acute attitude the modern reader will be vitally and hopelessly +wrong. He must support the tedium of frequent references to the +religious element in this part of English history, for without it there +would never have been any English history at all. And nothing could +clinch this truth more than the case of the Danes. In all the facts that +followed, the baptism of Guthrum is really much more important than the +Treaty of Wedmore. The treaty itself was a compromise, and even as such +did not endure; a century afterwards a Danish king like Canute was +really ruling in England. But though the Dane got the crown, he did not +get rid of the cross. It was precisely Alfred's religious exaction that +remained unalterable. And Canute himself is actually now only remembered +by men as a witness to the futility of merely pagan power; as the king +who put his own crown upon the image of Christ, and solemnly surrendered +to heaven the Scandinavian empire of the sea. + + + + +V + +ST. EDWARD AND THE NORMAN KINGS + + +The reader may be surprised at the disproportionate importance given to +the name which stands first in the title of this chapter. I put it there +as the best way of emphasizing, at the beginning of what we may call the +practical part of our history, an elusive and rather strange thing. It +can only be described as the strength of the weak kings. + +It is sometimes valuable to have enough imagination to unlearn as well +as to learn. I would ask the reader to forget his reading and everything +that he learnt at school, and consider the English monarchy as it would +then appear to him. Let him suppose that his acquaintance with the +ancient kings has only come to him as it came to most men in simpler +times, from nursery tales, from the names of places, from the +dedications of churches and charities, from the tales in the tavern, and +the tombs in the churchyard. Let us suppose such a person going upon +some open and ordinary English way, such as the Thames valley to +Windsor, or visiting some old seats of culture, such as Oxford or +Cambridge. One of the first things, for instance, he would find would +be Eton, a place transformed, indeed, by modern aristocracy, but still +enjoying its mediæval wealth and remembering its mediæval origin. If he +asked about that origin, it is probable that even a public schoolboy +would know enough history to tell him that it was founded by Henry VI. +If he went to Cambridge and looked with his own eyes for the college +chapel which artistically towers above all others like a cathedral, he +would probably ask about it, and be told it was King's College. If he +asked which king, he would again be told Henry VI. If he then went into +the library and looked up Henry VI. in an encyclopædia, he would find +that the legendary giant, who had left these gigantic works behind him, +was in history an almost invisible pigmy. Amid the varying and +contending numbers of a great national quarrel, he is the only cipher. +The contending factions carry him about like a bale of goods. His +desires do not seem to be even ascertained, far less satisfied. And yet +his real desires are satisfied in stone and marble, in oak and gold, and +remain through all the maddest revolutions of modern England, while all +the ambitions of those who dictated to him have gone away like dust upon +the wind. + +Edward the Confessor, like Henry VI., was not only an invalid but almost +an idiot. It is said that he was wan like an albino, and that the awe +men had of him was partly that which is felt for a monster of mental +deficiency. His Christian charity was of the kind that borders on +anarchism, and the stories about him recall the Christian fools in the +great anarchic novels of Russia. Thus he is reported to have covered the +retreat of a common thief upon the naked plea that the thief needed +things more than he did. Such a story is in strange contrast to the +claims made for other kings, that theft was impossible in their +dominions. Yet the two types of king are afterwards praised by the same +people; and the really arresting fact is that the incompetent king is +praised the more highly of the two. And exactly as in the case of the +last Lancastrian, we find that the praise has really a very practical +meaning in the long run. When we turn from the destructive to the +constructive side of the Middle Ages we find that the village idiot is +the inspiration of cities and civic systems. We find his seal upon the +sacred foundations of Westminster Abbey. We find the Norman victors in +the hour of victory bowing before his very ghost. In the Tapestry of +Bayeux, woven by Norman hands to justify the Norman cause and glorify +the Norman triumph, nothing is claimed for the Conqueror beyond his +conquest and the plain personal tale that excuses it, and the story +abruptly ends with the breaking of the Saxon line at Battle. But over +the bier of the decrepit zany, who died without striking a blow, over +this and this alone, is shown a hand coming out of heaven, and declaring +the true approval of the power that rules the world. + +The Confessor, therefore, is a paradox in many ways, and in none more +than in the false reputation of the "English" of that day. As I have +indicated, there is some unreality in talking about the Anglo-Saxon at +all. The Anglo-Saxon is a mythical and straddling giant, who has +presumably left one footprint in England and the other in Saxony. But +there was a community, or rather group of communities, living in Britain +before the Conquest under what we call Saxon names, and of a blood +probably more Germanic and certainly less French than the same +communities after the Conquest. And they have a modern reputation which +is exactly the reverse of their real one. The value of the Anglo-Saxon +is exaggerated, and yet his virtues are ignored. Our Anglo-Saxon blood +is supposed to be the practical part of us; but as a fact the +Anglo-Saxons were more hopelessly unpractical than any Celt. Their +racial influence is supposed to be healthy, or, what many think the same +thing, heathen. But as a fact these "Teutons" were the mystics. The +Anglo-Saxons did one thing, and one thing only, thoroughly well, as they +were fitted to do it thoroughly well. They christened England. Indeed, +they christened it before it was born. The one thing the Angles +obviously and certainly could not manage to do was to become English. +But they did become Christians, and indeed showed a particular +disposition to become monks. Moderns who talk vaguely of them as our +hardy ancestors never do justice to the real good they did us, by thus +opening our history, as it were, with the fable of an age of innocence, +and beginning all our chronicles, as so many chronicles began, with the +golden initial of a saint. By becoming monks they served us in many very +valuable and special capacities, but not notably, perhaps, in the +capacity of ancestors. + +Along the northern coast of France, where the Confessor had passed his +early life, lay the lands of one of the most powerful of the French +king's vassals, the Duke of Normandy. He and his people, who constitute +one of the most picturesque and curious elements in European history, +are confused for most of us by irrelevant controversies which would have +been entirely unintelligible to them. The worst of these is the inane +fiction which gives the name of Norman to the English aristocracy during +its great period of the last three hundred years. Tennyson informed a +lady of the name of Vere de Vere that simple faith was more valuable +than Norman blood. But the historical student who can believe in Lady +Clara as the possessor of the Norman blood must be himself a large +possessor of the simple faith. As a matter of fact, as we shall see also +when we come to the political scheme of the Normans, the notion is the +negation of their real importance in history. The fashionable fancy +misses what was best in the Normans, exactly as we have found it missing +what was best in the Saxons. One does not know whether to thank the +Normans more for appearing or for disappearing. Few philanthropists +ever became so rapidly anonymous. It is the great glory of the Norman +adventurer that he threw himself heartily into his chance position; and +had faith not only in his comrades, but in his subjects, and even in his +enemies. He was loyal to the kingdom he had not yet made. Thus the +Norman Bruce becomes a Scot; thus the descendant of the Norman Strongbow +becomes an Irishman. No men less than Normans can be conceived as +remaining as a superior caste until the present time. But this alien and +adventurous loyalty in the Norman, which appears in these other national +histories, appears most strongly of all in the history we have here to +follow. The Duke of Normandy does become a real King of England; his +claim through the Confessor, his election by the Council, even his +symbolic handfuls of the soil of Sussex, these are not altogether empty +forms. And though both phrases would be inaccurate, it is very much +nearer the truth to call William the first of the English than to call +Harold the last of them. + +An indeterminate debate touching the dim races that mixed without record +in that dim epoch, has made much of the fact that the Norman edges of +France, like the East Anglian edges of England, were deeply penetrated +by the Norse invasions of the ninth century; and that the ducal house of +Normandy, with what other families we know not, can be traced back to a +Scandinavian seed. The unquestionable power of captaincy and creative +legislation which belonged to the Normans, whoever they were, may be +connected reasonably enough with some infusion of fresh blood. But if +the racial theorists press the point to a comparison of races, it can +obviously only be answered by a study of the two types in separation. +And it must surely be manifest that more civilizing power has since been +shown by the French when untouched by Scandinavian blood than by the +Scandinavians when untouched by French blood. As much fighting (and more +ruling) was done by the Crusaders who were never Vikings as by the +Vikings who were never Crusaders. But in truth there is no need of such +invidious analysis; we may willingly allow a real value to the +Scandinavian contribution to the French as to the English nationality, +so long as we firmly understand the ultimate historic fact that the +duchy of Normandy was about as Scandinavian as the town of Norwich. But +the debate has another danger, in that it tends to exaggerate even the +personal importance of the Norman. Many as were his talents as a master, +he is in history the servant of other and wider things. The landing of +Lanfranc is perhaps more of a date than the landing of William. And +Lanfranc was an Italian--like Julius Cæsar. The Norman is not in history +a mere wall, the rather brutal boundary of a mere empire. The Norman is +a gate. He is like one of those gates which still remain as he made +them, with round arch and rude pattern and stout supporting columns; and +what entered by that gate was civilization. William of Falaise has in +history a title much higher than that of Duke of Normandy or King of +England. He was what Julius Cæsar was, and what St. Augustine was: he +was the ambassador of Europe to Britain. + +William asserted that the Confessor, in the course of that connection +which followed naturally from his Norman education, had promised the +English crown to the holder of the Norman dukedom. Whether he did or not +we shall probably never know: it is not intrinsically impossible or even +improbable. To blame the promise as unpatriotic, even if it was given, +is to read duties defined at a much later date into the first feudal +chaos; to make such blame positive and personal is like expecting the +Ancient Britons to sing "Rule Britannia." William further clinched his +case by declaring that Harold, the principal Saxon noble and the most +probable Saxon claimant, had, while enjoying the Duke's hospitality +after a shipwreck, sworn upon sacred relics not to dispute the Duke's +claim. About this episode also we must agree that we do not know; yet we +shall be quite out of touch with the time if we say that we do not care. +The element of sacrilege in the alleged perjury of Harold probably +affected the Pope when he blessed a banner for William's army; but it +did not affect the Pope much more than it would have affected the +people; and Harold's people quite as much as William's. Harold's people +presumably denied the fact; and their denial is probably the motive of +the very marked and almost eager emphasis with which the Bayeux Tapestry +asserts and reasserts the reality of the personal betrayal. There is +here a rather arresting fact to be noted. A great part of this +celebrated pictorial record is not concerned at all with the well-known +historical events which we have only to note rapidly here. It does, +indeed, dwell a little on the death of Edward; it depicts the +difficulties of William's enterprise in the felling of forests for +shipbuilding, in the crossing of the Channel, and especially in the +charge up the hill at Hastings, in which full justice is done to the +destructive resistance of Harold's army. But it was really after Duke +William had disembarked and defeated Harold on the Sussex coast, that he +did what is historically worthy to be called the Conquest. It is not +until these later operations that we have the note of the new and +scientific militarism from the Continent. Instead of marching upon +London he marched round it; and crossing the Thames at Wallingford cut +off the city from the rest of the country and compelled its surrender. +He had himself elected king with all the forms that would have +accompanied a peaceful succession to the Confessor, and after a brief +return to Normandy took up the work of war again to bring all England +under his crown. Marching through the snow, he laid waste the northern +counties, seized Chester, and made rather than won a kingdom. These +things are the foundations of historical England; but of these things +the pictures woven in honour of his house tell us nothing. The Bayeux +Tapestry may almost be said to stop before the Norman Conquest. But it +tells in great detail the tale of some trivial raid into Brittany solely +that Harold and William may appear as brothers in arms; and especially +that William may be depicted in the very act of giving arms to Harold. +And here again there is much more significance than a modern reader may +fancy, in its bearing upon the new birth of that time and the ancient +symbolism of arms. I have said that Duke William was a vassal of the +King of France; and that phrase in its use and abuse is the key to the +secular side of this epoch. William was indeed a most mutinous vassal, +and a vein of such mutiny runs through his family fortunes: his sons +Rufus and Henry I. disturbed him with internal ambitions antagonistic to +his own. But it would be a blunder to allow such personal broils to +obscure the system, which had indeed existed here before the Conquest, +which clarified and confirmed it. That system we call Feudalism. + +That Feudalism was the main mark of the Middle Ages is a commonplace of +fashionable information; but it is of the sort that seeks the past +rather in Wardour Street than Watling Street. For that matter, the very +term "mediæval" is used for almost anything from Early English to Early +Victorian. An eminent Socialist applied it to our armaments, which is +like applying it to our aeroplanes. Similarly the just description of +Feudalism, and of how far it was a part and how far rather an impediment +in the main mediæval movement, is confused by current debates about +quite modern things--especially that modern thing, the English +squirearchy. Feudalism was very nearly the opposite of squirearchy. For +it is the whole point of the squire that his ownership is absolute and +is pacific. And it is the very definition of Feudalism that it was a +tenure, and a tenure by military service. Men paid their rent in steel +instead of gold, in spears and arrows against the enemies of their +landlord. But even these landlords were not landlords in the modern +sense; every one was practically as well as theoretically a tenant of +the King; and even he often fell into a feudal inferiority to a Pope or +an Emperor. To call it mere tenure by soldiering may seem a +simplification; but indeed it is precisely here that it was not so +simple as it seems. It is precisely a certain knot or enigma in the +nature of Feudalism which makes half the struggle of European history, +but especially English history. + +There was a certain unique type of state and culture which we call +mediæval, for want of a better word, which we see in the Gothic or the +great Schoolmen. This thing in itself was above all things logical. Its +very cult of authority was a thing of reason, as all men who can reason +themselves instantly recognize, even if, like Huxley, they deny its +premises or dislike its fruits. Being logical, it was very exact about +who had the authority. Now Feudalism was not quite logical, and was +never quite exact about who had the authority. Feudalism already +flourished before the mediæval renascence began. It was, if not the +forest the mediævals had to clear, at least the rude timber with which +they had to build. Feudalism was a fighting growth of the Dark Ages +before the Middle Ages; the age of barbarians resisted by +semi-barbarians. I do not say this in disparagement of it. Feudalism was +mostly a very human thing; the nearest contemporary name for it was +homage, a word which almost means humanity. On the other hand, mediæval +logic, never quite reconciled to it, could become in its extremes +inhuman. It was often mere prejudice that protected men, and pure reason +that burned them. The feudal units grew through the lively localism of +the Dark Ages, when hills without roads shut in a valley like a +garrison. Patriotism had to be parochial; for men had no country, but +only a countryside. In such cases the lord grew larger than the king; +but it bred not only a local lordship but a kind of local liberty. And +it would be very inadvisable to ignore the freer element in Feudalism in +English history. For it is the one kind of freedom that the English have +had and held. + +The knot in the system was something like this. In theory the King owned +everything, like an earthly providence; and that made for despotism and +"divine right," which meant in substance a natural authority. In one +aspect the King was simply the one lord anointed by the Church, that is +recognized by the ethics of the age. But while there was more royalty in +theory, there could be more rebellion in practice. Fighting was much +more equal than in our age of munitions, and the various groups could +arm almost instantly with bows from the forest or spears from the smith. +Where men are military there is no militarism. But it is more vital that +while the kingdom was in this sense one territorial army, the regiments +of it were also kingdoms. The sub-units were also sub-loyalties. Hence +the loyalist to his lord might be a rebel to his king; or the king be a +demagogue delivering him from the lord. This tangle is responsible for +the tragic passions about betrayal, as in the case of William and +Harold; the alleged traitor who is always found to be recurrent, yet +always felt to be exceptional. To break the tie was at once easy and +terrible. Treason in the sense of rebellion was then really felt as +treason in the sense of treachery, since it was desertion on a perpetual +battlefield. Now, there was even more of this civil war in English than +in other history, and the more local and less logical energy on the +whole prevailed. Whether there was something in those island +idiosyncracies, shapeless as sea-mists, with which this story began, or +whether the Roman imprint had really been lighter than in Gaul, the +feudal undergrowth prevented even a full attempt to build the _Civitas +Dei_, or ideal mediæval state. What emerged was a compromise, which men +long afterwards amused themselves by calling a constitution. + +There are paradoxes permissible for the redressing of a bad balance in +criticism, and which may safely even be emphasized so long as they are +not isolated. One of these I have called at the beginning of this +chapter the strength of the weak kings. And there is a complement of it, +even in this crisis of the Norman mastery, which might well be called +the weakness of the strong kings. William of Normandy succeeded +immediately, he did not quite succeed ultimately; there was in his huge +success a secret of failure that only bore fruit long after his death. +It was certainly his single aim to simplify England into a popular +autocracy, like that growing up in France; with that aim he scattered +the feudal holdings in scraps, demanded a direct vow from the +sub-vassals to himself, and used any tool against the barony, from the +highest culture of the foreign ecclesiastics to the rudest relics of +Saxon custom. But the very parallel of France makes the paradox +startlingly apparent. It is a proverb that the first French kings were +puppets; that the mayor of the palace was quite insolently the king of +the king. Yet it is certain that the puppet became an idol; a popular +idol of unparalleled power, before which all mayors and nobles bent or +were broken. In France arose absolute government, the more because it +was not precisely personal government. The King was already a +thing--like the Republic. Indeed the mediæval Republics were rigid with +divine right. In Norman England, perhaps, the government was too +personal to be absolute. Anyhow, there is a real though recondite sense +in which William the Conqueror was William the Conquered. When his two +sons were dead, the whole country fell into a feudal chaos almost like +that before the Conquest. In France the princes who had been slaves +became something exceptional like priests; and one of them became a +saint. But somehow our greatest kings were still barons; and by that +very energy our barons became our kings. + + + + +VI + +THE AGE OF THE CRUSADES + + +The last chapter began, in an apparent irrelevance, with the name of St. +Edward; and this one might very well begin with the name of St. George. +His first appearance, it is said, as a patron of our people, occurred at +the instance of Richard Coeur de Lion during his campaign in +Palestine; and this, as we shall see, really stands for a new England +which might well have a new saint. But the Confessor is a character in +English history; whereas St. George, apart from his place in martyrology +as a Roman soldier, can hardly be said to be a character in any history. +And if we wish to understand the noblest and most neglected of human +revolutions, we can hardly get closer to it than by considering this +paradox, of how much progress and enlightenment was represented by thus +passing from a chronicle to a romance. + +In any intellectual corner of modernity can be found such a phrase as I +have just read in a newspaper controversy: "Salvation, like other good +things, must not come from outside." To call a spiritual thing external +and not internal is the chief mode of modernist excommunication. But if +our subject of study is mediæval and not modern, we must pit against +this apparent platitude the very opposite idea. We must put ourselves in +the posture of men who thought that almost every good thing came from +outside--like good news. I confess that I am not impartial in my +sympathies here; and that the newspaper phrase I quoted strikes me as a +blunder about the very nature of life. I do not, in my private capacity, +believe that a baby gets his best physical food by sucking his thumb; +nor that a man gets his best moral food by sucking his soul, and denying +its dependence on God or other good things. I would maintain that thanks +are the highest form of thought; and that gratitude is happiness doubled +by wonder. But this faith in receptiveness, and in respect for things +outside oneself, need here do no more than help me in explaining what +any version of this epoch ought in any case to explain. In nothing is +the modern German more modern, or more mad, than in his dream of finding +a German name for everything; eating his language, or in other words +biting his tongue. And in nothing were the mediævals more free and sane +than in their acceptance of names and emblems from outside their most +beloved limits. The monastery would often not only take in the stranger +but almost canonize him. A mere adventurer like Bruce was enthroned and +thanked as if he had really come as a knight errant. And a passionately +patriotic community more often than not had a foreigner for a patron +saint. Thus crowds of saints were Irishmen, but St. Patrick was not an +Irishman. Thus as the English gradually became a nation, they left the +numberless Saxon saints in a sense behind them, passed over by +comparison not only the sanctity of Edward but the solid fame of Alfred, +and invoked a half mythical hero, striving in an eastern desert against +an impossible monster. + +That transition and that symbol stand for the Crusades. In their romance +and reality they were the first English experience of learning, not only +from the external, but the remote. England, like every Christian thing, +had thriven on outer things without shame. From the roads of Cæsar to +the churches of Lanfranc, it had sought its meat from God. But now the +eagles were on the wing, scenting a more distant slaughter; they were +seeking the strange things instead of receiving them. The English had +stepped from acceptance to adventure, and the epic of their ships had +begun. The scope of the great religious movement which swept England +along with all the West would distend a book like this into huge +disproportion, yet it would be much better to do so than to dismiss it +in the distant and frigid fashion common in such short summaries. The +inadequacy of our insular method in popular history is perfectly shown +in the treatment of Richard Coeur de Lion. His tale is told with the +implication that his departure for the Crusade was something like the +escapade of a schoolboy running away to sea. It was, in this view, a +pardonable or lovable prank; whereas in truth it was more like a +responsible Englishman now going to the Front. Christendom was nearly +one nation, and the Front was the Holy Land. That Richard himself was of +an adventurous and even romantic temper is true, though it is not +unreasonably romantic for a born soldier to do the work he does best. +But the point of the argument against insular history is particularly +illustrated here by the absence of a continental comparison. In this +case we have only to step across the Straits of Dover to find the +fallacy. Philip Augustus, Richard's contemporary in France, had the name +of a particularly cautious and coldly public-spirited statesman; yet +Philip Augustus went on the same Crusade. The reason was, of course, +that the Crusades were, for all thoughtful Europeans, things of the +highest statesmanship and the purest public spirit. + +Some six hundred years after Christianity sprang up in the East and +swept westwards, another great faith arose in almost the same eastern +lands and followed it like its gigantic shadow. Like a shadow, it was at +once a copy and a contrary. We call it Islam, or the creed of the +Moslems; and perhaps its most explanatory description is that it was the +final flaming up of the accumulated Orientalisms, perhaps of the +accumulated Hebraisms, gradually rejected as the Church grew more +European, or as Christianity turned into Christendom. Its highest +motive was a hatred of idols, and in its view Incarnation was itself an +idolatry. The two things it persecuted were the idea of God being made +flesh and of His being afterwards made wood or stone. A study of the +questions smouldering in the track of the prairie fire of the Christian +conversion favours the suggestion that this fanaticism against art or +mythology was at once a development and a reaction from that conversion, +a sort of minority report of the Hebraists. In this sense Islam was +something like a Christian heresy. The early heresies had been full of +mad reversals and evasions of the Incarnation, rescuing their Jesus from +the reality of his body even at the expense of the sincerity of his +soul. And the Greek Iconoclasts had poured into Italy, breaking the +popular statues and denouncing the idolatry of the Pope, until routed, +in a style sufficiently symbolic, by the sword of the father of +Charlemagne. It was all these disappointed negations that took fire from +the genius of Mahomet, and launched out of the burning lands a cavalry +charge that nearly conquered the world. And if it be suggested that a +note on such Oriental origins is rather remote from a history of +England, the answer is that this book may, alas! contain many +digressions, but that this is not a digression. It is quite peculiarly +necessary to keep in mind that this Semite god haunted Christianity like +a ghost; to remember it in every European corner, but especially in our +corner. If any one doubts the necessity, let him take a walk to all the +parish churches in England within a radius of thirty miles, and ask why +this stone virgin is headless or that coloured glass is gone. He will +soon learn that it was lately, and in his own lanes and homesteads, that +the ecstasy of the deserts returned, and his bleak northern island was +filled with the fury of the Iconoclasts. + +It was an element in this sublime and yet sinister simplicity of Islam +that it knew no boundaries. Its very home was homeless. For it was born +in a sandy waste among nomads, and it went everywhere because it came +from nowhere. But in the Saracens of the early Middle Ages this nomadic +quality in Islam was masked by a high civilization, more scientific if +less creatively artistic than that of contemporary Christendom. The +Moslem monotheism was, or appeared to be, the more rationalist religion +of the two. This rootless refinement was characteristically advanced in +abstract things, of which a memory remains in the very name of algebra. +In comparison the Christian civilization was still largely instinctive, +but its instincts were very strong and very much the other way. It was +full of local affections, which found form in that system of _fences_ +which runs like a pattern through everything mediæval, from heraldry to +the holding of land. There was a shape and colour in all their customs +and statutes which can be seen in all their tabards and escutcheons; +something at once strict and gay. This is not a departure from the +interest in external things, but rather a part of it. The very welcome +they would often give to a stranger from beyond the wall was a +recognition of the wall. Those who think their own life all-sufficient +do not see its limit as a wall, but as the end of the world. The Chinese +called the white man "a sky-breaker." The mediæval spirit loved its part +in life as a part, not a whole; its charter for it came from something +else. There is a joke about a Benedictine monk who used the common grace +of _Benedictus benedicat_, whereupon the unlettered Franciscan +triumphantly retorted _Franciscus Franciscat_. It is something of a +parable of mediæval history; for if there were a verb Franciscare it +would be an approximate description of what St. Francis afterwards did. +But that more individual mysticism was only approaching its birth, and +_Benedictus benedicat_ is very precisely the motto of the earliest +mediævalism. I mean that everything is blessed from beyond, by something +which has in its turn been blessed from beyond again; only the blessed +bless. But the point which is the clue to the Crusades is this: that for +them the beyond was not the infinite, as in a modern religion. Every +beyond was a place. The mystery of locality, with all its hold on the +human heart, was as much present in the most ethereal things of +Christendom as it was absent from the most practical things of Islam. +England would derive a thing from France, France from Italy, Italy from +Greece, Greece from Palestine, Palestine from Paradise. It was not +merely that a yeoman of Kent would have his house hallowed by the +priest of the parish church, which was confirmed by Canterbury, which +was confirmed by Rome. Rome herself did not worship herself, as in the +pagan age. Rome herself looked eastward to the mysterious cradle of her +creed, to a land of which the very earth was called holy. And when she +looked eastward for it she saw the face of Mahound. She saw standing in +the place that was her earthly heaven a devouring giant out of the +deserts, to whom all places were the same. + +It has been necessary thus to pause upon the inner emotions of the +Crusade, because the modern English reader is widely cut off from these +particular feelings of his fathers; and the real quarrel of Christendom +and Islam, the fire-baptism of the young nations, could not otherwise be +seized in its unique character. It was nothing so simple as a quarrel +between two men who both wanted Jerusalem. It was the much deadlier +quarrel between one man who wanted it and another man who could not see +why it was wanted. The Moslem, of course, had his own holy places; but +he has never felt about them as Westerns can feel about a field or a +roof-tree; he thought of the holiness as holy, not of the places as +places. The austerity which forbade him imagery, the wandering war that +forbade him rest, shut him off from all that was breaking out and +blossoming in our local patriotisms; just as it has given the Turks an +empire without ever giving them a nation. + +Now, the effect of this adventure against a mighty and mysterious enemy +was simply enormous in the transformation of England, as of all the +nations that were developing side by side with England. Firstly, we +learnt enormously from what the Saracen did. Secondly, we learnt yet +more enormously from what the Saracen did not do. Touching some of the +good things which we lacked, we were fortunately able to follow him. But +in all the good things which he lacked, we were confirmed like adamant +to defy him. It may be said that Christians never knew how right they +were till they went to war with Moslems. At once the most obvious and +the most representative reaction was the reaction which produced the +best of what we call Christian Art; and especially those grotesques of +Gothic architecture, which are not only alive but kicking. The East as +an environment, as an impersonal glamour, certainly stimulated the +Western mind, but stimulated it rather to break the Moslem commandment +than to keep it. It was as if the Christian were impelled, like a +caricaturist, to cover all that faceless ornament with faces; to give +heads to all those headless serpents and birds to all these lifeless +trees. Statuary quickened and came to life under the veto of the enemy +as under a benediction. The image, merely because it was called an idol, +became not only an ensign but a weapon. A hundredfold host of stone +sprang up all over the shrines and streets of Europe. The Iconoclasts +made more statues than they destroyed. + +The place of Coeur de Lion in popular fable and gossip is far more +like his place in true history than the place of the mere denationalized +ne'er-do-weel given him in our utilitarian school books. Indeed the +vulgar rumour is nearly always much nearer the historical truth than the +"educated" opinion of to-day; for tradition is truer than fashion. King +Richard, as the typical Crusader, did make a momentous difference to +England by gaining glory in the East, instead of devoting himself +conscientiously to domestic politics in the exemplary manner of King +John. The accident of his military genius and prestige gave England +something which it kept for four hundred years, and without which it is +incomprehensible throughout that period--the reputation of being in the +very vanguard of chivalry. The great romances of the Round Table, the +attachment of knighthood to the name of a British king, belong to this +period. Richard was not only a knight but a troubadour; and culture and +courtesy were linked up with the idea of English valour. The mediæval +Englishman was even proud of being polite; which is at least no worse +than being proud of money and bad manners, which is what many Englishmen +in our later centuries have meant by their common sense. + +Chivalry might be called the baptism of Feudalism. It was an attempt to +bring the justice and even the logic of the Catholic creed into a +military system which already existed; to turn its discipline into an +initiation and its inequalities into a hierarchy. To the comparative +grace of the new period belongs, of course, that considerable cultus of +the dignity of woman, to which the word "chivalry" is often narrowed, or +perhaps exalted. This also was a revolt against one of the worst gaps in +the more polished civilization of the Saracens. Moslems denied even +souls to women; perhaps from the same instinct which recoiled from the +sacred birth, with its inevitable glorification of the mother; perhaps +merely because, having originally had tents rather than houses, they had +slaves rather than housewives. It is false to say that the chivalric +view of women was merely an affectation, except in the sense in which +there must always be an affectation where there is an ideal. It is the +worst sort of superficiality not to see the pressure of a general +sentiment merely because it is always broken up by events; the Crusade +itself, for example, is more present and potent as a dream even than as +a reality. From the first Plantagenet to the last Lancastrian it haunts +the minds of English kings, giving as a background to their battles a +mirage of Palestine. So a devotion like that of Edward I. to his queen +was quite a real motive in the lives of multitudes of his +contemporaries. When crowds of enlightened tourists, setting forth to +sneer at the superstitions of the continent, are taking tickets and +labelling luggage at the large railway station at the west end of the +Strand, I do not know whether they all speak to their wives with a more +flowing courtesy than their fathers in Edward's time, or whether they +pause to meditate on the legend of a husband's sorrow, to be found in +the very name of Charing Cross. + +But it is a huge historical error to suppose that the Crusades concerned +only that crust of society for which heraldry was an art and chivalry an +etiquette. The direct contrary is the fact. The First Crusade especially +was much more an unanimous popular rising than most that are called +riots and revolutions. The Guilds, the great democratic systems of the +time, often owed their increasing power to corporate fighting for the +Cross; but I shall deal with such things later. Often it was not so much +a levy of men as a trek of whole families, like new gipsies moving +eastwards. And it has passed into a proverb that children by themselves +often organized a crusade as they now organize a charade. But we shall +best realize the fact by fancying every Crusade as a Children's Crusade. +They were full of all that the modern world worships in children, +because it has crushed it out of men. Their lives were full, as the +rudest remains of their vulgarest arts are full, of something that we +all saw out of the nursery window. It can best be seen later, for +instance, in the lanced and latticed interiors of Memling, but it is +ubiquitous in the older and more unconscious contemporary art; something +that domesticated distant lands and made the horizon at home. They +fitted into the corners of small houses the ends of the earth and the +edges of the sky. Their perspective is rude and crazy, but it is +perspective; it is not the decorative flatness of orientalism. In a +word, their world, like a child's, is full of foreshortening, as of a +short cut to fairyland. Their maps are more provocative than pictures. +Their half-fabulous animals are monsters, and yet are pets. It is +impossible to state verbally this very vivid atmosphere; but it was an +atmosphere as well as an adventure. It was precisely these outlandish +visions that truly came home to everybody; it was the royal councils and +feudal quarrels that were comparatively remote. The Holy Land was much +nearer to a plain man's house than Westminster, and immeasurably nearer +than Runymede. To give a list of English kings and parliaments, without +pausing for a moment upon this prodigious presence of a religious +transfiguration in common life, is something the folly of which can but +faintly be conveyed by a more modern parallel, with secularity and +religion reversed. It is as if some Clericalist or Royalist writer +should give a list of the Archbishops of Paris from 1750 to 1850, noting +how one died of small-pox, another of old age, another by a curious +accident of decapitation, and throughout all his record should never +once mention the nature, or even the name, of the French Revolution. + + + + +VII + +THE PROBLEM OF THE PLANTAGENETS + + +It is a point of prestige with what is called the Higher Criticism in +all branches to proclaim that certain popular texts and authorities are +"late," and therefore apparently worthless. Two similar events are +always the same event, and the later alone is even credible. This +fanaticism is often in mere fact mistaken; it ignores the most common +coincidences of human life: and some future critic will probably say +that the tale of the Tower of Babel cannot be older than the Eiffel +Tower, because there was certainly a confusion of tongues at the Paris +Exhibition. Most of the mediæval remains familiar to the modern reader +are necessarily "late," such as Chaucer or the Robin Hood ballads; but +they are none the less, to a wiser criticism, worthy of attention and +even trust. That which lingers after an epoch is generally that which +lived most luxuriantly in it. It is an excellent habit to read history +backwards. It is far wiser for a modern man to read the Middle Ages +backwards from Shakespeare, whom he can judge for himself, and who yet +is crammed with the Middle Ages, than to attempt to read them forwards +from Cædmon, of whom he can know nothing, and of whom even the +authorities he must trust know very little. If this be true of +Shakespeare, it is even truer, of course, of Chaucer. If we really want +to know what was strongest in the twelfth century, it is no bad way to +ask what remained of it in the fourteenth. When the average reader turns +to the "Canterbury Tales," which are still as amusing as Dickens yet as +mediæval as Durham Cathedral, what is the very first question to be +asked? Why, for instance, are they called Canterbury Tales; and what +were the pilgrims doing on the road to Canterbury? They were, of course, +taking part in a popular festival like a modern public holiday, though +much more genial and leisurely. Nor are we, perhaps, prepared to accept +it as a self-evident step in progress that their holidays were derived +from saints, while ours are dictated by bankers. + +It is almost necessary to say nowadays that a saint means a very good +man. The notion of an eminence merely moral, consistent with complete +stupidity or unsuccess, is a revolutionary image grown unfamiliar by its +very familiarity, and needing, as do so many things of this older +society, some almost preposterous modern parallel to give its original +freshness and point. If we entered a foreign town and found a pillar +like the Nelson Column, we should be surprised to learn that the hero on +the top of it had been famous for his politeness and hilarity during a +chronic toothache. If a procession came down the street with a brass +band and a hero on a white horse, we should think it odd to be told that +he had been very patient with a half-witted maiden aunt. Yet some such +pantomime impossibility is the only measure of the innovation of the +Christian idea of a popular and recognized saint. It must especially be +realized that while this kind of glory was the highest, it was also in a +sense the lowest. The materials of it were almost the same as those of +labour and domesticity: it did not need the sword or sceptre, but rather +the staff or spade. It was the ambition of poverty. All this must be +approximately visualized before we catch a glimpse of the great effects +of the story which lay behind the Canterbury Pilgrimage. + +The first few lines of Chaucer's poem, to say nothing of thousands in +the course of it, make it instantly plain that it was no case of secular +revels still linked by a slight ritual to the name of some forgotten +god, as may have happened in the pagan decline. Chaucer and his friends +did think about St. Thomas, at least more frequently than a clerk at +Margate thinks about St. Lubbock. They did definitely believe in the +bodily cures wrought for them through St. Thomas, at least as firmly as +the most enlightened and progressive modern can believe in those of Mrs. +Eddy. Who was St. Thomas, to whose shrine the whole of that society is +thus seen in the act of moving; and why was he so important? If there be +a streak of sincerity in the claim to teach social and democratic +history, instead of a string of kings and battles, this is the obvious +and open gate by which to approach the figure which disputed England +with the first Plantagenet. A real popular history should think more of +his popularity even than his policy. And unquestionably thousands of +ploughmen, carpenters, cooks, and yeomen, as in the motley crowd of +Chaucer, knew a great deal about St. Thomas when they had never even +heard of Becket. + +It would be easy to detail what followed the Conquest as the feudal +tangle that it was, till a prince from Anjou repeated the unifying +effort of the Conqueror. It is found equally easy to write of the Red +King's hunting instead of his building, which has lasted longer, and +which he probably loved much more. It is easy to catalogue the questions +he disputed with Anselm--leaving out the question Anselm cared most +about, and which he asked with explosive simplicity, as, "Why was God a +man?" All this is as simple as saying that a king died of eating +lampreys, from which, however, there is little to learn nowadays, unless +it be that when a modern monarch perishes of gluttony the newspapers +seldom say so. But if we want to know what really happened to England in +this dim epoch, I think it can be dimly but truly traced in the story of +St. Thomas of Canterbury. + +Henry of Anjou, who brought fresh French blood into the monarchy, +brought also a refreshment of the idea for which the French have always +stood: the idea in the Roman Law of something impersonal and +omnipresent. It is the thing we smile at even in a small French +detective story; when Justice opens a handbag or Justice runs after a +cab. Henry II. really produced this impression of being a police force +in person; a contemporary priest compared his restless vigilance to the +bird and the fish of scripture whose way no man knoweth. Kinghood, +however, meant law and not caprice; its ideal at least was a justice +cheap and obvious as daylight, an atmosphere which lingers only in +popular phrases about the King's English or the King's highway. But +though it tended to be egalitarian it did not, of itself, tend to be +humanitarian. In modern France, as in ancient Rome, the other name of +Justice has sometimes been Terror. The Frenchman especially is always a +Revolutionist--and never an Anarchist. Now this effort of kings like +Henry II. to rebuild on a plan like that of the Roman Law was not only, +of course, crossed and entangled by countless feudal fancies and +feelings in themselves as well as others, it was also conditioned by +what was the corner-stone of the whole civilization. It had to happen +not only with but within the Church. For a Church was to these men +rather a world they lived in than a building to which they went. Without +the Church the Middle Ages would have had no law, as without the Church +the Reformation would have had no Bible. Many priests expounded and +embellished the Roman Law, and many priests supported Henry II. And yet +there was another element in the Church, stored in its first foundations +like dynamite, and destined in every age to destroy and renew the world. +An idealism akin to impossibilism ran down the ages parallel to all its +political compromises. Monasticism itself was the throwing off of +innumerable Utopias, without posterity yet with perpetuity. It had, as +was proved recurrently after corrupt epochs, a strange secret of getting +poor quickly; a mushroom magnificence of destitution. This wind of +revolution in the crusading time caught Francis in Assissi and stripped +him of his rich garments in the street. The same wind of revolution +suddenly smote Thomas Becket, King Henry's brilliant and luxurious +Chancellor, and drove him on to an unearthly glory and a bloody end. + +Becket was a type of those historic times in which it is really very +practical to be impracticable. The quarrel which tore him from his +friend's side cannot be appreciated in the light of those legal and +constitutional debates which the misfortunes of the seventeenth century +have made so much of in more recent history. To convict St. Thomas of +illegality and clerical intrigue, when he set the law of the Church +against that of the State, is about as adequate as to convict St. +Francis of bad heraldry when he said he was the brother of the sun and +moon. There may have been heralds stupid enough to say so even in that +much more logical age, but it is no sufficient way of dealing with +visions or with revolutions. St. Thomas of Canterbury was a great +visionary and a great revolutionist, but so far as England was concerned +his revolution failed and his vision was not fulfilled. We are therefore +told in the text-books little more than that he wrangled with the King +about certain regulations; the most crucial being whether "criminous +clerks" should be punished by the State or the Church. And this was +indeed the chief text of the dispute; but to realise it we must +reiterate what is hardest for modern England to understand--the nature +of the Catholic Church when it was itself a government, and the +permanent sense in which it was itself a revolution. + +It is always the first fact that escapes notice; and the first fact +about the Church was that it created a machinery of pardon, where the +State could only work with a machinery of punishment. It claimed to be a +divine detective who helped the criminal to escape by a plea of guilty. +It was, therefore, in the very nature of the institution, that when it +did punish materially it punished more lightly. If any modern man were +put back in the Becket quarrel, his sympathies would certainly be torn +in two; for if the King's scheme was the more rational, the Archbishop's +was the more humane. And despite the horrors that darkened religious +disputes long afterwards, this character was certainly in the bulk the +historic character of Church government. It is admitted, for instance, +that things like eviction, or the harsh treatment of tenants, was +practically unknown wherever the Church was landlord. The principle +lingered into more evil days in the form by which the Church authorities +handed over culprits to the secular arm to be killed, even for religious +offences. In modern romances this is treated as a mere hypocrisy; but +the man who treats every human inconsistency as a hypocrisy is himself a +hypocrite about his own inconsistencies. + +Our world, then, cannot understand St. Thomas, any more than St. +Francis, without accepting very simply a flaming and even fantastic +charity, by which the great Archbishop undoubtedly stands for the +victims of this world, where the wheel of fortune grinds the faces of +the poor. He may well have been too idealistic; he wished to protect the +Church as a sort of earthly paradise, of which the rules might seem to +him as paternal as those of heaven, but might well seem to the King as +capricious as those of fairyland. But if the priest was too idealistic, +the King was really too practical; it is intrinsically true to say he +was too practical to succeed in practice. There re-enters here, and +runs, I think, through all English history, the rather indescribable +truth I have suggested about the Conqueror; that perhaps he was hardly +impersonal enough for a pure despot. The real moral of our mediæval +story is, I think, subtly contrary to Carlyle's vision of a stormy +strong man to hammer and weld the state like a smith. Our strong men +were too strong for us, and too strong for themselves. They were too +strong for their own aim of a just and equal monarchy. The smith broke +upon the anvil the sword of state that he was hammering for himself. +Whether or no this will serve as a key to the very complicated story of +our kings and barons, it is the exact posture of Henry II. to his rival. +He became lawless out of sheer love of law. He also stood, though in a +colder and more remote manner, for the whole people against feudal +oppression; and if his policy had succeeded in its purity, it would at +least have made impossible the privilege and capitalism of later times. +But that bodily restlessness which stamped and spurned the furniture was +a symbol of him; it was some such thing that prevented him and his heirs +from sitting as quietly on their throne as the heirs of St. Louis. He +thrust again and again at the tough intangibility of the priests' +Utopianism like a man fighting a ghost; he answered transcendental +defiances with baser material persecutions; and at last, on a dark and, +I think, decisive day in English history, his word sent four feudal +murderers into the cloisters of Canterbury, who went there to destroy a +traitor and who created a saint. + +At the grave of the dead man broke forth what can only be called an +epidemic of healing. For miracles so narrated there is the same evidence +as for half the facts of history; and any one denying them must deny +them upon a dogma. But something followed which would seem to modern +civilization even more monstrous than a miracle. If the reader can +imagine Mr. Cecil Rhodes submitting to be horsewhipped by a Boer in St. +Paul's Cathedral, as an apology for some indefensible death incidental +to the Jameson Raid, he will form but a faint idea of what was meant +when Henry II. was beaten by monks at the tomb of his vassal and enemy. +The modern parallel called up is comic, but the truth is that mediæval +actualities have a violence that does seem comic to our conventions. The +Catholics of that age were driven by two dominant thoughts: the +all-importance of penitence as an answer to sin, and the all-importance +of vivid and evident external acts as a proof of penitence. Extravagant +humiliation after extravagant pride for them restored the balance of +sanity. The point is worth stressing, because without it moderns make +neither head nor tail of the period. Green gravely suggests, for +instance, of Henry's ancestor Fulk of Anjou, that his tyrannies and +frauds were further blackened by "low superstition," which led him to be +dragged in a halter round a shrine, scourged and screaming for the mercy +of God. Mediævals would simply have said that such a man might well +scream for it, but his scream was the only logical comment he could +make. But they would have quite refused to see why the scream should be +added to the sins and not subtracted from them. They would have thought +it simply muddle-headed to have the same horror at a man for being +horribly sinful and for being horribly sorry. + +But it may be suggested, I think, though with the doubt proper to +ignorance, that the Angevin ideal of the King's justice lost more by the +death of St. Thomas than was instantly apparent in the horror of +Christendom, the canonization of the victim and the public penance of +the tyrant. These things indeed were in a sense temporary; the King +recovered the power to judge clerics, and many later kings and +justiciars continued the monarchical plan. But I would suggest, as a +possible clue to puzzling after events, that here and by this murderous +stroke the crown lost what should have been the silent and massive +support of its whole policy. I mean that it lost the people. + +It need not be repeated that the case for despotism is democratic. As a +rule its cruelty to the strong is kindness to the weak. An autocrat +cannot be judged as a historical character by his relations with other +historical characters. His true applause comes not from the few actors +on the lighted stage of aristocracy, but from that enormous audience +which must always sit in darkness throughout the drama. The king who +helps numberless helps nameless men, and when he flings his widest +largesse he is a Christian doing good by stealth. This sort of monarchy +was certainly a mediæval ideal, nor need it necessarily fail as a +reality. French kings were never so merciful to the people as when they +were merciless to the peers; and it is probably true that a Czar who was +a great lord to his intimates was often a little father in innumerable +little homes. It is overwhelmingly probable that such a central power, +though it might at last have deserved destruction in England as in +France, would in England as in France have prevented the few from +seizing and holding all the wealth and power to this day. But in England +it broke off short, through something of which the slaying of St. Thomas +may well have been the supreme example. It was something overstrained +and startling and against the instincts of the people. And of what was +meant in the Middle Ages by that very powerful and rather peculiar +thing, the people, I shall speak in the next chapter. + +In any case this conjecture finds support in the ensuing events. It is +not merely that, just as the great but personal plan of the Conqueror +collapsed after all into the chaos of the Stephen transition, so the +great but personal plan of the first Plantagenet collapsed into the +chaos of the Barons' Wars. When all allowance is made for constitutional +fictions and afterthoughts, it does seem likely that here for the first +time some moral strength deserted the monarchy. The character of Henry's +second son John (for Richard belongs rather to the last chapter) stamped +it with something accidental and yet symbolic. It was not that John was +a mere black blot on the pure gold of the Plantagenets, the texture was +much more mixed and continuous; but he really was a discredited +Plantagenet, and as it were a damaged Plantagenet. It was not that he +was much more of a bad man than many opposed to him, but he was the +kind of bad man whom bad men and good do combine to oppose. In a sense +subtler than that of the legal and parliamentary logic-chopping invented +long afterwards, he certainly managed to put the Crown in the wrong. +Nobody suggested that the barons of Stephen's time starved men in +dungeons to promote political liberty, or hung them up by the heels as a +symbolic request for a free parliament. In the reign of John and his son +it was still the barons, and not in the least the people, who seized the +power; but there did begin to appear a _case_ for their seizing it, for +contemporaries as well as constitutional historians afterwards. John, in +one of his diplomatic doublings, had put England into the papal care, as +an estate is put in Chancery. And unluckily the Pope, whose counsels had +generally been mild and liberal, was then in his death-grapple with the +Germanic Emperor and wanted every penny he could get to win. His winning +was a blessing to Europe, but a curse to England, for he used the island +as a mere treasury for this foreign war. In this and other matters the +baronial party began to have something like a principle, which is the +backbone of a policy. Much conventional history that connects their +councils with a thing like our House of Commons is as far-fetched as it +would be to say that the Speaker wields a Mace like those which the +barons brandished in battle. Simon de Montfort was not an enthusiast for +the Whig theory of the British Constitution, but he was an enthusiast +for something. He founded a parliament in a fit of considerable absence +of mind; but it was with true presence of mind, in the responsible and +even religious sense which had made his father so savage a Crusader +against heretics, that he laid about him with his great sword before he +fell at Evesham. + +Magna Carta was not a step towards democracy, but it was a step away +from despotism. If we hold that double truth firmly, we have something +like a key to the rest of English history. A rather loose aristocracy +not only gained but often deserved the name of liberty. And the history +of the English can be most briefly summarized by taking the French motto +of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," and noting that the English have +sincerely loved the first and lost the other two. + +In the contemporary complication much could be urged both for the Crown +and the new and more national rally of the nobility. But it was a +complication, whereas a miracle is a plain matter that any man can +understand. The possibilities or impossibilities of St. Thomas Becket +were left a riddle for history; the white flame of his audacious +theocracy was frustrated, and his work cut short like a fairy tale left +untold. But his memory passed into the care of the common people, and +with them he was more active dead than alive--yes, even more busy. In +the next chapter we shall consider what was meant in the Middle Ages by +the common people, and how uncommon we should think it to-day. And in +the last chapter we have already seen how in the Crusading age the +strangest things grew homely, and men fed on travellers' tales when +there were no national newspapers. A many-coloured pageant of +martyrology on numberless walls and windows had familiarized the most +ignorant with alien cruelties in many climes; with a bishop flayed by +Danes or a virgin burned by Saracens, with one saint stoned by Jews and +another hewn in pieces by negroes. I cannot think it was a small matter +that among these images one of the most magnificent had met his death +but lately at the hands of an English monarch. There was at least +something akin to the primitive and epical romances of that period in +the tale of those two mighty friends, one of whom struck too hard and +slew the other. It may even have been so early as this that something +was judged in silence; and for the multitude rested on the Crown a +mysterious seal of insecurity like that of Cain, and of exile on the +English kings. + + + + +VIII + +THE MEANING OF MERRY ENGLAND + + +The mental trick by which the first half of English history has been +wholly dwarfed and dehumanized is a very simple one. It consists in +telling only the story of the professional destroyers and then +complaining that the whole story is one of destruction. A king is at the +best a sort of crowned executioner; all government is an ugly necessity; +and if it was then uglier it was for the most part merely because it was +more difficult. What we call the Judges' circuits were first rather the +King's raids. For a time the criminal class was so strong that ordinary +civil government was conducted by a sort of civil war. When the social +enemy was caught at all he was killed or savagely maimed. The King could +not take Pentonville Prison about with him on wheels. I am far from +denying that there was a real element of cruelty in the Middle Ages; but +the point here is that it was concerned with one side of life, which is +cruel at the best; and that this involved more cruelty for the same +reason that it involved more courage. When we think of our ancestors as +the men who inflicted tortures, we ought sometimes to think of them as +the men who defied them. But the modern critic of mediævalism commonly +looks only at these crooked shadows and not at the common daylight of +the Middle Ages. When he has got over his indignant astonishment at the +fact that fighters fought and that hangmen hanged, he assumes that any +other ideas there may have been were ineffectual and fruitless. He +despises the monk for avoiding the very same activities which he +despises the warrior for cultivating. And he insists that the arts of +war were sterile, without even admitting the possibility that the arts +of peace were productive. But the truth is that it is precisely in the +arts of peace, and in the type of production, that the Middle Ages stand +singular and unique. This is not eulogy but history; an informed man +must recognize this productive peculiarity even if he happens to hate +it. The melodramatic things currently called mediæval are much older and +more universal; such as the sport of tournament or the use of torture. +The tournament was indeed a Christian and liberal advance on the +gladiatorial show, since the lords risked themselves and not merely +their slaves. Torture, so far from being peculiarly mediæval, was copied +from pagan Rome and its most rationalist political science; and its +application to others besides slaves was really part of the slow +mediæval extinction of slavery. Torture, indeed, is a logical thing +common in states innocent of fanaticism, as in the great agnostic empire +of China. What was really arresting and remarkable about the Middle +Ages, as the Spartan discipline was peculiar to Sparta, or the Russian +communes typical of Russia, was precisely its positive social scheme of +production, of the making, building and growing of all the good things +of life. + +For the tale told in a book like this cannot really touch on mediæval +England at all. The dynasties and the parliaments passed like a changing +cloud and across a stable and fruitful landscape. The institutions which +affected the masses can be compared to corn or fruit trees in one +practical sense at least, that they grew upwards from below. There may +have been better societies, and assuredly we have not to look far for +worse; but it is doubtful if there was ever so spontaneous a society. We +cannot do justice, for instance, to the local government of that epoch, +even where it was very faulty and fragmentary, by any comparisons with +the plans of local government laid down to-day. Modern local government +always comes from above; it is at best granted; it is more often merely +imposed. The modern English oligarchy, the modern German Empire, are +necessarily more efficient in making municipalities upon a plan, or +rather a pattern. The mediævals not only had self-government, but their +self-government was self-made. They did indeed, as the central powers of +the national monarchies grew stronger, seek and procure the stamp of +state approval; but it was approval of a popular fact already in +existence. Men banded together in guilds and parishes long before Local +Government Acts were dreamed of. Like charity, which was worked in the +same way, their Home Rule began at home. The reactions of recent +centuries have left most educated men bankrupt of the corporate +imagination required even to imagine this. They only think of a mob as a +thing that breaks things--even if they admit it is right to break them. +But the mob made these things. An artist mocked as many-headed, an +artist with many eyes and hands, created these masterpieces. And if the +modern sceptic, in his detestation of the democratic ideal, complains of +my calling them masterpieces, a simple answer will for the moment serve. +It is enough to reply that the very word "masterpiece" is borrowed from +the terminology of the mediæval craftsmen. But such points in the Guild +System can be considered a little later; here we are only concerned with +the quite spontaneous springing upwards of all these social +institutions, such as they were. They rose in the streets like a silent +rebellion; like a still and statuesque riot. In modern constitutional +countries there are practically no political institutions thus given by +the people; all are received by the people. There is only one thing that +stands in our midst, attenuated and threatened, but enthroned in some +power like a ghost of the Middle Ages: the Trades Unions. + +In agriculture, what had happened to the land was like a universal +landslide. But by a prodigy beyond the catastrophes of geology it may be +said that the land had slid uphill. Rural civilization was on a wholly +new and much higher level; yet there was no great social convulsions or +apparently even great social campaigns to explain it. It is possibly a +solitary instance in history of men thus falling upwards; at least of +outcasts falling on their feet or vagrants straying into the promised +land. Such a thing could not be and was not a mere accident; yet, if we +go by conscious political plans, it was something like a miracle. There +had appeared, like a subterranean race cast up to the sun, something +unknown to the august civilization of the Roman Empire--a peasantry. At +the beginning of the Dark Ages the great pagan cosmopolitan society now +grown Christian was as much a slave state as old South Carolina. By the +fourteenth century it was almost as much a state of peasant proprietors +as modern France. No laws had been passed against slavery; no dogmas +even had condemned it by definition; no war had been waged against it, +no new race or ruling caste had repudiated it; but it was gone. This +startling and silent transformation is perhaps the best measure of the +pressure of popular life in the Middle Ages, of how fast it was making +new things in its spiritual factory. Like everything else in the +mediæval revolution, from its cathedrals to its ballads, it was as +anonymous as it was enormous. It is admitted that the conscious and +active emancipators everywhere were the parish priests and the +religious brotherhoods; but no name among them has survived and no man +of them has reaped his reward in this world. Countless Clarksons and +innumerable Wilberforces, without political machinery or public fame, +worked at death-beds and confessionals in all the villages of Europe; +and the vast system of slavery vanished. It was probably the widest work +ever done which was voluntary on both sides; and the Middle Ages was in +this and other things the age of volunteers. It is possible enough to +state roughly the stages through which the thing passed; but such a +statement does not explain the loosening of the grip of the great +slave-owners; and it cannot be explained except psychologically. The +Catholic type of Christianity was not merely an element, it was a +climate; and in that climate the slave would not grow. I have already +suggested, touching that transformation of the Roman Empire which was +the background of all these centuries, how a mystical view of man's +dignity must have this effect. A table that walked and talked, or a +stool that flew with wings out of window, would be about as workable a +thing as an immortal chattel. But though here as everywhere the spirit +explains the processes, and the processes cannot even plausibly explain +the spirit, these processes involve two very practical points, without +which we cannot understand how this great popular civilization was +created--or how it was destroyed. + +What we call the manors were originally the _villae_ of the pagan +lords, each with its population of slaves. Under this process, however +it be explained, what had occurred was the diminishment of the lords' +claim to the whole profit of a slave estate, by which it became a claim +to the profit of part of it, and dwindled at last to certain dues or +customary payments to the lord, having paid which the slave could enjoy +not only the use of the land but the profit of it. It must be remembered +that over a great part, and especially very important parts, of the +whole territory, the lords were abbots, magistrates elected by a +mystical communism and themselves often of peasant birth. Men not only +obtained a fair amount of justice under their care, but a fair amount of +freedom even from their carelessness. But two details of the development +are very vital. First, as has been hinted elsewhere, the slave was long +in the intermediate status of a serf. This meant that while the land was +entitled to the services of the man, he was equally entitled to the +support of the land. He could not be evicted; he could not even, in the +modern fashion, have his rent raised. At the beginning it was merely +that the slave was owned, but at least he could not be disowned. At the +end he had really become a small landlord, merely because it was not the +lord that owned him, but the land. It is hardly unsafe to suggest that +in this (by one of the paradoxes of this extraordinary period) the very +fixity of serfdom was a service to freedom. The new peasant inherited +something of the stability of the slave. He did not come to life in a +competitive scramble where everybody was trying to snatch his freedom +from him. He found himself among neighbours who already regarded his +presence as normal and his frontiers as natural frontiers, and among +whom all-powerful customs crushed all experiments in competition. By a +trick or overturn no romancer has dared to put in a tale, this prisoner +had become the governor of his own prison. For a little time it was +almost true that an Englishman's house was his castle, because it had +been built strong enough to be his dungeon. + +The other notable element was this: that when the produce of the land +began by custom to be cut up and only partially transmitted to the lord, +the remainder was generally subdivided into two types of property. One +the serfs enjoyed severally, in private patches, while the other they +enjoyed in common, and generally in common with the lord. Thus arose the +momentously important mediæval institutions of the Common Land, owned +side by side with private land. It was an alternative and a refuge. The +mediævals, except when they were monks, were none of them Communists; +but they were all, as it were, potential Communists. It is typical of +the dark and dehumanized picture now drawn of the period that our +romances constantly describe a broken man as falling back on the forests +and the outlaw's den, but never describe him as falling back on the +common land, which was a much more common incident. Mediævalism +believed in mending its broken men; and as the idea existed in the +communal life for monks, it existed in the communal land for peasants. +It was their great green hospital, their free and airy workhouse. A +Common was not a naked and negative thing like the scrub or heath we +call a Common on the edges of the suburbs. It was a reserve of wealth +like a reserve of grain in a barn; it was deliberately kept back as a +balance, as we talk of a balance at the bank. Now these provisions for a +healthier distribution of property would by themselves show any man of +imagination that a real moral effort had been made towards social +justice; that it could not have been mere evolutionary accident that +slowly turned the slave into a serf, and the serf into a peasant +proprietor. But if anybody still thinks that mere blind luck, without +any groping for the light, had somehow brought about the peasant +condition in place of the agrarian slave estate, he has only to turn to +what was happening in all the other callings and affairs of humanity. +Then he will cease to doubt. For he will find the same mediæval men busy +upon a social scheme which points as plainly in effect to pity and a +craving for equality. And it is a system which could no more be produced +by accident than one of their cathedrals could be built by an +earthquake. + +Most work beyond the primary work of agriculture was guarded by the +egalitarian vigilance of the Guilds. It is hard to find any term to +measure the distance between this system and modern society; one can +only approach it first by the faint traces it has left. Our daily life +is littered with a debris of the Middle Ages, especially of dead words +which no longer carry their meaning. I have already suggested one +example. We hardly call up the picture of a return to Christian +Communism whenever we mention Wimbledon Common. This truth descends to +such trifles as the titles which we write on letters and postcards. The +puzzling and truncated monosyllable "Esq." is a pathetic relic of a +remote evolution from chivalry to snobbery. No two historic things could +well be more different than an esquire and a squire. The first was above +all things an incomplete and probationary position--the tadpole of +knighthood; the second is above all things a complete and assured +position--the status of the owners and rulers of rural England +throughout recent centuries. Our esquires did not win their estates till +they had given up any particular fancy for winning their spurs. Esquire +does not mean squire, and esq. does not mean anything. But it remains on +our letters a little wriggle in pen and ink and an indecipherable +hieroglyph twisted by the strange turns of our history, which have +turned a military discipline into a pacific oligarchy, and that into a +mere plutocracy at last. And there are similar historic riddles to be +unpicked in the similar forms of social address. There is something +singularly forlorn about the modern word "Mister." Even in sound it has +a simpering feebleness which marks the shrivelling of the strong word +from which it came. Nor, indeed, is the symbol of the mere sound +inaccurate. I remember seeing a German story of Samson in which he bore +the unassuming name of Simson, which surely shows Samson very much +shorn. There is something of the same dismal _diminuendo_ in the +evolution of a Master into a Mister. + +The very vital importance of the word "Master" is this. A Guild was, +very broadly speaking, a Trade Union in which every man was his own +employer. That is, a man could not work at any trade unless he would +join the league and accept the laws of that trade; but he worked in his +own shop with his own tools, and the whole profit went to himself. But +the word "employer" marks a modern deficiency which makes the modern use +of the word "master" quite inexact. A master meant something quite other +and greater than a "boss." It meant a master of the work, where it now +means only a master of the workmen. It is an elementary character of +Capitalism that a shipowner need not know the right end of a ship, or a +landowner have even seen the landscape, that the owner of a goldmine may +be interested in nothing but old pewter, or the owner of a railway +travel exclusively in balloons. He may be a more successful capitalist +if he has a hobby of his own business; he is often a more successful +capitalist if he has the sense to leave it to a manager; but +economically he can control the business because he is a capitalist, +not because he has any kind of hobby or any kind of sense. The highest +grade in the Guild system was a Master, and it meant a mastery of the +business. To take the term created by the colleges in the same epoch, +all the mediæval bosses were Masters of Arts. The other grades were the +journeyman and the apprentice; but like the corresponding degrees at the +universities, they were grades through which every common man could +pass. They were not social classes; they were degrees and not castes. +This is the whole point of the recurrent romance about the apprentice +marrying his master's daughter. The master would not be surprised at +such a thing, any more than an M.A. would swell with aristocratic +indignation when his daughter married a B.A. + +When we pass from the strictly educational hierarchy to the strictly +egalitarian ideal, we find again that the remains of the thing to-day +are so distorted and disconnected as to be comic. There are City +Companies which inherit the coats of arms and the immense relative +wealth of the old Guilds, and inherit nothing else. Even what is good +about them is not what was good about the Guilds. In one case we shall +find something like a Worshipful Company of Bricklayers, in which, it is +unnecessary to say, there is not a single bricklayer or anybody who has +ever known a bricklayer, but in which the senior partners of a few big +businesses in the City, with a few faded military men with a taste in +cookery, tell each other in after-dinner speeches that it has been the +glory of their lives to make allegorical bricks without straw. In +another case we shall find a Worshipful Company of Whitewashers who do +deserve their name, in the sense that many of them employ a large number +of other people to whitewash. These Companies support large charities +and often doubtless very valuable charities; but their object is quite +different from that of the old charities of the Guilds. The aim of the +Guild charities was the same as the aim of the Common Land. It was to +resist inequality--or, as some earnest old gentlemen of the last +generation would probably put it, to resist evolution. It was to ensure, +not only that bricklaying should survive and succeed, but that every +bricklayer should survive and succeed. It sought to rebuild the ruins of +any bricklayer, and to give any faded whitewasher a new white coat. It +was the whole aim of the Guilds to cobble their cobblers like their +shoes and clout their clothiers with their clothes; to strengthen the +weakest link, or go after the hundredth sheep; in short, to keep the row +of little shops unbroken like a line of battle. It resisted the growth +of a big shop like the growth of a dragon. Now even the whitewashers of +the Whitewashers Company will not pretend that it exists to prevent a +small shop being swallowed by a big shop, or that it has done anything +whatever to prevent it. At the best the kindness it would show to a +bankrupt whitewasher would be a kind of compensation; it would not be +reinstatement; it would not be the restoration of status in an +industrial system. So careful of the type it seems, so careless of the +single life; and by that very modern evolutionary philosophy the type +itself has been destroyed. The old Guilds, with the same object of +equality, of course, insisted peremptorily upon the same level system of +payment and treatment which is a point of complaint against the modern +Trades Unions. But they insisted also, as the Trades Unions cannot do, +upon a high standard of craftsmanship, which still astonishes the world +in the corners of perishing buildings or the colours of broken glass. +There is no artist or art critic who will not concede, however distant +his own style from the Gothic school, that there was in this time a +nameless but universal artistic touch in the moulding of the very tools +of life. Accident has preserved the rudest sticks and stools and pots +and pans which have suggestive shapes as if they were possessed not by +devils but by elves. For they were, indeed, as compared with subsequent +systems, produced in the incredible fairyland of a free country. + +That the most mediæval of modern institutions, the Trades Unions, do not +fight for the same ideal of æsthetic finish is true and certainly +tragic; but to make it a matter of blame is wholly to misunderstand the +tragedy. The Trades Unions are confederations of men without property, +seeking to balance its absence by numbers and the necessary character +of their labour. The Guilds were confederations of men with property, +seeking to ensure each man in the possession of that property. This is, +of course, the only condition of affairs in which property can properly +be said to exist at all. We should not speak of a negro community in +which most men were white, but the rare negroes were giants. We should +not conceive a married community in which most men were bachelors, and +three men had harems. A married community means a community where most +people are married; not a community where one or two people are very +much married. A propertied community means a community where most people +have property; not a community where there are a few capitalists. But in +fact the Guildsmen (as also, for that matter, the serfs, semi-serfs and +peasants) were much richer than can be realized even from the fact that +the Guilds protected the possession of houses, tools, and just payment. +The surplus is self-evident upon any just study of the prices of the +period, when all deductions have been made, of course, for the different +value of the actual coinage. When a man could get a goose or a gallon of +ale for one or two of the smallest and commonest coins, the matter is in +no way affected by the name of those coins. Even where the individual +wealth was severely limited, the collective wealth was very large--the +wealth of the Guilds, of the parishes, and especially of the monastic +estates. It is important to remember this fact in the subsequent +history of England. + +The next fact to note is that the local government grew out of things +like the Guild system, and not the system from the government. In +sketching the sound principles of this lost society, I shall not, of +course, be supposed by any sane person to be describing a moral +paradise, or to be implying that it was free from the faults and fights +and sorrows that harass human life in all times, and certainly not least +in our own time. There was a fair amount of rioting and fighting in +connection with the Guilds; and there was especially for some time a +combative rivalry between the guilds of merchants who sold things and +those of craftsmen who made them, a conflict in which the craftsmen on +the whole prevailed. But whichever party may have been predominant, it +was the heads of the Guild who became the heads of the town, and not +vice versâ. The stiff survivals of this once very spontaneous uprising +can again be seen in the now anomalous constitution of the Lord Mayor +and the Livery of the City of London. We are told so monotonously that +the government of our fathers reposed upon arms, that it is valid to +insist that this, their most intimate and everyday sort of government, +was wholly based upon tools; a government in which the workman's tool +became the sceptre. Blake, in one of his symbolic fantasies, suggests +that in the Golden Age the gold and gems should be taken from the hilt +of the sword and put upon the handle of the plough. But something very +like this did happen in the interlude of this mediæval democracy, +fermenting under the crust of mediæval monarchy and aristocracy; where +productive implements often took on the pomp of heraldry. The Guilds +often exhibited emblems and pageantry so compact of their most prosaic +uses, that we can only parallel them by imagining armorial tabards, or +even religious vestments, woven out of a navvy's corderoys or a coster's +pearl buttons. + +Two more points must be briefly added; and the rough sketch of this now +foreign and even fantastic state will be as complete as it can be made +here. Both refer to the links between this popular life and the politics +which are conventially the whole of history. The first, and for that age +the most evident, is the Charter. To recur once more to the parallel of +Trades Unions, as convenient for the casual reader of to-day, the +Charter of a Guild roughly corresponded to that "recognition" for which +the railwaymen and other trades unionists asked some years ago, without +success. By this they had the authority of the King, the central or +national government; and this was of great moral weight with mediævals, +who always conceived of freedom as a positive status, not as a negative +escape: they had none of the modern romanticism which makes liberty akin +to loneliness. Their view remains in the phrase about giving a man the +freedom of a city: they had no desire to give him the freedom of a +wilderness. To say that they had also the authority of the Church is +something of an understatement; for religion ran like a rich thread +through the rude tapestry of these popular things while they were still +merely popular; and many a trade society must have had a patron saint +long before it had a royal seal. The other point is that it was from +these municipal groups already in existence that the first men were +chosen for the largest and perhaps the last of the great mediæval +experiments: the Parliament. + +We have all read at school that Simon de Montfort and Edward I., when +they first summoned Commons to council, chiefly as advisers on local +taxation, called "two burgesses" from every town. If we had read a +little more closely, those simple words would have given away the whole +secret of the lost mediæval civilization. We had only to ask what +burgesses were, and whether they grew on trees. We should immediately +have discovered that England was full of little parliaments, out of +which the great parliament was made. And if it be a matter of wonder +that the great council (still called in quaint archaism by its old title +of the House of Commons) is the only one of these popular or elective +corporations of which we hear much in our books of history, the +explanation, I fear, is simple and a little sad. It is that the +Parliament was the one among these mediæval creations which ultimately +consented to betray and to destroy the rest. + + + + +IX + +NATIONALITY AND THE FRENCH WARS + + +If any one wishes to know what we mean when we say that Christendom was +and is one culture, or one civilization, there is a rough but plain way +of putting it. It is by asking what is the most common, or rather the +most commonplace, of all the uses of the word "Christian." There is, of +course, the highest use of all; but it has nowadays many other uses. +Sometimes a Christian means an Evangelical. Sometimes, and more +recently, a Christian means a Quaker. Sometimes a Christian means a +modest person who believes that he bears a resemblance to Christ. But it +has long had one meaning in casual speech among common people, and it +means a culture or a civilization. Ben Gunn on Treasure Island did not +actually say to Jim Hawkins, "I feel myself out of touch with a certain +type of civilization"; but he did say, "I haven't tasted Christian +food." The old wives in a village looking at a lady with short hair and +trousers do not indeed say, "We perceive a divergence between her +culture and our own"; but they do say, "Why can't she dress like a +Christian?" That the sentiment has thus soaked down to the simplest and +even stupidest daily talk is but one evidence that Christendom was a +very real thing. But it was also, as we have seen, a very localized +thing, especially in the Middle Ages. And that very lively localism the +Christian faith and affections encouraged led at last to an excessive +and exclusive parochialism. There were rival shrines of the same saint, +and a sort of duel between two statues of the same divinity. By a +process it is now our difficult duty to follow, a real estrangement +between European peoples began. Men began to feel that foreigners did +not eat or drink like Christians, and even, when the philosophic schism +came, to doubt if they were Christians. + +There was, indeed, much more than this involved. While the internal +structure of mediævalism was thus parochial and largely popular, in the +greater affairs, and especially the external affairs, such as peace and +war, most (though by no means all) of what was mediæval was monarchical. +To see what the kings came to mean we must glance back at the great +background, as of darkness and daybreak, against which the first figures +of our history have already appeared. That background was the war with +the barbarians. While it lasted Christendom was not only one nation but +more like one city--and a besieged city. Wessex was but one wall or +Paris one tower of it; and in one tongue and spirit Bede might have +chronicled the siege of Paris or Abbo sung the song of Alfred. What +followed was a conquest and a conversion; all the end of the Dark Ages +and the dawn of mediævalism is full of the evangelizing of barbarism. +And it is the paradox of the Crusades that though the Saracen was +superficially more civilized than the Christian, it was a sound instinct +which saw him also to be in spirit a destroyer. In the simpler case of +northern heathenry the civilization spread with a simplier progress. But +it was not till the end of the Middle Ages, and close on the +Reformation, that the people of Prussia, the wild land lying beyond +Germany, were baptized at all. A flippant person, if he permitted +himself a profane confusion with vaccination, might almost be inclined +to suggest that for some reason it didn't "take" even then. + +The barbarian peril was thus brought under bit by bit, and even in the +case of Islam the alien power which could not be crushed was evidently +curbed. The Crusades became hopeless, but they also became needless. As +these fears faded the princes of Europe, who had come together to face +them, were left facing each other. They had more leisure to find that +their own captaincies clashed; but this would easily have been +overruled, or would have produced a petty riot, had not the true +creative spontaneity, of which we have spoken in the local life, tended +to real variety. Royalties found they were representatives almost +without knowing it; and many a king insisting on a genealogical tree or +a title-deed found he spoke for the forests and the songs of a whole +country-side. In England especially the transition is typified in the +accident which raised to the throne one of the noblest men of the Middle +Ages. + +Edward I. came clad in all the splendours of his epoch. He had taken the +Cross and fought the Saracens; he had been the only worthy foe of Simon +de Montfort in those baronial wars which, as we have seen, were the +first sign (however faint) of a serious theory that England should be +ruled by its barons rather than its kings. He proceeded, like Simon de +Montfort, and more solidly, to develop the great mediæval institution of +a parliament. As has been said, it was superimposed on the existing +parish democracies, and was first merely the summoning of local +representatives to advise on local taxation. Indeed its rise was one +with the rise of what we now call taxation; and there is thus a thread +of theory leading to its latter claims to have the sole right of taxing. +But in the beginning it was an instrument of the most equitable kings, +and notably an instrument of Edward I. He often quarrelled with his +parliaments and may sometimes have displeased his people (which has +never been at all the same thing), but on the whole he was supremely the +representative sovereign. In this connection one curious and difficult +question may be considered here, though it marks the end of a story +that began with the Norman Conquest. It is pretty certain that he was +never more truly a representative king, one might say a republican king, +than in the fact that he expelled the Jews. The problem is so much +misunderstood and mixed with notions of a stupid spite against a gifted +and historic race as such, that we must pause for a paragraph upon it. + +The Jews in the Middle Ages were as powerful as they were unpopular. +They were the capitalists of the age, the men with wealth banked ready +for use. It is very tenable that in this way they were useful; it is +certain that in this way they were used. It is also quite fair to say +that in this way they were ill-used. The ill-usage was not indeed that +suggested at random in romances, which mostly revolve on the one idea +that their teeth were pulled out. Those who know this as a story about +King John generally do not know the rather important fact that it was a +story against King John. It is probably doubtful; it was only insisted +on as exceptional; and it was, by that very insistence, obviously +regarded as disreputable. But the real unfairness of the Jews' position +was deeper and more distressing to a sensitive and highly civilized +people. They might reasonably say that Christian kings and nobles, and +even Christian popes and bishops, used for Christian purposes (such as +the Crusades and the cathedrals) the money that could only be +accumulated in such mountains by a usury they inconsistently denounced +as unchristian; and then, when worse times came, gave up the Jew to the +fury of the poor, whom that useful usury had ruined. That was the real +case for the Jew; and no doubt he really felt himself oppressed. +Unfortunately it was the case for the Christians that they, with at +least equal reason, felt him as the oppressor; and that _mutual_ charge +of tyranny is the Semitic trouble in all times. It is certain that in +popular sentiment, this Anti-Semitism was not excused as +uncharitableness, but simply regarded as charity. Chaucer puts his curse +on Hebrew cruelty into the mouth of the soft-hearted prioress, who wept +when she saw a mouse in a trap; and it was when Edward, breaking the +rule by which the rulers had hitherto fostered their bankers' wealth, +flung the alien financiers out of the land, that his people probably saw +him most plainly at once as a knight errant and a tender father of his +people. + +Whatever the merits of this question, such a portrait of Edward was far +from false. He was the most just and conscientious type of mediæval +monarch; and it is exactly this fact that brings into relief the new +force which was to cross his path and in strife with which he died. +While he was just, he was also eminently legal. And it must be +remembered, if we would not merely read back ourselves into the past, +that much of the dispute of the time was legal; the adjustment of +dynastic and feudal differences not yet felt to be anything else. In +this spirit Edward was asked to arbitrate by the rival claimants to the +Scottish crown; and in this sense he seems to have arbitrated quite +honestly. But his legal, or, as some would say, pedantic mind made the +proviso that the Scottish king as such was already under his suzerainty, +and he probably never understood the spirit he called up against him; +for that spirit had as yet no name. We call it to-day Nationalism. +Scotland resisted; and the adventures of an outlawed knight named +Wallace soon furnished it with one of those legends which are more +important than history. In a way that was then at least equally +practical, the Catholic priests of Scotland became especially the +patriotic and Anti-English party; as indeed they remained even +throughout the Reformation. Wallace was defeated and executed; but the +heather was already on fire; and the espousal of the new national cause +by one of Edward's own knights named Bruce, seemed to the old king a +mere betrayal of feudal equity. He died in a final fury at the head of a +new invasion upon the very border of Scotland. With his last words the +great king commanded that his bones should be borne in front of the +battle; and the bones, which were of gigantic size, were eventually +buried with the epitaph, "Here lies Edward the Tall, who was the hammer +of the Scots." It was a true epitaph, but in a sense exactly opposite to +its intention. He was their hammer, but he did not break but make them; +for he smote them on an anvil and he forged them into a sword. + +That coincidence or course of events, which must often be remarked in +this story, by which (for whatever reason) our most powerful kings did +not somehow leave their power secure, showed itself in the next reign, +when the baronial quarrels were resumed and the northern kingdom, under +Bruce, cut itself finally free by the stroke of Bannockburn. Otherwise +the reign is a mere interlude, and it is with the succeeding one that we +find the new national tendency yet further developed. The great French +wars, in which England won so much glory, were opened by Edward III., +and grew more and more nationalist. But even to feel the transition of +the time we must first realize that the third Edward made as strictly +legal and dynastic a claim to France as the first Edward had made to +Scotland; the claim was far weaker in substance, but it was equally +conventional in form. He thought, or said, he had a claim on a kingdom +as a squire might say he had a claim on an estate; superficially it was +an affair for the English and French lawyers. To read into this that the +people were sheep bought and sold is to misunderstand all mediæval +history; sheep have no trade union. The English arms owed much of their +force to the class of the free yeomen; and the success of the infantry, +especially of the archery, largely stood for that popular element which +had already unhorsed the high French chivalry at Courtrai. But the point +is this; that while the lawyers were talking about the Salic Law, the +soldiers, who would once have been talking about guild law or glebe +law, were already talking about English law and French law. The French +were first in this tendency to see something outside the township, the +trade brotherhood, the feudal dues, or the village common. The whole +history of the change can be seen in the fact that the French had early +begun to call the nation the Greater Land. France was the first of +nations and has remained the norm of nations, the only one which is a +nation and nothing else. But in the collision the English grew equally +corporate; and a true patriotic applause probably hailed the victories +of Crecy and Poitiers, as it certainly hailed the later victory of +Agincourt. The latter did not indeed occur until after an interval of +internal revolutions in England, which will be considered on a later +page; but as regards the growth of nationalism, the French wars were +continuous. And the English tradition that followed after Agincourt was +continuous also. It is embodied in rude and spirited ballads before the +great Elizabethans. The Henry V. of Shakespeare is not indeed the Henry +V. of history; yet he is more historic. He is not only a saner and more +genial but a more important person. For the tradition of the whole +adventure was not that of Henry, but of the populace who turned Henry +into Harry. There were a thousand Harries in the army at Agincourt, and +not one. For the figure that Shakespeare framed out of the legends of +the great victory is largely the figure that all men saw as the +Englishman of the Middle Ages. He did not really talk in poetry, like +Shakespeare's hero, but he would have liked to. Not being able to do so, +he sang; and the English people principally appear in contemporary +impressions as the singing people. They were evidently not only +expansive but exaggerative; and perhaps it was not only in battle that +they drew the long bow. That fine farcical imagery, which has descended +to the comic songs and common speech of the English poor even to-day, +had its happy infancy when England thus became a nation; though the +modern poor, under the pressure of economic progress, have partly lost +the gaiety and kept only the humour. But in that early April of +patriotism the new unity of the State still sat lightly upon them; and a +cobbler in Henry's army, who would at home have thought first that it +was the day of St. Crispin of the Cobblers, might truly as well as +sincerely have hailed the splintering of the French lances in a storm of +arrows, and cried, "St. George for Merry England." + +Human things are uncomfortably complex, and while it was the April of +patriotism it was the Autumn of mediæval society. In the next chapter I +shall try to trace the forces that were disintegrating the civilization; +and even here, after the first victories, it is necessary to insist on +the bitterness and barren ambition that showed itself more and more in +the later stages, as the long French wars dragged on. France was at the +time far less happy than England--wasted by the treason of its nobles +and the weakness of its kings almost as much as by the invasion of the +islanders. And yet it was this very despair and humiliation that seemed +at last to rend the sky, and let in the light of what it is hard for the +coldest historian to call anything but a miracle. + +It may be this apparent miracle that has apparently made Nationalism +eternal. It may be conjectured, though the question is too difficult to +be developed here, that there was something in the great moral change +which turned the Roman Empire into Christendom, by which each great +thing, to which it afterwards gave birth, was baptized into a promise, +or at least into a hope of permanence. It may be that each of its ideas +was, as it were, mixed with immortality. Certainly something of this +kind can be seen in the conception which turned marriage from a contract +into a sacrament. But whatever the cause, it is certain that even for +the most secular types of our own time their relation to their native +land has become not contractual but sacramental. We may say that flags +are rags, that frontiers are fictions, but the very men who have said it +for half their lives are dying for a rag, and being rent in pieces for a +fiction even as I write. When the battle-trumpet blew in 1914 modern +humanity had grouped itself into nations almost before it knew what it +had done. If the same sound is heard a thousand years hence, there is no +sign in the world to suggest to any rational man that humanity will not +do exactly the same thing. But even if this great and strange +development be not enduring, the point is that it is felt as enduring. +It is hard to give a definition of loyalty, but perhaps we come near it +if we call it the thing which operates where an obligation is felt to be +unlimited. And the minimum of duty or even decency asked of a patriot is +the maximum that is asked by the most miraculous view of marriage. The +recognized reality of patriotism is not mere citizenship. The recognized +reality of patriotism is for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in +sickness and in health, in national growth and glory and in national +disgrace and decline; it is not to travel in the ship of state as a +passenger, but if need be to go down with the ship. + +It is needless to tell here again the tale of that earthquake episode in +which a clearance in the earth and sky, above the confusion and +abasement of the crowns, showed the commanding figure of a woman of the +people. She was, in her own living loneliness, a French Revolution. She +was the proof that a certain power was not in the French kings or in the +French knights, but in the French. But the fact that she saw something +above her that was other than the sky, the fact that she lived the life +of a saint and died the death of a martyr, probably stamped the new +national sentiment with a sacred seal. And the fact that she fought for +a defeated country, and, even though it was victorious, was herself +ultimately defeated, defines that darker element of devotion of which I +spoke above, which makes even pessimism consistent with patriotism. It +is more appropriate in this place to consider the ultimate reaction of +this sacrifice upon the romance and the realities of England. + +I have never counted it a patriotic part to plaster my own country with +conventional and unconvincing compliments; but no one can understand +England who does not understand that such an episode as this, in which +she was so clearly in the wrong, has yet been ultimately linked up with +a curious quality in which she is rather unusually in the right. No one +candidly comparing us with other countries can say we have specially +failed to build the sepulchres of the prophets we stoned, or even the +prophets who stoned us. The English historical tradition has at least a +loose large-mindedness which always finally falls into the praise not +only of great foreigners but great foes. Often along with much injustice +it has an illogical generosity; and while it will dismiss a great people +with mere ignorance, it treats a great personality with hearty +hero-worship. There are more examples than one even in this chapter, for +our books may well make out Wallace a better man than he was, as they +afterwards assigned to Washington an even better cause than he had. +Thackeray smiled at Miss Jane Porter's picture of Wallace, going into +war weeping with a cambric pocket-handkerchief; but her attitude was +more English and not less accurate. For her idealization was, if +anything, nearer the truth than Thackeray's own notion of a mediævalism +of hypocritical hogs-in-armour. Edward, who figures as a tyrant, could +weep with compassion; and it is probable enough that Wallace wept, with +or without a pocket-handkerchief. Moreover, her romance was a reality, +the reality of nationalism; and she knew much more about the Scottish +patriots ages before her time than Thackeray did about the Irish +patriots immediately under his nose. Thackeray was a great man; but in +that matter he was a very small man, and indeed an invisible one. The +cases of Wallace and Washington and many others are here only mentioned, +however, to suggest an eccentric magnanimity which surely balances some +of our prejudices. We have done many foolish things, but we have at +least done one fine thing; we have whitewashed our worst enemies. If we +have done this for a bold Scottish raider and a vigorous Virginian +slave-holder, it may at least show that we are not likely to fail in our +final appreciation of the one white figure in the motley processions of +war. I believe there to be in modern England something like a universal +enthusiasm on this subject. We have seen a great English critic write a +book about this heroine, in opposition to a great French critic, solely +in order to blame him for not having praised her enough. And I do not +believe there lives an Englishman now, who if he had the offer of being +an Englishman then, would not discard his chance of riding as the +crowned conqueror at the head of all the spears of Agincourt, if he +could be that English common soldier of whom tradition tells that he +broke his spear asunder to bind it into a cross for Joan of Arc. + + + + +X + +THE WAR OF THE USURPERS + + +The poet Pope, though a friend of the greatest of Tory Democrats, +Bolingbroke, necessarily lived in a world in which even Toryism was +Whiggish. And the Whig as a wit never expressed his political point more +clearly than in Pope's line which ran: "The right divine of kings to +govern wrong." It will be apparent, when I deal with that period, that I +do not palliate the real unreason in divine right as Filmer and some of +the pedantic cavaliers construed it. They professed the impossible ideal +of "non-resistance" to any national and legitimate power; though I +cannot see that even that was so servile and superstitious as the more +modern ideal of "non-resistance" even to a foreign and lawless power. +But the seventeenth century was an age of sects, that is of fads; and +the Filmerites made a fad of divine right. Its roots were older, equally +religious but much more realistic; and though tangled with many other +and even opposite things of the Middle Ages, ramify through all the +changes we have now to consider. The connection can hardly be stated +better than by taking Pope's easy epigram and pointing out that it is, +after all, very weak in philosophy. "The right divine of kings to +govern wrong," considered as a sneer, really evades all that we mean by +"a right." To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be +right in doing it. What Pope says satirically about a divine right is +what we all say quite seriously about a human right. If a man has a +right to vote, has he not a right to vote wrong? If a man has a right to +choose his wife, has he not a right to choose wrong? I have a right to +express the opinion which I am now setting down; but I should hesitate +to make the controversial claim that this proves the opinion to be +right. + +Now mediæval monarchy, though only one aspect of mediæval rule, was +roughly represented in the idea that the ruler had a right to rule as a +voter has a right to vote. He might govern wrong, but unless he governed +horribly and extravagantly wrong, he retained his position of right; as +a private man retains his right to marriage and locomotion unless he +goes horribly and extravagantly off his head. It was not really even so +simple as this; for the Middle Ages were not, as it is often the fashion +to fancy, under a single and steely discipline. They were very +controversial and therefore very complex; and it is easy, by isolating +items whether about _jus divinum_ or _primus inter pares_, to maintain +that the mediævals were almost anything; it has been seriously +maintained that they were all Germans. But it is true that the influence +of the Church, though by no means of all the great churchmen, +encouraged the sense of a sort of sacrament of government, which was +meant to make the monarch terrible and therefore often made the man +tyrannical. The disadvantage of such despotism is obvious enough. The +precise nature of its advantage must be better understood than it is, +not for its own sake so much as for the story we have now to tell. + +The advantage of "divine right," or irremovable legitimacy, is this; +that there is a limit to the ambitions of the rich. "_Roi ne puis_"; the +royal power, whether it was or was not the power of heaven, was in one +respect like the power of heaven. It was not for sale. Constitutional +moralists have often implied that a tyrant and a rabble have the same +vices. It has perhaps been less noticed that a tyrant and a rabble most +emphatically have the same virtues. And one virtue which they very +markedly share is that neither tyrants nor rabbles are snobs; they do +not care a button what they do to wealthy people. It is true that +tyranny was sometimes treated as coming from the heavens almost in the +lesser and more literal sense of coming from the sky; a man no more +expected to be the king than to be the west wind or the morning star. +But at least no wicked miller can chain the wind to turn only his own +mill; no pedantic scholar can trim the morning star to be his own +reading-lamp. Yet something very like this is what really happened to +England in the later Middle Ages; and the first sign of it, I fancy, was +the fall of Richard II. + +Shakespeare's historical plays are something truer than historical; +they are traditional; the living memory of many things lingered, though +the memory of others was lost. He is right in making Richard II. +incarnate the claim to divine right; and Bolingbroke the baronial +ambition which ultimately broke up the old mediæval order. But divine +right had become at once drier and more fantastic by the time of the +Tudors. Shakespeare could not recover the fresh and popular part of the +thing; for he came at a later stage in a process of stiffening which is +the main thing to be studied in later mediævalism. Richard himself was +possibly a wayward and exasperating prince; it might well be the weak +link that snapped in the strong chain of the Plantagenets. There may +have been a real case against the _coup d'état_ which he effected in +1397, and his kinsman Henry of Bolingbroke may have had strong sections +of disappointed opinion on his side when he effected in 1399 the first +true usurpation in English history. But if we wish to understand that +larger tradition which even Shakespeare had lost, we must glance back at +something which befell Richard even in the first years of his reign. It +was certainly the greatest event of his reign; and it was possibly the +greatest event of all the reigns which are rapidly considered in this +book. The real English people, the men who work with their hands, lifted +their hands to strike their masters, probably for the first and +certainly for the last time in history. + +Pagan slavery had slowly perished, not so much by decaying as by +developing into something better. In one sense it did not die, but +rather came to life. The slave-owner was like a man who should set up a +row of sticks for a fence, and then find they had struck root and were +budding into small trees. They would be at once more valuable and less +manageable, especially less portable; and such a difference between a +stick and a tree was precisely the difference between a slave and a +serf--or even the free peasant which the serf seemed rapidly tending to +become. It was, in the best sense of a battered phrase, a social +evolution, and it had the great evil of one. The evil was that while it +was essentially orderly, it was still literally lawless. That is, the +emancipation of the commons had already advanced very far, but it had +not yet advanced far enough to be embodied in a law. The custom was +"unwritten," like the British Constitution, and (like that evolutionary, +not to say evasive entity) could always be overridden by the rich, who +now drive their great coaches through Acts of Parliament. The new +peasant was still legally a slave, and was to learn it by one of those +turns of fortune which confound a foolish faith in the common sense of +unwritten constitutions. The French Wars gradually grew to be almost as +much of a scourge to England as they were to France. England was +despoiled by her own victories; luxury and poverty increased at the +extremes of society; and, by a process more proper to an ensuing +chapter, the balance of the better mediævalism was lost. Finally, a +furious plague, called the Black Death, burst like a blast on the land, +thinning the population and throwing the work of the world into ruin. +There was a shortage of labour; a difficulty of getting luxuries; and +the great lords did what one would expect them to do. They became +lawyers, and upholders of the letter of the law. They appealed to a rule +already nearly obsolete, to drive the serf back to the more direct +servitude of the Dark Ages. They announced their decision to the people, +and the people rose in arms. + +The two dramatic stories which connect Wat Tyler, doubtfully with the +beginning, and definitely with the end of the revolt, are far from +unimportant, despite the desire of our present prosaic historians to +pretend that all dramatic stories are unimportant. The tale of Tyler's +first blow is significant in the sense that it is not only dramatic but +domestic. It avenged an insult to the family, and made the legend of the +whole riot, whatever its incidental indecencies, a sort of demonstration +on behalf of decency. This is important; for the dignity of the poor is +almost unmeaning in modern debates; and an inspector need only bring a +printed form and a few long words to do the same thing without having +his head broken. The occasion of the protest, and the form which the +feudal reaction had first taken, was a Poll Tax; but this was but a +part of a general process of pressing the population to servile labour, +which fully explains the ferocious language held by the government after +the rising had failed; the language in which it threatened to make the +state of the serf more servile than before. The facts attending the +failure in question are less in dispute. The mediæval populace showed +considerable military energy and co-operation, stormed its way to +London, and was met outside the city by a company containing the King +and the Lord Mayor, who were forced to consent to a parley. The +treacherous stabbing of Tyler by the Mayor gave the signal for battle +and massacre on the spot. The peasants closed in roaring, "They have +killed our leader"; when a strange thing happened; something which gives +us a fleeting and a final glimpse of the crowned sacramental man of the +Middle Ages. For one wild moment divine right was divine. + +The King was no more than a boy; his very voice must have rung out to +that multitude almost like the voice of a child. But the power of his +fathers and the great Christendom from which he came fell in some +strange fashion upon him; and riding out alone before the people, he +cried out, "I am your leader"; and himself promised to grant them all +they asked. That promise was afterwards broken; but those who see in the +breach of it the mere fickleness of the young and frivolous king, are +not only shallow but utterly ignorant interpreters of the whole trend +of that time. The point that must be seized, if subsequent things are to +be seen as they are, is that Parliament certainly encouraged, and +Parliament almost certainly obliged, the King to repudiate the people. +For when, after the rejoicing revolutionists had disarmed and were +betrayed, the King urged a humane compromise on the Parliament, the +Parliament furiously refused it. Already Parliament is not merely a +governing body but a governing class. Parliament was as contemptuous of +the peasants in the fourteenth as of the Chartists in the nineteenth +century. This council, first summoned by the king like juries and many +other things, to get from plain men rather reluctant evidence about +taxation, has already become an object of ambition, and is, therefore, +an aristocracy. There is already war, in this case literally to the +knife, between the Commons with a large C and the commons with a small +one. Talking about the knife, it is notable that the murderer of Tyler +was not a mere noble but an elective magistrate of the mercantile +oligarchy of London; though there is probably no truth in the tale that +his blood-stained dagger figures on the arms of the City of London. The +mediæval Londoners were quite capable of assassinating a man, but not of +sticking so dirty a knife into the neighbourhood of the cross of their +Redeemer, in the place which is really occupied by the sword of St. +Paul. + +It is remarked above that Parliament was now an aristocracy, being an +object of ambition. The truth is, perhaps, more subtle than this; but if +ever men yearn to serve on juries we may probably guess that juries are +no longer popular. Anyhow, this must be kept in mind, as against the +opposite idea of the _jus divinum_ or fixed authority, if we would +appreciate the fall of Richard. If the thing which dethroned him was a +rebellion, it was a rebellion of the parliament, of the thing that had +just proved much more pitiless than he towards a rebellion of the +people. But this is not the main point. The point is that by the removal +of Richard, a step above the parliament became possible for the first +time. The transition was tremendous; the crown became an object of +ambition. That which one could snatch another could snatch from him; +that which the House of Lancaster held merely by force the House of York +could take from it by force. The spell of an undethronable thing seated +out of reach was broken, and for three unhappy generations adventurers +strove and stumbled on a stairway slippery with blood, above which was +something new in the mediæval imagination; an empty throne. + +It is obvious that the insecurity of the Lancastrian usurper, largely +because he was a usurper, is the clue to many things, some of which we +should now call good, some bad, all of which we should probably call +good or bad with the excessive facility with which we dismiss distant +things. It led the Lancastrian House to lean on Parliament, which was +the mixed matter we have already seen. It may have been in some ways +good for the monarchy, to be checked and challenged by an institution +which at least kept something of the old freshness and freedom of +speech. It was almost certainly bad for the parliament, making it yet +more the ally of the mere ambitious noble, of which we shall see much +later. It also led the Lancastrian House to lean on patriotism, which +was perhaps more popular; to make English the tongue of the court for +the first time, and to reopen the French wars with the fine flag-waving +of Agincourt. It led it again to lean on the Church, or rather, perhaps, +on the higher clergy, and that in the least worthy aspect of +clericalism. A certain morbidity which more and more darkened the end of +mediævalism showed itself in new and more careful cruelties against the +last crop of heresies. A slight knowledge of the philosophy of these +heresies will lend little support to the notion that they were in +themselves prophetic of the Reformation. It is hard to see how anybody +can call Wycliffe a Protestant unless he calls Palagius or Arius a +Protestant; and if John Ball was a Reformer, Latimer was not a Reformer. +But though the new heresies did not even hint at the beginning of +English Protestantism, they did, perhaps, hint at the end of English +Catholicism. Cobham did not light a candle to be handed on to +Nonconformist chapels; but Arundel did light a torch, and put it to his +own church. Such real unpopularity as did in time attach to the old +religious system, and which afterwards became a true national tradition +against Mary, was doubtless started by the diseased energy of these +fifteenth-century bishops. Persecution can be a philosophy, and a +defensible philosophy, but with some of these men persecution was rather +a perversion. Across the channel, one of them was presiding at the trial +of Joan of Arc. + +But this perversion, this diseased energy, is the power in all the epoch +that follows the fall of Richard II., and especially in those feuds that +found so ironic an imagery in English roses--and thorns. The +foreshortening of such a backward glance as this book can alone claim to +be, forbids any entrance into the military mazes of the wars of York and +Lancaster, or any attempt to follow the thrilling recoveries and +revenges which filled the lives of Warwick the Kingmaker and the warlike +widow of Henry V. The rivals were not, indeed, as is sometimes +exaggeratively implied, fighting for nothing, or even (like the lion and +the unicorn) merely fighting for the crown. The shadow of a moral +difference can still be traced even in that stormy twilight of a heroic +time. But when we have said that Lancaster stood, on the whole, for the +new notion of a king propped by parliaments and powerful bishops, and +York, on the whole, for the remains of the older idea of a king who +permits nothing to come between him and his people, we have said +everything of permanent political interest that could be traced by +counting all the bows of Barnet or all the lances of Tewkesbury. But +this truth, that there was something which can only vaguely be called +Tory about the Yorkists, has at least one interest, that it lends a +justifiable romance to the last and most remarkable figure of the +fighting House of York, with whose fall the Wars of the Roses ended. + +If we desire at all to catch the strange colours of the sunset of the +Middle Ages, to see what had changed yet not wholly killed chivalry, +there is no better study than the riddle of Richard III. Of course, +scarcely a line of him was like the caricature with which his much +meaner successor placarded the world when he was dead. He was not even a +hunchback; he had one shoulder slightly higher than the other, probably +the effect of his furious swordsmanship on a naturally slender and +sensitive frame. Yet his soul, if not his body, haunts us somehow as the +crooked shadow of a straight knight of better days. He was not an ogre +shedding rivers of blood; some of the men he executed deserved it as +much as any men of that wicked time; and even the tale of his murdered +nephews is not certain, and is told by those who also tell us he was +born with tusks and was originally covered with hair. Yet a crimson +cloud cannot be dispelled from his memory, and, so tainted is the very +air of that time with carnage, that we cannot say he was incapable even +of the things of which he may have been innocent. Whether or no he was a +good man, he was apparently a good king and even a popular one; yet we +think of him vaguely, and not, I fancy, untruly, as on sufferance. He +anticipated the Renascence in an abnormal enthusiasm for art and music, +and he seems to have held to the old paths of religion and charity. He +did not pluck perpetually at his sword and dagger because his only +pleasure was in cutting throats; he probably did it because he was +nervous. It was the age of our first portrait-painting, and a fine +contemporary portrait of him throws a more plausible light on this +particular detail. For it shows him touching, and probably twisting, a +ring on his finger, the very act of a high-strung personality who would +also fidget with a dagger. And in his face, as there painted, we can +study all that has made it worth while to pause so long upon his name; +an atmosphere very different from everything before and after. The face +has a remarkable intellectual beauty; but there is something else on the +face that is hardly in itself either good or evil, and that thing is +death; the death of an epoch, the death of a great civilization, the +death of something which once sang to the sun in the canticle of St. +Francis and sailed to the ends of the earth in the ships of the First +Crusade, but which in peace wearied and turned its weapons inwards, +wounded its own brethren, broke its own loyalties, gambled for the +crown, and grew feverish even about the creed, and has this one grace +among its dying virtues, that its valour is the last to die. + +But whatever else may have been bad or good about Richard of Gloucester, +there was a touch about him which makes him truly the last of the +mediæval kings. It is expressed in the one word which he cried aloud as +he struck down foe after foe in the last charge at Bosworth--treason. +For him, as for the first Norman kings, treason was the same as +treachery; and in this case at least it was the same as treachery. When +his nobles deserted him before the battle, he did not regard it as a new +political combination, but as the sin of false friends and faithless +servants. Using his own voice like the trumpet of a herald, he +challenged his rival to a fight as personal as that of two paladins of +Charlemagne. His rival did not reply, and was not likely to reply. The +modern world had begun. The call echoed unanswered down the ages; for +since that day no English king has fought after that fashion. Having +slain many, he was himself slain and his diminished force destroyed. So +ended the war of the usurpers; and the last and most doubtful of all the +usurpers, a wanderer from the Welsh marches, a knight from nowhere, +found the crown of England under a bush of thorn. + + + + +XI + +THE REBELLION OF THE RICH + + +Sir Thomas More, apart from any arguments about the more mystical meshes +in which he was ultimately caught and killed, will be hailed by all as a +hero of the New Learning; that great dawn of a more rational daylight +which for so many made mediævalism seem a mere darkness. Whatever we +think of his appreciation of the Reformation, there will be no dispute +about his appreciation of the Renascence. He was above all things a +Humanist and a very human one. He was even in many ways very modern, +which some rather erroneously suppose to be the same as being human; he +was also humane, in the sense of humanitarian. He sketched an ideal, or +rather perhaps a fanciful social system, with something of the ingenuity +of Mr. H. G. Wells, but essentially with much more than the flippancy +attributed to Mr. Bernard Shaw. It is not fair to charge the Utopian +notions upon his morality; but their subjects and suggestions mark what +(for want of a better word) we can only call his modernism. Thus the +immortality of animals is the sort of transcendentalism which savours of +evolution; and the grosser jest about the preliminaries of marriage +might be taken quite seriously by the students of Eugenics. He suggested +a sort of pacifism--though the Utopians had a quaint way of achieving +it. In short, while he was, with his friend Erasmus, a satirist of +mediæval abuses, few would now deny that Protestantism would be too +narrow rather than too broad for him. If he was obviously not a +Protestant, there are few Protestants who would deny him the name of a +Reformer. But he was an innovator in things more alluring to modern +minds than theology; he was partly what we should call a Neo-Pagan. His +friend Colet summed up that escape from mediævalism which might be +called the passage from bad Latin to good Greek. In our loose modern +debates they are lumped together; but Greek learning was the growth of +this time; there had always been a popular Latin, if a dog-Latin. It +would be nearer the truth to call the mediævals bi-lingual than to call +their Latin a dead language. Greek never, of course, became so general a +possession; but for the man who got it, it is not too much to say that +he felt as if he were in the open air for the first time. Much of this +Greek spirit was reflected in More; its universality, its urbanity, its +balance of buoyant reason and cool curiosity. It is even probable that +he shared some of the excesses and errors of taste which inevitably +infected the splendid intellectualism of the reaction against the Middle +Ages; we can imagine him thinking gargoyles Gothic, in the sense of +barbaric, or even failing to be stirred, as Sydney was, by the trumpet +of "Chevy Chase." The wealth of the ancient heathen world, in wit, +loveliness, and civic heroism, had so recently been revealed to that +generation in its dazzling profusion and perfection, that it might seem +a trifle if they did here and there an injustice to the relics of the +Dark Ages. When, therefore, we look at the world with the eyes of More +we are looking from the widest windows of that time; looking over an +English landscape seen for the first time very equally, in the level +light of the sun at morning. For what he saw was England of the +Renascence; England passing from the mediæval to the modern. Thus he +looked forth, and saw many things and said many things; they were all +worthy and many witty; but he noted one thing which is at once a +horrible fancy and a homely and practical fact. He who looked over that +landscape said: "Sheep are eating men." + +This singular summary of the great epoch of our emancipation and +enlightenment is not the fact usually put first in such very curt +historical accounts of it. It has nothing to do with the translation of +the Bible, or the character of Henry VIII., or the characters of Henry +VIII.'s wives, or the triangular debates between Henry and Luther and +the Pope. It was not Popish sheep who were eating Protestant men, or +_vice versa_; nor did Henry, at any period of his own brief and rather +bewildering papacy, have martyrs eaten by lambs as the heathen had them +eaten by lions. What was meant, of course, by this picturesque +expression, was that an intensive type of agriculture was giving way to +a very extensive type of pasture. Great spaces of England which had +hitherto been cut up into the commonwealth of a number of farmers were +being laid under the sovereignty of a solitary shepherd. The point has +been put, by a touch of epigram rather in the manner of More himself, by +Mr. J. Stephen, in a striking essay now, I think, only to be found in +the back files of _The New Witness_. He enunciated the paradox that the +very much admired individual, who made two blades of grass grow instead +of one, was a murderer. In the same article, Mr. Stephen traced the true +moral origins of this movement, which led to the growing of so much +grass and the murder, or at any rate the destruction, of so much +humanity. He traced it, and every true record of that transformation +traces it, to the growth of a new refinement, in a sense a more rational +refinement, in the governing class. The mediæval lord had been, by +comparison, a coarse fellow; he had merely lived in the largest kind of +farm-house after the fashion of the largest kind of farmer. He drank +wine when he could, but he was quite ready to drink ale; and science had +not yet smoothed his paths with petrol. At a time later than this, one +of the greatest ladies of England writes to her husband that she cannot +come to him because her carriage horses are pulling the plough. In the +true Middle Ages the greatest men were even more rudely hampered, but +in the time of Henry VIII. the transformation was beginning. In the next +generation a phrase was common which is one of the keys of the time, and +is very much the key to these more ambitious territorial schemes. This +or that great lord was said to be "Italianate." It meant subtler shapes +of beauty, delicate and ductile glass, gold and silver not treated as +barbaric stones but rather as stems and wreaths of molten metal, +mirrors, cards and such trinkets bearing a load of beauty; it meant the +perfection of trifles. It was not, as in popular Gothic craftsmanship, +the almost unconscious touch of art upon all necessary things: rather it +was the pouring of the whole soul of passionately conscious art +especially into unnecessary things. Luxury was made alive with a soul. +We must remember this real thirst for beauty; for it is an +explanation--and an excuse. + +The old barony had indeed been thinned by the civil wars that closed at +Bosworth, and curtailed by the economical and crafty policy of that +unkingly king, Henry VII. He was himself a "new man," and we shall see +the barons largely give place to a whole nobility of new men. But even +the older families already had their faces set in the newer direction. +Some of them, the Howards, for instance, may be said to have figured +both as old and new families. In any case the spirit of the whole upper +class can be described as increasingly new. The English aristocracy, +which is the chief creation of the Reformation, is undeniably entitled +to a certain praise, which is now almost universally regarded as very +high praise. It was always progressive. Aristocrats are accused of being +proud of their ancestors; it can truly be said that English aristocrats +have rather been proud of their descendants. For their descendants they +planned huge foundations and piled mountains of wealth; for their +descendants they fought for a higher and higher place in the government +of the state; for their descendants, above all, they nourished every new +science or scheme of social philosophy. They seized the vast economic +chances of pasturage; but they also drained the fens. They swept away +the priests, but they condescended to the philosophers. As the new Tudor +house passes through its generations a new and more rationalist +civilization is being made; scholars are criticizing authentic texts; +sceptics are discrediting not only popish saints but pagan philosophers; +specialists are analyzing and rationalizing traditions, and sheep are +eating men. + +We have seen that in the fourteenth century in England there was a real +revolution of the poor. It very nearly succeeded; and I need not conceal +the conviction that it would have been the best possible thing for all +of us if it had entirely succeeded. If Richard II. had really sprung +into the saddle of Wat Tyler, or rather if his parliament had not +unhorsed him when he had got there, if he had confirmed the fact of the +new peasant freedom by some form of royal authority, as it was already +common to confirm the fact of the Trade Unions by the form of a royal +charter, our country would probably have had as happy a history as is +possible to human nature. The Renascence, when it came, would have come +as popular education and not the culture of a club of æsthetics. The New +Learning might have been as democratic as the old learning in the old +days of mediæval Paris and Oxford. The exquisite artistry of the school +of Cellini might have been but the highest grade of the craft of a +guild. The Shakespearean drama might have been acted by workmen on +wooden stages set up in the street like Punch and Judy, the finer +fulfilment of the miracle play as it was acted by a guild. The players +need not have been "the king's servants," but their own masters. The +great Renascence might have been liberal with its liberal education. If +this be a fancy, it is at least one that cannot be disproved; the +mediæval revolution was too unsuccessful at the beginning for any one to +show that it need have been unsuccessful in the end. The feudal +parliament prevailed, and pushed back the peasants at least into their +dubious and half-developed status. More than this it would be +exaggerative to say, and a mere anticipation of the really decisive +events afterwards. When Henry VIII. came to the throne the guilds were +perhaps checked but apparently unchanged, and even the peasants had +probably regained ground; many were still theoretically serfs, but +largely under the easy landlordism of the abbots; the mediæval system +still stood. It might, for all we know, have begun to grow again; but +all such speculations are swamped in new and very strange things. The +failure of the revolution of the poor was ultimately followed by a +counter-revolution; a successful revolution of the rich. + +The apparent pivot of it was in certain events, political and even +personal. They roughly resolve themselves into two: the marriages of +Henry VIII. and the affair of the monasteries. The marriages of Henry +VIII. have long been a popular and even a stale joke; and there is a +truth of tradition in the joke, as there is in almost any joke if it is +sufficiently popular, and indeed if it is sufficiently stale. A jocular +thing never lives to be stale unless it is also serious. Henry was +popular in his first days, and even foreign contemporaries give us quite +a glorious picture of a young prince of the Renascence, radiant with all +the new accomplishments. In his last days he was something very like a +maniac; he no longer inspired love, and even when he inspired fear, it +was rather the fear of a mad dog than of a watch-dog. In this change +doubtless the inconsistency and even ignominy of his Bluebeard weddings +played a great part. And it is but just to him to say that, perhaps with +the exception of the first and the last, he was almost as unlucky in his +wives as they were in their husband. But it was undoubtedly the affair +of the first divorce that broke the back of his honour, and +incidentally broke a very large number of other more valuable and +universal things. To feel the meaning of his fury we must realize that +he did not regard himself as the enemy but rather as the friend of the +Pope; there is a shadow of the old story of Becket. He had defended the +Pope in diplomacy and the Church in controversy; and when he wearied of +his queen and took a passionate fancy to one of her ladies, Anne Boleyn, +he vaguely felt that a rather cynical concession, in that age of cynical +concessions, might very well be made to him by a friend. But it is part +of that high inconsistency which is the fate of the Christian faith in +human hands, that no man knows when the higher side of it will really be +uppermost, if only for an instant; and that the worst ages of the Church +will not do or say something, as if by accident, that is worthy of the +best. Anyhow, for whatever reason, Henry sought to lean upon the +cushions of Leo and found he had struck his arm upon the rock of Peter. +The Pope denied the new marriage; and Henry, in a storm and darkness of +anger, dissolved all the old relations with the Papacy. It is probable +that he did not clearly know how much he was doing then; and it is very +tenable that we do not know it now. He certainly did not think he was +Anti-Catholic; and, in one rather ridiculous sense, we can hardly say +that he thought he was anti-papal, since he apparently thought he was a +pope. From this day really dates something that played a certain part in +history, the more modern doctrine of the divine right of kings, widely +different from the mediæval one. It is a matter which further +embarrasses the open question about the continuity of Catholic things in +Anglicanism, for it was a new note and yet one struck by the older +party. The supremacy of the King over the English national church was +not, unfortunately, merely a fad of the King, but became partly, and for +one period, a fad of the church. But apart from all controverted +questions, there is at least a human and historic sense in which the +continuity of our past is broken perilously at this point. Henry not +only cut off England from Europe, but what was even more important, he +cuts off England from England. + +The great divorce brought down Wolsey, the mighty minister who had held +the scales between the Empire and the French Monarchy, and made the +modern balance of power in Europe. He is often described under the +dictum of _Ego et Rex Meus_; but he marks a stage in the English story +rather because he suffered for it than because he said it. _Ego et Rex +Meus_ might be the motto of any modern Prime Minister; for we have +forgotten the very fact that the word minister merely means servant. +Wolsey was the last great servant who could be, and was, simply +dismissed; the mark of a monarchy still absolute; the English were +amazed at it in modern Germany, when Bismarck was turned away like a +butler. A more awful act proved the new force was already inhuman; it +struck down the noblest of the Humanists. Thomas More, who seemed +sometimes like an Epicurean under Augustus, died the death of a saint +under Diocletian. He died gloriously jesting; and the death has +naturally drawn out for us rather the sacred savours of his soul; his +tenderness and his trust in the truth of God. But for Humanism it must +have seemed a monstrous sacrifice; it was somehow as if Montaigne were a +martyr. And that is indeed the note; something truly to be called +unnatural had already entered the naturalism of the Renascence; and the +soul of the great Christian rose against it. He pointed to the sun, +saying "I shall be above that fellow" with Franciscan familiarity, which +can love nature because it will not worship her. So he left to his king +the sun, which for so many weary days and years was to go down only on +his wrath. + +But the more impersonal process which More himself had observed (as +noted at the beginning of this chapter) is more clearly defined, and +less clouded with controversies, in the second of the two parts of +Henry's policy. There is indeed a controversy about the monasteries; but +it is one that is clarifying and settling every day. Now it is true that +the Church, by the Renascence period, had reached a considerable +corruption; but the real proofs of it are utterly different both from +the contemporary despotic pretence and from the common Protestant story. +It is wildly unfair, for instance, to quote the letters of bishops and +such authorities denouncing the sins of monastic life, violent as they +often are. They cannot possibly be more violent than the letters of St. +Paul to the purest and most primitive churches; the apostle was there +writing to those Early Christians whom all churches idealize; and he +talks to them as to cut-throats and thieves. The explanation, for those +concerned for such subtleties, may possibly be found in the fact that +Christianity is not a creed for good men, but for men. Such letters had +been written in all centuries; and even in the sixteenth century they do +not prove so much that there were bad abbots as that there were good +bishops. Moreover, even those who profess that the monks were +profligates dare not profess that they were oppressors; there is truth +in Cobbett's point that where monks were landlords, they did not become +rack-renting landlords, and could not become absentee landlords. +Nevertheless, there was a weakness in the good institutions as well as a +mere strength in the bad ones; and that weakness partakes of the worst +element of the time. In the fall of good things there is almost always a +touch of betrayal from within; and the abbots were destroyed more easily +because they did not stand together. They did not stand together because +the spirit of the age (which is very often the worst enemy of the age) +was the increasing division between rich and poor; and it had partly +divided even the rich and poor clergy. And the betrayal came, as it +nearly always comes, from that servant of Christ who holds the bag. + +To take a modern attack on liberty, on a much lower plane, we are +familiar with the picture of a politician going to the great brewers, or +even the great hotel proprietors, and pointing out the uselessness of a +litter of little public-houses. That is what the Tudor politicians did +first with the monasteries. They went to the heads of the great houses +and proposed the extinction of the small ones. The great monastic lords +did not resist, or, at any rate, did not resist enough; and the sack of +the religious houses began. But if the lord abbots acted for a moment as +lords, that could not excuse them, in the eyes of much greater lords, +for having frequently acted as abbots. A momentary rally to the cause of +the rich did not wipe out the disgrace of a thousand petty interferences +which had told only to the advantage of the poor; and they were soon to +learn that it was no epoch for their easy rule and their careless +hospitality. The great houses, now isolated, were themselves brought +down one by one; and the beggar, whom the monastery had served as a sort +of sacred tavern, came to it at evening and found it a ruin. For a new +and wide philosophy was in the world, which still rules our society. By +this creed most of the mystical virtues of the old monks have simply +been turned into great sins; and the greatest of these is charity. + +But the populace which had risen under Richard II. was not yet +disarmed. It was trained in the rude discipline of bow and bill, and +organized into local groups of town and guild and manor. Over half the +counties of England the people rose, and fought one final battle for the +vision of the Middle Ages. The chief tool of the new tyranny, a dirty +fellow named Thomas Cromwell, was specially singled out as the tyrant, +and he was indeed rapidly turning all government into a nightmare. The +popular movement was put down partly by force; and there is the new note +of modern militarism in the fact that it was put down by cynical +professional troops, actually brought in from foreign countries, who +destroyed English religion for hire. But, like the old popular rising, +it was even more put down by fraud. Like the old rising, it was +sufficiently triumphant to force the government to a parley; and the +government had to resort to the simple expedient of calming the people +with promises, and then proceeding to break first the promises and then +the people, after the fashion made familiar to us by the modern +politicians in their attitude towards the great strikes. The revolt bore +the name of the Pilgrimage of Grace, and its programme was practically +the restoration of the old religion. In connection with the fancy about +the fate of England if Tyler had triumphed, it proves, I think, one +thing; that his triumph, while it might or might not have led to +something that could be called a reform, would have rendered quite +impossible everything that we now know as the Reformation. + +The reign of terror established by Thomas Cromwell became an Inquisition +of the blackest and most unbearable sort. Historians, who have no shadow +of sympathy with the old religion, are agreed that it was uprooted by +means more horrible than have ever, perhaps, been employed in England +before or since. It was a government by torturers rendered ubiquitous by +spies. The spoliation of the monasteries especially was carried out, not +only with a violence which recalled barbarism, but with a minuteness for +which there is no other word but meanness. It was as if the Dane had +returned in the character of a detective. The inconsistency of the +King's personal attitude to Catholicism did indeed complicate the +conspiracy with new brutalities towards Protestants; but such reaction +as there was in this was wholly theological. Cromwell lost that fitful +favour and was executed, but the terrorism went on the more terribly for +being simplified to the single vision of the wrath of the King. It +culminated in a strange act which rounds off symbolically the story told +on an earlier page. For the despot revenged himself on a rebel whose +defiance seemed to him to ring down three centuries. He laid waste the +most popular shrine of the English, the shrine to which Chaucer had once +ridden singing, because it was also the shrine where King Henry had +knelt to repent. For three centuries the Church and the people had +called Becket a saint, when Henry Tudor arose and called him a traitor. +This might well be thought the topmost point of autocracy; and yet it +was not really so. + +For then rose to its supreme height of self-revelation that still +stranger something of which we have, perhaps fancifully, found hints +before in this history. The strong king was weak. He was immeasurably +weaker than the strong kings of the Middle Ages; and whether or no his +failure had been foreshadowed, he failed. The breach he had made in the +dyke of the ancient doctrines let in a flood that may almost be said to +have washed him away. In a sense he disappeared before he died; for the +drama that filled his last days is no longer the drama of his own +character. We may put the matter most practically by saying that it is +unpractical to discuss whether Froude finds any justification for +Henry's crimes in the desire to create a strong national monarchy. For +whether or no it was desired, it was not created. Least of all our +princes did the Tudors leave behind them a secure central government, +and the time when monarchy was at its worst comes only one or two +generations before the time when it was weakest. But a few years +afterwards, as history goes, the relations of the Crown and its new +servants were to be reversed on a high stage so as to horrify the world; +and the axe which had been sanctified with the blood of More and soiled +with the blood of Cromwell was, at the signal of one of that slave's own +descendants, to fall and to kill an English king. + +The tide which thus burst through the breach and overwhelmed the King +as well as the Church was the revolt of the rich, and especially of the +new rich. They used the King's name, and could not have prevailed +without his power, but the ultimate effect was rather as if they had +plundered the King after he had plundered the monasteries. Amazingly +little of the wealth, considering the name and theory of the thing, +actually remained in royal hands. The chaos was increased, no doubt, by +the fact that Edward VI. succeeded to the throne as a mere boy, but the +deeper truth can be seen in the difficulty of drawing any real line +between the two reigns. By marrying into the Seymour family, and thus +providing himself with a son, Henry had also provided the country with +the very type of powerful family which was to rule merely by pillage. An +enormous and unnatural tragedy, the execution of one of the Seymours by +his own brother, was enacted during the impotence of the childish king, +and the successful Seymour figured as Lord Protector, though even he +would have found it hard to say what he was protecting, since it was not +even his own family. Anyhow, it is hardly too much to say that every +human thing was left unprotected from the greed of such cannibal +protectors. We talk of the dissolution of the monasteries, but what +occurred was the dissolution of the whole of the old civilization. +Lawyers and lackeys and money-lenders, the meanest of lucky men, looted +the art and economics of the Middle Ages like thieves robbing a church. +Their names (when they did not change them) became the names of the +great dukes and marquises of our own day. But if we look back and forth +in our history, perhaps the most fundamental act of destruction occurred +when the armed men of the Seymours and their sort passed from the +sacking of the Monasteries to the sacking of the Guilds. The mediæval +Trade Unions were struck down, their buildings broken into by the +soldiery, and their funds seized by the new nobility. And this simple +incident takes all its common meaning out of the assertion (in itself +plausible enough) that the Guilds, like everything else at that time, +were probably not at their best. Proportion is the only practical thing; +and it may be true that Cæsar was not feeling well on the morning of the +Ides of March. But simply to say that the Guilds declined, is about as +true as saying that Cæsar quietly decayed from purely natural causes at +the foot of the statue of Pompey. + + + + +XII + +SPAIN AND THE SCHISM OF NATIONS + + +The revolution that arose out of what is called the Renascence, and +ended in some countries in what is called the Reformation, did in the +internal politics of England one drastic and definite thing. That thing +was destroying the institutions of the poor. It was not the only thing +it did, but it was much the most practical. It was the basis of all the +problems now connected with Capital and Labour. How much the theological +theories of the time had to do with it is a perfectly fair matter for +difference of opinion. But neither party, if educated about the facts, +will deny that the same time and temper which produced the religious +schism also produced this new lawlessness in the rich. The most extreme +Protestant will probably be content to say that Protestantism was not +the motive, but the mask. The most extreme Catholic will probably be +content to admit that Protestantism was not the sin, but rather the +punishment. The most sweeping and shameless part of the process was not +complete, indeed, until the end of the eighteenth century, when +Protestantism was already passing into scepticism. Indeed a very decent +case could be made out for the paradox that Puritanism was first and +last a veneer on Paganism; that the thing began in the inordinate thirst +for new things in the _noblesse_ of the Renascence and ended in the +Hell-Fire Club. Anyhow, what was first founded at the Reformation was a +new and abnormally powerful aristocracy, and what was destroyed, in an +ever-increasing degree, was everything that could be held, directly or +indirectly, by the people _in spite of_ such an aristocracy. This fact +has filled all the subsequent history of our country; but the next +particular point in that history concerns the position of the Crown. The +King, in reality, had already been elbowed aside by the courtiers who +had crowded behind him just before the bursting of the door. The King is +left behind in the rush for wealth, and already can do nothing alone. +And of this fact the next reign, after the chaos of Edward VI.'s, +affords a very arresting proof. + +Mary Tudor, daughter of the divorced Queen Katherine, has a bad name +even in popular history; and popular prejudice is generally more worthy +of study than scholarly sophistry. Her enemies were indeed largely wrong +about her character, but they were not wrong about her effect. She was, +in the limited sense, a good woman, convinced, conscientious, rather +morbid. But it is true that she was a bad queen; bad for many things, +but especially bad for her own most beloved cause. It is true, when all +is said, that she set herself to burn out "No Popery" and managed to +burn it in. The concentration of her fanaticism into cruelty, especially +its concentration in particular places and in a short time, did remain +like something red-hot in the public memory. It was the first of the +series of great historical accidents that separated a real, if not +universal, public opinion from the old _régime_. It has been summarized +in the death by fire of the three famous martyrs at Oxford; for one of +them at least, Latimer, was a reformer of the more robust and human +type, though another of them, Cranmer, had been so smooth a snob and +coward in the councils of Henry VIII. as to make Thomas Cromwell seem by +comparison a man. But of what may be called the Latimer tradition, the +saner and more genuine Protestantism, I shall speak later. At the time +even the Oxford Martyrs probably produced less pity and revulsion than +the massacre in the flames of many more obscure enthusiasts, whose very +ignorance and poverty made their cause seem more popular than it really +was. But this last ugly feature was brought into sharper relief, and +produced more conscious or unconscious bitterness, because of that other +great fact of which I spoke above, which is the determining test of this +time of transition. + +What made all the difference was this: that even in this Catholic reign +the property of the Catholic Church could not be restored. The very fact +that Mary was a fanatic, and yet this act of justice was beyond the +wildest dreams of fanaticism--that is the point. The very fact that she +was angry enough to commit wrongs for the Church, and yet not bold +enough to ask for the rights of the Church--that is the test of the +time. She was allowed to deprive small men of their lives, she was not +allowed to deprive great men of their property--or rather of other +people's property. She could punish heresy, she could not punish +sacrilege. She was forced into the false position of killing men who had +not gone to church, and sparing men who had gone there to steal the +church ornaments. What forced her into it? Not certainly her own +religious attitude, which was almost maniacally sincere; not public +opinion, which had naturally much more sympathy for the religious +humanities which she did not restore than for the religious inhumanities +which she did. The force came, of course, from the new nobility and the +new wealth they refused to surrender; and the success of this early +pressure proves that the nobility was already stronger than the Crown. +The sceptre had only been used as a crowbar to break open the door of a +treasure-house, and was itself broken, or at least bent, with the blow. + +There is a truth also in the popular insistence on the story of Mary +having "Calais" written on her heart, when the last relic of the +mediæval conquests reverted to France. Mary had the solitary and heroic +half-virtue of the Tudors: she was a patriot. But patriots are often +pathetically behind the times; for the very fact that they dwell on old +enemies often blinds them to new ones. In a later generation Cromwell +exhibited the same error reversed, and continued to keep a hostile eye +on Spain when he should have kept it on France. In our own time the +Jingoes of Fashoda kept it on France when they ought already to have had +it on Germany. With no particular anti-national intention, Mary +nevertheless got herself into an anti-national position towards the most +tremendous international problem of her people. It is the second of the +coincidences that confirmed the sixteenth-century change, and the name +of it was Spain. The daughter of a Spanish queen, she married a Spanish +prince, and probably saw no more in such an alliance than her father had +done. But by the time she was succeeded by her sister Elizabeth, who was +more cut off from the old religion (though very tenuously attached to +the new one), and by the time the project of a similar Spanish marriage +for Elizabeth herself had fallen through, something had matured which +was wider and mightier than the plots of princes. The Englishman, +standing on his little island as on a lonely boat, had already felt +falling across him the shadow of a tall ship. + +Wooden _clichés_ about the birth of the British Empire and the spacious +days of Queen Elizabeth have not merely obscured but contradicted the +crucial truth. From such phrases one would fancy that England, in some +imperial fashion, now first realized that she was great. It would be far +truer to say that she now first realized that she was small. The great +poet of the spacious days does not praise her as spacious, but only as +small, like a jewel. The vision of universal expansion was wholly veiled +until the eighteenth century; and even when it came it was far less +vivid and vital than what came in the sixteenth. What came then was not +Imperialism; it was Anti-Imperialism. England achieved, at the beginning +of her modern history, that one thing human imagination will always find +heroic--the story of a small nationality. The business of the Armada was +to her what Bannockburn was to the Scots, or Majuba to the Boers--a +victory that astonished even the victors. What was opposed to them was +Imperialism in its complete and colossal sense, a thing unthinkable +since Rome. It was, in no overstrained sense, civilization itself. It +was the greatness of Spain that was the glory of England. It is only +when we realize that the English were, by comparison, as dingy, as +undeveloped, as petty and provincial as Boers, that we can appreciate +the height of their defiance or the splendour of their escape. We can +only grasp it by grasping that for a great part of Europe the cause of +the Armada had almost the cosmopolitan common sense of a crusade. The +Pope had declared Elizabeth illegitimate--logically, it is hard to see +what else he could say, having declared her mother's marriage invalid; +but the fact was another and perhaps a final stroke sundering England +from the elder world. Meanwhile those picturesque English privateers who +had plagued the Spanish Empire of the New World were spoken of in the +South simply as pirates, and technically the description was true; only +technical assaults by the weaker party are in retrospect rightly judged +with some generous weakness. Then, as if to stamp the contrast in an +imperishable image, Spain, or rather the empire with Spain for its +centre, put forth all its strength, and seemed to cover the sea with a +navy like the legendary navy of Xerxes. It bore down on the doomed +island with the weight and solemnity of a day of judgment; sailors or +pirates struck at it with small ships staggering under large cannon, +fought it with mere masses of flaming rubbish, and in that last hour of +grapple a great storm arose out of the sea and swept round the island, +and the gigantic fleet was seen no more. The uncanny completeness and +abrupt silence that swallowed this prodigy touched a nerve that has +never ceased to vibrate. The hope of England dates from that hopeless +hour, for there is no real hope that has not once been a forlorn hope. +The breaking of that vast naval net remained like a sign that the small +thing which escaped would survive the greatness. And yet there is truly +a sense in which we may never be so small or so great again. + +For the splendour of the Elizabethan age, which is always spoken of as a +sunrise, was in many ways a sunset. Whether we regard it as the end of +the Renascence or the end of the old mediæval civilization, no candid +critic can deny that its chief glories ended with it. Let the reader +ask himself what strikes him specially in the Elizabethan magnificence, +and he will generally find it is something of which there were at least +traces in mediæval times, and far fewer traces in modern times. The +Elizabethan drama is like one of its own tragedies--its tempestuous +torch was soon to be trodden out by the Puritans. It is needless to say +that the chief tragedy was the cutting short of the comedy; for the +comedy that came to England after the Restoration was by comparison both +foreign and frigid. At the best it is comedy in the sense of being +humorous, but not in the sense of being happy. It may be noted that the +givers of good news and good luck in the Shakespearian love-stories +nearly all belong to a world which was passing, whether they are friars +or fairies. It is the same with the chief Elizabethan ideals, often +embodied in the Elizabethan drama. The national devotion to the Virgin +Queen must not be wholly discredited by its incongruity with the coarse +and crafty character of the historical Elizabeth. Her critics might +indeed reasonably say that in replacing the Virgin Mary by the Virgin +Queen, the English reformers merely exchanged a true virgin for a false +one. But this truth does not dispose of a true, though limited, +contemporary cult. Whatever we think of that particular Virgin Queen, +the tragic heroines of the time offer us a whole procession of virgin +queens. And it is certain that the mediævals would have understood much +better than the moderns the martyrdom of _Measure for Measure_. And as +with the title of Virgin, so with the title of Queen. The mystical +monarchy glorified in _Richard II._ was soon to be dethroned much more +ruinously than in _Richard II._ The same Puritans who tore off the +pasteboard crowns of the stage players were also to tear off the real +crowns of the kings whose parts they played. All mummery was to be +forbidden, and all monarchy to be called mummery. + +Shakespeare died upon St. George's Day, and much of what St. George had +meant died with him. I do not mean that the patriotism of Shakespeare or +of England died; that remained and even rose steadily, to be the noblest +pride of the coming times. But much more than patriotism had been +involved in that image of St. George to whom the Lion Heart had +dedicated England long ago in the deserts of Palestine. The conception +of a patron saint had carried from the Middle Ages one very unique and +as yet unreplaced idea. It was the idea of variation without antagonism. +The Seven Champions of Christendom were multiplied by seventy times +seven in the patrons of towns, trades and social types; but the very +idea that they were all saints excluded the possibility of ultimate +rivalry in the fact that they were all patrons. The Guild of the +Shoemakers and the Guild of the Skinners, carrying the badges of St. +Crispin and St. Bartholomew, might fight each other in the streets; but +they did not believe that St. Crispin and St. Bartholomew were fighting +each other in the skies. Similarly the English would cry in battle on +St. George and the French on St. Denis; but they did not seriously +believe that St. George hated St. Denis or even those who cried upon St. +Denis. Joan of Arc, who was on the point of patriotism what many modern +people would call very fanatical, was yet upon this point what most +modern people would call very enlightened. Now, with the religious +schism, it cannot be denied, a deeper and more inhuman division +appeared. It was no longer a scrap between the followers of saints who +were themselves at peace, but a war between the followers of gods who +were themselves at war. That the great Spanish ships were named after +St. Francis or St. Philip was already beginning to mean little to the +new England; soon it was to mean something almost cosmically +conflicting, as if they were named after Baal or Thor. These are indeed +mere symbols; but the process of which they are symbols was very +practical and must be seriously followed. There entered with the +religious wars the idea which modern science applies to racial wars; the +idea of _natural_ wars, not arising from a special quarrel but from the +nature of the people quarrelling. The shadow of racial fatalism first +fell across our path, and far away in distance and darkness something +moved that men had almost forgotten. + +Beyond the frontiers of the fading Empire lay that outer land, as loose +and drifting as a sea, which had boiled over in the barbarian wars. +Most of it was now formally Christian, but barely civilized; a faint awe +of the culture of the south and west lay on its wild forces like a light +frost. This semi-civilized world had long been asleep; but it had begun +to dream. In the generation before Elizabeth a great man who, with all +his violence, was vitally a dreamer, Martin Luther, had cried out in his +sleep in a voice like thunder, partly against the place of bad customs, +but largely also against the place of good works in the Christian +scheme. In the generation after Elizabeth the spread of the new wild +doctrines in the old wild lands had sucked Central Europe into a cyclic +war of creeds. In this the house which stood for the legend of the Holy +Roman Empire, Austria, the Germanic partner of Spain, fought for the old +religion against a league of other Germans fighting for the new. The +continental conditions were indeed complicated, and grew more and more +complicated as the dream of restoring religious unity receded. They were +complicated by the firm determination of France to be a nation in the +full modern sense; to stand free and foursquare from all combinations; a +purpose which led her, while hating her own Protestants at home, to give +diplomatic support to many Protestants abroad, simply because it +preserved the balance of power against the gigantic confederation of +Spaniards and Austrians. It is complicated by the rise of a Calvinistic +and commercial power in the Netherlands, logical, defiant, defending its +own independence valiantly against Spain. But on the whole we shall be +right if we see the first throes of the modern international problems in +what is called the Thirty Years' War; whether we call it the revolt of +half-heathens against the Holy Roman Empire, or whether we call it the +coming of new sciences, new philosophies, and new ethics from the north. +Sweden took a hand in the struggle, and sent a military hero to the help +of the newer Germany. But the sort of military heroism everywhere +exhibited offered a strange combination of more and more complex +strategic science with the most naked and cannibal cruelty. Other forces +besides Sweden found a career in the carnage. Far away to the +north-east, in a sterile land of fens, a small ambitious family of +money-lenders who had become squires, vigilant, thrifty, thoroughly +selfish, rather thinly adopted the theories of Luther, and began to lend +their almost savage hinds as soldiers on the Protestant side. They were +well paid for it by step after step of promotion; but at this time their +principality was only the old Mark of Brandenburg. Their own name was +Hohenzollern. + + + + +XIII + +THE AGE OF THE PURITANS + + +We should be very much bored if we had to read an account of the most +exciting argument or string of adventures in which unmeaning words such +as "snark" or "boojum" were systematically substituted for the names of +the chief characters or objects in dispute; if we were told that a king +was given the alternative of becoming a snark or finally surrendering +the boojum, or that a mob was roused to fury by the public exhibition of +a boojum, which was inevitably regarded as a gross reflection on the +snark. Yet something very like this situation is created by most modern +attempts to tell the tale of the theological troubles of the sixteenth +and seventeenth centuries, while deferring to the fashionable distaste +for theology in this generation--or rather in the last generation. Thus +the Puritans, as their name implies, were primarily enthusiastic for +what they thought was pure religion; frequently they wanted to impose it +on others; sometimes they only wanted to be free to practise it +themselves; but in no case can justice be done to what was finest in +their characters, as well as first in their thoughts, if we never by +any chance ask what "it" was that they wanted to impose or to practise. +Now, there was a great deal that was very fine about many of the +Puritans, which is almost entirely missed by the modern admirers of the +Puritans. They are praised for things which they either regarded with +indifference or more often detested with frenzy--such as religious +liberty. And yet they are quite insufficiently understood, and are even +undervalued, in their logical case for the things they really did care +about--such as Calvinism. We make the Puritans picturesque in a way they +would violently repudiate, in novels and plays they would have publicly +burnt. We are interested in everything about them, except the only thing +in which they were interested at all. + +We have seen that in the first instance the new doctrines in England +were simply an excuse for a plutocratic pillage, and that is the only +truth to be told about the matter. But it was far otherwise with the +individuals a generation or two after, to whom the wreck of the Armada +was already a legend of national deliverance from Popery, as miraculous +and almost as remote as the deliverances of which they read so +realistically in the Hebrew Books now laid open to them. The august +accident of that Spanish defeat may perhaps have coincided only too well +with their concentration on the non-Christian parts of Scripture. It may +have satisfied a certain Old Testament sentiment of the election of the +English being announced in the stormy oracles of air and sea, which was +easily turned into that heresy of a tribal pride that took even heavier +hold upon the Germans. It is by such things that a civilized state may +fall from being a Christian nation to being a Chosen People. But even if +their nationalism was of a kind that has ultimately proved perilous to +the comity of nations, it still was nationalism. From first to last the +Puritans were patriots, a point in which they had a marked superiority +over the French Huguenots. Politically, they were indeed at first but +one wing of the new wealthy class which had despoiled the Church and +were proceeding to despoil the Crown. But while they were all merely the +creatures of the great spoliation, many of them were the unconscious +creatures of it. They were strongly represented in the aristocracy, but +a great number were of the middle classes, though almost wholly the +middle classes of the towns. By the poor agricultural population, which +was still by far the largest part of the population, they were simply +derided and detested. It may be noted, for instance, that, while they +led the nation in many of its higher departments, they could produce +nothing having the atmosphere of what is rather priggishly called +folklore. All the popular tradition there is, as in songs, toasts, +rhymes, or proverbs, is all Royalist. About the Puritans we can find no +great legend. We must put up as best we can with great literature. + +All these things, however, are simply things that other people might +have noticed about them; they are not the most important things, and +certainly not the things they thought about themselves. The soul of the +movement was in two conceptions, or rather in two steps, the first being +the moral process by which they arrived at their chief conclusion, and +the second the chief conclusion they arrived at. We will begin with the +first, especially as it was this which determined all that external +social attitude which struck the eye of contemporaries. The honest +Puritan, growing up in youth in a world swept bare by the great pillage, +possessed himself of a first principle which is one of the three or four +alternative first principles which are possible to the mind of man. It +was the principle that the mind of man can alone directly deal with the +mind of God. It may shortly be called the anti-sacramental principle; +but it really applies, and he really applied it, to many things besides +the sacraments of the Church. It equally applies, and he equally applied +it, to art, to letters, to the love of locality, to music, and even to +good manners. The phrase about no priest coming between a man and his +Creator is but an impoverished fragment of the full philosophic +doctrine; the true Puritan was equally clear that no singer or +story-teller or fiddler must translate the voice of God to him into the +tongues of terrestrial beauty. It is notable that the one Puritan man of +genius in modern times, Tolstoy, did accept this full conclusion; +denounced all music as a mere drug, and forbade his own admirers to read +his own admirable novels. Now, the English Puritans were not only +Puritans but Englishmen, and therefore did not always shine in clearness +of head; as we shall see, true Puritanism was rather a Scotch than an +English thing. But this was the driving power and the direction; and the +doctrine is quite tenable if a trifle insane. Intellectual truth was the +only tribute fit for the highest truth of the universe; and the next +step in such a study is to observe what the Puritan thought was the +truth about that truth. His individual reason, cut loose from instinct +as well as tradition, taught him a concept of the omnipotence of God +which meant simply the impotence of man. In Luther, the earlier and +milder form of the Protestant process only went so far as to say that +nothing a man did could help him except his confession of Christ; with +Calvin it took the last logical step and said that even this could not +help him, since Omnipotence must have disposed of all his destiny +beforehand; that men must be created to be lost and saved. In the purer +types of whom I speak this logic was white-hot, and we must read the +formula into all their parliamentary and legal formulæ. When we read, +"The Puritan party demanded reforms in the church," we must understand, +"The Puritan party demanded fuller and clearer affirmation that men are +created to be lost and saved." When we read, "The Army selected persons +for their godliness," we must understand, "The Army selected those +persons who seemed most convinced that men are created to be lost and +saved." It should be added that this terrible trend was not confined +even to Protestant countries; some great Romanists doubtfully followed +it until stopped by Rome. It was the spirit of the age, and should be a +permanent warning against mistaking the spirit of the age for the +immortal spirit of man. For there are now few Christians or +non-Christians who can look back at the Calvinism which nearly captured +Canterbury and even Rome by the genius and heroism of Pascal or Milton, +without crying out, like the lady in Mr. Bernard Shaw's play, "How +splendid! How glorious!... and oh what an escape!" + +The next thing to note is that their conception of church-government was +in a true sense self-government; and yet, for a particular reason, +turned out to be a rather selfish self-government. It was equal and yet +it was exclusive. Internally the synod or conventicle tended to be a +small republic, but unfortunately to be a very small republic. In +relation to the street outside the conventicle was not a republic but an +aristocracy. It was the most awful of all aristocracies, that of the +elect; for it was not a right of birth but a right before birth, and +alone of all nobilities it was not laid level in the dust. Hence we +have, on the one hand, in the simpler Puritans a ring of real republican +virtue; a defiance of tyrants, an assertion of human dignity, but above +all an appeal to that first of all republican virtues--publicity. One of +the Regicides, on trial for his life, struck the note which all the +unnaturalness of his school cannot deprive of nobility: "This thing was +not done in a corner." But their most drastic idealism did nothing to +recover a ray of the light that at once lightened every man that came +into the world, the assumption of a brotherhood in all baptized people. +They were, indeed, very like that dreadful scaffold at which the +Regicide was not afraid to point. They were certainly public, they may +have been public-spirited, they were never popular; and it seems never +to have crossed their minds that there was any need to be popular. +England was never so little of a democracy as during the short time when +she was a republic. + +The struggle with the Stuarts, which is the next passage in our history, +arose from an alliance, which some may think an accidental alliance, +between two things. The first was this intellectual fashion of Calvinism +which affected the cultured world as did our recent intellectual fashion +of Collectivism. The second was the older thing which had made that +creed and perhaps that cultured world possible--the aristocratic revolt +under the last Tudors. It was, we might say, the story of a father and a +son dragging down the same golden image, but the younger really from +hatred of idolatry, and the older solely from love of gold. It is at +once the tragedy and the paradox of England that it was the eternal +passion that passed, and the transient or terrestrial passion that +remained. This was true of England; it was far less true of Scotland; +and that is the meaning of the Scotch and English war that ended at +Worcester. The first change had indeed been much the same materialist +matter in both countries--a mere brigandage of barons; and even John +Knox, though he has become a national hero, was an extremely +anti-national politician. The patriot party in Scotland was that of +Cardinal Beaton and Mary Stuart. Nevertheless, the new creed did become +popular in the Lowlands in a positive sense, not even yet known in our +own land. Hence in Scotland Puritanism was the main thing, and was mixed +with Parliamentary and other oligarchies. In England Parliamentary +oligarchy was the main thing, and was mixed with Puritanism. When the +storm began to rise against Charles I., after the more or less +transitional time of his father, the Scotch successor of Elizabeth, the +instances commonly cited mark all the difference between democratic +religion and aristocratic politics. The Scotch legend is that of Jenny +Geddes, the poor woman who threw a stool at the priest. The English +legend is that of John Hampden, the great squire who raised a county +against the King. The Parliamentary movement in England was, indeed, +almost wholly a thing of squires, with their new allies the merchants. +They were squires who may well have regarded themselves as the real and +natural leaders of the English; but they were leaders who allowed no +mutiny among their followers. There was certainly no Village Hampden in +Hampden Village. + +The Stuarts, it may be suspected, brought from Scotland a more mediæval +and therefore more logical view of their own function; for the note of +their nation was logic. It is a proverb that James I. was a Scot and a +pedant; it is hardly sufficiently noted that Charles I. also was not a +little of a pedant, being very much of a Scot. He had also the virtues +of a Scot, courage, and a quite natural dignity and an appetite for the +things of the mind. Being somewhat Scottish, he was very un-English, and +could not manage a compromise: he tried instead to split hairs, and +seemed merely to break promises. Yet he might safely have been far more +inconsistent if he had been a little hearty and hazy; but he was of the +sort that sees everything in black and white; and it is therefore +remembered--especially the black. From the first he fenced with his +Parliament as with a mere foe; perhaps he almost felt it as a foreigner. +The issue is familiar, and we need not be so careful as the gentleman +who wished to finish the chapter in order to find out what happened to +Charles I. His minister, the great Strafford, was foiled in an attempt +to make him strong in the fashion of a French king, and perished on the +scaffold, a frustrated Richelieu. The Parliament claiming the power of +the purse, Charles appealed to the power of the sword, and at first +carried all before him; but success passed to the wealth of the +Parliamentary class, the discipline of the new army, and the patience +and genius of Cromwell; and Charles died the same death as his great +servant. + +Historically, the quarrel resolved itself, through ramifications +generally followed perhaps in more detail than they deserve, into the +great modern query of whether a King can raise taxes without the consent +of his Parliament. The test case was that of Hampden, the great +Buckinghamshire magnate, who challenged the legality of a tax which +Charles imposed, professedly for a national navy. As even innovators +always of necessity seek for sanctity in the past, the Puritan squires +made a legend of the mediæval Magna Carta; and they were so far in a +true tradition that the concession of John had really been, as we have +already noted, anti-despotic without being democratic. These two truths +cover two parts of the problem of the Stuart fall, which are of very +different certainty, and should be considered separately. + +For the first point about democracy, no candid person, in face of the +facts, can really consider it at all. It is quite possible to hold that +the seventeenth-century Parliament was fighting for the truth; it is not +possible to hold that it was fighting for the populace. After the autumn +of the Middle Ages Parliament was always actively aristocratic and +actively anti-popular. The institution which forbade Charles I. to raise +Ship Money was the same institution which previously forbade Richard II. +to free the serfs. The group which claimed coal and minerals from +Charles I. was the same which afterward claimed the common lands from +the village communities. It was the same institution which only two +generations before had eagerly helped to destroy, not merely things of +popular sentiment like the monasteries, but all the things of popular +utility like the guilds and parishes, the local governments of towns and +trades. The work of the great lords may have had, indeed it certainly +had, another more patriotic and creative side; but it was exclusively +the work of the great lords that was done by Parliament. The House of +Commons has itself been a House of Lords. + +But when we turn to the other or anti-despotic aspect of the campaign +against the Stuarts, we come to something much more difficult to dismiss +and much more easy to justify. While the stupidest things are said +against the Stuarts, the real contemporary case for their enemies is +little realized; for it is connected with what our insular history most +neglects, the condition of the Continent. It should be remembered that +though the Stuarts failed in England they fought for things that +succeeded in Europe. These were roughly, first, the effects of the +Counter-Reformation, which made the sincere Protestant see Stuart +Catholicism not at all as the last flicker of an old flame, but as the +spread of a conflagration. Charles II., for instance, was a man of +strong, sceptical, and almost irritably humorous intellect, and he was +quite certainly, and even reluctantly, convinced of Catholicism as a +philosophy. The other and more important matter here was the almost +awful autocracy that was being built up in France like a Bastille. It +was more logical, and in many ways more equal and even equitable than +the English oligarchy, but it really became a tyranny in case of +rebellion or even resistance. There were none of the rough English +safeguards of juries and good customs of the old common law; there was +_lettre de cachet_ as unanswerable as magic. The English who defied the +law were better off than the French; a French satirist would probably +have retorted that it was the English who obeyed the law who were worse +off than the French. The ordering of men's normal lives was with the +squire; but he was, if anything, more limited when he was the +magistrate. He was stronger as master of the village, but actually +weaker as agent of the King. In defending this state of things, in +short, the Whigs were certainly not defending democracy, but they were +in a real sense defending liberty. They were even defending some remains +of mediæval liberty, though not the best; the jury though not the guild. +Even feudalism had involved a localism not without liberal elements, +which lingered in the aristocratic system. Those who loved such things +might well be alarmed at the Leviathan of the State, which for Hobbes +was a single monster and for France a single man. + +As to the mere facts, it must be said again that in so far as Puritanism +was pure, it was unfortunately passing. And the very type of the +transition by which it passed can be found in that extraordinary man who +is popularly credited with making it predominate. Oliver Cromwell is in +history much less the leader of Puritanism than the tamer of Puritanism. +He was undoubtedly possessed, certainly in his youth, possibly all his +life, by the rather sombre religious passions of his period; but as he +emerges into importance, he stands more and more for the Positivism of +the English as compared with the Puritanism of the Scotch. He is one of +the Puritan squires; but he is steadily more of the squire and less of +the Puritan; and he points to the process by which the squirearchy +became at last merely pagan. This is the key to most of what is praised +and most of what is blamed in him; the key to the comparative sanity, +toleration and modern efficiency of many of his departures; the key to +the comparative coarseness, earthiness, cynicism, and lack of sympathy +in many others. He was the reverse of an idealist; and he cannot without +absurdity be held up as an ideal; but he was, like most of the squires, +a type genuinely English; not without public spirit, certainly not +without patriotism. His seizure of personal power, which destroyed an +impersonal and ideal government, had something English in its very +unreason. The act of killing the King, I fancy, was not primarily his, +and certainly not characteristically his. It was a concession to the +high inhuman ideals of the tiny group of true Puritans, with whom he had +to compromise but with whom he afterwards collided. It was logic rather +than cruelty in the act that was not Cromwellian; for he treated with +bestial cruelty the native Irish, whom the new spiritual exclusiveness +regarded as beasts--or as the modern euphemism would put it, as +aborigines. But his practical temper was more akin to such human +slaughter on what seemed to him the edges of civilization, than to a +sort of human sacrifice in the very centre and forum of it; he is not a +representative regicide. In a sense that piece of headsmanship was +rather above his head. The real regicides did it in a sort of trance or +vision; and he was not troubled with visions. But the true collision +between the religious and rational sides of the seventeenth-century +movement came symbolically on that day of driving storm at Dunbar, when +the raving Scotch preachers overruled Leslie and forced him down into +the valley to be the victim of the Cromwellian common sense. Cromwell +said that God had delivered them into his hand; but it was their own God +who delivered them, the dark unnatural God of the Calvinist dreams, as +overpowering as a nightmare--and as passing. + +It was the Whig rather than the Puritan that triumphed on that day; it +was the Englishman with his aristocratic compromise; and even what +followed Cromwell's death, the Restoration, was an aristocratic +compromise, and even a Whig compromise. The mob might cheer as for a +mediæval king; but the Protectorate and the Restoration were more of a +piece than the mob understood. Even in the superficial things where +there seemed to be a rescue it was ultimately a respite. Thus the +Puritan régime had risen chiefly by one thing unknown to +mediævalism--militarism. Picked professional troops, harshly drilled but +highly paid, were the new and alien instrument by which the Puritans +became masters. These were disbanded and their return resisted by Tories +and Whigs; but their return seemed always imminent, because it was in +the spirit of the new stern world of the Thirty Years' War. A discovery +is an incurable disease; and it had been discovered that a crowd could +be turned into an iron centipede, crushing larger and looser crowds. +Similarly the remains of Christmas were rescued from the Puritans; but +they had eventually to be rescued again by Dickens from the +Utilitarians, and may yet have to be rescued by somebody from the +vegetarians and teetotallers. The strange army passed and vanished +almost like a Moslem invasion; but it had made the difference that armed +valour and victory always make, if it was but a negative difference. It +was the final break in our history; it was a breaker of many things, and +perhaps of popular rebellion in our land. It is something of a verbal +symbol that these men founded New England in America, for indeed they +tried to found it here. By a paradox, there was something prehistoric in +the very nakedness of their novelty. Even the old and savage things they +invoked became more savage in becoming more new. In observing what is +called their Jewish Sabbath, they would have had to stone the strictest +Jew. And they (and indeed their age generally) turned witch-burning from +an episode to an epidemic. The destroyers and the things destroyed +disappeared together; but they remain as something nobler than the +nibbling legalism of some of the Whig cynics who continued their work. +They were above all things anti-historic, like the Futurists in Italy; +and there was this unconscious greatness about them, that their very +sacrilege was public and solemn like a sacrament; and they were +ritualists even as iconoclasts. It was, properly considered, but a very +secondary example of their strange and violent simplicity that one of +them, before a mighty mob at Whitehall, cut off the anointed head of the +sacramental man of the Middle Ages. For another, far away in the western +shires, cut down the thorn of Glastonbury, from which had grown the +whole story of Britain. + + + + +XIV + +THE TRIUMPH OF THE WHIGS + + +Whether or no we believe that the Reformation really reformed, there can +be little doubt that the Restoration did not really restore. Charles II. +was never in the old sense a King; he was a Leader of the Opposition to +his own Ministers. Because he was a clever politician he kept his +official post, and because his brother and successor was an incredibly +stupid politician, he lost it; but the throne was already only one of +the official posts. In some ways, indeed, Charles II. was fitted for the +more modern world then beginning; he was rather an eighteenth-century +than a seventeenth-century man. He was as witty as a character in a +comedy; and it was already the comedy of Sheridan and not of +Shakespeare. He was more modern yet when he enjoyed the pure +experimentalism of the Royal Society, and bent eagerly over the toys +that were to grow into the terrible engines of science. He and his +brother, however, had two links with what was in England the losing +side; and by the strain on these their dynastic cause was lost. The +first, which lessened in its practical pressure as time passed, was, of +course, the hatred felt for their religion. The second, which grew as it +neared the next century, was their tie with the French Monarchy. We will +deal with the religious quarrel before passing on to a much more +irreligious age; but the truth about it is tangled and far from easy to +trace. + +The Tudors had begun to persecute the old religion before they had +ceased to belong to it. That is one of the transitional complexities +that can only be conveyed by such contradictions. A person of the type +and time of Elizabeth would feel fundamentally, and even fiercely, that +priests should be celibate, while racking and rending anybody caught +talking to the only celibate priests. This mystery, which may be very +variously explained, covered the Church of England, and in a great +degree the people of England. Whether it be called the Catholic +continuity of Anglicanism or merely the slow extirpation of Catholicism, +there can be no doubt that a parson like Herrick, for instance, as late +as the Civil War, was stuffed with "superstitions" which were Catholic +in the extreme sense we should now call Continental. Yet many similar +parsons had already a parallel and opposite passion, and thought of +Continental Catholicism not even as the errant Church of Christ, but as +the consistent Church of Antichrist. It is, therefore, very hard now to +guess the proportion of Protestantism; but there is no doubt about its +presence, especially its presence in centres of importance like London. +By the time of Charles II., after the purge of the Puritan Terror, it +had become something at least more inherent and human than the mere +exclusiveness of Calvinist creeds or the craft of Tudor nobles. The +Monmouth rebellion showed that it had a popular, though an +insufficiently popular, backing. The "No Popery" force became the crowd +if it never became the people. It was, perhaps, increasingly an urban +crowd, and was subject to those epidemics of detailed delusion with +which sensational journalism plays on the urban crowds of to-day. One of +these scares and scoops (not to add the less technical name of lies) was +the Popish Plot, a storm weathered warily by Charles II. Another was the +Tale of the Warming Pan, or the bogus heir to the throne, a storm that +finally swept away James II. + +The last blow, however, could hardly have fallen but for one of those +illogical but almost lovable localisms to which the English temperament +is prone. The debate about the Church of England, then and now, differs +from most debates in one vital point. It is not a debate about what an +institution ought to do, or whether that institution ought to alter, but +about what that institution actually is. One party, then as now, only +cared for it because it was Catholic, and the other only cared for it +because it was Protestant. Now, something had certainly happened to the +English quite inconceivable to the Scotch or the Irish. Masses of +common people loved the Church of England without having even decided +what it was. It had a hold different indeed from that of the mediæval +Church, but also very different from the barren prestige of gentility +which clung to it in the succeeding century. Macaulay, with a widely +different purpose in mind, devotes some pages to proving that an +Anglican clergyman was socially a mere upper servant in the seventeenth +century. He is probably right; but he does not guess that this was but +the degenerate continuity of the more democratic priesthood of the +Middle Ages. A priest was not treated as a gentleman; but a peasant was +treated as a priest. And in England then, as in Europe now, many +entertained the fancy that priesthood was a higher thing than gentility. +In short, the national church was then at least really national, in a +fashion that was emotionally vivid though intellectually vague. When, +therefore, James II. seemed to menace this practising communion, he +aroused something at least more popular than the mere priggishness of +the Whig lords. To this must be added a fact generally forgotten. I mean +the fact that the influence then called Popish was then in a real sense +regarded as revolutionary. The Jesuit seemed to the English not merely a +conspirator but a sort of anarchist. There is something appalling about +abstract speculations to many Englishmen; and the abstract speculations +of Jesuits like Suarez dealt with extreme democracy and things +undreamed of here. The last Stuart proposals for toleration seemed thus +to many as vast and empty as atheism. The only seventeenth-century +Englishmen who had something of this transcendental abstraction were the +Quakers; and the cosy English compromise shuddered when the two things +shook hands. For it was something much more than a Stuart intrigue which +made these philosophical extremes meet, merely because they were +philosophical; and which brought the weary but humorous mind of Charles +II. into alliance with the subtle and detached spirit of William Penn. + +Much of England, then, was really alarmed at the Stuart scheme of +toleration, sincere or insincere, because it seemed theoretical and +therefore fanciful. It was in advance of its age or (to use a more +intelligent language) too thin and ethereal for its atmosphere. And to +this affection for the actual in the English moderates must be added (in +what proportion we know not) a persecuting hatred of Popery almost +maniacal but quite sincere. The State had long, as we have seen, been +turned to an engine of torture against priests and the friends of +priests. Men talk of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; but the +English persecutors never had so tolerant an edict to revoke. But at +least by this time the English, like the French, persecutors were +oppressing a minority. Unfortunately there was another province of +government in which they were still more madly persecuting the +majority. For it was here that came to its climax and took on its +terrific character that lingering crime that was called the government +of Ireland. It would take too long to detail the close network of +unnatural laws by which that country was covered till towards the end of +the eighteenth century; it is enough to say here that the whole attitude +to the Irish was tragically typified, and tied up with our expulsion of +the Stuarts, in one of those acts that are remembered for ever. James +II., fleeing from the opinion of London, perhaps of England, eventually +found refuge in Ireland, which took arms in his favour. The Prince of +Orange, whom the aristocracy had summoned to the throne, landed in that +country with an English and Dutch army, won the Battle of the Boyne, but +saw his army successfully arrested before Limerick by the military +genius of Patrick Sarsfield. The check was so complete that peace could +only be restored by promising complete religious liberty to the Irish, +in return for the surrender of Limerick. The new English Government +occupied the town and immediately broke the promise. It is not a matter +on which there is much more to be said. It was a tragic necessity that +the Irish should remember it; but it was far more tragic that the +English forgot it. For he who has forgotten his sin is repeating it +incessantly for ever. + +But here again the Stuart position was much more vulnerable on the side +of secular policy, and especially of foreign policy. The aristocrats to +whom power passed finally at the Revolution were already ceasing to have +any supernatural faith in Protestantism as against Catholicism; but they +had a very natural faith in England as against France; and even, in a +certain sense, in English institutions as against French institutions. +And just as these men, the most unmediæval of mankind, could yet boast +about some mediæval liberties, Magna Carta, the Parliament and the Jury, +so they could appeal to a true mediæval legend in the matter of a war +with France. A typical eighteenth-century oligarch like Horace Walpole +could complain that the cicerone in an old church troubled him with +traces of an irrelevant person named St. Somebody, when he was looking +for the remains of John of Gaunt. He could say it with all the _naïveté_ +of scepticism, and never dream how far away from John of Gaunt he was +really wandering in saying so. But though their notion of mediæval +history was a mere masquerade ball, it was one in which men fighting the +French could still, in an ornamental way, put on the armour of the Black +Prince or the crown of Henry of Monmouth. In this matter, in short, it +is probable enough that the aristocrats were popular as patriots will +always be popular. It is true that the last Stuarts were themselves far +from unpatriotic; and James II. in particular may well be called the +founder of the British Navy. But their sympathies were with France, +among other foreign countries; they took refuge in France, the elder +before and the younger after his period of rule; and France aided the +later Jacobite efforts to restore their line. And for the new England, +especially the new English nobility, France was the enemy. + +The transformation through which the external relations of England +passed at the end of the seventeenth century is symbolized by two very +separate and definite steps; the first the accession of a Dutch king and +the second the accession of a German king. In the first were present all +the features that can partially make an unnatural thing natural. In the +second we have the condition in which even those effecting it can hardly +call it natural, but only call it necessary. William of Orange was like +a gun dragged into the breach of a wall; a foreign gun indeed, and one +fired in a quarrel more foreign than English, but still a quarrel in +which the English, and especially the English aristocrats, could play a +great part. George of Hanover was simply something stuffed into a hole +in the wall by English aristocrats, who practically admitted that they +were simply stopping it with rubbish. In many ways William, cynical as +he was, carried on the legend of the greater and grimmer Puritanism. He +was in private conviction a Calvinist; and nobody knew or cared what +George was except that he was not a Catholic. He was at home the partly +republican magistrate of what had once been a purely republican +experiment, and among the cleaner if colder ideals of the seventeenth +century. George was when he was at home pretty much what the King of +the Cannibal Islands was when he was at home--a savage personal ruler +scarcely logical enough to be called a despot. William was a man of +acute if narrow intelligence; George was a man of no intelligence. Above +all, touching the immediate effect produced, William was married to a +Stuart, and ascended the throne hand-in-hand with a Stuart; he was a +familiar figure, and already a part of our royal family. With George +there entered England something that had scarcely been seen there +before; something hardly mentioned in mediæval or Renascence writing, +except as one mentions a Hottentot--the barbarian from beyond the Rhine. + +The reign of Queen Anne, which covers the period between these two +foreign kings, is therefore the true time of transition. It is the +bridge between the time when the aristocrats were at least weak enough +to call in a strong man to help them, and the time when they were strong +enough deliberately to call in a weak man who would allow them to help +themselves. To symbolize is always to simplify, and to simplify too +much; but the whole may be well symbolized as the struggle of two great +figures, both gentlemen and men of genius, both courageous and clear +about their own aims, and in everything else a violent contrast at every +point. One of them was Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke; the other was +John Churchill, the famous and infamous Duke of Marlborough. The story +of Churchill is primarily the story of the Revolution and how it +succeeded; the story of Bolingbroke is the story of the +Counter-Revolution and how it failed. + +Churchill is a type of the extraordinary time in this, that he combines +the presence of glory with the absence of honour. When the new +aristocracy had become normal to the nation, in the next few +generations, it produced personal types not only of aristocracy but of +chivalry. The Revolution reduced us to a country wholly governed by +gentlemen; the popular universities and schools of the Middle Ages, like +their guilds and abbeys, had been seized and turned into what they +are--factories of gentlemen, when they are not merely factories of +snobs. It is hard now to realize that what we call the Public Schools +were once undoubtedly public. By the Revolution they were already +becoming as private as they are now. But at least in the eighteenth +century there were great gentlemen in the generous, perhaps too +generous, sense now given to the title. Types not merely honest, but +rash and romantic in their honesty, remain in the record with the names +of Nelson or of Fox. We have already seen that the later reformers +defaced from fanaticism the churches which the first reformers had +defaced simply from avarice. Rather in the same way the +eighteenth-century Whigs often praised, in a spirit of pure magnanimity, +what the seventeenth-century Whigs had done in a spirit of pure +meanness. How mean was that meanness can only be estimated by realizing +that a great military hero had not even the ordinary military virtues +of loyalty to his flag or obedience to his superior officers, that he +picked his way through campaigns that have made him immortal with the +watchful spirit of a thieving camp-follower. When William landed at +Torbay on the invitation of the other Whig nobles, Churchill, as if to +add something ideal to his imitation of Iscariot, went to James with +wanton professions of love and loyalty, went forth in arms as if to +defend the country from invasion, and then calmly handed the army over +to the invader. To the finish of this work of art but few could aspire, +but in their degree all the politicians of the Revolution were upon this +ethical pattern. While they surrounded the throne of James, there was +scarcely one of them who was not in correspondence with William. When +they afterwards surrounded the throne of William, there was not one of +them who was not still in correspondence with James. It was such men who +defeated Irish Jacobitism by the treason of Limerick; it was such men +who defeated Scotch Jacobitism by the treason of Glencoe. + +Thus the strange yet splendid story of eighteenth-century England is one +of greatness founded on smallness, a pyramid standing on a point. Or, to +vary the metaphor, the new mercantile oligarchy might be symbolized even +in the externals of its great sister, the mercantile oligarchy of +Venice. The solidity was all in the superstructure; the fluctuation had +been all in the foundations. The great temple of Chatham and Warren +Hastings was reared in its origins on things as unstable as water and as +fugitive as foam. It is only a fancy, of course, to connect the unstable +element with something restless and even shifty in the lords of the sea. +But there was certainly in the genesis, if not in the later generations +of our mercantile aristocracy, a thing only too mercantile; something +which had also been urged against a yet older example of that polity, +something called _Punica fides_. The great Royalist Strafford, going +disillusioned to death, had said, "Put not your trust in princes." The +great Royalist Bolingbroke may well be said to have retorted, "And least +of all in merchant princes." + +Bolingbroke stands for a whole body of conviction which bulked very big +in English history, but which with the recent winding of the course of +history has gone out of sight. Yet without grasping it we cannot +understand our past, nor, I will add, our future. Curiously enough, the +best English books of the eighteenth century are crammed with it, yet +modern culture cannot see it when it is there. Dr. Johnson is full of +it; it is what he meant when he denounced minority rule in Ireland, as +well as when he said that the devil was the first Whig. Goldsmith is +full of it; it is the whole point of that fine poem "The Deserted +Village," and is set out theoretically with great lucidity and spirit in +"The Vicar of Wakefield." Swift is full of it; and found in it an +intellectual brotherhood-in-arms with Bolingbroke himself. In the time +of Queen Anne it was probably the opinion of the majority of people in +England. But it was not only in Ireland that the minority had begun to +rule. + +This conviction, as brilliantly expounded by Bolingbroke, had many +aspects; perhaps the most practical was the point that one of the +virtues of a despot is distance. It is "the little tyrant of the fields" +that poisons human life. The thesis involved the truism that a good king +is not only a good thing, but perhaps the best thing. But it also +involved the paradox that even a bad king is a good king, for his +oppression weakens the nobility and relieves the pressure on the +populace. If he is a tyrant he chiefly tortures the torturers; and +though Nero's murder of his own mother was hardly perhaps a gain to his +soul, it was no great loss to his empire. Bolingbroke had thus a wholly +rationalistic theory of Jacobitism. He was, in other respects, a fine +and typical eighteenth-century intellect, a free-thinking Deist, a clear +and classic writer of English. But he was also a man of adventurous +spirit and splendid political courage, and he made one last throw for +the Stuarts. It was defeated by the great Whig nobles who formed the +committee of the new régime of the gentry. And considering who it was +who defeated it, it is almost unnecessary to say that it was defeated by +a trick. + +The small German prince ascended the throne, or rather was hoisted into +it like a dummy, and the great English Royalist went into exile. Twenty +years afterwards he reappears and reasserts his living and logical faith +in a popular monarchy. But it is typical of the whole detachment and +distinction of his mind that for this abstract ideal he was willing to +strengthen the heir of the king whom he had tried to exclude. He was +always a Royalist, but never a Jacobite. What he cared for was not a +royal family, but a royal office. He celebrated it in his great book +"The Patriot King," written in exile; and when he thought that George's +great-grandson was enough of a patriot, he only wished that he might be +more of a king. He made in his old age yet another attempt, with such +unpromising instruments as George III. and Lord Bute; and when these +broke in his hand he died with all the dignity of the _sed victa +Catoni_. The great commercial aristocracy grew on to its full stature. +But if we wish to realize the good and ill of its growth, there is no +better summary than this section from the first to the last of the +foiled _coups d'état_ of Bolingbroke. In the first his policy made peace +with France, and broke the connection with Austria. In the second his +policy again made peace with France, and broke the connection with +Prussia. For in that interval the seed of the money-lending squires of +Brandenburg had waxed mighty, and had already become that prodigy which +has become so enormous a problem in Europe. By the end of this epoch +Chatham, who incarnated and even created, at least in a representative +sense, all that we call the British Empire, was at the height of his +own and his country's glory. He summarized the new England of the +Revolution in everything, especially in everything in which that +movement seems to many to be intrinsically contradictory and yet was +most corporately consistent. Thus he was a Whig, and even in some ways +what we should call a Liberal, like his son after him; but he was also +an Imperialist and what we should call a Jingo; and the Whig party was +consistently the Jingo party. He was an aristocrat, in the sense that +all our public men were then aristocrats; but he was very emphatically +what may be called a commercialist--one might almost say Carthaginian. +In this connection he has the characteristic which perhaps humanized but +was not allowed to hamper the aristocratic plan; I mean that he could +use the middle classes. It was a young soldier of middle rank, James +Wolfe, who fell gloriously driving the French out of Quebec; it was a +young clerk of the East India Company, Robert Clive, who threw open to +the English the golden gates of India. But it was precisely one of the +strong points of this eighteenth-century aristocracy that it wielded +without friction the wealthier _bourgeoisie_; it was not there that the +social cleavage was to come. He was an eloquent parliamentary orator, +and though Parliament was as narrow as a senate, it was one of great +senators. The very word recalls the roll of those noble Roman phrases +they often used, which we are right in calling classic, but wrong in +calling cold. In some ways nothing could be further from all this fine +if florid scholarship, all this princely and patrician geniality, all +this air of freedom and adventure on the sea, than the little inland +state of the stingy drill-sergeants of Potsdam, hammering mere savages +into mere soldiers. And yet the great chief of these was in some ways +like a shadow of Chatham flung across the world--the sort of shadow that +is at once an enlargement and a caricature. The English lords, whose +paganism was ennobled by patriotism, saw here something drawn out long +and thin out of their own theories. What was paganism in Chatham was +atheism in Frederick the Great. And what was in the first patriotism was +in the second something with no name but Prussianism. The cannibal +theory of a commonwealth, that it can of its nature eat other +commonwealths, had entered Christendom. Its autocracy and our own +aristocracy drew indirectly nearer together, and seemed for a time to be +wedded; but not before the great Bolingbroke had made a dying gesture, +as if to forbid the banns. + + + + +XV + +THE WAR WITH THE GREAT REPUBLICS + + +We cannot understand the eighteenth century so long as we suppose that +rhetoric is artificial because it is artistic. We do not fall into this +folly about any of the other arts. We talk of a man picking out notes +arranged in ivory on a wooden piano "with much feeling," or of his +pouring out his soul by scraping on cat-gut after a training as careful +as an acrobat's. But we are still haunted with a prejudice that verbal +form and verbal effect must somehow be hypocritical when they are the +link between things so living as a man and a mob. We doubt the feeling +of the old-fashioned orator, because his periods are so rounded and +pointed as to convey his feeling. Now before any criticism of the +eighteenth-century worthies must be put the proviso of their perfect +artistic sincerity. Their oratory was unrhymed poetry, and it had the +humanity of poetry. It was not even unmetrical poetry; that century is +full of great phrases, often spoken on the spur of great moments, which +have in them the throb and recurrence of song, as of a man thinking to +a tune. Nelson's "In honour I gained them, in honour I will die with +them," has more rhythm than much that is called _vers libres_. Patrick +Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death" might be a great line in Walt +Whitman. + +It is one of the many quaint perversities of the English to pretend to +be bad speakers; but in fact the most English eighteenth-century epoch +blazed with brilliant speakers. There may have been finer writing in +France; there was no such fine speaking as in England. The Parliament +had faults enough, but it was sincere enough to be rhetorical. The +Parliament was corrupt, as it is now; though the examples of corruption +were then often really made examples, in the sense of warnings, where +they are now examples only in the sense of patterns. The Parliament was +indifferent to the constituencies, as it is now; though perhaps the +constituencies were less indifferent to the Parliament. The Parliament +was snobbish, as it is now, though perhaps more respectful to mere rank +and less to mere wealth. But the Parliament was a Parliament; it did +fulfil its name and duty by talking, and trying to talk well. It did not +merely do things because they do not bear talking about--as it does now. +It was then, to the eternal glory of our country, a great +"talking-shop," not a mere buying and selling shop for financial tips +and official places. And as with any other artist, the care the +eighteenth-century man expended on oratory is a proof of his sincerity, +not a disproof of it. An enthusiastic eulogium by Burke is as rich and +elaborate as a lover's sonnet; but it is because Burke is really +enthusiastic, like the lover. An angry sentence by Junius is as +carefully compounded as a Renascence poison; but it is because Junius is +really angry--like the poisoner. Now, nobody who has realized this +psychological truth can doubt for a moment that many of the English +aristocrats of the eighteenth century had a real enthusiasm for liberty; +their voices lift like trumpets upon the very word. Whatever their +immediate forbears may have meant, these men meant what they said when +they talked of the high memory of Hampden or the majesty of Magna Carta. +Those Patriots whom Walpole called the Boys included many who really +were patriots--or better still, who really were boys. If we prefer to +put it so, among the Whig aristocrats were many who really were Whigs; +Whigs by all the ideal definitions which identified the party with a +defence of law against tyrants and courtiers. But if anybody deduces, +from the fact that the Whig aristocrats were Whigs, any doubt about +whether the Whig aristocrats were aristocrats, there is one practical +test and reply. It might be tested in many ways: by the game laws and +enclosure laws they passed, or by the strict code of the duel and the +definition of honour on which they all insisted. But if it be really +questioned whether I am right in calling their whole world an +aristocracy, and the very reverse of it a democracy, the true historical +test is this: that when republicanism really entered the world, they +instantly waged two great wars with it--or (if the view be preferred) it +instantly waged two great wars with them. America and France revealed +the real nature of the English Parliament. Ice may sparkle, but a real +spark will show it is only ice. So when the red fire of the Revolution +touched the frosty splendours of the Whigs, there was instantly a +hissing and a strife; a strife of the flame to melt the ice, of the +water to quench the flame. + +It has been noted that one of the virtues of the aristocrats was +liberty, especially liberty among themselves. It might even be said that +one of the virtues of the aristocrats was cynicism. They were not +stuffed with our fashionable fiction, with its stiff and wooden figures +of a good man named Washington and a bad man named Boney. They at least +were aware that Washington's cause was not so obviously white nor +Napoleon's so obviously black as most books in general circulation would +indicate. They had a natural admiration for the military genius of +Washington and Napoleon; they had the most unmixed contempt for the +German Royal Family. But they were, as a class, not only against both +Washington and Napoleon, but against them both for the same reason. And +it was that they both stood for democracy. + +Great injustice is done to the English aristocratic government of the +time through a failure to realize this fundamental difference, +especially in the case of America. There is a wrong-headed humour about +the English which appears especially in this, that while they often (as +in the case of Ireland) make themselves out right where they were +entirely wrong, they are easily persuaded (as in the case of America) to +make themselves out entirely wrong where there is at least a case for +their having been more or less right. George III.'s Government laid +certain taxes on the colonial community on the eastern seaboard of +America. It was certainly not self-evident, in the sense of law and +precedent, that the imperial government could not lay taxes on such +colonists. Nor were the taxes themselves of that practically oppressive +sort which rightly raise everywhere the common casuistry of revolution. +The Whig oligarchs had their faults, but utter lack of sympathy with +liberty, especially local liberty, and with their adventurous kindred +beyond the seas, was by no means one of their faults. Chatham, the great +chief of the new and very national _noblesse_, was typical of them in +being free from the faintest illiberality and irritation against the +colonies as such. He would have made them free and even favoured +colonies, if only he could have kept them as colonies. Burke, who was +then the eloquent voice of Whiggism, and was destined later to show how +wholly it was a voice of aristocracy, went of course even further. Even +North compromised; and though George III., being a fool, might himself +have refused to compromise, he had already failed to effect the +Bolingbroke scheme of the restitution of the royal power. The case for +the Americans, the real reason for calling them right in the quarrel, +was something much deeper than the quarrel. They were at issue, not with +a dead monarchy, but with a living aristocracy; they declared war on +something much finer and more formidable than poor old George. +Nevertheless, the popular tradition, especially in America, has pictured +it primarily as a duel of George III. and George Washington; and, as we +have noticed more than once, such pictures though figurative are seldom +false. King George's head was not much more useful on the throne than it +was on the sign-board of a tavern; nevertheless, the sign-board was +really a sign, and a sign of the times. It stood for a tavern that sold +not English but German beer. It stood for that side of the Whig policy +which Chatham showed when he was tolerant to America alone, but +intolerant of America when allied with France. That very wooden sign +stood, in short, for the same thing as the juncture with Frederick the +Great; it stood for that Anglo-German alliance which, at a very much +later time in history, was to turn into the world-old Teutonic Race. + +Roughly and frankly speaking, we may say that America forced the +quarrel. She wished to be separate, which was to her but another phrase +for wishing to be free. She was not thinking of her wrongs as a colony, +but already of her rights as a republic. The negative effect of so small +a difference could never have changed the world, without the positive +effect of a great ideal, one may say of a great new religion. The real +case for the colonists is that they felt they could be something, which +they also felt, and justly, that England would not help them to be. +England would probably have allowed the colonists all sorts of +concessions and constitutional privileges; but England could not allow +the colonists equality: I do not mean equality with her, but even with +each other. Chatham might have compromised with Washington, because +Washington was a gentleman; but Chatham could hardly have conceived a +country not governed by gentlemen. Burke was apparently ready to grant +everything to America; but he would not have been ready to grant what +America eventually gained. If he had seen American democracy, he would +have been as much appalled by it as he was by French democracy, and +would always have been by any democracy. In a word, the Whigs were +liberal and even generous aristocrats, but they were aristocrats; that +is why their concessions were as vain as their conquests. We talk, with +a humiliation too rare with us, about our dubious part in the secession +of America. Whether it increase or decrease the humiliation I do not +know; but I strongly suspect that we had very little to do with it. I +believe we counted for uncommonly little in the case. We did not really +drive away the American colonists, nor were they driven. They were led +on by a light that went before. + +That light came from France, like the armies of Lafayette that came to +the help of Washington. France was already in travail with the +tremendous spiritual revolution which was soon to reshape the world. Her +doctrine, disruptive and creative, was widely misunderstood at the time, +and is much misunderstood still, despite the splendid clarity of style +in which it was stated by Rousseau in the "Contrat Social," and by +Jefferson in The Declaration of Independence. Say the very word +"equality" in many modern countries, and four hundred fools will leap to +their feet at once to explain that some men can be found, on careful +examination, to be taller or handsomer than others. As if Danton had not +noticed that he was taller than Robespierre, or as if Washington was not +well aware that he was handsomer than Franklin. This is no place to +expound a philosophy; it will be enough to say in passing, by way of a +parable, that when we say that all pennies are equal, we do not mean +that they all look exactly the same. We mean that they are absolutely +equal in their one absolute character, in the most important thing about +them. It may be put practically by saying that they are coins of a +certain value, twelve of which go to a shilling. It may be put +symbolically, and even mystically, by saying that they all bear the +image of the King. And, though the most mystical, it is also the most +practical summary of equality that all men bear the image of the King of +Kings. Indeed, it is of course true that this idea had long underlain +all Christianity, even in institutions less popular in form than were, +for instance, the mob of mediæval republics in Italy. A dogma of equal +duties implies that of equal rights. I know of no Christian authority +that would not admit that it is as wicked to murder a poor man as a rich +man, or as bad to burgle an inelegantly furnished house as a tastefully +furnished one. But the world had wandered further and further from these +truisms, and nobody in the world was further from them than the group of +the great English aristocrats. The idea of the equality of men is in +substance simply the idea of the importance of man. But it was precisely +the notion of the importance of a mere man which seemed startling and +indecent to a society whose whole romance and religion now consisted of +the importance of a gentleman. It was as if a man had walked naked into +Parliament. There is not space here to develop the moral issue in full, +but this will suffice to show that the critics concerned about the +difference in human types or talents are considerably wasting their +time. If they can understand how two coins can count the same though one +is bright and the other brown, they might perhaps understand how two men +can vote the same though one is bright and the other dull. If, however, +they are still satisfied with their solid objection that some men are +dull, I can only gravely agree with them, that some men are very dull. + +But a few years after Lafayette had returned from helping to found a +republic in America he was flung over his own frontiers for resisting +the foundation of a republic in France. So furious was the onward stride +of this new spirit that the republican of the new world lived to be the +reactionary of the old. For when France passed from theory to practice, +the question was put to the world in a way not thinkable in connection +with the prefatory experiment of a thin population on a colonial coast. +The mightiest of human monarchies, like some monstrous immeasurable idol +of iron, was melted down in a furnace barely bigger than itself, and +recast in a size equally colossal, but in a shape men could not +understand. Many, at least, could not understand it, and least of all +the liberal aristocracy of England. There were, of course, practical +reasons for a continuous foreign policy against France, whether royal or +republican. There was primarily the desire to keep any foreigner from +menacing us from the Flemish coast; there was, to a much lesser extent, +the colonial rivalry in which so much English glory had been gained by +the statesmanship of Chatham and the arms of Wolfe and of Clive. The +former reason has returned on us with a singular irony; for in order to +keep the French out of Flanders we flung ourselves with increasing +enthusiasm into a fraternity with the Germans. We purposely fed and +pampered the power which was destined in the future to devour Belgium as +France would never have devoured it, and threaten us across the sea +with terrors of which no Frenchman would ever dream. But indeed much +deeper things unified our attitude towards France before and after the +Revolution. It is but one stride from despotism to democracy, in logic +as well as in history; and oligarchy is equally remote from both. The +Bastille fell, and it seemed to an Englishman merely that a despot had +turned into a demos. The young Bonaparte rose, and it seemed to an +Englishman merely that a demos had once more turned into a despot. He +was not wrong in thinking these allotropic forms of the same alien +thing; and that thing was equality. For when millions are equally +subject to one law, it makes little difference if they are also subject +to one lawgiver; the general social life is a level. The one thing that +the English have never understood about Napoleon, in all their myriad +studies of his mysterious personality, is how impersonal he was. I had +almost said how unimportant he was. He said himself, "I shall go down to +history with my code in my hand;" but in practical effects, as distinct +from mere name and renown, it would be even truer to say that his code +will go down to history with his hand set to it in signature--somewhat +illegibly. Thus his testamentary law has broken up big estates and +encouraged contented peasants in places where his name is cursed, in +places where his name is almost unknown. In his lifetime, of course, it +was natural that the annihilating splendour of his military strokes +should rivet the eye like flashes of lightning; but his rain fell more +silently, and its refreshment remained. It is needless to repeat here +that after bursting one world-coalition after another by battles that +are the masterpieces of the military art, he was finally worn down by +two comparatively popular causes, the resistance of Russia and the +resistance of Spain. The former was largely, like so much that is +Russian, religious; but in the latter appeared most conspicuously that +which concerns us here, the valour, vigilance and high national spirit +of England in the eighteenth century. The long Spanish campaign tried +and made triumphant the great Irish soldier, afterwards known as +Wellington; who has become all the more symbolic since he was finally +confronted with Napoleon in the last defeat of the latter at Waterloo. +Wellington, though too logical to be at all English, was in many ways +typical of the aristocracy; he had irony and independence of mind. But +if we wish to realize how rigidly such men remained limited by their +class, how little they really knew what was happening in their time, it +is enough to note that Wellington seems to have thought he had dismissed +Napoleon by saying he was not really a gentleman. If an acute and +experienced Chinaman were to say of Chinese Gordon, "He is not actually +a Mandarin," we should think that the Chinese system deserved its +reputation for being both rigid and remote. + +But the very name of Wellington is enough to suggest another, and with +it the reminder that this, though true, is inadequate. There was some +truth in the idea that the Englishman was never so English as when he +was outside England, and never smacked so much of the soil as when he +was on the sea. There has run through the national psychology something +that has never had a name except the eccentric and indeed extraordinary +name of Robinson Crusoe; which is all the more English for being quite +undiscoverable in England. It may be doubted if a French or German boy +especially wishes that his cornland or vineland were a desert; but many +an English boy has wished that his island were a desert island. But we +might even say that the Englishman was too insular for an island. He +awoke most to life when his island was sundered from the foundations of +the world, when it hung like a planet and flew like a bird. And, by a +contradiction, the real British army was in the navy; the boldest of the +islanders were scattered over the moving archipelago of a great fleet. +There still lay on it, like an increasing light, the legend of the +Armada; it was a great fleet full of the glory of having once been a +small one. Long before Wellington ever saw Waterloo the ships had done +their work, and shattered the French navy in the Spanish seas, leaving +like a light upon the sea the life and death of Nelson, who died with +his stars on his bosom and his heart upon his sleeve. There is no word +for the memory of Nelson except to call him mythical. The very hour of +his death, the very name of his ship, are touched with that epic +completeness which critics call the long arm of coincidence and prophets +the hand of God. His very faults and failures were heroic, not in a +loose but in a classic sense; in that he fell only like the legendary +heroes, weakened by a woman, not foiled by any foe among men. And he +remains the incarnation of a spirit in the English that is purely +poetic; so poetic that it fancies itself a thousand things, and +sometimes even fancies itself prosaic. At a recent date, in an age of +reason, in a country already calling itself dull and business-like, with +top-hats and factory chimneys already beginning to rise like towers of +funereal efficiency, this country clergyman's son moved to the last in a +luminous cloud, and acted a fairy tale. He shall remain as a lesson to +those who do not understand England, and a mystery to those who think +they do. In outward action he led his ships to victory and died upon a +foreign sea; but symbolically he established something indescribable and +intimate, something that sounds like a native proverb; he was the man +who burnt his ships, and who for ever set the Thames on fire. + + + + +XVI + +ARISTOCRACY AND THE DISCONTENTS + + +It is the pathos of many hackneyed things that they are intrinsically +delicate and are only mechanically made dull. Any one who has seen the +first white light, when it comes in by a window, knows that daylight is +not only as beautiful but as mysterious as moonlight. It is the subtlety +of the colour of sunshine that seems to be colourless. So patriotism, +and especially English patriotism, which is vulgarized with volumes of +verbal fog and gas, is still in itself something as tenuous and tender +as a climate. The name of Nelson, with which the last chapter ended, +might very well summarize the matter; for his name is banged and beaten +about like an old tin can, while his soul had something in it of a fine +and fragile eighteenth-century vase. And it will be found that the most +threadbare things contemporary and connected with him have a real truth +to the tone and meaning of his life and time, though for us they have +too often degenerated into dead jokes. The expression "hearts of oak," +for instance, is no unhappy phrase for the finer side of that England +of which he was the best expression. Even as a material metaphor it +covers much of what I mean; oak was by no means only made into +bludgeons, nor even only into battle-ships; and the English gentry did +not think it business-like to pretend to be mere brutes. The mere name +of oak calls back like a dream those dark but genial interiors of +colleges and country houses, in which great gentlemen, not degenerate, +almost made Latin an English language and port an English wine. Some +part of that world at least will not perish; for its autumnal glow +passed into the brush of the great English portrait-painters, who, more +than any other men, were given the power to commemorate the large +humanity of their own land; immortalizing a mood as broad and soft as +their own brush-work. Come naturally, at the right emotional angle, upon +a canvass of Gainsborough, who painted ladies like landscapes, as great +and as unconscious with repose, and you will note how subtly the artist +gives to a dress flowing in the foreground something of the divine +quality of distance. Then you will understand another faded phrase and +words spoken far away upon the sea; there will rise up quite fresh +before you and be borne upon a bar of music, like words you have never +heard before: "For England, home, and beauty." + +When I think of these things, I have no temptation to mere grumbling at +the great gentry that waged the great war of our fathers. But indeed the +difficulty about it was something much deeper than could be dealt with +by any grumbling. It was an exclusive class, but not an exclusive life; +it was interested in all things, though not for all men. Or rather those +things it failed to include, through the limitations of this rationalist +interval between mediæval and modern mysticism, were at least not of the +sort to shock us with superficial inhumanity. The greatest gap in their +souls, for those who think it a gap, was their complete and complacent +paganism. All their very decencies assumed that the old faith was dead; +those who held it still, like the great Johnson, were considered +eccentrics. The French Revolution was a riot that broke up the very +formal funeral of Christianity; and was followed by various other +complications, including the corpse coming to life. But the scepticism +was no mere oligarchic orgy; it was not confined to the Hell-Fire Club; +which might in virtue of its vivid name be regarded as relatively +orthodox. It is present in the mildest middle-class atmosphere; as in +the middle-class masterpiece about "Northanger Abbey," where we actually +remember it is an antiquity, without ever remembering it is an abbey. +Indeed there is no clearer case of it than what can only be called the +atheism of Jane Austen. + +Unfortunately it could truly be said of the English gentleman, as of +another gallant and gracious individual, that his honour stood rooted in +dishonour. He was, indeed, somewhat in the position of such an +aristocrat in a romance, whose splendour has the dark spot of a secret +and a sort of blackmail. There was, to begin with, an uncomfortable +paradox in the tale of his pedigree. Many heroes have claimed to be +descended from the gods, from beings greater than themselves; but he +himself was far more heroic than his ancestors. His glory did not come +from the Crusades but from the Great Pillage. His fathers had not come +over with William the Conqueror, but only assisted, in a somewhat +shuffling manner, at the coming over of William of Orange. His own +exploits were often really romantic, in the cities of the Indian sultans +or the war of the wooden ships; it was the exploits of the far-off +founders of his family that were painfully realistic. In this the great +gentry were more in the position of Napoleonic marshals than of Norman +knights, but their position was worse; for the marshals might be +descended from peasants and shopkeepers; but the oligarchs were +descended from usurers and thieves. That, for good or evil, was the +paradox of England; the typical aristocrat was the typical upstart. + +But the secret was worse; not only was such a family founded on +stealing, but the family was stealing still. It is a grim truth that all +through the eighteenth century, all through the great Whig speeches +about liberty, all through the great Tory speeches about patriotism, +through the period of Wandewash and Plassy, through the period of +Trafalgar and Waterloo, one process was steadily going on in the central +senate of the nation. Parliament was passing bill after bill for the +enclosure, by the great landlords, of such of the common lands as had +survived out of the great communal system of the Middle Ages. It is much +more than a pun, it is the prime political irony of our history, that +the Commons were destroying the commons. The very word "common," as we +have before noted, lost its great moral meaning, and became a mere +topographical term for some remaining scrap of scrub or heath that was +not worth stealing. In the eighteenth century these last and lingering +commons were connected only with stories about highwaymen, which still +linger in our literature. The romance of them was a romance of robbers; +but not of the real robbers. + +This was the mysterious sin of the English squires, that they remained +human, and yet ruined humanity all around them. Their own ideal, nay +their own reality of life, was really more generous and genial than the +stiff savagery of Puritan captains and Prussian nobles; but the land +withered under their smile as under an alien frown. Being still at least +English, they were still in their way good-natured; but their position +was false, and a false position forces the good-natured into brutality. +The French Revolution was the challenge that really revealed to the +Whigs that they must make up their minds to be really democrats or admit +that they were really aristocrats. They decided, as in the case of their +philosophic exponent Burke, to be really aristocrats; and the result +was the White Terror, the period of Anti-Jacobin repression which +revealed the real side of their sympathies more than any stricken fields +in foreign lands. Cobbett, the last and greatest of the yeomen, of the +small farming class which the great estates were devouring daily, was +thrown into prison merely for protesting against the flogging of English +soldiers by German mercenaries. In that savage dispersal of a peaceful +meeting which was called the Massacre of Peterloo, English soldiers were +indeed employed, though much more in the spirit of German ones. And it +is one of the bitter satires that cling to the very continuity of our +history, that such suppression of the old yeoman spirit was the work of +soldiers who still bore the title of the Yeomanry. + +The name of Cobbett is very important here; indeed it is generally +ignored because it is important. Cobbett was the one man who saw the +tendency of the time as a whole, and challenged it as a whole; +consequently he went without support. It is a mark of our whole modern +history that the masses are kept quiet with a fight. They are kept quiet +by the fight because it is a sham-fight; thus most of us know by this +time that the Party System has been popular only in the same sense that +a football match is popular. The division in Cobbett's time was slightly +more sincere, but almost as superficial; it was a difference of +sentiment about externals which divided the old agricultural gentry of +the eighteenth century from the new mercantile gentry of the +nineteenth. Through the first half of the nineteenth century there were +some real disputes between the squire and the merchant. The merchant +became converted to the important economic thesis of Free Trade, and +accused the squire of starving the poor by dear bread to keep up his +agrarian privilege. Later the squire retorted not ineffectively by +accusing the merchant of brutalizing the poor by overworking them in his +factories to keep up his commercial success. The passing of the Factory +Acts was a confession of the cruelty that underlay the new industrial +experiments, just as the Repeal of the Corn Laws was a confession of the +comparative weakness and unpopularity of the squires, who had destroyed +the last remnants of any peasantry that might have defended the field +against the factory. These relatively real disputes would bring us to +the middle of the Victorian era. But long before the beginning of the +Victorian era, Cobbett had seen and said that the disputes were only +relatively real. Or rather he would have said, in his more robust +fashion, that they were not real at all. He would have said that the +agricultural pot and the industrial kettle were calling each other +black, when they had both been blackened in the same kitchen. And he +would have been substantially right; for the great industrial disciple +of the kettle, James Watt (who learnt from it the lesson of the steam +engine), was typical of the age in this, that he found the old Trade +Guilds too fallen, unfashionable and out of touch with the times to help +his discovery, so that he had recourse to the rich minority which had +warred on and weakened those Guilds since the Reformation. There was no +prosperous peasant's pot, such as Henry of Navarre invoked, to enter +into alliance with the kettle. In other words, there was in the strict +sense of the word no commonwealth, because wealth, though more and more +wealthy, was less and less common. Whether it be a credit or discredit, +industrial science and enterprise were in bulk a new experiment of the +old oligarchy; and the old oligarchy had always been ready for new +experiments--beginning with the Reformation. And it is characteristic of +the clear mind which was hidden from many by the hot temper of Cobbett, +that he did see the Reformation as the root of both squirearchy and +industrialism, and called on the people to break away from both. The +people made more effort to do so than is commonly realized. There are +many silences in our somewhat snobbish history; and when the educated +class can easily suppress a revolt, they can still more easily suppress +the record of it. It was so with some of the chief features of that +great mediæval revolution the failure of which, or rather the betrayal +of which, was the real turning-point of our history. It was so with the +revolts against the religious policy of Henry VIII.; and it was so with +the rick-burning and frame-breaking riots of Cobbett's epoch. The real +mob reappeared for a moment in our history, for just long enough to show +one of the immortal marks of the real mob--ritualism. There is nothing +that strikes the undemocratic doctrinaire so sharply about direct +democratic action as the vanity or mummery of the things done seriously +in the daylight; they astonish him by being as unpractical as a poem or +a prayer. The French Revolutionists stormed an empty prison merely +because it was large and solid and difficult to storm, and therefore +symbolic of the mighty monarchical machinery of which it had been but +the shed. The English rioters laboriously broke in pieces a parish +grindstone, merely because it was large and solid and difficult to +break, and therefore symbolic of the mighty oligarchical machinery which +perpetually ground the faces of the poor. They also put the oppressive +agent of some landlord in a cart and escorted him round the county, +merely to exhibit his horrible personality to heaven and earth. +Afterwards they let him go, which marks perhaps, for good or evil, a +certain national modification of the movement. There is something very +typical of an English revolution in having the tumbril without the +guillotine. + +Anyhow, these embers of the revolutionary epoch were trodden out very +brutally; the grindstone continued (and continues) to grind in the +scriptural fashion above referred to, and, in most political crises +since, it is the crowd that has found itself in the cart. But, of +course, both the riot and repression in England were but shadows of the +awful revolt and vengeance which crowned the parallel process in +Ireland. Here the terrorism, which was but a temporary and desperate +tool of the aristocrats in England (not being, to do them justice, at +all consonant to their temperament, which had neither the cruelty and +morbidity nor the logic and fixity of terrorism), became in a more +spiritual atmosphere a flaming sword of religious and racial insanity. +Pitt, the son of Chatham, was quite unfit to fill his father's place, +unfit indeed (I cannot but think) to fill the place commonly given him +in history. But if he was wholly worthy of his immortality, his Irish +expedients, even if considered as immediately defensible, have not been +worthy of _their_ immortality. He was sincerely convinced of the +national need to raise coalition after coalition against Napoleon, by +pouring the commercial wealth then rather peculiar to England upon her +poorer Allies, and he did this with indubitable talent and pertinacity. +He was at the same time faced with a hostile Irish rebellion and a +partly or potentially hostile Irish Parliament. He broke the latter by +the most indecent bribery and the former by the most indecent brutality, +but he may well have thought himself entitled to the tyrant's plea. But +not only were his expedients those of panic, or at any rate of peril, +but (what is less clearly realized) it is the only real defence of them +that they were those of panic and peril. He was ready to emancipate +Catholics as such, for religious bigotry was not the vice of the +oligarchy; but he was not ready to emancipate Irishmen as such. He did +not really want to enlist Ireland like a recruit, but simply to disarm +Ireland like an enemy. Hence his settlement was from the first in a +false position for settling anything. The Union may have been a +necessity, but the Union was not a Union. It was not intended to be one, +and nobody has ever treated it as one. We have not only never succeeded +in making Ireland English, as Burgundy has been made French, but we have +never tried. Burgundy could boast of Corneille, though Corneille was a +Norman, but we should smile if Ireland boasted of Shakespeare. Our +vanity has involved us in a mere contradiction; we have tried to combine +identification with superiority. It is simply weak-minded to sneer at an +Irishman if he figures as an Englishman, and rail at him if he figures +as an Irishman. So the Union has never even applied English laws to +Ireland, but only coercions and concessions both specially designed for +Ireland. From Pitt's time to our own this tottering alternation has +continued; from the time when the great O'Connell, with his monster +meetings, forced our government to listen to Catholic Emancipation to +the time when the great Parnell, with his obstruction, forced it to +listen to Home Rule, our staggering equilibrium has been maintained by +blows from without. In the later nineteenth century the better sort of +special treatment began on the whole to increase. Gladstone, an +idealistic though inconsistent Liberal, rather belatedly realized that +the freedom he loved in Greece and Italy had its rights nearer home, and +may be said to have found a second youth in the gateway of the grave, +in the eloquence and emphasis of his conversion. And a statesman wearing +the opposite label (for what that is worth) had the spiritual insight to +see that Ireland, if resolved to be a nation, was even more resolved to +be a peasantry. George Wyndham, generous, imaginative, a man among +politicians, insisted that the agrarian agony of evictions, shootings, +and rack-rentings should end with the individual Irish getting, as +Parnell had put it, a grip on their farms. In more ways than one his +work rounds off almost romantically the tragedy of the rebellion against +Pitt, for Wyndham himself was of the blood of the leader of the rebels, +and he wrought the only reparation yet made for all the blood, +shamefully shed, that flowed around the fall of FitzGerald. + +The effect on England was less tragic; indeed, in a sense it was comic. +Wellington, himself an Irishman though of the narrower party, was +preeminently a realist, and, like many Irishmen, was especially a +realist about Englishmen. He said the army he commanded was the scum of +the earth; and the remark is none the less valuable because that army +proved itself useful enough to be called the salt of the earth. But in +truth it was in this something of a national symbol and the guardian, as +it were, of a national secret. There is a paradox about the English, +even as distinct from the Irish or the Scotch, which makes any formal +version of their plans and principles inevitably unjust to them. England +not only makes her ramparts out of rubbish, but she finds ramparts in +what she has herself cast away as rubbish. If it be a tribute to a thing +to say that even its failures have been successes, there is truth in +that tribute. Some of the best colonies were convict settlements, and +might be called abandoned convict settlements. The army was largely an +army of gaol-birds, raised by gaol-delivery; but it was a good army of +bad men; nay, it was a gay army of unfortunate men. This is the colour +and the character that has run through the realities of English history, +and it can hardly be put in a book, least of all a historical book. It +has its flashes in our fantastic fiction and in the songs of the street, +but its true medium is conversation. It has no name but incongruity. An +illogical laughter survives everything in the English soul. It survived, +perhaps, with only too much patience, the time of terrorism in which the +more serious Irish rose in revolt. That time was full of a quite +topsy-turvey tyranny, and the English humorist stood on his head to suit +it. Indeed, he often receives a quite irrational sentence in a police +court by saying he will do it on his head. So, under Pitt's coercionist +régime, a man was sent to prison for saying that George IV. was fat; but +we feel he must have been partly sustained in prison by the artistic +contemplation of how fat he was. That sort of liberty, that sort of +humanity, and it is no mean sort, did indeed survive all the drift and +downward eddy of an evil economic system, as well as the dragooning of a +reactionary epoch and the drearier menace of materialistic social +science, as embodied in the new Puritans, who have purified themselves +even of religion. Under this long process, the worst that can be said is +that the English humorist has been slowly driven downwards in the social +scale. Falstaff was a knight, Sam Weller was a gentleman's servant, and +some of our recent restrictions seem designed to drive Sam Weller to the +status of the Artful Dodger. But well it was for us that some such +trampled tradition and dark memory of Merry England survived; well for +us, as we shall see, that all our social science failed and all our +statesmanship broke down before it. For there was to come the noise of a +trumpet and a dreadful day of visitation, in which all the daily workers +of a dull civilization were to be called out of their houses and their +holes like a resurrection of the dead, and left naked under a strange +sun with no religion but a sense of humour. And men might know of what +nation Shakespeare was, who broke into puns and practical jokes in the +darkest passion of his tragedies, if they had only heard those boys in +France and Flanders who called out "Early Doors!" themselves in a +theatrical memory, as they went so early in their youth to break down +the doors of death. + + + + +XVII + +THE RETURN OF THE BARBARIAN + + +The only way to write a popular history, as we have already remarked, +would be to write it backwards. It would be to take common objects of +our own street and tell the tale of how each of them came to be in the +street at all. And for my immediate purpose it is really convenient to +take two objects we have known all our lives, as features of fashion or +respectability. One, which has grown rarer recently, is what we call a +top-hat; the other, which is still a customary formality, is a pair of +trousers. The history of these humorous objects really does give a clue +to what has happened in England for the last hundred years. It is not +necessary to be an æsthete in order to regard both objects as the +reverse of beautiful, as tested by what may be called the rational side +of beauty. The lines of human limbs can be beautiful, and so can the +lines of loose drapery, but not cylinders too loose to be the first and +too tight to be the second. Nor is a subtle sense of harmony needed to +see that while there are hundreds of differently proportioned hats, a +hat that actually grows larger towards the top is somewhat top-heavy. +But what is largely forgotten is this, that these two fantastic objects, +which now strike the eye as unconscious freaks, were originally +conscious freaks. Our ancestors, to do them justice, did not think them +casual or commonplace; they thought them, if not ridiculous, at least +rococo. The top-hat was the topmost point of a riot of Regency dandyism, +and bucks wore trousers while business men were still wearing +knee-breeches. It will not be fanciful to see a certain oriental touch +in trousers, which the later Romans also regarded as effeminately +oriental; it was an oriental touch found in many florid things of the +time--in Byron's poems or Brighton Pavilion. Now, the interesting point +is that for a whole serious century these instantaneous fantasies have +remained like fossils. In the carnival of the Regency a few fools got +into fancy dress, and we have all remained in fancy dress. At least, we +have remained in the dress, though we have lost the fancy. + +I say this is typical of the most important thing that happened in the +Victorian time. For the most important thing was that nothing happened. +The very fuss that was made about minor modifications brings into relief +the rigidity with which the main lines of social life were left as they +were at the French Revolution. We talk of the French Revolution as +something that changed the world; but its most important relation to +England is that it did not change England. A student of our history is +concerned rather with the effect it did not have than the effect it +did. If it be a splendid fate to have survived the Flood, the English +oligarchy had that added splendour. But even for the countries in which +the Revolution was a convulsion, it was the last convulsion--until that +which shakes the world to-day. It gave their character to all the +commonwealths, which all talked about progress, and were occupied in +marking time. Frenchmen, under all superficial reactions, remained +republican in spirit, as they had been when they first wore top-hats. +Englishmen, under all superficial reforms, remained oligarchical in +spirit, as they had been when they first wore trousers. Only one power +might be said to be growing, and that in a plodding and prosaic +fashion--the power in the North-East whose name was Prussia. And the +English were more and more learning that this growth need cause them no +alarm, since the North Germans were their cousins in blood and their +brothers in spirit. + +The first thing to note, then, about the nineteenth century is that +Europe remained herself as compared with the Europe of the great war, +and that England especially remained herself as compared even with the +rest of Europe. Granted this, we may give their proper importance to the +cautious internal changes in this country, the small conscious and the +large unconscious changes. Most of the conscious ones were much upon the +model of an early one, the great Reform Bill of 1832, and can be +considered in the light of it. First, from the standpoint of most real +reformers, the chief thing about the Reform Bill was that it did not +reform. It had a huge tide of popular enthusiasm behind it, which wholly +disappeared when the people found themselves in front of it. It +enfranchised large masses of the middle classes; it disfranchised very +definite bodies of the working classes; and it so struck the balance +between the conservative and the dangerous elements in the commonwealth +that the governing class was rather stronger than before. The date, +however, is important, not at all because it was the beginning of +democracy, but because it was the beginning of the best way ever +discovered of evading and postponing democracy. Here enters the +homoeopathic treatment of revolution, since so often successful. Well +into the next generation Disraeli, the brilliant Jewish adventurer who +was the symbol of the English aristocracy being no longer genuine, +extended the franchise to the artisans, partly, indeed, as a party move +against his great rival, Gladstone, but more as the method by which the +old popular pressure was first tired out and then toned down. The +politicians said the working-class was now strong enough to be allowed +votes. It would be truer to say it was now weak enough to be allowed +votes. So in more recent times Payment of Members, which would once have +been regarded (and resisted) as an inrush of popular forces, was passed +quietly and without resistance, and regarded merely as an extension of +parliamentary privileges. The truth is that the old parliamentary +oligarchy abandoned their first line of trenches because they had by +that time constructed a second line of defence. It consisted in the +concentration of colossal political funds in the private and +irresponsible power of the politicians, collected by the sale of +peerages and more important things, and expended on the jerrymandering +of the enormously expensive elections. In the presence of this inner +obstacle a vote became about as valuable as a railway ticket when there +is a permanent block on the line. The façade and outward form of this +new secret government is the merely mechanical application of what is +called the Party System. The Party System does not consist, as some +suppose, of two parties, but of one. If there were two real parties, +there could be no system. + +But if this was the evolution of parliamentary reform, as represented by +the first Reform Bill, we can see the other side of it in the social +reform attacked immediately after the first Reform Bill. It is a truth +that should be a tower and a landmark, that one of the first things done +by the Reform Parliament was to establish those harsh and dehumanised +workhouses which both honest Radicals and honest Tories branded with the +black title of the New Bastille. This bitter name lingers in our +literature, and can be found by the curious in the works of Carlyle and +Hood, but it is doubtless interesting rather as a note of contemporary +indignation than as a correct comparison. It is easy to imagine the +logicians and legal orators of the parliamentary school of progress +finding many points of differentiation and even of contrast. The +Bastille was one central institution; the workhouses have been many, and +have everywhere transformed local life with whatever they have to give +of social sympathy and inspiration. Men of high rank and great wealth +were frequently sent to the Bastille; but no such mistake has ever been +made by the more business administration of the workhouse. Over the most +capricious operations of the _lettres de cachet_ there still hovered +some hazy traditional idea that a man is put in prison to punish him for +something. It was the discovery of a later social science that men who +cannot be punished can still be imprisoned. But the deepest and most +decisive difference lies in the better fortune of the New Bastille; for +no mob has ever dared to storm it, and it never fell. + +The New Poor Law was indeed not wholly new in the sense that it was the +culmination and clear enunciation of a principle foreshadowed in the +earlier Poor Law of Elizabeth, which was one of the many anti-popular +effects of the Great Pillage. When the monasteries were swept away and +the mediæval system of hospitality destroyed, tramps and beggars became +a problem, the solution of which has always tended towards slavery, even +when the question of slavery has been cleared of the irrelevant question +of cruelty. It is obvious that a desperate man might find Mr. Bumble and +the Board of Guardians less cruel than cold weather and the bare +ground--even if he were allowed to sleep on the ground, which (by a +veritable nightmare of nonsense and injustice) he is not. He is actually +punished for sleeping under a bush on the specific and stated ground +that he cannot afford a bed. It is obvious, however, that he may find +his best physical good by going into the workhouse, as he often found it +in pagan times by selling himself into slavery. The point is that the +solution remains servile, even when Mr. Bumble and the Board of +Guardians ceased to be in a common sense cruel. The pagan might have the +luck to sell himself to a kind master. The principle of the New Poor +Law, which has so far proved permanent in our society, is that the man +lost all his civic rights and lost them solely through poverty. There is +a touch of irony, though hardly of mere hypocrisy, in the fact that the +Parliament which effected this reform had just been abolishing black +slavery by buying out the slave-owners in the British colonies. The +slave-owners were bought out at a price big enough to be called +blackmail; but it would be misunderstanding the national mentality to +deny the sincerity of the sentiment. Wilberforce represented in this the +real wave of Wesleyan religion which had made a humane reaction against +Calvinism, and was in no mean sense philanthropic. But there is +something romantic in the English mind which can always see what is +remote. It is the strongest example of what men lose by being +long-sighted. It is fair to say that they gain many things also, the +poems that are like adventures and the adventures that are like poems. +It is a national savour, and therefore in itself neither good nor evil; +and it depends on the application whether we find a scriptural text for +it in the wish to take the wings of the morning and abide in the +uttermost parts of the sea, or merely in the saying that the eyes of a +fool are in the ends of the earth. + +Anyhow, the unconscious nineteenth-century movement, so slow that it +seems stationary, was altogether in this direction, of which workhouse +philanthropy is the type. Nevertheless, it had one national institution +to combat and overcome; one institution all the more intensely national +because it was not official, and in a sense not even political. The +modern Trade Union was the inspiration and creation of the English; it +is still largely known throughout Europe by its English name. It was the +English expression of the European effort to resist the tendency of +Capitalism to reach its natural culmination in slavery. In this it has +an almost weird psychological interest, for it is a return to the past +by men ignorant of the past, like the subconscious action of some man +who has lost his memory. We say that history repeats itself, and it is +even more interesting when it unconsciously repeats itself. No man on +earth is kept so ignorant of the Middle Ages as the British workman, +except perhaps the British business man who employs him. Yet all who +know even a little of the Middle Ages can see that the modern Trade +Union is a groping for the ancient Guild. It is true that those who +look to the Trade Union, and even those clear-sighted enough to call it +the Guild, are often without the faintest tinge of mediæval mysticism, +or even of mediæval morality. But this fact is itself the most striking +and even staggering tribute to mediæval morality. It has all the +clinching logic of coincidence. If large numbers of the most hard-headed +atheists had evolved, out of their own inner consciousness, the notion +that a number of bachelors or spinsters ought to live together in +celibate groups for the good of the poor, or the observation of certain +hours and offices, it would be a very strong point in favour of the +monasteries. It would be all the stronger if the atheists had never +heard of monasteries; it would be strongest of all if they hated the +very name of monasteries. And it is all the stronger because the man who +puts his trust in Trades Unions does not call himself a Catholic or even +a Christian, if he does call himself a Guild Socialist. + +The Trade Union movement passed through many perils, including a +ludicrous attempt of certain lawyers to condemn as a criminal conspiracy +that Trade Union solidarity, of which their own profession is the +strongest and most startling example in the world. The struggle +culminated in gigantic strikes which split the country in every +direction in the earlier part of the twentieth century. But another +process, with much more power at its back, was also in operation. The +principle represented by the New Poor Law proceeded on its course, and +in one important respect altered its course, though it can hardly be +said to have altered its object. It can most correctly be stated by +saying that the employers themselves, who already organized business, +began to organize social reform. It was more picturesquely expressed by +a cynical aristocrat in Parliament who said, "We are all Socialists +now." The Socialists, a body of completely sincere men led by several +conspicuously brilliant men, had long hammered into men's heads the +hopeless sterility of mere non-interference in exchange. The Socialists +proposed that the State should not merely interfere in business but +should take over the business, and pay all men as equal wage-earners, or +at any rate as wage-earners. The employers were not willing to surrender +their own position to the State, and this project has largely faded from +politics. But the wiser of them were willing to pay better wages, and +they were specially willing to bestow various other benefits so long as +they were bestowed after the manner of wages. Thus we had a series of +social reforms which, for good or evil, all tended in the same +direction; the permission to employees to claim certain advantages as +employees, and as something permanently different from employers. Of +these the obvious examples were Employers' Liability, Old Age Pensions, +and, as marking another and more decisive stride in the process, the +Insurance Act. + +The latter in particular, and the whole plan of the social reform in +general, were modelled upon Germany. Indeed the whole English life of +this period was overshadowed by Germany. We had now reached, for good or +evil, the final fulfilment of that gathering influence which began to +grow on us in the seventeenth century, which was solidified by the +military alliances of the eighteenth century, and which in the +nineteenth century had been turned into a philosophy--not to say a +mythology. German metaphysics had thinned our theology, so that many a +man's most solemn conviction about Good Friday was that Friday was named +after Freya. German history had simply annexed English history, so that +it was almost counted the duty of any patriotic Englishman to be proud +of being a German. The genius of Carlyle, the culture preached by +Matthew Arnold, would not, persuasive as they were, have alone produced +this effect but for an external phenomenon of great force. Our internal +policy was transformed by our foreign policy; and foreign policy was +dominated by the more and more drastic steps which the Prussian, now +clearly the prince of all the German tribes, was taking to extend the +German influence in the world. Denmark was robbed of two provinces; +France was robbed of two provinces; and though the fall of Paris was +felt almost everywhere as the fall of the capital of civilization, a +thing like the sacking of Rome by the Goths, many of the most +influential people in England still saw nothing in it but the solid +success of our kinsmen and old allies of Waterloo. The moral methods +which achieved it, the juggling with the Augustenburg claim, the forgery +of the Ems telegram, were either successfully concealed or were but +cloudily appreciated. The Higher Criticism had entered into our ethics +as well as our theology. Our view of Europe was also distorted and made +disproportionate by the accident of a natural concern for Constantinople +and our route to India, which led Palmerston and later Premiers to +support the Turk and see Russia as the only enemy. This somewhat cynical +reaction was summed up in the strange figure of Disraeli, who made a +pro-Turkish settlement full of his native indifference to the Christian +subjects of Turkey, and sealed it at Berlin in the presence of Bismarck. +Disraeli was not without insight into the inconsistencies and illusions +of the English; he said many sagacious things about them, and one +especially when he told the Manchester School that their motto was +"Peace and Plenty, amid a starving people, and with the world in arms." +But what he said about Peace and Plenty might well be parodied as a +comment on what he himself said about Peace with Honour. Returning from +that Berlin Conference he should have said, "I bring you Peace with +Honour; peace with the seeds of the most horrible war of history; and +honour as the dupes and victims of the old bully in Berlin." + +But it was, as we have seen, especially in social reform that Germany +was believed to be leading the way, and to have found the secret of +dealing with the economic evil. In the case of Insurance, which was the +test case, she was applauded for obliging all her workmen to set apart a +portion of their wages for any time of sickness; and numerous other +provisions, both in Germany and England, pursued the same ideal, which +was that of protecting the poor against themselves. It everywhere +involved an external power having a finger in the family pie; but little +attention was paid to any friction thus caused, for all prejudices +against the process were supposed to be the growth of ignorance. And +that ignorance was already being attacked by what was called +education--an enterprise also inspired largely by the example, and +partly by the commercial competition of Germany. It was pointed out that +in Germany governments and great employers thought it well worth their +while to apply the grandest scale of organization and the minutest +inquisition of detail to the instruction of the whole German race. The +government was the stronger for training its scholars as it trained its +soldiers; the big businesses were the stronger for manufacturing mind as +they manufactured material. English education was made compulsory; it +was made free; many good, earnest, and enthusiastic men laboured to +create a ladder of standards and examinations, which would connect the +cleverest of the poor with the culture of the English universities and +the current teaching in history or philosophy. But it cannot be said +that the connection was very complete, or the achievement so thorough as +the German achievement. For whatever reason, the poor Englishman +remained in many things much as his fathers had been, and seemed to +think the Higher Criticism too high for him even to criticize. + +And then a day came, and if we were wise, we thanked God that we had +failed. Education, if it had ever really been in question, would +doubtless have been a noble gift; education in the sense of the central +tradition of history, with its freedom, its family honour, its chivalry +which is the flower of Christendom. But what would our populace, in our +epoch, have actually learned if they had learned all that our schools +and universities had to teach? That England was but a little branch on a +large Teutonic tree; that an unfathomable spiritual sympathy, +all-encircling like the sea, had always made us the natural allies of +the great folk by the flowing Rhine; that all light came from Luther and +Lutheran Germany, whose science was still purging Christianity of its +Greek and Roman accretions; that Germany was a forest fated to grow; +that France was a dung-heap fated to decay--a dung-heap with a crowing +cock on it. What would the ladder of education have led to, except a +platform on which a posturing professor proved that a cousin german was +the same as a German cousin? What would the guttersnipe have learnt as a +graduate, except to embrace a Saxon because he was the other half of an +Anglo-Saxon? The day came, and the ignorant fellow found he had other +things to learn. And he was quicker than his educated countrymen, for +he had nothing to unlearn. + +He in whose honour all had been said and sung stirred, and stepped +across the border of Belgium. Then were spread out before men's eyes all +the beauties of his culture and all the benefits of his organization; +then we beheld under a lifting daybreak what light we had followed and +after what image we had laboured to refashion ourselves. Nor in any +story of mankind has the irony of God chosen the foolish things so +catastrophically to confound the wise. For the common crowd of poor and +ignorant Englishmen, because they only knew that they were Englishmen, +burst through the filthy cobwebs of four hundred years and stood where +their fathers stood when they knew that they were Christian men. The +English poor, broken in every revolt, bullied by every fashion, long +despoiled of property, and now being despoiled of liberty, entered +history with a noise of trumpets, and turned themselves in two years +into one of the iron armies of the world. And when the critic of +politics and literature, feeling that this war is after all heroic, +looks around him to find the hero, he can point to nothing but a mob. + + + + +XVIII + +CONCLUSION + + +In so small a book on so large a matter, finished hastily enough amid +the necessities of an enormous national crisis, it would be absurd to +pretend to have achieved proportion; but I will confess to some attempt +to correct a disproportion. We talk of historical perspective, but I +rather fancy there is too much perspective in history; for perspective +makes a giant a pigmy and a pigmy a giant. The past is a giant +foreshortened with his feet towards us; and sometimes the feet are of +clay. We see too much merely the sunset of the Middle Ages, even when we +admire its colours; and the study of a man like Napoleon is too often +that of "The Last Phase." So there is a spirit that thinks it reasonable +to deal in detail with Old Sarum, and would think it ridiculous to deal +in detail with the Use of Sarum; or which erects in Kensington Gardens a +golden monument to Albert larger than anybody has ever erected to +Alfred. English history is misread especially, I think, because the +crisis is missed. It is usually put about the period of the Stuarts; and +many of the memorials of our past seem to suffer from the same +visitation as the memorial of Mr. Dick. But though the story of the +Stuarts was a tragedy, I think it was also an epilogue. + +I make the guess, for it can be no more, that the change really came +with the fall of Richard II., following on his failure to use mediæval +despotism in the interests of mediæval democracy. England, like the +other nations of Christendom, had been created not so much by the death +of the ancient civilization as by its escape from death, or by its +refusal to die. Mediæval civilization had arisen out of the resistance +to the barbarians, to the naked barbarism from the North and the more +subtle barbarism from the East. It increased in liberties and local +government under kings who controlled the wider things of war and +taxation; and in the peasant war of the fourteenth century in England, +the king and the populace came for a moment into conscious alliance. +They both found that a third thing was already too strong for them. That +third thing was the aristocracy; and it captured and called itself the +Parliament. The House of Commons, as its name implies, had primarily +consisted of plain men summoned by the King like jurymen; but it soon +became a very special jury. It became, for good or evil, a great organ +of government, surviving the Church, the monarchy and the mob; it did +many great and not a few good things. It created what we call the +British Empire; it created something which was really far more +valuable, a new and natural sort of aristocracy, more humane and even +humanitarian than most of the aristocracies of the world. It had +sufficient sense of the instincts of the people, at least until lately, +to respect the liberty and especially the laughter that had become +almost the religion of the race. But in doing all this, it deliberately +did two other things, which it thought a natural part of its policy; it +took the side of the Protestants, and then (partly as a consequence) it +took the side of the Germans. Until very lately most intelligent +Englishmen were quite honestly convinced that in both it was taking the +side of progress against decay. The question which many of them are now +inevitably asking themselves, and would ask whether I asked it or no, is +whether it did not rather take the side of barbarism against +civilization. + +At least, if there be anything valid in my own vision of these things, +we have returned to an origin and we are back in the war with the +barbarians. It falls as naturally for me that the Englishman and the +Frenchman should be on the same side as that Alfred and Abbo should be +on the same side, in that black century when the barbarians wasted +Wessex and besieged Paris. But there are now, perhaps, less certain +tests of the spiritual as distinct from the material victory of +civilization. Ideas are more mixed, are complicated by fine shades or +covered by fine names. And whether the retreating savage leaves behind +him the soul of savagery, like a sickness in the air, I myself should +judge primarily by one political and moral test. The soul of savagery is +slavery. Under all its mask of machinery and instruction, the German +regimentation of the poor was the relapse of barbarians into slavery. I +can see no escape from it for ourselves in the ruts of our present +reforms, but only by doing what the mediævals did after the other +barbarian defeat: beginning, by guilds and small independent groups, +gradually to restore the personal property of the poor and the personal +freedom of the family. If the English really attempt that, the English +have at least shown in the war, to any one who doubted it, that they +have not lost the courage and capacity of their fathers, and can carry +it through if they will. If they do not do so, if they continue to move +only with the dead momentum of the social discipline which we learnt +from Germany, there is nothing before us but what Mr. Belloc, the +discoverer of this great sociological drift, has called the Servile +State. And there are moods in which a man, considering that conclusion +of our story, is half inclined to wish that the wave of Teutonic +barbarism had washed out us and our armies together; and that the world +should never know anything more of the last of the English, except that +they died for liberty. + + +THE END + + +PRINTED IN ENGLAND BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, +LONDON AND BECCLES. + + +[Illustration: Publisher's logo] + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SHORT HISTORY OF ENGLAND*** + + +******* This file should be named 20897-8.txt or 20897-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/8/9/20897 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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