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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele
+
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+Title: The Evolution of an Empire
+
+Author: Mary Parmele
+
+Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6134]
+[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
+[This file was first posted on November 17, 2002]
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE ***
+
+
+
+
+Prodyuced by Anne Soulard, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE
+A BRIEF HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ENGLAND
+
+BY
+MARY PARMELE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+Will the readers of this little work please bear in mind the
+difficulties which must attend the painting of a very large picture,
+with multitudinous characters and details, upon a very small canvas!
+This book is mainly an attempt to trace to their sources some of the
+currents which enter into the life of England to-day; and to indicate
+the starting-points of some among the various threads--legislative,
+judicial, social, etc.--which are gathered into the imposing strand of
+English Civilization in this closing 19th Century.
+
+The reader will please observe that there seem to have been two things
+most closely interwoven with the life of England. RELIGION and MONEY
+have been the great evolutionary factors in her development.
+
+It has been, first, the resistance of the people to the extortions of
+money by the ruling class, and second, the violating of their religious
+instincts, which has made nearly all that is vital in English History.
+
+The lines upon which the government has developed to its present
+Constitutional form are chiefly lines of resistance to oppressive
+enactments in these two matters. The dynastic and military history of
+England, although picturesque and interesting, is really only a
+narrative of the external causes which have impeded the Nation's growth
+toward its ideal of "the greatest possible good to the greatest
+possible number."
+
+M. P.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Ancient Britain--Caesar's Invasion--Britain a Roman Province--Boadicea
+--Lyndin or London--Roman Legions Withdrawn--Angles and Saxons--
+Cerdic--Teutonic Invasion--English Kingdoms Consolidated
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Augustine--Edwin--Caedmon--Baeda--Alfred--Canute--Edward the
+Confessor--Harold--William the Conqueror
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+"Gilds" and Boroughs--William II.--Crusades--Henry I.--Henry II.--
+Becket's Death--Richard I.--John--Magna Charta
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+Henry III.--Roger Bacon--First True Parliament--Edward I.--Conquest of
+Wales--of Scotland--Edward II.--Edward III.--Battle of Crecy--Richard
+II.--Wickliffe
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+House of Lancaster--Henry IV.--Henry V.--Agincourt--Battle of Orleans--
+Wars of the Roses--House of York--Edward IV.--Richard III.--Henry VII.
+--Printing Introduced
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+Henry VIII--Wolsey--Reformation--Edward VI--Mary
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Elizabeth--East India Company Chartered--Colonization of Virginia--
+Flodden Field--Birth of Mary Stuart--Mary Stuart's Death--Spanish
+Armada--Francis Bacon
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+James I--First New England Colony--Gunpowder Plot--Translation of
+Bible--Charles I--Archbishop Laud--John Hampden--_Petition of Right_--
+Massachusetts Chartered--Earl Strafford--_Star Chamber_
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Long Parliament--Death of Strafford and Laud--Oliver Cromwell--Death
+of Charles I.--Long Parliament Dispersed--Charles II.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+Act of Habeas Corpus--Death of Charles II.--Milton--Bunyan--James II.
+--William and Mary--Battle of Boyne
+
+ CHAPTER XI.
+
+Anne--Marlborough--Battle of Blenheim--House of Hanover--George I.--
+George II.--Walpole--British Dominion in India--Battle of Quebec--John
+Wesley
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+George III.--Stamp Act--Tax on Tea--American Independence Acknowledged
+--Impeachment of Hastings--War of 1812--First English Railway--George
+IV.--William IV.--Reform Bill--Emancipation of the Slaves
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+Victoria--Famine in Ireland--War with Russia--Sepoy Rebellion--Massacre
+at Cawnpore
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Atlantic Cable--Daguerre's Discovery--First World's Fair--Death of
+Albert--Suez Canal--Victoria Empress of India--Disestablishment of
+Irish Branch of Church of England--Present Conditions
+
+
+
+
+HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The remotest fact in the history of England is written in her rocks.
+Geology tells us of a time when no sea flowed between Dover and Calais,
+while an unbroken continent extended from the Mediterranean to the
+Orkneys.
+
+Huge mounds of rough stones called Cromlechs, have yielded up still
+another secret. Before the coming of the Keltic-Aryans, there dwelt
+there two successive races, whose story is briefly told in a few human
+fragments found in these "Cromlechs." These remains do not bear the
+royal marks of Aryan origin. The men were small in stature, with
+inferior skulls; and it is surmised that they belonged to the same
+mysterious branch of the human family as the Basques and Iberians,
+whose presence in Southern Europe has never been explained.
+
+When the Aryan came and blotted out these races will perhaps always
+remain an unanswered question. But while Greece was clothing herself
+with a mantle of beauty, which the world for two thousand years has
+striven in vain to imitate, there was lying off the North and West
+coasts of the European Continent a group of mist-enshrouded islands of
+which she had never heard.
+
+Obscured by fogs, and beyond the horizon of Civilization, a branch of
+the Aryan race known as Britons were there leading lives as primitive
+as the American Indians, dwelling in huts shaped like beehives, which
+they covered with branches and plastered with mud. While Phidias was
+carving immortal statues for the Parthenon, this early Britisher was
+decorating his abode with the heads of his enemies; and could those
+shapeless blocks at Stonehenge speak, they would, perhaps, tell of
+cruel and hideous Druidical rites witnessed on Salisbury Plain, ages
+ago.
+
+[Sidenote: Caesar's Invasion, 55 B.C. Britain a Roman Province, 45 A.D.
+Boadicea 61 A.D.]
+
+Rumors of the existence of this people reached the Mediterranean three
+or four hundred years before Christ, but not until Caesar's invasion of
+the Island (55 B.C.) was there any positive knowledge of them.
+
+The actual conquest of Britain was not one of Caesar's achievements.
+But from the moment when his covetous eagle-eye viewed the chalk-cliffs
+of Dover from the coast of Northern Gaul, its fate was sealed. The
+Roman octopus from that moment had fastened its tentacles upon the
+hapless land; and in 45 A.D., under the Emperor Claudius, it became a
+Roman province. In vain did the Britons struggle for forty years. In
+vain did the heroic Boadicea (during the reign of Nero, 61 A.D.), like
+Hermann in Germany, and Vercingetorix in France, resist the destruction
+of her nation by the Romans. In vain did this woman herself lead the
+Britons, in a frenzy of patriotism; and when the inevitable defeat
+came, and London was lost, with the desperate courage of barbarian she
+destroyed herself rather than witness the humiliation of her race.
+
+The stately Westminster and St. Paul's did not look down upon this
+heroic daughter of Britain. London at that time was a collection of
+miserable huts and entrenched cattle-pens, which were in Keltic speech
+called the "Fort-on-the-Lake"--or "Llyndin," an uncouth name in Latin
+ears, which gave little promise of the future London, the Romans
+helping it to its final form by calling it Londinium.
+
+But the octopus had firmly closed about its victim, whose struggles,
+before the year 100 A.D., had practically ceased. A civilization which
+made no effort to civilize was forcibly planted upon the island. Where
+had been the humble village, protected by a ditch and felled trees,
+there arose the walled city, with temples and baths and forum, and
+stately villas with frescoed walls and tessellated floors, and hot-air
+currents converting winter into summer.
+
+So Chester, Colchester, Lincoln, York, London, and a score of other
+cities were set like jewels in a surface of rough clay, the Britons
+filling in the intervening spaces with their own rude customs, habits,
+and manners. Dwelling in wretched cabins thatched with straw and
+chinked with mud, they still stubbornly maintained their own uncouth
+speech and nationality, while they helplessly saw all they could earn
+swallowed up in taxes and tributes by their insatiate conquerors. The
+Keltic-Gauls might, if they would, assimilate this Roman civilization,
+but not so the Keltic-Britons.
+
+The two races dwelt side by side, but separate (except to some extent
+in the cities), or, if possible, the vanquished retreated before the
+vanquisher into Wales and Cornwall; and there to-day are found the only
+remains of the aboriginal Briton race in England.
+
+The Roman General Agricola had built in 78 A.D. a massive wall across
+the North of England, extending from sea to sea, to protect the Roman
+territory from the Picts and Scots, those wild dwellers in the Northern
+Highlands. It seems to us a frail barrier to a people accustomed to
+leaping the rocky wall set by nature between the North and the South;
+and unless it were maintained by a line of legions extending its entire
+length, they must have laughed at such a defence; even when duplicated
+later, as it was, by the Emperor Hadrian, in 120 A.D.; and still twice
+again, first by Emperor Antoninus, and then by Severus. For the swift
+transportation of troops in the defensive warfare always carried on
+with the Picts and Scots, magnificent roads were built, which linked
+the Romanized cities together in a network of splendid highways.
+
+There were more than three centuries of peace. Agriculture, commerce,
+and industries came into existence. "Wealth accumulated," but the
+Briton "decayed" beneath the weight of a splendid system, which had not
+benefited, but had simply crushed out of him his original vigor.
+Together with Roman villas, and vice, and luxury, had also come
+Christianity. But the Briton, if he had learned to pray, had forgotten
+how to fight,--and how to govern; and now the Roman Empire was
+perishing. She needed all her legions to keep Alaric and his Goths out
+of Rome.
+
+[Sidenote: Roman Legions Withdrawn, 410 A.D.]
+
+In 410 A.D. the fair cities and roads were deserted. The tramp of Roman
+soldiers was heard no more in the land, and the enfeebled native race
+were left helpless and alone to fight their battles with the Picts and
+Scots;--that fierce Briton offshoot which had for centuries dwelt in
+the fastnesses of the Highlands, and which swarmed down upon them like
+vultures as soon as their protectors were gone.
+
+In 446 A.D. the unhappy Britons invited their fate. Like their cousins,
+the Gauls, they invited the Teutons from across the sea to come to
+their rescue, and with result far more disastrous.
+
+When the Frank became the champion and conqueror of Gaul, he had for
+centuries been in conflict or in contact with Rome, and had learned
+much of the old Southern civilizations, and to some extent adopted
+their ideals. Not so the Angles and Saxons, who came pouring into
+Britain from Schleswig-Holstein. They were uncontaminated pagans. In
+scorn of Roman luxury, they set the torch to the villas, and temples
+and baths. They came, exterminating, not assimilating. The more
+complaisant Frank had taken Romanized, Latinized Gaul just as he found
+her, and had even speedily adopted her religion. It was for Gaul a
+change of rulers, but not of civilization.
+
+But the Angles and Saxons were Teutons of a different sort. They
+brought across the sea in those "keels" their religion, their manners,
+habits, nature, and speech; and they brought them for _use_ (just as
+the Englishman to-day carries with him a little England wherever he
+goes). Their religion, habits, and manners they stamped upon the
+helpless Britons. In spite of King Arthur, and his knights, and his
+sword "Excalibar," they swiftly paganized the land which had been for
+three centuries Christianized; and their nature and speech were so
+ground into the land of their adoption that they exist to-day wherever
+the Anglo-Saxon abides.
+
+From Windsor Palace to the humblest abode in England (and in America)
+are to be found the descendants of these dominating barbarians who
+flooded the British Isles in the 5th Century. What sort of a race were
+they? Would we understand England to-day, we must understand them. It
+is not sufficient to know that they were bearded and stalwart, fair and
+ruddy, flaxen-haired and with cold blue eyes. We should know what sort
+of souls looked out of those clear cold eyes. What sort of impulses and
+hearts dwelt within those brawny breasts.
+
+Their hearts were barbarous, but loving and loyal, and nature had
+placed them in strong, vehement, ravenous bodies. They were untamed
+brutes, with noble instincts.
+
+They had ideals too; and these are revealed in the rude songs and epics
+in which they delighted. Monstrous barbarities are committed, but
+always to accomplish some stern purpose of duty. They are cruel in
+order to be just. This sluggish, ravenous, drinking brute, with no
+gleam of poetry, no light-hearted rhythm in his soul, has yet chaotic
+glimpses of the sublime in his earnest, gloomy nature. He gives little
+promise of culture, but much of heroism. There is, too, a reaching
+after something grand and invisible, which is a deep religious
+instinct. All these qualities had the future English nation slumbering
+within them. Marriage was sacred, woman honored. All the members of a
+family were responsible for the acts of one member. The sense of
+obligation and of responsibility was strong and binding.
+
+Is not every type of English manhood explained by such an inheritance?
+From the drunken brawler in his hovel to the English gentleman "taking
+his pleasures sadly," all are accounted for; and Hampden, Milton,
+Cromwell, John Bright, and Gladstone existed potentially in those
+fighting, drinking savages in the 5th Century.
+
+Their religion, after 150 years, was exchanged for Christianity. Time
+softened their manners and habits, and mingled new elements with their
+speech. But the Anglo-Saxon _nature_ has defied the centuries and
+change. _A strong sense of justice_, and a _resolute resistance
+to encroachments upon personal liberty_, are the warp and woof of
+Anglo-Saxon character yesterday, to-day and forever. The steady
+insistence of these traits has been making English History for
+precisely 1,400 years, (from 495 to 1895,) and the history of the
+Anglo-Saxon race in America for 200 years as well.
+
+Our ancestors brought with them from their native land a simple, just,
+Teutonic structure of society and government, the base of which was the
+_individual free-man_. The family was considered the social unit.
+Several families near together made a township, the affairs of the
+township being settled by the male freeholders, who met together to
+determine by conference what should be done.
+
+This was the germ of the "town-meeting" and of popular government. In
+the "witan," or "wise men," who were chosen as advisers and adjusters
+of difficult questions, exist the future legislature and judiciary,
+while in the king, or "alder-mann" ("Ealdorman") we see not an
+oppressor, but one who by superior age and experience is fitted to
+lead. Cerdic, first Saxon king, was simply Cerdic the "Ealdorman" or
+"Alder-mann."
+
+They were a free people from the beginning. They had never bowed the
+neck to yoke, their heads had never bent to tyranny. Better far was it
+that Roman civilization, built upon Keltic-Briton foundation, should
+have been effaced utterly, and that this strong untamed humanity, even
+cruel and terrible as it was, should replace it. Roman laws, language,
+literature, faith, manners, were all swept away. A few mosaics, coins,
+and ruined fragments of walls and roads are all the record that remains
+of 300 years of occupation.
+
+And the Briton himself--what became of him? In Ireland and Scotland he
+lingers still; but, except in Wales and Cornwall, England knows him no
+more. Like the American Indian, he was swept into the remote,
+inaccessible corners of his own land. It seemed cruel, but it had to
+be. Would we build strong and high, it must not be upon _sand_. We
+distrust the Kelt as a foundation for nations as we do sand for our
+temples. France was never cohesive until a mixture of Teuton had
+toughened it. Genius makes a splendid spire, but a poor corner-stone.
+It would seem that the Keltic race, brilliant and richly endowed, was
+still unsuited to the world in its higher stages of development. In
+Britain, Gaul, and Spain they were displaced and absorbed by the
+Germanic races. And now for long centuries no Keltic people of
+importance has maintained its independence; the Gaelic of the Scotch
+Highlands and of Ireland, the native dialect of the Welsh and of
+Brittany, being the scanty remains of that great family of related
+tongues which once occupied more territory than German, Latin, and
+Greek combined. The solution of the Irish question may lie in the fact
+that the Irish are fighting against the inevitable; that they belong to
+a race which is on its way to extinction, and which is intended to
+survive only as a brilliant thread, wrought into the texture of more
+commonplace but more enduring peoples.
+
+It was written in the book of fate that a great nation should arise
+upon that green island by the North Sea. A foundation of Roman cement,
+made by a mingling of Keltic-Briton, and a corrupt, decayed
+civilization, would have altered not alone the fate of a nation, but
+the History of the World. Our barbarian ancestors brought from
+Schleswig-Holstein a rough, clean, strong foundation for what was to
+become a new type of humanity on the face of the earth. A Humanity
+which was not to be Persian nor Greek, nor yet Roman, but to be
+nourished on the best results of all, and to become the standard-bearer
+for the Civilization of the future.
+
+[Sidenote: Teutonic Invasion, 449 A.D.]
+
+The Jutes came first as an advance-guard of the great Teuton invasion.
+It was but the prologue to the play when Hengist and Horsa, in 449
+A.D., occupied what is now Kent, in the Southeast extremity of England.
+It was only when Cerdic and his Saxons placed foot on British soil(495
+A.D.) that the real drama began. And when the Angles shortly afterward
+followed and occupied all that the Saxons had not appropriated (the
+north and east coast), the actors were all present and the play began.
+The Angles were destined to bestow their name upon the land (Angle-
+land), and the Saxons a line of kings extending from Cerdic to
+Victoria.
+
+[Sidenote: English Kingdoms Consolidated.]
+
+Covetous of each other's possessions, these Teutons fought as brothers
+will. Exterminating the Britons was diversified with efforts to
+exterminate one another. Seven kingdoms, four Anglian and three Saxon,
+for 300 years tried to annihilate each other; then, finally submitting
+to the strongest, united completely,--as only children of one household
+of nations can do. The Saxons had been for two centuries dominating
+more and more until the long struggle ended--behold, Anglo-Saxon
+England consolidated English under one Saxon king! The other kingdoms--
+Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Kent, Sussex, and Essex--surviving as
+shires and counties.
+
+In 802 A.D., while Charlemagne was welding together his vast and
+composite empire, the Saxon Egbert (Ecgberht), descendant of Cerdic
+(the "Alder-mann"), was consolidating a less imposing, but, as it has
+proved, more permanent kingdom; and the History of a United England had
+begun.
+
+While Christianity had been effaced by the Teuton invasion in England,
+it had survived among the Irish-Britons. Ireland was never paganized.
+With fiery zeal, her people not alone maintained the religion of the
+Cross at home, but even drove back the heathen flood by sending
+missionaries among the Picts in the Highlands, and into other outlying
+territory about the North Sea.
+
+Pope Gregory the Great saw this Keltic branch of Christendom, actually
+outrunning Latin Christianity in activity, and he was spurred to an act
+which was to be fraught with tremendous consequences.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Augustine Came, 597.]
+
+The same spot in Kent (the isle of Thanet), which had witnessed the
+landing of Hengist and Horsa in 449, saw in 597 a band of men, calling
+themselves "Strangers from Rome," arriving under the leadership of
+Augustine.
+
+They moved in solemn procession toward Canterbury, bearing before them
+a silver cross, with a picture of Christ, chanting in concert, as they
+went, the litany of their Church. Christianity had entered by the same,
+door through which paganism had come 150 years before.
+
+The religion of Wodin and Thor had ceased to satisfy the expanding soul
+of the Anglo-Saxon; and the new faith rapidly spread; its charm
+consisting in the light it seemed to throw upon the darkness
+encompassing man's past and future.
+
+An aged chief said to Edwin, king of Northumbria, (after whom "Edwins-
+borough" was named,) "Oh, King, as a bird flies through this hall on a
+winter night, coming out of the darkness, and vanishing into the
+darkness again, even so is our life! If these strangers can tell us
+aught of what is beyond, let us hear them."
+
+King Edwin was among the first to espouse the new religion, and in less
+than one hundred years the entire land was Christianized.
+
+With the adoption of Christianity a new life began to course in the
+veins of the people.
+
+[Sidenote: Caedmon Father of English Poetry.]
+
+Caedmon, an unlettered Northumbrian peasant, was inspired by an Angel
+who came to him in his sleep and told him to "Sing." "He was not
+disobedient unto the heavenly vision." He wrote epics upon all the
+sacred themes, from the creation of the World to the Ascension of
+Christ and the final judgment of man, and English literature was born.
+
+"Paradise Lost," one thousand years later, was but the echo of this
+poet-peasant, who was the Milton of the 7th Century.
+
+In the 8th Century, Baeda (the venerable Beda), another Northumbrian,
+who was monk, scholar, and writer, wrote the first History of his
+people and his country, and discoursed upon astronomy, physics,
+meteorology, medicine, and philosophy. These were but the early
+lispings of Science; but they held the germs of the "British
+Association" and of the "Royal Society;" for as English poetry has its
+roots in Caedmon, so is English intellectual life rooted in Baeda.
+
+The culmination of this new era was in Alfred, who came to the throne
+of his grandfather, Egbert, in 871.
+
+He brought the highest ideals of the duties of a King, a broad,
+statesmanlike grasp of conditions, an unsullied heart, and a clear,
+strong intelligence, with unusual inclination toward an intellectual
+life.
+
+Few Kings have better deserved the title of "great." With him began the
+first conception of National law. He prepared a code for the
+administration of justice in his Kingdom, which was prefaced by the Ten
+Commandments, and ended with the Golden Rule; while in his leisure
+hours he gave coherence and form to the literature of the time.
+Taking the writings of Caedmon, Baeda, Pope Gregory, and Boethius;
+translating, editing, commentating, and adding his own to the views of
+others upon a wide range of subjects.
+
+He was indeed the father not alone of a legal system in England, but of
+her culture and literature besides. The people of Wantage, his native
+town, did well, in 1849, to celebrate the one-thousandth anniversary of
+the birth of the great King Alfred.
+
+But a condition of decadence was in progress in England, which Alfred's
+wise reign was powerless to arrest, and which his greatness may even
+have tended to hasten. The distance between the king and the people had
+widened from a mere step to a gulf. When the Saxon kings began to be
+clothed with a mysterious dignity as "the Lord's anointed," the people
+were correspondingly degraded; and the degradation of this class, in
+which the true strength of England consisted, bore unhappy but natural
+fruits.
+
+A slave or "unfree" class had come with the Teutons from their native
+land. This small element had for centuries now been swelled by captives
+taken in war, and by accessions through misery, poverty, and debt,
+which drove men to sell themselves and families and wear the collar of
+servitude. The slave was not under the lash; but he was a mere chattel,
+having no more part than cattle (from whom this title is derived) in
+the real life of the state.
+
+In addition to this, political and social changes had been long
+modifying the structure of society in a way tending to degrade the
+general condition. As the lesser Kingdoms were merged into one large
+one, the wider dominion of the king removed him further from the
+people; every succeeding reign raising him higher, depressing them
+lower, until the old English freedom was lost.
+
+The "folk-moot" and "Witenagemot" [Footnote: Witenagemot--a Council
+composed of "Witan" or "Wise Men."] were heard of no more. The life of
+the early English State had been in its "folk-moot," and hence rested
+upon the individual English freeman, who knew no superior but God, and
+the law. Now, he had sunk into the mere "villein," bound to follow his
+lord to the field, to give him his personal service, and to look to him
+alone for justice. With the decline of the freeman (or of popular
+government) came Anglo-Saxon degeneracy, which made him an easy prey to
+the Danes.
+
+The Northmen were a perpetual menace and scourge to England and
+Scotland. There never could be any feeling of permanent security while
+that hostile flood was always ready to press in through an unguarded
+spot on the coast. The sea wolves and robbers from Norway came
+devouring, pillaging, and ravaging, and then away again to their own
+homes or lairs. Their boast was that they "scorned to earn by sweat
+what they might win by blood." But the Northmen from Denmark were of a
+different sort. They were looking for permanent conquest, and had
+dreams of Empire, and, in fact, had had more or less of a grasp upon
+English soil for centuries before Alfred; and one of his greatest
+achievements was driving these hated invaders out of England. In 1013,
+under the leadership or Sweyn, they once more poured in upon the land,
+and after a brief but fierce struggle a degenerate England was gathered
+into the iron hand of the Dane.
+
+[Sidenote: Danish Kings, 1013 to 1042]
+
+Canute, the son of Sweyn, continued the successes of his father,
+conquering in Scotland Duncan (of Shakespeare's "Macbeth"), and
+proceeded to realize his dream of a great Scandinavian empire, which
+should include Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and England. He was one of
+those monumental men who mark the periods in the pages of History, and
+yet child enough to command the tides to cease, and when disobeyed, was
+so humiliated he never again placed a crown upon his head,
+acknowledging the presence of a King greater than himself.
+
+Conqueror though he was, the Dane was not exactly a foreigner in
+England. The languages of the two nations were almost the same, and a
+race affinity took away much of the bitterness of the subjugation,
+while Canute ruled more as a wise native King than as a Conqueror.
+
+But the span of life, even of a founder of Empire, is short. Canute's
+sons were degenerate, cruel, and in forty years after the Conquest had
+so exasperated the Anglo-Saxons that enough of the primitive spirit
+returned, to throw off the foreign yoke, and the old Saxon line was
+restored in Edward, known as "the Confessor."
+
+[Sidenote: Edward the Confessor, 1042 to 1066]
+
+Edward had qualities more fitted to adorn the cloister than the throne.
+He was more of a Saint than King, and was glad to leave the affairs of
+his realm in the hands of Earl Godwin. This man was the first great
+English statesman who had been neither Priest nor King. Astute,
+powerful, dexterous, he was virtual ruler of the Kingdom until King
+Edward's death in 1066, when, in the absence of an heir, Godwin's son
+Harold was called to the empty throne.
+
+Foreign royal alliances have caused no end of trouble in the life of
+Kingdoms. A marriage between a Saxon King and a Norman Princess, in
+about the year 1000 A.D., has made a vast deal of history. This
+Princess of Normandy, was the grandmother of the man, who was to be
+known as "William the Conqueror." In the absence of a direct heir to
+the English throne, made vacant by Edward's death, this descent gave a
+shadowy claim to the ambitious Duke across the Channel, which he was
+not slow to use for his own purposes.
+
+He asserted that Edward had promised that he should succeed him, and
+that Harold, the son of Godwin, had assured him of his assistance in
+securing his rights upon the death of Edward the Confessor. A
+tremendous indignation stirred his righteous soul when he heard of the
+crowning of Harold; not so much at the loss of the throne, as at the
+treachery of his friend.
+
+[Sidenote: Norman Conquest, 1066. Death of King Harold.]
+
+In the face of tremendous opposition and difficulties, he got together
+his reluctant Barons and a motley host, actually cutting down the trees
+with which to create a fleet, and then, depending upon pillage for
+subsistence, rushed to face victory or ruin.
+
+The Battle of Senlac (or Hastings) has been best told by a woman's hand
+in the famous Bayeux Tapestry. An arrow pierced the unhappy Harold in
+the eye, entering the brain, and the head which had worn the crown of
+England ten short months lay in the dust, William, with wrath
+unappeased, refusing him burial.
+
+[Sidenote: William I., King of England, 1066]
+
+William, Duke of Normandy, was King of England. Not alone that. He
+claimed that he had been rightful King ever since the death of his
+cousin Edward the Confessor; and that those who had supported Harold
+were traitors, and their lands confiscated to the crown. As nearly all
+had been loyal to Harold, the result was that most of the wealth of the
+Nation was emptied into William's lap, not by right of conquest, but by
+English law.
+
+Feudalism had been gradually stifling old English freedom, and the King
+saw himself confronted with a feudal baronage, nobles claiming
+hereditary, military, and judicial power independent of the King, such
+as degraded the Monarchy and riveted down the people in France for
+centuries. With the genius of the born ruler and conqueror, William
+discerned the danger, and its remedy. Availing himself of the early
+legal constitution of England, he placed justice in the old local
+courts of the "hundred" and "shire," to which every freeman had access,
+and these courts he placed under the jurisdiction of the _King_
+alone. In Germany and France the vassal owned supreme fealty to his
+_lord_, against all foes, even the King himself. In England, the
+tenant from this time swore direct fealty to none save his King.
+
+With the unbounded wealth at his disposal, William granted enormous
+estates to his followers upon condition of military service at his
+call. In other words, he seized the entire landed property of the
+State, and then used it to buy the allegiance of the people. By this
+means the whole Nation was at his command as an army subject to his
+will; and there was at the same time a breaking up of old feudal
+tyrannies by a redistribution of the soil under a new form of land
+tenure.
+
+The City of London was rewarded for instant submission by a Charter,
+signed,--not by his name--but his mark, for the Conqueror of England
+(from whom Victoria is twenty-fifth remove in descent), could not write
+his name.
+
+He built the Tower of London, to hold the City in restraint. Fortress,
+palace, prison, it stands to-day the grim progenitor of the Castles and
+Strongholds which soon frowned from every height in England.
+
+He took the outlawed despised Jew under his protection. Not as a
+philanthropist, but seeing in him a being who was always accumulating
+wealth, which could in any emergency be wrung from him by torture, if
+milder measures failed. Their hoarded treasure flowed into the land.
+They built the first stone houses, and domestic architecture was
+created. Jewish gold built Castles and Cathedrals, and awoke the
+slumbering sense of beauty. Through their connection with the Jews in
+Spain and the East, knowledge of the physical sciences also streamed
+into the land, and an intellectual life was revived, which bore fruit a
+century and a half later in Roger Bacon.
+
+[Sidenote: "Domesday Book." Meeting at Salisbury Plain. 1036]
+
+All these things were not done in a day. It was twenty years after the
+Conquest that William ordered a survey and valuation of all the land,
+which was recorded in what was known as "Domesday Book," that he might
+know the precise financial resources of his kingdom, and what was due
+him on the confiscated estates. Then he summoned all the nobles and
+large landholders to meet him at Salisbury Plain, and those shapeless
+blocks at "Stonehenge" witnessed a strange scene when 60,000 men there
+took solemn oath to support William as King _even against their own
+lords_. With this splendid consummation his work was practically
+finished. He had, with supreme dexterity and wisdom, blended two
+Civilizations, had at the right moment curbed the destructive element
+in feudalism, and had secured to the Englishman free access to the
+surface for all time. Thus the old English freedom was in fact restored
+by the Norman Conquest, by _direct_ act of the Conqueror.
+
+William typified in his person a transitional time, the old Norse
+world, mingling strangely in him with the new. He was the last outcome
+of his race. Norse daring and cruelty were side by side with gentleness
+and aspiration. No human pity tempered his vengeance. When hides were
+hung on the City Walls at Alencon, in insult to his mother (the
+daughter of a tanner), he tore out the eyes, cut off the hands and feet
+of the prisoners, and threw them over the walls. When he did this, and
+when he refused Harold's body a grave, it was the spirit of the sea-
+wolves within him. But it was the man of the coming Civilization, who
+could not endure death by process of law in his Kingdom, and who
+delighted to discourse with the gentle and pious Anselm, upon the
+mysteries of life and death.
+
+The _indirect_ benefits of the Conquest, came in enriching streams
+from the older civilizations. As Rome had been heir to the
+accumulations of experience in the ancient Nations, so England, through
+France became the heir to Latin institutions, and was joined to the
+great continuous stream of the World's highest development. Fresh
+intellectual stimulus renovated the Church. Roman law was planted upon
+the simple Teuton system of rights. Every department in State and in
+Society shared the advance, while language became refined, flexible,
+and enriched.
+
+This engrafting with the results of antiquity, was an enormous saving
+of time, in the development of a nation; but it did not change the
+essential character of the Anglo-Saxon, nor of his speech. The ravenous
+Teuton could devour and assimilate all these new elements and be
+himself--be Saxon still. The language of Bunyan and of the Bible, is
+Saxon; and it is the language of the Englishman to-day in childhood and
+in extremity. A man who is thoroughly in earnest--who is drowning--
+speaks Saxon. Character, as much as speech, remains unaltered. There is
+no trace of the Norman in the House of Commons, nor in the meetings at
+Exeter Hall, nor in the home, nor life of the people anywhere.
+
+The qualities which have made England great were brought across the
+North Sea in those "keels" in the 5th Century. The Anglo-Saxon put on
+the new civilization and institutions brought him by the Conquest, as
+he would an embroidered garment; but the man within the garment, though
+modified by civilization, has never essentially changed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+It is not in the exploits of its Kings but in the aspirations and
+struggles of its people, that the true history of a nation is to be
+sought. During the rule and misrule of the two sons, and grandson, of
+the Conqueror, England was steadily growing toward its ultimate form.
+
+As Society outgrew the simple ties of blood which bound it together in
+old Saxon England, the people had sought a larger protection in
+combinations among fellow freemen, based upon identity of occupation.
+
+[Sidenote: The "Gilds."]
+
+The "Frith-Gilds," or peace Clubs, came into existence in Europe during
+the 9th and 10th Centuries. They were harshly repressed in Germany and
+Gaul, but found kindly welcome from Alfred in England. In their mutual
+responsibility, in their motto, "if any misdo, let all bear it," Alfred
+saw simply an enlarged conception of the "_family_," which was the
+basis of the Saxon social structure; and the adoption of this idea of a
+larger unity, in _combination_, was one of the first phases of an
+expanding national life. So, after the conquest, while ambitious kings
+were absorbing French and Irish territory or fighting with recalcitrant
+barons, the _merchant, craft_, and _church_ "_gilds_"
+were creating a great popular force, which was to accomplish more
+enduring conquests.
+
+It was in the "boroughs" and in these "gilds" that the true life of the
+nation consisted. It was the shopkeepers and artisans which brought the
+right of free speech, and free meeting, and of equal justice across the
+ages of tyranny. One freedom after another was being won, and the
+battle with oppression was being fought, not by Knights and Barons, but
+by the sturdy burghers and craftsmen. Silently as the coral insect, the
+Anglo-Saxon was building an indestructible foundation for English
+liberties.
+
+[Sidenote: William II., 1017-1100. The Crusades Commenced, 1095. Henry
+I., 1100-1135]
+
+The Conqueror had bequeathed England to his second son, William Rufus,
+and Normandy to his eldest son, Robert. In 1095 (eight years after
+his death) commenced those extraordinary wars carried on by the
+chivalry of Europe against the Saracens in the East. Robert, in order
+to raise money to join the first crusade, mortgaged Normandy to his
+brother, and an absorption of Western France had begun, which, by means
+of conquest by arms and the more peaceful conquest by marriage, would
+in fifty years extend English dominion from the Scottish border to the
+Pyrenees.
+
+William's son Henry (I.), who succeeded his older brother, William
+Rufus, inherited enough of his father's administrative genius to
+complete the details of government which he had outlined. He organized
+the beginning of a judicial system, creating out of his secretaries and
+Royal Ministers a Supreme Court, whose head bore the title of
+Chancellor. He created also another tribunal, which represented the
+body of royal vassals who had all hitherto been summoned together three
+times a year. This "King's Court," as it was called, considered
+everything relating to the revenues of the state. Its meetings were
+about a table with a top like a chessboard, which led to calling the
+members who sat, "Barons of the Exchequer." He also wisely created a
+class of lesser nobles, upon whom the old barons looked down with
+scorn, but who served as a counterbalancing force against the arrogance
+of an old nobility, and bridged the distance between them and the
+people.
+
+So, while the thirty-five years of Henry's reign advanced and developed
+the purposes of his father, his marriage with a Saxon Princess did much
+to efface the memory of foreign conquest, in restoring the old Saxon
+blood to the royal line. But the young Prince who embodied this hope,
+went down with 140 young nobles in the "White Ship," while returning
+from Normandy. It is said that his father never smiled again, and upon
+his death, his nephew Stephen was king during twenty unfruitful years.
+
+But the succession returned through Matilda, daughter of Henry I and
+the Saxon princess. She married Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This
+Geoffrey, called "the handsome," always wore in his helmet a sprig of
+the broom-plant of Anjou (_Planta genista_), hence their son,
+Henry II. of England, was known as Henry _Plante-à-genêt_.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry II., 1154-1189. House of Plantagenet, 1154-1399.
+Thomas à Becket's Death 1170.]
+
+This first Plantagenet was a strong, coarse-fibred man; a practical
+reformer, without sentiment, but really having good government
+profoundly at heart.
+
+He took the reins into his great, rough hands with a determination
+first of all to curb the growing power of the clergy, by bringing it
+under the jurisdiction of the civil courts. To this end he created his
+friend and chancellor, Thomas à Becket, a primate of the Church to aid
+the accomplishment of his purpose. But from the moment Becket became
+Archbishop of Canterbury, he was transformed into the defender of the
+organization he was intended to subdue. Henry was furious when he found
+himself resisted and confronted by the very man he had created as an
+instrument of his will. These were years of conflict. At last, in a
+moment of exasperation, the king exclaimed, "Is there none brave enough
+to rid me of this low-born priest!" This was construed into a command.
+Four knights sped swiftly to Canterbury Cathedral, and murdered the
+Archbishop at the altar. Henry was stricken with remorse, and caused
+himself to be beaten with rods like the vilest criminal, kneeling upon
+the spot stained with the blood of his friend. It was a brutal murder,
+which caused a thrill of horror throughout Christendom. Becket was
+canonized; miracles were performed at his tomb, and for hundreds of
+years a stream of bruised humanity flowed into Canterbury, seeking
+surcease of sorrow, and cure for sickness and disease, by contact with
+the bones of the murdered saint.
+
+But Henry had accomplished his end. The clergy was under the
+jurisdiction of the King's Court during his reign. He also continued
+the judicial reorganization commenced by Henry I. He divided the
+kingdom into judicial districts. This completely effaced the legal
+jurisdiction of the nobles. The Circuits thus defined correspond
+roughly with those existing to-day; and from the Court of Appeals,
+which was also his creation, came into existence tribunal after
+tribunal in the future, including the "Star Chamber" and "Privy
+Council."
+
+But of all the blows aimed at the barons none told more effectually
+than the restoration of a national militia, which freed the crown from
+dependence upon feudal retainers for military service.
+
+In a fierce quarrel between two Irish chieftains, Henry was called upon
+to interfere; and when the quarrel was adjusted, Ireland found herself
+annexed to the English crown, and ruled by a viceroy appointed by the
+king. The drama of the Saxons defending the Britons from the Picts and
+Scots, was repeated.
+
+This first Plantagenet, with fiery face, bull-neck, bowed legs, keen,
+rough, obstinate, passionate, left England greater and freer, and yet
+with more of a personal despotism than he had found her. The trouble
+with such triumphs is that they presuppose the wisdom and goodness of
+succeeding tyrants.
+
+Henry's heart broke when he learned that his favorite son, John, was
+conspiring against him. He turned his face to the wall and died (1189),
+the practical hard-headed old king leaving his throne to a romantic
+dreamer, who could not even speak the language of his country.
+
+Richard (Coeur de Lion) was a hero of romance, but not of history. The
+practical concerns of his kingdom had no charm for him. His eye was
+fixed upon Jerusalem, not England, and he spent almost the entire ten
+years of his reign in the Holy Land.
+
+The Crusades, had fired the old spirit of Norse adventure left by the
+Danes, and England shared the general madness of the time. As a result
+for the treasure spent and blood spilled in Palestine, she received a
+few architectural devices and the science of Heraldry. But to Europe,
+the benefits were incalculable. The barons were impoverished, their
+great estates mortgaged to thrifty burghers, who extorted from their
+poverty charters of freedom, which unlocked the fetters and broke the
+spell of the dark ages.
+
+Richard the Lion-Hearted died as he had lived, not as a king, but as a
+romantic adventurer. He was shot by an arrow while trying to secure
+fabulous hidden treasure in France, with which to continue his wars in
+Palestine.
+
+[Sidenote: John, 1199-1216. Prince Arthur's Murder, 1203]
+
+His brother John, in 1199, ascended the throne. His name has come down
+as a type of baseness, cruelty, and treachery. His brother Geoffrey had
+married Constance of Brittany, and their son Arthur, named after the
+Keltic hero, had been urged as a rival claimant for the English throne.
+Shakespeare has not exaggerated the cruel fate of this boy, whose
+monstrous uncle really purposed having his eyes burnt out, being sure
+that if he were blind he would no longer be eligible for king. But
+death is surer even than blindness, and Hubert, his merciful protector
+from one fate, was powerless to avert the other. Some one was found
+with "heart as hard as hammered iron," who put an end to the young life
+(1203) at the Castle of Rouen.
+
+But the King of England, was vassal to the King of France, and Philip
+summoned John to account to him for this deed. When John refused to
+appear, the French provinces were torn from him. In 1204 he saw an
+Empire stretching from the English Channel to the Pyrenees vanish from
+his grasp, and was at one blow reduced to the realm of England.
+
+When we see on the map, England as she was in that day, sprawling in
+unwieldy fashion over the western half of France, we realize how much
+stronger she has been on "that snug little island, that right little,
+tight little island," and we can see that John's wickedness helped her
+to be invincible.
+
+The destinies of England in fact rested with her worst king. His
+tyranny, brutality, and disregard of his subjects' rights, induced a
+crisis which laid the corner-stone of England's future, and buttressed
+her liberties for all time.
+
+[Sidenote: Magna Charta, 1215]
+
+At a similar crisis in France, two centuries later, the king (Charles
+VII.) made common cause with the people against the barons or dukes. In
+England, in the 13th Century, the barons and people were drawn together
+against the King. They framed a Charter, its provisions securing
+protection and justice to every freeman in England. On Easter Day,
+1215, the barons, attended by two thousand armed knights, met the King
+near Oxford, and demanded his signature to the paper. John was awed,
+and asked them to name a day and place. "Let the day be the 15th of
+June, and the place Runnymede," was the reply.
+
+A brown, shrivelled piece of parchment in the British Museum to-day,
+attests to the keeping of this appointment. That old Oak at Runnymede,
+under whose spreading branches the name of John was affixed to the
+Magna Charta, was for centuries held the most sacred spot in England.
+
+It is an impressive picture we get of John, "the Lord's Anointed," when
+this scene was over, in a burst of rage rolling on the floor, biting
+straw, and gnawing a stick! "They have placed twenty-five kings over
+me," he shouted in a fury; meaning the twenty-five barons who were
+entrusted with the duty of seeing that the provisions of the Charter
+were fulfilled.
+
+Whether his death, one year later (1216), was the result of vexation of
+spirit or surfeit of peaches and cider, or poison, history does not
+positively say. But England shed no tears for the King to whom she owes
+her liberties in the Magna Charta.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Henry III., 1216-1272]
+
+For the succeeding 56 years John's son, Henry III., was King of
+England. While this vain, irresolute, ostentatious king was extorting
+money for his ambitious designs and extravagant pleasures, and
+struggling to get back the pledges given in the Great Charter, new and
+higher forces, to which he gave no heed, were at work in his kingdom.
+
+Paris at this time was the centre of a great intellectual revival,
+brought about by the Crusades. We have seen that through the despised
+Jew, at the time of the Conquest, a higher civilization was brought
+into England. Along with his hoarded gold came knowledge and culture,
+which he had obtained from the Saracen. Now, these germs had been
+revived by direct contact with the sources of ancient knowledge in the
+East during the Crusades; and while the long mental torpor of Europe
+was rolling away like mist before the rising sun, England felt the
+warmth of the same quickening rays, and Oxford took on a new life.
+
+[Sidenote: Oxford in the Thirteenth Century.]
+
+It was not the stately Oxford of to-day, but a rabble of roystering,
+revelling youths, English, Welsh, and Scotch, who fiercely fought out
+their fathers' feuds.
+
+They were a turbulent mob, who gave advance opinion, as it were, upon
+every ecclesiastical or political measure, by fighting it out on the
+streets of their town, so that an outbreak at Oxford became a sort of
+prelude to every great political movement.
+
+Impossible as it seems, intellectual life grew and expanded in this
+tumultuous atmosphere; and while the democratic spirit of the
+University threatened the king, its spirit of free intellectual inquiry
+shook the Church.
+
+The revival of classical learning, bringing streams of thought from old
+Greek and Latin fountains, caused a sudden expansion. It was like the
+discovery of an unsuspected and greater world, with a body of new
+truth, which threw the old into contemptuous disuse. A spirit of doubt,
+scepticism, and denial, was engendered. They comprehended now why
+Abelard had claimed the "supremacy of reason over faith," and why
+Italian poets smiled at dreams of "immortality." Then, too, the new
+culture compelled respect for infidel and for Jew. Was it not from
+their impious hands, that this new knowledge of the physical universe
+had been received?
+
+[Sidenote: Roger Bacon Writes Opus Majus.]
+
+Roger Bacon drank deeply from these fountains, new and old, and
+struggled like a giant to illumine the darkness of his time, by
+systematizing all existing knowledge. His "Opus Majus" was intended to
+bring these riches to the unlearned. But he died uncomprehended, and it
+was reserved for later ages to give recognition to his stupendous work,
+wrought in the twilight out of dimly comprehended truth.
+
+Pursued by the dream of recovering the French Empire, lost by his
+father, and of retracting the promises given in the Charter, Henry III.
+spent his entire reign in conflict with the barons and the people, who
+were closely drawn together by the common danger and rallied to the
+defence of their liberties under the leadership of Simon de Montfort.
+
+[Sidenote: Beginnings of House of Commons, 1265. First true Parliament,
+1295. Edward I., 1272-1307]
+
+It was at the town of Oxford that the great council of barons and
+bishops held its meetings. This council, which had long been called
+"Parliament" (from _parler_), in the year 1265 became for the
+first time a representative body, when Simon de Montfort summoned not
+alone the lords and bishops--but two citizens from every city, and two
+burghers from every borough. A Rubicon was passed when the merchant,
+and the shopkeeper, sat for the first time with the noble and the
+bishops in the great council. It was thirty years before the change was
+fully effected, it being in the year 1295 (just 600 years ago now) that
+the first true Parliament met. But the "House of Lords" and the germ of
+the "House of Commons," existed in this assembly at Oxford in 1265, and
+a government "of the people, for the people, by the people," had
+commenced.
+
+Edward I., the son and successor of Henry III., not only graciously
+confirmed the Great Charter, but added to its privileges. His expulsion
+of the Jews, is the one dark blot on his reign.
+
+[Sidenote: North Wales Conquered, 1213. Conquest of Scotland, 1296.]
+
+He conquered North Wales, the stronghold where those Keltic Britons,
+the Welsh, had always maintained a separate existence; and as a
+recompense for their wounded feelings bestowed upon the heir to the
+throne, the title "_Prince of Wales_."
+
+Westminster Abbey was completed at this time and began to be the
+resting-place for England's illustrious dead. The invention of
+gunpowder, which was to make iron-clad knights a romantic tradition,
+also belongs to this period, which saw too, the conquest of Scotland;
+and the magic stone supposed to have been Jacob's pillow at Bethel, and
+which was the Scottish talisman, was carried to Westminster Abbey and
+built into a coronation-chair, which has been used at the crowning of
+every English sovereign since that time.
+
+Scottish liberties were not so sacrificed by this conquest as had been
+the Irish. The Scots would not be slaves, nor would they stay conquered
+without many a struggle.
+
+[Sidenote: Robert Bruce, Bannockburn, 1314. Edward II., King 1307-1327.
+Edward III., 1327-1377.]
+
+Robert Bruce led a great rebellion, which extended into the succeeding
+reign, and Bruce's name was covered with glory by his great victory at
+Bannockburn (1314).
+
+We need not linger over the twenty years during which Edward II., by
+his private infamies, so exasperated his wife and son that they brought
+about his deposition, which was followed soon after by his murder; and
+then by a disgraceful regency, during which the Queen's favorite,
+Mortimer, was virtually king. But King Edward III. commenced to rule
+with a strong hand. As soon as he was eighteen years old he summoned
+the Parliament. Mortimer was hanged at Tyburn, and his queen-mother was
+immured for life.
+
+We have turned our backs upon Old England. The England of a
+representative Parliament and a House of Commons, of ideals derived
+from a wider knowledge, the England of a Westminster Abbey, and
+gunpowder, and cloth-weaving, is the England we all know to-day.
+Vicious kings and greed of territory, and lust of power, will keep the
+road from being a smooth one. but it leads direct to the England of
+Victoria; and 1895 was roughly outlined in 1327, when Edward III.
+grasped the helm with the decision of a master.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle of Crecy, 1346]
+
+After completing the subjection of Scotland he invaded France,--the
+pretext of resisting her designs upon the Netherlands, being merely a
+cover for his own thirst for territory and conquest. The victory over
+the French at Crecy, 1346, (and later of Poitiers,) covered the warlike
+king and his son, Edward the "Black Prince," with imperishable renown.
+Small cannon were first used at that battle. The knights and the
+archers laughed at the little toy, but found it useful in frightening
+the enemies' horses.
+
+Edward III. covered England with a mantle of military glory, for which
+she had to pay dearly later. He elevated the kingship to a more
+dazzling height, for which there have also been some expensive
+reckonings since. He introduced a new and higher dignity into nobility
+by the title of Duke, which he bestowed upon his sons; the great
+landholders or barons, having until that time constituted a body in
+which all were peers. He has been the idol of heroic England. But he
+awoke the dream of French conquest, and bequeathed to his successors a
+fatal war, which lasted for 100 years.
+
+The "Black Prince" died, and the "Black Death," a fearful pestilence,
+desolated a land already decimated by protracted wars. The valiant old
+King, after a life of brilliant triumphs, carried a sad and broken
+heart to the grave, and Richard II., son of the heroic Prince Edward,
+was king.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard II.,1377-1399. Wat Tyler's Rebellion 1381.]
+
+This last of the Plantagenets had need of great strength and wisdom to
+cope with the forces stirring at that time in his kingdom, and was
+singularly deficient in both. The costly conquests of his grandfather,
+were a troublesome legacy to his feeble grandson. Enormous taxes
+unjustly levied to pay for past glories, do not improve the temper of a
+people. A shifting of the burden from one class to another arrayed all
+in antagonisms against each other, and finally, when the burden fell
+upon the lowest order, as it is apt to do, they rose in fierce
+rebellion under the leadership of Wat Tyler, a blacksmith (1381).
+
+Concessions were granted and quiet restored, but the people had learned
+a new way of throwing off injustice. There began to be a new sentiment
+in the air. Men were asking why the few should dress in velvet and the
+many in rags. It was the first revolt against the tyranny of wealth,
+when people were heard on the streets singing the couplet
+
+   "When Adam delved and Eve span,
+    Who was then the gentleman?"
+
+As in the times of the early Saxon kings, the cause breeding
+destruction was the widening distance between the king and the people.
+In those earlier times the people unresistingly lapsed into decadence,
+but the Anglo-Saxon had learned much since then, and it was not so safe
+to degrade him and trample on his rights.
+
+[Sidenote: John Wickliffe, 1324-1384.]
+
+Then, too, John Wickliffe had been telling some very plain truths to
+the people about the Church of Rome, and there was developing a
+sentiment which made Pope and Clergy tremble. There was a spirit of
+inquiry, having its centre at Oxford, looking into the title-deeds of
+the great ecclesiastical despotism. Wickliffe heretically claimed that
+the Bible was the one ground of faith, and he added to his heresy by
+translating that Book into simple Saxon English, that men might learn
+for themselves what was Christ's message to man.
+
+Luther's protest in the 16th Century was but the echo of Wickliffe's in
+the 14th,--against the tyranny of a Church from which all spiritual
+life had departed, and which in its decay tightened its grasp upon the
+very things which its founder put "behind Him" in the temptation on the
+mountain, and aimed at becoming a temporal despotism.
+
+Closely intermingled with these struggles was going on another,
+unobserved at the time. Three languages held sway in England--Latin in
+the Church, French in polite society, and English among the people.
+Chaucer's genius selected the language of the people for its
+expression, as also of course, did Wickliffe in his translation of the
+Bible. French and Latin were dethroned, and the "King's English" became
+the language of the literature and speech of the English nation.
+
+[Sidenote: 1399 Deposition of Richard II. House of Plantagenet ends 1399.]
+
+He would have been a wise and great King who could have comprehended
+and controlled all the various forces at work at this time. Richard II.
+was neither. This seething, tumbling mass of popular discontents was
+besides only the groundwork for the personal strifes and ambitions
+which raged about the throne. The wretched King, embroiled with every
+class and every party, was pronounced by Parliament unfit to reign, the
+same body which deposed him, giving the crown to his cousin Henry of
+Lancaster (1399), and the reign of the Plantagenets was ended.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+[Sidenote: House of Lancaster, 1399-1461. Henry IV.,1399-1413.]
+
+The new king did not inherit the throne; he was _elected_ to it.
+He was an arbitrary creation of Parliament. The Duke of Lancaster,
+Henry's father (John of Gaunt), was only a younger son of Edward III.
+According to the strict rules of hereditary succession, there were two
+others with claims superior to Henry's. Richard Duke of York, his
+cousin, claimed a double descent from the Duke Clarence and also from
+the Duke of York, both sons of Edward III.
+
+This led later to the dreariest chapter in English history, "the Wars
+of the Roses."
+
+It is an indication of the enormous increase in the strength of
+Parliament, that such an exercise of power, the creating of a king, was
+possible. Haughty, arrogant kings bowed submissively to its will. Henry
+could not make laws nor impose taxes without first summoning Parliament
+and obtaining his subjects' consent. But corrupting influences were at
+work which were destined to cheat England out of her liberties for many
+a year.
+
+The impoverishment of the country to pay for war and royal
+extravagances, had awakened a troublesome spirit in the House of
+Commons. Cruelty to heretics also, and oppressive enactments were
+fought and defeated in this body. The King, clergy, and nobles, were
+drawing closer together and farther away from the people, and were
+devising ways of stifling their will.
+
+If the King might not resist the will of Parliament, he could fill it
+with men who would not resist his; so, by a system of bribery and force
+in the boroughs, the House of Commons had injected into it enough of
+the right sort to carry obnoxious measures. This was only one of the
+ways in which the dearly bought liberties were being defeated.
+
+Henry IV., the first Lancastrian king, lighted the fires of persecution
+in England. The infamous "Statute of Heresy" was passed 1401. Its first
+victim was a priest who was thrown to the flames for denying the
+doctrine of transubstantiation.
+
+Wickliffe had left to the people not a party, but a sentiment. The
+"Lollards," as they were called, were not an organization, but rather a
+pervading atmosphere of revolt, which naturally combined with the
+social discontent of the time, and there came to be more of hate than
+love in the movement, which was at its foundation a revolt against
+inequality of condition. As in all such movements, much that was
+vicious and unwise in time mingled with it, tending to give some excuse
+for its repression. The discarding of an old faith, unless at once
+replaced by a new one, is a time fraught with many dangers to Society
+and State.
+
+[Sidenote: Henry V. 1413-1422]
+
+Such were some of the forces at work for fourteen brief years while
+Henry IV. wore the coveted crown, and while his son, the roystering
+"Prince Hal," in the new character of King (Henry V.) lived out his
+brief nine years of glory and conquest.
+
+[Sidenote: Agincourt, 1415]
+
+France, with an insane King, vicious Queen Regent, and torn by the
+dissensions of ambitious Dukes, had reached her hour of greatest
+weakness, when Henry V. swept down upon her with his archers, and broke
+her spirit by his splendid victory at Agincourt; then married her
+Princess Katharine, and was proclaimed Regent of France. The rough
+wooing of his French bride, immortalized by Shakespeare, throws a
+glamour of romance over the time.
+
+But an all-subduing King cut short Henry's triumphs. He was stricken
+and died (1422), leaving an infant son nine months old, who bore the
+weight of the new title, "King of England and France," while Henry's
+brother, the Duke of Bedford, reigned as Regent.
+
+[Sidenote: Joan of Arc. Battle of Orleans 1429.]
+
+Then it was, that by a mysterious inspiration, Joan of Arc, a child and
+a peasant, led the French army to the besieged City of Orleans, and the
+crucial battle was won.
+
+Charles VII. was King. The English were driven out of France, and the
+Hundred Years' War ended in defeat (1453). England had lost Aquitaine,
+which for two hundred years (since Henry II.) had been hers, and had
+not a foot of ground on Norman soil.
+
+The long shadow cast by Edward III upon England was deepening. A
+ruinous war had drained her resources and arrested her liberties; and
+now the odium of defeat made the burdens it imposed intolerable. The
+temper of every class was strained to the danger point. The wretched
+government was held responsible, followed, as usual, by impeachments,
+murders, and impotent outbursts of fury.
+
+[Sidenote: Jack Cade's Insurrection, 1450]
+
+While, owing to social processes long at work, feudalism was in fact a
+ruin, a mere empty shell, it still seemed powerful as ever; just as an
+oak, long after its roots are dead, will still carry aloft a waving
+mass of green leafage. The great Earl of Warwick when he went to
+Parliament was still followed by 600 liveried retainers. But when Jack
+Cade led 20,000 men in rebellion at the close of the French war, they
+were not the serfs and villeinage of other times, but farmers and
+laborers, who, when they demanded a more economical expenditure of
+royal revenue, freedom at elections, and the removal of restrictions on
+their dress and living, knew their rights, and were not going to give
+them up without a struggle.
+
+But the madness of personal ambition was going to work deeper ruin and
+more complete wreck of England's fortunes. We have seen that by the
+interposition of Parliament, the House of Lancaster had been placed on
+the throne contrary to the tradition which gave the succession to the
+oldest branch, which Richard, the Duke of York, claimed to represent;
+his claim strengthened by a double descent from Edward III. through his
+two sons, Lionel and Edward.
+
+[Sidenote: Wars of the Roses 1455-1485]
+
+For twenty-one years, (1450-1471) these wars of the descendants of
+Edward III. were engaged in the most savage war, for purely selfish and
+personal ends, with not one noble or chivalric element to redeem the
+disgraceful exhibition of human nature at its worst. Murders,
+executions, treacheries, adorn a network of intrigue and villany, which
+was enough to have made the "White" and the "Red Rose" forever hateful
+to English eyes.
+
+The great Earl of Warwick led the White Rose of York to victory,
+sending the Lancastrian King to the tower, his wife and child fugitives
+from the Kingdom, and proclaimed Edward, (son of Richard Duke of York,
+the original claimant, who had been slain in the conflict), King of
+England.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Henry VI. House of York, 1461-1485.]
+
+Then, with an unscrupulousness worthy of the time and the cause,
+Warwick opened communication with the fugitive Queen, offering her his
+services, betrothed his daughter to the young Edward, Prince of Wales,
+took up the red Lancastrian rose from the dust of defeat,--brought the
+captive he had sent to the tower back to his throne--only to see him
+once more dragged down again by the Yorkists--and for the last time
+returned to captivity; leaving his wife a prisoner and his young son
+dead at Tewksbury, stabbed by Yorkist lords. Henry VI. died in the
+Tower, "mysteriously," as did all the deposed and imprisoned Kings;
+Warwick was slain in battle, and with Edward IV, the reign of the House
+of York commenced.
+
+Such in brief is the story of the "_Wars of the Roses_" and of the
+Earl of Warwick, the "_King Maker_."
+
+[Sidenote: Edward IV., 1471-1483.]
+
+At the close of the Wars of the Roses, feudalism was a ruin. The oak
+with its dead roots had been prostrated by the storm. The imposing
+system had wrought its own destruction. Eighty Princes of the blood
+royal had perished, and more than half of the Nobility had died on the
+field or the scaffold, or were fugitives in foreign lands. The great
+Duke of Exeter, brother-in-law to a King, was seen barefoot begging
+bread from door to door.
+
+By the confiscation of one-fifth of the landed estate of the Kingdom,
+vast wealth poured into the King's treasury. He had no need now to
+summon Parliament to vote him supplies. The clergy, rendered feeble and
+lifeless from decline in spiritual enthusiasm, and by its blind
+hostility to the intellectual movement of the time, crept closer to the
+throne, while Parliament, with its partially disfranchised House of
+Commons, was so rarely summoned that it almost ceased to exist. In the
+midst of the general wreck, the Kingship towered in solitary greatness.
+
+Edward IV. was absolute sovereign. He had no one to fear, unless it was
+his intriguing brother Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who, during the
+twenty-three years of Edward's reign, was undoubtedly carefully
+planning the bloodstained steps by which he himself should reach the
+throne.
+
+Acute in intelligence, distorted in form and in character, this Richard
+was a monster of iniquity. The hapless boy left heir to the throne upon
+the death of Edward IV., his father, was placed under the guardianship
+of his misshapen uncle, who until the majority of the young King,
+Edward V., was to reign under the title of Protector.
+
+[Sidenote: Richard III., 1483-1485. Death of the Princes in the Tower.]
+
+How this "Protector" protected his nephews all know. The two boys
+(Edward V. and Richard, Duke of York) were carried to the Tower. The
+world has been reluctant to believe that they were really smothered, as
+has been said; but the finding, nearly two hundred years later, of the
+skeletons of two children which had been buried or concealed at the
+foot of the stairs leading to their place of confinement, seems to
+confirm it beyond a doubt.
+
+[Sidenote: Bosworth Field. House of Tudor, 1485-1603. Henry VII.,
+1485-1509.]
+
+Retribution came swiftly. Two years later Richard fell at the battle of
+Bosworth Field, and the crown won by numberless crimes, rolled under a
+hawthorn bush. It was picked up and placed upon a worthier head.
+
+Henry Tudor, an offshoot of the House of Lancaster, was proclaimed King
+Henry VII., and his marriage with Princess Elizabeth of York (sister of
+the princes murdered in the Tower) forever blended the White and the
+Red Rose in peaceful union.
+
+[Sidenote: Printing Introduced into England.]
+
+During all this time, while Kings came and Kings went, the people
+viewed these changes from afar. But if they had no longer any share in
+the government, a great expansion was going on in their inner life.
+Caxton had set up his printing press, and the "art preservative of all
+arts," was bringing streams of new knowledge into thousands of homes.
+Copernicus had discovered a new Heaven, and Columbus a new Earth. The
+sun no longer circled around the Earth, nor was the Earth a flat plain.
+There was a revival of classic learning at Oxford, and Erasmus, the
+great preacher, was founding schools and preparing the minds of the
+people for the impending change, which was soon to be wrought by that
+Monk in Germany, whose soul was at this time beginning to be stirred to
+its mighty effort at reform.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Henry VIII., 1509-1517]
+
+When in the year 1509 a handsome youth of eighteen came to the throne,
+the hopes of England ran high. His intelligence, his frank, genial
+manners, his sympathy with the "new learning," won all classes. Erasmus
+in his hopes of purifying the Church, and Sir Thomas More in his
+"Utopian" dreams for politics and society, felt that a friend had come
+to the throne in the young Henry VIII.
+
+Spain had become great through a union of the rival Kingdoms Castile
+and Aragon; so a marriage with the Princess Katharine, daughter of
+Ferdinand and Isabella, had been arranged for the young Prince Henry,
+who had quietly accepted for his Queen his brother's widow, six years
+his senior.
+
+France under Francis I. had risen into a state no less imposing than
+Spain, and Henry began to be stirred with an ambition to take part in
+the drama of events going on upon the greater stage, across the
+Channel. The old dream of French conquest returned. Francis I. and
+Charles V. of Germany had commenced their struggle for supremacy in
+Europe. Henry's ambition was fostered by their vying with each other to
+secure his friendship. He was soon launched in a deep game of
+diplomacy, in which three intriguing Sovereigns were striving each to
+outwit the others.
+
+What Henry lacked in experience and craft was supplied by his
+Chancellor Wolsey, whose private and personal ambition to reach the
+Papal Chair was dexterously mingled with the royal game. The game was
+dazzling and absorbing, but it was unexpectedly interrupted; and the
+golden dreams of Erasmus and More, of a slow and orderly development in
+England through an expanding intelligence, were rudely shaken.
+
+Martin Luther audaciously nailed on the door of the Church at
+Wittenberg a protest against the selling of papal indulgences, and the
+pent-up hopes, griefs and despair of centuries burst into a storm which
+shook Europe to its centre.
+
+[Sidenote: Reformation, 1517]
+
+Since England had joined in the great game of European politics, she
+had advanced from being a third-rate power to the front rank among
+nations; so it was with great satisfaction that Catholic Europe heard
+Henry VIII. denounce the new Reformation, which had swiftly assumed
+alarming proportions.
+
+[Sidenote: Marriage with Anne Boleyn, 1533.]
+
+But a woman's eyes were to change all this. As Henry looked into the
+fair face of Anne Boleyn, his conscience began to be stirred over his
+marriage with his brother's widow, Katharine. He confided his scruples
+to Wolsey, who promised to use his efforts with the Pope to secure a
+divorce from Katharine. But this lady was niece to Charles V., the
+great Champion of the Church in its fight with Protestantism. It would
+never do to alienate him. So the divorce was refused.
+
+Henry VIII. was not as flexible and amiable now as the youth of
+eighteen had been. He defied the Pope, married Anne (1533), and sent
+his Minister into disgrace for not serving him more effectually. "There
+was the weight which pulled me down," said Wolsey of Anne, and death
+from a broken heart mercifully saved the old man from the scaffold he
+would certainly have reached.
+
+The legion of demons which had been slumbering in the King were
+awakened. He would break no law, but he would bend the law to his will.
+He commanded a trembling Parliament to pass an act sustaining his
+marriage with Anne. Another permitting him to name his successor, and
+then another--making him _supreme head of the Church in England_. The
+Pope was forever dethroned in his Kingdom, and Protestantism had
+achieved a bloodstained victory.
+
+[Sidenote: His Supremacy. Henry a Protestant. Anne Boleyn's Death, 1536.]
+
+Henry alone could judge what was orthodoxy and what heresy; but to
+disagree with _him_, was death. Traitor and heretic went to the
+scaffold in the same hurdle; the Catholic who denied the King's
+supremacy riding side by side with the Protestant who denied
+transubstantiation. The Protestantism of this great convert was
+political, not religious; he despised the doctrines of Lutheranism, and
+it was dangerous to believe too much and equally dangerous to believe
+too little. Heads dropped like leaves in the forest, and in three years
+the Queen who had overturned England and almost Europe, was herself
+carried to the scaffold (1536).
+
+It was in truth a "Reign of Terror" by an absolutism standing upon the
+ruin of every rival. The power of the Barons had gone; the Clergy were
+panic-stricken, and Parliament was a servant, which arose and bowed
+humbly to his vacant throne at mention of his name! A member for whom
+he had sent knelt trembling one day before him. "Get my bill passed to-
+morrow, my little man," said the King, "or to-morrow, this head of
+yours will be off." The next day the bill passed, and millions of
+Church property was confiscated, to be thrown away in gambling, or to
+enrich the adherents of the King.
+
+Thomas Cromwell, who had succeeded to Wolsey's vacant place, was his
+efficient instrument. This student of Machiavelli's "Prince," without
+passion or hate, pity or regret, marked men for destruction, as a
+woodman does tall trees, the highest and proudest names in the Kingdom
+being set down in his little notebook under the head of either "Heresy"
+or "Treason." Sir Thomas More, one of the wisest and best of men, would
+not say he thought the marriage with Katharine had been unlawful, and
+paid his head as the price of his fearless honesty.
+
+Jane Seymour, whom Henry married the day after Anne Boleyn's execution,
+died within a year at the birth of a son (Edward VI.). In 1540 Cromwell
+arranged another union with the plainest woman in Europe, Anne of
+Cleves; which proved so distasteful to Henry that he speedily divorced
+her, and in resentment at Cromwell's having entrapped him, by a
+flattering portrait drawn by Holbein, the Minister came under his
+displeasure, which at that time meant death. He was beheaded in 1540,
+and in that same year occurred the King's marriage with Katharine
+Howard, who one year later met same fate as Anne Boleyn.
+
+[Sidenote: Katherine Howard's Death 1541. Death of Henry VIII., 1547.]
+
+Katharine Parr, the fifth and last wife, and an ardent Protestant and
+reformer, also narrowly escaped, and would undoubtedly at last have
+gone to the block. But Henry, who at fifty-six was infirm and wrecked
+in health, died in the year 1547, the signing of death-warrants being
+his occupation to the very end.
+
+Whatever his motive, Henry VIII. had in making her Protestant, placed
+England firmly in the line of the world's highest progress; and strange
+to say, that Kingdom is most indebted to two of her worst Kings.
+
+[Sidenote: Edward VI 1547-1555. Lady Jane Grey's Death, 1553.]
+
+The crown passed to the son of Jane Seymour, Edward VI., a feeble boy
+of sixteen, and upon his death six years later (1553), by the King's
+will to Lady Jane Grey, descendant of his sister Mary. This gentle girl
+of seventeen, sensitive and thoughtful, a devout reformer, who read
+Greek and Hebrew and wrote Latin poetry, is a pathetic figure in
+history, where we see her, the unwilling wearer of a crown for ten
+days, and then with her young husband hurried to that fatal Tower, and
+to death; a brief touching interlude before the crowning of Mary,
+daughter of Henry and Katharine of Aragon.
+
+Henry VIII. stoutly adhered to Protestantism, and preferred that the
+succession should pass out of his own family, rather than into Catholic
+dominion again. Hence his naming of Jane Grey instead of his own
+daughter Mary, in case of the death of his delicate son Edward.
+
+But Henry was no longer there to stem the tide of Catholic sentiment.
+Lady Jane Grey was hurried to the block, and the Catholic Mary to the
+throne.
+
+[Sidenote: Mary 1553-1558. Calais Lost, 1558]
+
+Her marriage with Philip II. of Spain quickly overthrew the work of her
+father. Unlike Henry VIII., Mary was impelled by deep conviction. She
+persecuted to save from what she believed eternal death. Her cruelty
+was prompted by sincere fanaticism, mingled with the desire to please
+the Catholic Philip, whose love she craved and could not win.
+Disappointed in his aim to reign jointly with her, as he had hoped, he
+withdrew to Spain. Unlovely and unloved, she is almost an object of
+pity, as with dungeon, rack and fagot she strives to restore the
+Religion she loves, and to win the husband she adores. But Philip
+remained obdurately in Spain, and while she was lighting up all England
+with a blaze of martyrs, Calais, the last English possession in France,
+was lost. Mary died amid crushing disappointments public and personal,
+after reigning five years (1553-1558).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Elizabeth, 1558-1603.]
+
+Elizabeth, daughter of Henry and a disgraced and decapitated Queen,
+wore the crown of England. If heredity had been as much talked of then
+as now, England might have feared the child of a faithless wife, and a
+remorseless, bloodthirsty King. But while Mary, daughter of Katharine,
+the most pious and best of mothers, had left only a great blood-spot
+upon the page of History, Elizabeth's reign was to be the most wise,
+prosperous and great, the Kingdom had ever known. In her complex
+character there was the imperiousness, audacity and unscrupulousness of
+her father, the voluptuous pleasure-loving nature of her mother, and
+mingled with both, qualities which came from neither. She was a tyrant,
+held in check by a singular caution, with an instinctive perception of
+the presence of danger, to which her purposes always instantly bent.
+
+The authority vested in her was as absolute as her father's, but while
+her imperious temper sacrificed individuals without mercy, she ardently
+desired the welfare of her Kingdom, which she ruled with extraordinary
+moderation and a political sagacity almost without parallel, softening,
+but not abandoning, one of her father's usurpations.
+
+She was a Protestant without any enthusiasm for the religion she
+intended to restore in England, and prayed to the Virgin in her own
+private Chapel, while she was undoing the work of her Catholic sister
+Mary. The obsequious apologies to the Pope were withdrawn, but the
+Reformation she was going to espouse, was not the fiery one being
+fought for in Germany and France. It was mild, moderate, and like her
+father's, more political than religious. The point she made was that
+there must be religious uniformity, and conformity to the Established
+Church of England--with its new "Articles," which as she often said,
+"left _opinion_ free."
+
+It was in fact a softened reproduction of her terrible father's
+attitude. The Church, (called an "Episcopacy," on account of the
+jurisdiction of its Bishops,) was Protestant in doctrine, with gentle
+leaning toward Catholicism in externals, held still firmly by the "Act
+of Supremacy" in the controlling hand of the Sovereign. Above all else
+desiring peace and prosperity for England, the keynote of Elizabeth's
+policy in Church and in State was conciliation and compromise. So the
+Church of England was to a great extent a compromise, retaining as much
+as the people would bear of external form and ritual, for the sake of
+reconciling Catholic England.
+
+The large element to whom this was offensive was reinforced by
+returning refugees who brought with them the stern doctrines of Calvin;
+and they finally separated themselves altogether from a Church in which
+so much of Papacy still lingered, to establish one upon simpler and
+purer foundation; hence they were called "Puritans," and
+"Nonconformists," and were persecuted for violation of the "Act of
+Supremacy."
+
+The masculine side of Elizabeth's character was fully balanced by her
+feminine foibles. Her vanity was inordinate. Her love of adulation and
+passion for display, her caprice, duplicity, and her reckless love-
+affairs, form a strange background for the calm, determined, masterly
+statesmanship under which her Kingdom expanded.
+
+The subject of her marriage was a momentous one. There were plenty of
+aspirants for the honor. Her brother-in-law Philip, since the
+abdication of Charles V., his father, was a mighty King, ruler over
+Spain and the Netherlands, and was at the head of Catholic Europe. He
+saw in this vain, silly young Queen of England an easy prey. By
+marrying her he could bring England back to the fold, as he had done
+with her sister Mary, and the Catholic cause would be invincible.
+
+Elizabeth was a coquette, without the personal charm supposed to belong
+to that dangerous part of humanity. She toyed with an offer of marriage
+as does a cat with a mouse. She had never intended to marry Philip, but
+she kept him waiting so long for her decision, and so exasperated him
+with her caprice, that he exclaimed at last, "That girl has ten
+thousand devils in her." He little thought, that beneath that surface
+of folly there was a nature hard as steel, and a calm, clear, cool
+intelligence, for which his own would be no match, and which would one
+day hold in check the diplomacy of the "Escurial" and outwit that of
+Europe. She adored the culture brought by the "new learning;" delighted
+in the society of Sir Philip Sidney, who reflected all that was best in
+England of that day; talked of poetry with Spenser; discussed
+philosophy with Bruno; read Greek tragedies and Latin orations in the
+original; could converse in French and Italian, and was besides
+proficient in another language,--the language of the fishwife,--which
+she used with startling effect with her lords and ministers when her
+temper was aroused, and swore like a trooper if occasion required.
+
+But whatever else she was doing she never ceased to study the new
+England she was ruling. She felt, though did not understand, the
+expansion which was going on in the spirit of the people; but
+instinctively realized the necessity for changes and modifications in
+her Government, when the temper of the nation seemed to require it.
+
+It was enormous common-sense and tact which converted Elizabeth into a
+liberal Sovereign. Her instincts were despotic. When she bowed
+instantly to the will of the Commons, almost apologizing for seeming to
+resist it, it was not because she sympathized with liberal sentiments,
+but because of her profound political instincts, which taught her the
+danger of alienating that class upon which the greatness of her Kingdom
+rested. She realized the truth forgotten by some of her successors,
+that the Sovereign and the middle class _must be friends_. She
+might resist and insult her lords and ministers, send great Earls and
+favorites ruthlessly to the block, but no slightest cloud must come
+between her and her "dear Commons" and people. This it was which made
+Spenser's adulation in the "Faerie Queen" but an expression of the
+intense loyalty of her meanest subject.
+
+Perhaps it was because she remembered that the whole fabric of the
+Church rested upon Parliamentary enactment, and that she herself was
+Queen of England by Parliamentary sanction, that she viewed so
+complacently the growing power of that body in dealing more and more
+with matters supposed to belong exclusively to the Crown, as for
+instance in the struggle made by the Commons to suppress monopolies in
+trade, granted by royal prerogative. At the first she angrily resisted
+the measure. But finding the strength of the popular sentiment, she
+gracefully retreated, declaring, with royal scorn for truth, that "she
+had not before known of the existence of such an evil."
+
+In fact, lying, in her independent code of morals, was a virtue, and
+one to which she owed some of her most brilliant triumphs in diplomacy.
+And when the bald, unmitigated lie was at last found out, she felt not
+the slightest shame, but only amusement at the simplicity of those who
+had believed she was speaking the truth.
+
+[Sidenote: Massacre of St. Bartholomew's, 1572. East India Company
+Chartered, 1606. Colonization of Virginia.]
+
+Her natural instincts, her thrift, and her love of peace inclined her
+to keep aloof from the struggle going on in Europe between Protestants
+and Catholics. But while the news of St. Bartholomew's Eve seemed to
+give her no thrill of horror, she still sent armies and money to aid
+the Huguenots in France, and to stem the persecutions of Philip in the
+Netherlands, and committed England fully to a cause for which she felt
+no enthusiasm. She encouraged every branch of industry, commerce,
+trade, fostered everything which would lead to prosperity. Listened to
+Raleigh's plans for colonization in America, permitting the New Colony
+to be called "Virginia" in her honor (the Virgin Queen). She chartered
+the "Merchant Company," intended to absorb the new trade with the
+Indies (1600), and which has expanded into a British Empire in India.
+
+But amid all this triumph, a sad and solitary woman sat on the throne
+of England. The only relation she had in the world was her cousin, Mary
+Stuart, who was plotting to undermine and supplant her.
+
+The question of Elizabeth's legitimacy was an ever recurring one, and
+afforded a rallying point for malcontents, who asserted that her
+mother's marriage with Henry VIII. was invalidated by the refusal of
+the Pope to sanction the divorce. Mary Stuart, who stood next to
+Elizabeth in the succession, formed a centre from which a network of
+intrigue and conspiracy was always menacing the Queen's peace, if not
+her life, and her crown.
+
+Scotland, since the extinction of the line of Bruce, had been ruled by
+the Stuart Kings. Torn by internal feuds between her clans, and by the
+incessant struggle against English encroachments, she had drawn into
+close friendship with France, which country used her for its own ends,
+in harassing England, so that the Scottish border was always a point of
+danger in every quarrel between French and English Kings.
+
+[Sidenote: Flodden Field 1513. Birth of Mary Stuart 1542.]
+
+In 1502 Henry VIII. had bestowed the hand of his sister Margaret upon
+James IV. of Scotland, and it seemed as if a peaceful union was at last
+secured with his Northern neighbor. But in the war with France which
+soon followed, James, the Scottish King, turned to his old ally. He was
+killed at "Flodden Field," after suffering a crushing defeat. His
+successor, James V., had maried Mary Guise. Her family was the head and
+front of the ultra Catholic party in France, and her counsels probably
+influenced Edward to a continual hostility to the Protestant Henry,
+even though he was his uncle. The death of James in consequence of his
+defeat at "Solway Moss" occurred immediately after the birth of his
+daughter, Mary Stuart (1542).
+
+This unhappy child at once became the centre of intriguing designs;
+Henry VIII. wishing to betroth the little Queen to his son, afterwards
+Edward VI., and thus forever unite the rival kingdoms. But the Guises
+made no compromises with Protestants! Mary Guise, who was now Regent of
+the realm, had no desire for a closer union with Protestant England,
+and very much desired a nearer alliance with her own France. Mary
+Stuart was betrothed to the Dauphin, son of Francis I., and was sent to
+the French Court to be prepared by Catharine de Medici (the Italian
+daughter-in-law of Francis I.) for her future exalted position.
+
+[Sidenote: Mary Stuart Returns to England.]
+
+In 1561, Mary returned to England. Her boy-husband had died after a
+reign of two years. She was nineteen years old, had wonderful beauty,
+rare intelligence, and power to charm like a siren. Her short life had
+been spent in the most corrupt and profligate of Courts, under the
+combined influence of Catharine de Medici, the worst woman in Europe,--
+and her two uncles of the House of Guise, who were little better.
+Political intrigues, plottings and crimes were in the very air she
+breathed from infancy. But she was an ardent and devout Catholic, and
+as such became the centre and the hope of what still remained of
+Catholic England.
+
+Elizabeth would have bartered half her possessions for the one
+possession of beauty. That she was jealous of her fascinating rival
+there is little doubt, but that she was exasperated at her pretensions
+and at the audacious plottings against her life and throne is not
+strange. In fact we wonder that, with her imperious temper, she so long
+hesitated to strike the fatal blow.
+
+Whether Mary committed the dark crimes attributed to her or not, we do
+not know. But we do know, that after the murder of her wretched
+husband, Lord Darnley, (her cousin, Henry Stuart), she quickly married
+the man to whom the deed was directly traced. Her marriage with
+Bothwell was her undoing.  Scotland was so indignant at the act, that
+she took refuge in England, only to fall into Elizabeth's hands.
+
+Mary Stuart had once audaciously said, "the reason her cousin did not
+marry was because she would not lose the power of compelling men to
+make love to her." Perhaps the memory of this jest made it easier to
+sign the fatal paper in 1587.
+
+[Sidenote: Mary Stuart's Death, 1587.]
+
+When we read of Mary's irresistible charm, of her audacity, her
+cunning, her genius for diplomacy and statecraft, far exceeding
+Elizabeth's--when we read of all this and think of the blood of the
+Guises in her veins, and the precepts of Catharine de Medici in her
+heart, we realize what her usurpation would have meant for England, and
+feel that she was a menace to the State, and justly incurred her fate.
+Then again, when we hear of her gentle patience in her long captivity,
+her prayers and piety, and her sublime courage when she walked through
+the Hall at Fotheringay Castle, and laid her beautiful head on the
+block as on a pillow, we are melted to pity, and almost revolted at the
+act. It is difficult to be just, with such a lovely criminal, unless
+one is made of such stern stuff as was John Knox.
+
+[Sidenote: James VI., King of Scotland. Defeat of Spanish Armada, 1597.]
+The son of Mary by Henry Stuart (Lord Darnley) was James VI. of
+Scotland. With his mother's death, all pretensions to the English
+throne were forever at rest. But Philip of Spain thought the time
+propitious for his own ambitious purposes, and sent an Armada (fleet)
+which approached the Coast in the form of a great Crescent, one mile
+across. The little English "seadogs," not much larger than small
+pleasure yachts, were led by Sir Francis Drake. They worried the
+ponderous Spanish ships, and then, sending burning boats in amongst
+them, soon spoiled the pretty crescent. The fleet scattered along the
+Northern Coast, where it was overtaken by a frightful storm, and the
+winds and the waves completed the victory, almost annihilating the
+entire "Armada."
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Bacon.]
+
+England was great and glorious. The revolution, religious, social and
+political, had ploughed and harrowed the surface which had been
+fertilized with the "New Learning," and the harvest was rich. While all
+Europe was devastated by religious wars there arose in Protestant
+England such an era of peace and prosperity, with all the conditions of
+living so improved that the dreams of Sir Thomas More's "Utopia" seemed
+almost realized. The new culture was everywhere. England was garlanded
+with poetry, and lighted by genius, such as the world has not seen
+since, and may never see again. The name of Francis Bacon was
+sufficient to adorn an age, and that of Shakespeare alone, enough to
+illumine a century. Elizabeth did not create the glory of the
+"Elizabethan Age," but she did create the peace and social order from
+which it sprang.
+
+If this Queen ever loved any one it was the Earl of Leicester, the man
+who sent his lovely wife, Amy Robsart, to a cruel death in the delusive
+hope of marrying a Queen. We are unwilling to harbor the suspicion that
+she was accessory to this deed; and yet we cannot forget that she was
+the daughter of Henry VIII.!--and sometimes wonder if the memory of a
+crime as black as Mary's haunted her sad old age, when sated with
+pleasures and triumphs, lovers no more whispering adulation in her
+ears, and mirrors banished from her presence, she silently waited for
+the end.
+
+She died in the year 1603, and succumbing to the irony of fate, named
+the son of Mary Stuart--James VI. of Scotland--her successor.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: House of Stuart, 1603-1714.]
+
+The House of Stuart had peacefully reached the long coveted throne of
+England in the person of a most unkingly King. Gross in appearance and
+vulgar in manners, James had none of the royal attributes of his
+mother. A great deal of knowledge had been crammed into a very small
+mind. Conceited, vain, pedantic, headstrong, he set to work with the
+confidence of ignorance to carry out his undigested views upon all
+subjects, reversing at almost every point the policy of his great
+predecessor. Where she with supreme tact had loosened the screws so
+that the great authority vested in her might not press too heavily upon
+the nation, he tightened them. Where she bowed her imperious will to
+that of the Commons, this puny tyrant insolently defied it, and
+swelling with sense of his own greatness, claimed, "Divine right" for
+Kingship and demanded that his people should say "the King can do no
+wrong," "to question his authority is to question that of God." If he
+ardently supported the Church of England, it was because he was its
+head. The Catholic who would have turned the Church authority over
+again to the Pope, and the "Puritans" who resisted the "Popish
+practices" of the Reformed Church of England, were equally hateful to
+him, for one and the same reason; they were each aiming to diminish
+_his_ authority.
+
+[Sidenote: First English Colony in New England]
+
+When the Puritans brought to him a petition signed by 800 clergymen,
+praying that they be not compelled to wear the surplice, nor make the
+sign of the cross at baptism--he said they were "vipers," and if they
+did not submit to the authority of the Bishops in such matters "they
+should be harried out of the land." In the persecution implied by this
+threat, a large body of Puritans escaped to Holland with their
+families, and from thence came that band of heroic men and women on the
+"Mayflower," landing at a point On the American Coast which they called
+"Plymouth" (1620). A few Englishmen had in 1607 settled in Jamestown,
+Virginia. These two colonies contained the germ of the future "United
+States of America."
+
+[Sidenote: "Gunpowder Plot, 1605."]
+
+The persecution of the Catholics led to a plot to blow up Parliament
+House at a time when the King was present, thinking thus at one stroke
+to get rid of a usurping tyrant, and of a House of Commons which was
+daily becoming more and more infected with Puritanism. The discovery of
+this "Guy Fawkes gunpowder plot," prevented its consummation, and
+immensely strengthened Puritan sentiment.
+
+The keynote of Elizabeth's foreign policy had been hostility to Spain,
+that Catholic stronghold, and an unwavering adherence to Protestant
+Europe. James saw in that great and despotic government the most
+suitable friend for such a great King as himself. He proposed a
+marriage between his son Charles and the Infanta, daughter of the King
+of Spain, making abject promises of legislation in his Kingdom
+favorable to the Catholics; and when an indignant House of Commons
+protested against the marriage, they were insolently reprimanded for
+meddling with things which did not concern them, and were sent home,
+not to be recalled again until the King's necessities for money
+compelled him to summon them.
+
+[Sidenote: Francis Bacon.]
+
+During the early part of his reign the people seem to have been
+paralyzed and speechless before his audacious pretensions. Great
+courtiers were fawning at his feet listening to his pedantic wisdom,
+and humoring his theory of the "Divine right" of hereditary Kingship.
+And alas!--that we have to say it--Francis Bacon (his Chancellor),
+with intellect towering above his century,--was his obsequious servant
+and tool, uttering not one protest as one after another the liberties
+of the people were trampled upon!
+
+But this Spanish marriage had aroused a spirit before which a wiser man
+than James would have trembled. He was standing midway between two
+scaffolds, that of his mother (1587), and his son (1649). Every blow he
+struck at the liberties of England cut deep into the foundation of his
+throne. And when he violated the law of the land by the imposition of
+taxes, without the sanction of his Parliament, he had "sowed the wind"
+and the "whirlwind," which was to break on his son's head was
+inevitable. Popular indignation began to be manifest, and Puritan
+members of the Commons began to use language the import of which could
+not be mistaken. Bacon was disgraced; his crime,--while ostensibly the
+"taking of bribes,"--was in reality his being the servile tool of the
+King.
+
+[Sidenote: Translation of Bible. Great Britain.]
+
+In reviewing the acts of this reign we see a foolish Sovereign ruled by
+an intriguing adventurer whom he created Duke of Buckingham. We see him
+foiled in his attempt to link the fate of England with that of Catholic
+Europe;--sacrificing Sir Walter Raleigh because he had given offense to
+Spain, the country whose friendship he most desired. We see numberless
+acts of folly, and but three which we can commend. James did authorize
+and promote the translation of the Bible which has been in use until
+today. He named his double Kingdom of England and Scotland "Great
+Britain." These two acts, together with his death in 1625, meet with
+our entire approval.
+
+[Sidenote: James' Death 1625. Charles I., 1625-1649.]
+
+Charles I., son of James, was at least one thing which his father was
+not. He was a gentleman. Had it not been his misfortune to inherit a
+crown, his scholarly refinements and exquisite tastes, his
+irreproachable morals, and his rectitude in the personal relations of
+life, might have won him only esteem and honor. But these qualities
+belonged to Charles Stuart the gentleman. Charles the King was
+imperious, false, obstinate, blind to the conditions of his time, and
+ignorant of the nature of his people. Every step taken during his reign
+led him nearer to its fatal consummation.
+
+No family in Europe ever grasped at power more unscrupulously than the
+Guises in France. They were cruel and remorseless in its pursuit. It
+was the warm southern blood of her mother which was Mary Stuart's ruin.
+She was a Guise,--and so was her son James I.--and so was Charles I.,
+her grandson. There was despotism and tyranny in their blood. Their
+very natures made it impossible that they should comprehend the Anglo-
+Saxon ideal of civil liberty.
+
+Who can tell what might have been the course of History, if England had
+been ruled by English Kings, which it has not been since the Conquest.
+With every royal marriage there is a fresh infusion of foreign blood
+drawn from fountains not always the purest,--until after centuries of
+such dilutions, the royal line has less of the Anglo-Saxon in it than
+any ancestral line in the Kingdom.
+
+The odious Spanish marriage had been abandoned and Charles had married
+Henrietta, sister of Louis XIII. of France.
+
+[Sidenote: Archbishop Laud.]
+
+The subject of religion was the burning one at that time. It soon
+became apparent that the new King's personal sympathies leaned as far
+as his position permitted toward Catholicism. The Church of England
+under its new Primate, Archbishop Laud, was being drawn farther away
+from Protestantism and closer to Papacy; while Laud in order to secure
+Royal protection advocated the absolutism of the King, saying that
+James in his theory of "Divine right" had been inspired by the Holy
+Ghost, thus turning religion into an engine of attack upon English
+liberties. Laud's ideal was a purified Catholicism--retaining auricular
+confession, prayers for the dead, the Real Presence in the Sacrament,
+genuflexions and crucifixes, all of which were odious to Puritans and
+Presbyterians. He had a bold, narrow mind, and recklessly threw himself
+against the religious instincts of the time. The same pulpit from which
+was read a proclamation ordering that the Sabbath be treated as a
+holiday, and not a Holy-day, was also used to tell the people that
+resistance to the King's will was "Eternal damnation."
+
+This made the Puritans seem the defenders of the liberties of the
+country, and drew hosts of conservative Churchmen, such as Pym, to
+their side, although not at all in sympathy with a religious fanaticism
+which condemned innocent pleasures, and all the things which adorn
+life, as mere devices of the devil. Such were the means by which the
+line was at last sharply drawn. The Church of England and tyranny on
+one side, and Puritanism and liberty on the other.
+
+But there was one thing which at this moment was of deeper interest to
+the King than religion. He wanted,--he must have,--money.
+_Religion_ and _money_ are the two things upon which the fate
+of nations has oftenest hung. These two dangerous factors were both
+present now, and they were going to make history very fast.
+
+On account of a troublesome custom prevailing in his Kingdom, Charles
+must first summon his Parliament, and they must grant the needed
+supplies. His father had by the discovery of the theory of "Divine
+right," prepared the way to throw off these Parliamentary trammels. But
+that could only be reached by degrees. So Parliament was summoned. It
+had no objection to voting the needed subsidies, but,--the King must
+first promise certain reforms, political and religious, and--dismiss
+his odious Minister Buckingham.
+
+Charles, indignant at this outrage, dissolved the body, and appealed to
+the country for a loan. The same reply came from every quarter. "We
+will gladly lend the money, but it must be done through Parliament."
+The King was thoroughly aroused. If the loan will not be voluntary, it
+must be forced. A tax was levied, fines and penalties for its
+resistance meted out by subservient judges.
+
+[Sidenote: John Hampden, Petition of Right.]
+
+John Hampden was one of the earliest victims. His means were ample, the
+sum was small, but his manhood was great. "Not one farthing, if it me
+cost my life," was his reply as he sat in the prison at Gate House.
+
+The supply did not meet the King's demand. Overwhelmed with debt and
+shame and rage, he was obliged again to resort to the hated means.
+Parliament was summoned. The Commons, with memory of recent outrages in
+their hearts, were more determined than before. The members drew up a
+"_Petition of Right_," which was simply a reaffirmation of the
+inviolability of the rights of person, of property and of speech--a
+sort of second "Magna Charta."
+
+They resolutely and calmly faced their King, the "Petition" in one
+hand, the granted subsidies in the other. For a while he defied them;
+but the judges were whispering in his ear that the "Petition" would not
+be binding upon him, and Buckingham was urging him to yield. Perhaps it
+was Charles Stuart the gentleman who hesitated to receive money in
+return for solemn promises which he did not intend to keep! But Charles
+the King signed the paper, which seven judges out of twelve, in the
+highest court of the realm, were going to pronounce invalid because the
+King's power was beyond the reach of Parliament. It was inherent in him
+as King, and bestowed by God. _Any infringement upon his prerogative
+by Act of Parliament was void!_
+
+With king so false, and with justice so polluted at its fountain, what
+hope was there for the people but in Revolution?
+
+[Sidenote: Massachusetts Chartered, 1629]
+
+From the tyranny of the Church under Laud, a way was opened when, in
+1629, Charles granted a Charter to the Colony of Massachusetts. With a
+quiet, stern enthusiasm the hearts of men turned toward that refuge in
+America. Not men of broken fortunes, adventurers, and criminals, but
+owners of large landed estates, professional men, some of the best in
+the land, who abandoned home and comfort to face intolerable hardships.
+One wrote, "We are weaned from the delicate milk of our Mother England
+and do not mind these trials." As the pressure increased under Laud,
+the stream toward the West increased in volume; so that in ten years
+20,000 Englishmen had sought religious freedom across the sea, and had
+founded a Colony which, strange to say,--under the influence of an
+intense religious sentiment,--became itself a Theocracy and a new
+tyranny, although one sternly just and pure.
+
+The dissolute, worthless Buckingham had been assassinated, and Charles
+had wept passionate tears over his dead body. But his place had been
+filled by one far better suited to the King's needs at a time when he
+had determined not again to recall Parliament, but to rule without it
+until resistance to his measures had ceased.
+
+It was with no sinister purpose of establishing a despotism such as a
+stronger man might have harbored, that he made this resolve. What
+Charles wanted was simply the means of filling his exchequer; and if
+Parliament would not give him that except by a dicker for reforms, and
+humiliating pledges which he could not keep, why then he would find new
+ways of raising money without them. His father had done it before him,
+he had done it himself. With no Commons there to rate and insult him,
+it could be done without hindrance.
+
+He was not grand enough, nor base enough, nor was he rich enough, to
+carry out any organized design upon the country. He simply wanted
+money, and had such blind confidence in Kingship, that any very serious
+resistance to his authority did not enter his dreams. It was the
+limitations of his intelligence which proved his ruin, his inability to
+comprehend a new condition in the spirit of his people. Elizabeth would
+have felt it, though she did not understand it, and would have loosened
+the screws, without regard for her personal preferences, and by doing
+it, so bound the people to her, that her policy would have been their
+policy. Charles was as wise as the engineer who would rivet down the
+safety-valves!
+
+Sir Thomas Wentworth (Earl Strafford), who had taken the place of
+Buckingham, was an apostate from the party of liberty. Disappointed in
+becoming a leader in the Commons he had drawn gradually closer to the
+King, who now leaned upon him as the vine upon the oak.
+
+[Sidenote: Earl Strafford. The "Star Chamber."]
+
+This man's ideal was to build up in  England just such a despotism as
+Richelieu was building in France. The same imperious temper, the same
+invincible will and administrative genius, marked him as fitted for the
+work. While Charles was feebly scheming for revenue, he was laying
+large and comprehensive plans for a system of oppression, which should
+_yield_ the revenue,--and for Arsenals and Forts--and a standing
+Army, and a rule of terror which should hold the nation in subjection
+while these things were preparing. He was clear-sighted enough to see
+that "absolutism" was not to be accomplished by a system of reasoning.
+He would not urge it as a dogma, but as a fact.
+
+The "Star Chamber," a tribunal for the trying of a certain class of
+offences, was brought to a state of fresh efficiency. Its punishments
+could be anything this side of death. A clergyman accused of speaking
+disrespectfully of Laud, is condemned to pay 5,000 pounds to the King,
+300 pounds to the aggrieved Archbishop himself, one side of his nose
+is to be slit, one ear cut off, and one cheek branded. The next week
+this to be repeated on the other side, and then followed by
+imprisonment subject to pleasure of the Court. Another who has written
+a book considered seditious, has the same sentence carried out, only
+varied by imprisonment for life.
+
+These were some of the embellishments of the system called "Thorough,"
+which was carried on by the two friends and confederates, Laud and
+Strafford, who were in their pleasant letters to each other all the
+time lamenting that the power of the "Star Chamber" was so limited, and
+judges so timid! Is it strange that the plantation in Massachusetts had
+fresh recruits?
+
+But the more serious work was going on under Strafford's vigorous
+management. "Monopolies" were sold once more, with a fixed duty on
+profits added to the price of the original concession. Every article in
+use by the people was at last bought up by Monopolists, who were
+compelled to add to the price of these commodities, to compensate for
+the tax they must pay into the King's Treasury.
+
+[Sidenote: Monoplies. Ship Money.]
+
+"Ship Money" was a tax supposably for the building of a Navy, for which
+there was no accounting to the people, the amount and frequency of the
+levy being discretionary with the King. It was always possible and
+imminent, and was the most odious of all the methods adopted for
+wringing money from the nation, while resistance to it, as to all other
+such measures, was punished by the Star Chamber in such pleasant
+fashion as would please Strafford and Laud, whose creatures the judges
+were.
+
+Hampden, as before, championed the rights of the people in his own
+person, going to prison and facing death, if it were necessary, rather
+than pay the amount of 20 shillings. But that the taxes were paid by
+the people is evident, for so successful was this scheme of revenue
+that many predicted the King would never again call a Parliament. What
+would be the need of a Parliament, if he did not require money? The
+Royalists were pleased, and the people were wisely patient, knowing
+that such a financial fabric must fall at the first breath of a storm,
+and then their time would come.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The storm came in the form of a war upon Scotland, to enforce the
+established Church, which it had cast out "root and branch" for the
+Presbyterianism which pleased it. The Loyalists were alarmed by rumors
+that Scotland was holding treasonable communication with her old ally,
+France; and after an interval of eleven years, a Parliament was
+summoned, which was destined to outlive the King.
+
+[Sidenote: Long Parliament. Strafford Impeached.]
+
+The Commons came together in stern temper, Pym standing promptly at the
+Bar of the House of Lords with Strafford's impeachment for High
+Treason. The great Earl's apologists among the Lords, his own ingenious
+and powerful pleadings, the King's entreaties and worthless promises,
+all were in vain.
+
+The King saw the whole fabric of tyranny crumbling before his eyes. He
+was overawed and dared not refuse his signature to the fatal paper. It
+is said that as Strafford passed to the block, Laud, who was at the
+window of the room where he too was a prisoner, fainted as his old
+companion in cruelty stopped to say farewell to him.
+
+There were a few moments of silence, then,--a wild exultant shout. "His
+head is off--His head is off."
+
+[Sidenote: Strafford's Death. Death of Laud.]
+
+The execution of the Archbishop swiftly followed, then the abolition of
+the Star Chamber, and of the High Commission Court; then a bill was
+passed requiring that Parliament be summoned once in three years, and a
+law enacted _forbidding its dissolution except by its own
+consent_.
+
+They were rapidly nearing the conception that Parliament does not exist
+by sanction of the King, but the King by sanction of Parliament.
+
+What could be done with a King whom no promises could bind--who, while
+in the act of giving solemn pledges to Parliament in order to save
+Strafford, was perfidiously planning to overawe it by military force?
+The attempted arrest of Hampden, Pym, and three other leaders was part
+of this "Army Plot," which made civil war inevitable. The trouble had
+resolved itself into a deadly conflict between King and Parliament. If
+he resorted to arms, so must they.
+
+If Hampden stands out pre-eminent as the Champion who like a great
+Gladiator fought the battle of civil freedom, Pym is no less
+conspicious in having grasped the principles on which it must be
+fought. He saw that if either Crown or Parliament must go down, better
+for England that it should be the crown. He saw also, that the vital
+principle in Parliament lay in the House of Commons. If the King
+refused to act with them, it should be treated as an abdication, and
+Parliament must act without him, and if the Lords obstructed reform,
+then they must be told that the Commons must act alone, rather than let
+the Kingdom perish.
+
+This was the theory upon which the future action was based.
+Revolutionary and without precedent it has since been accepted as the
+correct construction of English Constitutional principles.
+
+[Sidenote: Oliver Cromwell.]
+
+Better would it have been for Charles had he let the ship sail, which
+was to have borne Hampden and his Cousin, Oliver Cromwell, toward the
+"Valley of the Connecticut." He recalled the man who was to be his evil
+genius when he gave that order. Cromwell could not so accurately have
+defined the constitutional right of his cause as Pym had done, nor make
+himself its adored head as was Hampden; but he had a more compelling
+genius than either. His figure stands up colossal and grim away above
+all others from the time he raised his praying, psalm-singing army,
+until the defeat of the King's forces at Naseby (1645), the flight of
+the King and his subsequent surrender.
+
+It was at this time that Cromwell began to manifest as much ability as
+a political as he had done as a military leader. Hampden had fallen on
+the battlefield, Pym was dead, he was virtual head of the cause.
+Perhaps it needed just such a terrible, uncompromising instrument, to
+carry England over such a crisis as was before her. Not
+overscrupulous about means, no troublesome theories about Church or
+State--no reverence for anything but God and "the Gospel."
+
+When Parliament halted and hesitated at the last about the trial of the
+King, it was the iron hand of Cromwell which strangled opposition, by
+placing a body of troops at the door, and excluding 140 doubtful
+members. A Parliament, with the House of Lords effaced, and with 140
+obstructing members excluded, leaving only a small body of men of the
+same mind, sustained by the moral sentiment of a Cromwellian Army,--can
+scarcely be called a Representative body; nor can it be considered
+competent to create a Court for the trial of a King! It was only
+justifiable as a last and desperate measure of self-defence.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Charles I., 1649]
+
+Charles wins back some of our sympathy and esteem by dying like a brave
+man and a gentleman. He conducted himself with marvellous dignity and
+self-possession throughout the trial, and at the end of seven days,
+laid his head upon the block in front of his royal palace of Whitehall.
+
+That small body of men, calling itself the "House of Commons," declared
+England a "Commonwealth," which was to be governed without any King or
+House of Lords. Cromwell was "Lord Protector of England, Scotland and
+Ireland." He scorned to be called King, but no King was ever more
+absolute in authority. It was a righteous tyranny, replacing a vicious
+one.
+
+There was no longer an eager hand dipping into the pockets of the
+people, compelling the poor to share his scanty earnings with the King.
+There was safety, and there was prosperity. But there was rage and
+detestation, as Cromwell's soldiers with gibes and jeers, hewed and
+hacked at venerable altars and pictures, and insulted the religious
+sentiment of one-half the people. Empty niches, mutilated carvings, and
+fragments of stained glass, from
+
+   "Windows richly dight,
+    Casting a dim religious light,"
+
+show us to-day the track of those profane fanatics.
+
+[Sidenote: Long Parliament Dispersed.]
+
+When the remnant of the House of Commons calling itself a Parliament
+was not alert enough in its obedience, Cromwell marched into the Hall
+with a company of musketeers, and calling them names neither choice nor
+flattering, ordered them to "get out," then locked the door, and put
+the key into his pocket. Such was the "dissolution" of a Parliament
+which had been strong enough to overthrow a Government, and to send a
+King to the scaffold! This might be fittingly described as a
+_personal_ Government!
+
+He was loved by none but the Army. There was no strong current of
+popular sentiment to uphold him as he carried out his arbitrary
+purposes; no engines of cruelty to fortify his authority; no "Star
+Chamber" to enforce his order. Men were not being nailed by the ears to
+the pillory, nor mutilated and branded, for resisting his will. But the
+spectacle was for that reason all the more astonishing: a great nation,
+full of rage, hate and bitterness, but silent and submissive under the
+spell of one dominating personality.
+
+He had no experience in diplomatic usages, no skilled ministers to
+counsel and warn, but by his foreign policy he made himself the terror
+of Europe; Spain, France, and the United Provinces courting his
+friendship, while Protestantism had protection at home and abroad.
+
+That the man who did this had a commanding genius, all must be agreed.
+But whether he was the incarnation of evil, or of righteousness, must
+ever remain in dispute. We shall never know whether or not his death,
+in 1658, cut short a career which might have passed from a justifiable
+to an unjustifiable tyranny.
+
+[Sidenote: Charles II., 1660.]
+
+A fabric held up by one sustaining hand, must fall when that hand is
+withdrawn. Cromwell left none who could support his burden. Charles
+II., who had been more than once foiled in trying to get in by the back
+door of his father's kingdom, was now invited to enter by the front,
+and amid shouts of joy was placed on the throne.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+Time brings its revenges. The instinct for beauty, and for joy and
+gladness, had been for twenty-one years repressed by harshly
+administered Puritanism. There was a thrill of delight in greeting a
+gracious, smiling king, who would lift the spell of gloom from the
+nation. Charles did this, more fully than was expected. Never was the
+law of reaction more fully demonstrated! The Court was profligate, and
+the age licentious. The reign of Charles was an orgy. When he needed
+more money for his pleasures, he bargained with Louis XIV. to join him
+in a war upon Protestantism in Holland, for the consideration of
+200,000 pounds!
+
+We wonder how he dared thus to goad and prod the British Lion, which
+had devoured his Father. But that animal had grown patient since the
+Protectorate. England treated Charles like a spoiled child whose
+follies entertained her, and whose misdemeanors she had not the heart
+to punish.
+
+[Sidenote: Act of Habeas Corpus, 1679.]
+
+The "Roundheads," who had trampled upon the "Cavaliers," were now
+trampled upon in return. But even at such a time as this the liberties
+of the people were expanding. The Act of "Habeas Corpus" forever
+prevented imprisonment, without showing in Court just cause for the
+detention of the prisoner.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Charles II., 1685.]
+The House of Stuart, those children of the Guises, was always Catholic
+at heart, and Charles was at no pains to conceal his preferences. A
+wave of Catholicism alarmed the people, who tried to divert the
+succession from James, the brother of the King, who was extreme and
+fanatical in his devotion  to the Church of Rome. But in 1685, the
+Masks and routs and revels were interrupted. The pleasure-loving
+Charles, who "had never said a foolish thing, and never done a wise
+one," lay dead in his palace at Whitehall, and James II. was King of
+England.
+
+[Sidenote: Milton and  Bunyan.]
+
+Three names have illumined this reign, in other respects so inglorious.
+In 1666 Newton discovered the law of gravitation and created a new
+theory of the Universe. In 1667 Milton published "Paradise Lost," and
+in 1672 Bunyan gave to the world his allegory, "Pilgrim's Progress."
+There was no inspiration to genius in the cause of King and Cavaliers.
+But the stern problems of Puritanism touched two souls with the divine
+afflatus. The sacred Epic of Milton, sublime in treatment as in
+conception, must ever stand unique and solitary in literature; while
+"Pilgrim's Progress," in plain homely dish served the same heavenly
+food. The theme of both was the problem of sin and redemption with
+which the Puritan soul was gloomily struggling.
+
+The reign of James II. was the last effort of royal despotism to
+recover its own. He tried to recall the right of Habeas Corpus;--to
+efface Parliament--and to overawe the Clergy, while insidiously
+striving to establish Papacy as the religion of the Kingdom. Chief
+Justice Jeffries, that most brutal of men, was his efficient aid, and
+boasted that he had in the service of James hanged more traitors than
+all his predecessors since the Conquest!
+
+The names Whig and Tory had come into existence in this struggle. Whig,
+standing for the opponents to Catholic domination, and Tory for the
+upholders of the King. But so flagrantly was the Catholic policy of
+James conducted, that his upholders were few. In three years from his
+accession, Whig and Tory alike were so alarmed, that they secretly sent
+an invitation to the King's son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to
+come and accept the Crown.
+
+[Sidenote: James II. Deposed.]
+
+William responded at once, and when he landed with 14,000 men, James,
+paralyzed, powerless, unable to raise a force to meet him, abandoned
+his throne without a struggle and took refuge in France.
+
+[Sidenote: William and Mary, 1689-1702.]
+
+The throne was formally declared vacant and William and Mary his wife
+were invited to rule jointly the Kingdom of England, Ireland and
+Scotland (1689).
+
+The House of Stuart, which seems to have brought not one single virtue
+to the throne, was always secretly conspiring with Catholicism in
+Europe. Louis XIV., as the head of Catholic Europe at this time, was
+the natural protector of the dethroned King. His aim had long been, to
+bring England into the Catholic European alliance, and, of course, if
+possible, to make it a dependency of France. A conspiracy with Louis to
+accomplish this end occupied England's exiled King during the rest of
+his life.
+
+[Sidenote: Battle of Boyne, 1690.]
+
+But European Protestantism had for its leader the man who now sat upon
+the throne of England. In fact he had probably accepted that throne in
+order to further his larger plans for defeating the expanding power of
+Louis XIV. in Europe. Broad and comprehensive in his statesmanship,
+noble and just in character, an able military leader, England was safe
+in his strong hand. Conspiracies were put down, one French army after
+another, with the despicable James at its head, was driven back; the
+purpose at one time being to establish James at the head of an
+independent Kingdom in Catholic Ireland. But that would-be King of
+Ireland was humiliated and sent back to France by the battle of Boyne
+Battle of Boyne (1690).
+
+[Sidenote: Bill of Rights]
+
+As important as was all this, things of even greater moment were going
+on in the life of England at this time. As a wise householder employs
+the hours of sunshine to repair the leaks revealed by the storm, just
+so Parliament now set about strengthening and riveting the weak spots
+revealed by the storms which had swept over England.
+
+What the "_Magna Charta_" and "_Petition of Right_" had
+asserted in a general way, was now by the "_Bill of Rights_,"
+established by specific enactments, which one after another declared
+what the King should and what he should not do. One of these Acts
+touched the very central nerve of English freedom.
+
+If _religion_ and _money_ are the two important factors in
+the life of a nation, it is _money_ upon which its life from day
+to day depends! A Government can exist without money about as long as a
+man without air! So the act which gave to the House of Commons
+exclusive power to grant supplies, and also to determine to what use
+they shall be applied, transferred the real authority to the people,
+whose will the Commons express.
+
+The struggle between the Crown and Parliament ends with this, and the
+theory of Pym is vindicated. The Sovereign and the House of Lords from
+that time could no more take money from the Treasury of England, than
+from that of France. Henceforth there can be no differences between
+King and people. _They must be friends._ A Ministry which forfeits
+the friendship of the Commons, cannot stand an hour, and supplies will
+stop until they are again in accord. In other words, the Government of
+England had become a Government _of the people_.
+
+William regarded these enactments as evidence of a lack of confidence
+in him. Conscious of his own magnanimous aims, of his power and his
+purpose to serve England as she had not been served before, he felt
+hurt and wounded at fetters which had not been placed upon such Kings
+as Charles I. and his sons. We wonder that a man so exalted and so
+superior, did not see that it was for future England that these laws
+were framed, for a time when perhaps a Prince not generous, and noble,
+and pure should be upon the throne.
+
+William was silent, grave, cold, reserved almost to sternness. He had
+none of the qualities which awaken personal enthusiasm. He was one of
+those great leaders who are worshipped from afar. Besides, it is not an
+easy task to rule another's household. Benefits however great, reforms
+however wise, are sure to be considered an impertinence by some. Then--
+there might be another "Restoration," and wary ambitious nobles were
+cautiously making a record which would not unfit them for its benefits
+when it came. He lived in an atmosphere of conspiracy, suspicion, and
+loyalty grudgingly bestowed. But these were only the surface currents.
+Anglo-Saxon England recognized in this foreign King, a man with the
+same race instincts, the same ideals of integrity, honor, justice and
+personal liberty, as her own; qualities possessed by few of her native
+sovereigns since the good King Alfred.
+
+The expensive wars carried on against James and his confederate, Louis
+XIV., compelled loans which were the beginning of the National Debt.
+That and the establishing of the Bank of England, form part of the
+history of this reign.
+
+In 1702 William died, and Mary having also died a few years earlier,
+the succession passed to her sister Anne, who was to be the last
+Sovereign of the House of Stuart.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Anne, Queen of England.]
+
+William's policy had not been bounded by his Island Kingdom. It
+included the cause of Protestant Europe. An apparently invincible King
+sat on the throne of France, gradually drawing all adjacent Kingdoms
+into his dominion. When in defiance of past pledges he placed his
+grandson upon the vacant throne of Spain, and declared that the
+Pyrenees should exist no more, even Catholic Austria revolted, and
+beginning to fear Louis more than Protestantism, new combinations were
+formed, England still holding aloof, and striving to keep out of the
+Alliance. But that all-absorbing King had long ago fixed his eye upon
+England as his future prey, and when he refused to recognize Anne as
+lawful Queen and declared his intention of placing the "Pretender"
+(illegitimate son of James) upon the throne, there could be no more
+hesitation. This Jupiter who had removed the Pyrenees, might wipe out
+the English Channel too! Hitherto the name Whig had stood for the
+adherents to the war policy, and Tory for its opponents. Now, all was
+changed. Even the stupid Anne and her Tory friends saw that William's
+policy must be her policy if she would keep her Kingdom.
+
+[Sidenote: Marlborough.]
+
+Fortunate was it for England, and for Europe at this time that a
+"Marlborough" had climbed to distinction by a slender, and not too
+reputable ladder. This man, John Churchill, who a few years ago had
+been unknown, without training, almost without education, was by pure
+genius fitted to become, upon the death of William, the guiding spirit
+of the Grand Alliance.
+
+He had none of the qualities possessed by William, and all the
+qualities that leader had not. He had no moral grandeur, no stern
+adherence to principles. Whig and Tory were alike to him, and he
+followed whichever seemed to lead to success, and to the richest
+rewards. He was perfectly sordid in his aims, invincible in his good
+nature, with a careless, easy _bonhomie_ which captured the
+hearts of Europeans, who called him "the handsome Englishman." As
+adroit in managing men as armies, as wise in planning political moves
+as campaigns, using tact and diplomacy as effectually as artillery, he
+assumed the whole direction of the European war; managed every
+negotiation, planned every battle, and achieved its great and
+overwhelming success.
+
+[Sidenote: "Battle of Blenheim, 1704."]
+
+"Blenheim" turned the tide of French victory, and broke the spell of
+Louis' invincibility. The loss at that battle was something more than
+men and fortresses. It was _prestige_, and that self-confidence
+which had made the great King believe that nothing could resist his
+purposes. It was a new sensation for him to bend his neck, and to say
+that he acknowledged Anne Queen of England.
+
+Marlborough received as his reward the splendid estate upon which was
+built the palace of "Blenheim." Then, when in the sunshine of peace
+England needed him no more, Anne quarrelled with his wife, her adored
+friend, and cast him aside as a rusty sword no longer of use. But for
+years Europe heard the song "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre," and his
+awe-inspiring name was used to frighten children in France and in
+England.
+
+His passionate love for his wife, Sarah Churchill, ran like a golden
+thread of romance through Marlborough's stormy career. On the eve of
+battle, and in the first flush of victory, he must first and last write
+her; and he would more willingly meet 20,000 Frenchmen than his wife's
+displeasure! Indeed Sarah seems to have waged her own battles very
+successfully with her tongue, and also to have had her own diplomatic
+triumphs. Through Anne's infatuation for her, she was virtually ruler
+while the friendship lasted. But to acquire ascendancy over Anne was
+not much of an achievement.
+
+It is said that there was but one duller person than the Queen in her
+Kingdom, and that was the royal Consort, George, Prince of Denmark.
+Happy was it for England that of the seventeen children born into this
+royal household, not one survived. The succession, in the absence of
+Anne's heirs, was pledged to George, Elector of Hanover, a remote
+descendant of James I.
+
+It was during Anne's reign that English literature assumed a new
+character. The stately and classic form being set aside for a style
+more familiar, and which concerned itself with the affairs of everyday
+life. Letters showed with a mild splendor, while Steele, Sterne, Swift,
+Defoe and Fielding were writing, and Addison's "Spectator" was on every
+breakfast-table.
+
+[Sidenote: Anne died, 1714.]
+
+In the year 1714 Anne died, and George I, of the House of Hanover, was
+King of England,--an England which, thanks to the great soldier and
+Duke, would never more be molested by the intriguing designs of a
+French King, and which held in her hand Gibraltar, the key to the
+Mediterranean.
+
+[Sidenote: House of Hanover, 1714. George I.]
+
+King George I. was a German grandson of Elizabeth, sister of Charles I.
+Deeply attached to his own Hanover, this stupid old man came slowly and
+reluctantly to assume his new honors. He could not speak English; and
+as he smoked his long pipe, his homesick soul was soothed by the ladies
+of his Court, who cut caricature figures out of paper for his
+amusement, while Robert Walpole relieved him of affairs of State. As
+ignorant of the politics of England as of its language, Walpole
+selected the King's Ministers and determined the policy of his
+Government; establishing a precedent which has always been followed.
+Since that time it has been the duty of the Prime Minister to form the
+Ministry; and no sovereign since Anne has ever appeared at a Cabinet
+Council, nor has refused assent to a single Act of Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: Whig rule.]
+
+Such a King was merely a symbol of Protestantism and of Constitutional
+Government. But this stream of royal dulness which set in from Hanover
+in 1714, came as a great blessing at the time. It enabled England to be
+ruled for thirty years by the party which had since the usurpation of
+James I. stood for the rights of the people. Walpole created a Whig
+Government. The Whigs had never wavered from certain principles upon
+which they had risen to power. There must be no tampering with justice,
+nor with the freedom of the press, nor any attempt to rule
+independently of Parliament. Thirty years of rule under these
+principles converted them into an integral part of the national life.
+The habit of loyalty to them was so established by this long Government
+of the Whig party, that Englishmen forgot such things could be, that it
+was possible to infringe upon the sacred liberties of the people.
+
+However much "Whig" and "Tory" have seemed to change since we first
+hear of them in the time of James I., they have in fact remained
+essentially the same; the Whigs always tending to limit the power of
+the crown, and the Tories to limit that of the people. At the time of
+Walpole the Tories had been the supporters of the Pretender and of the
+High Church party, the Whigs of the policy of William and
+Protestantism. Their predecessors were the "Cavaliers" and
+"Roundheads," and their successors to-day are found in the "Liberals"
+and "Conservatives."
+
+[Sidenote: South-Sea Bubble, 1720.]
+
+There was at last peace abroad and prosperity at home. The latter was
+interrupted for a time in 1720 by the speculative madness created by
+the "South-Sea Bubble." Men were almost crazed by the rise in the value
+of shares from 100 pounds to 1,000 pounds; and then plunged into
+despair and ruin when they suddenly dropped to nothing. The suffering
+caused by this wreck of fortunes was great. But industries revived,
+and prosperity and wealth returned with little to disturb them again
+until the death of George I. in 1727; when another George came over
+from Hanover to occupy the English throne.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of George, 1727.]
+
+George II. had one advantage over his father. He did speak the English
+language. Nor was he content to smoke his pipe and entrust his Kingdom
+to his Ministers, which was a doubtful advantage for the nation. But
+his clever wife, Queen Caroline, believed thoroughly in Walpole, and
+when she was controlled by the Minister, and then in turn herself
+controlled the policy of the King, that simple gentleman supposed that
+he,--George II.,--was ruling his own Kingdom. His small, narrow mind
+was incapable of statesmanship; but he was a good soldier. Methodical,
+stubborn and passionate, he was a King who needed to be carefully
+watched, and adroitly managed, to keep him from doing harm.
+
+[Sidenote: The "Young Pretender." Culloden Moor, 1746.]
+
+There was a young "Pretender" in these days (Charles Edward Stuart),
+who was conspiring with Louis XV., as his father had done with Louis
+XIV., to get to the English throne. We see him flitting about Europe
+from time to time, landing here and there on the British Coast--until
+when finally defeated at "Culloden Moor," 1746, this wraith of the
+House of Stuart disappears--dying obscurely in Rome; and "Wha'll be
+King but Charlie," and "Over the Water to Charlie," linger only as the
+echo of a lost cause.
+
+[Sidenote: "Seven Years' War."]
+
+There was a time of despondency when England seemed to be annexed to
+Hanover, following her fortunes, and sharing her misfortunes in the
+"seven years' war" over the Austrian succession, as if the Great
+Kingdom were a mere dependency to the little Electorate; and all to
+please the stubborn King. Desiring peace above all things England was
+no sooner freed from one entanglement, than she was plunged into
+another.
+
+In India, the English "Merchant Company," chartered by Elizabeth in
+1600, had expanded to a power. One of the native Princes, jealous of
+these foreign intruders in Bengal, and roused, it was said, by the
+French to expel them, committed that deed at which the world has
+shuddered ever since. One hundred and fifty settlers and traders, were
+thrust into an air-tight dungeon--an Indian midsummer. Maddened with
+heat and with thirst, most of them died before morning, trampling upon
+each other in frantic efforts to get air and water. This is the story
+of the "Black Hole of Calcutta;" which led to the victories of Clive,
+and the establishment of English Empire in India, 1757.
+
+[Sidenote: British Dominion in India, 1757. Battle of Quebec, 1760.]
+
+Two years later a quarrel over the boundaries of their American
+colonies brought the French and English into direct conflict. Gen.
+Wolfe, the English Commander, was killed at the moment of victory in
+scaling the walls of Quebec. Montcalm, the French commander, being
+saved the humiliation of seeing the loss of Canada (1760), by sharing
+the same fate.
+
+The dream of French Empire in America was at an end; and with the
+cession of Florida by Spain, England was mistress of the eastern half
+of the Continent from Nova Scotia to the Gulf of Mexico, and from the
+Atlantic to the Mississippi. So since the days of Elizabeth, and from
+seed dropped by her hand, an Eastern and a Western Empire had been
+added to that island Kingdom, whose highest dream had been to get back
+some of her lost provinces in France. Instead of that it was to be her
+destiny to girdle the Earth, so that the Sun in its entire course
+should never cease to shine upon British Dominions.
+
+[Sidenote: John Wesley.]
+
+Side by side with the aspiration which uplifts a nation, there is
+always a tendency toward degradation, which can only be arrested by the
+infusion of a higher spiritual life. Strong alcoholic liquors had taken
+the place of beer in England (to avoid the excessive tax imposed upon
+it) and the grossest intemperance prevailed in the early part of this
+reign. John Wesley introduced a regenerative force when he went about
+among the people preaching "Methodism," a pure and simple religion. Not
+since Augustine had the hearts of men been so touched, and a new life
+and new spirit came into being, better than all the prosperity and
+territorial expansion of the time.
+
+Walpole had passed from view long before the stirring changes we have
+alluded to. A new hand was guiding the affairs of State; the hand of
+William Pitt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+At the close of the Seven Years' War, England had driven the French out
+of Canada,--her ships which had traversed the Pacific from one end to
+the other, (Capt. Cook) had wherever they touched, claimed islands for
+the Crown; she had projected into the heart of India English
+institutions and civilization.
+
+Mistress of North America, and of the Pacific Isles, and future
+mistress of India, she had left in comparative insignificance those
+European States whose power was bounded by a single Continent. And all
+this,--in the reign of the puniest King who had ever sat upon her
+throne! As if to show that England was great not through--but in spite
+of, her Kings.
+
+[Sidenote: George III. 1760-1820.]
+
+When in 1760, George III. came to the throne, thirteen prosperous
+American Colonies were a source of handsome revenue to the mother
+country, by whom they were regarded as receptacles for surplus
+population, and a good field for unsuccessful men and adventurers.
+These children were frequently reminded that they owed England a great
+debt of gratitude. They had cost her expensive Indian and French wars
+for which she should expect them to reimburse her as their prosperity
+grew. They were to make nothing themselves, not so much as a horseshoe;
+but to send their raw material to English mills and factories, and when
+it was returned to them in wares and manufactured articles, they were
+to pay such taxes as were imposed, with grateful hearts to the kind
+Government which was so good as to rule them.
+
+[Sidenote: Stamp Act, 1765.]
+
+If the Colonies had still needed the protection of England from the
+French, they might never have questioned the propriety of their
+treatment. They were at heart intensely loyal, and the thought of
+severance from the Mother Country probably did not exist in a single
+breast. But they had since the fall of Quebec a feeling of security
+which was a good background for independence, if their manhood required
+its assertion. They were Anglo-Saxons, and perfectly understood the
+long struggle for civil rights which lay behind them. So when in 1765
+they were told that they must bear their share of the burden of
+National Debt which had been increased by wars in their behalf, and to
+that end a "Stamp Act" had been passed, they very carefully looked into
+the demand. This Act required that every legal document drawn in the
+Colonies, will, deed, note, draft, receipt, etc., be written upon paper
+bearing an expensive Government stamp.
+
+The thirteen Colonies, utterly at variance upon most subjects, were
+upon this agreed: _They would not submit to the tax._ They had
+read the Magna Charta, they knew that the Stamp Act violated its most
+vital principle. This tax had been framed to extort money from men who
+had no representation in Parliament, hence without their consent.
+
+Pitt vehemently declared that the Act was a tyranny, Burke and Fox
+protested against it, the brain and the heart of England compelled the
+repeal of the Act; Pitt declaring that the spirit shown in America was
+the same that in England had withstood the Stuarts, and refused "Ship
+Money." There was rejoicing and ringing of bells over the repeal, but
+before the echoes had died away another plan was forming in the narrow
+recesses of the King's brain.
+
+George III. had read English History. He remembered that if Parliaments
+grow obstructive, the way is not to fight them but to pack them with
+the right kind of material. Tampering with the boroughs, had so filled
+the House of Commons with Tories that it had almost ceased to be a
+representative body, and if Pitt would not bow to his wishes, he would
+find a Minister who would. Another tax was devised.
+
+[Sidenote: Tax on Tea.]
+
+Threepence a pound upon tea, shipped direct to America from India,
+would save the impost to England, bring tea at a cheaper rate to the
+Colonies (even with the added tax), and at the same time yield a
+handsome revenue to the Government.
+
+The Colonists were not at all moved by the idea of getting cheaper tea.
+They had taken their stand in this matter of taxation without
+representation; they would never move from it one inch. When the cargo
+of tea arrived in Boston harbor, it was thrown overboard by men
+disguised as Indians.
+
+George III. in a rage closed the port of Boston, cancelled the Charter
+of Massachusetts, withdrew the right of electing its own council and
+judges, investing the _Governor_ with these rights, to whom he
+also gave the power to send rebellious and seditious prisoners to
+England for trial. Then to make all this sure of fulfilment, he sent
+troops to enforce the order, in command of General Gage, whom he also
+appointed _Governor_ of Massachusetts.
+
+Fox said, "How intolerable that it should be in the power of one
+blockhead to do so much mischief!" The obstinacy of George III. cost
+England her dearest and fairest possession. It is almost impossible to
+picture what would be her power to-day if she had continued to be
+mistress of North America!
+
+All unconscious of his stupendous folly, the King was delighted at his
+own firmness. He rubbed his hands in high glee as he said,--"The die
+is cast, the Colonies must submit or triumph," meaning of course that
+"triumph" was a thing impossible. Pitt (now Earl Chatham), Burke, Fox,
+even the Tory House of Lords, petitioned and implored in vain. The
+confident, stubborn King stood alone, and upon him lies the whole
+responsibility--Lord North simply acting as his compliant tool.
+
+The colonies united as one, all local differences forgotten. As they
+fought at Lexington and at Bunker Hill, the idea of something more than
+_resistance_ was born--the idea of _independence_.
+
+A letter from the Government addressed to the Commander-in-Chief as
+"George Washington, Esq.," was sent back unopened. Battles were lost
+and won, the courage and resources of the Americans holding out for
+years as if by miracle, until when reinforced by France the end drew
+near; and was reached with the defeat of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.
+
+[Sidenote: Independence Acknowledged, 1782.]
+
+It was a dreary morning in 1782 when a humiliated King stood before the
+House of Lords and acknowledged the independence of the United States
+of America!
+
+Thus ended a contest which the Earl of Chatham had said "was conceived
+in injustice, and nurtured in folly."
+
+It was during the American war that the Press rose to be a great
+counterbalancing power. Popular sentiment no longer finding an outlet
+in the House of Commons, sought another mode of expression. Public
+opinion gathered in by the newspapers became a force before which
+Government dared not stand. The "Chronicle," "Post," "Herald" and
+"Times" came into existence, philosophers like Coleridge, and statesmen
+like Canning using their columns and compelling reforms.
+
+[Sidenote: Impeachment of Warren Hastings, 1788.]
+
+The impeachment of Warren Hastings, conducted by Burke, Sheridan, and
+Fox, led to such an exposure of the cruelty and corruption of the East
+India Company, that the gigantic monopoly was broken up. A "Board of
+Control" was created for the administration of Indian affairs, thus
+absorbing it into the general system of English Government (1784).
+
+James Watt had introduced (in 1769) steam into the life of England,
+with consequences dire at first, and fraught with such tremendous
+results later, changing all the industrial conditions of England and of
+the world.
+
+In 1789 England witnessed that terrific outburst of human passions in
+France, which culminated in the death of a King and a Queen. An
+appalling sight which made Republicanism seem odious, even to so
+exalted and just a soul as Burke, who denounced it with words of
+thrilling eloquence. Then came Napoleon Bonaparte, and his swift ascent
+to imperial power, followed by his audacious conquest almost of Europe,
+until Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, led the allied army at
+Waterloo, and Napoleon's sun went down.
+
+In 1812 the United States for a second time declared war against
+England. That country had claimed the right to search for British-born
+seamen upon American ships, in order to impress them into her own
+service and recruit her Navy. The "right of search" was denied, and the
+British forces landed in Maryland, burned the Capitol and Congressional
+Library at Washington, but met their "Waterloo" at New Orleans, where,
+under General Andrew Jackson, they were defeated, and the "right of
+search" is heard of no more.
+
+Long before this time George III. had been a prey to blindness,
+deafness, and insanity, and in 1820 his death came as a welcome event.
+Had he not been blind, deaf, and insane, in 1775, England might not
+have lost her fairest possession.
+
+The weight of the enormous debt incurred by the long wars fell most
+heavily upon the poor. One-half of their earnings went to the Crown.
+The poor man lived under a taxed roof, wore taxed clothing, ate taxed
+food from taxed dishes, and looked at the light of day through taxed
+window-glass. Nothing was free but the ocean.
+
+But there must not be cheap bread, for that meant reduced rents. The
+farmer was "protected" by having the price of corn kept artificially
+above a certain point, and further "protected" by a prohibitory tax
+upon foreign corn, all in order that the landlord might collect
+undiminished rentals from his farm lands. But, alas! there was no
+"protection" from starvation. Is it strange that gaunt famine was a
+frequent visitor in the land?--But men must starve in silence.--To beg
+was crime.
+
+   "Alas, that bread should be so dear,
+    And flesh and blood so cheap!"
+
+Children six years old worked fourteen and fifteen hours daily in mines
+and factories, beaten by overseers to keep them awake over their tasks;
+while others five and six years old, driven by blows, crawled with
+their brooms into narrow soot-clogged chimneys, and sometimes getting
+wedged in narrow flues, were mercifully suffocated and translated to a
+kinder world.
+
+A ruinous craving was created for stimulants, which took the place of
+insufficient food, and in these stunted, pallid, emaciated beings a
+foundation was laid for an enfeebled and debased population, which
+would sorely tax the wisdom of statesmanship in the future.
+
+If such was the condition of the honest working poor, what was that of
+the criminal? It is difficult now to comprehend the ferocity of laws
+which made _235 offenses--punishable with death_,--most of which
+we should now call misdemeanors. But perhaps death was better than the
+prisons, which were the abode of vermin, disease and filth unspeakable.
+Jailers asked for no pay, but depended upon the money they could wring
+from the wretched beings in their charge for food and small
+alleviations to their misery. In 1773 John Howard commenced his work in
+the prisons, and the idea was first conceived that the object of
+punishment should be not to degrade sin-sick humanity, but to reform
+it.
+
+Far above this deep dark undercurrent, there was a bright, shining
+surface. Johnson had made his ponderous contribution to letters.
+Francis Barney had surprised the world with "Evelina;" Horace Walpole,
+(son of Sir Robert) was dropping witty epigrams from his pen; Sheridan,
+Goldsmith, Cowper, Burns, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, in tones both
+grave and gay, were making sweet music; while Scott, Byron, Shelley
+added strains rich and melodious.
+
+[Sidenote: First English Railway, 1830.]
+
+As all this was passing, George Stephenson was pondering over a daring
+project. Fulton had completed his invention in 1807, and in 1819 the
+first steamship had crossed the Atlantic. If engines could be made to
+plough through the water, why might they not also be made to walk the
+earth? It was thought an audacious experiment when he put this iron
+fire-devouring monster on wheels, to draw loaded cars. Not until 1830
+was his plan realized, when his new locomotive--"The Rocket"--drew the
+first railway train from Liverpool to Manchester, the Duke of
+Wellington venturing his life on the trial trip.
+
+In the year 1782 Ireland was permitted to have its own Parliament; but
+owing to a treasonable correspondence with France, a few years later,
+she was deprived of this legislative independence, and in 1801, after a
+prolonged struggle, was reunited to Great Britain, and thenceforth sent
+her representatives to the British Parliament.
+
+[Sidenote: Oppression of Roman Catholics. Daniel O'Connell.]
+
+The laws against Roman Catholics which had been enacted as measures of
+self-defence from the Stuarts, now that there was no longer a necessity
+for them had become an oppression, which bore with special weight upon
+Catholic Ireland. By the oath of "Supremacy," and by the declarations
+against transubstantiation, intercession of Saints, etc., etc., the
+Catholics were shut out from all share in a Government which they were
+taxed to support. Such an obvious injustice should not have needed a
+powerful pleader; but it found one in Daniel O'Connell, who by constant
+agitation and fiery eloquence created such a public sentiment, that the
+Ministry, headed by the Duke of Wellington, aided by Sir Robert Peel in
+the House, carried through a measure in 1828 which opened Parliament to
+Catholics, and also gave them free access to all places of trust, Civil
+or Military,--excepting that of Regent,--Lord Chancellor--and Lord
+Lieutenant of Ireland.
+
+[Sidenote: George IV., 1820-1830.]
+
+There is nothing to record of George IV. except the irregularities of
+his private life, over which we need not linger. He was a dissolute
+spendthrift. His illegal marriage with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and his legal
+marriage with Caroline of Brunswick from whom he quickly freed himself,
+are the chief events in his history.
+
+His charming young daughter, the Princess Charlotte, had died in 1817,
+soon after her marriage with Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. She had
+been adored as the future Queen, but upon the death of George IV. in
+1830, the Crown passed to his sailor brother William.
+
+[Sidenote: William IV., 1830-1837.]
+
+William IV. was sixty-five when he came to the throne. He was not a
+courtier in his manners, nor much of a fine gentleman in his tastes.
+But his plain, rough sincerity was not unacceptable, and his immediate
+espousal of the Reform Act, then pending, won him popularity at once.
+
+The efficiency and integrity of the House of Commons had long been
+impaired by an effete system of representation, which had been
+unchanged for 500 years. Boroughs were represented which had long
+disappeared from the face of the earth. One had for years been covered
+by the sea! Another existed as a fragment of a wall in a gentleman's
+park, while towns like Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and nineteen
+other large and prosperous places, had no representation whatever.
+These "rotten boroughs" as they were called, were usually in the hands
+of wealthy landowners; one great Peer literally carrying eleven
+boroughs in his pocket, so that eleven members went to the House of
+Commons at his dictation.--It would seem that a reform so obviously
+needed should have been easy to accomplish. But the House of Lords
+clung to the old system as if the life of the Kingdom depended upon it.
+And when the measure was finally carried the good old Duke of
+Wellington said sadly, "We must hope for the best; but the most
+sanguine cannot believe we shall ever again be as prosperous."
+
+By this Act 56 boroughs were disfranchised, and 43 new ones, with 30
+county constituencies, were created.
+
+[Sidenote: "Reform Bill, 1832"]
+
+It was in the contest over this Reform Bill that the Tories took the
+name of "Conservatives" and their opponents "Liberals." Its passage
+marks a most important transition in England. The workingman was by it
+enfranchised, and the House of Commons, which had hitherto represented
+_property_, thenceforth represented _manhood_.
+
+Nor were political reforms the only ones. Human pity awoke from its
+lethargy. The penalties for wrongdoing became less brutal, the prisons
+less terrible. No longer did gaping crowds watch shivering wretches
+brought out of the jails every Monday morning, in batches of twenty and
+thirty, to be hung for pilfering or something even less. Little
+children were lifted out of the mines and factories and chimneys and
+placed in schools, which also began to be created for the poor.
+Numberless ways were devised for making life less miserable for the
+unfortunate, and for improving the social conditions of toiling men and
+women.
+
+[Sidenote: Slaves Emancipated, 1833.]
+
+While white slavery in the collieries and factories was thus mitigated,
+Wilberforce removed the stain of negro slavery from England in securing
+the passage of a Bill which, while compensating the owners (who
+received 20,000,000 pounds), set 800,000 human beings free (1833).
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Accession of Victoria, 1837.]
+
+William IV. died at Windsor Castle, and at 5 o'clock on the morning of
+June 2oth, 1837 (just 58 years from the day this is written), a young
+girl of eighteen was awakened to be told she was Queen of Great Britain
+and Ireland. Victoria was the only child of Edward, Duke of Kent,
+brother of William IV. Her marriage in 1840 with her cousin, Prince
+Albert of Saxe-Coburg, was one of deep affection, and secured for her a
+wise and prudent counsellor.
+
+[Sidenote: Famine in Ireland, 1846.]
+
+On account of the high price of corn, Ireland had for years subsisted
+entirely upon potatoes. The failure of this crop for several successive
+seasons, in 1846 produced a famine of such appalling dimensions that
+the old and the new world came to the rescue of the starving people.
+Parliament voted 10,000,000 pounds for food. But before relief could
+reach them, two millions, one-fourth of the population of Ireland, had
+perished. The anti-corn measures, championed by Richard Cobden and
+John Bright, which had been bitterly opposed by the Tories under the
+leadership of Disraeli, were thus reinforced by unexpected argument;
+foreign breadstuffs were permitted free access and free trade was
+accepted as the policy of England.
+
+Nicholas, the Czar of Russia, was, after the fashion of his
+predecessors (and his successors), always waiting for the right moment
+to sweep down upon Constantinople. England had become only a land of
+shopkeepers, France was absorbed with her new Empire, and with trying
+on her fresh imperial trappings. The time seemed favorable for a move.
+The pious soul of Nicholas was suddenly stirred by certain restrictions
+laid by the Sultan upon the Christians in Palestine. He demanded that
+he be made the Protector of Christianity in the Turkish Empire, by an
+arrangement which would in fact transfer the Sovereignty from
+Constantinople to St. Petersburg.
+
+That mass of Oriental corruption known as the Ottoman Empire, held
+together by no vital forces, was ready to fall into ruin at one
+vigorous touch. It was an anachronism in modern Europe, where its
+cruelty was only limited by its weakness. That such an odious,
+treacherous despotism should so strongly appeal to the sympathies of
+England that she was willing to enter upon a life-and-death struggle
+for its maintenance, let those believe who can.--Her rushing to the
+defence of Turkey, was about as sincere as Russia's interest in the
+Christians in Palestine.
+
+The simple truth beneath all these diplomatic subterfuges was of course
+that Russia wanted Constantinople, and England would at any cost
+prevent her getting it. The keys to the East must, in any event, not
+belong to Russia, her only rival in Asia.
+
+France had no Eastern Empire to protect, so her participation in the
+struggle is at first not so easy to comprehend, until we reflect that
+she had an ambitious and _parvenu_ Emperor. To have Europe see him
+in confidential alliance with England, was alone worth a war; while a
+vigorous foreign policy would help to divert attention from the recent
+treacheries by which he had reached a throne.
+
+[Sidenote: War with Russia, 1854.]
+
+Such were some of the hidden springs of action which in 1854 brought
+about the Crimean War,--one of the most deadly and destructive of
+modern times. Two great Christian kingdoms had rushed to the defence of
+the worst Government ever known, and the best blood in England was
+being poured into Turkish soil.
+
+The Russians soon found that the English were no less skilled as
+fighters, than as shopkeepers. They were victorious from the very
+first, even when the numbers were ill-matched. But one immortal deed of
+valor must have made her tremble before the spirit it revealed.
+
+Six hundred cavalrymen, in obedience to an order which all knew was a
+blunder, dashed into a valley lined with cannon, and charged an army of
+30,000 men!
+
+   "Was there a man dismayed?
+    Not though the soldiers knew
+    Some one had blundered.
+    Theirs not to reason why,
+    Theirs but to do,--and die,
+    As into the Valley of Death
+    Rode the six hundred."
+
+The horrible blunder at Balaklava was not the only one. One incapable
+general was followed by another, and routine and red-tape were more
+deadly than Russian shot and shell.
+
+Food and supplies beyond their utmost power of consumption, were
+hurried to the army by grateful England. Thousands of tons of wood for
+huts, shiploads of clothing and profuse provision for health and
+comfort, reached Balaklava.
+
+While the tall masts of the ships bearing these treasures were visible
+from the heights of Sebastopol, men there were perishing for lack of
+food, fuel and clothing. In rags, almost barefoot, half-fed, often
+without fuel even to cook their food, in that terrible winter on the
+heights, whole regiments of heroes became extinct, because there was
+not sufficient administrative ability to convey the supplies to a
+perishing army!
+
+So wretched was the hospital service, that to be sent there meant
+death. Gangrene carried off four out of five. Men were dying at a rate
+which would have extinguished the entire army in a year and a half. It
+was Florence Nightingale who redeemed this national disgrace, and
+brought order, care and healing into the camps.
+
+When England recalls with pride the valor and the victories in the
+Crimea, let her remember it was the _manhood in the ranks_ which
+achieved it. When all was over, war had slain its thousands,--but
+official incapacity its tens of thousands!
+
+It was a costly victory: Russia was humiliated, was even shut out from
+the waters of her own Black Sea, where she had hitherto been supreme.
+To two million Turks was preserved the privilege of oppressing eight
+million Christians; and for this,--twenty thousand British youth had
+perished. But--the way to India was unobstructed!
+
+England's career of conquest in India was not altogether of her own
+seeking. As a neighboring province committed outrages upon its British
+neighbors, it became necessary in self-defence to punish it; and such
+punishment, invariably led to its subjugation. In this way one province
+after another was subdued, until finally in the absorption of the
+Kingdom of Oude (1856) the natural boundary of the Himalaya Mountains
+had been reached, and the conquest was complete. The little trading
+company of British merchants had become an Empire, vast and rich beyond
+the wildest dreams of romance.
+
+The British rule was upon the whole beneficent. The condition of the
+people was improved, and there was little dissatisfaction except among
+the deposed native princes, who were naturally filled with hate and
+bitterness. The large army required to hold such an amount of
+territory, was to a great extent recruited from the native population,
+the Sepoys, as they were called, making good soldiers.
+
+[Sidenote: Sepoy  Rebellion, 1857-1858.]
+
+In 1857 the King of the Oude and some of the native princes cunningly
+devised a plan of undermining the British by means of their Sepoys, and
+circumstances afforded a singular opportunity for carrying out their
+design.
+
+A new rifle had been adopted, which required a greased cartridge, for
+which animal grease was used. The Sepoys were told this was a deep-laid
+plot to overthrow their native religions. The Mussulman was to be
+eternally lost by defiling his lips with the fat of swine, and the
+Hindu, by the indignity offered to the venerated Cow. These English had
+tried to ruin them not alone in this world, but in the next.
+
+[Sidenote: Massacre at Cawnpore.]
+
+Thrilled with horror, terror-stricken, the dusky soldiers were
+converted into demons. Mutinies arose simultaneously at twenty-two
+stations; not only officers, but Europeans, were slaughtered without
+mercy. At Cawnpore was the crowning horror. After a siege of many days
+the garrison capitulated to Nana Sahib and his Sepoys. The officers
+were shot, and their wives, daughters, sisters and babes, 206 in
+number, were shut up in a large apartment which had been used by the
+ladies for a ballroom.
+
+After eighteen days of captivity, the horrors of which will never be
+known, five men with sabres, in the twilight, were seen to enter the
+room and close the door. There were wild cries and shrieks and groans.
+Three times a hacked and a blunted sabre was passed out of a window in
+exchange for a sharper one. Finally the groans and moans gradually
+ceased and all was still. The next morning a mass of mutilated remains
+were thrown into an empty well.
+
+Two days later the avenger came in the person of General Havelock. The
+Sepoys were conquered and a policy of merciless retribution followed.
+
+In that well at Cawnpore was forever buried sympathy for the mutinous
+Indian. When we recall that, we can even hear with calmness of Sepoys
+fired from the cannon's mouth. From that moment it was the cause of men
+in conflict with demons, civilization in deadly struggle with cruel,
+treacherous barbarism. We cannot advocate meeting atrocity with
+atrocity, nor can we forget that it was a Christian nation fighting
+with one debased and infidel. But terrible surgery is sometimes needed
+to extirpate disease.
+
+Greed for territory, and wrong, and injustice may have mingled with the
+acquisition of an Indian Empire, but posterity will see only a majestic
+uplifting of almost a quarter of the human family from debased
+barbarism, to a Christian civilization; and all through the
+instrumentality of a little band of trading settlers from a small far-
+off island in the northwest of Europe.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+[Sidenote: Atlantic Cable, 1858.]
+
+But there were other things besides famine and wars taking place in the
+Kingdom of the young Queen. A greater and a subtler force than steam
+had entered into the life of the people. A miracle had happened in
+1858, when an electric wire threaded its way across the Atlantic, and
+two continents conversed as friends sitting hand in hand.
+
+[Sidenote: Daguerre's Discovery, 1839.]
+
+Another miracle had then just been achieved in the discovery of certain
+chemical conditions, by which scenes and objects would imprint
+themselves in minutest detail upon a prepared surface. A sort of magic
+seemed to have entered into life, quickening and intensifying all its
+processes. Enlarged knowledge opened up new theories of disease and
+created a new Art of healing. Surgery, with its unspeakable anguish,
+was rendered painless by anaesthetics. Mechanical invention was so
+stimulated that all the processes of labor were quickened and improved.
+
+[Sidenote: First World's Fair, 1851.]
+
+In 1851 the Prince Consort conceived the idea of a great Exposition,
+which should under one roof gather all the fruits of this marvellous
+advance, and Sydenham Palace, a gigantic structure of glass and iron,
+was erected.
+
+In literature, Tennyson was preserving English valor in immortal verse.
+Thackeray and Dickens, in prose as immortal, were picturing the social
+lights and shadows of the Victorian Age.
+
+[Sidenote: Death of Prince Albert, 1861.]
+
+In 1861 a crushing blow fell upon the Queen in the death of the Prince
+Consort. America treasures kindly memory of Prince Albert, on account
+of his outspoken friendship in the hour of her need. During the war of
+the Rebellion, while the fate of our country seemed hanging in the
+balance, we had few friends in England, where people seemed to look
+with satisfaction upon our probable dismemberment.
+
+We are not likely to forget the three shining exceptions:--Prince
+Albert--John Bright--and John Stuart Mill.
+
+[Sidenote: Suez Canal.]
+
+It was while that astute diplomatist, Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was
+Prime Minister, that French money, skill and labor opened up the
+waterway between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. It would never do
+to have France command such a strategic point on the way to the East.
+England was alert. She lost not a moment. The impecunious Khedive was
+offered by telegraph $20,000,000 for his interest in the Suez Canal,
+nearly one-half of the whole capital stock. The offer was accepted with
+no less alacrity than it was made. So with the Arabian Port of Aden,
+which she already possessed, and with a strong enough financial grasp
+upon impoverished Egypt to secure the right of way, should she need it,
+England had made the Canal which France dug, practically her own.
+
+[Sidenote: Victoria Crowned Empress of India, 1876]
+
+Lord Beaconsfield had crowned his dramatic and picturesque Ministerial
+career by placing a new diadem on the head of the widowed Queen, who
+was now Empress of India.  His successor, William Ewart Gladstone, the
+great leader of the Liberal party, was content with a less showy field.
+He had in 1869 relieved Ireland from the unjust burden of supporting a
+Church the tenets of which she considered blasphemous; and one which
+her own, the Roman Catholic, had for three centuries been trying to
+overthrow. We cannot wonder that the memory of a tyranny so odious is
+not easily effaced; nor that there is less gratitude for its removal,
+than bitterness that it should so long have been.
+
+[Sidenote: Disestablishment of Irish Branch of Church of England, 1869.]
+
+The disestablishment of the English Church in Ireland was one of the
+most righteous acts of this reign. Whether the great English Statesman
+will be equally successful in securing Home Rule for that unhappy land,
+upon which he has staked the final effort of his life, remains to be
+seen.
+
+The Irish question is such a tangled web of wrong and injustice
+complicated by folly and outrage, that the wisest and best-intentioned
+statesmanship is baffled. Whether the conditions would be improved by
+giving them their own Parliament, can only be determined by experiment;
+and that experiment England is not yet willing to try.
+
+History affords few spectacles of its kind more impressive than Mr.
+Gladstone at 86, with the ardor and energy of youth, battling for a
+measure he believes so vitally necessary to the Nation. It is a pity
+that for Americans his greatness is tarnished and belief in the
+infallibility of his judgment shaken, by the memory that he upheld the
+attack upon our National life in 1860; and that he, seemingly without
+regret, prophesied our downfall.
+
+The work of Parliamentary reform commenced in 1832 has moved steadily
+on through this reign. By successive acts the franchise has extended
+farther and farther, until a final limit is almost reached; and side by
+side with this has been a corresponding increase in educational
+facilities, "because," as a Peer cynically remarked, "we must educate
+our Masters!"
+
+So many reforms have been accomplished during this reign, the time
+seems not far distant when there will be little more for Liberals to
+urge, or for Conservatives and the House of Lords to obstruct. Monarchy
+is absolutely shorn of its dangers. The House of Commons, which is the
+actual ruling power of the Kingdom, is only the expression of the
+popular will.
+
+We are accustomed to regard American freedom as the one supreme type.
+But it is not. The popular will in England reaches the springs of
+Government more freely, more swiftly, and more imperiously, than it
+does in Republican America. It comes as a stern mandate, which must be
+obeyed on the instant. The Queen of England has less power than the
+President of the United States. He can form a definite policy, select
+his own Ministry to carry it out, and to some extent have his own way
+for four years, whether the people like it or not. The Queen cannot do
+this for a day. Her Ministry cannot stand an hour, with a policy
+disapproved by the Commons. Not since Anne has a sovereign refused
+signature to an Act of Parliament. The Georges, and William IV.,
+continued to exercise the power of dismissing Ministers at their
+pleasure. But since Victoria, an unwritten law forbids it, and with
+this vanishes the last _remnant of a personal Government_. The end
+long sought is attained.
+
+The history of no other people affords such an illustration of a
+steadily progressive national development from seed to blossom,
+compelled by one persistent force. Freedom in England has not been
+wrought by cataclysm as in France, but has unfolded like a plant from a
+life within; impeded and arrested sometimes, but patiently biding its
+time, and then steadily and irresistibly pressing outward; one leaf
+after another freeing itself from the detaining force. Only a few more
+remain to be unclosed, and we shall behold the consummate flower of
+fourteen centuries;--centuries in which the most practical nation in
+the world has steadily pursued an _ideal_! The ideal of individual
+freedom subordinated only to the good of the whole.
+
+The triumph of England has been the triumph not of genius, nor of
+intellect, but of _character_. It is those cross-threads of
+stubborn homely traits, the tenacity of purpose, the reluctance to
+change, the adherence to habit, usage and tradition, which have
+toughened the fabric almost to indestructibility. These traits are
+illustrated in the persistence of the hereditary principle in the royal
+line. We look in vain for another such instance. The blood of Cerdic,
+the first Saxon "Ealdorman" (495), flows in the veins of Victoria. She
+is 38th remove from Egbert, first Saxon King of consolidated England
+(802), 26th from William the Conqueror (1066), and 9th in descent from
+that picturesque and lovely criminal, Mary Stuart (1587). There have
+been wars, and foreign invasions,--a Danish and a Norman conquest, the
+overturning of dynasties, and Revolutions, and a "Protectorate," and
+yet--there sits upon the throne to-day a Queen descended by unbroken
+line from Cerdic the Saxon!
+
+Queen Victoria is undoubtedly indebted to the wise counsel and guidance
+of the Prince Consort in the early decades of her reign. Not one act of
+folly has marred its even current. She has held up to the nation a high
+ideal of wifehood, motherhood, and of domestic virtue. None of her
+predecessors have bound their people to them with ties so human, her
+griefs and experiences moving them as their own. We think of her more
+as an exalted type of Woman, than as Sovereign of the most marvellous
+Empire the World ever saw;--its area three times that of Europe,
+representing every zone, all products, and every race!
+
+How long England will be capable of sending out a vital current
+sufficient to nourish such distant extremities none can tell; or
+whether the far-off Colonies of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand will
+increase their independent life, until they become detached
+Sovereignties like the United States. If that day ever comes, like the
+Mother of a generation of grown children, with independent homes of
+their own,--England will sit with folded hands, her life-work done.
+
+Let no American forget, that England before the Restoration is as much
+our England as theirs. That the memories of Crecy, of Blenheim, of
+Marston Moor and Naseby, are our great inheritance too. That Chaucer,
+Milton, Shakespeare, belong to the humblest American as much as to
+Victoria.
+
+The branch has grown far from the parent tree since the 17th Century;
+and the England of Tennyson and Herbert Spencer is only a very distant
+cousin. She has not always treated us well, has not been chary of
+criticism, nor prodigal of praise, nor did she sympathize with us in
+the day of our peril and misfortune. But for all that--sharing the
+same great heritage of race and of literature, speaking in the same
+language the same thoughts and impulses, there must always exist
+between us a tie, such as can bind us to no other nation upon the
+earth.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Evolution of an Empire, by Mary Parmele
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EVOLUTION OF AN EMPIRE ***
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