No More Learning

HISTORY OF ENGLAND.




CHAPTER I.

I PURPOSE to write the history of England from the accession of King
James the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still
living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a
loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the
course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between our
sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of
the people and the title of the reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the
new settlement was, during many troubled years, successfully defended
against foreign and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement,
the authority of law and the security of property were found to be
compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never
before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom,
sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished
no example; how our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage,
rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; how her
opulence and her martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute
good faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of
marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have seemed
incredible; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power,
compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks
into insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length
united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties
of interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies rapidly
became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and
Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how in Asia,
British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durable
than that of Alexander.

Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters mingled with
triumphs, and great national crimes and follies far more humiliating
than any disaster. It will be seen that even what we justly account our
chief blessings were not without alloy. It will be seen that the system
which effectually secured our liberties against the encroachments of
kingly power gave birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute
monarchies are exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence partly
of unwise interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the increase of
wealth and the extension of trade produced, together with immense good,
some evils from which poor and rude societies are free. It will be seen
how, in two important dependencies of the crown, wrong was followed
by just retribution; how imprudence and obstinacy broke the ties which
bound the North American colonies to the parent state; how Ireland,
cursed by the domination of race over race, and of religion over
religion, remained indeed a member of the empire, but a withered
and distorted member, adding no strength to the body politic, and
reproachfully pointed at by all who feared or envied the greatness of
England.

Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this
chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all religious
minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our
country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the history
of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those who
compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which
exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but
no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take
a morose or desponding view of the present.

I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if
I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall
of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in the
parliament. It will be my endeavour to relate the history of the people
as well as the history of the government, to trace the progress of
useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects
and the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners of successive
generations and not to pass by with neglect even the revolutions which
have taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. I
shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity
of history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the
nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a great
and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very imperfectly
understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I shall
therefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the history of
our country from the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over many
centuries: but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes of that
contest which the administration of King James the Second brought to a
decisive crisis. [1]

Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness which
she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they became
known to the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of the
Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman arms; but she
received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the western
provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that was conquered,
and the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of Latin
porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain. No writer of British
birth is reckoned among the masters of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is
not probable that the islanders were at any time generally familiar with
the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity
of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It
drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and it is
at this day the basis of the French, Spanish and Portuguese languages.
In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic
speech, and could not stand its ground against the German.

The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons had derived
from their southern masters was effaced by the calamities of the fifth
century. In the continental kingdoms into which the Roman empire was
then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from the conquered race. In
Britain the conquered race became as barbarous as the conquerors.

All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental
provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin, were
zealous Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand,
brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of the
Elbe. While the German princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and
Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored
the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching the
Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were still performing
savage rites in the temples of Thor and Woden.

The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western
Empire kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where the
ancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the influence of
misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct barbarians, where the
court still exhibited the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine,
where the public buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of
Polycletus and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,
themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read and
interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato.
From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the
polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects of a mysterious
horror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer had
regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Laestrygonian
cannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as Procopius
had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was
such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region the
spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at
midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The
speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatmen, their weight
made the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisible
to mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, the
contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravely
related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching the country in
which the founder of Constantinople had assumed the imperial purple.
Concerning all the other provinces of the Western Empire we have
continuous information. It is only in Britain that an age of fable
completely separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and
Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical men and
women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and Mordred
are mythical persons, whose very existence may be questioned, and whose
adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus.

At length the darkness begins to break; and the country which had been
lost to view as Britain reappears as England. The conversion of the
Saxon colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series of
salutary revolutions. It is true that the Church had been deeply
corrupted both by that superstition and by that philosophy against which
she had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. She
had given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient
schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy
and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had
contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublime
theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to elevate many
intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later
period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the
seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. That
the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil
magistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age
of good government is an evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government,
be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise
laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by
priestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by priestcraft
than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such
a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and ruled by mere
physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a class, of which the
influence is intellectual and moral, rises to ascendancy. Such a class
will doubtless abuse its power: but mental power, even when abused,
is still a nobler and better power than that which consists merely in
corporeal strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who,
when at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who abhorred
the pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt, who
abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by
cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn forth
bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boasted
of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark
ages, and whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of the
world the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth
century. Yet surely a system which, however deformed by superstition,
introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governed
only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which
taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest
bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more
respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.

The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the
last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, the
sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle
ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal
curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude
inhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim,
than that he should never see anything but those squalid cabins and
uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life and when
female honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders,
it was better that the precinct of a shrine should be regarded with
an irrational awe, than that there should be no refuge inaccessible to
cruelty and licentiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable
of forming extensive political combinations, it was better that the
Christian nations should be roused and united for the recovery of the
Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed by
the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have been
justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious orders, it was
surely good that, in an age of ignorance and violence, there should be
quiet cloisters and gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely
cultivated, in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an
asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in transcribing the
Æneid of Virgil, and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle,
in which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or
carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural philosophy
might make experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had
not such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of
a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy,
European society would have consisted merely of beasts of burden and
beasts of prey. The Church has many times been compared by divines
to the ark of which we read in the Book of Genesis: but never was the
resemblance more perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode,
amidst darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great
works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within her that
feeble germ from which a Second and more glorious civilisation was to
spring.

Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the dark
ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was to unite the
nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth. What the Olympian
chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from
Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all Christians
of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus grew up
sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated from each other by
seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of
public law. Even in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom
mitigated by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies were
all members of one great federation.

Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A regular
communication was opened between our shores and that part of Europe in
which the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible.
Many noble monuments which have since been destroyed or defaced still
retained their pristine magnificence; and travellers, to whom Livy and
Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman aqueducts and
temples some faint notion of Roman history. The dome of Agrippa, still
glittering with bronze, the mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its
columns and statues, the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a
quarry, told to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story of that
great civilised world which had passed away. The islanders returned,
with awe deeply impressed on their half opened minds, and told the
wondering inhabitants of the hovels of London and York that, near the
grave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct, had piled up buildings
which would never be dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed
in the train of Christianity. The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan
age was assiduously studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The
names of Bede and Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Such
was the state of our country when, in the ninth century, began the last
great migration of the northern barbarians.

During many years Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth
innumerable pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by merciless
ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No country suffered so
much from these invaders as England. Her coast lay near to the ports
whence they sailed; nor was any shire so far distant from the sea as
to be secure from attack. The same atrocities which had attended the
victory of the Saxon over the Celt were now, after the lapse of ages,
suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the Dane. Civilization,--just as
it began to rise, was met by this blow, and sank down once more. Large
colonies of adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the
eastern shores of our island, spread gradually westward, and, supported
by constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the dominion
of the whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce Teutonic breeds
lasted through six generations. Each was alternately paramount. Cruel
massacres followed by cruel retribution, provinces wasted, convents
plundered, and cities rased to the ground, make up the greater part of
the history of those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth
a constant stream of fresh depredators; and from that time the mutual
aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage became frequent.
The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons; and thus one cause
of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish and Saxon tongues, both
dialects of one widespread language, were blended together. But the
distinction between the two nations was by no means effaced, when
an event took place which prostrated both, in common slavery and
degradation, at the feet of a third people.

The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom. Their valour and
ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia had
sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their sails were long the terror of
both coasts of the Channel. Their arms were repeatedly carried far into
the heart of: the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under the
walls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of
Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province, watered by
a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was their favourite
element. In that province they founded a mighty state, which gradually
extended its influence over the neighbouring principalities of Britanny
and Maine. Without laying aside that dauntless valour which had been the
terror of every land from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly
acquired all, and more than all, the knowledge and refinement which they
found in the country where they settled. Their courage secured their
territory against foreign invasion. They established internal order,
such as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced
Christianity; and with Christianity they learned a great part of what
the clergy had to teach. They abandoned their native speech, and adopted
the French tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant element. They
speedily raised their new language to a dignity and importance which it
had never before possessed. They found it a barbarous jargon; they fixed
it in writing; and they employed it in legislation, in poetry, and in
romance. They renounced that brutal intemperance to which all the other
branches of the great German family were too much inclined. The polite
luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarse
voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish neighbours. He loved
to display his magnificence, not in huge piles of food and hogsheads of
strong drink, but in large and stately edifices, rich armour, gallant
horses, choice falcons, well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate
rather than abundant, and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite
flavour than for their intoxicating power. That chivalrous spirit, which
has exercised so powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and
manners of all the European nations, was found in the highest exaltation
among the Norman nobles. Those nobles were distinguished by their
graceful bearing and insinuating address. They were distinguished also
by their skill in negotiation, and by a natural eloquence which they
assiduously cultivated. It was the boast of one of their historians that
the Norman gentlemen were orators from the cradle. But their chief
fame was derived from their military exploits. Every country, from
the Atlantic Ocean to the Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their
discipline and valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a handful of
warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another founded the monarchy
of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors both of the East and of the
West fly before his arms. A third, the Ulysses of the first crusade, was
invested by his fellow soldiers with the sovereignty of Antioch; and
a fourth, the Tancred whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was
celebrated through Christendom as the bravest and most generous of the
deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre.

The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to produce an effect
on the public mind of England. Before the Conquest, English princes
received their education in Normandy. English sees and English estates
were bestowed on Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken
in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems to have been
to the court of Edward the Confessor what the court of Versailles long
afterwards was to the court of Charles the Second.

The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only
placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the whole
population of England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The subjugation
of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more complete.
The country was portioned out among the captains of the invaders.
Strong military institutions, closely connected with the institution of
property, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the children of the
soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced, guarded the privileges,
and even the sports, of the alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though
beaten down and trodden underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold
men, the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to
the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws, waged
a predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination was an event of
daily occurrence. Many Normans suddenly disappeared leaving no trace.
The corpses of many were found bearing the marks of violence. Death by
torture was denounced against the murderers, and strict search was
made for them, but generally in vain; for the whole nation was in a
conspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought necessary to lay
a heavy fine on every Hundred in which a person of French extraction
should be found slain; and this regulation was followed up by another
regulation, providing that every person who was found slain should be
supposed to be a Frenchman, unless he was proved to be a Saxon.

During the century and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, to
speak strictly, no English history. The French Kings of England
rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all
neighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They received the homage
of Scotland. By their valour, by their policy, by their fortunate
matrimonial alliances, they became far more popular on the Continent
than their liege lords the Kings of France. Asia, as well as Europe,
was dazzled by the power and glory of our tyrants. Arabian chroniclers
recorded with unwilling admiration the fall of Acre, the defence of
Joppa, and the victorious march to Ascalon; and Arabian mothers
long awed their infants to silence with the name of the lionhearted
Plantagenet. At one time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about
to end as the Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and that a
single great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. So
strong an association is established in most minds between the greatness
of a sovereign and the greatness of the nation which he rules, that
almost every historian of England has expatiated with a sentiment of
exultation on the power and splendour of her foreign masters, and has
lamented the decay of that power and splendour as a calamity to our
country. This is, in truth, as absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro
of our time to dwell with national pride on the greatness of Lewis the
Fourteenth, and to speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regret
and shame. The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation
were not Englishmen: most of them were born in France: they spent the
greater part of their lives in France: their ordinary speech was French:
almost every high office in their gift was filled by a Frenchman: every
acquisition which they made on the Continent estranged them more and
more from the population of our island. One of the ablest among them
indeed attempted to win the hearts of his English subjects by espousing
an English princess. But, by many of his barons, this marriage was
regarded as a marriage between a white planter and a quadroon girl would
now be regarded in Virginia. In history he is known by the honourable
surname of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own countrymen
called him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous allusion to his Saxon
connection.

Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting
all France under their government, it is probable that England would
never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, her
prelates, would have been men differing in race and language from
the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great
proprietors would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the
banks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would have
remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a
fixed orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the
use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence,
except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.

England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which her
historians have generally represented as disastrous. Her interest was so
directly opposed to the interests of her rulers that she had no hope but
in their errors and misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her
first six French Kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the
seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of
his father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even
possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the King
of France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors
of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to
unrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France,
for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a
prince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England,
which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise
statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a
trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John
was driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make their
election between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with
the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they gradually
came to regard England as their country, and the English as their
countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they had
common interests and common enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the
tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike indignant at the favour shown by
the court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great grandsons of
those who had fought under William and the great grandsons of those who
had fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship;
and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won
by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit.

Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the
preceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained by
various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which
regarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever existed
between communities separated by physical barriers. For even the mutual
animosity of countries at war with each other is languid when compared
with the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally
intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been carried farther
than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely
effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements were
melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us.
But it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction between
Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the
reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard
the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was "May I
become an Englishman! " His ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do you
take me for an Englishman? " The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred
years later was proud of the English name.

The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over
continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought
in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps,
and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our
country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared.
Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that
we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our
glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the
national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has
ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders,
islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics,
their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness
that constitution which has ever since, through all changes,
preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free
constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some
defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great
society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the
House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies
which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its first
sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of
a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial
jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned
the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England
terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which
still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded.
Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages
of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest
purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the
tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that
noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many
glories of England.

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was
all but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to be
mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had been
formed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family
with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed,
scarcely anything in common between the England to which John had been
chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the armies of
Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.

A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the chief
object of the English was to establish, by force of arms, a great empire
on the Continent. The claim of Edward to the inheritance occupied by
the House of Valois was a claim in which it might seem that his subjects
were little interested.
Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting
all France under their government, it is probable that England would
never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her lords, her
prelates, would have been men differing in race and language from
the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great
proprietors would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the
banks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke would have
remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a
fixed orthography, and would have been contemptuously abandoned to the
use of boors. No man of English extraction would have risen to eminence,
except by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.

England owes her escape from such calamities to an event which her
historians have generally represented as disastrous. Her interest was so
directly opposed to the interests of her rulers that she had no hope but
in their errors and misfortunes. The talents and even the virtues of her
first six French Kings were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the
seventh were her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of
his father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even
possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the King
of France at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors
of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to
unrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France,
for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a
prince of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England,
which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally by wise
statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the dominion of a
trifler and a coward. From that moment her prospects brightened. John
was driven from Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make their
election between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with
the people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they gradually
came to regard England as their country, and the English as their
countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon found that they had
common interests and common enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the
tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike indignant at the favour shown by
the court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great grandsons of
those who had fought under William and the great grandsons of those who
had fought under Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship;
and the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won
by their united exertions, and framed for their common benefit.

Here commences the history of the English nation. The history of the
preceding events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained by
various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which
regarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever existed
between communities separated by physical barriers. For even the mutual
animosity of countries at war with each other is languid when compared
with the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally
intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been carried farther
than in England. In no country has that enmity been more completely
effaced. The stages of the process by which the hostile elements were
melted down into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us.
But it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction between
Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the end of the
reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In the time of Richard
the First, the ordinary imprecation of a Norman gentleman was "May I
become an Englishman! " His ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do you
take me for an Englishman? " The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred
years later was proud of the English name.

The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over
continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought
in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps,
and rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our
country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be compared.
Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is there that
we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our
glory. Then it was that the great English people was formed, that the
national character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has
ever since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically islanders,
islanders not merely in geographical position, but in their politics,
their feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness
that constitution which has ever since, through all changes,
preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free
constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of some
defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which any great
society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it was that the
House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies
which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its first
sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the dignity of
a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival of the imperial
jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of those sailors who manned
the rude barks of the Cinque Ports first made the flag of England
terrible on the seas. Then it was that the most ancient colleges which
still exist at both the great national seats of learning were founded.
Then was formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages
of the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest
purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior to the
tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first faint dawn of that
noble literature, the most splendid and the most durable of the many
glories of England.

Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was
all but complete; and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to be
mistaken, that a people inferior to none existing in the world had been
formed by the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family
with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed,
scarcely anything in common between the England to which John had been
chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the armies of
Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.

A period of more than a hundred years followed, during which the chief
object of the English was to establish, by force of arms, a great empire
on the Continent. The claim of Edward to the inheritance occupied by
the House of Valois was a claim in which it might seem that his subjects
were little interested. But the passion for conquest spread fast from
the prince to the people. The war differed widely from the wars
which the Plantagenets of the twelfth century had waged against the
descendants of Hugh Capet. For the success of Henry the Second, or of
Richard the First, would have made England a province of France. The
effect of the successes of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was to
make France, for a time, a province of England. The disdain with which,
in the twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent had regarded
the islanders, was now retorted by the islanders on the people of the
Continent. Every yeoman from Kent to Northumberland valued himself as
one of a race born for victory and dominion, and looked down with
scorn on the nation before which his ancestors had trembled. Even those
knights of Gascony and Guienne who had fought gallantly under the Black
Prince were regarded by the English as men of an inferior breed, and
were contemptuously excluded from honourable and lucrative commands. In
no long time our ancestors altogether lost sight of the original
ground of quarrel. They began to consider the crown of France as a
mere appendage to the crown of England; and, when in violation of the
ordinary law of succession, they transferred the crown of England to the
House of Lancaster, they seem to have thought that the right of Richard
the Second to the crown of France passed, as of course, to that house.
The zeal and vigour which they displayed present a remarkable contrast
to the torpor of the French, who were far more deeply interested in
the event of the struggle. The most splendid victories recorded in the
history of the middle ages were gained at this time, against great odds,
by the English armies. Victories indeed they were of which a nation may
justly be proud; for they are to be attributed to the moral superiority
of the victors, a superiority which was most striking in the lowest
ranks. The knights of England found worthy rivals in the knights of
France. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du Guesclin. But France had
no infantry that dared to face the English bows and bills. A French King
was brought prisoner to London. An English King was crowned at Paris.
The banner of St. George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the
Alps. On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle, which for
a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companies
obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of warriors who let out
their weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths of Italy.

Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers during that stirring
period. While France was wasted by war, till she at length found in
her own desolation a miserable defence against invaders, the English
gathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and
studied in security. Many of our noblest architectural monuments belong
to that age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint
George, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the spire of
Salisbury and the majestic towers of Lincoln. A copious and forcible
language, formed by an infusion of French into German, was now the
common property of the aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long
before genius began to apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes.
While English warriors, leaving behind them the devastated provinces of
France, entered Valladolid in triumph, and spread terror to the gates of
Florence, English poets depicted in vivid tints all the wide variety
of human manners and fortunes, and English thinkers aspired to know, or
dared to doubt, where bigots had been content to wonder and to believe.
The same age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and
Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.

In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English people, properly
so called, first take place among the nations of the world. Yet while
we contemplate with pleasure the high and commanding qualities which
our forefathers displayed, we cannot but admit that the end which they
pursued was an end condemned both by humanity and by enlightened policy,
and that the reverses which compelled them, after a long and bloody
struggle, to relinquish the hope of establishing a great continental
empire, were really blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit of
the French was at last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous national
resistance to the foreign conquerors; and from that time the skill
of the English captains and the courage of the English soldiers were,
happily for mankind, exerted in vain. After many desperate struggles,
and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors gave up the contest. Since
that age no British government has ever seriously and steadily pursued
the design of making great conquests on the Continent. The people,
indeed, continued to cherish with pride the recollection of Cressy, of
Poitiers, and of Agincourt. Even after the lapse of many years it was
easy to fire their blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promising
them an expedition for the conquest of France. But happily the energies
of our country have been directed to better objects; and she now
occupies in the history of mankind a place far more glorious than if
she had, as at one time seemed not improbable, acquired by the sword
an ascendancy similar to that which formerly belonged to the Roman
republic.

Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the warlike people
employed in civil strife those arms which had been the terror of Europe.
The means of profuse expenditure had long been drawn by the English
barons from the oppressed provinces of France. That source of supply
was gone: but the ostentatious and luxurious habits which prosperity had
engendered still remained; and the great lords, unable to gratify their
tastes by plundering the French, were eager to plunder each other.
The realm to which they were now confined would not, in the phrase of
Comines, the most judicious observer of that time, suffice for them all.
Two aristocratical factions, headed by two branches of the royal family,
engaged in a long and fierce struggle for supremacy. As the animosity
of those factions did not really arise from the dispute about the
succession it lasted long after all ground of dispute about the
succession was removed. The party of the Red Rose survived the last
prince who claimed the crown in right of Henry the Fourth. The party
of the White Rose survived the marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth.
Left without chiefs who had any decent show of right, the adherents of
Lancaster rallied round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York
set up a succession of impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobles
had perished on the field of battle or by the hands of the executioner,
when many illustrious houses had disappeared forever from history, when
those great families which remained had been exhausted and sobered by
calamities, it was universally acknowledged that the claims of all the
contending Plantagenets were united in the house of Tudor.

Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more momentous than the
acquisition or loss of any province, than the rise or fall of
any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhere
accompanied were fast disappearing.

It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary social
revolutions which have taken place in England, that revolution which, in
the thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of nation over nation,
and that revolution which, a few generations later, put an end to the
property of man in man, were silently and imperceptibly effected. They
struck contemporary observers with no surprise, and have received from
historians a very scanty measure of attention. They were brought about
neither by legislative regulations nor by physical force. Moral causes
noiselessly effaced first the distinction between Norman and Saxon, and
then the distinction between master and slave. None can venture to fix
the precise moment at which either distinction ceased. Some faint traces
of the old Norman feeling might perhaps have been found late in the
fourteenth century. Some faint traces of the institution of villenage
were detected by the curious so late as the days of the Stuarts; nor has
that institution ever, to this hour, been abolished by statute.

It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief agent in
these two great deliverances was religion; and it may perhaps be doubted
whether a purer religion might not have been found a less efficient
agent. The benevolent spirit of the Christian morality is undoubtedly
adverse to distinctions of caste. But to the Church of Rome such
distinctions are peculiarly odious; for they are incompatible with other
distinctions which are essential to her system. She ascribes to every
priest a mysterious dignity which entitles him to the reverence of every
layman; and she does not consider any man as disqualified, by reason
of his nation or of his family, for the priesthood. Her doctrines
respecting the sacerdotal character, however erroneous they may be, have
repeatedly mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society.
That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, in
regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an aristocracy
altogether independent of race, inverts the relation between the
oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the hereditary master to kneel
before the spiritual tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day,
in some countries where negro slavery exists, Popery appears in
advantageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is notorious
that the antipathy between the European and African races is by no
means so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington. In our own country this
peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system produced, during the middle
ages, many salutary effects. It is true that, shortly after the battle
of Hastings, Saxon prelates and abbots were violently deposed, and that
ecclesiastical adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundreds
into lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood
raised their voices against such a violation of the constitution of the
Church, refused to accept mitres from the hands of William, and charged
him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget that the vanquished
islanders were his fellow Christians. The first protector whom the
English found among the dominant caste was Archbishop Anselm. At a
time when the English name was a reproach, and when all the civil and
military dignities of the kingdom were supposed to belong exclusively
to the countrymen of the Conqueror, the despised race learned, with
transports of delight, that one of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear,
had been elevated to the papal throne, and had held out his foot to be
kissed by ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was
a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to
the shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their enemies.
Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there is no doubt
that he perished by Norman hands, and that the Saxons cherished his
memory with peculiar tenderness and veneration, and, in their popular
poetry, represented him as one of their own race. A successor of Becket
was foremost among the refractory magnates who obtained that charter
which secured the privileges both of the Norman barons and of the Saxon
yeomanry. How great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics subsequently
had in the abolition of villenage we learn from the unexceptionable
testimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest Protestant counsellors
of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder asked for the last sacraments,
his spiritual attendants regularly adjured him, as he loved his soul,
to emancipate his brethren for whom Christ had died. So successfully had
the Church used her formidable machinery that, before the Reformation
came, she had enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom
except her own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very tenderly
treated.

There can be no doubt that, when these two great revolutions had been
effected, our forefathers were by far the best governed people in
Europe. During three hundred years the social system had been in a
constant course of improvement. Under the first Plantagenets there had
been barons able to bid defiance to the sovereign, and peasants degraded
to the level of the swine and oxen which they tended. The exorbitant
power of the baron had been gradually reduced. The condition of the
peasant had been gradually elevated. Between the aristocracy and
the working people had sprung up a middle class, agricultural and
commercial. There was still, it may be, more inequality than is
favourable to the happiness and virtue of our species: but no man was
altogether above the restraints of law; and no man was altogether below
its protection.

That the political institutions of England were, at this early period,
regarded by the English with pride and affection, and by the most
enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration and envy,
is proved by the clearest evidence. But touching the nature of these
institutions there has been much dishonest and acrimonious controversy.

The historical literature of England has indeed suffered grievously from
a circumstance which has not a little contributed to her prosperity. The
change, great as it is, which her polity has undergone during the
last six centuries, has been the effect of gradual development, not of
demolition and reconstruction. The present constitution of our country
is, to the constitution under which she flourished five hundred years
ago, what the tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy. The
alteration has been great. Yet there never was a moment at which the
chief part of what existed was not old. A polity thus formed must abound
in anomalies. But for the evils arising from mere anomalies we have
ample compensation. Other societies possess written constitutions
more symmetrical. But no other society has yet succeeded in uniting
revolution with prescription, progress with stability, the energy of
youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.

This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks: and one of those
drawbacks is that every source of information as to our early history
has been poisoned by party spirit. As there is no country where
statesmen have been so much under the influence of the past, so there is
no country where historians have been so much under the influence of
the present. Between these two things, indeed, there is a natural
connection. Where history is regarded merely as a picture of life and
manners, or as a collection of experiments from which general maxims
of civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer lies under no very pressing
temptation to misrepresent transactions of ancient date. But where
history is regarded as a repository of titledeeds, on which the rights
of governments and nations depend, the motive to falsification becomes
almost irresistible. A Frenchman is not now impelled by any strong
interest either to exaggerate or to underrate the power of the Kings of
the house of Valois. The privileges of the States General, of the States
of Britanny, of the States of Burgundy, are to him matters of as little
practical importance as the constitution of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of
the Amphictyonic Council. The gulph of a great revolution completely
separates the new from the old system. No such chasm divides the
existence of the English nation into two distinct parts. Our laws and
customs have never been lost in general and irreparable ruin. With us
the precedents of the middle ages are still valid precedents, and are
still cited, on the gravest occasions, by the most eminent Statesmen.
For example, when King George the Third was attacked by the malady which
made him incapable of performing his regal functions, and when the most
distinguished lawyers and politicians differed widely as to the course
which ought, in such circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses of
Parliament would not proceed to discuss any plan of regency till all
the precedents which were to be found in our annals, from the earliest
times, had been collected and arranged. Committees were appointed to
examine the ancient records of the realm. The first case reported was
that of the year 1217: much importance was attached to the cases of
1326, of 1377, and of 1422: but the case which was justly considered
as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country the dearest
interests of parties have frequently been on the results of the
researches of antiquaries. The inevitable consequence was that our
antiquaries conducted their researches in the spirit of partisans.

It is therefore not surprising that those who have written, concerning
the limits of prerogative and liberty in the old polity of England
should generally have shown the temper, not of judges, but of angry and
uncandid advocates. For they were discussing, not a speculative matter,
but a matter which had a direct and practical connection with the most
momentous and exciting disputes of their own day. From the commencement
of the long contest between the Parliament and the Stuarts down to the
time when the pretensions of the Stuarts ceased to be formidable, few
questions were practically more important than the question whether the
administration of that family had or had not been in accordance with the
ancient constitution of the kingdom. This question could be decided only
by reference to the records of preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the
Mirror of Justice and the Rolls of Parliament, were ransacked to find
pretexts for the excesses of the Star Chamber on one side, and of the
High Court of Justice on the other. During a long course of years every
Whig historian was anxious to prove that the old English government was
all but republican, every Tory historian to prove that it was all but
despotic.

With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the
middle ages. Both readily found what they sought; and both obstinately
refused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the
Stuarts could easily point out instances of oppression exercised on
the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce
instances of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown.
The Tories quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost as servile
as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered
expressions as bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment
seat of Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which
Kings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another
set cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to itself the power
of inflicting punishment on Kings. Those who saw only one half of the
evidence would have concluded that the Plantagenets were as absolute
as the Sultans of Turkey: those who saw only the other half would have
concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges
of Venice; and both conclusions would have been equally remote from the
truth.

The old English government was one of a class of limited monarchies
which sprang up in Western Europe during the middle ages, and which,
notwithstanding many diversities, bore to one another a strong family
likeness. That there should have been such a likeness is not strange The
countries in which those monarchies arose had been provinces of the same
great civilised empire, and had been overrun and conquered, about the
same time, by tribes of the same rude and warlike nation. They were
members of the same great coalition against Islam. They were in
communion with the same superb and ambitious Church. Their polity
naturally took the same form. They had institutions derived partly from
imperial Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly from the old Germany.
All had Kings; and in all the kingly office became by degrees strictly
hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which had originally indicated
military rank. The dignity of knighthood, the rules of heraldry, were
common to all. All had richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments,
municipal corporations enjoying large franchises, and senates whose
consent was necessary to the validity of some public acts.

Of these kindred constitutions the English was, from an early period,
justly reputed the best. The prerogatives of the sovereign were
undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion and the spirit of chivalry
concurred to exalt his dignity. The sacred oil had been poured on his
head. It was no disparagement to the bravest and noblest knights to
kneel at his feet. His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled to
convoke the Estates of the realm: he could at his pleasure dismiss them;
and his assent was necessary to all their legislative acts. He was the
chief of the executive administration, the sole organ of communication
with foreign powers, the captain of the military and naval forces of the
state, the fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honour. He had large
powers for the regulation of trade. It was by him that money was
coined, that weights and measures were fixed, that marts and havens
were appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was immense. His hereditary
revenues, economically administered, sufficed to meet the ordinary
charges of government. His own domains were of vast extent. He was also
feudal lord paramount of the whole soil of his kingdom, and, in that
capacity, possessed many lucrative and many formidable rights, which
enabled him to annoy and depress those who thwarted him, and to enrich
and aggrandise, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed his
favour.

But his power, though ample, was limited by three great constitutional
principles, so ancient that none can say when they began to exist,
so potent that their natural development, continued through many
generations, has produced the order of things under which we now live.

First, the King could not legislate without the consent of his
Parliament. Secondly, he could impose no tax without the consent of
his Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound to conduct the executive
administration according to the laws of the land, and, if he broke those
laws, his advisers and his agents were responsible.

No candid Tory will deny that these principles had, five hundred years
ago, acquired the authority of fundamental rules. On the other hand,
no candid Whig will affirm that they were, till a later period, cleared
from all ambiguity, or followed out to all their consequences. A
constitution of the middle ages was not, like a constitution of the
eighteenth or nineteenth century, created entire by a single act,
and fully set forth in a single document. It is only in a refined
and speculative age that a polity is constructed on system. In rude
societies the progress of government resembles the progress of language
and of versification.