No More Learning

In Kemble's
view, the social changes that accompanied the gradual establish-
ment of these institutions were due to the conditions and new
forms of landed proprietorship. Kemble, though he had no legal
training, like that of certain other English historians of this age,
by his study of the charters came to understand that the English
system of land laws has an importance for English history not less
than the Roman had for that of Rome; and this insight he owed,
in the first instance, as he owed his perception of the Germanic
origin of that system, to his Old English lore. Rarely has so great
and direct a service been rendered to historical science by philo-
logical scholarship?
The ruling principles of English historians of the Germanist
group found their clearest and most vigorous exponent in Edward
Augustus Freeman, the central figure of the Oxford historical
school of the Victorian age-unless that title be disputed on behalf
of Stubbs, to whom Freeman's loyal friendship would have gladly
yielded precedence. In a sense, Freeman's method supplemented
Kemble's rather than followed it; for, in technical phrase, it was
the written monuments rather than the sources—the records
rather than the remains-on which Freeman based the con-
clusions repeated with unwearying persistency in his numerous
books great and small, and in countless essays and reviews. He
would not hear of Palgrave's paradox as to the kinship between
the Romanised Celts and the English invaders, and attributed to
As to Benjamin Thorpe, see, ante, vol. II, p. 344.


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70
[CH.
Historians
>
these a conquest which, with the exception of certain parts of the
country, meant extirpation. On the other hand, the Norman
conquest, of which he became the historian, seemed to him to have
brought about no fresh change of an analogous kind, and to have
fundamentally affected neither the nature and character of the
population, nor the course of the national history. In the consecu-
tive doings of the nation in war and in peace, in its enterprises
and exploits as well as in its legislation and system of government
in both church and state, its Germanic nature and character manifest
themselves. Obviously, however, the historian, whose own interest
is restricted to these relations, and who makes no pretence of
entering into the social life of the people in any of its aspects
save, in a more or less restricted measure, those of language,
literature and architecture, omits a strong link in his argument.
Injustice would be done to the force with which Freeman
explains and illustrates his general position, were it not added
that he calls in the powerful aid of the comparative method, for
which he was exceptionally qualified by his acquaintance with
much of the medieval history of non-Germanic lands, as well as
by his familiarity, noted in an earlier volume of this work, with
the history, and the constitutional history in particular, of Greece
and Rome. His training as a historical student may, in some
respects, have been self-training only, and his advocacy of the
principle of the unity of history may have suffered from his lack
of intimacy (on which he was wont to insist) with periods which
'were not his own' or to which he had not come down. ' Yet,
through him, comparative history first became a living thing
to English students, and the unity which he proclaimed with
missionary zeal was gradually accepted as a reality, in spite of
the time-honoured nomenclature of the schools
Freeman's literary activity seems extraordinary even to those
who had some personal cognisance of part of it. His historical
studies, at first, took a largely archaeological turn, and his early
literary efforts consisted, in the main, of contributions to The
Ecclesiastick and The Ecclesiologist, varied by Poems, legendary
and historical, published in conjunction with G. W. Cox. He
was, however, preparing for historical efforts in a wider field;
by a fortunate chance, a university prize competition, on the
1 See, ante, vol. Xn, chap. XIV.
It was as he listened to Arnold's Oxford lectures, in 1841 and 1842, that the idea
of the unity of history first dawned upon the future successor of the historian of
Rome in his modern history chair.


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11] Freeman's Earlier Writings 71
effects of the Roman conquest (1845–6), led him to read the works
of Thierry, Lingard and Palgrave; and he carried on the study of
the subject after he had had 'the good luck not to get the prize. '
He was, also, early intent upon the acquisition of a pure and
simple style, of which, as a historian, he was certainly master.
There was never much grace, and still less play of humour, about
what he wrote ; but his manner of writing, which he seems, in a
measure, to have modelled on Macaulay, was almost always forcible
and, in general, dignified; and, at times, he could rise to a certain
grandeur free from dogmatic admixture.
Although long interested in the question of the study of
history at Oxford, and author of a series of lectures published
under the title History and Conquests of the Saracens and of an
earlier History of Architecture, besides having become, from
about the year 1860 onwards, one of the pillars of The Saturday
Review, it was not till a little later that he reached the full
height of his powers as a historian. His reviews and other articles
in weeklies (The Saturday and The Guardian in particular), as
well as in monthlies and quarterlies, are, to a large extent, and
where their intent was not essentially controversial, chips from
the block at which he was working of the same material and
texture, homogeneous with his chief books in life and thought,
and little differentiated from them in style. His pen was, in fact,
as much his own in his journalistic as in his other productions,
in other words, his periodical articles, though, for the most part,
unsigned, invariably presented his own opinions? . His literary
activity, especially from 1859 onwards, was simply astounding?
In 1863, before he had completed the preparations for his
Norman Conquest, he brought out the first and, as it proved, the
only volume of a work which, had it been carried out on the lines
he had laid down for himself, might have become, in his younger
friend lord Bryce's words, 'a very great book,' and which, as it
is, has been, by some, more highly prized than any other of his
writings. The History of Federal Government, which Freeman
had designed as a comparative history of federalism in ancient
Greece, in the medieval foundation of the Swiss confederation, in
1 He broke off his long connection with The Saturday Review when he came to
differ from the general views of that journal on near-Eastern politics. His Hellenic
sympathies bad confirmed him in opinions at which he had arrived after much
reflection, and, from the time when he published in The Edinburgh for April 1857)
his article entitled The Greek People and the Greek Kingdom, they never wavered
through good or evil report.
* See his son-in-law's, dean Stephens's, excellent Life and Letters for details.


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72
Historians
[CH.
the intermediate growth of the united provinces of the Nether-
lands and of the Hansa and in the modern creation of the United
States of America, was, however, not carried beyond the earliest
of these stages? . He soon came back to his first love, if, with
his power of duplicating his tasks, he had ever swerved from
it. The appearance, in 1865, of his Old English History for
Children-children of twenty-four, it was, with some point, re-
marked-showed in what direction he was again concentrating his
labours and the travels which accompanied them; and, in 1867,
the first volume of The History of the Norman Conquest was
actually published? The last volume (the fifth) did not appear
till 1876.
Freeman's Norman Conquest accomplished what Palgrave had
planned, but only partially carried out. Into the later work,
mistakes may have found their way, even into salient passages of
the narrative, and into the account of the tragic catastrophe of
Senlac itself; and its general effect may suffer from a certain
lengthiness of which few historians writing on such a scale have
been able altogether to free themselves—least of all Freeman,
who had accustomed himself to the privilege of having his say
out. But any such objections are cast into the shade by the
merits of the work. It is admirably arranged on a converging
plan, which, in the second volume, brings the reader to the reign
of Edward the Confessor, so far as the banishment and death of
earl Godwine, the real hero of the tale ; while the affairs of
Normandy are brought up to William's first visit to England,
and thence, to Edward's death and the coronation of Harold,
the second hero of the story. Volume III relates the conquest
proper with epic breadth, and volume iv the reign of William in
England. Finally, in volume v, the history of the Norman kings
is summarised to the death of Stephen and the coronation of
Henry II, and chapters follow on the political results of the
Norman conquest, and its effects on language, literature and
architecture. The narrative, which closes with a summary of the
Angevin reigns, is enriched by a series of excursuses on particular
points and episodes, on geographical sites and local remains.
Lucid in arrangement, the work nowhere fails to manifest the
1 Cf. , ante, vol. XII, pp. 315—316.
2 In 1869, Freeman began his Historical Geography; but it was not published till
eleven years later. The idea of the work was excellent, and had not hitherto been
elaborated in an English form. As to the execution, of parts of the work, at all events,
opinions differ. Perhaps, his general historical knowledge was not of the minute sort
required for working out the details of the plan.


## p. 73 (#103) #############################################

II]
Freeman's Norman Conquest
73
spirit in which it was composed—that of a lofty patriotism in-
separable from an ardent love of freedom. His Swiss studies
reflected themselves in several passages of The Norman Conquest;
and he became more and more convinced of the absolute identity
of all the old Teutonic constitutions. ' Thus, he was fortified in his
contention that the Norman conquest left the free national life of
England, in its essentials, unchanged.
In 1882, Freeman published The Reign of William Rufus
and the Accession of Henry I, thus carrying out the design
which he had in his mind when summarising these passages of
English history in the last volume of his Norman Conquest. Here,
again, the narrative involved a twofold task; its main interest,
however, lay in ecclesiastical affairs, a field with which he took
pleasure in occupying himself, but which had also engaged the
attention of other eminent historians. These rolumes ended his
labours on the Norman conquest of England; but, although he
never composed his contemplated life of Henry I, he did not
abandon the subject of the Norman conquests in Europe. 'Palermo
follows naturally on Winchester and Rouen. ' But, of his sojourns
in Sicily, and of his history of that island, which he was also to
leave half-told, we have already spoken? In 1884, Freeman at
last found himself in the chair of modern history at Oxford; but
this acknowledgment of his eminence as a historian came too late
—at least too late for him to fit his teaching into the system of
historical instruction then flourishing in his university. This was
a mortification to him ; for no man of letters or learning ever
bestowed more attention on the academical, as well as on the
political, ecclesiastical and county administrative, life around
him. Still, his actual work as a historian remained, to the last,
the determining interest of his life ; and, in the midst of the
prosecution of it, death overtook him on the Spanish coast, at
Alicante, in March 1892.
In the death of Freeman, English historical literature suffered
a most severe loss. He had many great qualities—with, perhaps,
the defects of some of them; but these failings were most palpable
in controversy, in the conduct of which he lacked a due sense of
proportion, and was apt to become tiresome, and, at times, unjust.
As to his general historical manner, he has been frequently charged
with pedantry; but there is some element of misapprehension in
the cavil. For, though his habit of reiteration (deliberately adopted)
added to the positiveness of his manner, and thus imparted even
1 Ante, vol. xn, chap. XIV, p. 316.


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74
[CH.
Historians
to passages of his Histories too strongly dogmatic a flavour, he
was always perfectly clear and to the point, and declared that
‘history has no technical terms'-adding that he had sometimes
wished it had, 'to frighten away fools. ' He was apt to be lengthy,
and lord Bryce once told him that he had caught too much of the
manner of the cxixth Psalm ; but he was not diffuse by nature.
It was the cause the cause of truth—which led him to spare no
man or interest or opinion, and, least of all, to spare himself.
The close association of the names of Freeman and Stubbs,
and, with theirs, of that of a third but younger Oxford historian,
John Richard Green, was, at one time, a frequent theme of
academical jest; but, indeed, nothing would have been stranger
than that a bond of intimate intellectual sympathy should have
failed to unite men who, in the same age, devoted themselves to
the study and exposition of the national history, if not always
from the same point of view, at all events on a common basis of
historical principles and with the same purpose of proving the
continuity of the national life. And, certainly, the recognition
in English historical literature of that continuity was signally
advanced by their fellowship.
William Stubbs, successively bishop of Chester and of Oxford,
was Freeman's junior by two years only, but made his mark as a
historical writer nearly a decade later than his friend. For some
years, however, before the publication of his chief contribution
to English constitutional history, Stubbs, who, from 1850, lived
a life of tranquillity in his Essex rectory Navestock, enjoyed a
high reputation with those interested in the progress of the Rolls
series. To this collection, begun in 1857, he contributed, in 1858,
Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum, an endeavour to exhibit the course
of episcopal succession in England. By inclination and habit, he
was an antiquary, who came to interest himself more especially
in chronology and genealogy; but he edited perhaps the most
important of the publications undertaken for the series, the
Itinerarium and the Epistolae Cantuarienses of the reign of
Richard I, besides many others, including the Gesta Regis Henrici
of Benedict of Peterborough (1867) and Memorials of St Dunstan
(1874), for which he wrote luminous prefaces, displaying both
independence of judgment and high literary quality. In 1866,
having previously held the librarianship at Lambeth, Stubbs was
appointed by the earl of Derby to the modern history chair at
Oxford ; and having, as he said, been for seventeen years a country
parson, he now became for eighteen years an Oxford professor. In


## p. 75 (#105) #############################################

11]
William Stubbs
75
neither capacity did he allow himself any respite in his historical
labours, steadily pursuing those lines of study to which he was
attracted by the highest motives, never concealed by him. His
principal achievement in the department of ecclesiastical history
was The Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents of Great Britain
and Ireland, edited by him in conjunction with A. W. Haddan
(1871—8); in the same connection may be mentioned, though
they were of later date, his five Appendices to the Report of
the Commission on Ecclesiastical Courts, drawn up in 1883 after
attendance on seventy-five meetings of the commission.
In 1870, Stubbs first came before a wider public, and earned
the gratitude of students of English constitutional history by
arranging and editing Select Charters and other mustrations
of English Constitutional History (to the reign of Edward I).
The introductory notes to this volume, together with the opening
sketch of the evolution on which the collection was intended to
throw light, are models of succinct and luminous exposition.
This book, which is not likely to fall out of use, was followed,
in 1874–8, by The Constitutional History of England in its
Origin and Development, which has long been regarded as the
accepted guide to a study signally advanced by it. The subject
of the work, the evolution of English institutions from Old English
times to the beginning of the Tudor monarchy, where Hallam had
begun his investigations, is treated after a full and comprehensive
fashion, military history, and what may be called foreign politics,
being excluded. Inevitably, conceptions of English constitutional
history which still commended themselves to Stubbs have been
changed or have vanished in the course of the period during which
his work has, on the whole, held its ground; the mark theory, the
stand-by of the older Germanistic school, has been so greatly
modified as to have been, in a large measure, abandoned, and,
according to its actual meaning, Magna Carta is no longer held
by trained historians to secure the right of trial by jury to every
Englishman. Many points and passages of English constitutional
history, too, which have been cleared up by more recent enquiry-
the whole relations of the forest to English life, and the true story
of the rising of 1381—have recently been shown to have been
insufficiently treated by Stubbs? . But, just as Stubbs's work is
comprehensive in its range and purpose, rather than specially
a
See Petit-Dutaillis, C. , Studies and Notes supplementary to Stubbs's Constitutional
History, parts I and II (originally published as notes to the French translation of the
work); English translation by Rhodes, W. E. , Manchester, 1908—14.


## p. 76 (#106) #############################################

76
[CH.
Historians
concerned with particular or novel points, so its value is dependent
on the solidity and effectiveness with which the main historical
position is worked out-the sober and moderate position that
the English constitution is the result of administrative conception in the
age of the Normans of local self-government found in the age of the
Saxons 1.
Thus, it is a work which admits of being improved without being
discarded, and which it would be folly, because of its inevitable
deficiencies, to cast aside as out of date.
John Richard Green, though of a younger generation than
either Freeman or Stubbs, was not only, in his labours, closely
associated with both, but, to Freeman, he stood in a relation of
intimacy which made the younger man the chosen companion,
philosopher and friend of the older, while he was regarded with
an almost equally affectionate, if, perhaps, more critical, interest
by Stubbs, who, from the first, gave much attention to the design
of A Short History of the English People. On the morrow of the
actual publication of this book, Green (really very wideawake
already) awoke to find himself famous; and Stubbs pronounced
that he ‘knew no one who had the same grasp of the subject and
the same command of details combined. ' Himself the most
accurate of writers, he was not in the least perturbed by the
onslaughts made on Green's incidental lapses. The previous
literary career of the author of A Short History had been that
of a periodical writer of extraordinary freshness and ability. In
none of his contributions to The Saturday Review (which
extended from 1867 to 1872, with one or two later articles) was
he so successful as in the half-descriptive, half-historical ‘middles,'
which species Freeman, more or less, had originated, but which,
in Green's hands, was brought to a mastery not reached by
anyone but himself: these were afterwards republished under
the title Studies from England and Italy (1876). In addition,
he wrote a number of “social' middles, which flowed spontaneously
from his facile pen, and were, in part, reminiscences of clerical life
in its humorous, as well as in its serious, aspects. He had quitted
Oxford 'with the full intention of becoming the historian of the
church of England,' and it was through a lecture on Dunstan that
he first arrested Freeman's attention. His design was, character-
istically, changed into that of the history of the development of
Christian civilisation in England, and, before very long, into first
1 Cf. Vinogradoff, op. cit. pp. 23–24.


## p. 77 (#107) #############################################

11] 7. R. Green's Short History 77
thoughts of a short history with a still more comprehensive scope.
Soon after the first forming of this plan, he was made aware of the
seeds in him of an all but incurable disease.
Still only gradually, he made up his mind to devote the span
of life which might be his to the writing of history ; and it was
to English history that he felt he had a clear calling. Other
schemes and occupations were laid or left aside; he resigned his
London incumbency; and, while spending successive winter seasons
in Italy, gave himself up altogether to his task. In 1874, A Short
History of the English People appeared, and met with a success
unprecedented since the days of Macaulay. The extraordinary
popularity of this book is not due altogether to Green's narrative
and descriptive power—which always addresses itself to the
relations of the scene to the human actors in it and to the
wonderful brightness of the work. It is, also, due to his recog-
nition of all the elements in the national life which contributed
to the progress of the national history, and, especially, of the
intimate connection between the political, economical and social
and the literary and artistic life of the people. And, above all,
it is due to the sympathetic pulse which beats in every page, and
which is more than anywhere else noticeable where he gives
expression to his immense and indignant interest, almost recalling
that of the psalmist, in the poor.
The treatment of the several sections of Green's Short History
shows inequalities, and the narrative is not free from blemishes
of taste as well as errors of fact, to which the author was prepared
to plead guilty ; for, notwithstanding the buoyancy of his spirits
and the vivacity of his conversation, the genuine modesty of Green
revealed itself to all who knew him otherwise than superficially.
The book was not really well-suited for the purposes of a school-
book, to which it was largely applied ; but, though the student
of English history who remains a stranger to the work is not to
be congratulated, it has satisfied higher ends than those of mere
imparting of knowledge. That it assisted greatly in spreading
and sustaining a living interest in our national past, and in making
it intelligible as an organic whole of which the working continues,
cannot be doubted; and rarely has a single-minded ambition been
more swiftly or more amply fulfilled.
Aided by the devotion of his wife, Green lived to produce two
distinct elaborations of parts of the theme of his Short History,
entitled respectively The Making, and The Conquest, of England.
It was in these branches of his studies that he was specially able


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78
[CH.
Historians
to apply his power of tracing and delineating the geographical
aspects of national historical growth, with which no other historian
had dealt so fully and so ably before him. He died, in his forty-
sixth year, at Mentone, after a heroic struggle against the disease
to which he succumbed.
Of later English historical scholars who have taken a con-
spicuous part in examining the foundations of medieval political
and social life, without confining themselves to this field of
research and exposition, our mention must be of the briefest.
The writings of Sir Henry Maine belong to legal and political,
rather than to historical, literature, and his great reputation as
a philosophical jurist, due, in the first instance, to his work
entitled Ancient Law and strengthened by his legislative services
as legal member of the council of India, rose to its height when,
after his return home, he successively held two important pro-
fessorial chairs-of jurisprudence and of international law. His
lectures entitled Village Communities in the East and West
(1871) developed, with a breadth and luminousness peculiar to
the author and on a comparative basis largely supplied by his
knowledge of India in especial, the conclusions of Maurer and
Nasse. A second course, entitled The Early History of Institutions
(1875), applied the same method to a still more extensive field
of research. His lectures on international law, which entered
into the question of arbitration as a preventive of war, Maine,
unfortunately, did not live to see through the press. His method
was a remarkably attractive one; but he lacked the time, and,
perhaps, the inclination, for the closer investigation required for
a historical treatment of certain of his subjects.
To economic history proper is to be assigned the best known
voluminous work of James Edwin Thorold Rogers, A History of
Agriculture and Prices in England from 1259 to 1793 (1866–
1902); but he was also well seen in general political history, and
was a friend and follower of Cobden. His Protests of the Lords
(1875) is an interesting, as well as a valuable, piece of work.
The social history and life of the English peasantry, in his own
East Anglia, was the subject of a study by Augustus Jessopp,
which, under the name Arcady for better for worse (1887),
attracted wide attention; he was an ecclesiastical historian of
learning and breadth of view, and lived a long and unselfish
scholar's life.
The subject of English village communities was specially studied
by Frederic Seebohm, who died in 1912. So far back as 1867, he


## p. 79 (#109) #############################################

11]
Frederic William Maitland
79
had first become known to students of English history by an
attractive volume entitled The Oxford Reformers of 1498—Colet,
Erasmus and More—which renders full justice to Colet's share in
the renascence movement on the basis of the letters of his whole-
hearted friend and admirer Erasmus. But the researches which,
at a later date, he carried on during his long residence in Hert-
fordshire, and of which the first published result was his well-
known book The English Village Community (1882), had re-
ference to problems of early land-tenure and of the social system
evolved from it which largely occupied the minds of medievalists
in our own and other countries, and which represent a reaction
from the theory of the Germanic origin of the village com-
munity to that of its primary indebtedness to Roman influence.
Seebohm's investigations were not confined to English, but
afterwards extended, in particular, to Welsh, conditions of life.
In Frederic William Maitland, who, after a brilliant, but all too
short, career as teacher of English law and writer on English legal
history, was taken away when at the height of his intellectual
powers, his contemporaries, as of one accord, had come to recognise
a foremost authority on the studies with which he had identified
himself. Rarely has a more modest self-estimate (he judged
himself, for instance, incapable of narrative history) coexisted
with more fascinating mental and personal qualities, more pene-
trating insight into theory, a rarer art of illustrating it by the use
of practical example and a quicker and pleasanter wit. His power
of epigram was considerable, and imparts a delightful spontaneous
sparkle to his writings on subjects in the treatment of which few
readers expect diversion to be blended with instruction! He
had inherited from his father, Samuel Roffey Maitland, a vivid
interest in English history and a thorough independence of
judgment? . After giving himself up at Cambridge to philosophical
reading, he had, during eight years, acquired a full experience of
the practice of the law, but preferred its historical side, and
further equipped himself for the work of his life by an assiduous
study of continental legal history. Savigny's influence was,
1 See, for some illustrations, Smith, A. L. , Frederic William Maitland (1908).
2 S. R. Maitland, who during part of his life was librarian at Lambeth, in an early
work on the Albigenses and Waldenses (1832), treated the pretensions of Joseph
Milner's Church History with much contempt, and, in later publications, attacked
both him and Foxe, the author of The Book of Martyrs. The elder Maitland's
numerous contributions to The British Magazine, of which he became editor, gave
much offence to the evangelical party; but they have gained high praise both by their
learning and by their force of style. See bibliography.


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[CH.
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necessarily, very strong upon him, and he began a translation of the
great Geschichte des römischen Rechts im Mittelalter which he never
completed. As the purpose of his labours gradually shaped itself
in his mind, and he resolved upon accomplishing for the history
of English, what Savigny had achieved for that of Roman, law,
he perceived the necessity of associated effort, if this end was to
be reached. He thus became the founder, and, afterwards, the
director, of the Selden society, to whose publications he con-
tributed nearly half of those issued in his lifetime. The history
of common law had never been taken in hand after Bracton and
Blackstone ; and the very language of the law of the later middle
ages had been left without dictionary or grammar?
Maitland did not claim to be a palaeographer ; but he taught
himself by teaching others, and came to be esteemed an expert on
MSS and in the criticism of texts. In his own first important
production, Bracton's Notebook (1887), he claimed for a British
Museum MS the character of a collection of materials for the
famous treatise De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae. By such
researches as these, many of which were published by the Selden
society, and the whole range of which his paper entitled The
Materials for English Legal History: showed him to have under
his ken, he prepared himself for the publication, in conjunction with
his friend Sir Frederick Pollock, of their History of the English
Law before the Time of Edward I (1895). This book, which at
once took rank as the standard authority on its subject, deals
chiefly with the latter part of the twelfth, and with the thirteenth,
centuries—'a luminous age throwing light on both past and
future. ' But Maitland's attention was by no means absorbed by
this period of the laws and institutions of England. His essays
entitled Domesday Book and Beyond belong to a relatively late
date in his career (1897), and touch on debatable ground. In his
Selden volume Bracton and Azo (1895), he had discussed the
relations between English law and the corpus juris to which,
indirectly if not directly, the English judge had been held to be
deeply indebted. The general subject of these relations possessed
the greatest interest for him, and connected itself with the special
question of English canon law, which he discussed in six essays
entitled Roman Canon Law in the Church of England. Much
1 See Maitland's chapter (xx) in vol. 1 of the present work, 'The Anglo-French Law
Language. '
? See his introduction to the edition of The Mirror of Justice by his friend
Whittaker, W. J. (Selden society's publications, vol. v).
3 1, 11, in The Political Science Quarterly (New York, 1889).


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11]
Maitland. Mary Bateson
81
a
controversy followed, and Maitland briefly reverted to the subject
in the course of a very judicious contribution to The Cambridge
Modern History' entitled "The Anglican Settlement and the
Scottish Reformation. His Rede lecture (1901) entitled English
'
Law and the Renaissance, with its humorous half-outlook on
the future, will not easily be forgotten.
His reputation as a teacher had long been established ; so
far back as 1887, he had delivered a course of lectures entitled
The Constitutional History of England, which extends over five
periods from the death of Edward I to the present day, and,
though analytical in form, combines, with a clear statement of
principles, an abundance of illustration, while showing a wonderful
alertness and ability of, as it were, entering into the minds of his
hearers. The course was not published till 1908, and furnishes the
fittest memorial of Maitland's capacity as a lecturer. The Oxford
Ford Lectures (1898) dealt with the growth and definition of the
idea of a corporation, an abstraction admitting of being rendered
impressive by means of concrete illustrations, such as always had
a peculiar fascination for him. In his last years, in the face of
obstacles such as few scholars have braced themselves to resist
and overcome, Maitland continued to read and write, even in his
distant winter home. He proved his literary skill in a charming
life of Leslie Stephen ; but, most of his time was, when possible,
given to The Year Books of Edward II (1307-10)a series
begun late by him but carried through three successive volumes.
These monuments take the student back straight into the middle
ages, whose life they conjure up out of the dust of the law-
courts. Maitland's introduction to the first volume could only
have been written by one who had acquired a complete intimacy
with his material.
With Maitland's work that of Mary Bateson is closely con-
nected, although it was to Creighton that she owed the impulse
to historical research. As a medievalist, she more especially
occupied herself with monastic and municipal history; her earliest
writings, including an article entitled The Origin and Early
History of Double Monasteries, belonged to the former field of
study; and she edited Records of the Borough of Leicester, The
Charters of the Borough of Cambridge (with Maitland, 1901) and
two volumes entitled Borough Customs in the publications of the
Selden society. Her papers entitled The Laws of Breteuil showed
her original power of dealing with the sources of municipal
i Vol. 11, chap. XVI (1903).
E, L. XIV.
CH. II.
6


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82
[CH.
Historians
institutions, and she had thoroughly trained herself in medieval
bibliography. Whatever subject she treated, she wrote on it with
simplicity, directness and independence of judgment-qualities
which were part of her nature.
Among historical scholars of mark whose original work was
largely based on their labours at the Record office, John Sherren
Brewer and James Gairdner should be mentioned together. The
former, after having, in his earlier days, been subject to the in-
fluence of the Oxford movement, was much associated with
F. D. Maurice, whom he succeeded in his chair at King's college,
London. He made his mark as a writer in connection with the
earlier instalments of a work on which he remained engaged
during the whole of the latter part of his life—the calendaring,
for the Rolls series, of the state papers of Henry VIII, in a
succession of volumes to which he furnished introductions,
published posthumously as a separate work, The Reign of
Henry VIII to the death of Wolsey, under the editorship of
Gairdner. Brewer enjoyed a widespread reputation as a high-
minded and trustworthy historian, and as an accomplished and
many-sided man of letters. He did not profess to be writing a
history of the reign of Henry VIII ; but his few introductions,
together, amount to what is much more than a digest of the
transactions of the period—a survey of it by a writer of extensive
reading and remarkably clear judgment. His editions of works
of authors among whom are both Roger and Francis Bacon,
and his ever-welcome contributions to The Quarterly Review,
posthumously collected under the title English Studies, suffi-
ciently exhibit the intellectual versatility of the least dry-as-dust
of archivists.
James Gairdner, who was a public servant at the Record office
for more than half a century, used to say that what he knew he
had taught himself; and no scholar has ever passed through a
more conscientious training. He carried on Brewer's Calendar of
Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII to its com-
pletion in twenty-one volumes, further edited the documents of
the preceding two reigns, together with chronicles and other
monuments, and, in 1872–5, produced a standard edition of
The Paston Letters. But he, also, made many original contri-
butions to the study of English history, which were published in
divers collective works, and reprinted in his own and James
Spedding's Studies in English History (1881); and, in addition
to a remarkably fair and by no means paradoxical, Life of


## p. 83 (#113) #############################################

11] James Gairdner. Froude 83
Richard III, produced a short and equally original biographical
estimate of Henry VII. The remainder of his writings are con-
cerned with ecclesiastical history. Long studies in this field
of research had matured in him conclusions as to the English
reformation and its precursors, differing, in many respects, from
current protestant opinion, but always resting on a careful and
well-considered treatment of authorities. The editor of the nearly
finished (fourth) volume left behind him by Gairdner of his Lollardy
and the Reformation considers that, in writing the section of The
History of the English Church, of which Gairdner's later work
was an unfinished enlargement, he (though already at an advanced
age) believed himself to be fulfilling a duty'; and he, certainly,
had the cause of truth at heart. His sympathies, at the same
time, were strongly on the side of authority, as is evident from
his earlier essays on the Lollards, as well as from that entitled
The Divine Right of Kings?
Before we pass on to the treatment of later periods of English
history, we pause at the name of James Anthony Froude. He
holds a position so peculiar to himself in our historical literature
that it is difficult to assign to his name its appropriate position in
an enumeration of our principal nineteenth century writers on
history. His true place would be near that of Carlyle; whom,
during the greater part of his literary life, he consciously followed
as his master, whose way of looking at history he made his own,
and the biography of whom was among the noteworthiest of his
books. He had begun to write with quite other models before his
eyes; but, although he very early disengaged himself from the
controlling influence of Newman, it impressed itself, if upon
nothing else in him, upon his style as a writer. His contribution
to Lives of the English Saints—a life of St Neot, erstwhile prince
Athelstan of Kent-undertaken at Newman's request, is chiefly
remarkable for the effect on the writer of the requisite investiga-
tion of his subject; but it, also, shows his interest in history, and
English history especially, as a desirable university study, of which
he thinks the statute-book might (perhaps in an abridged form)
usefully be made a foundation. Then came the intellectual
i See W. Hunt's preface to vol. iv of Lollardy and the Reformation (1904), p. ix.
• Reprinted in vol. 1 of the Studies mentioned above, which contains, together with
Spedding's review of the conduct of James I in connection with the Overbury affair,
a contribution by Gairdner to the history of Lollardy, The Historical Element in
Shakespeare's Falstaf. Students of the first two Lancaster reigns owe a great debt
to the labours of James Hamilton Wylie, whose History of the Reign of Henry V
was, in substance, completed before his death.
6-2


## p. 84 (#114) #############################################

84
[ch.
Historians
experiences which put an end to his connection with academical,
and with clerical, work, and in the midst of which he found
a friend in Kingsley (to whose sister-in-law, the Argemone of
Yeast, he gave his hand). In 1849, he was introduced to Carlyle;
and, soon afterwards, he settled down to a literary life at Plas
Gwynant in Wales and Bideford in Devon. Here, he began, and
carried on during many years, his History of England from the
Fall of Wolsey, which, first intended to reach to the death of
Elizabeth, actually closed with the dissipation of the Spanish
Armada
The earliest sample of the spirit and style in which Froude
addressed himself to his task had been a recapitulation,
published in The Westminster Review (1852) under the title
England's Forgotten Worthies, of certain original narratives
of a daring and adventurous sort. That the seed thus sown
did not fall on barren ground is shown by the fact that the
paper inspired in Kingsley the idea of Westward Ho! and
supplied Tennyson with the theme of The Revenge. That this
stirring article breathed the antipathies as well as the sym-
pathies that were to mark the forthcoming History, suggests
itself from the terse description of king James I as 'the base son
of a bad mother. But, though Froude's reputation already
'
stood high in a chosen circle of friends, and, though Carlyle
watched the progress of the History with genuine interest—he
may, indeed, be said to have been largely responsible for its
central idea, the insufficiency of any but extraordinary men (such
as Henry VIII, in the first instance) for the management and
direction of extraordinary times—the success of the book must
have taken its author by surprise. He was too intent upon his
own aims and, also, in the right sense, too much of a man of the
world, to pay much attention to either praise or blame; but, that a
historical work of such amplitude should command the interest of
a wide public, while Macaulay's History was still in progress, and
,
that a book which could not but offend many, and startle more,
should sustain this interest throughout its voluminous course,
was, certainly, a very uncommon literary experience. Beyond a
doubt, the primary cause accounting for this result must be sought
in the style and method of the writer. Froude's style combined
fullness of matter with charm of manner; for his study of original
1 The Nemesis of Faith (1849) intended by Froude as a 'tragedy') was widely
accepted as having a didactic purpose and containing the confession of his own
faith. Cf. , ante, vol. XII, p. 292.


## p. 85 (#115) #############################################

85
6
II) Froude's History of England
documents both at home and abroad (notably at Simancas) was
most assiduous. His form of narrative was Herodotean rather
than Thucydidean; but the British reading public, especially since
its literary appetite has been fed largely on fiction, likes breadth
of exposition, and Froude's long paraphrases of original documents
commended themselves to readers in search of the real. His method
was, intentionally, the reverse of scientific; "there seems, indeed,'
he wrote', 'something incongruous in the very connexion of such
words as Science and History. ' His own style, beyond a doubt, is
all but irresistible to those who enjoy the union of facility of form
with wealth of colouring; and in variety of invective he is un-
surpassed, at least among writers whose good taste is only
exceptionally overpowered by sentiment? .
This is not the place in which to revive the memory of the
attacks which, during its progress, were made upon Froude's
History, certainly one of the best-abused books of any age of
literature. Besides long and severe charges of partisan mis-
statement, brought by representative historical writers against
his treatment of the monasteries question and of other important
topics, he was, from the first, exposed to a running fire of hostile
criticism on the part of The Saturday Review; and, from 1864
onwards, these censures grew into a systematic assault, which even
the friends of E. A. Freeman, who was mainly responsible for it,
would have gladly seen brought to a speedier end. These attacks,
which, excessive and, occasionally, even erroneous though they
were, proved fatal to Froude's reputation as a historian, had their
origin, partly in differences of ecclesiastical opinion, but, mainly,
in faults that were, or had become, engrained in his historical
writing-looseness of statement, incorrectness of quotation and
constant bias of opinion and sentiment. The true charge to be
brought against him lies, not in his neglect of authorities, but in
the perversity, conscious or unconscious, of his use of them. And
this, again, was due, not so much to a preconceived partisanship,
as to a conviction that the truth lay, away from popular notions,
in the conclusions at which he had independently, and, sometimes,
paradoxically, arrived. The uprightness of Henry VIII and the
wickedness of those who stood in his way, or in that of the
movement which Henry fitted into his policy, had to be proved
coute que coute; and proved, in this sense, it was, to Froude's
i See · The Scientific Method Applied to History,' in Short Studies, vol. 11.
: The list of animals to whom Mary queen of Scots is, in turn, compared in
Froude's History, is that of a small menagerie.


## p. 86 (#116) #############################################

86
[CH.
Historians
own—and to Kingsley's satisfaction. Of queen Elizabeth, in
his later volumes, he declined to make a heroine; and, if they
have a central figure, it is Burghley's, unless it be Burghley's
archfoe, 'far away' beyond the seas and mountains.
Froude's later works on historical subjects did not add to his
reputation as a historian; but nothing that he wrote could fail
to attract attention, and little to provoke controversy. The
English in Ireland in the Eighteenth Century (1872—4) grew out
of lectures delivered in America concerning a people whom, in a
way, Froude liked, but on whose national life he looked with scorn-
ful bitterness. No other of his books met with more convincing
rejoinders, among which Lecky's? is the most notable. His later
Spanish studies on the topics of one of the earliest, and of one
of the latest, episodes in his History, uphold the conclusions
there reached. To the brief period of his Oxford professorship
(in which, in 1892, he succeeded Freeman) belong The Life
and Letters of Erasmus, English Seamen in the Sixteenth
Century and The Council of Trent (1894–6). The first-named
of these, although good reading, both where it is Erasmus and
where it is Froude, did not escape the usual fate of his writings.
Froude, whose productivity had never ceased either during or
after his editorship of Fraser's Magazine (1860—74)-most of his
best occasional contributions to which are included in his delightful
Short Studies (1867)—was, for many years, one of the most con-
spicuous figures in the English world of letters. In 1874, he
definitely entered into that of politics. After his return to England,
he continued to take an active interest in affairs, both Irish and
colonial, and visited, in turn, the Australian colonies and the West
Indies, describing both expeditions in books which caused almost
as much ferment as anything previously written by him. But the
chief literary productions of his later years were those bearing
on his great friend and master, Carlyle? The second of these,
his History of the first Forty Years of Carlyle's Life, together
with its predecessor, the History of Carlyle's Life in London,
remains, for better and for worse, one of the most interesting of
English biographies.
Proceeding from Froude to his Oxford successor, we pass not
only from the study of the Tudor to that of the Stewart age.
In the whole field of modern history—as well as in that of modern
English history in particular-no higher praise is due to any writer
1 In vol, u of his History of England in the Eighteenth Century.
? See, ante, vol. Xin, chap. I.


## p. 87 (#117) #############################################

11]
Samuel Rawson Gardiner
87
of the century than should be accorded to Samuel Rawson Gardiner,
if the supreme criterion be absolute devotion, not only in the letter
but in the spirit, to historical truth, and if this be held to show
itself in a fairness of judgment that takes into account, with the
circumstances and conditions in which men of the past, great or
ordinary, lived and acted, those in which they thought and felt.
Gardiner was not, and, if his method of composition be taken into
account, hardly could be, a brilliant writer; as with his lecturing,
so his written narrative seemed to spin itself continuously out of
a full store of maturely considered facts and necessary comments,
reaching, without strain, the end of chapter or volume, as of
lecture or course.
When he resolved to write the history of the great English
revolution of the seventeenth century, he was not bound to
the service of any political or religious party, or under any
personal obligation beyond that of making his living. In 1856
and 1858, respectively, he became, as he continued through
life, unless his necessary lecturing and teaching interfered, a
regular reader at the British Museum and the Record office; and,
from that time forward, the principal purpose of his strenuous
labours was the writing of his History. But he knew that an
account of the revolution must be based on an examination of
its causes; and, thus, he began with preparing his History of
England from the Accession of James I to the Disgrace of Chief
Justice Coke, which appeared in 1863. In the previous year, he
had brought out, for the Camden society, a documentary volume
entitled Parliamentary Debates in 1610. Henceforth, his great
work advanced by regular instalments of two volumes, till it had
arrived at the threshold of the Civil war, when a completed
section was republished, in ten volumes, as The History of
England from 1603 to 1640. Its second part, the history of
the revolution proper, made its appearance in two successive
subsections, of which the second carried the history of the
commonwealth and protectorate to the year 1656, an additional
chapter dealing with the parliamentary elections of that year
being published posthumously. Thus, by a hard fate, he was
unable to finish his great task. But, up to the point actually
reached, it had been accomplished, without faltering or failure, in
accordance with the original plan and with the mastery over
material which, throughout, had marked his work.
Gardiner's History of England, though pursuing a chrono-
logical method, is in no sense annalistic in either conception or


## p. 88 (#118) #############################################

88
[CH.
Historians
treatment. As Firth, who continued the work, says, Gardiner 'did
not confine himself to relating facts, but traced the growth of the
religious and constitutional ideas which underlay' the greatest
political conflict ever known to these islands. Firth is equally
justified in dwelling on the completeness with which his prede-
cessor treated the different parts of his theme, neglecting neither
the military and naval, nor the economic and social, sides of the
national development. Gardiner made no pretence of tracing
literary or artistic growth, though his remarks on Milton and
those on Massinger show that it was not only the political element
in their writings which called forth his interest.
Throughout his occupation with his chief work, Gardiner
found, or made, time for the production of much useful historical
literature of an unpretentious sort, besides rendering services
of high value to the Camden and other historical societies, and
as contributor to collective historical undertakings of various
kinds. His little volume entitled The Thirty Years' War, together
with his Camden society volumes, Letters and Documents illus-
trating the Relations between England and Germany, 1618–20,
show how exceptionally he was qualified to become the historian of
a struggle destined, as it would seem, to remain without a fully
adequate historical treatment of all its component parts. Gardiner's
lectures delivered at Oxford in 1896 under the title Cromwell's
Place in History, admirably exemplify his manner as a teacher.
With the great Protector, he claimed some family connection; but,
of Cromwell, as of every other character of the past, he spoke as
intent only on understanding both the man and his actions.
Reasons sufficiently obvious explain why the period of English
history which Macaulay once hoped to reach, and of which the
later and most stirring years were, at first, too near to lend them-
selves to a judicial historic survey—the Hanoverian period, as it
has to be called-long attracted but few writers of independent mind
or higher literary qualities. According to the form of most of his
books, William (generally known as archdeacon) Coxe belongs to
the class of writers of historical memoirs, for the composition of
which he had abandoned that of a comprehensive work on the
historical and political state of Europe. He obtained a large amount
of unpublished material, and put this together with understanding
and skill, on a sufficiently broad basis to make his books useful as
general guides to the political history of their times. His well-
established whig principles are specially manifest in his Memoirs of
Sir Robert Walpole (1798), which, perhaps, is the least likely of his


## p. 89 (#119) #############################################

II]
Earl Stanhope
89
works to be altogether superseded. The later Memoirs of the Duke
of Marlborough (1818—19) have, probably, been not less largely
read; but the task, from the biographical point of view, was a
more complicated one, and Coxe's treatment cannot be regarded as
adequate, although no later life of Marlborough has proved alto-
gether successful! . His House of Austria (1807), nowadays,
needs only to be taken up to be laid down again as altogether
defective.
Philip Henry, fifth earl Stanhope, during his membership of
the house of commons as viscount Mahon, rendered good service
to the literary profession in general by his introduction of the bill
which became the Copyright act of 1842, and to historical studies
and interests by his initiation of the National Portrait gallery
(1856) and of the Historical MSS commission (1869), on which he
was one of the first commissioners. His own contributions to
historical literature were of a solid and enduring nature; he laid
no claim to a place among great writers; but students of the
national history, from the war of the Spanish succession to the
great Napoleonic war, owe him a real debt. His industry was
great; his judgment excellent if not infallible; and his candour
unimpeachable. His narrative, if it does not enchain, commends
itself by moderation and dignity of tone. He enjoyed rare oppor-
tunities, of which his readers had the full benefit, of access to
unpublished sources; and although, as his Miscellanies attest, full
of curiosity as to points of detail, he never lost himself in minutiae,
or let slip the main threads of his narrative. His earliest work
was The History of the War of the Succession in Spain, 1702–14
(1832), founded mainly on the papers of his ancestor, the high-
minded statesman who played an important part in the war-
a well-written book of much interest, which created a consider-
able impression, with the aid of an essay by Macaulay, between
whom and lord Mahon a long-continued friendship ensued.
It was followed by The History of England from the Peace of
Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713 to 1783, which remained
the standard history of England for this period, though, more
or less, it left aside certain aspects of the national life and
progress afterwards treated by Lecky, and cannot be said to
furnish a definite narrative of momentous episodes such as
the American war of independence. In 1870, earl Stanhope
added a beginning or introduction to his History, entitled
1 The late viscount Wolseley's Life, to the Accession of Anne (1894) has a mainly
military interest. For Coxe's other works, see bibliography.


## p. 90 (#120) #############################################

90
Historians
[CH.
The reign of Queen Anne up to the Peace of Utrecht. Though
it served its turn, it could not but seem a meagre performance
to readers whose favourites, both in historical composition and in
fiction, had, with brilliant success, illustrated this particular era
of English political, literary and social history. Before this, in
1861—2, Stanhope had produced a much superior work, in which
the unpublished material at his command had once more stood
him in excellent stead, the Life of the Younger Pitt, a biography
to which he addressed himself with thorough sympathy and which
will not easily be altogether superseded. Stanhope's lesser contri-
butions to English historical literature are numerous and valuable,
and the whole harvest of his life reflects high credit on his name.
His principal work is, in a measure, supplemented by William
Nathaniel Massey's History of England during the reign of
George III, which reaches to 1802. It is the work of a moderate
liberal, who had no sympathy to spare for the political ideas of
king George III.
Two English historical writers who, though in very different
ways, came into close contact with important political ideas of the
nineteenth century, and, more especially, with those concerning the
progressive development of the British empire, were, at not very
distant dates, conspicuous personages in the life of the universities
of Oxford and Cambridge respectively. Each in his way a master
of style, Goldwin Smith and Sir John Robert Seeley differed
fundamentally from one another in the political conceptions which
pervaded their historical writing. In 1858, Goldwin Smith was made
a member of the commission on national education. When, in 1859,
the earl of Derby appointed him regius professor of modern history
at Oxford, he had gained much experience as an academical re-
former and political journalist, but had his reputation as a historian
still to make outside his university. Two years later, he published
a volume entitled Lectures on Modern History. The most historical
of these, On the Foundation of the American Colonies, had, at the
same time, a distinct political bearing, and, in 1862—3, was followed
by a series of letters contributed to The Daily News, and after-
wards reprinted with additions, under the title The Empire, which,
in his most forcible style, advocated the separation of the British
colonies from the mother-country and their establishment as inde-
pendent states. This became the governing idea of his political
activity, which, at the same time, shaped his later personal life.
In 1862, he produced another volume, not less striking in manner
and style, entitled Irish History and Irish Character. Five
facer?
*


## p. 91 (#121) #############################################

11]
Sir J. R. Seeley
91
notan
histoned
cainen
years later, he published an admirable series of historical essays,
originally produced as public lectures, and called Three English
Statesmen (Pym, Cromwell and Pitt). Before this, the great
American civil war, during the progress of which he visited the
states, had found in him an enthusiastic supporter of the cause of
the north. Having, in 1866, been compelled by a severe personal
trouble to resign his Oxford chair, he, two years afterwards, trans-
ferred himself, with his political aspirations and disappointments,
at first to Cornell university, in the United States, and thence, in
June 1871, to Toronto. There, for nearly a generation longer, he
continued to carry on an incessant journalistic activity. The
books he sent forth were not of much importance; and, notwith-
standing the fascination of his style, always clear and dignified,
the letters from him printed in The Manchester Guardian and
elsewhere gradually became like the voice of one crying in the
wilderness. He can only be classed among historical writers by
a courtesy which will hardly be refused to him. He could not
keep the spirit of political controversy out of anything he wrote;
and, in truth, that spirit was part of his genius.
The career of Sir John Robert Seeley, who, though less
intimately connected with public life, and less gifted for taking
a personal part in it than Goldwin Smith, exercised a far more
enduring influence upon imperial politics than he, was of the least
eventful. At Cambridge, he won high distinction as a classical
scholar; but his great ability in argument was only known to
a few; and when, being then professor of Latin in London, he
was discovered to be the author of Ecce Homo, published in 1865,
the admiration excited by the book, amidst an outburst of con-
troversy, was largely due to its literary qualities? . Paradoxically
enough, it led to his appointment, in 1869, as regius professor of
modern history at Cambridge. His inaugural lecture was published,
together with some other lectures and essays delivered by him in
the north, in a collection of Lectures and Essays (1870).
Seeley's standpoint as a historical teacher and writer was clear
to himself from the first. In the opening sentence of the most
successful of his works, The Expansion of England, he cites
'a favourite maxim of mine,' that history, while it should be
scientific in its methods, should pursue a practical object. ' This
object was practical politics. As a new type of sophist, he set
himself the task of training, by his lectures and conversation,
1 See, ante, vol, mn, chap. XII, p. 297. His edition of the first decade of Livy,
with its excellent introduction, is mentioned, ibid. p. 493.


## p. 92 (#122) #############################################

92
[CH.
Historians
the statesmen of the future; the time was not far distant when
his applied history would serve to impress upon the nation political
lessons of which it seemed to him to stand in need. But he was
aware that, while engaged upon this task, he must prove his fitness
for it by the production of a historical work of solid merit; and
this he was enabled to do by the publication of his Life and
Times of Stein, or Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic
Age (1878). The work, which was the fruit of great labour,
though hardly of what could justly be called original research,
might have filled, at least for a time, a gap in the historical
literature of the age in question; for it appeared midway between
the monument of the great statesman piled up by Pertz and the
later elucidations of his career, and of its bearings upon German
and European history, by Max Lehmann and others. The success
to which Seeley's volumes attained was little more than a success
of esteem : although he had attentively studied his subject, he was
hardly quite at home in the whole of it; and, though clearly, and,
in parts, effectively, written, the work failed to establish itself as
one of those great political biographies which may be supplemented
or corrected, but are quite unlikely to be ever superseded.
In 1883, Seeley put forth the series of Cambridge lectures
on the foreign policy of Great Britain to which he gave the title
The Expansion of England in the Eighteenth century. Few
political historians have more felicitously carried out the avowed
purpose of combining a lucid and connected narrative of a period
of the past with a statement of conclusions bearing directly upon
political problems of the present. Imperialism, the very opposite
system to that cherished by Goldwin Smith and those who thought
with him, was here demonstrated to be the ideal which it behoved
the British nation to accept and apply as the moving factor in the
determination of the future of British dominion. And this dogma
was proclaimed at a time when, in British and colonial political
life, a parting of the ways still seemed possible; so that no half-
historical, half-political essay was ever more opportunely timed, or
more effectively directed to its purpose.
Seeley's last work, The Growth of British Policy, was not
published till after his death, which took place in 1895. This book
is described by its editor, G. W. Prothero, as an attempt to put
English history into a new framework, showing how foreign policy
affected every stage of its progress. It was intended to be, in
substance, an introduction to the history of British policy in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but the author had to trace


## p. 93 (#123) #############################################

11) Nineteenth Century English History 93
the current of his narrative back to Elizabeth, who, as he puts it,
was married to her people, whereas James I and Charles I were
only married to Anne of Denmark and Henrietta Maria. Seeley
avowed it to be his object as a teacher, not to interest his hearers
or readers in particular men or deeds, but to show them what
results the national action of former times had brought about for
ourselves and our children after us, and thus to interest them more
and more 'to the close. ' 'It is impossible,' he candidly added, that
the history of any state can be interesting, unless it exhibits some
sort of development? .
'
The history of the British empire in the nineteenth century
has, of necessity, employed many pens; but its documentary
materials were only in part accessible, and the difficulty of dis-
sociating historical narrative from political purpose or 'tendency'
was only to be avoided with difficulty. Harriet Martineau, whose
manifold contributions to political and social literature, as well as
to journalism and fiction, have found notice elsewhere in this
work? , in 1848 entered upon the onerous task, begun and aban-
doned by Charles Knight, of A History of England during the
Thirty Years' Peace, and, notwithstanding a serious interruption,
accomplished it before the end of the following year. 'Always,'
as was well said of her, 'a little before her time,' she related the
history of an age whose striving after reform was its most marked
characteristic in a spirit of moral and intellectual sympathy with
its ideas, accompanied by a clear critical estimate of the sum of
its achievements; home politics were her chief, but by no means
absorbing, concern, and she treated men as well as measures with
her habitual candour.
We come nearer to the present age in The History of England
from 1830, first published in 1871—3, by William Nassau Moles-
worth, vicar of Rochdale and a reformer who dwelt and worked very
near the fountain-head.