Front matter

HISTORY FOR READY REFERENCE FROM THE BEST HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS, SPECIALISTS THEIR OWN WORDS IN A COMPLETE SYSTEM OF HISTORY FOR ALL USES, EXTENDING TO ALL COUNTRIES AND SUBJECTS, AND REPRESENTING FOR BOTH READERS AND STUDENTS THE BETTER AND NEWER LITERATURE OF HISTORY IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE BY J.N.LARNED WITH NUMEROUS HISTORICAL MAPS FROM ORIGINAL STUDIES AND DRAWINGS BY ALAN C. REILEY IN FIVE VOLUMES VOLUME II-EL DORADO TO GREAVES SPRINGFIELD, MASS. THE C. A. NICHOLS CO., PUBLISHERS MDCCCXCV COPYRIGHT, 1894. BY J. N. LARNED. The Riversider Press, Cambridge, Mass, U. S. A. Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company. LIST OF MAPS. Map of Europe at the close of the Tenth Century, ... To follow page 1020 Map of Europe in 1768, ... To follow page 1086 Four maps of France, A. D. 1154, 1180, 1814 and 1860, ... To follow page 1168 Two maps of Central Europe, A. D. 848 and 888, ... On page 1404 Map of Germany at the Peace of Westphalia, ... To follow page 1486 Maps of Germany, A. D. 1815 and 1866; of the Netherlands, 1880-1889; and of the Zollverein, ... To follow page 1540 LOGICAL OUTLINES, IN COLORS. English history, ... To follow page 730 French history, ... To follow page 1158 German history, ... To follow page 1428 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. The Fifth Century, ... On page 1433 The Sixth Century, ... On page 1434 {769} EL DORADO, The quest of. "When the Spaniards had conquered and pillaged the civilized empires on the table lands of Mexico, Bogota, and Peru, they began to look round for new scenes of conquest, new sources of wealth; the wildest rumours were received as facts, and the forests and savannas, extending for thousands of square miles to the eastward of the cordilleras of the Andes, were covered, in imagination, with populous kingdoms, and cities filled with gold. The story of El Dorado, of a priest or king smeared with oil and then coated with gold dust, probably originated in a custom which prevailed among the civilized Indians of the plateau of Bogota; but El Dorado was placed, by the credulous adventurers, in a golden city amidst the impenetrable forests of the centre of South America, and, as search after search failed, his position was moved further and further to the eastward, in the direction of Guiana. El Dorado, the phantom god of gold and silver, appeared in many forms. ... The settlers at Quito and in Northern Peru talked of the golden empire of the Omaguas, while those in Cuzco and Charcas dreamt of the wealthy cities of Paytiti and Enim, on the banks of a lake far away, to the eastward of the Andes. These romantic fables, so firmly believed in those old days led to the exploration of vast tracts of country, by the fearless adventurers of the sixteenth century, portions of which have never been traversed since, even to this day. The most famous searches after El Dorado were undertaken from the coast of Venezuela, and the most daring leaders of these wild adventures were German knights." C. R. Markham, Introduction to Simon's Account of the Expedition of Ursua and Aguirre (Hakluyt Society 1861). "There were, along the whole coast of the Spanish Main, rumours of an inland country which abounded with gold. These rumours undoubtedly related to the kingdoms of Bogota and Tunja, now the Nuevo Reyno de Granada. Belalcazar, who was in quest of this country from Quito, Federman, who came from Venezuela, and Gonzalo Ximenez de Quesada, who sought it by way of the River Madalena, and who effected its conquest, met here. But in these countries also there were rumours of a rich land at a distance; similar accounts prevailed in Peru; in Peru they related to the Nuevo Reyno, there they related to Peru; and thus adventurers from both sides were allured to continue the pursuit after the game was taken. An imaginary kingdom was soon shaped out as the object of their quest, and stories concerning it were not more easily invented than believed. It was said that a younger brother of Atabalipa fled, after the destruction of the Incas, took with him the main part of their treasures, and founded a greater empire than that of which his family had been deprived. Sometimes the imaginary Emperor was called the Great Paytite, sometimes the Great Moxo, sometimes the Enim or Great Paru. An impostor at Lima affirmed that he had been in his capital, the city of Manoa, where not fewer than 3,000 workmen were employed in the silversmiths' street; he even produced a map of the country, in which he had marked a hill of gold, another of silver, and a third of salt. ... This imaginary kingdom obtained the name of El Dorado from the fashion of its Lord, which has the merit of being in savage costume. His body was anointed every morning with a certain fragrant gum of great price, and gold dust was then blown upon him, through a tube, till he was covered with it: the whole was washed off at night. This the barbarian thought a more magnificent and costly attire than could be afforded by any other potentate in the world, and hence the Spaniards called him El Dorado, or the Gilded One. A history of all the expeditions which were undertaken for the conquest of his kingdom would form a volume not less interesting than extraordinary." R. Southey, History of Brazil, volume 1, chapter 12. The most tragical and thrilling of the stories of the seekers after El Dorado is that which Mr. Markham introduces in the quotation above, and which Southey has told with full details in The Expedition of Orsua; and the Crimes of Aguirre. The most famous of the expeditions were those in which Sir Walter Raleigh engaged, and two of which he personally led--in 1595, and in 1617-18. Released from his long imprisonment in the Tower to undertake the latter, he returned from it, broken and shamed, to be sent to the scaffold as a victim sacrificed to the malignant resentment of Spain. How far Raleigh shared in the delusion of his age respecting El Dorado, and how far he made use of it merely to promote a great scheme for the "expansion of England," are questions that will probably remain forever in dispute. Sir Walter Raleigh, Discoverie of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana (Hakluyt Society 1848). ALSO IN: J. A. Van Heuvel, El Dorado. E. Edwards, Life of Raleigh, volume 1, chapters 10 and 25. P. F. Tytler, Life of Raleigh, chapters 3 and 6. E. Gosse, Raleigh, chapters 4 and 9. A. F. Bandelier, The gilded man. ELECTORAL COLLEGE, The Germanic: Its rise and constitution. Its secularization and extinction. See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152, and 1347-1493; also, 1801-1803, and 1805-1806. ELECTORAL COMMISSION, The. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1876-1877. ELECTORS, Presidential, of the United States of America. See PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY AND INVENTION. "Electricity, through its etymology at least, traces its lineage back to Homeric times. In the Odyssey reference is made to the 'necklace hung with bits of amber' presented by the Phœnician traders to the Queen of Syra. Amber was highly prized by the ancients, having been extensively used as an ornamental gem, and many curious theories were suggested as to its origin. Some of these, although mythical, were singularly near the truth, and it is an interesting coincidence that in the well-known myth concerning the ill-fated and rash youth who so narrowly escaped wrecking the solar chariot and the terrestrial sphere, amber, the first known source of electricity, and the thunder-bolts of Jupiter are linked together. It is not unlikely that this substance was indebted, for some of the romance that clung to it through ages, to the fact that when rubbed it attracts light bodies. This property it was known to possess in the earliest times: it is the one single experiment in electricity which has come down to us from the remotest antiquity. ... The power of certain fishes, notably what is known as the 'torpedo,' to produce electricity, was known at an early period, and was commented on by Pliny and Aristotle. {770} ... Up to the sixteenth [century] there seems to have been no attempt to study electrical phenomena in a really scientific manner. Isolated facts which almost thrust themselves upon observers, were noted, and, in common with a host of other natural phenomena, were permitted to stand alone, with no attempt at classification, generalization, or examination through experiment. ... Dr. Gilbert can justly be called the creator of the science of electricity and magnetism. His experiments were prodigious in number, and many of his conclusions were correct and lasting. To him we are indebted for the name 'electricity,' which he bestowed upon the power or property which amber exhibited in attracting light bodies, borrowing the name from the substance itself, in order to define one of its attributes. ... This application of experiment to the study of electricity, begun by Gilbert three hundred years ago, was industriously pursued by those who came after him, and the next two centuries witnessed a rapid development of science. Among the earlier students of this period were the English philosopher, Robert Boyle, and the celebrated burgomaster of Magdeburg, Otto von Guericke. The latter first noted the sound and light accompanying electrical excitation. These were afterwards independently discovered by Dr. Wall, an Englishman, who made the somewhat prophetic observation, 'This light and crackling seems in some degree to represent thunder and lightning.' Sir Isaac Newton made a few experiments in electricity, which he exhibited to the Royal Society. ... Francis Hawksbee was an active and useful contributor to experimental investigation, and he also called attention to the resemblance between the electric spark and lightning. The most ardent student of electricity in the early years of the eighteenth century was Stephen Gray. He performed a multitude of experiments, nearly all of which added something to the rapidly accumulating stock of knowledge, but doubtless his most important contribution was his discovery of the distinction between conductors and non-conductors. ... Some of Gray's papers fell into the hands of Dufay, an officer of the French army, who, after several years' service, had resigned his post to devote himself to scientific pursuits. ... His most important discovery was the existence of two distinct species of electricity, which he named 'vitreous' and 'resinous.' ... A very important advance was made in 1745 in the invention of the Leyden jar or phial. As has so many times happened in the history of scientific discovery, it seems tolerably certain that this interesting device was hit upon by at least three persons, working independently of each other. One Cuneus, a monk named Kleist, and Professor Muschenbroeck, of Leyden, are all accredited with the discovery. ... Sir William Watson perfected it by adding the outside metallic coating, and was by its aid enabled to fire gunpowder and other inflammables." T. C. Mendenhall, A Century of Electricity, chapter 1. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1745-1747. Franklin's identification of Electricity with Lightning. "In 1745 Mr. Peter Collinson of the Royal Society sent a [Leyden] jar to the Library Society of Philadelphia, with instructions how to use it. This fell into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, who at once began a series of electrical experiments. On March 28, 1747, Franklin began his famous letters to Collinson. ... In these letters he propounded the single-fluid theory of electricity, and referred all electric phenomena to its accumulation in bodies in quantities more than their natural share, or to its being withdrawn from them so as to leave them minus their proper portion." Meantime, numerous experiments with the Leyden jar had convinced Franklin of the identity of lightning and electricity, and he set about the demonstration of the fact. "The account given by Dr. Stuber of Philadelphia, an intimate personal friend of Franklin, and published in one of the earliest editions of the works of the great philosopher, is as follows:--'The plan which he had originally proposed was to erect on some high tower, or other elevated place, a sentry-box, from which should rise a pointed iron rod, insulated by being fixed in a cake of resin. Electrified clouds passing over this would, he conceived, impart to it a portion of their electricity, which would be rendered evident to the senses by sparks being emitted when a key, a knuckle, or other conductor was presented to it. Philadelphia at this time offered no opportunity of trying an experiment of this kind. Whilst Franklin was waiting for the erection of a spire, it occurred to him that he might have more ready access to the region of clouds by means of a common kite. He prepared one by attaching two cross-sticks to a silk handkerchief, which would not suffer so much from the rain as paper. To his upright stick was fixed an iron point. The string was, as usual, of hemp, except the lower end, which was silk. Where the hempen string terminated, a key was fastened. With this apparatus, on the appearance of a thunder-gust approaching, he went into the common, accompanied by his son, to whom alone he communicated his intentions, well knowing the ridicule which, too generally for the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful experiments in philosophy. He placed himself under a shed to avoid the rain. His kite was raised. A thunder-cloud passed over it. No signs of electricity appeared. He almost despaired of success, when suddenly he observed the loose fibres of his string move toward an erect position. He now pressed his knuckle to the key, and received a strong spark. How exquisite must his sensations have been at this moment! On his experiment depended the fate of his theory. Doubt and despair had begun to prevail, when the fact was ascertained in so clear a manner, that even the most incredulous could no longer withhold their assent. Repeated sparks were drawn from the key, a phial was charged, a shock given, and all the experiments made which are usually performed with electricity.' And thus the identity of lightning and electricity was proved. ... Franklin's proposition to erect lightning rods which would convey the lightning to the ground, and so protect the buildings to which they were attached, found abundant opponents. ... Nevertheless, public opinion became settled ... that they did protect buildings. ... Then the philosophers raised a new controversy as to whether the conductors should be blunt or pointed; Franklin, Cavendish, and Watson advocating points, and Wilson blunt ends. ... The logic of experiment, however, showed the advantage of pointed conductors; and people persisted then in preferring them, as they have done ever since." {771} P. Benjamin, The Age of Electricity, chapter 3. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1753-1820. The beginnings of the Electric Telegraph. "The first actual suggestion of an electric telegraph was made in an anonymous letter published in the Scots Magazine at Edinburgh, February 17th, 1753. The letter is initialed 'C. M.,' and many attempts have been made to discover the author's identity. ... The suggestions made in this letter were that a set of twenty-six wires should be stretched upon insulated supports between the two places which it was desired to put in connection, and at each end of every wire a metallic ball was to be suspended, having under it a letter of the alphabet inscribed upon a piece of paper. ... The message was to be read off at the receiving station by observing the letters which were successively attracted by their corresponding balls, as soon as the wires attached to the latter received a charge from the distant conductor. In 1787 Monsieur Lomond, of Paris, made the very important step of reducing the twenty-six wires to one, and indicating the different letters by various combinations of simple movements of an indicator, consisting of a pith-ball suspended by means of a thread from a conductor in contact with the wire. ... In the year 1790 Chappe, the inventor of the semaphore, or optico-mechanical telegraph, which was in practical use previous to the introduction of the electric telegraph, devised a means of communication, consisting of two clocks regulated so that the second hands moved in unison, and pointed at the same instant to the same figures. ... In the early form of the apparatus, the exact moment at which the observer at the receiving station should read off the figure to which the hand pointed was indicated by means of a sound signal produced by the primitive method of striking a copper stew pan, but the inventor soon adopted the plan of giving electrical signals instead of sound signals. ... In 1795 Don Francisco Salva ... suggested ... that instead of twenty-six wires being used, one for each letter, six or eight wires· only should be employed, each charged by a Leyden jar, and that different letters should be formed by means of various combinations of signals from these. ... Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis) Ronalds ... took up the subject of telegraphy in the year 1816, and published an account of his experiments in 1823," based on the same idea as that of Chappe. ... "Ronalds drew up a sort of telegraphic code by which words, and sometimes even complete sentences, could be transmitted by only three discharges. ... Ronalds completely proved the practicability of his plan, not only on [a] short underground line, .... but also upon an overhead line some eight miles in length, constructed by carrying a telegraph wire backwards and forwards over a wooden frame-work erected in his garden at Hammersmith. ... The first attempt to employ voltaic electricity in telegraphy was made by Don Francisco Salva, whose frictional telegraph has already been referred to. On the 14th of May, 1800, Salva read a paper on 'Galvanism and its application to Telegraphy' before the Academy of Sciences at Barcelona, in which he described a number of experiments which he had made in telegraphing over a line some 310 metres in length. ... A few years later he applied the then recent discovery of the Voltaic pile to the same purpose, the liberation of bubbles of gas by the decomposition of water at the receiving station being the method adopted for indicating the passage of the signals. A telegraph of a very similar character was devised by Sömmering, and described in a paper communicated by the inventor to the Munich Academy of Sciences in 1809. Sömmering used a set of thirty-five wires corresponding to the twenty-five letters of the German alphabet and the ten numerals. ... Oersted's discovery of the action of the electric current upon a suspended magnetic needle provided a new and much more hopeful method of applying the electric current to telegraphy. The great French astronomer Laplace appears to have been the first to suggest this application of Oersted's discovery, and he was followed shortly afterwards by Ampere, who in the year 1820 read a paper before the Paris Academy of Sciences." G. W. De Tunzelmann, Electricity in Modern Life, chapter 9. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1786-1800. Discoveries of Galvani and Volta. "The fundamental experiment which led to the discovery of dynamical electricity [1786] is due to Galvani, professor of anatomy in Bologna. Occupied with investigations on the influence of electricity on the nervous excitability of animals, and especially of the frog, he observed that when the lumbar nerves of a dead frog were connected with the crural muscles by a metallic circuit, the latter became briskly contracted. ... Galvani had some time before observed that the electricity of machines produced in dead frogs analogous contractions, and he attributed the phenomena first described to an electricity inherent in the animal. He assumed that this electricity, which he called vital fluid, passed from the nerves to the muscles by the metallic arc, and was thus the cause of contraction. This theory met with great support, especially among physiologists, but it was not without opponents. The most considerable of these was Alexander Volta, professor of physics in Pavia. Galvani's attention had been exclusively devoted to the nerves and muscles of the frog; Volta's was directed upon the connecting metal. Resting on the observation, which Galvani had also made, that the contraction is more energetic when the connecting arc is composed of two metals than where there is only one, Volta attributed to the metals the active part in the phenomenon of contraction. He assumed that the disengagement of electricity was due to their contact, and that the animal parts only officiated as conductors, and at the same time as a very sensitive electroscope. By means of the then recently invented electroscope, Volta devised several modes of showing the disengagement of electricity on the contact of metals. ... A memorable controversy arose between Galvani and Volta. The latter was led to give greater extension to his contact theory, and propounded the principle that when two heterogeneous substances are placed in contact, one of them always assumes the positive and the other the negative electrical condition. In this form Volta's theory obtained the assent of the principal philosophers of his time." A. Ganot, Elementary Treatise on Physics; translated by Atkinson, book 10, chapter 1. Volta's theory, however, though somewhat misleading, did not prevent his making what was probably the greatest step in the science up to this time, in the invention (about 1800) of the Voltaic pile, the first generator of electrical energy by chemical means, and the forerunner of the vast number of types of the modern "battery." {772} ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1810-1890. The Arc light. "The earliest instance of applying Electricity to the production of light was in 1810, by Sir Humphrey Davy, who found that when the points of two carbon rods whose other ends were connected by wires with a powerful primary battery were brought into contact, and then drawn a little way apart, the Electric current still continued to jump across the gap, forming what is now termed an Electric Arc. ... Various contrivances have been devised for automatically regulating the position of the two carbons. As early as 1847, a lamp was patented by Staite, in which the carbon rods were fed together by clockwork. ... Similar devices were produced by Foucault and others, but the first really successful arc lamp was Serrin's, patented in 1857, which has not only itself survived until the present day, but has had its main features reproduced in many other lamps. ... The Jablochkoff Candle (1876), in which the arc was formed between the ends of a pair of carbon rods placed side by side, and separated by a layer of insulating material, which slowly consumed as the carbons burnt down, did good service in accustoming the public to the new illuminant. Since then the inventions by Brush, Thomson-Houston, and others have done much to bring about its adoption for lighting large rooms, streets, and spaces out of doors." J. B. Verity, Electricity up to Date for Light, Power, and Traction, chapter 3. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1820-1825. Oersted, Ampere, and the discovery of the Electro-Magnet. "There is little chance ... that the discoverer of the magnet, or the discoverer and inventor of the magnetic needle, will ever be known by name, or that even the locality and date of the discovery will ever be determined [see COMPASS]. ... The magnet and magnetism received their first scientific treatment at the hands of Dr. Gilbert. During the two centuries succeeding the publication of his work, the science of magnetism was much cultivated. ... The development of the science went along parallel with that of the science of electricity ... although the latter was more fruitful in novel discoveries and unexpected applications than the former. It is not to be imagined that the many close resemblances of the two classes of phenomena were allowed to pass unnoticed. ... There was enough resemblance to suggest an intimate relation; and the connecting link was sought for by many eminent philosophers during the last years of the eighteenth and the earlier years of the present century." T. C. Mendenhall, A Century of Electricity, chapter 3. "The effect which an electric current, flowing in a wire, can exercise upon a neighbouring compass needle was discovered by Oersted in 1820. This first announcement of the possession of magnetic properties by an electric current was followed speedily by the researches of Ampere, Arago, Davy, and by the devices of several other experimenters, including De la Rive's floating battery and coil, Schweigger's multiplier, Cumming's galvanometer, Faraday's apparatus for rotation of a permanent magnet, Marsh's vibrating pendulum and Barlow's rotating star-wheel. But it was not until 1825 that the electromagnet was invented. Arago announced, on 25th September 1820, that a copper wire uniting the poles of a voltaic cell, and consequently traversed by an electric current, could attract iron filings to itself laterally. In the same communication he described how he had succeeded in communicating permanent magnetism to steel needles laid at right angles to the copper wire, and how, on showing this experiment to Ampere, the latter had suggested that the magnetizing action would be more intense if for the straight copper wire there were substituted one wrapped in a helix, in the centre of which the steel needle might be placed. This suggestion was at once carried out by the two philosophers. 'A copper wire wound in a helix was terminated by two rectilinear portions which could be adapted, at will, to the opposite poles of a powerful horizontal voltaic pile; a steel needle wrapped up in paper was introduced into the helix.' 'Now, after some minutes' sojourn in the helix, the steel needle had received a sufficiently strong dose of magnetism.' Arago then wound upon a little glass tube some short helices, each about 2¼ inches long, coiled alternately right-handedly and left-handedly, and found that on introducing into the glass tube a steel wire, he was able to produce 'consequent poles' at the places where the winding was reversed. Ampère, on October 23rd, 1820, read a memoir, claiming that these facts confirmed his theory of magnetic actions. Davy had, also, in 1820, surrounded with temporary coils of wire the steel needles upon which he was experimenting, and had shown that the flow of electricity around the coil could confer magnetic power upon the steel needles. ... The electromagnet, in the form which can first claim recognition ... was devised by William Sturgeon, and is described by him in the paper which he contributed to the Society of Arts in 1825." S. P. Thompson, The Electromagnet, chapter 1. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1825-1874. The Perfected Telegraph. "The European philosophers kept on groping. At the end of five years [after Oersted's discovery], one of them reached an obstacle which he made up his mind was so entirely insurmountable, that it rendered the electric telegraph an impossibility for all future time. This was [1825] Mr. Peter Barlow, fellow of the Royal Society, who had encountered the question whether the lengthening of the conducting wire would produce any effect in diminishing the energy of the current transmitted, and had undertaken to resolve the problem. ... 'I found [he said] such a considerable diminution with only 200 feet of wire as at once to convince me of the impracticability of the scheme.' ... The year following the announcement of Barlow's conclusions, a young graduate of the Albany (N. Y.) Academy--by name Joseph Henry--was appointed to the professorship of mathematics in that institution. Henry there began the series of scientific investigations which is now historic. ... Up to that time, electro-magnets had been made with a single coil of naked wire wound spirally around the core, with large intervals between the strands. The core was insulated as a whole: the wire was not insulated at all. Professor Schweigger, who had previously invented the multiplying galvanometer, had covered his wires with silk. Henry followed this idea, and, instead of a single coil of wire, used several. ... Barlow had said that the gentle current of the galvanic battery became so weakened, after traversing 200 feet of wire, that it was idle to consider the possibility of making it pass over even a mile of conductor and then affect a magnet. {773} Henry's reply was to point out that the trouble lay in the way Barlow's magnet was made. ... Make the magnet so that the diminished current will exercise its full effect. Instead of using one short coil, through which the current can easily slip, and do nothing, make a coil of many turns; that increases the magnetic field: make it of fine wire, and of higher resistance. And then, to prove the truth of his discovery, Henry put up the first electro-magnetic telegraph ever constructed. In the academy at Albany, in 1831, he suspended 1,060 feet of bell-wire, with a battery at one end and one of his magnets at the other; and he made the magnet attract and release its armature. The armature struck a bell, and so made the signals. Annihilating distance in this way was only one part of Henry's discovery. He had also found, that, to obtain the greatest dynamic effect close at hand, the battery should be composed of a very few cells of large surface, combined with a coil or coils of short coarse wire around the magnet,--conditions just the reverse of those necessary when the magnet was to be worked at a distance. Now, he argued, suppose the magnet with the coarse short coil, and the large-surface battery, be put at the receiving station; and the current coming over the line be used simply to make and break the circuit of that local battery. ... This is the principle of the telegraphic 'relay.' In 1835 Henry worked a telegraph-line in that way at Princeton. And thus the electro-magnetic telegraph was completely invented and demonstrated. There was nothing left to do, but to put up the posts, string the lines, and attach the instruments." P. Benjamin, The Age of Electricity, chapter 11. "At last we leave the territory of theory and experiment and come to that of practice. 'The merit of inventing the modern telegraph, and applying it on a large scale for public use, is, beyond all question, due to Professor Morse of the United States.' So writes Sir David Brewster, and the best authorities on the question substantially agree with him. ... Leaving for future consideration Morse's telegraph, which was not introduced until five years after the time when he was impressed with the notion of its feasibility, we may mention the telegraph of Gauss and Weber of Göttingen. In 1833, they erected a telegraphic wire between the Astronomical and Magnetical Observatory of Göttingen, and the Physical Cabinet of the University, for the purpose of carrying intelligence from the one locality to the other. To these great philosophers, however, rather the theory than the practice of Electric Telegraphy was indebted. Their apparatus was so improved as to be almost a new invention by Steinheil of Munich, who, in 1837 ... succeeded in sending a current from one end to the other of a wire 36,000 feet in length, the action of which caused two needles to vibrate from side to side, and strike a bell at each movement. To Steinheil the honour is due of having discovered the important and extraordinary fact that the earth might be used as a part of the circuit of an electric current. The introduction of the Electric Telegraph into England dates from the same year as that in which Steinheil's experiments took place. William Fothergill Cooke, a gentleman who held a commission in the Indian army, returned from India on leave of absence, and afterwards, because of his bad health, resigned his commission, and went to Heidelberg to study anatomy. In 1836, Professor Mönke, of Heidelberg, exhibited an electro-telegraphic experiment, 'in which electric currents, passing along a conducting wire, conveyed signals to a distant station by the deflexion of a magnetic needle enclosed in Schweigger's galvanometer or multiplier.' ... Cooke was so struck with this experiment, that he immediately resolved to apply it to purposes of higher utility than the illustration of a lecture. ... In a short time he produced two telegraphs of different construction. When his plans were completed, he came to England, and in February, 1837, having consulted Faraday and Dr. Roget on the construction of the electric-magnet employed in a part of his apparatus, the latter gentleman advised him to apply to Professor Wheatstone. ... The result of the meeting of Cooke and Wheatstone was that they resolved to unite their several discoveries; and in the month of May 1837, they took out their first patent 'for improvements in giving signals and sounding alarms in distant places by means of electric currents transmitted through metallic circuits.' ... By-and-by, as might probably have been anticipated, difficulties arose between Cooke and Wheatstone, as to whom the main credit of introducing the Electric Telegraph into England was due. Mr. Cooke accused Wheatstone (with a certain amount of justice, it should seem) of entirely ignoring his claims; and in doing so Mr. Cooke appears to have rather exaggerated his own services. Most will readily agree to the wise words of Mr. Sabine: "It was once a popular fallacy in England that Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone were the original inventors of the Electric Telegraph. The Electric Telegraph had, properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up as we have seen little by little." H. J. Nicoll, Great Movements, pages 424-429. "In the latter part of the year 1832, Samuel F. B. Morse, an American artist, while on a voyage from France to the United States, conceived the idea of an electromagnetic telegraph which should consist of the following parts, viz: A single circuit of conductors from some suitable generator of electricity; a system of signs, consisting of dots or points and spaces to represent numerals; a method of causing the electricity to mark or imprint these signs upon a strip or ribbon of paper by the mechanical action of an electro-magnet operating upon the paper by means of a lever, armed at one end with a pen or pencil; and a method of moving the paper ribbon at a uniform rate by means of clock-work to receive the characters. ... In the autumn of the year 1835 he constructed the first rude working model of his invention. ... The first public exhibition ... was on the 2d of September, 1837, on which occasion the marking was successfully effected through one third of a mile of wire. Immediately afterwards a recording instrument was constructed ... which was subsequently employed upon the first experimental line between Washington and Baltimore. This line was constructed in 1843-44 under an appropriation by Congress, and was completed by May of the latter year. On the 27th of that month the first despatch was transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. ... The experimental line was originally constructed with two wires, as Morse was not at that time acquainted with the discovery of Steinheil, that the earth might be used to complete the circuit. {774} Accident, however, soon demonstrated this fact. ... The following year (1845) telegraph lines began to be built over other routes. ... In October, 1851, a convention of deputies from the German States of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Würtemberg and Saxony, met at Vienna, for the purpose of establishing a common and uniform telegraphic system, under the name of the German-Austrian Telegraph Union. The various systems of telegraphy then in use were subjected to the most thorough examination and discussion. The convention decided with great unanimity that the Morse system was practically far superior to all others, and it was accordingly adopted. Prof. Steinheil, although himself ... the inventor of a telegraphic system, with a magnanimity that does him high honor, strongly urged upon the convention the adoption of the American system." ... The first of the printing telegraphs was patented in the United States by Royal E. House, in 1846. The Hughes printing telegraph, a remarkable piece of mechanism, was patented by David E. Hughes, of Kentucky, in 1855. A system known as the automatic method, in which the signals representing letters are transmitted over the line through the instrumentality of mechanism, was originated by Alexander Bain of Edinburgh, whose first patents were taken out in 1846. An autographic telegraph, transmitting despatches in the reproduced hand-writing of the sender, was brought out in 1850, by F. C. Bakewell, of London. The same result was afterwards accomplished with variations of method by Charles Cros, of Paris, Abbé Caseli, of Florence, and others; but none of these inventions has been extensively used. "The possibility of making use of a single wire for the simultaneous transmission of two or more communications seems to have first suggested itself to Moses G. Farmer, of Boston, about the year 1852." The problem was first solved with partial success by Dr. Gintl, on the line between Prague and Vienna, in 1853, but more perfectly by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, in the following year. Other inventors followed in the same field, among them Thomas A. Edison, of New Jersey, who was led by his experiments finally, in 1874 to devise a system "which was destined to furnish the basis of the first practical solution of the curious and interesting problem of quadruplex telegraphy." G. B. Prescott, Electricity and the Electric Telegraph, chapter 29-40. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1831-1872. Dynamo Electrical Machines, and Electric Motors. "The discovery of induction by Faraday, in 1831, gave rise to the construction of magneto-electro machines. The first of such machines that was ever made was probably a machine that never came into practical use, the description of which was given in a letter, signed 'P. M.,' and directed to Faraday, published in the Philosophical Magazine of 2nd August, 1832. We learn from this description that the essential parts of this machine were six horse-shoe magnets attached to a disc, which rotated in front of six coils of wire wound on bobbins." Sept. 3rd, 1832, Pixii constructed a machine in which a single horse-shoe magnet was made to rotate before two soft iron cores, wound with wire. In this machine he introduced the commutator, an essential element in all modern continuous current machines. "Almost at the same time, Ritchie, Saxton, and Clarke constructed similar machines. Clarke's is the best known, and is still popular in the small and portable 'medical' machines so commonly sold. ... A larger machine [was] constructed by Stöhrer (1843), on the same plan as Clarke's, but with six coils instead of two, and three compound magnets instead of one. ... The machines, constructed by Nollet (1849) and Shepard (1856) had still more magnets and coils. Shepard's machine was modified by Van Malderen, and was called the Alliance machine. ... Dr. Werner Siemens, while considering how the inducing effect of the magnet can be most thoroughly utilised, and how to arrange the coils in the most efficient manner for this purpose, was led in 1857 to devise the cylindrical armature. ... Sinsteden in 1851 pointed out that the current of the generator may itself be utilised to excite the magnetism of the field magnets. ... Wilde [in 1863] carried out this suggestion by using a small steel permanent magnet and larger electro magnets. ... The next great improvement of these machines arose from the discovery of what may be called the dynamo-electric principle. This principle may be stated as follows:--For the generation of currents by magneto-electric induction it is not necessary that the machine should be furnished with permanent magnets; the residual or temporary magnetism of soft iron quickly rotating is sufficient for the purpose. ... In 1867 the principle was clearly enunciated and used simultaneously, but independently, by Siemens and by Wheatstone. ... It was in February, 1867, that Dr. C. W. Siemens' classical paper on the conversion of dynamical into electrical energy without the aid of permanent magnetism was read before the Royal Society. Strangely enough, the discovery of the same principle was enunciated at the same meeting of the Society by Sir Charles Wheatstone. ... The starting-point of a great improvement in dynamo-electric machines, was the discovery by Pacinotti of the ring armature ... in 1860. ... Gramme, in 1871, modified the ring armature, and constructed the first machine, in which he made use of the Gramme ring and the dynamic principle. In 1872, Hefner-Alteneck, of the firm of Siemens and Halske, constructed a machine in which the Gramme ring is replaced by a drum armature, that is to say, by a cylinder round which wire is wound. ... Either the Pacinotti-Gramme ring armature, or the Hefner-Alteneck drum armature, is now adopted by nearly all constructors of dynamo-electric machines, the parts varying of course in minor details." The history of the dynamo since has been one of a gradual perfection of parts, resulting in the production of a great number of types, which can not here even be mentioned. A. R. von Urbanitzky, Electricity in the Service of Man, pages 227-242. S. P. Thompson, Dynamo Electrical Machines. ELECTRICITY: Electric Motors. It has been known for forty years that every form of electric motor which operated on the principle of mutual mechanical force between a magnet and a conducting wire or coil could also be made to act as a generator of induced currents by the reverse operation of producing the motion mechanically. And when, starting from the researches of Siemens, Wilde, Nollet, Holmes and Gramme, the modern forms of magneto-electric and dynamo-electric machines began to come into commercial use, it was discovered that any one of the modern machines designed as a generator of currents constituted a far more efficient electric motor than any of the previous forms which had been designed specially as motors. {775} It required no new discovery of the law of reversibility to enable the electrician to understand this; but to convince the world required actual experiment." A. Guillemin, Electricity and Magnetism, part 2, chapter 10, section 3. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1835-1889. The Electric Railway. "Thomas Davenport, a poor blacksmith of Brandon, Vt., constructed what might be termed the first electric railway. The invention was crude and of little practical value, but the idea was there. In 1835 he exhibited in Springfield, Massachusetts, a small model electric engine running upon a circular track, the circuit being furnished by primary batteries carried in the car. Three years later, Robert Davidson, of Aberdeen, Scotland, began his experiments in this direction. ... He constructed quite a powerful motor, which was mounted upon a truck. Forty battery cells, carried on the car, furnished power to propel the motor. The battery elements were composed of amalgamated zinc and iron plates, the exciting liquid being dilute sulphuric acid. This locomotive was run successfully on several steam railroads in Scotland, the speed attained was four miles an hour, but this machine was afterwards destroyed by some malicious person or persons while it was being taken home to Aberdeen. In 1849 Moses Farmer exhibited an electric engine which drew a small car containing two persons. In 1851, Dr. Charles Grafton Page, of Salem, Massachusetts, perfected an electric engine of considerable power. On April 29 of that year the engine was attached to a car and a trip was made from Washington to Bladensburg, over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad track. The highest speed attained was nineteen miles an hour. The electric power was furnished by one hundred Grove cells carried on the engine. ... The same year, Thomas Hall, of Boston, Mass., built a small electric locomotive called the Volta. The current was furnished by two Grove battery cells which were conducted to the rails, thence through the wheels of the locomotive to the motor. This was the first instance of the current being supplied to the motor on a locomotive from a stationary source. It was exhibited at the Charitable Mechanics fair by him in 1860. ... In 1879, Messrs. Siemen and Halske, of Berlin, constructed and operated an electric railway at the Industrial Exposition. A third rail placed in the centre of the two outer rails, supplied the current, which was taken up into the motor through a sliding contact under the locomotive. ... In 1880 Thomas A. Edison constructed an experimental road near his laboratory in Menlo Park, N. J. The power from the locomotive was transferred to the car by belts running to and from the shafts of each. The current was taken from and returned through the rails. Early in the year of 1881 the Lichterfelde, Germany, electric railway was put into operation. It is a third rail system and is still running at the present time. This may be said to be the first commercial electric railway constructed. In 1883 the Daft Electric Company equipped and operated quite successfully an electric system on the Saratoga & Mt. McGregor Railroad, at Saratoga, N. Y." During the next five or six years numerous electric railroads, more or less experimental, were built." October 31, 1888, the Council Bluffs & Omaha Railway and Bridge Company was first operated by electricity, they using the Thomson-Houston system. The same year the Thomson-Houston Co. equipped the Highland Division of the Lynn & Boston Horse Railway at Lynn, Massachusetts. Horse railways now began to be equipped with electricity all over the world, and especially in the United States. In February, 1889, the Thomson-Houston Electric Co. had equipped the line from Bowdoin Square, Boston, to Harvard Square, Cambridge, of the West End Railway with electricity and operated twenty cars, since which time it has increased its electrical apparatus, until now it is the largest electric railway line in the world." E. Trevert, Electric Railway Engineering, appendix A. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1841-1880. The Incandescent Electric Light. "While the arc lamp is well adapted for lighting large areas requiring a powerful, diffused light, similar to sunlight, and hence is suitable for outdoor illumination, and for workshops, stores, public buildings, and factories, especially those where colored fabrics are produced, its use in ordinary dwellings, or for a desk light in offices, is impractical, a softer, steadier, and more economical light being required. Various attempts to modify the arc-light by combining it with the incandescent were made in the earlier stages of electric lighting. ... The first strictly incandescent lamp was invented in 1841 by Frederick de Molyens of Cheltenham, England, and was constructed on the simple principle of the incandescence produced by the high resistance of a platinum wire to the passage of the electric current. In 1849 Petrie employed iridium for the same purpose, also alloys of iridium and platinum, and iridium and carbon. In 1845 J. W. Starr of Cincinnati first proposed the use of carbon, and, associated with King, his English agent, produced, through the financial aid of the philanthropist Peabody, an incandescent lamp. ... In all these early experiments, the battery was the source of electric supply; and the comparatively small current required for the incandescent light as compared with that required for the arc light, was an argument in favor of the former. ... Still, no substantial progress was made with either system till the invention of the dynamo resulted in the practical development of both systems, that of the incandescent following that of the arc. Among the first to make incandescent lighting a practical success were Sawyer and Man of New York, and Edison. For a long time, Edison experimented with platinum, using fine platinum wire coiled into a spiral, so as to concentrate the heat, and produce incandescence; the same current producing only a red heat when the wire, whether of platinum or other metal, is stretched out. ... Failing to obtain satisfactory results from platinum, Edison turned his attention to carbon, the superiority of which as an incandescent illuminant had already been demonstrated; but its rapid consumption, as shown by the Reynier and similar lamps, being unfavorable to its use as compared with the durability of platinum and iridium, the problem was, to secure the superior illumination of the carbon, and reduce or prevent its consumption. As this consumption was due chiefly to oxidation, it was questionable whether the superior illumination were not due to the same cause, and whether, if the carbon were inclosed in a glass globe, from which oxygen was eliminated, the same illumination could be obtained. {776} Another difficulty of equal magnitude was to obtain a sufficiently perfect vacuum, and maintain it in a hermetically sealed globe inclosing the carbon, and at the same time maintain electric connection with the generator through the glass by a metal conductor, subject to expansion and contraction different from that of the glass, by the change of temperature due to the passage of the electric current. Sawyer and Man attempted to solve this problem by filling the globe with nitrogen, thus preventing combustion by eliminating the oxygen. ... The results obtained by this method, which at one time attracted a great deal of attention, were not sufficiently satisfactory to become practical; and Edison and others gave their preference to the vacuum method, and sought to overcome the difficulties connected with it. The invention of the mercurial air pump, with its subsequent improvements, made it possible to obtain a sufficiently perfect vacuum, and the difficulty of introducing the current into the interior of the globe was overcome by imbedding a fine platinum wire in the glass, connecting the inclosed carbon with the external circuit; the expansion and contraction of the platinum not differing sufficiently from that of the glass, in so fine a wire, as to impair the vacuum. ... The carbons made by Edison under his first patent in 1879, were obtained from brown paper or cardboard. ... They were very fragile and short-lived, and consequently were soon abandoned. In 1880 he patented the process which, with some modifications, he still adheres to. In this process he uses filaments of bamboo, which are taken from the interior, fibrous portion of the plant." P. Atkinson, Elements of Electric Lighting, chapter 8. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1854-1866. The Atlantic Cable. "Cyrus Field ... established a company in America (in 1854), which ... obtained the right of landing cables in Newfoundland for fifty years. Soundings were made in 1856 between Ireland and Newfoundland, showing a maximum depth of 4,400 metres. Having succeeded after several attempts in laying a cable between Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, Field founded the Atlantic Telegraph Company in England. ... The length of the ... cable [used] was 4,000 kilometres, and was carried by the two ships Agamemnon and Niagara. The distance between the two stations on the coasts was 2,640 kilometres. The laying of the cable commenced on the 7th of August, 1857, at Valentia (Ireland); on the third day the cable broke at a depth of 3,660 metres, and the expedition had to return. A second expedition was sent in 1858; the two ships met each other half-way, the ends of the cable were joined, and the lowering of it commenced in both directions; 149 kilometres were thus lowered, when a fault in the cable was discovered. It had, therefore, to be brought on board again, and was broken during the process. After it had been repaired, and when 476 kilometres had been already laid, another fault was discovered, which caused another breakage; this time it was impossible to repair it, and the expedition was again unsuccessful, and had to return. In spite of the repeated failures, two ships were again sent out in the same year, and this time one end of the cable was landed in Ireland, and the other at Newfoundland. The length of the sunk cable was 3,745 kilometres. Field's first telegram was sent on the 7th of August, from America to Ireland. The insulation of the cable, however, became more defective every day, and failed altogether on the 1st of September. From the experience obtained, it was concluded that it was possible to lay a trans-Atlantic cable, and the company, after consulting a number of professional men, again set to work. ... The Great Eastern was employed in laying this cable. This ship, which is 211 metres long, 25 metres broad, and 16 metres in height, carried a crew of 500 men, of which 120 were electricians and engineers, 179 mechanics and stokers, and 115 sailors. The management of all affairs relating to the laying of the cable was entrusted to Canning. The coast cable was laid on the 21st of July, and the end of it was connected with the Atlantic cable on the 23rd. After 1,326 kilometres had been laid, a fault was discovered, an iron wire was found stuck right across the cable, and Canning considered the mischief to have been done with a malevolent purpose. On the 2nd of August, 2,196 kilometres of cable were sunk, when another fault was discovered. While the cable was being repaired it broke, and attempts to recover it at the time were all unsuccessful; in consequence of this the Great Eastern had to return without having completed the task. A new company, the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, was formed in 1866, and at once entrusted Messrs. Glass, Elliott and Company with the construction of a new cable of 3,000 kilometres. Different arrangements were made for the outer envelope of the cable, and the Great Eastern was once more equipped to give effect to the experiments which had just been made. The new expedition was not only to lay a new cable, but also to take up the end of the old one, and join it to a new piece, and thus obtain a second telegraph line. The sinking again commenced in Ireland on the 13th of July, 1866, and it was finished on the 27th. On the 4th of August, 1866, the Trans-Atlantic Telegraph Line was declared open." A. R. von Urbanitzky, Electricity in the Service of Man, pages 767-768. ELECTRICITY: A. D. 1876-1892. The Telephone. "The first and simplest of all magnetic telephones is the Bell Telephone." In "the first form of this instrument, constructed by Professor Graham Bell, in 1876 ... a harp of steel rods was attached to the poles of a permanent magnet. ... When we sing into a piano, certain of the strings of the instrument are set in vibration sympathetically by the action of the voice with different degrees of amplitude, and a sound, which is an approximation to the vowel uttered, is produced from the piano. Theory shows that, had the piano a much larger number of strings to the octave, the vowel sounds would be perfectly reproduced. It was upon this principle that Bell constructed his first telephone. The expense of constructing such an apparatus, however, deterred Bell from making the attempt, and he sought to simplify the apparatus before proceeding further in this direction. After many experiments with more, or less unsatisfactory results, he constructed the instrument ... which he exhibited at Philadelphia in 1876. In this apparatus, the transmitter was formed by an electro-magnet, through which a current flowed, and a membrane, made of gold-beater's skin, on which was placed as a sort of armature, a piece of soft iron, which thus vibrated in front of the electro-magnet when the membrane was thrown into sonorous vibration. {777} ... It is quite clear that when we speak into a Bell transmitter only a small fraction of the energy of the sonorous vibrations of the voice can be converted into electric currents, and that these currents must be extremely weak. Edison applied himself to discover some means by which he could increase the strength of these currents. Elisha Gray had proposed to use the variation of resistance of a fine platinum wire attached to a diaphragm dipping into water, and hoped that the variation of extent of surface in contact would so vary the strength of current as to reproduce sonorous vibrations; but there is no record of this experiment having been tried. Edison proposed to utilise the fact that the resistance of carbon varied under pressure. He had independently discovered this peculiarity of carbon, but it had been previously described by Du Moncel. ... The first carbon transmitter was constructed in 1878 by Edison." W. H. Preece, and J. Maier, The Telephone, chapter 3-4. In a pamphlet distributed at the Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893, entitled "Exhibit of the American Bell Telephone Co.," the following statements are made: "At the Centennial Exposition, in Philadelphia, in 1876, was given the first general public exhibition of the telephone by its inventor, Alexander Graham Bell. To-day, seventeen years later, more than half a million instruments are in daily use in the United States alone, six hundred million talks by telephone are held every year, and the human voice is carried over a distance of twelve hundred miles without loss of sound or syllable. The first use of the telephone for business purposes was over a single wire connecting only two telephones. At once the need of general inter-communication made itself felt. In the cities and larger towns exchanges were established and all the subscribers to any one exchange were enabled to talk to one another through a central office. Means were then devised to connect two or more exchanges by trunk lines, thus affording means of communication between all the subscribers of all the exchanges so connected. This work has been pushed forward until now have been gathered into what may be termed one great exchange all the important cities from Augusta on the east to Milwaukee on the west, and from Burlington and Buffalo on the north to Washington on the south, bringing more than one half the people of this country and a much larger proportion of the business interests, within talking distance of one another. ... The lines which connect Chicago with Boston, via New York, are of copper wire of extra size. It is about one sixth of an inch in diameter, and weighs 435 pounds to the mile. Hence each circuit contains 1,044,000 pounds of copper. ... In the United States there are over a quarter of a million exchange subscribers, and ... these make use of the telephone to carry on 600,000,000 conversations annually. There is hardly a city or town of 5,000 inhabitants that has not its Telephone Exchange, and these are so knit together by connecting lines that intercommunication is constant." The number of telephones in use in the United States, on the 20th of December in each year since the first introduction, is given as follows; 1877, 5,187; 1878, 17,567; 1879, 52,517; 1880, 123,380; 1881, 180,592; 1882, 237,728; 1883, 298,580; 1884, 325,574; 1885, 330,040; 1886, 353,518; 1887, 380,277; 1888, 411,511; 1889, 444,861; 1890, 483,790; 1891, 512,407; 1892, 552,720. ----------End: Electricity---------- ELEPHANT, Order of the. A Danish order of knighthood instituted in 1693 by King Christian V. ELEPHANTINE. See EGYPT: THE OLD EMPIRE AND THE MIDDLE EMPIRE. ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, The. Among the ancient Greeks, "the mysteries were a source of faith and hope to the initiated, as are the churches of modern times. Secret doctrines, regarded as holy, and to be kept with inviolable fidelity, were handed down in these brotherhoods, and no doubt were fondly believed to contain a saving grace by those who were admitted, amidst solemn and imposing rites, under the veil of midnight, to hear the tenets of the ancient faith, and the promises of blessings to come to those who, with sincerity of heart and pious trust, took the obligations upon them. The Eleusinian mysteries were the most imposing and venerable. Their origin extended back into a mythical antiquity, and they were among the few forms of Greek worship which were under the superintendence of hereditary priesthoods. Thirlwall thinks that 'they were the remains of a worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology and its attendant rites, grounded on a view of Nature less fanciful, more earnest, and better fitted to awaken both philosophical thought and religious feeling.' This conclusion is still further confirmed by the moral and religious tone of the poets,--such as Æschylus,--whose ideas on justice, sin and retribution are as solemn and elevated as those of a Hebrew prophet. The secrets, whatever they were, were never revealed in express terms; but Isocrates uses some remarkable expressions, when speaking of their importance to the condition of man. 'Those who are initiated,' says he 'entertain sweeter hopes of eternal life'; and how could this be the case, unless there were imparted at Eleusis the doctrine of eternal life, and some idea of its state and circumstances more compatible with an elevated conception of the Deity and of the human soul than the vague and shadowy images which haunted the popular mind. The Eleusinian communion embraced the most eminent men from every part of Greece,--statesmen, poets, philosophers, and generals; and when Greece became a part of the Roman Empire, the greatest minds of Rome drew instruction and consolation from its doctrines. The ceremonies of initiation--which took place every year in the early autumn, a beautiful season in Attica--were a splendid ritual, attracting visitors from every part of the world. The processions moving from Athens to Eleusis over the Sacred Way, sometimes numbered twenty or thirty thousand people, and the exciting scenes were well calculated to leave a durable impression on susceptible minds. ... The formula of the dismissal, after the initiation was over, consisted in the mysterious words 'konx,' 'ompax'; and this is the only Eleusinian secret that has illuminated the world from the recesses of the temple of Demeter and Persephone. But it is a striking illustration of the value attached to these rites and doctrines, that, in moments of extremest peril--as of impending shipwreck, or massacre by a victorious enemy,--men asked one another, 'Are you initiated?' as if this were the anchor of their hopes for another life." {778} C. C. Felton, Greece, Ancient and Modern, chapter 2, lecture 10. "The Eleusinian mysteries continued to be celebrated during the whole of the second half of the fourth century, till they were put an end to by the destruction of the temple at Eleusis, and by the devastation of Greece in the invasion of the Goths under Alaric in 395." See GOTHS: A. D. 395. W. Smith, Note to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, chapter 25. ALSO IN: R. Brown, The Great Dionysiak Myth, chapter 6, section. 2. J. J. I. von Dollinger, The Gentile and the Jew, book 3 (volume 1). See, also, ELEUSIS. ELEUSIS. Eleusis was originally one of the twelve confederate townships into which Attica was said to have been divided before the time of Theseus. It "was advantageously situated [about fourteen miles Northwest of Athens] on a height, at a small distance from the shore of an extensive bay, to which there is access only through narrow channels, at the two extremities of the island of Salamis: its position was important, as commanding the shortest and most level route by land from Athens to the Isthmus by the pass which leads at the foot of Mount Cerata along the shore to Megara. ... Eleusis was built at the eastern end of a low rocky hill, which lies parallel to the sea-shore. ... The eastern extremity of the hill was levelled artificially for the reception of the Hierum of Ceres and the other sacred buildings. Above these are the traces of an Acropolis. A triangular space of about 500 yards each side, lying between the hill and the shore, was occupied by the town of Eleusis. ... To those who approached Eleusis from Athens, the sacred buildings standing on the eastern extremity of the height concealed the greater part of the town, and on a nearer approach presented a succession of magnificent objects, well calculated to heighten the solemn grandeur of the ceremonies and the awe and reverence of the Mystæ in their initiation. ... In the plurality of enclosures, in the magnificence of the pylæ or gateways, in the absence of any general symmetry of plan, in the small auxiliary temples, we recognize a great resemblance between the sacred buildings of Eleusis and the Egyptian Hiera of Thebes and Philæ. And this resemblance is the more remarkable, as the Demeter of Attica was the Isis of Egypt. We cannot suppose, however, that the plan of all these buildings was even thought of when the worship of Ceres was established at Eleusis. They were the progressive creation of successive ages. ... Under the Roman Empire ... it was fashionable among the higher order of Romans to pass some time at Athens in the study of philosophy and to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries. Hence Eleusis became at that time one of the most frequented places in Greece; and perhaps it was never so populous as under the emperors of the first two centuries of our æra. During the two following centuries, its mysteries were the chief support of declining polytheism, and almost the only remaining bond of national union among the Greeks; but at length the destructive visit of the Goths in the year 396, the extinction of paganism and the ruin of maritime commerce, left Eleusis deprived of every source of prosperity, except those which are inseparable from its fertile plain, its noble bay, and its position on the road from Attica to the Isthmus. ... The village still preserves the ancient name, no further altered than is customary in Romaic conversions." W. M. Leake, Topography of Athens; volume 2: The Demi, section 5. ELGIN, Lord. The Indian administration of. See INDIA: A. D. 1862-1876. ELIS. Elis was an ancient Greek state, occupying the country on the western coast of Peloponnesus, adjoining Arcadia, and between Messenia at the south and Achaia on the north. It was noted for the fertility of its soil and the rich yield of its fisheries. But Elis owed greater importance to the inclusion within its territory of the sacred ground of Olympia, where the celebration of the most famous festival of Zeus came to be established at an early time. The Elians had acquired Olympia by conquest of the city and territory of Pisa, to which it originally belonged, and the presidency of the Olympic games was always disputed with them by the latter. Elis was the close ally of Sparta down to the year B. C. 421, when a bitter quarrel arose between them, and Elis suffered heavily in the wars which ensued. It was afterwards at war with the Arcadians, and joined the Ætolian League against the Achaian League. The city of Elis was one of the most splendid in Greece; but little now remains, even of ruins, to indicate its departed glories. See, also, OLYMPIC GAMES. ELISII, The. See LYGIANS. ELIZABETH, Czarina of Russia, A. D. 1741-1761.. Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, and the Thirty Years War. See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620; 1620; 1621-1623; 1631-1632, and 1648. Elizabeth, Queen of England, A. D. 1558-1603. Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain. See ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735; and SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725, and 1726-1731. ELIZABETH, N. J. The first settlement of. See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667. ELK HORN, OR PEA RIDGE, Battle of. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (JANUARY-MARCH: MISSOURI-ARKANSAS). ELKWATER, OR CHEAT SUMMIT, Battle of. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (AUGUST-DECEMBER: WEST VIRGINIA). ELLANDUM, Battle of. Decisive victory of Ecgberht, the West Saxon king, over the Mercians, A. D. 823. ELLEBRI, The. See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS. ELLENBOROUGH, Lord, The Indian administration of. See INDIA: A. D. 1836-1845. ELLSWORTH, Colonel, The death of. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (MAY: VIRGINIA). ELMET. A small kingdom of the Britons which was swallowed up in the English kingdom of Northumbria early in the seventh century. It answered, roughly speaking, to the present West-Riding of Yorkshire. ... Leeds "preserves the name of Loidis, by which Elmet seems also to have been known." J. R. Green, The Making of England, page 254. ELMIRA, N. Y. (then Newtown). General Sullivan's Battle with the Senecas. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1779 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER). ELSASS. See ALSACE. ELTEKEH, Battle of. A victory won by the Assyrian, Sennacherib, over the Egyptians, before the disaster befell his army which is related in 2 Kings xix. 35. Sennacherib's own account of the battle has been found among the Assyrian records. {779} A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light from the Ancient Monuments, chapter 6. ELUSATES, The. See AQUITAINE, TRIBES OF ANCIENT. ELVIRA, Battle of(1319). See SPAIN: A. D. 1273-1460. ELY, The Camp of Refuge at. See ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071. ELYMAIS. See ELAM. ELYMEIA. See MACEDONIA. ELYMIANS, The. See SICILY: EARLY INHABITANTS. ELYSIAN FIELDS. See CANARY ISLANDS. ELZEVIRS. See PRINTING: A. D. 1617-1680. EMANCIPATION, Catholic. See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829. EMANCIPATION, Compensated; Proposal of President Lincoln. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH). EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of. See GERMANY: A. D. 1807-1808. EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS, President Lincoln's. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (SEPTEMBER), and 1863 (JANUARY). EMANUEL, King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-1521. Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, A. D. 1553-1580. EMBARGO OF 1807, The American. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808. EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-1204. EMERITA AUGUSTA. A colony of Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern Merida, in Estremadura. C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note. EMESSA. Capture by the Arabs (A. D. 636). See MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 632-639. ÉMIGRÉS OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. See FRANCE: A. D. 1789-1791; 1791 (JULY-SEPTEMBER); and 1791-1792. EMITES, The. See JEWS: EARLY HEBREW HISTORY. EMMAUS, Battle of. Defeat of a Syrian army under Gorgias by Judas Maccabæus, B. C. 166. Josephus, Antiquity of the Jews, book 12, chapter 7. EMMENDINGEN, Battle of. See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (APRIL-OCTOBER). . EMMET INSURRECTION, The. See IRELAND: A. D. 1801-1803. EMPEROR. A title derived from the Roman title Imperator. See IMPERATOR. EMPORIA, The. See CARTHAGE, THE DOMINION OF. ENCOMIENDAS. See SLAVERY, MODERN: OF THE INDIANS; also, REPARTIMIENTOS. ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The. See IRELAND: A. D. 1843-1848. ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF 1864, The. See PAPACY: A. D. 1864. ENCYCLOPÆDISTS, The. "French literature had never been so brilliant as in the second half of the 18th century. Buffon, Diderot, D'Alembert, Rousseau, Duclos, Condillac, Helvetius, Holbach, Raynal, Condorcet, Mably, and many others adorned it, and the 'Encyclopædia,' which was begun in 1751 under the direction of Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual influence which has rarely been equalled. The name and idea were taken from a work published by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A noble preliminary discourse was written by D'Alembert; and all the best pens in France were enlisted in the enterprise, which was constantly encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire. Twice it was suppressed by authority, but the interdict was again raised. Popular favour now ran with an irresistible force in favour of the philosophers, and the work was brought to its conclusion in 1771." W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter. 20 (volume 5). ALSO IN: J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclopædists, chapter 5 (volume 1). E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the French Revolution, chapter 16. ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629, and after. ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876). See RUSSIA: A. D. 1859-1876. ENGADINE, The. See SWITZERLAND: A. D. 1396-1499. ENGEN, Battle of (1800). See FRANCE: A. D. 1800-1801 (MAY-FEBRUARY). ENGERN, Duchy of. See SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY. ENGHIEN, Duc d', The abduction and execution of. See FRANCE: 1804-1805. ENGLAND: Before the coming of the English. The Celtic and Roman periods. See BRITAIN. ENGLAND: A. D.449-547. The three tribes of the English conquest. The naming of the country. "It was by ... three tribes [from Northwestern Germany], the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes, that southern Britain was conquered and colonized in the fifth and sixth centuries, according to the most ancient testimony. ... Of the three, the Angli almost if not altogether pass away into the migration: the Jutes and the Saxons, although migrating in great numbers, had yet a great part to play in their own homes and in other regions besides Britain; the former at a later period in the train and under the name of the Danes; the latter in German history from the eighth century to the present day." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 3. "Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some tribes stand out conspicuously; Angles, Saxons, and Jutes stand out conspicuously above all. The Jutes led the way; from the Angles the land and the united nation took their name; the Saxons gave us the name by which our Celtic neighbours have ever known us. But there is no reason to confine the area from which our forefathers came to the space which we should mark on the map as the land of the continental Angles, Saxons, and Jutes. So great a migration is always likely to be swollen by some who are quite alien to the leading tribe; it is always certain to be swollen by many who are of stocks akin to the leading tribe, but who do not actually belong to it. {780} As we in Britain are those who stayed behind at the time of the second great migration of our people [to America], so I venture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on the continent of Europe as those who stayed behind at the time of the first great migration of our people. Our special hearth and cradle is doubtless to be found in the immediate marchland of Germany and Denmark, but the great common home of our people is to be looked on as stretching along the whole of that long coast where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue are spoken. If Angles and Saxons came, we know that Frisians came also, and with Frisians as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest sense Old England, as the land of one part of the kinsfolk who stayed behind. Through that whole region, from the special Anglian corner far into what is now northern France, the true tongue of the people, sometimes overshadowed by other tongues, is some dialect or other of that branch of the great Teutonic family which is essentially the same as our own speech. From Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one which differs from English only as the historical events of fourteen hundred years of separation have inevitably made the two tongues--two dialects, I should rather say, of the same tongue--to differ. From these lands we came as a people. That was our first historical migration. Our remote forefathers must have made endless earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan body, as parts of the smaller Teutonic body. But our voyage from the Low-Dutch mainland to the isle of Britain was our first migration as a people. ... Among the Teutonic tribes which settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the Saxons, stood out foremost. These two between them occupied by far the greater part of the land that was occupied at all. Each of these two gave its name to the united nation, but each gave it on different lips. The Saxons were the earlier invaders; they had more to do with the Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain, the whole of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain were known from the beginning, and are known still, as Saxons. But, as the various Teutonic settlements drew together, as they began to have common national feelings and to feel the need of a common national name, the name which they chose was not the same as that by which their Celtic neighbours called them. They did not call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony; they called themselves English and their land England. I used the word Saxony in all seriousness; it is a real name for the Teutonic part of Britain, and it is an older name than the name England. But it is a name used only from the outside by Celtic neighbours and enemies; it was not used from the inside by the Teutonic people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as they took to themselves a common name, that name was English; as soon as they gave their land a common name, that name was England. ... And this is the more remarkable, because the age when English was fully established as the name of the people, and England as the name of the land, was an age of Saxon supremacy, an age when a Saxon state held the headship of England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew step by step to be kings of the English and lords of the whole British island. In common use then, the men of the tenth and eleventh centuries knew themselves by no name but English." E. A. Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes (Lectures to American Audiences, pages 30-31, and 45-47). See ANGLES AND JUTES, and SAXONS. ENGLAND: A. D. 449-473. The Beginning of English history. The conquest of Kent by the Jutes. "In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors was drawn to the shores of Britain by the usual pledges of land and pay. The warriors were Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that projects from the shores of North-Germany, but who were probably akin to the race that was fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and settling in the Danish Isles. In three 'keels'--so ran the legend of their conquest--and with their Ealdormen, Hengest and Horsa, at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle of Thanet. With the landing of Hengest and his war-band English history begins. ... In the first years that followed after their landing, Jute and Briton fought side by side; and the Picts are said to have been scattered to the winds in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger came from the Jutes themselves. Their numbers probably grew fast as the news of their settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow pirates who were haunting the channel; and with the increase of their number must have grown the difficulty of supplying them with rations and pay. The dispute which rose over these questions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of war." The threat was soon executed; the forces of the Jutes were successfully transferred from their island camp to the main shore, and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site of modern Canterbury) was the first to experience their rage. "The town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the invaders pushed along the road to London. No obstacle seems to have checked their march from the Stour to the Medway." At Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford crossing the Medway, "the British leaders must have taken post for the defence of West Kent; but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells ... only that Horsa fell in the moment of victory; and the flint-heap of Horsted which has long preserved his name ... was held in aftertime to mark his grave. ... The victory of Aylesford was followed by a political change among the assailants, whose loose organization around ealdormen was exchanged for a stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, was no sooner won than 'Hengest took to the kingdom, and Ælle, his son.' ... The two kings pushed forward in 457 from the Medway to the conquest of West Kent." Another battle at the passage of the Cray was another victory for the invaders, and, "as the Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons' forsook Kent-land and fled with much fear to London.' ... If we trust British tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by a political revolution in Britain itself. ... It would seem ... that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt under Aurelius Ambrosianus, a descendant of the last Roman general who claimed the purple as an Emperor in Britain. ... The revolution revived for a while the energy of the province." The Jutes were driven back into the Isle of Thanet, and held there, apparently, for some years, with the help of the strong fortresses of Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet from the mainland. {781} "In 465 however the petty conflicts which had gone on along the shores of the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle. ... The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped'sfleet was so terrible that all hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems from this moment to have been abandoned; and ... no further struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement. It was only along its southern shore that the Britons now held their ground. ... A final victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark the moment when they reached the rich pastures which the Roman engineers had reclaimed from Romney Marsh. ... With this advance to the mouth of the Weald the work of Hengest's men came to an end; nor did the Jutes from this time play any important part in the attack on the island, for their after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wight and a few districts on the Southampton Water." J. R. Green, The Making of England, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 1, pages 67-101. ----------------------------------------------------------- A Logical Outline of English History IN WHICH THE DOMINANT CONDITIONS AND INFLUENCES ARE DISTINGUISHED BY COLORS. Physical or material (Orange). Ethnological (Dark Blue). Social and political (Green). Intellectual, moral and religious (Tan). Foreign (Black). 5th-7th centuries. Conquest: and settlement by Saxons, Angles and Jutes. The Island of Britain, separated from the Continent of Europe by a narrow breadth of sea, which makes friendly commerce easy and hostile invasion difficult;--its soil in great part excellent; its northern climate tempered by the humid warmth of the Gulf Stream; its conditions good for breeding a robust population, strongly fed upon corn and meats; holding, moreover, in store, for later times, a rare deposit of iron and coal, of tin and potter's clay, and other minerals of like utility; was occupied and possessed by tribes from Northern Europe, of the strongest race in history; already schooled in courage and trained to enterprise by generations of sea-faring adventure; uncorrupted by any mercenary contact with the decaying civilization of Rome, but ready for the knowledge it could give. 7th-11th Centuries. Fused, after much warring with one another and with their Danish kin, into a nation of Englishmen, they lived, for five centuries, an isolated life, until their insular and independent character had become deeply ingrained, and the primitive system of their social and political organization--their Townships, their Hundreds, their Shires, and the popular Moots, or courts, which determined and administered law in each--was rooted fast; though their king's power waxed and the nobles and the common people drew farther apart. A. D. 1066.--Norman conquest. Then they were mastered (in the last successful invasion that their Island ever knew) by another people, sprung from their own stock, but whose blood had been warmed and whose wit had been quickened by Latin and Gallic influences in the country of the Franks. 11th-18th Centuries. A new social and political system now formed itself in England as the result:--Feudalism modified by the essential democracy inherent in Old English institutions--producing a stout commonality to daunt the lords, and a strong aristocracy to curb the king. A. D. 1215. Magna Oharta. English royalty soon weakened itself yet more by ambitious strivings to maintain and extend a wide dominion over-sea, in Normandy and Aquitaine; and was helpless to resist when barons and commons came together to demand the signing and sealing of the Great Charter of Englishmen's rights. A. D. 1265-1295--Parliament. Out of the conditions which gave birth to Magna Charta there followed, soon, the development of the English Parliament as a representative legislature, from the Curia Regis of the Normans and the Witenagemot of the older English time. A. D. 1337-1453--The Hundred Years War. From the woful wars of a hundred years with France, which another century brought upon it, the nation, as a whole, suffered detriment, no doubt, and it progress was hindered in many ways; but politically the people took some good from the troubled times, because their kings were more dependant on them for money and men. A. D. 1453-1485--War of the Roses So likewise, they were bettered in some ways by the dreadful civil Wars of the Roses, which distracted England for thirty years. The nobles well-nigh perished, as an order, in these wars, while the middle-class people at large suffered relatively little, in numbers or estate. A. D. 1348--The Great Plague. But, previously, the great Plague, by diminishing the ranks of the laboring class, had raised wages and the standard of living among them, and had helped, with other causes, to multiply the small landowners and tenant farmers of the country, increasing the independent common class. A. D. 1327-1377--Immigration of Flemish weavers. Moreover, from the time of Edward III., who encouraged Flemish weavers to settle in England and to teach their art to his people, manufactures began to thrive; trade extended; towns grew in population and wealth, and the great burgher middle-class rose rapidly to importance and weight in the land. A. D. 1485-1603--Absolutism of the Tudors. But the commons of England were not prepared to make use of the actual power which they held. The nobles had led them in the past; it needed time to raise leaders among themselves, and time to organize their ranks. Hence no new checks on royalty were ready to replace those constraints which had been broken by the ruin of great houses in the civil wars, and the crown made haste to improve its opportunity for grasping power. There followed, under the Tudors, a period of absolutism greater than England had known before. 15th-16th Centuries--Renaissance. But this endured only for the time of the education of the commons, who conned the lessons of the age with eagerness and with understanding. The new learning from Greece and Rome; the new world knowledge that had been found in the West; the new ideas which the new art of the printer had furnished with wings,--all these had now gained their most fertile planting in the English mind. Their flower was the splendid literature of the Elizabethan age; they ripened fruits more substantial at a later day. The intellectual development of the nation tended first toward a religious independence, which produced two successive revolts--from Roman Papacy and from the Anglican Episcopacy that succeeded it. This religious new departure of the English people gave direction to a vast expansion of their energies in the outside world. It led them into war with Spain, and sent forth Drake and Hawkins and the Buccaneers, to train the sailors and pilot the merchant adventurers who would soon make England mistress of all the wide seas. A. D. 1608-1688. The Stuarts. The Civil War. The Commonwealth. The Revolution. Then, when these people, strong, prosperous and intelligent, had come to be ripely sufficient for self-government, there fell to them a foolish race of kings, who challenged them to a struggle which stripped royalty of all but its fictions, and established the sovereignty of England in its House of Commons for all time. 18th-19th Centuries. Science Invention. Material progress. Economic enlightenment. Unassailable in its island,--taking part in the great wars of the 18th century by its fleets and its subsidies chiefly,--busy with its undisturbed labors at home,--vigorous in its conquests, its settlements and its trade, which it pushed into the farthest parts of the earth,--creating wealth and protecting it from spoliation and from waste,--the English nation now became the industrial and economic school of the age. It produced the mechanical inventions which first opened a new era in the life of mankind on the material side; it attained to the splendid enlightenment of freedom in trade; it made England the workshop and mart of the world, and it spread her Empire to every Continent, through all the seas. --------- End: A Logical Outline of English History -------------------- ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527. The conquests of the Saxons. The founding of the kingdoms of Sussex, Wessex and Essex. "Whilst the Jutes were conquering Kent, their kindred took part in the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North Sea, filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now arrived--Ella and his three sons landed in the ancient territory of the Regni (A. D. 477-491). The Britons were defeated with great slaughter, and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and commons of the Weald. A general confederacy of the Kings and 'Tyrants' of the Britons was formed against the invaders, but fresh reinforcements arrived from Germany; the city of Andreades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabitants were slain and the buildings razed to the ground, so that its site is now entirely unknown. From this period the kingdom of the South Saxons was established in the person of Ella; and though ruling only over the narrow boundary of modern Sussex, he was accepted as the first of the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of the Isle of Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tidings received from Ella, another band of Saxons, commanded by Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed on the neighbouring shore, in the modern Hampshire (A. D. 494). At first they made but little progress. They were opposed by the Britons; but Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers celebrate for his nobility, and the British Bards extol for his beauty and valour, was slain (A. D. 501). The death of the Prince of the 'Woodlands of Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged, but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all opposition; and Cerdic, associating his son Cynric in the dignity, became the King of the territory which he gained. Under Cynric and his son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily, gained ground. The utmost extent of their dominions towards the North cannot be ascertained; but they had conquered the town of Bedford; and it was probably in consequence of their geographical position (A. D. 571) with respect to the countries of the Middle and East Saxons, that the name of the West Saxons was given to this colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon lost; but on the south of that river and of the Severn, the successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wessex, continued to extend their dominions. The Hampshire Avon, which retains its old Celtic name, signifying 'the Water,' seems at first to have been their boundary. Beyond this river, the British princes of Damnonia retained their power; and it was long before the country as far as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or border. About the time that the Saxons under Cerdic and Cynric were successfully warring against the Britons, another colony was seen to establish itself in the territory or kingdom which, from its geographical position, obtained the name of East Saxony; but whereof the district of the Middle Saxons, now Middlesex, formed a part. London, as you well know, is locally included in Middle Saxony; and the Kings of Essex, and the other sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country, certainly possessed many extensive rights of sovereignty in the city. Yet, I doubt much whether London was ever incorporated in any Anglo-Saxon kingdom; and I think we must view it as a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well able to resist the usurpations of the supreme Lord or Suzerain, Æscwin, or Ercenwine, who was the first King of the East Saxons (A. D. 527). His son Sleda was married to Ricola, daughter to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as the superior, or sovereign of the country; and though Sleda was King, yet Ethelbert joined in all important acts of government. This was the fate of Essex--it is styled a kingdom, but it never enjoyed any political independence, being always subject to the adjoining kings." F. Palgrave, History of the Anglo Saxons, chapter 2. "The descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cynric, in 495 at the mouth of the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Portchester in 501, can have been little more than plunder raids; and though in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the fall of 5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not till 514 that the tribe whose older name seems to have been that of the Gewissas, but who were to be more widely known as the West Saxons, actually landed with a view to definite conquest." J. R. Green, The Making of England, chapter 3. "The greatness of Sussex did not last beyond the days of its founder Ælle, the first Bretwalda. Whatever importance Essex, or its offshoot, Middlesex, could claim as containing the great city of London was of no long duration. We soon find London fluctuating between the condition of an independent commonwealth, and that of a dependency of the Mercian Kings. Very different was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom. Wessex has grown into England, England into Great Britain, Great Britain into the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom into the British Empire. Every prince who has ruled England before and since the eleventh century [the interval of the Danish kings, Harold, son of Godwine, and William the Conqueror, who were not of the West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the sixth century Wessex had risen to high importance among the English Kingdoms, though the days of its permanent supremacy were still far distant." E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 2, section 1. {782} ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633. The conquests of the Angles. The founding of their kingdoms. Northwards of the East Saxons was established the kingdom of the East Angles, in which a northern and a southern people (Northfolc and Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable that, even during the last period of the Roman sway, Germans were settled in this part of Britain; a supposition that gains probability from several old Saxon sagas, which have reference to East Anglia at a period anterior to the coming of Hengest and Horsa. The land of the Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides ... comprised the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of the East Angles Wehwa, or Wewa, or more commonly his son Uffa, or Wuffa, from whom his race derived their patronymic of Uffings or Wuffings, is recorded as the first king. The neighbouring states of Mercia originated in the marsh districts of the Lindisware, or inhabitants of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of Lincolnshire. With these were united the Middle Angles. This kingdom, divided by the Trent into a northern and a southern portion, gradually extended itself to the borders of Wales. Among the states which it comprised was the little Kingdom of the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later diocese of Worcester, or the counties of Gloucester, Worcester, and a part of Warwick. This state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore the common Germanic appellation of the land of the Magesætas. ... The country to the north of the Humber had suffered the most severely from the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It became at an early period separated into two British states, the names of which were retained for some centuries, viz.: Deifyr (Deora rice), afterwards Latinized into Deira, extending from the Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the Clyde. Here also the settlements of the German races appear anterior to the date given in the common accounts of the first Anglian kings of those territories, in the middle of the sixth century." J. M. Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe), volume 1, pages 112-117. The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumberland, Mercia and East Anglia, "are altogether much larger than the Saxon and Jutish Kingdoms, so you see very well why the land was called 'England' and not 'Saxony.' ... 'Saxonia' does occur now and then, and it was really an older name than 'Anglia,' but it soon went quite out of use. ... But some say that there were either Jutes or Saxons in the North of England as soon or sooner than there were in the south. If so, there is another reason why the Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us Saxons. It is not unlikely that there may have been some small Saxon or Jutish settlements there very early, but the great Kingdom of Northumberland was certainly founded by Ida the Angle in 547. It is more likely that there were some Teutonic settlements there before him, because the Chronicle does not say of him, as it does of Hengest, Cissa and Cerdie, that he came into the land by the sea, but only that he began the Kingdom. ... You must fully understand that in the old times Northumberland meant the whole land north of the Humber, reaching as far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part of what is now Scotland, including the city of Edinburgh, that is Eadwinesburh, the town of the great Northumbrian King Eadwine, or Edwin [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. ... You must not forget that Lothian and all that part of Scotland was part of Northumberland, and that the people there are really English, and still speak a tongue which has changed less from the Old-English than the tongue of any other part of England. And the real Scots, the Gael in the Highlands, call the Lowland Scots 'Saxons,' just as much as they do the people of England itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of the greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was often divided into two, Beornicia [or Bernicia] and Deira, the latter of which answered pretty nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the old Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English is Eoforwic, and which we cut short into York. York was for a long time the greatest town in the North of England. There are now many others much larger, but York is still the second city in England in rank, and it gives its chief magistrate the title of Lord-Mayor, as London· does, while in other cities and towns the chief magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any Lord. ... The great Anglian Kingdom of the Mercians, that is the Marchmen, the people on the march or frontier, seems to have been the youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually by joining together several smaller states, including all the land which the West Saxons had held north of the Thames. Such little tribes or states were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in Lincolnshire, the Magesætas in Herefordshire, the Hwiccas in Gloucester, Worcester, and part of Warwick, and several others. ... When Mercia was fully joined under one King, it made one of the greatest states in England, and some of the Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It was chiefly an Anglian Kingdom; and the Kings were of an Anglian stock, but among the Hwiccas and in some of the other shires in southern and western Mercia, most of the people must really have been Saxons." E. A. Freeman, Old English History for Children, chapter 5. ENGLAND: A. D. 560. Ethelbert becomes king of Kent. ENGLAND: A. D. 593. Ethelfrith becomes king of Northumbria. ENGLAND: A. D. 597-685. The conversion of the English. "It happened that certain Saxon children were to be sold for slaves at the marketplace at Rome; when Divine Providence, the great clock-keeper of time, ordering not only hours, but even instants (Luke ii. 38), to his own honour, so disposed it, that Gregory, afterwards first bishop of Rome of that name, was present to behold them. It grieved the good man to see the disproportion betwixt the faces and fortunes, the complexions and conditions, of these children, condemned to a servile estate, though carrying liberal looks, so legible was ingenuity in their faces. It added more to his sorrow, when he conceived that those youths were twice vassals, bought by their masters, and 'sold under sin' (Romans vii. 14), servants in their bodies, and slaves in their souls to Satan; which occasioned the good man to enter into further inquiry with the merchants (which set them to sale) what they were and whence they came, according to this ensuing dialogue: Gregory.--'Whence come these captives?' Merchants.--'From the isle of Britain.' Gregory.--'Are those islanders Christians?' Merchants.--'O no, they are Pagans.' Gregory.--'It is sad that the author of darkness should possess men with so bright faces. But what is the name of their particular nation?' Merchants.--'They are called Angli.' Gregory.--'And well may, for their "angel like faces"; it becometh such to be coheirs with the angels in heaven. In what province of England did they live?' Merchants.--'In Deira.' Gregory.--'They are to be freed de Dei irâ, "from the anger of God." How call ye the king of that country?' Merchants.--'Ella.' Gregory.--'Surely hallelujah ought to be sung in his kingdom to the praise of that God who created all things.' {783} Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the sound of every word to the time of spiritual goodness. Nor can his words be justly censured for levity, if we consider how, in that age, the elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the eloquence of prose in allusions. And which was the main, where his pleasant conceits did end, there his pious endeavours began; which did not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real effects, which ensued hereupon." Thomas Fuller, The Church History of Britain, book 2, section 1. In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop of Rome, or Pope, and six years later, still retaining the interest awakened in him by the captive English youth, he dispatched a band of missionary monks to Britain, with their prior, Augustine, at their head. Once they turned back, affrighted by what they heard of the ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the once-Christian island of Britain; but Gregory laid his commands upon them again, and in the spring of 597 they crossed the channel from Gaul, landing at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet, where the Jutish invaders had made their first landing, a century and a half before. They found Ethelbert of Kent, the most powerful of the English kings at that time, already prepared to receive them with tolerance, if not with favor, through the influence of a Christian wife--queen Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks. The conversion and baptism of the Kentish king and court, and the acceptance of the new faith by great numbers of the people followed quickly. In November of the same year, 597, Augustine returned to Gaul to receive his consecration as "Archbishop of the English," establishing the See of Canterbury, with the primacy which has remained in it to the present day. The East Saxons were the next to bow to the cross and in 604 a bishop, Mellitus, was sent to London. This ended Augustine's work--and Gregory's-- for both died that year. Then followed an interval of little progress in the work of the mission, and, afterwards, a reaction towards idolatry which threatened to destroy it altogether. But just at this time of discouragement in the south, a great triumph of Christianity was brought about in Northumberland, and due, there, as in Kent, to the influence of a Christian queen. Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles and his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D. 627, and a new center of missionary work was established at York. There, too, an appalling reverse occurred, when Northumberland was overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of Mercia; but the kingdom rallied, and the Christian Church was reestablished, not wholly, as before, under the patronage and rule of Rome, but partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic Church, which did not acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. In the end, however, the Roman forms of Christianity prevailed, throughout Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe. Before the end of the 7th century the religion of the Cross was established firmly in all parts of the island, the South Saxons being the latest to receive it. In the 8th century English missionaries were laboring zealously for the conversion of their Saxon and Frisian brethren on the continent. G. F. Maclear, Conversion of the West; The English. ALSO IN: The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical History. H. Soames, The Anglo Saxon Church. R. C. Jenkins, Canterbury, chapter 2. ENGLAND: End of the 6th. Century. The extent, the limits and the character of the Teutonic conquest. "Before the end of the 6th century the Teutonic dominion stretched from the German ocean to the Severn, and from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic tribes, whose exact ethnical relation to each other hardly concerns us. And the whole west side of the island, including not only modern Wales, but the great Kingdom of Strathclyde, stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, and the great peninsula containing Cornwall, Devon and part of Somerset, was still in the hands of independent Britons. The struggle had been a long and severe one, and the natives often retained possession of a defensible district long after the surrounding country had been occupied by the invaders. It is therefore probable that, at the end of the 6th century and even later, there may have been within the English frontier inaccessible points where detached bodies of Welshmen still retained a precarious independence. It is probable also that, within the same frontier, there still were Roman towns, tributary to the conquerors rather than occupied by them. But by the end of the 6th century even these exceptions must have been few. The work of the Conquest, as a whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic settlers had occupied by far the greater part of the territory which they ever were, in the strictest sense, to occupy. The complete supremacy of the island was yet to be won; but that was to be won, when it was won, by quite another process. The English Conquest of Britain differed in several important respects from every other settlement of a Teutonic people within the limits of the Roman Empire. ... Though the literal extirpation of a nation is an impossibility, there is every reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants of those parts of Britain which had become English at the 6th century had been as nearly extirpated as a nation can be. The women would doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death, emigration or personal slavery were the only alternatives which the vanquished found at the hands of our fathers. The nature of the small Celtic element in our language would of itself prove the fact. Nearly every Welsh word which has found its way into English expresses some small domestic matter, such as women and slaves would be concerned with." E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 2, section 1. "A glance at the map shows that the mass of the local nomenclature of England begins with the Teutonic conquest, while the mass of the local nomenclature of France is older than the Teutonic conquest. And, if we turn from the names on the map to the living speech of men, there is the most obvious, but the most important, of all facts, the fact that Englishmen speak English and that Frenchmen speak French. {784} That is to say, in Gaul the speech of Rome lived through the Teutonic conquest, while in Britain it perished in the Teutonic conquest, if it had not passed away before. And behind this is the fact, very much less obvious, a good deal less important, but still very important, that in Gaul tongues older than Latin live on only in corners as mere survivals, while in Britain, while Latin has utterly vanished, a tongue older than Latin still lives on as the common speech of an appreciable part of the land. Here then is the final result open to our own eyes. And it is a final result which could not have come to pass unless the Teutonic conquest of Britain had been something of an utterly different character from the Teutonic conquest of Gaul--unless the amount of change, of destruction, of havoc of every kind, above all, of slaughter and driving out of the existing inhabitants, had been far greater in Britain than it was in Gaul. If the Angles and Saxons in Britain had been only as the Goths in Spain, or even as the Franks in Gaul, it is inconceivable that the final results should have been so utterly different in the two cases. There is the plain fact: Gaul remained a Latin-speaking land; England became a Teutonic-speaking land. The obvious inference is that, while in Gaul the Teutonic conquest led to no general displacement of the inhabitants, in England it did lead to such a general displacement. In Gaul the Franks simply settled among a subject people, among whom they themselves were gradually merged; in Britain the Angles and Saxons slew or drove out the people whom they found in the land, and settled it again as a new people." E. A. Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes (Lectures to American Audiences), pages 114-115. "Almost to the close of the 6th century the English conquest of Britain was a sheer dispossession of the conquered people; and, so far as the English sword in these earlier days reached, Britain became England, a land, that is, not of Britons, but of Englishmen. There is no need to believe that the clearing of the land meant the general slaughter of the men who held it, or to account for such a slaughter by supposed differences between the temper of the English and those of other conquerors. ... The displacement of the conquered people was only made possible by their own stubborn resistance, and by the slow progress of the conquerors in the teeth of it. Slaughter no doubt there was on the battlefield or in towns like Anderida, whose long defence woke wrath in their besiegers. But for the most part the Britons cannot have been slaughtered; they were simply defeated and drew back." J. R. Green, The Making of England, chapter 4. The view strongly stated above, as to the completeness of the erasure of Romano-British society and influence from the whole of England except its southwestern and north· western counties, by the English conquest, is combated as strongly by another less prominent school of recent historians, represented, for example, by Mr. Henry C. Coote (The Romans of Britain) and by Mr. Charles H. Pearson, who says: "We know that fugitives from Britain settled largely during the 5th century in Armorica and in Ireland; and we may perhaps accept the legend of St. Ursula as proof that the flight, in some instances, was directed to the more civilized parts of the continent. But even the pious story of the 11,000 virgins is sober and credible by the side of that history which assumes that some million men and women were slaughtered or made homeless by a few ship-loads of conquerors." C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 1, chapter 6. The opinion maintained by Prof. Freeman and Mr. Green (and, no less, by Dr. Stubbs) is the now generally accepted one. ENGLAND: 7th Century. The so-called "Heptarchy." "The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regular system of seven Kingdoms, united under the regular supremacy of a single over-lord, is a dream which has passed away before the light of historic criticism. The English Kingdoms in Britain were ever fluctuating, alike in their number and in their relations to one another. The number of perfectly independent states was sometimes greater and sometimes less than the mystical seven, and, till the beginning of the ninth century, the whole nation did not admit the regular supremacy of any fixed and permanent over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that, among the mass of smaller and more obscure principalities, seven Kingdoms do stand out in a marked way, seven Kingdoms of which it is possible to recover something like a continuous history, seven Kingdoms which alone supplied candidates for the dominion of the whole island." These seven kingdoms were Kent, Sussex, Essex, Wessex, East Anglia, Northumberland and Mercia. E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 2. "After the territorial boundaries had become more settled, there appeared at the commencement of the seventh century seven or eight greater and smaller kingdoms. ... Historians have described this condition of things as the Heptarchy, disregarding the early disappearance of Sussex, and the existence of still smaller kingdoms. But this grouping was neither based upon equality, nor destined to last for any length of time. It was the common interest of these smaller states to withstand the sudden and often dangerous invasions of their western and northern neighbours; and, accordingly, whichever king was capable of successfully combating the common foe, acquired for the time a certain superior rank, which some historians denote by the title of Bretwalda. By this name can only be understood an actual and recognized temporary superiority; first ascribed to Ælla of Sussex, and later passing to Northumbria, until Wessex finally attains a real and lasting supremacy. It was geographical position which determined these relations of superiority. The small kingdoms in the west were shielded by the greater ones of Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, as though by crescent-shaped forelands--which in their struggles with the Welsh kingdoms, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, with Picts and Scots, were continually in a state of martial activity. And so the smaller western kingdoms followed the three warlike ones; and round these Anglo-Saxon history revolved for two whole centuries, until in Wessex we find a combination of most of the conditions which are necessary to the existence of a great State." R. Gneist, History of the English Constitution, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 617. Edwin becomes king of Northumbria. ENGLAND: A. D. 634. Oswald becomes king of Northumbria. ENGLAND: A. D. 655. Oswi becomes king of Northumbria. {785} ENGLAND: A. D. 670. Egfrith becomes king of Northumbria. ENGLAND: A. D. 688. Ini becomes king of the West Saxons. ENGLAND: A. D. 716. Ethelbald becomes king of Mercia. ENGLAND: A. D. 758. Offa becomes king of Mercia. ENGLAND: A. D. 794. Cenwulf becomes king of Mercia. ENGLAND: A. D. 800. Accession of the West Saxon king Ecgberht. ENGLAND: A. D. 800-836. The supremacy of Wessex. The first king of all the English. "And now I have come to the reign of Ecgberht, the great Bretwalda. He was an Ætheling of the blood of Cerdic, and he is said to have been the son of Ealhmund, and Ealhmund is said to have been an Under-king of Kent. For the old line of the Kings of Kent had come to an end and Kent was now sometimes under Wessex and sometimes under Mercia. ... When Beorhtric died in 800, he [Ecgberht] was chosen King of the West-Saxons. He reigned until 836, and in that time he brought all the English Kingdoms, and the greater part of Britain, more or less under his power. The southern part of the island, all Kent, Sussex, and Essex, he joined on to his own Kingdom, and set his sons or other Æthelings to reign over them as his Under-kings. But Northumberland, Mercia, and East-Anglia were not brought so completely under his power as this. Their Kings submitted to Ecgberht and acknowledged him as their over-lord, but they went on reigning in their own Kingdoms, and assembling their own Wise Men, just as they did before. They became what in after times was called his 'vassals,' what in English was called being his 'men.' ... Besides the English Kings, Ecgberht brought the Welsh, both in Wales and in Cornwall, more completely under his power. ... So King Ecgberht was Lord from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean, and from the English Channel to the Firth of Forth. So it is not wonderful if, in his charters, he not only called himself King of the West-Saxons or King of the West-Saxons and Kentishmen, but sometimes 'Rex Anglorum,' or 'King of the English.' But amidst all this glory there were signs of great evils at hand. The Danes came several times." E. A. Freeman, Old English History for Children, chapter 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 836. Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelwulf. ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880. Conquests and settlements of the Danes. The heroic struggle of Alfred the Great. The "Peace of Wedmore" and the "Danelaw." King Alfred's character and reign. "The Danish invasions of England ... fall naturally into three periods, each of which finds its parallel in the course of the English Conquest of Britain. ... We first find a period in which the object of the invaders seems to be simple plunder. They land, they harry the country, they fight, if need be, to secure their booty, but whether defeated or victorious, they equally return to their ships, and sail away with what they have gathered. This period includes the time from the first recorded invasion [A. D. 787] till the latter half of the ninth century. Next comes a time in which the object of the Northmen is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settlement. ... In the reign of Æthelwulf the son of Ecgberht it is recorded that the heathen men wintered for the first time in the Isle of Sheppey [A. D. 855]. This marks the transition from the first to the second period of their invasions. ... It was not however till about eleven years from this time that the settlement actually began. Meanwhile the sceptre of the West-Saxons passed from one hand to another. ... Four sons of Æthelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns of the first three among them [Ethelbald, A. D. 858, Ethelberht, 860, Ethelred, 866] make up together only thirteen years. In the reign of the third of these princes, Æthelred I., the second period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years were spent by the Northmen in ravaging and conquering the tributary Kingdoms. Northumberland, still disputed between rival Kings, fell an easy prey [867-869], and one or two puppet princes did not scruple to receive a tributary crown at the hands of the heathen invaders. They next entered Mercia [868], they seized Nottingham, and the West-Saxon King hastening to the relief of his vassals, was unable to dislodge them from that stronghold. East Anglia was completely conquered [866-870] and its King Eadmund died a martyr. At last the full storm of invasion burst upon Wessex itself [871]. King Æthelred, the first of a long line of West-Saxon hero-Kings, supported by his greater brother Ælfred [Alfred the Great] met the invaders in battle after battle with varied success. He died and Ælfred succeeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year [871], the last of Æthelred and the first of Ælfred, nine pitched battles, besides smaller engagements, were fought with the heathens on West-Saxon ground. At last peace was made; the Northmen retreated to London, within the Mercian frontier; Wessex was for the moment delivered, but the supremacy won by Ecgberht was lost. For a few years Wessex was subjected to nothing more than temporary incursions, but Northumberland and part of Mercia were systematically occupied by the Northmen, and the land was divided among them. ... At last the Northmen, now settled in a large part of the island, made a second attempt to add Wessex itself to their possessions [878]. For a moment the land seemed conquered; Ælfred himself lay hid in the marshes of Somersetshire; men might well deem that the Empire of Ecgberht and the Kingdom of Cerdic itself, had vanished for ever. But the strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen, the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver, carried his people safely through this most terrible of dangers. Within the same year the Dragon of Wessex was again victorious [at the battle of Ethandun, or Edington], and the Northmen were driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen, fifty years sooner, would have deemed the lowest depth of degradation, but which might now be fairly looked upon as honourable and even as triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wedmore the Northmen were to evacuate Wessex and the part of Mercia south-west of Watling-Street; they, or at least their chiefs, were to submit to baptism, and they were to receive the whole land beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-Saxon King. ... The exact boundary started from the Thames, along the Lea to its source, then right to Bedford and along the Ouse till it meets Watling-Street, then along Watling-Street to the Welsh border. See Ælfred and Guthrum's Peace,' Thorpe's 'Laws and Institutes,' i. 152. This frontier gives London to the English; but it seems that Ælfred did not obtain full possession of London till 886." {786} The territory thus conceded to the Danes, which included all northeastern England from the Thames to the Tyne, was thenceforth known by the name of the Danelagh or Danelaw, signifying the country subject to the law of the Danes. The Peace of Wedmore ended the second period of the Danish invasions. The third period, which was not opened until a full century later, embraced the actual conquest of the whole of England by a Danish king and its temporary annexation to the dominions of the Danish crown. E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 2, with foot-note. "Now that peace was restored, and the Danes driven out of his domains, it remained to be seen whether Alfred was as good a ruler as he was a soldier. ... What did he see? The towns, even London itself, pillaged, ruined, or burnt down; the monasteries destroyed; the people wild and lawless; ignorance, roughness, insecurity everywhere. It is almost incredible with what a brave heart he set himself to repair all this; how his great and noble aims were still before him; how hard he strove, and how much he achieved. First of all he seems to have sought for helpers. Like most clever men, he was good at reading characters. He soon saw who would be true, brave, wise friends, and he collected these around him. Some of them he fetched from over the sea, from France and Germany; our friend Asser from Wales, or, as he calls his country, 'Western Britain,' while England, he calls 'Saxony.' He says he first saw Alfred 'in a royal vill, which is called Dene' in Sussex. 'He received me with kindness, and asked me eagerly to devote myself to his service, and become his friend; to leave everything which I possessed on the left or western bank of the Severn, and promised that he would give more than an equivalent for it in his own dominions. I replied that I could not rashly and incautiously promise such things; for it seemed to be unjust that I should leave those sacred places in which I had been bred, educated, crowned, and ordained for the sake of any earthly honour and power, unless upon compulsion. Upon this he said, "If you cannot accede to this, at least let me have your service in part; spend six months of the year with me here, and the other six months in Britain."' And to this after a time Asser consented. What were the principal things he turned his mind to after providing for the defence of his kingdom, and collecting his friends and counsellors about him? Law--justice--religion--education. He collected and studied the old laws of his nation; what he thought good he kept, what he disapproved he left out. He added others, especially the ten commandments and some other parts of the law of Moses. Then he laid them all before his Witan, or wise men, and with their approval published them. ... The state of justice in England was dreadful at this time. ... Alfred's way of curing this was by inquiring into all cases, as far as he possibly could, himself; and Asser says he did this 'especially for the sake of the poor, to whose interest, day and night, he ever was wonderfully attentive; for in the whole kingdom the poor, besides him, had few or no protectors.' ... When he found that the judges had made mistakes through ignorance, he rebuked them, and told them they must either grow wiser or give up their posts; and soon the old earls and other judges, who had been unlearned from their cradles, began to study diligently. ... For reviving and spreading religion among his people he used the best means that he knew of; that is, he founded new monasteries and restored old ones, and did his utmost to get good bishops and clergymen. For his own part, he strove to practise in all ways what he taught to others. ... Education was in a still worse condition than everything else. ... All the schools had been broken up. Alfred says that when he began to reign there were very few clergymen south of the Humber who could even understand the Prayer-book. (That was still in Latin, as the Roman missionaries had brought it.) And south of the Thames he could not remember one. His first care was to get better-educated clergy and bishops. And next to get the laymen taught also. ... He founded monasteries and schools, and restored the old ones which had been ruined. He had a school in his court for his own children and the children of his nobles. But at the very outset a most serious difficulty confronted Alfred. Where was he to get books? At this time, as far as we can judge, there can only have been one, or at most two books in the English language--the long poem of Cædmon about the creation of the world, &c., and the poem of Beowulf about warriors and fiery dragons. There were many English ballads and songs, but whether these were written down I do not know. There was no book of history, not even English history; no book of geography, no religious books, no philosophy. Bede, who had written so many books, had written them all in Latin. ... So when they had a time of 'stillness' the king and his learned friends set to work and translated books into English; and Alfred, who was as modest and candid as he was wise, put into the preface of one of his translations that he hoped, if anyone knew Latin better than he did, that he would not blame him, for he could but do according to his ability. ... Beside all this, he had a great many other occupations. Asser, who often lived with him for months at a time, gives us an account of his busy life. Notwithstanding his infirmities and other hindrances, 'he continued to carry on the government, and to exercise hunting in all its branches; to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all kinds, his falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers; to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all the precedents of his ancestors, by his new mechanical inventions; to recite the Saxon books (Asser, being a Welshman, always calls the English, Saxon), and especially to learn by heart the Saxon poems, and to make others learn them; he never desisted from studying most diligently to the best of his ability; he attended the mass and other daily services of religion; he was frequent in psalm-singing and prayer; ... he bestowed alms and largesses on both natives and foreigners of all countries; he was affable and pleasant to all, and curiously eager to investigate things unknown.'" M. J. Guest, Lectures on the History of England, lecture 9. "It is no easy task for anyone who has been studying his [Alfred's] life and works to set reasonable bounds to their reverence, and enthusiasm, for the man. Lest the reader should think my estimate tainted with the proverbial weakness of biographers for their heroes; let them turn to the words in which the earliest, and the last of the English historians of that time, sum up the character of Alfred. {787} Florence of Worcester, writing in the century after his death, speaks of him as 'that famous, warlike, victorious king; the zealous protector of widows, scholars, orphans and the poor; skilled in the Saxon poets; affable and liberal to all; endowed with prudence, fortitude, justice, and temperance; most patient under the infirmity which he daily suffered; a most stern inquisitor in executing justice; vigilant and devoted in the service of God.' Mr. Freeman, in his 'History of the Norman Conquest,' has laid down the portrait in bold and lasting colours, in a passage as truthful as it is eloquent, which those who are familiar with it will be glad to meet again, while those who do not know it will be grateful to me for substituting for any poor words of my own. 'Alfred, the unwilling author of these great changes, is the most perfect character in history. He is a singular instance of a prince who has become a hero of romance, who, as such, has had countless imaginary exploits attributed to him, but to whose character romance has done no more than justice, and who appears in exactly the same light in history and in fable. No other man on record has ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both of the ruler and of the private man. In no other man on record were so many virtues disfigured by so little alloy. A saint without superstition, a scholar without ostentation, a warrior all whose wars were fought in the defence of his country, a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph--there is no other name in history to compare with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in the union of a more than monastic piety with the highest civil, military, and domestic virtues. Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast to the abject superstition of some other royal saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care of their own souls that they refused either to raise up heirs for their throne, or to strike a blow on behalf of their people. But even in Saint Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immediate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and unprofitable, however pious and glorious, undertakings. The true duties of the King of the French clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt or Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the great King of the West Saxons. With an inquiring spirit which took in the whole world, for purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Christian benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his first duty was to his own people. He forestalled our own age in sending expeditions to explore the Northern Ocean, and in sending alms to the distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neglected his duties, like some of his successors. The virtue of Alfred, like the virtue of Washington, consisted in no marvellous displays of super-human genius, but in the simple, straightforward discharge of the duty of the moment. But Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like Alfred, has no claim to Alfred's further characters of saint and scholar. William the Silent, too, has nothing to set against Alfred's literary merits; and in his career, glorious as it is, there is an element of intrigue and chicanery utterly alien to the noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washington. The same union of zeal for religion and learning with the highest gifts of the warrior and the statesman is found, on a wider field of action, in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot aspire to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all the splendour of conquest and legislation, we cannot be blind to an alloy of personal ambition, of personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own later princes, the great Edward alone can bear for a moment the comparison with his glorious ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard, even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do not see the same wonderful union of gifts and virtues which so seldom meet together; we cannot acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence, of occasional recklessness as to means; we cannot attribute to him the pure, simple, almost childlike disinterestedness which marks the character of Alfred.' Let Wordsworth, on behalf of the poets of England, complete the picture: 'Behold a pupil of the monkish gown, The pious Alfred, king to justice dear! Lord of the harp and liberating spear; Mirror of princes! Indigent renown Might range the starry ether for a crown Equal to his deserts, who, like the year, Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer, And awes like night, with mercy-tempered frown. Ease from this noble miser of his time No moment steals; pain narrows not his cares-- Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem, Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem, And Christian India, through her widespread clime, In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.'" Thomas Hughes, Alfred the Great, chapter 24. ALSO IN: R. Pauli, Life of Alfred the Great. Asser, Life of Alfred. See, also, NORMANS, and EDUCATION, MEDIÆVAL. ENGLAND: A. D. 901. Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Elder. ENGLAND: A. D. 925. Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelstan. ENGLAND: A. D. 938. The battle of Brunnaburgh. Alfred the Great, dying in 901, was succeeded by his son, Edward, and Edward, in turn, was followed, A. D. 925, by his son Athelstane, or Æthalsten. In the reign of Athelstane a great league was formed against him by the Northumbrian Danes with the Scots, with the Danes of Dublin and with the Britons of Strathclyde and Cumbria. Athelstane defeated the confederates in a mighty battle, celebrated in one of the finest of Old-English war-songs, and also in one of the Sagas of the Norse tongue, as the Battle of Brunnaburgh or Brunanburh, but the site of which is unknown. "Five Kings and seven northern Iarls or earls fell in the strife. ... Constantine the Scot fled to the north, mourning his fair-haired son, who perished in the slaughter. Anlaf [or Olaf, the leader of the Danes or Ostmen of Dublin], with a sad and scattered remnant of his forces, escaped to Ireland. ... The victory was so decisive that, during the remainder of the reign of Athelstane, no enemy dared to rise up against him; his supremacy was acknowledged without contest, and his glory extended to distant realms." F. Palgrave, History of the Anglo-Saxons, chapter 10. Mr. Skene is of opinion that the battle of Brunnaburgh was fought at Aldborough, near York. W. F. Skene, Celtic Scotland, volume 1, page 357. ENGLAND: A. D. 940. Accession of the West Saxon king Edmund. ENGLAND: A. D. 946. Accession of the West Saxon king Edred. ENGLAND: A. D. 955. Accession of the West Saxon king Edwig. {788} ENGLAND: A. D. 958. Accession of the West Saxon king Edgar. ENGLAND: A. D. 958. Completed union of the realm. Increase of kingly authority. Approach towards feudalism. Rise of the Witenagemot. Decline of the Freemen. "Before Alfred's son Edward died, the whole of Mercia was incorporated with his immediate dominions. The way in which the thing was done was more remarkable than the thing itself. Like the Romans, he made the fortified towns the means of upholding his power. But unlike the Romans, he did not garrison them with colonists from amongst his own immediate dependents. He filled them, as Henry the Fowler did afterwards in Saxony, with free townsmen, whose hearts were at one with their fellow countrymen around. Before he died in 924, the Danish chiefs in the land beyond the Humber had acknowledged his overlordship, and even the Celts of Wales and Scotland had given in their submission in some form which they were not likely to interpret too strictly. His son and his two grandsons, Athelstan, Edmund, and Edred completed the work, and when after the short and troubled interval of Edwy's rule in Wessex, Edgar united the undivided realm under his sway in 958, he had no internal enemies to suppress. He allowed the Celtic Scottish King who had succeeded to the inheritance of the Pictish race to possess the old Northumbrian land north of the Tweed, where they and their descendants learned the habits and speech of Englishmen. But he treated him and the other Celtic kings distinctly as his inferiors, though it was perhaps well for him that he did not attempt to impose upon them any very tangible tokens of his supremacy. The story of his being rowed by eight kings on the Dee is doubtless only a legend by which the peaceful king was glorified in the troubled times which followed. Such a struggle, so successfully conducted, could not fail to be accompanied by a vast increase of that kingly authority which had been on the growth from the time of its first establishment. The hereditary ealdormen, the representatives of the old kingly houses, had passed away. The old tribes, or--where their limitations had been obliterated by the tide of Danish conquest, as was the case in central and northern England--the new artificial divisions which had taken their place, were now known as shires, and the very name testified that they were regarded only as parts of a greater whole. The shire mote still continued the tradition of the old popular assemblies. At its head as presidents of its deliberations were the ealdorman and the bishop, each of them owing their appointment to the king, and it was summoned by the shire-reeve or sheriff, himself even more directly an officer of the king, whose business it was to see that all the royal dues were paid within the shire. In the more general concerns of the kingdom, the king consulted with his Witan, whose meetings were called the Witenagemot, a body, which, at least for all ordinary purposes, was composed not of any representatives of the shire-motes, but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose name, meaning 'servants', implied at least at first, that they either were or had at one time been in some way in the employment of the king. ... The necessities of war ... combined with the sluggishness of the mass of the population to favour the growth of a military force, which would leave the tillers of the soil to their own peaceful occupations. As the conditions which make a standing army possible on a large scale did not yet exist, such a force must be afforded by a special class, and that class must be composed of those who either had too much land to till themselves, or, having no land at all, were released from the bonds which tied the cultivator to the soil, in other words, it must be composed of a landed aristocracy and its dependents. In working out this change, England was only aiming at the results which similar conditions were producing on the Continent. But just as the homogeneousness of the population drew even the foreign element of the church into harmony with the established institutions, so it was with the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round the king, and it supplemented, instead of overthrowing, the old popular assemblies. Two classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had been marked out from their fellows at the time of the conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed from both, but he had some of the distinguishing marks of either. He was not like the gesith, a mere personal follower of the king. He did not, like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet his relation to the king was a close one, and he had a hold upon the land as firm as that of the older eorl. He may, perhaps, best be described as a gesith, who had acquired the position of an eorl without entirely throwing off his own characteristics. ... There can be little doubt that the change began in the practice of granting special estates in the folkland, or common undivided land, to special persons. At first this land was doubtless held to be the property of the tribe. [This is now questioned by Vinogradoff and others. See FOLCLAND.] ... When the king rose above the tribes, he granted it himself with the consent of his Witan. A large portion was granted to churches and monasteries. But a large portion went in privates estates, or book land, as it was called, from the book or charter which conveyed them to the king's own gesiths, or to members of his own family. The gesith thus ceased to be a mere member of the king's military household. He became a landowner as well, with special duties. to perform to the king. ... He had special jurisdiction given him over his tenants and serfs, exempting him and them from the authority of the hundred mote, though they still remained, except in very exceptional cases, under the authority of the shire mote. ... Even up to the Norman conquest this change was still going on. To the end, indeed, the old constitutional forms were not broken down. The hundred mote was not abandoned, where freemen enough remained to fill it. Even where all the land of a hundred had passed under the protection of a lord there was little outward change. ... There was thus no actual breach of continuity in the nation. The thegnhood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst the free classes. Nevertheless there was a danger of such a breach of continuity coming about. The freemen entered more and more largely into a condition of' dependence, and there was a great risk lest such a condition of dependence should become a condition of servitude. Here and there, by some extraordinary stroke of luck, a freeman might rise to be a thegn. But the condition of the class to which he belonged was deteriorating every day. {789} The downward progress to serfdom was too easy to take, and by large masses of the population it was already taken. Below the increasing numbers of the serfs was to be found the lower class of slaves, who were actually the property of their masters. The Witenagemot was in reality a select body of thegns, if the bishops, who held their lands in much the same way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather an inchoate House of Lords, than an inchoate Parliament, after our modern ideas. It was natural that a body of men which united a great part of the wealth with almost all the influence in the kingdom should be possessed of high constitutional powers. The Witenagemot elected the king, though as yet they always chose him out of the royal family, which was held to have sprung from the god Woden. There were even cases in which they deposed unworthy kings." S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, part 1, chapter 2, section 16-21. ENGLAND: A. D. 975. Accession of the West Saxon king Edward, called The Martyr. ENGLAND: A. D. 979. Accession of the West Saxon king Ethelred, called The Unready. ENGLAND: A. D. 979-1016. The Danish conquest. "Then [A. D. 979] commenced one of the longest and most disastrous reigns of the Saxon kings, with the accession of Ethelred II., justly styled Ethelred the Unready. The Northmen now renewed their plundering and conquering expeditions against England; while England had a worthless waverer for her ruler, and many of her chief men turned traitors to their king and country. Always a laggart in open war, Ethelred tried in 1001 the cowardly and foolish policy of buying off the enemies whom he dared not encounter. The tax called Dane-gelt was then levied to provide 'a tribute for the Danish men on account of the great terror which they caused.' To pay money thus was in effect to hire the enemy to renew the war. In 1002 Ethelred tried the still more weak and wicked measure of ridding himself of his enemies by treacherous massacre. Great numbers of Danes were now living in England, intermixed with the Anglo-Saxon population. Ethelred resolved to relieve himself from all real or supposed danger of these Scandinavian settlers taking part with their invading kinsmen, by sending secret orders throughout his dominions for the putting to death of every Dane, man, woman, and child, on St. Brice's Day, Nov. 13. This atrocious order was executed only in Southern England, that is, in the West-Saxon territories; but large numbers of the Danish race were murdered there while dwelling in full security among their Saxon neighbours. ... Among the victims was a royal Danish lady, named Gunhilde, who was sister of Sweyn, king of Denmark, and who had married and settled in England. ... The news of the massacre of St. Brice soon spread over the Continent, exciting the deepest indignation against the English and their king. Sweyn collected in Denmark a larger fleet and army than the north had ever before sent forth, and solemnly vowed to conquer England or perish in the attempt. He landed on the south coast of Devon, obtained possession of Exeter by the treachery of its governor, and then marched through western and southern England, marking every shire with fire, famine and slaughter; but he was unable to take London, which was defended against the repeated attacks of the Danes with strong courage and patriotism, such as seemed to have died out in the rest of Saxon England. In 1013, the wretched king Ethelred fled the realm and sought shelter in Normandy. Sweyn was acknowledged king in all the northern and western shires, but he died in 1014, while his vow of conquest was only partly accomplished. The English now sent for Ethelred back from Normandy, promising loyalty to him as their lawful king, 'provided he would rule over them more justly than he had done before.' Ethelred willingly promised amendment, and returned to reign amidst strife and misery for two years more. His implacable enemy, Sweyn, was indeed dead; but the Danish host which Sweyn had led thither was still in England, under the command of Sweyn's son, Canute [or Cnut], a prince equal in military prowess to his father, and far superior to him and to all other princes of the time in statesmanship and general ability. Ethelred died in 1016, while the war with Canute was yet raging. Ethelred's son, Edmund, surnamed Ironside, was chosen king by the great council then assembled in London, but great numbers of the Saxons made their submission to Canute. The remarkable personal valour of Edmund, strongly aided by the bravery of his faithful Londoners, maintained the war for nearly a year, when Canute agreed to a compromise, by which he and Edmund divided the land between them. But within a few months after this, the royal Ironside died by the hand of an assassin, and Canute obtained the whole realm of the English race. A Danish dynasty was now [A. D. 1016] established in England for three reigns." Sir E. S. Creasy, History of England, volume 1, chapter 5. ALSO IN: J. M. Lappenberg, England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, volume 2, pages 151-233. See, also, MALDEN, and ASSANDUN, BATTLES OF. ENGLAND: A. D. 1016. Accession and death of King Edmund Ironside. ENGLAND: A. D. 1016-1042. The Reign of the Danish kings. "Cnut's rule was not as terrible as might have been feared. He was perfectly unscrupulous in striking down the treacherous and mischievous chieftains who had made a trade of Ethelred's weakness and the country's divisions. But he was wise and strong enough to rule, not by increasing but by allaying those divisions. Resting his power upon his Scandinavian kingdoms beyond the sea, upon his Danish countrymen in England, and his Danish huscarles, or specially trained soldiers in his service, he was able, without even the appearance of weakness, to do what in him lay to bind Dane and Englishman together as common instruments of his power. Fidelity counted more with him than birth. To bring England itself into unity was beyond his power. The device which he hit upon was operative only in hands as strong as his own. There were to be four great earls, deriving their name from the Danish word jarl, centralizing the forces of government in Wessex, in Mercia, in East Anglia, and in Northumberland. With Cnut the four were officials of the highest class. They were there because he placed them there. They would cease to be there if he so willed it. But it could hardly be that it would always be so. Some day or another, unless a great catastrophe swept away Cnut and his creation, the earldoms would pass into territorial sovereignties and the divisions of England would be made evident openly." S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, chapter 2, section 25. {790} "He [Canute] ruled nominally at least, a larger European dominion than any English sovereign has ever done; and perhaps also a more homogeneous one. No potentate of the time came near him except the king of Germany, the emperor, with whom he was allied as an equal. The king of the Norwegians, the Danes, and a great part of the Swedes, was in a position to found a Scandinavian empire with Britain annexed. Canute's division of his dominions on his death-bed, showed that he saw this to be impossible; Norway, for a century and a half after his strong hand was removed, was broken up amongst an anarchical crew of piratic and blood-thirsty princes, nor could Denmark be regarded as likely to continue united with England. The English nation was too much divided and demoralised to retain hold on Scandinavia, even if the condition of the latter had allowed it. Hence Canute determined that during his life, as after his death, the nations should be governed on their own principles. ... The four nations of the English, Northumbrians, East Angles, Mercians and West Saxons, might, each under their own national leader, obey a sovereign who was strong enough to enforce peace amongst them. The great earldoms of Canute's reign were perhaps a nearer approach to a feudal division of England than anything which followed the Norman Conquest. ... And the extent to which this creation of the four earldoms affected the history of the next half-century cannot be exaggerated. The certain tendency of such an arrangement to become hereditary, and the certain tendency of the hereditary occupation of great fiefs ultimately to overwhelm the royal power, are well exemplified. ... The Norman Conquest restored national unity at a tremendous temporary sacrifice, just as the Danish Conquest in other ways, and by a reverse process, had helped to create it." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 7, section 77. Canute died in 1035. He was succeeded by his two sons, Harold Harefoot (1035-1040) and Harthacnute or Hardicanute (1040-1042), after which the Saxon line of kings was momentarily restored. E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1035. Accession of Harold, son of Cnut. ENGLAND: A. D. 1040. Accession of Harthacnut, or Hardicanute. ENGLAND: A. D. 1042. Accession of Edward the Confessor. ENGLAND: A. D. 1042-1066. The last of the Saxon kings. "The love which Canute had inspired by his wise and conciliatory rule was dissipated by the bad government of his sons, Harold and Harthacnut, who ruled in turn. After seven years of misgovernment, or rather anarchy, England, freed from the hated rule of Harthacnut by his death, returned to its old line of kings, and 'all folk chose Edward [surnamed The Confessor, son of Ethelred the Unready] to king,' as was his right by birth. Not that he was, according to our ideas, the direct heir, since Edward, the son of Edmund Ironside, still lived, an exile in Hungary. But the Saxons, by choosing Edward the Confessor, reasserted for the last time their right to elect that one of the hereditary line who was most available. With the reign of Edward the Confessor the Norman Conquest really began. We have seen the connection between England and Normandy begun by the marriage of Ethelred the Unready to Emma the daughter of Richard the Fearless, and cemented by the refuge offered to the English exiles in the court of the Norman duke. Edward had long found a home there in Canute's time. ... Brought up under Norman influence, Edward had contracted the ideas and sympathies of his adopted home. On his election to the English throne the French tongue became the language of the court, Norman favourites followed in his train, to be foisted into important offices of State and Church, and thus inaugurate that Normanizing policy which was to draw on the Norman Conquest. Had it not been for this, William would never have had any claim on England." The Normanizing policy of king Edward roused the opposition of a strong English party, headed by the great West-Saxon Earl Godwine, who had been lifted from an obscure origin to vast power in England by the favor of Canute, and whose son Harold held the earldom of East Anglia. "Edward, raised to the throne chiefly through the influence of Godwine, shortly married his daughter, and at first ruled England leaning on the assistance, and almost overshadowed by the power of the great earl." But Edward was Norman at heart and Godwine was thoroughly English; whence quarrels were not long in arising. They came to the crisis in 1051, by reason of a bloody tumult at Dover, provoked by insolent conduct on the part of a train of French visitors returning home from Edward's Court. Godwine was commanded to punish the townsmen of Dover and refused, whereupon the king obtained a sentence of outlawry, not only against the earl, but against his sons. "Godwine, obliged to bow before the united power of his enemies, was forced to fly the land. He went to Flanders with his son Swegen, while Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland, to be well received by Dermot king of Leinster. Many Englishmen seem to have followed him in his exile: for a year the foreign party was triumphant, and the first stage of the Norman Conquest complete. It was at this important crisis that William [Duke of Normandy], secure at home, visited his cousin Edward. ... Friendly relations we may be sure had existed between, the two cousins, and if, as is not improbable, William had begun to hope that he might some day succeed to the English throne, what more favourable opportunity for a visit could have been found? Edward had lost all hopes of ever having any children. ... William came, and it would seem, gained all that he desired. For this most probably was the date of some promise on Edward's part that William should succeed him on his death. The whole question is beset with difficulties. The Norman chroniclers alone mention it, and give no dates. Edward had no right to will away his crown, the disposition of which lay with King and Witenagemot (or assembly of Wise Men, the grandees of the country), and his last act was to reverse the promise, if ever given, in favour of Harold, Godwine's son. But were it not for some such promise, it is hard to see how William could have subsequently made the Normans and the world believe in the sacredness of his claim. ... William returned to Normandy; but next year Edward was forced to change his policy." Godwine and his sons returned to England, with a fleet at their backs; London declared for them, and the king submitted himself to a reconciliation. {791} "The party of Godwine once more ruled supreme, and no mention was made of the gift of the crown to William. Godwine, indeed, did not long survive his restoration, but dying the year after, 1053, left his son Harold Earl of the West-Saxons and the most important man in England." King Edward the Confessor lived yet thirteen years after this time, during which period Earl Harold grew continually in influence and conspicuous headship of the English party. In 1062 it was Harold's misfortune to be shipwrecked on the coast of France, and he was made captive. Duke William of Normandy intervened in his behalf and obtained his release; and "then, as the price of his assistance, extorted an oath from Harold, soon to be used against him. Harold, it is said, became his man, promised to marry 'William's daughter Adela, to place Dover at once in William's hands, and support his claim to the English throne on Edward's death. By a stratagem of William's the oath was unwittingly taken on holy relics, hidden by the duke under the table on which Harold laid hands to swear, whereby, according to the notions of those days, the oath was rendered more binding." But two years later, when Edward the Confessor died, the English Witenagemot chose Harold to be king, disregarding Edward's promise and Harold's oath to the Duke of Normandy. A. H. Johnson, The Normans in Europe, chapters 10 and 12. ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapters 7-10. J. R. Green, The Conquest of England, chapter 10. ENGLAND: A. D. 1066. Election and coronation of Harold. ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (spring and summer). Preparations of Duke William to enforce his claim to the English crown. On receiving news of Edward's death and of Harold's acceptance of the crown, Duke William of Normandy lost no time in demanding from Harold the performance of the engagements to which he had pledged himself by his oath. Harold answered that the oath had no binding effect, by reason of the compulsion under which it was given; that the crown of England was not his to bestow, and that, being the chosen king, he could not marry without consent of the Witenagemot. When the Duke had this reply he proceeded with vigor to secure from his own knights and barons the support he would need for the enforcing of his rights, as he deemed them, to the sovereignty of the English realm. A great parliament of the Norman barons was held at Lillebonne, for the consideration of the matter. "In this memorable meeting there was much diversity of opinion. The Duke could not command his vassals to cross the sea; their tenures did not compel them to such service. William could only request their aid to fight his battles in England: many refused to engage in this dangerous expedition, and great debates arose. ...William, who could not restore order, withdrew into another apartment: and, calling the barons to him one by one, he argued and reasoned with each of these sturdy vassals separately, and apart from the others. He exhausted all the arts of persuasion;--their present courtesy, he engaged, should not be tamed into a precedent, ... and the fertile fields of England should be the recompense of their fidelity. Upon this prospect of remuneration, the barons assented. ... William did not confine himself to his own subjects. All the adventurers and adventurous spirits of the neighbouring states were invited to join his standard. ... To all, such promises were made as should best incite them to the enterprise--lands,--liveries,--money,--according to their rank and degree; and the port of St. Pierre-sur-Dive was appointed as the place where all the forces should assemble. William had discovered four most valid reasons for the prosecution of his offensive warfare against a neighbouring people:--the bequest made by his cousin;--the perjury of Harold;--the expulsion of the Normans, at the instigation, as he alleged, of Godwin;--and, lastly, the massacre of the Danes by Ethelred on St. Brice's Day. The alleged perjury of Harold enabled William to obtain the sanction of the Papal See. Alexander, the Roman Pontiff, allowed, nay, even urged him to punish the crime, provided England, when conquered, should be held as the fief of St. Peter. ... Hildebrand, Archdeacon of the Church of Rome, afterwards the celebrated Pope Gregory VII., greatly assisted by the support which he gave to the decree. As a visible token of protection, the Pope transmitted to William the consecrated banner, the Gonfanon of St. Peter, and a precious ring, in which a relic of the chief of the Apostles was enclosed." Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, volume 3, pages 300-303. "William convinced, or seemed to convince, all men out of England and Scandinavia that his claim to the English crown was just and holy, and that it was a good work to help him to assert it in arms. ... William himself doubtless thought his own claim the better; he deluded himself as he deluded others. But we are more concerned with William as a statesman; and if it be statesmanship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends may be, if it be statesmanship to make men believe the worse cause is the better, then no man ever showed higher statesmanship than William showed in his great pleading before all Western Christendom. ... Others had claimed crowns; none had taken such pains to convince all mankind that the claim was a good one. Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one side a great advance." E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror, chapter 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (September). The invasion of Tostig and Harold Hardrada and their overthrow at Stamford Bridge. "Harold [the English king], as one of his misfortunes, had to face two powerful armies, in distant parts of the kingdom, almost at the same time. Rumours concerning the intentions and preparations of the Duke of Normandy soon reached England. During the greater part of the summer, Harold, at the head of a large naval and military force, had been on the watch along the English coast. But months passed away and no enemy became visible. William, it was said, had been apprised of the measures which had been taken to meet him. ... Many supposed that, on various grounds, the enterprise had been abandoned. Provisions also, for so great an army, became scarce. The men began to disperse; and Harold, disbanding the remainder, returned to London. But the news now came that Harold Hardrada, king of Norway, had landed in the north, and was ravaging the country in conjunction with Tostig, Harold's elder brother. This event came from one of those domestic feuds which did so much at this juncture to weaken the power of the English. {792} Tostig had exercised his authority in Northumbria [as earl] in the most arbitrary manner, and had perpetrated atrocious crimes in furtherance of his objects. The result was an amount of disaffection which seems to have put it out of the power of his friends to sustain him. He had married a daughter of Baldwin, count of Flanders, and so became brother-in-law to the duke of Normandy. His brother Harold, as he affirmed, had not done a brother's part towards him, and he was more disposed, in consequence, to side with the Norman than with the Saxon in the approaching struggle. The army with which he now appeared consisted mostly of Norwegians and Flemings, and their avowed object was to divide not less than half the kingdom between them. ... [The young Mercian earls Edwin and Morcar] summoned their forces ... to repel the invasion under Tostig. Before Harold could reach the north, they hazarded an engagement at a place named Fulford, on the Ouse, not far from Bishopstoke. Their measures, however, were not wisely taken. They were defeated with great loss. The invaders seem to have regarded this victory as deciding the fate of that part of the kingdom. They obtained hostages at York, and then moved to Stamford Bridge, where they began the work of dividing the northern parts of England between them. But in the midst of these proceedings clouds of dust were seen in the distance. The first thought was, that the multitude which seemed to be approaching must be friends. But the illusion was soon at an end. The dust raised was by the march of an army of West Saxons under the command of Harold." R. Vaughan, Revolutions of English History, book 3, chapter 1. "Of the details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we have no authentic record. We have indeed a glorious description [in the Heimskringla of Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the highest spirit of the warlike poetry of the North; but it is a description which, when critically examined, proves to be hardly more worthy of belief than a battle-piece in the Iliad. ... At least we know that the long struggle of that day was crowned by complete victory on the side of England. The leaders of the invading host lay each man ready for all that England had to give him, his seven feet of English ground. There Harold of Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings, yielded up that fiery soul which had braved death in so many forms and in so many lands. ... There Tostig, the son of Godwine, an exile and a traitor, ended, in crime and sorrow a life which had begun with promises not less bright than that of his royal brother. ... The whole strength of the Northern army was broken; a few only escaped by flight, and found means to reach the ships at Riccall." E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 14, section. 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1066 (October). The Norman invasion and battle of Senlac or Hastings. The battle of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, September 25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, on the Thursday, September 28, William of Normandy landed his more formidable army of invasion at Pevensey, on the extreme southeastern coast. The news of William's landing reached Harold, at York, on the following Sunday, it is thought, and his victorious but worn and wasted army was led instantly back, by forced marches, over the route it had traversed no longer than the week before. Waiting at London a few days for fresh musters to join him, the English king set out from that city October 12, and arrived on the following day at a point seven miles from the camp which his antagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast country, by way of provoking attack. Harold felt himself driven by the devastation they committed to face the issue of battle without waiting for a stronger rally. "Advancing near enough to the coast to check William's ravages, he intrenched himself on the hill of Senlac, a low spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a position which covered London, and forced the Norman army to concentrate. With a host subsisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve, and no alternative was left to William but a decisive victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that leads from Hastings the Duke led his men in the dim dawn of an October morning to the mound of Telham. It was from this point, that the Normans saw the host of the English gathered thickly behind a rough trench and a stockade on the height of Senlac. Marshy ground covered their right. ... A general charge of the Norman foot opened the battle; in front rode the minstrel Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catching it again while he chanted the song of Roland. He was the first of the host who struck a blow, and he was the first to fall. The charge broke vainly on the stout stockade behind which the English warriors plied axe and javelin with fierce cries of 'Out, Out,' and the repulse of the Norman footmen was followed by the repulse of the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. ... His Breton troops, entangled in the marshy ground on his left, broke in disorder, and a cry arose, as the panic spread through the army, that the Duke was slain. 'I live,' shouted William as he tore off his helmet, 'and by God's help will conquer yet.' Maddened by repulse, the Duke spurred right at the standard; unhorsed, his terrible mace struck down Gyrth, the King's brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of Godwine's sons, beside him; again dismounted, a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an unmannerly rider who would not lend him his steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle he turned the flight he had arrested into the means of victory. Broken as the stockade was by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay, when William by a feint of flight drew a part of the English force from their post of vantage. Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned line, and was master of the central plateau, while French and Bretons made good their ascent on either flank. At three the hill seemed won, at six the fight still raged around the standard, where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at bay on the spot marked afterward by the high altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the Duke at last brought his archers to the front, and their arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses crowded around the King. As the sun went down, a shaft pierced Harold's right eye; he fell between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed with a desperate mélée over his corpse." J. R. Green, A Short History of the English People, chapter 2, section 4. ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 15, section 4. E. S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, chapter 8. Wace, Roman de Rou, translated by Sir A. Malet. {793} England: A. D. 1066-1071. The Finishing of the Norman Conquest. "It must be well understood that this great victory [of Senlac] did not make Duke William King nor put him in possession of the whole land. He still held only part of Sussex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom showed as yet no mind to submit to him. If England had had a leader left like Harold or Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many battles as Cnut had, and that with much less chance of winning in the end. For a large part of England fought willingly on Cnut's side, while William had no friends in England at all, except a few Norman settlers. William did not call himself King till he was regularly crowned more than two months later, and even then he had real possession only of about a third of the kingdom. It was more than three years before he had full possession of all. Still the great fight on Senlac none the less settled the fate of England. For after that fight William never met with any general resistance. ... During the year 1067 William made no further conquests; all western and northern England remained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part of the land which had really submitted. The next two years were the time in which all England was really conquered. The former part of 1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that year gave him central and northern England as far as Yorkshire, the extreme north and northwest being still unsubdued. The attempt to win Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two revolts at York. Later in the year all the north and west was again in arms, and the Danish fleet [of King Swegen, in league with the English patriots] came. But the revolts were put down one by one, and the great winter campaign of 1069-1070 conquered the still unsubdued parts, ending with the taking of Chester. Early in 1070 the whole land was for the first time in Williams's possession; there was no more fighting, and he was able to give his mind to the more peaceful part of his schemes, what we may call the conquest of the native Church by the appointment of foreign bishops. But in the summer of 1070 began the revolt of the Fenland, and the defence of Ely, which lasted till the autumn of 1071. After that William was full King everywhere without dispute. There was no more national resistance; there was no revolt of any large part of the country. ... The conquest of the land, as far as fighting goes, was now finished." E. A. Freeman, Short History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 8, section 9; chapter 10, section 16. ENGLAND: A. D. 1067-1087. The spoils of the Conquest. "The Norman army ... remained concentrated around London [in the winter of 1067], and upon the southern and eastern coasts nearest Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded territory now almost solely occupied them. Commissioners went over the whole extent of country in which the army had left garrisons; they took an exact inventory of property of every kind, public and private, carefully registering every particular. ... A close inquiry was made into the names of all the English partisans of Harold, who had either died in battle, or survived the defeat, or by involuntary delays had been prevented from joining the royal standard. All the property of these three classes of men, lands, revenues, furniture, houses, were confiscated; the children of the first class were declared forever disinherited; the second class, were, in like manner, wholly dispossessed of their estates and property of every kind, and, says one of the Norman writers, were only too grateful for being allowed to retain their lives. Lastly, those who had not taken up arms were also despoiled of all they possessed, for having had the intention of taking up arms; but, by special grace, they were allowed to entertain the hope that after many long years of obedience and devotion to the foreign power, not they, indeed, but their sons, might perhaps obtain from their new masters some portion of their paternal heritage. Such was the law of the conquest, according to the unsuspected testimony of a man nearly contemporary with and of the race of the conquerors [Richard Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in the 12th century]. The immense product of this universal spoliation became the pay of those adventurers of every nation who had enrolled under the banner of the duke of Normandy. ... Some received their pay in money, others had stipulated that they should have a Saxon wife, and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave them in marriage noble dames, great heiresses, whose husbands had fallen in the battle. One, only, among the knights who had accompanied the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the conquered. His name was Guilbert Fitz-Richard: he said that he had accompanied his lord to England because such was his duty, but that stolen goods had no attraction for him." A. Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, book 4. "Though many confiscations took place, in order to gratify the Norman army, yet the mass of property was left in the hands of its former possessors. Offices of high trust were bestowed upon Englishmen, even upon those whose family renown might have raised the most aspiring thoughts. But, partly through the insolence and injustice of William's Norman vassals, partly through the suspiciousness natural to a man conscious of having overturned the national government, his yoke soon became more heavy. The English were oppressed; they rebelled, were subdued, and oppressed again. ... An extensive spoliation of property accompanied these revolutions. It appears by the great national survey of Domesday Book, completed near the close of the Conqueror's reign, that the tenants in capite of the crown were generally foreigners. ... But inferior freeholders were much less disturbed in their estates than the higher. ... The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in presenting us with a complete analysis of Domesday Book, afford an opportunity, by his list of mesne tenants at the time of the survey, to form some approximation to the relative numbers of English and foreigners holding manors under the immediate vassals of the crown. ... Though I will not now affirm or deny that they were a majority, they [the English] form a large proportion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis. ... {794} This might induce us to suspect that, great as the spoliation must appear in modern times, and almost completely as the nation was excluded from civil power in the commonwealth, there is some exaggeration in the language of those writers who represent them as universal reduced to a state of penury and servitude. And this suspicion may be in some degree just. Yet those writers, and especial the most English in feeling of them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by the language of contemporary authorities." H. Hallam, The Middle Ages. chapter 8, part 2. "By right of conquest William claimed nothing. He had come to take his crown, and he had unluckily met with some opposition in taking it. The crown-lands of King Edward passed of course to his successor. As for the lands of other men, in William's theory all was forfeited to the crown. The lawful heir had been driven to seek his kingdom in arms; no Englishman had helped him; many Englishmen had fought against him. All then were directly or indirectly traitors. The King might lawfully deal with the lands of all as his own. ... After the general redemption of lands, gradually carried out as William's power advanced, no general blow was dealt at Englishmen as such. ... Though the land had never seen so great a confiscation, or one so largely for the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing new in the thing itself. ... Confiscation of land was the every-day punishment for various public and private crimes. ... Once granting the original wrong of his coming at all and bringing a host of strangers with him, there is singularly little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror." E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror, pages 102-104, 126. "After each effort [of revolt] the royal hand was laid on more heavily: more and more land changed owners, and with the change of owners the title changed. The complicated and unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon tenures were exchanged for the simple and uniform feudal theory. ... It was not the change from alodial to feudal so much as from confusion to order. The actual amount of dispossession was no doubt greatest in the higher ranks." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 9, section. 95. ENGLAND: A. D. 1069-1071. The Camp of Refuge in the Fens. "In the northern part of Cambridgeshire there is a vast extent of low and marshy land, intersected in every direction by rivers. All the waters from the centre of England which do not flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty themselves into these marshes, which in the latter end of autumn overflow, cover the land, and are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion of this damp and swampy country was then, as now, called the Isle of Ely; another the Isle of Thorney, a third the Isle of Croyland. This district, almost a moving bog, impracticable for cavalry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more than once served as a refuge for the Saxons in the time of the Danish conquest; towards the close of the year 1069 it became the rendezvous of several bands of patriots from various quarters, assembling against the Normans. Former chieftains, now dispossessed of their lands, successively repaired hither with their clients, some by land, others by water, by the mouths of the rivers. They here constructed entrenchments of earth and wood, and established an extensive armed station, which took the name of the Camp of Refuge. The foreigners at first hesitated to attack them amidst their rushes and willows, and thus gave them time to transmit messages in every direction, at home and abroad, to the friends of old England. Become powerful, they undertook a partisan war by land and by sea, or, as the conquerors called it, robbery and piracy." A. Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans, book 4. "Against the new tyranny the free men of the Danelagh and of Northumbria rose. If Edward the descendant of Cerdic had been little to them, William the descendant of Rollo was still less. ... So they rose, and fought; too late, it may be, and without unity or purpose; and they were worsted by an enemy who had both unity and purpose; whom superstition, greed, and feudal discipline kept together, at least in England, in one compact body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates. And theirs was a land worth fighting for--a good land and large: from Humber mouth inland to the Trent and merry Sherwood, across to Chester and the Dee, round by Leicester and the five burghs of the Danes; eastward again to Huntingdon and Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an old Roman town); and then northward again into the wide fens, the land of the Girvii, where the great central plateau of England slides into the sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhaustible, because ever-growing to this day. Into those fens, as into a natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish noblemen crowded down instinctively from the inland to make their last stand against the French. ... Most gallant of them all, and their leader in the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward the Wake, Lord of Bourne and ancestor of that family of Wake, the arms of whom appear on the cover of this book." C. Kingsley, Hereward the Wake, Prelude. The defence of the Camp of Refuge was maintained until October, 1071, when the stronghold is said to have been betrayed by the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the disturbance of their peace. But Hereward did not submit. He made his escape and various accounts are given of his subsequent career and his fate. E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 20, section 1. ALSO IN: C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, first series, chapter 8. ENGLAND: A. D. 1085-1086. The Domesday Survey and Domesday Book. "The distinctive characteristic of the Norman kings [of England] was their exceeding greed, and the administrative system was so directed as to insure the exaction of the highest possible imposts. From this bent originated the great registration that William [the Conqueror] caused to be taken of all lands, whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the census of the entire population. The respective registers were preserved in the Cathedral of Winchester, and by the Norman were designated 'Ie grand rôle,' 'Ie rôle royal,' 'Ie rôle de Winchester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the Book of the Last Judgment,' 'Doomesdaege Boc,' 'Doomsday Book.'" E. Fischel, The English Constitution, chapter 1. For a different statement see the following: "The recently attempted invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed the king with the desirability of· an accurate knowledge of his resources, military and fiscal, both of which were based upon the land. The survey was completed in the remarkably short space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each shire the commissioners made their inquiries by the oaths of the sheriffs, the barons and their Norman retainers, the parish priests, the reeves and six ceorls of each township. {795} The result of their labours was a minute description of all the lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the four northern counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Durham, and part of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates the tenants-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, villeins, and serfs, describes the nature and obligations of the tenures, the value in the time of King Eadward, at the conquest, and at the date of the survey, and, which gives the key to the whole inquiry, informs the king whether any advance in the valuation could be made. ... The returns were transmitted to Winchester, digested, and recorded in two volumes which have descended to posterity under the name of Domesday Book. The name itself is probably derived from Domus Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the cathedral at Winchester in which the survey was at first deposited." T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 2. "Of the motives which induced the Conqueror and his council to undertake the Survey we have very little reliable information, and much that has been written on the subject savours more of a deduction from the result than of a knowledge of the immediate facts. We have the statement from the Chartulary of St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appointment of the Commissioners by the king himself to make the Survey. We have also the heading of the 'Inquisitio Eliensis' which purports to give, and probably does truly give, the items of the articles of inquiry, which sets forth as follows: I. What is the manor called? II. Who held it in the time of King Edward? III. Who now holds it? IV. How many hides? V. What teams are there in demesne? VI. What teams of the men? VII. What villans? VIII. What cottagers? IX. What bondmen? X. What freemen and what sokemen? XI. What woods? XII. What meadow? XIII. What pastures? XIV. What mills? XV. What fisheries? XVI. What is added or taken away? XVII. What the whole was worth together, and what now? XVIII. How much each freeman or sokeman had or has? All this to be estimated three times, viz. in the time of King Edward, and when King William gave it, and how it is now, and if more can be had for it than has been had. This document is, I think, the best evidence we have of the form of the inquiry, and it tallies strictly with the form of the various returns as we now have them. ... An external evidence failing, we are driven back to the Record itself for evidence of the Conqueror's intention in framing it, and anyone who carefully studies it will be driven to the inevitable conclusion that it was framed and designed in the spirit of perfect equity. Long before the Conquest, in the period between the death of Alfred and that of Edward the Confessor, the kingdom had been rapidly declining into a state of disorganisation and decay. The defence of the kingdom and the administration of justice and keeping of the peace could not be maintained by the king's revenues. The tax of Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first to buy peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain the defence of the kingdom, had more and more come to be levied unequally and unfairly. The Church had obtained enormous remissions of its liability, and its possessions were constantly increasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly collected and was burdensome upon the smaller holders and their poor tenants, while the nobility and the Church escaped with a small share in the burden. In short the tax had come to be collected upon an old and uncorrected assessment. It had probably dwindled in amount, and at last had been ultimately remitted by Edward the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion appears to have reigned throughout the realm. The Conqueror was threatened with foreign invasion, and pressed on all sides by complaints of unfair taxation on the part of his subjects. Estates had been divided and subdivided, and the incidence of the tax was unequal and unjust. He had to face the difficulties before him and to count the resources of his kingdom for its defence, and the means of doing so were not at hand. In this situation his masterly and order-loving Norman mind instituted this great inquiry, but ordered it to be taken (as I maintain the study of the Book will show) in the most public and open manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom equally and fairly upon all. The articles of his inquiry show that he was prepared to study the resources of his kingdom and consider the liability of his subjects from every possible point of view." Stuart Moore, On the Study of Domesday Book (Domesday Studies, volume 1). "Domesday Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and economical history of our country, a mine almost inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet unworked. Among national documents it is unique. There is nothing that approaches it in interest and value except the Landnámabók, which records the names of the original settlers in Iceland and the designations they bestowed upon the places where they settled, and tells us how the island was taken up and apportioned among them. Such a document for England, describing the way in which our forefathers divided the territory they conquered, and how 'they called the lands after their own names,' would indeed be priceless. But the Domesday Book does, indirectly, supply materials for the history of the English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it records not only how the lands of England were divided among the Norman host which conquered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names of the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the lands before the great battle which changed all the future history of England, and enables us to trace the extent of the transfer of the land from Englishmen to Normans; it shows how far the earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by its enumeration of the classes of population--freemen, sokemen, villans, cottiers, and slaves--it indicates the nature and extent of the earlier conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of England slaves were numerous, while in the East they were almost unknown, and hence we gather that in the districts first subdued the British population was exterminated or driven off, while in the West it was reduced to servitude." I. Taylor, Domesday Survivals (Domesday Studies, volume 1). ALSO IN: E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, chapters 21-22 and appendix A in volume 5. W. de Gray Birch, Domesday Book. F. W. Maitland, Domesday Book (Dict. Pol. Econ.). {796} ENGLAND: A. D. 1087-1135. The sons of the Conqueror and their reigns. William the Conqueror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine to his elder son Robert, the English crown to his stronger son, William, called Rufus, or the Red, and only a legacy of £5,000 to his third son, Henry, called Beauclerc, or The Scholar. The Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to persuade the Norman barons in England to displace William Rufus and plant Robert on the English throne. "The claim of Robert to succeed his father in England, was supported by the respected rights of primogeniture. But the Anglo-Saxon crown had always been elective. ... Primogeniture ... gave at that time no right to the crown of England, independent of the election of its parliamentary assembly. Having secured this title, the power of Rufus rested on the foundation most congenial with the feelings and institutions of the nation, and from their partiality received a popular support, which was soon experienced to be impregnable. The danger compelled the king to court his people by promises to diminish their grievances; which drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his banners, happy to have got a sovereign distinct from hated Normandy. The invasion of Robert, thus resisted by the English people, effected nothing but some temporary devastations. ... The state of Normandy, under Robert's administration, for some time furnished an ample field for his ambitious uncle's activity. It continued to exhibit a negligent government in its most vicious form. ... Odo's politics only facilitated the Reannexation of Normandy to England. But this event was not completed in William's reign. When he retorted the attempt of Robert, by an invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both countries found themselves endangered by the conflict, and combined their interest to persuade their respective sovereigns to a fraternal pacification. The most important article of their reconciliation provided, that if either should die without issue, the survivor should inherit his dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned; mutual courtesies ensued; and Robert visited England as his brother's guest. The mind of William the Red King, was cast in no common mould. It had all the greatness and the defects of the chivalric character, in its strong but rudest state. Impetuous, daring, original, magnanimous, and munificent; it was also harsh, tyrannical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers, loose in its moral principles, and disdaining consequences. ... While Lanfranc lived, William had a counsellor whom he respected, and whose good opinion he was careful to preserve. ... The death of Lanfranc removed the only man whose wisdom and influence could have meliorated the king's ardent, but undisciplined temper. It was his misfortune, on this event, to choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an unprincipled man. ... The minister advised the king, on the death of every prelate, to seize all his temporal possessions. ... The great revenues obtained from this violent innovation, tempted both the king and his minister to increase its productiveness, by deferring the nomination of every new prelate for an indefinite period. Thus he kept many bishoprics, and among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for some years; till a severe illness alarming his conscience, he suddenly appointed Anselm to the dignity; ... His disagreement with Anselm soon began. The prelate injudiciously began the battle by asking the king to restore, not only the possessions of his see, which were enjoyed by Lanfranc--a fair request--but also the lands which had before that time belonged to it; a demand that, after so many years alteration of property, could not be complied with without great disturbance of other persons. Anselm also exacted of the king that in all things which concerned the church, his counsels should be taken in preference to every other. ... Though Anselm, as a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to his age, yet his monastic and studious habits prevented him from having that social wisdom, that knowledge of human nature, that discreet use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild management of turbulent power, which might have enabled him to have exerted much of the influence of Lanfranc over the mind of his sovereign. ... Anselm, seeing the churches and abbeys oppressed in their property, by the royal orders, resolved to visit Rome, and to concert with the pope the measures most adapted to overawe the king. ... William threatened, that if he did go to Rome, he would seize all the possessions of the archbishopric. Anselm declared, that he would rather travel naked and on foot, than desist from his resolution; and he went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wallet. He was searched before his departure, that he might carry away no money, and was at last allowed to sail. But the king immediately executed his threat, and sequestered all his lands and property. This was about three years before the end of the reign. ... Anselm continued in Italy till William's death. The possession of Normandy was a leading object of William's ambition, and he gradually attained a preponderance in it. His first invasion compelled Robert to make some cessions; these were increased on his next attack: and when Robert determined to join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole of Normandy to William for three years, for 10,000 marks. He obtained the usual success of a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives were overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the invaders in their mountains. He marched an army against Malcolm, king of Scotland, to punish his incursions. Robert advised the Scottish king to conciliate William; Malcolm yielded to his counsel and accompanied Robert to the English court, but on his return, was treacherously attacked by Mowbray, the earl of Northumbria, and killed. William regretted the perfidious cruelty of the action. ... The government of William appears to have been beneficial, both to England and Normandy. To the church it was oppressive. ... He had scarcely reigned twelve years, when he fell by a violent death." He was hunting with a few attendants in the New Forest. "It happened that, his friends dispersing in pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble knight, whom he had brought out of France, and admitted to his table, and to whom he was much attached. As the sun was about to set, a stag passed before the king, who discharged an arrow at it. ... At the same moment, another stag crossing, Walter Tyrrel discharged an arrow at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft struck the king, and buried itself in his breast. He fell, without a word, upon the arrow, and expired on the spot. ... It seems to be a questionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel actually shot the king. That opinion was certainly the most prevalent at the time, both here and in France. ... {797} None of the authorities intimate a belief of a purposed assassination; and, therefore, it would be unjust now to impute it to anyone. ... Henry was hunting in a different part of the New Forest when Rufus fell. ... He left the body to the casual charity of the passing rustic, and rode precipitately to Winchester, to seize the royal treasure. ... He obtained the treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was on the following Sunday, the third day after William's death, elected king, and crowned. ... He began his reign by removing the unpopular agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He gratified the nation, by abolishing the oppressive exactions of the previous reign. He assured many benefits to the barons, and by a charter, signed on the day of his coronation, restored to the people their Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as amended by his father; a measure which ended the pecuniary oppressions of his brother, and which favoured the growing liberties of the nation. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's expanding intellect very early; had given him the best education which the age could supply. ... He became the most learned monarch of his day, and acquired and deserved the surname of Beauclerc, or fine scholar. No wars, no cares of state, could afterwards deprive him of his love of literature. The nation soon felt the impulse and the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual taste. He acceded at the age of 32, and gratified the nation by marrying and crowning Mathilda, daughter of the sister of Edgar Etheling by Malcolm the king of Scotland, who had been waylaid and killed." S. Turner, History of England during the Middle Ages, volume 1, chapters 5-6. The Norman lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of Normandy (who had returned from the Crusade) in his place. The quarrel went on till the battle of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was defeated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned for life. The duchy and the kingdom were again united. The war in Normandy led to a war with Louis king of France, who had espoused Robert's cause. It was ended by the battle of Brêmule, 1119, where the French suffered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all south Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh princes held out. Another expedition against them was preparing, when, in 1135, Henry fell ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and died. E. A. Freeman, The Reign of William Rufus and accession of Henry I. ALSO IN: Sir F. Palgrave, History of Normandy and England, volume 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1135-1154. The miserable reign of Stephen. Civil war, anarchy and wretchedness in England. The transition to hereditary monarchy. After the death of William the Conqueror, the English throne was occupied in succession by two of his sons, William II., or William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or Henry Beauclerk (1100-1135). The latter outlived his one legitimate son, and bequeathed the crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda, widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and now wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This latter marriage had been very unpopular, both in England and Normandy, and a strong party refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she was commonly called. This party maintained the superior claims of the family of Adela, daughter of William the Conqueror, who had married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice would have fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the eldest of Adela's sons; but his more enterprising younger brother Stephen supplanted him. Hastening to England, and winning the favour of the citizens of London, Stephen secured the royal treasure and persuaded a council of peers to elect him king. A most grievous civil war ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years, during which long period there was anarchy and great wretchedness in England. "The land was filled with castles, and the castles with armed banditti, who seem to have carried on their extortions under colour of the military commands bestowed by Stephen on every petty castellan. Often the very belfries of churches were fortified. On the poor lay the burden of building these strongholds; the rich suffered in their donjeons. Many were starved to death, and these were the happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled with reptiles, or hung up by the thumbs till they told where their treasures were concealed, or crippled in frames which did not suffer them to move, or held just resting on the ground by sharp iron collars round the neck. The Earl of Essex used to send out spies who begged from door to door, and then reported in what houses wealth was still left; the alms-givers were presently seized and imprisoned. The towns that could no longer pay the blackmail demanded from them were burned. ... Sometimes the peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the roads that led from a field of battle, and smote down the fugitives without any distinction of sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the very churches were burned and monks robbed. 'To till the ground was to plough the sea; the earth bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by such deeds, and men said openly that Christ slept, and his saints. Such things, and more than we can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins' (A. S. Chronicle). ... Many soldiers, sickened with the unnatural war, put on the white cross and sailed for a nobler battle-field in the East." As Matilda's son Henry--afterwards Henry II.--grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor gained strength and his party made head against the weak and incompetent Stephen. Finally, in 1153, peace was brought about under an agreement "that Stephen should wear the crown till his death, and Henry receive the homage of the lords and towns of the realm as heir apparent." Stephen died the next year and Henry came to the throne with little further dispute. C. H. Pearson, History of England During the Early and Middle Ages, chapter 28. "Stephen, as a king, was an admitted failure. I cannot, however, but view with suspicion the causes assigned to his failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That their criticisms had some foundation it would not be possible to deny. But in the first place, had he enjoyed better fortune, we should have heard less of his incapacity, and in the second, these writers, not enjoying the same stand-point as ourselves, were, I think, somewhat inclined to mistake effects for causes. ... His weakness throughout his reign ... was due to two causes, each supplementing the other. {798} These were--(1) the essentially unsatisfactory character of his position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that he should be king so long only as he gave satisfaction to those who had placed him on the throne; (2) the existence of a rival claim, hanging over him from the first, like the sword of Damocles, and affording a lever by which the malcontents could compel him to adhere to the original understanding, or even to submit to further demands. ... The position of his opponents throughout his reign would seem to have rested on two assumptions. The first, that a breach, on his part, of the 'contract' justified ipso facto revolt on theirs; the second, that their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any moment by performing the famous diffidatio. This essential feature of continental feudalism had been rigidly excluded by the Conqueror. He had taken advantage, as is well known, of his position as an English king, to extort an allegiance from his Norman followers more absolute than he could have claimed as their feudal lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that was due the introduction for a time of this pernicious principle into England. ... Passing now to the other point, the existence of a rival claim, we approach a subject of great interest, the theory of the succession to the English Crown at what may be termed the crisis of transition from the principle of election (within the royal house) to that of hereditary right according to feudal rules. For the right view on this subject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with his usual sound judgment, writes thus of the Norman period:--'The crown then continued to be elective. ... But whilst the elective principle was maintained in its fulness where it was necessary or possible to maintain it, it is quite certain that the right of inheritance, and inheritance as primogeniture, was recognized as coordinate. ... The measures taken by Henry I. for securing the crown to his own children, whilst they prove the acceptance of the hereditary principle, prove also the importance of strengthening it by the recognition of the elective theory.' Mr. Freeman, though writing with a strong bias in favour of the elective theory, is fully justified in his main argument, namely, that Stephen 'was no usurper in the sense in which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges, apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's offence, in the eyes of his contemporaries, lay in his breaking his solemn oath, and not in his supplanting a rightful heir. And he aptly suggests that the wretchedness of his reign may have hastened the growth of that new belief in the divine right of the heir to the throne, which first appears under Henry II., and in the pages of William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is concerned the case is clear enough. But we have also to consider the Empress. On what did she base her claim? I think that, as implied in Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not a single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as King Henry's daughter ('regis Henrici filia '), but she claimed it further because the succession had been assured to her by oath ('sibi juratum') as such. It is important to observe that the oath in question can in no way be regarded in the light of an election. ... The Empress and her partisans must have largely, to say the least, based their claim on her right to the throne as her father's heir, and ... she and they appealed to the oath as the admission and recognition of that right, rather than as partaking in any way whatever of the character of a free election. ... The sex of the Empress was the drawback to her claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little question that he would, as a matter of course, have succeeded his father at his death. Or again, had Henry II. been old enough to succeed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure, have done so. ... Broadly speaking, to sum up the evidence here collected, it tends to the belief that the obsolescence of the right of election to the English crown presents considerable analogy to that of canonical election in the case of English bishoprics. In both cases a free election degenerated into a mere assent to a choice already made. We see the process of change already in full operation when Henry I. endeavours to extort beforehand from the magnates their assent to his daughter's succession, and when they subsequently complain of this attempt to dictate to them on the subject. We catch sight of it again when his daughter bases her claim to the crown, not on any free election, but on her rights as her father's heir, confirmed by the above assent. We see it, lastly, when Stephen, though owing his crown to election, claims to rule by Divine right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that election to nothing more than a national 'assent' to his succession. Obviously, the whole question turned on whether the election was to be held first, or was to be a mere ratification of a choice already made. ... In comparing Stephen with his successor the difference between their circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for. At Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and financial oppression had rendered unpopular the power of the Crown, and had led to an impatience of official restraint which opened the path to a feudal reaction: at the accession of Henry, on the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled administration and of feudalism run mad had made all men eager for the advent of a strong king, and had prepared them to welcome the introduction of his centralizing administrative reforms. He anticipated the position of the house of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the Roses, and combined with it the advantages which Charles II. derived from the Puritan tyranny. Again, Stephen was hampered from the first by his weak position as a king on sufferance, whereas Henry came to his work unhampered by compact or concession. Lastly, Stephen was confronted throughout by a rival claimant, who formed a splendid rallying-point for all the discontent in his realm: but Henry reigned for as long as Stephen without a rival to trouble him; and when he found at length a rival in his own son, a claim far weaker than that which had threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a time to break his power as effectually as the followers of the Empress had broken that of Stephen. He may only, indeed, have owed his escape to that efficient administration which years of strength and safety had given him the time to construct. It in no way follows from these considerations that Henry was not superior to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself that Stephen's disadvantages were great, and that had he enjoyed better fortune, we might have heard less of his defects." J. H. Round, Geoffrey de Mandeville, chapter. 1. ALSO IN: Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapter 1. See, also, STANDARD, BATTLE OF THE (A. D. 1137). {799} ENGLAND: A. D. 1154-1189. Henry II., the first of the Angevin kings (Plantagenets) and his empire. Henry II., who came to the English throne on Stephen's death, was already, by the death of his father, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, the head of the great house of Anjou, in France. From his father he inherited Anjou, Touraine and Maine; through his mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I., he received the dukedom of Normandy as well as the kingdom of England; by marriage with Eleanor, of Aquitaine, or Guienne, he added to his empire the princely domain which included Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge, Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois, with claims of suzerainty over Auvergne and Toulouse. "Henry found himself at twenty-one ruler of dominions such as no king before him had ever dreamed of uniting. He was master of both sides of the English Channel, and by his alliance with his uncle, the Count of Flanders, he had command of the French coast from the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse would carry him to the shores of the Mediterranean. His subjects told with pride how 'his empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the Pyrenees'; there was no monarch save the Emperor himself who ruled over such vast domains. ... His aim [a few years Inter] seems to have been to rival in some sort the Empire of the West, and to reign as an over-king, with sub-kings of his various provinces, and England as one of them, around him. He was connected with all the great ruling houses. ... England was forced out of her old isolation; her interest in the world without was suddenly awakened. English scholars thronged the foreign universities; English chroniclers questioned travellers, scholars, ambassadors, as to what was passing abroad.' The influence of English learning and English statecraft made itself felt all over Europe. Never, perhaps, in all the history of England was there a time when Englishmen played so great a part abroad." The king who gathered this wide, incongruous empire under his sceptre, by mere circumstances of birth and marriage, proved strangely equal, in many respects, to its greatness. "He was a foreign king who never spoke the English tongue, who lived and moved for the most part in a foreign camp, surrounded with a motley host of Brabançons and hirelings. ... It was under the rule of a foreigner such as this, however, that the races of conquerors and conquered in England first learnt to feel that they were one. It was by his power that England, Scotland and Ireland were brought to some vague acknowledgement of a common suzerain lord, and the foundations laid of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. It was he who abolished feudalism as a system of government, and left it little more than a system of land tenure. It was he who defined the relations established between Church and State, and decreed that in England churchman as well as baron was to be held under the Common Law. ... His reforms established the judicial system whose main outlines have been preserved to our own day. It was through his 'Constitutions' and his 'Assizes' that it came to pass that over all the world the English-speaking races are governed by English and not by Roman law. It was by his genius for government that the servants of the royal household became transformed into Ministers of State. It was he who gave England a foreign policy which decided our continental relations for seven hundred years. The impress which the personality of Henry II. left upon his time meets us wherever we turn." Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second, chapters 1-2. Henry II. and his two sons, Richard I. (Cœur de Lion), and John, are distinguished, sometimes, as the Angevin kings, or kings of the House of Anjou, and sometimes as the Plantagenets, the latter name being derived from a boyish habit ascribed to Henry's father, Count Geoffrey, of "adorning his cap with a sprig of 'plantagenista,' the broom which in early summer makes the open country of Anjou and Maine a blaze of living gold." Richard retained and ruled the great realm of his father; but John lost most of his foreign inheritance, including Normandy, and became the unwilling benefactor of England by stripping her kings of alien interests and alien powers and bending their necks to Magna Charta. K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings. ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets. See, also, AQUITAINE (GUIENNE): A. D. 1137-1152; IRELAND: A. D. 1169-1175. ENGLAND: A. D. 1162-1170. Conflict of King and Church. The Constitutions of Clarendon. Murder of Archbishop Becket. "Archbishop Theobald was at first the King's chief favourite and adviser, but his health and his influence declining, Becket [the Archdeacon of Canterbury] was found apt for business as well as amusement, and gradually became intrusted with the exercise of all the powers of the crown. ... The exact time of his appointment as Chancellor has not been ascertained, the records of the transfer of the Great Seal not beginning till a subsequent reign, and old biographers being always quite careless about dates. But he certainly had this dignity soon after Henry's accession. ... Becket continued Chancellor till the year 1162, without any abatement in his favour with the King, or in the power which he possessed, or in the energy he displayed, or in the splendour of his career. ... In April, 1161, Archbishop Theobald died. Henry declared that Becket should succeed,--no doubt counting upon his co-operation in carrying on the policy hitherto pursued in checking the encroachments of the clergy and of the see of Rome. ... The same opinion of Becket's probable conduct was generally entertained, and a cry was raised that 'the Church was in danger.' The English bishops sent a representation to Henry against the appointment, and the electors long refused to obey his mandate, saying that 'it was indecent that a man who was rather a soldier than a priest, and who had devoted himself to hunting and falconry instead of the study of the Holy Scriptures, should be placed in the chair of St. Augustine.' ... The universal expectation was, that Becket would now attempt the part so successfully played by Cardinal Wolsey in a succeeding age; that, Chancellor and Archbishop, he would continue the minister and personal friend of the King; that he would study to support and extend all the prerogatives of the Crown, which he himself was to exercise; and that in the palaces of which he was now master he would live with increased magnificence and luxury. ... Never was there so wonderful a transformation. Whether from a predetermined purpose, or from a sudden change of inclination, he immediately became in every respect an altered man. {800} Instead of the stately and fastidious courtier, was seen the humble and squalid penitent. Next [to] his skin he wore hair-cloth, populous with vermin; he lived upon roots, and his drink was water, rendered nauseous by an infusion of fennel. By way of further penance and mortification, he frequently inflicted stripes on his naked back. ... He sent the Great Seal to Henry, in Normandy, with this short message, 'I desire that you will provide yourself with another Chancellor, as I find myself hardly sufficient for the duties of one office, and much less of two.' The fond patron, who had been so eager for his elevation, was now grievously disappointed and alarmed. ... He at once saw that he had been deceived in his choice. ... The grand struggle which the Church was then making was, that all churchmen should be entirely exempted from the jurisdiction of the secular courts, whatever crime they might have committed. ... Henry, thinking that he had a favourable opportunity for bringing the dispute to a crisis, summoned an assembly of all the prelates at Westminster, and himself put to them this plain question: 'Whether they were willing to submit to the ancient laws and customs of the kingdom?' Their reply, framed by Becket, was: 'We are willing, saving our own order.' ... The King, seeing what was comprehended in the reservation, retired with evident marks of displeasure, deprived Becket of the government of Eye and Berkhamstead, and all the appointments which he held at the pleasure of the Crown, and uttered threats as to seizing the temporalities of all the bishops, since they would not acknowledge their allegiance to him as the head of the state. The legate of Pope Alexander, dreading a breach with so powerful a prince at so unseasonable a juncture, advised Becket to submit for the moment; and he with his brethren, retracting the saving clause, absolutely promised 'to observe the laws and customs of the kingdom.' To avoid all future dispute, Henry resolved to follow up his victory by having these laws and customs, as far as the Church was concerned, reduced into a code, to be sanctioned by the legislature, and to be specifically acknowledged by all the bishops. This was the origin of the famous 'Constitutions of Clarendon.''' Becket left the kingdom (1164). Several years later he made peace with Henry and returned to Canterbury; but soon he again displeased the King, who cried in a rage, 'Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?' Four knights who were present immediately went to Canterbury, where they slew the Archbishop in the cathedral (December 29, 1170). "The government tried to justify or palliate the murder. The Archbishop of York likened Thomas à Becket to Pharaoh, who died by the Divine vengeance, as a punishment for his hardness of heart; and a proclamation was issued, forbidding anyone to speak of Thomas of Canterbury as a martyr: but the feelings of men were too strong to be checked by authority; pieces of linen which had been dipped in his blood were preserved as relics; from the time of his death it was believed that miracles were worked at his tomb; thither flocked hundreds of thousands, in spite of the most violent threats of punishment; at the end of two years he was canonised at Rome; and, till the breaking out of the Reformation, St. Thomas of Canterbury, for pilgrimages and prayers, was the most distinguished Saint in England." Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, chapter 3. "What did Henry II. propose to do with a clerk who was accused of a crime? ... Without doing much violence to the text, it is possible to put two different interpretations upon that famous clause in the Constitutions of Clarendon which deals with criminous clerks. ... According to what seems to be the commonest opinion, we might comment upon this clause in some such words as these:--Offences of which a clerk may be accused are of two kinds. They are temporal or they are ecclesiastical. Under the former head fall murder, robbery, larceny, rape, and the like; under the latter, incontinence, heresy, disobedience to superiors, breach of rules relating to the conduct of divine service, and so forth. If charged with an offence of the temporal kind, the clerk must stand his trial in the king's court; his trial, his sentence, will be like that of a layman. For an ecclesiastical offence, on the other hand, he will be tried in the court Christian. The king reserves to his court the right to decide what offences are temporal, what ecclesiastical; also he asserts the right to send delegates to supervise the proceedings of the spiritual tribunals. ... Let us attempt a rival commentary. The author of this clause is not thinking of two different classes of offences. The purely ecclesiastical offences are not in debate. No one doubts that for these a man will be tried in and punished by the spiritual court. He is thinking of the grave crimes, of murder and the like. Now every such crime is a breach of temporal law, and it is also a breach of canon law. The clerk who commits murder breaks the king's peace, but he also infringes the divine law, and--no canonist will doubt this--ought to be degraded. Very well. A clerk is accused of such a crime. He is summoned before the king's court, and he is to answer there--let us mark this word respondere--for what he ought to answer for there. What ought he to answer for there? The breach of the king's peace and the felony. When he has answered, ... then, without any trial, he is to be sent to the ecclesiastical court. In that court he will have to answer as an ordained clerk accused of homicide, and in that court there will be a trial (res ibi tractabitur). If the spiritual court convicts him it will degrade him, and thenceforth the church must no longer protect him. He will be brought back into the king's court, ... and having been brought back, no longer a clerk but a mere layman, he will be sentenced (probably without any further trial) to the layman's punishment, death or mutilation. The scheme is this: accusation and plea in the temporal court; trial, conviction, degradation, in the ecclesiastical court; sentence in the temporal court to the layman's punishment. This I believe to be the meaning of the clause." F. W. Maitland, Henry II. and the Criminous Clerks (English Historical Review, April, 1892), pages 224-226. The Assize of Clarendon, sometimes confused with the Constitutions of Clarendon, was an important decree approved two years later. It laid down the principles on which the administration of justice was to be carried out, in twenty-two articles drawn up for the use of the judges. Mrs. J. R Green, Henry the Second, chapters 5-6. {801} "It may not be without instruction to remember that the Constitutions of Clarendon, which Becket spent his life in opposing, and of which his death procured the suspension, are now incorporated in the English law, and are regarded, without a dissentient voice, as among the wisest and most necessary of English institutions; that the especial point for which he surrendered his life was not the independence of the clergy from the encroachments of the Crown, but the personal and now forgotten question of the superiority of the see of Canterbury to the see of York." A. P. Stanley, Historical Memorials of Canterbury, page 124. ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, sections 139-141. W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 4. J. C. Robertson, Becket. J. A. Giles, Life and Letters of Thomas à Becket. R. H. Froude, History of the Contest between Archbishop Thomas à Becket and Henry II. (Remains, part 2, volume 2). J. A. Froude, Life and Times of Thomas Becket. C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 1, chapter 29. See, also, BENEFIT OF CLERGY, and JURY, TRIAL BY. ENGLAND: A. D. 1189. Accession of King Richard I. (called Cœur de Lion). ENGLAND: A. D. 1189-1199. Reign of Richard Cœur de Lion. His Crusade and campaigns in France. "The Third Crusade [see CRUSADES: A. D. 1188-1192], undertaken for the deliverance of Palestine from the disasters brought upon the Crusaders' Kingdom by Saladin, was the first to be popular in England. ... Richard joined the Crusade in the very first year of his reign, and every portion of his subsequent career was concerned with its consequences. Neither in the time of William Rufus nor of Stephen had the First or Second Crusades found England sufficiently settled for such expeditions. ... But the patronage of the Crusades was a hereditary distinction in the Angevin family now reigning in England: they had founded the kingdom of Palestine; Henry II. himself had often prepared to set out; and Richard was confidently expected by the great body of his subjects to redeem the family pledge. ... Wholly inferior in statesmanlike qualities to his father as he was, the generosity, munificence, and easy confidence of his character made him an almost perfect representative of the chivalry of that age. He was scarcely at all in England, but his fine exploits both by land and sea have made him deservedly a favourite. The depreciation of him which is to be found in certain modern books must in all fairness be considered a little mawkish. A King who leaves behind him such an example of apparently reckless, but really prudent valour, of patience under jealous ill-treatment, and perseverance in the face of extreme difficulties, shining out as the head of the manhood of his day, far above the common race of kings and emperors,--such a man leaves a heritage of example as well as glory, and incites posterity to noble deeds. His great moral fault was his conduct to Henry, and for this he was sufficiently punished; but his parents must each bear their share of the blame. ... The interest of English affairs during Richard's absence languishes under the excitement which attends his almost continuous campaigns. ... Both on the Crusade and in France Richard was fighting the battle of the House which the English had very deliberately placed upon its throne; and if the war was kept off its shores, if the troubles of Stephen's reign were not allowed to recur, the country had no right to complain of a taxation or a royal ransom which times of peace enabled it, after all, to bear tolerably well. ... The great maritime position of the Plantagenets made these sovereigns take to the sea." M. Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, book 1, chapter 18. Richard "was a bad king; his great exploits, his military skill, his splendour and extravagance, his poetical tastes, his adventurous spirit, do not serve to cloak his entire want of sympathy, or even consideration for his people. He was no Englishman. ... His ambition was that of a mere warrior." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, section. 150 (volume 1). ALSO IN: K. Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, volume 2, chapter 7-8. ENGLAND: A. D. 1199. Accession of King John. ENGLAND: A. D. 1205. The loss of Normandy and its effects. In 1202 Philip Augustus, king of France, summoned John of England, as Duke of Normandy (therefore the feudal vassal of the French crown) to appear for trial on certain grave charges before the august court of the Peers of France. John refused to obey the summons; his French fiefs were declared forfeited, and the armies of the French king took possession of them (see FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224). This proved to be a lasting separation of Normandy from England,--except as it was recovered momentarily long afterwards in the conquests of Henry V. "The Norman barons had had no choice but between John and Philip. For the first time since the Conquest there was no competitor, son, brother, or more distant kinsman, for their allegiance. John could neither rule nor defend them. Bishops and barons alike welcomed or speedily accepted their new lord. The families that had estates on both sides of the Channel divided into two branches, each of which made terms for itself; or having balanced their interests in the two kingdoms, threw in their lot with one or other, and renounced what they could not save. Almost immediately Normandy settles down into a quiet province of France. ... For England the result of the separation was more important still. Even within the reign of John it became clear that the release of the barons from their connexion with the continent was all that was wanted to make them Englishmen. With the last vestiges of the Norman inheritances vanished the last idea of making England a feudal kingdom. The Great Charter was won by men who were maintaining, not the cause of a class, as had been the case in every civil war since 1070, but the cause of a nation. From the year 1203 the king stood before the English people face to face." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, section 152. See FRANCE: A. D. 1180-1224. ENGLAND: A. D. 1205-1213. King John's quarrel with the Pope and the Church. On the death, in 1205, of Archbishop Hubert, of Canterbury, who had long been chief minister of the crown, a complicated quarrel over the appointment to the vacant see arose between the monks of the cathedral, the suffragan bishops of the province, King John, and the powerful Pope Innocent III. Pope Innocent put forward as his candidate the afterwards famous Stephen Langton, secured his election in a somewhat irregular way (A. D. 1207), and consecrated him with his own hands. King John, bent on filling the primacy with a creature of his own, resisted the papal action with more fury than discretion, and proceeded to open war with the whole Church. {802} "The monks of Canterbury were driven from their monastery, and when, in the following year, an interdict which the Pope had intrusted to the Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester, was published, his hostility to the Church became so extreme that almost all the bishops fled; the Bishops of Winchester, Durham, and Norwich, two of whom belonged to the ministerial body, being the only prelates left in England. The interdict was of the severest form; all services of the Church, with the exception of baptism and extreme unction, being forbidden, while the burial of the dead was allowed only in unconsecrated ground; its effect was however, weakened by the conduct of some of the monastic orders, who claimed exemption from its operation, and continued their services. The king's anger knew no bounds. The clergy were put beyond the protection of the law; orders were issued to drive them from their benefices, and lawless acts committed at their expense met with no punishment. ... Though acting thus violently, John showed the weakness of his character by continued communication with the Pope, and occasional fitful acts of favour to the Church; so much so, that, in the following year, Langton prepared to come over to England, and, upon the continued obstinacy of the king, Innocent, feeling sure of his final victory, did not shrink from issuing his threatened excommunication. John had hoped to be able to exclude the knowledge of this step from the island ... ; but the rumour of it soon got abroad, and its effect was great. ... In a state of nervous excitement, and mistrusting his nobles, the king himself perpetually moved to and fro in his kingdom, seldom staying more than a few days in one place. None the less did he continue his old line of policy. ... In 1211 a league of excommunicated leaders was formed, including all the princes of the North of Europe; Ferrand of Flanders, the Duke of Brabant, John, and Otho [John's Guelphic Saxon nephew, who was one of two contestants for the imperial crown in Germany], were all members of it, and it was chiefly organized by the activity of Reinald of Dammartin, Count of Boulogne. The chief enemy of these confederates was Philip of France; and John thought he saw in this league the means of revenge against his old enemy. To complete the line of demarcation between the two parties, Innocent, who was greatly moved by the description of the disorders and persecutions in England, declared John's crown forfeited, and intrusted the carrying out of the sentence to Philip. In 1213 armies were collected on both sides. Philip was already on the Channel, and John had assembled a large army on Barhamdown, not far from Canterbury." But, at the last moment, when the French king was on the eve of embarking his forces for the invasion of England, John submitted himself abjectly to Pandulf, the legate of the Pope. He not only surrendered to all that he had contended against, but went further, to the most shameful extreme. "On the 15th of May, at Dover, he formally resigned the crowns of England and Ireland into the hands of Pandulf, and received them again as the Pope's feudatory." J. F. Bright, History of England (3d edition), volume 1, pages 130-134. ALSO IN: C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 2. E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, Book 4, number 5. See, also, BOUVINES, BATTLE OF. ENGLAND: A. D. 1206-1230. Attempts of John and Henry III. to recover Anjou and Maine. See ANJOU: A. D. 1206-1442. ENGLAND: A. D. 1215. Magna Carta. "It is to the victory of Bouvines that England owes her Great Charter [see BOUVINES]. ... John sailed for Poitou with the dream of a great victory which should lay Philip [of France] and the barons alike at his feet. He returned from his defeat to find the nobles no longer banded together in secret conspiracies, but openly united in a definite claim of liberty and law. The author of this great change was the new Archbishop [Langton] whom Innocent had set on the throne of Canterbury. ... In a private meeting of the barons at St. Paul's, he produced the Charter of Henry I., and the enthusiasm with which it was welcomed showed the sagacity with which the Primate had chosen his ground for the coming struggle. All hope, however, hung on the fortunes of the French campaign; it was the victory at Bouvines that broke the spell of terror, and within a few days of the king's landing the barons again met at St. Edmundsbury. ... At Christmas they presented themselves in arms before the king and preferred their claim. The few months that followed showed John that he stood alone in the land. ... At Easter the barons again gathered in arms at Brackley and renewed their claim. 'Why do they not ask for my kingdom?' cried John in a burst of passion; but the whole country rose as one man at his refusal. London threw open her gates to the army of the barons, now organized under Robert Fitz-Walter, 'the marshal of the army of God and the holy Church.' The example of the capital was at once followed by Exeter and Lincoln; promises of aid came from Scotland and Wales; the northern nobles marched hastily to join their comrades in London. With seven horsemen in his train John found himself face to face with a nation in arms. ... Nursing wrath in his heart the tyrant bowed to necessity, and summoned the barons to a conference at Runnymede. An island in the Thames between Staines and Windsor had been chosen as the place of conference: the king encamped on one bank, while the barons covered the marshy flat, still known by the name of Runnymede, on the other. Their delegates met in the island between them. ... The Great Charter was discussed, agreed to, and signed in a single day [June 15, A. D. 1215]. One copy of it still remains in the British Museum, injured by age and fire, but with the royal seal still hanging from the brown, shriveled parchment." J. R Green, Short History of the England People, chapter 3, sections 2-3. "As this was the first effort towards a legal government, so is it beyond comparison the most important event in our history, except that, Revolution without which its benefits would have been rapidly annihilated. The constitution of England has indeed no single date from which its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions of positive law, the far more important changes which time has wrought in the order of society, during six hundred years subsequent to the Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its direct application to our present circumstances. But it is still the key-stone of English liberty. All that has since been obtained is little more than as confirmation or commentary. ... The essential clauses of Magna Charta are those which protect the personal liberty and property of all freemen, by giving security from arbitrary imprisonment and arbitrary spoliation. {803} 'No freeman (says the 29th chapter of Henry III.'s charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in preference to that of John, the variations not being very material) shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him, nor send upon, but by lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or delay to any man, justice or right.' It is obvious that these words, interpreted by any honest court of law, convey an ample security for the two main rights of civil society." H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 8, part 2. "The Great Charter, although drawn up in the form of a royal grant, was really a treaty between the king and his subjects. ... It is the collective people who really form the other high contracting party in the great capitulation,--the three estates of the realm, not, it is true, arranged in order according to their profession or rank, but not the less certainly combined in one national purpose, and securing by one bond the interests and rights of each other, severally and all together. ... The barons maintain and secure the right of the whole people as against themselves as well as against their master. Clause by clause the rights of the commons are provided for as well as the rights of the nobles. ... The knight is protected against the compulsory exaction of his services, and the horse and cart of the freeman against the irregular requisition even of the sheriff. ... The Great Charter is the first great public act of the nation, after it has realised its own identity. ... The whole of the constitutional history of England is little more than a commentary on Magna Carta." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12, section 155. The following is the text of Magna Carta; "John, by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou, to his Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries, Foresters, Sheriffs, Governors, Officers, and to all Bailiffs, and his faithful subjects, greeting. Know ye, that we, in the presence of God, and for the salvation of our soul, and the souls of all our ancestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God and the advancement of Holy Church, and amendment of our Realm, by advice of our venerable Fathers, Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church; Henry, Archbishop of Dublin; William, of London; Peter, of Winchester; Jocelin, of Bath and Glastonbury; Hugh, of Lincoln; Walter, of Worcester; William, of Coventry; Benedict, of Rochester--Bishops; of Master Pandulph, Sub-Deacon and Familiar of our Lord the Pope; Brother Aymeric, Master of the Knights-Templars in England; and of the noble Persons, William Marescall, Earl of Pembroke; William, Earl of Salisbury; William, Earl of Warren; William, Earl of Arundel; Alan de Galloway, Constable of Scotland; Warin FitzGerald, Peter FitzHerbert, and Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou; Hugh de Neville, Matthew FitzHerbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip of Albiney, Robert de Roppell, John Mareschal, John FitzHugh, and others, our liegemen, have, in the first place, granted to God, and by this our present Charter confirmed, for us and our heirs forever; 1. That the Church of England shall be free, and have her whole rights, and her liberties inviolable; and we will have them so observed, that it may appear thence that the freedom of elections, which is reckoned chief and indispensable to the English Church, and which we granted and confirmed by our Charter, and obtained the confirmation of the same from our Lord the Pope Innocent III., before the discord between us and our barons, was granted of mere free will; which Charter we shall observe, and we do will it to be faithfully observed by our heirs for ever. 2. We also have granted to all the freemen of our kingdom, for us and for our heirs for ever, all the underwritten liberties, to be had and holden by them and their heirs, of us and our heirs for ever; If any of our earls, or barons, or others, who hold of us in chief by military service, shall die, and at the time of his death his heir shall be of full age, and owe a relief, he shall have his inheritance by the ancient relief--that is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl, for a whole earldom, by a hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a baron, for a whole barony, by a hundred pounds; the heir or heirs of a knight, for a whole knight's fee, by a hundred shillings at most; and whoever oweth less shall give less, according to the ancient custom of fees. 3. But if the heir of any such shall be under age, and shall be in ward, when he comes of age he shall have his inheritance without relief and without fine. 4. The keeper of the land of such an heir being under age, shall take of the land of the heir none but reasonable issues, reasonable customs, and reasonable services, and that without destruction and waste of his men and his goods; and if we commit the custody of any such lands to the sheriff, or any other who is answerable to us for the issues of the land, and he shall make destruction and waste of the lands which he hath in custody, we will take of him amends, and the land shall be committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall answer for the issues to us, or to him to whom we shall assign them; and if we sell or give to anyone the custody of any such lands, and he therein make destruction or waste, he shall lose the same custody, which shall be committed to two lawful and discreet men of that fee, who shall in like manner answer to us as aforesaid. 5. But the keeper, so long as he shall have the custody of the land, shall keep up the houses, parks, warrens, ponds, mills, and other things pertaining to the land, out of the issues of the same land; and shall deliver to the heir, when he comes of full age, his whole land, stocked with ploughs and carriages, according as the time of wainage shall require, and the issues of the land can reasonably bear. 6. Heirs shall be married without disparagement, and so that before matrimony shall be contracted, those who are near in blood to the heir shall have notice. 7. A widow, after the death of her husband, shall forthwith and without difficulty have her marriage and inheritance; nor shall she give anything for her dower, or her marriage, of her inheritance, which her husband and she held at the day of his death; and she may remain in the mansion house of her husband forty days after his death, within which time her dower shall be assigned. 8. No widow shall be distrained to marry herself, so long as she has a mind to live without a husband; but yet she shall give security that she will not marry without our assent, if she hold of us; or without the consent of the lord of whom she holds, if she hold of another. {804} 9. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land or rent for any debt so long as the chattels of the debtor are sufficient to pay the debt; nor shall the sureties of the debtor be distrained so long as the principal debtor has sufficient to pay the debt; and if the principal debtor shall fail in the payment of the debt, not having wherewithal to pay it, then the sureties shall answer the debt; and if they will they shall have the lands and rents of the debtor, until they shall be satisfied for the debt which they paid for him, unless the principal debtor can show himself acquitted thereof against the said sureties. 10. If anyone have borrowed anything of the Jews, more or less, and die before the debt be satisfied, there shall be no interest paid for that debt, so long as the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may hold; and if the debt falls into our hands, we will only take the chattel mentioned in the deed. 11. And if anyone shall die indebted to the Jews, his wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of that debt; and if the deceased left children under age, they shall have necessaries provided for them, according to the tenement of the deceased; and out of the residue the debt shall be paid, saving, however, the service due to the lords, and in like manner shall it be done touching debts due to others than the Jews. 12. No scutage or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless by the general council of our kingdom; except for ransoming our person, making our eldest son a knight, and once for marrying our eldest daughter; and for these there shall be paid no more than a reasonable aid. In like manner it shall be concerning the aids of the City of London. 13. And the City of London shall have all its ancient liberties and free customs, as well by land as by water: furthermore, we will and grant that all other cities and boroughs, and towns and ports, shall have all their liberties and free customs. 14. And for holding the general council of the kingdom concerning the assessment of aids, except in the three cases aforesaid, and for the assessing of scutages, we shall cause to be summoned the archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons of the realm, singly by our letters. And furthermore, we shall cause to be summoned generally, by our sheriffs and bailiffs, all others who hold of us in chief, for a certain day, that is to say, forty days before their meeting at least, and to a certain place; and in all letters of such summons we will declare the cause of such summons. And summons being thus made, the business shall proceed on the day appointed, according to the advice of such as shall be present, although all that were summoned come not. 15. We will not for the future grant to anyone that he may take aid of his own free tenants, unless to ransom his body, and to make his eldest son a knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter; and for this there shall be only paid a reasonable aid. 16. No man shall be distrained to perform more service for a knight's fee, or other free tenement, than is due from thence. 17. Common pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be holden in some place certain. 18. Trials upon the Writs of Novel Disseisin, and of Mort d'ancestor, and of Darrein Presentment, shall not be taken but in their proper counties, and after this manner: We, or if we should be out of the realm, our chief justiciary, will send two justiciaries through every county four times a year, who, with four knights of each county, chosen by the county, shall hold the said assizes in the county, on the day, and at the place appointed. 19. And if any matters cannot be determined on the day appointed for holding the assizes in each county, so many of the knights and freeholders as have been at the assizes aforesaid shall stay to decide them as is necessary, according as there is more or less business. 20. A freeman shall not be amerced for a small offence, but only according to the degree of the offence; and for a great crime according to the heinousness of it, saving to him his contenement; and after the same manner a merchant, saving to him his merchandise. And a villein shall be amerced after the same manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls under our mercy; and none of the aforesaid amerciaments shall be assessed but by the oath of honest men in the neighbourhood. 21. Earls and barons shall not be amerced but by their peers, and after the degree of the offence. 22. No ecclesiastical person shall be amerced for his lay tenement, but according to the proportion of the others aforesaid, and not according to the value of his ecclesiastical benefice. 23. Neither a town nor any tenant shall be distrained to make bridges or embankments, unless that anciently and of right they are bound to do it. 24. No sheriff, constable, coroner, or other our bailiffs, shall hold "Pleas of the Crown." 25. All counties, hundreds, wapentakes, and trethings, shall stand at the old rents, without any increase, except in our demesne manors. 26. If anyone holding of us a lay fee die, and the sheriff, or our bailiffs, show our letters patent of summons for debt which the dead man did owe to us, it shall be lawful for the sheriff or our bailiff to attach and register the chattels of the dead, found upon his lay fee, to the amount of the debt, by the view of lawful men, so as nothing be removed until our whole clear debt be paid; and the rest shall be left to the executors to fulfil the testament of the dead; and if there be nothing due from him to us, all the chattels shall go to the use of the dead, saving to his wife and children their reasonable shares. 27. If any freeman shall die intestate, his chattels shall be distributed by the hands of his nearest relations and friends, by view of the Church, saving to everyone his debts which the deceased owed to him. 28. No constable or bailiff of ours shall take corn or other chattels of any man unless he presently give him money for it, or hath respite of payment by the good-will of the seller. 29. No constable shall distrain any knight to give money for castle-guard, if he himself will do it in his person, or by another able man, in case he cannot do it through any reasonable cause. And if we have carried or sent him into the army, he shall be free from such guard for the time he shall be in the army by our command. 30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any other, shall take horses or carts of any freeman for carriage, without the assent of the said freeman. 31. Neither shall we nor our bailiffs take any man's timber for our castles or other uses, unless by the consent of the owner of the timber. 32. We will retain the lands of those convicted of felony only one year and a day, and then they shall be delivered to the lord of the fee. 33. All kydells (wears) for the time to come shall be put down in the rivers of Thames and Medway, and throughout all England, except upon the seacoast. {805} 34. The writ which is called prœcipe, for the future, shall not be made out to anyone, of any tenement, whereby a freeman may lose his court. 35. There shall be one measure of wine and one of ale through our whole realm; and one measure of corn, that is to say, the London quarter; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and russets, and haberjeets, that is to say, two ells within the lists; and it shall be of weights as it is of measures. 36. Nothing from henceforth shall be given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or limb, but it shall be granted freely, and not denied. 37. If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or by socage, or by burgage, and he hold also lands of any other by knight's service, we will not have the custody of the heir or land, which is holden of another man's fee by reason of that fee-farm, socage, or burgage; neither will we have the custody of the fee-farm, or socage, or burgage, unless knight's service was due to us out of the same fee-farm. We will not have the custody of an heir, nor of any land which he holds of another by knight's service, by reason of any petty serjeanty by which he holds of us, by the service of paying a knife, an arrow, or the like. 38. No bailiff from henceforth shall put any man to his law upon his own bare saying, without credible witnesses to prove it. 39. No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. 40. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man, either justice or right. 41. All merchants shall have safe and secure conduct, to go out of, and to come into England, and to stay there and to pass as well by land as by water, for buying and selling by the ancient and allowed customs, without any unjust tolls; except in time of war, or when they are of any nation at war with us. And if there be found any such in our land, in the beginning of the war, they shall be attached, without damage to their bodies or goods, until it be known unto us, or our chief justiciary, how our merchants be treated in the nation at war with us; and if ours be safe there, the others shall be safe in our dominions. 42. It shall be lawful, for the time to come, for anyone to go out of our kingdom, and return safely and securely by land or by water, saving his allegiance to us; unless in time of war, by some short space, for the common benefit of the realm, except prisoners and outlaws, according to the law of the land, and people in war with us, and merchants who shall be treated as is above mentioned. 43. If any man hold of any escheat, as of the honour of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne, Lancaster, or of other escheats which be in our hands, and are baronies, and die, his heir shall give no other relief, and perform no other service to us than he would to the baron, if it were in the baron's hand; and we will hold it after the same manner as the baron held it. 44. Those men who dwell without the forest from henceforth shall not come before our justiciaries of the forest, upon common summons, but such as are impleaded, or are sureties for any that are attached for something concerning the forest. 45. We will not make any justices, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, but of such as know the law of the realm and mean duly to observe it. 46. All barons who have founded abbeys, which they hold by charter from the kings of England, or by ancient tenure, shall have the keeping of them, when vacant, as they ought to have. 47. All forests that have been made forests in our time shall forthwith be disforested; and the same shall be done with the water-banks that have been fenced in by us in our time. 48. All evil customs concerning forests, warrens, foresters, and warreners, sheriffs and their officers, water-banks and their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired into in each county, by twelve sworn knights of the same county, chosen by creditable persons of the same county; and within forty days after the said inquest be utterly abolished, so as never to be restored: so as we are first acquainted therewith, or our justiciary, if we should not be in England. 49. We will immediately give up all hostages and charters delivered unto us by our English subjects, as securities for their keeping the peace, and yielding us faithful service. 50. We will entirely remove from their bailiwicks the relations of Gerard de Atheyes, so that for the future they shall have no bailiwick in England; we will also remove Engelard de Cygony, Andrew, Peter, and Gyon, from the Chancery; Gyon de Cygony, Geoffrey de Martyn, and his brothers; Philip Mark, and his brothers, and his nephew, Geoffrey, and their whole retinue. 51. As soon as peace is restored, we will send out of the kingdom all foreign knights, cross-bowmen, and stipendiaries, who are come with horses and arms to the molestation of our people. 52. If anyone has been dispossessed or deprived by us, without the lawful judgment of his peers, of his lands, castles, liberties, or right, we will forthwith restore them to him; and if any dispute arise upon this head, let the matter be decided by the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned, for the preservation of the peace. And for all those things of which any person has, without the lawful judgment of his peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by our father King Henry, or our brother King Richard, and which we have in our hands, or are possessed by others, and we are bound to warrant and make good, we shall have a respite till the term usually allowed the crusaders; excepting those things about which there is a plea depending, or whereof an inquest hath been made, by our order before we undertook the crusade; but as soon as we return from our expedition, or if perchance we tarry at home and do not make our expedition, we will immediately cause full justice to be administered therein. 53. The same respite we shall have, and in the same manner, about administering justice, disafforesting or letting continue the forests, which Henry our father, and our brother Richard, have afforested; and the same concerning the wardship of the lands which are in another's fee, but the wardship of which we have hitherto had, by reason of a fee held of us by knight's service; and for the abbeys founded in any other fee than our own, in which the lord of the fee says he has a right; and when we return from our expedition, or if we tarry at home, and do not make our expedition, we will immediately do full justice to all the complainants in this behalf. 54. No man shall be taken or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the death of any other than her husband. {806} 55. All unjust and illegal fines made by us, and all amerciaments imposed unjustly and contrary to the law of the land, shall be entirely given up, or else be left to the decision of the five-and-twenty barons hereafter mentioned for the preservation of the peace, or of the major part of them, together with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop of Canterbury, if he can be present, and others whom he shall think fit to invite; and if he cannot be present, the business shall notwithstanding go on without him; but so that if one or more of the aforesaid five-and-twenty barons be plaintiffs in the same cause, they shall be set aside as to what concerns this particular affair, and others be chosen in their room, out of the said five-and-twenty, and sworn by the rest to decide the matter. 56. If we have disseised or dispossessed the Welsh of any lands, liberties, or other things, without the legal judgment of their peers, either in England or in Wales, they shall be immediately restored to them; and if any dispute arise upon this head, the matter shall be determined in the Marches by the judgment of their peers; for tenements in England according to the law of England, for tenements in Wales according to the law of Wales, for tenements of the Marches according to the law of the Marches: the same shall the Welsh do to us and our subjects. 57. As for all those things of which a Welshman hath, without the lawful judgment of his peers, been disseised or deprived of by King Henry our father, or our brother King Richard, and which we either have in our hands or others are possessed of, and we are obliged to warrant it, we shall have a respite till the time generally allowed the crusaders; excepting those things about which a suit is depending, or whereof an inquest has been made by our order, before we undertook the crusade: but when we return, or if we stay at home without performing our expedition, we will immediately do them full justice, according to the laws of the Welsh and of the parts before mentioned. 58. We will without delay dismiss the son of Llewellin, and all the Welsh hostages, and release them from the engagements they have entered into with us for the preservation of the peace. 59. We will treat with Alexander, King of Scots, concerning the restoring his sisters and hostages, and his right and liberties, in the same form and manner as we shall do to the rest of our barons of England; unless by the charters which we have from his father, William, late King of Scots, it ought to be otherwise; and this shall be left to the determination of his peers in our court. 60. All the aforesaid customs and liberties, which we have granted to be holden in our kingdom, as much as it belongs to us, all people of our kingdom, as well clergy as laity, shall observe, as far as they are concerned, towards their dependents. 61. And whereas, for the honour of God and the amendment of our kingdom, and for the better quieting the discord that has arisen between us and our barons, we have granted all these things aforesaid; willing to render them firm and lasting, we do give and grant our subjects the underwritten security, namely that the barons may choose five-and-twenty barons of the kingdom, whom they think convenient; who shall take care, with all their might, to hold and observe, and cause to be observed, the peace and liberties we have granted them, and by this our present Charter confirmed in this manner; that is to say, that if we, our justiciary, our bailiffs, or any of our officers, shall in any circumstance have failed in the performance of them towards any person, or shall have broken through any of these articles of peace and security, and the offence be notified to four barons chosen out of the five-and-twenty before mentioned, the said four barons shall repair to us, or our justiciary, if we are out of the realm, and, laying open the grievance, shall petition to have it redressed without delay: and if it be not redressed by us, or if we should chance to be out of the realm, if it should not be redressed by our justiciary within forty days, reckoning from the time it has been notified to us, or to our justiciary (if we should be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid shall lay the cause before the rest of the five-and-twenty barons; and the said five-and-twenty barons, together with the community of the whole kingdom, shall distrain and distress us in all the ways in which they shall be able, by seizing our castles, lands, possessions, and in any other manner they can, till the grievance is redressed, according to their pleasure; saving harmless our own person, and the persons of our Queen and children; and when it is redressed, they shall behave to us as before. And any person whatsoever in the kingdom may swear that he will obey the orders of the five-and-twenty barons aforesaid in the execution of the premises, and will distress us, jointly with them, to the utmost of his power; and we give public and free liberty to anyone that shall please to swear to this, and never will hinder any person from taking the same oath. 62. As for all those of our subjects who will not, of their own accord, swear to join the five-and-twenty barons in distraining and distressing us, we will issue orders to make them take the same oath as aforesaid. And if anyone of the five-and-twenty barons dies, or goes out of the kingdom, or is hindered any other way from carrying the things aforesaid into execution, the rest of the said five-and-twenty barons may choose another in his room, at their discretion, who shall be sworn in like manner as the rest. In all things that are committed to the execution of these five-and-twenty barons, if, when they are all assembled together, they should happen to disagree about any matter, and some of them, when summoned, will not or cannot come, whatever is agreed upon, or enjoined, by the major part of those that are present shall be reputed as firm and valid as if all the five-and-twenty had given their consent; and the aforesaid five-and-twenty shall swear that all the premises they shall faithfully observe, and cause with all their power to be observed. And we will procure nothing from anyone, by ourselves nor by another, whereby any of these concessions and liberties may be revoked or lessened; and if any such thing shall have been obtained, let it be null and void; neither will we ever make use of it either by ourselves or any other. And all the ill-will, indignations, and rancours that have arisen between us and our subjects, of the clergy and laity, from the first breaking out of the dissensions between us, we do fully remit and forgive: moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said dissensions, from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign till the restoration of peace and tranquillity, we hereby entirely remit to all, both clergy and laity, and as far as in us lies do fully forgive. We have, moreover, caused to be made for them the letters patent testimonial of Stephen, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Lord Archbishop of Dublin, and the bishops aforesaid, as also of Master Pandulph, for the security and concessions aforesaid. {807} 63. Wherefore we will and firmly enjoin, that the Church of England be free, and that all men in our kingdom have and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, truly and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly to themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and places, for ever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without evil subtilty. Given under our hand, in the presence of the witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called Runingmede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June, in the 17th year of our reign." W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 5. Old South Leaflets, General Series, number 5. Also IN: E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages, book 1, number 7. C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274. Character and reign of Henry III. The Barons' War. Simon de Montfort and the evolution of the English Parliament. King John died October 17,1216. "His legitimate successor was a child of nine years of age. For the first time since the Conquest the personal government was in the hands of a minor. In that stormy time the great Earl of Pembroke undertook the government, as Protector. ... At the Council of Bristol, with general approbation and even with that of the papal legate, Magna Charta was confirmed, though with the omission of certain articles. ... After some degree of tranquillity had been restored, a second confirmation of the Great Charter took place in the autumn of 1217, with the omission of the clauses referring to the estates, but with the grant of a new charta de foresta, introducing a vigorous administration of the forest laws. In 9 Henry III. Magna Charta was again confirmed, and this is the form in which it afterwards took its place among the statutes of the realm. Two years later, Henry III. personally assumes the reins of government at the Parliament of Oxford (1227), and begins his rule without confirming the two charters. At first the tutorial government still continues, which had meanwhile, even after the death of the great Earl of Pembroke (1219), remained in a fairly orderly condition. The first epoch of sixteen years of this reign must therefore be regarded purely as a government by the nobility under the name of Henry III. The regency had succeeded in removing the dominant influence of the Roman Curia by the recall of the papal legate, Pandulf, to Rome (1221), and in getting rid of the dangerous foreign mercenary soldiery (1224). ... With the disgraceful dismissal of the chief justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, there begins a second epoch of a personal rule of Henry III. (1232-1252), which for twenty continuous years, presents the picture of a confused and undecided struggle between the king and his foreign favourites and personal adherents on the one side, and the great barons, and with them soon the prelates, on the other. ... In 21 Henry III. the King finds himself, in consequence of pressing money embarrassments, again compelled to make a solemn confirmation of the charter, in which once more the clauses relating to the estates are omitted. Shortly afterwards, as had happened just one hundred years previously in France, the name 'parliamentum' occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1244; Matth. Paris, 1246), and curiously enough, Henry III. himself, in a writ addressed to the Sheriff of Northampton, designates with this term the assembly which originated the Magna Charta. ... The name 'parliament,' now occurs more frequently, but does not supplant the more definite terms concilium, colloquium, etc. In the meanwhile the relations with the Continent became complicated, in consequence of the family connections of the mother and wife of the King, and the greed of the papal envoys. ... From the year 1244 onwards, neither a chief justice nor a chancellor, nor even a treasurer, is appointed, but the administration of the country is conducted at the Court by the clerks of the offices." R. Gneist, History of the English Constitution, volume 1, pages 313-321. "Nothing is so hard to realise as chaos; and nothing nearer to chaos can be conceived than the government of Henry III. Henry was, like all the Plantagenets, clever; like very few of them, he was devout; and if the power of conceiving a great policy would constitute a great King, he would certainly have been one. ... He aimed at making the Crown virtually independent of the barons. ... His connexion with Louis IX., whose brother-in-law he became, was certainly a misfortune to him. In France the royal power had during the last fifty years been steadily on the advance; in England it had as steadily receded; and Henry was ever hearing from the other side of the Channel maxims of government and ideas of royal authority which were utterly inapplicable to the actual state of his own kingdom. This, like a premature Stuart, Henry was incapable of perceiving; a King he was, and a King he would be, in his own sense of the word. It is evident that with such a task before him, he needed for the most shadowy chance of success, an iron strength of will, singular self-control, great forethought and care in collecting and husbanding his resources, a rare talent for administration, the sagacity to choose and the self-reliance to trust his counsellors. And not one of these various qualities did Henry possess. ... Henry had imbibed from the events and the tutors of his early childhood two maxims of state, and two alone: to trust Rome, and to distrust the barons of England. ... He filled the places of trust and power about himself with aliens, to whom the maintenance of Papal influence was like an instinct of self-preservation. Thus were definitely formed the two great parties out of whose antagonism the War of the Barons arose, under whose influence the relations between the crown and people of England were remodelled, and out of whose enduring conflict rose, indirectly, the political principles which contributed so largely to bring about the Reformation of the English Church. The few years which followed the fall of Hubert de Burgh were the heyday of Papal triumph. And no triumph could have been worse used. ... Thus was the whole country lying a prey to the ecclesiastical aliens maintained by the Pope, and to the lay aliens maintained by the King, ... when Simon de Montfort became ... inseparably intermixed with the course of our history. ... In the year 1258 opened the first act of the great drama which has made the name of Simon de Montfort immortal. ... The Barons of England, at Leicester's suggestion, had leagued for the defence of their rights. They appeared armed at the Great Council. ... {808} They required as the condition of their assistance that the general reformation of the realm should be entrusted to a Commission of twenty-four members, half to be chosen by the crown, and half by themselves. For the election of this body, primarily, and for a more explicit statement of grievances, the Great Council was to meet again at Oxford on the 11th of June, 1258. When the Barons came, they appeared at the head of their retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the plea; but the real danger was nearer home. They seized on the Cinque Ports; the unrenewed truce with France was the excuse; they remembered too vividly King John and his foreign mercenaries. They then presented their petition. This was directed to the redress of various abuses. ... To each and every clause the King gave his inevitable assent. One more remarkable encroachment was made upon the royal prerogative; the election in Parliament of a chief justiciar. ... The chief justiciar was the first officer of the Crown. He was not a mere chief justice, after the fashion of the present day, but the representative of the Crown in its high character of the fountain of justice. ... But the point upon which the barons laid the greatest stress, from the beginning to the end of their struggle, was the question of the employment of aliens. That the strongest castles and the fairest lands of England should be in the hands of foreigners, was an insult to the national spirit which no free people could fail to resent. ... England for the English, the great war cry of the barons, went home to the heart of the humblest. ... The great question of the constitution of Parliament was not heard at Oxford; it emerged into importance when the struggle grew fiercer, and the barons found it necessary to gather allies round them. ... One other measure completed the programme of the barons; namely, the appointment, already referred to, of a committee of twenty-four. ... It amounted to placing the crown under the control of a temporary Council of Regency [see OXFORD, PROVISIONS OF]. ... Part of the barons' work was simple enough. The justiciar was named, and the committee of twenty-four. To expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the two castles which he held, and called upon the rest to follow. They simply refused. ... But the barons were in arms, and prepared to use them. The aliens, with their few English supporters, fled to Winchester, where the castle was in the hands of the foreign bishop Aymer. They were besieged, brought to terms, and exiled. The barons were now masters of the situation. ... Among the prerogatives of the crown which passed to the Oxford Commission not the least valuable, for the hold which it gave on the general government of the country, was the right to nominate the sheriffs. In 1261 the King, who had procured a Papal bull to abrogate the Provisions of Oxford, and an army of mercenaries to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the sheriffs who had been placed in office by the barons. The reply of the barons was most memorable; it was a direct appeal to the order below their own. They summoned three knights elected from each county in England to meet them at St. Albans to discuss the state of the realm. It was clear that the day of the House of Commons could not be far distant, when at such a crisis an appeal to the knights of the shire could be made, and evidently made with success. For a moment, in this great move, the whole strength of the barons was united; but differences soon returned, and against divided counsels the crown steadily prevailed. In June, 1262, we find peace restored. The more moderate of the barons had acquiesced in the terms offered by Henry; Montfort, who refused them, was abroad in voluntary exile. ... Suddenly, in July, the Earl of Gloucester died, and the sole leadership of the barons passed into the hands of Montfort. With this critical event opens the last act in the career of the great Earl. In October he returns privately to England. The whole winter is passed in the patient reorganising of the party, and the preparation for a decisive struggle. Montfort, fervent, eloquent, and devoted, swayed with despotic influence the hearts of the younger nobles (and few in those days lived to be grey), and taught them to feel that the Provisions of Oxford were to them what the Great Charter had been to their fathers. They were drawn together with an unanimity unknown before. ... They demanded the restoration of the Great Provisions. The King refused, and in May, 1263, the barons appealed to arms. ... Henry, with a reluctant hand, subscribed once more to the Provisions of Oxford, with a saving clause, however, that they should be revised in the coming Parliament. On the 9th of September, accordingly, Parliament was assembled. ... The King and the barons agreed to submit their differences to the arbitration of Louis of France. ... Louis IX. had done more than any one king of France to enlarge the royal prerogative; and Louis was the brother-in-law of Henry. His award, given at Amiens on the 23d of January, 1264. was, as we should have expected, absolutely in favour of the King. The whole Provisions of Oxford were, in his view, an invasion of the royal power. ... The barons were astounded. ... They at once said that the question of the employment of aliens was never meant to be included. ... The appeal was made once again to the sword. Success for a moment inclined to the royal side, but it was only for a moment; and on the memorable field of Lewes the genius of Leicester prevailed. ... With the two kings of England and of the Romans prisoners in his hands, Montfort dictated the terms of the so-called Mise of Lewes. ... Subject to the approval of Parliament, all differences were to be submitted once more to French arbitration. ... On the 23d of June the Parliament met. It was no longer a Great Council, after the fashion of previous assemblies; it included four knights, elected by each English county. This Parliament gave such sanction as it was able to the exceptional authority of Montfort, and ordered that until the proposed arbitration could be carried out, the King's council should consist of nine persons, to be named by the Bishop of Chichester, and the Earls of Gloucester and Leicester. The effect was to give Simon for the time despotic power. ... It was at length agreed that all questions whatever, the employment of aliens alone excepted, should be referred to the Bishop of London, the justiciar Hugh le Despenser, Charles of Anjou, and the Abbot of Bec. If on any point they could not agree, the Archbishop of Rouen was to act as referee. ... It was ... not simply the expedient of a revolutionary chief in difficulties, but the expression of a settled and matured policy, when, in December 1264, [Montfort] issued in the King's name the ever-memorable writs which summoned the first complete Parliament which ever met in England. {809} The earls, barons, and bishops received their summons as of course; and with them the deans of cathedral churches, an unprecedented number of abbots and priors, two knights from every shire, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or borough in England. Of their proceedings we know but little; but they appear to have appointed Simon de Montfort to the office of Justiciar of England, and to have thus made him in rank, what he had before been in power, the first subject in the realm. ... Montfort ... had now gone so far, he had exercised such extraordinary powers, he had done so many things which could never really be pardoned, that perhaps his only chance of safety lay in the possession of some such office as this. It is certain, moreover, that something which passed in this Parliament, or almost exactly at the time of its meeting, did cause deep offence to a considerable section of the barons. ... Difficulties were visibly gathering thicker around him, and he was evidently conscious that disaffection was spreading fast. ... Negotiations went forward, not very smoothly, for the release of Prince Edward. They were terminated in May by his escape. It was the signal for a royalist rising. Edward took the command of the Welsh border; before the middle of June he had made the border his own. On the 29th Gloucester opened its gates to him. He had many secret friends. He pushed fearlessly eastward, and surprised the garrison of Kenilworth, commanded by Simon, the Earl's second son. The Earl himself lay at Evesham, awaiting the troops which his son was to bring up from Kenilworth. ... On the fatal field of Evesham, fighting side by side to the last, fell the Earl himself, his eldest son Henry, Despenser the late Justiciar, Lord Basset of Drayton, one of his firmest friends, and a host of minor name. With them, to all appearance, fell the cause for which they had fought." Simon de Montfort (Quarterly Review, January, 1866). See PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH: EARLY STAGES OF ITS EVOLUTION. "Important as this assembly [the Parliament of 1264] is in the history of the constitution, it was not primarily and essentially a constitutional assembly. It was not a general convention of the tenants in chief or of the three estates, but a parliamentary assembly of the supporters of the existing government." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 14, section 177 (volume 2). ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets. G. W. Prothero, Life of Simon de Montfort, chapter 11-12. H. Blaauw, The Barons' War. C. H. Pearson, England, Early and Middle Ages, volume 2. ENGLAND: A. D. 1271. Crusade of Prince Edward: See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271. ENGLAND: A. D. 1272. Accession of King Edward I. ENGLAND: A. D. 1275-1295. Development of Parliamentary representation under Edward 1. "Happily, Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a successor, and more than a successor, in the king's [Henry III.'s] son. ... Edward I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. ... He could do that easily and without effort which Simon could only do laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition. Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. ... Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who, knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom without thought of his own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone. ... In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of national unity which would one day transfer the function of regulation from the crown to the representatives of the people." S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, chapter 4, section 17. "In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both shires and boroughs representatives to aid him in the new work of government. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been lasting. The task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, as a part of a definite and orderly arrangement, according to which the English parliament was to be the perfect representation of the Three Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of taxation, legislation and united political action. ... Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool; another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. ... There is no evidence that the commons of either town or county were represented. ... In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283, two great assemblies, one at York and another at Northampton, in which four knights from each shire and four members from each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral and conventual clergy also of the two provinces were represented at the same places by their elected proctors. At these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of one-thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should do the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting a feudal aid and passing the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a law had been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special commissions. In 1294, ... under the alarm of war with France, an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by their representative knights in October. {810} The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops, deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned severally in person by the king's special writ, and the commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to this parliament contained a famous sentence taken from the Roman law, 'That which touches all should be approved by all,' a maxim which might serve as a motto for Edward's constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew upon him, now permanently and consistently completed." W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets, chapter 10. "Comparing the history of the following ages with that of the past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a definite idea of government before his eyes, or that that idea was successful because it approved itself to the genius and grew out of the habits of the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the nation was capable of, and adapted his constitutional reforms to that capacity. But although we may not refuse him the credit of design, it may still be questioned whether the design was altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced upon him by circumstances and developed by a series of careful experiments. ... The design, as interpreted by the result, was the creation of a national parliament, composed of the three estates. ... This design was perfected in 1295. It was not the result of compulsion, but the consummation of a growing policy. ... But the close union of 1295 was followed by the compulsion of 1297: out of the organic completeness of the constitution sprang the power of resistance, and out of the resistance the victory of the principles, which Edward might guide, but which he failed to coerce." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 15, section 244 and chapter 14, section 180-182. W. Stubbs, Select Charters, part 7. "The 13th century was above all things the age of the lawyer and the legislator. The revived study of Roman law had been one of the greatest results of the intellectual renaissance of the twelfth century. The enormous growth of the universities in the early part of the thirteenth century was in no small measure due to the zeal, ardour and success of their legal faculties. From Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great impulse towards the systematic and scientific study of the Civil Law of Rome. ... The northern lawyers were inspired by their emulation of the civilians and canonists to look at the rude chaos of feudal custom with more critical eyes. They sought to give it more system and method, to elicit its leading principles, and to coordinate its clashing rules into a harmonious body of doctrine worthy to be put side by side with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil and Canon Law. In this spirit Henry de Bracton wrote the first systematic exposition of English law in the reign of Henry III. The judges and lawyers of the reign of Edward sought to put the principles of Bracton into practice. Edward himself strove with no small success to carry on the same great work by new legislation. ... His well-known title of the 'English Justinian' is not so absurd as it appears at first sight. He did not merely resemble Justinian in being a great legislator. Like the famous codifier of the Roman law, Edward stood at the end of a long period of legal development, and sought to arrange and systematise what had gone before him. Some of his great laws are almost in form attempts at the systematic codification of various branches of feudal custom. ... Edward was greedy for power, and a constant object of his legislation was the exaltation of the royal prerogative. But he nearly always took a broad and comprehensive view of his authority, and thoroughly grasped the truth that the best interests of king and kingdom were identical. He wished to rule the state, but was willing to take his subjects into partnership with him, if they in return recognised his royal rights. ... The same principles which influenced Edward as a lawgiver stand out clearly in his relations to every class of his subjects. ... It was the greatest work of Edward's life to make a permanent and ordinary part of the machinery of English government, what in his father's time had been but the temporary expedient of a needy taxgatherer or the last despairing effort of a revolutionary partisan. Edward I. is--so much as one man can be--the creator of the historical English constitution. It is true that the materials were ready to his hand. But before he came to the throne the parts of the constitution, though already roughly worked out, were ill-defined and ill-understood. Before his death the national council was no longer regarded as complete unless it contained a systematic representation of the three estates. All over Europe the thirteenth century saw the establishment of a system of estates. The various classes of the community, which had a separate social status and a common political interest, became organised communities, and sent their representatives to swell the council of the nation. By Edward's time there had already grown up in England some rough anticipation of the three estates of later history. ... It was with no intention of diminishing his power, but rather with the object of enlarging it, that Edward called the nation into some sort of partnership with him. The special clue to this aspect of his policy is his constant financial embarrassment. He found that he could get larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his financial condition before the representatives of his people. ... The really important thing was that Edward, like Montfort, brought shire and borough representatives together in a single estate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser landowners, who, in a time when direct participation in politics was impossible for a lower class, were the real constituencies of the shire members, to look upon their interests as more in common with the traders of lower social status than with the greater landlords with whom in most continental countries the lesser gentry were forced to associate their lot. The result strengthened the union of classes, prevented the growth of the abnormally numerous privileged nobility of most foreign countries, and broadened and deepened the main current of the national life." T. F. Tout, Edward the First, chapter 7-8. {811} "There was nothing in England which answered to the 'third estate' in France--a class, that is to say, both isolated and close, composed exclusively of townspeople, enjoying no commerce with the rural population (except such as consisted in the reception of fugitives), and at once detesting and dreading the nobility by whom it was surrounded. In England the contrary was the case. The townsfolk and the other classes in each county were thrown together upon numberless occasions; a long period of common activity created a cordial understanding between the burghers on the one hand and their neighbours the knights and landowners on the other, and finally prepared the way for the fusion of the two classes." E. Boutmy, The English Constitution, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1279. The Statute of Mortmain. "For many years past, the great danger to the balance of power appeared to come from the regular clergy, who, favoured by the success of the mendicant orders, were adding house to house and field to field. Never dying out like families, and rarely losing by forfeitures, the monasteries might well nigh calculate the time, when all the soil of England should be their own. ... Accordingly, one of the first acts of the barons under Henry III. had been to enact, that no fees should be aliened to religious persons or corporations. Edward re-enacted and strengthened this by various provisions in the famous Statute of Mortmain. The fee illegally aliened was now to be forfeited to the chief lord under the King; and if, by collusion or neglect, the lord omitted to claim his right, the crown might enter upon it. Never was statute more unpopular with the class at whom it was aimed, more ceaselessly eluded, or more effectual. ... Once the clergy seem to have meditated open resistance, for, in 1281, we find the king warning the bishops, who were then in convocation at Lambeth, as they loved their baronies, to discuss nothing that appertained to the crown, or the king's person, or his council. The warning appears to have proved effectual, and the clergy found less dangerous employment in elaborating subtle evasions of the obnoxious law. At first fictitious recoveries were practised; an abbey bringing a suit against a would-be donor, who permitted judgment against him to go by default. When this was prohibited, special charters of exemption were procured. Once an attempt was made to smuggle a dispensing bill through parliament. One politic abbot in the 15th century encouraged his friends to make bequests of land, suffered them to escheat, and then begged them back of the crown, playing on the religious feelings of Henry VI. Yet it is strong proof of the salutary terror which the Statute of Mortmain inspired that even then the abbot was not quieted, and procured an Act of Parliament to purge him from any consequences of his illegal practices. In fact, the fear, lest astute crown lawyers should involve a rich foundation in wholesale forfeitures, seems sometimes to have hampered its members in the exercise of their undoubted rights as citizens." C. H. Pearson, History of England during the Early and Middle Ages, volume 2, chapter 9. ALSO IN: E. F. Henderson, Select Historical Documents. K. E. Digby, Law of Real Property (4th edition). ENGLAND: A. D. 1282-1284. Subjugation of Wales. See WALES: A. D. 1282-1284. ENGLAND: A. D. 1290-1305. Conquest of Scotland by Edward I. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1290-1305. ENGLAND: 14th Century. Immigration of Flemish artisans. The founding of English manufactures. See FLANDERS: A. D. 1335-1337. ENGLAND: A. D. 1306-1393. Resistance to the Pope. "For one hundred and fifty years succeeding the Conquest, the right of nominating the archbishops, bishops, and mitred abbots had been claimed and exercised by the king. This right had been specially confirmed by the Constitutions of Clarendon, which also provided that the revenues of vacant sees should belong to the Crown. But John admitted all the Papal claims, surrendering even his kingdom to the Pope, and receiving it back as a fief of the Holy See. By the Great Charter the Church recovered its liberties; the right of free election being specially conceded to the cathedral chapters and the religious houses. Every election was, however, subject to the approval of the Pope, who also claimed a right of veto on institutions to the smaller church benefices. ... Under Henry III. the power thus vested in the Pope and foreign superiors of the monastic orders was greatly abused, and soon degenerated into a mere channel for draining money into the Roman exchequer. Edward I. firmly withstood the exactions of the Pope, and reasserted the independence of both Church and Crown. ... In the reign of the great Edward began a series of statutes passed to check the aggressions of the Pope and restore the independence of the national church. The first of the series was passed in 1306-7. ... This statute was confirmed under Edward III. in the 4th, and again in the 5th year of his reign; and in the 25th of his reign [A. D. 1351], roused 'by the grievous complaints of all the commons of his realm,' the King and Parliament passed the famous Statute of Provisors, aimed directly at the Pope, and emphatically forbidding his nominations to English benefices. ... Three years afterwards it was found necessary to pass a statute forbidding citations to the court of Rome--[the prelude to the Statute of Præmunire, described below]. ... In 1389, there was an expectation that the Pope was about to attempt to enforce his claims, by excommunicating those who rejected them. ... The Parliament at once passed a highly penal statute. ... Matters were shortly afterwards brought to a crisis by Boniface IX., who after declaring the statutes enacted by the English Parliament null and void, granted to an Italian cardinal a prebendal stall at Wells, to which the king had already presented. Cross suits were at once instituted by the two claimants in the Papal and English courts. A decision was given by the latter, in favour of the king's nominee, and the bishops, having agreed to support the Crown, were forthwith excommunicated by the Pope. The Commons were now roused to the highest pitch of indignation,"--and the final great Statute of Præmunire was passed, A. D. 1393. "The firm and resolute attitude assumed by the country caused Boniface to yield; 'and for the moment,' observes Mr. Froude, 'and indeed for ever under this especial form, the wave of papal encroachment was rolled back.'" T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 11. "The great Statute of Provisors, passed in 1351, was a very solemn expression of the National determination not to give way to the pope's usurpation of patronage. ... All persons procuring or accepting papal promotions were to be arrested. ... In 1352 the purchasers of Provisions were declared outlaws; in 1365 another act repeated the prohibitions and penalties; and in 1390 the parliament of Richard II. rehearsed and confirmed the statute. By this act, forfeiture and banishment were decreed against future transgressors." {812} The Statute of Præmunire as enacted finally in 1393, provided that "all persons procuring in the court of Rome or elsewhere such translations, processes, sentences of excommunication, bulls, instruments or other things which touch the king, his crown, regality or realm, should suffer the penalties of præmunire"--which included imprisonment and forfeiture of goods. "The name præmunire which marks this form of legislation is taken from the opening word of the writ by which the sheriff is charged to summon the delinquent." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 19, section 715-716. ENGLAND: A. D. 1307. Accession of King Edward II. ENGLAND: A. D. 1310-1311. The Ordainers. "At the parliament which met in March 1310 [reign of Edward II.] a new scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed on the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions of Oxford. It was determined that the task of regulating the affairs of the realm and of the king's household should be committed to an elected body of twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of whom was Archbishop Winchelsey. ... The Ordainers were empowered to remain in office until Michaelmas 1311, and to make ordinances for the good of the realm, agreeable to the tenour of the king's coronation oath. The whole administration of the kingdom thus passed into their hands. ... The Ordainers immediately on their appointment issued six articles directing the observance of the charters, the careful collection of the customs, and the arrest of the foreign merchants; but the great body of the ordinances was reserved for the parliament which met in August 1311. The famous document or statute known as the Ordinances of 1311 contained forty-one clauses, all aimed at existing abuses." W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets, chapter 12. ENGLAND: A. D. 1314-1328. Bannockburn and the recovery of Scottish independence. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1314; 1314-1328. ENGLAND: A. D. 1327. Accession of King Edward III. ENGLAND: A. D. 1328. The Peace of Northampton with Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1328. ENGLAND: A. D. 1328-1360. The pretensions and wars of Edward III. in France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1328-1339; and 1337-1360. ENGLAND: A. D. 1332-1370. The wars of Edward III. with Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1332-1333, and 1333-1370. ENGLAND: A. D. 1333-1380. The effects of the war in France. "A period of great wars is generally favourable to the growth of a nobility. Men who equipped large bodies of troops for the Scotch or French wars, or who had served with distinction in them, naturally had a claim for reward at the hands of their sovereign. ... The 13th century had broken up estates all over England and multiplied families of the upper class; the 14th century was consolidating properties again, and establishing a broad division between a few powerful nobles and the mass of the community. But if the gentry, as an order, lost a little in relative importance by the formation of a class of great nobles, more distinct than had existed before, the middle classes of England, its merchants and yeomen, gained very much in importance by the war. Under the firm rule of the 'King of the Sea,' as his subjects lovingly called Edward III., our commerce expanded. Englishmen rose to an equality with the merchants of the Hanse Towns, the Genoese, or the Lombards, and England for a time overflowed with treasure. The first period of war, ending with the capture of Calais, secured our coasts; the second, terminated by the peace of Brétigny, brought the plunder of half [of] France into the English markets; and even when Edward's reign had closed on defeat and bankruptcy, and our own shores were ravaged by hostile fleets, it was still possible for private adventurers to retaliate invasion upon the enemy. ... The romance of foreign conquest, of fortunes lightly gained and lightly lost, influenced English enterprise for many years to come. ... The change to the lower orders during the reign arose rather from the frequent pestilences, which reduced the number of working men and made labour valuable, than from any immediate participation in the war. In fact, English serfs, as a rule, did not serve in Edward's armies. They could not be men-at-arms or archers for want of training and equipment; and for the work of light-armed troops and foragers, the Irish and Welsh seem to have been preferred. The opportunity of the serfs came with the Black Death, while districts were depopulated, and everywhere there was a want of hands to till the fields and get in the crops. The immediate effect was unfortunate. ... The indifference of late years, when men were careless if their villans stayed on the property or emigrated, was succeeded by a sharp inquisition after fugitive serfs, and constant legislation to bring them back to their masters. ... The leading idea of the legislator was that the labourer, whose work had doubled or trebled in value, was to receive the same wages as in years past; and it was enacted that he might be paid in kind, and, at last, that in all cases of contumacy he should be imprisoned without the option of a fine. ... The French war contributed in many ways to heighten the feeling of English nationality. Our trade, our language and our Church received a new and powerful influence. In the early years of Edward III.'s reign, Italian merchants were the great financiers of England, farming the taxes and advancing loans to the Crown. Gradually the instinct of race, the influence of the Pope, and geographical position, contributed, with the mistakes of Edward's policy, to make France the head, as it were, of a confederation of Latin nations. Genoese ships served in the French fleet, Genoese bowmen fought at Crécy, and English privateers retorted on Genoese commerce throughout the course of the reign. In 1376 the Commons petitioned that all Lombards might be expelled [from] the kingdom, bringing amongst other charges against them that they were French spies. The Florentines do not seem to have been equally odious, but the failure of the great firm of the Bardi in 1345, chiefly through its English engagements, obliged Edward to seek assistance elsewhere; and he transferred the privilege of lending to the crown to the merchants of the rising Hanse Towns." C. H. Pearson, English History in the Fourteenth Century, chapter 9. "We may trace the destructive nature of the war with France in the notices of adjoining parishes thrown into one for want of sufficient inhabitants, 'of people impoverished by frequent taxation of our lord the king,' until they had fled, of churches allowed to fall into ruin because there were none to worship within their walls, and of religious houses extinguished because the monks and nuns had died, and none bad been found to supply their places. ... {813} To the poverty of the country and the consequent inability of the nation to maintain the costly wars of Edward III., are attributed the enactments of sumptuary laws, which were passed because men who spent much on their table and dress were unable 'to help their liege lord' in the battle field." W. Denton, England in the 15th Century, introduction, part 2. ENGLAND: A. D. 1318-1349. The Black Death and its effects. "The plague of 1349 ... produced in every country some marked social changes. ... In England the effects of the plague are historically prominent chiefly among the lower classes of society. The population was diminished to an extent to which it is impossible now even to approximate, but which bewildered and appalled the writers of the time; whole districts were thrown out of cultivation, whole parishes depopulated, the number of labourers was so much diminished that on the one hand the survivors demanded an extravagant rate of wages, and even combined to enforce it, whilst on the other hand the landowners had to resort to every antiquated claim of service to get their estates cultivated at all; the whole system of farming was changed in consequence, the great landlords and the monastic corporations ceased to manage their estates by farming stewards, and after a short interval, during which the lands with the stock on them were let to the cultivator on short leases, the modern system of letting was introduced, and the permanent distinction between the farmer and the labourer established." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 16, section 259. "On the first of August 1348 the disease appeared in the seaport towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly westwards and northwards, through Devonshire and Somersetshire to Bristol. In order, if possible, to arrest its progress, all intercourse with the citizens of Bristol was prohibited by the authorities of the county of Gloucester. These precautions were however taken in vain; the Plague continued to Oxford, and, travelling slowly in the same measured way, reached London by the first of November. It appeared in Norwich on the first of January, and thence spread northwards. ... The mortality was enormous. Perhaps from one-third to one-half the population fell victims to the disease. Adam of Monmouth says that only a tenth of the population survived. Similar amplifications are found in all the chroniclers. We are told that 60,000 persons perished in Norwich between January and July 1349. No doubt Norwich was at that time the second city in the kingdom, but the number is impossible. ... It is stated that in England the weight of the calamity fell on the poor, and that the higher classes were less severely affected. But Edward's daughter Joan fell a victim to it and three archbishops of Canterbury perished in the same year. ... All contemporary writers inform us that the immediate consequence of the Plague was a dearth of labour, and excessive enhancement of wages, and thereupon a serious loss to the landowners. To meet this scarcity the king issued a proclamation directed to the sheriffs of the several counties, which forbad the payment of higher than the customary wages, under the penalties of amercement. But the king's mandate was every where disobeyed. ... Many of the labourers were thrown into prison; many to avoid punishment fled to the forests, but were occasionally captured and fined; and all were constrained to disavow under oath that they would take higher than customary wages for the future." J. E. T. Rogers, History of Agriculture and Prices in England, volume 1, chapter 15. ALSO IN: F. A. Gasquet, The Great Pestilence. W. Longman, Edward III., volume 1; chapter 10. A. Jessop, The Coming of the Friars, &c., chapter 4-5. ENGLAND: A. D. 1350-1400. Chaucer and his relations to English language and literature. "At the time when the conflict between church and state was most violent, and when Wyclif was beginning to draw upon himself the eyes of patriots, there was considerable talk at the English court about a young man named Geoffrey Chaucer, who belonged to the king's household, and who both by his personality and his connections enjoyed the favor of the royal family. ... On many occasions, even thus early, he had appeared as a miracle of learning to those about him--he read Latin as easily as French; he spoke a more select English than others; and it was known that he had composed, or, as the expression then was, 'made,' many beautiful English verses. The young poet belonged to a well-to-do middle-class family who had many far-reaching connections, and even some influence with the court. ... Even as a boy he may have heard his father, John Chaucer, the vintner of Thames Street, London, telling of the marvelous voyage he had made to Antwerp and Cologne in the brilliant suite of Edward III. in 1338. When a youth of sixteen or seventeen, Geoffrey served as a page or squire to Elizabeth, duchess of Ulster, first wife of Lionel, duke of Clarence, and daughter-in-law of the king. He bore arms when about nineteen years of age, and went to France in 1359, in the army commanded by Edward III. ... This epoch formed a sort of 'Indian summer' to the age of chivalry, and its spirit found expression in great deeds of war as well as in the festivals and manners of the court. The ideal which men strove to realize did not quite correspond to the spirit of the former age. On the whole, people had become more worldly and practical, and were generally anxious to protect the real interests of life from the unwarranted interference of romantic aspirations. The spirit of chivalry no longer formed a fundamental element, but only an ornament of life--an ornament, indeed, which was made much of, and which was looked upon with a sentiment partaking of enthusiasm. ... In the midst of this outside world of motley pomp and throbbing life Geoffrey could observe the doings of high and low in various situations. He was early initiated into court intrigues, and even into many political secrets, and found opportunities of studying the human type in numerous individuals and according to the varieties developed by rank in life, education, age, and sex. ... Nothing has been preserved from his early writings. ... The fact is very remarkable that from the first, or at least from a very early period, Chaucer wrote in the English language--however natural this may seem to succeeding ages in 'The Father of English Poetry.' The court of Edward III. favored the language as well as the literature of France; a considerable number of French poets and 'menestrels' were in the service and pay of the English king. {814} Queen Philippa, in particular, showing herself in this a true daughter of her native Hainault, formed the centre of a society cultivating the French language and poetry. She had in her personal service Jean Froissart, one of the most eminent representatives of that language and poetry; like herself he belonged to one of the most northern districts of the French-speaking territory; he had made himself a great name, as a prolific and clever writer of erotic and allegoric trifles, before he sketched out in his famous chronicle the motley-colored, vivid picture of that eventful age. We also see in this period young Englishmen of rank and education trying their flight on the French Parnassus. ... To these Anglo-French poets there belonged also a Kentishman of noble family, named John Gower. Though some ten years the senior of Chaucer, he had probably met him about this time. They were certainly afterwards very intimately acquainted. Gower ... had received a very careful education, and loved to devote the time he could spare from the management of his estates to study and poetry. His learning was in many respects greater than Chaucer's. He had studied the Latin poets so diligently that he could easily express himself in their language, and he was equally good at writing French verses, which were able to pass muster, at least in England. ... But, Chaucer did not let himself be led astray by examples such as these. It is possible that he would have found writing in French no easy task, even if he had attempted it. At any rate his bourgeois origin, and the seriousness of his vocation as poet, threw a determining weight into the scale and secured his fidelity to the English language with a commendable consistency." B. Ten Brink, History of English Literature, book 4, chapter 4 (volume 2, part 1). "English was not taught in the schools, but French only, until after the accession of Richard II., or possibly the latter years of Edward III., and Latin was always studied through the French. Up to this period, then, as there were no standards of literary authority, and probably no written collections of established forms, or other grammatical essays, the language had no fixedness or uniformity, and hardly deserved to be called a written speech. ... From this Babylonish confusion of speech, the influence and example of Chaucer did more to rescue his native tongue than any other single cause; and if we compare his dialect with that of any writer of an earlier date, we shall find that in compass, flexibility, expressiveness, grace, and all the higher qualities of poetical diction, he gave it at once the utmost perfection which the materials at his hand would permit of. The English writers of the fourteenth century had an advantage which was altogether peculiar to their age and country. At all previous periods, the two languages had co-existed, in a great degree independently of each other, with little tendency to intermix; but in the earlier part of that century, they began to coalesce, and this process was going on with a rapidity that threatened a predominance of the French, if not a total extinction of the Saxon element. ... When the national spirit was aroused, and impelled to the creation of a national literature, the poet or prose writer, in selecting his diction, had almost two whole vocabularies before him. That the syntax should be English, national feeling demanded; but French was so familiar and habitual to all who were able to read, that probably the scholarship of the day would scarcely have been able to determine, with respect to a large proportion of the words in common use, from which of the two great wells of speech they had proceeded. Happily, a great arbiter arose at the critical moment of severance of the two peoples and dialects, to preside over the division of the common property, and to determine what share of the contributions of France should be permanently annexed to the linguistic inheritance of Englishmen. Chaucer did not introduce into the English language words which it had rejected as aliens before, but out of those which had been already received, he invested the better portion with the rights of citizenship, and stamped them with the mint-mark of English coinage. In this way, he formed a vocabulary, which, with few exceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding generations has approved; and a literary diction was thus established, which, in all the qualities required for the poetic art, had at that time no superior in the languages of modern Europe. The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety of his philological appreciation, and the delicacy of his sense of adaptation to the actual wants of the English people, are sufficiently proved by the fact that, of the Romance words found in his writings, not much above one hundred have been suffered to become obsolete, while a much larger number of Anglo-Saxon words employed by him have passed altogether out of use. ... In the three centuries which elapsed between the Conquest and the noon-tide of Chaucer's life, a large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of religion, of moral and intellectual discourse, and of taste, had become utterly obsolete, and unknown. The place of the lost words had been partly supplied by the importation of Continental terms; but the new words came without the organic power of composition and derivation which belonged to those they had supplanted. Consequently, they were incapable of those modifications of form and extensions of meaning which the Anglo-Saxon roots could so easily assume, and which fitted them for the expression of the new shades of thought and of sentiment born of every hour in a mind and an age like those of Chaucer." G. P. Marsh, Origin and History of the English Language, lecture 9. ALSO IN: T. R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer. A. W. Ward, Chaucer. W. Godwin, Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. ENGLAND: A. D. 1360-1414. The Lollards. "The Lollards were the earliest 'Protestants' of England. They were the followers of John Wyclif, but before his time the nickname of Lollard had been known on the continent. A little brotherhood of pious people had sprung up in Holland, about the year 1300, who lived in a half-monastic fashion and devoted themselves to helping the poor in the burial of their dead; and, from the low chants they sang at the funerals--lollen being the old word for such singing--they were called Lollards. The priests and friars hated them and accused them of heresy, and a Walter Lollard, probably one of them, was burnt in 1322 at Cologne as a heretic, and gradually the name became a nickname for such people. So when Wyclif's simple priests' were preaching the new doctrines, the name already familiar in Holland and Germany, was given to them, and gradually became the name for that whole movement of religious reformation which grew up from the seed Wyclif sowed." B. Herford, Story of Religion in England, chapter 16. {815} "A turning point arrived in the history of the reforming party at the accession of the house of Lancaster. King Henry the Fourth was not only a devoted son of the Church, but he owed his success in no slight measure to the assistance of the Churchmen, and above all to that of Archbishop Arundel. It was felt that the new dynasty and the hierarchy stood or fell together. A mixture of religious and political motives led to the passing of the well-known statute 'De hæretico comburendo' in 1401 and thenceforward Lollardy was a capital offence." R. L. Poole, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform, chapter 8. "The abortive insurrection of the Lollards at the commencement of Henry V. 's reign, under the leadership of Sir John Oldcastle, had the effect of adding to the penal laws already in existence against the sect." This gave to Lollardy a political character and made the Lollards enemies against the State, as is evident from the king's proclamation in which it was asserted "that the insurgents intended to 'destroy him, his brothers and several of the spiritual and temporal lords, to confiscate the possessions of the Church, to secularize the religious orders, to divide the realm into confederate districts, and to appoint Sir John Oldcastle president of the commonwealth.'" T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History (4th edition), chapter 11. "The early life of Wycliffe is obscure. ... He emerges into distinct notice in 1360, ten years subsequent to the passing of the first Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity. ... He was a man of most simple life; austere in appearance; with bare feet and russet mantle. As a soldier of Christ, he saw in his Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom he was bound to imitate. By the contagion of example he gathered about him other men who thought as he did; and gradually, under his captaincy, these 'poor priests' as they were called--vowed to poverty because Christ was poor--vowed to accept no benefice ... spread out over the country as an army of missionaries, to preach the faith which they found in the Bible--to preach, not of relics and of indulgences, but of repentance and of the grace of God. They carried with them copies of the Bible which Wycliffe had translated, ... and they refused to recognize the authority of the bishops, or their right to silence them. If this had been all, and perhaps if Edward III. had been succeeded by a prince less miserably incapable than his grandson Richard, Wycliffe might have made good his ground; the movement of the parliament against the pope might have united in a common stream with the spiritual move against the church at home, and the Reformation have been antedated by a century. He was summoned to answer for himself before the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377. He appeared in court supported by the presence of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, the eldest of Edward's surviving sons, and the authorities were unable to strike him behind so powerful a shield. But the 'poor priests' had other doctrines. ... His [Wycliffe's] theory of property, and his study of the character of Christ, had led him to the near confines of Anabaptism." The rebellion of Wat Tyler, which occurred in 1381, cast odium upon all such opinions. "So long as Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a guarantee for the conduct of his immediate disciples; and although his favour had far declined, a party in the state remained attached to him, with sufficient influence to prevent the adoption of extreme measures against the 'poor priests.' ... They were left unmolested for the next twenty years. ... On the settlement of the country under Henry IV. they fell under the general ban which struck down all parties who had shared in the late disturbances." J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 6. "Wycliffe's translation of the Bible itself created a new era, and gave birth to what may be said never to have existed till then--a popular theology. ... It is difficult in our day to imagine the impression such a book must have produced in an age which had scarcely anything in the way of popular literature, and which had been accustomed to regard the Scriptures as the special property of the learned. It was welcomed with an enthusiasm which could not be restrained, and read with avidity both by priests and laymen. ... The homely wisdom, blended with eternal truth, which has long since enriched our vernacular speech with a multitude of proverbs, could not thenceforth be restrained in its circulation by mere pious awe or time-honoured prejudice. Divinity was discussed in ale-houses. Popular preachers made war upon old prejudices. and did much to shock that sense of reverence which belonged to an earlier generation. A new school had arisen with a theology of its own, warning the people against the delusive preaching of the friars, and asserting loudly its own claims to be true and evangelical, on the ground that it possessed the gospel in the English tongue. Appealing to such an authority in their favour, the eloquence of the new teachers made a marvellous impression. Their followers increased with extraordinary rapidity. By the estimate of an opponent they soon numbered half the population, and you could hardly see two persons in the street but one of them was a Wycliffite. ... They were supported by the powerful influence of John of Gaunt, who shielded not only Wycliffe himself, but even the most violent of the fanatics. And, certainly, whatever might have been Wycliffe's own view, doctrines were promulgated by his reputed followers that were distinctly subversive of authority. John Ball fomented the insurrection of Wat Tyler, by preaching the natural equality of men. ... But the popularity of Lollardy was short-lived. The extravagance to which it led soon alienated the sympathies of the people, and the sect fell off in numbers almost as rapidly as it had risen." J. Gairdner, Studies in English History, 1-2. "Wyclif ... was not without numerous followers, and the Lollardism which sprang out of his teaching was a living force in England for some time to come. But it was weak through its connection with subversive social doctrines. He himself stood aloof from such doctrines, but he could not prevent his followers from mingling in the social fray. It was perhaps their merit that they did so. The established constitutional order was but another name for oppression and wrong to the lower classes. But as yet the lower classes were not sufficiently advanced in moral and political training to make it safe to entrust them with the task of righting their own wrongs as they would have attempted to right them if they had gained the mastery. It had nevertheless become impossible to leave the peasants to be once more goaded by suffering into rebellion. The attempt, if it had been made, to enforce absolute labour-rents was tacitly abandoned, and gradually during the next century the mass of the villeins passed into the position of freemen. {816} For the moment, nobles and prelates, landowners and clergy, banded themselves together to form one great party of resistance. The church came to be but an outwork of the baronage." S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, part 1, chapter 5, sections 14-15. ALSO IN L. Sergeant, John Wyclif. G. Lechler, John Wiclif and his English Precursors. See, also, BOHEMIA; A. D. 1405-1415, and BEGUINES. ENGLAND: A. D. 1377. Accession of King Richard II. ENGLAND: A. D. 1377-1399. The character and reign of Richard II. "Richard II. was a far superior man to many of the weaker kings of England; but being self-willed and unwarlike, he was unfitted for the work which the times required. Yet, on a closer inspection than the traditional view of the reign has generally encouraged, we cannot but observe that the finer qualities which came out in certain crises of his reign appear to have frequently influenced his conduct: we know that he was not an immoral man, that he was an excellent husband to an excellent wife, and that he had devoted friends, willing to lay down their lives for him when there was nothing whatever left for them to gain. ... Richard, who had been brought up in the purple quite as much as Edward II., was kept under restraint by his uncles, and not being judiciously guided in the arts of government, fell, like his prototype, into the hands of favourites. His brilliant behaviour in the insurrection of 1381 indicated much more than mere possession of the Plantagenet courage and presence of mind. He showed a real sympathy with the villeins who had undeniable grievances. ... His instincts were undoubtedly for freedom and forgiveness, and there is no proof, nor even probability, that he intended to use the villeins against his enemies. His early and happy marriage with Anne of Bohemia ought, one might think, to have saved him from the vice of favouritism; but he was at least more fortunate than Edward II. in not being cast under the spell of a Gaveston. When we consider the effect of such a galling government as that of his uncle Gloucester, and his cousin Derby, afterwards Henry IV., who seems to have been pushing Gloucester on from the first, we can hardly be surprised that he should require some friend to lean upon. The reign is, in short, from one, and perhaps the truest, point of view, a long duel between the son of the Black Prince and the son of John of Gaunt. One or other of them must inevitably perish. A handsome and cultivated youth, who showed himself at fifteen every inch a king, who was married at sixteen, and led his own army to Scotland at eighteen, required a different treatment from that which he received. He was a man, and should have been dealt with as such. His lavish and reprehensible grants to his favourites were made the excuse for Gloucester's violent interference in 1386, but there is good ground for believing that the movement was encouraged by the anti-Wicliffite party, which had taken alarm at the sympathy with the Reformers shown at this time by Richard and Anne." M. Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, book 2, chapter 5. ALSO IN: J. R. Green, History of the English People, book 4, chapter 4 (volume 1). C. H. Pearson, English History in the 14th Century, chapter 10-12. ENGLAND: A. D. 1381. Wat Tyler's Rebellion. "In June 1381 there broke out in England the formidable insurrection known as Wat Tyler's Rebellion. The movement seems to have begun among the bondmen of Essex and of Kent; but it spread at once to the counties of Sussex Hertford, Cambridge, Suffolk and Norfolk. The peasantry, armed with bludgeons and rusty swords, first occupied the roads by which pilgrims went to Canterbury, and made everyone swear that he would be true to king Richard and not accept a king named John. This, of course, was aimed at the government of John of Gaunt [Duke of Lancaster], ... to whom the people attributed every grievance they had to complain of. The principal, or at least the immediate cause of offence arose out of a poll-tax which had been voted in the preceding year." J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, chapter 2. The leaders of the insurgents were Wat the Tyler, who had been a soldier, John Ball, a priest and preacher of democratic and socialistic doctrines, and one known as Jack Straw. They made their way to London. "It ought to have been easy to keep them out of the city, as the only approach to it was by London Bridge, and the mayor and chief citizens proposed to defend it. But the Londoners generally, and even three of the aldermen, were well inclined to the rebels, and declared that they would not let the gates be shut against their friends and neighbours, and would kill the mayor himself if he attempted to do it. So on the evening of Wednesday, June 13, the insurgents began to stream in across the bridge, and next morning marched their whole body across the river, and proceeded at once to the Savoy, the splendid palace of the Duke of Lancaster. Proclamation was made that any one found stealing the smallest article would be beheaded; and the place was then wrecked and burned with all the formalities of a solemn act of justice. Gold and silver plate was shattered with battle-axes and thrown into the Thames; rings and smaller jewels were brayed in mortars; silk and embroidered dresses were trampled under feet and torn up. Then the Temple was burned with all its muniments. The poet Gower was among the lawyers who had to save their lives by flight, and he passed several nights in the woods of Essex, covered with grass and leaves and living on acorns. Then the great house of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell was destroyed, taking seven days to burn." The young king (Richard II.) and his court and council had taken refuge in the Tower. The insurgents now threatened to storm their stronghold if the king did not come out and speak to them. The king consented and appointed a rendezvous at Mile End. He kept the appointment and met his turbulent subjects with so much courage and tact and so many promises, that he persuaded a great number to disperse to their homes. But while this pacific interview took place, Wat Tyler, John Ball, and some 400 of their followers burst into the Tower, determined to find the archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Treasurer, Sir Robert de Hales, who were the most obnoxious ministers. "So great was the general consternation that the soldiers dared not raise a hand while these ruffians searched the different rooms, not sparing even the king's bedroom, running spears into the beds, asked the king's mother to kiss them, and played insolent jokes on the chief officers. {817} Unhappily they were not long in finding the archbishop, who had said mass in the chapel, and was kneeling at the altar in expectation of their approach." The Lord Treasurer was also found, and both he and the archbishop were summarily beheaded by the mob. "Murder now became the order of the day, and foreigners were among the chief victims; thirteen Flemings were dragged out of one church and beheaded, seventeen out of another, and altogether it is said 400 perished. Many private enmities were revenged by the London rabble on this day." On the next day, June 15, the king, with an armed escort, went to the camp of the insurgents, at Smithfield, and opened negotiations with Tyler, offering successively three forms of a new charter of popular rights and liberties, all of which were rejected. Finally, Tyler was invited to a personal conference, and there, in the midst of the king's party, on some provocation or pretended provocation in his words or bearing, the popular leader was struck from his horse and killed. King Richard immediately rode out before the ranks of the rebels, while they were still dazed by the suddenness and audacity of the treacherous blow, crying "I will be your leader; follow me." The thoughtless mob followed and soon found itself surrounded by bodies of troops whose courage had revived. The king now commanded the trembling peasants "to fall on their knees, cut the strings of their bows, and leave the city and its neighbourhood, under pain of death, before nightfall. This command was instantly obeyed." Meantime and afterwards there were many lesser risings in various parts of the country, all of which were suppressed, with such rigorous prosecutions in the courts that 1,500 persons are said to have suffered judicially. C. H. Pearson, English History in the Fourteenth Century, chapter 10. The Wat Tyler insurrection proved disastrous in its effect on the work of Church reform which Wyclif was then pursuing. "Not only was the power of the Lancastrian party, on which Wyclif had relied, for the moment annihilated, but the quarrel between the Baronage and Church, on which his action had hitherto been grounded, was hushed in the presence of a common danger. Much of the odium of the outbreak, too, fell on the Reformer. ... John Ball, who had figured in the front rank of the revolt, was claimed as one of his adherents. ... Whatever belief such charges might gain, it is certain that from this moment all plans for the reorganization of the Church were confounded in the general odium which attached to the projects of the socialist peasant leaders." J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 5, section 3. "When Parliament assembled it proved itself as hostile as the crown to the conceding any of the demands of the people; both were faithful to all the records of history in similar cases; they would have belied all experience if, being victorious, they had consented to the least concession to the vanquished. The upper classes repudiated the recognition of the rights of the poor to a degree, which in our time would be considered sheer insanity. The king had annulled, by proclamation to the sheriffs, the charters of manumission which he had granted to the insurgents, and this revocation was warmly approved by both Lords and Commons, who, not satisfied with saying that such enfranchisement could not be made without their consent, added, that they would never give that consent, even to save themselves from perishing altogether in one day. There was, it is true, a vague rumour about the propriety and wisdom of abolishing villanage; but the notion was scouted, and the owners of serfs showed that they neither doubted the right by which they held their fellow-creatures in a state of slavery, nor would hesitate to increase the severity of the laws affecting them. They now passed a law by which 'all riots and rumours, and other such things were turned into high treason'; this law was most vaguely expressed, and would probably involve those who made it in inextricable difficulties. It was self-apparent, that this Parliament acted under the impulses of panic, and of revenge for recent injuries. ... It might be said that the citizens of the municipalities wrote their charters of enfranchisement with the very blood of their lords and bishops; yet, during the worst days of oppression, the serfs of the cities had never suffered the cruel excesses of tyranny endured by the country people till the middle of the fifteenth century. And, nevertheless, the long struggles of the townships, despite the bloodshed and cruelties of the citizens, are ever considered and narrated as glorious revolutions, whilst the brief efforts of the peasants for vengeance, which were drowned in their own blood, have remained as a stigma flung in the face of the country populations whenever they utter a word claiming some amelioration in their condition. Whence the injustice? The bourgeoisie was victorious and successful. The rural populations were vanquished and trampled upon. The bourgeoisie, therefore, has had its poets, historians, and flatterers, whilst the poor peasant, rude, untutored, and ignorant, never had a lyre nor a voice to bewail his lamentable sorrows and sufferings." Prof. De Vericour, Wat Tyler (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, number 8, volume 2). ALSO IN: G. Lechler, John Wiclif, chapter 9, section 3. C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 2, chapter 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1383. The Bishop of Norwich's Crusade in Flanders. See FLANDERS: A. D. 1383. ENGLAND: A. D. 1388. The Merciless or Wonderful Parliament. See PARLIAMENT, THE WONDERFUL. ENGLAND: A. D. 1399. Accession of King Henry IV. ENGLAND: A. D. 1399-1471. House of Lancaster. This name is given in English history to the family which became royal in the person of Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who deposed his cousin, Richard II., or forced him to abdicate the throne, and who was crowned king (Henry IV.), Oct. 11, 1399, with what seemed to be the consent of the nation. He not only claimed to be the next in succession to Richard, but he put forward a claim of descent through his mother, more direct than Richard's had been, from Henry III. "In point of fact Henry was not the next in succession. His father, John of Gaunt [or John of Ghent, in which city he was born], was the fourth son of Edward III., and there were descendants of that king's third son, Lionel Duke of Clarence, living. ... At one time Richard himself had designated as his successor the nobleman who really stood next to him in the line of descent. This was Roger Mortimer, Earl of March, the same who was killed by the rebels in Ireland. This Roger had left a son Edmund to inherit his title, but Edmund was a mere child, and the inconvenience of another minority could not have been endured." J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, chapter 2. {818} As for Henry's pretensions through his mother, they were founded upon what Mr. Gairdner calls an "idle story," that "the eldest son of Henry III. was not king Edward, but his brother Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, who was commonly reputed the second son; and that this Edmund had been purposely set aside on account of his personal deformity. The plain fact of the matter was that Edmund Crouchback was six years younger than his brother Edward I.; and that his surname Crouchback had not the smallest reference to personal deformity, but only implied that he wore the cross upon his back as a crusader." Mr. Wylie (History of England under Henry IV., volume 1, chapter 1) represents that this latter claim was put forward under the advice of the leading jurists of the time, to give the appearance of a legitimate succession; whereas Henry took his real title from the will and assent of the nation. Henry IV. was succeeded by his vigorous son, Henry V. and he in turn by a feeble son, Henry VI., during whose reign England was torn by intrigues and factions, ending in the lamentable civil wars known as the "Wars of the Roses," the deposition of Henry VI. and the acquisition of the throne by the "House of York," in the persons of Edward IV. and Richard III. It was a branch of the House of Lancaster that reappeared, after the death of Richard III. in the royal family better known as the Tudors. ENGLAND: A. D. 1400-1436. Relations with Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1400-1436. ENGLAND: A. D. 1402-1413. Owen Glendower's Rebellion in Wales. See WALES: A. D.1402-1413. ENGLAND: A. D. 1403. Hotspur's Rebellion. The earl of Northumberland and his son, Henry Percy, called "Hotspur," had performed great services for Henry IV., in establishing and maintaining him upon the throne. "At the outset of his reign their opposition would have been fatal to him; their adhesion ensured his victory. He had rewarded them with territory and high offices of trust, and they had by faithful services ever since increased their claims to gratitude and consideration. ... Both father and son were high-spirited, passionate, suspicious men, who entertained an exalted sense of their own services and could not endure the shadow of a slight. Up to this time [early in 1403] not a doubt had been cast on their fidelity. Northumberland was still the king's chief agent in Parliament, his most valued commander in the field, his Mattathias. It has been thought that Hotspur's grudge against the king began with the notion that the release of his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer [taken prisoner, the year before, by the Welsh], had been neglected by the king, or was caused by Henry's claim to deal with the prisoners taken at Homildon; the defenders of the Percies alleged that they had been deceived by Henry in the first instance, and only needed to be persuaded that Richard lived in order to desert the king. It is more probable that they suspected Henry's friendship, and were exasperated by his compulsory economies. ... Yet Henry seems to have conceived no suspicion. ... Northumberland and Hotspur were writing for increased forces [for the war with Scotland]. ... On the 10th of July Henry had reached Northamptonshire on his way northwards; on the 17th he heard that Hotspur with his uncle the earl of Worcester were in arms in Shropshire. They raised no cry of private wrongs, but proclaimed themselves the vindicators of national right: their object was to correct the evils of the administration, to enforce the employment of wise counsellors, and the proper expenditure of public money. ... The report ran like wildfire through the west that Richard was alive, and at Chester. Hotspur's army rose to 14,000 men, and not suspecting the strength and promptness of the king, he sat down with his uncle and his prisoner, the earl of Douglas, before Shrewsbury. Henry showed himself equal to the need. From Burton-on-Trent, where on July 17 he summoned the forces of the shires to join him, he marched into Shropshire, and offered to parley with the insurgents. The earl of Worcester went between the camps, but he was either an impolitic or a treacherous envoy, and the negotiations ended in mutual exasperation. On the 21st the battle of Shrewsbury was fought; Hotspur was slain; Worcester was taken and beheaded two days after. The old earl, who may or may not have been cognizant of his son's intentions from the first, was now marching to his succour. The earl of Westmoreland, his brother-in-law, met him and drove him back to Warkworth. But all danger was over. On the 11th of August he met the king at York, and submitted to him." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 18, section 632. ALSO IN: J. H. Wylie, History of England under Henry IV., volume 1, chapter 25. W. Shakespeare, King Henry IV., part 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1413. Accession of King Henry V. ENGLAND: A. D. 1413-1422. Parliamentary gains under Henry V. "What the sword had won the sword should keep, said Henry V. on his accession; but what was meant by the saying has its comment in the fact that, in the year which witnessed his victory at Agincourt, he yielded to the House of Commons the most liberal measure of legislation which until then it had obtained. The dazzling splendour of his conquests in France had for the time cast into the shade every doubt or question of his title, but the very extent of those gains upon the French soil established more decisively the worse than uselessness of such acquisitions to the English throne. The distinction of Henry's reign in constitutional history will always be, that from it dates that power, indispensable to a free and limited monarchy, called Privilege of Parliament; the shield and buckler under which all the battles of liberty and good government were fought in the after time. Not only were its leading safeguards now obtained, but at once so firmly established, that against the shock of incessant resistance in later years they stood perfectly unmoved. Of the awful right of impeachment, too, the same is to be said. It was won in the same reign, and was never afterwards lost." J. Forster, Historical and Biographical Essays, volume 1, page 207. ENGLAND: A. D. 1415-1422. Conquests of Henry V. in France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1415; and 1417-1422. ENGLAND: A. D. 1422. Accession of King Henry VI. ENGLAND: A. D. 1431-1453. Loss of English conquests and possessions in France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1431-1453, and AQUITAINE: A. D. 1360-1453. {819} ENGLAND: A. D. 1450. Cade's Rebellion. A formidable rebellion broke out in Kent, under the leadership of one Jack Cade, A. D. 1450. Overtaxation, the bad management of the council, the extortion of the subordinate officers, the injustice of the king's bench, the abuse of the right of purveyance, the "enquestes" and amercements, and the illegitimate control of elections were the chief causes of the rising of 1450. "The rising was mainly political, only one complaint was economical, not a single one was religious. We find not a single demand for new legislation. ... The movement was by no means of a distinctly plebeian or disorderly character, but was a general and organized rising of the people at large. It was a political upheaval. We find no trace of socialism or of democracy. ... The commons in 1450 arose against Lancaster and in favor of York. Their rising was the first great struggle in the Wars of the Roses." Kriehn, Rising in 1450, Chapter IV., VII. Cade and his rebels took possession of London; but they were beaten in a battle and forced to quit the city. Cade and some followers continued to be turbulent and soon afterwards he was killed. J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, chapter 7, section 6. ALSO IN: C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 3d series, chapter 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1455. Demoralized state of the nation. Effects of the wars in France. "The whole picture of the times is very depressing on the moral if not on the material side. There are few more pitiful episodes in history than the whole tale of the reign of Henry VI., the most unselfish and well-intentioned king that ever sat upon the English throne--a man of whom not even his enemies and oppressors could find an evil word to say; the troubles came, as they confessed, 'all because of his false lords, and never of him.' We feel that there must have been something wrong with the heart of a nation that could see unmoved the meek and holy king torn from wife and child, sent to wander in disguise up and down the kingdom for which he had done his poor best, and finally doomed to pine for five years a prisoner in the fortress where he had so long held his royal Court. Nor is our first impression concerning the demoralisation of England wrong. Every line that we read bears home to us more and more the fact that the nation had fallen on evil times. First and foremost among the causes of its moral deterioration was the wretched French War, a war begun in the pure spirit of greed and ambition,--there was not even the poor excuse that had existed in the time of Edward III.--carried on by the aid of hordes of debauched foreign mercenaries ... and persisted in long after it had become hopeless, partly from misplaced national pride, partly because of the personal interests of the ruling classes. Thirty-five years of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortunate had both soured and demoralised the nation. ... When the final catastrophe came and the fights of Formigny [or Fourmigny] and Chatillon [Castillon] ended the chapter of our disasters, the nation began to cast about for a scapegoat on whom to lay the burden of its failures. ... At first the unfortunate Suffolk and Somerset had the responsibility laid upon them. A little later the outcry became more bold and fixed upon the Lancastrian dynasty itself as being to blame not only for disaster abroad, but for want of governance at home. If King Henry had understood the charge, and possessed the wit to answer it, he might fairly have replied that his subjects must fit the burden upon their own backs, not upon his. The war had been weakly conducted, it was true; but weakly because the men and money for it were grudged. ... At home, the bulwarks of social order seemed crumbling away. Private wars, riot, open highway robbery, murder, abduction, armed resistance to the law, prevailed on a scale that had been unknown since the troublous times of Edward II.--we might almost say since the evil days of Stephen. But it was not the Crown alone that should have been blamed for the state of the realm. The nation had chosen to impose over-stringent constitutional checks on the kingly power before it was ripe for self-government, and the Lancastrian house sat on the throne because it had agreed to submit to those checks. If the result of the experiment was disastrous, both parties to the contract had to bear their share of the responsibility. But a nation seldom allows that it has been wrong; and Henry of Windsor had to serve as a scapegoat for all the misfortunes of the realm, because Henry of Bolingbroke had committed his descendants to the unhappy compact. Want of a strong central government was undoubtedly the complaint under which England was labouring in the middle of the 15th century, and all the grievances against which outcry was made were but symptoms of one latent disease. ... All these public troubles would have been of comparatively small importance if the heart of the nation had been sound. The phenomenon which makes the time so depressing is the terrible decay in private morals since the previous century. ... There is no class or caste in England which comes well out of the scrutiny. The Church, which had served as the conscience of the nation in better times, had become dead to spiritual things. It no longer produced either men of saintly life or learned theologians or patriotic statesmen. ... The baronage of England had often been unruly, but it had never before developed the two vices which distinguished it in the times of the Two Roses--a taste for indiscriminate bloodshed and a turn for political apostacy. ... Twenty years spent in contact with French factions, and in command of the godless mercenaries who formed the bulk of the English armies, had taught our nobles lessons of cruelty and faithlessness such as they had not before imbibed. ... The knights and squires showed on a smaller scale all the vices of the nobility. Instead of holding together and maintaining a united loyalty to the Crown, they bound themselves by solemn sealed bonds and the reception of 'liveries' each to the baron whom he preferred. This fatal system, by which the smaller landholder agreed on behalf of himself and his tenants to follow his greater neighbour in peace and war, had ruined the military system of England, and was quite as dangerous as the ancient feudalism. ... If the gentry constituted themselves the voluntary followers of the baronage, and aided their employers to keep England unhappy, the class of citizens and burgesses took a very different line of conduct. If not actively mischievous, they were solidly inert. They refused to entangle themselves in politics at all. They submitted impassively to each ruler in turn, when they had ascertained that their own persons and property were not endangered by so doing. A town, it has been remarked, seldom or never stood a siege during the Wars of the Roses, for no town ever refused to open its gates to any commander with an adequate force who asked for entrance." C. W. Oman, Warwick the King-maker, chapter 1. {820} ENGLAND: A. D. 1455-1471. The Wars of the Roses. Beginning with a battle fought at St. Albans on the 23d of May, 1455, England was kept in a pitiable state of civil war, with short intervals of troubled peace, during thirty years. The immediate cause of trouble was in the feebleness of King Henry VI., who succeeded to the throne while an infant, and whose mind, never strong, gave way under the trials of his position when he came to manhood. The control of the government, thus weakly commanded, became a subject of strife between successive factions. The final leaders in such contests were Queen Margaret of Anjou, the energetic consort of the helpless king (with the king himself sometimes in a condition of mind to cooperate with her), on one side, and, on the other side, the Duke of York, who traced his lineage to Edward III., and who had strong claims to the throne if Henry should leave no heir. The battle at St. Albans was a victory for the Yorkists and placed them in power for the next two years, the Duke of York being named Protector. In 1456 the king recovered so far as to resume the reigns of government, and in 1459 there was a new rupture between the factions. The queen's adherents were beaten in the battle of Bloreheath, September 23d of that year; but defections in the ranks of the Yorkists soon obliged the latter to disperse and their leaders, York, Warwick and Salisbury, fled to Ireland and to Calais. In June, 1460, the earls of Warwick, Salisbury and March (the latter being the eldest son of the Duke of York) returned to England and gathered an army speedily, the city of London opening its gates to them. The king's forces were defeated at Northampton (July 10) and the king taken prisoner. A parliament was summoned and assembled in October. Then the Duke of York came over from Ireland, took possession of the royal palace and laid before parliament a solemn claim to the crown. After much discussion a compromise was agreed upon, under which Henry VI. should reign undisturbed during his life and the Duke of York should be his undisputed successor. This was embodied in an act of parliament and received the assent of the king; but queen Margaret who had retired into the north, refused to surrender the rights of her infant son, and a strong party sustained her. The Duke of York attacked these Lancastrian forces rashly, at Wakefield, Dec. 30, 1460, and was slain on the field of a disastrous defeat. The queen's army, then, marching towards London, defeated the Earl of Warwick at St. Albans, February 17, 1461 (the second battle of the war at that place), and recovered possession of the person of the king. But Edward, Earl of March (now become Duke of York, by the death of his father), who had just routed a Lancastrian force at Mortimer's Cross, in Wales, joined his forces with those of Warwick and succeeded in occupying London, which steadily favored his cause. Calling together a council of lords, Edward persuaded them to declare King Henry deposed, on the ground that he had broken the agreement made with the late Duke of York. The next step was to elect Edward king, and he assumed the royal title and state at once. The new king lost no time in marching northwards against the army of the deposed sovereign, which lay near York. On the 27th of March the advanced division of the Lancastrians was defeated at Ferrybridge, and, two days later, their main body was almost destroyed in the fearful battle of Towton,--said to have been the bloodiest encounter that ever took place on English soil. King Henry took refuge in Scotland and Queen Margaret repaired to France. In 1464 Henry reappeared in the north with a body of Scots and refugees and there were risings in his favor in Northumberland, which the Yorkists crushed in the successive battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham. The Yorkist king (Edward IV.) now reigned without much disturbance ntil 1470, when he quarreled with the powerful Earl of Warwick-- the "king-maker," whose strong hand had placed him on the throne. Warwick then passed to the other side, offering his services to Queen Margaret and leading an expedition which sailed from Harfleur in September, convoyed by a French fleet. Edward found himself unprepared to resist the Yorkist risings which welcomed Warwick and he fled to Holland, seeking aid from his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. For nearly six months, the kingdom was in the hands of Warwick and the Lancastrians; the unfortunate Henry VI., released from captivity in the Tower, was once more seated on the throne. But on the 14th of March, 1471, Edward reappeared in England, landing at Ravenspur, professing that he came only to recover his dukedom of York. As he moved southwards he gathered a large force of supporters and soon reassumed the royal title and pretensions. London opened its gates to him, and, on the 14th of April--exactly one month after his landing--he defeated his opponents at Barnet, where Warwick, "the king-maker"--the last of the great feudal barons--was slain. Henry, again a captive, was sent back to the Tower. But Henry's dauntless queen, who landed at Weymouth, with a body of French allies on the very day of the disastrous Barnet fight, refused to submit. Cornwall and Devon were true to her cause and gave her an army with which she fought the last battle of the war at Tewksbury on the 4th of May. Defeated and taken prisoner, her young son slain--whether in the battle or after it is unknown--the long contention of Margaret of Anjou ended on that bloody field. A few days later, when the triumphant Yorkist King Edward entered London, his poor, demented Lancastrian rival died suddenly and suspiciously in the Tower. The two parties in the long contention had each assumed the badge of a rose--the Yorkists a white rose, the Lancastrians a red one. Hence the name of the Wars of the Roses. "As early as the time of John of Ghent, the rose was used as an heraldic emblem, and when he married Blanche, the daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, he used the red rose for a device. Edmund of Langley, his brother, the fifth son of Edward III., adopted the white rose in opposition to him; and their followers afterwards maintained these distinctions in the bloody wars of the fifteenth century. There is, however, no authentic account of the precise period when these badges were first adopted." Mrs. Hookham, Life and Times of Margaret of Anjou, volume 2, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York. Sir J. Ramsay, Lancaster and York. C. W. Oman; Warwick, the King-maker, chapter 5-17. See, also, TOWTON, BARNET, and TEWKSBURY. {821} The effects of the Wars of the Roses. "It is astonishing to observe the rapidity with which it [the English nation] had settled down to order in the reign of Henry VII. after so many years of civil dissension. It would lead us to infer that those wars were the wars of a class, and not of the nation; and that the effects of them have been greatly exaggerated. With the single exception of Cade's rebellion, they had nothing in common with the revolutions of later or earlier times. They were not wars against classes, against forms of government, against the order or the institutions of the nation. It was the rivalry of two aristocratic factions struggling for superiority, neither of them hoping or desiring, whichever obtained the upper hand, to introduce momentous changes in the State or its administration. The main body of the people took little interest in the struggle; in the towns at least there was no intermission of employment. The war passed over the nation, ruffling the surface, toppling down high cliffs here and there, washing away ancient landmarks, attracting the imagination of the spectator by the mightiness of its waves, and the noise of its thunders; but the great body below the surface remained unmoved. No famines, no plagues, consequent on the intermittance of labour caused by civil war, are recorded; even the prices of land and provisions scarcely varied more than they have been known to do in times of profoundest peace. But the indirect and silent operation of these conflicts was much more remarkable. It reft into fragments the confederated ranks of a powerful territorial aristocracy, which had hitherto bid defiance to the King, however popular, however energetic. Henceforth the position of the Sovereign in the time of the Tudors, in relation to all classes of the people, became very different from what it had been; the royal supremacy was no longer a theory; but a fact. Another class had sprung up on the decay of the ancient nobility. The great towns had enjoyed uninterrupted tranquility, and even flourished, under the storm that was scourging the aristocracy and the rural districts. Their population had increased by numbers whom fear or the horrors of war had induced to find shelter behind stone walls. The diminution of agricultural labourers converted into soldiers by the folly of their lords had turned corn-lands into pasture, requiring less skill, less capital, and less labour." J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII., volume 1, chapter 2. "Those who would estimate the condition of England aright should remember that the War of the Roses was only a repetition on a large scale of those private wars which distracted almost every county, and, indeed, by taking away all sense of security, disturbed almost every manor and every class of society during the same century. ... The lawless condition of English society in the 15th century resembled that of Ireland in as recent a date as the beginning of the 19th century. ... In both countries women were carried off, sometimes at night; they were first violated, then dragged to the altar in their night-dress and compelled to marry their captors. ... Children were seized and thrown into a dungeon until ransomed by their parents." W. Denton, England in the 15th Century, chapter 3. "The Wars of the Roses which filled the second half of the 15th century furnished the barons with an arena in which their instincts of violence had freer play than ever; it was they who, under the pretext of dynastic interests which had ceased to exist, of their own free choice prolonged the struggle. Altogether unlike the Italian condottieri, the English barons showed no mercy to their own order; they massacred and exterminated each other freely, while they were careful to spare the commonalty. Whole families were extinguished or submerged in the nameless mass of the nation, and their estates by confiscation or escheat helped to swell the royal domain. When Henry VII. had stifled the last movements of rebellion and had punished, through the Star Chamber, those nobles who were still suspected of maintaining armed bands, the baronage was reduced to a very low ebb; not more than twenty-nine lay peers were summoned by the king to his first Parliament. The old Norman feudal nobility existed no longer; the heroic barons of the great charter barely survived in the persons of a few doubtful descendants; their estates were split up or had been forfeited to the Crown. A new class came forward to fill the gap, that rural middle class which was formed ... by the fusion of the knights with the free landowners. It had already taken the lead in the House of Commons, and it was from its ranks that Henry VII. chose nearly all the new peers. A peerage renewed almost throughout, ignorant of the habits and traditions of the earlier nobility, created in large batches, closely dependent on the monarch who had raised it from little or nothing and who had endowed it with his bounty--this is the phenomenon which confronts us at the end of the fifteenth century." E. Boutmy, The English Constitution, chapter 5. ENGLAND: A. D. 1461. Accession of King Edward IV. ENGLAND: A. D. 1461-1485. House of York. The House of York, which triumphed in the Wars of the Roses, attaining the throne in the person of Edward IV. (A. D. 1461), derived its claim to the crown through descent, in the female line, from Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III. (the second son who lived to manhood and left children); while the House of Lancaster traced its lineage to John of Gaunt, a younger son of the same king Edward III., but the line of Lancastrian succession was through males. "Had the crown followed the course of hereditary succession, it would have devolved on the posterity of Lionel. ... By the decease of that prince without male issue, his possessions and pretensions fell to his daughter Philippa, who by a singular combination of circumstances had married Roger Mortimer earl of March, the male representative of the powerful baron who was attainted and executed for the murder of Edward II., the grandfather of the duke of Clarence. The son of that potent delinquent had been restored to his honours and estates at an advanced period in the reign of Edward III. ... Edmund, his grandson, had espoused Philippa of Clarence. Roger Mortimer, the fourth in descent from the regicide, was lord lieutenant of Ireland and was considered, or, according to some writers, declared to be heir of the crown in the early part of Richard's reign. Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, in whom the hereditary claim to the crown was vested at the deposition of Richard, was then only an infant of ten years of age. ... {822} Dying without issue, the pretensions to the crown, which he inherited through the duke of Clarence, devolved on his sister Anne Mortimer, who espoused Richard of York earl of Cambridge, the grandson of Edward III. by his fourth [fifth] son Edmund of Langley duke of York." Edward IV. was the grandson of this Anne Mortimer and Richard of York. Sir J. Mackintosh, History of England, volume 1, pages 338-339. The House of York occupied the throne but twenty-four years. On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, the crown was secured by his brother, Richard, duke of Gloucester, who caused Edward's two sons to be murdered in the Tower. The elder of these murdered princes is named in the list of English kings as Edward V.; but he cannot be said to have reigned. Richard III. was overthrown and slain on Bosworth field in 1485. ENGLAND: A. D. 1471-1485. The New Monarchy. The rise of Absolutism and the decline of Parliamentary government. "If we use the name of the New Monarchy to express the character of the English sovereignty from the time of Edward IV. to the time of Elizabeth, it is because the character of the monarchy during this period was something wholly new in our history. There is no kind of sibilantly between the kingship of the Old English, of the Norman, the Angevin, or the Plantagenet sovereigns, and the kingship of the Tudors. ... What the Great Rebellion in its final result actually did was to wipe away every trace of the New Monarchy, and to take up again the thread of our political development just where it had been snapped by the Wars of the Roses. ... The founder of the New Monarchy was Edward IV. ... While jesting with aldermen, or dallying with his mistresses, or idling over the new pages from the printing press [Caxton's] at Westminster, Edward was silently laying the foundations of an absolute rule which Henry VII. did little more than develop and consolidate. The almost total discontinuance of Parliamentary life was in itself a revolution. Up to this moment the two Houses had played a part which became more and more prominent in the government of the realm. ... Under Henry VI. an important step in constitutional progress had been made by abandoning the old form of presenting the requests of the Parliament in the form of petitions which were subsequently moulded into statutes by the Royal Councils; the statute itself, in its final form, was now presented for the royal assent, and the Crown was deprived of its former privilege of modifying it. Not only does this progress cease, but the legislative activity of Parliament itself comes abruptly to an end. ... The necessity for summoning the two Houses had, in fact, been removed by the enormous tide of wealth which the confiscation of the civil war poured into the royal treasury. ... It was said that nearly a fifth of the land had passed into the royal possession at one period or another of the civil war. Edward added to his resources by trading on a vast scale. ... The enterprises he had planned against France ... enabled Edward not only to increase his hoard, but to deal a deadly blow at liberty. Setting aside the usage of loans sanctioned by the authority of Parliament, Edward called before him the merchants of the city and requested from each a present or benevolence in proportion to the need. Their compliance with his prayer was probably aided by his popularity with the merchant class; but the system of benevolence was soon to be developed into the forced loans of Wolsey and the ship-money of Charles I." J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 6, section 3. ALSO IN: W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 18, section 696. ENGLAND: A. D. 1474. Treaty with the Hanseatic League. See HANSA TOWNS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1476. Introduction of Printing by Caxton. See PRINTING, &c.: A. D. 1476-1491. ENGLAND: A. D. 1483-1485. Murder of the young king, Edward V. Accession of Richard III. The battle of Bosworth and the fall of the House of York. On the death of Edward IV., in 1483, his crafty and unscrupulous brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, gathered quickly into his hands the reins of power, proceeding with consummate audacity and ruthlessness to sweep every strong rival out of his path. Contenting himself for a few weeks, only, with the title of Protector, he soon disputed the validity of his brother Edward's marriage, caused an obsequious Parliament to set aside the young sons whom the latter had left, declaring them to be illegitimate, and placed the crown on his own head. The little princes (King Edward V., and Richard, Duke of York), immured in the Tower, were murdered presently at their uncle's command, and Richard III. appeared, for the time, to have triumphed in his ambitious villainy. But, popular as he made himself in many cunning ways, his deeds excited a horror which united Lancastrians with the party of York in a common detestation. Friends of Henry, Earl of Richmond, then in exile, were not slow to take advantage of this feeling. Henry could claim descent from the same John of Gaunt, son of Edward III., to whom the House of Lancaster traced its lineage; but his family--the Beauforts--sprang from the mistress, not the wife, of the great Duke of Lancaster, and had only been legitimated by act of Parliament. The Lancastrians, however, were satisfied with the royalty of his blood, and the Yorkists were made content by his promise to marry a daughter of Edward IV. On this understanding being arranged, Henry came over from Brittany to England, landing at Milford Haven on the 7th or 8th of August, 1485, and advancing through Wales, being joined by great numbers as he moved. Richard, who had no lack of courage, marched quickly to meet him, and the two forces joined battle on Bosworth Field, in Leicestershire, on Sunday, August 21. At the outset of the fighting Richard was deserted by a large division of his army and saw that his fate was sealed. He plunged, with despairing rage, into the thickest of the struggle and was slain. His crowned helmet, which he had worn, was found by Sir Reginald Bray, battered and broken, under a hawthorn bush, and placed on the head of his rival, who soon attained a more solemn coronation, as Henry VII. C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 3d Series, chapters 19-20. "I must record my impression that a minute study of the facts of Richard's life has tended more and more to convince me of the general fidelity of the portrait with which we have been made familiar by Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. I feel quite ashamed, at this day, to think how I mused over this subject long ago, wasting a great deal of time, ink and paper, in fruitless efforts to satisfy even my own mind that traditional black was real historical white, or at worst a kind of grey. ... {823} Both the character and personal appearance of Richard III. have furnished matter of controversy. But with regard to the former the day has now gone by when it was possible to doubt the evidence at least of his principal crime; and that he was regarded as a tyrant by his subjects seems almost equally indisputable. At the same time he was not destitute of better qualities. ... As king he seems really to have studied his country's welfare, passed good laws, endeavoured to put an end to extortion, declined the free gifts offered to him by several towns, and declared he would rather have the hearts of his subjects than their money. His munificence was especially shown in religious foundations. ... His hypocrisy was not of the vulgar kind which seeks to screen habitual baseness of motive by habitual affectation of virtue. His best and his worst deeds were alike too well known to be either concealed or magnified; at least, soon after he became king, all doubt upon the subject must have been removed. ... His ingratiating manners, together with the liberality of his disposition, seem really to have mitigated to a considerable extent the alarms created by his fitful deeds of violence. The reader will not require to be reminded of Shakespeare's portrait of a murderer who could cajole the woman whom he had most exasperated and made a widow into marrying himself. That Richard's ingenuity was equal to this extraordinary feat we do not venture to assert; but that he had a wonderful power of reassuring those whom he had most intimidated and deceiving those who knew him best there can be very little doubt. ... His taste in building was magnificent and princely. ... There is scarcely any evidence of Richard's [alleged] deformity to be derived from original portraits. The number of portraits of Richard which seem to be contemporary is greater than might have been expected. ... The face in all the portraits is a remarkable one, full of energy and decision, yet gentle and sad-looking, suggesting the idea not so much of a tyrant as of a mind accustomed to unpleasant thoughts. Nowhere do we find depicted the warlike hard-favoured visage attributed to him by Sir Thomas More. ... With such a one did the long reign of the Plantagenets terminate. The fierce spirit and the valour of the race never showed more strongly than at the close. The Middle Ages, too, as far as England was concerned, may be said to have passed away with Richard III." J. Gairdner, History of the Life, and Reign of Richard The Third, introduction and chapter 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1485. Accession of King Henry VII. ENGLAND: A. D. 1485-1528. The Sweating Sickness. See SWEATING SICKNESS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1485-1603. The Tudors. The Tudor family, which occupied the English throne from the accession of Henry VII., 1485, until the death of Elizabeth, 1603, took its name, but not its royal lineage, from Sir Owen Tudor, a handsome Welsh chieftain, who won the heart and the hand of the young widow of Henry V., Catherine of France. The eldest son of that marriage, made Earl of Richmond, married in his turn Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter to John of Gaunt, or Ghent, who was one of the sons of Edward III. From this latter union came Henry of Richmond, as he was known, who disputed the crown with Richard III. and made his claim good on Bosworth Field, where the hated Richard was killed. Henry's pretensions were based on the royal descent of his mother--derived, however, through John of Gaunt's mistress-- and the dynasty which he founded was closely related in origin to the Lancastrian line. Henry of Richmond strengthened his hold upon the crown, though not his title to it, by marrying Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., thus joining the white rose to the red. He ascended the throne as Henry VII., A. D. 1485; was succeeded by his son, Henry VIII., in 1509, and the latter by his three children, in order as follows: Edward VI., 1547; Mary, 1553; Elizabeth, 1558. The Tudor family became extinct on the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603. "They [the Tudors] reigned in England, without a successful rising against them, for upwards of a hundred years; but not more by a studied avoidance of what might so provoke the country, than by the most resolute repression of every effort, on the part of what remained of the peerage and great families, to make head against the throne. They gave free indulgence to their tyranny only within the circle of the court, while they unceasingly watched and conciliated the temper of the people. The work they had to do, and which by more scrupulous means was not possible to be done, was one of paramount necessity; the dynasty uninterruptedly endured for only so long as was requisite to its thorough completion; and to each individual sovereign the particular task might seem to have been specially assigned. It was Henry's to spurn, renounce and utterly cast off, the Pope's authority, without too suddenly revolting the people's usages and habits; to arrive at blessed results by ways that a better man might have held to be accursed; during the momentous change in progress to keep in necessary check both the parties it affected; to persecute with an equal hand the Romanist and the Lutheran; to send the Protestant to the stake for resisting Popery, and the Roman Catholic to the scaffold for not admitting himself to be Pope; while he meantime plundered the monasteries, hunted down and rooted out the priests, alienated the abbey lands, and glutted himself and his creatures with that enormous spoil. It was Edward's to become the ready and undoubting instrument of Cranmer's design, and, with all the inexperience and more than the obstinacy of youth, so to force upon the people his compromise of doctrine and observance, as to render possible, even perhaps unavoidable, his elder sister's reign. It was Mary's to undo the effect of that precipitate eagerness of the Reformers, by lighting the fires of Smithfield; and opportunely to arrest the waverers from Protestantism, by exhibiting in their excess the very worst vices, the cruel bigotry, the hateful intolerance, the spiritual slavery, of Rome. It was Elizabeth's finally and forever to uproot that slavery from amongst us, to champion all over the world a new and nobler faith, and immovably to establish in England the Protestant religion." J. Forster, Historical and Biographical Essays, pages 221-222. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, Introduction to the Study of English History, chapter 6. C. E. Moberly, The Early Tudors. {824} ENGLAND: A. D. 1487-1497. The Rebellions of Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. Although Henry VII., soon after he attained the throne, married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward IV., and thus united the two rival houses, the Yorkists were discontented with his rule. "With the help of Margaret of Burgundy, Edward IV. 's sister, and James IV. of Scotland, they actually set up two impostors, one after the other, to claim the throne. There was a real heir of the House of York still alive--young Edward, Earl of Warwick [son of the Duke of Clarence, brother to Edward IV.], ... and Henry had taken the precaution to keep him in the Tower. But in 1487 a sham Earl of Warwick appeared in Ireland, and being supported by the Earl of Kildare, was actually crowned in Dublin Cathedral. Henry soon put down the imposture by showing the real earl to the people of London, and defeating the army of the pretended earl at Stoke, near Newark, June, 1487. He proved to be a lad named Lambert Simnel, the son of a joiner at Oxford, and he became a scullion in the king's kitchen." In 1492 another pretender of like character was brought forward. "A young man, called Perkin Warbeck, who proved afterwards to be a native of Tournay, pretended that he was Richard, Duke of York, the younger of the two little princes in the Tower, and that he had escaped when his brother Edward V. was murdered. He persuaded the king of France and Margaret of Burgundy to acknowledge him, and was not only received at the foreign courts, but, after failing in Ireland, he went to Scotland, where James IV. married him to his own cousin Catharine Gordon, and helped him to invade England in 1496. The invasion was defeated however, by the Earl of Surrey, and then Perkin went back to Ireland, where the people had revolted against the heavy taxes. There he raised an army and marched to Exeter, but meeting the king's troops at Taunton, he lost courage, and fled to the Abbey of Beaulieu, where he was taken prisoner, and sent to the Tower in 1497." In 1501 both Perkin Warbeck and the young Earl of Warwick were executed. A. B. Buckley, History of England for Beginners, chapter 13. ALSO IN: J. Gairdner, Story of Perkin Warbeck (appendix to Life of Richard III.). C. M, Yonge, Cameos from English History, 3d series, chapters 21 and 24. J. Gairdner, Henry VII., chapters 4 and 7. ENGLAND: 15th-16th Centuries. The Renaissance. Life in "Merry England." Preludes to the Elizabethan Age of literature. "Toward the close of the fifteenth century ... commerce and the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such an enormous one that corn-fields were changed into pasture-lands, 'whereby the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and come into riches and wealthy livings,' so that in 1553, 40,000 pieces of cloth were exported in English ships. It was already the England which we see to-day, a land of meadows, green, intersected by hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that in half a century the produce of an acre was doubled. They grew so rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles I. the Commons represented three times the wealth of the Upper House. The ruin of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma sent to England 'the third part of the merchants and manufacturers, who made silk, damask, stockings, taffetas, and serges.' The defeat of the Armada and the decadence of Spain opened the seas to their merchants. The toiling hive, who would dare, attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was about to reap its advantages and set out on its voyages, buzzing over the universe. At the base and on the summit of society, in all ranks of life, in all grades of human condition, this new welfare became visible. ... It is not when all is good, but when all is better, that they see the bright side of life, and are tempted to make a holiday of it. This is why at this period they did make a holiday of it, a splendid show, so like a picture that it fostered painting in Italy, so like a representation, that it produced the drama in England. Now that the battle-axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten down the independent nobility, and the abolition of the law of maintenance had destroyed the petty royalty of each great feudal baron, the lords quitted their sombre castles, battlemented fortresses, surrounded by stagnant water, pierced with narrow windows, a sort of stone breast-plates of no use but to preserve the life of their masters. They flock into new palaces, with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with fantastic and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and vast staircases, with gardens, fountains, statues, such as were the palaces of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, half Gothic and half Italian, whose convenience, grandeur, and beauty announced already habits of society and the taste for pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old manners; the four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity were reduced to two; gentlemen soon became refined, placing their glory in the elegance and singularity of their amusements and their clothes. ... To vent the feelings, to satisfy the heart and eyes, to set free boldly on all the roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this was the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was 'merry England,' as they called it then. It was not yet stern and constrained. It expanded widely, freely, and rejoiced to find itself so expanded. No longer at court only was the drama found but in the village. Strolling companies betook themselves thither, and the country folk supplied any deficiencies when necessary. Shakspeare saw, before he depicted them, stupid fellows, carpenters, joiners, bellow-menders, play Pyramus and Thisbe, represent the lion roaring as gently as possible, and the wall, by stretching out their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in which townspeople, workmen, and children bore their parts. ... A few sectarians, chiefly in the towns and of the people, clung gloomily to the Bible. But the court and the men of the world sought their teachers and their heroes from pagan Greece and Rome. About 1490 they began to read the classics; one after the other they translated them; it was soon the fashion to read them in the original. Elizabeth, Jane Grey, the Duchess of Norfolk, the Countess of Arundel, many other ladies, were conversant with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero in the original, and appreciated them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men were raised to the level of the great and healthy minds who had freely handled ideas of all kinds fifteen centuries ago. They comprehended not only their language, but their thought; they did not repeat lessons from, but held conversations with them; they were their equals, and found in them intellects as manly as their own. ... {825} Across the train of hooded school men and sordid cavillers the two adult and thinking ages were united, and the moderns, silencing the infantine or snuffling voices of the middle-age, condescended only to converse with the noble ancients. They accepted their gods, at least they understand them, and keep them by their side. In poems, festivals, tapestries, almost all ceremonies they appear, not restored by pedantry merely, but kept alive by sympathy, and glorified by the arts of an age as flourishing and almost as profound as that of their earliest birth. After the terrible night of the middle-age, and the dolorous legends of spirits and the damned, it was a delight to see again Olympus shining upon us from Greece; its heroic and beautiful deities once more ravishing the heart of men, they raised and instructed this young world by speaking to it the language of passion and genius; and the age of strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, had only to follow its own bent, in order to discover in them the eternal promoters of liberty and beauty. Nearer still was another paganism, that of Italy; the more seductive because more modern, and because it circulates fresh sap in an ancient stock; the more attractive, because more sensuous and present, with its worship of force and genius, of pleasure and voluptuousness. ... At that time Italy clearly led in every thing, and civilisation was to be drawn thence as from its spring. What is this civilisation which is thus imposed on the whole of Europe, whence every science and every elegance comes, whose laws are obeyed in every court, in which Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare sought their models and their materials? It was pagan in its elements and its birth; in its language, which is but slightly different from Latin; in its Latin traditions and recollections, which no gap has come to interrupt; in its constitution, whose old municipal life first led and absorbed the feudal life; in the genius of its race, in which energy and enjoyment always abounded." H. A. Taine, History of English Literature, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 1). "The intellectual movement, to which we give the name of Renaissance, expressed itself in England mainly through the Drama. Other races in that era of quickened activity, when modern man regained the consciousness of his own strength and goodliness after centuries of mental stagnation and social depression, threw their energies into the plastic arts and scholarship. The English found a similar outlet for their pent-up forces in the Drama. The arts and literature of Greece and Rome had been revealed by Italy to Europe. Humanism had placed the present once more in a vital relation to the past. The navies of Portugal and Spain had discovered new continents beyond the ocean; the merchants of Venice and Genoa had explored the farthest East. Copernicus had revolutionised astronomy, and the telescope was revealing fresh worlds beyond the sun. The Bible had been rescued from the mortmain of the Church; scholars studied it in the language of its authors, and the people read it in their own tongue. In this rapid development of art, literature, science, and discovery, the English had hitherto taken but little part. But they were ready to reap what other men had sown. Unfatigued by the labours of the pioneer, unsophisticated by the pedantries and sophistries of the schools, in the freshness of their youth and vigour, they surveyed the world unfolded to them. For more than half a century they freely enjoyed the splendour of this spectacle, until the struggle for political and religious liberty replunged them in the hard realities of life. During that eventful period of spiritual disengagement from absorbing cares, the race was fully conscious of its national importance. It had shaken off the shackles of oppressive feudalism, the trammels of ecclesiastical tyranny. It had not yet passed under the Puritan yoke, or felt the encroachments of despotic monarchy. It was justly proud of the Virgin Queen, with whose idealised personality the people identified their newly acquired sense of greatness. ... What in those fifty years they saw with the clairvoyant eyes of artists, the poets wrote. And what they wrote, remains imperishable. It is the portrait of their age, the portrait of an age in which humanity stood self-revealed, a miracle and marvel to its own admiring curiosity. England was in a state of transition when the Drama came to perfection. That was one of those rare periods when the past and the future are both coloured by imagination, and both shed a glory on the present. The medieval order was in dissolution; the modern order was in process of formation. Yet the old state of things had not faded from memory and usage; the new had not assumed despotic sway. Men stood then, as it were, between two dreams--a dream of the past, thronged with sinister and splendid reminiscences; a dream of the future, bright with unlimited aspirations and indefinite hopes. Neither the retreating forces of the Middle Ages nor the advancing forces of the modern era pressed upon them with the iron weight of actuality. The brutalities of feudalism had been softened; but the chivalrous sentiment remained to inspire the Surreys and the Sidneys of a milder epoch. ... What distinguished the English at this epoch from the nations of the South was not refinement of manners, sobriety, or self-control. On the contrary they retained an unenviable character for more than common savagery. ... Erasmus describes the filth of their houses, and the sicknesses engendered in their cities by bad ventilation. What rendered the people superior to Italians and Spaniards was the firmness of their moral fibre, the sweetness of their humanity, a more masculine temper, less vitiated instincts and sophisticated intellects, a law-abiding and religious conscience, contempt for treachery and baseness, intolerance of political or ecclesiastical despotism combined with fervent love of home and country. They were coarse, but not vicious; pleasure-loving, but not licentious; violent, but not cruel; luxurious but not effeminate. Machiavelli was a name of loathing to them. Sidney, Essex, Raleigh, More, and Drake were popular heroes; and whatever may be thought of these men, they certainly counted no Marquis of Pescara, no Duke of Valentino, no Malatesta Baglioni, no Cosimo de' Medici among them. The Southern European type betrayed itself but faintly in politicians like Richard Cromwell and Robert Dudley. . . . Affectations of foreign vices were only a varnish on the surface of society. The core of the nation remained sound and wholesome. Nor was the culture which the English borrowed from less unsophisticated nations, more than superficial. The incidents of Court gossip show how savage was the life beneath. {826} Queen Elizabeth spat, in the presence of her nobles, at a gentleman who had displeased her; struck Essex on the cheek; drove Burleigh blubbering from her apartment. Laws in merry England were executed with uncompromising severity. Every township had its gallows; every village its stocks, whipping-post and pillory. Here and there, heretics were burned upon the market-place; and the block upon Tower Hill was seldom dry. ... Men and women who read Plato, or discussed the elegancies of Petrarch, suffered brutal practical jokes, relished the obscenities of jesters, used the grossest language of the people. Carrying farms and acres on their backs in the shape of costly silks and laces, they lay upon rushes filthy with the vomit of old banquets. Glittering in suits of gilt and jewelled mail, they jostled with town-porters in the stench of the bear-gardens, or the bloody bull-pit. The church itself was not respected. The nave of old S. Paul's became a rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes. ... It is difficult, even by noting an infinity of such characteristics, to paint the many-coloured incongruities of England at that epoch. Yet in the midst of this confusion rose cavaliers like Sidney, philosophers like Bacon, poets like Spenser; men in whom all that is pure, elevated, subtle, tender, strong, wise, delicate and learned in our modern civilisation displayed itself. And the masses of the people were still in harmony with these high strains. They formed the audience of Shakspere. They wept for Desdemona, adored Imogen, listened with Jessica to music in the moon-light at Belmont, wandered with Rosalind through woodland glades of Arden. Such was the society of which our theatre became the mirror." J. A. Symonds, Shakspere's Predecessors in the English Drama, chapter 2, section 1, 2, and 5. ENGLAND: A. D. 1497. Cabot's discovery of the North American Continent. See AMERICA: A. D. 1497. ENGLAND: A. D. 1498. Voyage and discoveries of Sebastian Cabot. Ground of English claims in the New World. See AMERICA: A. D. 1498. ENGLAND: A. D. 1502. The marriage which brought the Stuarts to the English throne. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1502. ENGLAND: A. D. 1509. The character and reign of Henry VII. "As a king, Bacon tells us that he was 'a wonder for wise men.' Few indeed were the councillors that shared his confidence, but the wise men, competent to form an estimate of his statesmanship, had but one opinion of his consummate wisdom. Foreigners were greatly struck with the success that attended his policy. Ambassadors were astonished at the intimate knowledge he displayed of the affairs of their own countries. From the most unpropitious beginnings, a proscribed man and an exile, he had won his way in evil times to a throne beset with dangers; he had pacified his own country, cherished commerce, formed strong alliances over Europe, and made his personal influence felt by the rulers of France, Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands as that of a man who could turn the scale in matters of the highest importance to their own domestic welfare. ... From first to last his policy was essentially his own; for though he knew well how to choose the ablest councillors, he asked or took their advice only to such an extent as he himself deemed expedient. ... No one can understand his reign, or that of his son, or, we might add, of his granddaughter Queen Elizabeth, without appreciating the fact that, however well served with councillors, the sovereign was in those days always his own Prime Minister. ... Even the legislation of the reign must be regarded as in large measure due to Henry himself. We have no means, it is true, of knowing how much of it originated in his own mind; but that it was all discussed with him in Council and approved before it was passed we have every reason to believe. For he never appears to have put the royal veto upon any Bill, as constitutional usage both before and after his days allowed. He gave his assent to all the enactments sent up to him for approval, though he sometimes added to them provisos of his own. And Bacon, who knew the traditions of those times, distinctly attributes the good legislation of his days to the king himself. 'In that part, both of justice and policy, which is the most durable part, and cut, as it were, in brass or marble, the making of good laws, he did excel.' This statement, with but slight variations in the wording, appears again and again throughout the History; and elsewhere it is said that he was the best lawgiver to this nation after Edward I. ... The parliaments, indeed, that Henry summoned were only seven in number, and seldom did anyone of them last over a year, so that during a reign of nearly twenty-four years many years passed away without a Parliament at all. But even in those scanty sittings many Acts were passed to meet evils that were general subjects of complaint. ... He could scarcely be called a learned man, yet he was a lover of learning, and gave his children an excellent education. His Court was open to scholars. ... He was certainly religious after the fashion of his day. ... His religious foundations and bequests perhaps do not necessarily imply anything more than conventional feeling. But we must not overlook the curious circumstance that he once argued with a heretic at the stake at Canterbury and got him to renounce his heresy. It is melancholy to add that he did not thereupon release him from the punishment to which he had been sentenced; but the fact seems to show that he was afraid of encouraging insincere conversions by such leniency. During the last two or three years of the 15th century there was a good deal of procedure against heretics, but on the whole, we are told, rather by penances than by fire. Henry had no desire to see the old foundations of the faith disturbed. His zeal for the Church was recognised by no less than three Popes in his time, who each sent him a sword and a cap of maintenance. ... To commerce and adventure he was always a good friend. By his encouragement Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol and discovered Newfoundland--The New Isle, as it at first was called. Four years earlier Columbus had first set foot on the great western continent, and had not his brother been taken by pirates at sea, it is supposed that he too might have made his great discovery under Henry's patronage." James Gairdner, Henry the Seventh, chapter 13. ALSO IN: Lord Bacon, History of the Reign of King Henry VII. ENGLAND: A. D. 1509, Accession of King Henry VIII. ENGLAND: A. D. 1151-1513. Enlisted In the Holy League of Pope Julius II. against France. See ITALY: A. D. 1510-1513. ENGLAND: A. D. 1513. Henry's invasion of France. The victory of the Battle of the Spurs. See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515. {827} ENGLAND: A. D. 1513-1529. The ministry of Cardinal Wolsey. From 1513 to 1529, Thomas Wolsey, who became Archbishop of York in 1514, and Cardinal in 1515, was the minister who guided the policy of Henry VIII., so far as that head-strong and absolute monarch could be guided at all. "England was going through a crisis, politically, socially, and intellectually, when Wolsey undertook the management of affairs. ... We must regret that he put foreign policy in the first place, and reserved his constructive measures for domestic affairs. ... Yet even here we may doubt if the measures of the English Reformation would have been possible if Wolsey's mind had not inspired the king and the nation with a heightened consciousness of England's power and dignity. Wolsey's diplomacy at least tore away all illusions about Pope and Emperor, and the opinion of Europe, and taught Henry VIII. the measure of his own strength. It was impossible that Wolsey's powerful hand should not leave its impression upon everything which it touched. If Henry VIII. inherited a strong monarchy, Wolsey made the basis of monarchical power still stronger. ... Wolsey saw in the royal power the only possible means of holding England together and guiding it through the dangers of impending change. ... Wolsey was in no sense a constitutional minister, nor did he pay much heed to constitutional forms. Parliament was only summoned once during the time that he was in office, and then he tried to browbeat Parliament and set aside its privileges. In his view the only function of Parliament was to grant money for the king's needs. The king should say how much he needed, and Parliament ought only to advise how this sum might be most conveniently raised. ... He was unwise in his attempt to force the king's will upon Parliament as an unchangeable law of its action. Henry VIII. looked and learned from Wolsey's failure, and when he took the management of Parliament into his own hands he showed himself a consummate master of that craft. ... He was so skilful that Parliament at last gave him even the power over the purse, and Henry, without raising a murmur, imposed taxes which Wolsey would not have dared to suggest. ... Where Wolsey would have made the Crown independent of Parliament, Henry VIII. reduced Parliament to be a willing instrument of the royal will. ... Henry ... clothed his despotism with the appearance of paternal solicitude. He made the people think that he lived for them, and that their interests were his, whereas Wolsey endeavoured to convince the people that the king alone could guard their interests, and that their only course was to put entire confidence in him. Henry saw that men were easier to cajole than to convince. ... In spite of the disadvantage of a royal education, Henry was a more thorough Englishman than Wolsey, though Wolsey sprang from the people. It was Wolsey's teaching, however, that prepared Henry for his task. The king who could use a minister like Wolsey and then throw him away when he was no longer useful, felt that there was no limitation to his self-sufficiency. ... For politics in the largest sense, comprising all the relations of the nation at home and abroad, Wolsey had a capacity which amounted to genius, and it is doubtful if this can be said of any other Englishman. ... Taking England as he found her, he aimed at developing all her latent possibilities, and leading Europe to follow in her train. ... He made England for a time the centre of European politics, and gave her an influence far higher than she could claim on material grounds. ... He was indeed a political artist, who worked with a free hand and a certain touch.. ... He was, though he knew it not, fitted to serve England, but not to serve the English king. He had the aims of a national statesman, not of a royal servant. Wolsey's misfortune was that his lot was cast on days when the career of a statesman was not distinct from that of a royal servant." M. Creighton, Cardinal Wolsey, chapters 8 and 11. ALSO IN: J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII. J. A. Froude, History of England from the Fall of Wolsey, chapters 1-2. G. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey. ENGLAND: A. D. 1514. Marriage of the king's sister with Louis XII. of France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1513-1515. ENGLAND: A. D. 1516-1517. Intrigues against France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1516-1517. ENGLAND: A. D. 1519. Candidacy of Henry VIII. for the imperial crown. See GERMANY: A. D. 1519. ENGLAND: A. D. 1520-1521. Rivalry of the Emperor and the French King for the English alliance. See FRANCE: A. D. 1520-1523. ENGLAND: A. D. 1525. The king changes sides in European politics and breaks his alliance with the Emperor. See FRANCE: A. D. 1525-1526. ENGLAND: A. D. 1527. New alliance with France and Venice against Charles V. Formal renunciation of the claim of the English kings to the crown of France. See ITALY: A. D. 1527-1529. ENGLAND: A. D. 1527-1534. Henry VIII. and the Divorce question. The rupture with Rome. Henry VIII. owed his crown to the early death of his brother Arthur, whose widow, Catharine of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand, and consequently the aunt of Charles V. [emperor], Henry was enabled to marry through a dispensation obtained by Henry VII. from Pope Julius II.,--marriage with the wife of a deceased brother being forbidden by the laws of the Church. Henry was in his twelfth year when the marriage was concluded, but it was not consummated until the death of his father. ... The question of Henry's divorce from Catharine soon became a subject of discussion, and the effort to procure the annulling of the marriage from the pope was prosecuted for a number of years. Henry professed, and perhaps with sincerity, that he had long been troubled with doubts of the validity of the marriage, as being contrary to the divine law, and therefore not within the limit of the pope's dispensing power. The death of a number of his children, leaving only a single daughter, Mary, had been interpreted by some as a mark of the displeasure of God. At the same time the English people, in the fresh recollection of the long dynastic struggle, were anxious on account of the lack of a male heir to the throne. On the queen's side it was asserted that it was competent for the pope to authorize a marriage with a brother's widow, and that no doubt could possibly exist in the present case, since, according to her testimony, her marriage with Arthur had never been completed. The eagerness of Henry to procure the divorce increased with his growing passion for Anne Boleyn. The negotiations with Rome dragged slowly on. Catharine was six years older than himself, and had lost her charms. {828} He was enamored of this young English girl, fresh from the court of France. He resolved to break the marriage bond with the Spanish princess who had been his faithful wife for nearly twenty years. It was not without reason that the king became more and more incensed at the dilatory and vacillating course of the pope. ... Henry determined to lay the question of the validity of his marriage before the universities of Europe, and this he did, making a free use of bribery abroad and of menaces at home. Meantime, he took measures to cripple the authority of the pope and of the clergy in England. In these proceedings he was sustained by a popular feeling, the growth of centuries, against foreign ecclesiastical interference and clerical control in civil affairs. The fall of Wolsey was the effect of his failure to procure the divorce, and of the enmity of Anne Boleyn and her family. ... In order to convict of treason this minister, whom he had raised to the highest pinnacle of power, the king did not scruple to avail himself of the ancient statute of præmunire, which Wolsey was accused of having transgressed by acting as the pope's legate in England--it was dishonestly alleged, without the royal license. Early in 1531 the king charged the whole body of the clergy with having incurred the penalties of the same law by submitting to Wolsey in his legatine character. Assembled in convocation, they were obliged to implore his pardon, and obtained it only in return for a large sum of money. In their petition he was styled, in obedience to his dictation, 'The Protector and Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England,' to which was added, after long debate, at the suggestion of Archbishop Warham--'as far as is permitted by the law of Christ.' The Church, prostrate though it was at the feet of the despotic king, showed some degree of self-respect in inserting this amendment. Parliament forbade the introduction of papal bulls into England. The king was authorized if he saw fit, to withdraw the annats--first-fruits of benefices--from the pope. Appeals to Rome were forbidden. The retaliatory measures of Henry did not move the pope to recede from his position. On or about January 25, 1533, the king was privately married to Anne Boleyn. ... In 1534 Henry was conditionally excommunicated by Clement VII. The papal decree deposing him from the throne, and absolving his subjects from their allegiance, did not follow until 1538, and was issued by Paul III. Clement's bull was sent forth on the 23 of March. On the 23 of November Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, without the qualifying clause which the clergy had attached to their vote. The king was, moreover, clothed with full power and authority to repress and amend all such errors, heresies, and abuses as 'by any manner of spiritual authority or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be reformed.' Thus a visitatorial function of vast extent was recognized as belonging to him. In 1532 convocation was driven to engage not 'to enact or promulge or put in execution' any measures without the royal license, and to promise to change or to abrogate any of the 'provincial constitutions' which he should judge inconsistent with his prerogative. The clergy were thus stripped of all power to make laws. A mixed commission, which Parliament ordained for the revision of the whole canon law, was not appointed in this reign. The dissolution of the king's marriage thus dissolved the union of England with the papacy." G. P. Fisher, History of the Christian Church, period 8, chapter 6. ALSO IN: J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry VIII., volume 2, chapters 27-35. J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 1, chapter 2. S. H. Burke, Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, volume 1, chapters 8-25. J. Lingard, History of England, volume 6, chapter 3. T. E. Bridgett, Life and Writings of Sir T. More. ENGLAND: A. D. 1529-1535. The execution of Sir Thomas More. On the 25th of October, 1529, the king, by delivering the great seal to Sir Thomas More, constituted him Lord Chancellor. In making this appointment, Henry "hoped to dispose his chancellor to lend his authority to the projects of divorce and second marriage, which now agitated the king's mind, and were the main objects of his policy. ... To pursue this subject through the long negotiations and discussions which it occasioned during six years, would be to lead us far from the life of Sir Thomas More. ... All these proceedings terminated in the sentence of nullity in the case of Henry's marriage with Catherine, pronounced by Cranmer, the espousal of Anne Boleyn by the king, and the rejection of the papal jurisdiction by the kingdom, which still, however, adhered to the doctrines of the Roman catholic church. The situation of More during a great part of these memorable events was embarrassing. The great offices to which he was raised by the king, the personal favour hitherto constantly shown to him, and the natural tendency of his gentle and quiet disposition, combined to disincline him to resistance against the wishes of his friendly master. On the other hand, his growing dread and horror of heresy, with its train of disorders; his belief that universal anarchy would be the inevitable result of religious dissension, and the operation of seven years' controversy for the Catholic church, in heating his mind on all subjects involving the extent of her authority, made him recoil from designs which were visibly tending towards disunion with the Roman pontiff. ... Henry used every means of procuring an opinion favourable to his wishes from his chancellor, who excused himself as unmeet for such matters, having never professed the study of divinity. ... But when the progress towards the marriage was so far advanced that he saw how soon the active co-operation of a chancellor must be required, he made suit to 'his singular dear friend,' the duke of Norfolk, to procure his discharge from this office. The duke, often solicited by More, then obtained, by importunate suit, a clear discharge for the chancellor. ... The king directed Norfolk, when he installed his successor, to declare publicly, that his majesty had with pain yielded to the prayers of sir Thomas More, by the removal of such a magistrate. .... It must be owned that Henry felt the weight of this great man's opinion, and tried every possible means to obtain at least the appearance of his spontaneous approbation. ... The king ... sent the archbishop of Canterbury, the chancellor, the duke of Norfolk, and Cromwell, to attempt the conversion of More. Audley reminded More of the king's special favour and many benefits. More admitted them; but modestly added, that his highness had most graciously declared that on this matter More should be molested no more. {829} When in the end they saw that no persuasion could move him, they then said, 'that the king's highness had given them in commandment, if they could by no gentleness win him, in the king's name with ingratitude to charge him, that never was servant to his master so villainous, nor subject to his prince so traitorous as he.'. . . By a tyrannical edict, mis-called a law, in the same session of 1533-4, it was made high treason, after the 1st of May, 1534, by writing, print, deed, or act, to do or to procure, or cause to be done or procured, anything to the prejudice, slander, disturbance, or derogation of the king's lawful matrimony with queen Anne. If the same offences were committed by words, they were only misprision. The same act enjoined all persons to take an oath to maintain the whole contents of the statute, and an obstinate refusal to make such oath was subjected to the penalties of misprision. ... Sir T. More was summoned to appear before these commissioners at Lambeth, on Monday the 13th of April, 1534. ... After having read the statute and the form of the oath, he declared his readiness to swear that he would maintain and defend the order of succession to the crown as established by parliament. He disclaimed all censure of those who had imposed, or on those who had taken, the oath, but declared it to be impossible that he should swear to the whole contents of it, without offending against his own conscience. ... He never more returned to his house, being committed to the custody of the abbot of Westminster, in which he continued four days; and at the end of that time he was conveyed to the Tower on Friday the 17th of April, 1534. ... On the 6th of May, 1535, almost immediately after the defeat of every attempt to practise on his firmness, More was brought to trial at Westminster, and it will scarcely be doubted, that no such culprit stood at any European bar for a thousand years. ... It is lamentable that the records of the proceedings against such a man should be scanty. We do not certainly know the specific offence of which he was convicted. ... On Tuesday, the 6th of July (St. Thomas's eve), 1535, sir Thomas Pope, 'his singular good friend,' came to him early with a message from the king and council, to say that he should die before nine o'clock of the same morning. ... The lieutenant brought him to the scaffold, which was so weak that it was ready to fall, on which he said, merrily, 'Master Lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up, and for my coming down let me shift for myself.' When he laid his head on the block he desired the executioner to wait till he had removed his beard, for that had never offended his highness." Sir J. Mackintosh, Sir Thomas More (Cabinet Cyclopedia: Eminent British Statesmen, volume 1). ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, Historical Biographies, chapter 3. T. E. Bridgett, Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More, chapters 12-24. S. H. Burke, Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty, volume 1, chapter 29. ENGLAND: A. D. 1531-1563, The genesis of the Church of England. "Henry VIII. attempted to constitute an Anglican Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character, the singularly favorable situation in which he stood with respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the spoliation of the ah beys placed at his disposal, and the support of that class which still halted between two opinions, enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope. But Henry's system died with him. Had his life been prolonged, he would have found it difficult to maintain a position assailed with equal fury by all who were zealous either for the new or for the old opinions. The ministers who held the royal prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not venture to persist in so hazardous a policy; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice. The government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The government and the Protestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal power. The English reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously condemned as Antichristian numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abandoned. Many felt a strong repugnance even to things indifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual of the mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester for his religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would propose to herself the Church of Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should be abandoned to the Papist, and that the chief officers of the purified church should be called Superintendents. When it is considered that none of these prelates belonged to the extreme section of the Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that party had been followed, the work of reform would have been carried on as unsparingly in England as in Scotland. But, as the government needed the support of the Protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was therefore given up on both sides: an union was effected; and the fruit of that union was the Church of England." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 1. "The Reformation in England was, singular amongst the great religious movements of the sixteenth century. It was the least heroic of them all--the least swayed by religious passion, or moulded and governed by spiritual and theological necessities. From a general point of view, it looks at first little more than a great political change. The exigencies of royal passion, and the dubious impulses of statecraft, seem its moving and really powerful springs. But, regarded more closely, we recognise a significant train both of religious and critical forces at work. The lust and avarice of Henry, the policy of Cromwell, and the vacillations of the leading clergy, attract prominent notice; but there may be traced beneath the surface a wide-spread evangelical fervour amongst the people, and, above all, a genuine spiritual earnestness and excitement of thought at the universities. {830} These higher influences preside at the first birth of the movement. They are seen in active operation long before the reforming task was taken up by the Court and the bishops." J. Tulloch, Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in England in the 17th Century, volume 1, chapter 2. "The miserable fate of Anne Boleyn wins our compassion, and the greatness to which her daughter attained has been in some degree reflected back upon herself. Had she died a natural death, and had she not been the mother of Queen Elizabeth, we should have estimated her character at a very low value indeed. Protestantism might still, with its usual unhistorical partizanship, have gilded over her immoralities; but the Church of England must ever look upon Anne Boleyn with downcast eyes full of sorrow and shame. By the influence of her charms, Henry was induced to take those steps which ended in setting the Church of England free from an uncatholic yoke: but that such a result should be produced by such an influence is a fact which must constrain us to think that the land was guilty of many sins, and that it was these national sins which prevented better instruments from being raised up for so righteous an object." J. H. Blunt, The Reformation of the Church of England, pages 197-198. "Cranmer's work might never have been carried out, there might have been no English Bible, no Ten Articles or 'Institution,' no reforming Primers, nor Proclamations against Ceremonies, had it not been for the tact, boldness and skill of Thomas Crumwell, who influenced the King more directly and constantly than Cranmer, and who knew how to make his influence acceptable by an unprincipled confiscation and an absurd exaggeration of the royal supremacy. Crumwell knew that in his master's heart there was a dislike and contempt of the clergy. ... It is probable that Crumwell's policy was simply irreligious, and only directed towards preserving his influence with the King; but as the support of the reforming part of the nation was a useful factor in it, he was thus led to push forward religious information in conjunction with Cranmer. It has been before said that purity and disinterestedness are not to be looked for in all the actors in the English Reformation. To this it may be added that neither in the movement itself nor in those who took part in it is to be found complete consistency. This, indeed, is not to be wondered at. Men were feeling their way along untrodden paths, without any very clear perception of the end at which they were aiming, or any perfect understanding of the situation. The King had altogether misapprehended the meaning of his supremacy. A host of divines whose views as to the distinction between the secular and the spiritual had been confused by the action of the Popes, helped to mislead him. The clergy, accustomed to be crushed and humiliated by the Popes, submitted to be crushed and humiliated by the King; and as the tide of his autocratic temper ebbed and flowed, yielded to each change. Hence there was action and reaction throughout the reign. But in this there were obvious advantages for the Church. The gradual process accustomed men's thoughts to a reformation which should not be drastic or iconoclastic, but rather conservative and deliberate." G. G, Perry, History of the Reformation in England, chapter 5. "With regard to the Church of England, its foundations rest upon the rock of Scripture, not upon the character of the King by whom they were laid. This, however, must be affirmed in justice to Henry, that mixed as the motives were which first induced him to disclaim the Pope's authority, in all the subsequent measures he acted sincerely, knowing the importance of the work in which he had engaged, and prosecuting it sedulously and conscientiously, even when most erroneous. That religion should have had so little influence upon his moral conduct will not appear strange, if we consider what the religion was wherein he was trained up;--nor if we look at the generality of men even now, under circumstances immeasurably more fortunate than those in which he was placed. Undeniable proofs remain of the learning, ability, and diligence, with which he applied himself to the great business of weeding out superstition, and yet preserving what he believed to be the essentials of Christianity untouched. This praise (and it is no light one) is his due: and it is our part to be thankful to that all-ruling Providence, which rendered even his passions and his vices subservient to this important end." R. Southey, The Book of the Church, chapter 12. ENGLAND: A. D. 1535-1539. The suppression of the Monasteries. "The enormous, and in a great measure ill-gotten, opulence of the regular clergy had long since excited jealousy in every part of Europe. ... A writer much inclined to partiality towards the monasteries says that they held [in England] one-fifth part of the kingdom; no insignificant patrimony. ... As they were in general exempted from episcopal visitation, and intrusted with the care of their own discipline, such abuses had gradually prevailed and gained strength by connivance as we may naturally expect in corporate bodies of men leading almost of necessity useless and indolent lives, and in whom very indistinct views of moral obligations were combined with a great facility of violating them. The vices that for many ages had been supposed to haunt the monasteries, had certainly not left their precincts in that of Henry VIII. Wolsey, as papal legate, at the instigation of Fox, bishop of Hereford, a favourer of the Reformation, commenced a visitation of the professed as well as secular clergy in 1523, in consequence of the general complaint against their manners. ... Full of anxious zeal for promoting education, the noblest part of his character, he obtained bulls from Rome suppressing many convents (among which was that of St. Frideswide at Oxford), in order to erect and endow a new college in that university, his favourite work, which after his fall was more completely established by the name of Christ Church. A few more were afterwards extinguished through his instigation; and thus the prejudice against interference with this species of property was somewhat worn off, and men's minds gradually prepared for the sweeping confiscations of Cromwell [Thomas Cromwell, who succeeded Wolsey as chief minister of Henry VIII.]. The king indeed was abundantly willing to replenish his exchequer by violent means, and to avenge himself on those who gainsayed his supremacy; but it was this able statesman who, prompted both by the natural appetite of ministers for the subjects' money and by a secret partiality towards the Reformation, devised and carried on with complete success, if not with the utmost prudence, a measure of no inconsiderable hazard and difficulty. ... {831} It was necessary, by exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries, both to intimidate the regular clergy, and to excite popular indignation against them. It is not to be doubted that in the visitation of these foundations, under the direction of Cromwell, as lord vice-gerent of the king's ecclesiastical supremacy, many things were done in an arbitrary manner, and much was unfairly represented. Yet the reports of these visitors are so minute and specific that it is rather a preposterous degree of incredulity to reject their testimony whenever it bears hard on the regulars. ... The dread of these visitors soon induced a number of abbots to make surrenders to the king; a step of very questionable legality. But in the next session the smaller convents, whose revenues were less than £200 a year, were suppressed by act of parliament, to the number of 376, and their estates vested in the crown. This summary spoliation led to the great northern rebellion soon afterwards," headed by Robert Ask, a gentleman of Yorkshire, and assuming the title of a Pilgrimage of Grace. H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 2. "Far from benefiting the cause of the monastic houses, the immediate effect of the Pilgrimage of Grace was to bring ruin on those monasteries which had as yet been spared. For their complicity or alleged complicity in it, twelve abbots were hanged, drawn and quartered, and their houses were seized by the Crown. Every means was employed by a new set of Commissioners to bring about the surrender of others of the greater abbeys. The houses were visited, and their pretended relics and various tricks to encourage the devotion of the people were exposed. Surrenders went rapidly on during the years 1537 and 1538, and it became necessary to obtain a new Act of Parliament to vest the property of the later surrenders in the Crown. ... Nothing, indeed, can be more tragical than the way in which the greater abbeys were destroyed on manufactured charges and for imaginary crimes. These houses had been described in the first Act of Parliament as 'great and honourable,' wherein 'religion was right well kept and observed.' Yet now they were pitilessly destroyed. A revenue of about £131,607 is computed to have thus come to the Crown, while the movables are valued at £400,000. How was this vast sum of money expended? (1) By the Act for the suppression of the greater monasteries the King was empowered to erect six new sees, with their deans and chapters, namely, Westminster, Oxford, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol and Peterborough. ... (2) Some monasteries were turned into collegiate churches, and many of the abbey churches ... were assigned as parish churches. (3) Some grammar schools were erected. (4) A considerable sum is said to have been spent in making roads and in fortifying the coasts of the Channel. (5) But by far the greater part of the monastic property passed into the hands of the nobility and gentry, either by purchase at very easy rates, or by direct gift from the Crown. ... The monks and nuns ejected from the monasteries had small pensions assigned to them, which are said to have been regularly paid; but to many of them the sudden return into a world with which they had become utterly unacquainted, and in which they had no part to play, was a terrible hardship, ... greatly increased by the Six Article Law, which ... made the marriage of the secularized 'religious' illegal under heavy penalties." G. G. Perry, History of the Reformation in England, chapter 4. "The religious bodies, instead of uniting in their common defence, seem to have awaited singly their fate with the apathy of despair. A few houses only, through the agency of their friends, sought to purchase the royal favour with offers of money and lands; but the rapacity of the king refused to accept a part when the whole was at his mercy." J. Lingard, History of England, volume 6, chapter 4. Some of the social results of the suppression "may be summed up in a few words. The creation of a large class of poor to whose poverty was attached the stigma of crime; the division of class from class, the rich mounting up to place and power, the poor sinking to lower depths; destruction of custom as a check upon the exactions of landlords; the loss by the poor of those foundations at schools and universities intended for their children, and the passing away of ecclesiastical tithes into the hands of lay owners." F. A. Gasquet, Henry VIII. and the English Monasteries, volume 2, page 523. ENGLAND: A. D. 1536-1543. Trial and execution of Anne Boleyn. Her successors, the later wives of Henry VIII. Anne Boleyn had been secretly married to the king in January, 1533, and had been crowned on Whitsunday of that year. "The princess Elizabeth, the only surviving child, was born on the 7th of September following. ... The death of Catherine, which happened at Kimbolton on the 29th of January, 1536, seemed to leave queen Anne in undisturbed possession of her splendid seat." But the fickle king had now "cast his affections on Jane Seymour, the daughter of Sir John Seymour, a young lady then of the Queen's bed-chamber, as Anne herself had been in that of Catherine." Having lost her charms in the eyes of the lustful despot who had wedded her, her influence was gone-- and her safety. Charges were soon brought against the unfortunate woman, a commission (her own father included in it) appointed to inquire into her alleged misdeeds, and "on the 10th of May an indictment for high treason was found by the grand jury of Westminster against the Lady Anne, Queen of England; Henry Norris, groom of the stole; Sir Francis Weston and William Brereton, gentlemen of the privy chamber; and Mark Smeaton, a performer on musical instruments, and a person 'of low degree,' promoted to be a groom of the chamber for his skill in the fine art which he professed. It charges the queen with having, by all sorts of bribes, gifts, caresses, and impure blandishments, which are described with unblushing coarseness in the barbarous Latinity of the indictment, allured these members of the royal household into a course of criminal connection with her, which had been carried on for three years. It included also George Boleyn viscount Rochford, the brother of Anne, as enticed by the same lures and snares with the rest of the accused, so as to have become the accomplice of his sister, by sharing her treachery and infidelity to the king. It is hard to believe that Anne could have dared to lead a life so unnaturally dissolute, without such vices being more early and very generally known in a watchful and adverse court. {832} It is still more improbable that she should in every instance be the seducer. ... Norris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeaton were tried before a commission of oyer and terminer at Westminster, on the 12th of May, two days after the bill against them was found. They all, except Smeaton, firmly denied their guilt to the last moment. On Smeaton's confession it must be observed that we know not how it was obtained, how far it extended, or what were the conditions of it. ... On the 12th of May, the four commoners were condemned to die. Their sentence was carried into effect amidst the plaints of the bystanders. ... On the 15th of May, queen Anne and her brother Rochford were tried." The place of trial was in the Tower, "which concealed from the public eye whatever might be wanting in justice." Condemnation duly followed, and the unhappy queen was executed May 19, 1536. The king lost little time in wedding Jane Seymour. "She died in childbed of Edward VI. on the 13th of October, 1537. The next choice made by or for Henry, who remained a widower for the period of more than two years," was the "princess Anne, sister of the duke of Cleves, a considerable prince on the lower Rhine. ... The pencil of Holbein was employed to paint this lady for the king, who, pleased by the execution, gave the flattering artist credit for a faithful likeness. He met her at Dover, and almost immediately betrayed his disappointment. Without descending into disgusting particulars, it is necessary to state that, though the marriage was solemnised, the king treated the princess of Cleves as a friend." At length, by common action of an obsequious parliament and a more obsequious convocation of the church, the marriage was declared to be annulled, for reasons not specified. The consent of the repudiated wife was "insured by a liberal income of £3,000 a year, and she lived for 16 years in England with the title of princess Anne of Cleves. ... This annulment once more displayed the triumph of an English lady over a foreign princess." The lady who now captivated the brutally amorous monarch was lady Catherine Howard, niece to the duke of Norfolk, who became queen on the 8th of August, 1540. In the following November, the king received such information of lady Catherine's dissolute life before marriage "as immediately caused a rigid inquiry into her behaviour. ... The confessions of Catherine and of lady Rochford, upon which they were attainted in parliament, and executed in the Tower on the 14th of February, are not said to have been at any time questioned. ... On the 10th of July, 1543, Henry wedded Catherine Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer, a lady of mature age," who survived him. Sir J. Mackintosh, History of England (L. L. C.), volume 2, chapters 7-8. ALSO IN: P. Friedmann, Ann Boleyn. H. W. Herbert, Memoirs of Henry VIII. and his Six Wives. ENGLAND: A. D. 1539. The Reformation checked. The Six Articles. "Yielding to the pressure of circumstances, he [Henry VIII.] had allowed the Reformers to go further than he really approved. The separation from the Church of Rome, the absorption by the Crown of the powers of the Papacy, the unity of authority over both Church and State centred in himself, had been his objects. In doctrinal matters he clung to the Church of which he had once been the champion. He had gained his objects because he had the feeling of the nation with him. In his eagerness he had even countenanced some steps of doctrinal reform. But circumstances had changed. ... Without detriment to his position he could follow his natural inclinations. He listened, therefore, to the advice of the reactionary party, of which Norfolk was the head. They were full of bitterness against the upstart Cromwell, and longed to overthrow him as they had overthrown Wolsey. The first step in their triumph was the bill of the Six Articles, carried in the Parliament of 1539. These laid down and fenced round with extraordinary severity the chief points of the Catholic religion at that time questioned by the Protestants. The bill enacted, first, 'that the natural body and blood of Jesus Christ were present in the Blessed Sacrament,' and that 'after consecration there remained no substance of bread and wine, nor any other but the substance of Christ'; whoever, by word or writing, denied this article was a heretic, and to be burned. Secondly, the Communion in both kinds was not necessary, both body and blood being present in each element; thirdly, priests might not marry; fourthly, vows of chastity by man or woman ought to be observed; fifthly, private masses ought to be continued; sixthly, auricular confession must be retained. Whoever wrote or spoke against these ... Articles, on the first offence his property was forfeited; on the second offence he was a felon, and was put to death. Under this 'whip with six strings' the kingdom continued for the rest of the reign. The Bishops at first made wild work with it. Five hundred persons are said to have been arrested in a fortnight; the king had twice to interfere and grant pardons. It is believed that only twenty-eight persons actually suffered death under it." J. F. Bright, History of England, volume 2, page 411. ALSO IN: J. H. Blunt, Reformation of the Church of England, volume 1, chapter 8-9. S. H. Burke, Men and Women of the English Reformation, volume 2, pages 17-24. ENGLAND: A. D. 1542-1547. Alliance with Charles V. against Francis I. Capture and restoration of Boulogne. Treaty of Guines. See FRANCE: A. D. 1532-1547. ENGLAND: A. D. 1544-1548. The wooing of Mary Queen of Scots. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1544-1548. ENGLAND: A. D. 1547. Accession of King Edward VI. ENGLAND: A. D. 1547-1553. The completing of the Reformation. Henry VIII., dying on the 28th of January, 1547, was succeeded by his son Edward,--child of Jane Seymour,--then only nine years old. By the will of his father, the young king (Edward VI.) was to attain his majority at eighteen, and the government of his kingdom, in the meantime, was entrusted to a body of sixteen executors, with a second body of twelve councillors to assist with their advice. "But the first act of the executors and counsellors was to depart from the destination of the late king in a material article. No sooner were they met, than it was suggested that the government would lose its dignity for want of some head who might represent the royal majesty." The suggestion was opposed by none except the chancellor, Wriothesley,--soon afterwards raised to the peerage as Earl of Southampton. "It being therefore agreed to name a protector, the choice fell of course on the Earl of Hertford [afterwards Duke of Somerset], who, as he was the king's maternal uncle, was strongly interested in his safety." {833} The protector soon manifested an ambition to exercise his almost royal authority without any constraint, and, having found means to remove his principal opponent, Southampton, from the chancellorship, and to send him into disgrace, he procured a patent from the infant king which gave him unbounded power. With this power in his hand he speedily undertook to carry the work of church reform far beyond the intentions of Henry VIII. "The extensive authority and imperious character of Henry had retained the partisans of both religions in subjection; but upon his demise, the hopes of the Protestants, and the fears of the Catholics began to revive, and the zeal of these parties produced every where disputes and animosities, the usual preludes to more fatal divisions. The protector had long been regarded as a secret partisan of the reformers; and being now freed from restraint, he scrupled not to discover his intention of correcting all abuses in the ancient religion, and of adopting still more of the Protestant innovations. He took care that all persons intrusted with the king's education should be attached to the same principles; and as the young prince discovered a zeal for every kind of literature, especially the theological, far beyond his tender years, all men foresaw, in the course of his reign, the total abolition of the Catholic faith in England; and they early began to declare themselves in favour of those tenets which were likely to become in the end entirely prevalent. After Southhampton's fall, few members of the council seemed to retain any attachment to the Romish communion; and most of the counsellors appeared even sanguine in forwarding the progress of the reformation. The riches which most of them had acquired from the spoils of the clergy, induced them to widen the breach between England and Rome; and by establishing a contrariety of speculative tenets, as well as of discipline and worship, to render a coalition with the mother church altogether impracticable. Their rapacity, also, the chief source of their reforming spirit, was excited by the prospect of pillaging the secular, as they had already done the regular clergy; and they knew, that while any share of the old principles remained, or any regard to the ecclesiastics, they could never hope to succeed in that enterprise. The numerous and burdensome superstitions with which the Romish church was loaded had thrown many of the reformers, by the spirit of opposition, into an enthusiastic strain of devotion; and all rites, ceremonies, pomp, order, and extreme observances were zealously proscribed by them, as hindrances to their spiritual contemplations, and obstructions to their immediate converse with heaven." D. Hume, History of England, volume 3, chapter 34. "'This year' [1547] says a contemporary, 'the Archbishop of Canterbury [Cranmer] did eat meat openly in Lent in the hall of Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since England was a Christian country.' This significant act was followed by a rapid succession of sweeping changes. The legal prohibitions of Lollardry were removed; the Six Articles were repealed; a royal injunction removed all pictures and images from the churches; priests were permitted to marry; the new communion which had taken the place of the mass was ordered to be administered in both kinds, and in the English tongue; an English Book of Common Prayer, the Liturgy, which with slight alterations is still used in the Church of England, replaced the missal and breviary, from which its contents are mainly drawn; a new catechism embodied the doctrines of Cranmer and his friends; and a Book of Homilies compiled in the same sense was appointed to be read in churches. ... The power of preaching was restricted by the issue of licenses only to the friends of the Primate. ... The assent of the nobles about the Court was won by the suppression of chantries and religious guilds, and by glutting their greed with the last spoils of the Church. German and Italian mercenaries were introduced to stamp out the wider popular discontent which broke out in the East, in the West, and in the Midland counties. ... The rule of the upstart nobles who formed the Council of Regency became simply a rule of terror. 'The greater part of the people,' one of their creatures, Cecil, avowed, 'is not in favour of defending this cause, but of aiding its adversaries, the greater part of the nobles who absent themselves from court, all the bishops save three or four, almost all the judges and lawyers, almost all the justices of the peace, the priests who can move their flocks any way; for the whole of the commonalty is in such a state of irritation that it will easily follow any stir towards change.' But with their triumph over the revolt, Cranmer and his colleagues advanced yet more boldly in the career of innovation. ... The Forty-two Articles of Religion, which were now [1552] introduced, though since reduced by omissions to thirty-nine, have remained to this day the formal standard of doctrine in the English Church." J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 7, section 1. ALSO IN: J. Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, book 2. G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of Church of England, volume 2, book 1. L. Von Ranke, History of England, book 2, chapter 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1548. First Act for encouragement of Newfoundland fisheries. See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1501-1578. ENGLAND: A. D. 1553. The right of succession to the throne, on the death of Edward VI. "If Henry VII. be considered as the stock of a new dynasty, it is clear that on mere principles of hereditary right, the crown would descend, first, to the issue of Henry VIII.; secondly, to those of [his elder sister] Margaret Tudor, queen of Scots; thirdly, to those of [his younger sister] Mary Tudor, queen of France. The title of Edward was on all principles equally undisputed; but Mary and Elizabeth might be considered as excluded by the sentence of nullity, which had been pronounced in the case of Catharine and in that of Anne Boleyn, both which sentences had been confirmed in parliament. They had been expressly pronounced to be illegitimate children. Their hereditary right of succession seemed thus to be taken away, and their pretensions rested solely on the conditional settlement of the crown on them, made by their father's will, in pursuance of authority granted to him by act of parliament. After Elizabeth Henry had placed the descendants of Mary, queen of France, passing by the progeny of his eldest sister Margaret. Mary of France, by her second marriage with Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, had two daughters,--lady Frances, who wedded Henry Grey, marquis of Dorset, created duke of Suffolk; and lady Elinor, who espoused Henry Clifford, earl of Cumberland. {834} Henry afterwards settled the crown by his will on the heirs of these two ladies successively, passing over his nieces themselves in silence. Northumberland obtained the hand of lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter of Grey duke of Suffolk, by lady Frances Brandon, for lord Guilford Dudley, the admiral's son. The marriage was solemnised in May, 1553, and the fatal right of succession claimed by the house of Suffolk devolved on the excellent and unfortunate lady Jane." Sir J. Mackintosh, History of England, volume 2, chapter 9. ENGLAND: A. D. 1553. Accession of Queen Mary. ENGLAND: A. D. 1553. The doubtful conflict of religions. "Great as was the number of those whom conviction or self interest enlisted under the Protestant banner, it appears plain that the Reformation moved on with too precipitate a step for the majority. The new doctrines prevailed in London, in many large towns, and in the eastern counties. But in the north and west of England, the body of the people were strictly Catholics. The clergy, though not very scrupulous about conforming to the innovations, were generally averse to most of them. And, in spite of the church lands, I imagine that most of the nobility, if not the gentry, inclined to the same persuasion. ... An historian, whose bias was certainly not unfavourable to Protestantism [Burnet, iii. 190, 196] confesses that all endeavours were too weak to overcome the aversion of the people towards reformation, and even intimates that German troops were sent for from Calais on account of the bigotry with which the bulk of the nation adhered to the old superstition. This is somewhat an humiliating admission, that the protestant faith was imposed upon our ancestors by a foreign army. ... It is certain that the re-establishment of popery on Mary's accession must have been acceptable to a large part, or perhaps to the majority, of the nation." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 2. "Eight weeks and upwards passed between the proclaiming of Mary queen and the Parliament by her assembled; during which time two religions were together set on foot, Protestantism and Popery; the former hoping to be continued, the latter labouring to be restored. ... No small justling was there betwixt the zealous promoters of these contrary religions. The Protestants had possession on their side, and the protection of the laws lately made by King Edward, and still standing in free and full force unrepealed. ... The Papists put their ceremonies in execution, presuming on the queen's private practice and public countenance. ... Many which were neuters before, conceiving to which side the queen inclined, would not expect, but prevent her authority in alteration: so that superstition generally got ground in the kingdom. Thus it is in the evening twilight, wherein light and darkness at first may seem very equally matched, but the latter within little time doth solely prevail." T. Fuller, Church History of Britain, book 8, section 1, ¶ 5. ALSO IN: J. II. Blunt, Reformation of the Church of England, volume 1; chapters 8-9. ENGLAND: A. D. 1554. Wyat's Insurrection. Queen Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain was opposed with great bitterness of popular feeling, especially in London and its neighborhood. Risings were undertaken in Kent, Devonshire, and the Midland counties, intended for the frustration of the marriage scheme; but they were ill-planned and soon suppressed. That in Kent, led by Sir Thomas Wyat, threatened to be formidable at first, and the Queen's troops retreated before it. Wyat, however, lost his opportunity for securing London, by delays, and his followers dispersed. He was taken prisoner and executed. "Four hundred persons are said to have suffered for this rebellion." D. Hume, History of England, chapter 36. ENGLAND: A. D. 1555-1558. The restoration of Romanism. The persecution of Protestants by Queen Mary. "An attempt was made, by authority of King Edward's will, to set aside both his sisters from the succession, and raise Lady Jane Grey to the throne, who had lately been married to one of Northumberland's sons. This was Northumberland's doing; he was actuated by ambition, and the other members of the government assented to it, believing, like the late young King, that it was necessary for the preservation of the Protestant faith. Cranmer opposed the measure, but yielded. ... But the principles of succession were in fact well ascertained at that time, and, what was of more consequence, they were established in public opinion. Nor could the intended change be supported on the ground of religion, for popular feeling was decidedly against the Reformation. Queen Mary obtained possession of her rightful throne without the loss of a single life, so completely did the nation acknowledge her claim; and an after insurrection, rashly planned and worse conducted, served only to hasten the destruction of the Lady Jane and her husband. ... If any person may be excused for hating the Reformation, it was Mary. She regarded it as having arisen in this country from her mother's wrongs, and enabled the King to complete an iniquitous and cruel divorce. It had exposed her to inconvenience, and even danger, under her father's reign, to vexation and restraint under her brother; and, after having been bastardized in consequence of it, ... an attempt had been made to deprive her of the inheritance, because she continued to profess the Roman Catholic faith. ... Had the religion of the country been settled, she might have proved a good and beneficent, as well as conscientious, queen. But she delivered her conscience to the direction of cruel men; and, believing it her duty to act up to the worst principles of a persecuting Church, boasted that she was a virgin sent by God to ride and tame the people of England. ... The people did not wait till the laws of King Edward were repealed; the Romish doctrines were preached, and in some places the Romish clergy took possession of the churches, turned out the incumbents, and performed mass in jubilant anticipation of their approaching triumph. What course the new Queen would pursue had never been doubtful; and as one of her first acts had been to make Gardiner Chancellor, it was evident that a fiery persecution was at hand. Many who were obnoxious withdrew in time, some into Scotland, and more into Switzerland and the Protestant parts of Germany. Cranmer advised others to fly; but when his friends entreated him to preserve himself by the like precaution, he replied, that it was not fitting for him to desert his post. ... The Protestant Bishops were soon dispossessed of their sees; the marriages which the Clergy and Religioners had contracted were declared unlawful, and their children bastardized. {835} The heads of the reformed Clergy, having been brought forth to hold disputations, for the purpose rather of intimidating than of convincing them, had been committed to different prisons, and after these preparatories the fiery process began." R. Southey, Book of the Church, chapter 14. "The total number of those who suffered in this persecution, from the martyrdom of Rogers, in February, 1555, to September, 1558, when its last ravages were felt, is variously related, in a manner sufficiently different to assure us that the relaters were independent witnesses, who did not borrow from each other, and yet sufficiently near to attest the general accuracy of their distinct statements. By Cooper they are estimated at about 290. According to Burnet they were 284. Speed calculates them at 274. The most accurate account is probably that of Lord Burleigh, who, in his treatise called 'The Execution of Justice in England,' reckons the number of those who died in that reign by imprisonment, torments, famine and fire, to be near 400, of which those who were burnt alive amounted to 290. From Burnet's Tables of the separate years, it is apparent that the persecution reached its full force in its earliest year." Sir J. Mackintosh, History of England, volume 2, chapter 11. "Though Pole and Mary could have laid their hands on earl and baron, knight and gentleman, whose heresy was notorious, although, in the queen's own guard, there were many who never listened to a mass, they durst not strike where there was danger that they would be struck in return. ... They took the weaver from his loom, the carpenter from his workshop, the husbandman from his plough; they laid hands on maidens and boys 'who had never heard of any other religion than that which they were called on to abjure'; old men tottering into the grave, and children whose lips could but just lisp the articles of their creed; and of these they made their burnt-offerings; with these they crowded their prisons, and when filth and famine killed them, they flung them out to rot." J. A. Froude, History of England, chapter 24. Queen Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain and his arbitrary disposition, "while it thoroughly alienated the kingdom from Mary, created a prejudice against the religion which the Spanish court so steadily favoured. ... Many are said to have become Protestants under Mary who, at her coming to the throne, had retained the contrary persuasion." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 2. ALSO IN: J. Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, part 2, book 5. J. Lingard, History of England, volume 7, chapter 2-3. J. Fox, Book of Martyrs. P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata, volume 2. J. Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, book 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1557-1559. Involved by the Spanish husband of Queen Mary in war with France. Loss of Calais. See FRANCE: A. D. 1547-1559. ENGLAND: A. D. 1558. Accession of Queen Elizabeth. ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1588. The Age of Elizabeth: Recovery of Protestantism. "The education of Elizabeth, as well as her interest, led her to favour the reformation; and she remained not long in suspense with regard to the party which she should embrace. But though determined in her own mind, she resolved to proceed by gradual and secure steps, and not to imitate the example of Mary, in encouraging the bigots of her party to make immediately a violent invasion on the established religion. She thought it requisite, however, to discover such symptoms of her intentions as might give encouragement to the Protestants, so much depressed by the late violent persecutions. She immediately recalled all the exiles, and gave liberty to the prisoners who were confined on account of religion. ... Elizabeth also proceeded to exert, in favour of the reformers, some acts of power, which were authorized by the extent of royal prerogative during that age. Finding that the Protestant teachers, irritated by persecution, broke out in a furious attack on the ancient superstition, and that the Romanists replied with no less zeal and acrimony, she published a proclamation, by which she inhibited all preaching without a special licence; and though she dispensed with these orders in favour of some preachers of her own sect, she took care that they should be the most calm and moderate of the party. She also suspended the laws, so far as to order a great part of the service, the litany, the Lord's prayer, the creed, and the gospels, to be read in English. And, having first published injunctions that all churches should conform themselves to the practice of her own chapel, she forbad the host to be any more elevated in her presence: an innovation which, however frivolous it may appear, implied the most material consequences. These declarations of her intentions, concurring with preceding suspicions, made the bishops foresee, with certainty, a revolution in religion. They therefore refused to officiate at her coronation; and it was with some difficulty that the Bishop of Carlisle was at last prevailed on to perform the ceremony. ... Elizabeth, though she threw out such hints as encouraged the Protestants, delayed the entire change of religion till the meeting of the Parliament, which was summoned to assemble. The elections had gone entirely against the Catholics, who seem not indeed to have made any great struggle for the superiority; and the Houses met, in a disposition of gratifying the queen in every particular which she could desire of them. ... The first bill brought into Parliament, with a view of trying their disposition on the head of religion, was that for suppressing the monasteries lately erected, and for restoring the tenths and first-fruits to the queen. This point being gained without much difficulty, a bill was next introduced, annexing the supremacy to the crown; and though the queen was there denominated governess, not head, of the church, it conveyed the same extensive power, which, under the latter title, had been exercised by her father and brother. ... By this act, the crown, without the concurrence either of the Parliament or even of the convocation, was vested with the whole spiritual power; might repress all heresies, might establish or repeal all canons, might alter every point of discipline, and might ordain or abolish any religious rite or ceremony. ... A law was passed, confirming all the statutes enacted in King Edward's time with regard to religion; the nomination of bishops was given to the crown without any election of the chapters. ... A solemn and public disputation was held during this session, in presence of Lord Keeper Bacon, between the divines of the Protestant and those of the Catholic communion. The champions appointed to defend the religion of the sovereign were, as in all former instances, entirely triumphant; and the popish disputants, being pronounced refractory and obstinate, were even punished by imprisonment. {836} Emboldened by this victory, the Protestants ventured on the last and most important step, and brought into Parliament a bill for abolishing the mass, and re-establishing the liturgy of King Edward. Penalties were enacted as well against those who departed from this mode of worship, as against those who absented themselves from the church and the sacraments. And thus, in one session, without any violence, tumult, or clamour, was the whole system of religion altered, on the very commencement of a reign, and by the will of a young woman, whose title to the crown was by many thought liable to great objections." D. Hume, History of England, chapter 38, pages 375-380 (volume 3). "Elizabeth ascended the throne much more in the character of a Protestant champion than her own convictions and inclinations would have dictated. She was, indeed, the daughter of Ann Boleyn, whom by this time the Protestants were beginning to regard as a martyr of the faith; but she was also the child of Henry VIII., and the heiress of his imperious will. Soon, however, she found herself Protestant almost in her own despite. The Papacy, in the first pride of successful reaction, offered her only the alternative of submission or excommunication, and she did not for a moment hesitate to choose the latter. Then commenced that long and close alliance between Catholicism and domestic treason which is so differently judged as it is approached from the religious or the political side. These seminary priests, who in every various disguise come to England, moving secretly about from manor-house to manor-house, celebrating the rites of the Church, confirming the wavering, consoling the dying, winning back the lapsed to the fold, too well acquainted with Elizabeth's prisons, and often finding their way to her scaffolds,--what are they but the intrepid missionaries, the self-devoted heroes, of a proscribed faith? On the other hand, the Queen is excommunicate, an evil woman, with whom it is not necessary to keep faith, to depose whom would be the triumph of the Church, whose death, however compassed, its occasion: how easy to weave plots under the cloak of religious intercourse, and to make the unity of the faith a conspiracy of rebellion! The next heir to the throne, Mary of Scotland, was a Catholic, and, as long as she lived, a perpetual centre of domestic and European intrigue: plot succeeded plot, in which the traitorous subtlety was all Catholic--the keenness of discovery, the watchfulness of defence, all Protestant. Then, too, the shadow of Spanish supremacy began to cast itself broadly over Europe: the unequal struggle with Holland was still prolonged: it was known that Philip's dearest wish was to recover to his empire and the Church the island kingdom which had once unwillingly accepted his rule. It was thus the instinct of self-defence which placed Elizabeth at the head of the Protestant interest in Europe: she sent Philip Sidney to die at Zutphen: her sailor buccaneers, whether there were peace at home or not, bit and tore at everything Spanish upon the southern main: till at last, 1588, Philip gathered up all his naval strength and hurled the Armada at our shores. 'Afflavit Deus, et dissipati sunt.' The valour of England did much; the storms of heaven the rest. Mary of Scotland had gone to her death the year before, and her son had been trained to hate his mother's faith. There could be no question any more of the fixed Protestantism of the English people." C. Beard, Hibbert Lectures, 1883: The Reformation, lecture 9. ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1598. The Age of Elizabeth: The Queen's chief councillors. "Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, already officially experienced during three reigns, though still young, was the queen's chief adviser from first to last--that is to say, till he died in 1598. Philip II., who also died in that year, was thus his exact contemporary; for he mounted the Spanish throne just when Elizabeth and her minister began their work together. He was not long in discovering that there was one man, possessed of the most balanced judgment ever brought to the head of English affairs, who was capable of unwinding all his most secret intrigues; and, in fact, the two arch-enemies, the one in London and the other in Madrid, were pitted against each other for forty years. Elizabeth had also the good sense to select the wisest and most learned ecclesiastic of his day, Matthew Parker, for her Primate and chief adviser in Church affairs. It should be noted that both of these sages, as well as the queen herself, had been Conformists to the Papal obedience under Mary--a position far from heroic, but not for a moment to be confused with that of men whose philosophical indifference to the questions which exercised all the highest minds enabled them to join in the persecution of Romanists and Anglicans at different times with a sublime impartiality. ... It was under the advice of Cecil and Parker that Elizabeth, on coming to the throne, made her famous settlement or Establishment of religion." M. Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, book 2, chapter 17. ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1603. The Age of Elizabeth: Parliament. "The house of Commons, upon a review of Elizabeth's reign, was very far, on the one hand, from exercising those constitutional rights which have long since belonged to it, or even those which by ancient precedent they might have claimed as their own; yet, on the other hand, was not quite so servile and submissive an assembly as an artful historian has represented it. If many of its members were but creatures of power, ... there was still a considerable party, sometimes carrying the house along with them, who with patient resolution and inflexible aim recurred in every session to the assertion of that one great privilege which their sovereign contested, the right of parliament to inquire into and suggest a remedy for every public mischief or danger. It may be remarked that the ministers, such as Knollys, Hatton, and Robert Cecil, not only sat among the commons, but took a very leading part in their discussions; a proof that the influence of argument could no more be dispensed with than that of power. This, as I conceive, will never be the case in any kingdom where the assembly of the estates is quite subservient to the crown. Nor should we put out of consideration the manner in which the commons were composed. Sixty-two members were added at different times by Elizabeth to the representation; as well from places which had in earlier times discontinued their franchise, as from those to which it was first granted; a very large proportion of them petty boroughs, evidently under the influence of the crown or peerage. The ministry took much pains with ejections, of which many proofs, remain. {837} The house accordingly was filled with placemen, civilians, and common lawyers grasping at preferment. The slavish tone of these persons, as we collect from the minutes of D'Ewes, is strikingly contrasted by the manliness of independent gentlemen. And as the house was by no means very fully attended, the divisions, a few of which are recorded, running from 200 to 250 in the aggregate, it may be perceived that the court, whose followers were at hand, would maintain a formidable influence. But this influence, however pernicious to the integrity of parliament, is distinguishable from that exertion of almost absolute prerogative which Hume has assumed as the sole spring of Elizabeth's government, and would never be employed till some deficiency of strength was experienced in the other." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 5. ENGLAND: A. D. 1558-1603. The Age of Elizabeth: Literature. "The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours: statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers; Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and--high and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths--Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, men whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling; what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. Our writers and great men had something in them that savoured of the soil from which they grew: they were not French; they were not Dutch, or German, or Greek, or Latin; they were truly English. They did not look out of themselves to see what they should be; they sought for truth and nature, and found it in themselves. There was no tinsel, and but little art; they were not the spoilt children of affectation and refinement, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy, with none but natural grace, and heartfelt, unobtrusive delicacy. ... For such an extraordinary combination and development of fancy and genius many causes may be assigned; and we may seek for the chief of them in religion, in politics, in the circumstances of the time, the recent diffusion of letters, in local situation, and in the character of the men who adorned that period, and availed themselves so nobly of the advantages placed within their reach. ... The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. ... The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers (such they were thought) to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in the common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. ... The immediate use or application that was made of religion to subjects of imagination and fiction was not (from an obvious ground of separation) so direct or frequent as that which was made of the classical and romantic literature. For much about the same time, the rich and fascinating stores of the Greek and Roman mythology, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious, and thrown open in translations to the admiring gaze of the vulgar. ... What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of man at this period, was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairyland was realised in new and unknown worlds. ... Again, the heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in the reign of Elizabeth. The age of chivalry was not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe extinguished forever. ... Lastly, to conclude this account: What gave a unity and common direction to all these causes, was the natural genius of the country, which was strong in these writers in proportion to their strength. We are a nation of islanders, and we cannot help it, nor mend ourselves if we would. We are something in ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others. Music and painting are not our forte: for what we have done in that way has been little, and that borrowed from others with great difficulty. But we may boast of our poets and philosophers. That's something. We have had strong heads and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one side of the world, and left to bustle for ourselves, we have fought out many a battle for truth and freedom. That is our natural style; and it were to be wished we had in no instance departed from it. Our situation has given us a certain cast of thought and character; and our liberty has enabled us to make the most of it. We are of a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion, with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are slow to think, and therefore impressions do not work upon us till they act in masses. ... We may be accused of grossness, but not of flimsiness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of want of art and refinement, but not of a want of truth and nature. Our literature, in a word, is Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular; not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform texture, but of great weight in the whole, and of incomparable value in the best parts. It aims at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses, and is either very good indeed, or absolutely good for nothing. This character applies in particular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth, which is its best period, before the introduction of a rage for French rules and French models." W. Hazlitt, Lectures on the Literature of the Age of Elizabeth, lecture 1. {838} "Humanism, before it moulded the mind of the English, had already permeated Italian and French literature. Classical erudition had been adapted to the needs of modern thought. Antique authors had been collected, printed, annotated, and translated. They were fairly mastered in the south, and assimilated to the style of the vernacular. By these means much of the learning popularised by our poets, essayists, and dramatists came to us at second-hand, and bore the stamp of contemporary genius. In like manner, the best works of Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature were introduced into Great Britain together with the classics. The age favoured translation, and English readers before the close of the sixteenth century, were in possession of a cosmopolitan library in their mother tongue, including choice specimens of ancient and modern masterpieces. These circumstances sufficiently account for the richness and variety of Elizabethan literature. They also help to explain two points which must strike every student of that literature--its native freshness, and its marked unity of style. Elizabethan literature was fresh and native, because it was the utterance of a youthful race, aroused to vigorous self-consciousness under conditions which did not depress or exhaust its energies. The English opened frank eyes upon the discovery of the world and man, which had been effected by the Renaissance. They were not wearied with collecting, collating, correcting, transmitting to the press. All the hard work of assimilating the humanities had been done for them. They had only to survey and to enjoy, to feel and to express, to lay themselves open to delightful influences, to con the noble lessons of the past, to thrill beneath the beauty and the awe of an authentic revelation. Criticism had not laid its cold, dry finger on the blossoms of the fancy. The new learning was still young enough to be a thing of wonder and entrancing joy." J. A. Symonds, A Comparison of Elizabethan with Victorian Poetry (Fortnightly Rev., volume 45, page 56). ENGLAND: A. D. 1559. The Act of Supremacy, the Act of Uniformity, and the Court of High Commission. "When Elizabeth's first Parliament met in January 1559, Convocation, of course, met too. It at once claimed that the clergy alone had authority in matters of faith, and proceeded to pass resolutions in favour of Transubstantiation, the Mass, and the Papal Supremacy. The bishops and the Universities signed a formal agreement to this effect. That in the constitution of the English Church, Convocation, as Convocation, has no such power as this, was proved by the steps now taken. The Crown, advised by the Council and Parliament, took the matter in hand. As every element, except the Roman, had been excluded from the clerical bodies, a consultation was ordered between the representatives of both sides, and all preaching was suspended till a settlement had been arrived at between the queen and the Three Estates of the realm. The consultation broke upon the refusal of the Romanist champions to keep to the terms agreed upon; but even before it took place Parliament restored the Royal Supremacy, repealed the laws of Mary affecting religion, and gave the queen by her own desire, not the title of 'Supreme Head,' but 'Supreme Governor,' of the Church of England." M. Burrows, Commentaries on the History of England, book 2, chapter 17. This first Parliament of Elizabeth passed two memorable acts of great importance in English history,--the Act of Supremacy and the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer. "The former is entitled 'An act for restoring to the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the State Ecclesiastical and Spiritual; and for abolishing foreign power.' It is the same for substance with the 25th of Henry VIII. ... but the commons incorporated several other bills into it; for besides the title of 'Supreme Governor in all causes Ecclesiastical and Temporal,' which is restored to the Queen, the act revives those laws of King Henry VIII. and King Edward VI. which had been repealed in the late reign. It forbids all appeals to Rome, and exonerates the subjects from all exactions and impositions heretofore paid to that court; and as it revives King Edward's laws, it repeals a severe act made in the late reign for punishing heresy. ... 'Moreover, all persons in any public employs, whether civil or ecclesiastical, are obliged to take an oath in recognition of the Queen's right to the crown, and of her supremacy in all causes ecclesiastical and civil, on penalty of forfeiting all their promotions in the church, and of being declared incapable of holding any public office.' ... Further, 'The act forbids all writing, printing, teaching, or preaching, and all other deeds or acts whereby any foreign jurisdiction over these realms is defended, upon pain that they and their abettors, being thereof convicted, shall for the first offence forfeit their goods and chattels; ... spiritual persons shall lose their benefices, and all ecclesiastical preferments; for the second offence they shall incur the penalties of a præmunire; and the third offence shall be deemed high treason.' There is a remarkable clause in this act, which gave rise to a new court, called 'The Court of High Commission.' The words are these, 'The Queen and her successors shall have power, by their letters patent under the great seal, to assign, name, and authorize, as often as they shall think meet, and for as long a time as they shall please, persons being natural-born subjects, to use, occupy, and exercise, under her and them, all manner of jurisdiction, privileges, and preeminences, touching any spiritual or ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the realms of England and Ireland, &c., to visit, reform, redress, order, correct and amend all errors, heresies, schisms, abuses, contempts, offences and enormities whatsoever. Provided, that they have no power to determine anything to be heresy, but what has been adjudged to be so by the authority of the canonical scripture, or by the first four general councils, or any of them; or by any other general council wherein the same was declared heresy by the express and plain words of canonical scripture; or such as shall hereafter be declared to be heresy by the high court of parliament, with the assent of the clergy in convocation.' Upon the authority of this clause the Queen appointed a certain number of 'Commissioners' for ecclesiastical causes, who exercised the same power that had been lodged in the hands of one vicegerent in the reign of King Henry VIII. And how sadly they abused their power in this and the two next reigns will appear in the sequel of this history. They did not trouble themselves much with the express words of scripture, or the four first general councils, but entangled their prisoners with oaths ex-officio, and the inextricable mazes of the popish canon law. ... The papists being vanquished, the next point was to unite the reformed among themselves. ... Though all the reformers were of one faith, yet they were far from agreeing about discipline and ceremonies, each party being for settling the church according to their own model. ... {839} The Queen ... therefore appointed a committee of divines to review King Edward's liturgy, and to see if in any particular it was fit to be changed; their names were Dr. Parker, Grindal, Cox, Pilkington, May, Bill, Whitehead, and Sir Thomas Smith, doctor of the civil law. Their instructions were, to strike out all offensive passages against the pope, and to make people easy about the belief of the corporal presence of Christ in the sacraments; but not a word in favour of the stricter protestants. Her Majesty was afraid of reforming too far; she was desirous to retain images in churches, crucifixes and crosses, vocal and instrumental music, with all the old popish garments; it is not therefore to be wondered, that in reviewing the liturgy of King Edward, no alterations were made in favour of those who now began to be called Puritans, from their attempting a purer form of worship and discipline than had yet been established. ... The book was presented to the two houses and passed into a law. ... The title of the act is 'An act for the Uniformity of Common Prayer and Service in the Church, and administration of the Sacraments.' It was brought into the House of Commons April 18th, and was read a third time April 20th. It passed the House of Lords April 28th, and took place from the 24th of June 1559." D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 1, chapter 4. ALSO IN: G. Burnet, History of the Reformation of the Church of England., volume 2, book 3. P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1559-1566. Puritanism taking form. "The Church of England was a latitudinarian experiment, a contrivance to enable men of opposing creeds to live together without shedding each others' blood. It was not intended, and it was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants should find in its formulas all that they required. The services were deliberately made elastic; comprehending in the form of positive statement only what all Christians agreed in believing, while opportunities were left open by the rubric to vary the ceremonial according to the taste of the congregations. The management lay with the local authorities in town or parish: where the people were Catholics the Catholic aspect could be made prominent; where Popery was a bugbear, the people were not disturbed by the obtrusion of doctrines which they had outgrown. In itself it pleased no party or section. To the heated controversialist its chief merit was its chief defect. ... Where the tendencies to Rome were strongest, there the extreme Reformers considered themselves bound to exhibit in the most marked contrast the unloveliness of the purer creed. It was they who furnished the noble element in the Church of England. It was they who had been its martyrs; they who, in their scorn of the world, in their passionate desire to consociate themselves in life and death to the Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the Catholic Saints. But they had not the wisdom of the serpent, and certainly not the harmlessness of the dove. Had they been let alone--had they been unharassed by perpetual threats of revolution and a return of the persecutions--they, too, were not disinclined to reason and good sense. A remarkable specimen survives, in an account of the Church of Northampton, of what English Protestantism could become under favouring conditions. ... The fury of the times unhappily forbade the maintenance of this wise and prudent spirit. As the power of evil gathered to destroy the Church of England, a fiercer temper was required to combat with them, and Protestantism became impatient, like David, of the uniform in which it was sent to the battle. It would have fared ill with England had there been no hotter blood there than filtered in the sluggish veins of the officials of the Establishment. There needed an enthusiasm fiercer far to encounter the revival of Catholic fanaticism; and if the young Puritans, in the heat and glow of their convictions, snapped their traces and flung off their harness, it was they, after all, who saved the Church which attempted to disown them, and with the Church saved also the stolid mediocrity to which the fates then and ever committed and commit the government of it." J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 10, chapter 20. "The compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the first been considered by a large body of Protestants as a scheme for serving two masters, as an attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward VI. the scruples of this party had repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the government. When Elizabeth came to the throne, those difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders violence. The spirit of Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany. They had been hospitably received by their brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich and Geneva, and had been, during some years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a more democratical form of church government, than England had yet seen. These men returned to their country, convinced that the reform which had been effected under King Edward had been far less searching and extensive than the interests of pure religion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to obtain any concession from Elizabeth. Indeed, her system, wherever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ for the worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters of faith, to any human authority. ... Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined that they should be persecuted. Persecution produced its natural effect on them. It found them a sect: it made them a faction. ... The power of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found in every rank; but they were strongest among the mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small proprietors in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth they began to return a majority of the House of Commons. And doubtless, had our ancestors been then at liberty to fix their attention entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the crown and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But that was no season for internal dissensions. ... Roman Catholic Europe and reformed Europe were struggling for death or life. ... Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of all reformed churches was staked on the security of her person and on the success of her administration. ... {840} The Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no simulated fervour, that she might be kept from the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet, and that her arms might be victorious by sea and land." Lord Macaulay, History of England, volume 1, chapter 1. "Two parties quickly evolved themselves out of the mass of Englishmen who held Calvinistic opinions; namely those who were willing to conform to the requirements of the Queen, and those who were not. To both is often given indiscriminately by historians the name of Puritan; but it seems more correct, and certainly is more convenient, to restrict the use of the name to those who are sometimes called conforming Puritans. ... To the other party fitly belongs the name of Nonconformist. ... It was against the Nonconformist organization that Elizabeth's efforts were chiefly directed. ... The war began in the enforcement by Archbishop Parker in 1565 of the Advertisements as containing the minimum of ceremonial that would be tolerated. In 1566 the clergy of London were required to make the declaration of Conformity which was appended to the Advertisements, and thirty-seven were suspended or deprived for refusal. Some of the deprived ministers continued to conduct services and preach in spite of their deprivation, and so were formed the first bodies of Nonconformists, organized in England." H. O. Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans, chapter 3. ALSO IN: J. Tulloch, English Puritanism and its Leaders, introduction. D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 1, chapter 4. D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England, and America, chapters 8-10 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1562-1567. Hawkins' slave-trading voyages to America. First English enterprise in the New World. See AMERICA: A. D. 1562-1567. ENGLAND: A. D. 1564-1565 (?). The first naming of the Puritans. "The English bishops, conceiving themselves empowered by their canons, began to show their authority in urging the clergy of their dioceses to subscribe to the Liturgy, ceremonies and discipline of the Church; and such as refused the same were branded with the odious name of Puritans. A name which in this notion first began in this year [A. D. 1564]; and the grief had not been great if it had ended in the same. The philosopher banisheth the term, (which is Polysæmon), that is subject to several senses, out of the predicaments, as affording too much covert for cavil by the latitude thereof. On the same account could I wish that the word Puritan were banished common discourse, because so various in the acceptations thereof. We need not speak of the ancient Cathari or primitive Puritans, sufficiently known by their heretical opinions. Puritan here was taken for the opposers of the hierarchy and church service, as resenting of superstition. But profane mouths quickly improved this nickname, therewith on every occasion to abuse pious people; some of them so far from opposing the Liturgy, that they endeavoured (according to the instructions thereof in the preparative to the Confession) 'to accompany the minister with a pure heart,' and laboured (as it is in the Absolution) 'for a life pure and holy.' We will, therefore, decline the word to prevent exceptions; which, if casually slipping from our pen, the reader knoweth that only nonconformists are thereby intended." T. Fuller, Church History of Britain, book 9, section 1. "For in this year [1565] it was that the Zuinglian or Calvinian faction began to be first known by the name of Puritans, if Genebrard, Gualter, and Spondanus (being all of them right good chronologers) be not mistaken in the time. Which name hath ever since been appropriate to them, because of their pretending to a greater purity in the service of God than was held forth unto them (as they gave out) in the Common Prayer Book; and to a greater opposition to the rites and usages of the Church of Rome than was agreeable to the constitution of the Church of England." P. Heylyn, Ecclesia Restaurata: Elizabeth, Anno 7, section 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1568. Detention and imprisonment of Mary Queen of Scots. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568. ENGLAND: A. D. 1569. Quarrel with the Spanish governor of the Netherlands. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1568-1572. ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1580. Drake's piratical warfare with Spain and his famous voyage. See AMERICA: A. D. 1572-1580. ENGLAND: A. D. 1572-1603. Queen Elizabeth's treatment of the Roman Catholics. Persecution of the Seminary Priests and the Jesuits. "Camden and many others have asserted that by systematic connivance the Roman Catholics enjoyed a pretty free use of their religion for the first fourteen years of Elizabeth's reign. But this is not reconcilable to many passages in Strype's collections. We find abundance of persons harassed for recusancy, that is, for not attending the protestant church, and driven to insincere promises of conformity. Others were dragged before ecclesiastical commissions for harbouring priests, or for sending money to those who had fled beyond sea. ... A great majority both of clergy and laity yielded to the times; and of these temporizing conformists it cannot be doubted that many lost by degrees all thought of returning to their ancient fold. But others, while they complied with exterior ceremonies, retained in their private devotions their accustomed mode of worship. ... Priests ... travelled the country in various disguises, to keep alive a flame which the practice of outward conformity was calculated to extinguish. There was not a county throughout England, says a Catholic historian, where several of Mary's clergy did not reside, and were commonly called the old priests. They served as chaplains in private families. By stealth, at the dead of night, in private chambers, in the secret lurking places of an ill-peopled country, with all the mystery that subdues the imagination, with all the mutual trust that invigorates constancy, these proscribed ecclesiastics celebrated their solemn rites, more impressive in such concealment than if surrounded by all their former splendour. ... It is my thorough conviction that the persecution, for it can obtain no better name, carried on against the English Catholics, however it might serve to delude the government by producing an apparent conformity, could not but excite a spirit of disloyalty in many adherents of that faith. Nor would it be safe to assert that a more conciliating policy would have altogether disarmed their hostility, much less laid at rest those busy hopes of the future, which the peculiar circumstances of Elizabeth's reign had a tendency to produce." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 3. {841} "The more vehement Catholics had withdrawn from the country, on account of the dangers which there beset them. They had taken refuge in the Low Countries, and there Allen, one of the chief among them, had established a seminary at Douay, for the purpose of keeping up a supply of priests in England. To Douay numbers of young Englishmen from Oxford continually flocked. The establishment had been broken up by Requescens, and removed to Rheims, and a second college of the same description was established at Rome. From these two centres of intrigue numerous enthusiastic young men constantly repaired to England, and in the disguise of laymen carried on their priestly work and attempted to revive the Romanist religion. But abler and better disciplined workmen were now wanted. Allen and his friends therefore opened negotiations with Mercuriano, the head of the Jesuit order, in which many Englishmen had enrolled themselves. In 1580, as part of a great combined Catholic effort, a regular Jesuit mission, under two priests, Campion and Parsons, was despatched to England. ... The new missionaries were allowed to say that that part of the Bull [of excommunication issued against Elizabeth] which pronounced censures upon those who clung to their allegiance applied to heretics only, that Catholics might profess themselves loyal until the time arrived for carrying the Bull into execution; in other words, they were permitted to be traitors at heart while declaring themselves loyal subjects. This explanation of the Bull was of itself sufficient to justify severity on the part of the government. It was impossible henceforward to separate Roman Catholicism from disloyalty. Proclamations were issued requiring English parents to summon their children from abroad, and declaring that to harbour Jesuit priests was to support rebels. ... Early in December several priests were apprehended and closely examined, torture being occasionally used for the purpose. In view of the danger which these examinations disclosed, stringent measures were taken. Attendance at church was rendered peremptorily necessary. Parliament was summoned in the beginning of 1581 and laws passed against the action of the Jesuits. ... Had Elizabeth been conscious of the full extent of the plot against her, had she known the intention of the Guises [then dominant in France] to make a descent upon England in co-operation with Spain, and the many ramifications of the plot in her own country, it is reasonable to suppose that she would have been forced at length to take decided measures. But in ignorance of the abyss opening before her feet, she continued for some time longer her old temporizing policy." At last, in November, 1583, the discovery of a plot for the assassination of the queen, and the arrest of one Throgmorton, whose papers and whose confession were of startling import, brought to light the whole plan and extent of the conspiracy. "Some of her Council urged her at once to take a straightforward step, to make common cause with the Protestants of Scotland and the Netherlands, and to bid defiance to Spain. To this honest step, she as usual could not bring herself, but strong measures were taken in England. Great numbers of Jesuits and seminary priests were apprehended and executed, suspected magistrates removed, and those Catholic Lords whose treachery might have been fatal to her ejected from their places of authority and deprived of influence." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, pages 546-549. "That the conspiracy with which these men were charged was a fiction cannot be doubted. They had come to England under a prohibition to take any part in secular concerns, and with the sole view of exercising the spiritual functions of the priesthood. ... At the same time it must be owned that the answers which six of them gave to the queries were far from satisfactory. Their hesitation to deny the opposing power (a power then indeed maintained by the greater number of divines in Catholic kingdoms) rendered their loyalty very problematical, in case of an attempt to enforce the bull by any foreign prince. It furnished sufficient reason to watch their conduct with an eye of jealousy ... but could not justify their execution for an imaginary offence." J. Lingard, History of England, volume 8, chapter 3. "It is probable that not many more than 200 Catholics were executed, as such, in Elizabeth's reign, and this was ten score too many. ... 'Dod reckons them at 191; Milner has raised the list to 204. Fifteen of these, according to him, suffered for denying the Queen's supremacy, 126 for exercising their ministry, and the rest for being reconciled to the Romish church. Many others died of hardships in prison, and many were deprived of their property. There seems, nevertheless [says Hallam], to be good reason for doubting whether anyone who was executed might not have saved his life by explicitly denying the Pope's power to depose the Queen.'" J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands, chapter 17, with foot-note. ALSO IN: J. Foley, Records of the English Province of the Society of Jesus. ENGLAND: A. D. 1574. Emancipation of villeins on the royal domains. Practical end of serfdom. See SLAVERY, MEDIÆVAL: ENGLAND. ENGLAND: A. D. 1575. Sovereignty of Holland and Zealand offered to Queen Elizabeth, and declined. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1575-1577. ENGLAND: A. D. 1581. Marriage proposals of the Duke of Anjou declined by Queen Elizabeth. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1581-1584. ENGLAND: A. D. 1583. The expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Formal possession taken of Newfoundland. See AMERICA: A. D. 1583. ENGLAND: A. D. 1584-1590. Raleigh's colonizing attempts in America. See AMERICA: A. D. 1584-1586; and 1587-1590. ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1586. Leicester in the Low Countries. Queen Elizabeth's treacherous dealing with the struggling Netherlanders. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1585-1586. ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587. Mary Queen of Scots and the Catholic conspiracies. Her trial and execution. "Maddened by persecution, by the hopelessness of rebellion within or deliverance from without, the fiercer Catholics listened to schemes of assassination, to which the murder of William of Orange lent at the moment a terrible significance. The detection of Somerville, a fanatic who had received the host before setting out for London 'to shoot the Queen with his dagg,' was followed by measures of natural severity, by the flight and arrest of Catholic gentry, by a vigourous purification of the Inns of Court, where a few Catholics lingered, and by the dispatch of fresh batches of priests to the block. The trial and death of Parry, a member of the House of Commons who had served in the Queen's household, on a similar charge, brought the Parliament together in a transport of horror and loyalty. {842} All Jesuits and seminary priests were banished from the realm on pain of death. A bill for the security of the Queen disqualified any claimant of the succession who had instigated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's person from ever succeeding to the crown. The threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip or Scotland to aid her, of the baffled revolt of the English Catholics and the baffled intrigues of the Jesuits, she bent for a moment to submission. 'Let me go,' she wrote to Elizabeth; 'let me retire from this island to some solitude where I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I will sign away every right which either I or mine can claim.' But the cry was useless, and her despair found a new and more terrible hope in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew and approved the vow of Anthony Babington and a band of young Catholics, for the most part connected with the royal household, to kill the Queen; but plot and approval alike passed through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of Mary's correspondence revealed her guilt. In spite of her protests, a commission of peers sat as her judges at Fotheringay Castle; and their verdict of 'guilty' annihilated, under the provisions of the recent statute, her claim to the crown. The streets of London blazed with bonfires, and peals rang out from steeple to steeple, at the news of her condemnation; but, in spite of the prayer of Parliament for her execution, and the pressure of the Council, Elizabeth shrank from her death. The force of public opinion, however, was now carrying all before it, and the unanimous demand of her people wrested at last a sullen consent from the Queen. She flung the warrant signed upon the floor, and the Council took on themselves the responsibility of executing it. Mary died [February 8, 1587] on a scaffold which was erected in the castle hall at Fotheringay, as dauntlessly as she had lived. 'Do not weep,' she said to her ladies, 'I have given my word for you.' 'Tell my friends,' she charged Melville, 'that I die a good Catholic.'" J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, chapter 7, section 6. "'Who now doubts,' writes an eloquent modern writer, 'that it would have been wiser in Elizabeth to spare her life?' Rather, the political wisdom of a critical and difficult act has never in the world's history been more signally justified. It cut away the only interest on which the Scotch and English Catholics could possibly have combined. It determined Philip upon the undisguised pursuit of the English throne, and it enlisted against him and his projects the passionate patriotism of the English nobility." J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 34. ALSO IN: A. De Lamartine, Mary Stuart, chapter 31-34. L. S. F. Buckingham, Memoirs of Mary Stuart, volume 2, chapter 5-6. L. von Ranke, History of England, book 3, chapter 5. J. D. Leader, Mary Queen of Scots in Captivity. C. Nau, History of Mary Stuart. F. A. Mignet, History of Mary Queen of Scots, chapters 9-10. England: A. D. 1587-1588. The wrath of Catholic Europe. Spanish vengeance and ambition astir. "The death of Mary [Queen of Scots] may have preserved England from the religious struggle which would have ensued upon her accession to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth from only one, and that the weakest of her enemies; and it exposed her to a charge of injustice and cruelty, which, being itself well founded, obtained belief for any other accusation, however extravagantly false. It was not Philip [of Spain] alone who prepared for making war upon her with a feeling of personal hatred: throughout Romish Christendom she was represented as a monster of iniquity; that representation was assiduously set forth, not in ephemeral libels, but in histories, in dramas, in poems, and in hawker's pamphlets; and when the king of Spain equipped an armament for the invasion of England, volunteers entered it with a passionate persuasion that they were about to bear a part in a holy war against the wickedest and most inhuman of tyrants. The Pope exhorted Philip to engage in this great enterprize for the sake of the Roman Catholic and apostolic church, which could not be more effectually nor more meritoriously extended than by the conquest of England; so should he avenge his own private and public wrongs; so should he indeed prove himself most worthy of the glorious title of Most Catholic King. And he promised, as soon as his troops should have set foot in that island, to supply him with a million of crowns of gold towards the expenses of the expedition. ... Such exhortations accorded with the ambition, the passions, and the rooted principles of the king of Spain. The undertaking was resolved." R. Southey, Lives of the British Admirals, volume 2, page 319. "The succours which Elizabeth had from time to time afforded to the insurgents of the Netherlands was not the only cause of Philip's resentment and of his desire for revenge. She had fomented the disturbances in Portugal, ... and her captains, among whom Sir Francis Drake was the most active, had for many years committed unjustifiable depredations on the Spanish possessions of South America, and more than once on the coasts of the Peninsula itself. ... By Spanish historians, these hostilities are represented as unprovoked in their origin, and as barbarous in their execution, and candor must allow that there is but too much justice in the complaint." S. A. Dunham, History of Spain and Portugal, book 4, section 1, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 35. ENGLAND: A. D. 1588. The Spanish Armada. "Perhaps in the history of mankind there has never been a vast project of conquest conceived and matured in so protracted and yet so desultory a manner, as was this famous Spanish invasion. ... At last, on the 28th, 29th and 30th May, 1588, the fleet, which had been waiting at Lisbon more than a month for favourable weather, set sail from that port, after having been duly blessed by the Cardinal Archduke Albert, viceroy of Portugal. There were rather more than 130 ships in all, divided into 10 squadrons. ... The total tonnage of the fleet was 59,120: the number of guns was 3,165. Of Spanish troops there were 19,295 on board: there were 8,252 sailors and 2,088 galley-slaves. Besides these, there was a force of noble volunteers, belonging to the most illustrious houses of Spain, with their attendants, amounting to nearly 2,000 in all. ... The size of the ships ranged from 1,200 tons to 300. The galleons, of which there were about 60, were huge round-stemmed clumsy vessels, with bulwarks three or four feet thick, and built up at stem and stern, like castles. {843} The galeasses--of which there were four--were a third larger than the ordinary galley, and were rowed each by 300 galley-slaves. They consisted of an enormous towering fortress at the stern, a castellated structure almost equally massive in front, with seats for the rowers amidships. At stem and stern and between each of the slaves' benches were heavy cannon. These galeasses were floating edifices, very wonderful to contemplate. They were gorgeously decorated. There were splendid state-apartments, cabins, chapels, and pulpits in each, and they were amply provided with awnings, cushions, streamers, standards, gilded saints and bands of music. To take part in an ostentatious pageant, nothing could be better devised. To fulfil the great objects of a war-vessel--to sail and to fight--they were the worst machines ever launched upon the ocean. The four galleys were similar to the galeasses in every respect except that of size, in which they were by one-third inferior. All the ships of the fleet--galeasses, galleys, galleons, and hulks--were so encumbered with top-hamper, so over-weighted in proportion to their draught of water, that they could bear but little canvas, even with smooth seas and light and favourable winds. ... Such was the machinery which Philip had at last set afloat, for the purpose of dethroning Elizabeth and establishing the inquisition in England. One hundred and forty ships, 11,000 Spanish veterans, as many more recruits, partly Spanish, partly Portuguese, 2,000 grandees, as many galley slaves, and 300 barefooted friars and inquisitors. The plan was simple. Medina Sidonia [the captain-general of the Armada] was to proceed straight from Lisbon to Calais roads: there he was to wait for the Duke of Parma [Spanish commander in the Netherlands], who was to come forth from Newport, Sluys, and Dunkirk, bringing with him his 17,000 veterans, and to assume the chief command of the whole expedition. They were then to cross the channel to Dover, land the army of Parma, reinforced with 6,000 Spaniards from the fleet, and with these 23,000 men Alexander was to march at once upon London. Medina Sidonia was to seize and fortify the Isle of Wight, guard the entrance of the harbours against any interference from the Dutch and English fleets, and--so soon as the conquest of England had been effected--he was to proceed to Ireland. ... A strange omission had however been made in the plan from first to last. The commander of the whole expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head was the whole responsibility. Not a gun was to be fired--if it could be avoided--until he had come forth with his veterans to make his junction with the Invincible Armada off Calais. Yet there was no arrangement whatever to enable him to come forth--not the slightest provision to effect that junction. ... Medina could not go to Farnese [Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma], nor could Farnese come to Medina. The junction was likely to be difficult, and yet it had never once entered the heads of Philip or his counsellors to provide for that difficulty. ... With as much sluggishness as might have been expected from their clumsy architecture, the ships of the Armada consumed nearly three weeks in sailing from Lisbon to the neighbourhood of Cape Finisterre. Here they were overtaken by a tempest. ... Of the squadron of galleys, one was already sunk in the sea, and two of the others had been conquered by their own slaves. The fourth rode out the gale with difficulty, and joined the rest of the fleet, which ultimately reassembled at Coruña; the ships having, in distress, put in first at Vivera, Ribadeo, Gijon, and other northern ports of Spain. At the Groyne--as the English of that day were accustomed to call Coruña--they remained a month, repairing damages and recruiting; and on the 22d of July (N. S.) the Armada set sail. Six days later, the Spaniards took soundings, thirty leagues from the Scilly Islands, and on Friday, the 29th of July, off the Lizard, they had the first glimpse of the land of promise presented them by Sixtus V. of which they had at last come to take possession. On the same day and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand beacon-fires from the Land's End to Margate, and from the Isle of Wight to Cumberland, gave warning to every Englishman that the enemy was at last upon them." J. L. Motley, History of the United Netherlands, chapter 19. ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, History of England, volume 12, chapter 36. J. A. Froude, The Spanish Story of the Armada. R. Southey, Lives of British Admirals, volume 2, pages 327-334. C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 5th series, chapter 27. ENGLAND: A. D. 1588. The Destruction of the Armada. "The great number of the English, the whole able-bodied population being drilled, counterbalanced the advantage possessed, from their universal use of firearms, by the invaders. In all the towns there were trained bands (a civic militia); and, either in regular service or as volunteers, thousands of all ranks had received a military training on the continent. The musters represented 100,000 men as ready to assemble at their head-quarters at a day's notice. It was, as nearly always, in its military administration that the vulnerable point of England lay. The fitting-out and victualling of the navy was disgraceful; and it is scarcely an excuse for the councillors that they were powerless against the parsimony of the Queen. The Government maintained its hereditary character from the days of Ethelred the Unready, and the arrangements for assembling the defensive forces were not really completed by them until after the Armada was destroyed. The defeat of the invaders, if they had landed, must have been accomplished by the people. The flame of patriotism never burnt purer: all Englishmen alike, Romanists, Protestant Episcopalians, and Puritans, were banded together to resist the invader. Every hamlet was on the alert for the beacon-signal. Some 15,000 men were already under arms in London; the compact Tilbury Fort was full, and a bridge of boats from Tilbury to Gravesend blocked the Thames. Philip's preparations had been commensurate with the grandeur of his scheme. The dockyards in his ports in the Low Countries, the rivers, the canals, and the harbours of Spain, Portugal, Naples, and Italy, echoed the clang of the shipwrights' hammers. A vast armament, named, as if to provoke Nemesis, the 'Invincible Armada,' on which for three years the treasures of the American mines had been lavished, at length rode the seas, blessed with Papal benedictions and under the patronage of the saints. It comprised 65 huge galleons, of from 700 to 1,300 tons, with sides of enormous thickness, and built high like castles; four great galleys, each carrying 50 guns and 450 men, and rowed by 300 slaves; 56 armed merchantmen, and 20 pinnaces. These 129 vessels were armed with 2,430 brass and iron guns of the best manufacture, but each gun was furnished only with 50 rounds. {844} They carried 5,000 seamen: Parma's army amounted to 30,000 men--Spaniards, Germans, Italians and Walloons; and 19,000 Castilians and Portuguese, with 1,000 gentlemen volunteers, were coming to join him. To maintain this army after it had effected a landing, a great store of provisions--sufficient for 40,000 men for six months--was placed on board. The overthrow of this armament was effected by the navy and the elements. From the Queen's parsimony the State had only 36 ships in the fleet; but the City of London furnished 33 vessels; 18 were supplied by the liberality of private individuals; and nearly 100 smaller ships were obtained on hire; so that the fleet was eventually brought up to nearly 30,000 tons, carrying 16,000 men, and equipped with 837 guns. But there was sufficient ammunition for only a single day's fighting. Fortunately for Elizabeth's Government, the Spaniards, having been long driven from the channel by privateers, were now unacquainted with its currents; and they could procure, as the Dutch were in revolt, only two or three competent pilots. The Spanish commander was the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, an incapable man, but he had under him some of the ablest of Philip's officers. When the ships set out from the Tagus, on the 29th May, 1588, a storm came on, and the Armada had to put into Coruña to refit. From that port the Armada set out at the beginning of July, in lovely weather, with just enough wind to wave from the mastheads the red crosses which they bore as symbols of their crusade. The Duke of Medina entered the Channel on the 18th July, and the rear of his fleet was immediately harassed by a cannonade from the puny ships of England, commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham (Lord High Admiral), with Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Winter, Fenner, and other famous captains. With the loss of three galleons from fire or boarding, the Spanish commander, who was making for Flanders to embark Parma's army, anchored in Calais roads. In the night fire-ships--an ancient mode of warfare which had just been reintroduced by the Dutch--passed in among the Armada, a fierce gale completed their work, and morning revealed the remnant of the Invincible Armada scattered along the coast from Calais to Ostend. Eighty vessels remained to Medina, and with these he sailed up the North Sea, to round the British Isles. But the treacherous currents of the Orkneys and the Hebrides were unknown to his officers, and only a few ships escaped the tempests of the late autumn. More than two-thirds of the expedition perished, and of the remnant that again viewed the hills of Spain all but a few hundreds returned only to die." H. R. Clinton, From Crécy to Assye, chapter 7. In the fighting on the 23d of July, "the Spaniards' shot flew for the most part over the heads of the English, without doing execution, Cock being the only Englishman that died bravely in the midst of his enemies in a ship of his own. The reason of this was, that the English ships, being far less than the enemy's, made the attack with more quickness and agility; and when they had given a broadside, they presently sheered off to a convenient distance, and levelled their shot so directly at the bigger and more unwieldy ships of the Spaniards, as seldom to miss their aim; though the Lord Admiral did not think it safe or proper to grapple with them, as some advised, with much more heat than discretion, because that the enemy's fleet carried a considerable army within their sides, whereas ours had no such advantage. Besides their ships far exceeded ours in number and bulk, and were much stronger and higher built; insomuch that their men, having the opportunity to ply us from such lofty hatches, must inevitably destroy those that were obliged, as it were, to fight beneath them. ... On the 24th day of the month there was a cessation on both sides, and the Lord Admiral sent some of his smaller vessels to the nearest of the English harbours, to fetch a supply of powder and ammunition; then he divided the fleet into four squadrons, the first of which he commanded himself, the second he committed to Drake, the third to Hawkins, and the fourth to Frobisher. He likewise singled out of the main fleet some smaller vessels to begin the attack on all sides at once, in the very dead of the night; but a calm happening spoiled his design." On the 26th "the Spanish fleet sailed forward with a fair and soft gale at southwest and by south; and the English chased them close at the heels; but so far was this Invincible Armada from alarming the sea-coasts with any frightful apprehensions, that the English gentry of the younger sort entered themselves volunteers, and taking leave of their parents, wives, and children, did, with incredible cheerfulness, hire ships at their own charge; and, in pure love to their country, joined the grand fleet in vast numbers. ... On the 27th of this month the Spanish Fleet came to an anchor before Calais, their pilots having acquainted them that if they ventured any farther there was some danger that the force of the current might drive them away into the Northern Channel. Not far from them came likewise the English Admiral to an anchor, and lay within shot of their ships. The English fleet consisted by this time of 140 sail; all of them ships of force, and very tight and nimble sailors, and easily manageable upon a tack. But, however, the main brunt of the engagement lay not upon more than 15 or 16 of them. ... The Lord Admiral got ready eight of his worst ships the very day after the Spaniards came to an anchor; and having bestowed upon them a good plenty of pitch, tar, and rosin, and lined them well with brimstone and other combustible matter, they sent them before the wind, in the dead time of the night, under the conduct of Young and Prowse, into the midst of the Spanish fleet. ... The Spaniards reported that the duke, upon the approach of the fire-ships, ordered the whole fleet to weigh anchor and stand to sea, but that when the danger was over every ship should return to her station. This is what he did himself, and he likewise discharged a great gun as a signal to the rest to do as he did; the report, however, was heard but by very few, by reason their fears had dispersed them at that rate that some of them ventured out of the main ocean, and others sailed up the shallows of Flanders. In the meantime Drake and Fenner played briskly with their cannon upon the Spanish fleet, as it was rendezvousing over against Graveling. ... On the last day of the month the wind blew hard at north-west early in the morning, and the Spanish fleet attempting to get back again to the Straits of Calais, was driven toward Zealand. {845} The English then gave over the chase, because, in the Spaniards' opinion, they perceived them making haste enough to their own destruction. For the wind, lying at the W. N. W. point, could not choose but force them on the shoals and sands on the coast of Zealand. But the wind happening to come about in a little time to Southwest and by West they went before the wind. ... Being now, therefore, clear of danger in the main ocean, they steered northward, and the English fleet renewed the chase after them. ... The Spaniards having now laid aside all the thoughts and hopes of returning to attempt the English, and perceiving their main safety lay in their flight, made no stay or stop at any port whatever. And thus this mighty armada, which had been three whole years fitting out, and at a vast expense, met in one month's time with several attacks, and was at last routed, with a vast slaughter on their side, and but a very few of the English missing, and not one ship lost, except that small vessel of Cock's. ... When, therefore, the Spanish fleet had taken a large compass round Britain, by the coasts of Scotland, the Orcades, and Ireland, and had weathered many storms, and suffered as many wrecks and blows, and all the inconveniences of war and weather, it made a shift to get home again, laden with nothing but shame and dishonour. ... Certain it is that several of their ships perished in their flight, being cast away on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and that above 700 soldiers were cast on shore in Scotland. ... As for those who had the ill fortune to be drove upon the Irish shore, they met with the most barbarous treatment; for some of them were butchered by the wild Irish, and the rest put to the sword by the Lord Deputy." W. Camden, History of Queen Elizabeth. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, Historical Biographies: Drake. E. S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles, chapter 10. C. Kingsley, Westward Ho! chapter 31. R. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, &C. (E. Goldsmid's ed.), volume 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1596. Alliance with Henry IV. of France against Spain. See FRANCE: A. D. 1593--1598. ENGLAND: A. D. 1596. Dutch and English expedition against Cadiz. See SPAIN: A. D. 1596. ENGLAND: A. D. 1597. Abolition of the privileges of the Hanse merchants. See HANSA TOWNS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1600. The first charter to the East India Company. See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702. ENGLAND: A. D. 1601. The first Poor Law. See POOR LAWS, THE ENGLISH. ENGLAND: A. D. 1603. Accession of King James I. The Stuart family. On the death of Queen Elizabeth, in 1603, James VI. of Scotland became also the accepted king of England (under the title of James I.), by virtue of his descent from that daughter of Henry VII. and sister of Henry VIII., Margaret Tudor, who married James IV. king of Scots. His grandfather was James V.; his mother was Marie Stuart, or Mary, Queen of Scots, born of her marriage with Lord Darnley. He was the ninth in the line of the Scottish dynasty of the Stuarts, or Stewarts, for an account of the origin of which see SCOTLAND: A. D. 1370. He had been carefully alienated from the religion of his mother and reared in Protestantism, to make him an acceptable heir to the English throne. He came to it at a time when the autocratic spirit of the Tudors, making use of the peculiar circumstances of their time, had raised the royal power and prerogative to their most exalted pitch; and he united the two kingdoms of Scotland and England under one sovereignty. "The noble inheritance fell to a race who, comprehending not one of the conditions by which alone it was possible to be retained, profligately misused until they lost it utterly. The calamity was in no respect foreseen by the statesman, Cecil, to whose exertion it was mainly due that James was seated on the throne: yet in regard to it he cannot be held blameless. He was doubtless right in the course he took, in so far as he thereby satisfied a national desire, and brought under one crown two kingdoms that with advantage to either could not separately exist; but it remains a reproach to his name that he let slip the occasion of obtaining for the people some ascertained and settled guarantees which could not then have been refused, and which might have saved half a century of bloodshed. None such were proposed to James. He was allowed to seize a prerogative, which for upwards of fifty years had been strained to a higher pitch than at any previous period of the English history; and his clumsy grasp closed on it without a sign of question or remonstrance from the leading statesmen of England. 'Do I mak the judges? Do I mak the bishops?' he exclaimed, as the powers of his new dominion dawned on his delighted sense: 'Then, God's wauns! I mak what likes me, law and gospel!' It was even so. And this license to make gospel and law was given, with other far more questionable powers, to a man whose personal appearance and qualities were as suggestive of contempt, as his public acts were provocative of rebellion. It is necessary to dwell upon this part of the subject; for it is only just to his not more culpable but far less fortunate successor to say, that in it lies the source and explanation of not a little for which the penalty was paid by him. What is called the Great Rebellion can have no comment so pregnant as that which is suggested by the character and previous career of the first of the Stuart kings." J. Forster, Historical and Biographical Essays, p.227. ENGLAND: A. D. 1604. The Hampton Court Conference. James I. "was not long seated on the English throne, when a conference was held at Hampton Court, to hear the complaints of the puritans, as those good men were called who scrupled to conform to the ceremonies, and sought a reformation of the abuses of the church of England. On this occasion, surrounded with his deans, bishops, and archbishops, who breathed into his ears the music of flattery, and worshipped him as an oracle, James, like king Solomon, to whom he was fond of being compared, appeared in all his glory, giving his judgment on every question, and displaying before the astonished prelates, who kneeled every time they addressed him, his polemic powers and theological learning. Contrasting his present honours with the scenes from which he had just escaped in his native country, he began by congratulating himself that, 'by the blessing of Providence, he was brought into the promised land, where religion was professed in its purity; where he sat among grave, learned, and reverend men; and that now he was not, as formerly, a king without state and honour, nor in a place where order was banished, and beardless boys would brave him to his face.' {846} After long conferences, during which the king gave the most extraordinary exhibitions of his learning, drollery, and profaneness, he was completely thrown off his guard by the word presbytery, which Dr. Reynolds, a representative of the puritans, had unfortunately employed. Thinking that he aimed at a 'Scotch presbytery,' James rose into a towering passion, declaring that presbytery agreed as well with monarchy as God and the devil. 'Then,' said he, 'Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council, and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say, It must be thus: Then Dick shall reply, and say, Nay marry, but we will have it thus. And, therefore, here I must once reiterate my former speech, Le Roy s'avisera (the king will look after it). Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before you demand that of me; and if you then find me pursy and fat, and my wind-pipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you; for let that government be once up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath; then we shall all of us have work enough, both our hands full. But, Dr. Reynolds, till you find that I grow lazy, let that alone." Then, putting his hand to his hat, 'My lords the bishops,' said his majesty, 'I may thank you that these men plead for my supremacy; they think they can't make their party good against you, but by appealing unto it. But if once you are out, and they in place, I know what would become of my supremacy; for no bishop, no king, as I said before.' Then rising from his chair, he concluded the conference with, 'If this be all they have to say, I'll make them conform, or I'll harry them out of this land, or else do worse.' The English lords and prelates were so filled with admiration at the quickness of apprehension and dexterity in controversy shown by the king, that, as Dr. Barlow informs us, 'one of them said his majesty spoke by the instinct of the Spirit of God; and the lord chancellor, as he went out, said to the dean of Chester, I have often heard that Rex est mixta persona cum sacerdote (that a king is partly a priest), but I never saw the truth thereof till this day!' In these circumstances, buoyed up with flattery by his English clergy, and placed beyond the reach of the faithful admonitions of the Scottish ministry, we need not wonder to find James prosecuting, with redoubled ardour, his scheme of reducing the church of Scotland to the English model." T. McCrie, Sketches of Scottish Church History, chapter 5. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 1, sections 3. G. G. Perry, History of the Church of England, volume 1, chapter 2. T. Fuller, Church History of Britain, book 10, section 1 (volume 3). England: A. D. 1605. The Gunpowder Plot. "The Roman Catholics had expected great favour and indulgence on the accession of James, both as he was descended from Mary, whose life they believed to have been sacrificed to their cause, and as he himself, in his early youth, was imagined to have shown some partiality towards them. ... Very soon they discovered their mistake; and were at once surprised and enraged to find James, on all occasions, express his intention of strictly executing the laws enacted against them, and of persevering in all the rigorous measures of Elizabeth. Catesby, a gentleman of good parts and of an ancient family, first thought of a most extraordinary method of revenge; and he opened his intention to Piercy, a descendant of the illustrious house of Northumberland. In vain, said he, would you put an end to the king's life: he has children. ... To serve any good purpose, we must destroy, at one blow, the king, the royal family, the Lords, the Commons, and bury all our enemies in one common ruin. Happily, they are all assembled on the first meeting of Parliament, and afford us the opportunity of glorious and useful vengeance. Great preparations will not be requisite. A few of us, combining, may run a mine below the hall in which they meet, and choosing the very moment when the king harangues both Houses, consign over to destruction these determined foes to all piety and religion. ... Piercy was charmed with this project of Catesby; and they agreed to communicate the matter to a few more, and among the rest to Thomas Winter, whom they sent over to Flanders, in quest of Fawkes, an officer in the Spanish service, with whose zeal and courage they were all thoroughly acquainted. ... All this passed in the spring and summer of the year 1604; when the conspirators also hired a house in Piercy's name, adjoining to that in which the Parliament was to assemble. Towards the end of that year they began their operations. ... They soon pierced the wall, though three yards in thickness; but on approaching the other side they were somewhat startled at hearing a noise which they knew not how to account for. Upon inquiry, they found that it came from the vault below the House of Lords; that a magazine of coals had been kept there; and that, as the coals were selling off, the vault would be let to the highest bidder. The opportunity was immediately seized; the place hired by Piercy; thirty-six barrels of powder lodged in it; the whole covered up with faggots and billets; the doors of the cellar boldly flung open, and everybody admitted, as if it contained nothing dangerous. ... The day [November 5, 1605], so long wished for, now approached, on which the Parliament was appointed to assemble. The dreadful secret, though communicated to above twenty persons, had been religiously kept, during the space of near a year and a half. No remorse, no pity, no fear of punishment, no hope of reward, had as yet induced any one conspirator, either to abandon the enterprise or make a discovery of it." But the betrayal was unwittingly made, after all, by one in the plot, who tried to deter Lord Monteagle from attending the opening session of Parliament, by sending him a mysterious message of warning. Lord Monteagle showed the letter to Lord Salisbury, secretary of state, who attached little importance to it, but who laid it before the king. The Scottish Solomon read it with more anxiety and was shrewdly led by some expressions in the missive to order an inspection of the vaults underneath the parliamentary houses. The gunpowder was discovered and Guy Fawkes was found in the place, with matches for the firing of it on his person. Being put to the rack he disclosed the names of his accomplices. They were seized, tried and executed, or killed while resisting arrest. D. Hume, History of England, volume 4, chapter 46. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of England, chapter 6, (volume 1). J. Lingard, History of England, volume 9, chapter 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1606. The chartering of the Virginia Company, with its London and Plymouth branches. See VIRGINIA: A. D. 1606-1607. {847} ENGLAND: A. D. 1620. The Monopoly granted to the Council for New England. See NEW ENGLAND: A.. D. 1620-1623. ENGLAND: A. D. 1620. The exodus of the Pilgrims and the planting of their colony at New Plymouth. See MASSACHUSETTS (PLYMOUTH COLONY): A. D. 1620. ENGLAND: A. D. 1621. Claims in North America conflicting with France. Grant of Nova Scotia to Sir William Alexander. See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631. ENGLAND: A. D. 1623-1638. The grants in Newfoundland to Baltimore and Kirke. See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1610-1655. ENGLAND: A. D. 1625. The Protestant Alliance in the Thirty Years War. See GERMANY: A. D. 1624-1626. ENGLAND: A. D. 1625. The gains of Parliament in the reign of James I. "The commons had now been engaged [at the end of the reign of James I.], for more than twenty years, in a struggle to restore and to fortify their own and their fellow subjects' liberties. They had obtained in this period but one legislative measure of importance, the late declaratory act against monopolies. But they had rescued from disuse their ancient right of impeachment. They had placed on record a protestation of their claim to debate all matters of public concern. They had remonstrated against the usurped prerogatives of binding the subject by proclamation, and of levying customs at the out-ports. They had secured beyond controversy their exclusive privilege of determining contested elections of their members. They had maintained, and carried indeed to an unwarrantable extent, their power of judging and inflicting punishment, even for offences not committed against their house. Of these advantages some were evidently incomplete; and it would require the most vigorous exertions of future parliaments to realize them. But such exertions the increased energy of the nation gave abundant cause to anticipate. A deep and lasting love of freedom had taken hold of every class except perhaps the clergy; from which, when viewed together with the rash pride of the court, and the uncertainty of constitutional principles and precedents, collected through our long and various history, a calm by-stander might presage that the ensuing reign would not pass without disturbance, nor perhaps end without confusion." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1625. Marriage of Charles with Henrietta Maria of France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1624--1626. ENGLAND: A. D. 1625-1628. The accession of Charles I. Beginning of the struggle of King and Parliament. "The political and religious schism which had originated in the 16th century was, during the first quarter of the 17th century, constantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish despotism were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories tending to republicanism were in favour with a large portion of the House of Commons. ... While the minds of men were in this state, the country, after a peace of many years, at length engaged in a war [with Spain, and with Austria and the Emperor in the Palatinate] which required strenuous exertions. This war hastened the approach of the great constitutional crisis. It was necessary that the king should have a large military force. He could not have such a force without money. He could not legally raise money without the consent of Parliament. It followed, therefore, that he either must administer the government in conformity with the sense of the House of Commons, or must venture on such a violation of the fundamental laws of the land as had been unknown during several centuries. ... Just at this conjuncture James died [March 27, 1625]. Charles I. succeeded to the throne. He had received from nature a far better understanding, a far stronger will, and a far keener and firmer temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's political theories, and was much more disposed than his father to carry them into practice. ... His taste in literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified though not gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to dark and crooked ways. ... He seems to have learned from the theologians whom he most esteemed that between him and his subjects there could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract; that he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic authority; and that, in every promise which he made, there was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole judge. And now began that hazardous game on which were staked the destinies of the English people. It was played on the side of the House of Commons with keenness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness and perseverance. Great statesmen who looked far behind them and far before them were at the head of that assembly. They were resolved to place the king in such a situation that he must either conduct the administration in conformity with the wishes of his Parliament, or make outrageous attacks on the most sacred principles of the constitution. They accordingly doled out supplies to him very sparingly. He found that he must govern either in harmony with the House of Commons, or in defiance of all law. His choice was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament, and levied taxes by his own authority. He convoked a second Parliament [1626] and found it more intractable than the first. He again resorted to the expedient of dissolution, raised fresh taxes without any show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of the opposition into prison. At the same time a new grievance, which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation made insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning men to be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and alarm. Companies of soldiers were billeted on the people; and martial law was, in some places, substituted for the ancient jurisprudence of the realm. The king called a third Parliament [1628], and soon perceived that the opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He now determined on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing an inflexible resistance to the demands of the commons, he, after much altercation and many evasions, agreed to a compromise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, would have averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament granted an ample supply. The King ratified, in the most solemn manner, that celebrated law which is known by the name of the Petition of Right, and which is the second Great Charter of the liberties of England." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. R. Green, History of the English People, book 7, chapter 5 (volume 3). F. P. Guizot, History of the English Revolution, book 1. {848} ENGLAND: A. D. 1627-1628. Buckingham's war with France and expedition to La Rochelle. See FRANCE: A. D. 1627-1628. ENGLAND: A. D. 1628. The Petition of Right. "Charles had recourse to many subterfuges in hopes to elude the passing of this law; rather perhaps through wounded pride, as we may judge from his subsequent conduct, than much apprehension that it would create a serious impediment to his despotic schemes. He tried to persuade them to acquiesce in his royal promise not to arrest anyone without just cause, or in a simple confirmation of the Great Charter and other statutes in favour of liberty. The peers, too pliant in this instance to his wishes, and half receding from the patriot banner they had lately joined, lent him their aid by proposing amendments (insidious in those who suggested them, though not in the body of the house) which the commons firmly rejected. Even when the bill was tendered to him for that assent which it had been necessary, for the last two centuries, that the king should grant or refuse in a word, he returned a long and equivocal answer, from which it could only be collected that he did not intend to remit any portion of what he had claimed as his prerogative. But on an address from both houses for a more explicit answer, he thought fit to consent to the bill in the usual form. The commons, of whose harshness towards Charles his advocates have said so much, immediately passed a bill for granting five subsidies, about £350,000; a sum not too great for the wealth of the kingdom or for his exigencies, but considerable according to the precedents of former times, to which men naturally look. ... The Petition of Right, ... this statute is still called, from its not being drawn in the common form of an act of parliament." Although the king had been defeated in his attempt to qualify his assent to the Petition of Right, and had been forced to accede to it unequivocally, yet "he had the absurd and audacious insincerity (for we can use no milder epithets), to circulate 1,500 copies of it through the country, after the prorogation, with his first answer annexed; an attempt to deceive without the possibility of success. But instances of such ill-faith, accumulated as they are through the life of Charles, render the assertion of his sincerity a proof either of historical ignorance or of a want of moral delicacy." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 7. The following is the text of the Petition of Right: "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty. Humbly show unto our Sovereign Lord the King, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons in Parliament assembled, that whereas it is declared and enacted by a statute made in the time of the reign of King Edward the First, commonly called, 'Statutum de Tallagio non concedendo,' that no tallage or aid shall be laid or levied by the King or his heirs in this realm, without the goodwill and assent of the Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Barons, Knights, Burgesses, and other the freemen of the commonalty of this realm: and by authority of Parliament holden in the five and twentieth year of the reign of King Edward the Third, it is declared and enacted, that from thenceforth no person shall be compelled to make any loans to the King against his will, because such loans were against reason and the franchise of the land; and by other laws of this realm it is provided, that none should be charged by any charge or imposition, called a Benevolence, or by such like charge, by which the statutes before-mentioned, and other the good laws and statutes of this realm, your subjects have inherited this freedom, that they should not be compelled to contribute to any tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by common consent in Parliament: Yet nevertheless, of late divers commissions directed to sundry Commissioners in several counties with instructions have issued, by means whereof your people have been in divers places assembled, and required to lend certain sums of money unto your Majesty, and many of them upon their refusal so to do, have had an oath administered unto them, not warrantable by the laws or statutes of this realm, and have been constrained to become bound to make appearance and give attendance before your Privy Council, and in other places, and others of them have been therefore imprisoned, confined, and sundry other ways molested and disquieted: and divers other charges have been laid and levied upon your people in several counties, by Lords Lieutenants, Deputy Lieutenants, Commissioners for Musters, Justices of Peace and others, by command or direction from your Majesty or your Privy Council, against the laws and free customs of this realm: And where also by the statute called, 'The Great Charter of the Liberties of England,' it is declared and enacted, that no freeman may be taken or imprisoned or be disseised of his freeholds or liberties, or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled; or in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land: And in the eight and twentieth year of the reign of King Edward the Third, it was declared and enacted by authority of Parliament, that no man of what estate or condition that he be, should be put out of his lands or tenements, nor taken, nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to death, without being brought to answer by due process of law: Nevertheless, against the tenor of the said statutes, and other the good laws and statutes of your realm, to that end provided, divers of your subjects have of late been imprisoned without any cause showed, and when for their deliverance they were brought before your Justices, by your Majesty's writs of Habeas Corpus, there to undergo and receive as the Court should order, and their keepers commanded to certify the causes of their detainer; no cause was certified, but that they were detained by your Majesty's special command, signified by the Lords of your Privy Council, and yet were returned back to several prisons, without being charged with anything to which they might make answer according to the law: And whereas of late great companies of soldiers and mariners have been dispersed into divers counties of the realm, and the inhabitants against their wills have been compelled to receive them into their houses, and there to suffer them to sojourn, against the laws and customs of this realm, and to the great grievance and vexation of the people: And whereas also by authority of Parliament, in the 25th year of the reign of King Edward the Third, it is declared and enacted, that no man shall be forejudged of life or limb against the form of the Great Charter, and the law of the land: {849} and by the said Great Charter and other the laws and statutes of this your realm, no man ought to be adjudged to death; but by the laws established in this your realm, either by the customs of the same realm or by Acts of Parliament: and whereas no offender of what kind soever is exempted from the proceedings to be used, and punishments to be inflicted by the laws and statutes of this your realm: nevertheless of late divers commissions under your Majesty's Great Seal have issued forth, by which certain persons have been assigned and appointed Commissioners with power and authority to proceed within the land, according to the justice of martial law against such soldiers and mariners, or other dissolute persons joining with them, as should commit any murder, robbery, felony, mutiny, or other outrage or misdemeanour whatsoever, and by such summary course and order, as is agreeable to martial law, and is used in armies in time of war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of such offenders, and them to cause to be executed and put to death, according to the law martial: By pretext whereof, some of your Majesty's subjects have been by some of the said Commissioners put to death, when and where, if by the laws and statutes of the land they had deserved death, by the same laws and statutes also they might, and by no other ought to have been, adjudged and executed: And also sundry grievous offenders by colour thereof, claiming an exemption, have escaped the punishments due to them by the laws and statutes of this your realm, by reason that divers of your officers and ministers of justice have unjustly refused, or forborne to proceed against such offenders according to the same laws and statutes, upon pretence that the said offenders were punishable only by martial law, and by authority of such commissions as aforesaid, which commissions, and all other of like nature, are wholly and directly contrary to the said laws and statutes of this your realm: They do therefore humbly pray your Most Excellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be compelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevolence, tax, or such like charge, without common consent by Act of Parliament; and that none be called to make answer, or take such oath, or to give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise molested or disquieted concerning the same, or for refusal thereof; and that no freeman, in any such manner as is before-mentioned, be imprisoned or detained; and that your Majesty will be pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners, and that your people may not be so burdened in time to come; and that the foresaid commissions for proceeding by martial law, may be revoked and annulled; and that hereafter no commissions of like nature may issue forth to any person or persons whatsoever, to be executed as aforesaid, lest by colour of them any of your Majesty's subjects be destroyed or put to death, contrary to the laws and franchise of the land. All which they most humbly pray of your Most Excellent Majesty, as their rights and liberties according to the laws and statutes of this realm: and that your Majesty would also vouchsafe to declare, that the awards, doings, and proceedings to the prejudice of your people, in any of the premises, shall not be drawn hereafter into consequence or example: and that your Majesty would be also graciously pleased, for the further comfort and safety of your people, to declare your royal will and pleasure, that in the things aforesaid all your officers and ministers shall serve you, according to the laws and statutes of this realm, as they tender the honour of your Majesty, and the prosperity of this kingdom. [Which Petition being read the 2nd of June 1628, the King's answer was thus delivered unto it. The King willeth that right be done according to the laws and customs of the realm; and that the statutes be put in due execution, that his subjects may have no cause to complain of any wrong or oppressions, contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the preservation whereof he holds himself as well obliged as of his prerogative. On June 7 the answer was given in the accustomed form, 'Soit droit fait comme il est désiré.']" ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of England, chapter 63 (volume 6). S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, page 1. J. L. De Lolme, The English Constitution, chapter 7 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1628. Assassination of Buckingham. "While the struggle [over the Petition of Right] was going on, the popular hatred of Buckingham [the King's favourite, whose influence at court was supreme] showed itself in a brutal manner. In the streets of London, the Duke's physician, Dr. Lambe, was set upon by the mob, called witch, devil, and the Duke's conjuror, and absolutely beaten to death. The Council set inquiries on foot, but no individual was brought before it, and the rhyme went from mouth to mouth--'Let Charles and George do what they can, The Duke shall die like Doctor Lambe.' ... Charles, shocked and grieved, took his friend in his own coach through London to see the ten ships which were being prepared at Deptford for the relief of Rochelle. It was reported that he was heard to say, 'George, there are some that wish that both these and thou might perish. But care not thou for them. We will both perish together if thou dost.' There must have been something strangely attractive about the man who won and kept the hearts of four personages so dissimilar as James and Charles of England, Anne of Austria, and William Laud. ... In the meantime Rochelle held out." One attempt to relieve the beleaguered town had failed. Buckingham was to command in person the armament now in preparation for another attempt. "The fleet was at Portsmouth, and Buckingham went down thither in high spirits to take the command. The King came down to Sir Daniel Norton's house at Southwick. On the 23d of August Buckingham rose and 'cut a caper or two' before the barber dealt with his moustache and lovelocks. Then he was about to sit down to breakfast with a number of captains, and as he rose he received letters which made him believe that Rochelle had been relieved. He said he must tell the King instantly, but Soubise and the other refugees did not believe a word of it, and there was a good deal of disputing and gesticulation between them. He crossed a lobby, followed by the eager Frenchmen, and halted to take leave of an officer, Sir Thomas Fryar. Over the shoulder of this gentleman, as he bowed, a knife was thrust into Buckingham's breast. There was an effort to withdraw it; a cry 'The Villain!' and the great Duke, at 36 years old, was dead. The attendants at first thought the blow came from one of the noisy Frenchmen, and were falling on them." But a servant had seen the deed committed, and ran after the assassin, who was arrested and proved to be one John Felton, a soldier and a man of good family. He had suffered wrongs which apparently unhinged his mind. {850} C. M. Yonge, Cameos from English History, 6th series, chapter 17. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapter 65. ENGLAND: A. D. 1628-1632. Conquest and brief occupation of Canada and Nova Scotia. See CANADA (NEW FRANCE): A. D. 1628-1635. ENGLAND: A. D. 1629. The royal charter granted to the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. See: MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629. ENGLAND: A. D. 1629. The King's Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath. See AMERICA: A. D. 1629. ENGLAND: A. D. 1629. Tonnage and Poundage. The tumult in Parliament and the dissolution. Charles' third Parliament, prorogued on the 26th of June, 1628, reassembled on the 20th of January, 1629. "The Parliament Session proved very brief; but very energetic, very extraordinary. Tonnage and Poundage, what we now call Customhouse duties, a constant subject of quarrel between Charles and his Parliaments hitherto, had again been levied without Parliamentary consent; in the teeth of old 'Tallagio non concedendo,' nay even of the late solemnly confirmed Petition of Right; and naturally gave rise to Parliamentary consideration. Merchants had been imprisoned for refusing to pay it; Members of Parliament themselves had been 'supoena'd': there was a very ravelled coil to deal with in regard to Tonnage and Poundage. Nay the Petition of Right itself had been altered in the Printing; a very ugly business too. In regard to Religion also, matters looked equally ill. Sycophant Mainwaring, just censured in Parliament, had been promoted to a fatter living. Sycophant Montague, in the like circumstances, to a Bishopric: Laud was in the act of consecrating him at Croydon, when the news of Buckingham's death came thither. There needed to be a Committee of Religion. The House resolved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion; and did not want for matter. Bishop Neile of Winchester, Bishop Laud now of London, were a frightfully ceremonial pair of Bishops; the fountain they of innumerable tendencies to Papistry and the old clothes of Babylon. It was in this Committee of Religion, on the 11th day of February, 1628-9, that Mr. Cromwell, Member for Huntingdon, stood up and made his first speech, a fragment of which has found its way into History. ... A new Remonstrance behoves to be resolved upon; Bishops Neile and Laud are even to be 'named' there. Whereupon, before they could get well 'named' ... the King hastily interfered. This Parliament, in a fortnight more, was dissolved; and that under circumstances of the most unparalleled sort. For Speaker Finch, as we have seen, was a Courtier, in constant communication with the King: one day, while these high matters were astir, Speaker Finch refused to 'put the question' when ordered by the House! He said he had orders to the contrary; persisted in that;--and at last took to weeping. What was the House to do? Adjourn for two days; and consider what to do! On the second day, which was Wednesday, Speaker Finch signified that by his Majesty's command they were again adjourned till Monday next. On Monday next, Speaker Finch, still recusant, would not put the former nor indeed any question, having the King's order to adjourn again instantly. He refused; was reprimanded, menaced; once more took to weeping; then started up to go his ways. But young Mr. Holles, Denzil Holles, the Earl of Clare's second son, he and certain other honourable members were prepared for that movement: they seized Speaker Finch, set him down in his chair, and by main force held him there! A scene of such agitation as was never seen in Parliament before. 'The House was much troubled.' 'Let him go,' cried certain Privy Councillors, Majesty's Ministers as we should now call them, who in those days sat in front of the Speaker, 'Let Mr. Speaker go!' cried they imploringly. 'No!' answered Holles; 'God's wounds, he shall sit there till it please the House to rise!' The House in a decisive though almost distracted manner, with their Speaker thus held down for them, locked their doors; redacted Three emphatic Resolutions, their Protest against Arminianism, Papistry, and illegal Tonnage and Poundage; and passed the same by acclamation; letting no man out, refusing to let even the King's Usher in; then swiftly vanishing so soon as the resolutions were passed, for they understood the soldiery was coming. For which surprising procedure, vindicated by Necessity the mother of Invention, and supreme of Lawgivers, certain honourable gentlemen, Denzil Holles, Sir John Eliot, William Strode, John Selden, and others less known to us, suffered fine, imprisonment, and much legal tribulation: nay Sir John Eliot, refusing to submit, was kept in the Tower till he died. This scene fell out on Monday, 2d of March, 1629." T. Carlyle, Introduction to Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, chapter 4. ALSO IN: J. Forster, Sir John Eliot: a Biography, book 10, section 6-8 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1630. Emigration of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, with their royal charter. See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1629-1630. ENGLAND: A. D. 1631. Aid to Gustavus Adolphus in Germany. See GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1632. ENGLAND: A. D: 1632. Cession of Acadia (Nova Scotia) to France. See NOVA SCOTIA (ACADIA): A. D. 1621-1668. ENGLAND: A. D. 1632. The Palatine grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore. See MARYLAND: A. D. 1632. ENGLAND: A. D. 1633-1640. The Ecclesiastical despotism of Laud. "When Charles, having quarreled with his parliament, stood alone in the midst of his kingdom, seeking on all sides the means of governing, the Anglican clergy believed this day [for establishing the independent and uncontrolled power of their church] was come. They had again got immense wealth, and enjoyed it without dispute. The papists no longer inspired them with alarm. The primate of the church, Laud, possessed the entire confidence of the king and alone directed all ecclesiastical affairs. Among the other ministers, none professed, like lord Burleigh under Elizabeth, to fear and struggle against the encroachments of the clergy. The courtiers were indifferent, or secret papists. Learned men threw lustre over the church. The universities, that of Oxford more especially, were devoted to her maxims. Only one adversary remained--the people, each day more discontented with uncompleted reform, and more eager fully to accomplish it. But this adversary was also the adversary of the throne; it claimed at the same time, the one to secure the other, evangelical faith and civil liberty. {851} The same peril threatened the sovereignty of the crown and of episcopacy. The king, sincerely pious, seemed disposed to believe that he was not the only one who held his authority from God, and that the power of the bishops was neither of less high origin, nor of less sacred character. Never had so many favourable circumstances seemed combined to enable the clergy to achieve independence of the crown, dominion over the people. Laud set himself to work with his accustomed vehemence. First, it was essential that all dissensions in the bosom of the church itself should cease, and that the strictest uniformity should infuse strength into its doctrines, its discipline, its worship. He applied himself to this task with the most unhesitating and unscrupulous resolution. Power was exclusively concentrated into the hands of the bishops. The court of high commission, where they took cognizance of and decided everything relating to religious matters, became day by day more arbitrary, more harsh in its jurisdiction, its forms and its penalties. The complete adoption of the Anglican canons, the minute observance of the liturgy, and the rites enforced in cathedrals, were rigorously exacted on the part of the whole ecclesiastical body. A great many livings were in the hands of nonconformists; they were withdrawn from them. The people crowded to their sermons; they were forbidden to preach. ... Persecution followed and reached them everywhere. ... Meantime, the pomp of catholic worship speedily took possession of the churches deprived of their pastors; while persecution kept away the faithful, magnificence adorned the walls. They were consecrated amid great display, and it was then necessary to employ force to collect a congregation. Laud was fond of prescribing minutely the details of new ceremonies--sometimes borrowed from Rome, sometimes the production of his own imagination, at once ostentatious and austere. On the part of the nonconformists, every innovation, the least derogation from the canons or the liturgy, was punished as a crime; yet Laud innovated without consulting anybody, looking to nothing beyond the king's consent, and sometimes acting entirely upon his own authority. ... And all these changes had, if not the aim, at all events the result, of rendering the Anglican church more and more like that of Rome. ... Books were published to prove that the doctrine of the English bishops might very well adapt itself to that of Rome; and these books, though not regularly licensed, were dedicated to the king or to Laud, and openly tolerated. ... The splendour and exclusive dominion of episcopacy thus established, at least so he flattered himself, Laud proceeded to secure its independence. ... The divine right of bishops became, in a short time, the official doctrine, not only of the upper clergy, but of the king himself. ... By the time things had come to this pass, the people were not alone in their anger. The high nobility, part of them at least, took the alarm. They saw in the progress of the church far more than mere tyranny; it was a regular revolution, which, not satisfied with crushing popular reforms, disfigured and endangered the first reformation; that which kings had made and the aristocracy adopted." F. P. Guizot, History of the English Revolution of 1640, book 2. ALSO IN: D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 2, chapters 4-6. G. G. Perry, History of the Church of England, chapters 13-16 (volume l). P. Bayne, The Chief Actors of the Puritan Revolution, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1634-1637. Hostile measures against the Massachusetts Colony. See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1634-1637. ENGLAND: A. D. 1634-1637. Ship-money. "The aspect of public affairs grew darker and darker. ... All the promises of the king were violated without scruple or shame. The Petition of Right, to which he had, in consideration of moneys duly numbered, given a solemn assent, was set at naught. Taxes were raised by the royal authority. Patents of monopoly were granted. The old usages of feudal times were made pretexts for harassing the people with exactions unknown during many years. The Puritans were persecuted with cruelty worthy of the Holy Office. They were forced to fly from the country. They were imprisoned. They were whipped. Their ears were cut off. Their noses were slit. Their cheeks were branded with red-hot iron. But the cruelty of the oppressor could not tire out the fortitude of the victims. ... The hardy sect grew up and flourished, in spite of everything that seemed likely to stunt it, struck its roots deep into a. barren soil, and spread its branches wide to an inclement sky. ... For the misgovernment of this disastrous period, Charles himself is principally responsible. After the death of Buckingham, he seemed to have been his own prime minister. He had, however, two counsellors who seconded him, or went beyond him, in intolerance and lawless violence; the one a superstitious driveller, as honest as a vile temper would suffer him to be; the other a man of great valour and capacity, but licentious, faithless, corrupt, and cruel. Never were faces more strikingly characteristic of the individuals to whom they belonged than those of Laud and Strafford, as they still remain portrayed by the most skilful hand of that age. The mean forehead, the pinched features, the peering eyes of the prelate suit admirably with his disposition. They mark him out as a lower kind of Saint Dominic. ... But Wentworth--whoever names him without thinking of those harsh dark features, ennobled by their expression into more than the majesty of an antique Jupiter! ... Among the humbler tools of Charles were Chief-Justice Finch, and Noy, the attorney-general. Noy had, like Wentworth, supported the cause of liberty in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth, abandoned that cause for the sake of office. He devised, in conjunction with Finch, a scheme of exaction which made the alienation of the people from the throne complete. A writ was issued by the king, commanding the city of London to equip and man ships of war for his service. Similar writs were sent to the towns along the coast. These measures, though they were direct violations of the Petition of Right, had at least some show of precedent in their favour. But, after a time, the government took a step for which no precedent could be pleaded, and sent writs of ship-money to the inland counties. This was a stretch of power on which Elizabeth herself had not ventured, even at a time when all laws might with propriety have been made to bend to that highest law, the safety of the state. The inland counties had not been required to furnish ships, or money in the room of ships, even when the Armada was approaching our shores. {852} It seemed intolerable that a prince, who, by assenting to the Petition of Right, had relinquished the power of levying ship-money even in the outports, should be the first to levy it on parts of the kingdom where it had been unknown, under the most absolute of his predecessors. Clarendon distinctly admits that this tax was intended, not only for the support of the navy, but 'for a spring and magazine that should have no bottom, and for an everlasting supply on all occasions.' The nation well understood this; and from one end of England to the other, the public mind was strongly excited. Buckinghamshire was assessed at a ship of 450 tons, or a sum of £4,500. The share of the tax which fell to Hampden was very small [twenty shillings]; so small, indeed, that the sheriff was blamed for setting so wealthy a man at so low a rate. But, though the sum demanded was a trifle, the principle of the demand was despotism. Hampden, after consulting the most eminent constitutional lawyers of the time, refused to pay the few shillings at which he was assessed; and determined to incur all the certain expense and the probable danger of bringing to a solemn hearing this great controversy between the people and the crown. ... Towards the close of the year 1636, this great cause came on in the Exchequer Chamber before all the judges of England. The leading counsel against the writ was the celebrated Oliver St. John; a man whose temper was melancholy, whose manners were reserved, and who was as yet little known in Westminster Hall; but whose great talents had not escaped the penetrating eye of Hampden. The arguments of the counsel occupied many days; and the Exchequer Chamber took a considerable time for deliberation. The opinion of the bench was divided. So clearly was the law in favour of Hampden, that though the judges held their situations only during the royal pleasure, the majority against him was the least possible. Four of the twelve pronounced decidedly in his favour; a fifth took a middle course. The remaining seven gave their voices in favour of the writ. The only effect of this decision was to make the public indignation stronger and deeper. 'The judgment,' says Clarendon, 'proved of more advantage and credit to the gentleman condemned than to the king's service.' The courage which Hampden had shown on this occasion, as the same historian tells us, 'raised his reputation to a great height generally throughout the kingdom.'" Lord Macaulay, Essays, volume 2 (Nugent's Memorials of Hampden). ALSO IN: J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Hampden. S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapter 74 (volume 7), and chapters 77 and 82 (volume 8); ALSO Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, pages 37-53, and 115. ENGLAND: A. D. 1638-1640. Presbyterianism of the Puritan party. Rise of the independents. "It is the artifice of the favourers of the Catholic and of the prelatical party to call all who are sticklers for the constitution in church or state, or would square their actions by any rule, human or divine, Puritans." J. Rushworth, Historical Collection, volume 2, 1355. "These men [the Puritan party], at the commencement of the civil war, were presbyterians: and such had at that time been the great majority of the serious, the sober, and the conscientious people of England. There was a sort of imputation of laxness of principles, and of a tendency to immorality of conduct, upon the adherents of the establishment, which was infinitely injurious to the episcopal church. But these persons, whose hearts were in entire opposition to the hierarchy, had for the most part no difference of opinion among themselves, and therefore no thought of toleration for difference of opinion in others. Their desire was to abolish episcopacy and set up presbytery. They thought and talked much of the unity of the church of God, and of the cordial consent and agreement of its members, and considered all sects and varieties of sentiment as a blemish and scandal upon their holy religion. They would put down popery and episcopacy with the strong hand of the law, and were disposed to employ the same instrument to suppress all who should venture to think the presbyterian church itself not yet sufficiently spiritual and pure. Against this party, which lorded it for a time almost without contradiction, gradually arose the party of the independents. ... Before the end of the civil war they became almost as strong as the party of the presbyterians, and greatly surpassed them in abilities, intellectual, military and civil." W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, book 2, chapter 1 (volume 2). See, also, INDEPENDENTS; ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY) and (JULY-SEPTEMBER), A. D. 1646 (MARCH), A. D. 1647 (APRIL-AUGUST), and A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1639. The First Bishops' War in Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1638-1640. ENGLAND: A. D. 1640. The Short Parliament and the Second Bishops' War. The Scots Army in England. "His Majesty having burnt Scotch paper Declarations 'by the hands of the common hangman,' and almost cut the Scotch Chancellor Loudon's head off, and being again resolute to chastise the rebel Scots with an Army, decides on summoning a Parliament for that end, there being no money attainable otherwise. To the great and glad astonishment of England; which, at one time, thought never to have seen another Parliament! Oliver Cromwell sat in this Parliament for Cambridge; recommended by Hampden, say some; not needing any recommendation in those Fen-countries, think others. Oliver's Colleague was a Thomas Meautys, Esq. This Parliament met, 13th April, 1640: it was by no means prompt enough with supplies against the rebel Scots; the king dismissed it in a huff, 5th May; after a Session of three weeks: Historians call it the Short Parliament. His Majesty decides on raising money and an Army 'by other methods': to which end Wentworth, now Earl Strafford and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who had advised that course in the Council, did himself subscribe £20,000. Archbishop Laud had long ago seen 'a cloud rising' against the Four surplices at Allhallowtide; and now it is covering the whole sky in a most dismal and really thundery-looking manner. His Majesty by 'other methods,' commission of array, benevolence, forced loan, or how he could, got a kind of Army on foot, and set it marching out of the several Counties in the South towards the Scotch Border; but it was a most hopeless Army. The soldiers called the affair a Bishops' War; they mutinied against their officers, shot some of their officers: in various Towns on their march, if the Clergyman were reputed Puritan, they went and gave him three cheers; if of Surplice-tendency, they sometimes threw his furniture out of the window. {853} No fighting against poor Scotch Gospellers was to be hoped for from these men. Meanwhile the Scots, not to be behindhand, had raised a good Army of their own; and decided on going into England with it, this time, 'to present their grievances to the King's Majesty.' On the 20th of August, 1640, they cross the Tweed at Coldstream; Montrose wading in the van of them all. They wore uniform of hodden gray, with blue caps; and each man had a moderate haversack of oatmeal on his back. August 28th, the Scots force their way across the Tyne, at Newburn, some miles above Newcastle; the King's Army making small fight, most of them no fight; hurrying from Newcastle, and all town and country quarters, towards York again, where his Majesty and Strafford were. The Bishops' War was at an end. The Scots, striving to be gentle as doves in their behaviour, and publishing boundless brotherly Declarations to all the brethren that loved Christ's Gospel and God's Justice in England,--took possession of Newcastle next day; took possession gradually of all Northumberland and Durham,--and stayed there, in various towns and villages, about a year. The whole body of English Puritans looked upon them as their saviours. ... His Majesty and Strafford, in a fine frenzy at the turn of affairs, found no refuge, except to summon a 'Council of Peers,' to enter upon a 'Treaty' with the Scots; and alas, at last, summon a New Parliament. Not to be helped in any way. ... A Parliament was appointed for the 3d of November next;--whereupon London cheerfully lent £200,000; and the Treaty with the Scots at Ripon, 1st October, 1640, by and by transferred to London, went peaceably on at a very leisurely pace. The Scotch Army lay quartered at Newcastle, and over Northumberland and Durham, on an allowance of £850 a day; an Army indispensable for Puritan objects; no haste in finishing its Treaty. The English army lay across in Yorkshire; without allowance except from the casualties of the King's Exchequer; in a dissatisfied manner, and occasionally getting into 'Army-Plots.' This Parliament, which met on the 3d of November; 1640, has become very celebrated in History by the name of the 'Long Parliament.'" T. Carlyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 1: 1640. ALSO IN: J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Strafford. S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapter 91-94. J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, chapter 72-73 (volume 7). ENGLAND: A. D. 1640. Acquisition and settlement of Madras. See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702. ENGLAND: A. D. 1640-1641. The Long Parliament and the beginning of its work. Impeachment and Execution of Strafford. "The game of tyranny was now up. Charles had risked and lost his last stake. It is impossible to trace the mortifications and humiliations which this bad man now had to endure without a feeling of vindictive pleasure. His army was mutinous; his treasury was empty; his people clamoured for a Parliament; addresses and petitions against the government were presented. Strafford was for shooting those who presented them by martial law, but the king could not trust the soldiers. A great council of Peers was called at York, but the king would not trust even the Peers. He struggled, he evaded, he hesitated, he tried every shift rather than again face the representatives of his injured people. At length no shift was left. He made a truce with the Scots, and summoned a Parliament. ... On the 3d of November, 1640--a day to be long remembered--met that great Parliament, destined to every extreme of fortune--to empire and to servitude, to glory and to contempt;--at one time the sovereign of its sovereign, at another time the servant of its servants, and the tool of its tools. From the first day of its meeting the attendance was great, and the aspect of the members was that of men not disposed to do the work negligently. The dissolution of the late Parliament had convinced most of them that half measures would no longer suffice. Clarendon tells us that 'the same men who, six months before, were observed to be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that gentle remedies might be applied, talked now in another dialect both of kings and persons; and said that they must now be of another temper than they were the last Parliament.' The debt of vengeance was swollen by all the usury which had been accumulating during many years; and payment was made to the full. This memorable crisis called forth parliamentary abilities, such as England had never before seen. Among the most distinguished members of the House of Commons were Falkland, Hyde, Digby, Young, Harry Vane, Oliver St. John, Denzil Hollis, Nathaniel Fiennes. But two men exercised a paramount influence over the legislature and the country--Pym and Hampden; and, by the universal consent of friends and enemies, the first place belonged to Hampden." Lord Macaulay, Nugent's Memorials of Hampden (Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, volume 2). "The resolute looks of the members as they gathered at Westminster contrasted with the hesitating words of the king, and each brought from borough or county a petition of grievances. Fresh petitions were brought every day by bands of citizens or farmers. Forty committees were appointed to examine and report on them, and their reports formed the grounds on which the Commons acted. One by one the illegal acts of the Tyranny were annulled. Prynne and his fellow 'martyrs' recalled from their prisons, entered London in triumph, amid the shouts of a great multitude who strewed laurel in their path. The civil and criminal jurisdiction of the Privy Council, the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, the irregular jurisdictions of the Council of the North, of the Duchy of Lancaster, the County of Chester, and a crowd of lesser tribunals, were summarily abolished. Ship-money was declared illegal, and the judgment in Hampden's case annulled. A statute declaring 'the ancient right of the subjects of this kingdom that no subsidy, custom, impost, or any charge whatsoever, ought or may be laid or imposed upon any merchandize exported or imported by subjects, denizens or allies, without common consent of Parliament,' put an end forever to all pretensions to a right of arbitrary taxation on the part of the crown. A Triennial Bill enforced the Assembly of the Houses every three years, and bound the sheriff and citizens to proceed to election if the Royal writ failed to summon them. Charles protested, but gave way. He was forced to look helplessly on at the wreck of his Tyranny, for the Scotch army was still encamped in the north. ... Meanwhile the Commons were dealing roughly with the agents of the Royal system. ... {854} Windebank, the Secretary of State, with the Chancellor, Finch, fled in terror over sea. Laud himself was flung into prison. ... But even Laud, hateful as he was to all but the poor neighbours whose prayers his alms had won, was not the centre of so great and universal a hatred as the Earl of Strafford. Strafford's guilt was more than the guilt of a servile instrument of tyranny--it was the guilt of 'that grand apostate to the Commonwealth who,' in the terrible words which closed Lord Digby's invective, 'must not expect to be pardoned in this world till he be dispatched to the other.' He was conscious of his danger, but Charles forced him to attend the Court.' He came to London with the solemn assurance of his master that, "while there was a king in England, not a hair of Strafford's head should be touched by the Parliament." Immediately impeached of high treason by the Commons, and sent to the Tower, he received from the king a second and more solemn pledge, by letter, that, "upon the word of a king, you shall not suffer in life, honour or fortune." But the "word of a king" like Charles Stuart, had neither honor nor gratitude, nor a decent self respect behind it. He could be false to a friend as easily as to an enemy. When the Commons, fearing failure on the trial of their impeachment, resorted to a bill of attainder, Charles signed it with a little resistance, and Strafford went bravely and manfully to the block. "As the axe fell, the silence of the great multitude was broken by a universal shout of joy. The streets blazed with bonfires. The bells clashed out from every steeple." J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 8, section 6. The king "was as deeply pledged to Strafford as one man could be to another; he was as vitally concerned in saving the life and prolonging the service of incomparably his ablest servant as was ever any sovereign in the case of any minister; yet it is clear that for some days past, probably ever since the first signs of popular tumult began to manifest themselves, he had been wavering. Four days before the Bill passed the Lords, Strafford as is well known, entreated the king to assent to it. There is no reason to doubt the absolute sincerity with which, at the moment of its conception, the prisoner penned his famous letter from the Tower. That passionate chivalry of loyalty, which has never animated any human heart in equal intensity since Strafford's ceased to beat, inspires every line. ... Charles turned distractedly from one adviser to another, not so much for counsel as for excuse. He did not want his judgment guided, but his conscience quieted; and his counsellors knew it. They had other reasons, too, for urging him to his dishonour. Panic seems to have seized upon them all. The only man who would not have quailed before the fury of the populace was the man himself whose life was trembling in the balance. The judges were summoned to declare their opinion, and replied, with an admirable choice of non-committing terms, that 'upon all that which their Lordships have voted to be proved the Earl of Strafford doth deserve to undergo the pains and forfeitures of high treason.' Charles sent for the bishops, and the bishops, with the honourable exception of Juxon, informed him that he had two consciences,--a public and a private conscience,--and that 'his public conscience as a king might not only dispense with, but oblige him to do, that which was against his conscience as a man.' What passed between these two tenants in common of the royal breast during the whole of Sunday, May 9th, 1641, is within no earthly knowledge; but at some time on that day Charles's public conscience got the better of its private rival. He signed a commission for giving the royal assent to the Bill, and on Monday, May 10th, in the presence of a House scarcely able to credit the act of betrayal which was taking place before them, the Commissioners pronounced the fatal Le roi le veult over the enactment which condemned his Minister to the block. Charles, of course, might still have reprieved him by an exercise of the prerogative, but the fears which made him acquiesce in the sentence availed to prevent him from arresting its execution." H. D. Traill, Lord Stafford, pages 195-198. "It is a sorry office to plant the foot on a worm so crushed and writhing as the wretched king ... [who abandoned Strafford] for it was one of the few crimes of which he was in the event thoroughly sensible, and friend has for once cooperated with foe in the steady application to it of the branding iron. There is in truth hardly any way of relieving the 'damned spot' of its intensity of hue even by distributing the concentrated infamy over other portions of Charles's character. ... When we have convinced ourselves that this 'unthankful king' never really loved Strafford; that, as much as in him lay, he kept the dead Buckingham in his old privilege of mischief, by adopting his aversions and abiding by his spleenful purposes; that, in his refusals to award those increased honours for which his minister was a petitioner, on the avowed ground of the royal interest, may be discerned the petty triumph of one who dares not dispense with the services thrust upon him, but revenges himself by withholding their well-earned reward;--still does the blackness accumulate to baffle our efforts. The paltry tears he is said to have shed only burn that blackness in. If his after conduct indeed had been different, he might have availed himself of one excuse,--but that the man, who, in a few short months, proved that he could make so resolute a stand somewhere, should have judged this event no occasion for attempting it, is either a crowning infamy or an infinite consolation, according as we may judge wickedness or weakness to have preponderated in the constitution of Charles I. ... As to Strafford's death, the remark that the people had no alternative, includes all that it is necessary to urge. The king's assurances of his intention to afford him no further opportunity of crime, could surely weigh nothing with men who had observed how an infinitely more disgusting minister of his will had only seemed to rise the higher in his master's estimation for the accumulated curses of the nation. Nothing but the knife of Felton could sever in that case the weak head and the wicked instrument, and it is to the honour of the adversaries of Strafford that they were earnest that their cause should vindicate itself completely, and look for no adventitious redress. Strafford had outraged the people--this was not denied. He was defended on the ground of those outrages not amounting to a treason against the king. For my own part, this defence appears to me decisive, looking at it in a technical view, and with our present settlement of evidence and treason. {855} But to concede that point, after the advances they had made, would have been in that day to concede all. It was to be shown that another power had claim to the loyalty and the service of Strafford--and if a claim, then a vengeance to exact for its neglect. And this was done. ... One momentary emotion ... escaped ... [Strafford] when he was told to prepare for death. He asked if the king had indeed assented to the bill. Secretary Carleton answered in the affirmative; and Strafford, laying his hand on his heart, and raising his eyes to heaven, uttered the memorable words,--'Put not your trust in princes, nor in the sons of men, for in them there is no salvation.' Charles's conduct was indeed incredibly monstrous." R. Browning, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford (Eminent British Statesmen, by John Forster, volume 2, pages 403-406). ALSO IN: J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Strafford; Pym. Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 3 (volume 1). Lord Nugent, Memorials of Hampden. parts 5-6 (volumes 1-2). Lady T. Lewis, Life of Lord Falkland. The following are the Articles of Impeachment under which Strafford was tried and condemned: "Articles of the Commons, assembled in Parliament, against Thomas Earl of Strafford, in Maintenance of their Accusation, whereby he stands charged with High Treason. I. That he the said Thomas earl of Strafford hath traiterously endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the realms of England and Ireland, and, instead thereof, to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government, against law, which he hath declared by traiterous words, counsels, and actions, and by giving his majesty advice, by force of arms, to compel his loyal subjects to submit thereunto. II. That he hath traiterously assumed to himself regal power over the lives, liberties of persons, lands, and goods of his majesty's subjects, in England and Ireland, and hath exercised the same tyrannically, to the subversion and undoing of many, both peers and others, of his majesty's liege people. III. The better to inrich, and enable himself to go through with his traiterous designs, he hath detained a great part of his majesty's revenue, without giving any legal accounts; and hath taken great sums of money out of the exchequer, converting them to his own use, when his majesty was necessitated for his own urgent occasions, and his army had been a long time unpaid. IV. That he hath traiterously abused the power and authority of his government, to the increasing, countenancing, and encouraging of Papists, that so he might settle a mutual dependence and confidence betwixt himself and that party, and by their help prosecute and accomplish his malicious and tyrannical designs. V. That he hath maliciously endeavoured to stir up enmity and hostility between his majesty's subjects of England and those of Scotland. VI. That he hath traiterously broken the great trust reposed in him by his majesty, of lieutenant general of his Army, by wilfully betraying divers of his majesty's subjects to death, his majesty's Army to a dishonourable defeat by the Scots at Newborne, and the town of Newcastle into their hands, to the end that, by effusion of blood, by dishonour, by so great a loss as of Newcastle, his majesty's realm of England might be engaged in a national and irreconcilable quarrel with the Scots. VII. That, to preserve himself from being questioned for these and other his traiterous courses, he laboured to subvert the right of parliaments, and the ancient course of parliamentary proceedings, and, by false and malicious slanders, to incense his maj. against parliaments.--By which words, counsels, and actions, he hath traiterously, and contrary to his allegiance, laboured to alienate the hearts of the king's liege people from his maj. to set a division between them, and to ruin and destroy his majesty's kingdoms, for which they do impeach him of High Treason against our sovereign lord the king, his crown and dignity. And he the said earl of Strafford was lord deputy of Ireland, or lord lieutenant of Ireland, and lieutenant general of the Army there, under his majesty, and a sworn privy counsellor to his maj. for his kingdoms both of England and Ireland, and lord president of the North, during the time that all and every of the crimes and offences before set forth were done and committed; and he the said earl was lieutenant general of his majesty's Army in the North parts of England, during the time that the crimes and offences in the 5th and 6th Articles set forth were done and committed.--And the said commons, by protestation, saving to themselves the liberty of exhibiting at any time hereafter any other Accusation or Impeachment against the said earl, and also of replying to the Answer that he the said earl shall make unto the said Articles, or to any of them, and of offering proof also of the premises, or any of them, or of any other Accusation or Impeachment that shall be by them exhibited, as the case shall, according to the course of parliaments, require; and do pray that the said earl may be put to answer to all and every the premises; and that such proceedings, examination, trial, and judgment, may be upon every of them had and used, as is agreeable to law and justice." Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, volume 2, pages 737-739. ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (March-May). The Root and Branch Bill. "A bill was brought in [March, 1641], known as the Restraining Bill, to deprive Bishops of their rights of voting in the House of Lords. The opposition it encountered in that House induced the Commons to follow it up [May 27] with a more vehement measure, 'for the utter abolition of Archbishops, Bishops. Deans, Archdeacons, Prebendaries and Canons,' a measure known by the title of the Root and Branch Bill. By the skill of the royal partisans, this bill was long delayed in Committee." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2 (volume 2), page 650. ALSO IN: D. Masson, Life of John Milton, volume 2, book 2, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (October). Roundheads and Cavaliers. The birth of English parties. "After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September, 1641, adjourned for a short vacation and the king visited Scotland. He with difficulty pacified that kingdom, by consenting not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical reform, but even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act declaring that episcopacy was contrary to the word of God. The recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The day on which the houses met again is one of the most remarkable epochs in our history. From that day dates the corporate existence of the two great parties which have ever since alternately governed the country. ... {856} During the first months of the Long Parliament, the indignation excited by many years of lawless oppression was so strong and general that the House of Commons acted as one man. Abuse after abuse disappeared without a struggle. If a small minority of the representative body wished to retain the Star Chamber and the High Commission, that minority, overawed by the enthusiasm and by the numerical superiority of the reformers, contented itself with secretly regretting institutions which could not, with any hope of success, be openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it convenient to antedate the separation between themselves and their opponents, and to attribute the Act which restrained the king from dissolving or proroguing the Parliament, the Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and the attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made war on the king. But no artifice could be more disingenuous. Everyone of those strong measures was actively promoted by the men who were afterwards foremost among the Cavaliers. No republican spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles more severely than Colepepper. The most remarkable speech in favour of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby. The impeachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by Falkland. The demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be kept close prisoner was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law attainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious disunion become visible. Even against that law, a law which nothing but extreme necessity could justify, only about sixty members of the House of Commons voted. It is certain that Hyde was not in the minority, and that Falkland not only voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for the bill. Even the few who entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration. But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent; and when, in October 1641, the Parliament reassembled after a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with those which, under different names, have ever since contended, and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs, appeared confronting each other. During some years they were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were subsequently called Tories and Whigs; nor does it seem that these appellations are likely soon to become obsolete." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 1. It was not until some months later, however, that the name of Roundheads was applied to the defenders of popular rights by their royalist adversaries. See ROUNDHEADS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1641 (November). The Grand Remonstrance. Early in November, 1641, the king being in Scotland, and news of the insurrection in Ireland having just reached London, the party of Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell "resolved on a great pitched battle between them and the opposition, which should try their relative strengths before the king's return; and they chose to fight this battle over a vast document, which they entitled 'A Declaration and Remonstrance of the State of the Kingdom,' but which has come to be known since as The Grand Remonstrance. ... The notion of a great general document which, under the name of 'A Remonstrance,' should present to the king in one view a survey of the principal evils that had crept into the kingdom in his own and preceding reigns, with a detection of their causes, and a specification of the remedies, had more than once been before the Commons. It had been first mooted by Lord Digby while the Parliament was not a week old. Again and again set aside for more immediate work, it had recurred to the leaders of the Movement party, just before the king's departure for Scotland, as likely to afford the broad battle-ground with the opposition then becoming desirable. 'A Remonstrance to be made, how we found the Kingdom and the Church, and how the state of it now stands,' such was the description of the then intended document (August 7). The document had doubtless been in rehearsal through the Recess, for on the 8th of November the rough draft of it was presented to the House and read at the clerk's table. When we say that the document in its final form occupies thirteen folio pages of rather close print in Rushworth, and consists of a preamble followed by 206 articles or paragraphs duly numbered, one can conceive what a task the reading of even the first draft of it must have been, and through what a storm of successive debates over proposed amendments and additions it reached completeness. There had been no such debates yet in the Parliament." D. Masson, Life of John Milton, volume 2, book 2, chapter 6. "It [The Grand Remonstrance] embodies the case of the Parliament against the Ministers of the king. It is the most authentic statement ever put forth of the wrongs endured by all classes of the English people, during the first fifteen years of the reign of Charles I.; and, for that reason, the most complete justification upon record of the Great Rebellion." The debates on The Grand Remonstrance were begun November 9 and ended November 22, when the vote was taken: Ayes, 159.--Noes, 148.--So evenly were the parties in the great struggle then divided. J. Forster, History and Biographical Essays, volume 1: Debates on the Grand Remonstrance. The following is the text of "The Grand Remonstrance," with that of the Petition preceding it: "Most Gracious Sovereign: Your Majesty's most humble and faithful subjects the Commons in this present Parliament assembled, do with much thankfulness and joy acknowledge the great mercy and favour of God, in giving your Majesty a safe and peaceable return out of Scotland into your kingdom of England, where the pressing dangers and distempers of the State have caused us with much earnestness to desire the comfort of your gracious presence, and likewise the unity and justice of your royal authority, to give more life and power to the dutiful and loyal counsels and endeavours of your Parliament, for the prevention of that eminent ruin and destruction wherein your kingdoms of England and Scotland are threatened. The duty which we owe to your Majesty and our country, cannot but make us very sensible and apprehensive, that the multiplicity, sharpness and malignity of those evils under which we have now many years suffered, are fomented and cherished by a corrupt and ill-affected party, who amongst other their mischievous devices for the alteration of religion and government, have sought by many false scandals and imputations, cunningly insinuated and dispersed amongst the people, to blemish and disgrace our proceedings in this Parliament, and to get themselves a party and faction amongst your subjects, for the better strengthening themselves in their wicked courses; and hindering those provisions and remedies which might, by the wisdom of your Majesty and counsel of your Parliament, be opposed against them. {857} For preventing whereof, and the better information of your Majesty, your Peers and all other your loyal subjects, we have been necessitated to make a declaration of the state of the kingdom, both before and since the assembly of this Parliament, unto this time, which we do humbly present to your Majesty, without the least intention to lay any blemish upon your royal person, but only to represent how your royal authority and trust have been abused, to the great prejudice and danger of your Majesty, and of all your good subjects. And because we have reason to believe that those malignant parties, whose proceedings evidently appear to be mainly for the advantage and increase of Popery, is composed, set up, and acted by the subtile practice of the Jesuits and other engineers and factors for Rome, and to the great danger of this kingdom, and most grievous affliction of your loyal subjects, have so far prevailed as to corrupt divers of your Bishops and others in prime places of the Church, and also to bring divers of these instruments to be of your Privy Council, and other employments of trust and nearness about your Majesty, the Prince, and the rest of your royal children. And by this means have had such an operation in your counsel and the most important affairs and proceedings of your government, that a most dangerous division and chargeable preparation for war betwixt your kingdoms of England and Scotland, the increase of jealousies betwixt your Majesty and your most obedient subjects, the violent distraction and interruption of this Parliament, the insurrection of the Papists in your kingdom of Ireland, and bloody massacre of your people, have been not only endeavoured and attempted, but in a great measure compassed and effected. For preventing the final accomplishment whereof, your poor subjects are enforced to engage their persons and estates to the maintaining of a very expensive and dangerous war, notwithstanding they have already since the beginning of this Parliament undergone the charge of £150,000 sterling, or thereabouts, for the necessary support and supply of your Majesty in these present and perilous designs. And because all our most faithful endeavours and engagements will be ineffectual for the peace, safety and preservation of your Majesty and your people, if some present, real and effectual course be not taken for suppressing this wicked and malignant party:--We, your most humble and obedient subjects, do with all faithfulness and humility beseech your Majesty, 1. That you will be graciously pleased to concur with the humble desires of your people in a parliamentary way, for the preserving the peace and safety of the kingdom from the malicious designs of the Popish party: For depriving the Bishops of their votes in Parliament, and abridging their immoderate power usurped over the Clergy, and other your good subjects, which they have perniciously abused to the hazard of religion, and great prejudice and oppression of the laws of the kingdom, and just liberty of your people: For the taking away such oppressions in religion, Church government and discipline, as have been brought in and fomented by them; For uniting all such your loyal subjects together as join in the same fundamental truths against the Papists, by removing some oppressions and unnecessary ceremonies by which divers weak consciences have been scrupled, and seem to be divided from the rest, and for the due execution of those good laws which have been made for securing the liberty of your subjects. 2. That your Majesty will likewise be pleased to remove from your council all such as persist to favour and promote any of those pressures and corruptions wherewith your people have been grieved, and that for the future your Majesty will vouchsafe to employ such persons in your great and public affairs, and to take such to be near you in places of trust, as your Parliament may have cause to confide in; that in your princely goodness to your people you will reject and refuse all mediation and solicitation to the contrary, how powerful and near soever. 3. That you will be pleased to forbear to alienate any of the forfeited and escheated lands in Ireland which shall accrue to your Crown by reason of this rebellion, that out of them the Crown may be the better supported, and some satisfaction made to your subjects of this kingdom for the great expenses they are like to undergo [in] this war. Which humble desires of ours being graciously fulfilled by your Majesty, we will, by the blessing and favour of God, most cheerfully undergo the hazard and expenses of this war, and apply ourselves to such other courses and counsels as may support your real estate with honour and plenty at home, with power and reputation abroad, and by our loyal affections, obedience and service, lay a sure and lasting foundation of the greatness and prosperity of your Majesty, and your royal prosperity in future times. The Commons in this present Parliament assembled, having with much earnestness and faithfulness of affection and zeal to the public good of this kingdom, and His Majesty's honour and service for the space of twelve months, wrestled with great dangers and fears, the pressing miseries and calamities, the various distempers and disorders which had not only assaulted, but even overwhelmed and extinguished the liberty, peace and prosperity of this kingdom, the comfort and hopes of all His Majesty's good subjects, and exceedingly weakened and undermined the foundation and strength of his own royal throne, do yet find an abounding malignity and opposition in those parties and factions who have been the cause of those evils, and do still labour to cast aspersions upon that which hath been done, and to raise many difficulties for the hindrance of that which remains yet undone, and to foment jealousies between the King and Parliament, that so they may deprive him and his people of the fruit of his own gracious intentions, and their humble desires of procuring the public peace, safety and happiness of this realm. For the preventing of those miserable effects which such malicious endeavours may produce, we have thought good to declare the root and the growth of these mischievous designs: the maturity and ripeness to which they have attained before the beginning of the Parliament: the effectual means which have been used for the extirpation of those dangerous evils, and the progress which hath therein been made by His Majesty's goodness and the wisdom of the Parliament: the ways of obstruction and opposition by which that progress hath been interrupted: the courses to be taken for the removing those obstacles, and for the accomplishing of our most dutiful and faithful intentions and endeavours of restoring and establishing the ancient honour, greatness and security of this Crown and nation. {858} The root of all this mischief we find to be a malignant and pernicious design of subverting the fundamental laws and principles of government, upon which the religion and justice of this kingdom are firmly established. The actors and promoters hereof have been: 1. The Jesuited Papists, who hate the laws, as the obstacles of that change and subversion of religion which they so much long for. 2. The Bishops, and the corrupt part of the Clergy, who cherish formality and superstition as the natural effects and more probable supports of their own ecclesiastical tyranny and usurpation. 3. Such Councillors and Courtiers as for private ends have engaged themselves to further the interests of some foreign princes or states to the prejudice of His Majesty and the State at home. The common principles by which they moulded and governed all their particular counsels and actions were these: First, to maintain continual differences and discontents between the King and the people, upon questions of prerogative and liberty, that so they might have the advantage of siding with him, and under the notions of men addicted to his service, gain to themselves and their parties the places of greatest trust and power in the kingdom. A second, to suppress the purity and power of religion, and such persons as were best affected to it, as being contrary to their own ends, and the greatest impediment to that change which they thought to introduce. A third, to conjoin those parties of the kingdom which were most propitious to their own ends, and to divide those who were most opposite, which consisted in many particular observations. To cherish the Arminian part in those points wherein they agree with the Papists, to multiply and enlarge the difference between the common Protestants and those whom they call Puritans, to introduce and countenance such opinions and ceremonies as are fittest for accommodation with Popery, to increase and maintain ignorance, looseness and profaneness in the people; that of those three parties, Papists, Arminians and Libertines, they might compose a body fit to act such counsels and resolutions as were most conducible to their own ends. A fourth, to disaffect the King to Parliaments by slander and false imputations, and by putting him upon other ways of supply, which in show and appearance were fuller of advantage than the ordinary course of subsidies, though in truth they brought more loss than gain both to the King and people, and have caused the great distractions under which we both suffer. As in all compounded bodies the operations are qualified according to the predominant element, so in this mixed party, the Jesuited counsels, being most active and prevailing, may easily be discovered to have had the greatest sway in all their determinations, and if they be not prevented, are likely to devour the rest, or to turn them into their own nature. In the beginning of His Majesty's reign the party began to revive and flourish again, having been somewhat damped by the breach with Spain in the last year of King James, and by His Majesty's marriage with France; the interests and counsels of that State being not so contrary to the good of religion and the prosperity of this kingdom as those of Spain; and the Papists of England, having been ever more addicted to Spain than France, yet they still retained a purpose and resolution to weaken the Protestant parties in all parts, and even in France, whereby to make way for the change of religion which they intended at home. 1. The first effect and evidence of their recovery and strength was the dissolution of the Parliament at Oxford, after there had been given two subsidies to His Majesty, and before they received relief in any one grievance many other more miserable effects followed. 2. The loss of the Rochel fleet, by the help of our shipping, set forth and delivered over to the French in opposition to the advice of Parliament, which left that town without defence by sea, and made way, not only to the loss of that important place, but likewise to the loss of all the strength and security of the Protestant religion in France. 3. The diverting of His Majesty's course of wars from the West Indies, which was the most facile and hopeful way for this kingdom to prevail against the Spaniard, to an expenseful and successless attempt upon Cadiz, which was so ordered as if it had rather been intended to make us weary of war than to prosper in it. 4. The precipitate breach with France, by taking their ships to a great value without making recompense to the English, whose goods were thereupon imbarred and confiscated in that kingdom. 5. The peace with Spain without consent of Parliament, contrary to the promise of King James to both Houses, whereby the Palatine's cause was deserted and left to chargeable and hopeless treaties, which for the most part were managed by those who might justly be suspected to be no friends to that cause. 6. The charging of the kingdom with billeted soldiers in all parts of it, and the concomitant design of German horse, that the land might either submit with fear or be enforced with rigour to such arbitrary contributions as should be required of them. 7. The dissolving of the Parliament in the second year of His Majesty's reign, after a declaration of their intent to grant five subsidies. 8. The exacting of the like proportion of five subsidies, after the Parliament dissolved, by commission of loan, and divers gentlemen and others imprisoned for not yielding to pay that loan, whereby many of them contracted such sicknesses as cost them their lives. 9. Great sums of money required and raised by privy seals. 10. An unjust and pernicious attempt to extort great payments from the subject by way of excise, and a commission issued under the seal to that purpose. 11. The Petition of Right, which was granted in full Parliament, blasted, with an illegal declaration to make it destructive to itself, to the power of Parliament, to the liberty of the subject, and to that purpose printed with it, and the Petition made of no use but to show the bold and presumptuous injustice of such ministers as durst break the laws and suppress the liberties of the kingdom, after they had been so solemnly and evidently declared. 12. Another Parliament dissolved 4 Car., the privilege of Parliament broken, by imprisoning divers members of the House, detaining them close prisoners for many months together, without the liberty of using books, pen, ink or paper; denying them all the comforts of life, all means of preservation of health, not permitting their wives to come unto them even in the time of their sickness. {859} 13. And for the completing of that cruelty, after years spent in such miserable durance, depriving them of the necessary means of spiritual consolation, not suffering them to go abroad to enjoy God's ordinances in God's House, or God's ministers to come to them to minister comfort to them in their private chambers. 14. And to keep them still in this oppressed condition, not admitting them to be bailed according to law, yet vexing them with informations in inferior courts, sentencing and fining some of them for matters done in Parliament; and extorting the payments of those fines from them, enforcing others to put in security of good behaviour before they could be released. 15. The imprisonment of the rest, which refused to be bound, still continued, which might have been perpetual if necessity had not the last year brought another Parliament to relieve them, of whom one died [Sir John Eliot] by the cruelty and harshness of his imprisonment, which would admit of no relaxation, notwithstanding the imminent danger of his life, did sufficiently appear by the declaration of his physician, and his release, or at least his refreshment, was sought by many humble petitions, and his blood still cries either for vengeance or repentance of those Ministers of State, who have at once obstructed the course both of His Majesty's justice and mercy. 16. Upon the dissolution of both these Parliaments, untrue and scandalous declarations were published to asperse their proceedings, and some of their members unjustly; to make them odious, and colour the violence which was used against them; proclamations set out to the same purpose; and to the great dejecting of the hearts of the people, forbidding them even to speak of Parliaments. 17. After the breach of the Parliament in the fourth of His Majesty, injustice, oppression and violence broke in upon us without any restraint or moderation, and yet the first project was the great sums exacted through the whole kingdom for default of knighthood, which seemed to have some colour and shadow of a law, yet if it be rightly examined by that obsolete law which was pretended for it, it will be found to be against all the rules of justice, both in respect of the persons charged, the proportion of the fines demanded, and the absurd and unreasonable manner of their proceedings. 18. Tonnage and Poundage hath been received without colour or pretence of law; many other heavy impositions continued against law, and some so unreasonable that the sum of the charge exceeds the value of the goods. 19. The Book of Rates lately enhanced to a high proportion, and such merchants that would not submit to their illegal and unreasonable payments, were vexed and oppressed above measure; and the ordinary course of justice, the common birthright of the subject of England, wholly obstructed unto them. 20. And although all this was taken upon pretence of guarding the seas, yet a new unheard-of tax of ship-money was devised, and upon the same pretence, by both which there was charged upon the subject near £700,000 some years, and yet the merchants have been left so naked to the violence of the Turkish pirates, that many great ships of value and thousands of His Majesty's subjects have been taken by them, and do still remain in miserable slavery. 21. The enlargements of forests, contrary to 'Carta de Foresta,' and the composition thereupon. 22. The exactions of coat and conduct money and divers other military charges. 23. The taking away the arms of trained bands of divers counties. 24. The desperate design of engrossing all the gunpowder into one hand, keeping it in the Tower of London, and setting so high a rate upon it that the poorer sort were not able to buy it, nor could any have it without licence, thereby to leave the several parts of the kingdom destitute of their necessary defence, and by selling so dear that which was sold to make an unlawful advantage of it, to the great charge and detriment of the subject. 25. The general destruction of the King's timber, especially that in the Forest of Deane, sold to Papists, which was the best store-house of this kingdom for the maintenance of our shipping. 26. The taking away of men's right, under the colour of the King's title to land, between high and low water marks. 27. The monopolies of soap, salt, wine, leather, sea-coal, and in a manner of all things of most common and necessary use. 28. The restraint of the liberties of the subjects in their habitation, trades and other interests. 29. Their vexation and oppression by purveyors, clerks of the market and saltpetre men. 30. The sale of pretended nuisances, as building in and about London. 31. Conversion of arable into pasture, continuance of pasture, under the name of depopulation, have driven many millions out of the subjects' purses, without any considerable profit to His Majesty. 32. Large quantities of common and several grounds hath been taken from the subject by colour of the Statute of Improvement, and by abuse of the Commission of Sewers, without their consent, and against it. 33. And not only private interest, but also public faith, have been broken in seizing of the money and bullion in the mint, and the whole kingdom like to be robbed at once in that abominable project of brass money. 34. Great numbers of His Majesty's subjects for refusing those unlawful charges, have been vexed with long and expensive suits, some fined and censured, others committed to long and hard imprisonments and confinements, to the loss of health in many, of life in some, and others have had their houses broken up, their goods seized, some have been restrained from their lawful callings. 35. Ships have been interrupted in their voyages, surprised at sea in a hostile manner by projectors, as by a common enemy. 36. Merchants prohibited to unlade their goods in such ports as were for their own advantage, and forced to bring them to those places which were much for the advantage of the monopolisers and projectors. {860} 37. The Court of Star Chamber hath abounded in extravagant censures, not only for the maintenance and improvement of monopolies and other unlawful taxes, but for divers other causes where there hath been no offence, or very small; whereby His Majesty's subjects have been oppressed by grievous fines, imprisonments, stigmatisings, mutilations, whippings, pillories, gags, confinements, banishments; after so rigid a manner as hath not only deprived men of the society of their friends, exercise of their professions, comfort of books, use of paper or ink, but even violated that near union which God hath established between men and their wives, by forced and constrained separation, whereby they have been bereaved of the comfort and conversation one of another for many years together, without hope of relief, if God had not by His overruling providence given some interruption to the prevailing power, and counsel of those who were the authors and promoters of such peremptory and heady courses. 38. Judges have been put out of their places for refusing to do against their oaths and consciences; others have been so awed that they durst not do their duties, and the better to hold a rod over them, the clause 'Quam diu se bene gesserit' was left out of their patents, and a new clause 'Durante bene placito' inserted. 39. Lawyers have been checked for being faithful to their clients; solicitors and attorneys have been threatened, and some punished, for following lawful suits. And by this means all the approaches to justice were interrupted and forecluded. 40. New oaths have been forced upon the subject against law. 41. New judicatories erected without law. The Council Table have by their orders offered to bind the subjects in their freeholds, estates, suits and actions. 42. The pretended Court of the Earl Marshal was arbitrary and illegal in its being and proceedings. 43. The Chancery, Exchequer Chamber, Court of Wards, and other English Courts, have been grievous in exceeding their jurisdiction. 44. The estate of many families weakened, and some ruined by excessive fines, exacted from them for compositions of wardships. 45. All leases of above a hundred years made to draw on wardship contrary to law. 46. Undue proceedings used in the finding of offices to make the jury find for the King. 47. The Common Law Courts, feeling all men more inclined to seek justice there, where it may be fitted to their own desire, are known frequently to forsake the rules of the Common Law, and straying beyond their bounds, under pretence of equity, to do injustice. 48. Titles of honour, judicial places, sergeantships at law, and other offices have been sold for great sums of money, whereby the common justice of the kingdom hath been much endangered, not only by opening a way of employment in places of great trust, and advantage to men of weak parts, but also by giving occasion to bribery, extortion, partiality, it seldom happening that places ill-gotton are well used. 49. Commissions have been granted for examining the excess of fees, and when great exactions have been discovered, compositions have been made with delinquents, not only for the time past, but likewise for immunity and security in offending for the time to come, which under colour of remedy hath but confirmed and increased the grievance to the subject. 50. The usual course of pricking Sheriffs not observed, but many times Sheriffs made in an extraordinary way, sometimes as a punishment and charge unto them; sometimes such were pricked out as would be instruments to execute whatsoever they would have to be done. 51. The Bishops and the rest of the Clergy did triumph in the suspensions, ex-communications, deprivations, and degradations of divers painful, learned and pious ministers, in the vexation and grievous oppression of great numbers of His Majesty's good subjects. 52. The High Commission grew to such excess of sharpness and severity as was not much less than the Romish Inquisition, and yet in many cases by the Archbishop's power was made much more heavy, being assisted and strengthened by authority of the Council Table. 53. The Bishops and their Courts were as eager in the country; although their jurisdiction could not reach so high in rigour and extremity of punishment, yet were they no less grievous in respect of the generality and multiplicity of vexations, which lighting upon the meaner sort of tradesmen and artificers did impoverish many thousands. 54. And so afflict and trouble others, that great numbers to avoid their miseries departed out of the kingdom, some into New England and other parts of America, others into Holland. 55. Where they have transported their manufactures of cloth, which is not only a loss by diminishing the present stock of the kingdom, but a great mischief by impairing and endangering the loss of that particular trade of clothing, which hath been a plentiful fountain of wealth and honour to this nation. 56. Those were fittest for ecclesiastical preferment, and soonest obtained it, who were most officious in promoting superstition, most virulent in railing against godliness and honesty. 57. The most public and solemn sermons before His Majesty were either to advance prerogative above law, and decry the property of the subject, or full of such kind of invectives. 58. Whereby they might make those odious who sought to maintain the religion, laws and liberties of the kingdom, and such men were sure to be weeded out of the commission of the peace, and out of all other employments of power in the government of the country. 59. Many noble personages were councillors in name, but the power and authority remained in a few of such as were most addicted to this party, whose resolutions and determinations were brought to the table for countenance and execution, and not for debate and deliberation, and no man could offer to oppose them without disgrace and hazard to himself. 60. Nay, all those that did not wholly concur and actively contribute to the furtherance of their designs, though otherwise persons of never so great honour and abilities, were so far from being employed in any place of trust and power, that they were neglected, discountenanced, and upon all occasions injured and oppressed. 61. This faction was grown to that height and entireness of power, that now they began to think of finishing their work, which consisted of these three parts. 62. I. The government must be set free from all restraint of laws concerning our persons and estates. {861} 63. II. There must be a conjunction between Papists and Protestants in doctrine, discipline and ceremonies; only it must not yet be called Popery. 64. III. The Puritans, under which name they include all those that desire to preserve the laws and liberties of the kingdom, and to maintain religion in the power of it, must be either rooted out of the kingdom with force, or driven out with fear. 65. For the effecting of this it was thought necessary to reduce Scotland to such Popish superstitions and innovations as might make them apt to join with England in that great change which was intended. 66. Whereupon new canons and a new liturgy were pressed upon them, and when they refused to admit of them, an army was raised to force them to it, towards which the Clergy and the Papists were very forward in their contribution. 67. The Scots likewise raised an army for their defence. 68. And when both armies were come together, and ready for a bloody encounter, His Majesty's own gracious disposition, and the counsel of the English nobility and dutiful submission of the Scots, did so far prevail against the evil counsel of others, that a pacification was made, and His Majesty returned with peace and much honour to London. 69. The unexpected reconciliation was most acceptable to all the kingdom, except to the malignant party; whereof the Archbishop and the Earl of Strafford being heads, they and their faction begun to inveigh against the peace, and to aggravate the proceedings of the states, which so increased [incensed?] His Majesty, that he forthwith prepared again for war. 70. And such was their confidence, that having corrupted and distempered the whole frame and government of the kingdom, they did now hope to corrupt that which was the only means to restore all to a right frame and temper again. 71. To which end they persuaded His Majesty to call a Parliament, not to seek counsel and advice of them, but to draw countenance and supply from them, and to engage the whole kingdom in their quarrel. 72. And in the meantime continued all their unjust levies of money, resolving either to make the Parliament pliant to their will, and to establish mischief by a law, or else to break it, and with more colour to go on by violence to take what they could not obtain by consent. The ground alleged for the justification of this war was this, 73. That the undutiful demands of the Parliaments in Scotland was a sufficient reason for His Majesty to take arms against them, without hearing the reason of those demands, and thereupon a new army was prepared against them, their ships were seized in all ports both of England and Ireland, and at sea, their petitions rejected, their commissioners refused audience. 74. The whole kingdom most miserably distempered with levies of men and money, and imprisonments of those who denied to submit to those levies. 75. The Earl of Strafford passed into Ireland, caused the Parliament there to declare against the Scots, to give four subsidies towards that war, and to engage themselves, their lives and fortunes, for the prosecution of it, and gave directions for an army of eight thousand foot and one thousand horse to be levied there, which were for the most part Papists. 76. The Parliament met upon the 13th of April, 1640. The Earl of Strafford and Archbishop of Canterbury, with their party, so prevailed with His Majesty, that the House of Commons was pressed to yield a supply for maintenance of the war with Scotland, before they had provided any relief for the great and pressing grievances of the people, which being against the fundamental privilege and proceeding of Parliament, was yet in humble respect to His Majesty, so far admitted as that they agreed to take the matter of supply into consideration, and two several days it was debated. 77. Twelve subsidies were demanded for the release of ship-money alone, a third day was appointed for conclusion, when the heads of that party begun to fear the people might close with the King, in falsifying his desires of money; but that withal they were like to blast their malicious designs against Scotland, finding them very much indisposed to give any countenance to that war. 78. Thereupon they wickedly advised the King to break off the Parliament and to return to the ways of confusion, in which their own evil intentions were most likely to prosper and succeed. 79. After the Parliament ended the 5th of May, 1640, this party grew so bold as to counsel the King to supply himself out of his subjects' estates by his own power, at his own will, without their consent. 80. The very next day some members of both Houses had their studies and cabinets, yea, their pockets searched: another of them not long after was committed close prisoner for not delivering some petitions which he received by authority of that House. 81. And if harsher courses were intended (as was reported) it is very probable that the sickness of the Earl of Strafford, and the tumultuous rising in Southwark and about Lambeth were the causes that such violent intentions were not brought to execution. 82. A false and scandalous Declaration against the House of Commons was published in His Majesty's name, which yet wrought little effect with the people, but only to manifest the impudence of those who were authors of it. 83. A forced loan of money was attempted in the City of London. 84. The Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their several wards, enjoined to bring in a list of the names of such persons as they judged fit to lend, and of the sums they should lend. And such Aldermen as refused to do so were committed to prison. 85. The Archbishop and the other Bishops and Clergy continued the Convocation, and by a new commission turned it into a provincial Synod, in which, by an unheard-of presumption, they made canons that contain in them many matters contrary to the King's prerogative, to the fundamental laws and statutes of the realm, to the right of Parliaments, to the property and liberty of the subject, and matters tending to sedition and of dangerous consequence, thereby establishing their own usurpations, justifying their altar-worship, and those other superstitious innovations which they formerly introduced without warrant of law. {862} 86. They imposed a new oath upon divers of His Majesty's subjects, both ecclesiastical and lay, for maintenance of their own tyranny, and laid a great tax on the Clergy, for supply of His Majesty, and generally they showed themselves very affectionate to the war with Scotland, which was by some of them styled 'Bellum Episeopale,' and a prayer composed and enjoined to be read in all churches, calling the Scots rebels, to put the two nations in blood and make them irreconcilable. 87. All those pretended canons and constitutions were armed with the several censures of suspension, excommunication, deprivation, by which they would have thrust out all the good ministers, and most of the well-affected people of the kingdom, and left an easy passage to their own design of reconciliation with Rome. 88. The Popish party enjoyed such exemptions from penal laws as amounted to a toleration, besides many other encouragements and Court favours. 89. They had a Secretary of State, Sir Francis Windebanck, a powerful agent for speeding all their desires. 90. A Pope's Nuncio residing here, to act and govern them according to such influences as he received from Rome, and to intercede for them with the most powerful concurrence of the foreign princes of that religion. 91. By his authority the Papists of all sorts, nobility, gentry, and clergy were convocated after the manner of a Parliament. 92. New jurisdictions were erected of Romish Archbishops, taxes levied, another state moulded within this state independent in government, contrary in interest and affection, secretly corrupting the ignorant or negligent professors of our religion, and closely uniting and combining themselves against such as were found in this posture, waiting for an opportunity by force to destroy those whom they could not hope to seduce. 93. For the effecting whereof they were strengthened with arms and munitions, encouraged by superstitious prayers, enjoined by the Nuncio to be weekly made for the prosperity of some great design. 94. And such power had they at Court, that secretly a commission was issued out, or intended to be issued to some great men of that profession, for the levying of soldiers, and to command and employ them according to private instructions, which we doubt were framed for the advantage of those who were the contrivers of them. 95. His Majesty's treasure was consumed, his revenue anticipated. 96. His servants and officers compelled to lend great sums of money. 97. Multitudes were called to the Council Table, who were tired with long attendances there for refusing illegal payments. 98. The prisons were filled with their commitments; many of the Sheriffs summoned into the Star Chamber, and some imprisoned for not being quick enough in levying the ship-money; the people languished under grief and fear, no visible hope being left but in desperation. 99. The nobility began to weary of their silence and patience, and sensible of the duty and trust which belongs to them: and thereupon some of the most ancient of them did petition His Majesty at such a time, when evil counsels were so strong, that they had occasion to expect more hazard to themselves, than redress of those public evils for which they interceded. 100. Whilst the kingdom was in this agitation and distemper, the Scots, restrained in their trades, impoverished by the loss of many of their ships, bereaved of all possibility of satisfying His Majesty by any naked supplication, entered with a powerful army into the kingdom, and without any hostile act or spoil in the country they passed, more than forcing a passage over the Tyne at Newburn, near Newcastle, possessed themselves of Newcastle, and had a fair opportunity to press on further upon the King's army. 101. But duty and reverence to His Majesty, and brotherly love to the English nation, made them stay there, whereby the King had leisure to entertain better counsels. 102. Wherein God so blessed and directed him that he summoned the Great Council of Peers to meet at York upon the 24th of September, and there declared a Parliament to begin the 3d of November then following. 103. The Scots, the first day of the Great Council, presented an humble Petition to His Majesty, whereupon the Treaty was appointed at Ripon. 104. A present cessation of arms agreed upon, and the full conclusion of all differences referred to the wisdom and care of the Parliament. 105. At our first meeting, all oppositions seemed to vanish, the mischiefs were so evident which those evil counsellors produced, that no man durst stand up to defend them: yet the work itself afforded difficulty enough. 106. The multiplied evils and corruption of fifteen years, strengthened by custom and authority, and the concurrent interest of many powerful delinquents, were now to be brought to judgment and reformation. 107. The King's household was to be provided for:--they had brought him to that want, that he could not supply his ordinary and necessary expenses without the assistance of his people. 108. Two armies were to be paid, which amounted very near to eighty thousand pounds a month. 109. The people were to be tenderly charged, having been formerly exhausted with many burdensome projects. 110. The difficulties seemed to be insuperable, which by the Divine Providence we have overcome. The contrarieties incompatible, which yet in a great measure we have reconciled. 111. Six subsidies have been granted and a Bill of poll-money, which if it be duly levied, may equal six subsidies more, in all £600,000. 112. Besides we have contracted a debt to the Scots of £220,000, yet God hath so blessed the endeavours of this Parliament, that the kingdom is a great gainer by all these charges. 113. The ship-money is abolished, which cost the kingdom about £200,000 a year. 114. The coat and conduct-money, and other military charges are taken away, which in many countries amounted to little less than the ship-money. 115. The monopolies are all suppressed, whereof some few did prejudice the subject, above £1,000,000 yearly. 116. The soap £100,000. 117. The wine £300,000. 118. The leather must needs exceed both, and salt could be no less than that. {863} 119. Besides the inferior monopolies, which, if they could be exactly computed, would make up a great sum. 120. That which is more beneficial than all this is, that the root of these evils is taken away, which was the arbitrary power pretended to be in His Majesty of taxing the subject, or charging their estates without consent in Parliament, which is now declared to be against law by the judgment of both Houses, and likewise by an Act of Parliament. 121. Another step of great advantage is this, the living grievances, the evil counsellors and actors of these mischiefs have been so quelled. 122. By the justice done upon the Earl of Strafford, the flight of the Lord Finch and Secretary Windebank. 123. The accusation and imprisonment of the Archbishop of Canterbury, of Judge Berkeley; and 124. The impeachment of divers other Bishops and Judges, that it is like not only to be an ease to the present times, but a preservation to the future. 125. The discontinuance of Parliaments is prevented by the Bill for a triennial Parliament, and the abrupt dissolution of this Parliament by another Bill, by which it is provided it shall not be dissolved or adjourned without the consent of both Houses. 126. Which two laws well considered may be thought more advantageous than all the former, because they secure a full operation of the present remedy, and afford a perpetual spring of remedies for the future. 127. The Star Chamber. 128. The High Commission. 129. The Courts of the President and Council in the North were so many forges of misery, oppression and violence, and are all taken away, whereby men are more secured in their persons, liberties and estates, than they could be by any law or example for the regulation of those Courts or terror of the Judges. 130. The immoderate power of the Council Table, and the excessive abuse of that power is so ordered and restrained, that we may well hope that no such things as were frequently done by them, to the prejudice of the public liberty, will appear in future times but only in stories, to give us and our posterity more occasion to praise God for His Majesty's goodness, and the faithful endeavours of this Parliament. 131. The canons and power of canon-making are blasted by the votes of both Houses. 132. The exorbitant power of Bishops and their courts are much abated, by some provisions in the Bill against the High Commission Court, the authors of the many innovations in doctrine and ceremonies. 133. The ministers that have been scandalous in their lives, have been so terrified in just complaints and accusations, that we may well hope they will be more modest for the time to come; either inwardly convicted by the sight of their own folly, or outwardly restrained by the fear of punishment. 134. The forests are by a good law reduced to their right bounds. 135. The encroachments and oppressions of the Stannary Courts, the extortions of the clerk of the market. 136. And the compulsion of the subject to receive the Order of Knighthood against his will, paying of fines for not receiving it, and the vexatious proceedings thereupon for levying of those fines, are by other beneficial laws reformed and prevented. 137. Many excellent laws and provisions are in preparation for removing the inordinate power, vexation and usurpation of Bishops, for reforming the pride and idleness of many of the clergy, for easing the people of unnecessary ceremonies in religion, for censuring and removing unworthy and unprofitable ministers, and for maintaining godly and diligent preachers through the kingdom. 138. Other things of main importance for the good of this kingdom are in proposition, though little could hitherto be done in regard of the many other more pressing businesses, which yet before the end of this Session we hope may receive some progress and perfection. 139. The establishing and ordering the King's revenue, that so the abuse of officers and superfluity of expenses may be cut off, and the necessary disbursements for His Majesty's honour, the defence and government of the kingdom, may be more certainly provided for. 140. The regulating of courts of justice, and abridging both the delays and charges of lawsuits. 141. The settling of some good courses for preventing the exportation of gold and silver, and the inequality of exchanges between us and other nations, for the advancing of native commodities, increase of our manufactures, and well balancing of trade, whereby the stock of the kingdom may be increased, or at least kept from impairing, as through neglect hereof it hath done for many years last past. 142. Improving the herring-fishing upon our coasts, which will be of mighty use in the employment of the poor, and a plentiful nursery of mariners for enabling the kingdom in any great action. 143. The oppositions, obstructions and other difficulties wherewith we have been encountered, and which still lie in our way with some strength and much obstinacy, are these: the malignant party whom we have formerly described to be the actors and promoters of all our misery, they have taken heart again. 144. They have been able to prefer some of their own factors and agents to degrees of honour, to places of trust and employment, even during the Parliament. 145. They have endeavoured to work in His Majesty ill impressions and opinions of our proceedings, as if we had altogether done our own work, and not his; and had obtained from him many things very prejudicial to the Crown, both in respect of prerogative and profit. 146. To wipe out this slander we think good only to say thus much: that all that we have done is for His Majesty, his greatness, honour and support, when we yield to give £25,000 a month for the relief of the Northern Counties; this was given to the King, for he was bound to protect his subjects. 147. They were His Majesty's evil counsellors, and their ill instruments that were actors in those grievances which brought in the Scots. 148. And if His Majesty please to force those who were the authors of this war to make satisfaction, as he might justly and easily do, it seems very reasonable that the people might well be excused from taking upon them this burden, being altogether innocent and free from being any cause of it. {864} 149. When we undertook the charge of the army, which cost above £50,000 a month, was not this given to the King? Was it not His Majesty's army? Were not all the commanders under contract with His Majesty, at higher rates and greater wages than ordinary? 150. And have not we taken upon us to discharge all the brotherly assistance of £300,000, which we gave the Scots? Was it not toward repair of those damages and losses which they received from the King's ships and from his ministers? 151. These three particulars amount to above £1,100,000. 152. Besides, His Majesty hath received by impositions upon merchandise at least £400,000. 153. So that His Majesty hath had out of the subjects' purse since the Parliament began, £1,500,000 and yet these men can be so impudent as to tell His Majesty that we have done nothing for him. 154. As to the second branch of this slander, we acknowledge with much thankfulness that His Majesty hath passed more good Bills to the advantage of the subjects than have been in many ages. 155. But withal we cannot forget that these venomous councils did manifest themselves in some endeavours to hinder these good acts. 156. And for both Houses of Parliament we may with truth and modesty say thus much: that we have ever been careful not to desire anything that should weaken the Crown either in just profit or useful power. 157. The triennial Parliament for the matter of it, doth not extend to so much as by law we ought to have required (there being two statutes still in force for a Parliament to be once a year), and for the manner of it, it is in the King's power that it shall never take effect, if he by a timely summons shall prevent any other way of assembling. 158. In the Bill for continuance of this present Parliament, there seems to be some restraint of the royal power in dissolving of Parliaments, not to take it out of the Crown, but to suspend the execution of it for this time and occasion only: which was so necessary for the King's own security and the public peace, that without it we could not have undertaken any of these great charges, but must have left both the armies to disorder and confusion, and the whole kingdom to blood and rapine. 159. The Star Chamber was much more fruitful in oppression than in profit, the great fines being for the most part given away, and the rest stalled at long times. 160. The fines of the High Commission were in themselves unjust, and seldom or never came into the King's purse. These four Bills are particularly and more specially instanced. 161. In the rest there will not be found so much as a shadow of prejudice to the Crown. 162. They have sought to diminish our reputation with the people, and to bring them out of love with Parliaments. 163. The aspersions which they have attempted this way have been such as these: 164. That we have spent much time and done little, especially in those grievances which concern religion. 165. That the Parliament is a burden to the kingdom by the abundance of protections which hinder justice and trade; and by many subsidies granted much more heavy than any formerly endured. 166. To which there is a ready answer; if the time spent in this Parliament be considered in relation backward to the long growth and deep root of those grievances, which we have removed, to the powerful supports of those delinquents, which we have pursued, to the great necessities and other charges of the commonwealth for which we have provided. 167. Or if it be considered in relation forward to many advantages, which not only the present but future ages are like to reap by the good laws and other proceedings in this Parliament, we doubt not but it will be thought by all indifferent judgments, that our time hath been much better employed than in a far greater proportion of time in many former Parliaments put together; and the charges which have been laid upon the subject, and the other inconveniences which they have borne, will seem very light in respect of the benefit they have and may receive. 168. And for the matter of protections, the Parliament is so sensible of it that therein they intended to give them whatsoever ease may stand with honour and justice, and are in a way of passing a Bill to give them satisfaction. 169. They have sought by many subtle practices to cause jealousies and divisions betwixt us and our brethren of Scotland, by slandering their proceedings and intentions towards us, and by secret endeavours to instigate and incense them and us one against another. 170. They have had such a party of Bishops and Popish lords in the House of Peers, as hath caused much opposition and delay in the prosecution of delinquents, hindered the proceedings of divers good Bills passed in the Commons' House, concerning the reformation of sundry great abuses and corruptions both in Church and State. 171. They have laboured to seduce and corrupt some of the Commons' House to draw them into conspiracies and combinations against the liberty of the Parliament. 172. And by their instruments and agents they have attempted to disaffect and discontent His Majesty's army, and to engage it for the maintenance of their wicked and traitorous designs; the keeping up of Bishops in votes and functions, and by force to compel the Parliament to order, limit and dispose their proceedings in such manner as might best concur with the intentions of this dangerous and potent faction. 173. And when one mischievous design and attempt of theirs to bring on the army against the Parliament and the City of London, hath been discovered and prevented; 174. They presently undertook another of the same damnable nature, with this addition to it, to endeavour to make the Scottish army neutral, whilst the English army, which they had laboured to corrupt and envenom against us by their false and slanderous suggestions, should execute their malice to the subversion of our religion and the dissolution of our government. 175. Thus they have been continually practising to disturb the peace, and plotting the destruction even of all the King's dominions; and have employed their emissaries and agents in them, all for the promoting their devilish designs, which the vigilancy of those who were well affected hath still discovered and defeated before they were ripe for execution in England and Scotland. {865} 176. Only in Ireland, which was farther off, they have had time and opportunity to mould and prepare their work, and had brought it to that perfection that they had possessed themselves of that whole kingdom, totally subverted the government of it, routed out religion, and destroyed all the Protestants whom the conscience of their duty to God, their King and country, would not have permitted to join with them, if by God's wonderful providence their main enterprise upon the city and castle of Dublin, had not been detected and prevented upon the very eve before it should have been executed. 177. Notwithstanding they have in other parts of that kingdom broken out into open rebellion, surprising towns and castles, committed murders, rapes and other villainies, and shaken off all bonds of obedience to His Majesty and the laws of the realm. 178. And in general have kindled such a fire, as nothing but God's infinite blessing upon the wisdom and endeavours of this State will be able to quench it. 179. And certainly had not God in His great mercy unto this land discovered and confounded their former designs, we had been the prologue to this tragedy in Ireland, and had by this been made the lamentable spectacle of misery and confusion. 180. And now what hope have we but in God, when as the only means of our subsistence and power of reformation is under Him in the Parliament? 181. But what can we the Commons, without the conjunction of the House of Lords, and what conjunction can we expect there, when the Bishops and recusant lords are so numerous and prevalent that they are able to cross and interrupt our best endeavours for reformation, and by that means give advantage to this malignant party to traduce our proceedings? 182. They infuse into the people that we mean to abolish all Church government, and leave every man to his own fancy for the service and worship of God, absolving him of that obedience which he owes under God unto His Majesty, whom we know to be entrusted with the ecclesiastical law as well as with the temporal, to regulate all the members of the Church of England, by such rules of order and discipline as are established by Parliament, which is his great council in all affairs both in Church and State. 183. We confess our intention is, and our endeavours have been, to reduce within bounds that exorbitant power which the prelates have assumed unto themselves, so contrary both to the Word of God and to the laws of the land, to which end we passed the Bill for the removing them from their temporal power and employments, that so the better they might with meekness apply themselves to the discharge of their functions, which Bill themselves opposed, and were the principal instruments of crossing it. 184. And we do here declare that it is far from our purpose or desire to let loose the golden reins of discipline and government in the Church, to leave private persons or particular congregations to take up what form of Divine Service they please, for we hold it requisite that there should be throughout the whole realm a conformity to that order which the laws enjoin according to the Word of God. And we desire to unburden the consciences of men of needless and superstitious ceremonies, suppress innovations, and take away the monuments of idolatry. 185. And the better to effect the intended reformation, we desire there may be a general synod of the most grave, pious, learned and judicious divines of this island; assisted with some from foreign parts, professing the same religion with us, who may consider of all things necessary for the peace and good government of the Church, and represent the results of their consultations unto the Parliament, to be there allowed of and confirmed, and receive the stamp of authority, thereby to find passage and obedience throughout the kingdom. 186. They have maliciously charged us that we intend to destroy and discourage learning, whereas it is our chiefest care and desire to advance it, and to provide a competent maintenance for conscionable and preaching ministers throughout the kingdom, which will be a great encouragement to scholars, and a certain means whereby the want, meanness and ignorance, to which a great part of the clergy is now subject, will be prevented. 187. And we intended likewise to reform and purge the fountains of learning, the two Universities, that the streams flowing from thence may be clear and pure, and an honour and comfort to the whole land. 188. They have strained to blast our proceedings in Parliament, by wresting the interpretations of our orders from their genuine intention. 189. They tell the people that our meddling with the power of episcopacy hath caused sectaries and conventicles, when idolatrous and Popish ceremonies, introduced into the Church by the command of the Bishops have not only debarred the people from thence, but expelled them from the kingdom. 190. Thus with Elijah, we are called by this malignant party the troublers of the State, and still, while we endeavour to reform their abuses, they make us the authors of those mischiefs we study to prevent. 191. For the perfecting of the work begun, and removing all future impediments, we conceive these courses will be very effectual, seeing the religion of the Papists hath such principles as do certainly tend to the destruction and extirpation of all Protestants, when they shall have opportunity to effect it. 192. It is necessary in the first place to keep them in such condition as that they may not be able to do us any hurt, and for avoiding of such connivance and favour as hath heretofore been shown unto them. 193. That His Majesty be pleased to grant a standing Commission to some choice men named in Parliament, who may take notice of their increase, their counsels and proceedings, and use all due means by execution of the laws to prevent all mischievous designs against the peace and safety of this kingdom. 194. Thus some good course be taken to discover the counterfeit and false conformity of Papists to the Church, by colour whereof persons very much disaffected to the true religion have been admitted into place of greatest authority and trust in the kingdom. {866} 195. For the better preservation of the laws and liberties of the kingdom, that all illegal grievances and exactions be presented and punished at the sessions and assizes. 196. And that Judges and Justices be very careful to give this in charge to the grand jury, and both the Sheriff and Justices to be sworn to the due execution of the Petition of Right and other laws. 197. That His Majesty be humbly petitioned by both Houses to employ such counsellors, ambassadors and other ministers, in managing his business at home and abroad as the Parliament may have cause to confide in, without which we cannot give His Majesty such supplies for support of his own estate, nor such assistance to the Protestant party beyond the sea, as is desired. 198. It may often fall out that the Commons may have just cause to take exceptions at some men for being councillors, and yet not charge those men with crimes, for there be grounds of diffidence which lie not in proof. 199. There are others, which though they may be proved, yet are not legally criminal. 200. To be a known favourer of Papists, or to have been very forward in defending or countenancing some great offenders questioned in Parliament; or to speak contemptuously of either Houses of Parliament or Parliamentary proceedings. 201. Or such as are factors or agents for any foreign prince of another religion; such are justly suspected to get councillors' places, or any other of trust concerning public employment for money; for all these and divers others we may have great reason to be earnest with His Majesty, not to put his great affairs into such hands, though we may be unwilling to proceed against them in any legal way of charge or impeachment. 202. That all Councillors of State may be sworn to observe those laws which concern the subject in his liberty, that they may likewise take an oath not to receive or give reward or pension from any foreign prince, but such as they shall within some reasonable time discover to the Lords of His Majesty's Council. 203. And although they should wickedly forswear themselves, yet it may herein do good to make them known to be false and perjured to those who employ them, and thereby bring them into as little credit with them as with us. 204. That His Majesty may have cause to be in love with good counsel and good men, by shewing him in an humble and dutiful manner how full of advantage it would be to himself, to see his own estate settled in a plentiful condition to support his honour; to see his people united in ways of duty to him, and endeavours of the public good; to see happiness, wealth, peace and safety derived to his own kingdom, and procured to his allies by the influence of his own power and government." ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY). The King's attempt against the Five Members. On the 3d of January, "the king was betrayed into ... an indiscretion to which all the ensuing disorders and civil wars ought immediately and directly to be ascribed. This was the impeachment of Lord Kimbolton and the five members. ... Herbert, attorney-general, appeared in the House of Peers, and, in his majesty's name, entered an accusation of high treason against Lord Kimbolton and five commoners, Hollis, Sir Arthur Hazlerig, Hambden, Pym, and Strode. The articles were, That they had traitorously endeavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and government of the kingdom, to deprive the king of his regal power, and to impose on his subjects an arbitrary and tyrannical authority; that they had endeavoured, by many foul aspersions on his majesty and his government, to alienate the affections of his people, and make him odious to them; that they had attempted to draw his late army to disobedience of his royal commands, and to side with them in their traitorous designs; that they had invited and encouraged a foreign power to invade the kingdom; that they had aimed at subverting the rights and very being of Parliament; that, in order to complete their traitorous designs, they had endeavoured, as far as in them lay, by force and terror, to compel the Parliament to join with them, and to that end had actually raised and countenanced tumults against the king and Parliament; and that they had traitorously conspired to levy, and actually had levied, war against the king. The whole world stood amazed at this important accusation, so suddenly entered upon, without concert, deliberation or reflection. ... But men had not leisure to wonder at the indiscretion of this measure: their astonishment was excited by new attempts, still more precipitate and imprudent. A sergeant at arms, in the king's name, demanded of the House the five members, and was sent back without any positive answer. Messengers were employed to search for them and arrest them. Their trunks, chambers, and studies, were sealed and locked. The House voted all these acts of violence to be breaches of privilege, and commanded everyone to defend the liberty of the members. The king, irritated by all this opposition, resolved next day to come in person to the House, with an intention to demand, perhaps seize, in their presence, the persons whom he had accused. This resolution was discovered to the Countess of Carlisle, sister to Northumberland, a lady of spirit, wit, and intrigue. She privately sent intelligence to the five members; and they had time to withdraw, a moment before the king entered. He was accompanied by his ordinary retinue, to the number of above two hundred, armed as usual, some with halberts, some with walking swords. The king left them at the door, and he himself advanced alone through the hall, while all the members rose to receive him. The speaker withdrew from his chair, and the king took possession of it. The speech which he made was as follows: 'Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of coming to you. Yesterday, I sent a sergeant at arms, to demand some, who, by my order, were accused of high treason. Instead of obedience, I received a message. ... Therefore am I come to tell you, that I must have these men wheresoever I can find them. Well, since I see all the birds are flown, I do expect that you will send them to me as soon as they return. But I assure you, on the word of a king, I never did intend any force, but shall proceed against them in a fair and legal way, for I never meant any other.' ... When the king was looking around for the accused members, he asked the speaker, who stood below, whether any of these persons were in the House? The speaker, falling on his knee, prudently replied: 'I have, sir, neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak, in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am. {867} And I humbly ask pardon, that I cannot give any other answer to what your majesty is pleased to demand of me.' The Commons were in the utmost disorder; and when the king was departing, some members cried aloud so as he might hear them, Privilege! Privilege! and the House immediately adjourned till next day. That evening, the accused members, to show the greater apprehension, removed into the city, which was their fortress. The citizens were the whole night in arms. ... When the House of Commons met, they affected the greatest dismay; and adjourning themselves for some days, ordered a committee to sit in Merchant-Tailors' hall in the city. ... The House again met, and after confirming the votes of their committee, instantly adjourned, as if exposed to the most imminent perils from the violence of their enemies. This practice they continued for some time. When the people, by these affected panics, were wrought up to a sufficient degree of rage and terror, it was thought proper, that the accused members should, with a triumphant and military procession, take their seats in the House. The river was covered with boats, and other vessels, laden with small pieces of ordnance, and prepared for fight. Skippon, whom the Parliament had appointed, by their own authority, major-general of the city militia, conducted the members, at the head of this tumultuary army, to Westminster-hall. And when the populace, by land and by water, passed Whitehall, they still asked, with insulting shouts, What has become of the king and his cavaliers? And whither are they fled? The king, apprehensive of danger from the enraged multitude, had retired to Hampton-court, deserted by all the world, and overwhelmed with grief, shame, and remorse for the fatal measures into which he had been hurried." D. Hume, History of England, volume 5, chapter 55, pages 85-91. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 6, section 5. S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapter 103 (volume 10). J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Pym; Hampden. L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Cent., book 8, chapter 10 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (JANUARY-AUGUST). Preparations for war. The marshalling of forces. The raising of the King's standard. "January 10th. The King with his Court quits Whitehall; the Five Members and Parliament proposing to return tomorrow, with the whole City in arms round them. He left Whitehall; never saw it again till he came to lay down his head there. March 9th. The King has sent away his Queen from Dover, 'to be in a place of safety,'--and also to pawn the Crown-jewels in Holland, and get him arms. He returns Northward again, avoiding London. Many messages between the Houses of Parliament and him: 'Will your Majesty grant us Power of the Militia; accept this list of Lord-Lieutenants?' On the 9th of March, still advancing Northward without affirmative response, he has got to Newmarket; where another Message overtakes him, earnestly urges itself upon him: 'Could not your Majesty please to grant us Power of the Militia for a limited time?' 'No, by God!' answers his Majesty, 'not for an hour.' On the 19th of March he is at York; where his Hull Magazine, gathered for service against the Scots, is lying near; where a great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern potentates, will help him; where at least London and its Puritanism, now grown so fierce, is far off. There we will leave him; attempting Hull Magazine, in vain; exchanging messages with his Parliament; messages, missives, printed and written Papers without limit: Law-pleadings of both parties before the great tribunal of the English Nation, each party striving to prove itself right and within the verge of Law: preserved still in acres of typography, once thrillingly alive in every fibre of them; now a mere torpor, readable by few creatures, not rememberable by any." T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, preliminary. "As early as June 2 a ship had arrived on the North English coast, bringing the King arms and ammunition from Holland, purchased by the sale of the crown-jewels which the Queen had taken abroad. On the 22d of the same month more than forty of the nobles and others in attendance on the King at York had put down their names for the numbers of armed horse they would furnish respectively for his service. Requisitions in the King's name were also out for supplies of money; and the two Universities, and the Colleges in each, were invited to send in their plate. On the other hand, the Parliament had not been more negligent. There had been contributions or promises from all the chief Parliamentarian nobles and others; there was a large loan from the city; and hundreds of thousands, on a smaller scale, were willing to subscribe. And already, through all the shires, the two opposed powers were grappling and jostling with each other in raising levies. On the King's side there were what were called Commissions of Array, or powers granted to certain nobles and others by name to raise troops for the King. On the side of Parliament, in addition to the Volunteering which had been going on in many places (as, for example, in Cambridgeshire, where Oliver Cromwell was forming a troop of Volunteer horse ... ), there was the Militia Ordinance available wherever the persons named in that ordinance were really zealous for Parliament, and able to act personally in the districts assigned them. And so on the 12th of July the Parliament had passed the necessary vote for supplying an army, and had appointed the Earl of Essex to be its commander-in-chief, and the Earl of Bedford to be its second in command as general of horse. It was known, on the other side, that the Earl of Lindsey, in consideration of his past experience of service both on sea and land, was to have the command of the King's army, and that his master of horse was to be the King's nephew, young Prince Rupert, who was expected from the Continent on purpose. Despite all these preparations, however, it was probably not till August had begun that the certainty of Civil War was universally acknowledged. It was on the 9th of that month that the King issued his proclamation 'for suppressing the present Rebellion under the command of Robert, Earl of Essex,' offering pardon to him and others if within six days they made their submission. The Parliamentary answer to this was on the 11th; on which day the Commons resolved, each man separately rising in his place and giving his word, that they would stand by the Earl of Essex with their lives and fortunes to the end. Still, even after that, there were trembling souls here and there who hoped for a reconciliation. {868} Monday the 22d of August put an end to all such fluttering: --On that day, the King, who had meanwhile left York, and come about a hundred miles farther south, into the very heart of England, ... made a backward movement as far as the town of Nottingham, where preparations had been made for the great scene that was to follow. ... This consisted in bringing out the royal standard and setting it up in due form. It was about six o'clock in the evening when it was done. ... A herald read a proclamation, declaring the cause why the standard had been set up, and summoning all the lieges to assist his Majesty. Those who were present cheered and threw up their hats, and, with a beating of drums and a sounding of trumpets, the ceremony ended. ... From that evening of the 22d of August, 1642, the Civil War had begun." D. Masson, Life of John Milton, book 2, chapter 8 (volume 2). ALSO IN: John Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Pym; Hampden. S. R. Gardiner, History of England, 1603-1642, chapters 104-105 (volume 10). ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (AUGUST-SEPTEMBER). The nation choosing sides. "In wealth, in numbers, and in cohesion the Parliament was stronger than the king. To him there had rallied most of the greater nobles, many of the lesser gentry, some proportion of the richer citizens, the townsmen of the west, and the rural population generally of the west and north of England. For the Parliament stood a strong section of the peers and greater gentry, the great bulk of the lesser gentry, the townsmen of the richer parts of England, the whole eastern and home counties, and lastly, the city of London. But as the Civil War did not sharply divide classes, so neither did it geographically bisect England. Roughly speaking, aristocracy and peasantry, the Church, universities, the world of culture, fashion, and pleasure were loyal: the gentry, the yeomanry, trade, commerce, morality, and law inclined to the Parliament. Broadly divided, the north and west went for the king; the south and east for the Houses; but the lines of demarcation were never exact: cities, castles, and manor-houses long held out in an enemy's county. There is only one permanent limitation. Draw a line from the Wash to the Solent. East of that line the country never yielded to the king; from first to last it never failed the Parliament. Within it are enclosed Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Bucks, Herts, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex. This was the wealthiest, the most populous, and the most advanced portion of England. With Gloucester, Reading, Bristol, Leicester, and Northampton, it formed the natural home of Puritanism." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1642 (OCTOBER-DECEMBER). Edgehill--the opening battle of the war. The Eastern Association. Immediately after the raising of his standard at Nottingham, the King, "aware at last that he could not rely on the inhabitants of Yorkshire, moved to Shrewsbury, at once to collect the Catholic gentry of Lancashire and Cheshire, to receive the Royalist levies of Wales, and to secure the valley of the Severn. The movement was successful. In a few days his little army was increased fourfold, and he felt himself strong enough to make a direct march towards the capital. Essex had garrisoned Northampton, Coventry and Warwick, and lay himself at Worcester; but the King, waiting for no sieges, left the garrisoned towns unmolested and passed on towards London, and Essex received peremptory orders to pursue and interpose if possible between the King and London. On the 22nd of October he was close upon the King's rear at Keynton, between Stratford and Banbury. But his army was by no means at its full strength; some regiments had been left to garrison the West, others, under Hampden had not yet joined him. But delay was impossible, and the first battle of the war was fought on the plain at the foot of the north-west slope of Edgehill, over which the royal army descended, turning back on its course to meet Essex. Both parties claimed the victory. In fact it was with the King. The Parliamentary cavalry found themselves wholly unable to withstand the charge of Rupert's cavaliers. Whole regiments turned and fled without striking a blow; but, as usual, want of discipline ruined the royal cause. Rupert's men fell to plundering the Parliamentary baggage, and returned to the field only in time to find that the infantry, under the personal leading of Essex, had reestablished the fight. Night closed the battle [which is sometimes named from Edgehill and sometimes from Keynton]. The King's army withdrew to the vantage-ground of the hills, and Essex, reinforced by Hampden, passed the night upon the field. But the Royalist army was neither beaten nor checked in its advance, while the rottenness of the Parliamentary troops had been disclosed." Some attempts at peace-making followed this doubtful first collision; but their only effect was to embitter the passions on both sides. The King advanced, threatening London, but the citizens of the capital turned out valiantly to oppose him, and he "fell back upon Oxford, which henceforward became the centre of their operations. ... War was again the only resource, and speedily became universal. ... There was local fighting over the whole of England. ... The headquarters of the King were constantly at Oxford, from which, as from a centre, Rupert would suddenly make rapid raids, now in one direction, now in another. Between him and London, about Reading, Aylesbury, and Thame, lay what may be spoken of as the main army of Parliament, under the command of Lord-General Essex. ... The other two chief scenes of the war were Yorkshire and the West. In Yorkshire the Fairfaxes, Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir Thomas, made what head they could against what was known as the Popish army under the command of the Earl, subsequently Marquis of Newcastle, which consisted mainly of the troops of the Northern counties, which had become associated under Newcastle in favour of Charles. Newark, in Nottinghamshire, was early made a royal garrison, and formed the link of connection between the operations in Yorkshire and at Oxford. In the extreme South-west, Lord Stamford, the Parliamentary General, was making a somewhat unsuccessful resistance against Sir Ralph, afterwards Lord Hopton. Wales was wholly Royalist, and one of the chief objects of Charles's generals was to secure the Severn valley, and thus connect the war in Devonshire with the central operations at Oxford. In the Eastern counties matters assumed rather a different form. The principle of forming several counties into an association ... was adopted by the Parliament, and several such associations were formed, but none of these came to much except that of the Eastern counties, which was known by way of preeminence as 'The Association.' Its object was to keep the war entirely beyond the borders of the counties of which it consisted. The reason of its success was the genius and energy of Cromwell." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, page 659. {869} "This winter there arise among certain Counties 'Associations' for mutual defence, against Royalism and plunderous Rupertism; a measure cherished by the Parliament, condemned as treasonable by the King. Of which 'Associations,' countable to the number of five or six, we name only one, that of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cambridge, Herts; with Lord Gray of Wark for Commander; where and under whom Oliver was now serving. This 'Eastern Association' is alone worth naming. All the other Associations, no man of emphasis being in the midst of them, fell in a few months to pieces; only this of Cromwell subsisted, enlarged itself, grew famous;--and kept its own borders clear of invasion during the whole course of the War." T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, preliminary. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapters 2-4 (volume l). W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, chapter 2 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (May). Cromwell's Ironsides. "It was ... probably, a little before Edgehill, that there took place between Cromwell and Hampden the memorable conversation which fifteen years afterwards the Protector related in a speech to his second Parliament. It is a piece of autobiography so instructive and pathetic that it must be set forth in full in the words of Cromwell himself: 'I was a person who, from my first employment, was suddenly preferred and lifted up from lesser trusts to greater; from my first being Captain of a Troop of Horse. ... I had a very worthy friend then; and he was a very noble person, and I know his memory was very grateful to all,--Mr. John Hampden. At my first going out into this engagement, I saw our men were beaten at every hand. ... Your troops, said I, are most of them old decayed serving-men, and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and, said I, their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons and persons of quality: do you think that the spirits of such base mean fellows will ever be able to encounter gentlemen, that have honour and courage and resolution in them? Truly I did represent to him in this manner conscientiously; and truly I did tell him: You must get men of a spirit: and take it not ill what I say,--I know you will not,--of a spirit that is likely to go on as far as gentlemen will go: or else you will be beaten still. I told him so; I did truly. He was a wise and worthy person; and he did think that I talked a good notion, but an impracticable one. ... I raised such men as had the fear of God before them, as made some conscience of what they did; and from that day forward, I must say to you, they were never beaten, and wherever they were engaged against the enemy they beat continually.' ... The issue of the whole war lay in that word. It lay with 'such men as had some conscience in what they did.' 'From that day forward they were never beaten.' ... As for Colonel Cromwell,' writes a news-letter of May, 1643, 'he hath 2,000 brave men, well disciplined; no man swears but he pays his twelve-pence; if he be drunk, he is set in the stocks, or worse; if one calls the other roundhead he is cashiered: insomuch that the countries where they come leap for joy of them, and come in and join with them. How happy were it if all the forces were thus disciplined!' These were the men who ultimately decided the war, and established the Commonwealth. On the field of Marston, Rupert gave Cromwell the name of Ironside, and from thence this famous name passed to his troopers. There are two features in their history which we need to note. They were indeed 'such men as had some conscience in their work'; but they were also much more. They were disciplined and trained soldiers. They were the only body of 'regulars' on either side. The instinctive genius of Cromwell from the very first created the strong nucleus of a regular army, which at last in discipline, in skill, in valour, reached the highest perfection ever attained by soldiers either in ancient or modern times. The fervour of Cromwell is continually pressing towards the extension of this 'regular' force. Through all the early disasters, this body of Ironsides kept the cause alive: at Marston it overwhelmed the king: as soon as, by the New Model, this system was extended to the whole army, the Civil War was at an end." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 4. ALSO IN: J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell. ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JUNE-SEPTEMBER). The King calls in the Irish. "To balance the accession of power which the alliance with Scotland brought to the Parliament, Charles was so unwise, men then said so guilty, as to conclude a peace with the Irish rebels, with the intent that thus those of his forces which had been employed against them, might be set free to join his army in England. No act of the King, not the levying of ship-money, not the crowd of monopolies which enriched the court and impoverished the people, neither the extravagance of Buckingham, the tyranny of Strafford nor the prelacy of Laud, not even the attempted arrest of the five members, raised such a storm of indignation and hatred throughout the kingdom, as did this determination of the King to withdraw (as men said), for the purpose of subduing his subjects, the force which had been raised to avenge the blood of 100,000 Protestant martyrs. ... To the England of the time this act was nauseous, was exasperating to the highest degree, while to the cause of the King it was fatal; for, from this moment, the condition of the Parliamentary party began to mend." N. L. Walford, Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War, chapter 2. "None of the king's schemes proved so fatal to his cause as these. On their discovery, officer after officer in his own army flung down their commissions, the peers who had fled to Oxford fled back again to London, and the Royalist reaction in the Parliament itself came utterly to an end." J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 8, section 7. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapter 11 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY). Meeting of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. At the beginning of July, 1643, "London was astir with a new event of great consequence in the course of the national revolution. This was the meeting of the famous Westminster Assembly. The necessity of an ecclesiastical Synod or Convocation, to cooperate with the Parliament, had been long felt. {870} Among the articles of the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641 had been one desiring a convention of 'a General Synod of the most grave, pious, learned, and judicious divines of this island, assisted by some from foreign parts,' to consider of all things relating to the Church and report thereon to Parliament. It is clear from the wording of this article that it was contemplated that the Synod should contain representatives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uniformity of Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship between the Churches of England and Scotland was the fixed idea of those who chiefly desired a Synod. ... In April, 1642 ... it was ordered by the House, in pursuance of previous resolutions on the subject, 'that the names of such divines as shall be thought fit to be consulted with concerning the matter of the Church be brought in tomorrow morning,' the understood rule being that the knights and burgesses of each English county should name to the House two divines, and those of each Welsh county one divine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th, the names were given in. ... By the stress of the war the Assembly was postponed. At last, hopeless of a bill that should pass in the regular way by the King's consent, the Houses resorted, in this as in other things, to their peremptory plan of Ordinance by their own authority. On the 13th of May, 1643, an Ordinance for calling an Assembly was introduced in the Commons; which Ordinance, after due going and coming between the two Houses, came to maturity June 12, when it was entered at full length in the Lords' Journals. 'Whereas, amongst the infinite blessings of Almighty God upon this nation,'--so runs the preamble of the Ordinance,--'none is, or can be, more dear to us than the purity of our religion; and for as much as many things yet remain in the discipline, liturgy and government of the Church which necessarily require a more perfect reformation: and whereas it has been declared and resolved, by the Lords and Commons assembled in Parliament, that the present Church Government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors, Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and other ecclesiastical officers depending on the hierarchy, is evil and justly offensive and burdensome to the kingdom, and a great impediment to reformation and growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the state and government of this kingdom, and that therefore they are resolved the same shall be taken away, and that such a government shall be settled in the Church as may be agreeable to God's Holy Word, and most apt to procure and preserve the peace of the Church at home, and nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland, and other reformed Churches abroad. ... Be it therefore ordained, &c.' What is ordained is that 149 persons, enumerated by name in the Ordinance ... shall meet on the 1st of July next in King Henry VII.'s Chapel at Westminster; ... 'to confer and treat among themselves of such matters and things, concerning the liturgy, discipline and government of the Church of England ... as shall be proposed by either or both Houses of Parliament, and no other.' ... Notwithstanding a Royal Proclamation from Oxford, dated June 22, forbidding the Assembly and threatening consequences, the first meeting duly took place on the day appointed--Saturday, July 1, 1643; and from that day till the 22d of February, 1648-9, or for more than five years and a half, the Westminster Assembly is to be borne in mind as a power or institution in the English realm, existing side by side with the Long Parliament, and in constant conference and cooperation with it. The number of its sittings during these five years and a half was 1,163 in all; which is at the rate of about four sittings every week for the whole time. The earliest years of the Assembly were the most important." D. Masson, Life of John Milton, book 3, chapter 3 (volume 2). ALSO IN: A. F. Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly, lectures 4-5. D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 3, chapters 2 and 4. SEE, also, INDEPENDENTS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (JULY-SEPTEMBER). The Solemn League and Covenant with the Scottish nation. "Scotland had been hitherto kept aloof from the English quarrel. ... Up to this time the pride and delicacy of the English patriots withheld them, for obvious reasons, from claiming her assistance. Had it been possible, they would still have desired to engage no distant party in this great domestic struggle; but when the present unexpected crisis arrived ... these considerations were laid aside, and the chief leaders of the Parliament resolved upon an embassy to the North, to bring the Scottish nation into the field. The conduct of this embassy was a matter of the highest difficulty and danger. The Scots were known to be bigoted to their own persuasions of narrow and exclusive church government, while the greatest men of the English Parliament had proclaimed the sacred maxim that every man who worshipped God according to the dictates of his conscience was entitled to the protection of the State. But these men, Vane, Cromwell, Marten and St. John, though the difficulties of the common cause had brought them into the acknowledged position of leaders and directors of affairs, were in a minority in the House of Commons, and the party who were their superiors in numbers were as bigoted to the most exclusive principles of Presbyterianism as the Scots themselves. Denzil Holies stood at the head of this inferior class of patriots. ... The most eminent of the Parliamentary nobility, particularly Northumberland, Essex and Manchester belonged also to this body; while the London clergy, and the metropolis itself, were almost entirely Presbyterian. These things considered, there was indeed great reason to apprehend that this party, backed by the Scots, and supported with a Scottish army, would be strong enough to overpower the advocates of free conscience, and 'set up a tyranny not less to be deplored than that of Laud and his hierarchy, which had proved one of the main occasions of bringing on the war.' Yet, opposing to all this danger only their own high purposes and dauntless courage, the smaller party of more consummate statesmen were the first to propose the embassy to Scotland. ... On the 20th of July, 1643, the commissioners set out from London. They were four; and the man principally confided in among them was Vane [Sir Henry, the younger]. He, indeed, was the individual best qualified to succeed Hampden as a counsellor in the arduous struggle in which the nation was at this time engaged. ... Immediately on his arrival in Edinburgh the negotiation commenced, and what Vane seems to have anticipated at once occurred. The Scots offered their assistance heartily on the sole condition of an adhesion to the Scottish religious system on the part of England. {871} After many long and very warm debates, in which Vane held to one firm policy from the first, a solemn covenant was proposed, which Vane insisted should be named a solemn league and covenant, while certain words were inserted in it on his subsequent motion, to which he also adhered with immovable constancy, and which had the effect of leaving open to the great party in England, to whose interests he was devoted, that last liberty of conscience which man should never surrender. ... The famous article respecting religion ran in these words; 'That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavour, in our several places and callings, the preservation of the Reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, against our common enemies; the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, according to the Word of God, and the example of the best Reformed churches; and we shall endeavour to bring the churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confessing of faith, form of church government directory for worship and catechizing; that we and our posterity after us, may as brethren live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation of popery, prelacy (that is, church government by archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and commissaries, deans, deans and chapters, archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy).' Vane, by this introduction of 'according to the Word of God,' left the interpretation of that word to the free conscience of every man. On the 17th of August, the solemn league and covenant was voted by the Legislature and the Assembly of the Church at Edinburgh. The king in desperate alarm, sent his commands to the Scotch people not to take such a covenant. In reply, they 'humbly advised his majesty to take the covenant himself.' The surpassing service rendered by Vane on this great occasion to the Parliamentary cause, exposed him to a more violent hatred from the Royalists than he had yet experienced, and Clarendon has used every artifice to depreciate his motives and his sincerity. ... The solemn league and covenant remained to be adopted in England. The Scottish form of giving it authority was followed as far as possible. It was referred by the two Houses to the Assembly of Divines, which had commenced its sittings on the 1st of the preceding July, being called together to be consulted with by the Parliament for the purpose of settling the government and form of worship of the Church of England. This assembly already referred to, consisted of 121 of the clergy; and a number of lay assessors were joined with them, consisting of ten peers, and twenty members of the House of Commons. All these persons were named by the ordinance of the two Houses of Parliament which gave birth to the assembly. The public taking of the Covenant was solemnized on the 25th of September, each member of either House attesting his adherence by oath first, and then by subscribing his name. The name of Vane, subscribed immediately on his return, appears upon the list next to that of Cromwell." J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Vane. ALSO IN: J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Henry Vane, chapter 8. A. F. Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly, lectures 5-6. D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 3, chapter 2. S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, page 187. The following is the text of the Solemn League and Covenant: "A solemn league and covenant for Reformation and defence of religion, the honour and happiness of the King, and the peace and safety of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. We noblemen, barons, knights, gentlemen, citizens, burgesses, ministers of the Gospel, and commons of all sorts in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland, by the providence of God living under one King, and being of one reformed religion; having before our eyes the glory of God, and the advancement of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the honour and happiness of the King's Majesty and his posterity, and the true public liberty, safety and peace of the kingdoms, wherein everyone's private condition is included; and calling to mind the treacherous and bloody plots, conspiracies, attempts and practices of the enemies of God against the true religion and professors thereof in all places, especially in these three kingdoms, ever since the reformation of religion; and how much their rage, power and presumption are of late, and at this time increased and exercised, whereof the deplorable estate of the Church and kingdom of Ireland, the distressed estate of the Church and kingdom of England, and the dangerous estate of the Church and kingdom of Scotland, are present and public testimonies: we have (now at last) after other means of supplication, remonstrance, protestations and sufferings, for the preservation of ourselves and our religion from utter ruin and destruction, according to the commendable practice of these kingdoms in former times, and the example of God's people in other nations, after mature deliberation, resolved and determined to enter into a mutual and solemn league and covenant, wherein we all subscribe, and each one of us for himself, with our hands lifted up to the most high God, do swear, I. That we shall sincerely, really and constantly, through the grace of God, endeavour in our several places and callings, the preservation of the reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, against our common enemies; the reformation of religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, according to the Word of God, and the example of the best reformed Churches; and we shall endeavour to bring the Churches of God in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of Church government, directory for worship and catechising, that we, and our posterity after us, may, as brethren, live in faith and love, and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst of us. II. That we shall in like manner, without respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation of Popery, prelacy (that is, Church government by Archbishops, Bishops, their Chancellors and Commissaries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depending on that hierarchy), superstition, heresy, schism, profaneness and whatsoever shall be found to be contrary to sound doctrine and the power of godliness lest we partake in other men's sins, and thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues; and that the Lord may be one, and His name one in the three kingdoms. {872} III. We shall with the same sincerity, reality and constancy, in our several vocations, endeavour with our estates and lives mutually to preserve the rights and privileges of the Parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdoms, and to preserve and defend the King's Majesty's person and authority, in the preservation and defence of the true religion and liberties of the kingdoms, that the world may bear witness with our consciences of our loyalty, and that we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish His Majesty's just power and greatness. IV. We shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the discovery of all such as have been or shall be incendiaries, malignants or evil instruments, by hindering the reformation of religion, dividing the King from his people, or one of the kingdoms from another, or making any faction or parties amongst the people, contrary to the league and covenant, that they may be brought to public trial and receive condign punishment, as the degree of their offences shall require or deserve, or the supreme judicatories of both kingdoms respectively, or others having power from them for that effect, shall judge convenient. V. And whereas the happiness of a blessed peace between these kingdoms, denied in former times to our progenitors, is by the good providence of God granted to us, and hath been lately concluded and settled by both Parliaments: we shall each one of us, according to our places and interest, endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a firm peace and union to all posterity, and that justice may be done upon the wilful opposers thereof, in manner expressed in the precedent articles. VI. We shall also, according to our places and callings, in this common cause of religion, liberty and peace of the kingdom, assist and defend all those that enter into this league and covenant, in the maintaining and pursuing thereof; and shall not suffer ourselves, directly or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, persuasion or terror, to be divided and withdrawn from this blessed union and conjunction, whether to make defection to the contrary part, or give ourselves to a detestable indifferency or neutrality in this cause, which so much concerneth the glory of God, the good of the kingdoms, and the honour of the King; but shall all the days of our lives zealously and constantly continue therein, against all opposition, and promote the same according to our power, against all lets and impediments whatsoever; and what we are not able ourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal and make known, that it may be timely prevented or removed: all which we shall do as in the sight of God. And because these kingdoms are guilty of many sins and provocations against God, and His Son Jesus Christ, as is too manifest by our present distresses and dangers, the fruits thereof: we profess and declare, before God and the world, our unfeigned desire to be humbled for our own sins, and for the sins of these kingdoms; especially that we have not as we ought valued the inestimable benefit of the Gospel; that we have not laboured for the purity and power thereof; and that we have not endeavoured to receive Christ in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of Him in our lives, which are the causes of other sins and transgressions so much abounding amongst us, and our true and unfeigned purpose, desire and endeavour, for ourselves and all others under our power and charge, both in public and in private, in all duties we owe to God and man, to amend our lives, and each one to go before another in the example of a real reformation, that the Lord may turn away His wrath and heavy indignation, and establish these Churches and kingdoms in truth and peace. And this covenant we make in the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher of all hearts, with a true intention to perform the same, as we shall answer at that Great Day when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed: most humbly beseeching the Lord to strengthen us by His Holy Spirit for this end, and to bless our desires and Proceedings with such success as may be a deliverance and safety to His people, and encouragement to the Christian Churches groaning under or in danger of the yoke of Anti-Christian tyranny, to join in the same or like association and covenant, to the glory of God, the enlargement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and the peace and tranquility of Christian kingdoms and commonwealths." ENGLAND: A. D. 1643 (August-September). Siege of Gloucester and first Battle of Newbury. "When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly with the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the western and in the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the second city in the kingdom, from the Parliament. They had won several battles, and had not sustained a single serious or ignominious defeat. Among the Roundheads, adversity had begun to produce dissension and discontent. The Parliament was kept in alarm, sometimes by plots and sometimes by riots. It was thought necessary to fortify London against the royal army, and to hang some disaffected citizens at their own doors. Several of the most distinguished peers who had hitherto remained at Westminster fled to the court at Oxford; nor can it be doubted that, if the operations of the Cavaliers had, at this season, been directed by a sagacious and powerful mind, Charles would soon have marched in triumph to Whitehall. But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away; and it never returned. In August, 1643, he sate down before the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the inhabitants and by the garrison, with a determination such as had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London was excited. The trainbands of the City volunteered to march wherever their services might be required. A great force was speedily collected, and began to move westward. The siege of Gloucester was raised. The Royalists in every part of the kingdom were disheartened; the spirit of the parliamentary party revived; and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to Westminster." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 1. After accomplishing the relief of Gloucester, the Parliamentary army, marching back to London, was intercepted at Newbury by the army of the king, and forced to fight a battle, September 20, 1643, in which both parties, as at Edgehill, claimed the victory. The Royalists, however, failed to bar the road to London, as they had undertaken to do, and Essex resumed his march on the following morning. {873} "In this unhappy battle was slain the lord viscount Falkland; a person of such prodigious parts of learning and knowledge, of that inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation, of so flowing and obliging a humanity and goodness to mankind, and of that primitive sincerity and integrity of life, that if there were no other brand upon this odious and accursed war than that single loss, it must be most infamous and execrable to all posterity." Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 7, section 217. This lamented death on the royal side nearly evened, so to speak, the great, unmeasured calamity which had befallen the better cause three months before, when the high-souled patriot Hampden was slain in a paltry skirmish with Rupert's horse, at Chalgrove Field, not far from the borders of Oxfordshire. Soon after the fight at Newbury, Charles, having occupied Reading, withdrew his army to Oxford and went into winter quarters. N. L. Walford, Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War, chapter 2. ALSO IN: Sir E. Cust, Lives of the Warriors of the Civil Wars, part 2. S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapter 10 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (January). Battle of Nantwich and siege of Lathom House. The Irish army brought over by King Charles and landed in Flintshire, in November, 1643, under the command of Lord Byron, invaded Cheshire and laid siege to Nantwich, which was the headquarters of the Parliamentary cause in that region. Young Sir Thomas Fairfax was ordered to collect forces and relieve the town. With great difficulty he succeeded, near the end of January, 1644, in leading 2,500 foot-soldiers and twenty-eight troops of horse, against the besieging army, which numbered 3,000 foot and 1,800 horse. On the 28th of January he attacked and routed the Irish royalists completely. "All the Royalist Colonels, including the subsequently notorious Monk, 1,500 soldiers, six pieces of ordnance, and quantities of arms, were captured." Having accomplished this most important service, Sir Thomas, "to his great annoyance," received orders to lay siege to Lathom House, one of the country seats of the Earl of Derby, which had been fortified and secretly garrisoned, with 300 soldiers. It was held by the high-spirited and dauntless Countess of Derby, in the absence of her husband, who was in the Isle of Man. Sir Thomas Fairfax soon escaped from this ignoble enterprise and left it to be carried on, first, by his cousin, Sir William Fairfax, and afterwards by Colonel Rigby. The Countess defended her house for three months, until the approach of Prince Rupert forced the raising of the siege in the following spring. Lathom House was not finally surrendered to the Roundheads until December 6, 1645, when it was demolished. C. R. Markham, Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, chapter 13. ALSO IN: Mrs. Thompson, Recollections of Literary Characters and Celebrated Places, volume 2, chapter 2. E. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, page 2, chapter 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (January-July). The Scots in England. The Battle of Marston Moor. "On the 19th of January, 1644, the Scottish army entered England. Lesley, now earl of Leven, commanded them. ... In the meantime, the parliament at Westminster formed a council under the title of 'The Committee of the Two Kingdoms,' consisting of seven Lords, fourteen members of the Commons, and four Scottish Commissioners. Whatever belongs to the executive power as distinguished from the legislative devolved upon this Committee. In the spring of 1644 the parliament had five armies in the field, paid by general or local taxation, and by voluntary contributions. Including the Scottish army there were altogether 56,000 men under arms; the English forces being commanded, as separate armies, by Essex, Waller, Manchester, and Fairfax. Essex and Waller advanced to blockade Oxford. The queen went to Exeter in April, and never saw Charles again. The blockading forces around Oxford had become so strong that resistance appeared to be hopeless. On the night of the 3d of June the king secretly left the city and passed safely between the two hostile armies. There had again been jealousies and disagreements between Essex and Waller. Essex, supported by the council of war, but in opposition to the committee of the two kingdoms, had marched to the west. Waller, meanwhile, went in pursuit of the king into Worcestershire, Charles suddenly returned to Oxford; and then at Copredy Bridge, near Banbury, defeated Waller, who had hastened back to encounter him. Essex was before the walls of Exeter, in which city the queen had given birth to a princess. The king hastened to the west. He was strong enough to meet either of the parliamentary armies thus separated. Meanwhile the combined English and Scottish armies were besieging York. Rupert had just accomplished the relief of Lathom House, which had been defended by the heroic countess of Derby for eighteen weeks, against a detachment of the army of Fairfax. He then marched towards York with 20,000 men. The allied English and Scots retired from Hessey Moor, near York, to Tadcaster. Rupert entered York with 2,000 cavalry. The Earl of Newcastle was in command there. He counselled a prudent delay. The impetuous Rupert said he had the orders of the king for his guidance, and he was resolved to fight. On the 2nd of July, having rested two days in and near York, and enabled the city to be newly provisioned, the royalist army went forth to engage. They met their enemy on Marston Moor. The issue of the encounter would have been more than doubtful, but for Cromwell, who for the first time had headed his Ironsides in a great pitched battle. The right wing of the parliamentary army was scattered. Rupert was chasing and slaying the Scottish cavalry. ... The charges of Fairfax and Cromwell decided the day. The victory of the parliamentary forces was so complete that the Earl of Newcastle left York, and embarked at Scarborough for the continent. Rupert marched away also, with the wreck of his army, to Chester. Fifteen hundred prisoners, all the artillery, more than 100 banners, remained with the victors; 4,150 bodies lay dead on the plain." C. Knight, Crown History of England, chapter 25. ALSO IN: T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, letter 8. B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 7. W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, chapter 12, (volume 1). E. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, volume 2, chapter 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1644 (August-September). Essex's surrender. The second Battle of Newbury. {874} "The great success at Marston, which had given the north to the Parliament, was all undone in the south and west through feebleness and jealousies in the leaders and the wretched policy that directed the war. Detached armies, consisting of a local militia, were aimlessly ordered about by a committee of civilians in London. Disaster followed on disaster. Essex, Waller, and Manchester would neither agree amongst themselves nor obey orders. Essex and Waller had parted before Marston was fought; Manchester had returned from York to protect his own eastern counties. Waller, after his defeat at Copredy, did nothing, and naturally found his army melting away. Essex, perversely advancing into the west, was out-manœuvred by Charles, and ended a campaign of blunders by the surrender of all his infantry [at Fowey, in Cornwall, September 2, 1644]. By September 1644 throughout the whole south-west the Parliament had not an army in the field. But the Committee of the Houses still toiled on with honourable spirit, and at last brought together near Newbury a united army nearly double the strength of the King's. On Sunday, the 29th of October, was fought the second battle of Newbury, as usual in these ill-ordered campaigns, late in the afternoon. An arduous day ended without victory, in spite of the greater numbers of the Parliament's army, though the men fought well, and their officers led them with skill and energy. At night the King was suffered to withdraw his army without loss, and later to carry off his guns and train. The urgent appeals of Cromwell and his officers could not infuse into Manchester energy to win the day, or spirit to pursue the retreating foe." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 5. ALSO IN: B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapters 7. S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapters 19 and 21. ENGLAND: A. D. 1644-1645. The Self-denying Ordinance. "Cromwell had shown his capacity for organization in the creation of the Ironsides; his military genius had displayed itself at Marston Moor. Newbury first raised him into a political leader. 'Without a more speedy, vigorous and effective prosecution of the war,' he said to the Commons after his quarrel with Manchester, 'casting off all lingering proceedings, like those of soldiers of fortune beyond sea to spin out a war, we shall make the kingdom weary of us, and hate the name of a Parliament.' But under the leaders who at present conducted it a vigorous conduct of the war was hopeless. They were, in Cromwell's plain words, 'afraid to conquer.' They desired not to crush Charles, but to force him back, with as much of his old strength remaining as might be, to the position of a constitutional King. ... The army, too, as he long ago urged at Edgehill, was not an army to conquer with. Now, as then, he urged that till the whole force was new modeled, and placed under a stricter discipline, 'they must not expect any notable success in anything they went about.' But the first step in such a reorganization must be a change of officers. The army was led and officered by members of the two Houses, and the Self-renouncing [or Self-denying] Ordinance, which was introduced by Cromwell and Vane, declared the tenure of civil or military offices incompatible with a seat in either. In spite of a long and bitter resistance, which was justified at a later time by the political results which followed this rupture of the tie which had hitherto bound the army to the Parliament, the drift of public opinion was too strong to be withstood. The passage of the Ordinance brought about the retirement of Essex, Manchester, and Waller; and the new organization of the army went rapidly on under a new commander-in-chief, Sir Thomas Fairfax, the hero of the long contest in Yorkshire, and who had been raised into fame by his victory at Nantwich and his bravery at Marston Moor." J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 8, section 7. ALSO IN: W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, chapter 15 (volume l). J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Henry Vane, chapter 11. J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 10. J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Vane. ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (January-February). The attempted Treaty of Uxbridge. A futile negotiation between the king and Parliament was opened at Uxbridge in January, 1645. "But neither the king nor his advisers entered on it with minds sincerely bent on peace; they, on the one hand, resolute not to swerve from the utmost rigour of a conqueror's terms, without having conquered; and he though more secretly, cherishing illusive hopes of a more triumphant restoration to power than any treaty could be expected to effect. The three leading topics of discussion among the negotiators at Uxbridge were, the church, the militia, and the state of Ireland. Bound by their unhappy covenant, and watched by their Scots colleagues, the English commissioners on the parliament's side demanded the complete establishment of a presbyterian polity, and the substitution of what was called the directory for the Anglican liturgy. Upon this head there was little prospect of a union." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 10, part 1. ALSO IN: Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 8, sections 209-252 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (January-April). The New Model of the army. The passage of the Self-denying Ordinance was followed, or accompanied, by the adoption of the scheme for the so-called New Model of the army. "The New Model was organised as follows: 10 Regiments of Cavalry of 600 men, 6,000; 10 Companies of Dragoons of 100 men, 1,000; 10 Regiments of Infantry of 1,400 men, 14,000: Total, 21,000 men. All officers were to be nominated by Sir Thomas Fairfax, the new General, and (as was insisted upon by the Lords, with the object of excluding the more fanatical Independents) every officer was to sign the covenant within twenty days of his appointment. The cost of this force was estimated at £539,460 per annum, about £1,600,000 of our money. ... Sir Thomas Fairfax having been appointed Commander-in-Chief by a vote of both Houses on the 1st of April [A. D. 1645], Essex, Manchester and others of the Lords resigned their commissions on the 2nd. ... The name of Cromwell was of course, with those of other members of the Commons, omitted from the original list of the New Model army; but with a significance which could not have escaped remark, the appointment of lieutenant-general was left vacant, while none doubted by whom that vacancy would be filled." N. L. Walford, The Parliamentary Generals of the Great Civil War, chapter 4. ALSO IN: Sir E. Cust, Lives of the Warriors of the Civil Wars, part. 2: Fairfax. {875} ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JUNE). The Battle of Naseby. "Early in April, Fairfax with his new army advanced westward to raise the siege of Taunton, which city Goring was besieging. Before that task was completed he received orders to enter on the siege of Oxford. This did not suit his own views or those of the Independents. They had joined their new army upon the implied condition that decisive battles should be fought. It was therefore with great joy that Fairfax received orders to proceed in pursuit of the royal forces, which, having left Worcester, were marching apparently against the Eastern Association, and had just taken Leicester on their way. Before entering on this active service, Fairfax demanded and obtained leave for Cromwell to serve at least for one battle more in the capacity of Lieutenant-General. He came up with the king in the neighbourhood of Harborough. Charles turned back to meet him, and just by the village of Naseby the great battle known by that name was fought. Cromwell had joined the army, amid the rejoicing shouts of the troops, two days before, with the Association horse. Again the victory seems to have been chiefly due to his skill. In detail it is almost a repetition of the battle of Marston Moor." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, page 675. "The old Hamlet of Naseby stands yet, on its old hill-top, very much as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern border of Northamptonshire; nearly on a line, and nearly midway, between that Town and Daventry. A peaceable old Hamlet, of perhaps five hundred souls; clay cottages for laborers, but neatly thatched and swept; smith's shop, saddler's shop, beer-shop all in order; forming a kind of square, which leads off, North and South, into two long streets; the old Church with its graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spire finishing itself with a strange old Ball, held up by rods; a 'hollow copper Ball, which came from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth's time,'--which has, like Hudibras's breeches, 'been at the Siege of Bullen.' The ground is upland, moorland, though now growing corn; was not enclosed till the last generation, and is still somewhat bare of wood. It stands nearly in the heart of England; gentle Dullness, taking a turn at etymology, sometimes derives it from 'Navel'; 'Navesby, quasi Navelsby, from being, &c.' ... It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of England, that King Charles, on the 14th of June, 1645, fought his last Battle; dashed fiercely against the New-Model Army which he had despised till then: and saw himself shivered utterly to ruin thereby. 'Prince Rupert, on the King's right wing, charged up the hill, and carried all before him'; but Lieutenant-General Cromwell charged down hill on the other wing, likewise carrying all before him,--and did not gallop off the field to plunder, he. Cromwell, ordered thither by the Parliament, had arrived from the Association two days before, 'amid shouts from the whole Army': he had the ordering of the Horse this morning. Prince Rupert, on returning from his plunder, finds the King's Infantry a ruin; prepares to charge again with the rallied Cavalry; but the Cavalry too, when it came to the point, 'broke all asunder,'--never to reassemble more. ... There were taken here a good few 'ladies of quality in carriages';--and above a hundred Irish ladies not of quality, tattery camp-followers 'with long skean-knives about a foot in length,' which they well knew how to use; upon whom I fear the Ordinance against Papists pressed hard this day. The King's Carriage was also taken, with a Cabinet and many Royal Autographs in it, which when printed made a sad impression against his Majesty,--gave in fact a most melancholy view of the veracity of his Majesty, 'On the word of a King.' All was lost!" T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, letter 29. ALSO IN: Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 9, sections 30-42 (volume 4). E. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, volume 3, chapter 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JUNE-DECEMBER). Glamorgan's Commissions, and other perfidies of the King disclosed. "At the battle of Naseby, copies of some letters to the queen, chiefly written about the time of the treaty of Uxbridge, and strangely preserved, fell into the hands of the enemy and were instantly published. No other losses of that fatal day were more injurious to [the king's] cause. ... He gave her [the queen] power to treat with the English catholics, promising to take away all penal laws against them as soon as God should enable him to do so, in consideration of such powerful assistance as might deserve so great a favour, and enable him to affect it. ... Suspicions were much aggravated by a second discovery that took place soon afterwards, of a secret treaty between the earl of Glamorgan and the confederate Irish catholics, not merely promising the repeal of the penal laws, but the establishment of their religion in far the greater part of Ireland. The marquis of Ormond, as well as lord Digby, who happened to be at Dublin, loudly exclaimed against Glamorgan's presumption in concluding such a treaty, and committed him to prison on a charge of treason. He produced two commissions from the king, secretly granted without any seal or the knowledge of any minister, containing the fullest powers to treat with the Irish, and promising to fulfil any conditions into which he should enter. The king, informed of this, disavowed Glamorgan. ... Glamorgan, however, was soon released, and lost no portion of the king's or his family's favour. This transaction has been the subject of much historical controversy. The enemies of Charles, both in his own and later ages, have considered it as a proof of his indifference, at least, to the protestant religion, and of his readiness to accept the assistance of Irish rebels on any conditions. His advocates for a long time denied the authenticity of Glamorgan's commissions. But Dr. Birch demonstrated that they were genuine; and, if his dissertation could have left any doubt, later evidence might be adduced in confirmation." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 10 (volume 2). ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapters 39 and 44 (volume 2). T. Carte, Life of James, Duke of Ormond, book 4 (volume 3). J. Lingard, History of England, volume 10, chapter 3. {876} ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JULY-AUGUST). The Clubmen. "When Fairfax and Cromwell marched into the west [after Naseby fight], they found that in these counties the country-people had begun to assemble in bodies, sometimes 5,000 strong, to resist their oppressors, whether they fought in the name of King or Parliament. They were called clubmen from their arms, and carried banners, with the motto--'If you offer to plunder our cattle, Be assured we will give you battle.' The clubmen, however, could not hope to control the movements of the disciplined troops who now appeared against them. After a few fruitless attempts at resistance they dispersed." B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 8. "The inexpugnable Sir Lewis Dives (a thrasonical person known to the readers of Evelyn), after due battering, was now soon stormed; whereupon, by Letters found on him it became apparent how deeply Royalist this scheme of Clubmen had been: 'Commissions for raising Regiments of Clubmen'; the design to be extended over England at large, 'yea into the Associated Counties': however, it has now come to nothing." T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 2, letter 14. ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (JULY-SEPTEMBER). The storming of Bridgewater and Bristol. "The continuance of the civil war for a whole year after the decisive battle of Naseby is a proof of the King's selfishness, and of his utter indifference to the sufferings of the people. All rational hope was gone, and even Rupert advised his uncle to make terms with the Parliament. Yet Charles, while incessantly vacillating as to his plans, persisted in retaining his garrisons, and required his adherents to sacrifice all they possessed in order to prolong a useless struggle for a few months. Bristol, therefore, was to stand a siege, and Charles expected the garrison to hold out, without an object, to the last extremity, entailing misery and ruin on the second commercial city in the kingdom. Rupert was sent to take the command there, and when the army of Sir Thomas Fairfax approached, towards the end of August, he had completed his preparations." Fairfax had marched promptly and rapidly westward, after the battle of Naseby. He had driven Goring from the siege of Taunton, had defeated him in a sharp battle at Langport, taking 1,400 prisoners, and had carried Bridgewater by storm, July 21, capturing 2,000 prisoners, with 36 pieces of artillery and 5,000 stand of arms. On the 21st of August he arrived before Bristol, which Prince Rupert had strongly fortified, and which he held with an effective garrison of 2,300 men. On the morning of the 10th of September it was entered by storm, and on the following day Rupert, who still occupied the most defensible forts, surrendered the whole place. This surrender so enraged the King that he deprived his nephew of all his commissions and sent him a pass to quit the kingdom. But Rupert understood, as the King would not, that fighting was useless--that the royal cause was lost. C. R. Markham, Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, chapter 21-22. ALSO IN. Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 9. W. Hunt, Bristol, chapter 7. E. Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, volume 3, chapter 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1645 (SEPTEMBER). Defeat of Montrose at Philiphaugh. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1644-1645. ENGLAND: A. D. 1646 (MARCH). Adoption of Presbyterianism by Parliament. "For the last three years the Assembly of Divines had been sitting almost daily in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey. ... They were preparing a new Prayer-book, a form of Church Government, a Confession of Faith, and a Catechism; but the real questions at issue were the establishment of the Presbyterian Church and the toleration of sectarians. The Presbyterians, as we know, desired to establish their own form of Church government by assemblies and synods, without any toleration for non-conformists, whether Catholics, Episcopalians, or sectarians. But though they formed a large majority in the assembly, there was a well-organized opposition of Independents and Erastians, whose union made it no easy matter for the Presbyterians to carry every vote their own way. ... After the Assembly had sat a year and a half, the Parliament passed an ordinance for putting a directory, prepared by the divines, into force, and taking away the Common Prayer-book (3rd January, 1645). The sign of the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, the wearing of vestments, the keeping of saints' days, were discontinued. The communion table was ordered to be set in the body of the church, about which the people were to stand or sit; the passages of Scripture to be read were left to the minister's choice; no forms of prayer were prescribed. The same year a new directory for ordination of ministers was passed into an ordinance. The Presbyterian assemblies, called presbyteries, were empowered to ordain, and none were allowed to enter the ministry without first taking the covenant (8th November, 1645). This was followed by a third ordinance for establishing the Presbyterian system of Church government in England by way of trial for three years. As originally introduced into the House, this ordinance met with great opposition, because it gave power to ministers of refusing the sacrament and turning men out of the Church for scandalous offences. Now, in what, argued the Erastians, did scandalous offences consist? ... A modified ordinance accordingly was passed; scandalous offences, for which ministers might refuse the sacrament and excommunicate, were specified; assemblies were declared subject to Parliament, and leave was granted to those who thought themselves unjustly sentenced, to appeal right up from one Church assembly after another to the civil power--the Parliament (16th March, 1646). Presbyterians, both in England and Scotland, felt deeply mortified. After all these years' contending, then, just when they thought they were entering on the fruits of their labours, to see the Church still left under the power of the State--the disappointment was intense to a degree we cannot estimate. They looked on the Independents as the enemies of God; this 'lame Erastian Presbytery' as hardly worth the having. ... The Assembly of Divines practically came to an end in 1649, when it was changed into a committee for examining candidates for the Presbyterian ministry. It finally broke up without any formal dismissal on the dispersion of the Rump Parliament in March, 1653." B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 9. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War. chapter 40 (volume 2). A. F. Mitchell, The Westminster Assembly, lectures 7, 9, 13. Minutes of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly. See, also, INDEPENDENTS. {877} ENGLAND: A. D. 1646-1647. The King in the hands of the Scots. His duplicity and his intrigues. The Scots surrender him. "On the morning of May 6th authentic news came that the King had ridden into the Scottish army, and had entrusted to his northern subjects the guardianship of his royal person. Thereupon the English Parliament at once asserted their right to dispose of their King so long as he was on English soil; and for the present ordered that he be sent to Warwick Castle, an order, however, which had no effect. Newark, impregnable even to Ironsides, was surrendered at last by royal order; and the Scots retreated northwards to Newcastle, carrying their sovereign with them. ... Meantime the City Presbyterians were petitioning the House to quicken the establishment of the godly and thorough reformation so long promised; and they were supported by letters from the Scottish Parliament, which, in the month of February, 1646, almost peremptorily required that the Solemn League and Covenant should be carried out in the Scottish sense of it. ... The question as to the disposal of the King's person became accidentally involved in the issues between Presbyterianism and the sects. For if the King had been a man to be trusted, and if he had frankly accepted the army programme of free religion, a free Parliament, and responsible advisers, there is little doubt that he might have kept his crown and his Anglican ritual--at least for his own worship--and might yet have concluded his reign prosperously as the first constitutional King of England. Instead of this, he angered the army by making their most sacred purposes mere cards in a game, to be played or held as he thought most to his own advantage in dealing with the Presbyterian Parliament. On July 11th, 1646, Commissioners from both Houses were appointed to lay certain propositions for peace before the King at Newcastle. These of course involved everything for which the Parliament had contended, and in a form developed and exaggerated by the altered position of affairs. All armed forces were to be absolutely under the control of Parliament for a period of 20 years. Speaking generally, all public acts done by Parliament, or by its authority, were to be confirmed; and all public acts done by the King or his Oxford anti-Parliament, without due authorisation from Westminster, were to be void. ... On August 10th the Commissioners who had been sent to the King returned to Westminster. ... The King had given no distinct answer. It was a suspicious circumstance that the Duke of Hamilton had gone into Scotland, especially as Cromwell learned that, in spite of an ostensible order from the King, Montrose's force had not been disbanded. The labyrinthine web of royal intrigue in Ireland was beginning to be discovered. ... The death of the Earl of Essex on September 14th increased the growing danger of a fatal schism in the victorious party. The Presbyterians had hoped to restore him to the head of the army, and so sheathe or blunt the terrible weapon they had forged and could not wield. They were now left without a man to rival in military authority the commanders whose exploits overwhelmed their employers with a too complete success. Not only were the political and religious opinions of the soldiers a cause of anxiety, but the burden of their sustenance and pay was pressing heavily on the country. ... No wonder that the City of London, always sensitive as to public security, began to urge upon the Parliament the necessity for diminishing or disbanding the army in England. ... The Parliament, however, could not deal with the army, for two reasons; First, the negotiations with the Scotch lingered; and next, they could not pay the men. The first difficulty was overcome, at least for the time, by the middle of January, 1647, when a train of wagons carried £200,000 to Newcastle in discharge of the English debt to the Scottish army. But the successful accomplishment of this only increased the remaining difficulty of the Parliament--that of paying their own soldiers. We need not notice the charge made against the Scotch of selling their King further than to say, that it is unfairly based upon only one subordinate feature of a very complicated negotiation. If the King would have taken the Covenant, and guaranteed to them their precious Presbyterian system, his Scottish subjects would have fought for him almost to the last man. The firmness of Charles in declining the Covenant for himself is, no doubt, the most creditable point in his resistance. But his obstinacy in disputing the right of two nations, in their political establishment of religion, to override his convictions by their own, illustrates his entire incapacity to comprehend the new light dawning on the relations of sovereign and people. The Scots did their best for him. They petitioned him, they knelt to him, they preached to him. ... But to have carried with them an intractable man to form a wedge of division amongst themselves, at the same time that he brought against them the whole power of England, would have been sheer insanity. Accordingly, they made the best bargain they could both for him and themselves; and, taking their wages, they left him with his English subjects, who conducted him to Holdenby House, in Northamptonshire, on the 6th of February, 1647." J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 13. ALSO IN: S. R. Gardiner, The First two Stuarts and the Puritan Revolution, chapter 7, section 4. S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, chapter 3845 (volume 2). W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, book 1, chapters 24-27, and book 2, chapter 1-6 (volume 2). Earl of Clarendon, History of chapter Rebellion, book 9, section 161-178, and book 10 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1647 (APRIL-AUGUST). The Army takes things in hand. The King was surrendered to Parliament, and all now looking toward peace, the Presbyterians were uppermost, discredit falling upon the Army and its favorers. Many of the Recruiters [i. e., the new members, elected to fill vacancies in the Parliament], who at first had acted with the Independents, inclined now to their opponents. The Presbyterians, feeling that none would dare to question the authority of Parliament, pushed energetically their policy as regards the Army, of sending to Ireland, disbanding, neglecting the payment of arrears, and displacing the old officers. But suddenly there came for them a rude awakening. On April 30, 1647, Skippon, whom all liked, whom the Presbyterians indeed claimed, but who at the same time kept on good terms with the Army and Independents, rose in his place in St. Stephens and produced a letter, brought to him the day before by three private soldiers, in which eight regiments of horse expressly refused to serve in Ireland, declaring that it was a perfidious design to separate the soldiers from the officers whom they loved,--framed by men who, having tasted of power, were degenerating into tyrants. Holles and the Presbyterians were thunder-struck, and laying aside all other business summoned the three soldiers to appear at once. ... {878} A violent tumult arose in the House. The Presbyterians declared that the three sturdy Ironsides standing there, with their buff stained from their corselets, ought to be at once committed; to which it was answered, that if there were to be commitment, it should be to the best London tavern, and sack and sugar provided. Cromwell, leaning over toward Ludlow, who sat next to him, and pointing to the Presbyterians, said that those fellows would never leave till the Army pulled them out by the ears. That day it became known that there existed an organization, a sort of Parliament, in the Army, the officers forming an upper council and the representatives of the rank and file a lower council. Two such representatives stood in the lower council for each squadron or troop, known as 'Adjutators,' aiders, or 'Agitators.' This organization had taken upon itself to see that the Army had its rights. ... At the end of a month, there was still greater occasion for astonishment. Seven hundred horse suddenly left the camp, and appearing without warning, June 2, at Holmby House, where Charles was kept, in charge of Parliamentary commissioners, proposed to assume the custody of the King. A cool, quiet fellow, of rank no higher than that of cornet, led them and was their spokesman, Joyce. 'What is your authority?' asked the King. The cornet simply pointed to the mass of troopers at his back. ... So bold a step as the seizure of the King made necessary other bold steps on the part of the Army. Scarcely a fortnight had passed, when a demand was made for the exclusion from Parliament of eleven Presbyterians, the men most conspicuous for extreme views. The Army meanwhile hovered, ever ominously, close at hand, to the north and east of the city, paying slight regard to the Parliamentary prohibition to remain at a distance. The eleven members withdrew. ... But if Parliament was willing to yield, Presbyterian London and the country round about were not, and in July broke out into sheer rebellion. ... The Speakers of the Lords and Commons, at the head of the strength of the Parliament, fourteen Peers and one hundred Commoners, betook themselves to Fairfax, and on August 2 they threw themselves into the protection of the Army at Hounslow Heath, ten miles distant. A grand review took place. The consummate soldier, Fairfax, had his troops in perfect condition, and they were drawn out 20,000 strong to receive the seceding Parliament. The soldiers rent the air with shouts in their behalf, and all was made ready for a most impressive demonstration. On the 6th of August, Fairfax marched his troops in full array through the city, from Hammersmith to Westminster. Each man had in his hat a wreath of laurel. The Lords and Commons who had taken flight were escorted in the midst of the column; the city officials joined the train. At Westminster the Speakers were ceremoniously reinstalled, and the Houses again put to work, the first business being to thank the General and the veterans who had reconstituted them. The next day, with Skippon in the centre and Cromwell in the rear, the Army marched through the city itself, a heavy tramp of battle-seasoned platoons, at the mere sound of which the war-like ardor of the turbulent youths of the work-shops and the rough watermen was completely squelched. Yet the soldiers looked neither to the right nor left; nor by act, word, or gesture was any offence given." J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Henry Vane, chapter 12. ALSO IN: C. R. Markham, Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, chapter 24. T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 3, letter 26. W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, book 2, chapter 7-11. ENGLAND: A. D. 1647 (AUGUST-DECEMBER). The King's "Game" with Cromwell and the army, and the ending of it. After reinstating the Parliament at Westminster, "the army leaders resumed negotiations with the King. The indignation of the soldiers at his delays and intrigues made the task hourly more difficult; but Cromwell ... clung to the hope of accommodation with a passionate tenacity. His mind, conservative by tradition, and above all practical in temper, saw the political difficulties which would follow on the abolition of Royalty, and in spite of the King's evasions, he persisted in negotiating with him. But Cromwell stood almost alone; the Parliament refused to accept Ireton's proposals as a basis of peace, Charles still evaded, and the army then grew restless and suspicious. There were cries for a wide reform, for the abolition of the House of Peers, for a new House of Commons, and the Adjutators called on the Council of Officers to discuss the question of abolishing Royalty itself. Cromwell was never braver than when he faced the gathering storm, forbade the discussion, adjourned the Council, and sent the officers to their regiments. But the strain was too great to last long, and Charles was still resolute to 'play his game.' He was, in fact, so far from being in earnest in his negotiations with Cromwell and Ireton, that at the moment they were risking their lives for him he was conducting another and equally delusive negotiation with the Parliament. ... In the midst of his hopes of an accommodation, Cromwell found with astonishment that he had been duped throughout, and that the King had fled [November 11, 1647]. ... Even Cromwell was powerless to break the spirit which now pervaded the soldiers, and the King's perfidy left him without resource. 'The King is a man of great parts and great understanding,' he said at last, 'but so great a dissembler and so false a man that he is not to be trusted.' By a strange error, Charles had made his way from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, perhaps with some hope from the sympathy of Colonel Hammond, the Governor of Carisbrooke Castle, and again found himself a prisoner. Foiled in his effort to put himself at the head of the new civil war, he set himself to organize it from his prison; and while again opening delusive negotiations with the Parliament, he signed a secret treaty with the Scots for the invasion of the realm. The rise of Independency, and the practical suspension of the Covenant, had produced a violent reaction in his favour north of the Tweed. ... In England the whole of the conservative party, with many of the most conspicuous members of the Long Parliament at its head, was drifting, in its horror of the religious and political changes which seemed impending, toward the King; and the news from Scotland gave the signal for fitful insurrections in almost every quarter." J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 8, section 8. ALSO IN: F. P. Guizot, History of the English Revolution of 1640, books 7-8. L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 10, chapter 4. W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth. G. Hillier, Narrative of attempted Escapes of Charles I. from Carisbrooke Castle, &c. {879} ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (April-August). The Second Civil War. Defeat of the Scots at Preston. "The Second Civil War broke out in April, and proved to be a short but formidable affair. The whole of Wales was speedily in insurrection; a strong force of cavaliers were mustering in the north of England; in Essex, Surrey, and the southern counties various outbreaks arose; Berwick, Carlisle, Chester, Pembroke, Colchester, were held for the king; the fleet revolted; and 40,000 men were ordered by the Parliament of Scotland to invade England. Lambert was sent to the north; Fairfax to take Colchester; and Cromwell into Wales, and thence to join Lambert and meet the Scotch. On the 24th of May Cromwell reached Pembroke, but being short of guns, he did not take it till 11th July. The rising in Wales crushed, Cromwell turned northwards, where the northwest was already in revolt, and 20,000 Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, were advancing into the country. Want of supplies and shoes, and sickness, detained him with his army, some 7,000 strong, 'so extremely harassed with hard service and long marches, that they seemed rather fit for a hospital than a battle.' Having joined Lambert in Yorkshire he fought the battle of Preston on 17th of August. The battle of Preston was one of the most decisive and important victories ever gained by Cromwell, over the most numerous enemy he ever encountered, and the first in which he was in supreme command. ... Early on the morning of the 17th August, Cromwell, with some 9,000 men, fell upon the army of the Duke of Hamilton unawares, as it proceeded southwards in a long, straggling, unprotected line. The invaders consisted of 17,000 Scots and 7,000 good men from northern counties. The long ill-ordered line was cut In half and rolled back northward and southward, before they even knew that Cromwell was upon them. The great host, cut into sections, fought with desperation from town to town. But for three days it was one long chase and carnage, which ended only with the exhaustion of the victors and their horses. Ten thousand prisoners were taken. 'We have killed we know not what,' writes Cromwell, 'but a very great number; having done execution upon them above thirty miles together, besides what we killed in the two great fights.' His own loss was small, and but one superior officer. ... The Scottish invaders dispersed, Cromwell hastened to recover Berwick and Carlisle, and to restore the Presbyterian or Whig party in Scotland." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 7. ALSO IN: J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, chapter 74 (volume 7). Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 11 (volume 4). ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER). The Treaty at Newport. "The unfortunate issue of the Scots expedition under the duke of Hamilton, and of the various insurrections throughout England, quelled by the vigilance and good conduct of Fairfax and Cromwell, is well known. But these formidable manifestations of the public sentiment in favour of peace with the king on honourable conditions, wherein the city of London, ruled by the presbyterian ministers, took a share, compelled the house of commons to retract its measures. They came to a vote, by 165 to 90, that they would not alter the fundamental government by king, lords, and commons; they abandoned their impeachment against seven peers, the most moderate of the upper house and the most obnoxious to the army: they restored the eleven members to their seats; they revoked their resolutions against a personal treaty with the king, and even that which required his assent by certain preliminary articles. In a word the party for distinction's sake called presbyterian, but now rather to be denominated constitutional, regained its ascendancy. This change in the counsels of parliament brought on the treaty of Newport. The treaty of Newport was set on foot and managed by those politicians of the house of lords, who, having long suspected no danger to themselves but from the power of the king, had discovered, somewhat of the latest, that the crown itself was at stake, and that their own privileges were set on the same cast. Nothing was more remote from the intentions of the earl of Northumberland, or lord Say, than to see themselves pushed from their seats by such upstarts as Ireton and Harrison; and their present mortification afforded a proof how men reckoned wise in their generation become the dupes of their own selfish, crafty, and pusillanimous policy. They now grew anxious to see a treaty concluded with the king. Sensible that it was necessary to anticipate, if possible, the return of Cromwell from the north, they implored him to comply at once with all the propositions of parliament, or at least to yield in the first instance as far as he meant to go. They had not, however, mitigated in any degree the rigorous conditions so often proposed; nor did the king during this treaty obtain any reciprocal concession worth mentioning in return for his surrender of almost all that could be demanded." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 10, part 2. The utter faithlessness with which Charles carried on these negotiations, as on all former occasions, was shown at a later day when his correspondence came to light. "After having solemnly promised that all hostilities in Ireland should cease, he secretly wrote to Ormond (October 10): 'Obey my wife's orders, not mine, until I shall let you know I am free from all restraint; nor trouble yourself about my concessions as to Ireland; they will not lead to anything;' and the day on which he had consented to transfer to parliament for twenty years the command of the army (October 9), he wrote to sir William Hopkins: 'To tell you the truth, my great concession this morning was made only with a view to facilitate my approaching escape; without that hope, I should never have yielded in this manner. If I had refused, I could, without much sorrow, have returned to my prison; but as it is, I own it would break my heart, for I have done that which my escape alone can justify.' The parliament, though without any exact information, suspected all this perfidy; even the friends of peace, the men most affected by the king's condition, and most earnest to save him, replied but hesitatingly to the charges of the independents." F. P. Guizot, History of the English Revolution of 1640, book 8. ALSO IN: Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 11, sections 153-190 (volume 4). I. Disraeli, Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I., volume 2, chapters 39-40. {880} ENGLAND: A. D. 1648 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER). The Grand Army Remonstrance and Pride's Purge. The Long Parliament cut down to the Rump. On the 20th of November, 1648, Colonel Ewer and other officers presented to the house of commons a remonstrance from the Army against the negotiations and proposed treaty with the king. This was accompanied by a letter from Fairfax, stating that it had been voted unanimously in the council of officers, and entreating for it the consideration of parliament. The remonstrance recommended an immediate ending of the treaty conferences at Newport, demanded that the king be brought to justice, as the capital source of all grievances, and called upon parliament to enact its own dissolution, with provision for the electing and convening of future annual or biennial parliaments. Ten days passed without attention being given to this army manifesto, the house having twice adjourned its consideration of the document. On the first of December there appeared at Newport a party of horse which quietly took possession of the person of the king, and conveyed him to Hurst Castle, "a fortress in Hampshire, situated at the extreme point of a neck of land, which shoots into the sea towards the isle of Wight." The same day on which this was done, "the commissioners who had treated with the king at Newport made their appearance in the two houses of parliament; and the two following days were occupied by the house of commons in an earnest debate as to the state of the negotiation. Vane was one of the principal speakers against the treaty; and Fiennes, who had hitherto ranked among the independents, spoke for it. At length, after the house had sat all night, it was put and carried, at five in the morning of the 5th, by a majority of 129 to 83, that the king's answers to the propositions of both houses were a ground for them to proceed upon, to the settlement of the peace of the kingdom. On the same day this vote received the concurrence of the house of lords." Meantime, on the 30th of November, the council of the army had voted a second declaration more fully expressive of its views and announcing its intention to draw near to London, for the accomplishment of the purposes of the remonstrance. "On the 2d of December Fairfax marched to London, and quartered his army at Whitehall, St. James's, the Mews, and the villages near the metropolis. ... On the 5th of December three officers of the army held a meeting with three members of parliament, to arrange the plan by which the sound members might best be separated from those by whom their measures were thwarted, and might peaceably be put in possession of the legislative authority. The next morning a regiment of horse, and another of foot were placed as a guard upon the two houses, Skippon, who commanded the city-militia, having agreed with the council of the army to keep back the guard under his authority which usually performed that duty. A part of the foot were ranged in the Court of Requests, upon the stairs, and in the lobby leading to the house of commons. Colonel Pride was stationed near the door, with a list in his hand of the persons he was commissioned to arrest; and sometimes one of the door-keepers, and at others Lord Grey of Groby, pointed them out to him, as they came up with an intention of passing into the house. Forty-one members were thus arrested. ... On the following day more members were secured, or denied entrance, amounting, with those of the day before, to about one hundred. At the same time Cromwell took his seat; and Henry Marten moved that the speaker should return him thanks for his great and eminent services performed in the course of the campaign. The day after, the two houses adjourned to the 12th. During the adjournment many of the members who had been taken into custody by the military were liberated. ... Besides those who were absolutely secured, or shut out from their seats by the power of the army, there were other members that looked with dislike on the present proceedings, or that considered parliament as being under force, and not free in their deliberations, who voluntarily abstained from being present at their sittings and debates." W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, book 2, chapters 23-24 (volume 2). "The famous Pride's Purge was accomplished. By military force the Long Parliament was cut down to a fraction of its number, and the career begins of the mighty 'Rump,' so called in the coarse wit of the time because it was 'the sitting part.'" J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Henry Vane, chapter 13. "This name [the Rump] was first given to them by Walker, the author of the History of Independency, by way of derision, in allusion to a fowl all devoured but the rump." D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 4, chapter 1, foot-note. ALSO IN: C. R Markham, Life of the Great Lord Fairfax, chapter 28. D. Masson, Life of John Milton, book 4, chapters 1 and 3 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (JANUARY). The trial and execution of the King. "During the month in which Charles had remained at Windsor [whither he had been brought from Hurst Castle on the 17th of December], there had been proceedings in Parliament of which he was imperfectly informed. On the day he arrived there, it was resolved by the Commons that he should be brought to trial. On the 2nd of January, 1649, it was voted that, in making war against the Parliament, he had been guilty of treason; and a High Court was appointed to try him. One hundred and fifty commissioners were to compose the Court,-- peers, members of the Commons, aldermen of London. The ordinance was sent to the Upper House, and was rejected. On the 6th, a fresh ordinance, declaring that the people being, after God, the source of all just power, the representatives of the people are the supreme power in the nation; and that whatsoever is enacted or declared for law by the Commons in Parliament hath the force of a law, and the people are concluded thereby, though the consent of King or Peers be not had thereto. Asserting this power, so utterly opposed either to the ancient constitution of the monarchy, or to the possible working of a republic, there was no hesitation in constituting the High Court of Justice in the name of the Commons alone. The number of members of the Court was now reduced to 135. They had seven preparatory meetings, at which only 58 members attended. 'All men,' says Mrs. Hutchinson, 'were left to their free liberty of acting, neither persuaded nor compelled; and as there were some nominated in the commission who never sat, and others who sat at first but durst not hold on, so all the rest might have declined it if they would, when it is apparent they should have suffered nothing by so doing.' ... On the 19th of January, major Harrison appeared ... at Windsor with his troop. There was a coach with six horses in the court-yard, in which the King took his seat; and, once more, he entered London, and was lodged at St. James's palace. {881} The next day, the High Court of Justice was opened in Westminster-hall. ... After the names of the members of the court had been called, 69 being present, Bradshaw, the president, ordered the serjeant to bring in the prisoner. Silently the King sat down in the chair prepared for him. He moved not his hat, as he looked sternly and contemptuously around. The sixty-nine rose not from their seats, and remained covered. ... The clerk reads the charge, and when he is accused therein of being tyrant and traitor, he laughs in the face of the Court. 'Though his tongue usually hesitated, yet it was very free at this time, for he was never discomposed in mind,' writes Warwick. ... Again and again contending against the authority of the Court, the King was removed, and the sitting was adjourned to the 22nd. On that day the same scene was renewed; and again on the 23rd. A growing sympathy for the monarch became apparent. The cries of 'Justice, justice,' which were heard at first, were now mingled with 'God save the King.' He had refused to plead; but the Court nevertheless employed the 24th and 25th of January in collecting evidence to prove the charge of his levying war against the Parliament. Coke, the solicitor-general, then demanded whether the Court would proceed to pronouncing sentence; and the members adjourned to the Painted Chamber. On the 27th the public sitting was resumed. ... The Court, Bradshaw then stated, had agreed upon the sentence. Ludlow records that the King' desired to make one proposition before they proceeded to sentence; which he earnestly pressing, as that which he thought would lead to the reconciling of all parties, and to the peace of the three kingdoms, they permitted him to offer it; the effect of which was, that he might meet the two Houses in the Painted Chamber, to whom he doubted not to offer that which should satisfy and secure all interests.' Ludlow goes on to say, 'Designing, as I have since been informed, to propose his own resignation, and the admission of his son to the throne upon such terms as should have been agreed upon.' The commissioners retired to deliberate, 'and being satisfied, upon debate, that nothing but loss of time would be the consequence of it, they returned into the Court with a negative to his demand.' Bradshaw then delivered a solemn speech to the King. ... The clerk was lastly commanded to read the sentence, that his head should be severed from his body; 'and the commissioners,' says Ludlow, 'testified their unanimous assent by standing up.' The King attempted to speak; 'but being accounted dead in law, was not permitted.' On the 29th of January, the Court met to sign the sentence of execution, addressed to 'colonel Francis Hacker, colonel Huncks, and lieutenant-colonel Phayr, and to every one of them.' ... There were some attempts to save him. The Dutch ambassador made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve, whilst the French and Spanish ambassadors were inert. The ambassadors from the States nevertheless persevered; and early in the day of the 30th obtained some glimmering of hope from Fairfax. 'But we found,' they say in their despatch, 'in front of the house in which we had just spoken with the general, about 200 horsemen; and we learned, as well as on our way as on reaching home, that all the streets, passages, and squares of London were occupied by troops, so that no one could pass, and that the approaches of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to prevent anyone from coming in or going out; ... The same day, between two and three o'clock, the King was taken to a scaffold covered with black, erected before Whitehall.' To that scaffold before Whitehall, Charles walked, surrounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues of St. James's Park. It was a bitterly cold morning. ... His purposed address to the people was delivered only to the hearing of those upon the scaffold, but its purport was that the people mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by due administration of the laws of it.' His theory of government was a consistent one. He had the misfortune not to understand that the time had been fast passing away for its assertion. The headsman did his office; and a deep groan went up from the surrounding multitude." Charles Knight, Popular History of England, volume 4, chapter 7. "In the death-warrant of 29th January 1649, next after the President and Lord Grey, stands the name of Oliver Cromwell. He accepted the responsibility of it, justified, defended it to his dying day. No man in England was more entirely answerable for the deed than he, 'I tell you,' he said to Algernon Sidney, 'we will cut off his head with the crown upon it.' ... Slowly he had come to know--not only that the man, Charles Stuart, was incurably treacherous, but that any settlement of Parliament with the old Feudal Monarchy was impossible. As the head of the king rolled on the scaffold the old Feudal Monarchy expired for ever. In January 1649 a great mark was set in the course of the national life--the Old Rule behind it, the New Rule before it. Parliamentary government, the consent of the nation, equality of rights, and equity in the law--all date from this great New Departure. The Stuarts indeed returned for one generation, but with the sting of the Old Monarchy gone, and only to disappear almost without a blow. The Church of England returned; but not the Church of Laud or of Charles. The peers returned, but as a meek House of Lords, with their castles razed, their feudal rights and their political power extinct. It is said that the regicides killed Charles I. only to make Charles II. king. It is not so, They killed the Old Monarchy; and the restored monarch was by no means its heir, but a royal Stadtholder or Hereditary President." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 7. "Respecting the death of Charles it has been pronounced by Fox, that 'it is much to be doubted whether his trial and execution have not, as much as any other circumstance, served to raise the character of the English nation in the opinion of Europe in general.' And he goes on to speak with considerable favour of the authors of that event. One of the great authorities of the age having so pronounced, an hundred and fifty years after the deed, it may be proper to consider for a little the real merits of the actors, and the act. It is not easy to imagine a greater criminal than the individual against whom the sentence was awarded. ... Liberty is one of the greatest negative advantages that can fall to the lot of a man; without it we cannot possess any high degree of happiness, or exercise any considerable virtue. Now Charles, to a degree which can scarcely be exceeded, conspired against the liberty of his country, to assert his own authority without limitation, was the object of all his desires and all his actions, so far as the public was concerned. {882} To accomplish this object he laid aside the use of a parliament. When he was compelled once more to have recourse to this assembly, and found it retrograde to his purposes, he determined to bring up the army, and by that means to put an end to its sittings. Both in Scotland and England, the scheme that he formed for setting aside all opposition, was by force of arms. For that purpose he commenced war against the English parliament, and continued it by every expedient in his power for four years. Conquered, and driven out of the field, he did not for that, for a moment lose sight of his object and his resolution. He sought in every quarter for the materials of a new war; and, after an interval of twenty months, and from the depths of his prison, he found them. To this must be added the most consummate insincerity and duplicity. He could never be reconciled; he could never be disarmed; he could never be convinced. His was a war to the death, and therefore had the utmost aggravation that can belong to a war against the liberty of a nation. ... The proper lesson taught by the act of the thirtieth of January, was that no person, however high in station, however protected by the prejudices of his contemporaries, must expect to be criminal against the welfare of the state and community, without retribution and punishment. The event however sufficiently proved that the condemnation and execution of Charles did not answer the purposes intended by its authors. It did not conciliate the English nation to republican ideas. It shocked all those persons in the country who did not adhere to the ruling party. This was in some degree owing to the decency with which Charles met his fate. He had always been in manners, formal, sober and specious. ... The notion was every where prevalent, that a sovereign could not be called to account, could not be arraigned at the bar of his subjects. And the violation of this prejudice, instead of breaking down the wall which separated him from others, gave to his person a sacredness which never before appertained to it. Among his own partisans the death of Charles was treated, and was spoken of, as a sort of deicide. And it may be admitted for a universal rule, that the abrupt violation of a deep-rooted maxim and persuasion of the human mind, produces a reaction, and urges men to hug the maxim closer than ever. I am afraid, that the day that saw Charles perish on the scaffold, rendered the restoration of his family certain." W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth of England to the Restoration of Charles II., book 2, chapter 26 (volume 2). "The situation, complicated enough already, had been still further complicated by Charles's duplicity. Men who would have been willing to come to terms with him, despaired of any constitutional arrangement in which he was to be a factor; and men who had long been alienated from him were irritated into active hostility. By these he was regarded with increasing intensity as the one disturbing force with which no understanding was possible and no settled order consistent. To remove him out of the way appeared, even to those who had no thought of punishing him for past offences, to be the only possible road to peace for the troubled nation. It seemed that so long as Charles lived deluded nations and deluded parties would be stirred up, by promises never intended to be fulfilled, to fling themselves, as they had flung themselves in the Second Civil War, against the new order of things which was struggling to establish itself in England." S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, 1642-1649, chapter 71 (volume 3). ALSO IN: John Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Henry Marten. S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, pages 268-290. The following is the text of the Act which arraigned the King and constituted the Court by which he was tried: "Whereas it is notorious that Charles Stuart, the now king of England, not content with the many encroachments which his predecessors had made upon the people in their rights and freedom, hath had a wicked design totally to subvert the antient and fundamental laws and liberties of this nation, and in their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyrannical government; and that, besides all other evil ways and means to bring his design to pass, he hath prosecuted it with fire and sword, levied and maintained a civil war in the land, against the parliament and kingdom; whereby this country hath been miserably wasted, the public treasure exhausted, trade decayed, thousands of people murdered, and infinite other mischiefs committed; for all which high and treasonable offences the said Charles Stuart might long since have justly been brought to exemplary and condign punishment: whereas also the parliament, well hoping that the restraint and imprisonment of his person after it had pleased God to deliver him into their hands, would have quieted the distempers of the kingdom, did forbear to proceed judicially against him; but found, by sad experience, that such their remissness served only to encourage him and his accomplices in the continuance of their evil practices and in raising new commotions, rebellions, and invasions: for prevention therefore of the like or greater inconveniences, and to the end no other chief officer or magistrate whatsoever may hereafter presume, traiterously and maliciously, to imagine or contrive the enslaving or destroying of the English nation, and to expect impunity for so doing; be it enacted and ordained by the [Lords] and commons in Parliament assembled, and it is hereby enacted and ordained by the authority thereof, That the earls of Kent, Nottingham, Pembroke, Denbigh, and Mulgrave; the lord Grey of Warke; lord chief justice Rolle of the king's bench, lord chief justice St. John of the common Pleas, and lord chief baron Wylde; the lord Fairfax, lieutenant general Cromwell, &c. [in all about 150,] shall be, and are hereby appointed and required to be Commissioners and Judges, for the Hearing, Trying, and Judging of the said Charles Stuart; and the said Commissioners, or any 20 or more of them, shall be, and are hereby authorized and constituted an High Court of Justice, to meet and sit at such convenient times and place as by the said commissioners, or the major part, or 20 or more of them, under their hands and seals, shall be appointed and notified by public Proclamation in the Great Hall, or Palace Yard of Westminster; and to adjourn from time to time, and from place to place, as the said High Court, or the major part thereof, at meeting, shall hold fit; and to take order for the charging of him, the said Charles Stuart, with the Crimes and Treasons above-mentioned, and for receiving his personal Answer thereunto, and for examination of witnesses upon oath, (which the court hath hereby authority to administer) or otherwise, and taking any other Evidence concerning the same; and thereupon, or in default of such Answer, to proceed to final Sentence according to justice and the merit of the cause; and such final Sentence to execute, or cause to be executed, speedily and impartially.-- {883} And the said court is hereby and required to chuse and appoint all such officers, attendants, and other circumstances as they, or the major part of them, shall in any sort judge necessary or useful for the orderly and good managing of the premises; and Thomas lord Fairfax the General, and all officers and soldiers, under his command, and all officers of justice, and other well-affected persons, are hereby authorized and required to be aiding and assisting unto the said court in the due execution of the trust hereby committed unto them; provided that this act, and the authority hereby granted, do continue in force for the space of one month from the date of the making hereof, and no longer." Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, volume 3, pages 1254-1255. ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY). The Commonwealth established. "England was now a Republic. The change had been virtually made on Thursday, January 4, 1648-9, when the Commons passed their three great Resolutions, declaring (1) that the People of England were, under God, the original of all just power in the State, (2) that the Commons, in Parliament assembled, having been chosen by the People, and representing the People, possessed the supreme power in their name, and (3) that whatever the Commons enacted should have the force of a law, without needing the consent of either King or House of Peers. On Tuesday, the 30th of January, the theory of these Resolutions became more visibly a fact. On the afternoon of that day, while the crowd that had seen the execution in front of Whitehall were still lingering round the scaffold, the Commons passed an Act 'prohibiting the proclaiming of any person to be King of England or Ireland, or the dominions thereof.' It was thus declared that Kingship in England had died with Charles. But what of the House of Peers? It was significant that on the same fatal day the Commons revived their three theoretical resolutions of the 4th, and ordered them to be printed. The wretched little rag of a House might then have known its doom. But it took a week more to convince them." On the 6th of February it was resolved by the House of Commons, "'That the House of Peers in Parliament is useless and dangerous, and ought to be abolished, and that an Act be brought in to that purpose.' Next day, February 7, after another long debate, it was further resolved 'That it hath been found by experience, and this House doth declare, that the office of a King in this realm, and to have the power thereof in any single person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest of the People of this nation, and therefore ought to be abolished, and that an Act be brought in to that purpose.' Not till after some weeks were these Acts deliberately passed after the customary three readings. The delay, however, was matter of mere Parliamentary form. Theoretically a Republic since Jan. 4, 1648-9, and visibly a Republic from the day of Charles's death, England was a Republic absolutely and in every sense from February 7, 1648-9." For the administration of the government of the republican Commonwealth, the Commons resolved, on the 7th of February, that a Council of State be erected; to consist of not more than forty persons. On the 13th, Instructions to the intended Council of State were reported and agreed to, "these Instructions conferring almost plenary powers, but limiting the duration of the Council to one year." On the 14th and 15th forty-one persons were appointed to be members of the Council, Fairfax, Cromwell, Vane, St. John, Whitlocke, Henry Marten, and Colonels Hutchinson and Ludlow being in the number; nine to constitute a quorum, and no permanent President to be chosen. D. Masson, Life of John Milton, volume 4, book 1, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. Lingard, History of England, volume. 10, chapter 5. A. Bisset, Omitted Chapters of History of England, chapter 1. ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (FEBRUARY). The Eikon Basilike. "A book, published with great secrecy, and in very mysterious circumstances, February 9, 1648-9, exactly ten days after the late King's death, had done much to increase the Royalist enthusiasm. 'Eikon Basilike: The True Portraicture of His Sacred Majestie in his Solitudes and Sufferings.--Romans viii. More than conquerour, &c.--Bona agere et mala pati Regium est. MDCXLVIII': such was the title-page of this volume (of 269 pages of text, in small octavo), destined by fate, rather than by merit, to be one of the most famous books of the world. ... The book, so elaborately prepared and heralded, consists of twenty-eight successive chapters, purporting to have been written by the late King, and to be the essence of his spiritual autobiography in the last years of his life. Each chapter, with scarcely an exception, begins with a little narrative, or generally rather with reflections and meditations on some passage of the King's life the narrative of which is supposed to be unnecessary, and ends with a prayer in italics appropriate to the circumstances remembered. ... Save for a few ... passages ... , the pathos of which lies in the situation they represent, the Eikon Basilike is a rather dull performance, in third-rate rhetoric, modulated after the Liturgy; and without incision, point, or the least shred of real information as to facts. But O what a reception it had! Copies of it ran about instantaneously, and were read with sobs and tears. It was in vain that Parliament, March 16, gave orders for seizing the book. It was reprinted at once in various forms, to supply the constant demand--which was not satisfied, it is said, with less than fifty editions within a single year; it became a very Bible in English Royalist households. ... By means of this book, in fact, acting on the state of sentiment which it fitted, there was established, within a few weeks after the death of Charles I., that marvellous worship of his memory, that passionate recollection of him as the perfect man and the perfect king, the saint, the martyr, the all but Christ on earth again, which persisted till the other day as a positive religious cultus of the English mind, and still lingers in certain quarters." D. Masson, Life and Times of John Milton, volume 4, book 1, chapter 1. {884} "I struggled through the Eikon Basilike yesterday; one of the paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-starched, immaculate falsity and cant I have ever read. It is to me an amazement how any mortal could ever have taken that for a genuine book of King Charles's. Nothing but a surpliced Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could have got up such a set of meditations. It got Parson Gauden [John Gauden, Bishop of Exeter and Worcester, successively, after the Restoration, and who is believed to have been the author of the Eikon Basilike] a bishopric." T. Carlyle, History of his Life in London, by Froude, volume 1, chapter 7, November 26, 1840. ENGLAND: A. D. 1649 (APRIL-MAY). Mutiny of the Levellers. See LEVELLERS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1649-1650. Cromwell's campaign in Ireland. See IRELAND: A. D. 1649-1650. ENGLAND: A. D. 1650 (JULY). Charles II. proclaimed King in Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1650 (MARCH-JULY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1650 (SEPTEMBER). War with the Scots and Cromwell's victory at Dunbar. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1650 (SEPTEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1651 (SEPTEMBER). The Scots and Charles II. overthrown at Worcester. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1651. ENGLAND: A. D. 1651-1653. The Army and the Rump. "'Now that the King is dead and his son defeated,' Cromwell said gravely to the Parliament, 'I think it necessary to come to a settlement.' But the settlement which had been promised after Naseby was still as distant as ever after Worcester. The bill for dissolving the present Parliament, though Cromwell pressed it in person, was only passed, after bitter opposition, by a majority of two; and even this success had been purchased by a compromise which permitted the House to sit for three years more. Internal affairs were simply at a dead lock. ... The one remedy for all this was, as the army saw, the assembly of a new and complete Parliament in place of the mere 'rump' of the old; but this was the one measure which the House was resolute to avert. Vane spurred it to a new activity. ... But it was necessary for Vane's purposes not only to show the energy of the Parliament, but to free it from the control of the army. His aim was to raise in the navy a force devoted to the House, and to eclipse the glories of Dunbar and Worcester by yet greater triumphs at sea. With this view the quarrel with Holland had been carefully nursed. ... The army hardly needed the warning conveyed by the introduction of a bill for its disbanding to understand the new policy of the Parliament. ... The army petitioned not only for reform in Church and State, but for an explicit declaration that the House would bring its proceedings to a close. The Petition forced the House to discuss a bill for 'a New Representative,' but the discussion soon brought out the resolve of the sitting members to continue as a part of the coming Parliament without re-election. The officers, irritated by such a claim, demanded in conference after conference an immediate dissolution, and the House as resolutely refused. In ominous words Cromwell supported the demands of the army. 'As for the members of this Parliament, the army begins to take them in disgust. I would it did so with less reason.' ... Not only were the existing members to continue as members of the New Parliament, depriving the places they represented of their right of choosing representatives, but they were to constitute a Committee of Revision, to determine the validity of each election, and the fitness of the members returned. A conference took place [April 19, 1653] between the leaders of the Commons and the officers of the army. ... The conference was adjourned till the next morning, on an understanding that no decisive step should be taken; but it had no sooner reassembled, than the absence of the leading members confirmed the news that Vane was fast pressing the bill for a new Representative through the House. 'It is contrary to common honesty,' Cromwell angrily broke out; and, quitting Whitehall, he summoned a company of musketeers to follow him as far as the door of the House of Commons." J. R Green, Short History of England, chapter 8, section 9. ALSO IN: J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell. J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 22. ENGLAND: A. D. 1651-1672. The Navigation Acts and the American colonies. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1651-1672; also, NAVIGATION LAWS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1652-1654. War with the Dutch Republic. "After the death of William, Prince of Orange, which was attended with the depression of his party and the triumph of the Dutch republicans [see NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1647-1650], the Parliament thought that the time was now favourable for cementing a closer confederacy with the states. St. John, chief justice, who was sent over to the Hague, had entertained the idea of forming a kind of coalition between the two republics, which would have rendered their interests totally inseparable; ... but the states, who were unwilling to form a nearer confederacy with a government whose measures were so obnoxious, and whose situation seemed so precarious, offered only to renew 'the former alliances with England; and the haughty St. John, disgusted with this disappointment, as well as incensed at many affronts which had been offered him, with impunity, by the retainers of the Palatine and Orange families, and indeed by the populace in general, returned into England and endeavoured to foment a quarrel between the republics. .... There were several motives which at this time induced the English Parliament to embrace hostile measures. Many of the members thought that a foreign war would serve as a pretence for continuing the same Parliament, and delaying the new model of a representative, with which the nation had so long been flattered. Others hoped that the war would furnish a reason for maintaining, some time longer, that numerous standing army which was so much complained of. On the other hand, some, who dreaded the increasing power of Cromwell, expected that the great expense of naval armaments would prove a motive for diminishing the military establishment. To divert the attention of the public from domestic quarrels towards foreign transactions, seemed, in the present disposition of men's minds, to be good policy. ... All these views, enforced by the violent spirit of St. John, who had great influence over Cromwell, determined the Parliament to change the purposed alliance into a furious war against the United Provinces. To cover these hostile intentions, the Parliament, under pretence of providing for the interests of commerce, embraced such measures as they knew would give disgust to the states. They framed the famous act of navigation, which prohibited all nations from importing into England in their bottoms any commodity which was not the growth and manufacture of their own country. ... The minds of men in both states were every day more irritated against each other; and it was not long before these humours broke forth into action." D. Hume, History of England, chapter 60 (volume 5). {885} "The negotiations ... were still pending when Blake, meeting Van Tromp's fleet in the Downs, in vain summoned the Dutch Admiral to lower his flag. A battle was the consequence, which led to a declaration of war on the 8th of July (1652). The maritime success of England was chiefly due to the genius of Blake, who having hitherto served upon shore, now turned his whole attention to the navy. A series of bloody fights took place between the two nations. For some time the fortunes of the war seemed undecided. Van Tromp, defeated by Blake, had to yield the command to De Ruyter. De Ruyter in his turn was displaced to give way again to his greater rival. Van Tromp was reinstated in command. A victory over Blake off the Naze (November 28) enabled him to cruise in the Channel with a broom at his mast-head, implying that he had swept the English from the seas. But the year 1653 again saw Blake able to fight a drawn battle of two days' duration between Portland and La Hogue; while at length, on the 2d and 3d of June, a decisive engagement was fought off the North Foreland, in which Monk and Deane, supported by Blake, completely defeated the Dutch Admiral, who, as a last resource, tried in vain to blow up his own ship, and then retreated to the Dutch coast, leaving eleven ships in the hands of the English. In the next month, another victory on the part of Blake, accompanied by the death of the great Dutch Admiral, completed the ruin of the naval power of Holland. The States were driven to treat. In 1654 the treaty was signed, in which Denmark, the Hanseatic towns, and the Swiss provinces were included. ... The Dutch acknowledged the supremacy of the English flag in the British seas; they consented to the Navigation Act." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, page 701. ALSO IN: W. H. Dixon, Robert Blake, Admiral and General at Sea, chapters 6-7. D. Hannay, Admiral Blake, chapters 6-7. J. Campbell, Naval History of Great Britain, chapter 15 (volume 2). G. Penn, Memorials of Sir William Penn, chapter 4. J. Corbett, Monk, chapter 7. J. Geddes, History of the Administration of John De Witt, volume 1, books 4-5. See, also, NAVIGATION LAWS, ENGLISH: A. D. 1651. ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (APRIL). Cromwell's expulsion of the Rump. "In plain black clothes and gray worsted stockings, the Lord-General came in quietly and took his seat [April 20], as Vane was pressing the House to pass the dissolution Bill without delay and without the customary forms. He beckoned to Harrison and told him that the Parliament was ripe for dissolution, and he must do it. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'the work is very great and dangerous.'--'You say well,' said the general, and thereupon sat still for about a quarter of an hour. Vane sat down, and the Speaker was putting the question for passing the Bill. Then said Cromwell to Harrison again, 'This is the time; I must do it.' He rose up, put off his hat, and spoke. Beginning moderately and respectfully, he presently changed his style, told them of their injustice, delays of justice, self interest, and other faults; charging them not to have a heart to do anything for the public good, to have espoused the corrupt interest of Presbytery and the lawyers, who were the supporters of tyranny and oppression, accusing them of an intention to perpetuate themselves in power. And rising into passion, 'as if he were distracted,' he told them that the Lord had done with them, and had chosen other instruments for the carrying on His work that were worthy. Sir Peter Wentworth rose to complain of such language in Parliament, coming from their own trusted servant. Roused to fury by the interruption, Cromwell left his seat, clapped on his hat, walked up and down the floor of the House, stamping with his feet, and cried out, 'You are no Parliament, I say you are no Parliament. Come, come, we have had enough of this; I will put an end to your prating. Call them in!' Twenty or thirty musketeers under Colonel Worsley marched in onto the floor of the House. The rest of the guard were placed at the door and in the lobby. Vane from his place cried out, 'This is not honest, yea, it is against morality and common honesty.' Cromwell, who evidently regarded Vane as the breaker of the supposed agreement, turned on him with a loud voice, crying, 'O Sir Henry Vane, Sir Henry Vane, the Lord deliver me from Sir Henry Vane.' Then looking upon one of the members, he said, 'There sits a drunkard;' to another he said, 'Some of you are unjust, corrupt persons, and scandalous to the profession of the Gospel.' 'Some are whoremasters,' he said, looking at Wentworth and Marten. Going up to the table, he said, 'What shall we do with this Bauble? Here, take it away!' and gave it to a musketeer. 'Fetch him down,' he cried to Harrison, pointing to the Speaker. Lenthall sat still, and refused to come down unless by force. 'Sir,' said Harrison, 'I will lend you my hand,' and putting his hand within his, the Speaker came down. Algernon Sidney sat still in his place. 'Put him out,' said Cromwell. And Harrison and Worsley put their hands on his shoulders, and he rose and went out. The members went out, fifty-three in all, Cromwell still calling aloud. To Vane he said that he might have prevented this; but that he was a juggler and had not common honesty. 'It is you,' he said, as they passed him, 'that have forced me to do this, for I have sought the Lord night and day, that He would rather slay me than put me on the doing of this work.' He snatched the Bill of dissolution from the hand of the clerk, put it under his cloak, seized on the records, ordered the guard to clear the House of all members, and to have the door locked, and went away to Whitehall. Such is one of the most famous scenes in our history, that which of all other things has most heavily weighed on the fame of Cromwell. In truth it is a matter of no small complexity, which neither constitutional eloquence nor boisterous sarcasm has quite adequately unravelled. ... In strict constitutional right the House was no more the Parliament than Cromwell was the king. A House of Commons, which had executed the king, abolished the Lords, approved the 'coup d'état' of Pride, and by successive proscriptions had reduced itself to a few score of extreme partisans, had no legal title to the name of Parliament. The junto which held to Vane was not more numerous than the junto which held to Cromwell; they had far less public support; nor had their services to the Cause been so great. {886} In closing the House, the Lord-General had used his office of Commander-in-Chief to anticipate one 'coup d'état' by another. Had he been ten minutes late, Vane would himself have dissolved the House; snapping a vote which would give his faction a legal ascendancy. Yet, after all, the fact remains that Vane and the remnant of the famous Long Parliament had that 'scintilla juris,' as lawyers call it, that semblance of legal right, which counts for so much in things political." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 10. ALSO IN: J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Henry Vane, part 3, chapter 17. F. P. Guizot, History of Oliver Cromwell, book 4 (volume l). L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th century, book 11, chapter 5 (volume 3). W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, volume 3, chapters 27-29. ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (JUNE-DECEMBER). The Barebones, or Little Parliament. Six weeks after the expulsion of the Rump, Cromwell, in his own name, and upon his own authority, as "Captain-General and Commander-in-Chief," issued (June 6) a summons to one hundred and forty "persons fearing God and of approved fidelity and honesty," chosen and "nominated" by himself, with the advice of his council of officers, requiring them to be and appear at the Council Chamber of Whitehall on the following fourth day of July, to take upon themselves "the great charge and trust" of providing for "the peace, safety, and good government" of the Commonwealth, and to serve, each, "as a Member for the county" from which he was called. "Of all the Parties so summoned, 'only two' did not attend. Disconsolate Bulstrode says: 'Many of this Assembly being persons of fortune and knowledge, it was much wondered by some that they would at this summons, and from such hands, take upon them the Supreme Authority of this Nation; considering how little right Cromwell and his Officers had to give it, or those Gentlemen to take it.' My disconsolate friend, it is a sign that Puritan England in general accepts this action of Cromwell and his Officers, and thanks them for it, in such a case of extremity; saying as audibly as the means permitted: Yea, we did wish it so. Rather mournful to the disconsolate official mind. ... The undeniable fact is, these men were, as Whitlocke intimates, a quite reputable Assembly; got together by anxious 'consultation of the godly Clergy' and chief Puritan lights in their respective Counties; not without much earnest revision, and solemn consideration in all kinds, on the part of men adequate enough for such a work, and desirous enough to do it well. The List of the Assembly exists; not yet entirely gone dark for mankind. A fair proportion of them still recognizable to mankind. Actual Peers one or two: founders of Peerage Families, two or three, which still exist among us,--Colonel Edward Montague, Colonel Charles Howard, Anthony Ashley Cooper. And better than King's Peers, certain Peers of Nature; whom if not the King and his pasteboard Norroys have had the luck to make Peers of, the living heart of England has since raised to the Peerage and means to keep there,--Colonel Robert Blake the Sea-King, for one. 'Known persons,' I do think; 'of approved integrity, men fearing God'; and perhaps not entirely destitute of sense anyone of them! Truly it seems rather a distinguished Parliament,--even though Mr. Praisegod Barbone, 'the Leather merchant in Fleet-street,' be, as all mortals must admit, a member of it. The fault, I hope, is forgivable. Praisegod, though he deals in leather, and has a name which can be misspelt, one discerns to be the son of pious parents; to be himself a man of piety, of understanding and weight,--and even of considerable private capital, my witty flunkey friends! We will leave Praisegod to do the best he can, I think. ... In fact, a real Assembly of the Notables in Puritan England; a Parliament, Parliamentum, or Speaking-Apparatus for the now dominant Interest in England, as exact as could well be got,--much more exact, I suppose, than any ballot-box, free hustings or ale-barrel election usually yields. Such is the Assembly called the Little Parliament, and wittily Bare-bone's Parliament; which meets on the 4th of July. Their witty name survives; but their history is gone all dark." T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, part 7, speech. 1. The "assembly of godly persons" proved, however, to be quite an unmanageable body, containing so large a number of erratic and impracticable reformers that everything substantial among English institutions was threatened with overthrow at their hands. After five months of busy session, Cromwell was happily able to bring about a dissolution of his parliament, by the action of a majority, surrendering back their powers into his hands,--which was done on the 10th of December, 1653. F. P. Guizot, History of Oliver Cromwell, book 5 (volume 2). ALSO IN: J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 23. ENGLAND: A. D. 1653 (December). The Establishment and Constitution of the Protectorate. The Instrument of Government. "What followed the dissolution of the Little Parliament is soon told. The Council of Officers having been summoned by Cromwell as the only power de facto, there were dialogues and deliberations, ending in the clear conclusion that the method of headship in a 'Single Person' for his whole life must now be tried in the Government of the Commonwealth, and that Cromwell must be that 'Single Person.' The title of King was actually proposed; but, as there were objections to that, Protector was chosen as a title familiar in English History and of venerable associations. Accordingly, Cromwell having consented, and all preparations having been made, he was, on Friday, December 16, in a great assembly of civic, judicial and military dignities, solemnly sworn and installed in the Chancery Court, Westminster Hall, as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland. There were some of his adherents hitherto who did not like this new elevation of their hero, and forsook him in consequence, regarding any experiment of the Single Person method in Government 'as a treason to true Republicanism, and Cromwell's assent to it as unworthy of him. Among these was Harrison. Lambert, on the other hand, had been the main agent in the change, and took a conspicuous part in the installation-ceremony. In fact, pretty generally throughout the country and even among the Presbyterians, the elevation of Cromwell to some kind of sovereignty had come to be regarded as an inevitable necessity of the time, the only possible salvation of the Commonwealth from the anarchy, or wild and experimental idealism, in matters civil and religious, which had been the visible drift at last of the Barebones or Daft Little Parliament. ... The powers and duties of the Protectorate had been defined, rather elaborately, in a Constitutional Instrument of forty-two Articles, called 'The Government of the Commonwealth' [more commonly known as The Instrument of Government] to which Cromwell had sworn fidelity at his installation." {887} D. Masson, Life of John Milton, volume 4, book 4, chapters 1 and 3. ALSO IN: J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell. L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 12, chapter 1 (volume 3). S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, introduction, section 4 and pages 314-324. Cobbett's Parliamentary History of England, volume 3, pages 1417-1426. The following is the text Of the Instrument of Government: The government of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging. I. That the supreme legislative authority of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, shall be and reside in one person, and the people assembled in Parliament; the style of which person shall be the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland. II. That the exercise of the chief magistracy and the administration of the government over the said countries and dominions, and the people thereof, shall be in the Lord Protector, assisted with a council, the number whereof shall not exceed twenty-one, nor be less than thirteen. III. That all writs, processes, commissions, patents, grants, and other things, which now run in the name and style of the keepers of the liberty of England by authority of Parliament, shall run in the name and style of the Lord Protector, from whom, for the future, shall be derived all magistracy and honours in these three nations; and have the power of pardons (except in case of murders and treason) and benefit of all forfeitures for the public use; and shall govern the said countries and dominions in all things by the advice of the council, and according to these presents and the laws. IV. That the Lord Protector, the Parliament sitting, shall dispose and order the militia and forces, both by sea and land, for the peace and good of the three nations, by consent of Parliament; and that the Lord Protector, with the advice and consent of the major part of the council, shall dispose and order the militia for the ends aforesaid in the intervals of Parliament." V. That the Lord Protector, by the advice aforesaid, shall direct in all things concerning the keeping and holding of a good correspondency with foreign kings, princes, and states; and also, with the consent of the major part of the council, have the power of war and peace. VI. That the laws shall not be altered, suspended, abrogated, or repealed, nor any new law made, nor any tax, charge, or imposition laid upon the people, but by common consent in Parliament, save only as is expressed in the thirtieth article. VII. That there shall be a Parliament summoned to meet at Westminster upon the third day of September, 1654, and that successively a Parliament shall be summoned once in every third year, to be accounted from the dissolution of the present Parliament. VIII. That neither the Parliament to be next summoned, nor any successive Parliaments, shall, during the time of five months, to be accounted from the day of their first meeting, be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved, without their own consent. IX. That as well the next as all other successive Parliaments, shall be summoned and elected in manner hereafter expressed; that is to say, the persons to be chosen within England, Wales, the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, to sit and serve in Parliament, shall be, and not exceed, the number of four hundred. The persons to be chosen within Scotland, to sit and serve in Parliament, shall be, and not exceed, the number of thirty; and the persons to be chosen to sit in Parliament for Ireland shall be, and not exceed, the number of thirty. X. That the persons to be elected to sit in Parliament from time to time, for the several counties of England, Wales, the Isles of Jersey and Guernsey, and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and all places within the same respectively, shall be according to the proportions and numbers hereafter expressed: that is to say, Bedfordshire, 5; Bedford Town, 1; Berkshire, 5; Abingdon, 1; Reading, 1; Buckinghamshire, 5; Buckingham Town, 1; Aylesbury, 1; Wycomb, 1; Cambridgeshire, 4; Cambridge Town, 1; Cambridge University, 1; Isle of Ely, 2; Cheshire, 4; Chester, 1; Cornwall, 8; Launceston, 1; Truro, 1; Penryn, 1; East Looe and West Looe, 1; Cumberland, 2; Carlisle, 1; Derbyshire, 4; Derby Town, 1; Devonshire, 11; Exeter, 2; Plymouth, 2 Clifton, Dartmouth, Hardness, 1; Totnes, 1; Barnstable, 1; Tiverton, 1; Honiton, 1; Dorsetshire, 6; Dorchester, 1; Weymouth and Melcomb-Regis, 1; Lyme-Regis, 1; Poole, 1; Durham, 2; City of Durham, 1; Essex, 13; Malden, 1; Colchester, 2; Gloucestershire, 5; Gloucester, 2; Tewkesbury, 1; Cirencester, 1; Herefordshire, 4; Hereford, 1; Leominster, 1; Hertfordshire, 5; St. Alban's, 1: Hertford, 1; Huntingdonshire, 3; Huntingdon, 1; Kent, 11; Canterbury, 2; Rochester, 1 Maidstone, 1; Dover, 1; Sandwich, 1; Queenborough, 1; Lancashire, 4; Preston, 1; Lancaster, 1; Liverpool, 1; Manchester, 1; Leicestershire, 4 Leicester, 2; Lincolnshire, 10; Lincoln, 2; Boston, 1; Grantham, 1; Stamford, 1; Great Grimsby, 1; Middlesex, 4; London, 6; Westminster, 2; Monmouthshire, 3; Norfolk 10; Norwich, 2; Lynn-Regis, 2 Great Yarmouth, 2 Northamptonshire, 6; Peterborough, 1; Northampton, 1; Nottinghamshire, 4; Nottingham, 2; Northumberland, 3; Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1; Berwick, 1; Oxfordshire, 5; Oxford City, 1; Oxford University, 1; Woodstock, 1; Rutlandshire, 2; Shropshire, 4; Shrewsbury, 2; Bridgnorth, 1; Ludlow, 1; Staffordshire, 3; Lichfield, 1; Stafford, 1; Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1; Somersetshire, 11; Bristol, 2; Taunton, 2; Bath, 1; Wells, 1; Bridgwater, 1; Southamptonshire, 8; Winchester, 1; Southampton, 1 Portsmouth, 1; Isle of Wight, 2; Andover, 1; Suffolk, 10; Ipswich, 2; Bury St. Edmunds, 2; Dunwich, 1; Sudbury, 1; Surrey, 6; Southwark, 2; Guildford, 1; Reigate, 1; Sussex, 9; Chichester, 1; Lewes, 1; East Grinstead, 1; Arundel, 1; Rye, 1; Westmoreland, 2; Warwickshire, 4; Coventry, 2; Warwick, 1; Wiltshire, 10; New Sarum, 2; Marlborough, 1; Devizes, 1; Worcestershire, 5; Worcester, 2. YORKSHIRE. West Riding, 6; East Riding, 4; North Riding, 4; City of York, 2 Kingston-upon-Hull, 1; Beverley, 1; Scarborough, 1; Richmond, 1; Leeds, 1; Halifax, 1. {888} WALES. Anglesey, 2: Brecknoekshire, 2; Cardiganshire, 2; Carmarthenshire, 2; Carnarvonshire, 2; Denbighshire, 2; Flintshire, 2; Glamorganshire, 2; Cardiff, 1; Merionethshire, 1; Montgomeryshire, 2; Pembrokeshire, 2; Haverfordwest, 1; Radnorshire, 2. The distribution of the persons to be chosen for Scotland and Ireland, and the several counties, cities, and places therein, shall be according to such proportions and number as shall be agreed upon and declared by the Lord Protector and the major part of the council, before the sending forth writs of summons for the next Parliament. XI. That the summons to Parliament shall be by writ under the Great Seal of England, directed to the sheriffs of the several and respective counties, with such alteration as may suit with the present government to be made by the Lord Protector and his council, which the Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal shall seal, issue, and send abroad by warrant from the Lord Protector. If the Lord Protector shall not give warrant for issuing of writs of summons for the next Parliament, before the first of June, 1654, or for the Triennial Parliaments, before the first day of August in every third year, to be accounted as aforesaid; that then the Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal for the time being, shall, without any warrant or direction, within seven days after the said first day of June, 1654, seal, issue, and send abroad writs of summons (changing therein what is to be changed as aforesaid) to the several and respective sheriffs of England, Scotland, and Ireland, for summoning the Parliament to meet at Westminster, the third day of September next; and shall likewise, within seven days after the said first day of August, in every third year, to be accounted from the dissolution of the precedent Parliament, seal, issue, and send forth abroad several writs of summons (changing therein what is to be changed) as aforesaid, for summoning the Parliament to meet at Westminster the sixth of November in that third year. That the said several and respective sheriffs, shall, within ten days after the receipt of such writ as aforesaid, cause the same to be proclaimed and published in every market-town within his county upon the market-days thereof, between twelve and three of the clock; and shall then also publish and declare the certain day of the week and month, for choosing members to serve in Parliament for the body of the said county, according to the tenor of the said writ, which shall be upon Wednesday five weeks after the date of the writ; and shall likewise declare the place where the election shall be made: for which purpose he shall appoint the most convenient place for the whole county to meet in; and shall send precepts for elections to be made in all and every city, town, borough, or place within his county, where elections are to be made by virtue of these presents, to the Mayor, Sheriff, or other head officer of such city, town, borough, or place, within three days after the receipt of such writ and writs; which the said Mayors, Sheriffs, and officers respectively are to make publication of, and of the certain day for such elections to be made in the said city, town, or place aforesaid, and to cause elections to be made accordingly. XII. That at the day and place of elections, the Sheriff of each county, and the said Mayors, Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and other head officers within their cities, towns, boroughs, and places respectively, shall take view of the said elections, and shall make return into the chancery within twenty days after the said elections, of the persons elected by the greater number of electors, under their hands and seals, between him on the one part, and the electors on the other part; wherein shall be contained, that the persons elected shall not have power to alter the government as it is hereby settled in one single person and a Parliament. XIII. That the Sheriff, who shall wittingly and willingly make any false return, or neglect his duty, shall incur the penalty of 2,000 marks of lawful English money; the one moiety to the Lord Protector, and the other moiety to such person as will sue for the same. XIV. That all and every person and persons, who have aided, advised, assisted, or abetted in any war against the Parliament, since the first day of January 1641 (unless they have been since in the service of the Parliament, and given signal testimony of their good affection thereunto) shall be disabled and incapable to be elected, or to give any vote in the election of any members to serve in the next Parliament, or in the three succeeding Triennial Parliaments. XV. That all such, who have advised, assisted, or abetted the rebellion of Ireland, shall be disabled and incapable for ever to be elected, or give any vote in the election of any member to serve in Parliament; as also all such who do or shall profess the Roman Catholic religion. XVI. That all votes and elections given or made contrary, or not according to these qualifications, shall be null and void; and if any person, who is hereby made incapable, shall give his vote for election of members to serve in Parliament, such person shall lose and forfeit one full year's value of his real estate, and one full third part of his personal estate; one moiety thereof to the Lord Protector, and the other moiety to him or them who shall sue for the same. XVII. That the persons who shall be elected to serve in Parliament, shall be such (and no other than such) as are persons of known integrity, fearing God, and of good conversation, and being of the age of twenty-one years. XVIII. That all and every person and persons seised or possessed to his own use, of any estate, real or personal, to the value of £200, and not within the aforesaid exceptions, shall be capable to elect members to serve in Parliament for counties. XIX. That the Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal, shall be sworn before they enter into their offices, truly and faithfully to issue forth, and send abroad, writs of summons to Parliament, at the times and in the manner before expressed: and in case of neglect or failure to issue and send abroad writs accordingly, he or they shall for every such offence be guilty of high treason, and suffer the pains and penalties thereof. XX. That in case writs be not issued out, as is before expressed, but that there be a neglect therein, fifteen days after the time wherein the same ought to be issued out by the Chancellor, Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal; that then the Parliament shall, as often as such failure shall happen, assemble and be held at Westminster, in the usual place, at the times prefixed, in manner and by the means hereafter expressed; that is to say, that the sheriffs of the several and respective counties, sheriffdoms, cities, boroughs, and places aforesaid, within England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, the Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and the Mayor and Bailiffs of the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed, and other places aforesaid respectively, shall at the several courts and places to be appointed as aforesaid, within thirty days after the said fifteen days, cause such members to be chosen for their said several and respective counties, sheriffdoms, universities, cities, boroughs, and places aforesaid, by such persons, and in such manner, as if several and respective writs of summons to Parliament under the Great Seal had issued and been awarded according to the tenor aforesaid: that if the sheriff, or other persons authorized, shall neglect his or their duty herein, that all and every such sheriff and person authorized as aforesaid, so neglecting his or their duty, shall, for every such offence, be guilty of high treason, and shall suffer the pains and penalties thereof. {889} XXI. That the clerk, called the clerk of the Commonwealth in Chancery for the time being, and all others, who shall afterwards execute that office, to whom the returns shall be made, shall for the next Parliament, and the two succeeding Triennial Parliaments, the next day after such return, certify the names of the several persons so returned, and of the places for which he and they were chosen respectively, unto the Council; who shall peruse the said returns, and examine whether the persons so elected and returned be such as is agreeable to the qualifications, and not disabled to be elected: and that every person and persons being so duly elected, and being approved of by the major part of the Council to be persons not disabled, but qualified as aforesaid, shall be esteemed a member of Parliament, and be admitted to sit in Parliament, and not otherwise. XXII. That the persons so chosen and assembled in manner aforesaid, or any sixty of them, shall be, and be deemed the Parliament of England, Scotland, and Ireland; and the supreme legislative power to be and reside in the Lord Protector and such Parliament, in manner herein expressed. XXIII. That the Lord Protector, with the advice of the major part of the Council, shall at any other time than is before expressed, when the necessities of the State shall require it, summon Parliaments in manner before expressed, which shall not be adjourned, prorogued, or dissolved without their own consent, during the first three months of their sitting. And in case of future war with any foreign State, a Parliament shall be forthwith summoned for their advice concerning the same. XXIV. That all Bills agreed unto by the Parliament, shall be presented to the Lord Protector for his consent; and in case he shall not give his consent thereto within twenty days after they shall be presented to him, or give satisfaction to the Parliament within the time limited, that then, upon declaration of the Parliament that the Lord Protector hath not consented nor given satisfaction, such Bills shall pass into and become laws, although he shall not give his consent thereunto; provided such Bills contain nothing in them contrary to the matters contained in these presents. XXV. That [Henry Lawrence, esq.; Philip lord vise. Lisle; the majors general Lambert, Desborough, and Skippon; lieutenant general Fleetwood; the colonels Edward Montagu, Philip Jones, and Wm. Sydenham; sir Gilbert Pickering, sir Ch. Wolseley, and sir Anth. Ashley Cooper, Barts., Francis Rouse, esq., Speaker of the late Convention, Walter Strickland, and Rd. Major, esqrs.]--or any seven of them, shall be a Council for the purposes expressed in this writing; and upon the death or other removal of any of them, the Parliament shall nominate six persons of ability, integrity, and fearing God, for everyone that is dead or removed; out of which the major part of the Council shall elect two, and present them to the Lord Protector, of which he shall elect one; and in case the Parliament shall not nominate within twenty days after notice given unto them thereof, the major part of the Council shall nominate three as aforesaid to the Lord Protector, who out of them shall supply the vacancy; and until this choice be made, the remaining part of the Council shall execute as fully in all things, as if their number were full. And in case of corruption, or other miscarriage in any of the Council in their trust, the Parliament shall appoint seven of their number, and the Council six, who, together with the Lord Chancellor, Lord Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal for the time being, shall have power to hear and determine such corruption and miscarriage, and to award and inflict punishment, as the nature of the offence shall deserve, which punishment shall not be pardoned or remitted by the Lord Protector; and, in the interval of Parliaments, the major part of the Council, with the consent of the Lord Protector, may, for corruption or other miscarriage as aforesaid, suspend any of their number from the exercise of their trust, if they shall find it just, until the matter shall be heard and examined as aforesaid. XXVI. That the Lord Protector and the major part of the Council aforesaid may, at any time before the meeting of the next Parliament, add to the Council such persons as they shall think fit, provided the number of the Council be not made thereby to exceed twenty-one, and the quorum to be proportioned accordingly by the Lord Protector and the major part of the Council. XXVII. That a constant yearly revenue shall be raised, settled, and established for maintaining of 10,000 horse and dragoons, and 20,000 foot, in England, Scotland and Ireland, for the defence and security thereof, and also for a convenient number of ships for guarding of the seas; besides £200,000 per annum for defraying the other necessary charges of administration of justice, and other expenses of the Government, which revenue shall be raised by the customs, and such other ways and means as shall be agreed upon by the Lord Protector and the Council, and shall not be taken away or diminished, nor the way agreed upon for raising the same altered, but by the consent of the Lord Protector and the Parliament. XXVIII. That the said yearly revenue shall be paid into the public treasury, and shall be issued out for the uses aforesaid. XXIX. That in case there shall not be cause hereafter to keep up so great a defence both at land or sea, but that there be an abatement made thereof, the money which will be saved thereby shall remain in bank for the public service, and not be employed to any other use but by consent of Parliament, or, in the intervals of Parliament, by the Lord Protector and major part of the Council. {890} XXX. That the raising of money for defraying the charge of the present extraordinary forces, both at sea and land, in respect of the present wars, shall be by consent of Parliament, and not otherwise: save only that the Lord Protector, with the consent of the major part of the Council, for preventing the disorders and dangers which might otherwise fall out both by sea and land, shall have power, until the meeting of the first Parliament, to raise money for the purposes aforesaid; and also to make laws and ordinances for the peace and welfare of these nations where it shall be necessary, which shall be binding and in force, until order shall be taken in Parliament concerning the same. XXXI. That the lands, tenements, rents, royalties, jurisdictions and hereditaments which remain yet unsold or undisposed of, by Act or Ordinance of Parliament, belonging to the Commonwealth (except the forests and chases, and the honours and manors belonging to the same; the lands of the rebels in Ireland, lying in the four counties of Dublin, Cork, Kildare, and Carlow; the lands forfeited by the people of Scotland in the late wars, and also the lands of Papists and delinquents in England who have not yet compounded), shall be vested in the Lord Protector, to hold, to him and his successors, Lords Protectors of these nations, and shall not be alienated but by consent in Parliament. And all debts, fines, issues, amercements, penalties and profits, certain and casual, due to the Keepers of the liberties of England by authority of Parliament, shall be due to the Lord Protector, and be payable into his public receipt, and shall be recovered and prosecuted in his name. XXXII. That the office of Lord Protector over these nations shall be elective and not hereditary; and upon the death of the Lord Protector, another fit person shall be forthwith elected to succeed him in the Government; which election shall be by the Council, who, immediately upon the death of the Lord Protector, shall assemble in the Chamber where they usually sit in Council; and, having given notice to an their members of the cause of their assembling, shall, being thirteen at least present, proceed to the election; and, before they depart the said Chamber, shall elect a fit person to succeed in the Government, and forthwith cause proclamation thereof to be made in an the three nations as shall be requisite; and the person that they, or the major part of them, shall elect as aforesaid, shall be, and shall be taken to be, Lord Protector over these nations of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging. Provided that none of the children of the late King, nor any of his line or family, be elected to be Lord Protector or other Chief Magistrate over these nations, or any the dominions thereto belonging. And until the aforesaid election be past, the Council shall take care of the Government, and administer in an things as fully as the Lord Protector, or the Lord Protector and Council are enabled to do. XXXIII. That Oliver Cromwell, Captain-General of the forces of England, Scotland and Ireland, shall be, and is hereby declared to be, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging, for his life. XXXIV. That the Chancellor, Keeper or Commissioners of the Great Seal, the Treasurer, Admiral, Chief Governors of Ireland and Scotland, and the Chief Justices of both the Benches, shall be chosen by the approbation of Parliament; and, in the intervals of Parliament, by the approbation of the major part of the Council, to be afterwards approved by the Parliament. XXXV. That the Christian religion, as contained in the Scriptures, be held forth and recommended as the public profession of these nations; and that, as soon as may be, a provision, less subject to scruple and contention, and more certain than the present, be made for the encouragement and maintenance of able and painful teachers, for the instructing the people, and for discovery and confutation of error, hereby, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine; and until such provision be made, the present maintenance shall not be taken away or impeached. XXXVI. That to the public profession held forth none shall be compened by penalties or otherwise; but that endeavours be used to win them by sound doctrine and the example of a good conversation. XXXVII. That such as profess faith in God by Jesus Christ (though differing in judgment from the doctrine, worship or discipline publicly held forth) shall not be restrained from, but shall be protected in, the profession of the faith and exercise of their religion; so as they abuse not this liberty to the civil injury of others and to the actual disturbance of the public peace on their parts: provided this liberty be not extended to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as, under the profession of Christ, hold forth and practice licentiousness. XXXVIII. That all laws, statutes and ordinances, and clauses in any law, statute or ordinance to the contrary of the aforesaid liberty, shall be esteemed as null and void. XXXIX. That the Acts and Ordinances of Parliament made for the sale or other disposition of the lands, rents and hereditaments of the late King, Queen, and Prince, of Archbishops and Bishops, &c., Deans and Chapters, the lands of delinquents and forest-lands, or any of them, or of any other lands, tenements, rents and hereditaments belonging to the Commonwealth, shall nowise be impeached or made invalid, but shall remain good and firm; and that the securities given by Act and Ordinance of Parliament for any sum or sums of money, by any of the said lands, the excise, or any other public revenue; and also the securities given by the public faith of the nation, and the engagement of the public faith for satisfaction of debts and damages, shall remain firm and good, and not be made void and invalid upon any pretence whatsoever. XL. That the Articles given to or made with the enemy, and afterwards confirmed by Parliament, shall be performed and made good to the persons concerned therein; and that such appeals as were depending in the last Parliament for relief concerning bills of sale of delinquent's estates, may be heard and determined the next Parliament, anything in this writing or otherwise to the contrary notwithstanding. {891} XLI. That every successive Lord Protector over these nations shall take and subscribe a solemn oath, in the presence of the Council, and such others as they shall call to them, that he will seek the peace, quiet and welfare of these nations, cause law and justice to be equally administered; and that he will not violate or infringe the matters and things contained in this writing, and in all other things will, to his power and to the best of his understanding, govern these nations according to the laws, statutes and customs thereof. XLII. That each person of the Council shall, before they enter upon their trust, take and subscribe an oath, that they will be true and faithful in their trust, according to the best of their knowledge; and that in the election of every successive Lord Protector they shall proceed therein impartially, and do nothing therein for any promise, fear, favour or reward. ENGLAND: A. D. 1654. Re-conquest of Acadia (Nova Scotia). See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1621-1668. ENGLAND: A. D. 1654 (April). Incorporation of Scotland with the Commonwealth. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1654. ENGLAND: A. D. 1654-1658. The Protector, his Parliaments and his Major-Generals. The Humble Petition and Advice. Differing views of the Cromwellian autocracy. "Oliver addressed his first Protectorate Parliament on Sunday, the 3d of September. ... Immediately, under the leadership of old Parliamentarians, Haslerig, Scott, Bradshaw, and many other republicans, the House proceeded to debate the Instrument of Government, the constitutional basis of the existing system. By five votes, it decided to discuss 'whether the House should approve of government by a Single Person and a Parliament.' This was of course to set up the principle of making the Executive dependent on the House; a principle, in Oliver's mind, fatal to settlement and order. He acted at once. Calling on the Lord Mayor to secure the city, and disposing his own guard round Westminster Hall, he summoned the House again on the 9th day. ... Members were called on to sign a declaration, 'not to alter the government as settled in a Single Person and a Parliament.' Some, 300 signed; the minority--about a fourth--refused and retired. ... The Parliament, in spite of the declaration, set itself from the first to discuss the constitution, to punish heretics, suppress blasphemy, revise the Ordinances of the Council; and they deliberately withheld all supplies for the services and the government. At last they passed an Act for revising the constitution de novo. Not a single bill had been sent up to the Protector for his assent. Oliver, as usual, acted at once. On the expiration of their five lunar months, 22d January 1655, he summoned the House and dissolved it, with a speech full of reproaches." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 11. "In 1656, the Protector called a second Parliament. By excluding from it about a hundred members whom he judged to be hostile to his government, he found himself on amicable terms with the new assembly. It presented to him a Humble Petition and Advice, asking that certain changes of the Constitution might be agreed to by mutual consent, and that he should assume the title of King. This title he rejected, and the Humble Petition and Advice was passed in an amended form on May 25, 1657, and at once received the assent of the Protector. On June 26, it was modified in some details by the Additional Petition and Advice. Taking the two together, the result was to enlarge the power of Parliament and to diminish that of the Council. The Protector, in turn, received the right of appointing his successor, and to name the life-members of 'the other House,' which was now to take the place of the House of Lords. ... In accordance with the Additional Petition and Advice, the Protector summoned 'certain persons to sit in the other House.' A quarrel between the two Houses broke out, and the Protector [February 4, 1658] dissolved the Parliament in anger." S. R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution, pages lxiii-lxiv., and 334-350. "To govern according to law may sometimes be an usurper's wish, but can seldom be in his power. The protector [in 1655] abandoned all thought of it. Dividing the kingdom into districts, he placed at the head of each a major-general as a sort of military magistrate, responsible for the subjection of his prefecture. These were eleven in number, men bitterly hostile to the royalist party, and insolent towards all civil authority. They were employed to secure the payment of a tax of 10 per cent., imposed by Cromwell's arbitrary will on those who had ever sided with the king during the late wars, where their estates exceeded £100 per annum. The major-generals, in their correspondence printed among Thurloe's papers, display a rapacity and oppression beyond their master's. ... All illusion was now gone as to the pretended benefits of the civil war. It had ended in a despotism, compared to which all the illegal practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles his life and crown, appeared as dust in the balance. For what was ship-money, a general burthen, by the side of the present decimation of a single class, whose offence had long been expiated by a composition and effaced by an act of indemnity? or were the excessive punishments of the star-chamber so odious as the capital executions inflicted without trial by peers, whenever it suited the usurper to erect his high court of justice? ... I cannot ... agree in the praises which have been showered upon Cromwell for the just administration of the laws under his dominion. That, between party and party, the ordinary civil rights of men were fairly dealt with, is no extraordinary praise; and it may be admitted that he filled the benches of justice with able lawyers, though not so considerable as those of the reign of Charles II.; but it is manifest that, so far as his own authority was concerned, no hereditary despot, proud in the crimes of a hundred ancestors, could more have spurned at every limitation than this soldier of a commonwealth." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 10, part 2. "Cromwell was, and felt himself to be, a dictator called in by the winning cause in a revolution to restore confidence and secure peace. He was, as he said frequently, 'the Constable set to keep order in the Parish.' Nor was he in any sense a military despot. ... Never did a ruler invested with absolute power and overwhelming military force more obstinately strive to surround his authority with legal limits and Parliamentary control." F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, chapter 11. "To this condition, then, England was now reduced. After the gallantest fight for liberty that had ever been fought by any nation in the world, she found herself trampled under foot by a military despot. All the vices of old kingly rule were nothing to what was now imposed upon her." J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth: Cromwell. {892} "His [Cromwell's] wish seems to have been to govern constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the laws for that of the sword. But he soon found that, hated as he was, both by Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe only by being absolute. ... Those soldiers who would not suffer him to assume the kingly title, stood by him when he ventured on acts of power as high as any English king has ever attempted. The government, therefore, though in form a republic, was in truth a despotism, moderated only by the wisdom, the sobriety and the magnanimity of the despot." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 1. England: A. D. 1655-1658. War with Spain, alliance with France. Acquisition of Dunkirk. "Though the German war ['the Thirty Years' War,' concluded in 1648 by the Treaty of Westphalia] was over, the struggle between France and Spain was continued with great animosity, each country striving to crush her rival and become the first power in Europe. Both Louis XIV. and Philip IV. of Spain were bidding for the protector's support. Spain offered the possession of Calais, when taken from France; France the possession of Dunkirk when taken from Spain (1655). Cromwell determined to ally himself with France against Spain. ... It was in the West Indies that the obstructive policy of Spain came most into collision with the interests of England. Her kings based their claims to the possession of two continents on the bull of Pope Alexander VI., who in 1493 had granted them all lands they should discover from pole to pole, at the distance of 100 leagues west from the Azores and Cape Verd Islands. On the strength of this bull they held that the discovery of an island gave them the right to the group, the discovery of a headland the right to a continent. Though this monstrous claim had quite broken down as far as the North American continent was concerned, the Spaniards, still recognizing 'no peace beyond the line,' endeavoured to shut all Europeans but themselves out of any share in the trade or colonization of at least the southern half of the New World. ... While war was now proclaimed with Spain, a treaty of peace was signed between France and England, Louis XIV. agreeing to banish Charles Stuart and his brothers from French territory (October 24, 1655). This treaty was afterwards changed into a league, offensive and defensive (March 23, 1657), Cromwell undertaking to assist Louis with 6,000 men in besieging Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk, on condition of receiving the two latter towns when reduced by the allied armies. By the occupation of these towns Cromwell intended to control the trade of the Channel, to hold the Dutch in check, who were then but unwilling friends, and to lessen the danger of invasion from any union of Royalists and Spaniards. The war opened in the year 1657 [Jamaica, however, had already been taken from the Spaniards and St. Domingo attacked], with another triumph by sea." This was Blake's last exploit. He attacked and destroyed the Spanish bullion fleet, from Mexico, in the harbor of Santa Cruz, island of Teneriffe, and silenced the forts which guarded it. The great sea-captain died on his voyage home, after striking this blow. The next spring "the siege of Dunkirk was commenced (May, 1658). The Spaniards tried to relieve the town, but were completely defeated in an engagement called the Battle of the Dunes from the sand hills among which it was fought; the defeat was mainly owing to the courage and discipline of Oliver's troops, who won for themselves the name of 'the Immortal Six Thousand.' ... Ten days after the battle Dunkirk surrendered, and the French had no choice but to give over to the English ambassador the keys of a town they thought 'unsi bon morceau' ['a good ...'] (June 25)." B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, chapter 15. ALSO IN: T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, book 9, speech 5 and book 10, letters 152-157. J. Campbell, Naval History of Great Britain, chapter 15 (volume 2). J. Waylen, The House of Cromwell and the Story of Dunkirk, pages 173-272. W. H. Dixon, Robert Blake, chapters 9-10. D. Hannay, Admiral Blake, chapter 9-11. See, also, FRANCE: A. D. 1655-1658. ENGLAND: A. D. 1658-1660. The fall of the Protectorate and Restoration of the Stuarts. King Charles II. When Oliver Cromwell died, on the 3d day of September, 1658--the anniversary of his victories at Dunbar and at Worcester--his eldest son Richard, whom he had nominated, it was said, on his death-bed, was proclaimed Protector, and succeeded him "as quietly as any King had ever been succeeded by any Prince of Wales. During five months, the administration of Richard Cromwell went on so tranquilly and regularly that all Europe believed him to be firmly established on the chair of state." But Richard had none of his father's genius or personal power, and the discontents and jealousies which the former had rigorously suppressed soon tossed the latter from his unstable throne by their fierce upheaval. He summoned a new Parliament (January 27, 1659), which recognized and confirmed his authority, though containing a powerful opposition, of uncompromising republicans and secret royalists. But the army, which the great Protector had tamed to submissive obedience, was now stirred into mischievous action once more as a political power in the state, subservient to the ambition of Fleetwood and other commanders. Richard Cromwell could not make himself the master of his father's battalions. "He was used by the army as an instrument for the purpose of dissolving the Parliament [April 22], and was then contemptuously thrown aside. The officers gratified their republican allies by declaring that the expulsion of the Rump had been illegal, and by inviting that assembly to resume its functions. The old Speaker and a quorum of the old members came together [May 9] and were proclaimed, amidst the scarcely stifled derision and execration of the whole nation, the supreme power in the Commonwealth. It was at the same time expressly declared that there should be no first magistrate and no House of Lords. But this state of things could not last. On the day on which the Long Parliament revived, revived also its old quarrel with the army. Again the Rump forgot that it owed its existence to the pleasure of the soldiers, and began to treat them as subjects. Again the doors of the House of Commons were closed by military violence [October 13]; and a provisional government, named by the officers, assumed the direction of affairs." The troops stationed in Scotland, under Monk, had not been consulted, however, in these transactions, and were evidently out of sympathy with their comrades in England. Monk, who had never meddled with politics before, was now induced to interfere. {893} He refused to acknowledge the military provisional government, declared himself the champion of the civil power, and marched into England at the head of his 7,000 veterans. His movement was everywhere welcomed and encouraged by popular demonstrations of delight. The army in England lost courage and lost unity, awed and paralyzed by the public feeling at last set free. Monk reached London without opposition, and was the recognized master of the realm. Nobody knew his intentions--himself, perhaps, as little as any--and it was not until after a period of protracted suspense that he declared himself for the convening of a new and free Parliament, in the place of the Rump--which had again resumed its sittings--for the settlement of the state. "The result of the elections was such as might have been expected from the temper of the nation. The new House of Commons consisted, with few exceptions, of persons friendly to the royal family. The Presbyterians formed the majority. ... The new Parliament, which, having been called without the royal writ, is more accurately described as a Convention, met at Westminster [April 26, 1660]. The Lords repaired to the hall, from which they had, during more than eleven years, been excluded by force. Both Houses instantly invited the King to return to his country. He was proclaimed with pomp never before known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland to the coast of Kent. When he landed [May 25, 1660], the cliffs of Dover were covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one could be found who was not weeping with delight. The journey to London was a continued triumph." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 1. The only guarantee with which the careless nation took back their ejected kings of the faithless race of Stuarts was embodied in a Declaration which Charles sent over from "Our Court at Breda" in April, and which was read in Parliament with an effusive display of respect and thankfulness. In this Declaration from Breda, "a general amnesty and liberty of conscience were promised, with such exceptions and limitations only as the Parliament should think fit to make. All delicate questions, among others the proprietorship of confiscated estates, were in like manner referred to the decision of Parliament, thus leaving the King his liberty while diminishing his responsibility; and though fully asserting the ancient rights of the Crown, he announced his intention to associate the two Houses with himself in all great affairs of State." F. P. Guizot, History of Richard Cromwell and the Restoration, book 4 (volume 2). ALSO IN: G. Burnet, History of My Own Time, book 2, 1660-61. Earl of Clarendon, History of the Rebellion, book 16 (volume 6). D. Masson, Life of Milton, volume 5, book 3. J. Corbett, Monk, chapter 9-14. ENGLAND: A. D. 1660-1685. The Merry Monarch. "There never were such profligate times in England as under Charles the Second. Whenever you see his portrait, with his swarthy ill-looking face and great nose, you may fancy him in his Court at Whitehall, surrounded by some of the very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling, indulging in vicious conversation, and committing every kind of profligate excess. It has been a fashion to call Charles the Second 'The Merry Monarch.' Let me try to give you a general idea of some of the merry things that were done, in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat upon his merry throne, in merry England. The first merry proceeding was--of course--to declare that he was one of the greatest, the wisest, and the noblest kings that ever shone, like the blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The next merry and pleasant piece of business was, for the Parliament, in the humblest manner, to give him one million two hundred thousand pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life that old disputed 'tonnage and poundage' which had been so bravely fought for. Then, General Monk, being made Earl of Albemarle, and a few other Royalists similarly rewarded, the law went to work to see what was to be done to those persons (they were called Regicides) who had been concerned in making a martyr of the late King. Ten of these were merrily executed; that is to say, six of the judges, one of the council, Colonel Hacker and another officer who had commanded the Guards, and Hugh Peters, a preacher who had preached against the martyr with all his heart. These executions were so extremely merry, that every horrible circumstance which Cromwell had abandoned was revived with appalling cruelty. ... Sir Harry Vane, who had furnished the evidence against Stratford, and was one of the most staunch of the Republicans, was also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execution. ... These merry scenes were succeeded by another, perhaps even merrier. On the anniversary of the late King's death, the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, "Were torn out of their graves in 'Westminster Abbey, dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows all day long, and then beheaded. Imagine the head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to be stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom would have dared to look the living Oliver in the face for half a moment! Think, after you have read this reign, what England was under Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave, and what it was under this merry monarch who sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again. Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and daughter were not to be spared, either, though they had been most excellent women. The base clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which had been buried in the Abbey, and--to the eternal disgrace of England--they were thrown into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of Pym, and of the brave and bold old Admiral Blake. ... The whole Court was a great flaunting crowd of debauched men and shameless women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted and outraged her in every possible way, until she consented to receive those worthless creatures as her very good friends, and to degrade herself by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom the King made Lady Castlemaine, and afterwards Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most powerful of the bad women about the Court, and had great influence with the King nearly all through his reign. Another merry lady named Moll Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange girl and then an actress, who really had good in her, and of whom one of the worst things I know is, that actually she does seem to have been fond of the King. The first Duke of St. Albans was this orange girl's child. In like manner the son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King created Duchess of Portsmouth, became the Duke of Richmond. {894} Upon the whole it is not so bad a thing to be a commoner. The Merry Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got through his hundred thousand pounds, and then, by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French King for five millions of livres. When I think of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell raised England in the eyes of foreign powers, and when I think of the manner in which he gained for England this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined to consider that if the Merry Monarch had been made to follow his father for this action, he would have received his just deserts." C. Dickens, Child's History of England, chapter 35. ENGLAND: A. D. 1661. Acquisition of Bombay. See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702. ENGLAND: A. D. 1661. The Savoy Conference. "The Restoration had been the joint work of Episcopalian and Presbyterian; would it be possible to reconcile them on this question too [i. e., of the settlement of Church government]? The Presbyterian indeed was willing enough for a compromise, for he had an uneasy feeling that the ground was slipping from beneath his feet. Of Charles's intentions he was still in doubt; but he knew that Clarendon was the sworn friend of the Church. The Churchman on the other hand was eagerly expecting the approaching hour of triumph. It soon appeared that as King and Parliament, so King and Church were inseparable in the English mind; that indeed the return of the King was the restoration of the Church even more than it was the restoration of Parliament. In the face of the present Presbyterian majority however it was necessary to temporise. The former incumbents of Church livings were restored, and the Commons took the Communion according to the rites of the Church; but in other respects the Presbyterians were carefully kept in play; Charles taking his part in the elaborate farce by appointing ten of their leading ministers royal chaplains, and even attending, their sermons." In October, 1660, Charles "took the matter more completely into his own hands by issuing a Declaration. Refusing, on the ground of constraint, to admit the validity of the oaths imposed upon him in Scotland, by which he was bound to uphold the Covenant, and not concealing his preference for the Anglican Church, as 'the best fence God hath yet raised against popery in the world,' he asserted that nevertheless, to his own knowledge, the Presbyterians were not enemies to Episcopacy or a set liturgy, and were opposed to the alienation of Church revenues. The Declaration then went on to limit the power of bishops and archdeacons in a degree sufficient to satisfy many of the leading Presbyterians, one of whom, Reynolds, accepted a bishopric. Charles then proposed to choose an equal number of learned divines of both persuasions to discuss alterations in the liturgy; meanwhile no one was to be troubled regarding differences of practice. The majority in the Commons at first welcomed the Declaration, ... and a bill was accordingly introduced by Sir Matthew Hale to turn the Declaration into a law. But Clarendon at any rate had no intention of thus baulking the Church of her revenge. Anticipating Hale's action, he had in the interval been busy in securing a majority against any compromise. The Declaration had done its work in gaining time, and when the bill was brought in it was rejected by 183 to 157 votes. Parliament was at once (December 24) dissolved. The way was now open for the riot of the Anglican triumph. Even before the new House met the mask was thrown off by the issuing of an order to the justices to restore the full liturgy. The conference indeed took place in the Savoy Palace. It failed, like the Hampton Court Conference of James I., because it was intended to fail. Upon the two important points, the authority of bishops and the liturgy, the Anglicans would not give way an inch. Both parties informed the King that, anxious as they were for agreement, they saw no chance of it. This last attempt at union having fallen through, the Government had their hands free; and their intentions were speedily made plain." O. Airy, The English Restoration and Louis XIV., chapter 7. "The Royal Commission [for the Savoy Conference] bore date the 25th of March. It gave the Commissioners authority to review the Book of Common Prayer, to compare it with the most ancient Liturgies, to take into consideration all things which it contained, to consult respecting the exceptions against it, and by agreement to make such necessary alterations as should afford satisfaction to tender consciences, and restore to the Church unity and peace; the instrument appointed 'the Master's lodgings in the Savoy' as the place of meeting. ... The Commissioners were summoned to meet upon the 15th of April. ... The Bill of Uniformity, hereafter to be described, actually passed the House of Commons on the 9th of July, about a fortnight before the Conference broke up. The proceedings of a Royal Commission to review the Prayer Book, and make alterations for the satisfaction of tender consciences were, by this premature act, really treated with mockery, a circumstance which could not but exceedingly offend and annoy the Puritan members, and serve to embitter the language of Baxter as the end of these fruitless sittings approached." J. Stoughton, History of Religion in English, volume 3, chapter 5. ALSO IN: E. Calamy, Nonconformists' Memorial, introduction, section 3. W. Orme, Life and Times of Richard Baxter, chapter 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1662. The sale of Dunkirk. "Unable to confine himself within the narrow limits of his civil list, with his favorites and mistresses, he [Charles II.] would have sought even in the infernal regions the gold which his subjects measured out to him with too parsimonious a hand. ... [He] proposed to sell to France Dunkirk and its dependencies, which, he said, cost him too much to keep up. He asked twelve million francs; he fell at last to five millions, and the treaty was signed October 27, 1662. It was time; the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, informed of the negotiation, had determined to offer Charles II. whatever he wished in behalf of their city not to alienate Dunkirk. Charles dared not retract his word, which would have been, as D'Estrades told him, to break forever with Louis XIV., and on the 2d of December Louis joyfully made his entry into his good city, reconquered by gold instead of the sword." H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV., translated by M. L. Booth, chapter 4 (volume 1). {895} England: A. D. 1662-1665. The Act of Uniformity and persecution of the Nonconformists. The failure of the Savoy Conference "was the conclusion which had been expected and desired. Charles had already summoned the Convocation, and to that assembly was assigned the task which had failed in the hands of the commissioners at the Savoy. ... The act of uniformity followed [passed by the Commons July 9, 1661; by the Lords May 8, 1662; receiving the royal assent May 19, 1662], by which it was enacted that the revised Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordination of Ministers, and no other, should be used in all places of public worship; and that all beneficed clergymen should read the service from it within a given time, and, at the close, profess in a set form of words, their 'unfeigned assent and consent to everything contained and prescribed in it.' ... The act of uniformity may have been necessary for the restoration of the church to its former discipline and doctrine; but if such was the intention of those who framed the declaration from Breda, they were guilty of infidelity to the king and of fraud to the people, by putting into his mouth language which, with the aid of equivocation, they might explain away, and by raising in them expectations which it was never meant to fulfil." J. Lingard, History of England, volume 11, chapter. 4. "This rigorous act when it passed, gave the ministers, who could not conform, no longer time than till Bartholomewday, August 24th, 1662, when they were all cast out. ... This was an action without a precedent: The like to this the Reformed church, nay the Christian world, never saw before. Historians relate, with tragical exclamations, that between three and four score bishops were driven at once into the island of Sardinia by the African vandals; that 200 ministers were banished by Ferdinand, king of Bohemia; and that great havock was, a few years after, made among the ministers of Germany by the Imperial Interim. But these all together fall short of the number ejected by the act of uniformity, which was not less than 2,000. The succeeding hardships of the latter were also by far the greatest. They were not only silenced, but had no room left for any sort of usefulness, and were in a manner buried alive. Far greater tenderness was used towards the Popish clergy ejected at the Reformation. They were suffered to live quietly; but these were oppressed to the utmost, and that even by their brethren who professed the same faith themselves: not only excluded preferments, but turned out into the wide world without any visible way of subsistence. Not so much as a poor vicarage, not an obscure chapel, not a school was left them. Nay, though they offered, as some of them did, to preach gratis, it must not be allowed them. ... The ejected ministers continued for ten years in a state of silence and obscurity. ... The act of uniformity took place August the 24th, 1662. On the 26th of December following, the king published a Declaration, expressing his purpose to grant some indulgence or liberty in religion. Some of the Nonconformists were hereupon much encouraged, and waiting privately on the king, had their hopes confirmed, and would have persuaded their brethren to have thanked him for his declaration; but they refused, lest they should make way for the toleration of the Papists, whom they understood the king intended to include in it. ... Instead of indulgence or comprehension, on the 30th of June, an act against private meetings, called the Conventicle Act, passed the House of Commons, and soon after was made a law, viz.: 'That every person above sixteen years of age, present at any meeting, under pretence of any exercise of religion, in other manner than is the practice of the church of England, where there are five persons more than the household, shall for the first offence, by a justice of peace be recorded, and sent to gaol three months, till he pay £5, and for the second offence six months, till he pay £10, and the third time being convicted by a jury, shall be banished to some of the American plantations, excepting New England or Virginia." ... In the year 1665 the plague broke out"--and the ejected ministers boldly took possession for the time of the deserted London pulpits. "While God was consuming the people by this judgment, and the Nonconformists were labouring to save their souls, the parliament, which sat at Oxford, was busy in making an act [called the Five Mile Act] to render their case incomparably harder than it was before, by putting upon them a certain oath ['that it is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against the king,' &c.], which, if they refused, they must not come (unless upon the road) within five miles of any city or corporation, any place that sent burgesses to parliament, any place where they had been ministers, or had preached after the act of oblivion. ... When this act came out, those ministers who had any maintenance of their own, found out some place of residence in obscure villages, or market-towns, that were not corporations." E. Calamy, The Nonconformist's Memorial, introduction, sections 4-6. ALSO IN: J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England, volume 3, chapters 6-9. D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 4, chapter 6-7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1663. The grant of the Carolinas to Monk, Clarendon, Shaftesbury, and others. See NORTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1663-1670. ENGLAND: A. D. 1663. The King's charter to Rhode Island. See RHODE ISLAND: A. D. 1660-1663. ENGLAND: A. D. 1664. The conquest of New Netherland (New York). See NEW YORK: A. D. 1664. ENGLAND: A. D. 1664-1665. The first refractory symptoms in Massachusetts. See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1660-1665. ENGLAND: A. D. 1665. The grant of New Jersey to Carteret and Berkeley. See NEW JERSEY: A. D. 1664-1667. ENGLAND: A. D. 1665-1666. War with Holland renewed. The Dutch fleet in the Thames. See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1665-1666. ENGLAND: A. D. 1668. The Triple Alliance with Holland and Sweden against Louis XIV. See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1668. ENGLAND: A. D. 1668. Cession of Acadia (Nova Scotia) to France. See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1621-1668. ENGLAND: A. D. 1668-1670. The secret Catholicism and the perfidy of the King. His begging of bribes from Louis XIV. His betrayal of Holland. His breaking of the Triple Alliance. In 1668, the royal treasury being greatly embarrassed by the king's extravagances, an attempt was made "to reduce the annual expenditure below the amount of the royal income. ... But this plan of economy accorded not with the royal disposition, nor did it offer any prospect of extinguishing the debt. Charles remembered the promise of pecuniary assistance from France in the beginning of his reign; and, though his previous efforts to cultivate the friendship of Louis had been defeated by an unpropitious course of events, he resolved to renew the experiment. {896} Immediately after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Buckingham opened a negotiation with the duchess of Orleans, the king's sister, in France, and Charles, in his conversations with the French resident, apologised for his conduct in forming the triple alliance, and openly expressed his wish to enter into a closer union, a more intimate friendship, with Louis. ... About the end of the year the communications between the two princes became more open and confidential; French money, or the promise of French money, was received by the English ministers; the negotiation began to assume a more regular form, and the most solemn assurances of secrecy were given, that their real object might be withheld from the knowledge, or even the suspicion, of the States. In this stage of the proceedings Charles received an important communication from his brother James. Hitherto that prince had been an obedient and zealous son of the Church of England; but Dr. Heylin's History of the Reformation had shaken his religious credulity, and the result of the inquiry was a conviction that it became his duty to reconcile himself with the Church of Rome. He was not blind to the dangers to which such a change would expose him; and he therefore purposed to continue outwardly in communion with the established church, while he attended at the Catholic service in private. But, to his surprise, he learned from Symonds, a Jesuit missionary, that no dispensation could authorise such duplicity of conduct: a similar answer was returned to the same question from the pope; and James immediately took his resolution. He communicated to the king in private that he was determined to embrace the Catholic faith; and Charles without hesitation replied that he was of the same mind, and would consult with the duke on the subject in the presence of lord Arundell, lord Arlington, and Arlington's confidential friend, sir Thomas Clifford. ... The meeting was held in the duke's closet. Charles, with tears in his eyes, lamented the hardship of being compelled to profess a religion which he did not approve, declared his determination to emancipate himself from this restraint, and requested the opinion of those present, as to the most eligible means of effecting his purpose with safety and success. They advised him to communicate his intention to Louis, and to solicit the powerful aid of that monarch. Here occurs a very interesting question,--was Charles sincere or not? ... He was the most accomplished dissembler in his dominions; nor will it be any injustice to his character to suspect that his real object was to deceive both his brother and the king of France. ... Now, however, the secret negotiation proceeded with greater activity; and lord Arundell, accompanied by sir Richard Bellings, hastened to the French court. He solicited from Louis the present of a considerable sum, to enable the king to suppress any insurrection which might be provoked by his intended conversion, and offered the co-operation of England in the projected invasion of Holland, on the condition of an annual subsidy during the continuation of hostilities." On the advice of Louis, Charles postponed, for the time being, his intention to enter publicly the Romish church and thus provoke a national revolt; but his proposals were otherwise accepted, and a secret treaty was concluded at Dover, in May, 1670, through the agency of Charles' sister, Henrietta, the duchess of Orleans, who came over for that purpose. "Of this treaty, ... though much was afterwards said, little was certainly known. All the parties concerned, both the sovereigns and the negotiators, observed an impenetrable secrecy. What became of the copy transmitted to France is unknown; its counterpart was confided to the custody of sir Thomas Clifford, and is still in the keeping of his descendant, the lord Clifford of Chudleigh. The principal articles were: 1. That the king of England should publicly profess himself a Catholic at such time as should appear to him most expedient, and subsequently to that profession should join with Louis in a war against the Dutch republic at such time as the most Christian king should judge proper. 2. That to enable the king of England to suppress any insurrection which might be occasioned by his conversion, the king of France should grant him an aid of 2,000,000 of livres, by two payments, one at the expiration of three months, the other of six months, after the ratification of the treaty, and should also assist him with an armed force of 6,000 men, if ... necessary. ... 4. That if, eventually, any new rights on the Spanish monarchy should accrue to the king of France, the king of England should aid him with all his power in the acquisition of those rights. 5. That both princes should make war on the united provinces, and that neither should conclude peace or truce with them without the advice and consent of his ally.". J. Lingard, History of England, volume 11, chapter 6. ALSO IN: H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 11. O. Airy, The English Restoration and Louis XIV., chapter 16. G. Burnet, History of My Own Time, book 2 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1671. The Cabal. "It was remarked that the committee of council, established for foreign affairs, was entirely changed; and that Prince Rupert, the Duke of Ormond, Secretary Trevor, and Lord-keeper Bridgeman, men in whose honour the nation had great confidence, were never called to any deliberations. The whole secret was intrusted to five persons, Clifford, Ashley [afterwards Earl of Shaftesbury], Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale. These men were known by the appellation of the Cabal, a word which the initial letters of their names happened to compose. Never was there a more dangerous ministry in England, nor one more noted for pernicious counsels." D. Hume, History of England, chapter. 65 (volume 6). See, also, CABINET, THE ENGLISH. ENGLAND: A. D. 1672-1673. The Declaration of Indulgence and the Test Act. "It would have been impossible to obtain the consent of the party in the Royal Council which represented the old Presbyterians, of Ashley or Lauderdale or the Duke of Buckingham, to the Treaty of Dover. But it was possible to trick them into approval of a war with Holland by playing on their desire for a toleration of the Nonconformists. The announcement of the King's Catholicism was therefore deferred. ... His ministers outwitted, it only remained for Charles to outwit his Parliament. A large subsidy was demanded for the fleet, under the pretext of upholding the Triple Alliance, and the subsidy was no sooner granted than the two Houses were adjourned. {897} Fresh supplies were obtained by closing the Exchequer, and suspending--under Clifford's advice--the payment of either principal or interest on loans advanced to the public treasury. The measure spread bankruptcy among half the goldsmiths of London; but it was followed in 1672 by one yet more startling--the Declaration of Indulgence. By virtue of his ecclesiastical powers, the King ordered 'that all manner of penal laws on matters ecclesiastical against whatever sort of Nonconformists or recusants should be from that day suspended,' and gave liberty of public worship to all dissidents save Catholics, who were allowed to practice their religion only in private houses. ... The Declaration of Indulgence was at once followed by a declaration of war against the Dutch on the part of both England and France. ... It was necessary in 1673 to appeal to the Commons [for war supplies], but the Commons met in a mood of angry distrust. ... There was a general suspicion that a plot was on foot for the establishment of Catholicism and despotism, and that the war and the Indulgence were parts of the plot. The change of temper in the Commons was marked by the appearance of what was from that time called the Country party, with Lords Russell and Cavendish and Sir William Coventry at its head--a party which sympathized with the Nonconformists, but looked on it as its first duty to guard against the designs of the Court. As to the Declaration of Indulgence, however, all parties in the House were at one. The Commons resolved 'that penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical cannot be suspended but by consent of Parliament,' and refused supplies till the Declaration was recalled. The King yielded; but the Declaration was no sooner recalled than a Test Act was passed through both Houses without opposition, which required from everyone in the civil and military employment of the State the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, a declaration against transubstantiation, and a reception of the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. Clifford at once counseled resistance, and Buckingham talked flightily about bringing the army to London, but Arlington saw that all hope of carrying the 'great plan' through was at an end, and pressed Charles to yield. ... Charles sullenly gave way. No measure has ever brought about more startling results. The Duke of York owned himself a Catholic, and resigned his office as Lord High Admiral. ... Clifford, too, ... owned to being a Catholic, and ... laid down his staff of office. Their resignation was followed by that of hundreds of others in the army and the civil service of the Crown. ... The resignations were held to have proved the existence of the dangers which the Test Act had been passed to meet. From this moment all trust in Charles was at an end." J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 9, section 3. "It is very true that the [Test Act] pointed only at Catholics, that it really proposed an anti-Popish test, yet the construction of it, although it did not exclude from office such Dissenters as could occasionally conform, did effectually exclude all who scrupled to do so. Aimed at the Romanists, it struck the Presbyterians. It is clear that, had the Nonconformists and the Catholics joined their forces with those of the Court, in opposing the measure, they might have defeated it; but the first of these classes for the present submitted to the inconvenience, from the horror which they entertained of Popery, hoping, at the same time, that some relief would be afforded for this personal sacrifice in the cause of a common Protestantism. Thus the passing of an Act, which, until a late period, inflicted a social wrong upon two large sections of the community, is to be attributed to the course pursued by the very parties whose successors became the sufferers." J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England, volume 3, chapter 11. ALSO IN: D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 4, chapter 8, and volume 5, chapter 1. J. Collier, Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, part 2, book 9 (volume 8). ENGLAND: A. D. 1672-1674. Alliance with Louis XIV. of France in war with Holland. See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1672-1674. ENGLAND: A. D. 1673. Loss of New York, retaken by the Dutch. See NEW YORK: A. D. 1673. ENGLAND: A. D. 1674. Peace with the Dutch. Treaty of Westminster. Recovery of New York. See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674. ENGLAND: A. D. 1675-1688. Concessions to France in Newfoundland. See NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1660-1688. ENGLAND: A. D. 1678-1679. The Popish Plot. "There was an uneasy feeling in the nation that it was being betrayed, and just then [August, 1678] a strange story caused a panic throughout all England. A preacher of low character, named Titus Oates, who had gone over to the Jesuits, declared that he knew of a plot among the Catholics to kill the king and set up a Catholic Government. He brought his tale to a magistrate, named Sir Edmund Bury Godfrey, and shortly afterwards [October 17] Godfrey was found murdered in a ditch near St. Pancras Church. The people thought that the Catholics had murdered him to hush up the 'Popish plot,' and when Parliament met a committee was appointed to examine into the matter. Some papers belonging to a Jesuit named Coleman alarmed them, and so great was the panic that an Act was passed shutting out all Catholics, except the Duke of York, from Parliament. After this no Catholic sat in either House for a hundred and fifty years. But worse followed. Oates became popular, and finding tale-bearing successful, he and other informers went on to swear away the lives of a great number of innocent Catholics. The most noted of these was Lord Stafford, an upright and honest peer, who was executed in 1681, declaring his innocence. Charles laughed among his friends at the whole matter, but let it go on, and Shaftesbury, who wished to turn out Lord Danby, did all he could to fan the flame." A. B. Buckley, History of England for Beginners, chapter 19. "The capital and the whole nation went mad with hatred and fear. The penal laws, which had begun to lose something of their edge, were sharpened anew. Everywhere justices were busied in searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of siege. The train bands were under arms all night. Preparations were made for barricading the great thoroughfares. Patroles marched up and down the streets. Cannon were planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought himself safe unless he carried under his coat a small flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish assassins." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter. 2 (volume 1). {898} "It being expected that printed Bibles would soon become rare, or locked up in an unknown tongue, many honest people, struck with the alarm, employed themselves in copying the Bible into short-hand that they might not be destitute of its consolations in the hour of calamity. ... It was about the year 1679 that the famous King's Head Club was formed, so named from its being held at the King's Head Tavern in Fleet Street. ... They were terrorists and spread alarm with great effect. It was at this club that silk armour, pistol proof, was recommended as a security against assassination at the hands of the Papists; and the particular kind of life-preserver of that day, called a Protestant flail, was introduced." G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth, chapter 5 (volume 1). "And now commenced, before the courts of justice and the upper house, a sombre prosecution of the catholic lords Arundel, Petre, Stafford, Powis, Bellasis, the Jesuits Coleman, Ireland, Grieve, Pickering, and, in succession, all who were implicated by the indefatigable denunciations of Titus Oates and Bedloe. Unhappily, these courts of justice, desiring, in common with the whole nation, to condemn rather than to examine, wanted neither elements which might, if strictly acted upon, establish legal proof of conspiracy against some of the accused, nor terrible laws to destroy them when found guilty. And it was here that a spectacle, at first imposing, became horrible. No friendly voice arose to save those men who were guilty only of impracticable wishes, of extravagant conceptions. The king, the duke of York, the French ambassador, thoroughly acquainted as they were with the real nature of these imputed crimes, remained silent; they were thoroughly cowed." A. Carrel, History of the Counter-Revolution in England, part 1, chapter 4. "Although, ... upon a review of this truly shocking transaction, we may be fairly justified ... in imputing to the greater part of those concerned in it, rather an extraordinary degree of blind credulity than the deliberate wickedness of planning and assisting in the perpetration of legal murders; yet the proceedings on the popish plot must always be considered as an indelible disgrace upon the English nation, in which king, parliament, judges, juries, witnesses, prosecutors, have all their respective, though certainly not equal, shares." C. J. Fox, History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II., introduction, ch. "In this dreadful scene of wickedness, it is difficult not to assign the pre-eminence of guilt to Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury. If he did not first contrive, he certainly availed himself of the revelations of Oates, to work up the nation to the fury which produced the subsequent horrors. ... In extenuation of the delusion of the populace, something may be offered. The defamation of half a century had made the catholics the objects of protestant odium and distrust: and these had been increased by the accusation, artfully and assiduously fomented, of their having been the authors of the fire of the city of London. The publication, too, of Coleman's letters, certainly announced a considerable activity in the catholics to promote the catholic religion; and contained expressions, easily distorted to the sense, in which the favourers of the belief of the plot wished them to be understood. Danby's correspondence, likewise, which had long been generally known, and was about this time made public, had discovered that Charles was in the pay of France. These, with several other circumstances, had inflamed the imaginations of the public to the very highest pitch. A dreadful something (and not the less dreadful because its precise nature was altogether unknown), was generally apprehended. ... For their supposed part in the plot, ten laymen and seven priests, one of whom was seventy, another eighty, years of age, were executed. Seventeen others were condemned, but not executed. Some died in prison, and some were pardoned. On the whole body of catholics the laws were executed with horrible severity." C. Butler, Historical Memoirs of the English Catholics, chapter 32, section 3 (volume 2). ALSO IN: Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, chapter 89 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1679 (May). The Habeas Corpus Act. "Arbitrary imprisonment is a grievance which, in some degree, has place in almost every government, except in that of Great Britain; and our absolute security from it we owe chiefly to the present Parliament; a merit which makes some atonement for the faction and violence into which their prejudices had, in other particulars, betrayed them. The great charter had laid the foundation of this valuable part of liberty; the petition of right had renewed and extended it; but some provisions were still wanting to render it complete, and prevent all evasion or delay from ministers and judges. The act of habeas corpus, which passed this session, served these purposes. By this act it was prohibited to send anyone to a prison beyond sea. No judge, under severe penalties, must refuse to any prisoner a writ of habeas corpus, by which the gaoler was directed to produce in court the body of the prisoner (whence the writ has its name), and to certify the cause of his detainer and imprisonment. If the gaol lie within twenty miles of the judge, the writ must be obeyed in three days; and so proportionably for greater distances; every prisoner must be indicted the first term after his commitment, and brought to trial in the subsequent term. And no man, after being enlarged by order of court, can be recommitted for the same offence." D. Hume, History of England, chapter 67 (volume 6). "The older remedies serving as a safeguard against unlawful imprisonment, were-- 1. The writ of Mainprise, ensuring the delivery of the accused to a friend of the same, who gave security to answer for his appearance before the court when required, and in token of such undertaking he held him by the hand ('le prit par le main'). 2. The writ 'De odio et atiâ,' i. e., of hatred and malice, which, though not abolished, has long since been antiquated. ... It directed the sheriff to make inquisition in the county court whether the imprisonment proceeded from malice or not. ... 3. The writ 'De homine replegiando,' or replevying a man, that is, delivering him out on security to answer what may be objected against him. A writ is, originally, a royal writing, either an open patent addressed to all to whom it may come, and issued under the great seal; or, 'litteræ clausæ,' a sealed letter addressed to a particular person; such writs were prepared in the royal courts or in the Court of Chancery. The most usual instrument of protection, however, against arbitrary imprisonment is the writ of 'Habeas corpus,' so called from its beginning with the words, 'Habeas corpus ad subjiciendum,' which, on account of its universal application and the security it affords, has, insensibly, taken precedence of all others. {899} This is an old writ of the common law, and must be prayed for in any of the Superior courts of common law. ... But this writ . . . proved but a feeble, or rather wholly ineffectual protection against the arbitrary power of the sovereign. The right of an English subject to a writ of habeas corpus, and to a release from imprisonment unless sufficient cause be shown for his detention, was fully canvassed in the first years of the reign of Charles I. ... The parliament endeavoured to prevent such arbitrary imprisonment by passing the 'Petition of Right,' which enacted that no freeman, in any such manner ... should be imprisoned or detained. Even this act was found unavailing against the malevolent interpretations put by the judges; hence the 16 Charles I., c. 10, was passed, which enacts, that when any person is restrained of his liberty by the king in person, or by the Privy Council, or any member thereof, he shall, on demand of his counsel, have a writ of habeas corpus, and, three days after the writ, shall be brought before the court to determine whether there is ground for further imprisonment, for bail, or for his release. Notwithstanding these provisions, the immunity of English subjects from arbitrary detention was not ultimately established in full practical efficiency until the passing of the statute of Charles II., commonly called the 'Habeas Corpus Act.'" E. Fischel, The English Constitution, book 1, chapter 9. ALSO IN: Sir W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, book 3, chapter 8. H. J. Stephen, Commentaries, book 5, chapter 12, section 5 (volume 4). The following is the text of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679: I. Whereas great Delays have been used by Sheriffs, Gaolers and other Officers, to whose Custody any of the King's Subjects have been committed, for criminal or supposed criminal Matters, in making Returns of Writs of Habeas Corpus to them directed, by standing out an Alias and Pluries Habeas Corpus, and sometimes more, and by other Shifts, to avoid their yielding Obedience to such Writs, contrary to their Duty, and the known Laws of the Land, whereby many of the King's Subjects have been, and hereafter may be long detained in Prison, in such cases where by Law they are bailable, to their great Charges and Vexation. II. For the Prevention whereof, and the more speedy Relief of all Persons imprisoned for any such Criminal, or supposed Criminal Matters: (2.) Be it Enacted by the King's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the Authority thereof, that whensoever any Person or Persons shall bring any Habeas Corpus directed unto any Sheriff, or Sheriffs, Gaoler, Minister, or other Person whatsoever, for any Person in his or their Custody, and the said Writ shall be served upon the said Officer, or left at the Gaol or Prison, with any of the under Officers, under Keepers, or Deputy of the said Officers or Keepers, that the said Officer or Officers, his or their Under Officers, Under Keepers or Deputies, shall within three Days after the Service thereof, as aforesaid (unless the Commitment aforesaid were for Treason or Felony, plainly and specially expressed in the Warrant of Commitment), upon Payment or Tender of the Charges of bringing the said Prisoner, to be ascertained by the Judge or Court that awarded the same, and endorsed upon the said Writ, not exceeding Twelve-pence per Mile, and upon Security given by his own Bond, to pay the Charges of carrying back the Prisoner, if he shall be remanded by the Court or Judge, to which he shall be brought, according to the true Intent of this present Act, and that he will not make any Escape by the way, make Return of such Writ. (3.) And bring or cause to be brought the Body of the Party so committed or restrained, unto or before the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England for the time being, or the Judges or Barons of the said Court from whence the said Writ shall Issue, or unto and before such other Person or Persons before whom the said Writ is made returnable, according to the Command thereof. (4.) And shall then likewise certifie the true causes of his Detainer, or Imprisonment, unless the commitment of the said party be in any place beyond the Distance of twenty Miles from the Place or Places where such Court or Person is, or shall be residing; and if beyond the Distance of twenty Miles, and not above One Hundred Miles, then within the Space of Ten Days, and if beyond the Distance of One Hundred Miles, then within the space of Twenty Days, after such Delivery aforesaid, and not longer. III. And to the Intent that no Sheriff, Gaoler or other Officer may pretend Ignorance of the Import of any such Writ, (2.) Be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That all such Writs shall be marked in this manner, Per Statutum Tricesimo Primo Caroli Secundi Regis, and shall be signed by the Person that awards the same. (3.) And if any Person or Persons shall be or stand committed or detained, as aforesaid, for any Crime, unless for Felony or Treason, plainly expressed in the Warrant of Commitment, in the Vacation-time, and out of Term, it shall and may be lawful to and for the Person or Persons so committed or detained (other than Persons convict, or in Execution by legal Process) or anyone on his or their Behalf, to appeal, or complain to the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or anyone of His Majesty's Justices, either of the one Bench, or of the other, or the Barons of the Exchequer of the Degree of the Coif. (4.) And the said Lord Chancellor, Lord Keeper, Justices, or Barons, or any of them, upon View of the Copy or Copies of the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment and Detainer, or otherwise upon Oath made, that such Copy or Copies were denied to be given by such Person or Persons in whose custody the Prisoner or Prisoners is or are detained, are hereby authorized and required, upon Request made in Writing by such Person or Persons, or any on his, her, or their Behalf, attested and subscribed by two Witnesses, who were present at the Delivery of the same, to award and grant an Habeas Corpus under the Seal of such Court, whereof he shall then be one of the Judges, (5.) to be directed to the Officer or Officers in whose Custody the Party so committed or detained shall be, returnable immediate before the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or such Justice, Baron, or any other Justice or Baron, of the Degree of the Coif, of any of the said Courts. (6.) And upon Service thereof as aforesaid, the Officer or Officers, his or their under Officer or under Officers, under Keeper or under Keepers, or their Deputy, in whose Custody the Party is so committed or detained, shall within the times respectively before limited, bring such Prisoner or Prisoners before the said Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, or such Justices, Barons, or one of them, before whom the said Writ is made returnable, and in case of his Absence, before any of them, with the Return of such Writ, and the true Causes of the Commitment and Detainer. {900} (7.) And thereupon within two Days after the Party shall be brought before them the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or such Justice or Baron, before whom the Prisoner shall be brought as aforesaid, shall discharge the said Prisoner from his Imprisonment, taking his or their Recognizance, with one or more Surety or Sureties, in any Sum, according to their Discretions, having regard to the Quality of the Prisoner, and Nature of the Offence, for his or their Appearance in the Court of King's Bench the Term following, or at the next Assizes, Sessions, or general Gaol-Delivery, of and for such County, City or Place, where the Commitment was, or where the Offence was committed, or in such other Court where the said Offence is properly cognizable, as the Case shall require, and then shall certify the said Writ with the Return thereof, and the said Recognizance or Recognizances into the said Court, where such Appearance is to be made. (8.) Unless it shall appear unto the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or Justice, or Justices, or Baron or Barons, that the Party so committed is detained upon a legal Process, Order, or Warrant out of some Court that hath Jurisdiction of Criminal Matters, or by some Warrant signed and sealed with the Hand and Seal of any of the said Justices or Barons, or some Justice or Justices of the Peace, for such Matters or Offences, for the which by the Law, the Prisoner is not bailable. IV. Provided always, and be it enacted, That if any Person shall have wilfully neglected by the Space of two whole Terms after his Imprisonment to pray a Habeas Corpus for his Enlargement, such Person so wilfully neglecting, shall not have any Habeas Corpus to be granted in Vacation-time in Pursuance of this Act. V. And be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That if any Officer or Officers, his or their under Officer, or under Officers, under Keeper or under Keepers, or Deputy, shall neglect or refuse to make the Returns aforesaid, or to bring the Body or Bodies of the Prisoner or Prisoners, according to the Command of the said Writ, within the respective times aforesaid, or upon Demand made by the Prisoner, or Person in his Behalf, shall refuse to deliver, or within the Space of six Hours after Demand shall not deliver, to the Person so demanding, a true Copy of the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment and Detainer of such Prisoner, which he and they are hereby required to deliver accordingly; all and every the Head Gaolers and Keepers of such Prisons, and such other Person, in whose Custody the Prisoner shall be detained, shall for the first Offence, forfeit to the Prisoner, or Party grieved, the Sum of One Hundred Pounds. (2.) And for the second Offence, the Sum of Two Hundred Pounds, and shall and is hereby made incapable to hold or execute his said Office. (3.) The said Penalties to be recovered by the Prisoner or Party grieved, his Executors or Administrators, against such Offender, his Executors or Administrators, by any Action of Debt, Suit, Bill, Plaint or Information, in any of the King's Courts at Westminster, wherein no Essoin, Protection, Priviledge, Injunction, Wager of Law, or stay of Prosecution, by Non vult ulterius prosequi, or otherwise, shall be admitted or allowed, or any more than one Imparlance. (4.) And any Recovery or Judgment at the Suit of any Party grieved, shall be a sufficient Conviction for the first Offence; and any after Recovery or Judgment at the Suit of a Party grieved, for any Offence after the first Judgment, shall be a sufficient Conviction to bring the Officers or Person within the said Penalty for the Second Offence. VI. And for the Prevention of unjust Vexation, by reiterated Commitments for the same offence; (2.) Be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That no Person or Persons, which shall be delivered or set at large upon any Habeas Corpus, shall at any time hereafter be again imprisoned or committed for the same Offence, by any Person or Persons whatsoever, other than by the legal Order and Process of such Court wherein he or they shall be bound by Recognizance to appear, or other Court having Jurisdiction of the Cause. (3.) And if any other Person or Persons shall knowingly, contrary to this Act, recommit or imprison, or knowingly procure or cause to be recommitted or imprisoned for the same Offence, or pretended Offence, any Person or Persons delivered or set at large as aforesaid, or be knowingly aiding or assisting therein, then he or they shall forfeit to the Prisoner or Party grieved, the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds; any colourable Pretence or Variation in the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment notwithstanding, to be recovered as aforesaid. VII. Provided always, and be it further enacted, That if any Person or Persons shall be committed for High Treason or Felony, plainly and specially expressed in the Warrant of Commitment, upon his Prayer or Petition in open Court the first Week of the Term, or first Day of the Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol Delivery, to be brought to his Tryal, shall not be indicted sometime in the next Term, Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery after such Commitment, it shall and may be lawful to and for the Judges of the Court of King's Bench, and Justices of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery, and they are hereby required, upon Motion to them made in open Court the last Day of the Term, Sessions or Gaol-Delivery, either by the Prisoner, or anyone in his Behalf, to set at Liberty the Prisoner upon Bail, unless it appear to the Judges and Justices upon Oath made, that the Witnesses for the King could not be produced the same Term, Sessions, or general Gaol-Delivery. (2.) And if any Person or Persons committed as aforesaid, upon his Prayer or Petition in open Court, the first Week of the Term, or first Day of the Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, and general Gaol-Delivery, to be brought to his Tryal, shall not be indicted and tryed the second Term, Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery, after his Commitment, or upon his Tryal shall be acquitted, he shall be discharged from his Imprisonment. VIII. Provided always, that nothing in this Act shall extend to discharge out of Prison, any Person charged in Debt, or other Action, or with Process in any Civil Cause, but that after he shall be discharged of his Imprisonment for such his criminal Offence, he shall be kept in Custody, according to the Law for such other Suit. {901} IX. Provided always, and be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That if any Person or Persons, Subjects of this Realm, shall be committed to any Prison, or in Custody of any Officer or Officers whatsoever, for any Criminal or supposed Criminal Matter, that the said Person shall not be removed from the said Prison and Custody, into the Custody of any other Officer or Officers. (2.) Unless it be by Habeas Corpus, or some other legal Writ; or where the Prisoner is delivered to the Constable or other inferiour Officer, to carry such Prisoner to some common Gaol. (3.) Or where any Person is sent by Order of any Judge of Assize, or Justice of the Peace, to any common Workhouse, or House of Correction. (4.) Or where the Prisoner is removed from one Prison or Place to another within the same County, in order to his or her Tryal or Discharge in due Course of Law. (5.) Or in case of sudden Fire, or Infection, or other Necessity. (6.) And if any Person or Persons shall after such Commitment aforesaid, make out and sign, or countersign, any Warrant or Warrants for such Removal aforesaid, contrary to this Act, as well he that makes or signs, or countersigns, such Warrant or Warrants, as the Officer or Officers, that obey or execute the same, shall suffer & incur the Pains & Forfeitures in this Act before-mentioned, both for the 1st & 2nd Offence, respectively, to be recover'd in manner aforesaid, by the Party grieved. X. Provided also, and be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That it shall and may be lawful to and for any Prisoner & Prisoners as aforesaid, to move, and obtain his or their Habeas Corpus, as well out of the High Court of Chancery, or Court of Exchequer, as out of the Courts of King's Bench, or Common Pleas, or either of them. (2.) And if the said Lord Chancellor or Lord Keeper, or any Judge or Judges, Baron or Barons for the time being, of the Degree of the Coif, of any of the Courts aforesaid, in the Vacation time, upon view of the Copy or Copies of the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment or Detainer, or upon Oath made that such Copy or Copies were denied as aforesaid, shall deny any Writ of Habeas Corpus by this Act required to be granted, being moved for as aforesaid, they shall severally forfeit to the Prisoner or Party grieved, the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds, to be recovered in manner aforesaid. XI. And be it declared and enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That an Habeas Corpus according to the true Intent and meaning of this Act, may be directed, and run into any County Palatine, the Cinque Ports, or other priviledged Places, within the Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, and the Isles of Jersey or Guernsey, any Law or Usage to the contrary notwithstanding. XII. And for preventing illegal Imprisonments in Prisons beyond the Seas; (2.) Be it further enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That no Subject of this Realm that now is, or hereafter shall be, an Inhabitant or Resiant of this Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, shall or may be sent Prisoner into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey, Tangier, or into Parts, Garrisons, Islands, or Places beyond the Seas, which are, or at any time hereafter shall be within or without the Dominions of his Majesty, his Heirs or Successors. (3.) And that every such Imprisonment is hereby enacted and adjudged to be illegal. (4.) And that if any of the said Subjects now is, or hereafter shall be so imprisoned, every such Person and Persons so imprisoned, shall and may for every such Imprisonment, maintain by Virtue of this Act, an Action or Actions of False Imprisonment, in any of his Majesty's Courts of Record, against the Person or Persons by whom he or she shall be so committed, detained, imprisoned, sent Prisoner or transported, contrary to the true meaning of this Act, and against all or any Person or Persons, that shall frame, contrive, write, seal or countersign any Warrant or Writing for such Commitment, Detainer, Imprisonment or Transportation, or shall be advising, aiding or assisting in the same, or any of them. (5.) And the Plaintiff in every such Action, shall have judgment to recover his treble Costs, besides Damages; which Damages so to be given, shall not be less than Five Hundred Pounds. (6.) In which Action, no Delay, Stay, or Stop of Proceeding, by Rule, Order or Command, nor no Injunction, Protection, or Priviledge whatsoever, nor any more than one Imparlance shall be allowed, excepting such Rule of the Court wherein the Action shall depend, made in open Court, as shall be thought in justice necessary, for special Cause to be expressed in the said Rule. (7.) And the Person or Persons who shall knowingly frame, contrive, write, seal or countersign any Warrant for such Commitment, Detainer, or Transportation, or shall so commit, detain, imprison, or transport any Person or Persons contrary to this Act, or be any ways advising, aiding or assisting therein, being lawfully convicted thereof, shall be disabled from thenceforth to bear any Office of Trust or Profit within the said Realm of England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, or any of the Islands, Territories or Dominions thereunto belonging. (8.) And shall incur and sustain the Pains, Penalties, and Forfeitures, limited, ordained, and Provided in and by the Statute of Provision and Premunire made in the Sixteenth Year of King Richard the Second. (9.) And be incapable of any Pardon from the King, his Heirs or Successors, of the said Forfeitures, Losses, or Disabilities, or any of them. XIII. Provided always, That nothing in this Act shall extend to give Benefit to any Person who shall by Contract in Writing, agree with any Merchant or Owner, of any Plantation, or other Person whatsoever, to be transported to any part beyond the Seas, and receive Earnest upon such Agreement, altho' that afterwards such Person shall renounce such Contract. XIV. Provided always, and be it enacted, That if any Person or Persons, lawfully convicted of any Felony, shall in open Court pray to be transported beyond the Seas, and the Court shall think fit to leave him or them in Prison for that Purpose, such Person or Persons may be transported into any Parts beyond the Seas; This Act, or any thing therein contained to the contrary notwithstanding. XV. Provided also, and be it enacted, That nothing herein contained, shall be deemed, construed, or taken to extend to the Imprisonment of any Person before the first Day of June, One Thousand Six Hundred Seventy and Nine, or to any thing advised, procured, or otherwise done, relating to such Imprisonment; Any thing herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding. {902} XVI. Provided also, That if any Person or Persons, at any time resiant in this Realm, shall have committed any Capital Offence in Scotland or Ireland, or any of the Islands, or foreign Plantations of the King, his Heirs or Successors, where he or she ought to be tryed for such Offence, such Person or Persons may be sent to such Place, there to receive such Tryal, in such manner as the same might have been used before the making this Act; Any thing herein contained to the contrary notwithstanding. XVII. Provided also, and be it enacted, That no Person or Persons, shall be sued, impleaded, molested or troubled for any Offence against this Act, unless the Party offending be sued or impleaded for the same within two Years at the most after such time wherein the Offence shall be committed, in Case the Party grieved shall not be then in Prison; and if he shall be in Prison, then within the space of two Years after the Decease of the Person imprisoned, or his, or her Delivery out of Prison, which shall first happen. XVIII. And to the Intent no Person may avoid his Tryal at the Assizes, or general Gaol Delivery, by procuring his Removal before the Assizes at such time as he cannot be brought back to receive his Tryal there; (2.) Be it enacted, That after the Assizes proclaimed for that County where the Prisoner is detained, no Person shall be removed from the Common Gaol upon any Habeas Corpus granted in pursuance of this Act, but upon any such Habeas Corpus shall be brought before the Judge of Assize in open Court, who is thereupon to do what to Justice shall appertain. XIX. Provided nevertheless, That after the Assizes are ended, any Person or Persons detained may have his or her Habeas Corpus, according to the Direction and Intention of this Act. XX. And be it also enacted by the Authority aforesaid, That if any Information, Suit or Action, shall be brought or exhibited against any Person or Persons, for any Offence committed or to be committed against the Form of this Law, it shall be lawful for such Defendants to plead the general Issue, that they are not guilty, or that they owe nothing, and to give such special Matter in Evidence to the Jury, that shall try the same, which Matter being pleaded, had been good and sufficient matter in Law to have discharged the said Defendant or Defendants against the said Information, Suit or Action, and the said Matter shall be then as available to him or them, to all Intents and Purposes, as if he or they had sufficiently pleaded, set forth, or alleged the same Matter in Bar, or Discharge of such Information, Suit or Action. XXI. And because many times Persons charged with Petty-Treason or Felony, or as Accessaries thereunto, are committed upon Suspicion only, whereupon they are bailable or not, according as the Circumstances making out that Suspicion are more or less weighty, which are best known to the Justices of Peace that committed the Persons, and have the Examinations before them, or to other Justices of the Peace in the County; (2.) Be it therefore enacted, That where any Person shall appear to be committed by any Judge, or Justice of the Peace, and charged as necessary before the Fact, to any Petty-Treason or Felony, or upon Suspicion thereof, or with Suspicion of Petty-Treason or Felony, which Petty-Treason or Felony, shall be plainly and specially expressed in the Warrant of Commitment, that such Person shall not be removed or bailed by Virtue of this Act, or in any other manner than they might have been before the making of this Act. ENGLAND: A. D. 1679 (June). The Meal-tub Plot. "Dangerfield, a subtle and dexterous man, who had gone through all the shapes and practices of roguery, and in particular was a false coiner, undertook now to coin a plot for the ends of the papists. He ... got into all companies, and mixed with the hottest men of the town, and studied to engage others with himself to swear that they had been invited to accept of commissions, and that a new form of government was to be set up, and that the king and the royal family were to be sent away. He was carried with this story, first to the duke, and then to the king, and had a weekly allowance of money, and was very kindly used by many of that side; so that a whisper run about town, that some extraordinary thing would quickly break out: and he having some correspondence with one colonel Mansel, he made up a bundle of seditious but ill contrived letters, and laid them in a dark corner of his room: and then some searchers were sent from the custom house to look for some forbidden goods, which they heard were in Mansel's chamber. There were no goods found: but as it was laid, they found that bundle of letters: and upon that a great noise was made of a discovery: but upon inquiry it appeared the letters were counterfeited, and the forger of them was suspected; so they searched into all Dangerfield's haunts, and in one of them they found a paper that contained the scheme of this whole fiction, which, because it was found in a meal-tub, came to be called the meal-tub plot. ... This was a great disgrace to the popish party, and the king suffered much by the countenance he had given him." G. Burnet, History of My Own Time, book 3, 1679. ENGLAND: A. D. 1679-1681. The Exclusion Bill. "Though the duke of York was not charged with participation in the darkest schemes of the popish conspirators, it was evident that his succession was the great aim of their endeavours, and evident also that he had been engaged in the more real and undeniable intrigues of Coleman. His accession to the throne, long viewed with just apprehension, now seemed to threaten such perils to every part of the constitution as ought not supinely to be waited for, if any means could be devised to obviate them. This gave rise to the bold measure of the exclusion bill, too bold, indeed, for the spirit of the country, and the rock on which English liberty was nearly shipwrecked. In the long parliament, full as it was of pensioners and creatures of court influence, nothing so vigorous would have been successful. ... But the zeal they showed against Danby induced the king to put an end [January 24, 1679] to this parliament of seventeen years' duration; an event long ardently desired by the popular party, who foresaw their ascendancy in the new elections. The next house of commons accordingly came together with an ardour not yet quenched by corruption; and after reviving the impeachments commenced by their predecessors, and carrying a measure long in agitation, a test which shut the catholic peers out of parliament, went upon the exclusion bill [the second reading of which was carried, May 21, 1679, by 207 to 128]. {903} Their dissolution put a stop to this; and in the next parliament the lords rejected it [after the commons had passed the bill, without a division, October, 1680]. ... The bill of exclusion ... provided that the imperial crown of England should descend to and be enjoyed by such person or persons successively during the life of the duke of York as would have inherited or enjoyed the same in case he were naturally dead. ... But a large part of the opposition had unfortunately other objects in view." Under the contaminating influence of the earl of Shaftesbury, "they broke away more and more from the line of national opinion, till a fatal reaction involved themselves in ruin, and exposed the cause of public liberty to its most imminent peril. The countenance and support of Shaftesbury brought forward that unconstitutional and most impolitic scheme of the duke of Monmouth's succession. [James, duke of Monmouth, was the acknowledged natural son of king Charles, by Lucy Walters, his mistress while in exile at the Hague.] There could hardly be a greater insult to a nation used to respect its hereditary line of kings, than to set up the bastard of a prostitute, without the least pretence of personal excellence or public services, against a princess of known virtue and attachment to the protestant religion. And the effrontery of this attempt was aggravated by the libels eagerly circulated to dupe the credulous populace into a belief of Monmouth's legitimacy." H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 12. ALSO IN: A. Carrel, History of the Counter-Revolution in England, part 2, chapter 1. G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth, chapter 4-8 (volume 1). G. Burnet, History of My Own Time, book 3, 1679-81. Sir W. Temple, Memoirs, part 3 (Works, volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1680. Whigs and Tories acquire their respective names. "Factions indeed were at this time [A. D. 1680] extremely animated against each other. The very names by which each party denominated its antagonist discover the virulence and rancour which prevailed. For besides petitioner and abhorrer, appellations which were soon forgotten, this year is remarkable for being the epoch of the well-known epithets of Whig and Tory, by which, and sometimes without any material difference, this island has been so long divided. The court party reproached their antagonists with their affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland, who were known by the name of Whigs: the country party found a resemblance between the courtiers and the popish banditti in Ireland, to whom the appellation of Tory was affixed: and after this manner these foolish terms of reproach came into public and general use." D. Hume, History of England, chapter 68 (volume 6). "The definition of the nickname Tory, as it originally arose, is given in 'A New Ballad' (Narcissus Luttrell's Collection):-- The word Tory's of Irish Extraction, 'Tis a Legacy that they have left here They came here in their brogues, And have acted like Rogues, In endeavouring to learn us to swear." J. Grego, History of Parliamentary Elections, page 36. ALSO IN: G. W. Cooke, History of Party, volume 1, chapter 2. Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 2. For the origin of the name of the 'Whig party, See WHIGS (WIGGAMORS); also, RAPPAREES. ENGLAND: A. D. 1681-1683. The Tory reaction and the downfall of the Whigs. The Rye-house Plot. "Shaftesbury's course rested wholly on the belief that the penury of the Treasury left Charles at his mercy, and that a refusal of supplies must wring from the King his assent to the exclusion. But the gold of France had freed the King from his thraldom. He had used the Parliament [of 1681] simply to exhibit himself as a sovereign whose patience and conciliatory temper was rewarded with insult and violence; and now that he saw his end accomplished, he suddenly dissolved the Houses in April, and appealed in a Royal declaration to the justice of the nation at large. The appeal was met by an almost universal burst of loyalty. The Church rallied to the King; his declaration was read from every pulpit; and the Universities solemnly decided that 'no religion, no law, no fault, no forfeiture' could avail to bar the sacred right of hereditary succession. ... The Duke of York returned in triumph to St. James's. ... Monmouth, who had resumed his progresses through the country as a means of checking the tide of reaction, was at once arrested. ... Shaftesbury, alive to the new danger, plunged desperately into conspiracies with a handful of adventurers as desperate as himself, hid himself in the City, where he boasted that ten thousand 'brisk boys' were ready to appear at his call, and urged his friends to rise in arms. But their delays drove him to flight. ... The flight of Shaftesbury proclaimed the triumph of the King. His wonderful sagacity had told him when the struggle was over and further resistance useless. But the Whig leaders, who had delayed to answer the Earl's call, still nursed projects of rising in arms, and the more desperate spirits who had clustered around him as he lay hidden in the City took refuge in plots of assassination, and in a plan for murdering Charles and his brother as they passed the Rye-house [a Hertfordshire farm house, so-called] on their road from London to Newmarket. Both the conspiracies were betrayed, and, though they were wholly distinct from one another, the cruel ingenuity of the Crown lawyers blended them into one. Lord Essex, the last of an ill-fated race, saved himself from a traitor's death by suicide in the Tower. Lord Russell, convicted on a charge of sharing in the Rye-house Plot, was beheaded in Lincoln Inn Fields. The same fate awaited Algernon Sidney. Monmouth fled in terror over sea, and his flight was followed by a series of prosecutions for sedition directed against his followers. In 1683 the Constitutional opposition which had held Charles so long in check lay crushed at his feet. ... On the very day when the crowd around Russell's scaffold were dipping their handkerchiefs in his blood, as in the blood of a martyr, the University of Oxford solemnly declared that the doctrine of passive obedience, even to the worst of rulers, was a part of religion." During the brief remainder of his reign Charles was a prudently absolute monarch, governing without a Parliament, coolly ignoring the Triennial Act, and treating on occasions the Test Act, as well as other laws obnoxious to him, with contempt. He died unexpectedly, early in February, 1685, and his brother, the Duke of York, succeeded to the throne, as James II., with no resistance, but with much feeling opposed to him. J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 9, sections 5-6. {904} ALSO IN: G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth; chapters 8-10 (volume 1). D. Hume, History of England, chapters 68-69 (volume 6). G. W. Cooke, History of Party, volume 1, chapters 6-11. ENGLAND: A. D. 1685. Accession of James II. ENGLAND: A. D. 1685 (February). The new King proclaims his religion. "The King [James II.] early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to the proof. While he was a subject, he had been in the habit of hearing mass with closed doors in a small oratory which had been fitted up for his wife. He now ordered the doors to be thrown open, in order that all who came to pay their duty to him might see the ceremony. When the host was elevated there was a strange confusion in the antechamber. The Roman Catholics fell on their knees: the Protestants hurried out of the room. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the palace; and, during Lent, a series of sermons was preached there by Popish divines." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 4 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1685 (May-July). Monmouth's Rebellion. "The Parliament which assembled on the 22nd of May ... was almost entirely Tory. The failure of the Rye-House Plot had produced a reaction, which for a time entirely annihilated the Whig influence. ... The apparent triumph of the King and the Tory party was completed by the disastrous failure of the insurrection planned by their adversaries. A knot of exiled malcontents, some Scotch, some English, had collected in Holland. Among them was Monmouth and the Earl of Argyle, son of that Marquis of Argyle who had taken so prominent a part on the Presbyterian side in the Scotch troubles of Charles I.'s reign. Monmouth had kept aloof from politics till, on the accession of James, he was induced to join the exiles at Amsterdam, whither Argyle, a strong Presbyterian, but a man of lofty and moderate views, also repaired. National jealousy prevented any union between the exiles, and two expeditions were determined on,--the one under Argyle, who hoped to find an army ready to his hand among his clansmen in the West of Scotland, the other under Monmouth in the West of England. Argyle's expedition set sail on the 2nd of May [1685]. ... Argyle's invasion was ruined by the limited authority intrusted to him, and by the jealousy and insubordination of his fellow leaders. ... His army disbanded. He was himself taken in Renfrewshire, and, after an exhibition of admirable constancy, was beheaded. ... A week before the final dispersion of Argyle's troops, Monmouth had landed in England [at Lyme, June 11]. He was well received in the West. He had not been twenty-four hours in England before he found himself at the head of 1,500 men; but though popular among the common people, he received no support from the upper classes. Even the strongest Whigs disbelieved the story of his legitimacy, and thought his attempt ill-timed and fraught with danger. ... Meanwhile Monmouth had advanced to Taunton, had been there received with enthusiasm, and, vainly thinking to attract the nobility, had assumed the title of King. Nor was his reception at Bridgewater less flattering. But difficulties already began to gather round him; he was in such want of arms, that, although rustic implements were converted into pikes, he was still obliged to send away many volunteers; the militia were closing in upon him in all directions; Bristol had been seized by the Duke of Beaufort, and the regular army under Feversham and Churchill were approaching." After feebly attempting several movements, against Bristol and into Wiltshire, Monmouth lost heart and fell back to Bridgewater. "The Royalist army was close behind him, and on the fifth of July encamped about three miles from Bridgewater, on the plain of Sedgemoor." Monmouth was advised to undertake a night surprise, and did so in the early morning of the 6th. "The night was not unfitting for such an enterprise, for the mist was so thick that at a few paces nothing could be seen. Three great ditches by which the moor was drained lay between the armies; of the third of these, strangely enough, Monmouth knew nothing." The unexpected discovery of this third ditch, known as "the Bussex Rhine," which his cavalry could not cross, and behind which the enemy rallied, was the ruin of the enterprise. "Monmouth saw that the day was lost, and with the love of life which was one of the characteristics of his soft nature, he turned and fled. Even after his flight the battle was kept up bravely. At length the arrival of the King's artillery put an end to any further struggle. The defeat was followed by all the terrible scenes which mark a suppressed insurrection. ... Monmouth and Grey pursued their flight into the New Forest, and were there apprehended in the neighbourhood of Ringwood." Monmouth petitioned abjectly for his life, but in vain. He was executed on the 15th of July. "The failure of this insurrection was followed by the most terrible cruelties. Feversham returned to London, to be flattered by the King and laughed at by the Court for his military exploits. He left Colonel Kirke in command at Bridgewater. This man had learned, as commander at Tangier, all the worst arts of cruel despotism. His soldiery in bitter pleasantry were called Kirke's 'Lambs,' from the emblem of their regiment. It is impossible to say how many suffered at the hands of this man and his brutal troops; 100 captives are said by some to have been put to death the week after the battle. But this military revenge did not satisfy the Court." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 2, pages 764-768. The number of Monmouth's men killed is computed by some at 2,000, by others at 300; a disparity, however, which may be easily reconciled by supposing that the one account takes in those who were killed in battle, while the other comprehends the wretched fugitives who were massacred in ditches, cornfields, and other hiding places, the following day." C. J. Fox, History of the Early Part of the Reign of James II., chapter 3. ALSO IN: G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth, chapters 13-28 (volumes 1-2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1685 (September). The Bloody Assizes. "Early in September, Jeffreys [Sir George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench], accompanied by four other judges, set out on that circuit of which the memory will last as long as our race and language. ... At Winchester the Chief Justice first opened his commission. Hampshire had not been the theatre of war; but many of the vanquished rebels had, like their leader, fled thither." Two among these had been found concealed in the house of Lady Alice Lisle, a widow of eminent nobility of character, and Jeffreys' first proceeding was to arraign Lady Alice for the technical reason of the concealment. {905} She was tried with extraordinary brutality of manner on the part of the judge; the jury was bullied into a verdict of guilty, and the innocent woman was condemned by the fiend on the bench to be burned alive. By great exertion of many people, the sentence was commuted from burning to beheading. No mercy beyond this could be obtained from Jeffreys or his fit master, the king. "In Hampshire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on the day following her execution, Jeffreys reached Dorchester, the principal town of the county in which Monmouth had landed, and the judicial massacre began. The court was hung, by order of the Chief Justice, with scarlet; and this innovation seemed to the multitude to indicate a bloody purpose. ... More than 300 prisoners were to be tried. The work seemed heavy; but Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light. He let it be understood that the only chance of obtaining pardon or respite was to plead guilty. Twenty-nine persons, who put themselves on their country and were convicted, were ordered to be tied up without delay. The remaining prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred and ninety-two received sentence of death. The whole number hanged in Dorsetshire amounted to seventy-four. From Dorchester Jeffreys proceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely grazed the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, comparatively few persons were capitally punished. Somersetshire, the chief seat of the rebellion, had been reserved for the last and most fearful vengeance. In this county two hundred and thirty-three prisoners were in a few days hanged, drawn and quartered. At every spot where two roads met, on every market place, on the green of every large village which had furnished Monmouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in the wind, or heads and quarters stuck on poles, poisoned the air, and made the traveller sick with horror. ... The Chief Justice was all himself. His spirits rose higher and higher as the work went on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and swore in such a way that many thought him drunk from morning to night. ... Jeffreys boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all his predecessors together since the Conquest. ... Yet those rebels who were doomed to death were less to be pitied than some of the survivors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was unable to bring home the charge of high treason were convicted of misdemeanours and were sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that which Oates had undergone. ... The number of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was eight hundred and forty-one. These men, more wretched than their associates who suffered death, were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on persons who enjoyed favour at court. The conditions of the gift were that the convicts should be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should not be emancipated for ten years, and that the place of their banishment should be some West Indian island. ... It was estimated by Jeffreys that, on an average, each of them, after all charges were paid, would be worth from ten to fifteen pounds. There was therefore much angry competition for grants. ... And now Jeffreys had done his work, and returned to claim his reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West, leaving carnage, mourning and terror behind him. The hatred with which he was regarded by the people of Somersetshire has no parallel in our history. ... But at the court Jeffreys was cordially welcomed. He was a judge after his master's own heart. James had watched the circuit with interest and delight. ... At a later period, when all men of all parties spoke with horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge and the wicked King attempted to vindicate themselves by throwing the blame on each other." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 5. ALSO IN: Sir James Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England, chapter 1. Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, chapter 100 (volume 3). G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth, chapter 29-31 (volume 2). See, also, TAUNTON: A. D. 1685. ENGLAND: A. D. 1685-1686. Faithless and tyrannical measures against the New England colonies. See CONNECTICUT: A. D. 1685-1687; and MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1671-1686. ENGLAND: A. D. 1685-1689. The Despotism of James II. in Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1681-1689. ENGLAND: A. D. 1686. The Court of High Commission revived. "James conceived the design of employing his authority as head of the Church of England as a means of subjecting that church to his pleasure, if not of finally destroying it. It is hard to conceive how he could reconcile to his religion the exercise of supremacy in an heretical sect, and thus sanction by his example the usurpations of the Tudors on the rights of the Catholic Church. ... He, indeed, considered the ecclesiastical supremacy as placed in his hands by Providence to enable him to betray the Protestant establishment. 'God,' said he to Barillon, 'has permitted that all the laws made to establish Protestantism now serve as a foundation for my measures to re-establish true religion, and give me a right to exercise a more extensive power than other Catholic princes possess in the ecclesiastical affairs of their dominions.' He found legal advisers ready with paltry expedients for evading the two statutes of 1641 and 1660 [abolishing, and re-affirming the abolition of the Court of High Commission], under the futile pretext that they forbade only a court vested with such powers of corporal punishment as had been exercised by the old Court of High Commission; and in conformity to their pernicious counsel, he issued, in July, a commission to certain ministers, prelates, and judges, to act as a Court of Commissioners in Ecclesiastical Causes. The first purpose of this court was to enforce directions to preachers, issued by the King, enjoining them to abstain from preaching on controverted questions." Sir James Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England, chapter 2. ALSO IN: D. Neal, History of the Puritans, volume 5, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1686. The consolidation of New England under a royal Governor-General. See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1686. ENGLAND: A. D. 1687. Riddance of the Test Act by royal dispensing power. "The abolition of the tests was a thing resolved upon in the catholic council, and for this a sanction of some kind or other was required, as they dared not yet proceed upon the royal will alone. Chance, or the machinations of the catholics, created an affair which brought the question of the tests under another form before the court of king's bench. {906} This court had not the power to abolish the Test Act, but it might consider whether the king had the right of exempting particular subjects from the formalities. ... The king ... closeted himself with the judges one by one, dismissed some, and got those who replaced them, 'ignorant men,' says an historian, 'and scandalously incompetent,' to acknowledge his dispensing power. ... The judges of the king's bench, after a trial, ... declared, almost in the very language used by the crown counsel: 1. That the kings of England are sovereign princes; 2. That the laws of England are the king's laws; 3. That therefore it is an inseparable prerogative in the kings of England to dispense with penal laws in particular cases, and upon particular necessary reasons; 4. That of those reasons, and those necessities, the king himself is sole judge; and finally, which is consequent upon all, 5. That this is not a trust invested in, or granted to the king by the people, but the ancient remains of the sovereign power and prerogative of the kings of England, which never yet was taken from them, nor can be. The case thus decided, the king thought he might rely upon the respect always felt by the English people for the decisions of the higher courts, to exempt all his catholic subjects from the obligations of the test. And upon this, it became no longer a question merely of preserving in their commissions and offices those whose dismissal had been demanded by parliament. ... To obtain or to retain certain employments, it was necessary to be of the same religion with the king. Papists replaced in the army and in the administration all those who had pronounced at all energetically for the maintenance of the tests. Abjurations, somewhat out of credit during the last session of parliament, again resumed favour." A. Carrel, History of the Counter-Revolution in England, chapter 3. ALSO IN: J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England, volume 4, chapter 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1687-1688. Declarations of Indulgence. Trial of the Seven Bishops. "Under pretence of toleration for Dissenters, James endeavoured, under another form, to remove obstacles from Romanists. He announced an Indulgence. He began in Scotland by issuing on the 12th of February, 1687, in Edinburgh, a Proclamation granting relief to scrupulous consciences. Hereby he professed to relieve the Presbyterians, but the relief of them amounted to nothing; to the Romanists it was complete. ... On the 18th of March, 1687, he announced to the English Privy Council his intention to prorogue Parliament, and to grant upon his own authority entire liberty of conscience to all his subjects. Accordingly on the 4th of April he published his Indulgence, declaring his desire to see all his subjects become members of the Church of Rome, and his resolution (since that was impracticable) to protect them in the free exercise of their religion; also promising to protect the Established Church: then he annulled a number of Acts of Parliament, suspended all penal laws against Nonconformists, authorised Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to perform worship publicly, and abrogated all Acts of Parliament imposing any religious test for civil or military offices. This declaration was then notoriously illegal and unconstitutional. James now issued a second and third declaration for Scotland, and courted the Dissenters in England, but with small encouragement. ... On the 27th of April, 1688, James issued a second Declaration of Indulgence for England. ... On the 4th of May, by an order in Council, he directed his Declaration of the 27th of April to be publicly read during divine service in all Churches and Chapels, by the officiating ministers, on two successive Sundays--namely, on the 20th and 27th of May in London, and on the 3d and 10th of June in the country; and desired the Bishops to circulate this Declaration through their dioceses. Hitherto the Bishops and Clergy had held the doctrine of passive obedience to the sovereign, however bad in character or in his measures--now they were placed by the King himself in a dilemma. Here was a violation of existing law, and an intentional injury to their Church, if not a plan for the substitution of another. The Nonconformists, whom James pretended to serve, coincided with and supported the Church. A decided course must be taken. The London Clergy met and resolved not to read the Declaration. On the 12th of May, at Lambeth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury and other Prelates assembled. They resolved that the Declaration ought not to be read. On Friday, the 18th of May, a second meeting of the Prelates and eminent divines was held at Lambeth Palace. A petition to the King was drawn up by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his own handwriting, disclaiming all disloyalty and all intolerance, ... but stating that Parliament had decided that the King could not dispense with Statutes in matters ecclesiastical--that the Declaration was therefore illegal--and could not be solemnly published by the petitioners in the House of God and during divine service. This paper was signed by Sancroft, Archbishop of Canterbury, Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, Turner of Ely, Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawny of Bristol. It was approved by Compton, Bishop of London, but not signed, because he was under suspension. The Archbishop had long been forbidden to appear at Court, therefore could not present it. On Friday evening the six Bishops who had signed were introduced by Sunderland to the King, who read the document and pronounced it libellous [and seditious and rebellious], and the Bishops retired. On Sunday, the 20th of May, the first day appointed, the Declaration was read in London only in four Churches out of one hundred. The Dissenters and Church Laymen sided with the Clergy. On the following Sunday the Declaration was treated in the same manner in London, and on Sunday, the 3d of June, was disregarded by Bishops and Clergy in all parts of England. James, by the advice of Jeffreys, ordered the Archbishop and Bishops to be indicted for a seditious libel. They were, on the 8th of June, conveyed to the Tower amidst the most enthusiastic demonstrations of respect and affection from all classes. The same night the Queen was said to have given birth to a son; but the national opinion was that some trick had been played. On the 29th of June the trial of the seven Bishops came on before the Court of King's Bench. ... The Jury, who, after remaining together all night (one being stubborn) pronounced a verdict of not guilty on the morning of the 30th June, 1688." W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapter 2. {907} "The court met at nine o'clock. The nobility and gentry covered the benches, and an immense concourse of people filled the Hall, and blocked up the adjoining streets. Sir Robert Langley, the foreman of the jury, being, according to established form, asked whether the accused were guilty or not guilty, pronounced the verdict 'Not guilty.' No sooner were these words uttered than a loud huzza arose from the audience in the court. It was instantly echoed from without by a shout of joy, which sounded like a crack of the ancient and massy roof of Westminster Hall. It passed with electrical rapidity from voice to voice along the infinite multitude who waited in the streets. It reached the Temple in a few minutes. ... 'The acclamations,' says Sir John Reresby, 'were a very rebellion in noise.' In no long time they ran to the camp at Hounslow, and were repeated with an ominous voice by the soldiers in the hearing of the King, who, on being told that they were for the acquittal of the bishops, said, with an ambiguity probably arising from confusion, 'So much the worse for them.'" Sir J. Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England in 1688, chapter 9. ALSO IN: A. Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bishops. R. Southey, Book of the Church, chapter 18. G. G. Perry, History of the Church of England, chapter 30 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1688 (July). William and Mary of Orange the hope of the nation. "The wiser among English statesmen had fixed their hopes steadily on the succession of Mary, the elder daughter and heiress of James. The tyranny of her father's reign made this succession the hope of the people at large. But to Europe the importance of the change, whenever it should come about, lay not so much in the succession of Mary as in the new power which such an event would give to her husband, William, Prince of Orange. We have come, in fact, to a moment when the struggle of England against the aggression of its King blends with the larger struggle of Europe against the aggression of Lewis XIV." J. R. Green, Short History of England, chapter 9, section 7. "William of Nassau, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of the republic of the United Provinces, was, before the birth of the Prince of Wales, first prince of the blood royal of England [as son of Princess Mary, daughter of Charles I., and, therefore, nephew as well as son-in-law of James II.]; and his consort, the Lady Mary, the eldest daughter of the King, was, at that period, presumptive heiress to the crown." Sir J. Mackintosh, History of the Revolution in England, chapter 10. ENGLAND: A. D. 1688 (JULY-NOVEMBER). Invitation to William of Orange and his acceptance of it. "In July, in almost exact coincidence of time with the Queen's accouchement [generally doubted and suspected], came the memorable trial of the Seven Bishops, which gave the first demonstration of the full force of that popular animosity which James's rule had provoked. Some months before, however, Edward Russell, nephew of the Earl of Bedford, and cousin of Algernon Sidney's fellow-victim, had sought the Hague with proposals to William [prince of Orange] to make an armed descent upon England, as vindicator of English liberties and the Protestant religion. William had cautiously required a signed invitation from at least a few representative statesmen before committing himself to such an enterprise, and on the day of the acquittal of the Seven Bishops a paper, signed in cipher by Lords Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, and Lumley, by Compton, Bishop of Northampton, by Edward Russell, and by Henry Sidney, brother of Algernon, was conveyed by Admiral Herbert to the Hague. William was now furnished with the required security for English assistance in the projected undertaking, but the task before him was still one of extreme difficulty. ... On the 10th of October, matters now being ripe for such a step, William, in conjunction with some of his English advisers, put forth his famous declaration. Starting with a preamble to the effect that the observance of laws is necessary to the happiness of states, the instrument proceeds to enumerate fifteen particulars in which the laws of England had been set at naught. The most important of these were-- (1) the exercise of the dispensing power; (2) the corruption, coercion, and packing of the judicial bench; (3) the violation of the test laws by the appointment of papists to offices (particularly judicial and military offices, and the administration of Ireland), and generally the arbitrary and illegal measures resorted to by James for the propagation of the Catholic religion; (4) the establishment and action of the Court of High Commission; (5) the infringement of some municipal charters, and the procuring of the surrender of others; (6) interference with elections by turning out of all employment such as refused to vote as they were required; and (7) the grave suspicion which had arisen that the Prince of Wales was not born of the Queen, which as yet nothing had been done to remove. Having set forth these grievances, the Prince's manifesto went on to recite the close interest which he and his consort had in this matter as next in succession to the crown, and the earnest solicitations which had been made to him by many lords spiritual and temporal, and other English subjects of all ranks, to interpose, and concluded by affirming in a very distinct and solemn manner that the sole object of the expedition then preparing was to obtain the assembling of a free and lawful Parliament, to which the Prince pledged himself to refer all questions concerning the due execution of the laws, and the maintenance of the Protestant religion, and the conclusion of an agreement between the Church of England and the Dissenters, as also the inquiry into the birth of the 'pretended Prince of Wales'; and that this object being attained, the Prince would, as soon as the state of the nation should permit of it, send home his foreign forces. About a week after, on the 16th of October, all things being now in readiness, the Prince took solemn leave of the States-General. ... On the 19th William and his armament set sail from Helvoetsluys, but was met on the following day by a violent storm which forced him to put back on the 21st. On the 1st of November the fleet put to sea a second time. ... By noon of the 5th of November, the Prince's fleet was wafted safely into Torbay." H. D. Traill, William the Third, chapter 3. ALSO IN: G. Burnet, History of My Own Time, 1688 (volume 3). L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 18, chapters 1-4 (volume 4). Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors, chapters 106-107: Somers (volume 4). T. P. Courtenay, Life of Danby (Lardner's Cab. Cyclop.), pages 315-324. {908} ENGLAND: A. D. 1688 (NOVEMBER-DECEMBER). The Revolution. Ignominious flight of James. "The declaration published by the prince [on landing] consisted of sixteen articles. It enumerated those proceedings of the government since the accession of the king, which were regarded as in the greatest degree opposed to the liberty of the subject and to the safety of the Protestant religion. ... To provide some effectual remedy against these and similar evils, was the only design of the enterprise in which the prince, in compliance with earnest solicitations from many lords, both spiritual and temporal, from numbers among the gentry and all ranks of people, had now embarked. ... Addresses were also published to the army and navy. ... The immediate effect of these appeals did not correspond with the expectations of William and his followers. On the 8th of November the people of Exeter received the prince with quiet submission. The memory of Monmouth's expedition was still fresh and terrible through the west. On the 12th, lord Cornbury, son of the earl of Clarendon, went over, with some officers, and about a hundred of his regiment, to the prince; and most of the officers, with a larger body of the privates belonging to the regiment commanded by the duke of St. Alban's, followed their example. Of three regiments, however, quartered near Salisbury, the majority could not be induced to desert the service of the king. ... Every day now brought with it new accessions to the standard of the prince, and tidings of movements in different parts of the kingdom in his favour; while James was as constantly reminded, by one desertion after another, that he lived in an atmosphere of treachery, with scarcely a man or woman about him to be trusted. The defection of the lords Churchill and Drumlaneric, and of the dukes of Grafton and Ormond, was followed by that of prince George and the princess Anne. Prince George joined the invader at Sherburne; the princess made her escape from Whitehall at night, under the guardianship of the bishop of London, and found an asylum among the adherents of the prince of Orange who were in arms in Northamptonshire. By this time Bristol and Plymouth, Hull, York, and Newcastle, were among the places of strength which had been seized by the partisans of the prince. His standard had also been unfurled with success in the counties of Derby, Nottingham, York, and Cheshire. ... Even in Oxford, several of the heads of colleges concurred in sending Dr. Finch, warden of All Souls' College, to invite the prince from Dorsetshire to their city, assuring him of their willingness to receive him, and to melt down their plate for his service, if it should be needed. So desperate had the affairs of James now become, that some of his advisers urged his leaving the kingdom, and negotiating with safety to his person from a distance; but from that course he was dissuaded by Halifax and Godolphin. In compliance with the advice of an assembly of peers, James issued a proclamation on the 13th of November, stating that writs had been signed to convene a parliament on the 15th of January; that a pardon of all offences should previously pass the great seal; and that commissioners should proceed immediately to the head-quarters of the prince of Orange, to negotiate on the present state of affairs. The commissioners chosen by the king were Halifax, Nottingham, and Godolphin; but William evaded for some days the conference which they solicited. In the meantime a forged proclamation in the name of the prince was made public in London, denouncing the Catholics of the metropolis as plotting the destruction of life and property on the largest possible scale. ... No one doubted the authenticity of this document, and the ferment and disorder which it spread through the city filled the king with the greatest apprehension for the safety of himself and family. On the morning of the 9th of December, the queen and the infant prince of Wales were lodged on board a yacht at Gravesend, and commenced a safe voyage to Calais. James pledged himself to follow within 24 hours. In the course of that day the royal commissioners sent a report of their proceedings to Whitehall. The demands of the prince were, that a parliament should be assembled; that all persons holding public trusts in violation of the Test-laws should relinquish them; that the city should have command of the Tower; that the fleet, and the places of strength through the kingdom should be placed in the hands of Protestants; that the expense of the Dutch armament should be defrayed, in part, from the English Treasury; and that the king and the prince, and their respective forces, should remain at an equal distance from London during the sitting of parliament. James read these articles with some surprise, observing that they were much more moderate than he had expected. But his pledge had been given to the queen; the city was still in great agitation; and private letters, intimating that his person was not beyond the reach of danger, suggested that his interests might possibly be better served by his absence than by his presence. Hence his purpose to leave the kingdom remained unaltered. At three o'clock on the following morning the king left Whitehall with sir Edward Hales, disguising himself as an attendant. The vessel provided to convey him to France was a miserable fishing-boat. It descended the river without interruption until it came near to Feversham, where some fishermen, suspecting Hales and the king to be Catholics, probably priests endeavouring to make their escape in disguise, took them from the vessel. ... The arrest of the monarch at Feversham on Wednesday was followed by an order of the privy council, commanding that his carriage and the royal guards should be sent to reconduct him to the capital. ... After some consultation the king was informed that the public interests required his immediate withdrawment to some distance from Westminster, and Hampton Court was named. James expressed a preference for Rochester, and his wishes in that respect were complied with. The day on which the king withdrew to Rochester William took up his residence in St. James's. The king chose his retreat, deeming it probable that it might be expedient for him to make a second effort to reach the continent. ... His guards left him so much at liberty, that no impediment to his departure was likely to arise; and on the last day of this memorable year--only a week after his removal from Whitehall, James embarked secretly at Rochester, and with a favourable breeze safely reached the French coast." R. Vaughan, History of England under the House of Stuart, volume 2, pages 914-918. ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapters 9-10 (volume 2). H. D. Traill, William the Third, chapter 4. Continuation of Sir J. Mackintosh's History of the Revolution in 1688, chapters 16-17. Sir J. Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, part 1, books 6-7 (volume 2). {909} ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (JANUARY-FEBRUARY). The settlement of the Crown on William and Mary. The Declaration of Rights. "The convention met on the 22nd of January. Their first care was to address the prince to take the administration of affairs and disposal of the revenue into his hands, in order to give a kind of parliamentary sanction to the power he already exercised. On the 28th of January the commons, after a debate in which the friends of the late king made but a faint opposition, came to their great vote: That king James II., having endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this kingdom, by breaking the original contract between king and people, and by the advice of Jesuits and other wicked persons having violated the fundamental laws, and having withdrawn himself out of the kingdom, has abdicated the government, and that the throne is thereby vacant. They resolved unanimously the next day, That it hath been found by experience inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this protestant kingdom to be governed by a popish prince. This vote was a remarkable triumph of the Whig party, who had contended for the exclusion bill. ... The lords agreed with equal unanimity to this vote; which, though it was expressed only as an abstract proposition, led by a practical inference to the whole change that the whigs had in view. But upon the former resolution several important divisions took place." The lords were unwilling to commit themselves to the two propositions, that James had "abdicated" the government by his desertion of it, and that the throne had thereby become "vacant." They yielded at length, however, and adopted the resolution as the commons had passed it. They "followed this up by a resolution, that the prince and princess of Orange shall be declared king and queen of England, and all the dominions thereunto belonging. But the commons, with a noble patriotism, delayed to concur in this hasty settlement of the crown, till they should have completed the declaration of those fundamental rights and liberties for the sake of which alone they had gone forward with this great revolution. That declaration, being at once an exposition of the mis-government which had compelled them to dethrone the late king, and of the conditions upon which they elected his successors, was incorporated in the final resolution to which both houses came on the 13th of February, extending the limitation of the crown as far as the state of affairs required: That William and Mary, prince and princess of Orange, be, and be declared, king and queen of England, France and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them, the said prince and princess, during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them; and that the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in, and executed by, the said prince of Orange, in the names of the said prince and princess, during their joint lives; and after their decease the said crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said princess; for default of such issue, to the princess Anne of Denmark [younger daughter of James II.], and the heirs of her body; and for default of such issue, to the heirs of the body of the said prince of Orange. ... The Declaration of Rights presented to the prince of Orange by the marquis of Halifax, as speaker of the lords, in the presence of both houses, on the 18th of February, consists of three parts: a recital of the illegal and arbitrary acts committed by the late king, and of their consequent vote of abdication; a declaration, nearly following the words of the former part, that such enumerated acts are illegal; and a resolution, that the throne shall be filled by the prince and princess of Orange, according to the limitations mentioned. ... This declaration was, some months afterwards [in October], confirmed by a regular act of the legislature in the bill of rights." See ENGLAND: 1689 (OCTOBER). H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapters 14-15 (volume 3). ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 10 (volume 2). L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 19, chapters 2-3 (volume 4). R. Gneist, History of English Constitution, chapter 42 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (APRIL-AUGUST). The Church and the Revolution. The Toleration Act. The Non-Jurors. "The men who had been most helpful in bringing about the late changes were not all of the same way of thinking in religion; many of them belonged to the Church of England; many were Dissenters. It seemed, therefore, a fitting time to grant the Dissenters some relief from the harsh laws passed against them in Charles II.'s reign. Protestant Dissenters, save those who denied the Trinity, were no longer forbidden to have places of worship and services of their own, if they would only swear to be loyal to the king, and that his power was as lawful in Church as in State matters. The law that gave them this is called the Toleration Act. Men's notions were still, however, very narrow; care was taken that the Roman Catholics should get no benefit from this law. Even a Protestant Dissenter might not yet lawfully be a member of either House of Parliament, or take a post in the king's service; for the Test Acts were left untouched. King William, who was a Presbyterian in his own land, wanted very much to see the Dissenters won back to the Church of England. To bring this about, he wished the Church to alter those things in the Prayer Book which kept Dissenters from joining with her. But most of the clergy would not have any change; and because these were the stronger party in Convocation--as the Parliament of the Church is called--William could get nothing done. At the same time a rent, which at first seemed likely to be serious, was made in the Church itself. There was a strong feeling among the clergy in favour of the banished king. So a law was made by which every man who held a preferment in the Church, or either of the Universities, had to swear to be true to King William and Queen Mary, or had to give up his preferment. Most of the clergy were very unwilling to obey this law; but only 400 were found stout-hearted enough to give up their livings rather than do what they thought to be a wicked thing. These were called 'non-jurors,' or men who would not swear. Among them were five out of the seven Bishops who had withstood James II. only a year before. The sect of non-jurors, who looked upon themselves as the only true Churchmen, did not spread. But it did not die out altogether until seventy years ago [i. e., early in the 19th century]. It was at this time that the names High-Church and Low-Church first came into use." J. Rowley, The Settlement of the Constitution, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England, volume 5, chapters 4-11. T. Lathbury, History of the Non-jurors. {910} ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (MAY). War declared against France. The Grand Alliance. See FRANCE: A.. D. 1689-1690. ENGLAND: A. D. 1689 (OCTOBER). The Bill of Rights. The following is the text of the Bill of Rights, passed by Parliament at its sitting in October, 1689: Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, assembled at Westminster, lawfully, fully, and freely representing all the estates of the people of this realm, did upon the Thirteenth day of February, in the year of our Lord One Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-eight [o. s.], present unto their Majesties, then called and known by the names and style of William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, being present in their proper persons, a certain Declaration in writing, made by the said Lords and Commons, in the words following, viz.: "Whereas the late King James II., by the assistance of divers evil counsellors, judges, and ministers employed by him, did endeavour to subvert and extirpate the Protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom: 1. By assuming and exercising a power of dispensing with and suspending of laws, and the execution of laws, without consent of Parliament. 2. By committing and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for humbly petitioning to be excused from concurring to the said assumed power. 3. By issuing and causing to be executed a commission under the Great Seal for erecting a court, called the Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes. 4. By levying money for and to the use of the Crown by pretence of prerogative, for other time and in other manner than the same was granted by Parliament. 5. By raising and keeping a standing army within this kingdom in time of peace, without consent of Parliament, and quartering soldiers contrary to law. 6. By causing several good subjects, being Protestants, to be disarmed, at the same time when Papists were both armed and employed contrary to law. 7. By violating the freedom of election of members to serve in Parliament. 8. By prosecutions in the Court of King's Bench for matters and causes cognisable only in Parliament, and by divers other arbitrary and illegal causes. 9. And whereas of late years, partial, corrupt, and unqualified persons have been returned, and served on juries in trials, and particularly divers jurors in trials for high treason, which were not freeholders. 10. And excessive bail hath been required of persons committed in criminal cases, to elude the benefit of the laws made for the liberty of the subjects. 11. And excessive fines have been imposed; and illegal and cruel punishments inflicted. 12. And several grants and promises made of fines and forfeitures before any conviction or judgment against the persons upon whom the same were to be levied. All which are utterly and directly contrary to the known laws and statutes, and freedom of this realm. And whereas the said late King James II. having abdicated the government, and the throne being thereby vacant, his Highness the Prince of Orange (whom it hath pleased Almighty God to make the glorious instrument of delivering this kingdom from Popery and arbitrary power) did (by the advice of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and divers principal persons of the Commons) cause letters to be written to the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, being Protestants, and other letters to the several counties, cities, universities, boroughs, and Cinque ports, for the choosing of such persons to represent them as were of right to be sent to Parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon the two-and-twentieth day of January, in this year One Thousand Six Hundred Eighty and Eight, in order to such an establishment, as that their religion, laws, and liberties might not again be in danger of being subverted; upon which letters elections have been accordingly made. And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, pursuant to their respective letters and elections, being now assembled in a full and free representation of this nation, taking into their most serious consideration the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid, do in the first place (as their ancestors in like case have usually done) for the vindicating and asserting their ancient rights and liberties, declare: 1. That the pretended power of suspending of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal authority, without consent of Parliament, is illegal. 2. That the pretended power of dispensing with laws, or the execution of laws by regal authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised of late, is illegal. 3. That the commission for erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious. 4. That levying money for or to the use of the Crown by pretence and prerogative, without grant of Parliament, for longer time or in other manner than the same is or shall be granted, is illegal. 5. That it is the right of the subjects to petition the King, and all commitments and prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal. 6. That the raising or keeping a standing army within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it be with consent of Parliament, is against law. 7. That the subjects which are Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions, and as allowed by law. 8. That election of members of Parliament ought to be free. 9. That the freedom of speech, and debates or proceedings in Parliament, ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament. 10. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted. 11. That jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned, and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high treason ought to be freeholders. 12. That all grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of particular persons before conviction are illegal and void. 13. And that for redress of all grievances, and for the amending, strengthening, and preserving of the laws, Parliament ought to be held frequently. {911} And they do claim, demand, and insist upon all and singular the premises, as their undoubted rights and liberties; and that no declarations, judgments, doings or proceedings, to the prejudice of the people in any of the said premises, ought in any wise to be drawn hereafter into consequence or example. To which demand of their rights they are particularly encouraged by the declaration of his Highness the Prince of Orange, as being the only means for obtaining a full redress and remedy therein. Having therefore an entire confidence that his said Highness the Prince of Orange will perfect the deliverance so far advanced by him, and will still preserve them from the violation of their rights, which they have here asserted, and from all other attempts upon their religion, rights, and liberties: II. The said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, assembled at Westminster, do resolve, that William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be, and be declared, King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to them the said Prince and Princess during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them; and that the sole and full exercise of the regal power be only in, and executed by, the said Prince of Orange, in the names of the said Prince and Princess, during their joint lives; and after their deceases, the said crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of the said Princess; and for default of such issue to the Princess Anne of Denmark, and the heirs of her body; and for default of such issue to the heirs of the body of the said Prince of Orange. And the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do pray the said Prince and Princess to accept the same accordingly. III. And that the oaths hereafter mentioned be taken by all persons of whom the oaths of allegiance and supremacy might be required by law instead of them; and that the said oaths of allegiance and supremacy be abrogated. 'I, A. B., do sincerely promise and swear, That I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their Majesties King William and Queen Mary: So help me God.' 'I, A. B., do swear, That I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure as impious and heretical that damnable doctrine and position, that princes excommunicated or deprived by the Pope, or any authority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or murdered by their subjects, or any other whatsoever. And I do declare, that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, preeminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm: So help me God.'" IV. Upon which their said Majesties did accept the crown and royal dignity of the kingdoms of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the resolution and desire of the said Lords and Commons contained in the said declaration. V. And thereupon their Majesties were pleased, that the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, being the two Houses of Parliament, should continue to sit, and with their Majesties' royal concurrence make effectual provision for the settlement of the religion, laws and liberties of this kingdom, so that the same for the future might not be in danger again of being subverted; to which the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, did agree and proceed to act accordingly. VI. Now in pursuance of the premises, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, for the ratifying, confirming, and establishing the said declaration, and the articles, clauses, matters, and things therein contained, by the force of a law made in due form by authority of Parliament, do pray that it may be declared and enacted, That all and singular the rights and liberties asserted and claimed in the said declaration are the true, ancient, and indubitable rights and liberties of the people of this kingdom, and so shall be esteemed, allowed, adjudged, deemed, and taken to be, and that all and every the particulars aforesaid shall be firmly and strictly holden and observed, as they are expressed in the said declaration; and all officers and ministers whatsoever shall serve their Majesties and their successors according to the same in all times to come. VII. And the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, seriously considering how it hath pleased Almighty God, in his marvellous providence, and merciful goodness to this nation, to provide and preserve their said Majesties' royal persons most happily to reign over us upon the throne of their ancestors, for which they render unto Him from the bottom of their hearts their humblest thanks and praises, do truly, firmly, assuredly, and in the sincerity of their hearts, think, and do hereby recognise, acknowledge, and declare, that King James II. having abdicated the Government, and their Majesties having accepted the Crown and royal dignity as aforesaid, their said Majesties did become, were, are, and of right ought to be, by the laws of this realm, our sovereign liege Lord and Lady, King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, in and to whose princely persons the royal state, crown, and dignity of the said realms, with all honours, styles, titles, regalities, prerogatives, powers, jurisdictions, and authorities to the same belonging and appertaining, are most fully, rightfully, and entirely invested and incorporated, united, and annexed. VIII. And for preventing all questions and divisions in this realm, by reason of any pretended titles to the Crown, and for preserving a certainty in the succession thereof, in and upon which the unity, peace, tranquillity, and safety of this nation doth, under God, wholly consist and depend, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do beseech their Majesties that it may be enacted, established, and declared, that the Crown and regal government of the said kingdoms and dominions, with all and singular the premises thereunto belonging and appertaining, shall be and continue to their said Majesties, and the survivor of them, during their lives, and the life of the survivor of them. And that the entire, perfect, and full exercise of the regal power and government be only in, and executed by, his Majesty, in the names of both their Majesties, during their joint lives; and after their deceases the said Crown and premises shall be and remain to the heirs of the body of her Majesty: and for default of such issue, to her Royal Highness the Princess Anne of Denmark, and the heirs of her body; and for default of such issue, to the heirs of the body of his said Majesty: And thereunto the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do, in the name of all the people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully submit themselves, their heirs and posterities, for ever: and do faithfully promise, that they will stand to, maintain, and defend their said Majesties, and also the limitation and succession of the Crown herein specified and contained, to the utmost of their powers, with their lives and estates, against all persons whatsoever that shall attempt anything to the contrary. {912} IX. And whereas it hath been found by experience, that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a Popish prince, or by any king or queen marrying a Papist, the said Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, do further pray that it may be enacted, That all and every person and persons that is, are, or shall be reconciled to, or shall hold communion with, the See or Church of Rome, or shall profess the Popish religion, or shall marry a Papist, shall be excluded, and be for ever incapable to inherit, possess, or enjoy the Crown and Government of this realm, and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging, or any part of the same, or to have, use, or exercise, any regal power, authority, or jurisdiction within the same; and in all and every such case or cases the people of these realms shall be and are hereby absolved of their allegiance, and the said Crown and government shall from time to time descend to, and be enjoyed by, such person or persons, being Protestants, as should have inherited and enjoyed the same, in case the said person or persons so reconciled, holding communion, or professing, or marrying, as aforesaid, were naturally dead. X. And that every King and Queen of this realm, who at any time hereafter shall come to and succeed in the Imperial Crown of this kingdom, shall, on the first day of the meeting of the first Parliament, next after his or her coming to the Crown, sitting in his or her throne in the House of Peers, in the presence of the Lords and Commons therein assembled, or at his or her coronation, before such person or persons who shall administer the coronation oath to him or her, at the time of his or her taking the said oath (which shall first happen), make, subscribe, and audibly repeat the declaration mentioned in the statute made in the thirteenth year of the reign of King Charles II., intituled "An Act for the more effectual preserving the King's person and Government, by disabling Papists from sitting in either House of Parliament." But if it shall happen that such King or Queen, upon his or her succession to the Crown of this realm, shall be under the age of twelve years, then every such King or Queen shall make, subscribe, and audibly repeat the said declaration at his or her coronation, or the first day of meeting of the first Parliament as aforesaid, which shall first happen after such King or Queen shall have attained the said age of twelve years. XI. All which their Majesties are contented and pleased shall be declared, enacted, and established by authority of this present Parliament, and shall stand, remain, and be the law of this realm for ever; and the same are by their said Majesties, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, declared, enacted, or established accordingly. XII. And be it further declared and enacted by the authority aforesaid, That from and after this present session of Parliament, no dispensation by "non obstante" of or to any statute, or any part thereof, shall be allowed, but that the same shall be held void and of no effect, except a dispensation be allowed of in such statute, and except in such cases as shall be specially provided for by one or more bill or bills to be passed during this present session of Parliament. XIII. Provided that no charter, or grant, or pardon granted before the three-and-twentieth day of October, in the year of our Lord One thousand six hundred eighty-nine, shall be any ways impeached or invalidated by this Act, but that the same shall be and remain of the same force and effect in law, and no other, than as if this Act had never been made. ENGLAND: A. D. 1689-1696. The war of the League of Augsburg, or the Grand Alliance against Louis XIV. (called in American history "King William's War "). See FRANCE: A. D. 1689-1690; 1689-1691; 1692; 1693 (JULY); 1694; 1695-1696. Also, CANADA: A. D. 1689-1690; 1692-1697; and NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1694--1697. ENGLAND: A. D. 1690 (JUNE). The Battle of Beachy Head. The great peril of the kingdom. "In June, 1690, whilst William was in Ireland, the French sent a fleet, under Tourville, to threaten England. He left Brest and entered the British Channel. Herbert (then Earl of Torrington) commanded the English fleet lying in the Downs, and sailed to Saint Helens, where he was joined by the Dutch fleet under Evertsen. On the 26th of June the English and French fleets were close to each other, and an important engagement was expected, when unexpectedly Torrington abandoned the Isle of Wight and retreated towards the Straits of Dover. ... The Queen and her Council, receiving this intelligence, sent to Torrington peremptory orders to fight. Torrington received these orders on the 29th June. Next day he bore down on the French fleet in order of battle. He had less than 60 ships of the line, whilst the French had 80. He placed the Dutch in the van, and during the whole fight rendered them little or no assistance. He gave the signal to engage, which was immediately obeyed by Evertsen, who fought with the most splendid courage, but at length, being unsupported, his second in command and many other officers of high rank having fallen, and his ships being fearfully shattered, Evertsen was obliged to draw off his contingent from the unequal battle. Torrington destroyed some of these injured ships, took the remainder in tow, and sailed along the coast of Kent for the Thames. When in that river he pulled up all the buoys to prevent pursuit. ... Upon his return to London he was sent to the Tower, and in December was tried at Sheerness by court-martial, and on the third day was acquitted; but William refused to see him, and ordered him to be dismissed from the navy." W. H. Torriano, William the Third, chapter 24. "There has scarcely ever been so sad a day in London as that on which the news of the Battle of Beachy Head arrived. The shame was insupportable; the peril was imminent. ... At any moment London might be appalled by news that 20,000 French veterans were in Kent. It was notorious that, in every part of the kingdom, the Jacobites had been, during some months, making preparations for a rising. All the regular troops who could be assembled for the defence of the island did not amount to more than 10,000 men. It may be doubted whether our country has ever passed through a more alarming crisis than that of the first week of July 1690." Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 15 (volume 3). ALSO IN: J. Campbell, Naval History of Great Britain, chapter 18 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1690-1691. Defeat of James and the Jacobites in Ireland. See IRELAND: A. D. 1689-1691. ENGLAND: A. D. 1692. The new charter to Massachusetts as a royal province. See MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1689-1692. {912} ENGLAND: A. D. 1692. Attempted invasion from France. Battle of La Hogue. "The diversion in Ireland having failed, Louis wished to make an effort to attack England without and within. James II., who had turned to so little advantage the first aid granted by the King of France saw therefore in preparation a much more powerful assistance, and obtained what had been refused him after the days of the Boyne and Beachy-Head,--an army to invade England. News received from that country explained this change in the conduct of Louis. The opinion of James at Versailles was no better than in the past; but England was believed to be on the eve of counter-revolution, which it would be sufficient to aid with a vigorous and sudden blow. ... Many eminent personages, among the Whigs as well as among the Tories, among others the Duke of Marlborough (Churchill), had opened a secret correspondence with the royal exile at Saint-Germain. James had secret adherents in the English fleet which he had so long commanded before reigning, and believed himself able to count on Rear-Admiral Carter, and even on Admiral Russell. Louis gave himself up to excessive confidence in the result of these plots, and arranged his plan of naval operations accordingly. An army of 30,000 men, with 500 transports, was assembled on the coast of Normandy, the greater part at La Hogue and Cherbourg, the rest at Havre: this was composed of all the Irish troops, a number of Anglo-Scotch refugees, and a corps of French troops. Marshal de Bellefonds commanded under King James. Tourville was to set ut from Brest in the middle of April with fifty ships of the line, enter the Channel, attack the English fleet before it could be reinforced by the Dutch, and thus secure the invasion. Express orders were sent to him to engage the enemy 'whatever might be his numbers.' It was believed that half of the English fleet would go over to the side of the allies of its king. The landing effected, Tourville was to return to Brest, to rally there the squadron of Toulon, sixteen vessels strong, and the rest of our large ships, then to hold the Channel during the whole campaign. They had reckoned without the elements, which, hitherto hostile to the enemies of France, this time turned against her." The French fleets were detained by contrary winds and by incomplete preparations. Tourville was not reinforced, as he expected to be, by the squadrons of Toulon and Rochefort. Before he found it possible to sail from Brest, the Jacobite plot had been discovered in England, the government was on its guard, and the Dutch and English fleets had made their junction. Still, the French admiral was under orders which left him no discretion, and he went out to seek the enemy. "May 29, at daybreak, between the Capes of La Hogue and Barfleur, Tourville found himself in presence of the allied fleet, the most powerful that had ever appeared on the sea. He had been joined by seven ships from the squadron of Rochefort, and numbered 44 vessels against 99, 78 of which carried over 50 guns, and, for the most part, were much larger than a majority of the French. The English had 63 ships and [4,540] guns; the Dutch, 36 ships and 2,614 guns; in all, 7,154 guns; the French counted only 3,114. The allied fleet numbered nearly 42,000 men; the French fleet less than 20,000." Notwithstanding this great inferiority of numbers and strength, it was the French fleet which made the attack, bearing down under full sail "on the immense mass of the enemy." The attempt was almost hopeless; and yet, when night fell, after a day of tremendous battle, Tourville had not yet lost a ship; but his line of battle had been broken, and no chance of success remained. "May 30, at break of day, Tourville rallied around him 35 vessels. The other nine had strayed, five towards La Hogue, four towards the English coast, whence they regained Brest. If there had been a naval port at La Hogue or at Cherbourg, as Colbert and Vauban had desired, the French fleet would have preserved its laurels! There was no place of retreat on all that coast. The fleet of the enemy advanced in full force. It was impossible to renew the prodigious effort of the day before." In this emergency, Tourville made a daring attempt to escape with his fleet through the dangerous channel called the Race of Alderney, which separates the Channel Islands from the Normandy coast. Twenty-two vessels made the passage safely and found a place of refuge at St. Malo; thirteen were too late for the tide and failed. Most of these were destroyed, during the next few days, by the English and Dutch at Cherbourg and in the bay of La Hogue,--in the presence and under the guns of King James' army of invasion. "James II. had reason to say that 'his unlucky star' everywhere shed a malign influence around him; but this influence was only that of his blindness and incapacity. Such was that disaster of La Hogue, which has left among us such a fatal renown, and the name of which resounds in our history like another Agincourt or Cressy. Historians have gone so far as to ascribe to this the destruction of the French navy. ... La Hogue was only a reprisal for Beachy-Head. The French did not lose in it a vessel more than the allies had lost two years before, and the 15 vessels destroyed were soon replaced." H. Martin, History of France: Age of Louis XIV: (translated by M. L. Booth), volume 2, chapter 2.' ALSO IN: Lord Macaulay, History of England, chapter 18 (volume 4). L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 20, chapter 4 (volume 5). Sir J. Dalrymple, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, part 2, book 7 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1695. Expiration of censorship law. Appearance of first newspapers. See PRINTING AND THE PRESS: A. D. 1695. ENGLAND: A. D. 1696-1749. Measures of commercial and industrial restriction in the American colonies. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1696-1749. ENGLAND: A. D. 1697. The Peace of Ryswick. Recognition of William III. by France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1697. ENGLAND: A. D. 1698. The founding of Calcutta. See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702. ENGLAND: A. D. 1698-1700. The question of the Spanish Succession. The Treaties of Partition. The Spanish king's will. See SPAIN: A. D. 1698-1700. ENGLAND: A. D. 1701. The Act of Settlement. The source of the sovereignty of the House of Hanover or Brunswick. "William and Mary had no children; and in 1700 the young Duke of Gloucester, the only child of Anne that lived beyond infancy, died. There was now no hope of there being anyone to inherit the crown by the Bill of Rights after the death of William and of Anne. In 1701, therefore, Parliament settled the crown on the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and her heirs. Sophia was one of the children of that Elizabeth, daughter of James I., who in 1613 had married the Palsgrave Frederick. She was chosen to come after William and Anne because she was the nearest to the Stuart line who was a Protestant. The law that did this is called the Act of Settlement; it gives Queen Victoria her title to the throne. Parliament in passing it tried to make the nation's liberties still safer. It was now made impossible (1) for any foreigner to sit in Parliament or to hold an office under the Crown; (2). for the king to go to war in defence of countries that did not belong to England, unless Parliament gave him leave; or (3) to pardon anyone so that the Commons might not be able to impeach him." J. Rowley, The Settlement of the Constitution, book 1, chapter 5. {914} "Though the choice was truly free in the hands of parliament, and no pretext of absolute right could be advanced on any side, there was no question that the princess Sophia was the fittest object of the nation's preference. She was indeed very far removed from any hereditary title. Besides the pretended prince of Wales, and his sister, whose legitimacy no one disputed, there stood in her way the duchess of Savoy, daughter of Henrietta duchess of Orleans, and several of the Palatine family. These last had abjured the reformed faith, of which their ancestors had been the strenuous assertors; but it seemed not improbable that some one might return to it. ... According to the tenor and intention of the act of settlement, all prior claims of inheritance, save that of the issue of king William and the princess Anne, being set aside and annulled, the princess Sophia became the source of a new royal line. The throne of England and Ireland, by virtue of the paramount will of parliament, stands entailed upon the heirs of her body, being protestants. In them the right is as truly hereditary as it ever was in the Plantagenets or the Tudors. But they derive it not from those ancient families. The blood indeed of Cerdic and of the Conqueror flows in the veins of his present majesty [George IV.]. Our Edwards and Henries illustrate the almost unrivalled splendour and antiquity of the house of Brunswic. But they have transmitted no more right to the allegiance of England than Boniface of Este or Henry the Lion. That rests wholly on the act of settlement, and resolves itself into the sovereignty of the legislature. H. Hallam, Constitutional History of England, chapter 15 (volume 3). ALSO IN: Sir A. Halliday, Annals of the House of Hanover, book 10 (volume 2). See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1714. ENGLAND: A. D. 1701-1702. The rousing of the nation to war with France. When Louis XIV. procured and accepted for his grandson the bequest of the Spanish crown, throwing over the Partition Treaty, "William had the intolerable chagrin of discovering not only that he had been befooled, but that his English subjects had no sympathy with him or animosity against the royal swindler who had tricked him. 'The blindness of the people here,' he writes sadly to the Pensionary Heinsius, 'is incredible. For though the affair is not public, yet it was no sooner said that the King of Spain's will was in favour of the Duke of Anjou, that it was the general opinion that it was better for England that France should accept the will than fulfil the Treaty of Partition.' ... William dreaded the idea of a Bourbon reigning at Madrid, but he saw no very grave objection, as the two treaties showed, to Naples and Sicily passing into French hands. With his English subjects the exact converse was the case. They strongly deprecated the assignment of the Mediterranean possessions of the Spaniard to the Dauphin; but they were undisturbed by the sight of the Duke of Anjou seating himself on the Spanish throne. ... But just as, under a discharge from an electric battery, two repugnant chemical compounds will sometimes rush into sudden combination, so at this juncture the King and the nation were instantaneously united by the shock of a gross affront. The hand that liberated the uniting fluid was that of the Christian king. On the 16th of September 1701 James II. breathed his last at St. Germains, and, obedient to one of those impulses, half-chivalrous, half-arrogant, which so often determined his policy, Louis XIV. declared his recognition of the Prince of Wales as de jure King of England. No more timely and effective assistance to the policy of its de facto king could possibly have been rendered. Its effect upon English public opinion was instantaneous; and when William returned from Holland on the 4th of November, he found the country in the temper in which he could most have wished it to be." Dissolving the Parliament in which his plans had long been factiously opposed, he summoned a new one, which met on the last day of the year 1701. "Opposition in Parliament--in the country it was already inaudible--was completely silenced. The two Houses sent up addresses assuring the King of their firm resolve to defend the succession against the pretended Prince of Wales and all other pretenders whatsoever. ... Nor did the goodwill of Parliament expend itself in words. The Commons accepted without a word of protest the four treaties constituting the new Grand Alliance. ... The votes of supply were passed unanimously." But scarcely had the nation and the King arrived at this agreement with one another than the latter was snatched from his labors. On the 21st of February, 1702, William received an injury, through the stumbling of his horse, which his frail and diseased body could not bear. His death would not have been long delayed in any event, but it was hastened by this accident, and occurred on the 8th of March following. He was succeeded by Anne, the sister of his deceased queen, Mary, and second daughter of the deposed Stuart king, James II. H. D. Traill, William the Third, chapters 14-15. ALSO IN: L. von Ranke, History of England, 17th Century, book 21, chapters 7-10 (volume 5). See, also, SPAIN: A. D. 1701-1702. ENGLAND: A. D. 1702. Accession of Queen Anne. ENGLAND: A. D. 1702. Union of rival East India Companies. See INDIA: A. D. 1600-1702. ENGLAND: A. D. 1702. The War of the Spanish Succession. Failure at Cadiz. The treasure ships in Vigo Bay. Marlborough's first campaigns. See SPAIN: A. D. 1702; and NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1702-1704. ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1711. The War of the Spanish Succession in America (called "Queen Anne's War"). See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1710; CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713. {915} ENGLAND: A. D. 1702-1714. The Age of Anne in literature. "That which was once called the Augustan age of English literature was specially marked by the growing development of a distinct literary class. It was a period of transition from the early system of the patronage of authors to the later system of their professional independence. Patronage was being changed into influence. The system of subscription, by which Pope made his fortune, was a kind of joint-stock patronage. The noble did not support the poet, but induced his friends to subscribe. The noble, moreover, made another discovery. He found that he could dispense a cheaper and more effective patronage than of old by patronising at the public expense. During the reign of Queen Anne, the author of a successful poem or an effective pamphlet might look forward to a comfortable place. The author had not to wear the livery, but to become the political follower, of the great man. Gradually a separation took place. The minister found it better to have a regular corps of politicians and scribblers in his pay than occasionally to recruit his ranks by enlisting men of literary taste. And, on the other hand, authors, by slow degrees, struggled into a more independent position as their public increased. In the earlier part of the century, however, we find a class of fairly cultivated people, sufficiently numerous to form a literary audience, and yet not so numerous as to split into entirely distinct fractions. The old religious and political warfare has softened; the statesman loses his place, but not his head; and though there is plenty of bitterness, there is little violence. We have thus a brilliant society of statesmen, authors, clergymen, and lawyers, forming social clubs, meeting at coffee-houses, talking scandal and politics, and intensely interested in the new social phenomena which emerge as the old order decays; more excitable, perhaps, than their fathers, but less desperately in earnest, and waging a constant pamphleteering warfare upon politics, literature, and theology, which is yet consistent with a certain degree of friendly intercourse. The essayist, the critic, and the novelist appear for the first time in their modern shape; and the journalist is slowly gaining some authority as the wielder of a political force. The whole character of contemporary literature, in short, is moulded by the social conditions of the class for which and by which it was written, still more distinctly than by the ideas current in contemporary speculation. ... Pope is the typical representative of the poetical spirit of the day. He may or may not be regarded as the intellectual superior of Swift or Addison; and the most widely differing opinions may be formed of the intrinsic merits of his poetry. The mere fact, however, that his poetical dynasty was supreme to the end of the century proved that, in some sense, he is a most characteristic product. Nor is it hard to see the main sources of his power. Pope had at least two great poetical qualities. He was amongst the most keenly sensitive of men, and he had an almost unique felicity of expression, which has enabled him to coin more proverbs than any writer since Shakespeare. Sensitive, it may be said, is a polite word for morbid, and his felicity of phrase was more adapted to coin epigrams than poetry. The controversy is here irrelevant. Pope, whether, as I should say, a true poet, or, as some have said, only the most sparkling of rhymesters, reflects the thoughts of his day with a curious completeness. ... There is, however, another wide province of literature in which writers of the eighteenth century did work original in character and of permanent value. If the seventeenth century is the great age of dramatists and theologians, the eighteenth century was the age in which the critic, the essayist, the satirist, the novelist, and the moralist first appeared, or reached the highest mark. Criticism, though still in its infancy, first became an independent art with Addison. Addison and his various colleagues set the first example of that kind of social essay which is still popular. Satire had been practised in the preceding century, and in the hands of Dryden had become a formidable political weapon; but the social satire of which Pope was, and remains, the chief master, began with the century, and may be said to have expired with it, in spite of the efforts of Byron and Gifford. De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett developed the modern novel out of very crude rudiments; and two of the greatest men of the century, Swift and Johnson, may be best described as practical moralists in a vein peculiar to the time. ... The English novel, as the word is now understood, begins with De Foe. Though, like all other products of mind or body, it was developed out of previously existing material, and is related to the great family of stories with which men have amused themselves in all ages, it is, perhaps, as nearly an original creation as anything can be. The legends of saints which amused the middle ages, or the chivalrous romances which were popular throughout the seventeenth century, had become too unreal to amuse living human beings. De Foe made the discovery that a history might be equally interesting if the recorded events had never happened." L. Stephen, History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, chapter 12, sections 23-56 (volume 2). "This so-called classic age of ours has long ceased to be regarded with that complacency which led the most flourishing part of it to adopt the epithet 'Augustan.' It will scarcely be denied by its greatest admirer, if he be a man of wide reading, that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the five great ages of literature. Deficient in the highest intellectual beauty, in the qualities which awaken the fullest critical enthusiasm, the eighteenth century will be enjoyed more thoroughly by those who make it their special study than by those who skim the entire surface of literature. It has, although on the grand scale condemned as second-rate, a remarkable fulness and sustained richness which endear it to specialists. If it be compared, for instance, with the real Augustan age in Rome, or with the Spanish period of literary supremacy, it may claim to hold its own against these rivals in spite of their superior rank, because of its more copious interest. If it has neither a Horace nor a Calderon, it has a great extent and variety of writers just below these in merit, and far more numerous than what Rome or Spain can show during those blossoming periods. It is, moreover, fertile at far more points than either of these schools. This sustained and variegated success, at a comparatively low level of effort, strikes one as characteristic of an age more remarkable for persistent vitality than for rapid and brilliant growth. The Elizabethan vivida vis is absent, the Georgian glow has not yet dawned, but there is a suffused prosaic light of intelligence, of cultivated form, over the whole picture, and during the first half of the period, at least, this is bright enough to be very attractive. Perhaps, in closing, the distinguishing mark of eighteenth-century literature may be indicated as its mastery of prose as a vehicle for general thought." E. Gosse, The Study of Eighteenth-Century Literature (New Princeton Rev., July, 1888, page 21). ENGLAND: A. D. 1703. The Methuen Treaty with Portugal. See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1703; and SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704. {916} England: A. D. 1703. The Aylesbury election case. "Ashby, a burgess of Aylesbury, sued the returning officer for maliciously refusing his vote. Three judges of the King's Bench decided, against the opinion of Chief Justice Holt, that the verdict which a jury had given in favor of Ashby must be set aside, as the action was not maintainable. The plaintiff went to the House of Lords upon a writ of error, and there the judgment was reversed by a large majority of Peers. The Lower House maintained that 'the qualification of an elector is not cognizable elsewhere than before the Commons of England'; that Ashby was guilty of a breach of privilege; and that all persons who should in future commence such an action, and all attorneys and counsel conducting the same, are also guilty of a high breach of privilege. The Lords, led by Somers, then came to counter-resolutions. ... The prorogation of Parliament put an end to the quarrel in that Session; but in the next it was renewed with increased violence. The judgment against the Returning Officer was followed up by Ashby levying his damages. Other Aylesbury men brought new actions. The Commons imprisoned the Aylesbury electors. The Lords took strong measures that affected, or appeared to affect, the privileges of the Commons. The Queen finally stopped the contest by a prorogation; and the quarrel expired when the Parliament expired under the Triennial Act. Lord Somers 'established the doctrine which has been acted on ever since, that an action lies against a Returning Officer for maliciously refusing the vote of an elector.'" C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 5, chapter 17. ALSO IN: Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord Chancellors: Somers, chapter. 110 (volume 4). ENGLAND: A. D. 1704-1707. Marlborough's campaigns in the War of the Spanish Succession. Campaigns in Spain. See GERMANY: A. D. 1704; SPAIN: A. D. 1703-1704, to 1707; NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1705, and 1706-1707. ENGLAND: A. D. 1707. The Union with Scotland. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707. ENGLAND: A. D. 1707-1708. Hostility to the Union in Scotland. Spread of Jacobitism. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1707-1708. ENGLAND: A. D. 1708-1709. The War of the Spanish Succession: Oudenarde and Malplaquet. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709; and SPAIN: A. D. 1707-1710. ENGLAND: A. D. 1709. The Barrier Treaty with Holland. "The influence of the Whig party in the affairs of government in England, always irksome to the Queen, had now began visibly to decline; and the partiality she was suspected of entertaining for her brother, with her known dislike of the house of Hanover, inspired them with alarm, lest the Tories might seek still further to propitiate her favour, by altering, in his favour, the line of succession, as at present established. They had, accordingly, made it one of the preliminaries of the proposed treaty of peace, that the Protestant succession, in England, should be secured by a general guarantee, and now sought to repair, as far as possible, the failure caused by the unsuccessful termination of the conferences, by entering into a treaty to that effect with the States. The Marquis Townshend, accordingly, repaired for this purpose to the Hague, when the States consented to enter into an engagement to maintain the present succession to the crown, with their whole force, and to make the recognition of that succession, and the expulsion of the Pretender from France, an indispensable preliminary to any peace with that kingdom. In return for this important guarantee, England was to secure to the States a barrier, formed of the towns of Nieuport, Furnes and the fort of Knokke, Menin, Lille, Ryssel, Tournay, Conde, and Valenciennes, Maubeuge, Charleroi, Namur, Lier, Halle, and some forts, besides the citadels of Ghent and Dendermonde. It was afterwards asserted, in excuse for the dereliction from that treaty on the part of England, that Townshend had gone beyond his instructions; but it is quite certain that it was ratified without hesitation by the queen, whatever may have been her secret feelings regarding it." C. M. Davies, History of Holland, part 3, chapter 11 (volume 3 ). ENGLAND: A. D. 1710-1712. Opposition to the war. Trial of Sacheverell. Fall of the Whigs and Marlborough. "A 'deluge of blood' such as that of Malplaquet increased the growing weariness of the war, and the rejection of the French offers was unjustly attributed to a desire on the part of Marlborough of lengthening out a contest which brought him profit and power. The expulsion of Harley and St. John [Bolingbroke] from the Ministry had given the Tories leaders of a more vigorous stamp, and St. John brought into play a new engine of political attack whose powers soon made themselves felt. In the Examiner, and in a crowd of pamphlets and periodicals which followed in its train, the humor of Prior, the bitter irony of Swift, and St. John's own brilliant sophistry spent themselves on the abuse of the war and of its general. ... A sudden storm of popular passion showed the way in which public opinion responded to these efforts. A High-Church divine, Dr. Sacheverell, maintained the doctrine of non-resistance [the doctrine, that is, of passive obedience and non-resistance to government, implying a condemnation of the Revolution of 1688 and of the Revolution settlement], in a sermon at St. Paul's, with a boldness which deserved prosecution; but in spite of the warning of Marlborough and of Somers the Whig Ministers resolved on his impeachment. His trial in 1710 at once widened into a great party struggle, and the popular enthusiasm in Sacheverell's favor showed the gathering hatred of the Whigs and the war. ... A small majority of the peers found him guilty, but the light sentence they inflicted was in effect an acquittal, and bonfires and illuminations over the whole country welcomed it as a Tory triumph. The turn of popular feeling freed Anne at once from the pressure beneath which she had bent; and the skill of Harley, whose cousin, Mrs. Masham, had succeeded the Duchess of Marlborough in the Queen's favor, was employed in bringing about the fall both of Marlborough and the Whig Ministers. ... The return of a Tory House of Commons sealed his [Marlborough's] fate. His wife was dismissed from court. A masterly plan for a march into the heart of France in the opening of 1711 was foiled by the withdrawal of a part of his forces, and the negotiations which had for some time been conducted between the French and English Ministers without his knowledge marched rapidly to a close. ... At the opening of 1712 the Whig majority of the House of Lords was swamped by the creation of twelve Tory peers. Marlborough was dismissed from his command, charged with peculation, and condemned as guilty by a vote of the House of Commons. He at once withdrew from England, and with his withdrawal all opposition to the peace was at an end." J. R. Green, Short History of the English People, section 9, chapter 9. {917} Added to other reasons for opposition to the war, the death of the Emperor Joseph I., which occurred in April, 1711, had entirely reversed the situation in Europe out of which the war proceeded. The Archduke Charles, whom the allies had been striving to place on the Spanish throne, was now certain to be elected Emperor. He received the imperial crown, in fact, in December, 1711. By this change of fortune, therefore, he became a more objectionable claimant of the Spanish crown than Louis XIV. 's grandson had been. See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1711. Earl Stanhope, History of England, Reign of Anne, chapters 12-15. "Round the fall of Marlborough has gathered the interest attaching to the earliest political crisis at all resembling those of quite recent times. It is at this moment that Party Government in the modern sense actually commenced. William the Third with military instinct had always been reluctant to govern by means of a party. Bound as he was, closely, to the Whigs, he employed Tory Ministers. ... The new idea of a homogeneous government was working itself into shape under the mild direction of Lord Somers; but the form finally taken under Sir Robert Walpole, which has continued to the present time, was as yet some way off. Marlborough's notions were those of the late King. Both abroad and at home he carried out the policy of William. He refused to rely wholly upon the Whigs, and the extreme Tories were not given employment. The Ministry of Godolphin was a composite administration, containing at one time, in 1705, Tories like Harley and St. John as well as Whigs such as Sunderland and Halifax. ... Lord Somers was a type of statesman of a novel order at that time. ... In the beginning of the eighteenth century it was rare to find a man attaining the highest political rank who was unconnected by birth or training or marriage with any of the great 'governing families,' as they have been called. Lord Somers was the son of a Worcester attorney. ... It was fortunate for England that Lord Somers should have been the foremost man of the Whig party at the time when constitutional government, as we now call it, was in course of construction. By his prudent counsel the Whigs were guided through the difficult years at the end of Queen Anne's reign; and from the ordeal of seeing their rivals in power they certainly managed, as a party, to emerge on the whole with credit. Although he was not nominally their leader, the paramount influence in the Tory party was Bolingbroke's; and that the Tories suffered from the defects of his great qualities, no unprejudiced critic can doubt. Between the two parties, and at the head of the Treasury through the earlier years of the reign, stood Godolphin, without whose masterly knowledge of finance and careful attention to the details of administration Marlborough's policy would have been baffled and his campaigns remained unfought. To Godolphin, more than to any other one man, is due the preponderance of the Treasury control in public affairs. It was his administration, during the absence of Marlborough on the Continent, which created for the office of Lord Treasurer its paramount importance, and paved the way for Sir Robert Walpole's government of England under the title of First Lord of the Treasury. ... Marlborough saw and always admitted that his victories were due in large measure to the financial skill of Godolphin. To this statesman's lasting credit it must be remembered that in a venal age, when the standards of public honesty were so different from those which now prevail, Godolphin died a poor man. ... Bolingbroke is interesting to us as the most striking figure among the originators of the new parliamentary system. With Marlborough disappeared the type of Tudor statesmen modified by contact with the Stuarts. He was the last of the Imperial Chancellors. Bolingbroke and his successor Walpole were the earlier types of constitutional statesmen among whom Mr. Pitt and, later, Mr. Gladstone stand pre-eminent. ... He and his friends, opponents of Marlborough, and contributors to his fall, are interesting to us mainly as furnishing the first examples of 'Her Majesty's Opposition,' as the authors of party government and the prototypes of cabinet ministers of to-day. Their ways of thought, their style of speech and of writing, may be dissimilar to those now in vogue, but they show greater resemblance to those of modern politicians than to those of the Ministers of William or of the Stuarts. Bolingbroke may have appeared a strange product of the eighteenth century to his contemporaries, but he would not have appeared peculiarly misplaced among the colleagues of Lord Randolph Churchill or Mr. Chamberlain." R. B. Brett, Footprints of Statesmen, chapter 3. ALSO IN: W. Coxe, Memoirs of Marlborough, chapters 89-107. W. Coxe, Memoirs of Walpole, volume 1, chapters 5-6. G. Saintsbury, Marlborough. G. W. Cooke, Memoirs of Bolingbroke, volume 1, chapters 6-13. J. C. Collins, Bolingbroke. A. Hassall, Life of Bolingbroke, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1711-1714. The Occasional Conformity Bill and the Schism Act. "The Test Act, making the reception of the Anglican Sacrament a necessary qualification for becoming a member of corporations, and for the enjoyment of most civil offices, was very efficacious in excluding Catholics, but was altogether insufficient to exclude moderate Dissenters. ... Such men, while habitually attending their own places of worship, had no scruple about occasionally entering an Anglican church, or receiving the sacrament from an Anglican clergyman. The Independents, it is true, and some of the Baptists, censured this practice, and Defoe wrote vehemently against it, but it was very general, and was supported by a long list of imposing authorities. ... In 1702, in 1703, and in 1704, measures for suppressing occasional conformity were carried through the Commons, but on each occasion they were defeated by the Whig preponderance in the Lords." In 1711, the Whigs formed a coalition with one section of the Tories to defeat the negotiations which led to the Peace of Utrecht; but the Tories "made it the condition of alliance that the Occasional Conformity Bill should be accepted by the Whigs. {918} The bargain was made; the Dissenters were abandoned, and, on the motion of Nottingham, a measure was carried providing that all persons in places of profit or trust, and all common councilmen in corporations, who, while holding office, were proved to have attended any Nonconformist place of worship, should forfeit the place, and should continue incapable of public employment till they should depose that for a whole year they had not attended a conventicle. The House of Commons added a fine of £40, which was to be paid to the informer, and with this addition the Bill became a law. Its effects during the few years it continued in force were very inconsiderable, for the great majority of conspicuous Dissenters remained in office, abstaining from public worship in conventicles, but having Dissenting ministers as private chaplains in their houses. ... The object of the Occasional Conformity Bill was to exclude the Dissenters from all Government positions of power, dignity or profit. It was followed in 1714 by the Schism Act, which was intended to crush their seminaries and deprive them of the means of educating their children in their faith. ... As carried through the House of Commons, it provided that no one, under pain of three months' imprisonment, should keep either a public or a private school, or should even act as tutor or usher, unless he had obtained a licence from the Bishop, had engaged to conform to the Anglican liturgy, and had received the sacrament in some Anglican church within the year. In order to prevent occasional conformity it was further provided that if a teacher so qualified were present at any other form of worship he should at once become liable to three months' imprisonment, and should be incapacitated for the rest of his life from acting as schoolmaster or tutor. ... Some important clauses, however, were introduced by the Whig party qualifying its severity. They provided that Dissenters might have school-mistresses to teach their children to read; that the Act should not extend to any person instructing youth in reading, writing, or arithmetic, in any part of mathematics relating to navigation, or in any mechanical art only. ... The facility with which this atrocious Act was carried, abundantly shows the danger in which religious liberty was placed in the latter years of the reign of Queen Anne." W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 1. The Schism Act was repealed in 1719, during the administration of Lord Stanhope. Cobbett's Parliamentary History, volume 7, pages 567-587. ALSO IN: J. Stoughton, History of Religion in England, volume 5, chapters 14-16. ENGLAND: A. D. 1713. Ending of the War of the Spanish Succession. The Peace of Utrecht. Acquisitions from Spain and France. See UTRECHT: A. D. 1712-1714; CANADA: A. D. 1711-1713; also, NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1713; and SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1698-1776. ENGLAND: A. D. 1713. Second Barrier Treaty with the Dutch. See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1713-1715. ENGLAND: A. D. 1713-1714. The desertion of the Catalans. See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1714. ENGLAND: A. D. 1714. The end of the Stuart line and the beginning of the Hanoverians. Queen Anne died, after a short illness, on the morning of August 1, 1714. The Tories, who had just gained control of the ministry, were wholly unprepared for this emergency. They assembled in Privy Council, on the 29th of July, when the probably fatal issue of the Queen's illness became apparent, and "a strange scene is said to have occurred. Argyle and Somerset, though they had contributed largely by their defection to the downfall of the Whig ministry of Godolphin, were now again in opposition to the Tories, and had recently been dismissed from their posts. Availing themselves of their rank of Privy Councillors, they appeared unsummoned in the council room, pleading the greatness of the emergency. Shrewsbury, who had probably concocted the scene, rose and warmly thanked them for their offer of assistance; and these three men appear to have guided the course of events. ... Shrewsbury, who was already Chamberlain and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, became Lord Treasurer, and assumed the authority of Prime Minister. Summons were at once sent to all Privy Councillors, irrespective of party, to attend; and Somers and several other of the Whig leaders were speedily at their post. They had the great advantage of knowing clearly the policy they should pursue, and their measures were taken with admirable promptitude and energy. The guards of the Tower were at once doubled. Four regiments were ordered to march from the country to London, and all seamen to repair to their vessels. An embargo was laid on all shipping. The fleet was equipped, and speedy measures were taken to protect the seaports and to secure tranquility in Scotland and Ireland. At the same time despatches were sent to the Netherlands ordering seven of the ten British battalions to embark without delay; to Lord Strafford, the ambassador at the Hague, desiring the States-General to fulfil their guarantee of the Protestant succession in England; to the Elector, urging him to hasten to Holland, where, on the death of the Queen, he would be met by a British squadron, and escorted to his new kingdom." When the Queen's death occurred, "the new King was at once proclaimed, and it is a striking proof of the danger of the crisis that the funds, which had fallen on a false rumour of the Queen's recovery, rose at once when she died. Atterbury is said to have urged Bolingbroke to proclaim James III. at Charing Cross, and to have offered to head the procession in his lawn sleeves, but the counsel was mere madness, and Bolingbroke saw clearly that any attempt to overthrow the Act of Settlement would be now worse than useless. ... The more violent spirits among the Jacobites now looked eagerly for a French invasion, but the calmer members of the party perceived that such an invasion was impossible. ... The Regency Act of 1705 came at once into operation. The Hanoverian minister produced the sealed list of the names of those to whom the Elector entrusted the government before his arrival, and it was found to consist of eighteen names taken from the leaders of the Whig party. ... Parliament, in accordance with the provisions of the Bill, was at once summoned, and it was soon evident that there was nothing to fear. The moment for a restoration was passed." W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 1 (volume 1). {919} "George I., whom circumstances and the Act of Settlement had thus called to be King of Great Britain and Ireland, had been a sovereign prince for sixteen years, during which time he had been Elector of Brunswick-Lüneburg. He was the second who ever bore that title. By right of his father he was Elector; it was by right of his mother that he now became ruler of the United Kingdom. The father was Ernest Augustus, Sovereign Bishop of Osnaburg, who, by the death of his elder brothers, had become Duke of Hanover, and then Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg. In 1692 he was raised by the Emperor to the dignity of Elector. ... The mother of George I. was Sophia, usually known as the Electress Sophia. The title was merely one of honour, and only meant wife of an Elector. ... The Electress Sophia was the daughter of Elizabeth, daughter of King James I., and Frederick, the Elector Palatine [whose election to the throne of Bohemia and subsequent expulsion from that kingdom and from his Palatine dominions were the first acts in the Thirty Years' War]. ... The new royal house in England is sometimes called the House of Hanover, sometimes the House of Brunswick. It will be found that the latter name is more generally used in histories written during the last century, the former in books written in the present day. If the names were equally applicable, the modern use is the more convenient, because there is another, and in some respects well known, branch of the House of Brunswick; but no other has a right to the name of Hanover. It is, however, quite certain that, whatever the English use may be, Hanover is properly the name of a town and of a duchy, but that the electorate was Brunswick-Lüneburg. ... The House of Brunswick was of noble origin, tracing itself back to a certain Guelph d'Este, nicknamed 'the Robust,' son of an Italian nobleman, who had been seeking his fortunes in Germany. Guelph married Judith, widow of the English King, Harold, who fell on the hill of Senlac. ... One of Guelph's descendants, later, married Maud, the daughter of King Henry II., probably the most powerful king in Europe of his day, at whose persuasion the Emperor conferred on the Guelphs the duchy of Brunswick." E. E. Morris, The Early Hanoverians, book 1, chapter 2. ALSO IN: P. M. Thornton, The Brunswick Accession, chapters 1-10. Sir A. Halliday, Annals of the House of Hanover, book 10 (volume 2). J. McCarthy, History of the Four Georges, chapters 1-4. W. M. Thackeray, The Four Georges, lecture 1. A. W. Ward, The Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession (English History Review, volume 1). See, also, ENGLAND: A. D. 1701, THE ACT OF SETTLEMENT. ENGLAND: A. D. 1714-1721. First years of George I. The rise of Walpole to power and the founding of Parliamentary Government. "The accession of the house of Hanover in the person of the great-grandson of James I. was once called by a Whig of this generation the greatest miracle in our history. It took place without domestic or foreign disturbance. ... Within our own borders a short lull followed the sharp agitations of the last six months. The new king appointed an exclusively Whig Ministry. The office of Lord Treasurer was not revived, and the title disappears from political history. Lord Townshend was made principal Secretary of State, and assumed the part of first Minister. Mr. Walpole [Sir Robert] took the subaltern office of paymaster of the forces, holding along with it the paymastership of Chelsea Hospital. Although he had at first no seat in the inner Council or Cabinet, which seems to have consisted of eight members, only one of them a commoner, it is evident that from the outset his influence was hardly second to that of Townshend himself. In little more than a year (October 1715) he had made himself so prominent and valuable in the House of Commons, that the opportunity of a vacancy was taken to appoint him to be First Commissioner of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. ... Besides excluding their opponents from power, the Whigs instantly took more positive measures. The new Parliament was strongly Whig. A secret committee was at once appointed to inquire into the negotiations for the Peace. Walpole was chairman, took the lead in its proceedings, and drew the report." On Walpole's report, the House "directed the impeachment of Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond for high treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanours mainly relating to the Peace of Utrecht. ... The proceedings against Oxford and Bolingbroke are the last instance in our history of a political impeachment. They are the last ministers who were ever made personally responsible for giving bad advice and pursuing a discredited policy, and since then a political mistake has ceased to be a crime. ... The affair came to an abortive end. ... The opening years of the new reign mark one of the least attractive periods in political history. George I. ... cared very little for his new kingdom, and knew very little about its people or its institutions. ... His expeditions to Hanover threw the management of all domestic affairs almost without control into the hands of his English ministers. If the two first Hanoverian kings had been Englishmen instead of Germans, if they had been men of talent and ambition, or even men of strong and commanding will without much talent, Walpole would never have been able to lay the foundations of government by the House of Commons and by Cabinet so firmly that even the obdurate will of George III. was unable to overthrow it See CABINET, THE ENGLISH. Happily for the system now established, circumstances compelled the first two sovereigns of the Hanoverian line to strike a bargain with the English Whigs, and it was faithfully kept until the accession of the third George. The king was to manage the affairs of Hanover, and the Whigs were to govern England. It was an excellent bargain for England. Smooth as this operation may seem in historic description, Walpole found its early stages rough and thorny." The king was not easily brought to understand that England would not make war for Hanoverian objects, nor allow her foreign policy to be shaped by the ambitions of the Electorate. Differences arose which drove Townshend from the Cabinet, and divided the Whig party. Walpole retired from the government with Townshend, and was in opposition for three years, while Lord Stanhope and the Earl of Sunderland controlled the administration. The Whig schism came to an end in 1720, and Townshend and Walpole rejoined the administration, the latter as Paymaster of the Forces without a seat in the Cabinet. "His opposition was at an end, but he took no part in the active work of government. ... Before many months had passed the country was overtaken by the memorable disasters of the South Sea Bubble. See SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. {920} All eyes were turned to Walpole. Though he had privately dabbled in South Sea stock on his own account, his public predictions came back to men's minds; they remembered that he had been called the best man for figures in the House, and the disgrace of' his most important colleagues only made his sagacity the more prominent. ... He returned to his old posts, and once more became First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer (April 1721), while Townshend was again Secretary of State. Walpole held his offices practically without a break for twenty-one years. The younger Pitt had an almost equal span of unbroken supremacy, but with that exception there is no parallel to Walpole's long tenure of power. To estimate aright the vast significance of this extraordinary stability, we must remember that the country had just passed through eighty years of revolution. A man of 80 in 1721 could recall the execution of Charles I., the protectorate of Oliver, the fall of Richard Cromwell, the restoration of Charles II., the exile of James II., the change of the order of succession to William of Orange, the reactionary ministry of Anne, and finally the second change to the House of Hanover. The interposition, after so long a series of violent perturbations as this, of twenty years of settled system and continuous order under one man, makes Walpole's government of capital and decisive importance in our history, and constitutes not an artificial division like the reign of a king, but a true and definite period, with a beginning, an end, a significance, and a unity of its own." J. Morley, Walpole, chapters 3-4. ALSO IN: W. Coxe, Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole, chapters 9-21 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1715. The Jacobite rising. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1715. ENGLAND: A. D. 1716. The Septennial Act. The easy suppression of the Jacobite rebellion was far from putting an end to the fears of the loyal supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty. They regarded with especial anxiety the approaching Parliamentary elections. "As, by the existing statute of 6 William and Mary [the Triennial Act, of 1694], Parliament would be dissolved at the close of the year, and a new election held in the spring of 1717, there seemed great probability of a renewal of the contest, or at least of very serious riots during the election time. With this in view, the ministers proposed that the existing Parliament should be continued for a term of seven instead of three years. This, which was meant for a temporary measure, has never been repealed, and is still the law under which Parliaments are held. It has been often objected to this action of Parliament, that it was acting arbitrarily in thus increasing its own duration. 'It was a direct usurpation,' it has been said, 'of the rights of the people, analogous to the act of the Long Parliament in declaring itself indestructible.' It has been regarded rather as a party measure than as a forward step in liberal government. We must seek its vindication in the peculiar conditions of the time. It was useless to look to the constituencies for the support of the popular liberty. The return of members in the smaller boroughs was in the hands of corrupt or corruptible freemen; in the counties, of great landowners; in the larger towns, of small place-holders under Government. A general election in fact only gave fresh occasion for the exercise of the influence of the Crown and of the House of Lords--freedom and independence in the presence of these two permanent powers could be secured only by the greater permanence of the third element of the Legislature, the House of Commons. It was thus that, though no doubt in some degree a party measure for securing a more lengthened tenure of office to the Whigs, the Septennial Act received, upon good constitutional grounds, the support and approbation of the best statesmen of the time." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 3, page 938. ALSO IN: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, volume 1, chapter 6. ENGLAND: A. D. 1717-1719. The Triple Alliance. The Quadruple Alliance. War with Spain. See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725; also, ITALY: A. D. 1715-1735. ENGLAND: A. D. 1720. The South Sea Bubble. See SOUTH SEA BUBBLE. ENGLAND: A. D. 1721-1742. Development of the Cabinet System of ministerial government. See CABINET, THE ENGLISH. ENGLAND: A. D. 1725. The Alliance of Hanover. See SPAIN: A. D. 1713-1725. ENGLAND: A. D. 1726-1731. Fresh differences with Spain. Gibraltar besieged. The Treaty of Seville. The Second Treaty of Vienna. See SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731. ENGLAND: A. D. 1727. Accession of King George II. ENGLAND: A. D. 1727-1741. Walpole's administration under George II. "The management of public affairs during the six years of George the First's reign in which Walpole was Prime Minister, was easy. ... His political fortunes seemed to be ruined by George the First's death [1727]. That King's successor had ransacked a very copious vocabulary of abuse, in order to stigmatise the minister and his associates. Rogue and rascal, scoundrel and fool, were his commonest utterances when Robert Walpole's name was mentioned. ... Walpole bowed meekly to the coming storm," and an attempt was made to put Sir Spencer Compton in his place. But Compton himself, as well as the king and his sagacious queen, soon saw the futility of it, and the old ministry was retained. "At first, Walpole was associated with his brother-in-law, Townsend. But they soon disagreed, and the rupture was total after the death of Walpole's sister, Townsend's wife. ... After Townsend's dismissal, Walpole reigned alone, if, indeed, he could be said to exercise sole functions while Newcastle was tied to him. Long before he was betrayed by this person, of whom he justly said that his name was perfidy, he knew how dangerous was the association. But Newcastle was the largest proprietor of rotten boroughs in the kingdom, and, fool and knave as he was, he had wit enough to guess at his own importance, and knavery enough to make his market. Walpole's chief business lay in managing the King, the Queen, the Church, the House of Commons, and perhaps the people. I have already said, that before his accession George hated Walpole. But there are hatreds and hatreds, equal in fervency while they last, but different in duration. The King hated Walpole because he had served his father well. But one George was gone, and another George was in possession. Then came before the man in possession the clear vision of Walpole's consummate usefulness. The vision was made clearer by the sagacious hints of the Queen. It became clear as noonday when Walpole contrived to add £115,000 to the civil list. ... Besides, Walpole was sincerely determined to support the Hanoverian succession. He constantly insisted to George that the final settlement of his House on the throne would be fought out in England. ... Hence he was able to check one of the King's ruling passions, a longing to engage in war. ... {921} It is generally understood that Walpole managed the House of Commons by bribery; that the secret service money was thus employed: and that this minister was the father of that corruption which was reported to have disgraced the House during the first half of the last century. I suspect that these influences have been exaggerated. It is a stock story that Walpole said he knew every man's price. It might have been generally true, but the foundation of this apothegm is, in all likelihood, a recorded saying of his about certain members of the opposition. ... Walpole has been designated, and with justice, as emphatically a peace minister. He held 'that the most pernicious circumstances in which this country can be, are those of war, as we must be great losers while the war lasts, and cannot be great gainers when it ends.' He kept George the Second at peace, as well as he could, by insisting on it that the safety of his dynasty lay in avoiding foreign embroilments. He strove in vain against the war which broke out in 1739. ... I do not intend to disparage Walpole's administrative ability when I say that the country prospered independently of any financial policy which he adopted or carried out. ... Walpole let matters take their course, for he understood that the highest merit of a minister consists in his doing no mischief. But Walpole's praise lies in the fact, that, with this evident growth of material prosperity, he steadily set his face against gambling with it. He resolved, as far as lay in his power, to keep the peace of Europe; and he was seconded in his efforts by Cardinal Fleury. He contrived to smooth away the difficulties which arose in 1727; and on January 13, 1730, negotiated the treaty of Seville [see SPAIN: A. D. 1726-1731], the benefits of which lasted through ten years of peace, and under which he reduced the army to 5,000 men." But the opposition to Walpole's peace policy became a growing passion, which overcame him in 1741 and forced him to resign. On his resignation he was raised to the peerage, with the title of Earl of Orford, and defeated, though with great difficulty, the determination of his enemies to impeach him. J. E. T. Rogers, Historical Gleanings, volume 1, chapter 2. "It is impossible, I think, to consider his [Walpole's] career with adequate attention without recognising in him a great minister, although the merits of his administration were often rather negative than positive, and although it exhibits few of those dramatic incidents, and is but little susceptible of that rhetorical colouring, on which the reputation of statesmen largely depends. ... He was eminently true to the character of his countrymen. He discerned with a rare sagacity the lines of policy most suited to their genius and to their needs, and he had a sufficient ascendancy in English politics to form its traditions, to give a character and a bias to its institutions. The Whig party, under his guidance, retained, though with diminished energy, its old love of civil and of religious liberty, but it lost its foreign sympathies, its tendency to extravagance, its military restlessness. The landed gentry, and in a great degree the Church, were reconciled to the new dynasty. The dangerous fissures which divided the English nation were filled up. Parliamentary government lost its old violence, it entered into a period of normal and pacific action, and the habits of compromise, of moderation, and of practical good sense, which are most essential to its success, were greatly strengthened. These were the great merits of Walpole. His faults were very manifest, and are to be attributed in part to his own character, but in a great degree to the moral atmosphere of his time. He was an honest man in the sense of desiring sincerely the welfare of his country and serving his sovereign with fidelity; but he was intensely wedded to power, exceedingly unscrupulous about the means of grasping or retaining it, and entirely destitute of that delicacy of honour which marks a high-minded man. ... His estimate of political integrity was very similar to his estimate of female virtue. He governed by means of an assembly which was saturated with corruption, and he fully acquiesced in its conditions and resisted every attempt to improve it. ... It is necessary to speak with much caution on this matter, remembering that no statesman can emancipate himself from the conditions of his time. ... The systematic corruption of Members of Parliament is said to have begun under Charles II., in whose reign it was practised to the largest extent. It was continued under his successor, and the number of scandals rather increased than diminished after the Revolution. ... And if corruption did not begin with Walpole, it is equally certain that it did not end with him. His expenditure of secret service money, large as it was, never equalled in an equal space of time the expenditure of Bute. ... The real charge against him is that in a period of profound peace, when he exercised an almost unexampled ascendancy in politics, and when public opinion was strongly in favour of the diminution of corrupt influence in Parliament, he steadily and successfully resisted every attempt at reform. ... It was his settled policy to maintain his Parliamentary majority, not by attracting to his ministry great orators, great writers, great financiers, or great statesmen, ... but simply by engrossing borough influence and extending the patronage of the Crown." W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter. 3 (volume 1). "But for Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pretender back again. But for his obstinate love of peace, we should have had wars, which the nation was not strong enough nor united enough to endure. But for his resolute counsels and good-humoured resistance, we might have had German despots attempting a Hanoverian regimen over us: we should have had revolt, commotion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of a quarter of a century of peace, freedom and material prosperity, such as the country never enjoyed, until that corrupter of parliaments, that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot and statesman governed it. ... In private life the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures: he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond; and his holidays bawling after dogs, or boozing at Houghton with Boors over beef and punch. He cared for letters no more than his master did: he judged human nature so meanly that one is ashamed to have to own that he was right, and that men could be corrupted by means so base. But, with his hireling House of Commons, he defended liberty for us; with his incredulity he kept Church-craft down. ... He gave Englishmen no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease, and freedom; the Three per Cents. nearly at par; and wheat at five and six and twenty shillings a quarter." W. M. Thackeray, The Four Georges, chapter 2. ALSO IN: W. Coxe, Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole, chapters 31-59 (volume 1). Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 15-23 (volumes 2-3). Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of George II. {922} ENGLAND: A. D. 1731-1740. The question of the Austrian Succession. Guarantee of the Pragmatic Sanction. See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1718-1738, and 1740. ENGLAND: A. D. 1732. The grant of Georgia to General Oglethorpe. See GEORGIA: A. D. 1732-1739. ENGLAND: A. D. 1733. The first Bourbon Family Compact. Its hostility to Great Britain. See FRANCE, A. D. 1733. ENGLAND: A. D. 1733-1787 The great inventions which built up the Cotton Manufacture. See COTTON MANUFACTURE. ENGLAND: A. D. 1739-1741. The War of Jenkins' Ear. "In spite of Walpole's love of peace, and determined efforts to preserve it, in the year 1739 a war broke out with Spain, which is an illustration of the saying that the occasion of a war may be trifling, though its real cause be very serious. The war is often called the War of Jenkins' Ear. The story ran that eight years before (1731) a certain Captain Jenkins, skipper of the ship 'Rebecca,' of London, had been maltreated by the Spaniards. His ship was sailing from Jamaica, and hanging about the entrance of the Gulf of Florida, when it was boarded by the Spanish coast guard. The Spaniards could find no proof that Jenkins was smuggling, though they searched narrowly, and being angry at their ill-success they hanged him to the yardarm, lowering him just in time to save his life. At length they pulled off his ear and told him to take it to his king. ... Seven years later Captain Jenkins was examined by the House of Commons, on which occasion some member asked him how he felt when being maltreated, and Jenkins answered, 'I recommended my soul to God and my cause to my country.' The answer, whether made at the time or prepared for use in the House of Commons, touched a chord of sympathy, and soon was circulated through the country. 'No need of allies now,' said one politician; 'the story of Jenkins will raise us volunteers.' The truth of the matter is that this story from its somewhat ridiculous aspect has remained in the minds of men, but that it is only a specimen of many stories then afloat, all pointing to insolence of Spaniards in insisting upon what was after all strictly within their rights. But the legal treaty rights of Spain were growing intolerable to Englishmen, though not necessarily to the English Government; and traders and sailors were breaking the international laws which practically stopped the expansion of England in the New World. The war arose out of a question of trade, in this as in so many other cases the English being prepared to fight in order to force an entrance for their trade, which the Spaniards wished to shut out from Spanish America. This question found a place amongst the other matters arranged by the treaty of Utrecht, when the English obtained almost as their sole return for their victories what was known as the Assiento. This is a Spanish word meaning contract, but its use had been for some time confined to the disgraceful privilege of providing Spanish America with negroes kidnapped from their homes in Africa. The Flemings, the Genoese, the Portuguese, and the French Guinea Company received in turn from Spanish kings the monopoly in this shameful traffic, which at the treaty of Utrecht was passed on for a period of thirty years to England, now becoming mistress of the seas, and with her numerous merchant ships better able than others to carry on the business. The English Government committed the contract to the South Sea Company, and the number of negroes to be supplied annually was no less than 4,800 'sound, healthy, merchantable negroes, two-thirds to be male, none under ten or over forty years old.' In the Assiento Treaty there was also a provision for the trading of one English ship each year with Spanish America; but in order to prevent too great advantage therefrom it was carefully stipulated that the ship should not exceed 600 tons burden. There is no doubt that this stipulation was regularly violated by the English sending a ship of the required number of tons, but with it numerous tenders and smaller craft. Moreover smuggling, being very profitable, became common; it was of this smuggling that Captain Jenkins was accused. ... Walpole, always anxious for peace, by argument, by negotiation, by delays, resisted the growing desire for war; at length he could resist no longer. For the sake of his reputation he should have resigned office, but he had enjoyed power too long to be ready to yield it, and most unwisely he allowed himself to be forced into a declaration of war October 19, 1739. The news was received throughout England with a perfect frenzy of delight. ... A year and a day after this declaration of war an event occurred--the death of the Emperor--which helped to swell the volume of this war until it was merged into the European war, called the War of the Austrian Succession, which includes within itself the First and Second Silesian Wars, between Austria and Frederick the Great of Prussia. The European war went on until the general pacification in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. Within another ten years war broke out again on somewhat similar grounds, but on a much wider scale and with the combatants differently arranged, under the title 'Seven Years' War.' The events of this year, whilst the war was only between Spain and England, were the attacks on Spanish settlements in America, the capture of Porto Bello, and the failure before Cartagena, which led to Anson's famous voyage." E. E. Morris, The Early Hanoverians, book 2, chapter 3. "Admiral Vernon, setting sail with the English fleet from Jamaica, captured Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of Darien, December 1st--an exploit for which he received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament. His attempt on Carthagena, in the spring of 1741, proved, however, a complete failure through his dissensions, it is said, with General Wentworth, the commander of the land forces. A squadron, under Commodore Anson, despatched to the South Sea for the purpose of annoying the Spanish colonies of Peru and Chili, destroyed the Peruvian town of Paita, and made several prizes; the most important of which was one of the great Spanish galleons trading between Acapulco and Manilla, having a large treasure on board. It was on this occasion that Anson circumnavigated the globe, having sailed from England in 1740 and returned to Spithead in 1744." T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 6, chapter 3. {923} ALSO IN: R. Walter, Voyage around the World of George Anson. Sir J. Barrow, Life of Lord George Anson, chapter 1-2. W. Coxe, Memoirs of the Bourbon Kings of Spain, chapter 43 (volume 3). See, also, FRANCE, A. D. 1733, and GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743. ENGLAND: A. D. 1740-1741. Beginning of the War of the Austrian Succession. See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1740-1741. ENGLAND: A. D. 1742. Naval operations in the Mediterranean. See ITALY: A. D. 1741-1743. ENGLAND: A. D. 1742-1745. Ministries of Carteret and the Pelhams, Pitt's admission to the Cabinet. "Walpole resigned in the beginning of February, 1742; but his retirement did not bring Pitt into office. The King had conceived a violent prejudice against him, not only on account of the prominent and effective part he had taken in the general assault upon the late administration, but more especially in consequence of the strong opinions he had expressed on the subject of Hanover, and respecting the public mischiefs arising from George the Second's partiality to the interests of the Electorate. Lord Wilmington was the nominal head of the new administration, which was looked on as little more than a weak continuation of Walpole's. The same character was generally given to Pelham's ministry, (Pelham succeeded Wilmington as Premier, on the death of the latter in 1743,) and Pitt soon appeared in renewed opposition to the Court. It was about this time that he received a creditable and convenient addition to his private fortune, which also attested his celebrity. In 1744, the celebrated Duchess of Marlborough died, leaving him a legacy' of 10,000 l. on account of his merit in the noble defence he has made of the laws of England, to prevent the ruin of his country.' Pitt was now at the head of a small but determined band of Opposition statesmen, with whom he was also connected by intermarriages between members of their respective families and his own. These were Lord Cobham, the Grenvilles, and his schoolfellow Lord Lyttelton. The genius of Pitt had made the opposition of this party so embarrassing to the minister, that Mr. Pelham, the leader of the House of Commons, and his brother, the Duke of Newcastle, found it necessary to get rid of Lord Carteret, who was personally most obnoxious to the attacks of Pitt, on account of his supposed zeal in favour of the King's Hanoverian policy. Pitt's friends, Lyttelton and Grenville, were taken into the ministry [called the Broad-bottomed Administration], and the undoubted wish of the Pelhams was to enlist Pitt also among their colleagues. But 'The great Mr. Pitt,' says old Horace Walpole--using in derision an epithet soon confirmed by the serious voice of the country--'the great Mr. Pitt insisted on being Secretary at War';--but it was found that the King's aversion to him was insurmountable; and after much reluctance and difficulty, his friends were persuaded to accept office without him, under an assurance from the Duke of Newcastle that 'he should at no distant day be able to remove this prejudice from his Majesty's mind.' Pitt concurred in the new arrangement, and promised to give his support to the remodelled administration. ... On the breaking out of the rebellion of 1745, Pitt energetically supported the ministry in their measures to protect the established government. George the Second's prejudices against him, were, however, as strong as ever. At last a sort of compromise was effected. Pitt waived for a time his demand of the War Secretaryship, and on the 22nd of February, 1746, he was appointed one of the joint Vice-treasurers for Ireland; and on the 6th of May following he was promoted to the more lucrative office of Paymaster-General of the Forces. ... In his office of Paymaster of the Forces Pitt set an example then rare among statesmen, of personal disinterestedness. He held what had hitherto been an exceedingly lucrative situation: for the Paymaster seldom had less than 100,000 l. in his hands, and was allowed to appropriate the interest of what funds he held to his own use. In addition to this it had been customary for foreign princes in the pay of England to allow the Paymaster of the Forces a per-centage on their subsidies. Pitt nobly declined to avail himself of these advantages, and would accept of nothing beyond his legal salary." Sir E. Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, chapter 4. "From Walpole's death in 1745, when the star of the Stuarts set for ever among the clouds of Culloden, to 1754, when Henry Pelham followed his old chief, public life in England was singularly calm and languid. The temperate and peaceful disposition of the Minister seemed to pervade Parliament. At his death the King exclaimed: 'Now I shall have no more peace'; and the words proved to be prophetic. Both in Parliament and in the country, as well as beyond its shores, the elements of discord were swiftly at war. Out of conflicting ambitions and widely divergent interests a new type of statesman, very different from Walpole, or from Bolingbroke, or from Pelham, or from the 'hubble-bubble Newcastle,' was destined to arise. And along with the new statesman a new force, of which he was in part the representative, in part the creator, was to be introduced into political life. This new force was the unrepresented voice of the people. The new statesman was an ex-cornet of horse, William Pitt, better known as Lord Chatham. The characteristics of William Pitt which mainly influenced his career were his ambition and his ill-health. Power, and that conspicuous form of egotism called personal glory, were the objects of his life. He pursued them with all the ardour of a strong-willed purpose; but the flesh was in his case painfully weak. Gout had declared itself his foe while he was still an Eton boy. His failures, and prolonged withdrawal at intervals from public affairs, were due to the inroads of this fatal enemy, from whom he was destined to receive his death-blow. Walpole had not been slow to recognise the quality of this 'terrible cornet of horse,' as he called him." R. B. Brett, Footprints of Statesmen, chapter 7. ALSO IN: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 24-28 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1743. The British Pragmatic Army. Battle of Dettingen. See AUSTRIA: A. D. 1743. ENGLAND: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER). The second Bourbon Family Compact. See FRANCE: A. D. 1743 (OCTOBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1743-1752. Struggle of French and English for supremacy in India. The founding of British empire by Clive. See INDIA: A. D. 1743-1752. ENGLAND: A. D. 1744-1745. War of the Austrian Succession: Hostilities in America. See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1744: and 1745. {924} ENGLAND: A. D. 1745 (MAY). War of the Austrian Succession in the Netherlands. Fontenoy. See NETHERLANDS (THE AUSTRIAN PROVINCES): A. D. 1745. ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1746. The Young Pretender's invasion. Last rising of the Jacobites. See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1745-1746. ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1747. War of the Austrian Succession British incapacity. Final successes at Sea. "The extraordinary incapacity of English commanders, both by land and sea, is one of the most striking facts in the war we are considering. ... Mismanagement and languor were general. The battle of Dettingen was truly described as a happy escape rather than a great victory; the army in Flanders can hardly be said to have exhibited any military quality except courage, and the British navy, though it gained some successes, added little to its reputation. The one brilliant exception was the expedition of Anson round Cape Horn, for the purpose of plundering the Spanish merchandise and settlements in the Pacific. It lasted for nearly four years. ... The overwhelming superiority of England upon the sea began, however, gradually to influence the war. The island of Cape Breton, which commanded the mouth of Gulf St. Lawrence, and protected the Newfoundland fisheries, was captured in the June of 1745. In 1747 a French squadron was destroyed by a very superior English fleet off Cape Finisterre. Another was defeated near Belleisle, and in the same year as many as 644 prizes were taken. The war on the part of the English, however, was most efficiently conducted by means of subsidies, which were enormously multiplied." W. E. H. Lecky, History of England, 18th Century, chapter 3 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1746-1747. War of the Austrian Succession in Italy. Siege of Genoa. See ITALY: A. D. 1746-1747. ENGLAND: A. D. 1748 (OCTOBER). End and results of the War of the Austrian Succession. See AIX-LA-CHAPELLE: A. D. 1748; and NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1745-1748. ENGLAND: A. D. 1748-1754. First movements to dispute possession of the Ohio Valley with the French. See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754. ENGLAND: A. D. 1749-1755. Unsettled boundary disputes with France in America. Preludes of the final contest. See NOVA SCOTIA: A. D. 1749-1755; CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753; and OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1754. ENGLAND: A. D. 1751. Reformation of the Calendar. See CALENDAR, GREGORIAN. ENGLAND: A. D. 1753. The Jewish Naturalization Bill. See JEWS: A. D. 1662-1753. ENGLAND: A. D. 1754. Collision with the French in the Ohio Valley. See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1754. ENGLAND: A. D. 1754-1755. The Seven Years War. Its causes and provocations. "The seven years that succeeded the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle are described by Voltaire as among the happiest that Europe ever enjoyed. Commerce revived, the fine arts flourished, and the European nations resembled, it is said, one large family that had been reunited after its dissensions. Unfortunately, however, the peace had not exterminated all the elements of discord. Scarcely had Europe begun to breathe again when new disputes arose, and the seven years of peace and prosperity were succeeded by another seven of misery and war. The ancient rivalry between France and England, which had formerly vented itself in continental struggles, had, by the progress of maritime discovery and colonisation, been extended to all the quarters of the globe. The interests of the two nations came into collision in India, Africa and America, and a dispute about boundaries in this last quarter again plunged them into a war. By the 9th article of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, France and England were mutually to restore their conquests in such state as they were before the war. This clause became a copious source of quarrel. The principal dispute regarded the limits of Acadia, or Nova Scotia, which province had, by the 12th article of the Treaty of Utrecht, been ceded to England 'conformably to its ancient boundaries'; but what these were had never been accurately determined, and each Power fixed them according to its convenience. Thus, while the French pretended that Nova Scotia embraced only the peninsula extending from Cape St. Mary to Cape Canseau, the English further included in it that part of the American continent which extends to Pentagoet on the west, and to the river St. Lawrence on the north, comprising all the province of New Brunswick. Another dispute regarded the western limits of the British North American settlements. The English claimed the banks of the Ohio as belonging to Virginia, the French as forming part of Louisiana; and they attempted to confine the British colonies by a chain of forts stretching from Louisiana to Canada. Commissaries were appointed to settle these questions, who held their conferences at Paris between the years 1750 and 1755. Disputes also arose respecting the occupation by the French of the islands of St. Lucia, Dominica, St. Vincent, and Tobago, which had been declared neutral by former treaties. Before the Commissaries could terminate their labours, mutual aggressions had rendered a war inevitable. As is usual in such cases, it is difficult to say who was the first aggressor. Each nation laid the blame on the other. Some French writers assert that the English resorted to hostilities out of jealousy at the increase of the French navy. According to the plans of Rouillé, the French Minister of Marine, 111 ships of the line, 54 frigates, and smaller vessels in proportion, were to be built in the course of ten years. The question of boundaries was, however, undoubtedly the occasion, if not also the true cause, of the war. A series of desultory conflicts had taken place along the Ohio, and on the frontiers of Nova Scotia, in 1754, without being avowed by the mother countries. A French writer, who flourished about this time, the Abbé Raynal, ascribes "this clandestine warfare to the policy of the Court of Versailles, which was seeking gradually to recover what it had lost by treaties. Orders were now issued to the English fleet to attack French vessels wherever found. ... It being known that a considerable French fleet was preparing to sail from Brest and Rochefort for America, Admiral Boscawen was despatched thither, and captured two French men-of-war off Cape Race in Newfoundland, June 1755. Hostilities were also transferred to the shores of Europe. ... A naval war between England and France was now unavoidable; but, as in the case of the Austrian Succession, this was also to be mixed up with a European war. {925} The complicated relations of the European system again caused these two wars to run into one, though their origin had nothing in common. France and England, whose quarrel lay in the New World, appeared as the leading Powers in a European contest in which they had only a secondary interest, and decided the fate of Canada on the plains of Germany. The war in Europe, commonly called the Seven Years' War, was chiefly caused by the pride of one Empress [Maria Theresa], the vanity of another [Elizabeth of Russia], and the subserviency of a royal courtezan [Madame Pompadour], who became the tool of these passions." T. H. Dyer, History of Modern Europe, book 6, chapter 5 (volume 3). "The Seven Years' War was in its origin not an European war at all; it was a war between England and France on Colonial questions with which the rest of Europe had nothing to do; but the alliances and enmities of England and France in Europe, joined with the fact that the King of England was also Elector of Hanover, made it almost certain that a war between England and France must spread to the Continent. I am far from charging on the English Government of the time--for it was they, and not the French, who forced on the war--as Macaulay might do, the blood of the Austrians who perished at Leuthen, of the Russians sabred at Zorndorf, and the Prussians mown down at Kunersdorf. The States of the Continent had many old enmities not either appeased or fought out to a result; and these would probably have given rise to a war some day, even if no black men, to adapt Macaulay again, had been previously fighting on the coast of Coromandel, nor red men scalping each other by the great lakes of North America. Still, it is to be remembered that it was the work of England that the war took place then and on those lines; and in view of the enormous suffering and slaughter of that war, and of the violent and arbitrary proceedings by which it was forced on, we may well question whether English writers have any right to reprobate Frederick's seizure of Silesia as something specially immoral in itself and disastrous to the world. If the Prussians were highway robbers, the English were pirates. ... The origin of the war between England and France, if a struggle which had hardly been interrupted since the nominal peace could be said to have an origin, was the struggle for America." A. R. Ropes, The Causes of the Seven Years' War (Royal Historical Society, Transactions, new series, volume 4). ALSO IN: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 31-32 (volume 4). F. Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, chapters 1-7. See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 1755-1756; CANADA: A. D. 1750-1753; and OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1748-1754. ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (APRIL). Demand of the royal governors in America for taxation of the colonies by act of Parliament. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1755. ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (JUNE). Boscawen's naval victory over the French. See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (JUNE). ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (JULY). Braddock's defeat in America. See OHIO (VALLEY): A. D. 1755. ENGLAND: A. D. 1755 (SEPTEMBER). Victory at Lake George. See CANADA: A. D. 1755 (SEPTEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1756. Loss of Minorca and reverses in America. See MINORCA: A. D. 1756; and CANADA: A. D. 1756-1757. ENGLAND: A. D. 1757-1759. Campaigns on the Continent. Defence of Hanover. See GERMANY: A D. 1757 (JULY-DECEMBER), to 1759 (APRIL-AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1757-1760. The great administration of the elder Pitt. "In 1754 Henry Pelham died. The important consequence of his death was the fact that it gave Pitt at last an opportunity of coming to the front. The Duke of Newcastle, Henry Pelham's brother, became leader of the administration, with Henry Fox for Secretary at War, Pitt for Paymaster-general of the Forces, and Murray, afterwards to be famous as Lord Mansfield, for Attorney-general. There was some difficulty about the leadership of the House of Commons. Pitt was still too much disliked by the King, to be available for the position. Fox for a while refused to accept it, and Murray was unwilling to do anything which might be likely to withdraw him from the professional path along which he was to move to such distinction. An attempt was made to get on with a Sir Thomas Robinson, a man of no capacity for such a position, and the attempt was soon an evident failure. Then Fox consented to take the position on Newcastle's own terms, which were those of absolute submission to the dictates of Newcastle. Later still he was content to descend to a subordinate office which did not even give him a place in the Cabinet. Fox never recovered the damage which his reputation and his influence suffered by this amazing act. ... The Duke of Newcastle's Ministry soon fell. Newcastle was not a man who had the slightest capacity for controlling or directing a policy of war; and the great struggle known as the Seven Years' War had now broken out. One lamentable event in the war has to be recorded, although it was but of minor importance. This was the capture of Minorca by the French under the romantic, gallant, and profligate Duc de Richelieu. The event is memorable chiefly, or only, because it was followed by the trial and execution [March 14, 1757] of the unfortunate Admiral Byng. See MINORCA: A. D. 1756. The Duke of Newcastle resigned office, and for a short time the Duke of Devonshire was at the head of a coalition Ministry which included Pitt. The King, however, did not stand this long, and one day suddenly turned them all out of office. Then a coalition of another kind was formed, which included Newcastle and Pitt, with Henry Fox in the subordinate position of paymaster. Pitt now for the first time had it all his own way. He ruled everything in the House of Commons. He flung himself with passionate and patriotic energy into the alliance with that great Frederick whose genius and daring were like his own." Justin McCarthy, History of the Four Georges, volume 2, chapter 41. "Newcastle took the Treasury. Pitt was Secretary of State, with the lead in the House of Commons, and with the supreme direction of the war and of foreign affairs. Fox, the only man who could have given much annoyance to the new Government, was silenced with the office of Paymaster, which, during the continuance of that war, was probably the most lucrative place in the whole Government. He was poor, and the situation was tempting. ... The first acts of the new administration were characterized rather by vigour than by judgment. Expeditions were sent against different parts of the French coast with little success. ... But soon conquests of a very different kind filled the kingdom with pride and rejoicing. A succession of victories undoubtedly brilliant, and, as it was thought, not barren, raised to the highest point the fame of the minister to whom the conduct of the war had been intrusted. {926} In July, 1758, Louisburg fell. The whole island of Cape Breton was reduced. The fleet to which the Court of Versailles had confided the defence of French America was destroyed. The captured standards were borne in triumph from Kensington Palace to the city, and were suspended in St. Paul's Church, amidst the roar of guns and kettle-drums, and the shouts of an immense multitude. Addresses of congratulation came in from all the great towns of England. Parliament met only to decree thanks and monuments, and to bestow, without one murmur, supplies more than double of those which had been given during the war of the Grand Alliance. The year 1759 opened with the conquest of Goree. Next fell Guadaloupe; then Ticonderoga; then Niagara. The Toulon squadron was completely defeated by Boscawen off Cape Lagos. But the greatest exploit of the year was the achievement of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham. The news of his glorious death and of the fall of Quebec reached London in the very week in which the Houses met. All was joy and triumph. Envy and faction were forced to join in the general applause. Whigs and Tories vied with each other in extolling the genius and energy of Pitt. His colleagues were never talked of or thought of. The House of Commons, the nation, the colonies, our allies, our enemies, had their eyes fixed on him alone. Scarcely had Parliament voted a monument to Wolfe when another great event called for fresh rejoicings. The Brest fleet, under the command of Conflans, had put out to sea. It was overtaken by an English squadron under Hawke. Conflans attempted to take shelter close under the French coast. The shore was rocky: the night was black: the wind was furious: the waves of the Bay of Biscay ran high. But Pitt had infused into every branch of the service a spirit which had long been unknown. No British seaman was disposed to err on the same side with Byng. The pilot told Hawke that the attack could not be made without the greatest danger. 'You have done your duty in remonstrating,' answered Hawke; 'I will answer for everything. I command you to lay me alongside the French admiral.' Two French ships of the line struck. Four were destroyed. The rest hid themselves in the rivers of Brittany. The year 1760 came; and still triumph followed triumph. Montreal was taken; the whole Province of Canada was subjugated; the French fleets underwent a succession of disasters in the seas of Europe and America. In the meantime conquests equalling in rapidity, and far surpassing in magnitude, those of Cortes and Pizarro, had been achieved in the East. In the space of three years the English had founded a mighty empire. The French had been defeated in every part of India. Chandernagore had surrendered to Clive, Pondicherry to Coote. Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa and the Carnatic, the authority of the East India Company was more absolute than that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had ever been. On the continent of Europe the odds were against England. We had but one important ally, the King of Prussia; and he was attacked, not only by France, but also by Russia and Austria. Yet even on the Continent, the energy of Pitt triumphed over all difficulties. Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of subsidising foreign princes, he now carried that practice farther than Carteret himself would have ventured to do. The active and able Sovereign of Prussia received such pecuniary assistance as enabled him to maintain the conflict on equal terms against his powerful enemies. On no subject had Pitt ever spoken with so much eloquence and ardour as on the mischiefs of the Hanoverian connection. He now declared, not without much show of reason, that it would be unworthy of the English people to suffer their King to be deprived of his electoral dominions in an English quarrel. He assured his countrymen that they should be no losers, and that he would conquer America for them in Germany. By taking this line he conciliated the King, and lost no part of his influence with the nation. In Parliament, such was the ascendeney which his eloquence, his success, his high situation, his pride, and his intrepidity had obtained for him, that he took liberties with the House of which there had been no example, and which have never since been imitated. ... The face of affairs was speedily changed. The invaders [of Hanover] were driven out. ... In the meantime, the nation exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity. ... The success of our arms was perhaps owing less to the skill of his [Pitt's] dispositions than to the national resources and the national spirit. But that the national spirit rose to the emergency, that the national resources were contributed with unexampled cheerfulness, this was undoubtedly his work. The ardour of his soul had set the whole kingdom on fire. ... The situation which Pitt occupied at the close of the reign of George the Second was the most enviable ever occupied by any public man in English history. He had conciliated the King; he domineered over the House of Commons; he was adored by the people; he was admired by all Europe. He was the first Englishman of his time; and he had made England the first country in the world. The Great Commoner, the name by which he was often designated, might look down with scorn on coronets and garters. The nation was drunk with joy and pride." Lord Macaulay, First Essay on William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (Essays, volume 3). ALSO IN: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 33-36 (volume 4). Sir E. Creasy, Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, chapter 4. England: A. D. 1758 (JUNE-AUGUST). The Seven Years War. Abortive expeditions against the coast of France. Early in 1758 there was sent out "one of those joint military and naval expeditions which Pitt seems at first to have thought the proper means by which England should assist in a continental war. Like all such isolated expeditions, it was of little value. St. Malo, against which it was directed, was found too strong to be taken, but a large quantity of shipping and naval stores was destroyed. The fleet also approached Cherbourg, but although the troops were actually in their boats ready to land, they were ordered to re-embark, and the fleet came home. Another somewhat similar expedition was sent out later in the year. In July General Bligh and Commodore Howe took and destroyed Cherbourg, but on attempting a similar assault on St. Malo they found it too strong for them. The army had been landed in the Bay of St. Cast, and, while engaged in re-embarkation, it was attacked by some French troops which had been hastily collected, and severely handled." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 3, page 1027. {927} ENGLAND: A. D. 1758 (JULY-NOVEMBER). The Seven Years War in America: Final capture of Louisbourg and recovery of Fort Duquesne. Bloody defeat at Ticonderoga. See CANADA: A. D. 1758; and CAPE BRETON ISLAND: A. D. 1758-1760. ENGLAND: A. D. 1758-1761. Breaking of French power in India. See INDIA: A. D. 1758-1761. ENGLAND: A. D. 1759. Great victories in America. Niagara, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Quebec. See CANADA: A. D. 1759. ENGLAND: A. D. 1759 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER). British naval supremacy established. Victories off Lagos and in Quiberon Bay. "Early in the year [1759] the French had begun to make preparations for an invasion of the British Isles on a large scale. Flat-bottomed boats were built at Havre and other places along the coasts of Normandy and Brittany, and large fleets were collected at Brest and Toulon, besides a small squadron at Dunkirk. A considerable force was assembled at Vannes in the south of Brittany, under the command of the Duc d'Aiguillon, which was to be convoyed to the Irish coasts by the combined fleets of Brest and Toulon, while the flat-bottomed boats transported a second army across the channel under cover of a dark night. The Dunkirk squadron, under Admiral Thurot, a celebrated privateer, was to create a diversion by attacking some part of the Scotch coast. The design was bold and well contrived, and would not improbably have succeeded three or even two years before, but the opportunity was gone. England was no longer in 'that enervate state in which 20,000 men from France could shake her.' Had a landing been effected, the regular troops in the country, with the support of the newly created militia, would probably have been equal to the emergency; but a more effectual bulwark was found in the fleet, which watched the whole French coast, ready to engage the enemy as soon as he ventured out of his ports. The first attempt to break through the cordon was made by M. de la Clue from Toulon. The English Mediterranean fleet, under Admiral Boscawen, cruising before that port, was compelled early in July to retire to Gibraltar to take in water and provisions and to refit some of' the ships. Hereupon M. de la Clue put to sea, and hugging the African coast, passed the straits without molestation. Boscawen, however, though his ships were not yet refitted, at once gave chase, and came up with the enemy off [Lagos, on] the coast of Portugal, where an engagement took place [August 18], in which three French ships were taken and two driven on shore and burnt. The remainder took refuge in Cadiz, where they were blockaded till the winter, when, the English fleet being driven off the coast by a storm, they managed to get back to Toulon. The discomfiture of the Brest fleet, under M. de Conflans, was even more complete. On November 9 Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, who had blockaded Brest all the summer and autumn, was driven from his post by a violent gale, and on the 14th, Conflans put to sea with 21 sail of the line and 4 frigates. On the same day, Hawke, with 22 sail of the line, stood out from Torbay, where he had taken shelter, and made sail for Quiberon Bay, judging that Conflans would steer thither to liberate a fleet of transports which were blocked up in the river Morbihan, by a small squadron of frigates under Commodore Duff. On the morning of the 20th, he sighted the French fleet chasing Duff in Quiberon Bay. Conflans, when he discerned the English, recalled his chasing ships and prepared for action; but on their nearer approach changed his mind, and ran for shelter among the shoals and rocks of the coast. The sea was running mountains high and the coast was very dangerous and little known to the English, who had no pilots; but Hawke, whom no peril could daunt, never hesitated a moment, but crowded all sail after them. Without regard to lines of battle, every ship was directed to make the best of her way towards the enemy, the admiral telling his officers he was for the old way of fighting, to make downright work with them. In consequence many of the English ships never got into action at all; but the short winter day was wearing away, and all haste was needed if the enemy were not to escape. ... As long as daylight lasted the battle raged with great fury, so near the coast that '10,000 persons on the shore were the sad spectators of the white flag's disgrace.' ... By nightfall two French ships, the Thésée 74, and Superb 70, were sunk, and two, the Formidable 80, and the Héros 74, had struck. The Soleil Royal afterwards went aground, but her crew escaped, as did that of the Héros, whose captain dishonourably ran her ashore in the night. Of the remainder, seven ships of the line and four frigates threw their guns overboard, and escaped up the river Vilaine, where most of them bumped their bottoms out in the shallow water; the rest got away and took shelter in the Charente, all but one, which was wrecked, but very few ever got out again. With two hours more of daylight Hawke thought he could have taken or destroyed all, as he was almost up with the French van when night overtook him. Two English ships, the Essex 64, and the Resolution 74, went ashore in the night and could not be got off, but the crews were saved, and the victory was won with the loss of 40 killed and 200 wounded. The great invasion scheme was completely wrecked. Thurot had succeeded in getting out from Dunkirk, and for some months was a terror to the northern coast-towns, but early in the following year an end was put to his career. For the rest of the war the French never ventured to meet the English in battle on the high seas, and could only look on helplessly while their colonies and commerce fell into the hands of their rivals. From the day of the fight in Quiberon Bay, the naval and commercial supremacy of England was assured." F. W. Longman, Frederick the Great and the Seven Years War, chapter 12, section 3. ALSO IN: C. D. Yonge, History of the British Navy, volume 1, chapter 12. J. Entick, History of the late War, volume 4, pages 241-290. ENGLAND: A. D. 1760. Completed conquest of Canada. Successes of the Prussians and their allies. See CANADA: A. D. 1760; and GERMANY: A. D. 1760. {928} ENGLAND: A. D. 1760-1763. Accession of George III. His ignorance and his despotic notions of kingship. Retirement of the elder Pitt. Rise and fall of Bute. The Grenville Ministry. "When George III. came to the throne, in 1760, England had been governed for more than half a century by the great Whig families which had been brought into the foreground by the revolution of 1688. ... Under Walpole's wise and powerful sway, the first two Georges had possessed scarcely more than the shadow of sovereignty. It was the third George's ambition to become a real king, like the king of France or the king of Spain. From earliest babyhood, his mother had forever been impressing upon him the precept, 'George be king!' and this simple lesson had constituted pretty much the whole of his education. Popular tradition regards him as the most ignorant king that ever sat upon the English throne; and so far as general culture is concerned, this opinion is undoubtedly correct. ... Nevertheless ... George III. was not destitute of a certain kind of ability, which often gets highly rated in this not too clear-sighted world. He could see an immediate end very distinctly, and acquired considerable power from the dogged industry with which he pursued it. In an age where some of the noblest English statesmen drank their gallon of strong wine daily, or sat late at the gambling-table, or lived in scarcely hidden concubinage, George III. was decorous in personal habits and pure in domestic relations, and no banker's clerk in London applied himself to the details of business more industriously than he. He had a genuine talent for administration, and he devoted this talent most assiduously to selfish ends. Scantily endowed with human sympathy, and almost boorishly stiff in his ordinary unstudied manner, he could be smooth as oil whenever he liked. He was an adept in gaining men's confidence by a show of interest, and securing their aid by dint of fair promises; and when he found them of no further use, he could turn them adrift with wanton insult. Anyone who dared to disagree with him upon even the slightest point of policy he straightway regarded as a natural enemy, and pursued him ever afterward with vindictive hatred. As a natural consequence, he surrounded himself with weak and short-sighted advisers, and toward all statesmen of broad views and independent character he nursed the bitterest rancour. ... Such was the man who, on coming to the throne in 1760, had it for his first and chiefest thought to break down the growing system of cabinet government in England." J. Fiske, The American Revolution, chapter 1 (volume 1). "The dissolution of Parliament, shortly after his accession, afforded an opportunity of strengthening the parliamentary connection of the king's friends. Parliament was kept sitting while the king and Lord Bute were making out lists of the court candidates, and using every exertion to secure their return. The king not only wrested government boroughs from the ministers, in order to nominate his own friends, but even encouraged opposition to such ministers as he conceived not to be in his interest. ... Lord Bute, the originator of the new policy, was not personally well qualified for its successful promotion. He was not connected with the great families who had acquired a preponderance of political influence; he was no parliamentary debater: his manners were unpopular: he was a courtier rather than a politician: his intimate relations with the Princess of Wales were an object of scandal; and, above all, he was a Scotchman. ... Immediately after the king's accession he had been made a privy councillor, and admitted into the cabinet. An arrangement was soon afterwards concerted, by which Lord Holdernesse retired from office with a pension, and Lord Bute succeeded him as Secretary of State. It was now the object of the court to break up the existing ministry, and to replace it with another, formed from among the king's friends. Had the ministry been united, and had the chiefs reposed confidence in one another, it would have been difficult to overthrow them. But there were already jealousies amongst them, which the court lost no opportunity of fomenting. A breach soon arose between Mr. Pitt, the most powerful and popular of the ministers, and his colleagues. He desired to strike a sudden blow against Spain, which had concluded a secret treaty of alliance with France, then at war with this country. See FRANCE: A. D. 1761 (AUGUST). Though war minister he was opposed by all his colleagues except Lord Temple. He bore himself haughtily at the council, --declared that he had been called to the ministry by the voice of the people, and that he could not be responsible for measures which he was no longer allowed to guide. Being met with equal loftiness in the cabinet, he was forced to tender his resignation. The king overpowered the retiring minister with kindness and condescension. He offered the barony of Chatham to his wife, and to himself an annuity of £3,000 a year for three lives. The minister had deserved these royal favours, and he accepted them, but at the cost of his popularity. ... The same Gazette which announced his resignation, also trumpeted forth the peerage and the pension, and was the signal for clamors against the public favourite. On the retirement of Mr. Pitt, Lord Bute became the most influential of the ministers. He undertook the chief management of public affairs in the cabinet, and the sole direction of the House of Lords. ... His ascendency provoked the jealousy and resentment of the king's veteran minister, the Duke of Newcastle: who had hitherto distributed all the patronage of the Crown, but now was never consulted. ... At length, in May 1762, his grace, after frequent disagreements in the cabinet and numerous affronts, was obliged to resign. And now, the object of the court being at length attained, Lord Bute was immediately placed at the head of affairs, as First Lord of the Treasury. ... The king and his minister were resolved to carry matters with a high hand, and their arbitrary attempts to coerce and intimidate opponents disclosed their imperious views of the prerogative. Preliminaries of a treaty of peace with France having been agreed upon, against which a strong popular feeling was aroused, the king's vengeance was directed against all who ventured to disapprove them. The Duke of Devonshire having declined to attend the council summoned to decide upon the peace, was insulted by the king, and forced to resign his office of Lord Chamberlain. A few days afterwards the king, with his own hand, struck his grace's name from the list of privy councillors. ... No sooner had Lord Rockingham heard of the treatment of the Duke of Devonshire than he ... resigned his place in the household. A more general proscription of the Whig nobles soon followed. The Dukes of Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquess of Rockingham, having presumed, as peers of Parliament, to express their disapprobation of the peace, were dismissed from the lord-lieutenancies of their counties. ... Nor was the vengeance of the court confined to the heads of the Whig party. {929} All placemen, who had voted against the preliminaries of peace, were dismissed. ... The preliminaries of peace were approved by Parliament; and the Princess of Wales, exulting in the success of the court, exclaimed, 'Now my son is king of England.' But her exultation was premature. ... These stretches of prerogative served to unite the Whigs into an organised opposition. ... The fall of the king's favoured minister was even more sudden than his rise. ... Afraid, as he confessed, 'not only of falling himself, but of involving his royal master in his ruin,' he resigned suddenly [April 7, 1763],--to the surprise of all parties, and even of the king himself,--before he had held office for eleven months. ... He retreated to the interior cabinet, whence he could direct more securely the measures of the court; having previously negotiated the appointment of Mr. George Grenville as his successor, and arranged with him the nomination of the cabinet. The ministry of Mr. Grenville was constituted in a manner favourable to the king's personal views, and was expected to be under the control of himself and his favorite." T. E. May, Constitutional History of England, 1760-1860, chapter 1. ALSO IN: J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of the Life and Reign of George III., chapter 1-10 (volume 1). The Grenville Papers, volumes 1-2. W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George III., chapters 2-3 (volume 1). G. O. Trevelyan, Early History of Charles James Fox, chapter 4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1760-1775. Crown, Parliament and Colonies. The conflicting theories of their relations. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1760-1775. ENGLAND: A. D. 1761-1762. The third Family Compact of the Bourbon kings. War with Spain. See FRANCE: A. D. 1761 (AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1761-1762. The Seven Years War: Last Campaigns in Germany. See GERMANY: A. D. 1761-1762. ENGLAND: A. D. 1 762. Capture of Havana. See CUBA: A. D. 1514-1851. ENGLAND: A. D. 1762-1764. "The North Briton," No. 45, and the prosecution of Wilkes. "The popular dislike to the new system of Government by courtiers had found vent in a scurrilous press, the annoyance of which continued unabated by the sham retirement of the minister whose ascendancy had provoked this grievous kind of opposition. The leader of the host of libellers was John Wilkes, a man of that audacity and self-possession which are indispensable to success in the most disreputable line of political adventure. But Wilkes had qualities which placed him far above the level of a vulgar demagogue. Great sense and shrewdness, brilliant wit, extensive knowledge of the world, with the manners of a gentleman, were among the accomplishments which he brought to a vocation, but rarely illustrated by the talents of a Catiline. Long before he engaged in public life, Wilkes had become infamous for his debaucheries, and, with a few other men of fashion, had tested the toleration of public opinion by a series of outrages upon religion and decency. Profligacy of morals, however, has not in any age or country proved a bar to the character of a patriot. ... Wilkes' journal, which originated with the administration of Lord Bute [first issued June 5, 1762], was happily entitled 'The North Briton,' and from its boldness and personality soon obtained a large circulation. It is surpassed in ability though not often equalled in virulence by the political press of the present day; but at a time when the characters of public men deservedly stood lowest in public estimation, they were protected, not unadvisedly perhaps, from the assaults of the press by a stringent law of libel. ... It had been the practice since the Revolution, and it is now acknowledged as an important constitutional right, to treat the Speech from the Throne, on the opening of Parliament, as the manifesto of the minister; and in that point of view, it had from time to time been censured by Pitt, and other leaders of party, with the ordinary license of debate. But when Wilkes presumed to use this freedom in his paper, though in a degree which would have seemed temperate and even tame had he spoken to the same purport in his place in Parliament, it was thought necessary to repress such insolence with the whole weight of the law. A warrant was issued from the office of the Secretary of State to seize--not any person named--but 'the authors, printers, and publishers of the seditious libel, entitled the North Briton, No. 45.' Under this warrant, forty-nine persons were arrested and detained in custody for several days; but as it was found that none of them could be brought within the description in the warrant, they were discharged. Several of the individuals who had been so seized, brought actions for false imprisonment against the messengers; and in one of these actions, in which a verdict was entered for the plaintiff under the direction of the Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the two important questions as to the claim of a Secretary of State to the protection given by statute to justices of the peace acting in that capacity, and as to the legality of a warrant which did not specify any individual by name, were raised by a Bill of Exceptions to the ruling of the presiding judge, and thus came upon appeal before the Court of King's Bench. ... The Court of King's Bench ... intimated a strong opinion against the Crown upon the important constitutional questions which had been raised, and directed the case to stand over for further argument; but when the case came on again, the Attorney-General Yorke prudently declined any further agitation of the questions. ... These proceedings were not brought to a close until the end of the year 1765, long after the administration under which they were instituted had ceased to exist. ... The prosecution of Wilkes himself was pressed with the like indiscreet vigour. The privilege of Parliament, which extends to every case except treason, felony, and breach of the peace, presented an obstacle to the vengeance of the Court. But the Crown lawyers, with a servility which belonged to the worst times of prerogative, advised that a libel came within the purview of the exception, as having a tendency to a breach of the peace; and upon this perversion of plain law, Wilkes was arrested, and brought before Lord Halifax for examination. The cool and wary demagogue, however, was more than a match for the Secretary of State; but his authorship of the alleged libel having been proved by the printer, he was committed close prisoner to the Tower. In a few days, having sued out writs of habeas, he was brought up before the Court of Common Pleas. ... The argument which would confound the commission of a crime with conduct which had no more than a tendency to provoke it, was at once rejected by an independent court of justice; and the result was the liberation of Wilkes from custody. {930} But the vengeance of the Court was not turned aside by this disappointment. An ex-officio prosecution for libel was immediately instituted against the member for Aylesbury; he was deprived of his commission as colonel of the Buckinghamshire militia; his patron, Earl Temple, who provided the funds for his defence, was at the same time dismissed from the lord-lieutenancy of the same county, and from the Privy Council. When Parliament assembled in the autumn, the first business brought forward by the Government was this contemptible affair--a proceeding not merely foolish and undignified, but a flagrant violation of common justice and decency. Having elected to prosecute Wilkes for this alleged libel before the ordinary tribunals of the country, it is manifest that the Government should have left the law to take its course unprejudiced. But the House of Commons was now required to pronounce upon the very subject-matter of inquiry which had been referred to the decision of a court of law; and this degenerate assembly, at the bidding of the minister, readily condemned the indicted paper in terms of extravagant and fulsome censure, and ordered that it should be burned by the hands of the common hangman. Lord North, on the part of the Government, then pressed for an immediate decision on the question of privilege; but Pitt, in his most solemn manner, insisting on an adjournment, the House yielded this point. On the following day, Wilkes, being dangerously wounded in a duel with Martin, one of the joint Secretaries to the Treasury, who had grossly insulted him in the House, for the purpose of provoking a quarrel, was disabled from attending in his place; but the House, nevertheless, refused to postpone the question of privilege beyond the 24th of the month. On that day, they resolved 'that the privilege of Parliament does not extend to the case of writing and publishing seditious libels, nor ought to be allowed to obstruct the ordinary course of the laws in the speedy and effectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous an offence.' Whatever may be thought of the public spirit or prudence of a House of Commons which could thus officiously define its privilege, the vote was practically futile, since a court of justice had already decided in this very case, as a matter of strict law, that the person of a member of Parliament was protected from arrest on a charge of this description. The conduct of Pitt on this occasion was consistent with the loftiness of his character. ... The conduct of the Lords was in harmony with that of the Lower House. ... The session was principally occupied by the proceedings against this worthless demagogue, whom the unworthy hostility of the Crown and both Houses of Parliament had elevated into a person of the first importance. His name was coupled with that of Liberty; and when the executioner appeared to carry into effect the sentence of Parliament upon 'The North Briton,' he was driven away by the populace, who rescued the obnoxious paper from the flames, and evinced their hatred and contempt for the Court faction by 'burning in its stead the jack-boot and the petticoat, the vulgar emblems which they employed to designate John Earl of Bute and his supposed royal patroness. ... Wilkes himself, however, was forced to yield to the storm. Beset by the spies of Government, and harassed by its prosecutions, which he had not the means of resisting, he withdrew to Paris. Failing to attend in his place in the House of Commons on the first day after the Christmas recess, according to order, his excuse was eagerly declared invalid; a vote of expulsion immediately followed [January 19, 1764], and a new writ was ordered for Aylesbury." W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George III., chapter 4 (volume 1). ALSO IN: J. E. T. Rogers, Historical Gleanings, volume 2, chapter 3. Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 41-42 (volume 5). ENGLAND: A. D. 1763. The end and results of the Seven Years War: The Peace of Paris and Peace of Hubertsburg. America to be English, not French. See SEVEN YEARS WAR. ENGLAND: A. D. 1763-1764. Determination to tax the American colonies. The Sugar (or Molasses) Act. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1763-1764. ENGLAND: A. D. 1764. The climax of the mercantile colonial policy and its consequences. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1764. ENGLAND: A. D. 1765. Passage of the Stamp Act for the colonies. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1765. ENGLAND: A. D. 1765-1768. Grenville dismissed. The Rockingham and the Grafton-Chatham Ministries. Repeal of the Stamp Act. Fresh trouble in the American colonies. "Hitherto the Ministry had only excited the indignation of the people and the colonies. Not satisfied with the number of their enemies, they now proceeded to quarrel openly with the king. In 1765 the first signs of the illness, to which George afterwards fell a victim, appeared; and as soon as he recovered he proposed, with wonderful firmness, that a Regency Bill should be brought in, limiting the king's choice of a Regent to the members of the Royal Family. The Ministers, however, in alarm at the prospect of a new Bute Ministry, persuaded the king that there was no hope of the Princess's name being accepted, and that it had better be left out of the Bill. The king unwisely consented to this unparalleled insult on his parent, apparently through lack of consideration. Parliament, however, insisted on inserting the Princess's name by a large majority, and thus exposed the trick of his Ministers. This the king never forgave. They had been for some time obnoxious to him, and now he determined to get rid of them. With this view he induced the Duke of Cumberland to make overtures to Chatham [Pitt, not yet titled], offering almost any terms." But no arrangement was practicable, and the king was left quite at the mercy of the Ministers be detested. "He was obliged to consent to dismiss Bute and all Bute's following. He was obliged to promise that he would use no underhand influence for the future. Life, in fact, became a burden to him under George Grenville's domination, and he determined to dismiss him, even at the cost of accepting the Whig Houses, whom he had pledged himself never to employ again. Pitt and Temple still proving obdurate, Cumberland opened negotiations with the Rockingham Whigs, and the Grenville Ministry was at an end [July, 1765]. ... The new Ministry was composed as follows: Rockingham became First Lord of the Treasury; Dowdeswell, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Newcastle, Privy Seal; Northington, Lord Chancellor. ... {931} Their leader Rockingham was a man of sound sense, but no power of language or government. ... He was totally free from any suspicion of corruption. In fact there was more honesty than talent in the Ministry altogether. ... The back-bone of the party was removed by the refusal of Pitt to co-operate. Burke was undoubtedly the ablest man among them, but his time was not yet come. Such a Ministry, it was recognized even by its own members, could not last long. However, it had come in to effect certain necessary legislation, and it certainly so far accomplished the end of its being. It repealed the Stamp Act [see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1766], which had caused so much indignation among the Americans; and at the same time passed a law securing the dependence of the colonies. ... The king, however, made no secret of his hostility to his Ministers. ... The conduct of Pitt in refusing to join them was a decided mistake, and more. He was really at one with them on most points. Most of their acts were in accordance with his views. But he was determined not to join a purely party Ministry, though he could have done so practically on whatever terms he pleased. In 1766, however, he consented to form a coalition, in which were included men of the most opposite views--'King's Friends,' Rockingham Whigs, and the few personal followers of Pitt. Rockingham refused to take any office, and retired to the more congenial occupation of following the hounds. The nominal Prime Minister of this Cabinet was the Duke of Grafton, for Pitt refused the leadership, and retired to the House of Lords as Lord Chatham. Charles Townshend became Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Lord North, the leader of the 'King's Friends,' was Pay-master. The Ministry included Shelburne, Barré, Conway, Northington, Barrington, Camden, Granby--all men of the most opposite views. ... This second Ministry of Pitt was a mistake from the very first. He lost all his popularity by taking a peerage. ... As a peer and Lord Privy Seal he found himself in an uncongenial atmosphere. ... His name, too, had lost a great deal of its power abroad. 'Pitt' had, indeed, been a word to conjure with; but there were no associations of defeat and humiliation connected with the name of 'Chatham.' ... There were other difficulties, however, as well. His arrogance had increased, and it was so much intensified by irritating gout, that it became almost impossible to serve with him. His disease later almost approached madness. ... The Ministry drifted helplessly about at the mercy of each wind and wave of opinion like a water-logged ship; and it was only the utter want of union among the Opposition which prevented its sinking entirely. As it was, they contrived to renew the breach with America, which had been almost entirely healed by Rockingham's repeal of the Stamp Act. Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was by far the ablest man left in the Cabinet, and he rapidly assumed the most prominent position. He had always been in favour of taxing America. He now brought forward a plan for raising a revenue from tea, glass, and paper [see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1766-1767, and 1767-1768], by way of import duty at the American ports. ... This wild measure was followed shortly by the death of its author, in September; and then the weakness of the Ministry became so obvious that, as Chatham still continued incapable, some fresh reinforcement was absolutely necessary. A coalition was effected with the Bloomsbury Gang; and, in consequence, Lords Gower, Weymouth, and Sandwich joined the Ministry. Lord Northington and General Conway retired. North succeeded Townshend at the Exchequer. Lord Hillsborough became the first Secretary of State for the Colonies, thus raising the number of Secretaries to three. This Ministry was probably the worst that had governed England since the days of the Cabal; and the short period of its existence was marked by a succession of arbitrary and foolish acts. On every important question that it had to deal with, it pursued a course diametrically opposed to Chatham's views; and yet with singular irony his nominal connection with it was not severed for some time"--that is, not until the following year, 1768. B. C. Skottowe, Our Hanoverian Kings, pages 234-239. ALSO IN: The Grenville Papers, volumes 3-4. C. W. Dilke, Papers of a Critic, volume 2. E. Lodge, Portraits, volume 8, chapter 2. ENGLAND: A. D. 1767-1769. The first war with Hyder Ali, of Mysore. See INDIA: A. D. 1767-1769. ENGLAND: A. D. 1768-1770. The quartering of troops in Boston and Its ill consequences. See BOSTON: A. D. 1768; and 1770. ENGLAND: A. D. 1768-1774. John Wilkes and the King and Parliament again. The Middlesex elections. In March, 1768, Wilkes, though outlawed by the court, returned to London from Paris and solicited a pardon from the king; but his petition was unnoticed. Parliament being then dissolved and writs issued for a new election, he offered himself as a candidate to represent the City of London. "He polled 1,247 votes, but was unsuccessful. On the day following this decision he issued an address to the freeholders of Middlesex. The election took place at Brentford, on the 28th of March. At the close of the poll the numbers were--Mr. Wilkes, 1,292; Mr. Cooke, 827; Sir W. B. Proctor, 807. This was a victory which astonished the public and terrified the ministry. The mob was in ecstasies. The citizens of London were compelled to illuminate their houses and to shout for 'Wilkes and liberty.' It was the earnest desire of the ministry to pardon the man whom they had persecuted, but the king remained inexorable. ... A month after the election he wrote to Lord North: 'Though relying entirely on your attachment to my person as well as in your hatred of any lawless proceeding, yet I think it highly expedient to apprise you that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes appears to be very essential, and must be effected.' What the sovereign counselled was duly accomplished. Before his expulsion, Wilkes was a prisoner in the King's Bench. Having surrendered, it was determined that his outlawry was informal; consequently it was reversed, and sentence was passed for the offences whereof he had been convicted. He was fined £1,000, and imprisoned for twenty-two months. On his way to prison he was rescued by the mob; but as soon as he could escape out of the hands of his boisterous friends he went and gave himself into the custody of the Marshal of the King's Bench. Parliament met on the 10th of April, and it was thought that he would be released in order to take his seat. A dense multitude assembled before the prison, but, balked in its purpose of escorting the popular favourite to the House, became furious, and commenced a riot. {932} Soldiers were at hand prepared for this outbreak. They fired, wounding and slaughtering several persons; among others, they butchered a young man whom they found in a neighbouring house, and who was mistaken for a rioter they had pursued. At the inquest the jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against the magistrate who ordered the firing, and the soldier who did the deed. The magistrate was tried and acquitted. The soldier was dismissed the service, but received in compensation, as a reward for his services, a pension of one shilling a day. A general order sent from the War Office by Lord Barrington conveyed his Majesty's express thanks to the troops employed, assuring them 'that every possible regard shall be shown to them; their zeal and good behaviour on this occasion deserve it; and in case any disagreeable circumstance should happen in the execution of their duty, they shall have every defence and protection that the law can authorise and this office can give.' This approbation of what the troops had done was the necessary supplement to a despatch from Lord Weymouth sent before the riot, and intimating that force was to be used without scruple. Wilkes commented on both documents. His observations on the latter drew a complaint from Lord Weymouth of breach of privilege. This was made an additional pretext for his expulsion from the House of Commons. Ten days afterwards he was re-elected, his opponent receiving five votes only. On the following day the House resolved 'that John Wilkes, Esquire, having been in this session of Parliament expelled this House, was and is incapable of being elected a member to serve in this present Parliament'; and his election was declared void. Again the freeholders of Middlesex returned him, and the House re-affirmed the above resolution. At another election he was opposed by Colonel Luttrell, a Court tool, when he polled 1,143 votes against 296 cast for Luttrell. It was declared, however, that the latter had been elected. Now began a struggle between the country, which had been outraged in the persons of the Middlesex electors, and a subservient majority in the House of Commons that did not hesitate to become instrumental in gratifying the personal resentment of a revengeful and obstinate king. The cry of 'Wilkes and liberty' was raised in quarters where the very name of the popular idol had been proscribed. It was evident that not the law only had been violated in his person, but that the Constitution itself had sustained a deadly wound. Wilkes was overwhelmed with substantial marks of sympathy. In the course of a few weeks £20,000 were subscribed to pay his debts. He could boast, too, that the courts of law had at length done what was right between him and one of the Secretaries of State who had signed the General Warrant, the other having been removed by death beyond the reach of justice. Lord Halifax was sentenced to pay £4,000 damages. These damages, and the costs of the proceedings, were defrayed out of the public purse. Lord North admitted that the outlay had exceeded £100,000. Thus the nation was doubly insulted by the ministers, who first violated the law, and then paid the costs of the proceedings out of the national taxes. On the 17th of April, 1770, Wilkes left the prison, to be elected in rapid succession to the offices--then much sought after, because held in high honour--of Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor of London. In 1774 he was permitted to take his seat as Member for Middlesex. After several failures, he succeeded in getting the resolutions of his incapacity to sit in the House formally expunged from its journals. He was elected Chamberlain of the City in 1779, and filled that lucrative and responsible post till his death, in 1797, at the age of seventy. Although the latter portion of his career as Member of Parliament has generally been considered a blank, yet it was marked by several incidents worthy of attention. He was a consistent and energetic opponent of the war with America." W. F. Rae, John Wilkes (Fortnightly Review, September, 1868, volume 10). ALSO IN: W. F. Rae, Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox, part 1. G. O. Trevelyan, Early History of Charles James Fox, chapters 5-6, and 8. ENGLAND: A. D. 1769-1772. The Letters of Junius. "One of the newspapers in London at this period was the 'Public Advertiser,' printed and directed by Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall. His politics were those of the Opposition of the day; and he readily received any contributions of a like tendency from unknown correspondents. Among others was a writer whose letters beginning at the latest in April, 1767, continued frequent through that and the ensuing year. It was the pleasure of this writer to assume a great variety of signatures in his communications, as Mnemon, Atticus, and Brutus. It does not appear, however, that these letters (excepting only some with the signature of Lucius which were published in the autumn of 1768) attracted the public attention to any unusual extent, though by no means wanting in ability, or still less in acrimony. ... Such was the state of these publications, not much rising in interest above the common level of many such at other times, when on the 21st of January 1769 there came forth another letter from the same hand with the novel signature of Junius. It did not differ greatly from its predecessors either in superior merit or superior moderation; it contained, on the contrary, a fierce and indiscriminate attack on most men in high places, including the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Granby. But, unlike its predecessors, it roused to controversy a well-known and respectable opponent. Sir William Draper, General in the army and Knight of the Bath, undertook to meet and parry the blows which it had aimed at his Noble friend. In an evil hour for himself he sent to the Public Advertiser a letter subscribed with his own name, and defending the character and conduct of Lord Granby. An answer from Junius soon appeared, urging anew his original charge, and adding some thrusts at Sir William himself on the sale of a regiment, and on the nonpayment of the Manilla ransom. Wincing at the blow, Sir William more than once replied; more than once did the keen pen of Junius lay him prostrate in the dust. The discomfiture of poor Sir William was indeed complete. Even his most partial friends could not deny that so far as wit and eloquence were concerned the man in the mask had far, very far, the better in the controversy. ... These victories over a man of rank and station such as Draper's gave importance to the name of Junius. Henceforth letters with that signature were eagerly expected by the public, and carefully prepared by the author. {933} He did not indeed altogether cease to write under other names; sometimes especially adopting the part of a bystander, and the signature of Philo-Junius; but it was as Junius that his main and most elaborate attacks were made. Nor was it long before he swooped at far higher game than Sir William. First came a series of most bitter pasquinades against the Duke of Grafton. Dr. Blackstone was then assailed for the unpopular vote which he gave in the case of Wilkes. In September was published a false and malignant attack upon the Duke of Bedford,--an attack, however, of which the sting is felt by his descendants to this day. In December the acme of audacity was reached by the celebrated letter to the King. All this while conjecture was busy as to the secret author. Names of well-known statesmen or well-known writers--Burke or Dunning, Boyd or Dyer, George Sackville or Gerard Hamilton--flew from mouth to mouth. Such guesses were for the most part made at mere hap-hazard, and destitute of any plausible ground. Nevertheless the stir and talk which they created added not a little to the natural effects of the writer's wit and eloquence. 'The most important secret of our times!' cries Wilkes. Junius himself took care to enhance his own importance by arrogant, nay even impious, boasts of it. In one letter of August 1771 he goes so far as to declare that 'the Bible and Junius will be read when the commentaries of the Jesuits are forgotten!' Mystery, as I have said, was one ingredient to the popularity of Junius. Another not less efficacious was supplied by persecution. In the course of 1770 Mr. Woodfall was indicted for publishing, and Mr. Almon with several others for reprinting, the letter from Junius to the King. The verdict in Woodfall's case was: Guilty of printing and publishing only. It led to repeated discussions and to ulterior proceedings. But in the temper of the public at that period such measures could end only in virtual defeat to the Government, in augmented reputation to the libeller. During the years 1770 and 1771 the letters of Junius were continued with little abatement of spirit. He renewed invectives against the Duke of Grafton; he began them against Lord Mansfield, who had presided at the trials of the printers; he plunged into the full tide of City politics; and he engaged in a keen controversy with the Rev. John Horne, afterwards Horne Tooke. The whole series of letters from January 1769, when it commences, until January 1772, when it terminates, amounts to 69, including those with the signature of Philo-Junius, those of Sir William Draper, and those of Mr. Horne. ... Besides the letters which Junius designed for the press, there were many others which he wrote and sent to various persons, intending them for those persons only. Two addressed to Lord Chatham appear in Lord Chatham's correspondence. Three addressed to Mr. George Grenville have until now remained in manuscript among the papers at Wotton, or Stowe; all three were written in the same year, 1768, and the two first signed with the same initial C. Several others addressed to Wilkes were first made known through the son of Mr. Woodfall. But the most important of all, perhaps, are the private notes addressed to Mr. Woodfall himself. Of these there are upwards of sixty, signed in general with the letter C.; some only a few lines in length; but many of great value towards deciding the question of authorship. It seems that the packets containing the letters of Junius for Mr. Woodfall or the Public Advertiser were sometimes brought to the office-door, and thrown in, by an unknown gentleman, probably Junius himself; more commonly they were conveyed by a porter or other messenger hired in the streets. When some communication from Mr. Woodfall in reply was deemed desirable, Junius directed it to be addressed to him under some feigned name, and to be left till called for at the bar of some coffee-house. ... It may be doubted whether Junius had any confidant or trusted friend. ... When dedicating his collected letters to the English people, he declares: 'I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it shall perish with me.'" Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapter 47 (v. 5). The following list of fifty-one names of persons to whom the letters of Junius have been attributed at different times by different writers is given in Cushing's "Initials and Pseudonyms": James Adair, M. P.; Captain Allen; Lieutenant-Colonel Isaac Barre, M. P.; William Henry Cavendish Bentinck; Mr. Bickerton; Hugh M'Aulay Boyd; Edmund Burke; William Burke; John Butler, Bishop of Hereford; Lord Camden; John Lewis De Lolme; John Dunning, afterwards Lord Ashburton; Samuel Dyer; Henry Flood; Sir Philip Francis; George III.; Edward Gibbon; Richard Glover; Henry Grattan; William Greatrakes; George Grenville; James Grenville; William Gerard Hamilton; James Hollis; Thomas Hollis; Sir George Jackson; Sir William Jones; John Kent; Major-General Charles Lee; Charles Lloyd; Thomas Lyttleton; Laughlin Maclean; Rev. Edmund Marshall; Thomas Paine; William Pitt, Earl of Chatham; the Duke of Portland; Thomas Pownall; Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Robert Rich; John Roberts; Rev. Philip Rosenhagen; George, Viscount Sackville; the Earl of Shelburne; Philip Dormer Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Richard Suett; Earl Temple; John Horne Tooke; Horace Walpole; Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Loughborough; John Wilkes; James Wilmot, D. D.; Daniel Wray. ALSO IN: G. W. Cooke, History of Party, volume 3, chapter 6. C. W. Dilke, Papers of a Critic, volume 2. Lord Macaulay, Warren Hastings (Essays, volume 5). A. Bisset, Short History of the English Parliament, chapter 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1770. Fall of the Grafton Ministry. Beginning of the administration of Lord North. "The incompetency of the ministry was ... becoming obvious. In the first place it was divided within itself. The Prime Minister, with the Chancellor and some others, were remnants of the Chatham ministry and admirers of Chatham's policy. The rest of the Cabinet were either men who represented Bedford's party, or members of that class whose views are sufficiently explained by their name, 'the King's friends.' Grafton, fonder of hunting and the turf than of politics, had by his indolence suffered himself to fall under the influence of the last-named party, and unconstitutional action had been the result which had brought discontent in England to the verge of open outbreak. Hillsborough, under the same influence, was hurrying along the road which led to the loss of America. On this point the Prime Minister had found himself in a minority in his own Cabinet. {934} France too, under Choiseul, in alliance with Spain, was beginning to think of revenge for the losses of the Seven Years' War. A crisis was evidently approaching, and the Opposition began to close their ranks. Chatham, yielding again to the necessities of party, made a public profession of friendship with Temple and George Grenville; and though there was no cordial connection, there was external alliance between the brothers and the old Whigs under Rockingham. In the first session of 1770 the storm broke. Notwithstanding the state of public affairs, the chief topic of the King's speech was the murrain among 'horned beasts,'--a speech not of a king, but, said Junius, of 'a ruined grazier.' Chatham at once moved an amendment when the address in answer to this speech was proposed. He deplored the want of all European alliances, the fruit of our desertion of our allies at the Peace of Paris; he blamed the conduct of the ministry with regard to America, which, he thought, needed much gentle handling, inveighed strongly against the action of the Lower House in the case of Wilkes, and ended by moving that that action should at once be taken into consideration. At the sound of their old leader's voice his followers in the Cabinet could no longer be silent. Camden declared he had been a most unwilling party to the persecution of Wilkes, and though retaining the Seals attacked and voted against the ministry. In the Lower House, Granby, one of the most popular men in England, followed the same course. James Grenville and Dunning, the Solicitor-General, also resigned. Chatham's motion was lost but was followed up by Rockingham, who asked for a night to consider the state of the nation. ... Grafton thus found himself in no state to meet the Opposition, and in his heart still admiring Chatham, and much disliking business, he suddenly and unexpectedly gave in his resignation the very day fixed for Rockingham's motion. The Opposition seemed to have everything in their own hands, but there was no real cordiality between the two sections. ... The King with much quickness and decision, took advantage of this disunion. To him it was of paramount importance to retain his friends in office, and to avoid a new Parliament elected in the present excited state of the nation. There was only one of the late ministry capable of assuming the position of Prime Minister. This was Lord North, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to him the King immediately and successfully applied, so that while the different sections of the Opposition were still unable to decide on any united action they were astonished to find the old ministry reconstituted and their opportunity gone. The new Prime Minister ... had great capacity for business and administration, and much sound sense; he was a first-rate debater, and gifted with a wonderful sweetness of temper, which enabled him to listen unmoved, or even to sleep, during the most violent attacks upon himself, and to turn aside the bitterest invectives with a happy joke. With his accession to the Premiership the unstable character of the Government ceased. Resting on the King, making himself no more than an instrument of the King's will, and thus commanding the support of all royal influence from whatever source derived, North was able to bid defiance to all enemies, till the ill effects of such a system of government, and of the King's policy, became so evident that the clamour for a really responsible minister grew too loud to be disregarded. Thus is closed the great constitutional struggle of the early part of the reign--the struggle of the King, supported by the unrepresented masses, and the more liberal and independent of those who were represented, against the domination of the House of Commons. It was an attempt to break those trammels which, under the guise of liberty, the upper classes, the great lords and landed aristocracy, had succeeded after the Revolution in laying on both Crown and people. In that struggle the King had been victorious. But he did not recognize the alliance which had enabled him to succeed. He did not understand that the people had other objects much beyond his own." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 3, pages 1057-1060. ALSO IN: Correspondence of George III. with Lord North, volume 1. W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George III., chapters 10-13 (volume 1). J. Adolphus, History of England: Reign of George III., chapter 17 (volume 1). E. Burke, Thoughts on the Present Discontents (Works, volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1770-1773. Repeal of the Townshend duties, except on tea. The tea-ships and the Boston Tea-party. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1770, and 1772-1773; and BOSTON: A. D. 1773. ENGLAND: A. D. 1771. Last contention of Parliament against the Press. Freedom of reporting secured. "The session of 1771 commenced with a new quarrel between the House of Commons and the country. The standing order for the exclusion of strangers, which had long existed (and which still exists), was seldom enforced, except when it was thought desirable that a question should be debated with closed doors. It was now attempted, by means of this order, to prevent the publication of the debates and proceedings of the House. It had long been the practice of the newspapers, and other periodical journals, to publish the debates of Parliament, under various thin disguises, and with more or less fulness and accuracy, from speeches furnished at length by the speakers themselves, to loose and meagre notes of more or less authenticity. One of the most attractive features of the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' a monthly publication of respectability, which has survived to the present day, was an article which purported to be a report of the debates in Parliament. This report was, for nearly three years, prepared by Dr. Johnson, who never attended the galleries himself, and derived his information from persons who could seldom give him more than the names of the speakers, and the side which each of them took in the debate. The speeches were, therefore, the composition of Johnson himself; and some of the most admired oratory of the period was avowedly the product of his genius. Attempts were made from time to time, both within and without the walls of Parliament, to abolish, or at least to modify, the standing order for the exclusion of strangers, by means of which the license of reporting had been restricted; for there was no order of either House specifically prohibiting the publication of its debates. But such proposals had always been resisted by the leaders of parties, who thought that the privilege was one which might be evaded, but could not safely be formally relinquished. The practice of reporting, therefore, was tolerated on the understanding, that a decent disguise should be observed; and that no publication of the proceedings of Parliament should take place during the session. {935} There can be little doubt, however, that the public journals would have gone on, with the tacit connivance of the parliamentary chiefs, until they had practically established a right of reporting regularly the proceedings of both Houses, had not the presumptuous folly of inferior members provoked a conflict with the press upon this ground of privilege, and, in the result, driven Parliament reluctantly to yield what they would otherwise have quietly conceded. It was Colonel Onslow, member for Guildford, who rudely agitated a question which wiser men had been content to leave unvexed; and by his rash meddling, precipitated the very result which he thought he could prevent. He complained that the proceedings of the House had been inaccurately reported; and that the newspapers had even presumed to reflect on the public conduct of honourable members." William Massey, History of England, volume 2, chapter 15. "Certain printers were in consequence ordered to attend the bar of the House. Some appeared and were discharged, after receiving, on their knees, a reprimand from the Speaker. Others evaded compliance; and one of them, John Miller, who failed to appear, was arrested by its messenger, but instead of submitting, sent for a constable and gave the messenger into custody for an assault and false imprisonment. They were both taken before the Lord Mayor (Mr. Brass Crosby), Mr. Alderman Oliver, and the notorious John Wilkes, who had recently been invested with the aldermanic gown. These civic magistrates, on the ground that the messenger was neither a peace-officer nor a constable, and that his warrant was not backed by a city magistrate, discharged the printer from custody, and committed the messenger to prison for an unlawful arrest. Two other printers, for whose apprehension a reward had been offered by a Government proclamation, were collusively apprehended by friends, and taken before Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, who discharged the prisoners as 'not being accused of having committed any crime.' These proceedings at once brought the House into conflict with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London. The Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver, who were both members of Parliament, were ordered by the House to attend in their places, and were subsequently committed to the Tower. Their imprisonment, instead of being a punishment, was one long-continued popular ovation, and from the date of their release, at the prorogation of Parliament shortly afterwards, the publication of debates has been pursued without any interference or restraint. Though still in theory a breach of privilege, reporting is now encouraged by Parliament as one of the main sources of its influence--its censure being reserved for wilful misrepresentation only. But reporters long continued beset with many difficulties. The taking of notes was prohibited, no places were reserved for reporters, and the power of a single member of either House to require the exclusion of strangers was frequently and capriciously employed. By the ancient usage of the House of Commons [until 1875] any one member by merely 'spying' strangers present could compel the Speaker to order their withdrawal." T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, chapter 17. ALSO IN: R. F. D. Palgrave, The House of Commons, lecture 2. T. E. May, Constitutional History of England, chapter 7 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1772. The ending of Negro slavery in the British Islands. See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1685-1772. ENGLAND: A. D. 1773. Reconstitution of the Government of British India. See INDIA: A. D. 1770-1773. ENGLAND: A. D. 1774. The Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Act and the Quebec Act. The First Continental Congress in America. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1774. ENGLAND: A. D. 1774. Advent in English industries of the Steam-Engine as made efficient by James Watt. See STEAM ENGINE: A. D. 1765-1785. ENGLAND: A. D. 1775. The beginning of the War of the American Revolution. Lexington. Concord. The colonies in arms and Boston beleaguered. Ticonderoga. Bunker Hill. The Second Continental Congress. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1775. ENGLAND: A. D. 1775-1776. Successful defence of Canada against American invasion. See CANADA: A. D. 1775-1776. ENGLAND: A. D. 1776. War measures against the colonies. The drift toward American independence. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1776 (JANUARY-JUNE). ENGLAND: A. D. 1776-1778. The People, the Parties, the King, and Lord North, in their relations to the American War. "The undoubted popularity of the war [in America] in its first stage had for some time continued to increase, and in the latter part of 1776 and 1777 it had probably attained its maximum. ... The Whigs at this time very fully admitted that the genuine opinion of the country was with the Government and with the King. ... The Declaration of Independence, and the known overtures of the Americans to France, were deemed the climax of insolence and ingratitude. The damage done to English commerce, not only in the West Indies but even around the English and Irish coast, excited a widespread bitterness. ... In every stage of the contest the influence of the Opposition was employed to trammel the Government. ... The statement of Wraxall that the Whig colours of buff and blue were first adopted by Fox in imitation of the uniform of Washington's troops, is, I believe, corroborated by no other writer; but there is no reason to question his assertion that the members of the Whig party in society and in both Houses of Parliament during the whole course of the war wished success to the American cause and rejoiced in the American triumphs. ... While the Opposition needlessly and heedlessly intensified the national feeling against them, the King, on his side, did the utmost in his power to embitter the contest. It is only by examining his correspondence with Lord North that we fully realise how completely at this time he assumed the position not only of a prime minister but of a Cabinet, superintending, directing, and prescribing, in all its parts, the policy of the Government. ... 'Every means of distressing America,' wrote the King, 'must meet with my concurrence.' He strongly supported the employment of Indians. ... It was the King's friends who were most active in promoting all measures of violence. ... The war was commonly called the 'King's war,' and its opponents were looked upon as opponents of the King. The person, however, who in the eye of history appears most culpable in this matter, was Lord North. ... {936} The publication of the correspondence of George III. ... supplies one of the most striking and melancholy examples of the relation of the King to his Tory ministers. It appears from this correspondence that for the space of about five years North, at the entreaty of the King, carried on a bloody, costly, and disastrous war in direct opposition to his own judgment and to his own wishes. ... Again and again he entreated that his resignation might be accepted, but again and again he yielded to the request of the King, who threatened, if his minister resigned, to abdicate the throne. ... The King was determined, under no circumstances, to treat with the Americans on the basis of the recognition of their independence; but he acknowledged, after the surrender of Burgoyne, and as soon as the French war had become inevitable, that unconditional submission could no longer be hoped for. ... He consented, too, though apparently with extreme reluctance, and in consequence of the unanimous vote of the Cabinet, that new propositions should be made to the Americans." These overtures, conveyed to America by three Commissioners, were rejected, and the colonies concluded, in the spring of 1778, their alliance with France. "The moment was one of the most terrible in English history. England had not an ally in the world. ... England, already exhausted by a war which its distance made peculiarly terrible, had to confront the whole force of France, and was certain in a few months to have to encounter the whole force of Spain. ... There was one man to whom, in this hour of panic and consternation, the eyes of all patriotic Englishmen were turned. . . . If any statesman could, at the last moment, conciliate [the Americans], dissolve the new alliance, and kindle into a flame the loyalist feeling which undoubtedly existed largely in America, it was Chatham. If, on the other hand, conciliation proved impossible, no statesman could for a moment be compared to him in the management of a war. Lord North implored the King to accept his resignation, and to send for Chatham. Bute, the old Tory favourite, breaking his long silence, spoke of Chatham as now indispensable. Lord Mansfield, the bitterest and ablest rival of Chatham, said, with tears in his eyes, that unless the King sent for Chatham the ship would assuredly go down. ... The King was unmoved. He consented indeed--and he actually authorised Lord North to make the astounding proposition--to receive Chatham as a subordinate minister to North. ... This episode appears to me the most criminal in the whole reign of George III., and in my own judgment it is as criminal as any of those acts which led Charles I. to the scaffold." W. E. H. Lecky, History of England in the 18th Century, chapter 14 (volume 4). "George III. and Lord North have been made scapegoats for sins which were not exclusively their own. The minister, indeed, was only the vizier, who hated his work, but still did not shrink from it, out of a sentiment that is sometimes admired under the name of loyalty, but which in such a case it is difficult to distinguish from base servility. The impenetrable mind of the King was, in the case of the American war, the natural organ and representative of all the lurking ignorance and arbitrary humours of the entire community. It is totally unjust and inadequate to lay upon him the entire burden." J. Morley, Edmund Burke: a Historical Study, page 135. "No sane person in Great Britain now approves of the attempt to tax the colonies. No sane person does otherwise than rejoice that the colonies became free and independent. But let us in common fairness say a word for King George. In all that he did he was backed by the great mass of the British nation. And let us even say a word for the British nation also. Had the King and the nation been really wise, they would have let the colonies go without striking a blow. But then no king and no nation ever was really wise after that fashion. King George and the British nation were simply not wiser than other people. I believe that you may turn the pages of history from the earliest to the latest times, without finding a time when any king or any commonwealth, freely and willingly, without compulsion or equivalent, gave up power or dominion, or even mere extent of territory on the map, when there was no real power or dominion. Remember that seventeen years after the acknowledgment of American independence, King George still called himself King of France. Remember that, when the title was given up, some people thought it unwise to give it up. Remember that some people in our own day regretted the separation between the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover. If they lived to see the year 1866, perhaps they grew wiser." E. A. Freeman, The English People in its Three Homes (Lectures to American Audiences), pages 183-184. ALSO IN: Correspondence of George III. with Lord North. Lord Brougham, Historical Sketches of Statesmen in the Reign of George III. T. Macknight, History of the Life and Times of Edmund Burke, chapters 22-26 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1778. War with France. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1778 (FEBRUARY). ENGLAND: A.D. 1778-1780. Repeal of Catholic penal laws. The Gordon No-Popery Riots. "The Quebec Act of 1774 [see CANADA: A. D. 1763-1774], establishing Catholicism in Canada, would a generation earlier have been impossible, and it was justly considered a remarkable sign of the altered condition of opinion that such a law should be enacted by a British Parliament, and should have created no serious disturbances in the country. ... The success of the Quebec Act led Parliament, a few years later, to undertake the relief of the Catholics at home from some part of the atrocious penal laws to which they were still subject. ... The Act still subsisted which gave a reward of £100 to any informer who procured the conviction of a Catholic priest performing his functions in England, and there were occasional prosecutions, though the judges strained the law to the utmost in order to defeat them. ... The worst part of the persecution of Catholics was based upon a law of William III., and in 1778 Sir George Savile introduced a bill to repeal those portions of this Act which related to the apprehending of Popish bishops, priests, and Jesuits, which subjected these and also Papists keeping a school to perpetual imprisonment, and which disabled all Papists from inheriting or purchasing land. ... It is an honourable fact that this Relief Bill was carried without a division in either House, without any serious opposition from the bench of bishops, and with the concurrence of both parties in the State. The law applied to England only, but the Lord Advocate promised, in the ensuing session, to introduce a similar measure for Scotland. {937} It was hoped that a measure which was so manifestly moderate and equitable, and which was carried with such unanimity through Parliament, would have passed almost unnoticed in the country; but fiercer elements of fanaticism than politicians perceived were still smouldering in the nation. The first signs of the coming storm were seen among the Presbyterians of Scotland. The General Assembly of the Scotch Established Church was sitting when the English Relief Bill was pending, and it rejected by a large majority a motion for a remonstrance to Parliament against it. But in a few months an agitation of the most dangerous description spread swiftly through the Lowlands. It was stimulated by many incendiary resolutions of provincial synods, by pamphlets, hand-bills, newspapers, and sermons, and a 'Committee for the Protestant Interests' was formed at Edinburgh to direct it. ... Furious riots broke out in January, 1779, both in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Several houses in which Catholics lived, or the Catholic worship was celebrated, were burnt to the ground. The shops of Catholic tradesmen were wrecked, and their goods scattered, plundered, or destroyed. Catholic ladies were compelled to take refuge in Edinburgh Castle. The houses of many Protestants who were believed to sympathise with the Relief Bill were attacked, and among the number was that of Robertson the historian. The troops were called out to suppress the riot, but they were resisted and pelted, and not suffered to fire in their defence. ... The flame soon spread southwards. For some years letters on the increase of Popery had been frequently appearing in the London newspapers. Many murmurs had been heard at the enactment of the Quebec Act, and many striking instances in the last ten years had shown how easily the spirit of riot could be aroused, and how impotent the ordinary watchmen were to cope with it. ... The fanatical party had unfortunately acquired an unscrupulous leader in the person of Lord George Gordon, whose name now attained a melancholy celebrity. He was a young man of thirty, of very ordinary talents, and with nothing to recommend him but his connection with the ducal house of Gordon. ... A 'Protestant Association,' consisting of the worst agitators and fanatics, was formed, and at a great meeting held on May 29, 1780, and presided over by Lord George Gordon, it was determined that 20,000 men should march to the Parliament House to present a petition for the repeal of the Relief Act. It was about half-past two on the afternoon of Friday, June 2, that three great bodies, consisting of many thousands of men, wearing blue cockades, and carrying a petition which was said to have been signed by near 120,000 persons, arrived by different roads at the Parliament House. Their first design appears to have been only to intimidate, but they very soon proceeded to actual violence. The two Houses were just meeting, and the scene that ensued resembled on a large scale and in an aggravated form the great riot which had taken place around the Parliament House in Dublin during the administration of the Duke of Bedford. The members were seized, insulted, compelled to put blue cockades in their hats, to shout 'No Popery!' and to swear that they would vote for the repeal; and many of them, but especially the members of the House of Lords, were exposed to the grossest indignities. ... In the Commons Lord George Gordon presented the petition, and demanded its instant consideration. The House behaved with much courage, and after a hurried debate it was decided by 192 to 7 to adjourn its consideration till the 6th. Lord George Gordon several times appeared on the stairs of the gallery, and addressed the crowd, denouncing by name those who opposed him, and especially Burke and North; but Conway rebuked him in the sight and hearing of the mob, and Colonel Gordon, one of his own relatives, declared that the moment the first man of the mob entered the House he would plunge his sword into the body of Lord George. The doors were locked. The strangers' gallery was empty, but only a few doorkeepers and a few other ordinary officials protected the House, while the mob is said at first to have numbered not less than 60,000 men. Lord North succeeded in sending a messenger for the guards, but many anxious hours passed before they arrived. Twice attempts were made to force the doors. ... At last about nine o'clock the troops appeared, and the crowd, without resisting, agreed to disperse. A great part of them, however, were bent on further outrages. They attacked the Sardinian Minister's chapel in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields. They broke it open, carried away the silver lamps and other furniture, burnt the benches in the street, and flung the burning brands into the chapel. The Bavarian Minister's chapel in Warwick Street Golden Square was next attacked, plundered, and burnt before the soldiers could intervene. They at last appeared upon the scene, and some slight scuffling ensued, and thirteen of the rioters were captured. It was hoped that the riot had expended its force, for Saturday and the greater part of Sunday passed with little disturbance, but on Sunday afternoon new outrages began in Moorfields, where a considerable Catholic population resided. Several houses were attacked and plundered, and the chapels utterly ruined." W. E. H. Lecky, History of English in the 18th Century, chapter 13 (volume 3). "On Monday the rioters continued their outrages. ... Notwithstanding, however, that the town might now be said to have been in the possession of the rioters for more than three days, it does not appear that any more decided measures were adopted to put them down. Their audacity and violence, as might have been expected, increased under this treatment. On Tuesday afternoon and evening the most terrible excesses were perpetrated. Notwithstanding that a considerable military force was stationed around and on the way to the Houses of Parliament, several of the members were again insulted and maltreated in the grossest manner. Indeed, the mob by this time seem to have got over all apprehensions of the interference of the soldiers." The principal event of the day was the attack on Newgate prison, which was destroyed and the prisoners released. "The New Prison, Clerkenwell, was also broken open ... and all the prisoners set at large. Attacks were likewise made upon several ... private houses. ... But the most lamentable of all the acts of destruction yet perpetrated by these infuriated ruffians was that with which they closed the day of madness and crime--the entire demolition of the residence of Lord Mansfield, the venerable Lord Chief Justice, in Bloomsbury Square. ... {938} The scenes that took place on Wednesday were still more dreadful than those by which Tuesday had been marked. The town indeed was now in a state of complete insurrection: and it was felt by all that the mob must be put down at any cost, if it was intended to save the metropolis of the kingdom from utter destruction. This day, accordingly, the military were out in all quarters, and were everywhere employed against the infuriated multitudes who braved their power. ... The King's Bench Prison, the New Gaol, the Borough Clink, the Surrey Bridewell, were all burned today. ... The Mansion House, the Museum, the Exchange, the Tower, and the Bank, were all, it is understood, marked for destruction. Lists of these and the other buildings which it was intended to attack were circulated among the mob. The bank was actually twice assaulted; but a powerful body of soldiers by whom it was guarded on both occasions drove off the crowd, though not without great slaughter. At some places the rioters returned the fire of the military. ... Among other houses which were set on fire in Holborn were the extensive premises of Mr. Langdale, the distiller, who was a Catholic. ... The worst consequence of this outrage, however, was the additional excitement which the frenzy of the mob received from the quantities of spirits with which they were here supplied. Many indeed drank themselves literally dead; and many more, who had rendered themselves unable to move, perished in the midst of the flames. Six and thirty fires, it is stated, were this night to be seen, from one spot, blazing at the same time in different quarters of the town. ... By Thursday morning ... the exertions of Government, now thoroughly alarmed, had succeeded in bringing up from different parts so large a force of regular troops and of militia as to make it certain that the rioters would be speedily overpowered. ... The soldiers attacked the mob in various places, and everywhere with complete success. ... On Friday the courts of justice were again opened for business, and the House of Commons met in the evening. ... On this first day after the close of the riots, 'the metropolis,' says the Annual Register, 'presented in many places the image of a city recently stormed and sacked.' ... Of the persons apprehended and brought to trial, 59 were capitally convicted; and of these more than 20 were executed; the others were sent to expiate their offences by passing the remainder of their days in hard labour and bondage in a distant land. ... Lord George Gordon, in consequence of the part he had borne in the measures which led to these riots, was sent to the Tower, and some time afterwards brought to trial on a charge of high treason," but was acquitted. Sketches of Popular Tumults, section 1, chapter 3. ALSO IN: J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of the Life and Reign of George III., chapter 34 (volume 2). H. Walpole, Journal of the Reign of George III., volume 2, pages 403-424. Annual Register, 1780, pages 254-287. C. Dickens, Barnaby Rudge. W. J. Amherst, History of Catholic Emancipation, volume 1, chapters 1-5. ENGLAND: A. D. 1780-1782. Declining strength of the government. Rodney's great naval victory. The siege of Gibraltar. "The fall of Lord North's ministry, and with it the overthrow of the personal government of George III., was now close at hand. For a long time the government had been losing favour. In the summer of 1780, the British victories in South Carolina had done something to strengthen, yet when, in the autumn of that year, Parliament was dissolved, although the king complained that his expenses for purposes of corruption had been twice as great as ever before, the new Parliament was scarcely more favourable to the ministry than the old one. Misfortunes and perplexities crowded in the path of Lord North and his colleagues. The example of American resistance had told upon Ireland. ... For more than a year there had been war in India, where Hyder Ali, for the moment, was carrying everything before him. France, eager to regain her lost foothold upon Hindustan, sent a strong armament thither, and insisted that England must give up all her Indian conquests except Bengal. For a moment England's great Eastern empire tottered, and was saved only by the superhuman efforts of Warren Hastings, aided by the wonderful military genius of Sir Eyre Coote. In May, 1781, the Spaniards had taken Pensacola, thus driving the British from their last position in Florida. In February, 1782, the Spanish fleet captured Minorca, and the siege of Gibraltar, which had been kept up for nearly three years, was pressed with redoubled energy. During the winter the French recaptured St. Eustatius, and handed it over to Holland; and Grasse's great fleet swept away all the British possessions in the West Indies, except Jamaica, Barbadoes, and Antigua. All this time the Northern League kept up its jealous watch upon British cruisers in the narrow seas, and among all the powers of Europe the government of George could not find a single friend. The maritime supremacy of England was, however, impaired but for a moment. Rodney was sent back to the West Indies, and on the 12th of April, 1782, his fleet of 36 ships encountered the French near the island of Sainte-Marie-Galante. The battle of eleven hours which ensued, and in which 5,000 men were killed or wounded, was one of the most tremendous contests ever witnessed upon the ocean before the time of Nelson. The French were totally defeated, and Grasse was taken prisoner,--the first French commander-in-chief, by sea or land, who had fallen into an enemy's hands since Marshal Tallard gave up his sword to Marlborough, on the terrible day of Blenheim. France could do nothing to repair this crushing disaster. Her naval power was eliminated from the situation at a single blow; and in the course of the summer the English achieved another great success by overthrowing the Spaniards at Gibraltar, after a struggle which, for dogged tenacity, is scarcely paralleled in modern warfare. By the autumn of 1782, England, defeated in the United States, remained victorious and defiant as regarded the other parties to the war." J. Fiske, American Revolution, chapter 15 (volume 2). "Gibraltar ... had been closely invested for nearly three years. At first, the Spanish had endeavoured to starve the place; but their blockade having been on two occasions forced by the British fleet, they relinquished that plan, and commenced a regular siege. During the spring and summer of 1781, the fortress was bombarded, but with little success; in the month of November, the enemy were driven from their approaches, and the works themselves were almost destroyed by a sally from the garrison. Early in the year, however, the fall of Minorca enabled the Spanish to reform the siege of Gibraltar. {939} De Grillon himself, the hero of Minorca, superseding Alvarez, assumed the chief command. ... The garrison of Gibraltar comprised no more than 7,000 men; while the force of the allied monarchies amounted to 33,000 soldiers, with an immense train of artillery. De Grillon, however, who was well acquainted with the fortress, had little hope of taking it from the land side, but relied with confidence on the formidable preparations which he had made for bombarding it from the sea. Huge floating batteries, bomb-proof and shot-proof, were constructed; and it was calculated that the action of these tremendous engines alone would be sufficient to destroy the works. Besides the battering ships, of which ten were provided, a large armament of vessels of all rates was equipped; and a grand attack was to take place, both from sea and land, with 400 pieces of artillery. Six months were consumed in these formidable preparations; and it was not until September that they were completed. A partial cannonade took place on the 9th and three following days; but the great attack, which was to decide the fate of the beleaguered fortress, was commenced on the 13th of September. On that day, the combined fleets of France and Spain, consisting of 47 sail of the line, besides numerous ships of inferior rate, were drawn out in order of battle before Gibraltar. Numerous bomb ketches, gun and mortar boats, dropped their anchors within close range; while the ten floating batteries were moored with strong iron chains within half gun-shot of the walls. On the land 170 guns were prepared to open fire simultaneously with the ships; and 40,000 troops were held in readiness to rush in at the first practicable breach. ... The grand attack was commenced at ten o'clock in the forenoon, by the fire of 400 pieces of artillery. The great floating batteries, securely anchored within 600 yards of the walls, poured in an incessant storm, from 142 guns. Elliot had less than 100 guns to reply to the cannonade both from sea and land; and of these he made the most judicious use. Disregarding the attack from every other quarter, he concentrated the whole of his ordnance on the floating batteries in front of him; for unless these were silenced, their force would prove irresistible. But for a long time the thunder of 80 guns made no impression on the enormous masses of wood and iron. The largest shells glanced harmless from their sloping roofs; the heaviest shot could not penetrate their hulls seven feet in thickness. Nevertheless, the artillery of the garrison was still unceasingly directed against these terrible engines of destruction. A storm of red-hot balls was poured down upon them; and about midday it was observed that the combustion caused by these missiles, which had hitherto been promptly extinguished, was beginning to take effect. Soon after, the partial cessation of the guns from the battering ships, and the volumes of smoke which issued from their decks, made it manifest they were on fire, and that all the efforts of the crews were required to subdue the conflagration. Towards evening, their guns became silent; and before midnight, the flames burst forth from the principal floating battery, which carried the Admiral's flag. ... Eight of the 10 floating batteries were on fire during the night; and the only care of the besieged was to save from the flames and from the waters, the wretched survivors of that terrible flotilla, which had so recently menaced them with annihilation. . . . The loss of the enemy was computed at 2,000; that of the garrison, in killed and wounded, amounted to no more than 84. The labour of a few hours sufficed to repair the damage sustained by the works. The French and Spanish fleets remained in the Straits, expecting the appearance of the British squadron under Lord Howe; and relying on their superiority in ships and weight of metal, they still hoped that the result of an action at sea might enable them to resume the siege of Gibraltar. Howe, having been delayed by contrary winds, did not reach the Straits until the 9th of October; and, notwithstanding the superior array which the enemy presented, he was prepared to risk an engagement. But at this juncture, a storm having scattered the combined fleet, the British Admiral was enabled to land his stores and reinforcements without opposition. Having performed this duty, he set sail for England; nor did the Spanish Admiral, though still superior by eight sail of the line, venture to dispute his passage. Such was the close of the great siege of Gibraltar; an undertaking which had been regarded by Spain as the chief object of the war, which she had prosecuted for three years, and which, at the last, had been pressed by the whole force of the allied monarchies. After this event, the war itself was virtually at an end." W. Massey, History of England, Reign of George III., chapter 27 (volume 3). ALSO IN: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), History of England, 1713-1783, chapters 62-66 (volume 7). J. Drinkwater, History of the Siege of Gibraltar. ENGLAND: A. D. 1780-1783. Second war with Hyder Ali, or Second Mysore War. See INDIA: A. D. 1780--1783. ENGLAND: A. D. 1781-1783. War with Holland. See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1746-1787. ENGLAND: A. D. 1782. Legislative independence conceded to Ireland. See IRELAND: A. D. 1778-1794. ENGLAND: A. D. 1782-1783. Fall of Lord North. The second Rockingham Ministry. Fox, Shelburne, and the American peace negotiations. The Shelburne Ministry. Coalition of Fox and North. "There comes a point when even the most servile majority of an unrepresentative Parliament finds the strain of party allegiance too severe, and that point was reached when the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown became known in November, 1781. 'O God, it is all over!' cried Lord North, wringing his hands, when he heard of it. ... On February 7, a vote of censure, moved by Fox, upon Lord Sandwich, was negatived by a majority of only twenty-two. On the 22nd, General Conway lost a motion in favour of putting an end to the war by only one vote. On the 27th, the motion was renewed in the form of a resolution and carried by a majority of nineteen. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1782 (FEBRUARY-MAY). Still the King would not give his consent to Lord North's resignation. Rather than commit himself to the opposition, he seriously thought of abdicating his crown and retiring to Hanover. ... Indeed, if it had not been for his large family, and the character of the Prince of Wales, already too well known, it is far from improbable that he would have carried this idea into execution, and retired from a Government of which he was no longer master. {940} By the 20th [of March], however, even George III. saw that the game could not be kept up any longer. He gave permission to Lord North to announce his resignation, and parted with him with the characteristic words: 'Remember, my Lord, it is you who desert me, not I who desert you.' ... Even when the long-deferred blow fell, and Lord North's Ministry was no more, the King refused to send for Lord Rockingham. He still flattered himself that he might get together a Ministry from among the followers of Chatham and of Lord North, which would be able to restore peace without granting independence, and Shelburne was the politician whom he fixed upon to aid him in this scheme. ... Shelburne, however, was too clever to fall into the trap. A Ministry which had against it the influence of the Rockingham connection and the talents of Charles Fox, and would not receive the hearty support of Lord North's phalanx of placemen, was foredoomed to failure. The pear was not yet ripe. He saw clearly enough that his best chance of permanent success lay in becoming the successor, not the supplanter, of Rockingham. ... His game was to wait. He respectfully declined to act without Rockingham. ... Before Rockingham consented to take office, he procured a distinct pledge from the King that he would not put a veto upon American independence, if the Ministers recommended it; and on the 27th of March the triumph of the Opposition was completed by the formation of a Ministry, mainly representative of the old Whig families, pledged to a policy of economical reform, and of peace with America on the basis of the acknowledgment of independence. Fox received the reward of his services by being appointed Foreign Secretary, and Lord Shelburne took charge of the Home and Colonial Department. Rockingham himself went to the Treasury, Lord John Cavendish became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Keppel First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Camden President of the Council. Burke was made Paymaster of the Forces, and Sheridan Under-Secretary to his friend Fox. At the King's special request, Thurlow was allowed to remain as Chancellor. ... The Cabinet no sooner met than it divided into the parties of Shelburne and of Fox, while Rockingham, Conway, and Cavendish tried to hold the balance between them, and Thurlow artfully fomented the dissensions. ... Few Administrations have done so much in a short time as did the Rockingham Ministry during the three months of its existence, and it so happened that the lion's share of the work fell to Fox. Upon his appointment to office his friends noticed a change in habits and manner of life, as complete as that ascribed to Henry V. on his accession to the throne. He is said never to have touched a card during either of his three short terms of office. ... By the division of work among the two Secretaries of State, all matters which related to the colonies were under the control of Shelburne, while those relating to foreign Governments belonged to the department of Fox. Consequently it became exceedingly important to these two Ministers whether independence was to be granted to the American colonies by the Crown of its own accord, or should be reserved in order to form part of the general treaty of peace. According to Fox's plan, independence was to be offered at once fully and freely to the Americans. They would thus gain at a blow all that they wanted. Their jealousy of French and Spanish interests in America would at once assert itself, and England would have no difficulty in bringing them over to her side in the negotiations with France. Such was Fox's scheme, but unfortunately, directly America became independent, she ceased to be in any way subject to Shelburne's management, and the negotiations for peace would pass wholly out of his control into the hands of Fox. ... Shelburne at once threw his whole weight into the opposite scale. He urged with great effect that to give independence at once was to throw away the trump card. It was the chief concession which England would be required to make, the only one which she was, prepared to make; and to make it at once, before she was even asked, was wilfully to deprive herself of her best weapon. The King and the Cabinet adopted Shelburne's view. Fox's scheme for the isolation of France failed, and a double negotiation for peace was set on foot. Shelburne and Franklin took charge of the treaty with America [see UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1782 (SEPTEMBER)], Fox and M. de Vergennes that with France and Spain and Holland. An arrangement of this sort could hardly have succeeded had the two Secretaries been the firmest of friends; since they were rivals and enemies it was foredoomed to failure." Fox found occasion very soon to complain that important matters in Shelburne's negotiation with Franklin were kept from his knowledge, and once more he proposed to the Cabinet an immediate concession of independence to the Americans. Again he was outvoted, and, "defeated and despairing, only refrained from resigning there and then because he would not embitter Rockingham's last moments upon earth." This was on the 30th of June. "On the 1st of, July Rockingham died, and on the 2nd Shelburne accepted from the King the task of forming a Ministry." Fox, of course, declined to enter it, and suffered in influence because he could not make public the reasons for his inability to act with Lord Shelburne. "Only Lord Cavendish, Burke, and the Solicitor-General, Lee, left office with Portland and Fox, and the gap was more than supplied by the entrance of William Pitt [Lord Chatham's son, who had entered Parliament in 1780] into the Cabinet as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Fortune seemed to smile on Shelburne. He ... might well look forward to a long and unclouded tenure of political power. His Administration lasted not quite seven months." It was weakened by distrust and dissatisfaction among its members, and overturned in February, 1783, by a vote of censure on the peace which it had concluded with France, Spain and the American States. It was succeeded in the Government by the famous Coalition Ministry formed under Fox and Lord North. "The Duke of Portland succeeded Shelburne at the Treasury. Lord North and Fox became the Secretaries of State. Lord John Cavendish returned to the Exchequer, Keppel to the Admiralty, and Burke to the Paymastership, the followers of Lord North ... were rewarded with the lower offices. Few combinations in the history of political parties have been received by historians and posterity with more unqualified condemnation than the coalition of 1783. ... There is no evidence to show that at the time it struck politicians in general as being specially heinous." H. O. Wakeman, Life of Charles James Fox, chapters 3-5. ALSO IN: Lord J. Russell, Life of Fox, chapters 16-17 (volume l). W. F. Rae, Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox, pages 307-317. Lord E. Fitzmaurice, Life of William, Earl of Shelburne, volume 3, chapters 3-6. {941} ENGLAND: A. D. 1783. The definitive Treaty of Peace with the United States of America signed at Paris. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1783 (SEPTEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1783-1787. Fall of the Coalition. Ascendancy of the younger Pitt. His extraordinary grasp of power. His attempted measures of reform. "Parliament met on the 11th of November; on the 18th Fox asked for leave to introduce a Bill for the Better Government of India. That day month[?] the Government had ceased to exist. Into the merits of the Bill it is not now necessary to enter. ... It was clear that it furnished an admirable weapon against an unpopular Coalition which had resisted economical reform, demanded a great income for a debauched prince, and now aimed at securing a monopoly of the vast patronage of India,--patronage which, genially exercised by Dundas, was soon to secure Scotland for Pitt. In the House of Commons the majority for the Bill was over 100; the loftiest eloquence of Burke was exerted in its favour; and Fox was, as ever, dauntless and crushing in debate. But outside Parliament the King schemed, and controversy raged. ... When the Bill arrived at the House of Lords, the undertakers were ready. The King had seen Temple, and empowered him to communicate to all whom it might concern his august disapprobation. The uneasy whisper circulated, and the joints of the lords became as water. The peers who yearned for lieutenancies or regiments, for stars or strawberry leaves; the prelates, who sought a larger sphere of usefulness; the minions of the bedchamber and the janissaries of the closet; all, temporal or spiritual, whose convictions were unequal to their appetite, rallied to the royal nod. ... The result was overwhelming. The triumphant Coalition was paralysed by the rejection of their Bill. They rightly refused to resign, but the King could not sleep until he had resumed the seals. Late at night he sent for them. The messenger found North and Fox gaily seated at supper with their followers. At first he was not believed. 'The King would not dare do it,' exclaimed Fox. But the under Secretary charged with the message soon convinced them of its authenticity, and the seals were delivered with a light heart. In such dramatic fashion, and the springtide of its youth, fell that famous government, unhonoured and unwept. 'England,' once said Mr. Disraeli, 'does not love coalitions.' She certainly did not love this one. On this occasion there was neither hesitation nor delay; the moment had come, and the man. Within 12 hours of the King's receiving the seals, Pitt had accepted the First Lordship of the Treasury and the Chancellorship of the Exchequer. That afternoon his writ was moved amid universal derision. And so commenced a supreme and unbroken Ministry of 17 years. Those who laughed were hardly blamable, for the difficulties were tremendous. ... The composition of the Government was ... the least of Pitt's embarrassments. The majority against him in the House of Commons was not less than 40 or 50, containing, with the exception of Pitt himself and Dundas, every debater of eminence; while he had, before the meeting of Parliament, to prepare and to obtain the approval of the East India Company to a scheme which should take the place of Burke's. The Coalition Ministers were only dismissed on the 18th of December, 1783; but, when the House of Commons met on the 12th of January, 1784, all this had been done. The narrative of the next three months is stirring to read, but would require too much detail for our limits. ... On the day of the meeting of Parliament, Pitt was defeated in two pitched divisions, the majorities against him being 39 and 54. His government seemed still-born. His colleagues were dismayed. The King came up from Windsor to support him. But in truth he needed no support. He had inherited from his father that confidence which made Chatham once say, 'I am sure that I can save this country, and that nobody else can'; which made himself say later, 'I place much dependence on my new colleagues; I place still more dependence on myself.' He had refused, in spite of the King's insistance, to dissolve; for he felt that the country required time. ... The Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure office worth not less than £3,000 a year, fell vacant the very day that Parliament met. It was universally expected that Pitt would take it as of right, and so acquire an independence, which would enable him to devote his life to politics, without care for the morrow. He had not £300 a year; his position was to the last degree precarious. ... Pitt disappointed his friends and amazed his enemies. He gave the place to Barré. ... To a nation inured to jobs this came as a revelation. ... Above and beyond all was the fact that Pitt, young, unaided, and alone, held his own with the great leaders allied against him. ... In face of so resolute a resistance, the assailants began to melt away. Their divisions, though they always showed a superiority to the Government, betrayed notable diminution. ... On the 25th of March Parliament was dissolved, the announcement being retarded by the unexplained theft of the Great Seal. When the elections were over, the party of Fox, it was found, had shared the fate of the host of Sennacherib. The number of Fox's martyrs--of Fox's followers who had earned that nickname by losing their seats--was 160. ... The King and Pitt were supported on the tidal wave of one of those great convulsions of feeling, which in Great Britain relieve and express pent-up national sentiment, and which in other nations produce revolutions." Lord Rosebery, Pitt, chapter 3. "Three subjects then needed the attention of a great statesman, though none of them were so pressing as to force themselves on the attention of a little statesman. These were, our economical and financial legislation, the imperfection of our parliamentary representation, and the unhappy' condition of Ireland. Pitt dealt with all three. ... He brought in a series of resolutions consolidating our customs laws, of which the inevitable complexity may be estimated by their number. They amounted to 133, and the number of Acts of Parliament which they restrained or completed was much greater. He attempted, and successfully, to apply the principles of Free Trade, the principles which he was the first of English statesmen to learn from Adam Smith, to the actual commerce of the country. ... The financial reputation of Pitt has greatly suffered from the absurd praise which was once lavished on the worst part of it. {942} The dread of national ruin from the augmentation of the national debt was a sort of nightmare in that age. ... Mr. Pitt sympathised with the general apprehension and created the well-known 'Sinking Fund.' He proposed to apply annually a certain fixed sum to the payment of the debt, which was in itself excellent, but he omitted to provide real money to be so paid. ... He proposed to borrow the money to payoff the debt, and fancied that he thus diminished it. ... The exposure of this financial juggle, for though not intended to be so, such in fact it was, has reacted very unfavourably upon Mr. Pitt's deserved fame. ... The subject of parliamentary reform is the one with which, in Mr. Pitt's early days, the public most connected his name, and is also that with which we are now least apt to connect it. ... He proposed the abolition of the worst of the rotten boroughs fifty years before Lord Grey accomplished it. ... If the strong counteracting influence of the French Revolution had not changed the national opinion, he would unquestionably have amended our parliamentary representation. ... The state of Ireland was a more pressing difficulty than our financial confusion, our economical errors, or our parliamentary corruption. ... He proposed at once to remedy the national danger of having two Parliaments, and to remove the incredible corruption of the old Irish Parliament, by uniting the three kingdoms in a single representative system, of which the Parliament should sit in England. ... Of these great reforms he was only permitted to carry a few into execution. His power, as we have described it, was great when his reign commenced, and very great it continued to be for very many years; but the time became unfavourable for all forward-looking statesmanship." W. Bagehot, Biographical Studies: William Pitt. ALSO IN: Earl Stanhope, Life of William Pitt, chapters 4-9 (volume 1). G. Tomline, Life of William Pitt, chapters 3-9 (volume 1-2). Lord Rosebery, Pitt, chapters 3-4. ENGLAND: A. D. 1788 (FEBRUARY). Opening of the Trial of Warren Hastings. See INDIA: A. D.1785-1795. ENGLAND: A. D. 1788-1789. The King's second derangement. The king's second derangement, which began to show itself in the summer of 1788, was more serious and of longer duration than the first. "He was able ... to sign a warrant for the further prorogation of Parliament by commission, from the 25th September to the 20th November. But, in the interval, the king's malady increased: he was wholly deprived of reason, and placed under restraint; and for several days his life was in danger. As no authority could be obtained from him for a further prorogation, both Houses assembled on the 20th November. ... According to long established law, Parliament, without being opened by the Crown, had no authority to proceed to any business whatever: but the necessity of an occasion, for which the law had made no provision, was now superior to the law; and Parliament accordingly proceeded to deliberate upon the momentous questions to which the king's illness had given rise." By Mr. Fox it was maintained that "the Prince of Wales had as clear a right to exercise the power of sovereignty during the king's incapacity as if the king were actually dead; and that it was merely for the two Houses of Parliament to pronounce at what time he should commence, the exercise of his right. ... Mr. Pitt, on the other hand, maintained that as no legal provision had been made for carrying on the government, it belonged to the Houses of Parliament to make such provision." The discussion to which these differences, and many obstructing circumstances in the situation of affairs, gave rise, was so prolonged, that the king recovered his faculties (February, 1789) before the Regency Bill, framed by Mr. Pitt, had been passed. T. E. May, Constitutional History of England, volume 1, chapter 3. ENGLAND: A. D. 1789-1792. War with Tippoo Saib (third Mysore War). See INDIA: A. D. 1785-1793. ENGLAND: A. D. 1793. The Coalition against Revolutionary France. Unsuccessful siege of Dunkirk. See FRANCE: A. D. 1793 (MARCH-SEPTEMBER), and (JULY-DECEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1793-1796. Popular feeling towards the French Revolution. Small number of the English Jacobins. Pitt forced into war. Tory panic and reign of terror. Violence of government measures. "That the war [of Revolutionary France] with Germany would widen into a vast European struggle, a struggle in which the peoples would rise against their oppressors, and the freedom which France had won diffuse itself over the world, no French revolutionist doubted for an hour. Nor did they doubt that in this struggle England would join them. It was from England that they had drawn those principles of political and social liberty which they believed themselves to be putting into practice. It was to England that they looked above all for approbation and sympathy. ... To the revolutionists at Paris the attitude of England remained unintelligible and irritating. Instead of the aid they had counted on, they found but a cold neutrality. ... But that this attitude was that of the English people as a whole was incredible to the French enthusiasts. ... Their first work therefore they held to be the bringing about a revolution in England. ... They strove, through a number of associations which had formed themselves under the name of Constitutional Clubs, to rouse the same spirit which they had roused in France; and the French envoy, Chauvelin, protested warmly against a proclamation which denounced this correspondence as seditious. ... Burke was still working hard in writings whose extravagance of style was forgotten in their intensity of feeling to spread alarm throughout Europe. He had from the first encouraged the emigrant princes to take arms, and sent his son to join them at Coblentz. 'Be alarmists,' he wrote to them; 'diffuse terror!' But the royalist terror which he sowed would have been of little moment had it not roused a revolutionary terror in France. ... In November the Convention decreed that France offered the aid of her soldiers to all nations who would strive for freedom. ... In the teeth of treaties signed only two years before, and of the stipulation made by England when it pledged itself to neutrality, the French Government resolved to attack Holland, and ordered its generals to enforce by arms the opening of the Scheldt [see FRANCE: A. D.1792-1793 (DECEMBER-FEBRUARY)]. To do this was to force England into war. Public opinion was already pressing every day harder upon Pitt. ... But even while withdrawing our Minister from Paris on the imprisonment of the King, to whose Court he had been commissioned, Pitt clung stubbornly to a policy of peace. ... {943} No hour of Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood lonely and passionless before the growth of national passion, and refused to bow to the gathering cry for war. ... But desperately as Pitt struggled for peace, his struggle was in vain. ... Both sides ceased from diplomatic communications, and in February 1793 France issued her Declaration of War. From that moment Pitt's power was at an end. His pride, his immovable firmness, and the general confidence of the nation, still kept him at the head of affairs; but he could do little save drift along with a tide of popular feeling which he never fully understood. Around him the country broke out in a fit of passion and panic which rivalled the passion and panic oversea. ... The partisans of Republicanism were in reality but a few handfuls of men. ... But in the mass of Englishmen the dread of these revolutionists passed for the hour into sheer panic. Even the bulk of the Whig party believed property and the constitution to be in peril, and forsook Fox when he still proclaimed his faith in France and the Revolution." J. R. Green, History of the English People, book 9, chapter 4 (volume 4). "Burke himself said that not one man in a hundred was a Revolutionist. Fox's revolutionary sentiments met with no response, but with general reprobation, and caused even his friends to shrink from his side. Of the so-called Jacobin Societies, the Society for Constitutional Information numbered only a few hundred members, who, though they held extreme opinions, were headed by men of character, and were quite incapable of treason or violence. The Corresponding Society was of a more sinister character; but its numbers were computed only at 6,000, and it was swallowed up in the loyal masses of the people. ... It is sad to say it, but when Pitt had once left the path of right, he fell headlong into evil. To gratify the ignoble fears and passions of his party, he commenced a series of attacks on English liberty of speaking and writing which Mr. Massey, a strong anti-revolutionist, characterizes as unparalleled since the time of Charles I. The country was filled with spies. A band of the most infamous informers was called into activity by the government. ... There was a Tory reign of terror, to which a slight increase of the panic among the upper classes would probably have lent a redder hue. Among other measures of repression the Habeas Corpus Act was suspended; and the liberties of all men were thus placed at the mercy of the party in power. ... In Scotland the Tory reign of terror was worse than in England." Goldwin Smith, Three English Statesmen, pages 239-247. "The gaols were filled with political delinquents, and no man who professed himself a reformer could say, that the morrow might not see him a prisoner upon a charge of high treason. ... But the rush towards despotism against which the Whigs could not stand, was arrested by the people. Although the Habeas Corpus had fallen, the Trial by Jury remained, and now, as it had done before, when the alarm of fictitious plots had disposed the nation to acquiesce in the surrender of its liberties, it opposed a barrier which Toryism could not pass." The trials which excited most interest were those of Hardy, who organized the Corresponding Society, and Horne Tooke. But no unlawful conduct or treasonable designs could be proved against them by creditable witnesses, and both were acquitted." The public joy was very general at these acquittals. ... The war lost its popularity; bread grew scarce; commerce was crippled; ... the easy success that had been anticipated was replaced by reverses. The people clamoured and threw stones at the king, and Pitt eagerly took advantage of their violence to tear away the few shreds of the constitution which yet covered them. He brought forward the Seditious Meetings bill, and the Treasonable Practices bill. Bills which, among other provisions, placed the conduct of every political meeting under the protection of a magistrate, and rendered disobedience to his command a felony." G. W. Cooke, History of Party, volume 3, chapter 17. ALSO IN: J. Adolphus, History of England: Reign of George III., chapters 81-89 and 95 (volumes 5-6). J. Gifford, History of the Political Life of William Pitt, chapters 23-24, and 28-29 (volumes 3-4). W. Massey, History of England: Reign of George III., chapters 32-36 (volumes 3-4). E. Smith, The Story of the English Jacobins. A. Bisset, Short History of the English Parliament, chapter 8. ENGLAND: A. D. 1794. Campaigns of the Coalition against France. French successes in the Netherlands and on the Rhine. Conquest of Corsica. Naval victory of Lord Howe. See FRANCE: A. D. 1794 (MARCH-JULY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1794. Angry relations with the United States. The Jay Treaty. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1794-1795. ENGLAND: A. D. 1794-1795. Withdrawal of troops from the Netherlands. French conquest of Holland. Establishment of the Batavian Republic. Crumbling of the European Coalition. See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1795 (OCTOBER-MAY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1795. Disastrous expedition to Quiberon Bay. See FRANCE: A. D. 1794-1796. ENGLAND: A. D. 1795. Capture of the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch. See FRANCE: A. D. 1795 (JUNE-DECEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1796 (SEPTEMBER). Evacuation and abandonment of Corsica. See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (SEPTEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1796 (OCTOBER). Unsuccessful peace negotiations with the French Directory. See FRANCE: A. D. 1796 (OCTOBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1796-1798. Attempted French invasions of Ireland. Irish Insurrection. See IRELAND: A. D. 1793-1798. ENGLAND: A. D. 1797. Monetary panic and suspension of specie payments. Defeat of the first Reform movement. Mutiny of the Fleet. Naval victories of Cape St. Vincent and Camperdown. "The aspect of affairs in Britain had never been so clouded during the 18th century as at the beginning of the year 1797. The failure of Lord Malmesbury's mission to Paris had closed every hope of an honourable termination to the war, while of all her original allies, Austria alone remained; the national burdens were continually increasing, and the three-per-cents had fallen to fifty-one; while party spirit raged with uncommon violence, and Ireland was in a state of partial insurrection. A still greater disaster resulted from the panic arising from the dread of invasion, and which produced such a run on all the banks, that the Bank of England itself was reduced to payment in sixpences, and an Order in Council appeared (February 26) for the suspension of all cash payments. This measure, at first only temporary, was prolonged from time to time by parliamentary enactments, making bank-notes a legal-tender; and it was not till 1819, after the conclusion of peace, that the recurrence to metallic currency took place. {944} The Opposition deemed this a favourable opportunity to renew their cherished project of parliamentary reform; and on 26th May, Mr. (afterwards Lord) Grey brought forward a plan chiefly remarkable for containing the outlines of that subsequently carried into effect in 1831. It was negatived, however, after violent debates, by a majority of 258 against 93. After a similar strife of parties, the motion for the continuance of the war was carried by a great majority in both houses; and the requisite supplies were voted. ... Unknown to the government, great discontent had for a long time prevailed in the navy. The exciting causes were principality the low rate of pay (which had not been raised since the time of Charles II.), the unequal distribution of prize-money, and undue severity in the maintenance of discipline. These grounds of complaint, with others not less well founded, gave rise to a general conspiracy, which broke out (April 15) in the Channel fleet under Lord Bridport. All the ships fell under the power of the insurgents; but they maintained perfect order, and memorialised the Admiralty and the Commons on their grievances: their demands being examined by government, and found to be reasonable, were granted; and on the 7th of May the fleet returned to its duty. But scarcely was the spirit of disaffection quelled in this quarter, when it broke out in a more alarming form (May 22) among the squadron at the Nore, which was soon after (June 6) joined by the force which had been cruising off the Texel under Lord Duncan. The mutineers appointed a seaman named Parker to the command; and, blockading the mouth of the Thames, announced their demands in such a tone of menacing audacity as insured their instant rejection by the government. This second mutiny caused dreadful consternation in London; but the firmness of the King remained unshaken, and he was nobly seconded by the parliament. A bill was passed, prohibiting all communication with the mutineers under pain of death. Sheerness and Tilbury Fort were armed and garrisoned for the defence of the Thames; and the sailors, finding the national feelings strongly arrayed against them, became gradually sensible that their enterprise was desperate. One by one the ships returned to their duty; and on 15th June all had submitted. Parker and several other ringleaders suffered death; but clemency was extended to the multitude. ... Notwithstanding all these dissensions, the British navy was never more terrible to its enemies than during this eventful year. On the 14th of February, the Spanish fleet of 27 sail of the line and 12 frigates, which had put to sea for the purpose of raising the blockade of the French harbours, was encountered off Cape St. Vincent by Sir John Jarvis, who had only 15 ships and 6 frigates. By the old manœuvre of breaking the line, 9 of the Spanish ships were cut off from the rest; and the admiral, while attempting to regain them by wearing round the rear of the British line, was boldly assailed by Nelson and Collingwood,--the former of whom, in the Captain, of 74 guns, engaged at once two of the enemy's gigantic vessels, the Santissima Trinidad of 136 guns, and the San Josef of 112; while the Salvador del Mundo, also of 112 guns, struck in a quarter of an hour to Collingwood. Nelson at length carried the San Josef by boarding, and received the Spanish admiral's sword on his own quarterdeck. The Santissima Trinidad--an enormous four-decker--though her colours were twice struck, escaped in the confusion; but the San Josef and the Salvador, with two 74-gun ships, remained in the hands of the British; and the Spanish armament, thus routed by little more than half its own force, retired in the deepest dejection to Cadiz, which was shortly after insulted by a bombardment from the gallant Nelson. A more important victory than that of Sir John Jarvis (created in consequence Earl St. Vincent) was never gained at sea, from the evident superiority of skill and seamanship which it demonstrated in the British navy. The battle of St. Vincent disconcerted the plans of Truguet for the naval campaign; but later in the season a second attempt to reach Brest was made by a Dutch fleet of 15 sail of the line and 11 frigates, under the command of De Winter, a man of tried courage and experience. The British blockading fleet, under Admiral Duncan, consisted of 16 ships and 3 frigates; and the battle was fought (October 16) off Camperdown, about nine miles from the shore of Holland. The manœuvres of the British Admiral were directed to cut off the enemy's retreat to his own shores; and this having been accomplished, the action commenced yard-arm to yard-arm, and continued with the utmost fury for more than three hours. The Dutch sailors fought with the most admirable skill and courage, and proved themselves worthy descendants of Van Tromp and De Ruyter; but the prowess of the British was irresistible. 12 sail of the line, including the flagship, two 56-gun ships, and 2 frigates, struck their colours; but the nearness of the shore enabled two of the prizes to escape, and one 74-gun ship foundered. The obstinacy of the conflict was evidenced by the nearly equal number of killed and wounded, which amounted to 1,040 English, and 1,160 Dutch. ... The only remaining operations of the year were the capture of Trinidad in February, by a force which soon after was repulsed from before Porto Rico; and an abortive attempt at a descent in Pembroke Bay by about 1,400 French." Epitome of Alison's History of Europe, sections 190-196 (chapter 22, volume 5--of complete work). ALSO IN: J. Adolphus, History of England: Reign of George III., chapters 100-103 (volume 6). R. Southey, Life of Nelson, chapter 4. E. J. De La Gravière, Sketches of the Last Naval War, volume 1, part 2. Captain A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power on the French Revolution and Empire, chapters 8 and 11 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1798 (AUGUST). Nelson's victory in the Battle of the Nile. See FRANCE: A. D. 1798 (MAY-AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1798. Second Coalition against Revolutionary France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1798-1799 (AUGUST-APRIL). ENGLAND: A. D. 1799 (APRIL). Final war with Tippoo Saib (third Mysore War). See INDIA: A. D. 1798-1805. ENGLAND: A. D. 1799 (AUGUST-OCTOBER). Expedition against Holland. Seizure of the Dutch fleet. Ignominious ending of the enterprise. Capitulation of the Duke of York. See FRANCE: A. D. 1799 (APRIL-SEPTEMBER), and (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1800. Legislative union of Ireland with Great Britain. Creation of the "United Kingdom." See IRELAND: A. D. 1798-1800. {945} ENGLAND: A. D. 1801. The first Factory Act. See FACTORY LEGISLATION. ENGLAND: A. D. 1801-1802. Import of the Treaty of Luneville. Bonaparte's preparations for conflict with Great Britain alone. Retirement of Pitt. The Northern Maritime League and its summary annihilation at Copenhagen. Expulsion of the French from Egypt. The Peace of Amiens. See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1802. ENGLAND: A. D. 1801-1806. Pitt's promise to the Irish Catholics broken by the King. His resignation. The Addington Ministry. The Peace of Amiens. War resumed. Pitt at the helm again. His death. The Ministry of "All the Talents." "The union with Ireland introduced a new topic of party discussion, which quickly became only second to that of parliamentary reform. In transplanting the parliament of College Green to St. Stephen's, Pitt had transplanted the questions which were there debated; and, of these, none had been more important than the demand of the Catholics to be admitted to the common rights of citizens. Pitt, whose Toryism was rather the imperiousness of a haughty master, than the cautious cowardice of the miser of power, thought their complaints were just. In his private negotiations with the Irish popular leaders he probably promised that emancipation should be the sequel to the union. In his place in parliament he certainly gave an intimation, which from the mouth of a minister could receive no second interpretation. Pitt was not a minister who governed by petty stratagems, by ambiguous professions, and by skilful shuffles: he was at least an honourable enemy. He prepared to fulfil the pledge he had given, and to admit the Catholics within the pale of the constitution. It had been better for the character of George III. had he imitated the candour of his minister; had he told him that he had made a promise he would not be suffered to fulfil, before he had obtained the advantage to gain which that promise had been made. When Pitt proposed Catholic emancipation as one of the topics of the king's speech, for the session of 1801, the royal negative was at once interposed, and when Dundas persisted in his attempt to overcome his master's objections, the king abruptly terminated the conference, saying, 'Scotch metaphysics cannot destroy religious obligations.' Pitt immediately tendered his resignation. ... All that was brilliant in Toryism passed from the cabinet with the late minister: When Pitt and Canning were withdrawn, with their satellites, nothing remained of the Tory party but the mere courtiers who lived upon the favour of the king, and the insipid lees of the party; men who voted upon every subject in accordance with their one ruling idea--the certain ruin, which must follow the first particle of innovation. Yet from these relicts the king was obliged to form a new cabinet, for application to the Whigs was out of the question. These were more strenuous for emancipation than Pitt. Henry Addington, Pitt's speaker of the house of commons, was the person upon whom the king's choice fell; and he succeeded, with the assistance of the late premier, in filling up the offices at his disposal. ... The peace of Amiens was the great work of this feeble administration [see FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1802], and formed a severe commentary upon the boastings of the Tories. 'Unless the monarchy of France be restored,' Pitt had said, eight years before, 'the monarchy of England is lost forever.' Eight years of warfare had succeeded, yet the monarchy of France was not restored, and the crusade was stayed. England had surrendered her conquests, France retained hers; the landmarks of Europe had been in some degree restored; England, alone, remained burdened with the enduring consequences of the ruinous and useless strife. The peace was approved by the Whigs, who were glad of any respite from such a war, and by Pitt, who gave his support to the Addington administration. But he could not control his adherents. ... As the instability of the peace grew manifest, the incompetency of the administration became generally acknowledged: with Pitt sometimes chiding, Windham and Canning, and Lords Spencer and Grenville continually attacking, and Fox and the Whigs only refraining from violent opposition from a knowledge that if Addington went out Pitt would be his successor, the conduct of the government was by no means an easy or a grateful task to a man destitute of commanding talents. When to these parliamentary difficulties were added a recommencement of the war, and a popular panic at Bonaparte's threatened invasion, Addington's embarrassments became inextricable. He had performed the business which Pitt had assigned him; he had made an experimental peace, and had saved Pitt's honour with the Roman Catholics. The object of his appointment he had unconsciously completed, and no sooner did his predecessor manifest an intention of returning to office, than the ministerial majorities began to diminish, and Addington found himself without support. On the 12th of April it was announced that Mr. Addington had resigned, and Pitt appeared to resume his station as a matter of course. During his temporary retirement, Pitt had, however, lost one section of his supporters. The Grenville party and the Whigs had gradually approximated, and the former now refused to come into the new arrangements unless Fox was introduced into the cabinet. To this Pitt offered no objection, but the king was firm--or obstinate. ... In the following year, Addington himself, now created Viscount Sidmouth, returned to office with the subordinate appointment of president of the council. The conflagration had again spread through Europe. ... Pitt had the mortification to see his grand continental coalition, the produce of such immense expense and the object of such hope, shattered in one campaign. At home, Lord Melville, his most faithful political supporter, was attacked by a charge from which he could not defend him, and underwent the impeachment of the commons for malpractices in his office as treasurer of the navy. Lord Sidmouth and several others seceded from the cabinet, and Pitt, broken in health, and dispirited by reverses, had lost much of his wonted energy. Thus passed away the year 1805. On the 23d of January, 1806, Pitt expired. ... The death of Pitt was the dissolution of his administration. The Tory party was scattered in divisions and subdivisions innumerable. Canning now recognised no political leader, but retained his old contempt for Sidmouth and his friends, and his hostility to the Grenvilles for their breach with Pitt. Castlereagh, William Dundas, Hawkesbury, or Barham, although sufficiently effective when Pitt was present to direct and to defend, would have made a hopeless figure without him in face of such an opposition as the house of commons now afforded. {946} The administration, which was ironically designated by its opponents as 'All the Talents,' succeeded. Lord Grenville was first lord of the treasury. Fox chose the office of secretary for foreign affairs with the hope of putting an end to the war. Windham was colonial secretary. Earl Spencer had the seals of the home department. Erskine was lord chancellor. Mr. Grey was first lord of the admiralty. Sheridan, treasurer of the navy. Lord Sidmouth was privy seal. Lord Henry Petty, who, although now only in his 26th year, had already acquired considerable distinction as an eloquent Whig speaker, was advanced to the post of chancellor of the exchequer, the vacant chair of Pitt. Such were the men who now assumed the reins under circumstances of unparalleled difficulty." G. W. Cooke, History of Party, volume 3, chapters 17-18. ALSO IN: Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon), Life of Pitt, chapters 29-44 (volumes 3-4). A. G. Stapleton, George Canning and His Times, chapters 6-8. Earl Russell, Life and Times of Charles James Fox, chapters 58-69 (volume 3). G. Pellew, Life and Correspondence of Henry Addington, 1st Viscount Sidmouth, chapters 10-26 (volumes 1-2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1802 (OCTOBER). Protest against Bonaparte's interference in Switzerland. His extraordinary reply. See FRANCE: A. D. 1801-1803. ENGLAND: A. D. 1802-1803. Bonaparte's complaints and demands. The Peltier trial. The First Consul's rage. Declaration of war. Napoleon's seizure of Hanover. Cruel detention of all English people in France, Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands. See FRANCE: A. D. 1802-1803. ENGLAND: A. D. 1804-1809. Difficulties with the United States. Questions of neutral rights. Right of Search and Impressment. The American Embargo. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808. ENGLAND: A. D. 1805 (JANUARY-APRIL). Third Coalition against France. See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (JANUARY-APRIL). ENGLAND: A. D. 1805. Napoleon's threatened invasion. Nelson's long pursuit of the French fleet. His victory and death at Trafalgar. The crushing of the Coalition at Austerlitz. See FRANCE: A. D. 1805 (MARCH-DECEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1806. Final seizure of Cape Colony from the Dutch. See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1486-1806. ENGLAND: A. D. 1806. Cession of Hanover to Prussia by Napoleon. War with Prussia. See GERMANY: A. D. 1806 (JANUARY-AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1806. Attempted reinstatement of the dethroned King of Naples. The Battle of Maida. See FRANCE: A. D. 1805-1806 (DECEMBER-SEPTEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1806. Death of Pitt. Peace negotiations with Napoleon. See FRANCE: A. D. 1806 (JANUARY-OCTOBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1807. Expedition against Buenos Ayres. See ARGENTINE REPUBLIC: A. D. 1806-1820. ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1810. Commercial warfare with Napoleon. Orders in Council. Berlin and Milan Decrees. See FRANCE: A. D. 1806-1810. ENGLAND: A. D. 1806-1812. The ministry of "All the Talents." Abolition of the Slave Trade. The Portland and the Perceval ministries. Confirmed insanity of George III. Beginning of the regency of the Prince of Wales. Assassination of Mr. Perceval. The "Ministry of All the Talents" is "remarkable solely for its mistakes, and is to be remembered chiefly for the death of Fox [September 13, 1806] and the abolition of the slave-trade. Fox was now destined at the close of his career to be disillusioned with regard to Napoleon. He at last thoroughly realized the insincerity of his hero. ... The second great object of Fox's life he succeeded in attaining before his death;--this was the abolition of the slave-trade. For more than thirty years the question had been before the country, and a vigorous agitation had been conducted by Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Fox. . Pitt was quite at one with them on this question, and had brought forward motions on the subject. The House of Lords, however, rejected all measures of this description during the Revolutionary War, under the influence of the Anti-Jacobin feeling. It was reserved for Fox to succeed in carrying a Bill inflicting heavy pecuniary punishments on the traffic in slaves. And yet this measure--the sole fruit of Fox's statesmanship--was wholly inadequate; nor was it till the slave-trade was made felony in 1811 that its final extinction was secured. The remaining acts of the Ministry were blunders. ... Their financial system was a failure. They carried on the war so as to alienate their allies and to cover themselves with humiliation. Finally, they insisted on bringing forward a measure for the relief of the Catholics, though there was not the slightest hope of carrying it, and it could only cause a disruption of the Government. ... The king and the Pittites were determined to oppose it, and so the Ministry agreed to drop the question under protest. George insisted on their withdrawing the protest, and as this was refused he dismissed them. ... This then was the final triumph of George III. He had successfully dismissed this Ministry; he had maintained the principle that every Ministry is bound to withdraw any project displeasing to the king. These principles were totally inconsistent with Constitutional Government, and they indirectly precipitated Reform by rendering it absolutely necessary in order to curb the royal influence. ... The Duke of Portland's sole claims to form a Ministry were his high rank, and the length of his previous services. His talents were never very great, and they were weakened by age and disease. The real leader was Mr. Perceval, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, a dexterous debater and a patriotic statesman. This Government, being formed on the closest Tory basis and on the king's influence, was pledged to pursue a retrograde policy and to oppose all measures of Reform. The one really high-minded statesman in the Cabinet was Canning, the Foreign Minister. His advanced views, however, continually brought him into collision with Castlereagh, the War Minister, a man of much inferior talents and the narrowest Tory views. Quarrels inevitably arose between the two, and there was no real Prime Minister to hold them strongly under control. ... At last the ill-feeling ended in a duel, which was followed by a mutual resignation on the ground that neither could serve with the other. This was followed by the resignation of Portland, who felt himself wholly unequal to the arduous task of managing the Ministry any longer. {947} The leadership now devolved on Perceval, who found himself in an apparently hopeless condition. His only supporters were Lords Liverpool, Eldon, Palmerston, and Wellesley. Neither Canning, Castlereagh, nor Sidmouth (Addington) would join him. The miserable expedition to Walcheren had just ended in ignominy. The campaign in the Peninsula was regarded as a chimerical enterprise, got up mainly for the benefit of a Tory commander. Certainly the most capable man in the Cabinet was Lord Wellesley, the Foreign Minister, but he was continually thwarted by the incapable men he had to deal with. However, as long as he remained at the Foreign Office, he supported the Peninsular War with vigour, and enabled his brother to carry out more effectually his plans with regard to the defence of Portugal. In November, 1810, the king was again seized with insanity, nor did he ever recover the use of his faculties during the rest of his life. The Ministry determined to bring forward Pitt's old Bill of 1788 in a somewhat more modified form, February, 1811. The Prince of Wales requested Grey and Grenville to criticize this, but, regarding their reply as lukewarm, he began to entertain an ill-will for them. At this moment the judicious flattery of his family brought him over from the Whigs, and he decided to continue Perceval in office. Wellesley, however, took the opportunity to resign, and was succeeded by Castlereagh, February, 1812. In May Perceval was assassinated by Mr. Bellingham, a lunatic, and his Ministry at once fell to pieces." B. C. Skottowe, Our Hanoverian Kings, book 10, chapter 3. ALSO IN: F. H. Hill, George Canning, chapters 13-17. S. Walpole, Life of Spencer Perceval, volume 2. R. I. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilberforce, chapter 20 (volume 3). ENGLAND: A. D. 1807. Act for the Abolition of the Slave-Trade. See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1792-1807. ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (FEBRUARY-SEPTEMBER). Operations in support of the Russians against the Turks and French. Bold naval attack on Constantinople and humiliating failure. Disastrous expedition to Egypt. See TURKS: A. D. 1806-1807. ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY). Alliance formed at Tilsit between Napoleon and Alexander I. of Russia. See GERMANY: A. D. 1807 (JUNE-JULY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (AUGUST-NOVEMBER). Bombardment of Copenhagen and seizure of the Danish fleet. War with Russia and Denmark. See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810. ENGLAND: A. D. 1807 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER). Submission of Portugal to Napoleon under English advice. Flight of the house of Braganza to Brazil. See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807. ENGLAND: A. D. 1808 (MAY). Ineffectual attempt to aid Sweden. Expedition of Sir John Moore. See SCANDINAVIAN STATES: A. D. 1807-1810. ENGLAND: A. D. 1808 (JULY). Peace and alliance with the Spanish people against the new Napoleonic monarchy. Opening of the Peninsular War. See SPAIN: A. D.1808 (MAY-SEPTEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1808. Expulsion of English forces from Capri. See ITALY (SOUTHERN): A. D.1808-1809. ENGLAND: A. D. 1808-1809. Wellington's first campaign in the Peninsula. Convention of Cintra. Evacuation of Portugal by the French. Sir John Moore's advance into Spain and his retreat. His death at Corunna. See SPAIN: A. D. 1808-1809 (AUGUST-JANUARY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY). Wellington sent to the Peninsula. The passage of the Douro and the Battle of Talavera. See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (FEBRUARY-JULY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (JULY-DECEMBER). The Walcheren Expedition. "Three times before, during the war, it had occurred to one or another, connected with the government, that it would be a good thing to hold Antwerp, and command the Scheldt, seize the French ships in the river, and get possession of their arsenals and dockyards. On each occasion, men of military science and experience had been consulted; and invariably they had pronounced against the scheme. Now, however, what Mr. Pitt had considered impracticable, Lord Castlereagh, with the rashness of incapacity, resolved should be done: and, in order not to be hindered, he avoided consulting with those who would have objected to the enterprise. Though the scene of action was to be the swamps at the mouths of the Scheldt, he consulted no physician. Having himself neither naval, military, nor medical knowledge, he assumed the responsibility--except such as the King and the Duke of York chose to share. ... It was May, 1809, before any stir was apparent which could lead men outside the Cabinet to infer that an expedition for the Scheldt was in contemplation; but so early as the beginning of April (it is now known), Mr. Canning signified that he could not share in the responsibility of an enterprise which must so involve his own office. ... The fleet that rode in the channel consisted of 39 ships of the line, and 36 frigates, and a due proportion of small vessels: in all, 245 vessels of war: and 400 transports carried 40,000 soldiers. Only one hospital ship was provided for the whole expedition, though the Surgeon General implored the grant of two more. He gave his reasons, but was refused. ... The naval commander was Sir Richard J. Strachan, whose title to the responsibility no one could perceive, while many who had more experience were unemployed. The military command was given (as the selection of the present Cabinet bad been) to Lord Chatham, for no better reason than that he was a favourite with the King and Queen, who liked his gentle and courtly manners, and his easy and amiable temper. ... The fatal mistake was made of not defining the respective authorities of the two commanders; and both being inexperienced or apathetic, each relied upon the other first, and cast the blame of failure upon him afterwards. In the autumn, an epigram of unknown origin was in every body's mouth, all over England: 'Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn, Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan; Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em, Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.' The fleet set sail on the 28th of July, and was on the coast of Holland the next day. The first discovery was that there were not boats enough to land the troops and the ordnance. The next was that no plan had been formed about how to proceed. The most experienced officers were for pushing on to Antwerp, 45 miles off, and taking it before it could be prepared for defence; but the commanders determined to take Flushing first. They set about it so slowly that a fortnight was consumed in preparations. {948} In two days more, the 15th of August, Flushing was taken. After this, Lord Chatham paused to consider what he should do next; and it was the 21st before be began to propose to go on to Antwerp. Then came the next discovery, that, by this time two intermediate places had been so strengthened that there must be some fighting on the way. So he did nothing more but take possession of two small islands near Flushing. Not another blow was struck; not another league was traversed by this magnificent expedition. But the most important discovery of all now disclosed itself. The army had been brought into the swamps at the beginning of the sickly season. Fever sprang up under their feet, and 3,000 men were in hospital in a few days, just when it became necessary to reduce the rations, because provisions were falling short. On the 27th of August, Lord Chatham led a council of war to resolve that 'it was not advisable to pursue further operations.' But, if they could not proceed, neither could they remain where they were. The enemy had more spirit than their invaders. On the 30th and 31st, such a fire was opened from both banks of the river, that the ships were obliged to retire. Flushing was given up, and everything else except the island of Walcheren, which it was fatal to hold at this season. On the 4th of September, most of the ships were at home again; and Lord Chatham appeared on the 14th. Eleven thousand men were by that time in the fever, and he brought home as many as he could. Sir Eyre Coote, whom he left in command, was dismayed to see all the rest sinking down in disease at the rate of hundreds in a day. Though the men had been working in the swamps, up to the waist in marsh water, and the roofs of their sleeping places had been carried off by bombardment, so that they slept under a canopy of autumn fog, it was supposed that a supply of Thames water to drink would stop the sickness; and a supply of 500 tons per week was transmitted. At last, at the end of October, a hundred English bricklayers, with tools, bricks, and mortar, were sent over to mend the roofs; but they immediately dropped into the hospitals. Then the patients were to be accommodated in the towns; but to spare the inhabitants, the soldiers were laid down in damp churches; and their bedding had from the beginning been insufficient for their need. At last, government desired the chief officers of the army Medical Board to repair to Walcheren, and see what was the precise nature of the fever, and what could be done. The Surgeon-General and the Physician-General threw the duty upon each other. Government appointed it to the Physician-General, Sir Lucas Pepys; but he refused to go. Both officers were dismissed, and the medical department of the army was reorganized and greatly improved. The deaths were at this time from 200 to 300 a week. When Walcheren was evacuated, on the 23rd of December, nearly half the force sent out five months before were dead or missing; and of those who returned, 35,000 were admitted into the hospitals of England before the next 1st of June. Twenty millions sterling were spent on this expedition. It was the purchase money of tens of thousands of deaths, and of ineffaceable national disgrace." H. Martineau, History of England, 1800-1815, book 2, chapter 2. ALSO IN: C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 7, chapter 20. ENGLAND: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-DECEMBER). Difficulties of Wellington's campaign in the Peninsula. His retreat into Portugal. See SPAIN: A. D. 1809 (AUGUST-DECEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1810. Capture of the Mauritius. See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816. ENGLAND: A. D. 1810-1812. The War in the Peninsula. Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras. French recoil from them. English advance into Spain. See SPAIN: A. D. 1800-1810 (OCTOBER-SEPTEMBER), and 1810-1812. ENGLAND: A. D. 1811. Capture of Java from the Dutch. See INDIA: A. D. 1805-1816. ENGLAND: A. D. 1811-1812. Desertion of Napoleon's Continental System by Russia and Sweden. Reopening of their ports to British commerce. See FRANCE: A. D. 1810-1812. ENGLAND: A. D. 1812 (JANUARY). Building of the first passenger Steam-boat. See STEAM NAVIGATION: THE BEGINNINGS. ENGLAND: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-AUGUST). The Peninsular War. Wellington's victory at Salamanca and advance to Madrid. See SPAIN: A. D. 1812 (JUNE-AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1812-1813. The Liverpool Ministry. Business depression and bad harvests. Distress and rioting. The Luddites. "Again there was much negotiation, and an attempt to introduce Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning to the ministry. Of course they could not serve with Castlereagh; they were then asked to form a ministry with Grenville and Grey, but these Lords objected to the Peninsular War, to which Wellesley was pledged. Grenville and Grey then attempted a ministry of their own but quarrelled with Lord Moira on the appointments to the Household; and as an American war was threatening, and the ministry had already given up their Orders in Council (one of the chief causes of their unpopularity), the Regent rather than remain longer without a ministry, intrusted Lord Liverpool with the Premiership, with Castlereagh as his Foreign Secretary, and the old ministry remained in office. Before the day of triumph of this ministry arrived, while Napoleon was still at the height of his power, and the success of Wellington as yet uncertain, England had drifted into war with America. It is difficult to believe that this useless war might not have been avoided had the ministers been men of ability. It arose from the obstinate manner in which the Government clung to the execution of their retaliatory measures against France, regardless of the practical injury they were inflicting upon all neutrals. ... The same motive of class aggrandizement which detracts from the virtue of the foreign policy of this ministry underlay the whole administration of home affairs. There was an incapacity to look at public affairs from any but a class or aristocratic point of view. The natural consequence was a constantly increasing mass of discontent among the lower orders, only kept in restraint by an overmastering fear felt by all those higher in rank of the possible revolutionary tendencies of any attempt at change. Much of the discontent was of course the inevitable consequence of the circumstances in which England was placed, and for which the Government was only answerable in so far as it created those circumstances. At the same time it is impossible not to blame the complacent manner in which the misery was ignored and the occasional success of individual merchants and contractors regarded as evidences of national prosperity. ... {949} A plentiful harvest in 1813, and the opening of many continental ports, did much to revive both trade and manufactures; but it was accompanied by a fall in the price of corn from 171s. to 75s. The consequence was widespread distress among the agriculturists, which involved the country banks, so that in the two following years 240 of them stopped payment. So great a crash could not fail to affect the manufacturing interest also; apparently, for the instant, the very restoration of peace brought widespread ruin. ... Before the end of the year 1811, wages had sunk to 7s. 6d. a week. The manufacturing operatives were therefore in a state of absolute misery. Petitions signed by 40,000 or 50,000 men urged upon Parliament that they were starving; but there was another class which fared still worse. Machinery had by no means superseded hand-work. In thousands of hamlets and cottages handlooms still existed. The work was neither so good nor so rapid as work done by machinery; even at the best of times used chiefly as an auxiliary to agriculture, this hand labour could now scarcely find employment at all. Not unnaturally, without work and without food, these hand workers were very ready to believe that it was the machinery which caused their ruin, and so in fact it was; the change, though on the whole beneficial, had brought much individual misery. The people were not wise enough to see this. They rose in riots in many parts of England, chiefly about Nottingham, calling themselves Luddites (from the name of a certain idiot lad who some 30 years before, had broken stocking-frames), gathered round them many of the disbanded soldiery with whom the country was thronged, and with a very perfect secret organization, carried out their object of machine-breaking. The unexpected thronging of the village at nightfall, a crowd of men with blackened faces, armed sentinels holding every approach, silence on all sides, the village inhabitants cowering behind closed doors, an hour or two's work of smashing and burning, and the disappearance of the crowd as rapidly as it had arrived--such were the incidents of the night riots." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 3, pages 1325-1332. ALSO IN: C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 7, chapter 30. Pictorial History of England, volume 8, chapter 4 (Reign of George III., volume 4). ENGLAND: A. D. 1812-1815. War with the United States. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1804-1809; 1808; and 1810-1812, to 1815 (JANUARY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1813 (JUNE). Joined with the new European Coalition against Napoleon. See GERMANY: A. D. 1813 (MAY-AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1813-1814. Wellington's victorious and final campaigns in the Peninsular War. See SPAIN: A. D. 1812-1814. ENGLAND: A. D. 1813-1816. War with the Ghorkas of Nepal. See INDIA: A. D..1805-1816. ENGLAND: A. D. 1814. The allies in France and in possession of Paris. Fall of Napoleon. See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (JANUARY-MARCH), and (MARCH-APRIL). ENGLAND: A. D. 1814 (May-June). Treaty of Paris. Acquisition of Malta, the Isle of France and the Cape of Good Hope. See FRANCE: A. D. 1814 (APRIL-JUNE). ENGLAND: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER). The Treaty of Ghent, terminating war with the United States. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (DECEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1814-1815. The Congress of Vienna and its revision of the map of Europe. See VIENNA, THE CONGRESS OF. ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (MARCH). The Corn Law. See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828. [Transcriber's Note:] INDONESIA: A. D. 1815 (APRIL). Eruption of Mount Tambora precipitating the "Year without a Summer" and widespread famine. "Low temperatures and heavy rains resulted in failed harvests in Britain and Ireland. ... With the cause of the problems unknown, hungry people demonstrated in front of grain markets and bakeries. Later riots, arson, and looting took place in many European cities. On some occasions, rioters carried flags reading "Bread or Blood". Though riots were common during times of hunger, the food riots of 1816 and 1817 were the highest levels of violence since the French Revolution. It was the worst famine of 19th-century mainland Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer#Europe [End Transcriber's Note] ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (JUNE). The Waterloo campaign. Defeat and final Overthrow of Napoleon. See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JUNE). ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (JULY-AUGUST). Surrender of Napoleon. His confinement on the Island of St. Helena. See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JUNE-AUGUST). ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (JULY-NOVEMBER). Wellington's army in Paris. The Second Treaty. See FRANCE: A. D. 1815 (JULY-NOVEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1815 (SEPTEMBER). The Holy Alliance. See HOLY ALLIANCE. ENGLAND: A. D. 1816-1820. Agitation for Parliamentary Reform. Hampden Clubs. Spencean philanthropists. Trials of William Hone. The Spa-fields meeting and riot. March of the Blanketeers. Massacre of Peterloo. The Six Acts. Death of George III. Accession of George IV. "From this time the name of Parliamentary Reform became, for the most part, a name of terror to the Government. ... It passed away from the patronage of a few aristocratic lovers of popularity, to be advocated by writers of 'two-penny trash,' and to be discussed and organized by 'Hampden Clubs' of hungering philanthropists and unemployed 'weaver-boys.' Samuel Bamford, who thought it no disgrace to call himself 'a Radical' ... says, 'at this time (1816) the writings of William Cobbett suddenly became of great authority; they were read on nearly every cottage hearth in the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire, in those of Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham; also in many of the Scottish manufacturing towns. Their influence was speedily visible.' Cobbett advocated Parliamentary Reform as the corrective of whatever miseries the lower classes suffered. A new order of politicians was called into action: 'The Sunday-schools of the preceding thirty years had produced many working men of sufficient talent to become readers, writers, and speakers in the village meetings for Parliamentary Reform; some also were found to possess a rude poetic talent, which rendered their effusions popular, and bestowed an additional charm on their assemblages; and by such various means, anxious listeners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were drawn from the cottages of quiet nooks and dingles to the weekly readings and discussions of the Hampden Clubs.' ... In a Report of the Secret Committee of the House of Commons, presented on the 19th of February, 1817, the Hampden Clubs are described as 'associated professedly for the purpose of Parliamentary Reform, upon the most extended principle of universal suffrage and annual parliaments'; but that 'in far the greater number of them ... nothing short of a Revolution is the object expected and avowed.' The testimony of Samuel Bamford shows that, in this early period of their history, the Hampden Clubs limited their object to the attainment of Parliamentary Reform. ... Bamford, at the beginning of 1817, came to London as a delegate from the Middleton Club, to attend a great meeting of delegates to be assembled in London. ... {950} The Middleton delegate was introduced, amidst the reeking tobacco-fog of a low tavern, to the leading members of a society called the 'Spencean Philanthropists.' They derived their name from that of a Mr. Spence, a school-master in Yorkshire, who had conceived a plan for making the nation happy, by causing all the lands of the country to become the property of the State, which State should divide all the produce for the support of the people. ... The Committee of the Spenceans openly meddled with sundry grave questions besides that of a community in land; and, amongst other notable projects, petitioned Parliament to do away with machinery. Amongst these fanatics some dangerous men had established themselves, such as Thistlewood, who subsequently paid the penalty of five years of maniacal plotting." A meeting held at Spa-fields on the 2d of December, 1816, in the interest of the Spencean Philanthropists, terminated in a senseless outbreak of riot, led by a young fanatic named Watson. The mob plundered some gunsmiths' shops, shot one gentleman who remonstrated, and set out to seize the Tower; but was dispersed by a few resolute magistrates and constables. "It is difficult to imagine a more degraded and dangerous position than that in which every political writer was placed during the year 1817. In the first place, he was subject, by a Secretary of State's warrant, to be imprisoned upon suspicion, under the Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act. Secondly, he was open to an ex-officio information, under which he would be compelled to find bail, or be imprisoned. The power of ex-officio information had been extended so as to compel bail, by an Act of 1808; but from 1808 to 1811, during which three years forty such informations were laid, only one person was held to bail. In 1817 numerous ex-officio informations were filed, and the almost invariable practice then was to hold the alleged offender to bail, or, in default, to commit to prison. Under this Act Mr. Hone and others were committed to prison during this year. ... The entire course of these proceedings was a signal failure. There was only one solitary instance of success--William Cobbett ran away. On the 28th of March he fled to America, suspending the publication of his 'Register' for four months. On the 12th of May earl Grey mentioned in the House of Lords that a Mr. Hone was proceeded against for publishing some blasphemous parody; but he had read one of the same nature, written, printed, and published, some years ago, by other people, without any notice having been officially taken of it. The parody to which earl Grey alluded, and a portion of which he recited, was Canning's famous parody, 'Praise Lepaux'; and he asked whether the authors, be they in the cabinet or in any other place, would also be found out and visited with the penalties of the law? This hint to the obscure publisher against whom these ex-officio informations had been filed for blasphemous and seditious parodies, was effectually worked out by him in the solitude of his prison, and in the poor dwelling where he had surrounded himself, as he had done from his earliest years, with a collection of odd and curious books. From these he had gathered an abundance of knowledge that was destined to perplex the technical acquirements of the Attorney-General, to whom the sword and buckler of his precedents would be wholly useless, and to change the determination of the boldest judge in the land [Lord Ellenborough] to convict at any rate, into the prostration of helpless despair. Altogether, the three trials of William Hone are amongst the most remarkable in our constitutional history. They produced more distinct effects upon the temper of the country than any public proceedings of that time. They taught the Government a lesson which has never been forgotten, and to which, as much as to any other cause, we owe the prodigious improvement as to the law of libel itself, and the use of the law, in our own day,--an improvement which leaves what is dangerous in the press to be corrected by the remedial power of the press itself; and which, instead of lamenting over the newly-acquired ability of the masses to read seditious and irreligious works, depends upon the general diffusion of this ability as the surest corrective of the evils that are incident even to the best gift of heaven,--that of knowledge." C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 8, chapter 5. In 1817 "there was widespread distress. There were riots in the counties of England arising out of the distress. There were riots in various parts of London. Secret Committees were appointed by both Houses of the Legislature to inquire into the alleged disaffection of part of the people. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended. The march of the Blanketeers from Manchester [March, 1817] caused panic and consternation through various circles in London. The march of the Blanketeers was a very simple and harmless project. A large number of the working-men in Manchester conceived the idea of walking to London to lay an account of their distress before the heads of the Government, and to ask that some remedy might be found, and also to appeal for the granting of Parliamentary reform. It was part of their arrangement that each man should carry a blanket with him, as they would, necessarily, have to sleep at many places along the way, and they were not exactly in funds to pay for first-class hotel accommodation. The nickname of Blanketeers was given to them because of their portable sleeping-arrangements. The whole project was simple, was touching in its simplicity. Even at this distance of time one cannot read about it without being moved by its pathetic childishness. These poor men thought they had nothing to do but to walk to London, and get to speech of Lord Liverpool, and justice would be done to them and their claims. The Government of Lord Liverpool dealt very roundly, and in a very different way, with the Blanketeers. If the poor men had been marching on London with pikes, muskets and swords, they could not have created a greater fury of panic and of passion in official circles. The Government, availing itself of the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, had the leaders of the movement captured and sent to prison, stopped the march by military force, and dispersed those who were taking part in it. ... The 'Massacre of Peterloo,' as it is not inappropriately called, took place not long after. A great public meeting was held [August 16, 1819] at St. Peter's Field, then on the outskirts of Manchester, now the site of the Free Trade Hall, which many years later rang so often to the thrilling tones of John Bright. The meeting was called to petition for Parliamentary reform. It should be remembered that in those days Manchester, Birmingham, and other great cities were without any manner of representation in Parliament. {951} It was a vast meeting--some 80,000 men and women are stated to have been present. The yeomanry [a mounted militia force], for some reason impossible to understand, endeavoured to disperse the meeting, and actually dashed in upon the crowd, spurring their horses and flourishing their sabres. Eleven persons were killed, and several hundreds were wounded. The Government brought in, as their panacea for popular trouble and discontent, the famous Six Acts. These Acts were simply measures to render it more easy for the authorities to put down or disperse meetings which they considered objectionable, and to suppress any manner of publication which they chose to call seditious. But among them were some Bills to prevent training and drilling, and the collection and use of arms. These measures show what the panic of the Government was. It was the conviction of the ruling classes that the poor and the working-classes of England were preparing a revolution. ... During all this time, the few genuine Radicals in the House of Commons were bringing on motion after motion for Parliamentary reform, just as Grattan and his friends were bringing forward motion after motion for Catholic Emancipation. In 1818, a motion by Sir Francis Burdett for annual Parliaments and universal suffrage was lost by a majority of 106 to nobody. ... The motion had only two supporters--Burdett himself, and his colleague, Lord Cochrane. ... The forms of the House require two tellers on either side, and a compliance with this inevitable rule took up the whole strength of Burdett's party. ... On January 29, 1820, the long reign of George III. came to an end. The life of the King closed in darkness of eyes and mind. Stone-blind, stone-deaf, and, except for rare lucid intervals, wholly out of his senses, the poor old King wandered from room to room of his palace, a touching picture, with his long, white, flowing beard, now repeating to himself the awful words of Milton--the 'dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon--irrecoverably dark'--now, in a happier mood, announcing himself to be in the companionship of angels. George, the Prince Regent, succeeded, of course, to the throne; and George IV. at once announced his willingness to retain the services of the Ministry of Lord Liverpool. The Whigs had at one time expected much from the coming of George IV. to the throne, but their hopes had begun to be chilled of late." J. McCarthy, Sir Robert Peel, chapter 3. ALSO IN: J. Routledge, Chapters in the History of Popular Progress, chapters 12-19. H. Martineau, History of the Thirty Years' Peace, book 1, chapters 5-17 (volume 1). E. Smith, William Cobbett, chapters 21-23 (volume 2). See, also, TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828. ENGLAND: A. D. 1818. Convention with the United States relating to Fisheries, etc. See FISHERIES, NORTH AMERICAN: A. D. 1814-1818. ENGLAND: A. D. 1820. Accession of King George IV. ENGLAND: A. D. 1820-1822. Congresses of Troppau, Laybach and Verona. Projects of the Holy Alliance. English protests. Canning's policy towards Spain and the Spanish American colonies. See VERONA, THE CONGRESS OF. ENGLAND: A. D. 1820-1827. The Cato Street Conspiracy. Trial of Queen Caroline. Canning in the Foreign Office. Commercial Crisis of 1825. Canning as Premier. His death. "Riot and social misery had, during the Regency, heralded the Reign. They did not cease to afflict the country. At once we are plunged into the wretched details of a conspiracy. Secret intelligence reached the Home Office to the effect that a man named Thistlewood, who had been a year in jail for challenging Lord Sidmouth, had with several accomplices laid a plot to murder the Ministers during a Cabinet dinner, which was to come off at Lord Harrowby's. The guests did not go, and the police pounced on the gang, arming themselves in a stable in Cato Street, off the Edgeware Road. Thistlewood blew out the candle, having first stabbed a policeman to the heart. For that night he got off; but, being taken next day, he was soon hanged, with his four leading associates. This is called the Cato Street Conspiracy. ... George IV., almost as soon as the crown became his own, began to stir in the matter of getting a divorce from his wife. He had married this poor Princess Caroline of Brunswick in 1795, merely for the purpose of getting his debts paid. Their first interview disappointed both. After some time of semi-banishment to Blackheath she had gone abroad to live chiefly in Italy, and had been made the subject of more than one 'delicate investigation' for the purpose of procuring evidence of infidelity against her. She now came to England (June 6, 1820), and passed from Dover to London through joyous and sympathizing crowds. The King sent a royal message to the Lords, asking for an inquiry into her conduct. Lord Liverpool and Lord Castlereagh laid before the Lords and Commons a green bag, stuffed with indecent and disgusting accusations against the Queen. Happily for her she had two champions, whose names shall not readily lose the lustre gained in her defence--Henry Brougham and Thomas Denman, her Attorney-General and Solicitor-General. After the failure of a negotiation, in which the Queen demanded two things that the Ministers refused--the insertion of her name in the Liturgy, and a proper reception at some foreign court--Lord Liverpool brought into the Upper House a 'Bill of Pains and Penalties,' which aimed at her degradation from the throne and the dissolution of her marriage. Through the fever-heat of a scorching summer the case went on, counsel and witnesses playing their respective parts before the Lords. ... At length the Bill, carried on its third reading by a majority of only nine, was abandoned by the Ministry (November 10). And the country broke out into cheers and flaming windows. Had she rested content with the vindication of her fair fame, it would have been better for her own peace. But she went in public procession to St. Paul's to return thanks for her victory. And more rashly still in the following year she tried to force her way into Westminster Abbey during the Coronation of her husband (July 19, 1821). But mercy came a few days later from the King of kings. The people, true to her even in death, insisted that the hearse containing her remains should pass through the city; and in spite of bullets from the carbines of dragoons they gained their point, the Lord Mayor heading the procession till it had cleared the streets. ... George Canning had resigned his office rather than take any part with the Liverpool Cabinet in supporting the 'Bill of Pains and Penalties,' and had gone to the Continent for the summer of the trial year. {952} Early in 1822 Lord Sidmouth ... resigned the Home Office. He was succeeded by Robert Peel, a statesman destined to achieve eminence. Canning about the same time was offered the post of Governor-General of India," and accepted it; but this arrangement was suddenly changed by the death of Castlereagh, who committed suicide in August. Canning then became Foreign Secretary. "The spirit of Canning's foreign policy was diametrically opposed to that of Londonderry [Castlereagh]. ... Refusing to interfere in Spanish affairs, he yet acknowledged the new-won freedom of the South American States, which had lately shaken off the Spanish yoke. To preserve peace and yet cut England loose from the Holy Alliance were the conflicting aims, which the genius of Canning enabled him to reconcile [see VERONA, CONGRESS OF]. ... During the years 1824-25, the country, drunk with unusual prosperity, took that speculation fever which has afflicted her more than once during the last century and a half. ... A crop of fungus companies sprang up temptingly from the heated soil of the Stock Exchange. ... Shares were bought and gambled in. The winter passed; but spring shone on glutted markets. depreciated stock, no buyers, and no returns from the shadowy and distant investments in South America, which had absorbed so much capital. Then the crashing began--the weak broke first, the strong next, until banks went down by dozens, and commerce for the time was paralyzed. By causing the issue of one and two pound notes, by coining in great haste a new supply of sovereigns, and by inducing the Bank of England to lend money upon the security of goods--in fact to begin the pawnbroking business--the Government met the crisis, allayed the panic, and to some extent restored commercial credit. Apoplexy having struck down Lord Liverpool early in 1827, it became necessary to select a new Premier. Canning was the chosen man." He formed a Cabinet with difficulty in April, Wellington, Peel, Eldon, and others of his former colleagues refusing to take office with him. His administration was brought abruptly to an end in August by his sudden death. W. F. Collier, History of England, pages 526-529. ALSO IN: Lord Brougham, Life and Times, by Himself, chapters 12-18 (volume 2). A. G. Stapleton, George Canning and His Times, chapters 18-34. A. G. Stapleton, Some Official Correspondence of George Canning, 2 volumes F. H. Hill, George Canning, chapters 19-22. Sir T. Martin, Life of Lord Lyndhurst, chapter 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1824-1826. The first Burmese War. See INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833. ENGLAND: A. D. 1825-1830. The beginning of railroads. See STEAM LOCOMOTION ON LAND. ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1828. Removal of Disabilities from the Dissenters. Repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts. "Early in 1827 a private member, of little influence, unexpectedly raised a dormant question. For the best part of a century the Dissenters had passively submitted to the anomalous position in which they had been placed by the Legislature [see above: A. D. 1662-1665; 1672-1673; 1711-1714]. Nominally unable to hold any office under the Crown, they were annually 'whitewashed' for their infringement of the law by the passage of an Indemnity Act. The Dissenters had hitherto been assenting parties to this policy. They fancied that the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts would logically lead to the emancipation of the Roman Catholics, and they preferred remaining under a disability themselves to running the risk of conceding relief to others. The tacit understanding, which thus existed between the Church on one side and Dissent on the other, was maintained unbroken and almost unchallenged till 1827. It was challenged in that year by William Smith, the member for Norwich. Smith was a London banker; he was a Dissenter; and he felt keenly the hard, unjust, and unnecessary' law which disabled him from holding, any office, however insignificant, under the Crown,' and from sitting 'as a magistrate in any corporation without violating his conscience.' Smith took the opportunity which the annual Indemnity Act afforded him of stating these views in the House of Commons. As he spoke the scales fell from the eyes of the Liberal members. The moment he sat down Harvey, the member for Colchester, twitted the Opposition with disregarding 'the substantial claims of the Dissenters,' while those of the Catholics were urged year after year' with the vehemence of party,' and supported by 'the mightiest powers of energy and eloquence.' The taunt called up Lord John Russell, and elicited from him the declaration that he would bring forward a motion on the Test and Corporation Acts, 'if the Protestant Dissenters should think it to their interest that he should do so.' A year afterwards--on the 26th of February, 1828--Lord John Russell rose to redeem the promise which he thus gave." His motion "was carried by 237 votes to 193. The Ministry had sustained a crushing and unexpected reverse. For the moment it was doubtful whether it could continue in office. It was saved from the necessity of resigning by the moderation and dexterity of Peel. Peel considered that nothing could be more unfortunate for the Church than to involve the House of Commons in a conflict with the House of Lords on a religious question. ... On his advice the Bishops consented to substitute a formal declaration for the test hitherto in force. The declaration, which contained a promise that the maker of it would 'never exert any power or any influence to injure or subvert the Protestant' Established Church, was to be taken by the members of every corporation, and, at the pleasure of the Crown, by the holder of every office. Russell, though he disliked the declaration, assented to it for the sake of securing the success of his measure." The bill was modified accordingly and passed both Houses, though strenuously resisted by all the Tories of the old school. S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 10 (volume 2). ALSO IN: J. Stoughton, Religion in England from 1800 to 1850, volume 1, chapter 2. H. S. Skeats, History of the Free Churches of England, chapter 9. ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1828. The administration of Lord Goderich. Advent of the Wellington Ministry. "The death of Mr. Canning placed Lord Goderich at the head of the government. The composition of the Cabinet was slightly altered. Mr. Huskisson became Colonial Secretary, Mr. Herries Chancellor of the Exchequer. The government was generally considered to be weak, and not calculated for a long endurance. ... The differences upon financial measures between Mr. Herries ... and Mr. Huskisson ... could not be reconciled by Lord Goderich, and he therefore tendered his resignation to the king on the 9th of January, 1828. {953} His majesty immediately sent to lord Lyndhurst to desire that he and the duke of Wellington should come to Windsor. The king told the duke that he wished him to form a government of which he should be the head. ... It was understood that lord Lyndhurst was to continue in office. The duke of Wellington immediately applied to Mr. Peel, who, returning to his post of Secretary of State for the Home Department, saw the impossibility of re-uniting in this administration those who had formed the Cabinet of lord Liverpool. He desired to strengthen the government of the duke of Wellington by the introduction of some of the more important of Mr. Canning's friends into the Cabinet and to fill some of the lesser offices. The earl of Dudley, Mr. Huskisson, lord Palmerston, and Mr. Charles Grant, became members of the new administration. Mr. William Lamb, afterwards lord Melbourne, was appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland. The ultra-Tories were greatly indignant at these arrangements. They groaned and reviled as if the world was unchanged." C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 8, chapter 13. ALSO IN: Sir T. Martin, Life of Lord Lyndhurst, chapter 9. W. M. Torrens, Life of Viscount Melbourne, volume 1, chapter 15. ENGLAND: A. D. 1827-1829. Intervention on behalf of Greece. Battle of Navarino. See GREECE: A. D. 1821-1829. ENGLAND: A. D. 1828. Corn Law amendment. The Sliding Scale. See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828. ENGLAND: A. D. 1829. Catholic Emancipation. See IRELAND: A. D. 1811-1829. ENGLAND: A. D. 1830. The state of the Parliamentary representation before Reform. Death of George IV. Accession of William IV. Fall of the Wellington Ministry. "Down to the year 1800, when the Union between Great Britain and Ireland was effected, the House consisted of 558 members; after 1800, it consisted of 658 members. In the earlier days of George III., it was elected by 160,000 voters, out of a population of a little more than eight millions; in the later days of that monarch, it was elected by about 440,000 voters, out of a population of twenty-two millions. ... But the inadequacy of the representation will be even more striking if we consider the manner in which the electors were broken up into constituencies. The constituencies consisted either of counties, or of cities or boroughs. Generally speaking, the counties of England and Wales (and of Ireland, after the Union) were represented by two members, and the counties of Scotland by one member; and the voters were the forty-shilling freeholders. The number of cities and boroughs which returned members varied; but, from the date of the Union, there were about 217 in England and Wales, 14 in Scotland, and 39 in Ireland,--all the English and Welsh boroughs (with a few exceptions) returning two members, and the Scotch and Irish boroughs one member. How the particular places came to be Parliamentary boroughs is a question of much historic interest, which cannot be dealt with here in detail. Originally, the places to which writs were issued seem to have been chosen by the Crown, or, not unfrequently, by the Sheriffs of the counties. Probably, in the first instance, the more important places were selected; though other considerations, such as the political opinions of the owners of the soil, and the desire to recognise services (often of a very questionable character) rendered by such owners to the King, no doubt had their weight. In the time of Cromwell, some important changes were made. In 1654, he disfranchised many small boroughs, increased the number of county members, and enfranchised Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax. All these reforms were cancelled after the Restoration; and from that time very few changes were made. ... In the hundred and fifty years which followed the Restoration, however, there were changes in the condition of the country, altogether beyond the control of either kings or parliaments. Old towns disappeared or decayed, and new ones sprang up. Manchester, Birmingham, and Leeds were remarkable examples of the latter,--Old Sarum was an example of the former. ... At one time a place of some importance, it declined from the springing up of New Sarum (Salisbury); and, even so far back as the reign of Henry VII., it existed as a town only in imagination, and in the roll of the Parliamentary boroughs. ... Many other places might be named [known as Rotten Boroughs and Pocket Boroughs]--such as Gatton in Surrey, and Ludgershall in Wiltshire--which represented only their owners. In fact, the representation of owners, and of owners only, was a very prominent feature of the electoral system now under consideration. Thus, the Duke of Norfolk was represented by eleven members, who sat for places forming a part of his estates; similarly, Lord Lonsdale was represented by nine members, Lord Darlington by seven, the Duke of Rutland and several other peers by six each; and it is stated by one authority that the Duke of Newcastle, at one time, returned one third of all the members for the boroughs, while, up to 1780, the members for the county of York--the largest and most influential of the counties--were always elected in Lord Rockingham's dining-room. But these are only selected instances. Many others might be cited. According to a statement made by the Duke of Richmond in 1780, 6,000 persons returned a clear majority of the House of Commons. In 1793, the Society of the Friends of the People asserted, and declared that they were able to prove, that 84 individuals returned 157 members; that 70 individuals returned 150 members; and that of the 154 individuals who thus returned 307 members--the majority of the House before the Union with Ireland--no fewer than 40 were peers. The same Society asserted in the same year, and declared that they were able to prove, that 70 members were returned by 35 places, in which there were scarcely any electors; that 90 members were returned by 46 places, in which there were fewer than 50 electors; that 37 members were returned by 19 places, with not more than 100 electors; and that 52 members were returned by 26 places, with not more than 200 electors: all these in England alone. Even in the towns which had a real claim to representation, the franchise rested upon no uniform basis. ... In some cases the suffrage was practically household suffrage; in other cases the suffrage was extremely restricted. But they all returned their two members equally; it made no difference whether the voters numbered 3,000 or only three or four. Such being the state of the representation, corruption was inevitable. Bribery was practised to an inconceivable extent. Many of the smaller boroughs had a fixed price, and it was by no means uncommon to see a borough advertised for sale in the newspapers. ... {954} As an example of cost in contesting a county election, it is on record that the joint expenses of Lord Milton and Mr. Lascelles, in contesting the county of York in 1807, were £200,000. ... It is not to be supposed that a condition of things which appears to us so intolerable attracted no attention before what may be called the Reform era. So far back as 1745, Sir Francis Dashwood (afterwards Lord de Spencer) moved an amendment to the Address in favour of Reform; Lord Chatham himself, in 1766 and 1770, spoke of the borough representation as 'the rotten part of the constitution,' and likened it to a 'mortified limb'; the Duke of Richmond of that day, in 1780, introduced a bill into the House of Lords which would have given manhood suffrage and annual parliaments; and three times in succession, in 1782, 1783, and 1785, Mr. Pitt proposed resolutions in favour of Reform. ... After Mr. Pitt had abandoned the cause, Mr. (afterwards Earl) Grey took up the subject. First, in 1792, he presented that famous petition from the Society of the Friends of the People, to which allusion has been already made, and founded a resolution upon it. He made further efforts in 1793, 1795, and 1797, but was on every occasion defeated by large majorities. ... From the beginning of the 19th century to the year 1815--with the exception of a few months after the Peace of Amiens in 1802--England was at war. During that time Reform dropped out of notice. ... In 1817, and again in 1818 and 1819, Sir Francis Burdett, who was at that time member for Westminster and a leading Reformer, brought the question of Reform before the House of Commons. On each occasion he was defeated by a tremendous majority. ... The next ten years were comparatively uneventful, so far as the subject of this history is concerned. ... Two events made the year 1830 particularly opportune for raising the question of Parliamentary Reform. The first of these events was the death of George IV. [June 26],--the second, the deposition of Charles X. of France. ... For the deposition of Charles--followed as it was very soon by a successful insurrection in Belgium--produced an immense impression upon the Liberals of this country, and upon the people generally. In a few days or weeks there had been secured in two continental countries what the people of England had been asking for in vain for years. ... We must not omit to notice one other circumstance that favoured the cause of Reform. This was the popular distress. Distress always favours agitation. The distress in 1830 was described in the House of Lords at the time as 'unparalleled in any previous part of our history.' Probably this was an exaggeration. But there can be no doubt that the distress was general, and that it was acute. ... By the law as it stood when George IV. died, the demise of the Crown involved a dissolution of Parliament. The Parliament which was in existence in 1830 had been elected in 1826. Since the beginning o£ 1828 the Duke of Wellington had been Prime Minister, with Mr. (soon after Sir Robert) Peel as Home Secretary, and Leader of the House of Commons. They decided to dissolve at once. ... In the Parliament thus dissolved, and especially in the session just brought to a close, the question of Reform had held a prominent place. At the very beginning of the session, in the first week of February, the Marquis of Blandford (afterwards Duke of Marlborough) moved an amendment to the Address, in which, though a Tory, he affirmed the conviction 'that the State is at this moment in the most imminent danger, and that no effectual measures of salvation will or can be adopted until the people shall be restored to their rightful share in the legislation of the country.' ... He was supported on very different grounds by Mr. O'Connell, but was defeated by a vote of 96 to 11. A few days later he introduced a specific plan of Reform--a very Radical plan indeed--but was again ignominiously defeated; then, on the 23d of February, Lord John Russell ... asked for leave to bring in a bill for conferring the franchise upon Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, as the three largest unrepresented towns in the kingdom, but was defeated by 188 votes to 140; and finally, on the 28th of May--scarcely two months before the dissolution--Mr. O'Connell brought in a bill to establish universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and triennial parliaments, but found only 13 members to support him in a House of 332. ... Thus, the question of Reform was now before the country, not merely as a popular but as a Parliamentary question. It is not too much to say that, when the dissolution occurred, it occupied all minds. ... The whole of August and a considerable part of September, therefore, were occupied with the elections, which were attended by an unparalleled degree of excite merit. ... When all was over, and the results were reckoned up, it was found that, of the 28 members who represented the thirteen greatest cities in England (to say nothing of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland), only 3 were Minsterialists. ... Of the 236 men who were returned by elections, more or less popular, in England, only 79 were Ministerialists. ... The first Parliament of William IV. met on the 26th of October, but the session was not really opened till the 2d of November, when the King came down and delivered his Speech. ... The occasion was made memorable, however, not by the King's Speech, but by a speech by the Duke of Wellington, who was then Prime Minister. ... 'The noble Earl [Grey],' said the Duke, 'has alluded to something in the shape of a Parliamentary Reform, but he has been candid enough to acknowledge that he is not prepared with any measure of Reform; and I have as little scruple to say that his Majesty's Government is as totally unprepared as the noble lord. Nay, on my own part, I will go further, and say, that I have never read or heard of any measure, up to the present moment, which could in any degree satisfy my mind that the state of the representation could be improved, or be rendered more satisfactory to the country at large than at the present moment. ... I am not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but I will at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, as long as I hold any station in the government of the country, I shall always feel it my duty to resist such measures when proposed by others.' Exactly fourteen days after the delivery of this speech, the Duke's career' as Prime Minister came for the time to a close. On the 16th of November he came down to Westminster, and announced that he had resigned office. In the meantime, there had been something like a panic in the city, because Ministers, apprehending disturbance, had advised the King and Queen to abandon an engagement to dine, on the 9th, with the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall. {955} On the 15th, too, the Government had sustained a defeat in the House of Commons, on a motion proposed by Sir Henry Parnell on the part of the Opposition, having reference to the civil list. This defeat was made the pretext for resignation. But it was only a pretext. After the Duke's declaration in regard to Reform, and in view of his daily increasing unpopularity, his continuance in office was impossible." W. Heaton, The Three Reforms of Parliament, chapters 1-2. ALSO IN: A. Paul, History of Reform, chapters 1-6. W. Bagehot, Essays on Parliamentary Reform, essay 2. H. Cox, Antient Parliamentary Elections. S. Walpole, The Electorate and the Legislature, chapter 4. E. A. Freeman, Decayed Boroughs (Historical Essays, 4th series). England: A. D. 1830-1832. The great Reform of Representation in Parliament, under the Ministry of Earl Grey. "Earl Grey was the new Minister; and Mr. Brougham his Lord Chancellor. The first announcement of the premier was that the government would 'take into immediate consideration the state of the representation, with a view to the correction of those defects which have been occasioned in it, by the operation of time; and with a view to the reestablishment of that confidence upon the part of the people, which he was afraid Parliament did not at present enjoy, to the full extent that is essential for the welfare and safety of the country, and the preservation of the government.' The government were now pledged to a measure of parliamentary reform; and during the Christmas recess were occupied in preparing it. Meanwhile, the cause was eagerly supported by the people. ... So great were the difficulties with which the government had to contend, that they needed all the encouragement that the people could give. They had to encounter the reluctance of the king,--the interests of the proprietors of boroughs, which Mr. Pitt, unable to overcome, had sought to purchase,--the opposition of two thirds of the House of Lords; and perhaps of a majority of the House of Commons,--and above all, the strong Tory spirit of the country. ... On the 3d February, when Parliament reassembled, Lord Grey announced that the government had succeeded in framing 'a measure which would be effective, without exceeding the bounds of a just and well-advised moderation,' and which 'had received the unanimous consent of the whole government.' ... On the 1st March, this measure was brought forward in the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, to whom,--though not in the cabinet,--this honorable duty had been justly confided. ... On the 22d March, the second reading of the bill was carried by a majority of one only, in a House of 608,--probably the greatest number which, up to that time, had ever been assembled at a division. On the 19th of April, on going into committee, ministers found themselves in a minority of eight, on a resolution proposed by General Gascoyne, that the number of members returned for England ought not to be diminished. On the 21st, ministers announced that it was not their intention to proceed with the bill. On that same night, they were again defeated on a question of adjournment, by a majority of twenty-two. This last vote was decisive. The very next day, Parliament was prorogued by the king in person, 'with a view to its immediate dissolution.' It was one of the most critical days in the history of our country. ... The people were now to decide the question;--and they decided it. A triumphant body of reformers was returned, pledged to carry the reform bill; and on the 6th July, the second reading of the renewed measure was agreed to, by a majority of 136. The most tedious and irritating discussions ensued in committee,--night after night; and the bill was not disposed of until the 21st September, when it was passed by a majority of 109. That the peers were still adverse to the bill was certain; but whether, at such a crisis, they would venture to oppose the national will, was doubtful. On the 7th October, after a debate of five nights,--one of the most memorable by which that House has ever been distinguished, and itself a great event in history,--the bill was rejected on the second reading, by a majority of forty-one. The battle was to be fought again. Ministers were too far pledged to the people to think of resigning; and on the motion of Lord Ebrington, they were immediately supported by a vote of confidence from the House of Commons. On the 20th October, Parliament was prorogued; and after a short interval of excitement, turbulence, and danger [see BRISTOL: A. D. 1831], met again on the 6th December. A third reform bill was immediately brought in,--changed in many respects,--and much improved by reason of the recent census, and other statistical investigations. Amongst other changes, the total number of members was no longer proposed to be reduced. This bill was read a second time on Sunday morning, the 18th of December, by a majority of 162. On the 23d March, it was passed by the House of Commons, and once more was before the House of Lords. Here the peril of again rejecting it could not be concealed,--the courage of some was shaken,--the patriotism of others aroused; and after a debate of four nights, the second reading was affirmed by the narrow majority of nine. But danger still awaited it. The peers who would no longer venture to reject such a bill, were preparing to change its essential character by amendments. Meanwhile the agitation of the people was becoming dangerous. ... The time had come, when either the Lords must be coerced; or the ministers must resign. This alternative was submitted to the king. He refused to create peers: the ministers resigned, and their resignation was accepted. Again the Commons came to the rescue of the bill and the reform ministry. On the motion of Lord Ebrington, an address was immediately voted by them, renewing their expressions of unaltered confidence in the late ministers, and imploring his Majesty 'to call to his councils such persons only as will carry into effect, unimpaired in all its essential provisions, that bill for reforming the representation of the people, which has recently passed this House.' ... The public excitement was greater than ever; and the government and the people were in imminent danger of a bloody collision, when Earl Grey was recalled to the councils of his sovereign. The bill was now secure. The peers averted the threatened addition to their numbers by abstaining from further opposition; and the bill,--the Great Charter of 1832,--at length received the Royal Assent. It is now time to advert to the provisions of this famous statute; and to inquire how far it corrected the faults of a system, which had been complained of for more than half a century. {956} The main evil had been the number of nomination, or rotten boroughs enjoying the franchise. Fifty-six of these,--having less than 2,000 inhabitants, and returning 111 members,--were swept away. Thirty boroughs, having less than 4,000 inhabitants, lost each a member. Weymouth and Melcombe Regis lost two. This disfranchisement extended to 143 members. The next evil had been, that large populations were unrepresented; and this was now redressed. Twenty-two large towns, including metropolitan districts, received the privilege of returning two members; and 20 more of returning one. The large county populations were also regarded in the distribution of seats,--the number of county members being increased from 94 to 159. The larger counties were divided; and the number of members adjusted with reference to the importance of the constituencies. Another evil was the restricted and unequal franchise. This too was corrected. All narrow rights of election were set aside in Boroughs; and a £10 household franchise was established. The freemen of corporate towns were the only class of electors whose rights were reserved; but residence within the borough was attached as a condition to their right of voting. ... The county constituency was enlarged by the addition of copyholders and leaseholders, for terms of years, and of tenants-at-will paying a rent of £50 a year. ... The defects of the Scotch representation, being even more flagrant and indefensible than those of England, were not likely to be omitted from Lord Grey's general scheme of reform. ... The entire representation was remodelled. Forty-five members had been assigned to Scotland at the Union: this number was now increased to 53 of whom 30 were allotted to counties, and 23 to cities and burghs. The county franchise was extended to all owners of property of £10 a year, and to certain classes of leaseholders; and the burgh franchise to all £10 householders. The representation of Ireland had many of the defects of the English system. ... The right of election was taken away from the corporations, and vested in £10 householders; and large additions were made to the county constituency. The number of members in Ireland, which the Act of Union had settled at 100, was now increased to 105." T. E. May, Constitutional History of England, 1760-1860, chapter 6 (volume 1). ALSO IN: W. N. Molesworth, History of the Reform Bill of 1832. W. Jones, Biographical Sketches of the Reform Ministers. Lord Brougham, Life and Times, by Himself, chapters 21-22. S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 11 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1831. First assumption of the name Conservatives by the Tories. See CONSERVATIVE PARTY. ENGLAND: A. D. 1831-1832. Intervention in the Netherlands. Creation of the kingdom of Belgium. War with Holland. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1830-1832. ENGLAND: A. D. 1832-1833. Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies. Trade monopoly of the East India Company withdrawn. Factory Bill. Irish tithes. "The period which succeeded the passing of the Reform Bill was one of immense activity and earnestness in legislation. ... The first great reform was the complete abolition of the system of slavery in the British colonies. The slave trade had itself been suppressed so far as we could suppress it long before that time, but now the whole system of West Indian slavery was brought to an end [see SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1834-1838]. ... A long agitation of the small but energetic anti-slavery party brought about this practical result in 1833. ... Granville Sharpe, Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian and statesman, Thomas Fowell Buxton, Wilberforce, Brougham, and many others, had for a long time been striving hard to rouse up public opinion to the abolition of the slave system." The bill which passed Parliament gave immediate freedom to all children subsequently born, and to all those who were then under six years of age; while it determined for all other slaves a period of apprenticeship, lasting five years in one class and seven years in another, after which they attained absolute freedom. It appropriated £20,000,000 for the compensation of the slave-owners. "Another reform of no small importance was accomplished when the charter of the East India Company came to be renewed in 1833. The clause giving them a commercial monopoly of the trade of the East was abolished, and the trade thrown open to the merchants of the world [see INDIA: A. D. 1823-1833]. There were other slaves in those days as well as the negro. There were slaves at home, slaves to all intents and purposes, who were condemned to a servitude as rigorous as that of the negro, and who, as far as personal treatment went, suffered more severely than negroes in the better class plantations. We speak now of the workers in the great mines and factories. No law up to this time regulated with anything like reasonable stringency the hours of labour in factories. ... A commission was appointed to investigate the condition of those who worked in the factories. Lord Ashley, since everywhere known as the Earl of Shaftesbury, ... brought forward the motion which ended in the appointment of the commission. The commission quickly brought together an immense amount of evidence to show the terrible effect, moral and physical, of the over-working of women and children, and an agitation set in for the purpose of limiting by law the duration of the hours of labour. ... The principle of legislative interference to protect children working in factories was established by an Act passed in 1833, limiting the work of children to eight hours a day, and that of young persons under eighteen to 69 hours a week [see FACTORY LEGISLATION]. The agitation then set on foot and led by Lord Ashley was engaged for years after in endeavouring to give that principle a more extended application. ... Irish tithes were one of the grievances which came under the energetic action of this period of reform. The people of Ireland complained with justice of having to pay tithes for the maintenance of the church establishment in which they did not believe, and under whose roofs they never bent in worship." In 1832, committees of both Houses of Parliament reported in favor of the extinction of tithes; but the Government undertook temporarily a scheme whereby it made advances to the Irish clergy and assumed the collection of tithes among its own functions. It only succeeded in making matters worse, and several years passed before the adoption (in 1838) of a bill which "converted the tithe composition into a rent charge." J. McCarthy, The Epoch of Reform, chapters 7-8. ALSO IN: C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 8, chapter 17. H. Martineau, History of the Thirty Years' Peace, book 4, chapters 6-9 (volumes 2-3). {957} ENGLAND: A. D. 1833-1840. Turko-Egyptian question and its settlement. The capture of Acre. Bombardment of Alexandria. See TURKS: A. D. 1831-1840. ENGLAND: A. D. 1833-1845. The Oxford or Tractarian Movement. See OXFORD OR TRACTARIAN MOVEMENT. ENGLAND: A. D. 1834-1837. Resignation of Lord Grey and the Reform Ministry. The first Melbourne Administration. Peel's first Ministry and Melbourne's second. Death of William IV. Accession of Queen Victoria. "On May 27th, Mr. Ward, member of St. Albans, brought forward ... resolutions, that the Protestant Episcopal Church of Ireland much exceeded the spiritual wants of the Protestant population; that it was the right of the State, and of Parliament, to distribute church property, and that the temporal possessions of the Irish church ought to be reduced. The ministers determined to adopt a middle course and appoint a commission of inquiry; they hoped thereby to induce Mr. Ward to withdraw his motion, because the question was already in government hands. While the negotiations were going on, news was received of the resignation of four of the most conservative members of the Cabinet, who regarded any interference with church property with abhorrence; they were Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of Ripon. ... Owing to the difference of opinion in the Cabinet on the Irish coercion bill, on July 9, 1834, Earl Grey placed his resignation as Prime Minister in the hands of the king. On the 10th the House of Commons adjourned for four days. On the 14th, Viscount Melbourne stated in the House of Lords that his Majesty had honored him with his commands for the formation of a ministry. He had undertaken the task, but it was not yet completed. There was very little change in the Cabinet; Lord Melbourne's place in the Home Department was filled by Lord Duncannon; Sir John Cam Hobhouse obtained a seat as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and Lord Carlisle surrendered the Privy Seal to Lord Mulgrave. The Irish Church Bill was again brought forward, and although it passed the Commons, was defeated in the Lords, August 1st. The king much disliked the church policy of the Whigs, and dreaded reform. He was eager to prevent the meeting of the House, and circumstances favored him. Before the session Lord Spencer died, and Lord Althorpe, his son, was thus removed to the upper House. There was no reason why this should have broken up the ministry, but the king seized the opportunity, sent for Lord Melbourne, asserted that the ministry depended chiefly on the personal influence of Lord Althorpe in the Commons, declared that, deprived of it as it now was, the government could not go on, and dismissed his ministers, instructing Melbourne at once to send for the Duke of Wellington. The sensation in London was great; the dismissal of the ministry was considered unconstitutional; the act of the king was wholly without precedent. ... The Duke of Wellington, from November 15th to December 9th, was the First Lord of the Treasury, and the sole Secretary of State, having only one colleague, Lord Lyndhurst, who held the great seal, while at the same time he sat as Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer. This temporary government was called a dictatorship. ... On Sir Robert Peel's return from Italy, whence he had been called, he waited upon the king and accepted the office of First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer. With the king's permission, he applied to Lord Stanley and Sir James Graham, entreating them to give him the benefit of their co-operation as colleagues in the Cabinet. They both declined. Prevented from forming a moderate Conservative ministry, he was reduced to fill his places with men of more pronounced opinions, which promised ill for any advance in reform. ... The Foreign, Home, War, and Colonial offices were filled by Wellington, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen; Lord Lyndhurst was Lord Chancellor; Harding, Secretary for Ireland; and Lord Wharncliffe, Privy Seal. With this ministry Peel had to meet a hostile House of Commons. ... The Prime Minister therefore thought it necessary to dissolve Parliament, and took the opportunity [in what was called 'the Tamworth manifesto'] of declaring his policy. He declared his acceptance of the Reform Bill as a final settlement of the question. ... The elections, though they returned a House, as is generally the case, more favorable to the existing government than that which had been dissolved, still gave a considerable majority to the Liberals. ... Lord John Russell, on April 7th, proposed the resolution, 'That it is the opinion of this House that no measure upon the subject of the tithes in Ireland can lead to satisfactory and final adjustment which does not embody the temporalities of the Church in Ireland.' This was adopted by a majority of 27, and that majority was fatal to the ministry. On the following day the Duke of Wellington, in the House of Lords, stated that in consequence of the resolution in the House of Commons, the ministry had tendered their resignation. Sir Robert made a similar explanation in the Commons. Ten days later, Viscount Melbourne, in moving the adjournment of the House of Lords, stated that the king had been pleased to appoint him First Lord of the Treasury. ... On June 9, 1837, a bulletin issued from Windsor Castle informing a loyal and really affectionate people that the king was ill. From the 12th they were regularly issued until the 19th, when the malady, inflammation of the lungs, had greatly increased. ... On Tuesday, June 20th, the last of these official documents was issued. His Majesty had expired that morning at 2 o'clock. William died in the seventy-second year of his age and seventh year of his reign, leaving no legitimate issue. He was succeeded by his niece, Alexandrina Victoria." A. H. McCalman, Abridged History of England, pages 565-570. ALSO IN: W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, volume 2, chapters 10-12. W. M. Torrens, Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne, volume 2, chapters 1-8. J. W. Croker, Correspondence and Diaries, chapters 18-20 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1836-1839. Beginning of the Anti-Corn-Law Agitation. See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1836-1839. ENGLAND: A. D. 1837. Separation of Hanover. See HANOVER: A. D. 1837. {958} ENGLAND: A. D. 1837-1839. Opening of the reign of Queen Victoria. End of personal rule. Beginning of purely constitutional government. Peel and the Bedchamber Question. "The Duke of Wellington thought the accession of a woman to the sovereign's place would be fatal to the present hopes of the Tories [who were then expecting a turn of events in their favor, as against the Whig administration of Lord Melbourne]. 'Peel,' he said, 'has no manners, and I have no small talk.' He seemed to take it for granted that the new sovereign would choose her Ministers as a school-girl chooses her companions. He did not know, did not foresee, that with the accession of Queen Victoria the real reign of constitutional government in these islands was to begin. The late King had advanced somewhat on the ways of his predecessors, but his rule was still, to all intents and purposes, a personal rule. With the accession of Victoria the system of personal rule came to an end. The elections which at that time were necessary on the coming of a new sovereign went slightly in favour of the Tories. The Whigs had many troubles. They were not reformers enough for the great body of their supporters. ... The Radicals had split off from them. They could not manage O'Connell. The Chartist fire was already burning. There was many a serious crisis in foreign policy--in China and in Egypt, for example. The Canadian Rebellion and the mission of Lord Durham involved the Whigs in fresh anxieties, and laid them open to new attacks from their enemies. On the top of all came some disturbances, of a legislative rather than an insurrectionary kind, in Jamaica, and the Government felt called upon to bring in a Bill to suspend for five years the Constitution of the island. A Liberal and reforming Ministry bringing in a Bill to suspend a Constitution is in a highly awkward and dangerous position. Peel saw his opportunity, and opposed the Bill. The Government won by a majority of only 5. Lord Melbourne accepted the situation, and resigned [May 7, 1839]. The Queen sent for the Duke of Wellington, and he, of course, advised her to send for Peel. When Peel came, the young Queen told him with all the frankness of a girl that she was sorry to part with her late Ministers, and that she did not disapprove of their conduct, but that she felt bound to act in accordance with constitutional usages; Peel accepted the task of forming an Administration. And then came the famous dispute known as the 'Bedchamber Question'--the 'question de jupons.' The Queen wished to retain her ladies-in-waiting; Peel insisted that there must be some change. Two of these ladies were closely related to Whig statesmen whose policy was diametrically opposed to that of Peel on no less important a question than the Government of Ireland. Peel insisted that he could not undertake to govern under such conditions. The Queen, acting on the advice of her late Ministers, would not give way. The whole dispute created immense excitement at the time. There was a good deal of misunderstanding on both sides. It was quietly settled, soon after, by a compromise which the late Prince Consort suggested, and which admitted that Peel had been in the right. ... Its importance to us now is that, as Peel would not give way, the Whigs had to come back again, and they came back discredited and damaged, having, as Mr. Molesworth puts it, got back 'behind the petticoats of the ladies-in-waiting.'" J. McCarthy, Sir Robert Peel, chapter 12. ALSO IN: W. N. Molesworth, History of England, 1830-1874, volume 2, chapter 1. H. Dunckley, Lord Melbourne, chapter 11. ENGLAND: A. D. 1837. The Victorian Age in Literature. "It may perhaps be assumed without any undue amount of speculative venturesomeness that the age of Queen Victoria will stand out in history as the period of a literature as distinct from others as the age of Elizabeth or Anne, although not perhaps equal in greatness to the latter, and far indeed below the former. At the opening of Queen Victoria's reign a great race of literary men had come to a close. It is curious to note how sharply and completely the literature of Victoria separates itself from that of the era whose heroes were Scott, Byron, and Wordsworth: Before Queen Victoria came to the throne, Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats were dead. Wordsworth lived, indeed, for many years after; so did Southey and Moore; and Savage Landor died much later still. But Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, and Landor had completed their literary work before Victoria came to the throne. Not one of them added a cubit or an inch to his intellectual stature from that time; some of them even did work which distinctly proved that their day was done. A new and fresh breath was soon after breathed into literature. Nothing, perhaps, is more remarkable about the better literature of the age of Queen Victoria than its complete severance from the leadership of that which had gone before it, and its evidence of a fresh and genuine inspiration. It is a somewhat curious fact, too, very convenient for the purposes of this history, that the literature of Queen Victoria's time thus far divides itself clearly enough into two parts. The poets, novelists, and historians who were making their fame with the beginning of the reign had done all their best work and made their mark before these later years, and were followed by a new and different school, drawing inspiration from wholly different sources, and challenging comparison as antagonists rather than disciples. We speak now only of literature. In science the most remarkable developments were reserved for the later years of the reign." J. McCarthy, The Literature of the Victorian Reign (Appletons' Journal, January, 1879, page 498). "The age of Queen Victoria is as justly entitled to give name to a literary epoch as any of those periods on which this distinction has been conferred by posterity. A new tone of thought and a new colour of style are discernible from about the date of the Queen's accession, and, even should these characteristics continue for generations without apparent break, it will be remembered that the Elizabethan age did not terminate with Elizabeth. In one important respect, however, it differs from most of those epochs which derive their appellation from a sovereign. The names of Augustus, Lorenzo, Louis XIV., Anne, are associated with a literary advance, a claim to have bequeathed models for imitation to succeeding ages. This claim is not preferred on behalf of the age of Victoria. It represents the fusion of two currents which had alternately prevailed in successive periods. Delight and Utility met, Truth and Imagination kissed each other. Practical reform awoke the enthusiasm of genius, and genius put poetry to new use, or made a new path for itself in prose. The result has been much gain, some loss, and an originality of aspect which would alone render our Queen's reign intellectually memorable. {959} Looking back to the 18th century in England, we see the spirit of utility entirely in the ascendant. Intellectual power is as great as ever, immortal books are written as of old, but there is a general incapacity not only for the production, but for the comprehension of works of the imagination. Minds as robust as Johnson's, as acute as Hume's, display neither strength nor intelligence in their criticism of the Elizabethan writers, and their professed regard for even the masterpieces of antiquity is evidently in the main conventional. Conversely, when the spell is broken and the capacity for imaginative composition returns, the half-century immediately preceding her Majesty's accession does not, outside the domain of the ideal, produce a single work of the first class. Hallam, the elder Mill, and others compose, indeed, books of great value, but not great books. In poetry and romantic fiction, on the other hand, the genius of that age reaches a height unattained since Milton, and probably not destined to be rivalled for many generations. In the age of Victoria we witness the fusion of its predecessors." R. Garnett, Literature (The Reign of Queen Victoria, edited by T. H. Ward, volume 2, pages 445-446). "The most conspicuous of the substantial distinctions between the literature of the present day and that of the first quarter or third of the century may be described as consisting in the different relative positions at the two dates of Prose and Verse. In the Georgian era verse was in the ascendant; in the Victorian era the supremacy has passed to prose. It is not easy for anyone who has grown up in the latter to estimate aright the universal excitement which used to be produced in the former by a new poem of Scott's, or Byron's, or Moore's, or Campbell's, or Crabbe's, or the equally fervid interest that was taken throughout a more limited circle in one by Wordsworth, or Southey, or Shelley. There may have been a power in the spirit of poetry which that of prose would in vain aspire to. Probably all the verse ages would be found to have been of higher glow than the prose ones. The age in question, at any rate, will hardly be denied by anyone who remembers it to have been in these centuries, perhaps from the mightier character of the events and circumstances in the midst of which we were then placed, an age in which the national heart beat more strongly than it does at present in regard to other things as well as this. Its reception of the great poems that succeeded one another so rapidly from the first appearance of Scott till the death of Byron was like its reception of the succession of great victories that, ever thickening, and almost unbroken by a single defeat, filled up the greater part of the ten years from Trafalgar to Waterloo--from the last fight of Nelson to the last of Wellington. No such huzzas, making the welkin ring with the one voice of a whole people, and ascending alike from every city and town and humblest village in the land, have been heard since then. ... Of course, there was plenty of prose also written throughout the verse era; but no book in prose that was then produced greatly excited the public mind, or drew any considerable amount of attention, till the Waverley novels began to appear; and even that remarkable series of works did not succeed in at once reducing poetry to the second place, however chief a share it may have had in hastening that result. Of the other prose writing that then went on what was most effective was that of the periodical press,--of the Edinburgh Review and Cobbett's Register, and, at a later date, of Blackwood's Magazine and the London Magazine (the latter with Charles Lamb and De Quincey among its contributors),--much of it owing more or less of its power to its vehement political partisanship. A descent from poetry to prose is the most familiar of all phenomena in the history of literature. Call it natural decay or degeneracy, or only a relaxation which the spirit of a people requires after having been for a certain time on the wing or on the stretch, it is what a period of more than ordinary poetical productiveness always ends in." G. L. Craik, Compendious History of English Literature, volume 2, pages 553-555. "What ... are the specific channels of Victorian utterance in verse? To define them is difficult, because they are so subtly varied and so inextricably interwoven. Yet I think they may be superficially described as the idyll and the lyric. Under the idyll I should class all narrative and descriptive poetry, of which this age has been extraordinarily prolific; sometimes assuming the form of minstrelsy, as in the lays of Scott; sometimes approaching to the classic style, as in the Hellenics of Landor; sometimes rivalling the novellette, as in the work of Tennyson; sometimes aiming at psychological analysis, as in the portraits drawn by Robert Browning; sometimes confining art to bare history, as in Crabbe; sometimes indulging flights of pure artistic fancy, as in Keats' "Endymion" and "Lamia." Under its many metamorphoses the narrative and descriptive poetry of our century bears the stamp of the idyll, because it is fragmentary and because it results in a picture. ... No literature and no age has been more fertile of lyric poetry than English literature in the age of Victoria. The fact is apparent. I should superfluously burden my readers if I were to prove the point by reference to Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Rossetti, Clough, Swinburne, Arnold, Tennyson, and I do not know how many of less illustrious but splendid names, in detail. The causes are not far to seek. Without a comprehensive vehicle like the epic, which belongs to the first period of national life, or the drama, which belongs to its secondary period, our poets of a later day have had to sing from their inner selves, subjectively, introspectively, obeying impulses from nature and the world, which touched them not as they were Englishmen, but as they were this man or that woman. ... When they sang, they sang with their particular voice; and the lyric is the natural channel for such song. But what a complex thing is this Victorian lyric! It includes Wordsworth's sonnets and Rossetti's ballads, Coleridge's' Ancient Mariner' and Keats' odes, Clough's 'Easter day' and Tennyson's 'Maud,' Swinburne's 'Songs before Sunrise' and Browning's 'Dramatis Personæ,' Thomson's 'City of Dreadful Night' and Mary Robinson's 'Handful of Honeysuckles,' Andrew Lang's Ballades and Sharp's 'Weird of Michael Scot,' Dobson's dealings with the eighteenth century and Noel's 'Child's Garland,' Barnes's Dorsetshire Poems and Buchanan's London Lyrics, the songs from Empedocles on Etna and Ebenezer Jones's 'Pagan's Drinking Chant,' Shelley's Ode to the West Wind and Mrs. Browning's 'Pan is Dead,' Newman's hymns and Gosse's Chant Royal. {960} The kaleidoscope presented by this lyric is so inexhaustible that any man with the fragment of a memory might pair off scores of poems by admired authors, and yet not fall upon the same parallels as those which I have made. The genius of our century, debarred from epic, debarred from drama, falls back upon idyllic and lyrical expression. In the idyll it satisfies its objective craving after art. In the lyric it pours forth personality. It would be wrong, however, to limit the wealth of our poetry to these two branches. Such poems as Wordsworth's 'Excursion,' Byron's 'Don Juan' and 'Childe Harold,' Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' William Morris's 'Earthly Paradise,' Clough's 'Amours de Voyage,' are not to be classified in either species. They are partly autobiographical, and in part the influence of the tale makes itself distinctly felt in them. Nor again can we omit the translations, of which so many have been made; some of them real masterpieces and additions to our literature." J. A. Symonds, A Comparison of Elizabethan with Victorian Poetry (Fortnightly Review, January 1, 1889, pages 62-64). The difference between the drama and the novel "is one of perspective; and it is this which in a wide sense distinguishes the Elizabethan and the Victorian views of life, and thence of art. ... It is ... the present aim of art to throw on life all manner of side-lights, such as the stage can hardly contrive, but which the novel professes to manage for those who can read. The round unvarnished tale of the early novelists has been dead for over a century, and in its place we have fiction that seeks to be as complete as life itself. ... There is, then, in each of these periods an excellence and a relative defect: in the Elizabethan, roundness and balance, but, to us, a want of fulness; in the Victorian, amplified knowledge, but a falling short of comprehensiveness. And adapted to each respectively, the drama and the novel are its most expressive literary form. The limitations and scope of the drama are those of its time, and so of the novel. Even as the Elizabethan lived with all his might and was not troubled about many things, his art was intense and round, but restricted; and as the Victorian commonly views life by the light of a patent reading-lamp, and so, sitting apart, sees much to perplex, the novel gives a more complex treatment of life, with rarer success in harmony. This rareness is not, however, due to the novel itself, but to the minds of its makers. In possibility it is indeed the greater of the two, being more epical; for it is as capable of grandeur, and is ampler. This largeness in Victorian life and art argues in the great novelists a quality of spirit which it is difficult to name without being misunderstood, and which is peculiarly non-Elizabethan. It argues what Burns would call a castigated pulse, a supremacy over passion. Yet they are not Lucretian gods, however calm their atmosphere; their minds are not built above humanity, but, being rooted deep in it, rise high. ... Both periods are at heart earnest, and the stamp on the great literature of each is that of reality, heightened and made powerful by romance. Nor is their agreement herein greatly shaken by the novel laying considerable stress on the outside of life, while the drama is almost heedless of it; for they both seek to break into the kernel, their variance being chiefly one of method, dictated by difference of knowledge, taste, and perception." T. D. Robb, The Elizabethan Drama and the Victorian Novel (Lippincott's Monthly Magazine, April, 1891, pages 520-522). England: A. D. 1838-1842. The Chartist agitation. "When the Parliament was opened by the Queen on the 5th of February, 1839, a passage in the Royal Speech had reference to a state of domestic affairs which presented an unhappy contrast to the universal loyalty which marked the period of the Coronation. Her Majesty said: 'I have observed with pain the persevering efforts which have been made in some parts of the country to excite my subjects to disobedience and resistance to the law, and to recommend dangerous and illegal practices.' Chartism, which for ten subsequent years occasionally agitated the country, had then begun to take root. On the previous 12th of December a proclamation had been issued against illegal Chartist assemblies, several of which had been held, says the proclamation, 'after sunset by torchlight.' The persons attending these meetings were armed with guns and pikes; and demagogues, such as Feargus O'Connor and the Rev. Mr. Stephens at Bury, addressed the people in the most inflammatory language. ... The document called 'The People's Charter,' which was embodied in the form of a bill in 1838, comprised six points:--universal suffrage, excluding, however, women; division of the United Kingdom into equal electoral districts; vote by ballot; annual parliaments; no property qualification for members; and a payment to every member for his legislative services. These principles so quickly recommended themselves to the working-classes that in the session of 1839 the number of signatures to a petition presented to Parliament was upwards of a million and a quarter. The middle classes almost universally looked with extreme jealousy and apprehension upon any attempt for an extension of the franchise. The upper classes for the most part regarded the proceedings of the Chartists with a contempt which scarcely concealed their fears. This large section of the working population very soon became divided into what were called physical-force Chartists and moral-force Chartists. As a natural consequence, the principles and acts of the physical-force Chartists disgusted every supporter of order and of the rights of property." C. Knight, Popular History of England, volume 8, chapter 23. "Nothing can be more unjust than to represent the leaders and promoters of the movement as mere factious and self-seeking demagogues. Some of them were men of great ability and eloquence; some were impassioned young poets, drawn from the class whom Kingsley has described in his 'Alton Locke'; some were men of education; many were earnest and devoted fanatics; and, so far as we can judge, all, or nearly all, were sincere. Even the man who did the movement most harm, and who made himself most odious to all reasonable outsiders, the once famous, now forgotten, Feargus O'Connor, appears to have been sincere, and to have personally lost more than he gained by his Chartism. ... He was of commanding presence, great stature, and almost gigantic strength. He had education; he had mixed in good society; he belonged to an old family. ... There were many men in the movement of a nobler moral nature than poor, huge, wild Feargus O'Connor. There were men like Thomas Cooper, ... devoted, impassioned, full of poetic aspiration, and no scant measure of poetic inspiration as well. Henry Vincent was a man of unimpeachable character. ... {961} Ernest Jones was as sincere and self-sacrificing a man as ever joined a sinking cause. ... It is necessary to read such a book as Thomas Cooper's Autobiography to understand how genuine was the poetic and political enthusiasm which was at the heart of the Chartist movement, and how bitter was the suffering which drove into its ranks so many thousands of stout working men who, in a country like England, might well have expected to be able to live by the hard work they were only too willing to do. One must read the Anti-Corn-Law Rhymes of Ebenezer Elliott to understand how the 'bread tax' became identified in the minds of the very best of the working class, and identified justly, with the system of political and economical legislation which was undoubtedly kept up, although not of conscious purpose, for the benefit of a class. ... A whole literature of Chartist newspapers sprang up to advocate the cause. The 'Northern Star,' owned and conducted by Feargus O'Connor, was the most popular and influential of them; but every great town had its Chartist press. Meetings were held at which sometimes very violent language was employed. ... A formidable riot took place in Birmingham, where the authorities endeavoured to put down a Chartist meeting. ... Efforts were made at times to bring about a compromise with the middle-class Liberals and the Anti-Corn-Law leaders; but all such attempts proved failures. The Chartists would not give up their Charter; many of them would not renounce the hope of seeing it carried by force. The Government began to prosecute some of the orators and leaders of the Charter movement; and some of these were convicted, imprisoned and treated with great severity. Henry Vincent's imprisonment at Newport, in Wales, was the occasion of an attempt at rescue [November 4, 1839] which bore a very close resemblance indeed to a scheme of organised and armed rebellion." A conflict occurred in which ten of the Chartists were killed, and some 50 were wounded. Three of the leaders, named Frost, Williams, and Jones, were tried and convicted on the charge of high treason, and were sentenced to death; but the sentence was commuted to one of transportation. "The trial and conviction of Frost, Williams, and Jones, did not put a stop to the Chartist agitation. On the contrary, that agitation seemed rather to wax and strengthen and grow broader because of the attempt at Newport and its consequences. ... There was no lack of what were called energetic measures on the part of the Government. The leading Chartists all over the country were prosecuted and tried, literally by hundreds. In most cases they were convicted and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. ... The working classes grew more and more bitter against the Whigs, who they said had professed Liberalism only to gain their own ends. ... There was a profound distrust of the middle class and their leaders," and it was for that reason that the Chartists would not join hands with the Anti-Corn-Law movement, then in full progress. "It is clear that at that time the Chartists, who represented the bulk of the artisan class in most of the large towns, did in their very hearts believe that England was ruled for the benefit of aristocrats and millionaires who were absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of the poor. It is equally clear that most of what are called the ruling class did really believe the English working men who joined the Chartist movement to be a race of fierce, unmanageable, and selfish communists, who, if they were allowed their own way for a moment, would prove themselves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and all established securities of society." J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 5 (volume 1). Among the measures of coercion advocated in the councils of the Chartists was that of appointing and observing what was to be called a "'sacred month,' during which the working classes throughout the whole kingdom were to abstain from every kind of labour, in the hope of compelling the governing classes to concede the charter." W. N. Molesworth, History of England, 1830-1874, volume 2, chapter 5. ALSO IN: T. Cooper, Life, by himself, chapter 14-23. W. Lovett, Life and Struggles, chapters 8-15. T. Frost, Forty Years' Recollections, chapters 3-11. H. Jephson, The Platform, part 4, chapters 17 and 19 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1839-1842. The Opium War with China. See CHINA: A. D. 1839-1842. ENGLAND: A. D. 1840. Adoption of Penny-Postage. "In 1837 Mr. Rowland Hill had published his plan of a cheap and uniform postage. A Committee of the House of Commons was appointed in 1837, which continued its inquiries throughout the session of 1838, and arrived at the conviction that the plan was feasible, and deserving of a trial under legislative sanction. After much discussion, and the experiment of a varying charge, the uniform rate for a letter not weighing more than half an ounce became, by order of the Treasury, one penny. This great reform came into operation on the 10th of January, 1840. Its final accomplishment is mainly due to the sagacity and perseverance of the man who first conceived the scheme." C. Knight, Crown History of England, page 883. "Up to this time the rates of postage on letters were very heavy, and varied according to the distance. For instance, a single letter conveyed from one part of a town to another cost 2d.; a letter from Reading, to London 7d.; from Brighton, 8d.; from Aberdeen, 1s. 3½d.; from Belfast, 1s. 4d. If the letter was written on more than a single sheet, the rate of postage was much higher." W. N. Molesworth, History of England, 1830-1874, volume 2, chapter 1. ALSO IN: G. B. Hill, Life of Sir Rowland Hill. ENGLAND: A. D. 1840. The Queen's marriage. "On January 16,1840, the Queen, opening Parliament in person, announced her intention to marry her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha--a step which she trusted would be 'conducive to the interests of my people as well as to my own domestic happiness.' ... It was indeed a marriage founded on affection. ... The Queen had for a long time loved her cousin. He was nearly her own age, the Queen being the elder by three months and two or three days. Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel was the full name of the young Prince. He was the second son of Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and of his wife Louisa, daughter of Augustus, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenberg. Prince Albert was born at the Rosenau, one of his father's residences, near Coburg, on August 26, 1819. ... A marriage between the Princess Victoria and Prince Albert had been thought of as desirable among the families on both sides, but it was always wisely resolved that nothing should be said to the young Princess on the subject unless she herself showed a distinct liking for her cousin. {962} In 1836, Prince Albert was brought by his father to England, and made the personal acquaintance of the Princess, and she seems at once to have been drawn toward him in the manner which her family and friends would most have desired. ... The marriage of the Queen and the Prince took place on February 10, 1840." J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 7 (volume 1). ENGLAND: A. D. 1841-1842. Interference in Afghanistan. The first Afghan War. See AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1803-1838; 1838-1842; 1842-1869. ENGLAND: A. D. 1841-1842. Fall of the Melbourne Ministry. Opening of the second administration of Sir Robert Peel. In 1841, the Whig Ministry (Melbourne's) determined "to do something for freedom of trade. ... Colonial timber and sugar were charged with a duty lighter than was imposed on foreign timber and sugar; and foreign sugar paid a lighter or a heavier duty according as it was imported from countries of slave labour or countries of free labour. It was resolved to raise the duty on colonial timber, but to lower the duty on foreign timber and foreign sugar, and at the same time to replace the sliding scale of the Corn Laws then in force [see TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1815-1828] with a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter. ... The concessions offered by the Ministry, too small to excite the enthusiasm of the free traders, were enough to rally all the threatened interests around Peel. Baring's revision of the sugar duties was rejected by a majority of 36. Everybody expected the Ministers to resign upon this defeat; but they merely announced the continuance of the former duties. Then Peel gave notice of a vote of want of confidence, and carried it on the 4th of June by a single vote in a House of 623 members. Instead of resigning, the Ministers appealed to the country. The elections went on through the last days of June and the whole of July. When the new Parliament was complete, it appeared that the Conservatives could count upon 367 votes in the House of Commons. The Ministry met Parliament on the 24th of August. Peel in the House of Commons and Ripon in the House of Lords moved amendments to the Address, which were carried by majorities of 91 and 72 respectively." The Ministry resigned and a Conservative Government was formed, with Peel at its head, as First Lord of the Treasury. "Wellington entered the Cabinet without office, and Lyndhurst assumed for the third time the honours of Lord Chancellor." Among the lesser members of the Administration--not in the Cabinet--was Mr. Gladstone, who became Vice-President of the Board of Trade. "This time Peel experienced no difficulty with regard to the Queen's Household. It had been previously arranged that in the case of Lord Melbourne's resignation three Whig Ladies, the Duchess of Bedford, the Duchess of Sutherland, and Lady Normanby, should resign of their own accord. One or two other changes in the Household contented Peel, and these the Queen accorded with a frankness which placed him entirely at his ease. ... During the recess Peel took a wide survey of the ills affecting the commonwealth, and of the possible remedies. To supply the deficiency in the revenue without laying new burthens upon the humbler class; to revive our fainting manufactures by encouraging the importation of raw material; to assuage distress by making the price of provisions lower and more regular, without taking away that protection which he still believed essential to British agriculture: these were the tasks which Peel now bent his mind to compass. ... Having solved [the problems] to his own satisfaction, he had to persuade his colleagues that they were right. Only one proved obstinate. The Duke of Buckingham would hear of no change in the degree of protection afforded to agriculture. He surrendered the Privy Seal, which was given to the Duke of Buccleugh. ... The Queen's Speech recommended Parliament to consider the state of the laws affecting the importation of corn and other commodities. It announced the beginning of a revolution which few persons in England thought possible, although it was to be completed in little more than ten years." F. C. Montague, Life of Sir Robert Peel, chapter 7-8. ALSO IN: J. R. Thursfield, Peel, chapter 7-8. W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, volume 3, chapters 3-5. J. W. Croker, Correspondence and Diaries, chapter 22 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1842. The Ashburton Treaty with the United States. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1842. ENGLAND: A. D. 1845-1846. Repeal of the Corn Laws and dissolution of the League. See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1845-1846. ENGLAND: A. D. 1845-1846. First war with the Sikhs. See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849. ENGLAND: A. D. 1846. Settlement of the Oregon Boundary Question with the United States. See OREGON: A. D. 1844-1846. ENGLAND: A. D. 1846. The vengeance of the Tory-Protectionists. Overthrow of Peel. Advent of Disraeli. Ministry of Lord John Russell. "Strange to say, the day when the Bill [extinguishing the duties on corn] was read in the House of Lords for the third time [June 25] saw the fall of Peel's Ministry. The fall was due to the state of Ireland. The Government had been bringing in a Coercion Bill for Ireland. It was introduced while the Corn Bill was yet passing through the House of Commons. The situation was critical. All the Irish followers of Mr. O'Connell would be sure to oppose the Coercion Bill. The Liberal party, at least when out of office, had usually made it their principle to oppose Coercion Bills, if they were not attended with some promises of legislative reform. The English Radical members, led by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, were certain to oppose coercion. If the protectionists should join with these other opponents of the Coercion Bill, the fate of the measure was assured, and with it the fate of the Government. This was exactly what happened. Eighty Protectionists followed Lord George Bentinck into the lobby against the Bill, in combination with the Free Traders, the Whigs, and the Irish Catholic and national members. The division took place on the second reading of the Bill on Thursday, June 25, and there was a majority of 73 against the Ministry." J. McCarthy, The Epoch of Reform, page 183. {963} The revengeful Tory-Protectionist attack on Peel was led by Sir George Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, then just making himself felt in the House of Commons. It was distinctly grounded upon no objection in principle to the Irish Coercion Bill, but on the declaration that they could "no longer trust Peel, and, must therefore refuse to give him unconstitutional powers.' ... He had twice betrayed the party who had trusted his promises. ... 'The gentlemen of England,' of whom it had once been Sir Robert's proudest boast to be the leader, declared against him. He was beaten by an overpowering majority, and his career as an English Minister was closed. Disraeli's had been the hand which dethroned him, and to Disraeli himself, after three years of anarchy and uncertainty, descended the task of again building together the shattered ruins of the Conservative party. Very unwillingly they submitted to the unwelcome necessity. Canning and the elder Pitt had both been called adventurers, but they had birth and connection, and they were at least Englishmen. Disraeli had risen out of a despised race; he had never sued for their favours; he had voted and spoken as he pleased, whether they liked it or not. ... He was without Court favour, and had hardly a powerful friend except Lord Lyndhurst. He had never been tried on the lower steps of the official ladder. He was young, too--only 42--after all the stir that he had made. There was no example of a rise so sudden under such conditions. But the Tory party had accepted and cheered his services, and he stood out alone among them as a debater of superior power. Their own trained men had all deserted them. Lord George remained for a year or two as nominal chief: but Lord George died; the conservatives could only consolidate themselves under a real leader, and Disraeli was the single person that they had who was equal to the situation. ... He had overthrown Peel and succeeded to Peel's honours." J. A. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield, chapter 9. Although the Tory-Protectionists had accomplished the overthrow of Peel, they were not prepared to take the Government into their own hands. The new Ministry was formed under Lord John Russell, as First Lord of the Treasury, with Lord Palmerston in the Foreign Office, Sir George Grey in the Home Department, Earl Grey Colonial Secretary, Sir C. Wood Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Macaulay Paymaster-General. W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, volume 3, chapter 11. The most important enactment of the Coercion Bill "(which subsequently gave it the name of the Curfew Act) was that which conferred on the executive Government the power in proclaimed districts of forbidding persons to be out of their dwellings between sunset and sunrise. The right of proclaiming a district as a disturbed district was placed in the hands of the Lord-Lieutenant, who might station additional constabulary there, the whole expense of which was to be borne by the district." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 4, page 137. ALSO IN: S. Walpole, Life of Lord John Russell, chapter 16 (volume 1). B. Disraeli, Lord George Bentinck, chapter 14-16. ENGLAND: A. D. 1846. Difference with France on the Spanish marriages. See FRANCE: A. D. 1841-1848. ENGLAND: A. D. 1848. The last Chartist demonstration. "The more violent Chartists had broken from the Radical reformers, and had themselves divided into two sections; for their nominal leader, Feargus O'Connor, was at bitter enmity with more thoroughgoing and earnest leaders such as O'Brien and Cooper. O'Connor had not proved a very efficient guide. He had entered into a land scheme of a somewhat doubtful character. ... He had also injudiciously taken up a position of active hostility to the free-traders, and while thus appearing as the champion of a falling cause had alienated many of his supporters. Yet the Parliament elected in 1846 contained several representatives of the Chartist principles, and O'Connor himself had been returned for Nottingham by a large majority over Hobhouse, a member of the new Ministry. The revolution in France gave a sudden and enormous impulse to the agitation. The country was filled with meetings at which violent speeches were uttered and hints, not obscure, dropped of the forcible establishment of a republic in England. A new Convention was summoned for the 6th of April, a vast petition was prepared, and a meeting, at which it was believed that half a million of people would have been present, was summoned to meet on Kennington Common on the 10th of April for the purpose of carrying the petition to the House in procession. The alarm felt in London was very great. It was thought necessary to swear in special constables, and the wealthier classes came forward in vast numbers to be enrolled. There are said to have been no less than 170,000 special constables. The military arrangements were entrusted to the Duke of Wellington; the public offices were guarded and fortified; public vehicles were forbidden to pass the streets lest they should be employed for barricades; and measures were taken to prevent the procession from crossing the bridges. ... Such a display of determination seemed almost ridiculous when compared with what actually occurred. But it was in fact the cause of the harmless nature of the meeting. Instead of half a million, about 30,000 men assembled on Kennington Common. Feargus O'Connor was there; Mr. Maine, the Commissioner of Police, called him aside, told him he might hold his meeting, but that the procession would be stopped, and that he would be held personally responsible for any disorder that might occur. His heart had already begun to fail him, and he ... used all his influence to put an end to the procession. His prudent advice was followed, and no disturbance of any importance took place. ... The air of ridicule thrown over the Chartist movement by the abortive close of a demonstration which had been heralded with so much violent talk was increased by the disclosures attending the presentation of the petition." There were found to be only 2,000,000 names appended to the document, instead of 5,000,000 as claimed, and great numbers of them were manifestly spurious. "This failure proved a deathblow to Chartism." J. F. Bright, History of England, period 4, pages 176-178. ALSO IN: S. Walpole, History of England from 1815, chapter 20 (volume 4). ENGLAND: A. D. 1848-1849. Second war with the Sikhs. Conquest and annexation of the Punjab. See INDIA: A. D. 1845-1849. ENGLAND: A. D. 1849. Repeal of the Navigation Laws. See NAVIGATION LAWS: A. D. 1849. ENGLAND: A. D. 1849-1850. The Don Pacifico Affair. Lord Palmerston's speech. The little difficulty with Greece which came to a crisis in the last weeks of 1849 and the first, of 1850 (see GREECE: A. D. 1846-1850), and which was commonly called the Don Pacifico Affair, gave occasion for a memorable speech in Parliament by Lord Palmerston, defending his foreign policy against attacks. {964} The speech (June 24, 1850), which occupied five hours, "from the dusk of one day till the dawn of another," was greatly admired, and proved immensely effective in raising the speaker's reputation. "The Don Pacifico debate was unquestionably an important landmark in the life of Lord Palmerston. Hitherto his merits had been known only to a select few; for the British public does not read Blue Books, and as a rule troubles itself very little about foreign politics at all. ... But the Pacifico speech caught the ear of the nation, and was received with a universal verdict of approval. From that hour Lord Palmerston became the man of the people, and his rise to the premiership only a question of time." L. C. Sanders, Life of Viscount Palmerston, chapter 8. ALSO IN: Marquis of Lorne, Viscount Palmerston, chapter 7. J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 19 (volume 2). J. Morley, Life of Cobden, volume 2, chapter 3. T. Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, chapter 38 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1850. The so-called Clayton-Bulwer Treaty with the United States, establishing a joint protectorate over the projected Nicaragua Canal. See NICARAGUA: A. D. 1850. ENGLAND: A. D. 1850. Restoration of the Roman Episcopate. The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill. See PAPACY: A. D. 1850. ENGLAND: A. D. 1850-1852. The London protocol and treaty on the Schleswig-Holstein Question. See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (DENMARK): A. D. 1848-1862. ENGLAND: A. D. 1851. The Great Exhibition. "The first of May, 1851, will always be memorable as the day on which the Great Exhibition was opened in Hyde Park. ... Many exhibitions of a similar kind have taken place since. Some of these far surpassed that of Hyde Park in the splendour and variety of the collections brought together. Two of them at least--those of Paris in 1867 and 1878--were infinitely superior in the array and display of the products, the dresses, the inhabitants of far-divided countries. But the impression which the Hyde Park Exhibition made upon the ordinary mind was like that of the boy's first visit to the play--an impression never to be equalled. ... It was the first organised to gather all the representatives of the world's industry into one great fair. ... The Hyde Park Exhibition was often described as the festival to open the long reign of Peace. It might, as a mere matter of chronology, be called without any impropriety the festival to celebrate the close of the short reign of Peace. From that year, 1851, it may be said fairly enough that the world has hardly known a week of peace. ... The first idea of the Exhibition was conceived by Prince Albert; and it was his energy and influence which succeeded in carrying the idea into practical execution. ... Many persons were disposed to sneer at it; many were sceptical about its doing any good; not a few still regarded Prince Albert as a foreigner and a pedant, and were slow to believe that anything really practical was likely to be developed under his impulse and protection. ... There was a great deal of difficulty in selecting a plan for the building. ... Happily, a sudden inspiration struck Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Paxton, who was then in charge of the Duke of Devonshire's superb grounds at Chatsworth. Why not try glass and iron? he asked himself. ... Mr. Paxton sketched out his plan hastily, and the idea was eagerly accepted by the Royal Commissioners. He made many improvements afterwards in his design; but the palace of glass and iron arose within the specified time on the green turf of Hyde Park." J. McCarthy, History of Our Own Times, chapter 21 (volume 2). ALSO IN: T. Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, chapters 33-36, 39, 42-43 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1851-1852. The Coup d'Etat in France and Lord Palmerston's dismissal from the Cabinet. Defeat and resignation of Lord John Russell. The first Derby Disraeli Ministry and the Aberdeen coalition Ministry. The "coup d'etat" of December 2nd, 1851, by which Louis Napoleon made himself master of France (see FRANCE: A. D. 1851) brought about the dismissal of Lord Palmerston from the British Ministry, followed quickly by the overthrow of the Ministry which expelled him. "Lord Palmerston not only expressed privately to Count Walewski [the French ambassador] his approval of the 'coup d'etat,' but on the 16th of December wrote a despatch to Lord Normanby, our representative in Paris, expressing in strong terms his satisfaction at the success of the French President's arbitrary action. This despatch was not submitted either to the Prime Minister or to the Queen, and of course the offence was of too serious a character to be passed over. A great deal of correspondence ensued, and as Palmerston's explanations were not deemed satisfactory, and he had clearly broken the undertaking he gave some time previously, he was dismissed from office. ... There were some who thought him irretrievably crushed from this time forward; but a very short time only elapsed before he retrieved his fortunes and was as powerful as ever. In February 1852 Lord John Russell brought in a Militia Bill which was intended to develop a local militia for the defence of the country. Lord Palmerston strongly disapproved of the scope of the measure, and in committee moved an amendment to omit the word 'local,' so as to constitute a regular militia, which should be legally transportable all over the kingdom, and thus be always ready for any emergency. The Government were defeated by eleven votes, and as the Administration had been very weak for some time, Lord John resigned. Lord Derby formed a Ministry, and invited the cooperation of Palmerston, but the offer was declined, as the two statesmen differed on the question of imposing a duty on the importation of corn, and other matters.' G. B. Smith, The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria, pages 264-265. "The new Ministry [in which Mr. Disraeli became Chancellor of the Exchequer] took their seats on the 27th of February, but it was understood that a dissolution of Parliament would take place in the summer, by which the fate of the new Government would be decided, and that in the meantime the Opposition should hold its hand. The raw troops [of the Tory Party in the House of Commons], notwithstanding their inexperience, acquitted themselves with credit, and some good Bills were passed, the Militia Bill among the number, while a considerable addition to the strength of the Navy was effected by the Duke of Northumberland. No doubt, when the general election began, the party had raised itself considerably in public estimation. But for one consideration the country would probably have been quite willing to entrust its destinies to their hands. {965} But that one consideration was all important. ... The Government was obliged to go to the country, to some extent, on Protectionist principles. It was known that a Derbyite majority meant a moderate import duty; and the consequence was that Lord Derby just lost the battle, though by a very narrow majority. When Parliament met in November, Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli had a very difficult game to play. ... Negotiations were again opened with Palmerston and the Peelites, and on this occasion Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert were willing to join if Lord Palmerston might lead in the House of Commons. But the Queen put her veto on this arrangement, which accordingly fell to the ground; and Lord Derby had to meet the Opposition attack without any reinforcements. ... On the 16th of December, ... being defeated on the Budget by a majority of 19, Lord Derby at once resigned." T. E. Kebbel, Life of the Earl of Derby, chapter 6. "The new Government [which succeeded that of Derby] was a coalition of Whigs and Peelites, with Sir William Molesworth thrown in to represent the Radicals. Lord Aberdeen became Prime Minister, and Mr. Gladstone Chancellor of the Exchequer. The other Peelites in the Cabinet were the Duke of Newcastle, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Herbert." G. W. E. Russell, The Rt. Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, chapter 5. ENGLAND: A. D. 1852. Second Burmese War. Annexation of Pegu. See INDIA: A. D. 1852. ENGLAND: A. D. 1852-1853. Abandonment of Protection by the Conservatives. Further progress in Free Trade. See TARIFF LEGISLATION (ENGLAND): A. D. 1846-1879. ENGLAND: A. D. 1853-1855. Civil-Service Reform. See CIVIL-SERVICE REFORM IN ENGLAND. ENGLAND: A. D. 1853-1856. The Crimean War. See RUSSIA: A. D. 1853-1854, to 1854-1856. ENGLAND: A. D. 1855. Popular discontent with the management of the war. Fall of the Aberdeen Ministry. Palmerston's first premiership. A brightening of prospects. "Our army system entirely broke down [in the Crimea], and Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of Newcastle were made the scapegoats of the popular indignation. ... But England was not only suffering from unpreparedness and want of administrative power in the War department; there were dissensions in the Cabinet. ... Lord John Russell gave so much trouble, that Lord Aberdeen, after one of the numerous quarrels and reconciliations which occurred at this juncture, wrote to the Queen that nothing but a sense of public duty and the necessity for avoiding the scandal of a rupture kept him at his post. ... At a little later stage ... the difficulties were renewed. Mr. Roebuck gave notice of his motion for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the condition of the army before Sebastopol, and Lord John definitively resigned. The Ministry remained in office to await the fate of Mr. Roebuck's motion, which was carried against them by the very large majority of 157. Lord Aberdeen now placed the resignation of the Cabinet in the hands of the Queen [January 31, 1855]. ... Thus fell the Coalition Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen. In talent and parliamentary influence it was apparently one of the strongest Governments ever seen, but it suffered from a fatal want of cohesion." G. B. Smith, Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria, pages 227-230. "Lord Palmerston had passed his 70th year when the Premiership came to him for the first time. On the fall of the Coalition Government the Queen sent for Lord Derby, and upon his failure for Lord John Russell. Palmerston was willing at the express request of her Majesty to serve once more under his old chief, but Clarendon and many of the Whigs not unnaturally positively refused to do so. Palmerston finally undertook and successfully achieved the task of forming a Government out of the somewhat heterogeneous elements at his command. Lord Clarendon continued at the Foreign Office, and Gladstone was still Chancellor of the Exchequer. The War Department was reorganised, the office of Secretary at War disappearing, and being finally merged in that of Secretary of State for War. Although Palmerston objected to Roebuck's Committee, he was practically compelled to accept it, and this led to the resignation of Gladstone, Graham and Herbert; their places being taken by Sir G. C. Lewis, Sir Charles Wood, and Lord John Russell." Marquis of Lorne, Viscount Palmerston, chapter 10. "It was a dark hour in the history of the nation when Lord Palmerston essayed the task which had been abandoned by the tried wisdom of Derby, Lansdowne, and John Russell. Far away in the Crimea the war was dragging on without much hope of a creditable solution, though the winter of discontent and mismanagement was happily over. The existence of the European concert was merely nominal. The Allies had discovered, many months previously, that, though Austria was staunch, Prussia was a faithless friend. ... Between the belligerent powers the cloud of suspicion and distrust grew thicker; for Abd-el-Medjid was known to be freely squandering his war loans on seraglios and palaces while Kars was starving; and though there was no reason for distrusting the present good faith of the Emperor of the French, his policy was straight-forward only as long as he kept himself free from the influence of the gang of stock-jobbers and adventurers who composed his Ministry. Nor was the horizon much brighter on the side of England. A series of weak cabinets, and the absence of questions of organic reform, had completely relaxed the bonds of Party. If there was no regular Opposition, still less was there a regular majority. ... And the hand that was to restore order out of chaos was not so steady as of yore. ... Lord Palmerston was not himself during the first weeks of his leadership. But the prospect speedily brightened. Though Palmerston was considerably over seventy, he still retained a wonderful vigour of constitution. He was soon restored to health, and was always to be found at his post. ... His generalship secured ample majorities for the Government in every division during the session. Of the energy which Lord Palmerston inspired into the operations against Sebastopol, there can hardly be two opinions." L. C. Sanders, Life of Viscount Palmerston, chapter 10. ENGLAND: A. D. 1855. Mr. Gladstone's Commission to the Ionian Islands. See IONIAN ISLANDS: A. D. 1815-1862. ENGLAND: A. D. 1856-1860. War with China. French alliance in the war. Capture of Canton. Entrance into Pekin. Destruction of the Summer Palace. See CHINA: A. D. 1856-1860. {966} ENGLAND: A. D. 1857-1858. The Sepoy Mutiny in India. See INDIA: A. D. 1857, to 1857-1858 (JULY-JUNE). ENGLAND: A. D. 1858. Assumption of the government of India by the Crown. End of the rule of the East India Co. See INDIA: A. D. 1858. ENGLAND: A. D. 1858-1859. The Conspiracy Bill. Fall of Palmerston's government. Second Ministry of Derby and Disraeli. Lord Palmerston again Premier. "On January 14, 1858, an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon III. by a gang of desperadoes, headed by Orsini, whose head-quarters had previously been in London. Not without some reason it was felt in France that such men ought not to be able to find shelter in this country, and the French Minister was ordered to make representations to that effect. Lord Palmerston, always anxious to cultivate the good feeling of the French nation, desired to pass a measure which should give to the British Government the power to banish from England any foreigner conspiring in Britain against the life of a foreign sovereign. ... An unfortunate outburst of vituperation against England in the French press, and the repetition of such language by officers of the French army who were received by the Emperor when they waited on him as a deputation, aroused very angry English feeling. Lord Palmerston had already introduced the Bill he desired to pass, and it had been read the first time by a majority of 200. But the foolish action of the French papers changed entirely the current of popular opinion. Lord Derby saw his advantage. An amendment to the second reading, which was practically a vote of censure, was carried against Lord Palmerston, and to his own surprise no less than to that of the country, he was obliged to resign. Lord Derby succeeded to Palmerston's vacant office. ... Lord Derby's second Ministry was wrecked upon the fatal rock of Reform early in 1859, and at once appealed to the country. ... The election of 1859 failed to give the Conservatives a majority, and soon after the opening of the session they were defeated upon a vote of want of confidence moved by Lord Hartington. Earl Granville was commissioned by the Queen to form a Ministry, because her Majesty felt that 'to make so marked a distinction as is implied in the choice of one or other as Prime Minister of two statesmen so full of years and honour as Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell would be a very invidious and unwelcome task.' Each of these veterans was willing to serve under the other, but neither would follow the lead of a third. And so Granville failed, and to Palmerston was entrusted the task. He succeeded in forming what was considered the strongest Ministry of modern times, so far as the individual ability of its members was concerned. Russell went to the Foreign Office and Gladstone to the Exchequer." Marquis of Lorne, Viscount Palmerston, chapters 10-11. ALSO IN: T. Martin, Life of the Prince Consort, chapters 82-84, 91-92, and 94 (volume 4). T. E. Kebbel, Life of the Earl of Derby, chapter 7. ENGLAND: A. D. 1860. The Cobden-Chevalier commercial treaty with France. See TARIFF LEGISLATION (FRANCE): A. D. 1853-1860. ENGLAND: A. D. 1861 (May). The Queen's Proclamation of Neutrality with reference to the American Civil War. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (APRIL-MAY). ENGLAND: A. D. 1861 (October). The allied intervention in Mexico. See MEXICO: A. D. 1861-1867. ENGLAND: A. D. 1861 (November). The Trent Affair. Seizure of Mason and Slidell. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1861 (NOVEMBER). ENGLAND: A. D. 1861-1865. The Cotton Famine. "Upon a population, containing half a million of cotton operatives, in a career of rapid prosperity, the profits of 1860 reaching in some instances from 30 to 40 per cent upon the capital engaged; and with wages also at the highest point which they had ever touched, came the news of the American war, with the probable stoppage of 85 per cent of the raw material of their manufacture. A few wise heads hung despondently down, or shook with fear for the fate of 'the freest nation under heaven,' but the great mass of traders refused to credit a report which neither suited their opinions nor their interests. ... There was a four months' supply held on this side the water at Christmas (1860), and there had been three months' imports at the usual rate since that time, and there would be the usual twelve months' supply from other sources; and by the time this was consumed, and the five months' stock of goods held by merchants sold, all would be right again. That this was the current opinion was proved by the most delicate of all barometers, the scale of prices; for during the greater part of the year 1861 the market was dull, and prices scarcely moved upwards. But towards the end of the year the aspect of affairs began to change. ... The Federals had declared a blockade of the Southern ports, and, although as yet it was pretty much a 'paper blockade,' yet the newly established Confederate government was doing its best to render it effective. They believed that cotton was king in England, and that the old country could not do without it, and would be forced, in order to secure its release, to side with those who kept it prisoner. Mills began to run short time or to close in the month of October, but no noise was made about it; and the only evidence of anything unusual was at the boards of guardians, where the applications had reached the mid-winter height three months earlier than usual. The poor-law guardians in the various unions were aware that the increase was not of the usual character--it was too early for out-door labourers to present themselves; still the difference was not of serious amount, being only about 3,000 in the whole twenty-eight unions. In November, 7,000 more presented themselves, and in December the increase was again 7,000; so that the recipients of relief were at this time 12,000 (or about 25 per cent) more than in the January previous. And now serious thoughts began to agitate many minds; cotton was very largely held by speculators for a rise, the arrivals were meagre in quantity, and the rates of insurance began to show that, notwithstanding the large profits on imports, the blockade was no longer on paper alone. January, 1862, added 16,000 more to the recipients of relief, who were now 70 per cent above the usual number for the same period of the year. But from the facts as afterwards revealed, the statistics of boards of guardians were evidently no real measure of the distress prevailing. ... The month of February usually lessens the dependents on the poor-rates, for out-door labour begins again as soon as the signs of spring appear; but in 1862 it added nearly 9,000 to the already large number of extra cases, the recipients being now 105 per cent above the average for the same period of the year. {967} But this average gives no idea of the pressure in particular localities. ... The cotton operatives were now, if left to themselves, like a ship's crew upon short provisions, and those very unequally distributed, and without chart or compass, and no prospect of getting to land. In Ashton there were 3,197; in Stockport, 8,588; and in Preston, 9,488 persons absolutely foodless; and who nevertheless declined to go to the guardians. To have forced the high-minded heads of these families to hang about the work-house lobbies in company with the idle, the improvident, the dirty, the diseased, and the vicious, would have been to break their heaving hearts, and to hurl them headlong into despair. Happily there is spirit enough in this country to appreciate nobility, even when dressed in fustian, and pride and sympathy enough to spare even the poorest from unnecessary humiliation; and organisations spring up for any important work so soon as the necessity of the case becomes urgent in any locality. Committees arose almost simultaneously in Ashton, Stockport, and Preston; and in April, Blackburn followed in the train, and the guardians and the relief committees of these several places divided an extra 6,000 dependents between them. The month of May, which usually reduces pauperism to almost its lowest ebb, added 6,000 more to the recipients from the guardians, and 5,000 to the dependents on the relief committees, which were now six in number, Oldham and Prestwich (a part of Manchester) being added to the list. ... The month of June sent 6,000 more applicants to sue for bread to the boards of guardians, and 5,000 additional to the six relief committees; and these six committees had now as many dependents as the whole of the boards of guardians in the twenty-eight unions supported in ordinary years. ... In the month of July, when all unemployed operatives would ordinarily be lending a hand in the hay harvest, and picking up the means of living whilst improving in health and enjoying the glories of a summer in the country, the distress increased like a flood, 13,000 additional applicants being forced to appeal for poor-law relief; whilst 11,000 others were adopted by the seven relief committees. ... In August the flood had become a deluge, at which the stoutest heart might stand appalled. The increased recipients of poor-law relief were in a single month, 33,000, being nearly as many as the total number chargeable in the same month of the previous year, whilst a further addition of more than 34,000 became chargeable to the relief committees. ... Most of the cotton on hand at this period was of Indian growth, and needed alterations of machinery to make it workable at all, and in good times an employer might as well shut up his mill as try to get it spun or manufactured. But oh! how glad would the tens of thousands of unwilling idlers have been now, to have had a chance even of working at Surats, although they knew that it required much harder work for one-third less than normal wages. ... Another month is past, and October has added to the number under the guardians no less than 55,000, and to the charge of the relief committees 39,000 more. ... And now dread winter approaches, and the authorities have to deal not only with hundreds of thousands who are compulsorily idle, and consequently foodless, but who are wholly unprepared for the inclemencies of the season; who have no means of procuring needful clothing, nor even of making a show of cheerfulness upon the hearth by means of the fire, which is almost as useful as food. ... The total number of persons chargeable at the end of November, 1862, was, under boards of guardians, 258,357, and on relief committees, 200,084; total 458,441. ... There were not wanting men who saw, or thought they saw, a short way out of the difficulty, viz., by a recognition on the part of the English government of the Southern confederacy in America. And meetings were called in various places to memorialise the government to this effect. Such meetings were always balanced by counter meetings, at which it was shown that simple recognition would be waste of words; that it would not bring to our shores a single shipload of cotton, unless followed up by an armed force to break the blockade, which course if adopted would be war; war in favour of the slave confederacy of the South, and against the free North and North-west, whence comes a large proportion of our imported corn. In addition to the folly of interfering in the affairs of a nation 3,000 miles away, the cotton, if we succeeded in getting it, would be stained with blood and cursed with the support of slavery, and would also prevent our getting the food which we needed from the North equally as much as the cotton from the South. ... These meetings and counter meetings perhaps helped to steady the action of the government (notwithstanding the sympathy of some of its members towards the South), to confirm them in the policy of the royal proclamation, and to determine them to enforce the provisions of the Foreign Enlistment Act against all offenders. ... The maximum pressure upon the relief committees was reached early in December, 1862, but, as the tide had turned before the end of the month, the highest number chargeable at any one time is nowhere shown. The highest number exhibited in the returns is for the last week in the year 1862, viz.: 485,434 persons; but in the previous weeks of the same month some thousands more were relieved." J. Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine, chapters 8 and 12. ALSO IN: R. A. Arnold, History of the Cotton Famine. E. Waugh, Factory Folk during the Cotton Famine. ENGLAND: A. D. 1862 (JULY). The fitting out of the Confederate cruiser Alabama at Liverpool. See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1862-1864. ENGLAND: A. D. 1865. Governor Eyre and the Jamaica Insurrection. See JAMAICA: A. D. 1865. ENGLAND: A. D. 1865-1868. Death of Palmerston. Ministry of Lord John Russell. Its unsatisfactory Reform Bill and its resignation. Triumph of the Adullamites. Third administration of Derby and Disraeli, and its Reform Bills. "On the death of Lord Palmerston [which occurred October 18, 1865], the premiership was intrusted for the second time to Earl Russell, with Mr. Gladstone as leader in the House of Commons. The queen opened her seventh parliament (February 6, 1866), in person, for the first time since the prince consort's death. On March 12th Mr. Gladstone brought forward his scheme of reform, proposing to extend the franchise in counties and boroughs, but the opposition of the moderate Liberals, and their joining the Conservatives, proved fatal to the measure, and in consequence the ministry of Earl Russell resigned. {968} The government had been personally weakened by the successive deaths of Mr. Sidney Herbert, Sir George Cornewall Lewis, the Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Elgin, and Lord Palmerston. The queen sent for the Earl of Derby to form a Cabinet, who, although the Conservative party was in the minority in the House of Commons, accepted the responsibility of undertaking the management of the government: he as Premier and First Lord of the Treasury; Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer." A. H. McCalman, Abridged History of England, page 603. "The measure, in fact, was too evidently a compromise. The Russell and Gladstone section of the Cabinet wanted reform: the remnants of Palmerston's followers still thought it unnecessary. The result was this wretched, tinkering measure, which satisfied nobody, and disappointed the expectation of all earnest Reformers. ... The principal opposition came not from the Conservatives, as might have been expected, but from Mr. Horsman and Mr. Robert Lowe, both members of the Liberal party, who from the very first declared they would have none of it. ... Mr. Bright denounced them furiously as 'Adullamites'; all who were in distress, all who were discontented, had gathered themselves together in the political cave of Adullam for the attack on the Government. But Mr. Lowe, all unabashed by denunciation or sarcasm, carried the war straight into the enemy's camp in a swift succession of speeches of extraordinary brilliance and power. ... The party of two, which in its origin reminded Mr. Bright of 'the Scotch terrier which was so covered with hair that you could not tell which was the head and which was the tail of it,' was gradually reinforced by deserters from the ranks of the Government until at last the Adullamites were strong enough to turn the scale of a division. Then one wild night, after a hot and furious debate, the combined armies of the Adullamites and Conservatives carried triumphantly an amendment brought forward by one of the Adullamite chiefs, Lord Dunkellin, to the effect that a rating be substituted for a rental qualification; and the Government was at an end. ... The failure of the bill brought Lord Russell's official career to its close. He formally handed over the leadership of the party to Mr. Gladstone, and from this time took but little part in politics. Lord Derby, his opponent, was soon to follow his example, and then the long-standing duel between Gladstone and Disraeli would be pushed up to the very front of the parliamentary stage, right in the full glare of the footlights. Meanwhile, however, Lord Derby had taken office [July 9, 1866]. Disraeli and Gladstone were changing weapons and crossing the stage. ... The exasperated Liberals, however, were rousing a widespread agitation throughout the country in favour of Reform: monster meetings were held in Hyde Park; the Park railings were pulled down and trampled on by an excited mob, and the police regulations proved as unable to bear the unusual strain as police regulations usually do on such occasions. The result was that Mr. Disraeli became convinced that a Reform Bill of some kind or other was inevitable, and Mr. Disraeli's opinion naturally carried the day. The Government, however, did not go straight to the point at once. They began by proposing a number of resolutions on the subject, which were very soon laughed out of existence. Then they brought a bill founded on them, which, however, was very shortly afterwards withdrawn after a very discouraging reception. Finally, the Ministry, lightened by the loss of three of its members--the Earl of Carnarvon, Viscount Cranborne, and General Peel--announced their intention of bringing in a comprehensive measure. The measure in question proposed household suffrage in the boroughs subject to the payment of rates, and occupation franchise for the counties subject to the same limitation, and a variety of fanciful clauses, which would have admitted members of the liberal professions, graduates of the universities, and a number of other classes to the franchise. The most novel feature was a clause which permitted a man to acquire two votes if he possessed a double qualification by rating and by profession. The great objection to the bill was that it excluded the compound householder.' The compound householder is now as extinct an animal as the potwalloper found in earlier parliamentary strata, but he was the hero of the Reform debates of 1867, and as such deserves more than a passing reference. He was, in fact, an occupier of a small house who did not pay his rates directly and in person, but paid them through his landlord. Now the occupiers of these very small houses were naturally by far the most numerous class of occupiers in the boroughs, and the omission of them implied a large exclusion from the franchise. The Liberal party, therefore, rose in defence of the compound householder, and the struggle became fierce and hot. It must be remembered, however, that neither Mr. Gladstone nor Mr. Bright wished to lower the franchise beyond a certain point, and a meeting was held in consequence, in which it was agreed that the programme brought forward in committee should begin by an alteration of the rating laws, so that the compound householder above a certain level should pay his own rates and be given a vote, and that all occupiers below the level should be excluded from the rates and the franchise alike. On what may be described roughly as 'the great drawing-the-line question,' however, the Liberal party once more split up. The advanced section were determined that all occupiers should be admitted, and they would have no 'drawing the line.' Some fifty or sixty of them held a meeting in the tea-room of the House of Commons and decided on this course of action: in consequence they acquired the name of the 'Tea-Room Party.' The communication of their views to Mr. Gladstone made him excessively indignant. He denounced them in violent language, and his passion was emulated by Mr. Bright. ... Mr. Gladstone had to give in, and his surrender was followed by that of Mr. Disraeli. The Tea-Room Party, in fact, were masters of the day, and were able to bring sufficient pressure to bear on the Government to induce them to admit the principle of household suffrage pure and simple, and to abolish all distinctions of rating. ... Not only was the household suffrage clause considerably extended, the dual vote abolished, and most of the fancy franchises swept away, but there were numerous additions which completely altered the character of the bill, and transformed it from a balanced attempt to enlarge the franchise without shifting the balance of power to a sweeping measure of reform." B. C. Skottowe, Short History of Parliament, chapter 22. {969} The Reform Bill for England "was followed in 1868 by measures for Scotland and Ireland. By these Acts the county franchise in England was extended to all occupiers of lands or houses of the yearly value of £12, and in Scotland to all £5 property owners and £14 property occupiers; while that in Ireland was not altered. The borough franchise in England and Scotland was given to all ratepaying householders and to lodgers occupying lodgings of the annual value of £10; and in Ireland to all ratepaying £4 occupiers. Thus the House of Commons was made nearly representative of all taxpaying commoners, except agricultural labourers and women." D. W. Rannie, Historical Outline of the English Constitution, chapter 12, section 4. ALSO IN: W. BAGEHOT, Essays on Parliamentary Reform, 3. G. B. Smith, Life of Gladstone, chapters 17-18 (volume 2). W. Robertson, Life and Times of John Bright, chapters 39-40. ENGLAND: A. D. 1865-1869. Discussion of the Alabama Claims of the United States. The Johnson-Clarendon Treaty and its rejection. See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1862-1869. ENGLAND: A. D. 1867-1868. Expedition to Abyssinia. See ABYSSINIA: A. D. 1854-1889. ENGLAND: A. D. 1868-1870. Disestablishment of the Irish Church. Retirement of the Derby-Disraeli Ministry. Mr. Gladstone in power. His Irish Land Bill. "On March 16, 1868, a remarkable debate took place in the House of Commons. It had for its subject the condition of Ireland, and it was introduced by a series of resolutions which Mr. John Francis Maguire, an Irish member, proposed. ... It was on the fourth night of the debate that the importance of the occasion became fully manifest. Then it was that Mr. Gladstone spoke, and declared that in his opinion the time had come when the Irish Church as a State institution must cease to exist. Then every man in the House knew that the end was near. Mr. Maguire withdrew his resolutions. The cause he had to serve was now in the hands of one who, though not surely more earnest for its success, had incomparably greater power to serve it. There was probably not a single Englishman capable of forming an opinion who did not know that from the moment when Mr. Gladstone made his declaration, the fall of the Irish State Church had become merely a question of time. Men only waited to see how Mr. Gladstone would proceed to procure its fall. Public expectation was not long kept in suspense. A few days after the debate on Mr. Maguire's motion, Mr. Gladstone gave notice of three resolutions on the subject of the Irish State Church. The first declared that in the opinion of the House of Commons it was necessary that the Established Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an Establishment, due regard being had to all personal interests and to all individual rights of property. The second resolution pronounced it expedient to prevent the creation of new personal interests by the exercise of any public patronage; and the third asked for an address to the Queen, praying that Her Majesty would place at the disposal of Parliament her interest in the temporalities of the Irish Church. The object of these resolutions was simply to prepare for the actual disestablishment of the Church, by providing that no further appointments should be made, and that the action of patronage should be stayed, until Parliament should decide the fate of the whole institution. On March 30, 1868, Mr. Gladstone proposed his resolutions. Not many persons could have had much doubt as to the result of the debate. But if there were any such, their doubts must have begun to vanish when they read the notice of amendment to the resolutions which was given by Lord Stanley. The amendment proclaimed even more surely than the resolutions the impending fall of the Irish Church. Lord Stanley must have been supposed to speak in the name of the Government and the Conservative party; and his amendment merely declared that the House, while admitting that considerable modifications in the temporalities of the Church in Ireland might appear to be expedient, was of opinion 'that any proposition tending to the disestablishment or disendowment of the Church ought to be reserved for the decision of the new Parliament.' Lord Stanley's amendment asked only for delay. ... The debate was one of great power and interest. ... When the division was called there were 270 votes for the amendment, and 331 against it. The doom of the Irish Church was pronounced by a majority of 61. An interval was afforded for agitation on both sides. ... Mr. Gladstone's first resolution came to a division about a month after the defeat of Lord Stanley's amendment. It was carried by a majority somewhat larger than that which had rejected the amendment--330 votes were given for the resolution; 265 against it. The majority for the resolution was therefore 65. Mr. Disraeli quietly observed that the Government must take some decisive step in consequence of that vote; and a few days afterwards it was announced that as soon as the necessary business could be got through, Parliament would be dissolved and an appeal made to the country. On the last day of July the dissolution took place, and the elections came on in November. Not for many years had there been so important a general election. The keenest anxiety prevailed as to its results. The new constituencies created by the Reform Bill were to give their votes for the first time. The question at issue was not merely the existence of the Irish State Church. It was a general struggle of advanced Liberalism against Toryism. ... The new Parliament was to all appearance less marked in its Liberalism than that which had gone before it. But so far as mere numbers went the Liberal party was much stronger than it had been. In the new House of Commons it could count upon a majority of about 120, whereas in the late Parliament it had but 60. Mr. Gladstone it was clear would now have everything in his own hands, and the country might look for a career of energetic reform. ... Mr. Disraeli did not meet the new Parliament as Prime Minister. He decided very properly that it would be a mere waste of public time to wait for the formal vote of the House of Commons, which would inevitably command him to surrender. He at once resigned his office, and Mr. Gladstone was immediately sent for by the Queen, and invited to form an Administration. Mr. Gladstone, it would seem, was only beginning his career. He was nearly sixty years of age, but there were scarcely any evidences of advancing years to be seen on his face. ... The Government he formed was one of remarkable strength. ... Mr. Gladstone went to work at once with his Irish policy. {970} On March 1, 1869, the Prime Minister introduced his measure for the disestablishment and partial disendowment of the Irish State Church. The proposals of the Government were, that the Irish Church should almost at once cease to exist as a State Establishment, and should pass into the condition of a free Episcopal Church. As a matter of course the Irish bishops were to lose their seats in the House of Lords. A synodal, or governing body, was to be elected from the clergy and laity of the Church and was to be recognised by the Government, and duly incorporated. The union between the Churches of England and Ireland was to be dissolved, and the Irish Ecclesiastical Courts were to be abolished. There were various and complicated arrangements for the protection of the life interests of those already holding positions in the Irish Church, and for the appropriation of the fund which would return to the possession of the State when all these interests had been fairly considered and dealt with. ... Many amendments were introduced and discussed; and some of these led to a controversy between the two Houses of Parliament; but the controversy ended in compromise. On July 26, 1869, the measure for the disestablishment of the Irish Church received the royal assent. Lord Derby did not long survive the passing of the measure which he had opposed with such fervour and so much pathetic dignity. Be died before the Irish State Church had ceased to live. ... When the Irish Church had been disposed of, Mr. Gladstone at once directed his energies to the Irish land system. ... In a speech delivered by him during his electioneering campaign in Lancashire, he had declared that the Irish upas-tree had three great branches: the State Church, the Land Tenure System, and the System of Education, and that he meant to hew them all down if he could. On February 15, 1870, Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land Bill into the House of Commons. ... It recognised a certain property or partnership of the tenant in the land which he tilled. Mr. Gladstone took the Ulster tenant-right as he found it, and made it a legal institution. In places where the Ulster practice, or something analogous to it, did not exist, he threw upon the landlord the burden of proof as regarded the right of eviction. The tenant disturbed in the possession of his land could claim compensation for improvements, and the bill reversed the existing assumption of the law by presuming all improvements to be the property of the tenant, and leaving it to the landlord, if he could, to prove the contrary. The bill established a special judiciary machinery for carrying out its provisions. ... It put an end to the reign of the landlord's absolute power; it reduced the landlord to the level of every other proprietor, of every other man in the country who had anything to sell or hire. ... The bill passed without substantial alteration. On August 1, 1870, the bill received the Royal assent. The second branch of the upas-tree had been hewn down. ... Mr. Gladstone had dealt with Church and land; he had yet to deal with university education. He had gone with Irish ideas thus far." J. McCarthy, Short History of Our Own Times, chapter 23. ALSO IN: W. N. Molesworth, History of England, 1830-1874, volume 3, chapter 6. Annual Register, 1869, part 1: English History, chapters 2-3, and 1870, chapters 1-2. ENGLAND: A. D. 1870. The Education Bill. See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, ENGLAND: A. D. 1699-1870. ENGLAND: A. D. 1871. Abolition of Army Purchase and University Religious Tests. Defeat of the Ballot Bill. "The great measure of the Session [of 1871] was of course the Army Bill, which was introduced by Mr. Cardwell, on the 16th of February. It abolished the system by which rich men obtained by purchase commissions and promotion in the army, and provided £8,000,000 to buy all commissions, as they fell in, at their regulation and over-regulation value [the regulation value being a legal price, fixed by a Royal Warrant, but which in practice was never regarded]. In future, commissions were to be awarded either to those who won them by open competition, or who had served as subalterns in the Militia, or to deserving non-commissioned officers. ... The debate, which seemed interminable, ended in an anti-climax that astonished the Tory Opposition. Mr. Disraeli threw over the advocates of Purchase, evidently dreading an appeal to the country. ... The Army Regulation Bill thus passed the Second Reading without a division," and finally, with some amendments passed the House. "In the House of Lords the Bill was again obstructed. ... Mr. Gladstone met them with a bold stroke. By statute it was enacted that only such terms of Purchase could exist as her Majesty chose to permit by Royal Warrant. The Queen, therefore, acting on Mr. Gladstone's advice, cancelled her warrant permitting Purchase, and thus the opposition of the Peers was crushed by what Mr. Disraeli indignantly termed 'the high-handed though not illegal' exercise of the Royal Prerogative. The rage of the Tory Peers knew no bounds." They "carried a vote of censure on the Government, who ignored it, and then their Lordships passed the Army Regulation Bill without any alterations. ... The Session of 1871 was also made memorable by the struggle over the Ballot Bill, in the course of which nearly all the devices of factious obstruction were exhausted. ... When the Bill reached the House of Lords, the real motive which dictated the ... obstruction of the Conservative Opposition in the House of Commons was quickly revealed. The Lords rejected the Bill on the 18th of August, not merely because they disliked and dreaded it, but because it had come to them too late for proper consideration. Ministers were more successful with some other measures. In spite of much conservative opposition they passed a Bill abolishing religious tests in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and throwing open all academic distinctions and privileges except Divinity Degrees and Clerical Fellowships to students of all creeds and faiths." R. Wilson, Life and Times of Queen Victoria, volume 2, chapter 16. ALSO IN: G. W. E. Russell, The Rt. Hon. W. E. Gladstone, chapter 9. ENGLAND: A. D. 1871-1872. Renewed negotiations with the United States. The Treaty of Washington and the Geneva Award. See ALABAMA CLAIMS: A. D. 1869-1871; 1871; and 1871-1872. ENGLAND: A. D. 1873-1879. Rise of the Irish Home Rule Party and organization of the Land League. See IRELAND: A. D. 1873-1879. ENGLAND: A. D. 1873-1880. Decline and fall of the Gladstone government. Disraeli's Ministry. His rise to the peerage, as Earl of Beaconsfield. The Eastern Question. Overthrow of the administration. The Second Gladstone Ministry. {971} "One of the little wars in which we had to engage broke out with the Ashantees, a misunderstanding resulting from our purchase of the Dutch possessions (1873) in their neighbourhood. Troops and marines under Wolseley ... were sent out to West Africa. Crossing the Prah River, January 20th, 1874, he defeated the Ashantees on the last day of that month at a place called Amoaful, entered and burnt their capital, Coomassie, and made a treaty with their King, Koffee, by which he withdrew all claims of sovereignty over the tribes under our protection. The many Liberal measures carried by the Ministry caused moderate men to wish for a halt. Some restrictions on the licensed vintners turned that powerful body against the Administration, which, on attempting to carry an Irish University Bill in 1873, became suddenly aware of its unpopularity, as the second reading was only carried by a majority of three. Resignation followed. The erratic, but astute, Disraeli declined to undertake the responsibility of governing the country with the House of Commons then existing, consequently Mr. Gladstone resumed office; yet Conservative reaction progressed. He in September became Chancellor of the Exchequer (still holding the Premiership) and 23rd January, 1874, he suddenly dissolved Parliament, promising in a letter to the electors of Greenwich the final abolition of the income tax, and a reduction in some other 'imposts.' The elections went against him. The 'harassed' interests overturned the Ministry (17th February, 1874). ... On the accession of the Conservative Government under Mr. Disraeli (February, 1874), the budget showed a balance of six millions in favour of the reduction of taxation. Consequently the sugar duties were abolished and the income tax reduced to 2d. in the pound. This, the ninth Parliament of Queen Victoria, sat for a little over six years. ... Mr. Disraeli, now the Earl of Beaconsfield, was fond of giving the country surprises. One of these consisted in the purchase of the interest of the Khedive of Egypt in the Suez Canal for four millions sterling (February, 1876). Another was the acquisition of the Turkish Island of Cyprus, handed over for the guarantee to Turkey of her Asiatic provinces in the event of any future Russian encroachments. ... As war had broken out in several of the Turkish provinces (1876), and as Russia had entered the lists for the insurgents against the Sultan, whom England was bound to support by solemn treaties, we were treated to a third surprise by the conveyance, in anticipation of a breach with Russia, of 7,000 troops from India to Malta. The Earl of Derby, looking upon this manœuvre as a menace to that Power, resigned his office, which was filled by Lord Salisbury (1878). ... The war proving disastrous to Turkey, the treaty of St. Stephano (February, 1878), was concluded with Russia, by which the latter acquired additional territory in Asia Minor in violation of the treaty of Paris (1856). Our Government strongly remonstrated, and war seemed imminent. Through the intercession, however, of Bismarck, the German Chancellor, war was averted, and a congress soon met in Berlin, at which Britain was represented by Lords Salisbury and Beaconsfield; the result being the sanction of the treaty already made, with the exception that the town of Erzeroum was handed back to Turkey. Our ambassadors returned home rather pompously, the Prime Minister loftily declaring, that they had brought back 'peace with honour.' ... Our expenses had rapidly increased, the wealthy commercial people began to distrust a Prime Minister who had brought us to the brink of war, the Irish debates, Irish poverty, and Irish outrages had brought with them more or less discredit on the Ministry. ... The Parliament was dissolved March 24th, but the elections went so decisively in favour of the Liberals that Beaconsfield resigned (April 23rd). Early in the following year he appeared in his place in the House of Peers, but died April 19th. Though Mr. Gladstone had in 1875 relinquished the political leadership in favour of Lord Hartington yet the 'Bulgarian Atrocities' and other writings brought him again so prominent before the public that his leadership was universally acknowledged by the party. ... He now resumed office, taking the two posts so frequently held before by Prime Ministers since the days of William Pitt, who also held them. ... The result of the general election of 1880 was the return of more Liberals to Parliament than Conservatives and Home Rulers together. The farming interest continued depressed both in Great Britain and Ireland, resulting in thousands of acres being thrown on the landlords' hands in the former country, and numerous harsh evictions in the latter for non-payment of rent. Mr. Gladstone determined to legislate anew on the Irish Land Question: and (1881) carried through both Houses that admirable measure known as the Irish Land Act, which for the first time in the history of that country secured to the tenant remuneration for his own industry. A Land Commission Court was established to fix Fair Rents for a period of 15 years. After a time leaseholders were included in this beneficent legislation." R. Johnston, A Short History of the Queen's Reign, pages 49-57. ALSO IN: J. A. Froude, Lord Beaconsfield, chapters 16-17. G. B. Smith, Life of Gladstone, chapters 22-28 (volume 2). H. Jephson, The Platform, chapters 21-22 (volume 2). ENGLAND: A. D. 1877. Assumption by the Queen of the title of Empress of India. See INDIA: A. D. 1877. ENGLAND: A. D. 1877-1878. The Eastern Question again. Bulgarian atrocities. Excitement over the Russian successes in Turkey. War-clamor of "the Jingoes." The fleet sent through the Dardanelles. Arrangement of the Berlin Congress. See BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES: A. D. 1875-1878; and TURKS: A. D. 1878. ENGLAND: A. D. 1877-1881. Annexation of the Transvaal. The Boer War. See SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1806-1881. ENGLAND: A. D. 1878. The Congress of Berlin. Acquisition of the control of Cyprus. See TURKS: A. D. 1878. ENGLAND: A. D. 1878-1880. The second Afghan War. See AFGHANISTAN: A. D. 1869-1881. ENGLAND: A. D. 1880. Breach between the Irish Party and the English Liberals. See IRELAND: A. D. 1880. ENGLAND: A. D. 1882. War in Egypt. Bombardment of Alexandria. Battle of Tel-el-Kebir. See EGYPT: A. D. 1875-1882, and 1882-1883. ENGLAND: A. D. 1883. The Act for Prevention of Corrupt and Illegal Practices at Parliamentary Elections. {972} "Prior to the General Election of 1880 there were those who hoped and believed that Corrupt Practices at Elections were decreasing. These hopes were based upon the growth of the constituencies and their increased political intelligence, and also upon the operation of the Ballot Act. The disclosures following the General Election proved to the most sanguine that this belief was an error. Corrupt practices were found to be more prevalent than ever. If in olden times larger aggregate sums were expended in bribery and treating, never probably had so many persons been bribed and treated as at the General Election of 1880. After that election nineteen petitions against returns on the ground of corrupt practices were presented. In eight instances the Judges reported that those practices had extensively prevailed, and in respect of seven of these the reports of the Commissioners appointed under the Act of 1852 demonstrated the alarming extent to which corruption of all kinds had grown. ... A most serious feature in the Commissioners' Reports was the proof they afforded that bribery was regarded as a meritorious not as a disgraceful act. Thirty magistrates were reported as guilty of corrupt practices and removed from the Commission of the Peace by the Lord Chancellor. Mayors, aldermen, town-councillors, solicitors, the agents of the candidates, and others of a like class were found to have dealt with bribery as if it were a part of the necessary machinery for conducting an election. Worst of all, some of these persons had actually attained municipal honours, not only after they had committed these practices, but even after their misdeeds had been exposed by public inquiry. The Reports also showed, and a Parliamentary Return furnished still more conclusive proof, that election expenses were extravagant even to absurdity, and moreover were on the increase. The lowest estimate of the expenditure during the General Election of 1880 amounts to the enormous sum of two and a half millions. With another Reform Bill in view, the prospects of future elections were indeed alarming. ... The necessity for some change was self-evident. Public opinion insisted that the subject should be dealt with, and the evil encountered. ... The Queen's Speech of the 6th of January, 1881, announced that a measure 'for the repression of corrupt practices' would be submitted to Parliament, and on the following day the Attorney-General (Sir Henry James), in forcible and eloquent terms, moved for leave to introduce his Bill. His proposals (severe as they seemed) were received with general approval and sympathy, both inside and outside the House of Commons, at a time when members and constituents alike were ashamed of the excesses so recently brought to light. It is true that the two and a half years' delay that intervened between the introduction of the Bill and its finally becoming law (a delay caused by the necessities of Irish legislation), sufficed very considerably to cool the enthusiasm of Parliament and the public. Yet enough desire for reform remained to carry in July 1883 the Bill of January 1881, modified indeed in detail, but with its principles intact and its main provisions unaltered. The measure which has now become the Parliamentary Elections Act of 1883, was in its conception pervaded by two principles. The first was to strike hard and home at corrupt practices; the second was to prohibit by positive legislation any expenditure in the conduct of an election which was not absolutely necessary. Bribery, undue influence, and personation, had long been crimes for which a man could be fined and imprisoned. Treating was now added to the same class of offences, and the punishment for all rendered more deterrent by a liability to hard labour. ... Besides punishment on conviction, incapacities of a serious character are to result from a person being reported guilty of corrupt practices by Election Judges or Election Commissioners. ... A candidate reported personally guilty of corrupt practices can never sit again for the same constituency, and is rendered incapable of being a member of the House of Commons for seven years. All persons, whether candidates or not, are, on being reported, rendered incapable of holding any public office or exercising any franchise for the same period. Moreover, if any persons so found guilty are magistrates, barristers, solicitors, or members of other honourable professions, they are to be reported to the Lord Chancellor, Inns of Court, High Court of Justice, or other authority controlling their profession, and dealt with as in the case of professional misconduct. Licensed victuallers are, in a similar manner, to be reported to the licensing justices, who may on the next occasion refuse to renew their licenses. ... The employment of all paid assistants except a very limited number is forbidden; no conveyances are to be paid for, and only a restricted number of committee rooms are to be engaged. Unnecessary payments for the exhibition of bills and addresses, and for flags, bands, torches, and the like are declared illegal. But these prohibitions of specific objects were not considered sufficient. Had these alone been enacted, the money of wealthy and reckless candidates would have found other channels in which to flow. ... And thus it was that the 'maximum scale' was adopted as at once the most direct and the most efficacious means of limiting expenditure. Whether by himself or his agents, by direct payment or by contract, the candidate is forbidden to spend more in 'the conduct and management of an election' than the sums permitted by the Act, sums which depend in each case on the numerical extent of the constituency." H. Hobhouse, The Parliamentary Elections (Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act, 1883, pages 1-8. ENGLAND: A. D. 1884-1885. The Third Reform Bill and the Redistribution Bill. The existing qualifications and disqualifications of the Suffrage. "Soon after Mr. Gladstone came into power in 1880, Mr. Trevelyan became a member of his Administration. Already the Premier had secured the co-operation of two other men new to office--Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke. ... Their presence in the Administration was looked upon as a good augury by the Radicals, and the augury was not destined to prove misleading. It was understood from the first that, with such men as his coadjutors, Mr. Gladstone was pledged to a still further Reform. He was pledged already, in fact, by his speeches in Midlothian. ... On the 17th of October, 1883, a great Conference was held at Leeds, for the purpose of considering the Liberal programme for the ensuing season. The Conference was attended by no fewer than 2,000 delegates, who represented upwards of 500 Liberal Associations. {973} It was presided over by Mr. John Morley. ... To a man the delegates agreed as to the imperative necessity of household suffrage being extended to the counties; and almost to a man they agreed also as to the necessity of the measure being no longer delayed. ... When Parliament met on the 5th of the following February ... a measure for 'the enlargement of the occupation franchise in Parliamentary Elections throughout the United Kingdom' was distinctly promised in the Royal Speech; and the same evening Mr. Gladstone gave notice that 'on the first available day,' he would move for leave to bring in the bill. So much was the House of Commons occupied with affairs in Egypt and the Soudan, however, that it was not till the 29th of February that the Premier was able to fulfil his pledge." Four months were occupied in the passage of the bill through the House of Commons, and when it reached the Lords it was rejected. This roused "an intense feeling throughout the country. On the 21st of July, a great meeting was held in Hyde Park, attended, it was believed, by upwards of 100,000 persons. ... On the 30th of July, a great meeting of delegates was held in St. James's Hall, London. ... Mr. John Morley, who presided, used some words respecting the House that had rejected the bill which were instantly caught up by Reformers everywhere. 'Be sure,' he said, 'that no power on earth can separate henceforth the question of mending the House of Commons from the question of mending, or ending, the House of Lords.' On the 4th of August, Mr. Bright, speaking at Birmingham, referred to the Lords as 'many of them the spawn of the plunder and the wars and the corruption of the dark ages of our country'; and his colleague, Mr. Chamberlain, used even bolder words: 'During the last one hundred years the House of Lords has never contributed one iota to popular liberties or popular freedom, or done anything to advance the common weal; and during that time it has protected every abuse and sheltered every privilege. ... It is irresponsible without independence, obstinate without courage, arbitrary without judgment, and arrogant without knowledge.' ... In very many instances, a strong disposition was manifested to drop the agitation for the Reform of the House of Commons for a time, and to concentrate the whole strength of the Liberal party on one final struggle for the Reform (or, preferably, the extinction) of the Upper House." But Mr. Gladstone gave no encouragement to this inclination of his party. The outcome of the agitation was the passage of the Franchise Bill a second time in the House of Commons, in November, 1884, and by the Lords soon afterwards. A concession was made to the latter by previously satisfying them with regard to the contemplated redistribution of seats in the House of Commons, for which a separate bill was framed and introduced while the Franchise Bill was yet pending. The Redistribution Bill passed the Commons in May and the Lords in June, 1885. W. Heaton, The Three Reforms of Parliament, chapter 6. "In regard to electoral districts, the equalization, in other words, the radical refashioning of electoral districts, having about the same number of inhabitants, is carried out. For this purpose, 79 towns, having less than 15,000 inhabitants, are divested of the right of electing a separate member; 36 towns, with less than 50,000, return only one member; 14 large towns obtain an increase of the number of the members in proportion to the population; 35 towns, of nearly 50,000, obtain a new franchise. The counties are throughout parcelled-out into 'electoral districts' of about the like population, to elect one member each. This single-seat system is, regularly, carried out in towns, with the exception of 28 middle-sized towns, which have been left with two members. The County of York forms, for example, 26 electoral districts; Liverpool 9. To sum up, the result stands thus:--the counties choose 253 members (formerly 187), the towns 237 (formerly 297). The average population of the county electoral districts is now 52,800 (formerly 70,800); the average number of the town electoral districts 52,700 (formerly 41,200). ... The number of the newly-enfranchised is supposed, according to an average estimate, to be 2,000,000." Dr. R. Gneist, The English Parliament in its Transformations, chapter 9. ALSO IN: J. Murdoch, History of Constitutional Reform in Great Britain and Ireland, pages 277-398. H. Jephson, The Platform, chapter 23 (volume 2). The following is the text of the "Third Reform Act," which is entitled "The Representation of the People Act, 1884": An Act to amend the Law relating to the Representation of the People of the United Kingdom. [6th December, 1884.] Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows: 1. This Act may be cited as the Representation of the People Act, 1884. 2. A uniform household franchise and a uniform lodger franchise at elections shall be established in all counties and boroughs throughout the United Kingdom, and every man possessed of a household qualification or a lodger qualification shall, if the qualifying premises be situate in a county in England or Scotland, be entitled to be registered as a voter, and when registered to vote at an election for such county, and if the qualifying premises be situate in a county or borough in Ireland, be entitled to be registered as a voter, and when registered to vote at an election for such county or borough. 3. Where a man himself inhabits any dwelling-house by virtue of any office, service, or employment, and the dwelling-house is not inhabited by any person under whom such man serves in such office, service, or employment, he shall be deemed for the purposes of this Act and of the Representation of the People Acts to be an inhabitant occupier of such dwelling-house as a tenant. 4. Subject to the saving in this Act for existing voters, the following provisions shall have effect with reference to elections: (1.) A man shall not be entitled to be registered as a voter in respect of the ownership of any rentcharge except the owner of the whole of the tithe rentcharge of a rectory, vicarage, chapelry, or benefice to which an apportionment of tithe rentcharge shall have been made in respect of any portion of tithes. (2.) Where two or more men are owners either as joint tenants or as tenants in common of an estate in any land or tenement, one of such men, but not more than one, shall, if his interest is sufficient to confer a qualification as a voter in respect of the ownership of such estate, be entitled (in the like cases and subject to the like conditions as if he were the sole owner) to be registered as a voter, and when registered to vote at an election. {974} Provided that where such owners have derived their interest by descent, succession, marriage, marriage settlement, or will, or where they occupy the land or tenement, and are bonâ fide engaged as partners carrying on trade or business thereon, each of such owners whose interest is sufficient to confer on him a qualification as a voter shall be entitled (in the like cases and subject to the like conditions as if he were sole owner) to be registered as a voter in respect of such ownership, and when registered to vote at an election, and the value of the interest of each such owner where not otherwise legally defined shall be ascertained by the division of the total value of the land or tenement equally among the whole of such owners. 5. Every man occupying any land or tenement in a county or borough in the United Kingdom of a clear yearly value of not less than ten pounds shall be entitled to be registered as a voter and when registered to vote at an election for such county or borough in respect of such occupation subject to the like conditions respectively as a man is, at the passing of this Act, entitled to be registered as a voter and to vote at an election for such county in respect of the county occupation franchise, and at an election for such borough in respect of the borough occupation franchise. 6. A man shall not by virtue of this Act be entitled to be registered as a voter or to vote at any election for a county in respect of the occupation of any dwelling-house, lodgings, land, or tenement, situate in a borough. 7. (1.) In this Act the expression "a household qualification" means, as respects England and Ireland, the qualification enacted by the third section of the Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see comments appended to this text], and the enactments amending or affecting the same, and the said section and enactments so far as they are consistent with this Act, shall extend to counties in England and to counties and boroughs in Ireland. (2.) In the construction of the said enactments, as amended and applied to Ireland, the following dates shall be substituted for the dates therein mentioned, that is to say, the twentieth day of July for the fifteenth day of July, the first day of July for the twentieth day of July, and the first day of January for the fifth day of January. (3.) The expression "a lodger qualification" means the qualification enacted, as respects England, by the fourth section of the Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see comments appended to this text], and the enactments amending or affecting the same, and as respects Ireland, by the fourth section of the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the same, and the said section of the English Act of 1867, and the enactments amending or affecting the same, shall, so far as they are consistent with this Act, extend to counties in England, and the said section of the Irish Act of 1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the same, shall, so far as they are consistent with this Act, extend to counties in Ireland; and sections five and six and twenty-two and twenty-three of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878, so far as they relate to lodgings, shall apply to Ireland, and for the purpose of such application the reference in the said section six to the Representation of the People Act, 1867, shall be deemed to be made to the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868, and in the said section twenty-two of the Parliamentary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878, the reference to section thirteen of the Parliamentary Registration Act, 1843, shall be construed to refer to the enactments of the Registration Acts in Ireland relating to the making out, signing, publishing, and otherwise dealing with the lists of voters, and the reference to the Parliamentary Registration Acts shall be construed to refer to the Registration Acts in Ireland, and the following dates shall be substituted in Ireland for the dates in that section mentioned, that is to say, the twentieth day of July for the last day of July, and the fourteenth day of July for the twenty-fifth day of July, and the word "overseers" shall be construed to refer in a county to the clerk of the peace, and in a borough to the town clerk. (4.) The expression "a household qualification" means, as respects Scotland, the qualification enacted by the third section of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the same, and the said section and enactments shall, so far as they are consistent with this Act, extend to counties in Scotland, and for the purpose of the said section and enactments the expression "dwelling-house" in Scotland means any house or part of a house occupied as a separate dwelling, and this definition of a dwelling-house shall be substituted for the definition contained in section fifty-nine of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868. (5.) The expression "a lodger qualification" means, as respects Scotland, the qualification enacted by the fourth section of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868, and the enactments amending or affecting the same, and the said section and enactments, so far as they are consistent with this Act, shall extend to counties in Scotland. (6.) The expression "county occupation franchise" means, as respects England, the franchise enacted by the sixth section of the Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see comments appended to this text]; and, as respects Scotland, the franchise enacted by the sixth section of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868; and, as respects Ireland, the franchise enacted by the first section of the Act of the session of the thirteenth and fourteenth years of the reign of Her present Majesty, chapter sixty-nine. (7.) The expression "borough occupation franchise" means, as respects England, the franchise enacted by the twenty-seventh section of the Act of the session of the second and third years of the reign of King William the Fourth, chapter forty-five [see comments appended to this text]; and as respects Scotland, the franchise enacted by the eleventh section of the Act of the session of the second and third years of the reign of King William the Fourth, chapter sixty-five; and as respects Ireland the franchise enacted by section five of the Act of the session of the thirteenth and fourteenth years of the reign of Her present Majesty, chapter sixty-nine, and the third section of the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868. {975} (8.) Any enactments amending or relating to the county occupation franchise or 'borough occupation franchise other than the sections in this Act in that behalf mentioned shall be deemed to be referred to in the definition of the county occupation franchise and the borough occupation franchise in this Act mentioned. 8. (1.) In this Act the expression "the Representation of the People Acts" means the enactments for the time being in force in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively relating to the representation of the people, inclusive of the Registration Acts as defined by this Act. (2.) The expression "the Registration Acts" means the enactments for the time being in force in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively, relating to the registration of persons entitled to vote at elections for counties and boroughs, inclusive of the Rating Acts as defined by this Act. (3.) The expressions "the Representation of the People Acts" and "the Registration Acts" respectively, where used in this Act, shall be read distributively in reference to the three parts of the United Kingdom as meaning in the case of each part the enactments for the time being in force in that part. (4.) All enactments of the Registration Acts which relate to the registration of persons entitled to vote in boroughs in England in respect of a household or a lodger qualification, and in boroughs in Ireland in respect of a lodger qualification, shall, with the necessary variations and with the necessary alterations of precepts, notices, lists, and other forms, extend to counties as well as to boroughs. (5.) All enactments of the Registration Acts which relate to the registration in counties and boroughs in Ireland of persons entitled to vote in respect of the county occupation franchise and the borough occupation franchise respectively, shall, with the necessary variations and with the necessary alterations of precepts, notices, lists, and other forms, extend respectively to the registration in counties and boroughs in Ireland of persons entitled to vote in respect of the household qualification conferred by this Act. (6.) In Scotland all enactments of the Registration Acts which relate to the registration of persons entitled to vote in burghs, including the provisions relating to dates, shall, with the necessary variations, and with the necessary alterations of notices and other forms, extend and apply to counties as well as to burghs; and the enactments of the said Acts which relate to the registration of persons entitled to vote in counties shall, so far as inconsistent with the enactments so applied, be repealed: Provided that in counties the valuation rolls, registers, and lists shall continue to be arranged in parishes as heretofore. 9. (1.) In this Act the expression "the Rating Acts" means the enactments for the time being in force in England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively, relating to the placing of the names of occupiers on the rate book, or other enactments relating to rating in so far as they are auxiliary to or deal with the registration of persons entitled to vote at elections; and the expression "the Rating Acts" where used in this Act shall be read distributively in reference to the three parts of the United Kingdom as meaning in the case of each part the Acts for the time being in force in that part. (2.) In every part of the United Kingdom it shall be the duty of the overseers annually, in the months of April and May, or one of them, to inquire or ascertain with respect to every hereditament which comprises any dwelling-house or dwelling-houses within the meaning of the Representation of the People Acts, whether any man, other than the owner or other person rated or liable to be rated in respect of such hereditament, is entitled to be registered as a voter in respect of his being an inhabitant occupier of any such dwelling-house, and to enter in the rate book the name of every man so entitled, and the situation or description of the dwelling-house in respect of which he is entitled, and for the purposes of such entry a separate column shall be added to the rate book. (3.) For the purpose of the execution of such duty the overseers may serve on the person who is the occupier or rated or liable to be rated in respect of such hereditament, or on some agent of such person concerned in the management of such hereditament, the requisition specified in the Third Schedule of this Act requiring that the form in that notice be accurately filled up and returned to the overseers within twenty-one days after such service; and if any such person or agent on whom such requisition is served fails to comply therewith, he shall be liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding forty shillings, and any overseer who fails to perform his duty under this section shall be deemed guilty of a breach of duty in the execution of the Registration Acts, and shall be liable to be fined accordingly a sum not exceeding forty shillings for each default. (4.) The notice under this section may be served in manner provided by the Representation of the People Acts with respect to the service on occupiers of notice of non-payment of rates, and, where a body of persons, corporate or unincorporate, is rated, shall be served on the secretary or agent of such body of persons; and where the hereditament by reason of belonging to the Crown or otherwise is not rated, shall be served on the chief local officer having the superintendence or control of such hereditament. (5.) In the application of this section to Scotland the expression rate book means the valuation roll, and where a man entered on the valuation roll by virtue of this section inhabits a dwelling-house by virtue of any office, service, or employment, there shall not be entered in the valuation roll any rent or value against the name of such man as applicable to such dwelling-house, nor shall any such man by reason of such entry become liable to be rated in respect of such dwelling-house. (6.) The proviso in section two of the Act for the valuation of lands and heritages in Scotland passed in the session of the seventeenth and eighteenth years of the reign of Her present Majesty chapter ninety-one, and section fifteen of the Representation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868, shall be repealed: Provided that in any county in Scotland the commissioners of supply, or the parochial board of any parish, or any other rating authority entitled to impose assessments according to the valuation roll, may, if they think fit, levy such assessments in respect of lands and heritages separately let for a shorter period than one year or at a rent not amounting to four pounds per annum in the same manner and from the same persons as if the names of the tenants and occupiers of such lands and heritages were not inserted in the valuation roll. {976} (7.) In Ireland where the owner of a dwelling-house is rated instead of the occupier, the occupier shall nevertheless be entitled to be registered as a voter, and to vote under the same conditions under which an occupier of a dwelling-house in England is entitled in pursuance of the Poor Rate Assessment and Collection Act, 1869, and the Acts amending the same, to be registered as a voter, and to vote where the owner is rated, and the enactments referred to in the First Schedule to this Act shall apply to Ireland accordingly, with the modifications in that schedule mentioned. (8.) Both in England and Ireland where a man inhabits any dwelling-house by virtue of any office, service, or employment, and is deemed for the purposes of this Act and of the Representation of the People Acts to be an inhabitant occupier of such dwelling-house as a tenant, and another person is rated or liable to be rated for such dwelling-house, the rating of such other person shall for the purposes of this Act and of the Representation of the People Acts be deemed to be that of the inhabitant occupier; and the several enactments of the Poor Rate Assessment and Collection Act, 1869, and other Acts amending the same referred to in the First Schedule to this Act shall for those purposes apply to such inhabitant occupier, and in the construction of those enactments the word "owner" shall be deemed to include a person actually rated or liable to be rated as aforesaid. (9.) In any part of the United Kingdom where a man inhabits a dwelling-house in respect of which no person is rated by reason of such dwelling-house belonging to or being occupied on behalf of the Crown, or by reason of any other ground of exemption, such person shall not be disentitled to be registered as a voter, and to vote by reason only that no one is rated in respect of such dwelling-house, and that no rates are paid in respect of the same, and it shall be the duty of the persons making out the rate book or valuation roll to enter any such dwelling-house as last aforesaid in the rate book or valuation roll, together with the name of the inhabitant occupier thereof. 10. Nothing in this Act shall deprive any person (who at the date of the passing of this Act is registered in respect of any qualification to vote for any county or borough), of his right to be from time to time registered and to vote for such county or borough in respect of such qualification in like manner as if this Act had not passed. Provided that where a man is so registered in respect of the county or borough occupation franchise by virtue of a qualification which also qualifies him for the franchise under this Act, he shall be entitled to be registered in respect of such latter franchise only. Nothing in this Act shall confer on any man who is subject to any legal incapacity to be registered as a voter or to vote, any right to be registered as a voter or to vote. 11. This Act, so far as may be consistently with the tenor thereof, shall be construed as one with the Representation of the People Acts as defined by this Act; and the expressions "election," "county," and "borough," and other expressions in this Act and in the enactments applied by this Act, shall have the same meaning as in the said Acts. Provided that in this Act and the said enactments--The expression "overseers" includes assessors, guardians, clerks of unions, or other persons by whatever name known, who perform duties in relation to rating or to the registration of voters similar to those performed in relation to such matters by overseers in England. The expression "rentcharge" includes a fee farm rent, a feu duty in Scotland, a rent seck, a chief rent, a rent of assize, and any rent or annuity granted out of land. The expression "land or tenement" includes any part of a house separately occupied for the purpose of any trade, business, or profession, and that expression, and also the expression "hereditament" when used in this Act, in Scotland includes "lands and heritages." The expressions "joint tenants" and "tenants in common" shall include "pro indiviso proprietors." The expression "clear yearly value" as applied to any land or tenement means in Scotland the annual value as appearing in the valuation roll, and in Ireland the net annual value at which the occupier of such land or tenement was rated under the last rate for the time being, under the Act of the session of the first and second years of the reign of Her present Majesty, chapter fifty-six, or any Acts amending the same. 12. Whereas the franchises conferred by this Act are in substitution for the franchises conferred by the enactments mentioned in the first and second parts of the Second Schedule hereto, be it enacted that the Acts mentioned in the first part of the said Second Schedule shall be repealed to the extent in the third column of that part of the said schedule mentioned except in so far as relates to the rights of persons saved by this Act; and the Acts mentioned in the second part of the said Second Schedule shall be repealed to the extent in the third column of that part of the said schedule mentioned, except in so far as relates to the rights of persons saved by this Act and except in so far as the enactments so repealed contain conditions made applicable by this Act to any franchise enacted by this Act. 13. This Act shall commence and come into operation on the first day of January one thousand eight hundred and eighty-five: Provided that the register of voters in any county or borough in Scotland made in the last-mentioned year shall not come into force until the first day of January one thousand eight hundred and eighty-six, and until that day the previous register of voters shall continue in force. The following comments upon the foregoing act afford explanations which are needed for the understanding of some of its provisions: "The introduction of the household franchise into counties is the main work of the Representation of the People Act, 1884. ... The county household franchise is ... made identical with the borough franchise created by the Reform Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vict., c. 102), to which we must, therefore, turn for the definition of the one household franchise now established in both counties and boroughs throughout the United Kingdom. The third section of the Act in question provides that 'Every man shall in and after the year 1868 be entitled to be registered as a voter, and when registered to vote, for a member or members to serve in Parliament for a borough [we must now add "or for a county or division of a county"] who is qualified as follows: (1.) Is of full age and not subject to any legal incapacity; (2.) Is on the last day of July [now July 15th] in any year, and has during the whole of the preceding twelve calendar months been an inhabitant occupier as owner or tenant of any dwelling house within the borough [or within a county or division of a county]; {977} (3.) Has during the time of such occupation been rated as an ordinary occupier in respect of the premises so occupied by him within the borough to all rates (if any) made for the relief of the poor in respect of such premises; and, (4.) Has on or before the 20th day of July in the same year bona fide paid an equal amount in the pound to that payable by other ordinary occupiers in respect of all poor rates that have been payable by him in respect of the said premises up to the preceding 5th day of January: Provided that no man shall under this section be entitled to be registered as a voter by reason of his being a joint occupier of any dwelling house. ... The lodger franchise was the creation of the Reform Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vict., c. 102), the 4th section of which conferred the suffrage upon lodgers who, being of full age and not subject to any legal incapacity, have occupied in the same borough lodgings 'of a clear yearly value, if let unfurnished, of £10 or upwards' for twelve months preceding the last day of July, and have claimed to be registered as voters at the next ensuing registration of voters. By this clause certain limitations or restrictions were imposed on the lodger franchise; but these were swept away by the 41 & 42 Vict., c. 26, the 6th section of which considerably enlarged the franchise by enacting that:-- (1.) Lodgings occupied by a person in any year or two successive years shall not be deemed to be different lodgings by reason only that in that year or either of those years he has occupied some other rooms or place in addition to his original lodgings. (2.) For the purpose of qualifying a lodger to vote the occupation in immediate succession of different lodgings of the requisite value in the same house shall have the same effect as continued occupation of the same lodgings. (3.) Where lodgings are jointly occupied by more than one lodger, and the clear yearly value of the lodgings if let unfurnished is of an amount which, when divided by the number of the lodgers, gives a sum of not less than £10 for each lodger, then each lodger (if otherwise qualified and subject to the conditions of the Representation of the People Act, 1867) shall be entitled to be registered and when registered to vote as a lodger, provided that not more than two persons being such joint lodgers shall be entitled to be registered in respect of such lodgings. ... Until the passing of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, no householder was qualified to vote unless he not only occupied a dwelling house, but occupied it either as owner or as the tenant of the owner. And where residence in an official or other house was necessary, or conducive to the efficient discharge of a man's duty or service, and was either expressly or impliedly made a part of such duty or service then the relation of landlord or tenant was held not to be created. The consequence was that a large number of persons who as officials, as employes, or as servants are required to reside in public buildings, on the premises of their employers or in houses assigned to them by their masters were held not to be entitled to the franchise. In future such persons will ... be entitled to vote as inhabitant occupiers and tenants (under Section 3 of the recent Act), notwithstanding that they occupy their dwelling houses 'by virtue of any office, service or employment.' But this is subject to the condition that a subordinate cannot qualify or obtain a vote in respect of a dwelling house which is also inhabited by any person under whom 'such man serves in such office, service or employment.' ... Persons seised of (i. e., owning) an estate of inheritance (i. e., in fee simple or fee-tail) of freehold tenure, in lands or tenements, of the value of 40s. per annum, are entitled to a vote for the county or division of the county in which the estate is situated. This is the class of electors generally known as 'forty shilling freeholders.' Originally all freeholders were entitled to county votes, but by the 8 Henry VI., c. 7, it was provided that no freehold of a less annual value than 40s. should confer the franchise. Until the Reform Act of 1832, 40s. freeholders, whether their estate was one of inheritance or one for life or lives, were entitled to county votes. That Act, however, restricted the county freehold franchise by drawing a distinction between (1) freeholds of inheritance, and (2) freeholds not of inheritance. While the owners of the first class of freeholds were left in possession of their former rights (except when the property is situated within a Parliamentary borough), the owners of the latter were subjected to a variety of conditions and restrictions. ... Before the passing of the Representation of the People Act, 1884, any number of persons might qualify and obtain county votes as joint owners of a freehold of inheritance, provided that it was of an annual value sufficient to give 40s. for each owner. But ... this right is materially qualified by Section 4 of the recent Act. ... Persons seised of an estate for life or lives of freehold tenure of the annual value of 40s., but of less than £5, are entitled to a county vote, provided that they (1) actually and bonâ fide occupy the premises, or (2) were seised of the property at the time of the passing of the 2 Will. IV., c. 45 (June 7th, 1832), or (3) have acquired the property after the date by marriage, marriage settlement, devise, or promotion to a benefice or office. ... Persons seised of an estate for life or lives or of any larger estate in lands or tenements of any tenure whatever of the yearly value of £5 or upwards: This qualification is not confined to the ownership of freehold lands. Under the words 'of any tenure whatever' (30 & 31 Vict., c. 102, s. 5) copyholders have county votes if their property is of the annual value of £5. ... The electoral qualifications in Scotland are defined by the 2 & 3 Will. IV., c. 65, the 31 & 32 Vict., c. 48, and the Representation of the People Act, 1884 (48 Vict., c. 3). The effect of the three Acts taken together is that the County franchises are as follows: 1. Owners of Land, &c., of the annual value of £5, after deducting feu duty, ground annual, or other considerations which an owner may be bound to pay or to give an account for as a condition of his right. 2. Leaseholders under a lease of not less than 57 years or for the life of the tenant of the clear yearly value of £10, or for a period of not less than 19 years when the clear yearly value is not less than £50, or the tenant is in actual personal occupancy of the land. 3. Occupiers of land, &c., of the clear yearly value of £10. 4. Householders. 5. Lodgers. 6. The service franchise. Borough franchises. 1. Occupiers of land or tenements of the annual value of £10. 2. Householders. 3. Lodgers. 4. The service franchise. {978} The qualification for these franchises is in all material respects the same as for the corresponding franchises in the Scotch counties, and in the counties and boroughs of England and Wales. ... The Acts relating to the franchise in Ireland are 2 & 3 Will. IV., c. 88, 13 & 14 Vict., c. 69, the representation of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868, and the Representation of the People Act, 1884. Read together they give the following qualifications: County franchises. 1. Owners of freeholds of inheritance or of freeholds for lives renewable for ever rated to the poor at the annual value of £5. 2. Freeholders and copyholders of a clear annual value of £10. 3. Leaseholders of various terms and value. 4. Occupiers of land or a tenement of the clear annual value of £10. 5. Householders. 6. The lodger franchise. 7. The service franchise. Borough franchises. 1. Occupiers of lands and tenements of the annual value of £10. 2. Householders. ... 3. Lodgers. 4. The service franchise. 5. Freemen in certain boroughs. ... All the franchises we have described ... are subject to this condition, that no one, however qualified, can be registered or vote in respect of them if he is subjected to any legal incapacity to become or act as elector. ... No alien unless certificated or naturalised, no minor, no lunatic or idiot, nor any person in such a state of drunkenness as to be incapable--is entitled to vote. Police magistrates in London and Dublin, and police officers throughout the country, including the members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, are disqualified from voting either generally or for constituencies within which their duties lie. In the case of the police the disqualification continues for six months after an officer has left the force. ... Persons are disqualified who are convicted of treason or treason-felony, for which the sentence is death or penal servitude, or any term of imprisonment with hard labour or exceeding twelve months, until they have suffered their punishment (or such as may be substituted by competent authority), or until they receive a free pardon. Peers are disqualified from voting at the election of any member to serve in Parliament. A returning officer may not vote at any election for which he acts, unless the numbers are equal, when he may give a casting vote. No person is entitled to be registered in any year as a voter for any county or borough who has within twelve calendar months next previous to the last day of July in such year received parochial relief or other alms which by the law of Parliament disqualify from voting. Persons employed at an election for reward or payment are disqualified from voting thereat although they may be on the register. ... The Corrupt and Illegal Practices Prevention Act, 1883 (46 & 47 Vict., c. 51), disqualifies a variety of offenders [see above, A. D. 1883] against its provisions from being registered or voting." W. A. Holdsworth, The New Reform Act, pages 20-36. ENGLAND: A. D. 1881-1885. Campaign in the Soudan for the relief of General Gordon. See EGYPT: A. D. 1884-1885. ENGLAND: A. D. 1885. The fall of the Gladstone government. The brief first Ministry of Lord Salisbury. "Almost simultaneously with the assembling of Parliament [February 19, 1885] had come the news of the fall of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon [see EGYPT: A. D. 1884-1885]. These terrible events sent a thrill of horror and indignation throughout the country, and the Government was severely condemned in many quarters for its procrastination. Mr. Gladstone, who was strongly moved by Gordon's death, rose to the situation, and announced that it was necessary to overthrow the Mahdi at Khartoum, to renew operations against Osman Digma, and to construct a railway from Suakim to Berber with a view to a campaign in the autumn. A royal proclamation was issued calling out the reserves. Sir Stafford Northcote initiated a debate on the Soudan question with a motion affirming that the risks and sacrifices which the Government appeared to be ready to encounter could only be justified by a distinct recognition of our responsibility for Egypt, and those portions of the Soudan which are necessary to its security. Mr. John Morley introduced an amendment to the motion, waiving any judgment on the policy of the Minister, but expressing regret at its decision to continue the conflict with the Mahdl. Mr. Gladstone skilfully dealt with both motion and amendment. Observing that it was impossible to give rigid pledges as to the future, he appealed to the Liberal party, if they had not made up their minds to condemn and punish the Government, to strengthen their hands by an unmistakable vote of confidence. The Government obtained a majority of 14, the votes being 302 in their favour with 288 against; but many of those who supported the Government had also voted for the amendment by Mr. Morley. ... Financial questions were extremely embarrassing to the Government, and it was not until the 30th of April that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was ready with his financial statement. He was called upon to deal with a deficit of upwards of a million, with a greatly depressed revenue, and with an estimated expenditure for the current year--including the vote of credit--of no less than £100,000,000. Amongst Mr. Childers's proposals was one to levy upon land an amount of taxation proportioned to that levied on personal property. There was also an augmentation of the spirit duties and of the beer duty. The country members were dissatisfied and demanded that no new charges should be thrown on the land till the promised relief of local taxation had been carried out. The agricultural and the liquor interests were discontented, as well as the Scotch and Irish members with the whiskey duty. The Chancellor made some concessions, but they were not regarded as sufficient, and on the Monday after the Whitsun holidays, the Opposition joined battle on a motion by Sir M. Hicks Beach. ... Mr. Gladstone stated at the close of the debate that the Government would resign if defeated. The amendment was carried against them by 264 to 252, and the Ministry went out. ... Lord Salisbury became Premier. ... The general election ... [was] fixed for November 1885." G. B. Smith, The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria, pages 373-377. ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886. The partition of East Africa with Germany. See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889. {979} ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1886. Mr. Gladstone's return to power. His Home Rule Bill for Ireland and his Irish Land Bill. Their defeat. Division of the Liberal Party. Lord Salisbury's Ministry. "The House of Commons which had been elected in November and December, 1885, was the first House of Commons which represented the whole body of the householders and lodgers of the United Kingdom. The result of the appeal to new constituencies and an enlarged electorate had taken all parties by surprise. The Tories found themselves, by the help of their Irish allies, successful in the towns beyond all their hopes; the Liberals, disappointed in the boroughs, had found compensation in unexpected successes in the counties; and the Irish Nationalists had almost swept the board. ... The English representation--exclusive of one Irish Nationalist for Liverpool--gave a liberal majority of 28 in the English constituencies; which Wales and Scotland swelled to 106. The Irish representation had undergone a still more remarkable change. Of 103 members for the sister island, 85 were Home Rulers and only 18 were Tories. ... The new House of Commons was exactly divided between the Liberals on one side and the Tories with their Irish allies on the other. Of its 670 members just one-half, or 335, were Liberals, 249 were Tories, and 86 were Irish Nationalists [or Home Rulers]. ... It was soon clear enough that the alliance between the Tory Ministers and the Irish Nationalists was at an end." On the 25th of January 1886, the Government was defeated on an amendment to the address, and on the 28th it resigned. Mr. Gladstone was invited to form a Ministry and did so with Lord Herschell for Lord Chancellor, Sir William Harcourt for Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers for Home Secretary, Lord Granville for Secretary for the Colonies, Mr. John Morley for Chief Secretary for Ireland, and Mr. Chamberlain for President of the Local Government Board. On the 29th of March "Mr. Gladstone announced in the House of Commons that on the 8th of April he would ask for leave to bring in a bill 'to amend the provision for the future government of Ireland'; and that on the 15th he would ask leave to bring in a measure 'to make amended provision for the sale and purchase of land in Ireland.'" The same day Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Trevelyan (Secretary for Ireland) resigned their seats in the Cabinet, and it was generally understood that differences of opinion on the Irish bills had arisen. On the 8th of April the House of Commons was densely crowded when Mr. Gladstone introduced his measure for giving Home Rule to Ireland. In a speech which lasted three hours and a half he set forth the details of his plan and the reasons on which they were based. The essential conditions observed in the framing of the measure, as he defined them, were these: "The unity of the Empire must not be placed in jeopardy; the minority must be protected; the political equality of the three countries must be maintained, and there must be an equitable distribution of Imperial burdens. He then discussed some proposals which had been made for the special treatment of Ulster--its exclusion from the bill, its separate autonomy or the reservation of certain matters, such as education, for Provincial Councils; all of which he rejected. The establishment of an Irish legislature involved the removal of Irish peers from the House of Lords and the Irish representatives from the House of Commons. But if Ireland was not represented at Westminster, how was it to be taxed? The English people would never force on Ireland taxation without representation. The taxing power would be in the hands of the Irish legislature, but Customs and Excise duties connected with Customs would be solely in the control of the Imperial Parliament, Ireland's share in these being reserved for Ireland's use. Ireland must have security against her Magna Charta being tampered with; the provision of the Act would therefore only be capable of modification with the concurrence of the Irish legislature, or after the recall of the Irish members to the two Houses of Parliament. The Irish legislature would have all the powers which were not specially reserved from it in the Act. It was to consist of two orders, though not two Houses. It would be subject to all the prerogatives of the Crown; it would have nothing to do with Army or Navy, or with Foreign or Colonial relations; nor could it modify the Act on which its own authority was based. Contracts, charters, questions of education, religious endowments and establishments, would be beyond its authority. Trade and navigation, coinage, currency, weights and measures, copyright, census, quarantine laws, and some other matters, were not to be within the powers of the Irish Parliament. The composition of the legislature was to be first, the 103 members now representing Ireland with 101, elected by the same constituencies, with the exception of the University, with power to the Irish legislature to give two members to the Royal University if it chose; then the present Irish members of the House of Lords, with 75 elected by the Irish people under a property qualification. The Viceroyalty was to be left, but the Viceroy was not to quit office with an outgoing government, and no religious disability was to affect his appointment. He would have a Privy Council, and the executive would remain as at present, but might be changed by the action of the legislative body. The present judges would preserve their lien on the Consolidated Fund of Great Britain, and the Queen would be empowered to antedate their pensions if it was seen to be desirable. Future judges, with the exception of two in the Court of Exchequer, would be appointed by the Irish government, and, like English judges, would hold their office during good behaviour. The Constabulary would remain under its present administration, Great Britain paying all charges over a million. Eventually, however, the whole police of Ireland would be under the Irish government. The civil servants would have two years' grace, with a choice of retirement on pension before passing under the Irish executive. Of the financial arrangements Mr. Gladstone spoke in careful and minute detail. He fixed the proportion of Imperial charges Ireland should pay at one-fifteenth, or in other words she would pay one part and Great Britain fourteen parts. More than a million of duty is paid on spirits in Ireland which come to Great Britain, and this would be practically a contribution towards the Irish revenue. So with Irish porter and with the tobacco manufactured in Ireland and sold here. Altogether the British taxpayers would contribute in this way £1,400,000 a year to the Irish Exchequer; reducing the actual payment of Ireland itself for Imperial affairs to one-twenty-sixth." On the 16th of April Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land Bill, connecting it with the Home Rule Bill as forming part of one great measure for the pacification of Ireland. In the meantime the opposition to his policy within the ranks of the Liberal party had been rapidly taking form. It Mr. Trevelyan, Sir Henry James, Sir John Lubbock, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. Courtney. It soon received the support of Mr. John Bright. The debate in the House, which lasted until the 3rd of June, was passionate and bitter. {980} It ended in the defeat of the Government by a majority of 30 against the bill. The division was the largest which had ever been taken in the House of Commons, 657 members being present. The majority was made up of 249 Conservatives and 94 Liberals. The minority consisted of 228 Liberals and 85 Nationalists. Mr. Gladstone appealed to the country by a dissolution of Parliament. The elections were adverse to him, resulting in the return to Parliament of members representing the several parties and sections of parties as follows: Home Rule Liberals, or Gladstonians, 194, Irish Nationalists 85 total 279; seceding Liberals 75, Conservatives 316 total 391. Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues resigned and a new Ministry was formed under Lord Salisbury. The Liberals, in alliance with the Conservatives and giving their support to Lord Salisbury's Government, became organized as a distinct party under the leadership of Lord Hartington, and took the name of Liberal Unionists. P. W. Clayden, England under the Coalition, chapters 1-6. ALSO IN: H. D. Traill, The Marquis of Salisbury, chapter 12. Annual Register, 1885, 1886. ENGLAND: A. D. 1885-1888. Termination of the Fishery Articles of the Treaty of Washington. Renewed controversies with the United States. The rejected Treaty. See FISHERIES, NORTH AMERICAN: A. D. 1877-1888. ENGLAND: A. D. 1886. Defeat of Mr. Parnell's Tenants' Relief Bill. The plan of campaign in Ireland. See IRELAND: A. D. 1886. ENGLAND: A. D. 1886-1893. The Bering Sea Controversy and Arbitration. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1886-1893. ENGLAND: A. D. 1890. Settlement of African questions with Germany. Cession of Heligoland. See AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1889. ENGLAND: A. D. 1891. The Free Education Bill. See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES. ENGLAND: A. D. 1891. ENGLAND: A. D. 1892-1893. The fourth Gladstone Ministry. Passage of the Irish Home Rule Bill by the House of Commons. Its defeat by the Lords. On the 28th of June, 1892, Parliament was dissolved, having been in existence since 1886, and a new Parliament was summoned to meet on the 4th of August. Great excitement prevailed in the ensuing elections, which turned almost entirely on the question of Home Rule for Ireland. The Liberal or Gladstonian party, favoring Home Rule, won a majority of 42 in the House of Commons; but in the representation of England alone there was a majority of 70 returned against it. In Ireland, the representation returned was 103 for Home Rule, and 23 against; in Scotland, 51 for and 21 against; in Wales, 28 for and 2 against. Conservatives and Liberal Unionists (opposing Home Rule) lost little ground in the boroughs, as compared with the previous Parliament, but largely in the counties. As the result of the election, Lord Salisbury and his Ministry resigned August 12, and Mr. Gladstone was summoned to form a Government. In the new Cabinet, which was announced four days later, Earl Rosebery became Foreign Secretary; Baron Herschell, Lord Chancellor; Sir William Vernon Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Mr. Herbert H. Asquith, Home Secretary; and Mr. John Morley, Chief Secretary for Ireland. Although the new Parliament assembled in August, 1892, it was not until the 13th of February following that Mr. Gladstone introduced his bill to establish Home Rule in Ireland. The bill was under debate in the House of Commons until the night of September 1, 1893, when it passed that body by a vote of 301 to 267. "The bill provides for a Legislature for Ireland, consisting of the Queen and of two Houses--the Legislative Council and the Legislative Assembly. This Legislature, with certain restrictions, is authorized to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of Ireland in respect of matters exclusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof. The bill says that the powers of the Irish Legislature shall not extend to the making of any law respecting the establishment or endowment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or imposing any disability or conferring any privilege on account of religious belief, or whereby any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or whereby private property may be taken without just compensation. According to the bill the executive power in Ireland shall continue vested in her Majesty the Queen, and the Lord Lieutenant, on behalf of her Majesty, shall exercise any prerogatives or other executive power of the Queen the exercise of which may be delegated to him by her Majesty, and shall in the Queen's name summon, prorogue, and dissolve the Legislature. An Executive Committee of the Privy Council of Ireland is provided for, which 'shall aid and advise in the government of Ireland.' The Lord Lieutenant, with the advice and consent of the Executive Council, is authorized to give or withhold the assent of her Majesty to bills passed by the houses of the Legislature. The Legislative Council by the terms of the bill shall consist of forty-eight Councilors. Every man shall be entitled to vote for a Councilor who owns or occupies any land or tenement of a ratable value of £20. The term of office of the Councilors is to be for eight years, which is not to be affected by dissolution, but one-half of the Councilors shall retire in every fourth year and their seats be filled by a new election. The Legislative Assembly is to consist of 103 members returned by the Parliamentary constituencies existing at present in Ireland. This Assembly, unless sooner dissolved, may exist for five years. The bill also provides for 80 Irish members in the House of Commons. In regard to finance, the bill provides that for the purposes of this act the public revenue shall be divided into general revenue and special revenue, and general revenue shall consist of the gross revenue collected in Ireland from taxes; the portion due to Ireland of the hereditary revenues of the crown which are managed by the Commissioners of Woods, an annual sum for the customs and excise duties collected in Great Britain on articles consumed in Ireland, provided that an annual sum of the customs and excise duties collected in Ireland on articles consumed in Great Britain shall be deducted from the revenue collected in Ireland and treated as revenue collected in Great Britain; these annual sums to be determined by a committee appointed jointly by the Irish Government and the Imperial Treasury. It is also provided that one-third of the general revenue of Ireland and also that portion of any imperial miscellaneous revenue to which Ireland may claim to be entitled shall be paid into the Treasury of the United Kingdom as the contribution of Ireland to imperial liabilities and expenditures; this plan to continue for a term of six years, at the end of which time a new scheme of tax division shall be devised. {981} The Legislature, in order to meet expenses of the public service, is authorized to impose taxes other than those now existing in Ireland. Ireland should also have charged up against her and be compelled to pay out of her own Treasury all salaries and pensions of Judges and liabilities of all kinds which Great Britain has assumed for her benefit. The bill further provides that appeal from courts in Ireland to the House of Lords shall cease and that all persons having the right of appeal shall have a like right to appeal to the Queen in council. The term of office of the Lord Lieutenant is fixed at six years. Ultimately the Royal Irish Constabulary shall cease to exist and no force other than the ordinary civil police shall be permitted to be formed. The Irish Legislature shall be summoned to meet on the first Tuesday in September, 1894, and the first election for members shall be held at such time before that day as may be fixed by her Majesty in council." In the House of Lords, the bill was defeated on the 8th of September--the second reading postponed to a day six months from that date--by the overwhelming vote of 419 to 41. ----------ENGLAND: End---------- ENGLE.--ENGLISH. See ANGLES AND JUTES; also, ENGLAND: A. D. 547-633. ENGLISH PALE, The. See PALE, THE ENGLISH. ENGLISH SWEAT, The. See SWEATING SICKNESS. ENGLISHRY. To check the assassination of his tyrannical Norman followers by the exasperated English, William the Conqueror ordained that the whole Hundred within which one was slain should pay a heavy penalty. "In connexion with this enactment there grew up the famous law of 'Englishry,' by which every murdered man was presumed to be a Norman, unless proofs of 'Englishry' were made by the four nearest relatives of the deceased. 'Presentments of Englishry,' as they were technically termed, are recorded in the reign of Richard I., but not later." T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History. page 68. ENNISKILLEN, The defence of. See IRELAND: A. D. 1688-1689. ENÔMOTY, The. In the Spartan military organization the enômoty "was a small company of men, the number of whom was variable, being given differently at 25, 32, or 36 men,--drilled and practised together in military evolutions, and bound to each other by a common oath. Each Enômoty had a separate captain or enomotarch, the strongest and ablest soldier of the company." G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 8. ENRIQUE. See HENRY. ENSISHEIM, Battle of (1674). See NETHERLANDS (HOLLAND): A. D. 1674-1678. EORL AND CEORL. "The modern English forms of these words have completely lost their ancient meaning. The word 'Earl,' after several fluctuations, has settled down as the title of one rank in the Peerage; the word 'Churl' has come to be a word of moral reprobation, irrespective of the rank of the person who is guilty of the offence. But in the primary meaning of the words, 'Eorl' and 'Ceorl'--words whose happy jingle causes them to be constantly opposed to each other--form an exhaustive division of the free members of the state. The distinction in modern language is most nearly expressed br the words 'Gentle' and 'Simple.' The 'Ceorl' is the simple freeman, the mere unit in the army or in the assembly, whom no distinction of birth or office marks out from his fellows." E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 3, section 2. See, also, ETHEL; and ENGLAND: A. D. 958. EORMEN STREET. See ERMYN STREET. EPAMINONDAS, and the greatness of Thebes. See GREECE: B. C. 379-371, and 371-362; also THEBES: B. C. 378. EPEIROS. See Epmus. EPHAH, The. "The ephah, or bath, was the unit of measures of capacity for both liquids and grain [among the ancient Jews]. The ephah is considered by Queipo to have been the measure of water contained in the ancient Egyptian cubic foot, and thus equivalent to 29.376 litres, or 6.468 imperial gallons, and to have been nearly identical with the ancient Egyptian artaba and the Greek metretes. For liquids, the ephah was divided into six hin, and the twelfth part of the hin was the log. As a grain measure, the ephah was divided into ten omers, or gomers. The omer measure of manna gathered by the Israelites in the desert as a day's food for each adult person was thus equal to 2.6 imperial quarts. The largest measure of capacity both for liquids and dry commodities was the cor of twelve ephahs." H. W. Chisholm, On the Science of Weighing and Measuring, chapter 2. EPHES-DAMMIM, Battle of. The battle which followed David's encounter with Goliath, the gigantic Philistine. 1 Samuel, xvii. EPHESIA, The. See IONIC (PAN-IONIC) AMPHIKTYONY. EPHESUS. The Ephesian Temple. "The ancient city of Ephesus was situated on the river Cayster, which falls into the Bay of Scala Nova, on the western coast of Asia Minor. Of the origin and foundation of Ephesus we have no historical record. Stories were told which ascribed the settlement of the place to Androklos, the son of the Athenian king, Codrus. ... With other Ionian cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus fell into the hands of Crœsus, the last of the kings of Lydia, and, on the overthrow of Crœsus by Cyrus, it passed under the heavier yoke of the Persian despot. Although from that time, during a period of at least five centuries, to the conquest by the Romans, the city underwent great changes of fortune, it never lost its grandeur and importance. The Temple of Artemis (Diana), whose splendour has almost become proverbial, tended chiefly to make Ephesus the most attractive and notable of all the cities of Asia Minor. Its magnificent harbour was filled with Greek and Phenician merchantmen, and multitudes flocked from all parts to profit by its commerce and to worship at the shrine of its tutelary goddess. The City Port was fully four miles from the sea, which has not, as has been supposed, receded far. ... During the generations which immediately followed the conquest of Lydia and the rest of Asia Minor by the Persian kings, the arts of Greece attained their highest perfection, and it was within this short period of little more than two centuries that the great Temple of Artemis was three times built upon the same site, and, as recent researches have found, each time on the same grand scale." J. T. Wood, Discoveries at Ephesus, chapter 1. {982} The excavations which were carried on at Ephesus by Mr. Wood, for the British Museum, during eleven years, from 1863 until 1874, resulted in the uncovering of a large part of the site of the great Temple and the determining of its architectural features, besides bringing to light many inscriptions and much valuable sculpture. The account given in the work named above is exceedingly interesting. EPHESUS: Ionian conquest and occupation. See ASIA MINOR: THE GREEK COLONIES. EPHESUS: Ancient Commerce. "The spot on the Asiatic coast which corresponded most nearly with Corinth on the European, was Ephesus, a city which, in the time of Herodotus, had been the starting point of caravans for Upper Asia, but which, under the change of dynasties and ruin of empires, had dwindled into a mere provincial town. The mild sway of Augustus restored it to wealth and eminence, and as the official capital of the province of Asia, it was reputed to be the metropolis of no less than 500 cities." C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 40. EPHESUS: A. D. 267. Destruction by the Goths of the Temple of Diana. See GOTHS: A. D. 258-267. EPHESUS: A. D. 431 and 449. The General Council and the "Robber Synod." See NESTORIAN AND MONOPHYSITE CONTROVERSY. ----------EPHESUS: End---------- EPHETÆ, The. A board of fifty-one judges instituted by the legislation of Draco, at Athens, for the trial of crimes of bloodshed upon the Areopagus. G. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The State, part 3, chapter 3. EPHORS. "Magistrates, called by the name of Ephors, existed in many Dorian as well as in other States [of ancient Greece], although our knowledge with regard to them extends no further than to the fact of their existence; while the name, which signifies quite generally 'overseers,' affords room for no conclusion as to their political position or importance. In Sparta, however, the Board of Five Ephors became, in the course of time, a magistracy of such dignity and influence that no other can be found in any free State with which it can be compared. Concerning its first institution nothing certain can be ascertained. ... The following appears to be a probable account:--The Ephors were originally magistrates appointed by the kings, partly to render them special assistance in the judicial decision of private disputes,--a function which they continued to exercise in later times,--partly to undertake, as lieutenants of the kings, other of their functions, during their absence in military service, or through some other cause. ... When the monarchy and the Gerousia wished to re-establish their ancient influence in opposition to the popular assembly, they were obliged to agree to a concession which should give some security to the people that this power should not be abused to their detriment. This concession consisted in the fact that the Ephors were independently authorized to exercise control over the kings themselves. ... The Ephors were enabled to interfere in every department of the administration, and to remove or punish whatever they found to be contrary to the laws or adverse to the public interest." G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The State, part 3, chapter 1, section 8. See, also, SPARTA: THE CONSTITUTION, &c. EPHTHALITES, The. See HUNS, THE WHITE. EPIDAMNUS. See GREECE: B. C. 435-432; and KORKYRA. EPIDII, The. See BRITAIN, CELTIC TRIBES. EPIGAMIA. The right of marriage in ancient Athens. G. F. Schömann, Antiquities of Greece: The State, part 3, chapter 3. EPIGONI, The. See BŒOTIA. EPIPOLÆ. One of the parts or divisions of the ancient city of Syracuse, Sicily. EPIROT LEAGUE, The. "The temporary greatness of the Molossian kingdom [of Epeiros, or Epirus] under Alexander and Pyrrhus is matter of general history. Our immediate business is with the republican government which succeeded on the bloody extinction of royalty and the royal line [which occurred B. C. 239]. Epeiros now became a republic; of the details of its constitution we know nothing, but its form can hardly fail to have been federal. The Epeirots formed one political body; Polybios always speaks of them, like the Achaians and Akarnanians, as one people acting with one will. Decrees are passed, ambassadors are sent and received, in the name of the whole Epeirot people, and Epeiros had, like Akarnania, a federal coinage bearing the common name of the whole nation." E. A. Freeman, History of Federal Government, book 4, section 1. EPIRUS.--THE EPIROTS. "Passing over the borders of Akarnania [in ancient western Greece] we find small nations or tribes not considered as Greeks, but known, from the fourth century B. C. downwards, under the common name of Epirots. This word signifies, properly, inhabitants of a continent, as opposed to those of an island or a peninsula. It came only gradually to be applied by the Greeks as their comprehensive denomination to designate all those diverse tribes, between the Ambrakian Gulf on the south and west, Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians and Macedonians to the north and north-east. Of these Epirots the principal were--the Chaonians, Thesprotians, Kassopians, and Molossians, who occupied the country inland as well as maritime along the Ionian Sea, from the Akrokeraunian mountains to the borders of Ambrakia in the interior of the Ambrakian Gulf. ... Among these various tribes it is difficult to discriminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hellenic; for Herodotus considers both Molossians and Thesprotians as Hellenic,--and the oracle of Dôdôna, as well as the Nekyomanteion (or holy cavern for evoking the dead) of Acheron, were both in the territory of the Thesprotians, and both (in the time of the historian) Hellenic. Thucydides, on the other hand, treats both Molossians and Thesprotians as barbaric. ... Epirus is essentially a pastoral country: its cattle as well as its shepherds and shepherds' dogs were celebrated throughout all antiquity; and its population then, as now, found divided village residence the most suitable to their means and occupations. ... Both the Chaonians and Thesprotians appear, in the time of Thucydides, as having no kings: there was a privileged kingly race, but the presiding chief was changed from year to year. The Molossians, however, had a line of kings, succeeding from father to son, which professed to trace its descent through fifteen generations downward from Achilles and Neoptolemus to Tharypas about the year 400 B. C." G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 24. {983} The Molossian kings subsequently extended their sovereignty over the whole country and styled themselves kings of Epirus. Pyrrhus, whose war with Rome (see ROME: B. C. 282-275) is one of the well known episodes of history, was the most ambitious and energetic of the dynasty (see MACEDONIA: B. C. 297-280); Hannibal reckoned him among the greatest of soldiers. In the next century Epirus fell under the dominion of Rome. Subsequently it formed part of the Byzantine empire; then became a separate principality, ruled by a branch of the imperial Comnenian family; was conquered by the Turks in 1466 and is now represented by the southern half of the province of Turkey, called Albania. See, also, ŒNOTRIANS. EPIRUS: A. D. 1204-1350. The Greek Despotat. From the ruins of the Byzantine empire, overthrown by the Crusaders and the Venetians in 1204, "that portion ... situated to the west of the range of Pindus was saved from feudal domination by Michael, a natural son of Constantine Angelos, the uncle of the Emperors Isaac II. and Alexius III. After the conquest of Constantinople, he escaped into Epirus, where his marriage with a lady of the country gave him some influence; and assuming the direction of the administration of the whole country from Dyrrachium to Naupactus, he collected a considerable military force, and established the seat of his authority generally at Ioannina or Arta. ... History has unfortunately preserved very little information concerning the organisation and social condition of the different classes and races which inhabited the dominions of the princes of Epirus. Almost the only facts that have been preserved relate to the wars and alliances of the despots and their families with the Byzantine emperors and the Latin princes. ... They all assumed the name of Angelos Komnenos Dukas; and the title of despot, by which they are generally distinguished, was a Byzantine honorary distinction, never borne by the earlier members of the family until it had been conferred on them by the Greek emperor. Michael I, the founder of the despotat, distinguished himself by his talents as a soldier and a negotiator. He extended his authority over all Epirus, Acarnania and Etolia, and a part of Macedonia and Thessaly. Though virtually independent, he acknowledged Theodore I. (Laskaris), [at Nicæa] as the lawful emperor of the East." The able and unscrupulous brother of Michael, Theodore, who became his successor in 1214, extinguished by conquest the Lombard kingdom of Saloniki, in Macedonia (A. D. 1222), and assumed the title of emperor, in rivalry with the Greek emperor at Nicæa, establishing his capital at Thessalonica. The empire of Thessalonica was short lived. Its capital was taken by the emperor of Nicæa, in 1234, and Michael's son John, then reigning, was forced to resign the imperial title. The despotat of Epirus survived for another century, much torn and distracted by wars and domestic conflicts. In 1350 its remaining territory was occupied by the king of Servia, and finally it was swallowed up in the conquests of the Turks. G. Finlay, History of Greece from its Conquest by the Crusader, chapter 6. ALSO IN: Sir J. E. Tennent, History of Modern Greece, chapter 3. EPIRUS: Modern History. See ALBANIANS. EPISCOPALIAN CHURCH. See CHURCH OF ENGLAND. EPISTATES. The presiding officer of the ancient Athenian council and popular assembly. EPONYM.--EPONYMUS. The name-giver,--the name-giving hero of primitive myths, in which tribes and races of people set before themselves, partly by tradition, partly by imagination, an heroic personage who is supposed to be their common progenitor and the source of their name. EPONYM CANON OF ASSYRIA. See ASSYRIA, EPONYM CANON OF. EPPING FOREST. Once so extensive that it covered the whole county of Essex, England, and was called the Forest of Essex. Subsequently, when diminished in size, it was called Waltham Forest. Still later, when further retrenched, it took the name of Epping, from a town that is embraced in it. It is still quite large, and within recent years it has been formally declared by the Queen "a people's park." J. C. Brown, Forests of England. EPULONES, The. "The epulones [at Rome] formed a college for the administration of the sacred festivals." C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 31. EQUADOR. See ECUADOR. EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY. See NEW YORK: A. D. 1835-1837. EQUESTRIAN ORDER, Roman. "The selection of the burgess cavalry was vested in the censors. It was, no doubt, the duty of these to make the selection on purely military grounds, and at their musters to insist that all horsemen incapacitated by age or otherwise, or at all unserviceable, should surrender their public horse; but it was not easy to hinder them from looking to noble birth more than to capacity, and from allowing men of standing, who were once admitted, senators particularly, to retain their horse beyond the proper time. Accordingly it became the practical rule for the senators to vote in the eighteen equestrian centuries, and the other places in these were assigned chiefly to the younger men of the nobility. The military system, of course, suffered from this, not so much through the unfitness for effective service of no small part of the legionary cavalry, as through the destruction of military equality to which the change gave rise; the noble youth more and more withdrew from serving in the infantry, and the legionary cavalry became a close aristocratic corps." T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 3, chapter 11. "The eighteen centuries, therefore, in course of time ... lost their original military character and remained only as a voting body. It was by the transformation thus effected in the character of the eighteen centuries of knights, whilst the cavalry service passed over to the richer citizens not included in the senatorial families, that a new class of Roman citizens began gradually to be formed, distinct from the nobility proper and from the mass of the people, and designated as the equestrian order." W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 7, chapter. 1. The equestrian order became a legally constituted class under the judicial law of Caius Gracchus, B. C. 123, which fixed its membership by a census, and transferred to it the judicial functions previously exercised by the senators only. It formed a kind of monetary aristocracy, as a counterweight to the nobility. W. Ihne, History of Rome, book 7, chapter 6. {984} ERA, Christian. "Unfortunately for ancient Chronology, there was no one fixed or universally established Era. Different countries reckoned by different eras, whose number is embarrassing, and their commencements not always easily to be adjusted or reconciled to each other; and it was not until A. D. 532 that the Christian Era was invented by Dionysius Exiguus, a Scythian by birth, and a Roman Abbot, who flourished in the reign of Justinian. ... Dionysius began his era with the year of our Lord's incarnation and nativity, in U. C. 753, of the Varronian Computation, or the 45th of the Julian Era. And at an earlier period, Panodorus, an Egyptian monk, who flourished under the Emperor Arcadius, A. D. 395, had dated the incarnation in the same year. But by some mistake, or misconception of his meaning, Bede, who lived in the next century after Dionysius, adopted his year of the Nativity, U. C. 753, yet began the Vulgar Era, which he first introduced, the year after, and made it commence Jan. 1, U. C. 754, which was an alteration for the worse, as making the Christian Era recede a year further from the true year of the Nativity. The Vulgar Era began to prevail in the West about the time of Charles Martel and Pope Gregory II. A. D. 730. ... But it was not established till the time of Pope Eugenius IV. A. D. 1431, who ordered this era to be used in the public Registers. ... Dionysius was led to date the year of the Nativity, U. C. 753, from the Evangelist Luke's account that John the Baptist began his ministry 'in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar'; and that Jesus, at his baptism, 'was beginning to be about 30 years of age.' Luke iii. 1-23. ... But this date of the Nativity is at variance with Matthew's account, that Christ was born before Herod's death; which followed shortly after his massacre of the infants at Bethlehem. ... Christ's birth, therefore, could not have been earlier than U. C. 748, nor later than U. C. 749. And if we assume the latter year, as most conformable to the whole tenor of Sacred History, with Chrysostom, Petavius, Prideaux, Playfair, &c., this would give Christ's age at his baptism, about 34 years; contrary to Luke's account." W. Hales, New Analysis of Chronology, volume 1, book l. In a subsequent table, Mr. Hales gives the results of the computations made by different chronologists, ancient and modern, to fix the true year of the Nativity, as accommodated to what is called "the vulgar," or popularly accepted, Christian Era. The range is through no less than ten years, from B. C. 7 to A. D. 3. His own conclusion, supported by Prideaux and Playfair, is in favor of the year B. C. 5. Somewhat more commonly at the present time, it is put at B. C. 4. See, also, JEWS: B. C. 8-A. D. 1. ERA, French Revolutionary. See FRANCE: A. D. 1792 (SEPTEMBER-NOVEMBER), and 1793 (OCTOBER). ERA, Gregorian. See CALENDAR, GREGORIAN. ERA, Jalalæan. See TURKS (THE SELJUK): A. D. 1073-1092. ERA, Julian. See CALENDAR, JULIAN. ERA, Mahometan, or Era of the Hegira. "The epoch of the Era of the Hegira is, according to the civil calculation, Friday, the 16th of July, A. D. 622, the day of the flight of Mahomet from Mecca to Medina, which is the date of the Mahometans; but astronomers and some historians assign it to the preceding day, viz., Thursday, the 15th of July; an important fact to be borne in mind when perusing Arabian writers. The years of the Hegira are lunar years, and contain twelve months, each commencing with the new moon; a practice which necessarily leads to great confusion and uncertainty, inasmuch as every year must begin considerably earlier in the season than the preceding. In chronology and history, however, and in dating their public instruments, the Turks use months which contain alternately thirty and twenty-nine days, excepting the last month, which, in intercalary years, contains thirty days. ... The years of the Hegira are divided into cycles of thirty years, nineteen of which are termed common years, of 354 days each; and the eleven others intercalary, or abundant, from their consisting of one day more: these are the 2d, 5th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th, 18th, 21st, 24th, 26th and 29th. To ascertain whether any given year be intercalary or not divide it by 30; and if either of the above numbers remain, the year is one of 355 days." Sir H. Nicolas, Chronology of History. See, also, MAHOMETAN CONQUEST: A. D. 609-632. ERA, Spanish. "The Spanish era dates from 38 B. C. (A. U. 716) and is supposed to mark some important epoch in the organization of the province by the Romans. It may coincide with the campaign of Calvinus, which is only known to us from a notice in the Fasti Triumphales. ... The Spanish era was preserved in Aragon till 1358, in Castile till 1383, and in Portugal till 1415." C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 34, note. ERA OF DIOCLETIAN, or Era of Martyrs. See ROME: A. D. 192-284. ERA OF GOOD FEELING. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1821-1824. ERA OF THE FOUNDATION OF ROME. See ROME: B. C. 753. ERA OF THE OLYMPIADS. See OLYMPIADS, ERA OF THE. ERANI. Associations existing in ancient Athens which resembled the mutual benefit or friendly-aid societies of modern times. G. F. Schömann, Antiquity of Greece: The State, part 3, chapter 3. ERASTIANISM. A doctrine which "received its name from Thomas Erastus, a German physician of the 16th century, contemporary with Luther. The work in which he delivered his theory and reasonings on the subject is entitled 'De Excommunicatione Ecclesiastica.' ... The Erastians ... held that religion is an affair between man and his creator, in which no other man or society of men was entitled to interpose. ... Proceeding on this ground, they maintained that every man calling himself a Christian has a right to make resort to any Christian place of worship, and partake in all its ordinances. Simple as this idea is, it strikes at the root of all priestcraft." W. Godwin, History of the Commonwealth, volume 1, chapter 13. ERCTÉ, Mount, Hamilcar on. See PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST. See, also, ERYX. ERDINI, The. See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS. EREMITES OF ST. FRANCIS. See MINIMS. ERETRIA. See CHALCIS AND ERETRIA. ERFURT, IMPERIAL CONFERENCE AND TREATY OF. See FRANCE: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER). {985} ERECTHEION AT ATHENS, The. "At a very early period there was, opposite the long northern side of the Parthenon, a temple which, according to Herodot, was dedicated jointly to Athene Polias and the Attic hero, Erectheus. ... This temple was destroyed by fire while the Persians held the city. Not unlikely the rebuilding of the Erectheion was begun by Perikles together with that of the other destroyed temples of the Akropolis; but as it was not finished by him, it is generally not mentioned amongst his works. ... This temple was renowned amongst the ancients as one of the most beautiful and perfect in existence, and seems to have remained almost intact down to the time of the Turks. The siege of Athens by the Venetians in 1687 seems to have been fatal to the Erectheion, as it was to the Parthenon." E. Guhl and W. Koner, Life of the Greeks, section 14. See, also, ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS. ERIC, King of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, A. D. 1412-1439. Eric Blodaexe, King of Norway, A. D. 934-940. Eric I., King of Denmark, A. D: 850-854. Eric I. (called Saint), King of Sweden, A. D. 1155-1161. Eric II., King of Denmark, A. D. 854-883. Eric II., King of·Norway, A. D. 1280-1299. Eric II. (Knutsson), King of Sweden, A. D. 1210-1216. Eric III., King of Denmark, A. D. 1095-1103. Eric III. (called The Stammerer), King of Sweden, A. D. 1222-1250. Eric IV., King of Denmark, A. D. 1134-1137. Eric V., King of Denmark, A. D. 1137-1147. Eric VI., King of Denmark, A. D. 1241-1250. Eric VII., King of Denmark, A. D. 1259-1286. Eric VIII., King of Denmark, A. D. 1286-1319. Eric XIV., King of Sweden, A. D. 1560-1568. ERICSSON, John Invention and construction of the Monitor. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1862 (MARCH). ERIE, The City of: A. D. 1735. Site occupied by the French. See CANADA: A. D. 1700-1735. ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1764-1791. Origin. Four years after the British conquest of Canada, in 1764, Colonel John Bradstreet built a blockhouse and stockade near the site of the later Fort Erie, which was not constructed until 1791. When war with the United States broke out, in 1812, the British considered the new fort untenable, or unnecessary, and evacuated and partly destroyed it, in May, 1813. C. K. Remington, Old Fort Erie. ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1814. The siege and the destruction. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1814 (JULY-SEPTEMBER). ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1866. The Fenian invasion. See CANADA: A. D. 1866-1871. ----------ERIE: End---------- ERIE, Lake: The Indian name. See NIAGARA: THE NAME, &c. ERIE, Lake: A. D. 1679. Navigated by La Salle. See CANADA: A. D. 1669-1687. ERIE, Lake: A. D. 1813. Perry's naval victory. See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1812-1813. ----------ERIE, Lake: End---------- ERIE CANAL, Construction of the. See NEW YORK: A. D. 1817-1825. ERIES, The. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: HURONS, &c., and IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY: THEIR CONQUESTS. ERIN. See IRELAND. ERMANRIC, OR HERMANRIC, The empire of. See GOTHS (OSTROGOTHS): A. D. 350-375; and 376. ERMYN STREET. A corruption of Eormen street, the Saxon name of one of the great Roman roads in Britain, which ran from London to Lincoln. Some writers trace it northwards through York to the Scottish border and southward to Pevensey. See ROMAN ROADS IN BRITAIN. ERNESTINE LINE OF SAXONY. See SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553. ERPEDITANI, The. See IRELAND, TRIBES OF EARLY CELTIC INHABITANTS. ERTANG, The. The sacred book of the Manicheans. See MANICHEANS. ERYTHRÆ.-ERYTHRÆAN SIBYL. Erythræ was an ancient Ionian city on the Lydian coast of Asia Minor, opposite the island of Chios or Scio. It was chiefly famous as the home or seat of one of the most venerated of the sibyls--prophetic women--of antiquity. The collection of Sibylline oracles which was sacredly preserved at Rome appears to have been largely derived from Erythræ. The Cumæan Sibyl is sometimes identified with her Erythræan sister, who is said to have passed into Europe. See, also, SIBYLS. ERYTHRÆAN SEA, The. The Erythræan Sea, in the widest sense of the term, as used by the ancients, comprised "the Arabian Gulf (or what we now call the Red Sea), the coasts of Africa outside the straits of Bab el Mandeb as far as they had then been explored, as well as those of Arabia and India down to the extremity of the Malabar coast." The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea is a geographical treatise of great importance which we owe to some unknown Greek writer supposed to be nearly contemporary with Pliny. It is "a kind of manual for the instruction of navigators and traders in the Erythræan Sea." E. H. Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, chapter 25. "The Erythrêam Sea is an appellation ... in all appearance deduced [by the ancients] from their entrance into it by the straits of the Red Sea, styled Erythra by the Greeks, and not excluding the gulph of Persia, to which the fabulous history of a king Erythras is more peculiarly appropriate." W. Vincent, Periplus of the Erythrêan Sea, book 1, prelim. disquis. ERYX.--ERCTE. A town originally Phoœnician or Carthaginian on the northwestern coast of Sicily. It stood on the slope of a mountain which was crowned with an ancient temple of Aphrodite, and which gave the name Erycina to the goddess when her worship was introduced at Rome. See PUNIC WAR, THE FIRST. ERZEROUM: A. D. 1878. Taken by the Russians. See TURKS: A. D. 1877-1878. ESCOCÉS, The party of the. See MEXICO: A. D. 1822-1828. ESCOMBOLI. See STAMBOUL. ESCORIAL, The. See SPAIN: A. D. 1559-1563. ESCUYER.--ESQUIRE. See CHIVALRY. ESDRAELON, Valley of. See MEGIDDO. ESKIMO, The. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESKIMAUAN FAMILY. ESNE. See THEOW. ESPARTERO, Regency of. See SPAIN: A. D. 1833-1846. ESPINOSA, Battle of. See SPAIN: A. D. 1808 (SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER). {986} ESQUILINE, The. See SEVEN HILLS OF ROME. ESQUIRE.--ESCUYER.--SQUIRE. See CHIVALRY. ESQUIROS, Battle of (1521). See NAVARRE: A. D. 1442-1521. ESSELENIAN FAMILY, The. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ESSELENIAN FAMILY. ESSENES, The. See Supplement in volume 5. ESSEX. Originally the kingdom formed by that body of the Saxon conquerors of Britain, in the fifth and sixth centuries, who acquired, from their geographical position in the island, the name of the East Saxons. It covered the present county of Essex and also included London and Middlesex. See ENGLAND: A. D. 477-527. ESSEX JUNTO, The. In the Massachusetts election of 1781, "the representatives of the State in Congress, and some of the more moderate leaders at home, opposed Governor Hancock, the popular candidate, and supported James Bowdoin, who was thought to represent the more conservative elements. ... It was at this time that Hancock is said to have bestowed on his opponents the title of the 'Essex Junto,' and this is the first appearance of the name in American politics. ... The 'Junto' was generally supposed to be composed of such men as Theophilus Parsons, George Cabot, Fisher Ames, Stephen Higginson, the Lowells, Timothy Pickering, &c., and took its name from the county to which most of its reputed members originally belonged. ... The reputed members of the 'Junto' held political power in Massachusetts [as leaders of the Federalist party] for more than a quarter of a century." According to Chief Justice Parsons, as quoted by Colonel Pickering in his Diary, the term 'Essex Junto' was applied by one of the Massachusetts royal governors, before the Revolution, to certain gentlemen of Essex county who opposed his measures. Hancock, therefore, only revived the title and gave it currency, with a new application. H. C. Lodge, Life and Letters of George Cabot, pages 17-22. ESSLINGEN, OR ASPERN, Battle of. See GERMANY: A. D. 1809 (JANUARY-JUNE). ESSUVII, The. A Gallic tribe established anciently in the modern French department of the Orne. Napoleon III., History of Cæsar, book 3, chapter 2, note. ESTATES, Assembly of. "An assembly of estates is an organised collection, made by representation or otherwise, of the several orders, states or conditions of men, who are recognised as possessing political power. A national council of clergy and barons is not an assembly of estates, because it does not include the body of the people, the plebs, the simple freemen or commons." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 15, section 185. See, also, ESTATES, THE THREE. ESTATES, The Three. "The arrangement of the political factors in three estates is common, with some minor variations, to all the European constitutions, and depends on a principle of almost universal acceptance. This classification differs from the system of caste and from all divisions based on differences of blood or religion, historical or prehistorical. ... In Christendom it has always taken the form of a distinction between clergy and laity, the latter being subdivided according to national custom into noble and non-noble, patrician and plebeian, warriors and traders, landowners and craftsmen. ... The Aragonese cortes contained four brazos or arms, the clergy, the great barons or ricos hombres, the minor barons, knights or infanzones, and the towns. The Germanic diet comprised three colleges, the electors, the princes and the cities, the two former being arranged in distinct benches, lay and clerical. ... The Castilian cortes arranged the clergy, the ricos hombres and the communidades, in three estates. The Swedish diet was composed of clergy, barons, burghers and peasants. ... In France, both in the States General and in the provincial estates, the division is into gentz de l'eglise, nobles, and gentz des bonnes villes. In England, after a transitional stage, in which the clergy, the greater and smaller barons, and the cities and boroughs, seemed likely to adopt the system used in Aragon and Scotland, and another in which the county and borough communities continued to assert an essential difference, the three estates of clergy, lords and commons, finally emerge as the political constituents of the nation, or, in their parliamentary form, as the lords spiritual and temporal and the commons. This familiar formula in either shape bears the impress of history. The term commons is not in itself an appropriate expression for the third estate; it does not signify primarily the simple freemen, the plebs, but the plebs organised and combined in corporate communities, in a particular way for particular purposes. The commons are the communitates or universitates, the organised bodies of freemen of the shires and towns. ... The third estate in England differs from the same estate in the continental constitutions, by including the landowners under baronial rank. In most of those systems it contains the representatives of the towns or chartered communities only." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 15, sections 185, 193. "The words 'gens de tiers et commun état' are found in many acts [France] of the 15th century. The expressions 'tiers état,' 'commun état,' and 'le commun' are used indifferently, ... This name of 'Tiers État, when used in its ordinary sense, properly comprises only the population of the privileged cities; but in effect it extends much beyond this; it includes not only the cities, but the villages and hamlets--not only the free commonalty, but all those for whom civil liberty is a privilege still to come." A. Thierry, Formation and Progress of the Tiers État in France, volume 1, pages 61 and 60. ESTATES, or "States," of the Netherland Provinces. See NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1584-1585. ESTATES GENERAL. See STATES GENERAL. ESTE, The House of. "Descended from one of the northern families which settled in Italy during the darkest period of the middle ages, the Este traced their lineal descent up to the times of Charlemagne. They had taken advantage of the frequent dissensions between the popes and the German emperors of the houses of Saxony and Swabia, and acquired wide dominions in Lunigiana, and the March of Treviso, where the castle of Este, their family residence, was situated. Towards the middle of the 11th century, that family had been connected by marriages with the Guelphs of Bavaria, and one of the name of Este was eventually to become the common source from which sprung the illustrious houses of Brunswick and Hanover. The Este had warmly espoused the Guelph party [see GUELFS], during the wars of the Lombard League. ... {987} Towards the year 1200, Azzo V., Marquis of Este, married Marchesella degli Adelardi, daughter of one of the most conspicuous Guelphs at Ferrara, where the influence of the House of Este was thus first established." L. Mariotti (A. Gallenga), Italy, volume 2, pages 62-63. The Marquesses of Este became, "after some of the usual fluctuations, permanent lords of the cities of Ferrara [1264] and Modena [1288]. About the same time they lost their original holding of Este, which passed to Padua, and with Padua to Venice. Thus the nominal marquess of Este and real lord of Ferrara was not uncommonly spoken of as Marquess of Ferrara. In the 15th century these princes rose to ducal rank; but by that time the new doctrine of the temporal dominion of the Popes had made great advances. Modena, no man doubted, was a city of the Empire; but Ferrara was now held to be under the supremacy of the Pope. The Marquess Borso had thus to seek his elevation to ducal rank from two separate lords. He was created Duke of Modena [1453] and Reggio by the Emperor, and afterwards Duke of Ferrara [1471] by the Pope. This difference of holding ... led to the destruction of the power of the house of Este. In the times in which we are now concerned, their dominions lay in two masses. To the west lay the duchy of Modena and Reggio; apart from it to the east lay the duchy of Ferrara. Not long after its creation, this last duchy was cut short by the surrender of the border-district of Rovigo to Venice. ... Modena and Ferrara remained united, till Ferrara was annexed [1598] as an escheated fief to the dominions of its spiritual overlord. But the house of Este still reigned over Modena with Reggio and Mirandola, while its dominions were extended to the sea by the addition of Massa and other small possessions between Lucca and Genoa. The duchy in the end passed by female succession to the House of Austria [1771-1803]." E. A. Freeman, Historical Geography of Europe, chapter 8, sections 3-4. "The government of the family of Este at Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio displays curious contrasts of violence and popularity. Within the palace frightful deeds were perpetrated; a princess was beheaded [1425] for alleged adultery with a stepson; legitimate and illegitimate children fled from the court, and even abroad their lives were threatened by assassins sent in pursuit of them (1471). Plots from without were incessant; the bastard of a bastard tried to wrest the crown from the lawful heir, Hercules I.: this latter is said afterwards (1493) to have poisoned his wife on discovering that she, at the instigation of her brother, Ferrante of Naples, was going to poison him. This list of tragedies is closed by the plot of two bastards against their brothers; the ruling Duke Alfonso I. and the Cardinal Ippolito (1506), which was discovered in time, and punished with imprisonment for life. ... It is undeniable that the dangers to which these princes were constantly exposed developed in them capacities of a remarkable kind." J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy, part 1, chapter 5. For the facts of the ending of the legitimate Italian line of Este, See PAPACY: A. D. 1597. ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA: Origin of the name. See ÆSTII. ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA: Christian conquest. See LIVONIA: 12TH-13TH CENTURIES. ESTIENNES, The Press of the. See PRINTING: A. D. 1496-1598. ESTREMOS, OR AMEIXAL, Battle of (1663). See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1637-1668. ETCHEMINS, The. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: ALGONQUIAN FAMILY. ETHANDUN, OR EDINGTON, Battle of (A. D. 878). See ENGLAND: A. D. 855-880. ETHEL, ETHELINGS, OR ÆTHELINGS. "The sons and brothers of the king [of the English] were distinguished by the title of Æthelings. The word Ætheling, like eorl, originally denoted noble birth simply; but as the royal house of Wessex rose to pre-eminence and the other royal houses and the nobles generally were thereby reduced to a relatively lower grade, it became restricted to the near kindred of the national king." T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Constitutional History, page 29. "It has been sometimes held that the only nobility of blood recognized in England before the Norman Conquest was that of the king's kin. The statement may be regarded as deficient in authority, and as the result of a too hasty generalization from the fact that only the sons and brothers of the kings bear the name of ætheling. On the other hand must be alleged the existence of a noble (edhiling) class among the continental Saxons who had no kings at all. ... The laws of Ethelbert prove the existence of a class bearing the name of eorl of which no other interpretation can be given. That these, eorlas and æthel, were the descendants of the primitive nobles of the first settlement, who, on the institution of royalty, sank one step in dignity from the ancient state of rude independence, in which they had elected their own chiefs and ruled their own dependents, may be very reasonably conjectured. ... The ancient name of eorl, like that of ætheling, changed its application, and, under the influence, perhaps, of Danish association, was given like that of jarl to the official ealdorman. Henceforth the thegn takes the place of the æthel, and the class of thegns probably embraces all the remaining families of noble blood. The change may have been very gradual; the 'north people's law' of the tenth or early eleventh century still distinguishes the eorl and ætheling with a wergild nearly double that of the ealdorman and seven times that of the thegn; but the north people's law was penetrated with Danish influence, and the eorl probably represents the jarl rather than the ealdorman, the great eorl of the fourth part of England as it was divided by Canute. ... The word eorl is said to be the same as the Norse jarl and another form of ealdor (?); whilst the ceorl answers to the Norse Karl; the original meaning of the two being old man and young man." W. Stubbs, Constitutional History of England, chapter 6, section 64, and note. ETHEL.--Family-land. See ALOD; and FOLCLAND. ETHELBALD, King of Mercia, A. D. 716-755. Ethelbald, King of Wessex, A. D. 858-860. ETHELBERT, King of Kent, A. D. 565-616. Ethelbert, King of Wessex, A. D. 860-866. ETHELFRITH, King of Northumberland, A. D. 593-617. ETHELRED, King of Wessex, A. D. 866-871. Ethelred, called the Unready, King of Wessex, A. D. 979-1016. {988} ETHELSTAN, King of Wessex, A. D. 925-940. ETHELWULF, King of Wessex, A. D. 836-858. ETHIOPIA. The Ethiopia of the ancients, "in the ordinary and vague sense of the term, was a vast tract extending in length above a thousand miles, from the 9th to the 24th degree of north latitude, and in breadth almost 900 miles, from the shores of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean to the desert of the Sahara. This tract was inhabited for the most part by wild and barbarous tribes--herdsmen, hunters, or fishermen--who grew no corn, were unacquainted with bread, and subsisted on the milk and flesh of their cattle, or on game, turtle, and fish, salted or raw. The tribes had their own separate chiefs, and acknowledged no single head, but on the contrary were frequently at war one with the other, and sold their prisoners for slaves. Such was Ethiopia in the common vague sense; but from this must be distinguished another narrower Ethiopia, known sometimes as 'Ethiopia Proper' or 'Ethiopia above Egypt,' the limits of which were, towards the south, the junction of the White and Blue Niles, and towards the north the Third Cataract. Into this tract, called sometimes 'the kingdom of Meroë,' Egyptian civilisation had, long before the eighth century [B. C.], deeply penetrated. Temples of the Egyptian type, stone pyramids, avenues of sphinxes, had been erected; a priesthood had been set up, which was regarded as derived from the Egyptian priesthood; monarchical institutions had been adopted; the whole tract formed ordinarily one kingdom, and the natives were not very much behind the Egyptians in arts or arms, or very different from them in manners, customs, and mode of life. Even in race the difference was not great. The Ethiopians were darker in complexion than the Egyptians, and possessed probably a greater infusion of Nigritic blood; but there was a common stock at the root of the two races--Cush and Mizraim were brethren. In the region of Ethiopia Proper a very important position was occupied in the eighth century [B. C.] by Napata. Napata was situated midway in the great bend of the Nile, between latitude 18° and 19°. ... It occupied the left bank of the river in the near vicinity of the modern Gebel Berkal. . . Here, when the decline of Egypt enabled the Ethiopians to reclaim their ancient limits, the capital was fixed of that kingdom, which shortly became a rival of the old empire of the Pharaohs, and aspired to take its place. ... The kingdom of Meroë, whereof it was the capital, reached southward as far as the modern Khartoum, and eastward stretched up to the Abyssinian highlands, including the valleys of the Atbara and its tributaries, together with most of the tract between the Atbara and the Blue Nile. ... Napata continued down to Roman times a place of importance, and only sank to ruin in consequence of the campaigns of Petronius against Candacé in the first century after our era." G. Rawlinson, History of Ancient Egypt, chapter 25. ALSO IN: A. H. L. Heeren, Historical Researches, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, &c., pages 143-249. See, also, EGYPT: ABOUT B. C. 1200-670; and LIBYANS, THE. ETON SCHOOL. See EDUCATION, MODERN: EUROPEAN COUNTRIES.--ENGLAND. ETRURIA, Ancient. See ETRUSCANS. ETRURIA, The kingdom of. See GERMANY: A. D. 1801-1803; also PORTUGAL: A. D. 1807; and FRANCE: A. D. 1807-1808(NOVEMBER-FEBRUARY). ETRUSCANS, The. "At the time when Roman history begins, we find that a powerful and warlike race, far superior to the Latins in civilisation and in the arts of life, hemmed in the rising Roman dominion in the north. The Greeks called them Turrhenoi, the Romans called them Etrusci, they called themselves the Rasenna. Who they were and whence they came has ever been regarded as one of the most doubtful and difficult problems in ethnology. One conclusion only can be said to have been universally accepted both in ancient and in modern times. It is agreed on every hand that in all essential points, in language, in religion, in customs, and in appearance, the Etruscans were a race wholly different from the Latins. There is also an absolute agreement of all ancient tradition to the effect that the Etruscans were not the original inhabitants of Etruria, but that they were an intrusive race of conquerors. ... It has been usually supposed that the Rasenna made their appearance in Italy some ten or twelve centuries before the Christian era. ... For some six or seven centuries, the Etruscan power and territory continued steadily to increase, and ultimately stretched far south of the Tiber, Rome itself being included in the Etruscan dominion, and being ruled by an Etruscan dynasty. The early history of Rome is to a great extent the history of the uprising of the Latin race, and its long struggle for Italian supremacy with its Etruscan foe. It took Rome some six centuries of conflict to break through the obstinate barrier of the Etruscan power. The final conquest of Etruria by Rome was effected in the year 281 B. C. ... The Rasennic people were collected mainly in the twelve great cities of Etruria proper, between the Arno and the Tiber. [Modern Tuscany takes its name from the ancient Etruscan inhabitants of the region.] This region was the real seat of the Etruscan power. ... From the 'Shah-nameh,' the great Persian epic, we learn that the Aryan Persians called their nearest non-Aryan neighbours--the Turkic or Turcoman tribes to the north of them--by the name Turan, a word from which we derive the familiar ethnologic term Turanian. The Aryan Greeks, on the other hand, called the Turkic tribe of the Rasenna, the nearest non-Aryan race, by the name of Turrhenoi. The argument of this book is to prove that the Tyrrhenians of Italy were of kindred race with the Turanians of Turkestan. Is it too much to conjecture that the Greek form Turrhene may be identically the same word as the Persian form Turan?" I. Taylor, Etruscan Researches, chapter 2. "The utmost we can say is that several traces, apparently reliable, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans may be on the whole included among the Indo-Germans. ... But even granting those points of connection, the Etruscan people appears withal scarcely less isolated. 'The Etruscans,' Dionysius said long ago, 'are like no other nation in language and manners'; and we have nothing to add to his statement. ... Reliable traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the Tiber, by land, are altogether wanting. ... South of the Tiber no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication whatever is discernible of any serious pressure by the Etruscans upon the Latin nation." T. Mommsen, History of Rome, book 1, chapter 9. {989} EUBŒA. "The island of Eubœa, long and narrow like Krête, and exhibiting a continuous backbone of lofty mountains from northwest to southeast, is separated from Bœotia at one point by a strait so narrow (celebrated in antiquity under the name of the Eurīpus) that the two were connected by a bridge for a large portion of the historical period of Greece, erected during the later times of the Peloponnesian war by the inhabitants of Chalkis [Chalcis]. Its general want of breadth leaves little room for plains. The area of the island consists principally of mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, suited in many parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for grain-culture or town habitations. Some plains there were, however, of great fertility, especially that of Lelantum, bordering on the sea near Chalkis, and continuing from that city in a southerly direction towards Eretria. Chalkis and Eretria, both situated on the western coast, and both occupying parts of this fertile plain, were the two principal places in the island: the domain of each seems to have extended across the island from sea to sea. ... Both were in early times governed by an oligarchy, which among the Chalcidians was called the Hippobotæ, or Horse feeders,-- proprietors probably of most part of the plain called Lelantum." G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 12. See, also, NEGROPONT. EUBOIC TALENT. See TALENT. EUCHITES, The. See MYSTICISM. EUDES, King of France (in partition with Charles the Simple), A. D. 887-898. EUDOSES, The. See AVIONES. EUGENE (Prince) of Savoy, Campaigns of. See HUNGARY: A. D. 1699-1718; GERMANY: A. D. 1704; ITALY (SAVOY AND PIEDMONT): A. D. 1701-1713; NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1708-1709, and 1710-1712. EUGENE I., Pope, A. D. 655-657. Eugene II., Pope, A. D. 824-827. Eugene III., Pope, A. D. 1145-1153. Eugene IV., Pope, A. D. 1431-1447. EUGENIANS, The. See HY-NIALS. EUMENES, and the wars of the Diadochi. See MACEDONIA: B. C. 323-316. EUMOLPHIDÆ, The. See PHYLÆ. EUPATRIDÆ, The. "The Eupatridæ [in ancient Athens] are the wealthy and powerful men, belonging to the most distinguished families in all the various gentes, and principally living in the city of Athens, after the consolidation of Attica: from them are distinguished the middling and lower people, roughly classified into husbandmen and artisans. To the Eupatridæ is ascribed a religious as well as a political and social ascendency. They are represented as the source of all authority on matters both sacred and profane," G. Grote, History of Greece, part 2, chapter 10. EUROKS, OR YUROKS. See AMERICAN ABORIGINES: MODOCS. EUROPE. A HISTORICAL SKETCH. A general sketch of the history of Europe at large cannot, for obvious reasons, be constructed of quotations from the historians, on the plan followed in other parts of this work. The editor has found it necessary, therefore, to introduce here an essay of his own. The first inhabitants of the continent of Europe have left no trace of their existence on the surface of the land. The little that we know of them has been learned by the discovery of deeply buried remains, including a few bones and skulls, many weapons and tools which they had fashioned out of stone and bone, and some other rude marks of their hands which time has not destroyed. The places in which these remains are found--under deposits that formed slowly in ancient river beds and in caves--have convinced geologists that the people whose existence they reveal lived many thousands of years ago, and that the continent of Europe in their time was very different from the Europe of the present day, in its climate, in its aspect, and in its form. They find reason to suppose that the peninsula of Italy, as well as that of Spain, was then an isthmus which joined Europe to Africa; and this helps to explain the fact that remains of such animals as the elephant, the lion, the rhinoceros, the hippopotamus, and the hyena, as well as the mammoth, are found with the remains of these early men. They all seem to have belonged, together, to a state of things, on the surface of the earth, which was greatly changed before the men and the animals that we have historical knowledge of appeared. The Stone Age. These primitive Europeans were evidently quite at the bottom of the savage state. They had learned no use of metals, since every relic of their workmanship that can be found is of stone, or bone, or wood. It is thought possible that they shaped rough vessels out of unbaked clay; but that is uncertain. There is nothing to show that they had domesticated any animals. It is plain that they dwelt in caves, wherever nature provided such dwellings; but what shelters they may have built elsewhere for themselves is unknown. In one direction, only, did these ancient people exhibit a faculty finer than we see in the lowest savages of the present day: they were artists, in a way. They have left carvings and drawings of animals--the latter etched with a sharp point on horns, bones, and stones--which are remarkable for uncultured men. The period in man's life on the earth at which these people lived--the period before metals were known--has been named by archæologists the Stone Age. But the Stone Age covers two stages of human culture--one in which stone implements were fashioned unskilfully, and a second in which they were finished with expert and careful hands. The first is called the Palæolithic or Old Stone Age, the second the Neolithic or New Stone Age. Between the two periods in Europe there seems to have been a long interval of time, and a considerable change in the condition of the country, as well as in that of its people. {990} In fact, the Europe of the Neolithic Age was probably not very different in form and climate from the Europe of our own day. Relics of the human life of that time are abundantly scattered over the face of the continent. There are notable deposits of them in the so-called "kitchen-middens" of Denmark, which are great mounds of shells,--shells of oysters and other molluscs,--which these ancient fishermen had opened and emptied, and then cast upon a refuse heap. Buried in those mounds, many bits of their workmanship have been preserved, and many hints of their manner of life are gleaned from the signs and tokens which these afford. They had evidently risen some degrees above the state of the men of the Palæolithic or Old Stone Age; but they were inferior in art. The Bronze Age. The discovery and use of copper--the metal most easily worked, and most frequently found in the metallic state--is the event by which archæologists mark the beginning of a second state in early civilizations. The period during which copper, and copper hardened by an alloy of tin, are the only metals found in use, they call the Bronze Age. There is no line of positive division between this and the Neolithic period which it followed. The same races appear to have advanced from the one stage to the other, and probably some were in possession of tools and weapons of bronze, while others were still contenting themselves with implements of stone. Lake Dwellings. In many parts of Europe, especially in Switzerland and northern Italy, plain traces of some curious habitations of people who lived through the later Stone Age into the Bronze Age, and even after it, have been brought to light. These are the "lake dwellings," or "lacustrine habitations," as they have been called, which have excited interest in late years. They were generally built on piles, driven into a lake-bottom, at such distance from shore as would make them easy of defence against enemies. The foundations of whole villages of these dwellings have been found in the Swiss and North Italian lakes, and less numerously elsewhere. From the lake-mud under and around them, a great quantity of relics of the lake-dwellers have been taken, and many facts about their arts and mode of life have been learned. It is known that, even before a single metal had come into their hands, they had begun to cultivate the earth; had raised wheat and barley and flax; had domesticated the horse, the ox, the sheep, the goat, the pig and the dog; had become fairly skilful in weaving, in rope-making, and in the art of the potter, but without the potter's wheel. Gradually copper and bronze made their appearance among the implements of these people, as modern search discovers them imbedded, layer upon layer, in the old ooze of the lake-beds where they were dropped. In time, iron, too, reveals itself among their possessions, showing that they lived in their lake-villages from the later Stone Age into that third period of the early process of civilization which is named the Iron Age--when men first acquired the use of the most useful of all the metals. It appears, in fact, that the lake-dwellings were occupied even down to Roman times, since articles of Roman make have been found in the ruins of them. Barrows. In nearly all parts of Europe there are found burial mounds, called barrows, which contain buried relics of people who lived at one or the other of the three periods named. For the most part, they represent inhabitants of the Neolithic and of the Bronze Ages. In Great Britain some of these barrows are long, some are round; and the skulls found in the long barrows are different in shape from those in the round ones, showing a difference of race. The people to whom the first belonged are called "long-headed," or "dolichocephalic"; the others are called "broad-headed," or "brachycephalic." In the opinion of some ethnologists, who study this subject of the distinctions of race in the human family, the broad-headed people were ancestors of the Celtic or Keltic tribes, whom the Romans subdued in Gaul and Britain; while the long-headed men were of a preceding race, which the Celts, when they came, either drove out of all parts of Europe, except two or three mountainous corners, or else absorbed by intermarriage. The Basques of northwestern Spain, and some of their neighbors on the French side of the Pyrenees, are supposed to be survivals of this very ancient people; and there are suspected to be traces of their existence seen in the dark-haired and dark-skinned people of parts of Wales, Ireland, Corsica, North Africa, and elsewhere. The Aryan Nations. At least one part of this conjecture has much to rest upon. The inhabitants of western Europe when our historical knowledge of them--that is, our recorded and reported knowledge of them--begins, were, certainly, for the most part, Celtic peoples, and it is extremely probable that they had been occupying the country as long as the period represented by the round barrows. It is no less probable that they were the lake-dwellers of Switzerland, North Italy, and other regions; and that they did, in fact, displace some earlier people in most parts of Western Europe. The Celts--whose nearly pure descendants are found now in the Bretons of France, the Welsh, the Highland Scotch and the Celtic Irish, and who formed the main stock of the larger part of the French nation--were one branch of the great family of nations called Aryan or Indo-European. The Aryan peoples are assumed to be akin to one another--shoots from one stem--because their languages are alike in grammatical structure and contain great numbers of words that are manifestly formed from the same original "root"; and because they differ in these respects from all other languages. The nations thus identified as Aryan are the nations that have acted the most important parts in all human history except the history of extremely ancient times. Besides the Celtic peoples already mentioned, they include the English, the Dutch, the Germans, and the Scandinavians, forming the Teutonic race; the Russians, Poles, and others of the Slavonic group; the ancient Greeks and Romans, with their modern representatives, and the Persians and Hindus in Asia. According to the evidence of their languages, there must have been a time and a place, in the remote past, when and where a primitive Aryan race, which was ancestral to all these nations, lived and multiplied until it outgrew its original country and began to send forth successive "swarms," or migrating hordes, as many unsettled races have been seen to do within the historic age. {991} It is hopeless, perhaps, to think of determining the time when such a dispersion of the Aryan peoples began; but many scholars believe it possible to trace, by various marks and indications, in language and elsewhere, the lines of movement in the migration, so far as to guess with some assurance the region of the primitive Aryan home; but thus far there are great disagreements in the guessing. Until recent years, the prevailing judgment pointed to that highland district in Central Asia which lies north of the Hindoo-Koosh range of mountains, and between the upper waters of the Oxus and Jaxartes. But later studies have discredited this first theory and started many opposing ones. The strong tendency now is to believe that the cradle of all the peoples of Aryan speech was somewhere in Europe, rather than in Asia, and in the north of Europe rather than in the center or the south. At the same time, there seems to be a growing opinion that the language of the Aryans was communicated to conquered peoples so extensively that its spread is not a true measure of the existing diffusion of the race. The Celtic Branch. Whatever may have been the starting-point of the Aryan migrations, it is supposed that the branch now distinguished as Celtic was the first to separate from the parent stem and to acquire for itself a new domain. It occupied southwestern Europe, from northern Spain to the Rhine, and across the Channel to the British islands, extending eastward into Switzerland, North It&ly and the Tyrol. But little of what the tribes and nations forming this Celtic race did is known, until the time when another Aryan people, better civilized, came into collision with them, and drew them into the written history of the world by conquering them and making them its subjects. The people who did this were the Romans, and the Romans and the Greeks are believed to have been carried into the two peninsulas which they inhabited, respectively, by one and the same movement in the Aryan dispersion. Their languages show more affinity to one another than to the other Aryan tongues, and there are other evidences of a near relationship between them; though they separated, it is quite certain, long before the appearance of either in history. The Hellenes, or Greeks. The Greeks, or Hellenes, as they called themselves, were the first among the Aryan peoples in Europe to make themselves historically known, and the first to write the record which transmits history from generation to generation. The peninsula in which they settled themselves is a very peculiar one in its formation. It is crossed in different directions by mountain ranges, which divide the land into parts naturally separated from one another, and which form barriers easily defended against invading foes. Between the mountains lie numerous fertile valleys. The coast is ragged with gulfs and bays, which notch it deeply on all sides, making the whole main peninsula a cluster of minor peninsulas, and supplying the people with harbors which invite them to a life of seafaring and trade. It is surrounded, moreover, with islands, which repeat the invitation. Almost necessarily, in a country marked with such features so strongly, the Greeks became divided politically into small independent states--city-states they have been named--and those on the sea-coast became engaged very early in trade with other countries of the Mediterranean Sea. Every city of importance in Greece was entirely sovereign in the government of itself and of the surrounding territory which formed its domain. The stronger among them extended their dominion over some of the weaker or less valiant ones; but even then the subject cities kept a considerable measure of independence. There was no organization of national government to embrace the whole, nor any large part, of Greece. Certain among the states were sometimes united in temporary leagues, or confederacies, for common action in war; but these were unstable alliances, rather than political unions. In their earliest form, the Greek city-states were governed by kings, whose power appears to have been quite limited, and who were leaders rather than sovereigns. But kingship disappeared from most of the states in Greece proper before they reached the period of distinct and accepted history. The kings were first displaced by aristocracies--ruling families, which took all political rights and privileges to themselves, and allowed their fellows (whom they usually oppressed) no part or voice in public affairs. In most instances these aristocracies, or oligarchies, were overthrown, after a time, by bold agitators who stirred up a revolution, and then contrived, while confusion prevailed, to gather power into their own hands. Almost every Greek city had its time of being ruled by one or more of these Tyrants, as they were called. Some of them, like Pisistratus of Athens, ruled wisely and justly for the most part, and were not "tyrants" in the modern sense of the term; but all who gained and held a princely power unlawfully were so named by the Greeks. The reign of the Tyrants was nowhere lasting. They were driven out of one city after another until they disappeared. Then the old aristocracies came uppermost again in some cities, and ruled as before. But some, like Athens, had trained the whole body of their citizens to such intelligence and spirit that neither kingship nor oligarchy would be endured any longer, and the people undertook to govern themselves. These were the first democracies--the first experiments in popular government--that history gives any account of. "The little commonwealths of Greece," says a great historian, "were the first states at once free and civilized which the world ever saw. They were the first states which gave birth to great statesmen, orators, and generals who did great deeds, and to great historians who set down those great deeds in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths, in short, that the political and intellectual life of the world began." In the belief of the Greeks, or of most men among them, their early history was embodied with truth in the numerous legends and ancient poems which they religiously preserved; but people in modern times look differently upon those wonderful myths and epics, studying them with deep interest, but under more critical views. They throw much light on the primitive life of the Hellenes, and more light upon the development of the remarkable genius and spirit of those thoughtful and imaginative people; but of actual history there are only glimpses and guesses to be got from them. {992} The Homeric poems, the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey," describe a condition of things in which the ruling state of Peloponnesus (the southern peninsula of Greece) was a kingdom of the Achaians, having its capital at Mycenæ, in Argolis,--the realm of King Agamemnon,--and in which Athens is unknown to the poet. Within recent years, Dr. Schliemann has excavated the ruins of Mycenæ, and has found evidence that it really must have been, in very early times, the seat of a strong and rich monarchy. But the Achaian kingdom had entirely disappeared, and the Achaian people had shrunk to an insignificant community, on the Gulf of Corinth, when the first assured views of Greek history open to us. The Dorians. It seems to be a fact that the Achaians had been overwhelmed by a great invasion of more barbarous Greek tribes from the North, very much as the Roman Empire, in later times, was buried under an avalanche of barbarism from Germany. The invaders were a tribe or league of tribes called Dorians, who had been driven from their own previous home on the slopes of the Pindus mountain range. Their movement southward was part, as appears, of an extensive shifting of place, or migration, that occurred at that time (not long, it is probable, before the beginning of the historic period) among the tribes of Hellas. The Dorians claimed that in conquering Peloponnesus they were recovering a heritage from which their chiefs had been anciently expelled, and their legends were shaped accordingly. The Dorian chiefs appeared in these legends as descendants of Hercules, and the tradition of the conquest became a story of "The Return of the Heraclids." The principal states founded or possessed and controlled by the Dorians in Peloponnesus, after their conquest, were Sparta, or Lacedæmon, Argos, and Corinth. The Spartans were the most warlike of the Greeks,--the most resolute and energetic,--and their leadership in practical affairs common to the whole came to be generally acknowledged. At the same time they had little of the intellectual superiority which distinguished some of their Hellenic kindred in so remarkable a degree. Their state was organized on military principles; its constitution (the body of famous ordinances ascribed to Lycurgus) was a code of rigid discipline, which dealt with the citizen as a soldier always under training for war, and demanded from him the utmost simplicity of life. Their form of government combined a peculiar monarchy (having two royal families and two kings) with an aristocratic senate (the Gerousia), and a democratic assembly (which voted on matters only as submitted to it by the senate), with an irresponsible executive over the whole, consisting of five men called the Ephors. This singular government, essentially aristocratic or oligarchical, was maintained, with little disturbance or change, through the whole independent history of Sparta. In all respects, the Spartans were the most conservative and the least progressive among the politically important Greeks. At the beginning of the domination of the Dorians in Peloponnesus, their city of Argos took the lead, and was the head of a league which included Corinth and other city-states. But Sparta soon rose to rivalry with Argos; then reduced it to a secondary place, and finally subjugated it completely. The Ionians. The extensive shifting of population which had produced its most important result in the invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, must have caused great commotions and changes throughout the whole Greek peninsula; and quite as much north of the Corinthian isthmus as south of it. But in the part which lies nearest to the isthmus--the branch peninsula of Attica--the old inhabitants appear to have held their ground, repelling invaders, and their country was affected only by an influx of fugitives, flying from the conquered Peloponnesus. The Attic people were more nearly akin to the expelled Achaians and Ionians than to the conquering Dorians, although a common brotherhood in the Hellenic race was recognized by all of them. Whatever distinction there may have been before between Achaians and Ionians now practically disappeared, and the Ionic name became common to the whole branch of the Greek people which derived itself from them. The important division of the race through all its subsequent history was between Dorians and Ionians. The Æolians constituted a third division, of minor importance and of far less significance. The distinction between Ionians and Dorians was a very real one, in character no less than in traditions and name. The Ionians were the superior Greeks on the intellectual side. It was among them that the wonderful genius resided which produced the greater marvels of art, literature and philosophy in Greek civilization. It was among them, too, that the institutions of political freedom were carried to their highest attainment. Their chief city was Athens, and the splendor of its history bears testimony to their unexampled genius. On the other hand, the Dorians were less thoughtful, less imaginative, less broad in judgment or feeling--less susceptible, it would seem, of a high refinement of culture; but no less capable in practical pursuits, no less vigorous in effective action, and sounder, perhaps, in their moral constitution. Sparta, which stood at the head of the Doric states, contributed almost nothing to Greek literature, Greek thought, Greek art, or Greek commerce, but exercised a great influence on Greek political history. Other Doric states, especially Corinth, were foremost in commercial and colonizing enterprise, and attained some brilliancy of artistic civilization, but with moderate originality. Greeks and Phœnicians. It was natural, as noted above, that the Greeks should be induced at an early day to navigate the surrounding seas, and to engage in trade with neighboring nations. They were not original, it is supposed, in these ventures, but learned more or less of ship-building and the art of navigation from an older people, the Phœnicians, who dwelt on the coast of Syria and Palestine, and whose chief cities were Sidon and Tyre. The Phœnicians had extended their commerce widely through the Mediterranean before the Greeks came into rivalry with them. Their ships, and their merchants, and the wares they bartered, were familiar in the Ægean when the Homeric poems were composed. {993} They seem to have been the teachers of the early Greeks in many things. They gave them, with little doubt, the invention of the alphabet, which they themselves had borrowed from Egypt. They conveyed hints of art, which bore astonishing fruits when planted in the fertile Hellenic imagination. They carried from the East strange stories of gods and demigods, which were woven into the mythology of the Greeks. They gave, in fact, to Greek civilization, at its beginning, the greatest impulse it received. But all that Hellas took from the outer world it wrought into a new character, and put upon it the stamp of its own unmistakable genius. In navigation and commerce the Greeks of the coast-cities and the islands were able, ere long, to compete on even terms with the Phœnicians, and it happened, in no great space of time, that they had driven the latter entirely from the Ægean and the Euxine seas. Greek Colonies. They had now occupied with colonies the coast of Asia Minor and the islands on both their own coasts. The Ionian Greeks were the principal colonizers of the Asiatic shore and of the Cyclades. On the former and near it they founded twelve towns of note, including Samos, Miletus, Ephesus, Chios, and Phocæa, which are among the more famous cities of ancient times. Their important island settlements in the Cyclades were Naxos, Delos, Melos, and Paros. They possessed, likewise, the great island of Eubœa, with its two wealthy cities of Chalcis and Eretria. These, with Attica, constituted, in the main, the Ionic portion of Hellas. The Dorians occupied the islands of Rhodes and Cos, and founded on the coast of Asia Minor the cities of Halicarnassus and Cnidus. The important Æolian colonies in Asia were Smyrna (acquired later by the Ionians), Temnos, Larissa, and Cyme. Of the islands they occupied Lesbos and Tenedos. From these settlements on neighboring coasts and islands the vigorous Greeks pushed on to more distant fields. It is probable that their colonies were in Cyprus and Crete before the eighth century, B. C. In the seventh century B. C., during a time of confusion and weakness in Egypt, they had entered that country as allies or as mercenaries of the kings, and had founded a city, Naucratis, which became an important agent in the exchange of arts and ideas, as well as of merchandise, between the Nile and the Ægean. Within a few years past the site of Naucratis has been uncovered by explorers, and much has been brought to light that was obscure in Greek and Egyptian history before. Within the same seventh century, Cyrene and Barca had been built on the African coast, farther west. Even a century before that time, the Corinthians had taken possession of Corcyra (modern Corfu), and they, with the men of Chalcis and Megara, had been actively founding cities that grew great and rich, in Sicily and in southern Italy, which latter acquired the name of "Magna Græcia" (Great Greece). At a not much later time they had pressed northwards to the Euxine or Black Sea, and had scattered settlements along the Thracian and Macedonian coast, including one (Byzantium) on the Bosphorus, which became, after a thousand years had passed, the imperial city of Constantinople. About 597 B. C., the Phocæans had planted a colony at Massalia, in southern Gaul, from which sprang the great city known in modern times as Marseilles. And much of all this had been done, by Ionians and Dorians together, before Athens (in which Attica now centered itself, and which loomed finally greater in glory than the whole Hellenic world besides) had made a known mark in history. Rise of Athens. At first there had been kings in Athens, and legends had gathered about their names which give modern historians a ground-work for critical guessing, and scarcely more. Then the king disappeared and a magistrate called Archon took his place, who held office for only ten years. The archons are believed to have been chosen first from the old royal family alone; but after a time the office was thrown open to all noble families. This was the aristocratic stage of political evolution in the city-state. The next step was taken in 683 B. C. (which is said to be the beginning of authentic Athenian chronology) when nine archons were created, in place of the one, and their term of office was reduced to a single year. Fifty years later, about 621 B. C., the people of Athens obtained their first code of written law, ascribed to one Draco, and described as a code of much severity. But it gave certainty to law, for the first time, and was the first great protective measure secured by the people. In 612 B. C. a noble named Kylon attempted to overthrow the aristocratic government and establish a tyranny under himself, but he failed. Legislation of Solon. Then there came forward in public life another noble, who was one of the wisest men and purest patriots of any country or age, and who made an attempt of quite another kind. This was Solon, the famous lawgiver, who became archon in 594 B. C. The political state of Athens at that time has been described for us in an ancient Greek treatise lately discovered, and which is believed to be one of the hitherto lost writings of Aristotle. "Not only," says the author of this treatise, "was the constitution at this time oligarchical in every respect, but the poorer classes, men, women, and children, were in absolute slavery to the rich. ... The whole country was in the hands of a few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their rent, they were liable to be haled into slavery, and their children with them. Their persons were mortgaged to their creditors." Solon saw that this was a state of things not to be endured by such a people as the Athenians, and he exerted himself to change it. He obtained authority to frame a new constitution and a new code of laws for the state. In the latter, he provided measures for relieving the oppressed class of debtors. In the former, he did not create a democratic government, but he greatly increased the political powers of the people. He classified them according to their wealth, defining four classes, the citizens in each of which had certain political duties and privileges measured to them by the extent of their property and income. But the whole body of citizens, in their general assembly (the Ecclesia), were given the important right of choosing the annual archons, whom they must select, however, from the ranks of the wealthiest class. At the same time, Solon enlarged the powers of the old aristocratic senate--the Areopagus--giving it a supervision of the execution of the laws and a censorship of the morals of the people. {994} "These changes did not constitute Democracy,--a form of government then unknown, and for which there was as yet no word in the Greek language. But they initiated the democratic spirit. ... Athens, thus fairly started on her way,--emancipated from the discipline of aristocratic school-masters, and growing into an age of manly liberty and self-restraint,--came eventually nearer to the ideal of 'the good life' [Aristotle's phrase] than any other State in Hellas." (W. W. Fowler.) Tyranny of Pisistratus. But before the Athenians reached their nearness to this "good life," they had to pass under the yoke of a "tyrant," Pisistratus, who won the favor of the poorer people, and, with their help, established himself in the Acropolis (560 B. C.) with a foreign guard to maintain his power. Twice driven out, he was twice restored, and reigned quite justly and prudently, on the whole, until his death in 527 B. C. He was succeeded by his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus; but the latter was killed in 514, and Hippias was expelled by the Spartans in 510 B. C.; after which there was no tyranny in Athens. The Democratic Republic. On the fall of the Pisistratidæ, a majority of the noble or privileged class struggled hard to regain their old ascendancy; but one of their number, Cleisthenes, took the side of the people and helped them to establish a democratic constitution. He caused the ancient tribal division of the citizens to be abolished, and substituted a division which mixed the members of clans and broke up or weakened the clannish influence in politics. He enlarged Solon's senate or council and divided it into committees, and he brought the "ecclesia," or popular assembly, into a more active exercise of its powers. He also introduced the custom of ostracism, which permitted the citizens of Athens to banish by their vote any man whom they thought dangerous to the state. The constitution of Cleisthenes was the final foundation of the Athenian democratic republic. Monarchical and aristocratic Sparta resented the popular change, and undertook to restore the oligarchy by force of arms; but the roused democracy of Athens defended its newly won liberties with vigor and success. The Persian Wars. Not Athens only, but all Greece, was now about to be put to a test which proved the remarkable quality of both, and formed the beginning of their great career. The Ionian cities of Asia Minor had recently been twice conquered, first by Crœsus, King of Lydia, and then by Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire, who had overthrown Crœsus (B. C. 547), and taken his dominions. The Persians oppressed them, and in 500 B. C. they rose in revolt. Athens and Eretria sent help to them, while Sparta refused. The revolt was suppressed, and Darius, the king of Persia, planned vengeance upon the Athenians and Eretrians for the aid they had given to it. He sent an expedition against them in 493 B. C., which was mostly destroyed by a storm. In 490 B. C. he sent a second powerful army and fleet, which took Eretria and razed it to the ground. The great Persian army then marched upon Athens, and was met at Marathon by a small Athenian force of 9,000 men. The little city of Platæa sent 1,000 more to stand with them in the desperate encounter. They had no other aid in the fight, and the Persians were a great unnumbered host. But Miltiades, the Greek general that day, planned his battle-charge so well that he routed the Asiatic host and lost but 192 men. The Persians abandoned their attempt and returned to their wrathful king. One citizen of Athens, Themistocles, had sagacity enough to foresee that the "Great King," as he was known, would not rest submissive under his defeat; and with difficulty he persuaded his fellow citizens to prepare themselves for future conflicts by building a fleet and by fortifying their harbors, thus making themselves powerful at sea. The wisdom of his counsels was proved in 480 B. C., when Xerxes, the successor of Darius, led an army of prodigious size into Greece, crossing the Hellespont by a bridge of boats. This time, Sparta, Corinth, and several of the lesser states, rallied with Athens to the defence of the common country; but Thebes and Argos showed friendship to the Persians, and none of the important island-colonies contributed any help. Athens was the brain and right arm of the war, notwithstanding the accustomed leadership of Sparta in military affairs. The first encounter was at Thermopylæ, where Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defended the narrow pass, and died in their place when the Persians found a way across the mountain to surround them. But on that same day the Persian fleet was beaten at Artemisium. Xerxes marched on Athens, however, found the city deserted, and destroyed it. His fleet had followed him, and was still stronger than the naval force of the Greeks. Themistocles forced a battle, against the will of the Peloponnesian captains, and practically destroyed the Persian fleet. This most memorable battle of Salamis was decisive of the war, and decisive of the independence of Greece. Xerxes, in a panic, hastened back into Asia, leaving one of his generals, Mardonius, with 300,000 men, to pursue the war. But Mardonius was routed and his host annihilated, at Platæa, the next year, while the Persian fleet was again defeated on the same day at Mycale. The Golden Age of Athens. The war had been glorious for the Athenians, and all could see that Greece had been saved by their spirit and their intelligence much more than by the valor of Sparta and the other states. But they were in a woful condition, with their city destroyed and their families without homes. Wasting no time in lamentations, they rebuilt the town, stretched its walls to a wider circuit, and fortified it more strongly than before, under the lead of the sagacious Themistocles. Their neighbors were meanly jealous, and Sparta made attempts to interfere with the building of the walls; but Themistocles baffled them cunningly, and the new Athens rose proudly out of the ashes of the old. {995} The Ionian islands and towns of Asia Minor (which had broken the Persian yoke) now recognized the superiority and leadership of Athens, and a league was formed among them, which held the meetings of its deputies and kept its treasury in the temple of Apollo on the sacred island of Delos; for which reason it was called the Confederacy of Delos, or the Delian League. The Peloponnesian states formed a looser rival league under the headship of Sparta. The Confederacy of Delos was in sympathy with popular governments and popular parties everywhere, while the Spartans and their following favored oligarchies and aristocratic parties. There were many occasions for hostility between the two. The Athenians, at the head of their Confederacy, were strong, until they impaired their power by using it in tyrannical ways. Many lesser states in the league were foolish enough to commute in money payments the contribution of ships and men which they had pledged themselves to make to the common naval force. This gave Athens the power to use that force despotically, as her own, and she did not scruple to exercise the power. The Confederacy was soon a name; the states forming it were no longer allies of Athens, but her subjects; she ruled them as the sovereign of an Empire, and her rule was neither generous nor just. Thereby the double tie of kinship and of interest which might have bound the whole circle of Ionian states to her fortunes and herself was destroyed by her own acts. Provoking the hatred of her allies and challenging the jealous fear of her rivals, Athens had many enemies. At the same time, a dangerous change in the character of her democratic institutions was begun, produced especially by the institution of popular jury-courts, before which prosecutions of every kind were tried, the citizens who constituted the courts acting as jury and judge at once. This gave them a valuable training, without doubt, and helped greatly to raise the common standard of intelligence among the Athenians so high; but it did unquestionably tend also to demoralizations that were ruinous in the end. The jury service, which was slightly paid, fell more and more to an unworthy class, made up of idlers or intriguers. Party feeling and popular passions gained an increasing influence over the juries, and demagogues acquired an increasing skill in making use of them. But these evils were scarcely more than in their seed during the great period of "Athenian Empire," as it is sometimes called, and everything within its bounds was suffused with the shining splendor of that matchless half-century. The genius of this little Ionic state was stimulated to amazing achievements in every intellectual field. Æschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, within a single generation, crowded Athenian literature with the masterpieces of classic drama. Pheidias and his companions crowned the Acropolis and filled the city with works that have been the models in art for all ages since. Socrates began the quizzing which turned philosophy into honest truth-seeking paths, and Plato listened to him and was instructed for his mission. Thucydides watched events with sagacious young eyes, and prepared his pen for the chronicling of them; while Herodotus, pausing at Athens from his wide travels, matured the knowledge he had gathered up and perfected it for his final work. Over all of them came Pericles to preside and rule, not as a master, or "tyrant," but as leader, guide, patron, princely republican,--statesman and politician in one. The Peloponnesian War. The period of the ascendancy of Pericles was the "golden age" of Athenian prosperity and power, both material and intellectual. The beginning of the end of it was reached a little before he died, when the long-threatened war between Athens and the Peloponnesian league, led by Sparta, broke out (B. C. 431). If Athens had then possessed the good will of the cities of her own league, and if her citizens had retained their old sobriety and intelligence, she might have triumphed in the war; for she was all powerful at sea and fortified almost invincibly against attacks by land. But the subject states, called allies, were hostile, for the most part, and helped the enemy by their revolts, while the death of Pericles (B. C. 429) let loose on the people a swarm of demagogues who flattered and deluded them, and baffled the wiser and more honest, whose counsels and leadership might have given her success. The fatal folly of the long war was an expedition against the distant city of Syracuse (B. C. 415-413), into which the Athenians were enticed by the restless and unscrupulous ambition of Alcibiades. The entire force sent to Sicily perished there, and the strength and spirit of Athens were ruinously sapped by the fearful calamity. She maintained the war, however, until 404 B. C., when, having lost her fleet in the decisive battle of Ægospotami, and being helplessly blockaded by sea and land, the city was surrendered to the Spartan general Lysander. Her walls and fortifications were then destroyed and her democratic government was overthrown, giving place to an oligarchy known as the "thirty tyrants." The democracy soon suppressed the thirty tyrants and regained control, and Athens, in time, rose somewhat from her deep humiliation, but never again to much political power in Greece. In intellect and cultivation, the superiority of the Attic state was still maintained, and its greatest productions in philosophy and eloquence were yet to be given to the world. Spartan and Theban Ascendancy. After the fall of Athens, Sparta was dominant in the whole of Greece for thirty years and more, exercising her power more oppressively than Athens had done. Then Thebes, which had been treacherously seized and garrisoned by the Spartans, threw off their yoke (B. C. 379) and led a rising, under her great and high-souled citizen, Epaminondas, which resulted in bringing Thebes to the head of Greek affairs. But the Theban ascendancy was short-lived, and ended with the death of Epaminondas in 362 B. C. Macedonian Supremacy. Meantime, while the city-states of Hellas proper had been wounding and weakening one another by their jealousies and wars, the semi-Greek kingdom of Macedonia, to the north of them, in their own peninsula, had been acquiring their civilization and growing strong. And now there appeared upon its throne a very able king, Philip, who took advantage of their divisions, interfered in their affairs, and finally made a practical conquest of the whole peninsula, by his victory at the battle of Chæronea (B. C. 338). At Athens, the great orator Demosthenes had exerted himself for years to rouse resistance to Philip. If his eloquence failed then, it has served the world immortally since, by delighting and instructing mankind. {996} King Philip was succeeded by his famous son, Alexander the Great, who led an army of Macedonians and Greeks into Asia (B. C. 334), overthrew the already crumbling Persian power, pursued his conquests through Afghanistan to India, and won a great empire which he did not live to rule. When he died (B. C. 323), his generals divided the empire among them and fought with one another for many years. But the general result was the spreading of the civilization and language of the Greeks, and the establishing of their intellectual influence, in Egypt, in Syria, in Asia Minor, and beyond. In Greece itself, a state of disturbance and of political confusion and weakness prevailed for another century. There was promise of something better, in the formation, by several of the Peloponnesian states, of a confederacy called the Achaian League, which might possibly have federated and nationalized the whole of Hellas in the end; but the Romans, at this juncture, turned their conquering arms eastward, and in three successive wars, between 211 and 146 B. C., they extinguished the Macedonian kingdom, and annexed it, with the whole peninsula, to the dominions of their wonderful republic. The Romans. The Romans, as stated already, are believed to have been originally near kindred to the Greeks. The same movement, it is supposed, in the successive outswarmings of Aryan peoples, deposited in one peninsula the Italian tribes, and in the next peninsula, eastward, the tribes of the Hellenes. Among the Italian tribes were Latins, Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc., occupying the middle and much of the southern parts of the peninsula, while a mysterious alien people, the Etruscans, whose origin is not known, possessed the country north of them between the Arno and the Tiber. In the extreme south were remnants of a primitive race, the Iapygian, and Greek colonies were scattered there around the coasts. From the Latins sprang the Romans, at the beginning of their separate existence; but there seems to have been a very early union of these Romans of the primitive tradition with a Sabine community, whereby was formed the Roman city-state of historical times. That union came about through the settlement of the two communities, Latin and Sabine, on two neighboring hills, near the mouth of the river Tiber, on its southern bank. In the view of some historians, it is the geographical position of those hills, hardly less than the masterful temper and capacity of the race seated on them, which determined the marvellous career of the city founded on that site. Says Professor Freeman: "The whole history of the world has been determined by the geological fact that at a point a little below the junction of the Tiber and the Anio the isolated hills stand nearer to one another than most of the other hills of Latium. On a site marked out above all other sites for dominion, the centre of Italy, the centre of Europe, as Europe then was, a site at the junction of three of the great nations of Italy, and which had the great river as its highway to lands beyond the bounds of Italy, stood two low hills, the hill which bore the name of Latin Saturn, and the hill at the meaning of whose name of Palatine scholars will perhaps guess for ever. These two hills, occupied by men of two of the nations of Italy, stood so near to one another that a strait choice indeed was laid on those who dwelled on them. They must either join together on terms closer than those which commonly united Italian leagues, or they must live a life of border warfare more ceaseless, more bitter, than the ordinary warfare of Italian enemies. Legend, with all likelihood, tells us that warfare was tried; history, with all certainty, tells us that the final choice was union. The two hills were fenced with a single wall; the men who dwelled on them changed from wholly separate communities into tribes of a single city." The followers of Romulus occupied the Palatine Mount, and the Sabines were settled on the Quirinal. At subsequent times, the Cœlian, the Capitoline, the Aventine, the Esquiline and the Viminal hills were embraced in the circumvallation, and the city on the seven hills thus acquired that name. If modern students and thinkers, throwing light on the puzzling legends and traditions of early Rome from many sources, in language and archæology, have construed their meaning lightly, then great importance attaches to those first unions or incorporations of distinct settlements in the forming of the original city-state. For it was the beginning of a process which went on until the whole of Latium, and then the whole of Italy, and, finally, the whole Mediterranean world, were joined to the seven hills of Rome. "The whole history of Rome is a history of incorporation"; and it is reasonable to believe that the primal spring of Roman greatness is found in that early adoption and persistent practice of the policy of political absorption, which gave conquest a character it had never borne before. At the same time, this view of the creation of the Roman state contributes to an understanding of its early constitutional history. It supposes that the union of the first three tribes which coalesced--those of the Palatine, the Quirinal and Capitoline (both occupied by the Sabines) and the Cœlian hills--ended the process of incorporation on equal terms. These formed the original Roman people--the "fathers," the "patres," whose descendants appear in later times as a distinct class or order, the "patricians"--holding and struggling to maintain exclusive political rights, and exclusive ownership of the public domain, the "ager publicus," which became a subject of bitter contention for four centuries. Around these heirs of the "fathers" of Rome arose another class of Romans, brought into the community by later incorporations, and not on equal terms. If the first class were "fathers," these were children, in a political sense, adopted into the Roman family, but without a voice in general affairs, or a share in the public lands, or eligibility to the higher offices of the state. These were the "plebeians" or "plebs" of Rome, whose long struggle with the patricians for political and agrarian rights is the more interesting side of Roman history throughout nearly the whole of the prosperous age of the republic. {997} At Rome, as at Athens, there was a period of early kingship, the legends of which are as familiar to us all as the stories of the Bible, but the real facts of which are almost totally unknown. It is surmised that the later kings--the well known Tarquins of the classical tale--were Etruscan princes (it is certain that they were Etruscans), who had broken for a time the independence of the Romans and extended their sovereignty over them. It is suspected, too, that this period of Etruscan domination was one in which Roman civilization made a great advance, under the tuition of a more cultivated people. But if Rome in its infancy did know a time of subjugation, the endurance was not long. It ended, according to Roman chronology, in the 245th year of the city, or 509 B.C., by the expulsion of Tarquin the Proud, the last of the kings. The Roman Republic. The Republic was then founded; but it was an aristocratic and not a democratic republic. The consuls, who replaced the kings, were required to be patricians, and they were chosen by the landholders of the state. The senate was patrician; all the important powers of government were in patrician hands, and the plebs suffered grievous oppression in consequence. They were not of a tamely submissive race. They demanded powers for their own protection, and by slow degrees they won them--strong as the patricians were in their wealth and their trained political skill. Precisely as in Athens, the first great effort among the common people was to obtain relief from crushing burdens of debt, which had been laid upon them in precisely the same way--by loss of harvests while in military service, and by the hardness of the laws which creditors alone had framed. An army of plebs, just home from war, marched out of the city and refused to return until magistrates of their own choosing had been conceded to them. The patricians could not afford to lose the bone and sinew of their state, and they yielded the point in demand (B. C. 494). This first "secession of the plebs" brought about the first great democratic change in the Roman constitution, by calling into existence a powerful magistracy--the Tribunes of the Plebs--who henceforth stood between the consuls and the common people, for the protection of the latter. From this first success the plebeian order went forward, step by step, to the attainment of equal political rights in the commonwealth, and equal participation in the lands which Roman conquest was continually adding to the public domain. In 450 B. C., after ten years of struggle, they secured the appointment of a commission which framed the famous Twelve Tables of the Law, and so established a written and certain code. Five years later, the caste exclusiveness of the patricians was broken down by a law which permitted marriages between the orders. In 367 B. C. the patrician monopoly of the consular office was extinguished, by the notable Licinian Laws, which also limited the extent of land that any citizen might occupy, and forbade the exclusive employment of slave labor on any estate. One by one, after that, other magistracies were opened to the plebs; and in 287 B. C. by the Lex Hortensia, the plebeian concilium, or assembly, was made independent of the senate and its acts declared to be valid and binding. The democratic commonwealth was now completely formed. Roman Conquest of Italy. While these changes in the constitution of their Republic were in progress, the Romans had been making great advances toward supremacy in the peninsula. First they had been in league with their Latin neighbors, for war with the Æquians, the Volscians, and the Etruscans. The Volscian war extended over forty years, and ended about 450 B. C. in the practical disappearance of the Volscians from history. Of war with the Æquians, nothing is heard after 458 B. C., when, as the tale is told, Cincinnatus left his plow to lead the Romans against them. The war with the Etruscans of the near city of Veii had been more stubborn. Suspended by a truce between 474 and 438 B. C., it was then renewed, and ended in 396 B. C., when the Etruscan city was taken and destroyed. At the same time the power of the Etruscans was being shattered at sea by the Greeks of Tarentum and Syracuse, while at home they were attacked from the north by the barbarous Gauls or Celts. These last named people, having crossed the Alps from Gaul and Switzerland and occupied northern Italy, were now pressing upon the more civilized nations to the south of the Po. The Etruscans were first to suffer, and their despair became so great that they appealed to Rome for help. The Romans gave little aid to them in their extremity; but enough to provoke the wrath of Brennus, the savage leader of the Gauls. He quitted Etruria and marched to Rome, defeating an army which opposed him on the Allia, pillaging and burning the city (B. C. 390) and slaying the senators, who had refused to take refuge, with other inhabitants, in the capitol. The defenders of the capitol held it for seven months; Rome was rebuilt, when the Gauls withdrew, and soon took up her war again with the Etruscan cities. By the middle of the same century she was mistress of southern Etruria, though her territories had been ravaged twice again by renewed incursions of the Gauls. In a few years more, when her allies of Latium complained of their meager share of the fruits of these common wars, and demanded Roman citizenship and equal rights, she fought them fiercely and humbled them to submissiveness (B. C. 339-338), reducing their cities to the status of provincial towns. And now, having awed or subdued her rivals, her friends, and her enemies, near at hand, the young Republic swung into the career of rapid conquest which subdued to her will, within three-fourths of a century, the whole of Italy below the mouth of the Arno. In 343 B. C. the Roman arms had been turned against the Samnites at the south, and they had been driven from the Campania. In 327 B. C. the same dangerous rivals were again assailed, with less impunity. At the Caudine Forks, in 321 B. C., the Samnites inflicted both disaster and shame upon their indomitable foes; but the end of the war (B. C. 304) found Rome advanced and Samnium fallen back. A third contest ended the question of supremacy; but the Samnites (B. C. 290) submitted to become allies and not subjects of the Roman state. In this last struggle the Samnites had summoned Gauls and Etruscans to join them against the common enemy, and Rome had overcome their united forces in a great fight at Sentinum. This was in 295 B. C. Ten years later she annihilated the Senonian Gauls, annexed their territory and planted a colony at Sena on the coast. In two years more she had paralyzed the Boian Gauls by a terrible chastisement, and had nothing more to fear from the northward side of her realm. Then she turned back to finish her work in the south. {998} War with Pyrrhus. The Greek cities of the southern coast were harassed by various marauding neighbors, and most of them solicited the protection of Rome, which involved, of course, some surrender of their independence. But one great city, Tarentum, the most powerful of their number, refused these terms, and hazarded a war with the terrible republic, expecting support from the ambitious Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, on the Greek coast opposite their own. Pyrrhus came readily at their call, with dreams of an Italian kingdom more agreeable than his own. Assisted in the undertaking by his royal kinsmen of Macedonia and Syria, he brought an army of 25,000 men, with 20 elephants--which Roman eyes had never seen before. In two bloody fights (B. C. 280-279), Pyrrhus was victorious; but the cost of victory was so great that he dared not follow it up. He went over to Sicily, instead, and waged war for three years (B. C. 278-276) with the Carthaginians, who had subjugated most of the island. The Epirot king brought timely aid to the Sicilian Greeks, and drove their Punic enemies into the western border of the island; but he claimed sovereignty over all that his arms delivered, and was not successful in enforcing the claim. He returned to Italy and found the Romans better prepared than before to face his phalanx and his elephants. They routed him at Beneventum, in the spring of 275 B. C. and he went back to Epirus, with his dreams dispelled. Tarentum fell, and Southern Italy was added to the dominion of Rome. Punic Wars. During her war with Pyrrhus, the Republic had formed an alliance with Carthage, the powerful maritime Phœnician city on the African coast. But friendship between these two cities was impossible. The ambition of both was too boundless and too fierce. They were necessarily competitors for supremacy in the Mediterranean world, from the moment that a narrow strait between Italy and Sicily was all that held them apart. Rome challenged her rival to the duel in 264 B. C., when she sent help to the Mamertines, a band of brigands who had seized the Sicilian city of Messina, and who were being attacked by both Carthaginians and Syracusan Greeks. The "First Punic War," then begun, lasted twenty-four years, and resulted in the withdrawal of the Carthaginians from Sicily, and in their payment of an enormous war indemnity to Rome. The latter assumed a protectorate over the island, and the kingdom of Hiero of Syracuse preserved its nominal independence for the time; but Sicily, as a matter of fact, might already be looked upon as the first of those provinces, beyond Italy, which Rome bound to herself, one by one, until she had compassed the Mediterranean with her dominion and gathered to it all the islands of that sea. The "Second Punic war," called sometimes the "Hannibalic war," was fought with a great Carthaginian, rather than with Carthage herself. Hamilcar Barca had been the last and ablest of the Punic generals in the contest for Sicily. Afterwards he undertook the conquest of Spain, where his arms had such success that he established a very considerable power, more than half independent of the parent state. He nursed an unquenchable hatred of Rome, and transmitted it to his son Hannibal, who solemnly dedicated his life to warfare with the Latin city. Hamilcar died, and in due time Hannibal found himself prepared to make good his oath. He provoked a declaration of war (B. C. 218) by attacking Saguntum, on the eastern Spanish coast--a town which the Romans "protected." The latter expected to encounter him in Spain; but before the fleet bearing their legions to that country had reached Massilia, he had already passed the Pyrenees and the Rhone, with nearly 100,000 men, and was crossing the Alps, to assail his astounded foes on their own soil. The terrific barrier was surmounted with such suffering and loss that only 20,000 foot and 6,000 horse, of the great army which left Spain, could be mustered for the clearing of the last Alpine pass. With this small following, by sheer energy, rapidity and precision of movement--by force, in other words, of a military genius never surpassed in the world--he defeated the armies of Rome again and again, and so crushingly in the awful battle of Cannæ (B. C. 216) that the proud republic was staggered, but never despaired. For fifteen years the great Carthaginian held his ground in southern Italy; but his expectation of being joined by discontented subjects of Rome in the peninsula was very slightly realized, and his own country gave him little encouragement or help. His brother Hasdrubal, marching to his relief in 207 B. C., was defeated on the river Metaurus and slain. The arms of Rome had prospered meantime in Sicily and in Spain, even while beaten at home, and her Punic rival had been driven from both. In 204 B. C. the final field of battle was shifted to Carthaginian territory by Scipio, of famous memory, thereafter styled Africanus, because he "carried the war into Africa." Hannibal abandoned Italy to confront him, and at Zama, in the autumn of 202 B. C., the long contention ended, and the career of Carthage as a Power in the ancient world was forever closed. Existing by Roman sufferance for another half century, she then gave her implacable conquerors another pretext for war, and they ruthlessly destroyed her (B.C. 146). Roman Conquest of Greece. In that same year of the destruction of Carthage, the conquest of Greece was finished. The first war of the Romans on that side of the Adriatic had taken place during the Second Punic war, and had been caused by an alliance formed between Hannibal and King Philip of Macedonia (B. C. 214). They pursued it then no further than to frustrate Philip's designs against themselves; but they formed alliances with the Greek states oppressed or menaced by the Macedonian, and these drew them into a second war, just as the century closed. On Cynoscephalæ, Philip was overthrown (B. C. 197), his kingdom reduced to vassalage, and the freedom of all Greece was solemnly proclaimed by the Roman Consul Flaminius. {999} And now, for the first time, Rome came into conflict with an Asiatic power. The throne of the Syrian monarchy, founded by one of the generals of Alexander the Great, was occupied by a king more ambitious than capable, who had acquired a large and loosely jointed dominion in the East, and who bore the sounding name of Antiochus the Great. This vainglorious King, having a huge army and many elephants at his disposal, was eager to try a passage at arms with the redoubtable men of Rome. He was encouraged in his desire by the Ætolians in Greece, who bore ill-will to Rome. Under this encouragement, and having Hannibal--then a fugitive at his court--to give him counsel, which he lacked intelligence to use, Antiochus crossed the Ægean and invaded Greece (B. C. 192). The Romans met him at the pass of Thermopylæ; drove him back to the shores from which he came; pursued him thither; crushed and humbled him on the field of Magnesia, and took the kingdoms and cities of Asia Minor under their protection, as the allies (soon to be subjects) of Rome. Twenty years passed with little change in the outward situation of affairs among the Greeks. But discontent with the harshness and haughtiness of Roman "protection" changed from sullenness to heat, and Perseus, son of Philip of Macedonia, fanned it steadily, with the hope of bringing it to a flame. Rome watched him with keen vigilance, and before his plans were ripe her legions were upon him. He battled with them obstinately for three years (B. C. 171-168); but his fate was sealed at Pydna. He went as a prisoner to Rome; his kingdom was broken into four small republics; the Achæan League was stricken by the captivity of a thousand of its chief men; the whole of Greece was humbled to submissiveness, though not yet formally reduced to the state of a Roman province. That followed some years later, when risings in Macedonia and Achaia were punished by the extinction of the last semblance of political independence in both (B. C. 148-146). The Zenith of the Republic. Rome now gripped the Mediterranean (the ocean of the then civilized world) as with four fingers of a powerful hand: one laid on Italy and all its islands, one on Macedonia and Greece, one on Carthage, one on Spain, and the little finger of her "protection" reaching over to the Lesser Asia. Little more than half a century, since the day that Hannibal threatened her own city gates, had sufficed to win this vast dominion. But the losses of the Republic had been greater, after all, than the gains; for the best energies of its political constitution had been expended in the acquisition, and the nobler qualities in its character had been touched with the incurable taints of a licentious prosperity. Beginning of Decline. A century and a half had passed since the practical ending of the struggle of plebeians with patricians for political and agrarian rights. In theory and in form, the constitution remained as democratic as it was made by the Licinian Laws of 367 B. C., and by the finishing touch of the Hortensian Law of 287 B. C. But in practical working it had reverted to the aristocratic mode. A new aristocracy had risen out of the plebeian ranks to reinforce the old patrician order. It was composed of the families of men who had been raised to distinction and ennobled by the holding of eminent offices, and its spirit was no less jealous and exclusive than that of the older high caste. The Senate and the Mob. Thus strengthened, the aristocracy had recovered its ascendancy in Rome, and the Senate, which it controlled, had become the supreme power in government. The amazing success of the Republic during the last century just reviewed--its successes in war, in diplomacy, and in all the sagacious measures of policy by which its great dominion had been won--are reasonably ascribed to this fact. For the Senate had wielded the power of the state, in most emergencies, with passionless deliberation and with unity and fixity of aim. But it maintained its ascendancy by an increasing employment of means which debased and corrupted all orders alike. The people held powers which might paralyze the Senate at any moment, if they chose to exercise them, through their assemblies and their tribunes. They had seldom brought those powers into play thus far, to interfere with the senatorial government of the Republic, simply because they had been bribed to abstain. The art of the politician in Rome, as distinguished from the statesman, had already become demagoguery. This could not well have been otherwise under the peculiar constitution of the Roman citizenship. Of the thirty-five tribes who made up the Roman people, legally qualified to vote, only four were within the city. The remaining thirty-one were "plebs urbana." There was no delegated representation of this country populace--citizens beyond the walls. To exercise their right of suffrage they must be personally present at the meetings of the "comitia tributa"--the tribal assemblies; and those of any tribe who chanced to be in attendance at such a meeting might give a vote which carried with it the weight of their whole tribe. For questions were decided by the majority of tribal, not individual, votes; and a very few members of a tribe might act for and be the tribe, for all purposes of voting, on occasions of the greatest possible importance. It is quite evident that a democratic system of this nature gave wide opportunity for corrupt "politics." There must have been, always, an attraction for the baser sort among the rural plebs, drawing them into the city, to enjoy the excitement of political contests, and to partake of the flatteries and largesses which began early to go with these. And circumstances had tended strongly to increase this sinister sifting into Rome of the most vagrant and least responsible of her citizens, to make them practically the deputies and representatives of that mighty sovereign which had risen in the world--the "Populus Romanus." For there was no longer either thrift or dignity possible in the pursuits of husbandry. The long Hannibalic War had ruined the farming class in Italy by its ravages; but the extensive conquests that followed it had been still more ruinous to that class by several effects combined. Corn supplies from the conquered provinces were poured into Rome at cheapened prices; enormous fortunes, gathered in the same provinces by officials, by farmers of taxes, by money-lenders, and by traders, were largely invested in great estates, absorbing the small farms of olden time; and, finally, free-labor in agriculture was supplanted, more and more, by the labor of slaves, which war and increasing wealth combined to multiply in numbers. Thus the "plebs urbana" of Rome were a depressed and, therefore, a degenerating class, and the same circumstances that made them so impelled them towards the city, to swell the mob which held its mighty sovereignty in their hands. {1000} So far, a lavish amusement of this mob with free games, and liberal bribes, had kept it generally submissive to the senatorial government. But the more it was debased by such methods, and its vagrancy encouraged, the more extravagant gratuities of like kind it claimed. Hence a time could never be far away when the aristocracy and the senate would lose their control of the popular vote on which they had built their governing power. Agrarian Agitations. But they invited the quicker coming of that time by their own greediness in the employment of their power for selfish and dishonest ends. They had practically recovered their monopoly of the use of the public lands. The Licinian law, which forbade any one person to occupy more than five hundred jugera (about three hundred acres) of the public lands, had been made a dead letter. The great tracts acquired in the Samnite wars, and since, had remained undistributed, while the use and profit of them were enjoyed, under one form of authority or another, by rich capitalists and powerful nobles. This evil, among many that waxed greater each year, caused the deepest discontent, and provoked movements of reform which soon passed by rapid stages into a revolution, and ended in the fall of the Republic. The leader of the movement at its beginning was Tiberius Gracchus, grandson of Scipio Africanus on the side of his mother, Cornelia. Elected tribune in 133 B. C., he set himself to the dangerous task of rousing the people against senatorial usurpations, especially in the matter of the public domain. He only drew upon himself the hatred of the senate and its selfish supporters; he failed to rally a popular party that was strong enough for his protection, and his enemies slew him in the very midst of a meeting of the tribes. His brother Caius took up the perilous cause and won the office of tribune (B. C. 123) in avowed hostility to the senatorial government. He was driven to bid high for popular help, even when the measures which he strove to carry were most plainly for the welfare of the common people, and he may seem to modern eyes to have played the demagogue with some extravagance. But statesmanship and patriotism without demagoguery for their instrument or their weapon were hardly practicable, perhaps, in the Rome of those days, and it is not easy to find them clean-handed in any political leader of the last century of the Republic. The fall of Caius Gracchus was hastened by his attempt to extend the Roman franchise beyond the "populus Romanus," to all the freemen of Italy. The mob in Rome was not pleased with such political generosity, and cooled in its admiration for the large-minded tribune. He lost his office and the personal protection it threw over him, and then he, like his brother, was slain (B. C. 121) in a melee. Jugurthine War. For ten years the senate, the nobility, and the capitalists (now beginning to take the name of the equestrian order), had mostly their own way again, and effaced the work of the Gracchi as completely as they could. Then came disgraceful troubles in Numidia which enraged the people and moved them to a new assertion of themselves. The Numidian king who helped Scipio to pull Carthage down had been a ward of Rome since that time. When he died, he left his kingdom to be governed jointly by two young sons and an older nephew. The latter, Jugurtha, put his cousins out of the way, took the kingdom to himself, and baffled attempts at Rome to call him to account, by heavy bribes. The corruption in the case became so flagrant that even the corrupted Roman populace revolted against it, and took the Numidian business into its own hands. War was declared against Jugurtha by popular vote, and, despite opposing action in the Senate, one Marius, an experienced soldier of humble birth, was elected consul and sent out to take command. Marius distinguished himself in the war much less than did one of his officers, Cornelius Sulla; but he bore the lion's share of glory when Jugurtha was taken captive and conveyed to Rome (B. C. 104). Marius was now the great hero of the hour, and events were preparing to lift him to the giddiest heights of popularity. Teutones and Cimbri. Hitherto, the barbarians of wild Europe whom the Romans had met were either the Aryan Celts, or the non-Aryan tribes found in northern Italy, Spain and Gaul. Now, for the first time, the armies of Rome were challenged by tribes of another grand division of the Aryan stock, coming out of the farther North. These were the Cimbri and the Teutones, wandering hordes of the great Teutonic or Germanic race which has occupied Western Europe north of the Rhine since the beginning of historic time. So far as we can know, these two were the first of the Germanic nations to migrate to the South. They came into collision with Rome in 113 B. C., when they were in Noricum, threatening the frontiers of her Italian dominion. Four years later they were in southern Gaul, where the Romans were now settling colonies and subduing the native Celts. Twice they had beaten the armies opposed to them; two years later they added a third to their victories; and in 105 B. C. they threw Rome into consternation by destroying two great armies on the Rhone. Italy seemed helpless against the invasion for which these terrible barbarians were now preparing, when Marius went against them. In the summer of 102 B. C. he annihilated the Teutones, near Aquæ Sextiæ (modern Aix), and in the following year he destroyed the invading Cimbri, on a bloody field in northern Italy, near modern Vercellæ. Marius. From these great victories, Marius went back to Rome, doubly and terribly clothed with power, by the devotion of a reckless army and the hero-worship of an unthinking mob. The state was at his mercy. A strong man in his place might have crushed the class-factions and accomplished the settlement which Cæsar made after half a century more of turbulence and shame. But Marius was ignorant, he was weak, and he became a mere blood-stained figure in the ruinous anarchy of his time. {1001} Optimates and Populares. The social and political state of the capital had grown rapidly worse. A middle-class in Roman society had practically disappeared. The two contending parties or factions, which had taken new names--"optimates" and "populares"--were now divided almost solely by the line which separates rich from poor. "If we said that 'optimates' signified the men who bribed and abused office under the banner of the Senate and its connections, and that 'populares' meant men who bribed and abused office with the interests of the people outside the Senatorial pale upon their lips, we might do injustice to many good men on both sides, but should hardly be slandering the parties" (Beesly). There was a desperate conflict between the two in the year 100, B. C. and the Senate once more recovered its power for a brief term of years. The Social War. The enfranchisement of the so-called "allies"--the Latin and other subjects of Rome who were not citizens--was the burning question of the time. The attempt of Caius Gracchus to extend rights of citizenship to them had been renewed again and again, without success, and each failure had increased the bitter discontent of the Italian people. In 90 B. C. they drew together in a formidable confederation and rose in revolt. In the face of this great danger Rome sobered herself to action with old time wisdom and vigor. She yielded her full citizenship to all Italian freemen who had not taken arms, and then offered it to those who would lay their arms down. At the same time, she fought the insurrection with every army she could put into the field, and in two years it was at an end. Marius and his old lieutenant, Sulla, had been the principal commanders in this "Social War," as it was named, and Sulla had distinguished himself most. The latter had now an army at his back and was a power in the state, and between the two military champions there arose a rivalry which produced the first of the Roman Civil Wars. Marius and Sulla. A troublesome war in the East had been forced upon the Romans by aggressions of Mithridates, King of Pontus. Both Marius and Sulla aspired to the command. Sulla obtained election to the consulship in 88 B. C. and was named for the coveted place. But Marius succeeded in getting the appointment annulled by a popular assembly and himself chosen instead for the Eastern command. Sulla, personally imperilled by popular tumults, fled to his legions, put himself at their head, and marched back to Rome--the first among her generals to turn her arms against herself. There was no effective resistance; Marius fled; both Senate and people were submissive to the dictates of the consul who had become master of the city. He "made the tribes decree their own political extinction, resuscitating the comitia centuriata; he reorganized the Senate by adding three hundred to its members and vindicating the right to sanction legislation; conducted the consular elections, exacting from L. Cornelius Cinna, the newly elected consul, a solemn oath that he would observe the new regulations, and securing the election of Cn. Octavius in his own interest, and then, like 'a countryman who had just shaken the lice off his coat,' to use his own figure, he turned to do his great work in the East." (Horton). Sulla went to Greece, which was in revolt and in alliance with Mithridates, and conducted there a brilliant, ruthless campaign for three years (B. C. 87-84), until he had restored Roman authority in the peninsula, and forced the King of Pontus to surrender all his conquests in Asia Minor. Until this task was finished, he gave no heed to what his enemies did at Rome; though the struggle there between "Sullans" and "Marians" had gone fiercely and bloodily on, and his own partisans had been beaten in the fight. The consul Octavius, who was in Bulla's interest, had first driven the consul Cinna out of the city, after slaying 10,000 of his faction. Cinna's cause was taken up by the new Italian citizens; he was joined by the exiled Marius, and these two returned together, with an army which the Senate and the party of Sulla were unable to resist. Marius came back with a burning heart and with savage intentions of revenge. A horrible massacre of his opponents ensued, which went on unchecked for five days, and was continued more deliberately for several months, until Marius died, at the beginning of the year 86 B. C. Then Cinna ruled absolutely at Rome for three years, supported in the main by the newly-made citizens; while the provinces generally remained under the control of the party of the optimates. In 83 B. C. Sulla, having finished with carefulness his work in the East, came back into Italy, with 40,000 veterans to attend his steps. He had been outlawed and deprived of his command, by the faction governing at the capital; but its decrees had no effect and troubled him little. Cinna had been killed by his own troops, even before Bulla's landing at Brundisium. Several important leaders and soldiers on the Marian side, such as Pompeius, then a young general, and Crassus, the millionaire, went over to Sulla's camp. One of the consuls of the year saw his troops follow their example, in a body; the other consul was beaten and driven into Capua. Sulla wintered in Campania, and the next spring he pressed forward to Rome, fighting a decisive battle with Marius the younger on the way, and took possession of the city; but not in time to prevent a massacre of senators by the resentful mob. Sulla's Dictatorship. Before that year closed, the whole of Italy had been subdued, the final battle being fought with the Marians and Italians at the Colline Gate, and Sulla again possessed power supreme. He placed it beyond dispute by a deliberate extermination of his opponents, more merciless than the Marian massacre had been. They were proscribed by name, in placarded lists, and rewards paid to those who killed them; while their property was confiscated, and became the source of vast fortunes to Sulla's supporters, and of lands for distribution to his veterans. When this terror had paralyzed all resistance to his rule, the Dictator (for he had taken that title) undertook a complete reconstruction of the constitution, aiming at a permanent restoration of senatorial ascendancy and a curbing of the powers which the people, in their assemblies, and the magistrates who especially represented them, had gained during the preceding century. He remodelled, moreover, the judicial system, and some of his reforms were undoubtedly good, though they did not prove enduring. When he had fashioned the state to his liking, this extraordinary usurper quietly abdicated his dictatorial office (B. C. 80) and retired to private life, undisturbed until his death (B. C. 78). {1002} After Sulla. The system he had established did not save Rome from renewed distractions and disorder after Sulla died. There was no longer a practical question between Senate and people--between the few and the many in government. The question now, since the legionaries held their swords prepared to be flung into the scale, was what one should again gather the powers of government into his hands, as Sulla had done. The Great Game and the Players. The history of the next thirty years--the last generation of republican Rome--is a sad and sinister but thrilling chronicle of the strifes and intrigues, the machinations and corruptions, of a stupendous and wicked game in politics that was played, against one another and against the Republic, by a few daring, unscrupulous players, with the empire of the civilized world for the stake between them. There were more than a few who aspired; there were only three players who entered really as principals into the game. These were Pompeius, called "the Great," since he extinguished the Marian faction in Sicily and in Spain; Crassus, whose wealth gave him power, and who acquired some military pretensions besides, by taking the field against a formidable insurrection of slaves (B. C. 73-71); and Julius Cæsar, a young patrician, but nephew of Marius by marriage, who assiduously strengthened that connection with the party of the people, and who began, very soon after Sulla's death, to draw attention to himself as a rising power in the politics of the day. There were two other men, Cicero and the younger Cato, who bore a nobler and greater because less selfish part in the contest of that fateful time. Both were blind to the impossibility of restoring the old order of things, with a dominant Senate, a free but well guided populace, and a simply ordered social state; but their blindness was heroic and high-souled. Pompeius in the East. Of the three strong rivals for the vacant dictatorial chair which waited to be filled, Pompeius held by far the greater advantages. His fame as a soldier was already won; he had been a favorite of Fortune from the beginning of his career; everything had succeeded with him; everything was expected for him and expected from him. Even while the issues of the great struggle were pending, a wonderful opportunity for increasing his renown was opened to him. The disorders of the civil war had licensed a swarm of pirates, who fairly possessed the eastern Mediterranean and had nearly extirpated the maritime trade. Pompeius was sent against them (B. C. 67), with a commission that gave him almost unlimited powers, and within ninety days he had driven them from the sea. Then, before he had returned from this exploit, he was invested with supreme command in the entire East, where another troublesome war with Mithridates was going on. He harvested there all the laurels which belonged by better right to his predecessor, Lucullus, finding the power of Mithridates already broken down. From Pontus he passed into Armenia, and thence into Syria, easily subjugating both, and extinguishing the monarchy of the Seleucids. The Jews resisted him and he humbled them by the siege and conquest of their sacred city. Egypt was now the only Mediterranean state left outside the all-absorbing dominion of Rome; and even Egypt, by bequest of its late king, belonged to the Republic, though not yet claimed. The First Triumvirate. Pompeius came back to Rome in the spring of 61 B. C. so glorified by his successes that he might have seemed to be irresistible, whatever he should undertake. But, either through an honest patriotism or an overweening confidence, he had disbanded his army when he reached Italy, and he had committed himself to no party. He stood alone and aloof, with a great prestige, great ambitions, and no ability to use the one or realize the other. Before another year passed, he was glad to accept offers of a helping hand in politics from Cæsar, who had climbed the ladder of office rapidly within four or five years, spending vast sums of borrowed money to amuse the people with games, and distinguishing himself as a democratic champion. Cæsar, the far seeing calculator, discerned the enormous advantages that he might gain for himself by massing together the prestige of Pompeius, the wealth of Crassus and his own invincible genius, which was sure to be the master element in the combination. He brought the coalition about through a bargain which created what is known in history as the First Triumvirate, or supremacy of three. Cæsar in Gaul. Under the terms of the bargain, Cæsar was chosen consul for 59 B. C., and at the end of his term was given the governorship of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul, with command of three legions there, for five years. His grand aim was a military command--the leadership of an army--the prestige of a successful soldier. No sooner had he secured the command than fortune gave him opportunities for its use in the most striking way and with the most impressive results. The Celtic tribes of Gaul, north of the two small provinces which the Romans had already acquired on the Mediterranean coast, gave him pretexts or provocations (it mattered little to Cæsar which) for war with them, and in a series of remarkable campaigns, which all soldiers since have admired, he pushed the frontiers of the dominion of Rome to the ocean and the Rhine, and threatened the nations of Germany on the farther banks of that stream. "The conquest of Gaul by Cæsar," says Mr. Freeman, "is one of the most important events in the history of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of modern history, as it brought the old world of southern Europe, of which Rome was the head, into contact with the lands and nations which were to play the greatest part in later times--with Gaul, Germany, and Britain." From Gaul Cæsar crossed the channel to Britain in 55 B. C. and again in the following year, exacting tribute from the Celtic natives, but attempting no lodgment in the island. {1003} Meantime, while pursuing a career of conquest which excited the Roman world, Cæsar never lost touch with the capital and its seething politics. Each winter he repaired to Lucca, the point in his province which was nearest to Rome, and conferred there with his friends, who flocked to the rendezvous. He secured an extension of his term, to enable him to complete his plans, and year by year he grew more independent of the support of his colleagues in the triumvirate, while they weakened one another by their jealousies, and the Roman state was more hopelessly distracted by factious strife. End of the Triumvirate. The year after Cæsar's second invasion of Britain, Crassus, who had obtained the government of Syria, perished in a disastrous war with the Parthians, and the triumvirate was at an end. Disorder in Rome increased and Pompeius lacked energy or boldness to deal with it, though he seemed to be the one man present who might do so. He was made sole consul in 52 B. C.; he might have seized the dictatorship, with approval of many, but he waited for it to be offered to him, and the offer never came. He drew at last into close alliance with the party of the Optimates, and left the Populares to be won entirely to Cæsar's side. Civil War. Matters came to a crisis in 50 B. C., when the Senate passed an order removing Cæsar from his command and discharging his soldiers who had served their term. He came to Ravenna with a single legion and concerted measures with his friends. The issue involved is supposed to have been one of life or death to him, as well as of triumph or failure in his ambitions; for his enemies were malignant. His friends demanded that he be made consul, for his protection, before laying down his arms. The Senate answered by proclaiming him a public enemy if he failed to disband his troops with no delay. It was a declaration of war, and Cæsar accepted it. He marched his single legion across the Rubicon, which was the boundary of his province, and advanced towards Rome. Pompeius, with the forces he had gathered, retreated southward, and consuls, senators and nobles generally streamed after him. Cæsar followed them--turning aside from the city--and his force gathered numbers as he advanced. The Pompeians continued their flight and abandoned Italy, withdrawing to Epirus, planning to gather there the forces of the East and return with them. Cæsar now took possession of Rome and secured the islands of Sicily and Sardinia, from which it drew its supply of food. This done, he proceeded without delay to Spain, where seven legions strongly devoted to Pompeius were stationed. He overcame them in a single campaign, enlisted most of the veterans in his own service, and acquired a store of treasure. Before the year ended he was again in Rome, where the citizens had proclaimed him dictator. He held the dictatorship for eleven days, only, to legalize an election which made him consul, with a pliant associate. He reorganized the government, complete in all its branches, including a senate, partly composed of former members of the body who had remained or returned. Then (B. C. 48.--January) he took up the pursuit of Pompeius and the Optimates. Crossing to Epirus, after some months of changeful fortune, he fought and won the decisive battle of Pharsalia. Pompeius, flying to Egypt, was murdered there. Cæsar, following, with a small force, was placed in great peril by a rising at Alexandria, but held his ground until assistance came. He then garrisoned Egypt with Roman troops and made the princess Cleopatra, who had captivated him by her charms, joint occupant of the throne with her younger brother. During his absence, affairs at Rome were again disturbed, and he was once more appointed dictator, as well as tribune for life. His presence restored order at once, and he was soon in readiness to attack the party of his enemies who had taken refuge in Africa. The battle of Thapsus, followed by the suicide of Cato and the surrender of Utica, practically finished the contest, though one more campaign was fought in Spain the following year. Cæsar Supreme. Cæsar was now master of the dominions of Rome, and as entirely a monarch as anyone of his imperial successors, who took his name, with the power which he caused it to symbolize, and called themselves "Cæsars," and "Imperators," as though the two titles were equivalent. "Imperator" was the title under which he chose to exercise his sovereignty. Other Roman generals had been Imperators before, but he was the first to be named Imperator for life, and the word (changed in our tongue to Emperor) took a meaning from that day more regal than Rex or King. That Cæsar, the Imperator, first of all Emperors, ever coveted the crown and title of an older-fashioned royalty, is not an easy thing to believe. Having settled his authority firmly, he gave his attention to the organization of the Empire (still Republic in name) and to the reforming of the evils which afflicted it. That he did this work with consummate judgment and success is the opinion of all who study his time. He gratified no resentments, executed no revenges, proscribed no enemies. All who submitted to his rule were safe; and it seems to be clear that the people in general were glad to be rescued by his rule from the old oligarchical and anarchical state. But some of Cæsar's own partisans were dissatisfied with the autocracy which they helped to create, or with the slenderness of their own parts in it. They conspired with surviving leaders of the Optimates, and Cæsar was assassinated by them, in the Senate chamber, on the 15th of March, B. C. 44. Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate of Cæsar which many thoughtful historians have formed, in the following strong words: "In the character of Cæsar the great contrasts of existence meet and balance each other. He was of the mightiest creative power, and yet of the most penetrating judgment; of the highest energy of will and the highest capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals, and at the same time born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect man'; and he was this because he was the entire and perfect Roman." This may be nearly true if we ignore the moral side of Cæsar's character. He was of too large a nature to do evil things unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in comparison with many of his kind; but he had no scruples. {1004} After the Murder of Cæsar. The murderers of Cæsar were not accepted by the people as the patriots and "liberators" which they claimed to be, and they were soon in flight from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had been Cæsar's associate in the consulship, now naturally and skilfully assumed the direction of affairs, and aspired to gather the reins of imperial power into his own hands. But rivals were ready to dispute with him the great prize of ambition. Among them, it is probable that Antony gave little heed at first to the young man, Caius Octavius, or Octavianus, who was Cæsar's nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was less than nineteen years old, he was absent in Apollonia, and he was little known. But the young Cæsar, coming boldly though quietly to Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with a patient craftiness and dexterity that were marvellous in one so young. The Second Triumvirate. The contestants soon resorted to arms. The result of their first indecisive encounter was a compromise and the formation of a triumvirate, like that of Cæsar, Pompeius and Crassus. This second triumvirate was made up of Antonius, Octavius, and Lepidus, lately master of the horse in Cæsar's army. Unlike the earlier coalition, it was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its first act was a proscription, in the terrible manner of Sulla, which filled Rome and Italy with murders, and with terror and mourning. Cicero, the patriot and great orator, was among the victims cut down. After this general slaughter of their enemies at home, Antonius and Octavius proceeded against Brutus and Cassius, two of the assassins of Cæsar, who had gathered a large force in Greece. They defeated them at Philippi, and both "liberators" perished by their own hands. The triumvirs now divided the empire between them, Antonius ruling the East, Octavius the West, and Lepidus taking Africa--that is, the Carthaginian province, which included neither Egypt nor Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the queen of Egypt was among his vassals, and she ensnared him. He gave himself up to voluptuous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while the cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked unceasingly to solidify and increase his power. After six years had passed, the young Cæsar was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which he did mercifully, by sending him into exile. After five years more, he launched his legions and his war galleys against Antonius, with the full sanction of the Roman senate and people. The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius the whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleopatra committed suicide after flying to Egypt. The kingdom of the Ptolemies was now extinguished and became a Roman province in due form. Octavius (Augustus) Supreme. Octavius was now more securely absolute as the ruler of Rome and its great empire than Sulla or Julius Cæsar had been, and he maintained that sovereignty without challenge for forty-five years, until his death. He received from the Senate the honorary title of "Augustus," by which he is most commonly known. For official titles, he took none but those which had belonged to the institutions of the Republic, and were familiarly known. He was Imperator, as his uncle had been. He was Princeps, or head of the Senate; he was Censor; he was Tribune; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great offices of the Republic he kept alive, and ingeniously constructed his sovereignty by uniting their powers in himself. Organization of the Empire. The historical position of Augustus, as the real founder of the Roman Empire, is unique in its grandeur; and yet History has dealt contemptuously, for the most part, with his name. His character has been looked upon, to use the language of De Quincey, as "positively repulsive, in the very highest degree." "A cool head," wrote Gibbon of him, "an unfeeling heart, and a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypocrisy, which he never afterwards laid aside." And again: "His virtues, and even his vices, were artificial; and according to the various dictates of his interest, he was at first the enemy, and at last the father, of the Roman world." Yet, how can we deny surpassing high qualities of some description to a man who set the shattered Roman Republic, with all its democratic bases broken up, on a new--an imperial--foundation, so gently that it suffered no further shock, and so solidly that it endured, in whole or in part, for a millennium and a half? In the reign of Augustus the Empire was consolidated and organized; it was not much extended. The frontiers were carried to the Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of Spain was made complete. Augustus generally discouraged wars of conquest. His ambitious stepsons, Drusus and Tiberius, persuaded him into several expeditions beyond the Rhine, against the restless German nations, which perpetually menaced the borders of Gaul; but these gained no permanent footing in the Teutonic territory. They led, on the contrary, to a fearful disaster (A. D. 9), near the close of the reign of Augustus, when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed in the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination of the tribes, planned and conducted by a young chieftain named Hermann, or Arminius, who is the national hero of Germany to this day. The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the northern frontier against the Germans left marks which are conspicuously visible at the present day. From the fifty fortresses which he is said to have built along the line sprang many important modern cities,--Basel, Strasburg, Worms, Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and Leyden, among the number. From similar forts on the Danubian frontier rose Vienna, Regensburg and Passau. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero. Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in his honors, his offices, and his powers, by his step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom he had adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign, was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless his subjects belied him, which some historians suspect. Another attempt at the conquest of Germany was made by his nephew Germanicus, son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, believing that he had been poisoned. A son of Germanicus, Caius, better known by his nick-name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of many emperors to be crazed and made beast-like, in lust, cruelty and senselessness, by the awful, unbounded power which passed into their hands. {1005} The Empire bore his madness for three years, and then he was murdered by his own guards. The Senate had thoughts now of restoring the commonwealth, and debated the question for a day; but the soldiers of the prætorian guard took it out of their hands, and decided it, by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius (A. D. 41), a brother of Germanicus, and uncle of the emperor just slain. Claudius was weak of body and mind, but not vicious, and his reign was distinctly one of improvement and advance in the Empire. He began the conquest of Britain, which the Romans had neglected since Cæsar's time, and he opened the Senate to the provincials of Gaul. He had two wives of infamous character, and the later one of these, Agrippina, brought him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and who succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of foul memory, who was madman and monster in as sinister a combination as history can show. During the reign of Nero, the spread of Christianity, which had been silently making its way from Judæa into all parts of the Empire, began to attract the attention of men in public place, and the first persecution of its disciples took place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in Rome, which the hated emperor was believed to have caused; but he found it convenient to accuse the Christians of the deed, and large numbers of them were put to death in horrible ways. Vespasian and his Sons. Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until the soldiers in the provinces rose against him, and he committed suicide (A. D. 68) to escape a worse death. Then followed a year of civil war between rival emperors--Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian--proclaimed by different bodies of soldiers in various parts of the Empire. The struggle ended in favor of Vespasian, a rude, strong soldier, who purged the government, disciplined the army, and brought society back toward simpler and more decent ways. The great revolt of the Jews (A. D. 66-70) had broken out before he received the purple, and he was commanding in Judæa when Nero fell. The siege, capture and destruction of Jerusalem was accomplished by his son Titus. A more formidable revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun the Batavians, a German tribe which occupied part of the Netherland territory, near the mouth of the Rhine. They were joined by neighboring Gauls and by disaffected Roman legionaries, and they received help from their German kindred on the northern side of the Rhine. The revolt, led by a chieftain named Civilis, who had served in the Roman army, was overcome with extreme difficulty. Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded (A. D. 79) by his elder son, Titus, whose subjects so admired his many virtues that he was called "the delight of the human race." His short reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at Rome, a great pestilence, and the frightful eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii. After Titus came his younger brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be another creature of the monstrous species that appeared so often in the series of Roman emperors. The conquest of southern Britain (modern England) was completed in his reign by an able soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of the North, but was recalled before subduing them. Domitian was murdered by his own servants (A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen years. Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian. Rome and the Empire were happy at last in the choice that was made of a sovereign to succeed the hateful son of Vespasian. Not the soldiery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it fell on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who was already an aged man. He wore the purple but sixteen months, and his single great distinction in Roman history is, that he introduced to the imperial succession a line of the noblest men who ever sat in the seat of the Cæsars. The first of these was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva adopted and associated with himself in authority. When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by adoption ascended the throne with no opposition. The new Emperor was simple and plain in his habits and manners of life; he was honest and open in all his dealings with men; he was void of suspicion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He gave careful attention to the business of state and was wise in his administration of affairs, improving roads, encouraging trade, helping agriculture, and developing the resources of the Empire in very prudent and practical ways. But he was a soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely reopened the career of conquest which had been almost closed for the Empire since Pompeius came back from the East. A threatening kingdom having risen among the Dacians, in the country north of the lower Danube--the Transylvania and Roumania of the present day--he attacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous campaigns (A. D. 101-106), and annexed the whole territory to the dominion of Rome. He then garrisoned and colonized the country, and Romanized it so completely that it keeps the Roman name, and its language to this day is of the Latin stock, though Goths, Huns, Bulgarians and Slavs have swept it in successive invasions, and held it among their conquests for centuries at a time. In the East, he ravaged the territory of the Parthian king, entered his capital and added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Arabia Petræa to the list of Roman provinces. But he died (A. D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his eastern campaigns. His successor abandoned them, and none have doubted that he did well; because the Empire was weakened by the new frontier in Asia which Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the East were given up. The successor who did this was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom the Emperor adopted in his last hours. Until near the close of his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the emperors. Rome saw little of him, and resented his incessant travels through every part of his great realm. His manifest preference for Athens, where he lingered longest, and which flourished anew under his patronage, was still more displeasing to the ancient capital. For the Emperor was a man of cultivation, fond of literature, philosophy and art, though busy with the cares of State. In his later years he was afflicted with a disease which poisoned his nature by its torments, filled his mind with dark suspicions, and made him fitfully tyrannical and cruel. The event most notable in his generally peaceful and prosperous reign was the renewed and final revolt of the Jews, under Barchochebas, which resulted in their total expulsion from Jerusalem, and its conversion into a heathen city, with a Roman name. {1006} The Antonines. Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D. 138) a man of blameless character, Titus Aurelius Antoninus, who received from his subjects, when he became Emperor, the appellation "Pius," to signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of his disposition. He justified the name of Antoninus Pius, by which he is historically known, and his reign, though disturbed by some troubles on the distant borders of the Empire, was happy for his subjects in nearly all respects. "No great deeds are told of him, save this, perhaps the greatest, that he secured the love and happiness of those he ruled" (Capes). Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had no son of his own; but even before he came to the throne, and at the request of Hadrian, he had adopted a young lad who won the heart of the late Emperor while still a child. The family name of this son by adoption was Verus, and he was of Spanish descent; the name which he took, in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illustrious name in the whole imperial line, from Augustus to the last Constantine, and made so, not so much by deeds as by character. He gave the world the solitary example of a philosopher upon the throne. There have been a few--a very few--surpassingly good men in kingly places; but there has never been another whose soul was lifted to so serene a height above the sovereignty of his station. Unlimited power tempted no form of selfishness in him; he saw nothing in his imperial exaltation but the duties which it imposed. His mind was meditative, and inclined him to the studious life; but he compelled himself to be a man of vigor and activity in affairs. He disliked war; but he spent years of his life in camp on the frontiers; because it fell to his lot to encounter the first great onset of the barbarian nations of the north, which never ceased from that time to beat against the barriers of the Empire until they had broken them down. His struggle was on the line of the Danube, with the tribes of the Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Vandals, and others of less formidable power. He held them back, but the resources of the Empire were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the effort. For the first time, too, there were colonies of barbarians brought into the Empire, from beyond its lines, to be settled for the supply of soldiers to the armies of Rome: It was a dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy to begin. The decline of the great world-power was, in truth, already well advanced, and the century of good emperors which ended when Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded, and did not arrest, the progress of mortal maladies in the state. From Commodus to Caracalla. The best of emperors was followed on the throne by a son, Commodus, who went mad, like Nero and Caligula, with the drunkenness of power, and who was killed (A. D. 192) by his own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The soldiers of the prætorian guard now took upon themselves the making of emperors, and placed two upon the throne--first, Pertinax, an aged senator, whom they murdered the next year, and then Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to whom, as the highest bidder, they sold the purple. Again, as after Nero's death, the armies on the frontiers put forward, each, a rival claimant, and there was war between the competitors. The victor who became sovereign was Septimius Severus (A. D. 194-211), who had been in command on the Danube. He was an able soldier, and waged war with success against the Parthians in the East, and with the Caledonians in Britain, which latter he could not subdue. Of his two sons, the elder, nicknamed Caracalla (A. D. 211-217), killed his brother with his own hands, and tortured the Roman world with his brutalities for six years, when he fell under the stroke of an assassin. The reign of this foul beast brought one striking change to the Empire. An imperial edict wiped away the last distinction between Romans and Provincials, giving citizenship to every free inhabitant of the Empire. "Rome from this date became constitutionally an empire, and ceased to be merely a municipality. The city had become the world, or, viewed from the other side, the world had become 'the City'" (Merivale). Anarchy and Decay. The period of sixty-seven years from the murder of Caracalla to the accession of Diocletian--when a great constitutional change occurred--demands little space in a sketch like this. The weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in its social and political structure,--the chief among which were the deadly influence of its system of slavery and the paralyzing effects of its autocracy,--went on at an increasing rate, while disorder grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, complete. There were twenty-two emperors in the term, which scarcely exceeded that of two generations of men. Nineteen of these were taken from the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny or murder, while one fell in battle, and another was held captive in Persia till he died. Only five among these twenty-two ephemeral lords of the world,--namely Alexander Severus, Decius (who was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who persecuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty), Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus,--can be credited with any personal weight or worth in the history of the time; and they held power too briefly to make any notable mark. The distractions of the time were made worse by a great number of local "tyrants," as they were called--military adventurers who rose in different parts of the Empire and established themselves for a time in authority over some district, large or small. In the reign of Gallienus (A. D. 260-268) there were nineteen of these petty "imperators," and they were spoken of as the "thirty tyrants." The more important of the "provincial empires" thus created were those of Postumus, in Gaul, and of Odenatus of Palmyra. The latter, under Zenobia; queen and successor of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy, until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 273. {1007} The Teutonic Nations. The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and the Danube had, by this time, improved their organization, and many of the tribes formerly separated and independent were now gathered into powerful confederations. The most formidable of these leagues in the West was that which acquired the common name of the Franks, or Freemen, and which was made up of the peoples occupying territory along the course of the Lower Rhine. Another of nearly equal power, dominating the German side of the Upper Rhine and the headwaters of the Danube, is believed to have absorbed the tribes which had been known in the previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi, and others. The general name it received was that of the Alemanni. The Alemanni were in intimate association with the Suevi, and little is known of the distinction that existed between the two. They had now begun to make incursions across the Rhine, but were driven back in 238. Farther to the East, on the Lower Danube, a still more dangerous horde was now threatening the flanks of the Empire in its European domain. These were Goths, a people akin, without doubt, to the Swedes, Norsemen and Danes; but whence and when they made their way to the neighborhood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute. It was in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans became first aware of their presence in the country since known as the Ukraine. A few years later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne, they began to make incursions into Dacia. During the reign of Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-249) they passed through Dacia, crossed the Danube, and invaded Mœsia (modern Bulgaria). In their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the Balkans, defeated the Romans in two terrible battles, the last of which cost the reigning Emperor, Decius, his life, and destroyed the city of Philippopolis, with 100,000 of its people. But when, a few years later, they attempted to take possession of even Thrace and Macedonia, they were crushingly defeated by the Emperor Claudius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by surrendering to them the whole province of Dacia (A. D. 270), where they settled, giving the Empire no disturbance for nearly a hundred years. Before this occurred, the Goths, having acquired the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy, which plundered the coast cities of Asia Minor and Greece, including Athens itself. On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power, a revived and regenerated Persian monarchy, had risen out of the ruins of the Parthian kingdom, which it overthrew, and had begun without delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East. Diocletian. Briefly described, this was the state and situation of the Roman Empire when Diocletian, an able Illyrian soldier, came to the throne (A. D. 284). His accession marks a new epoch. "From this time," says Dean Merivale, "the old names of the Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and the Senate itself, cease, even if still existing, to have any political significance." "The empire of Rome is henceforth an Oriental sovereignty." But the changes which Diocletian made in the organization and administration of the Empire, if they did weigh it down with a yet more crushing autocracy and contribute to its exhaustion in the end, did also, for the time, stop the wasting of its last energies, and gather them in hand for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that he lengthened the term of its career. Finding that one man in the exercise of supreme sovereignty, as absolute as he wished to make it, could not give sufficient care to every part of the vast realm, he first associated one Maximian with himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or Augustus, and six years later (A. D. 292) he selected two others from among his generals and invested them with a subordinate sovereignty, giving them the title of "Cæsars." The arrangement appears to have worked satisfactorily while Diocletian remained at the head of his imperial college. But in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he bore, and abdicated the throne, unwillingly followed by his associate, Maximian. The two Cæsars, Constantius and Galerius, were then advanced to the imperial rank, and two new Cæsars were named. Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon rending the Empire again. The details are unimportant. Constantine and Christianity. After nine years of struggle, two competitors emerged (A. D. 314) alone, and divided the Empire between them. They were Constantine, son of Constantius, the Cæsar, and one Licinius. After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared, defeated and put to death, and Constantine (A. D. 323) shared the sovereignty of Rome with none. In its final stages, the contest had become, practically, a trial of strength between expiring Paganism in the Roman world and militant Christianity, now grown to great strength. The shrewd adventurer Constantine saw the political importance to which the Christian Church had risen, and identified himself with it by a "conversion" which has glorified his name most undeservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity is to be a good man, then Constantine was none; for his life was full of evil deeds, after he professed the religion of Christ, even more than before. "He poured out the best and noblest blood in torrents, more especially of those nearly connected with himself. ... In a palace which he had made a desert, the murderer of his father-in-law, his brothers-in-law, his sister, his wife, his son, and his nephew, must have felt the stings of remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest" (Sismondi). But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine was an event of vast import in history. It changed immensely, and with suddenness, the position, the state, the influence, and very considerably the character and spirit of the Christian Church. The hierarchy of the Church became, almost at once, the greatest power in the Empire, next to the Emperor himself, and its political associations, which were dangerous from the beginning, soon proved nearly fatal to its spiritual integrity. "Both the purity and the freedom of the Church were in danger of being lost. State and Church were beginning an amalgamation fraught with peril. The State was becoming a kind of Church, and the Church a kind of State. The Emperor preached and summoned councils, called himself, though half in jest, a 'bishop,' and the bishops had become State officials, who, like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled by the imperial courier-service, and frequented the ante-chambers of the palaces in Constantinople." "The Emperor determined what doctrines were to prevail in the Church, and banished Arius to-day and Athanasius to-morrow." "The Church was surfeited with property and privileges. The Emperor, a poor financier, impoverished the Empire to enrich" it (Uhlhorn). That Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian Church from these great changes, is very questionable. {1008} By another event of his reign, Constantine marked it in history with lasting effect. He rebuilt with magnificence the Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it his imperial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality with Rome, but to official find practical superiority, as the capital of the Empire. The old Rome dwindled in rank and prestige from that day; the new Rome--the city of Constantine, or Constantinople--rose to the supreme place in the eyes and the imaginations of men. Julian and the Pagan Revival. That Constantine added the abilities of a statesman to the unscrupulous cleverness of an adventurer is not to be disputed; but he failed to give proof of this when he divided the Empire between his three sons at his death (A. D. 337). The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after sixteen years, one survivor gathered the whole realm under his scepter again. He (Constantius), who debased and disgraced the Church more than his father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man, who, not unnaturally, preferred the old pagan Greek philosophy to the kind of Christianity which he had seen flourishing at the Byzantine court. He publicly restored the worship of the ancient gods of Greece and Rome; he excluded Christians from the schools, and bestowed his favor on those who scorned the Church; but he entered on no violent persecution. His reign was brief, lasting only two years. He perished in a hapless expedition against the Persians, by whom the Empire was now almost incessantly harassed. Valentinian and Valens. His successor, Jovian, whom the army elected, died in seven months; but Valentinian, another soldier, raised by his comrades to the throne, reigned vigorously for eleven years. He associated his brother, Valens, with him in the sovereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he took the administration of the West. Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the northern frontiers of the Empire, along the Rhine and the Danube, were well defended. Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for his capital, six years before he became Emperor, and had organized its defence most effectively. Valentinian maintained the line with success against the Alemanni; while his lieutenant, Theodosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous attacks of the Scots and Picts of its northern region. On the Danube, there continued to be peace with the Goths, who held back all other barbarians from that northeastern border. The Goths in the Empire. But the death of Valentinian was the beginning of fatal calamities. His brother, Valens, had none of his capability or his vigor, and was unequal to such a crisis as now occurred. The terrible nation of the Huns had entered Europe from the Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or Visigoths, fled before them. These fugitives begged to be permitted to cross the Danube and settle on vacant lands in Mœsia and Thrace. Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic nation, 200,000 warriors, with their women and children, passed the river (A. D. 376). It is possible that they might, by fair treatment, have been converted into loyal citizens, and useful defenders of the land. But the corrupt officials of the court took advantage of their dependent state, and wrung extortionate prices from them for disgusting food, until they rose in desperation and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other barbarians came over to join them (A. D. 378); the Roman armies were beaten in two great battles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of Constantinople, which they could not surmount, and the whole open country, from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at will. Theodosius. In the meantime, the western division of the Empire had passed, on the death of Valentinian, under the nominal rule of his two young sons, Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian II., aged four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help to his uncle Valens; but the latter fought his fatal battle while the boy emperor was on the way, and the latter, upon hearing of it, turned back. Then Gratian performed his one great act. He sought a colleague, and called to the throne the most promising young soldier of the day. This was Theodosius, whose father, Count Theodosius, the deliverer of Britain, had been put to death by Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three years before. The new Emperor took the East for his realm, having Gratian and Valentinian II. for colleagues in the West. He speedily checked the ravages of the Goths and restored the confidence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought diplomacy to bear upon the dangerous situation, and succeeded in arranging a peace with the Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the imperial service with forty thousand of their men. But they retained their distinctive organization, under their own chiefs, and were called "fœderati," or allies. This concession of a semi-independence to so great a body of armed barbarians in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake, as was proved before many years. For the time being it secured peace, and gave Theodosius opportunity to attend to other things. The controversies of the Church were among the subjects of his consideration, and by taking the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trinitarianism, in the Roman world. His reign was signalized, moreover, by the formal, official abolition of paganism at Rome. The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at Paris, lost his throne and his life, in 383, as the consequence of a revolt which began in Britain and spread to Gaul. The successful rebel and usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theodosius made terms with him, and acknowledged his sovereignty for a number of years. But, not content with a dominion which embraced Britain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian II., was still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome), under the tutelage of his mother. Valentinian fled to Theodosius; the Eastern Emperor adopted his cause, and restored him to his throne, defeating the usurper and putting him to death (A. D. 388). Four years later Valentinian II. died; another usurper arose, and again Theodosius (A. D. 394) recovered the throne. {1009} Final Division of the Empire. Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty. The Empire was once more, and for the last time, in its full extent, united under a single lord. It remained so for but a few months. At the beginning of the year 395, Theodosius died, and his two weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divided the perishing Empire between them, only to augment, in its more venerable seat, the distress of the impending fall. Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the government of the East; Hononus, a child of eleven, gave his name to the administration of the West. Each emperor was under the guardianship of a minister chosen by Theodosius before he died. Rufinus, who held authority at Constantinople, was worthless in all ways; Stilicho, who held the reins at Milan, was a Vandal by birth, a soldier and a statesman of vigorous powers. Decay of the Western Empire. The West seemed more fortunate than the East, in this division; yet the evil days now fast coming near fell crushingly on the older Rome, while the New Rome lived through them, and endured for a thousand years. No doubt the Empire had weakened more on its elder side; had suffered more exhaustion of vital powers. It had little organic vitality now left in it. If no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it from every point with increasing fierceness, it seems probable that it would have gone to pieces ere long through mere decay. And if, on the other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life of its best republican days, it might have defied Teuton and Slav forever. But all the diseases, political and social, which the Republic engendered in itself, had been steadily consuming the state, with their virulence even increased, since it took on the imperial constitution. All that imperialism did was to gather waning energies in hand, and make the most of them for external use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy, induced by an ever-widening system of slave-labor, continued to spread. Production decreased; the sum of wealth shrunk in the hands of each succeeding generation; and yet the great fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age to age. The gulf between rich and poor opened deeper and wider, and the bridges once built across it by middle-class thrift were fallen down. The burden of imperial government had become an unendurable weight; the provincial municipalities, which had once been healthy centers of a local political life, were strangled by the nets of taxation flung over them. Men sought refuge even in death from the magistracies which made them responsible to the imperial treasury for revenues which they could not collect. Population dwindled, year by year. Recruiting from the body of citizens for the common needs of the army became more impossible. The state was fully dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries of one tribe for its defence against barbaric invaders of another; and it was no longer able, as of old, to impress its savage servitors with awe of its majesty and its name. Stilicho and Alaric. Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising flood of disaster. He checked the Picts and Scots of Northern Britain, and the Alemanni and their allies on the frontiers of Gaul. But now there arose again the more dreadful barbarian host which had footing in the Empire itself, and which Theodosius had taken into pay. The Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 395), and were persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him out of the domain which seemed waiting to be snatched from one or both of the feeble monarchs, who sat in mockery of state at Constantinople and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved first against the capital on the Bosphorus; but Rufinus persuaded him to pass on into Greece, where he went pillaging and destroying for a year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of the Empire, came over from Italy with an army to oppose him; but he was stopped on the eve of battle by orders from the Eastern Court, which sent him back, as an officious meddler. This act of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards, and Arcadius, being free from his influence, then called upon Stilicho for help. The latter came once more to deliver Greece, and did so with success. But Alaric, though expelled from the peninsula, was neither crushed nor disarmed, and the Eastern Court had still to make terms with him. It did so for the moment by conferring on him the government of that part of Illyricum which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day coincide with, very nearly. He rested there in peace for four years, and then (A. D. 400) he called his people to arms again, and led the whole nation, men, women and children, into Italy. The Emperor, Honorius, fled from Milan to Ravenna, which, being a safe shelter behind marshes and streams, became the seat of the court for years thereafter. Stilicho, stripping Britain and Gaul of troops, gathered forces with which, at Eastertide in the year 402, and again in the following year, he defeated the Goths, and forced them to retreat. He had scarcely rested from these exertions, when the valiant Stilicho was called upon to confront a more savage leader, Radagaisus by name, who came from beyond the lines (A. D. 405), with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many tribes pouring after him across the Alps. Again Stilicho, by superior skill, worsted the invaders, entrapping them in the mountains near Fiesole (modern Florence), and starving them there till they yielded themselves to slavery and their chieftain to death. This was the last great service to the dying Roman state which Stilicho was permitted to do. Undermined by the jealousies of the cowardly court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly the power by which he held himself so high. He was accused of treasonable designs and was seized and instantly executed, by the Emperor's command. {1010} Alaric and his Goths in Rome. Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for Alaric to fear, and he promptly returned across the Alps, with the nation of the Visigoths behind him. There was no resistance to his march, and he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not assail the walls, but sat down before the gates (A. D. 408), until the starving citizens paid him a great ransom in silver and gold and precious spices and silken robes. With this booty he retired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army was swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian slaves, and by reinforcements of Goths and Huns. From his camp he opened negotiations with Honorius, demanding the government of Dalmatia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain subsidies of money and corn. The contemptible court, skulking at Ravenna, could neither make war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities. He marched again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized the port of Ostia, with its supplies of grain, and forced the helpless capital to join him in proclaiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the city, one Attalus, accepted the purple at his hands, and played the puppet for a few months in imperial robes. But the scheme proved unprofitable, Attalus was deposed, and negotiations were reopened with Honorius. Their only result was a fresh provocation which sent Alaric once more against Rome, and this time with wrath and vengeance in his heart. Then the great, august capital of the world was entered, through treachery or by surprise, on the night of the 24th of August, 410, and suffered all that the lust, the ferocity and the greed of a barbarous army let loose could inflict on an unresisting city. It was her first experience of that supreme catastrophe of war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in; but it was not to be the last. From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved southward, intending to conquer Sicily; but a sudden illness brought his career to an end. The Barbarians Swarming in. The Empire was now like a dying quarry, pulled down by fierce hunting packs and torn on every side. The Goths were at its throat; the tribes of Germany--Sueves, Vandals, Burgundians, Alans--had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406) and swarmed upon its flanks, throughout Gaul and Spain. The inrush began after Stilicho, to defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Vandals, and Alans passed slowly through the provinces, devouring their wealth and making havoc of their civilization as they went. After three years, they had reached and surmounted the Pyrenees, and were spreading the same destruction through Spain. The confederated tribes of the Franks had already been admitted as allies into northwestern Gaul, and were settled there in peace. At first, they stood faithful to the Roman alliance, and valiantly resisted the new invasion; but its numbers overpowered them, and their fidelity gave way when they saw the pillage of the doomed provinces going on. They presently joined the barbarous mob, and with an energy which secured the lion's share of plunder and domain. The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals and Sueves to the southwest, but took possession of the left bank of the middle Rhine, whence they gradually spread into western Switzerland and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone and Saone, establishing in time an important kingdom, to which they gave their name. No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the perishing provincials of Gaul in the extremity of their distress; but a pretender arose in Britain, who assumed the imperial title and promised deliverance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was welcomed with eagerness, both there and in Spain, to which he advanced. He gained some success, partly by enlisting and partly by resisting the invaders; but his career was brief. Other pretenders appeared in various provinces, of the West; but the anarchy of the time was too great for any authority, legitimate or revolutionary, to establish itself. The Visigoths in Gaul. And, now, into the tempting country of the afflicted Gauls, already crowded with rapacious freebooters, the Visigoths made their way. Their new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned, as sometimes stated, to restore the imperial sovereignty there. He moved with his nation, as Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his departure, was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux, and the Aquitainian country at large, was soon subject to his command (A. D. 412-419). He passed the Pyrenees and entered Spain, where an assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia, drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Vandals into the South; but did not take possession of the country until a later time. The Visigoths, returning to Aquitaine, found there, at last, the kingdom which Alaric set out from the Danube to seek, and they were established in it with the Roman Emperor's consent. It was known as the kingdom of Gothia, or Septimania, but is more commonly called, from its capital, the kingdom of Toulouse. The Eastern Empire. Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived at so desperate a state as in the West. With the departure of Alaric, it had been relieved from its most dangerous immediate foe. There had been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every evidence of a government with no settled authority and no title to respect; but yet the Empire stood and was not yet seriously shaken. In 408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though he left an infant son to take his place; for he also left a daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a woman of rare virtue and talents, and who reigned in her brother's name. Aetius and the Huns. The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the failing sovereignty of Rome had been so disastrously linked for eight and twenty rears, died in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and Placidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth of a century, in the name of her child. Her reign was far stronger than her wretched brother's had been, because she gave loyal support to a valiant and able man, who stood at her side. Aetius, her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do to hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian against barbarian--Hun against Goth and Frank--in skilful diplomacy and courageous war. But nothing that he won was any lasting gain. In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the camps of both the Goths and the Huns, and had made acquaintances among the chieftains of both which served his policy many times. {1011} He had employed the terrible Huns in the early years of his ministry, and perhaps they had learned too much of the weakness of the Roman State. These most fearful of all the barbarian peoples then surging in Europe had been settled, for some years, in the region since called Hungary, under Attila, their most formidable king. He terrorized all the surrounding lands and exercised a lordship from the Caspian to the Baltic and the Rhine. The imperial court at the East stooped to pay him annual tribute for abstaining from the invasion of its domain. But in 450, when the regent Pulcheria became Empress of the East, by her brother's death, and married a brave old soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the governing power, a new tone was heard in the voice from Constantinople which answered Attila's demands. Defeat of Attila. The Hun then appears to have seen that the sinking Empire of the West offered a more certain victim to his terrors and his arms, and he turned them to that side. First forming an alliance with the Vandals (who had crossed from Spain to Africa in 429, had ravaged and subdued the Roman provinces, and had established a kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with a naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led his huge army into suffering Gaul. There were Ostrogoths, and warriors from many German tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific host; for Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were forced to follow when he led. His coming into Gaul affrighted Romans and barbarians alike, and united them in a common defense. Aetius formed an alliance with Theodoric, the Visigothic king, and their forces were joined by Burgundians and Franks. They met Attila near Chalons, and there, on a day in June, A. D. 451, upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a battle that is always counted among the few which gave shape to all subsequent history. The Huns were beaten back, and Europe was saved from the hopeless night that must have followed a Tartar conquest in that age. Attila threatening Rome. Attila retreated to Germany, foiled but not daunted. The next year (A. D. 452) he invaded Italy and laid siege to Aquileia, an important city which stood in his path. It resisted for three months and was then utterly destroyed. The few inhabitants who escaped, with fugitives from neighboring ports, found a refuge in some islands of the Adriatic coast, and formed there a sheltered settlement which grew into the great city and republican state of Venice. Aetius made strenuous exertions to gather forces for another battle with the Huns; but the resources of the Empire had sunk very low. While he labored to collect troops, the effect of a pacific embassy was despairingly tried, and it went forth to the camp of Attila, led by the venerable bishop of Rome--the first powerful Pope--Leo I., called the Great. The impression which Leo made on the Hunnish king, by his venerable presence, and by the persuasiveness of his words, appears to have been extraordinary. At all events, Attila consented to postpone his designs on Rome; though he demanded and received promise of an annual tribute. The next winter he died, and Rome was troubled by him no more. Rome Sacked by the Vandals. But another enemy came, who rivalled Attila in ruthlessness, and who gave a name to barbarity which it has kept to this day. The Vandal king, Genseric, who now swept the Mediterranean with a piratical fleet, made his appearance in the Tiber (A. D. 455) and found the Roman capital powerless to resist his attack. The venerable Pope Leo again interceded for the city, and obtained a promise that captives should not be tortured nor buildings burned,--which was the utmost stretch of mercy that the Vandal could afford. Once more, then, was Rome given up, for fourteen days and nights, to pillage and the horrors of barbaric debauch. "Whatever had survived the former sack,--whatever the luxury of the Roman Patriciate, during the intervening forty-five years, had accumulated in reparation of their loss,--the treasures of the imperial palace, the gold and silver vessels employed in the churches, the statues of pagan divinities and men of Roman renown, the gilded roof of the temple of Capitolian Jove, the plate and ornaments of private individuals, were leisurely conveyed to the Vandal fleet and shipped off to Africa" (Sheppard). The Vandal invasion had been preceded, in the same year, by a palace revolution which brought the dynasty of Theodosius to an end. Placidia was dead, and her unworthy son, Valentinian III., provoked assassination by dishonoring the wife of a wealthy senator, Maximus, who mounted to his place. Maximus was slain by a mob at Rome, just before the Vandals entered the city. The Empire was now without a head, and the throne without an heir. In former times, the Senate or the army would have filled the vacant imperial seat; now, it was a barbarian monarch, Theodoric, the Visigothic king, who made choice of a successor to the Cæsars. He named a Gallic noble, Avitus by name, who had won his esteem, and the nomination was confirmed by Marcian, Emperor of the East. Ricimer and Majorian. But the influence of Theodoric in Roman affairs was soon rivalled by that of Count Ricimer, another Goth, or Sueve, who held high command in the imperial army, and who resented the elevation of Avitus. The latter was deposed, after reigning a single year; and Majorian, a soldier of really noble and heroic character, was promoted to the throne. He was too great and too sincere a man to be Ricimer's tool, and the same hand which raised him threw him down, after he had reigned four years (A. D. 457-461). He was in the midst of a powerful undertaking against the Vandals when he perished. Majorian was the last Emperor in the Western line who deserves to be named. The last Emperors in the West. Ricimer ruled Italy, with the rigor of a despot, under the modest title of Patrician, until 472. His death was soon followed by the rise of another general of the barbarian troops, Orestes, to like autocracy, and he, in turn, gave way to a third, Odoacer, who slew him and took his place. The creatures, half a dozen in number, who put on and put off the purple robe, at the command of these adventurers, who played with the majesty of Rome, need no further mention. {1012} The last of them was Romulus Augustulus, son of Orestes, who escaped his father's fate by formally resigning the throne. He was the last Roman Emperor in the West, until Charlemagne revived the title, three centuries and a quarter later. "The succession of the Western Emperors came to an end, and the way in which it came to an end marks the way in which the names and titles of Rome were kept on, while all power was passing into the hands of the barbarians. The Roman Senate voted that one Emperor was enough, and that the Eastern Emperor, Zeno, should reign over the whole Empire. But at the same time Zeno was made to entrust the government of Italy, with the title of Patrician, to Odoacer. ... Thus the Roman Empire went on at Constantinople, or New Rome, while Italy and the Old Rome itself passed into the power of the Barbarians. Still the Roman laws and names went on, and we may be sure that any man in Italy would have been much surprised if he had been told that the Roman Empire had come to an end" (Freeman). Odoacer. The government of Odoacer, who ruled with the authority of a king, though pretending to kingship only in his own nation, was firm and strong. Italy was better protected from its lawless neighbors than it had been for nearly a century before. But nothing could arrest the decay of its population--the blight that had fallen upon its prosperity. Nor could that turbulent age afford any term of peace that would be long enough for even the beginning of the cure of such maladies and such wounds as had brought Italy low. For fourteen years Odoacer ruled; and then he was overthrown by a new kingdom-seeking barbarian, who came, like Alaric, out of the Gothic swarm. Theodoric the Ostrogoth. The Ostrogoths had now escaped, since Attila died, from the yoke of the Huns, and were prepared, under an able and ambitious young king, Theodoric, who had been reared as a hostage at Constantinople, to imitate the career of their cousins, the Visigoths. Having troubled the Eastern Court until it stood in fear of him, Theodoric asked for a commission to overthrow Odoacer, in Italy, and received it from the Emperor's hand. Thus empowered by one still recognized as lawful lord on both sides of the Adriatic, Theodoric crossed the Julian Alps (A. D. 489) with the families of his nation and their household goods. Three battles made him master of the peninsula and decided the fate of his rival. Odoacer held out in Ravenna for two years and a half, and surrendered on a promise of equal sovereignty with the Ostrogothic king. But Theodoric did not scruple to kill him with his own sword, at the first opportunity which came. In that act, the native savagery in him broke loose; but through most of his life he kept his passions decently tamed, and acted the barbarian less frequently than the civilized statesman and king. He gave Italy peace, security, and substantial justice for thirty years. With little war, he extended his sovereignty over Illyrium, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhætia and Provence, in south-eastern Gaul. If the extensive kingdom which he formed--with more enlightenment than any other among those who divided the heritage of Rome--could have endured, the parts of Europe which it covered might have fared better in after times than they did. "Italy might have been spared six hundred years of gloom and degradation." But powerful influences were against it from the first, and they were influences which proceeded mischievously from the Christian Church. Had the Goths been pagans, the Church might have turned a kindly face to them, and wooed them to conversion as she wooed the Franks. But they were Christians, of a heretic stamp, and the orthodox Christianity of Rome held them in deadly loathing. While still beyond the Danube, they had received the faith from an Arian apostle, at the time of the great conflict of Athanasius against Arius, and were stubborn in the rejection of Trinitarian dogma. Hence the Church in the West was never reconciled to the monarchy of Theodoric in Italy, nor to that of the Visigoths at Toulouse; and its hostility was the ultimate cause of the failure of both. The Empire in the East. To understand the events which immediately caused the fall of the Ostrogothic power, we must turn back for a moment to the Empire in the East. Marcian, whom Pulcheria, the wise daughter of Arcadius, made Emperor by marrying him, died in 457, and Aspar, the barbarian who commanded the mercenaries, selected his successor. He chose his own steward, one Leo, who proved to have more independence than his patron expected, and who succeeded in destroying the latter. After Leo I. came (474) his infant grandson; Leo II., whose father, an Isaurian chieftain, took his place when he died, within the year. The Isaurian assumed a Greek name, Zeno, and occupied the throne--with one interval of flight and exile for twenty months--during seven years. When he died, his widow gave her hand in marriage to an excellent officer of the palace, Anastasius by name, and he was sovereign of the Empire for twenty-seven years. The reign of Justinian. After Anastasius, came Justin I., born a peasant in Dacia (modern Roumania), but advanced as a soldier to the command of the imperial guards, and thence to the throne. He had already adopted and educated his nephew, Justinian, and before dying, in 527, he invested him with sovereignty as a colleague. The reign of Justinian was the most remarkable in the whole history of the Empire in the East. Without breadth of understanding, or notable talents of any kind: without courage; without the least nobility of character; without even the virtue of fidelity to his ministers and friends,--this remarkable monarch contrived to be splendidly served by an extraordinary generation of great soldiers, great jurists, great statesmen, who gave a brilliance to his reign that was never rivalled while the Byzantine seat of Empire stood. It owes, in modern esteem, its greatest fame to the noble collection of Roman laws which was made, in the Pandects and the Code, under the direction of the wise and learned Tribonian. Transiently it was glorified by conquests that bore a likeness to the march of the resistless legions of ancient Rome; and the laurelled names of Belisarius and Narses claimed a place on the columns of victory with the names of Cæsar and Pompeius. {1013} But the splendors of the reign were much more than offset by miseries and calamities of the darkest kind. "The reign of Justinian, from its length, its glory and its disasters, may be compared to the reign of Louis XIV., which exceeded it in length, and equalled it in glory and disaster. ... He extended the limits of his empire; but he was unable to defend the territory he had received from his predecessors. Everyone of the thirty-eight years of his reign was marked by an invasion of the barbarians; and it has been said that, reckoning those who fell by the sword, who perished from want, or were led into captivity, each invasion cost 200,000 subjects to the empire. Calamities which human prudence is unable to resist seemed to combine against the Romans, as if to compel them to expiate their ancient glory. ... So that the very period which gave birth to so many monuments of greatness, may be looked back upon with horror, as that of the widest desolation and the most terrific mortality" (Sismondi). The first and longest of the wars of Justinian was the Persian war, which he inherited from his predecessors, and which scarcely ceased while the Persian monarchy endured. It was in these Asiatic campaigns that Belisarius began his career. But his first great achievement was the overthrow and extinction of the Vandal power in Africa, and the restoration of Roman authority (the empire of the new Rome) in the old Carthaginian province (A. D. 533-534). He accomplished this with a force of but 10,000 foot and 5,000 horse, and was hastily recalled by his jealous lord on the instant of his success. Conquests of Belisarius in Italy. But the ambition of Justinian was whetted by this marvellous conquest, and he promptly projected an expedition against the kingdom of the Eastern Goths. The death of Theodoric had occurred in 526. His successor was a child of ten years, his grandson, whose mother exercised the regency. Amalsuentha, the queen-regent, was a woman of highly cultivated mind, and she offended her subjects by too marked a Romanization of her ideas. Her son died in his eighteenth year, and she associated with herself on the throne the next heir to it, a worthless nephew of Theodoric, who was able, in a few weeks, to strip all her power from her and consign her to a distant prison, where she was soon put to death (A. D. 535). She had previously opened negotiations with Justinian for the restoration of his supremacy in Italy, and the ambitious Emperor assumed with eagerness a right to avenge her deposition and death. The fate of Amalsuentha was his excuse, the discontent of Roman orthodoxy with the rule of the heretic Goths was his encouragement, to send an army into Italy with Belisarius at its head. First taking possession of Sicily, Belisarius landed in Italy in 536, took Naples and advanced on Rome. An able soldier, Vitiges, had been raised to the Gothic throne, and he evacuated Rome in December; but he returned the following March and laid siege to the ancient capital, which Belisarius had occupied with a moderate force. It was defended against him for an entire year, and the strength of the Gothic nation was consumed on the outer side of the walls, while the inhabitants within were wasted by famine and disease. The Goths invoked the aid of the Franks in Gaul, and those fierce warriors, crossing the Alps (A. D. 538), assailed both Goths and Greeks, with indiscriminate hostility, destroyed Milan and Genoa, and mostly perished of hunger themselves before they retreated from the wasted Cisalpine country. Released from Rome, Belisarius advanced in his turn against Ravenna, and took the Gothic capital, making Vitiges a prisoner (A. D. 539). His reward for these successes was a recall from command. The jealous Emperor could not afford his generals too much glory at a single winning. As a consequence of his folly, the Goths, under a new king, Totila, were allowed to recover so much ground in the next four years that, when, in 544, Belisarius was sent back, almost without an army, the work of conquest had to be done anew. Rome was still being held against Totila, who besieged it, and the great general went by sea to its relief. He forced the passage of the Tiber, but failed through the misconduct of the commander in the city to accomplish an entry, and once more the great capital was entered and yielded to angry Goths (A. D. 546). They spared the lives of the few people they found, and the chastity of the women; but they plundered without restraint. Rome a Solitude for Forty Days. Totila commanded the total destruction of the city; but his ruthless hand was stayed by the remonstrances of Belisarius. After demolishing a third of the walls, he withdrew towards the South, dragging the few inhabitants with him, and, during forty days, Rome is said to have been an unpeopled solitude. The scene which this offers to the imagination comes near to being the most impressive in history. At the end of that period it was entered by Belisarius, who hastily repaired the walls, collected his forces, and was prepared to defend himself when Totila came back by rapid marches from Apulia. The Goths made three assaults and were bloodily repulsed. End of the Ostrogothic Kingdom. But again Belisarius was recalled by a mean and jealous court, and again the Gothic cause was reanimated and restored. Rome was taken again from its feeble garrison (A. D. 549), and this time it was treated with respect. Most of Italy and Sicily, with Corsica and Sardinia, were subdued by Totila's arms, and that king, now successful, appealed to Justinian for peace. It was refused, and in 552 a vigorous prosecution of the war resumed, under a new commander--the remarkable eunuch Narses, who proved himself to be one of the great masters of war. Totila was defeated and slain in the first battle of the campaign; Rome was again beleaguered and taken; and the last blow needed to extinguish the Gothic kingdom in Italy was given the following year (A. D. 553), when Totila's successor, Teia, ended his life on another disastrous field of battle. The Exarchate. Italy was restored for the moment to the Empire, and was placed under the government of an imperial viceroy, called Exarch, which high office the valiant Narses was the first to fill. His successors, known in history as the Exarchs of Ravenna, resided in that capital for a long period, while the arm of their authority was steadily shortened by the conquests of new invaders, whose story is yet to be told. {1014} Events in the West. Leaving Italy and Rome, once more in the imperial fold, but mere provinces now of a distant and alienated sovereignty, it is necessary to turn back to the West, and glance over the regions in which, when we looked at them last, the institutions of Roman government and society were being dissolved and broken up by flood upon flood of barbaric invasion from the Teutonic North. Teutonic Conquest of Britain. If we begin at the farthest West which the Roman dominion reached, we shall find that the island of Britain was abandoned, practically, by the imperial government earlier than the year 410, when Rome was sinking under the blows of Alaric. From that time the inhabitants were left to their own government and their own defense. To the inroads of the savage Caledonian Picts and Irish Scots, there were added, now, the coast ravages of a swarm of ruthless pirates, which the tribes of northwestern Europe had begun to launch upon the German or North Sea. The most cruel and terrible of these ocean freebooters were the Saxons, of the Elbe, and they gave their name for a time to the whole. Their destructive raids upon the coasts of Britain and Gaul had commenced more than a century before the Romans withdrew their legions, and that part of the British coast most exposed to their ravages was known as the Saxon Shore. For about thirty years after the Roman and Romanized inhabitants of Britain had been left to defend themselves, they held their ground with good courage, as appears; but the incessant attacks of the Picts wore out, at last, their confidence in themselves, and they were fatally led to seek help from their other enemies, who scourged them from the sea. Their invitation was given, not to the Saxons, but to a band of Jutes--warriors from that Danish peninsula in which they have left their name. The Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet, in the Isle of Thanet (A. D. 449 or 450), with two chiefs, Hengest and Horsa, at their head. They came as allies, and fought by the side of the Britons against the Picts with excellent success. Then came quarrels, and presently, in 455, the arms of Hengest and Horsa were turned against their employers. Ten years later the Jutes had secure possession of the part of Britain now called Kent, and Hengest was their king, Horsa having fallen in the war. This was the beginning of the transformation of Roman-Celtic Britain into the Teutonic England of later history. The success of the Jutes drew their cousins and piratical comrades, the Saxons and the Angles, to seek kingdoms in the same rich island. The Saxons came first, landing near Selsey, in 477, and taking gradual possession of a district which became known as the kingdom of the South Saxons, or Sussex. The next invasion was by Saxons under Cerdic, and Jutes, who joined to form the kingdom of the West Saxons, or Wessex, covering about the territory of modern Hampshire. So much of their conquest was complete by the year 519. At about the same time, other colonies were established and gave their names, as East Saxons and Middle Saxons, to the Essex and Middlesex of modern English geography. A third tribe from the German shore, the Angles, now came (A. D. 547) to take their part in the conquest of the island, and these laid their hands upon kingdoms in the East and North of England, so much larger than the modest Jute and Saxon realms in the south that their name fixed itself, at last, upon the whole country, when it lost the name of Britain. Northumberland, which stretched from the Humber to the Firth of Forth, Mercia, which covered at one time the whole middle region of England, and East Anglia, which became divided into the two English counties of Norfolk (North-folk) and Suffolk (South-folk), were the three great kingdoms of the Angles. The Making of England. Before the end of the sixth century, almost the whole of modern England, and part of Scotland, on its eastern side, as far to the north as Edinburgh, was in possession of the German invaders. They had not merely subdued the former possessors--Britons and Roman provincials (if Romans remained in the island after their domination ceased),--but, in the judgment of the best investigators of the subject, they had practically swept them from all the parts of the island in which their own settlements were established. That is to say, the prior population was either exterminated by the merciless swords of these Saxon and English pagans, or was driven into the mountains of Wales, into the peninsula of Cornwall and Devon, or into the Strathclyde corner of Scottish territory,--in all which regions the ancient British race has maintained itself to this day. Scarcely a vestige of its existence remains elsewhere in England,--neither in language, nor in local names, nor in institutions, nor in survivals of any other kind; which shows that the inhabitants were effaced by the conquest, as the inhabitants of Gaul, of Spain, and of Italy, for example, were not. The new society and the new states which now arose on the soil of Britain, and began to shape themselves into the England of the future, were as purely Germanic as if they had grown up in the Jutish peninsula or on the Elbe. The institutions, political and social, of the immigrant nations, had been modified by changed circumstances, but they had incorporated almost nothing from the institutions which they found existing in their new home and which they supplanted. Broadly speaking, nothing Roman and nothing Celtic entered into them. They were constructed on German lines throughout. The barbarism of the Saxons and their kin when they entered Britain was far more unmitigated than that of most of the Teutonic tribes which overwhelmed the continental provinces of Rome had been. The Goths had been influenced to some extent and for quite a period by Roman civilization, and had nominally accepted Christian precepts and beliefs, before they took arms against the Empire. The Franks had been allies of Rome and in contact with the refinements of Roman Gaul, for a century or two before they became masters in that province. Most of the other nations which transplanted themselves in the fifth century from beyond the Rhine to new homes in the provinces of Rome, had been living for generations on the borders of the Empire, or near; had acquired some acquaintance, at least, with the civilization which they did not share, and conceded to it a certain respect; while some of them had borne arms for the Emperor and taken his pay. But the Saxons, Angles and Jutes had thus far been remote from every influence or experience of the kind. {1015} They knew the Romans only as rich strangers to be plundered and foes to be fought. Christianity represented nothing to them but an insult to their gods. There seems to be little doubt, therefore, that the civilizing work which Rome had done in western Europe was obliterated nowhere else so ruthlessly and so wantonly as in Britain. Christianity, still sheltered and strong in Ireland, was wholly extinguished in England for a century and more, until the memorable mission of Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great (A. D. 597), began the conversion of the savage islanders. The Kingdom of the Franks. In Gaul, meanwhile, and in southwestern Germany, the Franks had become the dominant power. They had moved tardily to the conquest, but when they moved it was with rapid strides. While they dwelt along the Lower Rhine, they were in two divisions: the Salian Franks, who occupied, first, the country near the mouth of the river, and then spread southwards, to the Somme, or beyond; and the Ripuarians, who lived farther up the Rhine, in the neighborhood of Cologne, advancing thence to the Moselle. In the later part of the fifth century a Roman Patrician, Syagrius, still exercised some kind of authority in northern Gaul; but in 486 he was defeated and overthrown by Chlodvig, or Clovis, the chief of the Salian Franks. Ten years later, Clovis, leading both the Salian and the Ripuarian Franks in an attack upon the German Alemanni, beyond the Upper Rhine, subdued that people completely, and took their country. Their name survived, and adhered to the whole people of Germany, whom the Franks and their successors the French have called Allemands to this day. After his conquest of the Alemanni, Clovis, who had married a Christian wife, accepted her faith and was baptized, with three thousand of his chief men. The professed conversion was as fortunate politically for him as it had been for Constantine. He adopted the Christianity which was that of the Roman Church--the Catholic Christianity of the Athanasian creed--and he stood forth at once as the champion of orthodoxy against the heretic Goths and Burgundians, whose religion had been poisoned by the condemned doctrines of Arius. The blessings, and the more substantial endeavors, of the Roman Church were, therefore, on his side, when he attacked the Burgundians and made them tributary, and when, a few years later, he expelled the Goths from Aquitaine and drove them into Spain (A.D. 500-508). Beginning, apparently, as one of several chiefs among the Salian Franks, he ended his career (510) as sole king of the whole Frank nation, and master of all Gaul except a Gothic corner of Provence, with a considerable dominion beyond the Rhine. The Merovingian Kings. But Clovis left his realm to four sons, who divided it into as many kingdoms, with capitals at Metz, Orleans, Paris, and Soissons. There was strife and war between them, until one of the brothers, Lothaire, united again the whole kingdom, which, meantime, had been enlarged by the conquest of Thuringia and Provence, and by the extinction of the tributary Burgundian kings. When he died, his sons rent the kingdom again, and warred with one another, and once more it was brought together. Says Hallam: "It is a weary and unprofitable task to follow these changes in detail, through scenes of tumult and bloodshed, in which the eye meets with no sunshine, nor can rest upon any interesting spot. It would be difficult, as Gibbon has justly observed, to find anywhere more vice or less virtue." But, as Dean Church has remarked, the Franks were maintained in their ascendancy by the favor of the clergy and the circumstances of their position, despite their divisions and the worthless and detestable character of their kings, after Clovis. "They occupied a land of great natural wealth, and great geographical advantages, which had been prepared for them by Latin culture; they inherited great cities which they had not built, and fields and vineyards which they had not planted; and they had the wisdom, not to destroy, but to use their conquest. They were able with singular ease and confidence to employ and trust the services, civil and military, of the Latin population. ... The bond between the Franks and the native races was the clergy. ... The forces of the whole nation were at the disposal of the ruling race; and under Frank chiefs, the Latins and Gauls learned once more to be warriors." This no doubt suggests a quite true explanation of the success of the Franks; but too much may easily be inferred from it. It will not be safe to conclude that the Franks were protectors of civilization in Gaul, and did not lay destroying hands upon it. We shall presently see that it sank to a very darkened state under their rule, though the eclipse may have been less complete than in some other of the barbarized provinces of Rome. Rise of the Carolingians. The division in the Frankish dominion which finally marked itself deeply and became permanent was that which separated the East Kingdom, or Austrasia, from the West Kingdom, or Neustria. In Austrasia, the Germanic element prevailed; in Neustria, the Roman and Gallic survivals entered most largely into the new society. Austrasia widened into the Germany of later history; Neustria into France. In both these kingdoms, the Frankish kings sank lower and lower in character, until their name (of Merwings or Merovingians, from an ancestor of Clovis) became a byword for sloth and worthlessness. In each kingdom there arose, beside the nominal monarch, a strong minister, called the Major Domus, or Mayor of the Palace, who exercised the real power and governed in the king's name. During the last half of the seventh century, the Austrasian Mayor, Pippin of Heristal, and the Neustrian Mayor, Ebroin, converted the old antagonism of the two kingdoms into a personal rivalry and struggle for supremacy. Ebroin was murdered, and Pippin was the final victor, in a decisive battle at Testry (687), which made him virtual master of the whole Frank realm, although the idle Merwings still sat on their thrones. Pippin's son, Charles Martel, strengthened and extended the domination which his father had acquired. He drove back the Saxons and subdued the Frisians in the North, and, in the great and famous battle of Tours (732) he repelled, once for all, the attempt of the Arab and Moorish followers of Mahomet, already lodged in Spain, to push their conquests beyond the Pyrenees. {1016} The next of the family, Pippin the Short, son of Charles Martel, put an end to the pretence of governing in the name of a puppet-king. The last of the Merovingians was quietly deposed--lacking even importance enough to be put to death-- and Pippin received the crown at the hands of Pope Zachary (A. D. 751). He died in 768, and the reign of his son, who succeeded him--the Great Charles--the Charlemagne of mediæval history--is the introduction to so new an era, and so changed an order of circumstances in the European world, that it will be best to finish with all that lies behind it in our hasty survey before we take it up. The Conquests of Islam. Outside of Europe, a new and strange power had now risen, and had spread its forces with extraordinary rapidity around the southern and eastern circuit of the Mediterranean, until it troubled both extremities of the northern shore. This was the power of Islam--the proselyting, war-waging religion of Mahomet, the Arabian prophet. At the death of Mahomet, in 632, he was lord of Arabia, and his armies had just crossed the border, to attack the Syrian possessions of the Eastern Roman Empire. In seven years from that time, the whole of Palestine and Syria had been overrun, Jerusalem, Damascus, Antioch, and all the strong cities taken, and Roman authority expelled. In two years more, they had dealt the last blow to the Sassanian monarchy in Persia and shattered it forever. At the same time they were besieging Alexandria and adding Egypt to their conquests. In 668, only thirty-six years after the death of the Prophet, they were at the gates of Constantinople, making the first of their many attempts to gain possession of the New Rome. In 698 they had taken Carthage, had occupied all North Africa to the Atlantic coast, had converted the Mauretanians, or Moors, and absorbed them into their body politic as well as into their communion. In 711 the commingled Arabs and Moors crossed the Straits and entered Spain, and the overthrow of the Christian kingdom of the Visigoths was practically accomplished in a single battle that same year. Within two years more, the Moors (as they came to be most commonly called) were in possession of the whole southern, central, and eastern parts of the Spanish peninsula, treating the inhabitants who had not fled with a more generous toleration than differing Christians were wont to offer to one another. The Spaniards (a mixed population of Roman, Suevic, Gothic, and aboriginal descent) who did, not submit, took refuge in the mountainous region of the Asturias and Galicia, where they maintained their independence, and, in due time, became aggressive, until, after eight centuries, they recovered their whole land. The Eastern Empire. At the East, as we have seen, the struggle of the Empire with the Arabs began at the first moment of their career of foreign conquest. They came upon it when it was weak from many wounds, and exhausted by conflict with many foes. Before the death of Justinian (565), the transient glories of his reign had been waning fast. His immediate successor saw the work of Belisarius and Narses undone, for the most part, and the Italian peninsula overrun by a new horde of barbarians, more rapacious and more savage than the Goths. At the same time, the Persian war broke out again, and drained the imperial resources to pay for victories that had no fruit. Two better and stronger emperors--Tiberius and Maurice--who came after him, only made an honorable struggle, without leaving the Empire in a better state. Then a brutal creature--Phocas--held the throne for eight years (602-610) and sunk it very low by his crimes. The hero, Heraclius, who was now raised to power, came too late. Assailed suddenly, at the very beginning of his reign, by a fierce Persian onset, he was powerless to resist. Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor were successively ravaged and conquered by the Persian arms. They came even to the Bosphorus, and for ten years they held its eastern shore and maintained a camp within sight of Constantinople itself; while the wild Tartar nation of the Avars raged, at the same time, through the northern and western provinces of the Empire, and threatened the capital on its landward sides. The Roman Empire was reduced, for a time, to "the walls of Constantinople, with the remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some maritime cities, from Tyre to Trebizond, of the Asiatic coast." But in 622 Heraclius turned the tide of disaster and rolled it back upon his enemies. Despite an alliance of the Persians with the Avars, and their combined assault upon Constantinople in 626, he repelled the latter, and wrested from the former, in a series of remarkable campaigns, all the territory they had seized. He had but just accomplished this great deliverance of his dominions, when the Arabs came upon him, as stated above. There was no strength left in the Empire to resist the terrible prowess of these warriors of the desert. They extinguished its authority in Syria and Egypt, as we have seen, in the first years of their career; but then turned their arms to the East and the West, and were slow in disputing Asia Minor with its Christian lords. "From the time of Heraclius the Byzantine theatre is contracted and darkened: the line of empire which had been defined by the laws of Justinian and the arms of Belisarius recedes on all sides from our view" (Gibbon). There was neither vigor nor virtue in the descendants of Heraclius; and when the last of them was destroyed by a popular rising against his vicious tyranny (711), revolution followed revolution so quickly that three reigns were begun and ended in six years. The so-called Byzantine Empire. Then came to the throne a man of strong character, who redeemed it at least from contempt; who introduced a dynasty which endured for a century, and whose reign is the beginning of a new era in the history of the Eastern Empire, so marked that the Empire has taken from that time, in the common usage, a changed name, and is known thenceforth as the Byzantine, rather than the Eastern or the Greek. This was Leo the Isaurian, who saved Constantinople from a second desperate Moslem siege; who checked for a considerable period the Mahometan advance in the East; who reorganized the imperial administration on lasting lines; and whose suppression of image-worship in the Christian churches of his empire led to a rupture with the Roman Church in the West,--to the breaking of all relations of dependence in Rome and Italy upon the Empire in the East, and to the creating of a new imperial sovereignty in Western Europe which claimed succession to that of Rome. {1017} Lombard Conquest of Italy. On the conquest of Italy by Belisarius and Narses, for Justinian, the eunuch Narses, as related before, was made governor, residing at Ravenna, and bearing the title of Exarch. In a few years he was displaced, through the influence of a palace intrigue at Constantinople. To be revenged, it is said that he persuaded the Lombards, a German tribe lately become threatening on the Upper Danube, to enter Italy. They came, under their leader Alboin, and almost the whole northern and middle parts of the peninsula submitted to them with no resistance. Pavia stood a siege for three years before it surrendered to become the Lombard capital; Venice received an added population of fugitives, and was safe in her lagoons--like Ravenna, where the new Exarch watched the march of Lombard conquest, and scarcely opposed it. Rome was preserved, with part of southern Italy and with Sicily; but no more than a shadow of the sovereignty of the Empire now stretched westward beyond the Adriatic. Temporal Power of the Popes. The city of Rome, and the territory surrounding it, still owned a nominal allegiance to the Emperor at Constantinople; but their immediate and real ruler was the Bishop of Rome, who had already acquired, in a special way, the fatherly name of "Papa" or Pope. Many circumstances had combined to place both spiritual and temporal power in the hands of these Christian pontiffs of Rome. They may have been originally, in the constitution of the Church, on an equal footing of ecclesiastical authority with the four other chiefs of the hierarchy--the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem; but the great name of Rome gave them prestige and weight of superior influence to begin with. Then, they stood, geographically and sympathetically, in nearest relations with that massive Latin side of Christendom, in western Europe, which was never much disturbed by the raging dogmatic controversies that tore and divided the Church on its Eastern, Greek side. It was inevitable that the Western Church should yield homage to one head--to one bishopric above all other bishoprics; and it was more inevitable that the See of Rome should be that one. So the spiritual supremacy to which the Popes arrived is easily enough explained. The temporal authority which they acquired is accounted for as obviously. Even before the interruption of the line of emperors in the West, the removal of the imperial residence for long periods from Rome, to Constantinople, to Milan, to Ravenna, left the Pope the most impressive and influential personage in the ancient capital. Political functions were forced on him, whether he desired to exercise them or not. It was Pope Leo who headed the embassy to Attila, and saved the city from the Huns. It was the same Pope who pleaded for it with the Vandal king, Genseric. And still more and more, after the imperial voice which uttered occasional commands to his Roman subjects was heard from a distant palace in Constantinople, and in accents that had become wholly Greek, the chair of St. Peter grew throne-like,--the respect paid to the Pope in civil matters took on the spirit of obedience, and his aspect before the people became that of a temporal prince. This process of the political elevation of the Papacy was completed by the Lombard conquest of Italy. The Lombard kings were bent upon the acquisition of Rome; the Popes were resolute and successful in holding it against them. At last the Papacy made its memorable and momentous alliance with the Carolingian chiefs of the Franks. It assumed the tremendous super-imperial right and power to dispose of crowns, by taking that of the kingdom of the Franks from Childeric and giving it to Pippin (751); and this was the first assumption of that right by the chief priest of Western Christendom. In return, Pippin led an army twice to Italy (754-755), humbled the Lombards, took from them the exarchate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis (a district east of the Appenines, between Ancona and Ferrara), and transferred this whole territory as a conqueror's "donation" to the Apostolic See. The temporal sovereignty of the Popes now rested on a base as political and as substantial as that of the most worldly and vulgar potentates around them. Charlemagne's restored Roman Empire. Pippin's greater son, Charlemagne, renewed the alliance of his house with the Papacy, and strengthened it by completing the conquest of the Lombards, extinguishing their kingdom (774), and confirming his father's donation of the States of the Church. Charlemagne was now supreme in Italy, and the Pope became the representative of his sovereignty at Rome,--a position which lastingly enhanced the political importance of the Roman See in the peninsula. But while Pope and King stood related, in one view, as agent and principal, or subject and sovereign, another very different relationship slowly shaped itself in the thoughts of one, if not of both. The Western Church had broken entirely with the Eastern, on the question of image-worship; the titular sovereignty of the Eastern Emperor in the ancient Roman capital was a worn-out fiction; the reign of a female usurper, Irene, at Constantinople afforded a good occasion for renouncing and discarding it. But a Roman Emperor there must be, somewhere, for lesser princes and sovereigns to do homage to; the political habit and feeling of the European world, shaped and fixed by the long domination of Rome, still called for it. "Nor could the spiritual head of Christendom dispense with the temporal; without the Roman Empire there could not be," according to the feeling of the ninth century, "a Roman, nor by necessary consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church." For "men could not separate in fact what was indissoluble in thought: Christianity must stand or fall along with the great Christian state: they were but two names for one and the same thing" (Bryce). Therefore the head of the Church, boldly enlarging the assumption of his predecessor who bestowed the crown of the Merovingians upon Pippin, now took it upon himself to set the diadem of the Cæsars on the head of Charlemagne. On the Christmas Day, in the year 800, in the basilica of St. Peter, at Rome, the solemn act of coronation was performed by Pope Leo III.; the Roman Empire lived again, in the estimation of that age, and Charles the Great reopened the interrupted line of successors to Augustus. {1018} Before this imperial coronation of Charlemagne occurred, he had already made his dominion imperial in extent, by the magnitude of his conquests. North, south, east, and west, his armies had been everywhere victorious. In eighteen campaigns against the fierce and troublesome Saxons, he subdued those stubborn pagans and forced them to submit to a Christian baptism--with how much of immediate religious effect may be easily surmised. But by opening a way for the more Christ-like missionaries of the cross, who followed him, this missionary of the battle-ax did, no doubt, a very real apostolic work. He checked the ravages of the piratical Danes. He crushed the Avars and took their country, which comprised parts of the Austria and Hungary of the present day. He occupied Bavaria, on the one hand, and Brittany on the other. He crossed the Pyrenees to measure swords with the Saracens, and drove them from the north of Spain, as far as the Ebro. His lordship in Italy has been noticed already. He was unquestionably one of the greatest monarchs of any age, and deserves the title Magnus, affixed to his name, if that title ever has been deserved by the kings who were flattered with it. There was much more in his character than the mere aggressive energy which subjugated so wide a realm. He was a man of enlightenment far beyond his time; a man who strove after order, in that disorderly age, and who felt oppressed by the ignorance into which the world had sunk. He was a seeker after learning, and the friend and patron of all in his day who groped in the darkness and felt their way towards the light. He organized his Empire with a sense of political system which was new among the Teutonic masters of Western Europe (except as shown by Theodoric in Italy); but there were not years enough in his own life for the organism to mature, and his sons brought back chaos again. Appearance of the Northmen. Before Charlemagne died (814) he saw the western coasts and river valleys of his Empire harried by a fresh outpouring of sea-rovers from the far North, and it is said that he had sad forebodings of the affliction they would become to his people thereafter. These new pirates of the North Sea, who took up, after several centuries, the abandoned trade of their kinsmen, the Saxons (now retired from their wild courses and respectably settled on one side of the water, while subdued and kept in order on the other), were of the bold and rugged Scandinavian race, which inhabited the countries since known as Denmark, Sweden and Norway. They are more or less confused under the general name of Northmen, or Norsemen--men of the North; but that term appears to have been applied more especially to the freebooters from the Norwegian coast, as distinguished from the "Danes" of the lesser peninsula. It is convenient, in so general a sketch as this, to ignore the distinction, and to speak of the Northmen as inclusive, for that age, of the whole Scandinavian race. Their visitations began to terrify the coasts of England, France and Germany, and the lower valleys of the rivers which they found it possible to ascend, some time in the later half of the eighth century. It is probable that their appearance on the sea at this time, and not before, was due to a revolution which united Norway under a single king and a stronger government, and which, by suppressing independence and disorder among the petty chiefs, drove many of them to their ships and sent them abroad, to lead a life of lawlessness more agreeable to their tastes. It is also probable that the northern countries had become populated beyond their resources, as seemed to have happened before, when the Goths swarmed out, and that the outlet by sea was necessarily and deliberately opened. Whatever the cause, these Norse adventurers, in fleets of long boats, issued with some suddenness from their "vics," or fiords (whence the name "viking"), and began an extraordinary career. For more than half a century their raids had no object but plunder, and what they took they carried home to enjoy. First to the Frisian coast, then to the Rhine--the Seine--the Loire,--they came again and again to pillage and destroy; crossing at the same time to the shores of their nearest kinsmen--but heeding no kinship in their savage and relentless forays along the English coasts--and around to Ireland and the Scottish islands, where their earliest lodgments were made. The Danes in England. About the middle of the ninth century they began to seize tracts of land in England and to settle themselves there in permanent homes. The Angles in the northern and eastern parts and the Saxons in the southern part of England had weakened themselves and one another by rivalry and war between their divided kingdoms. There had been for three centuries an unceasing struggle among them for supremacy. At the time of the coming of the Danes (who were prominent in the English invasion and gave their name to it), the West Saxon kings had won a decided ascendancy. The Danes, by degrees, stripped them of what they had gained. Northumberland, Mercia and East Anglia were occupied in succession, and Wessex itself was attacked. King Alfred, the great and admirable hero of early English history, who came to the throne in 871, spent the first eight years of his reign in a deadly struggle with the invaders. He was obliged in the end to concede to them the whole northeastern part of England, from the Thames to the Tyne, which was known thereafter as "the Danelaw"; but they became his vassals, and submitted to Christian baptism. A century later, the Norse rovers resumed their attacks upon England, and a cowardly English king, distrusting the now settled and peaceful Danes, ordered an extensive massacre of them (1002). The rage which this provoked in Denmark led to a great invasion of the country. England was completely conquered, and remained subject to the Danish kings until 1042, when its throne was recovered for a brief space of time by the English line. {1019} The Normans in Normandy. Meanwhile the Northmen had gained a much firmer and more important footing in the territory of the Western Franks--which had not yet acquired the name of France. The Seine and its valley attracted them again and again, and after repeated expeditions up the river, even to the city of Paris, which they besieged several times, one of their chiefs, Rolf or Rollo, got possession of Rouen and began a permanent settlement in the country. The Frank King, Charles the Simple, now made terms with Rollo and granted him a district at the mouth of the Seine, (912), the latter acknowledging the suzerainty or feudal superiority of Charles, and accepting at the same time the doubly new character of a baptised Christian and a Frankish Duke. The Northmen on the Seine were known thenceforth as Normans, their dukedom as Normandy, and they played a great part in European history during the next two centuries. The Northmen in the West. The northern sea-rovers who had settled neither in Ireland, England, nor Frankland, went farther afield into the West and North and had wonderful adventures there. They took possession of the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Hebrides, and other islands in those seas, including Man, and founded a powerful island-kingdom, which they held for a long period. Thence they passed on to Faroë and Iceland, and in Iceland, where they lived peaceful and quiet lives of necessity, they founded an interesting republic, and developed a very remarkable civilization, adorned by a literature which the world is learning more and more to admire. From Iceland, it was a natural step to the discovery of Greenland, and from Greenland, there is now little doubt that they sailed southwards and saw and touched the continent of America, five centuries before Columbus made his voyage. The Northmen in the East. While the Northmen of the ninth and tenth centuries were exciting and disturbing all Western Europe by their naval exploits, other adventurers from the Swedish side of the Scandinavian country were sallying eastwards under different names. Both as warriors and as merchants, they made their way from the Baltic to the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, and bands of them entered the service of the Eastern Emperor, at Constantinople, where they received the name of Varangians, from the oath by which they bound themselves. One of the Swedish chiefs, Rurik by name, was chosen by certain tribes of the country now called Russia, to be their prince. Rurik's capital was Novgorod, where he formed the nucleus of a kingdom which grew, through many vicissitudes, into the modern empire of Russia. His successors transferred their capital to Kief, and ultimately it was shifted again to Moscow, where the Muscovite princes acquired the title, the power, and the great dominion of the Czars of all the Russias. The Slavonic Race. The Russian sovereigns were thus of Swedish origin; but their subjects were of another race. They belonged to a branch of the great Aryan stock, called the Slavic or Slavonic, which was the last to become historically known. The Slavonians bore no important part in events that we have knowledge of until several centuries of the Christian era had passed. They were the obscure inhabitants in that period of a wide region in Eastern Europe, between the Vistula and the Caspian. In the sixth century, pressed by the Avars, they crossed the Vistula, moving westwards, along the Baltic; and, about the same time they moved southwards, across the Danube, and established the settlements which formed the existing Slavonic states in South-eastern Europe--Servia, Croatia and their lesser neighbors. But the principal seat of the Slavonic race within historic times has always been in the region still occupied by its principal representatives, the Russians and the Poles. Mediæval Society.--The Feudal System. We have now come to a period in European history--the middle period of the Middle Ages--when it is appropriate to consider the peculiar state of society which had resulted from the transplanting of the Germanic nations of the North to the provinces of the Roman Empire, and from placing the well civilized surviving inhabitants of the latter in subjection to and in association with masters so vigorous, so capable and so barbarous. In Gaul, the conquerors, unused to town-life, not attracted to town pursuits, and eager for the possession of land, had generally spread themselves over the country and left the cities more undisturbed, except as they pillaged them or extorted ransom from them. The Roman-Gallic population of the country had sought refuge, no doubt, to a large extent, in the cities; the agricultural laborers were already, for the most part, slaves or half-slaves--the coloni of the Roman system--and remained in their servitude; while some of the poorer class of freemen may have sunk to the same condition. How far the new masters of the country had taken possession of its land by actual seizure, ousting the former owners, and under what rules, if any, it was divided among them, are questions involved in great obscurity. In the time of Charlemagne, there seems to have been a large number of small landowners who cultivated their own holdings, which they owned, not conditionally, but absolutely, by the tenure called allodial. But alongside of these peasant proprietors there was another landed class whose estates were held on very different terms, and this latter class, at the time now spoken of, was rapidly absorbing the former. It was a class which had not existed before, neither among the Germans nor among the Romans, and the system of land tenure on which it rested was equally new to both, although both seem to have contributed something to the origin of it. This was the Feudal System, which may be described, in the words of Bishop Stubbs, as being "a complete organization of society through the medium of land tenure, in which, from the king down to the landowner, all are bound together by obligation of service and defence: the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord; the defence and service being based on, and regulated by, the nature and extent of the land held by the one of the other." Of course, the service exacted was, in the main, military, and the system grew up as a military system, expanding into a general governing system, during a time of loose and ineffective administration. That it was a thing of gradual growth is now fairly well settled, although little is clearly known of the process of growth. It came to its perfection in the tenth century, by which time most other tenures of land had disappeared. The allodial tenure gave way before it, because, in those disorderly times, men of small or moderate property in land were in need of the protection which a powerful lord, who had many retainers at his back, or a strong monastery, could give, and were induced to surrender, to one or the other, their free ownership of the land they held, receiving it back as tenants, in order to establish the relation which secured a protector. {1020} In its final organization, the feudal system, as stated before, embraced the whole society of the kingdom. Theoretically, the king was the pinnacle of the system. In the political view of the time--so far as a political view existed--he was the over-lord of the realm rather by reason of being its ultimate land-lord, than by being the center of authority and the guardian of law. The greater subordinate lordships of the kingdom--the dukedoms and counties--were held as huge estates, called fiefs, derived originally by grant from the king, subject to the obligation of military service, and to certain acts of homage, acknowledging the dependent relationship. The greater feudatories, or vassals, holding immediately from the king, were lords in their turn of a second order of feudatories, who held lands under them; and they again might divide their territories among vassals of a third degree; for the process of sub-infeudation went on until it reached the cultivator of the soil, who bore the whole social structure of society on his bent back. But the feudal system would have wrought few of the effects which it did if it had involved nothing but land tenure and military service. It became, however, as before intimated, a system of government, and one which inevitably produced a disintegration of society and a destruction of national bonds. A grant of territory generally carried with it almost a grant of sovereignty over the inhabitants of the territory, limited only by certain rights and powers reserved to the king, which he found extreme difficulty in exercising. The system was one "in which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded the class next below him, in which abject slavery formed the lowest and irresponsible tyranny the highest grade, in which private war, private coinage, private prisons, took the place of the imperial institutions of government" (Stubbs). This was the singular system which had its original and special growth among the Franks, in the Middle Ages, and which spread from them, under the generally similar conditions of the age, to other countries, with various degrees of modification and limitation. Its influence was obviously opposed to political unity and social order, and to the development of institutions favorable to the people. But an opposing influence had kept life in one part of society which feudalism was not able to envelope. That was in cities. The cities, as before stated, had been the refuge of a large and perhaps a better part of the Roman-Gallic free population which survived the barbarian conquest. They, in conjunction with the Church, preserved, without doubt, so much of the plant of Roman civilization as escaped destruction. They certainly suffered heavily, and languished for several centuries; but a slow revival of industries and arts went on in them,--trade crept again into its old channels, or found new ones,--and wealth began to be accumulated anew. With the consciousness of wealth came feelings of independence; and such towns were now beginning to acquire the spirit which made them, a little later, important instruments in the weakening and breaking of the feudal system. Rise of the Kingdom of France. During the period between the death of Charlemagne and the settlement of the Normans in the Carlovingian Empire, that Empire had become permanently divided. The final separation had taken place (887) between the kingdom of the East Franks, or Germany, and the kingdom of the West Franks, which presently became France. Between them stretched a region in dispute called Lotharingia, out of which came the duchy of Lorraine. The kingdom of Burgundy (sometimes cut into two) and the kingdom of Italy, had regained a separate existence; and the Empire which Charlemagne had revived was nothing but a name. The last of the Carlovingian emperors was Arnulf, who died in 899. The imperial title was borne afterwards by a number of petty Italian potentates, but lost all imperial significance for two-thirds of a century, until it was restored to some grandeur again and to a lasting influence in history, by another German king. Before this occurred, the Carlovingian race of kings had disappeared from both the Frank kingdoms. During the last hundred years of their reign in the West kingdom, the throne had been disputed with them two or three times by members of a rising family, the Counts of Paris and Orleans, who were also called Dukes of the French, and whose duchy gave its name to the kingdom which they finally made their own. The kings of the old race held their capital at Laon, with little power and a small dominion, until 987, when the last one died. The then Count of Paris and Duke of the French, Hugh, called Capet, became king of the French, by election; Paris became the capital of the kingdom, and the France of modern times had its birth, though very far from its full growth. The royal power had now declined to extreme weakness. The development of feudalism had undermined all central authority, and Hugh Capet as king had scarcely more power than he drew from his own large fief. "At first he was by no means acknowledged in the kingdom; but ... the chief vassals ultimately gave at least a tacit consent to the usurpation, and permitted the royal name to descend undisputed upon his posterity. But this was almost the sole attribute of sovereignty which the first kings of the third dynasty enjoyed. For a long period before and after the accession of that family France has, properly speaking, no national history" (Hallam). The Communes. When the royal power began to gain ascendancy, it seems to have been largely in consequence of a tacitly formed alliance between the kings and the commons or burghers of the towns. The latter, as noted before, were acquiring a spirit of independence, born of increased prosperity, and were converting their guilds or trades unions into crude forms of municipal organization, as "communes" or commons. Sometimes by purchase and sometimes by force, they were ridding themselves of the feudal pretensions which neighboring lords held over them, and were obtaining charters which defined and guaranteed municipal freedom to them. One or two kings of the time happened to be wise enough to give encouragement to this movement towards the enfranchisement of the communes, and it proved to have an important influence in weakening feudalism and strengthening royalty.