Part 2 — Chapter III. (These four articles abrogated by the four articles following them, 118-122.) Article 118. The Federal Constitution may at any time be amended. (continued 15)

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, chapters 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 charta.

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.

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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.'

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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.

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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.

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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.