HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Introduc tion. CHAPTER I. insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth; how, in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid and more durable than that of Alexander. I PURPOSE to write the History of England from the accession of King James the Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between our Sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together the rights of the people and the title of the reigning Nor will it be less my duty faithfully dynasty. I shall relate how the new to record disasters mingled with trisettlement was, during many troubled umphs, and great national crimes and years, successfully defended against follies far more humiliating than any foreign and domestic enemies; how, disaster. It will be seen that even under that settlement, the authority of what we justly account our chief blesslaw and the security of property were ings were not without alloy. It will found to be compatible with a liberty be seen that the system which effectuof discussion and of individual action ally secured our liberties against the never before known; how, from the encroachments of kingly power gave auspicious union of order and freedom, birth to a new class of abuses from sprang a prosperity of which the annals which absolute monarchies are exempt. of human affairs had furnished no ex- It will be seen that, in consequence ample; how our country, from a state partly of unwise interference, and partly of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose of unwise neglect, the increase of wealth to the place of umpire among European and the extension of trade produced, powers; how her opulence and her together with immense good, some evils martial glory grew together; how, by from which poor and rude societies are wise and resolute good faith, was gra- free. It will be seen how, in two imdually established a public credit fruit-portant dependencies of the crown, ful of marvels which to the statesmen wrong was followed by just retribution; of any former age would have seemed how imprudence and obstinacy broke incredible; how a gigantic commerce the ties which bound the North Amegave birth to a maritime power, com- rican colonies to the parent state; how pared with which every other maritime Ireland, cursed by the domination of power, ancient or modern, sinks into race over race, and of religion over VOL, I. B religion, remained indeed a member of | ministration of King James the Second the empire, but a withered and dis- brought to a decisive crisis.* torted member, adding no strength to the body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by all who feared or envied the greatness of England. Britain Romans. Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the greatness which she was destined to at- under the tain. Her inhabitants, when Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, first they became known to the Tyrian the general effect of this chequered nar- mariners, were little superior to the rative will be to excite thankfulness in natives of the Sandwich Islands. She all religious minds, and hope in the was subjugated by the Roman arms; breasts of all patriots. For the history but she received only a faint tincture of our country during the last hundred of Roman arts and letters. Of the and sixty years is eminently the history western provinces which obeyed the of physical, of moral, and of intellec- Cæsars she was the last that was contual improvement. Those who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed to take a morose or despond-probable that the islanders were at any ing view of the present. quered, and the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of Latian porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned among the masters of Latian poetry and eloquence. It is not time generally familiar with the tongue of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity of the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and it is at this day the basis of the French, Spanish, and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not stand its ground against the German. I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour to relate the history of the people as well as the history of the government, to trace the progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe the rise of religious sects and the changes of literary taste, to portray the manners The scanty and superficial civilisaof successive generations, and not to tion which the Britons had derived pass by with neglect even the revolu- from their southern masters was effaced tions which have taken place in dress, by the calamities of the fifth century. furniture, repasts, and public amuse- In the continental kingdoms into which ments. I shall cheerfully bear the re- the Roman empire was then dissolved, proach of having descended below the the conquerors learned much from the dignity of history, if I can succeed in conquered race. In Britain the conplacing before the English of the nine-quered race became as barbarous as the teenth century a true picture of the life conquerors. of their ancestors. The events which I propose to relate form only a single act of a great and eventful drama extending through ages, and must be very imperfectly understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I shall therefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the history of our country from the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over many centuries; but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes of that contest which the ad All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, *In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom thought it necessary to cite authorities: for, in these chapters, I have not detailed events minutely, or used recondite for the most part such that a person tolerably materials; and the facts which I mention are well read in English history, if not already apprised of them, will at least know where to look for evidence of them. In the subsequent chapters I shall carefully indicate the sources of my information. Britain Saxons. Clovis, Alboin, were zealous Christians. | country in which the founder of ConThe followers of Ida and Cer-stantinople had assumed the imperial under the dic, on the other hand, brought purple. Concerning all the other proto their settlements in Britain vinces of the Western Empire we have all the superstitions of the Elbe. continuous information. It is only in While the German princes who reigned Britain that an age of fable completely at Paris, Toledo, Arles, and Ravenna separates two ages of truth. Odoacer listened with reverence to the instruc- and Totila, Euric and Thrasimund, tions of bishops, adored the relics of Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are martyrs, and took part eagerly in dis- historical men and women. But Henputes touching the Nicene theology, gist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were Arthur and Mordred are mythical perstill performing savage rites in the sons, whose very existence may be temples of Thor and Woden. questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus. Saxons to The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those At length the darkness begins to eastern provinces where the ancient break; and the country which Convercivilisation, though slowly fading away had been lost to view as Britain sion of the under the influence of misgovernment, reappears as England. The Christimight still astonish and instruct bar-conversion of the Saxon colo- anity. barians, where the court still exhibited nists to Christianity was the first of the splendour of Diocletian and Con- a long series of salutary revolutions. stantine, where the public buildings It is true that the Church had been were still adorned with the sculptures deeply corrupted both by that superstiof Polycletus and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants, themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read and interpret the master-pieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosporus, objects of a mysterious horror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the Læstrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our island in which, as Procopius had been told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate region the spirits of the departed were ferried over from the land of the Franks at midnight. A strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The speech of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatmen: their weight made the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisible to mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribonian, gravely related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching. the tion and by that philosophy against which she had long contended, and over which she had at last triumphed. She had given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples. Roman policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had contributed to deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublime theology and benevolent morality of her earlier days to elevate many intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were, in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the functions of the civil magistrate would, in our time, be a great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil may, in an age of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by priestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in should be no refuge inaccessible to ignorance, and ruled by mere physical cruelty and licentiousness. In times force, has great reason to rejoice when when statesmen were incapable of a class, of which the influence is intel- forming extensive political combinalectual and moral, rises to ascendency. tions, it was better that the Christian Such a class will doubtless abuse its nations should be roused and united power: but mental power, even when for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre, abused, is still a nobler and better than that they should, one by one, be power than that which consists merely overwhelmed by the Mahometan power. in corporeal strength. We read in our Whatever reproach may, at a later Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when period, have been justly thrown on the at the height of greatness, were smitten indolence and luxury of religious orders, with remorse, who abhorred the plea- it was surely good that, in an age of sures and dignities which they had pur-ignorance and violence, there should be chased by guilt, who abdicated their quiet cloisters and gardens, in which crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while they boasted of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of the world the standard received in the Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet surely a system which, however deformed by superstition, introduced strong moral restraints into communities previously governed only by vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists. The same observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle ages. In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he should never see anything but those squalid cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when life and when female honour were exposed to daily risk from tyrants and marauders, it was better that the preeinct of a shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe, than that there the arts of peace could be safely cul- was to Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth. What the Olympian chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all Christians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. |