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I 
 
Wi. |. <S»0t ^ €o'b (Sinuatbnal Str'us. 
 
 EPOCH PHIMER 
 
 OF 
 
 ENGLISH HISTORY: 
 
 BMrm Ay iktboduvtobt volume to 
 
 <* EP OCHS or ENGLISH BIST OB F.** 
 
 117/4 rtcent Bkoamination Papers set for entrance to 
 High Schools in Ontario, 
 
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 MANDELL CREIGHTON, M.A., 
 
 ItAXM rSI<LOW AXO TUTOB OV UKKTOS COU<BO>| OXTOftP. 
 
 10 TH Edition. Price, 30 cbnts. 
 
 Authorized by the Minister qf Edttcation for use in SchooU 
 
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 W. J. GAGE AND COMPANY, 
 
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CONTENTS. 
 
 aiAPTBR 
 
 I. The Coming of the English 
 
 II. The Coming of the Danes 
 
 III. The Norman Conquest . 
 
 IV. Settlement after the Conquest 
 V. The Crovi>{ and the Barons 
 
 VI. The Great Charter . 
 
 VII. Rise of the Commons 
 
 VIII. Dissensions among the Barcns 
 
 IX. The Tudor Despotism 
 
 X. The Reformation 
 
 XI. Pretensions of the Stuarts 
 
 XII. The Great Rebellion 
 
 XII T. The Revolution . . . 
 
 xrv. Party Government . , 
 
 XV. Rule of the Whig Nobles 
 
 XVI. The Crown against the Whig 
 
 XVII. European War . 
 
 XVIII. Parliamentary Reform . 
 
 XIX. Government by the People , 
 
 Nobles 
 
 PAOK 
 
 I 
 
 5 
 
 za 
 
 «7 
 
 30 
 4a 
 SO 
 
 55 
 
 62 
 
 73 
 8x 
 
 85 
 
 93 
 
 zoa 
 
 X12 
 
 X20 
 
 129 
 »35 
 
This little hook owes its existence to repeated 
 demands for an Introductory Volume to the series 
 of Epochs of English History y in which will be 
 found fuller details of all the subjects mentioned 
 in the following pages. 
 
HISTORY OF ENGLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH. 
 
 t. We know very little about our country, until just 
 before the time of the birth of Christ, when it was visited 
 by the Ronnans, the great conquering people 
 of old times, who spread their arms and their bhuuil 
 laws all along the Mediterranean Sea, and A'°- 43-78. 
 then northward through Gaul, till they reached the shores 
 of the Channel. Their great general, Caius Julius Cxsar, 
 who had conquered Gaul, came over to Britain, B.C 55 
 and 54, and fought against the Britons to prevent them 
 fiom sending any help to the Gauls, who were their kins- 
 folk. In this way the Romans got to know of Britain ; 
 and when Gaul had entirely submitted to them, they sent 
 an army to Britain (a.d. 43), and after some fighting con- 
 quered the island as far north as the Firth of Forth and 
 the Clyde (a.d. 78). 
 
 2. The Britons were a rude people, who lived in 
 huts in small villages, and were often at war, one 
 tribe against another. The Romans, when The Roman 
 they came among them, did as they did n»i«. 78-4os>, 
 everywhere they went— built towns, made roads, kept 
 order and peace throughout the land. To guard the 
 northern boundary of their province of Britain, the 
 £ff. B 
 
 \ 
 
History of England, 
 
 A.D. 120- 
 
 M ^ 
 
 ii 
 
 Roman Emperor Hadrianus built (A.t). 120) a great wall 
 between the Sol way Firth and the mouth of the Tyne to 
 keep back the Caledonians, as the people who dwelt in 
 the north were then called ; parts of this wall still 
 remain and are the greatest memorials of the Roman 
 rule in our land. Besides these things, the Romans were 
 the means of Christianity coming into the land, and the 
 Church spread among the Britons. After a rule of 350 
 years the Romans left Britain. For the German tribes on 
 the borders of the Empire began to grow stronger as they 
 learned from the Romans, and at length attacked the 
 Romans themselves, so that they were forced to withdraw 
 from the outlying provinces and fight for those nearer 
 home. The Britons were gradually left to themselves ; 
 andwhen^the Romans ceased to fight for them (A.D. 409), 
 they found it hard work to keep off the barbarous tribes 
 of the north— the Picts, as the Caledonians were now 
 called, and the Scots, a tribe who had come over from 
 Ireland. At last things went so badly with them that 
 they welcomed the coming among them of a German 
 people, who had been sailing for some time around their 
 shores, and who they hoped would fight for them against 
 the Picts and Scots. This people was called the English, 
 and its home was on the coast of the North Sea, by the 
 mouths of the river Elbe. 
 
 3. There were three tribes of these English — the Jutes, 
 the Angles, and the Saxons. The first who came were 
 English con- tbe Jutes (449), who, when they found that 
 quest of Britain was a pleasant land, brought over 
 
 524. ' their wives and children, and drove out the 
 
 Britons, whom they called Welsh, or strangers. The 
 first setdement of the Jutes was in Kent (451). Soon 
 came the Saxons and set up a kingdom of the South 
 Saxons, or Sassen, in 477, and a kingdom of the West 
 Saxons in 519. A little later (547) came the Angles, who 
 
 ^ 
 
597. 
 
 Thi Coming of the English* 
 
 conquered the land along the east coast, and set up the 
 kingdoms of East Anglia and Nortiiuuiuria. Others 
 advanced inland from the H umber and went into the 
 middle of the land, whence they gradually drove the 
 Welsh to the Severn Valley, and called their land the 
 March or border land. 
 
 4. In this way Britain was conquered by the English, 
 who drove the Britons or Welsh to the west, where 
 they held Devon and Cornwall, Wales, and cu»tom» of 
 Strathclyde, or the country from the Clyde to ^« English. 
 the Mersey. But the English and the Welsh did not mix 
 together, and the English learned from the Welsh none 
 of the ways and customs which the Romans had 
 taught them, but lived according to their own fashions 
 which they brought with them from their own homes. 
 They did not live in towns, as the Romans had taught 
 the Britons to do, but were a farmer people, and lived 
 together in villages, where were the homesteads of a few 
 families. All the freemen had land given them when 
 first they settled in England ; and they lived at home and 
 worked the land, except when the king and his Wise 
 Men called them to go to war. All freemen had land, 
 and those who had no land were slaves, and worked for 
 others. 
 
 5. The English were heathens, and learned nothing 
 about Christianity from the Britons, whom they despised. 
 But there was a wise and good Pope, Gregory ^ 
 
 I., who sent missionaries to England. It is oftheEng- 
 said thlt he did so because he had seen in ^"'J^' 597-^7. 
 Rome some fair-haired boys for sale as slaves, and, 
 marvelling at their beauty, asked who they were. When 
 he was told that they were Angles, he said, * They should 
 be angels instead of Angles.' Hence he thought of the 
 heathen English when he became Pope, and sent a 
 company of monks, headed by one Augustine (597). 
 
 H ii 
 
History of England, 
 
 A.D. 597- 
 
 The men of Kent listened to him and became Christians, 
 and so did the East Saxons and the men of East 
 Anglia. But the mightiest of the English kingdoms in 
 those days was that of Northumberland, and the way in 
 which it received Christianity shows how our forefathers 
 managed their affairs. King Edwin of Northumberland 
 had married a wife from Kent, who brought with her a 
 monk, PauUinus, who preached the gospel to the king 
 and the people. Then the king called together his Wise 
 Men and asked their opinion, and one rose and said : 
 * O king, the life of man seems to me to be as when a 
 sparrow flies into your hall when you sit at meat with 
 your lords. It comes out of the darkness and flies out 
 into it again. So is the life of man : we know not whence 
 it comes nor whither it goes. If this new teacher has 
 aught to tell us, let us listen to him.^ AH agreed to his 
 words. After they had heard the preaching of Paul- 
 linus, the chief priest of the old gods rose and said that 
 he had served his gods faithfully and had profited 
 nothing ; so he rode to the idol's temple and broke it 
 down (627). 
 
 6. After this Christianity spread through the rest of 
 the land; and though some kingdoms went back to 
 •Dtt . r.u heathenism at times, still the gospel pre- 
 conversion, vailed, and the English strove to spread it 
 6a7-7S4- amoHgst Other peoples. English missionaires 
 
 converted the Germans along the Rhine, and helped to 
 set in order the Prankish Church. The English gained 
 much from Christianity, which made them gentler, and 
 taught them to be less cruel in their wars. Moreover, 
 Christianity was a means of uniting thsm ; for in 668 the 
 Pope sent to England a priest of Tarsus, called Theo- 
 dore, who set up two archbishops and bishops to rule 
 the Church, and gave districts for priests. Wh^n the 
 English found themselves thus brought together in 
 
597- 
 
 757. 
 
 The Coming of the Danes, 
 
 5 
 
 religious matters, they were more likely to come together 
 under one rule in other matters, and so form one kingdom 
 instead of many. Again, by becoming Christians and set- 
 ling their Church under the Pope, the English drew nearer 
 to the other nations of Europe. For as the Roman Em- 
 pire had held together under one law the peoples whom 
 Rome conquered, after its fall the Roman Church began 
 to take its place and hold the peoples of Europe together 
 under one faith. The English conquest had separated 
 our land from the rest of Europe, but their conversion 
 brought it back again. The Church also taught the 
 people many things ; for the monks lived together in 
 houses by themselves in wild places, where they tilled 
 the land. Some of them became men of learning, as 
 was Bede, a monk of Jarrow, who wrote a history of the 
 English Church. At the monasteries also was kept a 
 record of the chief things that happened every year, and 
 from these comes the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which tell 
 us about these old times. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE COMING OF THE DANES. 
 
 I. England had been conquered by a number of 
 bands of warriors, who had made separate kingdoms ; but 
 gradually one kingdom became mightier than 
 the others. First Kent was the chief kingdom ; Wessex, 
 but it was small and had to give way before 757-836. 
 Northumberland, which for a time seemed likely to bring 
 the other kingdoms to own its superiority. But the 
 power of Northumberland fell at the end of the 
 seventh century, and after that the kings of the March- 
 land and of Wessex warred against one another, to see 
 
History of England, 
 
 A.D. 757- 
 
 i 
 
 who should be chief. Offa,king of the Marchland (757-96), 
 brought the other kings to look up to him as their lord. 
 He also drove back the Welsh, and built a great dyke 
 between the Dee and the Wye, as the Romans had done 
 before ; the dyke is still called by his name. Moreover, 
 he dealt as an equal with the great king of the Franks, 
 Charles the Great, who was bringing together the peoples 
 of Western Europe as Ofifa was bringing together those 
 of England. But Offa did not succeed ; for after his 
 death the chief power passed to Wessex, where it stayed, 
 and it was under the over-lordship of Wessex that Eng- 
 land at last became one. The king of Wessex who 
 brought this about was Egbert (800-836), who had fled 
 before the power of Offa to the court of Charles the 
 Great, and there had learned many wise ways. He 
 brought all the kings of England and all the kings of 
 Wales up to the Dee to submit to him as lord. 
 
 2. But just as the power of the West Saxon king 
 seemed to have established peace in the land, new enemies 
 
 began to attack it from abroad. These were 
 the Danes, who were near of kin to the 
 English, and now were driven by troubles at home and 
 by the wars of Charles the Great to seek new lands 
 abroad, as the English themselves had done three cen- 
 turies before. The Danes, in their ships, sailed about 
 quickly, took the English by surprise and plundered 
 them. They would sail up rivers and settle in some 
 island or safe place, and then carry off everything 
 round about, and when they were attacked would sail 
 away again. At the end of Egbert's reign they plun- 
 dered the south coasts ; and, as they were heathen, they 
 dealt cruelly with the English. 
 
 3. Egbert beat back the Danes ; but those who came 
 after him were not so strong as he, and the Danes grow 
 bolder and began to make settlements, and then pressed 
 
 The Danes. 
 
^7^. 
 
 The Coming of the Danes, 
 
 on into the middle of the land. It was hard to do 
 much against them : for though England was ^ ... 
 
 It, 11 Danish in- 
 
 under one lord, yet there were many smaller vasions, 
 kings and ealdormen, under whom each part of ^38-878. 
 the country still governed itself, and gathered together 
 its own troops and sent them to the Host of the nation. 
 But it took long to collect these troops, and they could 
 not be kept together when there was nothing certain to be 
 done. Moreover, when there was a weak.king, whom 
 the people did not respect, there was little unity of action 
 among them. When the Danes found out this, they came 
 in greater numbers, and settled in the north and east of 
 England. When the next great king, Alfred, came to the. 
 throne (871), he had hard work in fighting against them ; 
 and at last, in 878, was driven from his kingdom and into 
 a little island, which was called from him Athelney (the 
 Princes' Island), among the marshes of Somersetshire. 
 But the people gathered round him again, and he raised"^ 
 an army and defeated the Danes, so that they made peace 
 with him at Wedmore. By this peace the Danes con- 
 sented to become Christians, and Alfred gave up to them 
 the land north of the Thames and the Roman Road, 
 Watling Street, which went from Dover to Chester. 
 Thus the Danes settled peaceably in England, and now 
 that they had become Christians they mixed with the 
 English people. 
 
 4. After this there was peace for a time, and the king- 
 dom of Wessex again became powerful under Alfred, who 
 was a good and wise king, and made good The great 
 laws for his people. Also he built ships to eSIiuSJ ^^ 
 go against the Danes, and strengthened his 878-979! 
 kingdom, so that the Danes feared him. Moreover, he set 
 up schools and brought learned men to teach his people. 
 He ruled so wisely and well that the kings who came 
 after him were able to make themselves again kings over 
 

 8 
 
 History of England. a.d. 87a- 
 
 I' It 
 
 !'. 
 
 Hii, 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 1 
 
 the wholfe land ; they conquered the Danes, and even the 
 Welsh and the Scots submitted to them as their lords. 
 These were the great kings of the old English days, 
 and under them the land was peaceful and pros- 
 perous. First came Alfred's son, Edward the Elder (901- 
 925), who subdued the Danes as far as the Humber ; the 
 princes of Northumberland, Strathclyde, Wales, and 
 Scotland all * chose him as father and lord,' as the 
 Chronicle says, for they saw how great was his power, and 
 they all needed his help against the Danes. His son 
 Ethelstan (925-940) added Northumberland also to his 
 kingdom ; and Edmund (940-946) did away with the 
 kingdom of Strathclyde and gave it to the king of the 
 Scots to rule, who promised in return to help him in war. 
 Edgar also (959-975) reigned in great glory ; and it is told 
 of him that once, when he was at Chester, eight kings who 
 owned him as their lord rowed him in his boat on the 
 river Dee. In his days lived Dunstan, whom Edgar 
 made Archbishop of Canterbury, and who, by his wis- 
 dom, did much to make these great kings spread their 
 power over the Welsh and the king of the Scots. Dun- 
 stan also ruled the clergy well, and set in order the monks 
 who had begun to live carelessly. By his advice wise 
 and good laws were made for the people by the king and 
 his Wise Men. 
 
 5. Many changes had come over the people since the 
 time that they first settled in the land, and the way in 
 which they were ruled under the great kings 
 of the Eng- was this : The small kingdoms had passed 
 *'*'*• away, and instead of them were shires, over 
 
 each of which was put an ealdorman by the king and 
 his Wise Men ; besides him also was a shire-reeve (sheriff 
 or bailiff of the shire), tn look after the king's dues. Every 
 township managed its own small business ; but for greater 
 
p. S;^ 
 
 979. 
 
 The Coming of the Danes, 
 
 things they sent men to the assembly of the shire, or 
 shire-moot^ over whicli sat the ealdorman, the bishop, and 
 the sheriff. Thus each shire governed itself in a way ; 
 but the laws were made by the king and his council of 
 Wise Men {witenagemot)y in which sat the bishops and 
 ealdormen, and such other wise men as the king sum- 
 moned from among those who served him. Yox the 
 king had become much more powerful in these troubled 
 times, and could keep more followers than other men. 
 It had always been a custom among the English for the 
 great men to have followers (gesiths) who served them. 
 As the king grew great and had much land to give to 
 his followers, it became an honour to be his follower, 
 and men did not think it beneath them to change the 
 name of gesith to that of thancy which means servant. 
 In this way all the great men came to be the king's 
 thanes, and the poorer men put themselves under the 
 thanes and gave them their lands to protect. Thus 
 a change came over the freemen in England, as the 
 fights against the Danes drove them to hold more closely 
 together. But the Danes taught them also to hold fast ' 
 by their freedom and not submit entiiely to the great 
 nobles. 
 
 6. There was need, however, of a strong king to keep 
 the English together and drive back the Danes, who 
 again began to attack England. After the 
 days of Edgar came a king who did not theUnready, 
 know how to rule, Ethelred, who was called 979-ioi6' 
 the Unready, that is, the man without rede or council. 
 When the Danes and the Northmen from Noiway came 
 again to England, Ethelred, instead of fighting against 
 them, raised money from the people and paid them to go 
 away. Of course this only made them come back in 
 greater numbers, and Sweyn, King of Denmark, did 
 
1'^! 
 
 pi 
 
 10 
 
 History of England, a.d. 979- 
 
 much ill tb the English. But instead of fighting against 
 him, Ethelred fought against Malcolm, King of the Scots, 
 and also sent his fleet against the Normans. 
 
 7. These Normans henceforth have much to do 
 with England. They were Northmen who sailed from 
 The Nor- Norway under a leader called Rolf, and 
 "^"*- plundered the coasts of France, and at last 
 settled in the north of the land in 911, in the same 
 way as the Danes had settled in England in Alfred's 
 days. They mfxed with the people whom they found 
 there, and learned their language, and so became like 
 the French people. They were great warriors, and 
 pressed up the river Seine ; but the Counts^ of Paris 
 always drove them back, and it was because they fought 
 so well against the Normans that the Counts of Paris 
 became kings of France in the same way as the kings 
 of Wessex became kings of the English, because they 
 rescued the land from the Danes. 
 
 8. Ethelred soon made peace with the Normans 
 and married Emma, sistei of their duke. The Danes 
 Ethelredand ^^^® ravaging the land, as usual, and 
 the Danes, the King did a wicked deed against them; 
 
 "*^' for on Saint Brice's day, 1002, he caused 
 all the Danes who had stayed in England to be put to 
 death. This made King Sweyn very angry, and he 
 a! tacked England more grievously than before. Ethelred 
 could do little against him ; for he was no warrior, and his 
 chief men did not obey him, but often plotted with the 
 Danes against him, so that all his plans failed, and there 
 was great misery throughout the land. At last, in 1013, 
 Sweyn came with his son Cnut and a great army. 
 First the men of the North took him for their king ; then 
 he compelled the rest of the land to take him also, and 
 Ethelred, with his wife Emma and his two sons, fled to 
 the court of the Norman duke. 
 
979- 
 
 I03i. 
 
 The Coming of the Danes, 
 
 II 
 
 rainst 
 
 9. Early in 1014 Sweyn died, and the Wise Men sent 
 
 for Ethelred ; but the Danes said they would have 
 
 Sweyn's son Cnut for their king. But Ethel- ^ ^ . . 
 „ _,, , 1, iT-j e t. The Danuh 
 
 reds son Edmund, called Ironside, fought conquest. 
 
 bravely against Cnut, so that he went back to »o»3-ioi6. 
 
 Denmark. Ethelred, however, had not long to reign, 
 
 for he died in 1016. Cnut came back to England, and 
 
 he and Edmund fought which should be king. They 
 
 made a peace that they should divide the land between 
 
 them ; but Edmund died soon after, and then the English 
 
 took Cnut for their king. 
 
 10. Thus it came to pass that after all their invasions 
 the Danes at last conquered England ; they did so 
 because the English did not hold together, ^^^^ ,j,j^ 
 and had few men in whom they could trust to »o3S. 
 lead them. Cnut was a great king, and ruled over 
 many lands ; but he lived in England, and ruled it as 
 became an English king. During his reign the land was 
 at peace, and he made good laws and made men obey 
 them. One strange thing he did : he sent to Normandy 
 and asked in marriage for Emma, who had been wife of 
 Ethelred. So Emma came back to England, but left her 
 children by Ethelred in Noiinandy, to be brought up by 
 their uncle. Cnut made some changes in the rule of 
 England, for he saw that it needed to be held more 
 closely together. He divided England into four parts, 
 following the chief of the old kingdoms, Northumberland, 
 East Anglia, Marchland, and Wessex. Wessex he ruled 
 himself for a few years ; but over the others he set earls, 
 and from this time we hear of earls instead of the old 
 ealdormen. Cnut also kept many followers always about 
 him, who bore arms and were brave soldiers, so that he 
 had a small army of his own, besides that which he could 
 gather from the people. So Cnut was a mighty king and 
 ruled England well, and there was peace in his days. 
 
13 
 
 History of England, A.D.1035- 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 ^''!i 
 
 lit! 
 
 ih 
 
 1' * 
 
 THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 
 
 1. On Cnut's 2ath there was a dispute who should be 
 king. Cnut had willed that his son Harold should rule 
 
 in England, and that Uarthacnut, his son 
 Harthacnut. by Emma, should rule in Denmark. But 
 X03S-1042. Emma wished that her son Harthacnut, and 
 not Harold, should rule in England. The mightiest man 
 among the English, Godwin— whom Cnut had made Earl 
 of Wessex in 1020— was of the same mind as Emma, and 
 so the South of England did not at first hold to Harold. 
 But Harold died in 1040, and then Harthacnut was king 
 over the whole land. He sent for his half-brother Edward, 
 the son of Emma and Ethelred, to come to England from 
 Normandy ; ^nd when Harthacnut died suddenly in 1042, 
 Godwin brought it about that men chose Edward as 
 
 2. Edward married Godwin^s daughter, and was at 
 Tirst friendly to Godwin and followed his advice in all 
 Edward the things. But Edward had been brought up 
 Confessor in Normandy, and many Normans came 
 mans, 1042- over to England and urged Edward to do 
 «o52. things in England in the way in which they 
 were done in Normandy Also he put many Normans 
 in bishoprics and high places in the land. The Eng- 
 lish did not like this, but wanted to hold by their old 
 customs, and be ruled by men of their own race. So 
 there were two parties in England, that of the king and 
 his Norman friends, and that of the English, who looked 
 to Godwin as their leader. At last, in 105 1, the ill-feel- 
 ing between the English and Normans led to a quairel 
 between the men of Dover and the followers of Eustace, 
 Count of Boulogne, the king's brother-in-law, who had 
 
to66. 
 
 The Norfttan Conquest 
 
 13 
 
 been to visit him. The men of Dover drove him out of 
 their town. The king was angry at this, and bade God- 
 win punibh them. Godwin refused, and was outlawed. 
 He went to Flanders and his son Harold to Ireland, and 
 there they gathered together ships and men. "When 
 Godwin was away William, Duke of Normandy, came 
 to see Edward, for they were relations, as Edward's 
 mother Emma was the sister of William's grandfather. 
 Edward had no children, and no nearer kin than nephews, 
 who were the children of Edmund Ironside. It is said 
 that Edward, in his anger against Godwin, promised 
 William that he should succeed him as king of the 
 English ; but he had no power to make such promise, for 
 the Wise Men chose the king, though they generally 
 chose the son or near relation of the last king. 
 
 3. Soon Godwin came back, and the English gathered 
 round him, and the Normans fled from the land. Amongst 
 those who fled was Robert, a Norman, who Godwin 
 had been made Archbishop of Canterbury, f^'^jJ^J"* 
 and an Englishman, Stigand, was made arch- mans, 103a, • 
 bishop in his place. Robert complained to the Pope, 
 and men abroad said that it was an unholy thing of the 
 English to set up another in his place. After this the 
 Normans came back no more while Edward lived. 
 
 4. In 1053 Godwin died, and his son Harold was 
 made Earl of Wessex in his stead, and was the mightiest 
 man in England ; another of Godwin's sons, ^ . . , 
 Tostig, was made Earl of Northumberland, sons, 1053- 
 So the race of Godwin was strong, and niled '°^* 
 
 the land. But Duke William of Normandy still thought 
 of Edward's promise that he should be king of England 
 after his death. One day Harold was shipwrecked on 
 the coast of France, and Duke W^illiam got him into his 
 power and made him swear, before he would let him go, 
 that he would help him to be king of England. More- 
 
t4 
 
 History of England. A.n. 1066. 
 
 1 ■ » 
 
 11- 
 
 ill 
 
 ill 
 
 over, there arose a quarrel between Tos^ig and the people 
 of Northumberland, so that they drove him out and set 
 up another earl. The Wise Men judged the quarrel, and 
 outlawed Tostig, who went to Flanders. 
 
 5. Edward, who was called the Confessor because he 
 was so pious, died in 1066, and before he died it is said 
 
 that he repented of his promise to WilLam, 
 made king, and told the Wisc Men to choose Harold 
 *°^' king. So they chose him, but William 
 
 determined to fight against him. Many things helped 
 William, for the Pope was on his side, as he thought the 
 English Church did not listen to him s6 much as it once 
 had done. So the Pope sent William a banner and 
 blessed him, and many folk listened to the Pope. The 
 story also that Harold had broken his oath made men 
 think ill of him. So William was able to gather a large 
 army against him. Moreover, Tostig went to the King 
 of Norway, Harold Hardrada, and asked for help, that 
 he might get back his earldom, and the north king pro- 
 mised to lead an army to England. 
 
 6. So Harold was no sooner made king than he 
 found himself threatened both from the north and 
 
 from the south. The first foes that came 
 
 Fiffht 
 
 against the wcre Harold Hardrada and Tostig, who 
 Danes. landed and defeatei' the men of the north. 
 
 Then Harold, Godwin's son, went against them, and 
 the two armies met at Stamford Bridge. Before the 
 battle Harold rode forth and offered Tostig a third 
 of his kingdom. Then Tostig asked, *What shall 
 be given to Harold of Norway ? ' And Harold said, 
 * Seven feet of English ground, or a foot more, for he is 
 taller than common men.' Tostig answered, * Never shall 
 it be said that Tostig left his friends : we will win the 
 land with our swords or die like men.' Then the fight 
 began, and was long and bloody, but at last the English 
 
 Hi » 
 
 iii 
 
 
Io66l 
 
 77te Norman Conquest 
 
 15 
 
 prevailed and Harold Hardrada and Tostig were killed. 
 Then the rest of the Northmen went back home, and 
 Harold was freed from one danger that beset him. 
 
 7. But four days after the fight at Stamford Bridge 
 William the Norman landed at Pevensey, an4 advanced to 
 Hastings. Harold had to hasten southwards, Battle of 
 and met him at Senlac, near Hastings. There Seniac 
 was fought the great battle which decided the fate of Eng- 
 land. Harold drew up his men carefully on a hill behind 
 a palisade of stakes set in the ground, and ordered them 
 not to pass outside this wall. The battle was begun by a 
 Norman minstrel, Taillefer, who rode towards the English 
 singing a song of the deeds of Charles the Emperor, and 
 he slew two Englishmen before he fell hiraseir. The 
 Normans then rushed upon the English, but could not 
 drive them away from their pales. At last William 
 ordered his men to pretend to flee. When the English 
 saw them flee, they forgot the orders of Harold and pur- 
 sued them. Then the Normans turned and drove them 
 back, and pressed up to the hill-top, where was Harold 
 and his bravest soldiers. Long time they fought, till 
 Harold was wounded in the eye and fell : then the 
 English fled; 
 
 8. The death of Harold left England without anyone 
 to oppose William, for there was no other leader who 
 was strong enough to bring the people 
 together. At first the Wise M en chose for their crowned 
 king Edgar the Atheling, grandson of Edmund ^'"^' '°^* 
 Ironside ; but the great earls of the north, Edwin and 
 Morcar, would not help him. So William took pos- 
 session of Dover, and then marched slowly through Kent, 
 where men submitted to him. When he reached London, 
 Edgar the Atheling and the chief men saw nothing else 
 to do save to take William for their king and lord. So 
 on Christmas Day, 1066, William was crowned king of 
 
i6 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1066. 
 
 'i 
 
 the English ; and the Normans knew so little of their 
 ways that when the archbishop asked, according to the 
 old custom, if they would have William for their king, 
 and the people shouted * Yea, yea ! King William ! * the 
 Normans thought it meant treachery, and set fire to the 
 houses near. 
 
 9. Thus the Normans came into England as the 
 Danes had done before. This Norman conquest brings 
 
 . to an end the first part of English history, 
 
 the Norman which was the time when the folks who were 
 conquest. afterwards to make up the English people 
 were settling in the land. All over Europe the same sort 
 of thing had been going on after the fall of the ^oman 
 Empire. German tribes had been settling one after 
 another, and wave after wave of new settlers kept coming 
 on until nations had got together that were strong enough 
 to hold their own. England took longest in getting itself 
 together, for the English had come in small bodies, and 
 each body of men had settled their own business in the 
 district where they lived. It was good that they did so, 
 for from them we got those ideas oi local self 'government 
 which made the English people fit to govern themselves 
 sooner than any other people. But this spirit of local 
 government prevented the English from holding together 
 enough to drive off their foes. The foreign kings had to 
 teach them how to hold together. Cnut began by divid- 
 ing the kingdom into earldoms ; but these earldoms, after 
 his death, tended to be 4t variance one against another, 
 and the northern earls did not care to help Harold 
 against William. William the Norman and his sons 
 made England one, so that henceforth it drove back its 
 enemies, and no more foreign conquerors settled in it 
 
to66. 
 
 17 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 , SETTLEMENT AFTER THE CONQUEST. 
 
 I. After William the Norman was crowned king of the 
 English, the people gradually submitted to him. All who 
 submitted kept their lands ; but William took wiliiam the 
 the lands of those who had fought against him Conqueror, 
 in the battle of Hastings, whom he looked on as * ^ ^* 
 traitors, and gave them to his Norman followers. William 
 had a very difficult part to play when he became king of 
 the English. He was Duke of Normandy, and owed 
 much to the Norman barons who had fought for him. 
 But he wished to make himself stronger as king of the 
 English than he had been as Duke of Normandy, and he 
 could only do so by using the English against the Nor- 
 mans after the conquest, as he had used the Normans 
 against the English before. He did not, therefore, 
 behave as one who had won a kingdom by battle, but 
 aimed at ruling as the rightful king of the English, and 
 by the help of the English people keeping down the 
 power of his Norman barons. 
 
 2. The Normans had entirely learned the ways of 
 the French folk among whom they had settled. Amongst 
 these folk had grown up a system of society The feudal 
 which rested on the holding of land, and system. 
 called ^'^ feudal system. Every man held his land from 
 a lord, whose man or vassal he became, whom he 
 was bound to follow in war, and who was bound to 
 protect him ; the great lords, or tenants-in-chief, held 
 their lands directly from the king. This was a natural 
 way at first of holding men together, when there was 
 nothing else that could do so. The same sort of system 
 had grown up in England, as we see in the king's thanes ; 
 but it had not gone so far, or been so completely esta- 
 blished, in England as in France. 
 
 E.H. c 
 
z8 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1066- 
 
 i'"i 
 
 3. Williani had seen the evil of this system in France, 
 where the tenants- in-chief paid little heed to the king, but 
 William and ruled their own lands almost as they chose, 
 bisbaroM. and oppressed their vassals. Moreover, 
 their vassals looked upon themselves ajs the men of their 
 lord, and not the king's men. So feudalism, instead of 
 holding men closer together, prevented the nation from 
 forming into one, and set up separate customs and rights 
 in every district. William had no other means of govern- 
 ing England except through the barons in this feudal 
 way. He was bound to reward his Norman followers, 
 and he granted to them all the lands that came to him. 
 As the English rose against him — for they did not like 
 his stern rule — they lost their lands. The Normans often 
 married Englishi heiresses, and in one way or another, 
 gradually, almost all the land in England changed hands, 
 and passed from the English to the Normans. William 
 regarded all land as held in the feudal way. But he 
 wished to check the evils of this system, and therefore 
 kept up the old free institutions of the English — their 
 shire courts and all that had to do with local govern- 
 ment. He made the Norman barons less powerful in 
 England than they were in Normandy; for he let no. 
 man hold much land together, and he made everyone 
 who held land take an oath of obedience to himself, 
 whether he held land directly from him or from some 
 lord. Moreover, William saw the evil of the great earl- 
 doms which Cnut had set up, and which Edward had 
 kept. He made very few earldoms, only on the border 
 lands for defence, but governed the counties by sheriffs, 
 whom he chose himself, and made all barons attend the 
 sheriffs' courts. In this way William set up a state of 
 things which he hoped would make the king strong, and 
 would avoid the evils which he had seen both in England 
 and Normandy. 
 
lo^d. Settlement after the Conquest, 
 
 19 
 
 4. It was not to be expected that William would carry 
 out his plans peacefully, '^he English found many hard- 
 ships from their Norman lords, who were much RWnc» 
 stricter than their former lords had been ; and ^511! 
 
 ninst 
 
 lam, 
 
 though William tried to deal justly, yet, when 1066-1073. 
 he was away in Normandy, those who ruled in his name 
 treated the people harshly. Hence there were risings 
 against William, and the Danes came to help the Eng- 
 lish, but William bribed them to depart. The men 
 of the north were especially dangerous, for the discon- 
 tented English fled into the Lothians and took refuge 
 with the Scottish king, Malcolm. But William was very 
 stem in reducing them to order, and passed the winter 
 of 1069 in th^ north, in which time he laid waste the 
 land and turned it almost into a desert for sixty miles, 
 that his foes might not be able to use it against him. 
 After this the English gradually submitted ; but some, 
 under a brave leader, Here ward, held out in the fen 
 country near Ely, and gave William much trouble before 
 he could subdue them. In 1072 William entered Scot- 
 land, and made Malcolm submit also. 
 
 5. No sooner were the English reduced to obedience 
 than the Norman barons began to rebel against William. 
 They did not like having less power in Eng- 
 land than they had in Normandy; they did barons, 107a- 
 not like to see King William grow so strong ^^^' 
 as to be able to bring them under the laws. At last 
 two of the barons, the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, 
 plotted against William, and tried to get Waltheof, Earl of 
 Nottingham, the last of the English earls, to join them. 
 Though Waltheof did not help them, still, when their 
 revolt was put down, he was put to death as a traitor 
 (1076). Men said that William was glad to rid himself 
 of the last of the great Englishmen. The discontent of 
 the Nonnan barons showed itself in stirring up William's 
 
 ca 
 
t 
 
 ' 20 
 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1076- 
 
 eldest son, Robert, to rebel against his father. Robert 
 claimed that the duchy of Normandy should be given to 
 him, and many of the barons and the King of France 
 helped him. So William seldom had peace in all his 
 dominions. 
 
 6. William was a strong man, who knew how to rule, 
 and made men obey him. His chief adviser was an 
 waiiamand Italian, Lanfranc,who had lived long in Nor- 
 the Church, mandy, and whom William made Archbishop 
 of Canterbury. AH the English bishoprics and abbeys 
 were given to Normans, many of whom were learned 
 and good men, and brought the English Church into 
 greater order. The coming of William put the Church 
 in England in closer union with the Church of Rome, 
 for William had come with the Pope's blessing to reform 
 the Church. Still he would not let any of the rights of 
 the old kings pass into the hands of the Pope, as the 
 Pope had hoped. He meant to keep all the power in 
 his own hands, and would not let any of the clergy make 
 laws for themselves without his consent. In one way, 
 however, he increased the power of the clergy ; he set 
 up law courts for bishops and archdeacons, in which they 
 might judge ecclesiastical cases according to the law 
 of the Church. In former times the bishops had sat 
 with the ealdormen in the courts of the shire, and ques- 
 tions which concerned the Church had been tried there 
 as well as others. At first this change was good, as the 
 law of the Church was milder, and in many things wiser, 
 than the common law ; but in later times this separation 
 of the clergy from other folk did much mischief. 
 
 7. William died while warring against the King of 
 France, and few men mourned for him ; for William, 
 
 though a wise ruler, was hard and stem, and 
 men were afraid of him. The English found 
 his rule harsh, for he made them pay heavy 
 
 William's 
 
 povtm- 
 
 weut. 
 
I 
 
 1093. Settlement after the Conquest, 
 
 2t 
 
 taxes, both those which they had paid to their former kings 
 and those which were due to himself according to the 
 new system by which the king was supreme landlord. 
 That he might know about the land, and how much 
 money and how many soldiers he could raise from it, 
 he sent into each shire officers, who enquired from 
 chosen men from each shire about the state of the 
 land. Thus he had a record which men called the 
 Domesday Book, for they said that it would last till 
 the day of doom, or judgment By such means as this 
 William set up a strong government, in spite of all the 
 difficulties which beset him. He made the power of the 
 king great, and made all men obey it. 
 
 8. When he died his friend Lanfranc crowned his 
 son William, who was called the Red from the colour of 
 his hair. There was no rule in England that 
 the eldest son should succeed his father as the Red, ' 
 king, and William I. had wished that his >o87-"oo. 
 second son, William, should follow him, and not Robert. 
 The Norman barons supported Robert ; but William 
 promised good government to the English, and they 
 and Lanfranc stood by him, so that Robert's cause was 
 unsuccessful. So long as Lanfranc lived things went on 
 well, but when he died, in 1089, William II.'j bad qua- 
 lities showed themselves. He soon had no one to fear, 
 as Robert went on a crusade, and the barons who were 
 on his side lost their lands in England and fled to 
 Normandy. William II. was a strong ruler, like his 
 father, but he had no care for religion and virtue, broke 
 all the promises which he had made to the people, and 
 only strove to get from them all the money he could 
 His chief adviser was Ranulf Flambard, whom he made 
 Bishop of Durham, and by his advice he pushed his 
 feudal powers to the uttermost, especially over the lands 
 of the Church, When a bishop or abbot died he did 
 
2/ 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1093- 
 
 * 
 
 not choose another in his place, but kept the Church 
 lands himself. So after Lanfranc's death there was no 
 archbishop made for foir years, till the king had a severe 
 illness, and, thinking he was going to die, made a holy 
 man, Anselm, archbishop (1093). This Anselm was, 
 like Lanfranc, an Italian who had lived in Normandy, 
 and happened to be in England on a visit. So great 
 was his fame for goodness and learning, that the king 
 was moved to appoint him. But when William II. 
 recovered from his illness, he did not wish to have any- 
 one to check him, so he annoyed Anselm in every way, 
 till he fled from England (1097), for he was a quiet and 
 gentle man, who could not hold his own against the king. 
 When Anselm was gone William II. oppressed his 
 people without any restraint, so that men groaned 
 under his tyranny. 
 
 9. Like his father, William II. was very fond of the 
 chase, and was killed by an arrow while hunting in ihe New 
 
 Forest (i 100). His younger brother, Henry, was 
 charter, ' hunting with him, and rode away at once and 
 "«»• had himself crowned king. Robert was still 
 
 away on the crusade, but Henry was afraid that many 
 barons might be on Robert's side, so he wished at least to 
 gain the English. He promised to undo all the wrong that 
 William II. had done, and he wrote down in a charter 
 his promises to govern according to the old laws. This 
 charter was the first of a long series of such like pro- 
 mises made by English kings, and it was by means of 
 these charters that the English people set up their 
 liberty against the great power of the Crown. It was 
 well for England that the sons of William I. had to win 
 their way to the throne by promises to the people ; 
 otherwise the old liberties might have been set aside and 
 forgotten. 
 
 10. Henry I. had been born in England, and wished 
 
 ft 
 
Iii8. 
 
 The Crown and the Barons, 
 
 23 
 
 to reign as an English king. So he married the daughter 
 of Malcolm of Scotland, and Margaret, sister 
 of Edgar the Atheling, who was of the old and'S'obert, 
 English blood. He punished Flambard, "<»-"o6. 
 brought back Anselm, and gave the Church its old 
 rights. When, in iioi, Robert came back, the English 
 held by Henry I., and the discontented barons supported 
 Robert. In 1 106 Robert was defeated and taken prisoner 
 at Tenchebrai, in Normandy ; but the fighting still lasted 
 against the rebellious barons, who were not reduced to 
 obedience till 1 1 18. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE CROWN AND THE BARONS. 
 
 I. In this Struggle against the barons the English people 
 and the clergy stood by the king. Henry I. saw that 
 England could not be governed through the Henry i.'s 
 barons, and set to work to form a special ment"iio7- 
 class of ministers who would owe everything "3S- 
 to the king, and would carry out a system of administra- 
 tion under him. So he raised up a number of new 
 families, who held offices under the Crown, and were not 
 too strong to be brought to justice if they did wrong. 
 His chief adviser in all his plans was a poor Norman 
 priest, Roger, whom the king made Bishop of Salisbury. 
 Roger set in order all the machinery of government, 
 such as the King's Court, in which the king and the 
 officers of his household settled all the matters which 
 were too great for the shire courts to settle. This court 
 of the king still remains as the Privy Council, and from 
 
ri: i 
 
 !*■■ 
 
 t 
 
 r 
 
 f\\ 
 
 24 
 
 History of England, 
 
 A.D. 1 11^ 
 
 it sprung the law courts at Westminster. Roger set in 
 order also the king's revenue, and established the Court 
 of Exchequer ; he sent the Barons of the Exchequer on 
 journeys through the land, to decide disputes about the 
 king's revenue. These barons met the men of the shire 
 in the shire court, and in this way a great step was taken 
 towards the state of things that made Parliament pos- 
 sible. For the men of the shire could give their advice 
 or make their complaints to the king's officers, and this 
 was the beginning of representatives ^ or chosen men, from 
 the shires and towns having a share in the government 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 2. Henry kept order throughout the land, yet men 
 feared rather than loved him, for, like his father, he was a 
 
 hard man. The only man who withstood 
 and"S!e ' him was Anselm, who claimed for the Church 
 Church. greater freedom than the king could grant ; 
 
 for he claimed that the clergy should not be invested by 
 a layman with the lands of their churches. Both Auselm 
 and the king at last gave way a little ; but this struggle 
 was the first that the clergy carried on against the king, 
 and for the next hundred years the clergy are the only class 
 that could stand against the excessive power of the king. 
 
 3. Henry hoped that he had set up a strong govern- 
 ment for his son to carry out ; but his only son, William, 
 
 was drowned on his way home from Nor- 
 
 Stephen and ,. tt i-j a \.^ 
 
 theWons, maudy, m 11 20. Henry had a daughter, 
 1135-1139. Matilda, who had been married to the 
 Emperor Henry V., and afterwards to Geoflfrey, Count 
 of Anjou. The king wished liiat Matilda should succeed 
 him, and made all the barons and clergy take an oath to 
 be faithful to her. But when Henry I. died in 1 135, the 
 barons were unwilling to have a woman for their ruler, and 
 the Normans did not like the Angevins, or men of Anjou. 
 So they took as their king Stephen, Count of Boulogne, 
 
1154. 
 
 The Crown and tJie Barons, 
 
 ^i 
 
 a son of Henry's sister, Adela. Stephen made good 
 promises, but he was nothing more than a good-natured 
 soldier, and did not know how to rule. He let go all the 
 wise measures of* Henry I. and allowed the barons to 
 do as they liked. Then it was that the English folk 
 felt what it was to be under the power of feudal lords. 
 Everywhere the barons built castles —more than i,ioo 
 were built altogether — and from these castles they plun- 
 dered the people at their pleasure. Stephen was foolish, 
 and quarrelled with Bishop Roger of Salisbury, and drove 
 him from his office. Then the disorders of the land 
 became greater ; the clergy went against the king. 
 Matilda came to England, and in 1139 civil war began. 
 
 4. The barons did not care who they fought for, but 
 only wished to gain power for themselves ; and the misery 
 of the people became so great that we are q^^^ ^^^ 
 told *men said openly that Christ slept and "39-»i53- 
 his saints.' Matilda and Stephen were alike helpless to 
 mend matters ; but at last Matilda's son, Henry, made 
 peace with Stephen at Wallingford, in 11 53, on condition 
 that Stephen should rule as long as he lived, and then 
 Henry should succeed him. Next year Stephen died, 
 and Henr>' U. was welcomed with delight as one who was 
 strong enough to bring back order and again set up law. 
 The reign of Stephen had shown' the miseries which 
 the feudal system, if left unchecked, would bring upon the 
 people, and men were ready to help the new kirg not 
 only to set up the old»che"ks upon the barons which Wil- 
 liam I. and Henry I. had set up, but also to add new ones. 
 
 5. Wiien Henry II. became king of England he 
 already ruled over wide lands, for from his mother he 
 inherited Normandy, from his father Anjou, tt » ' 
 and he had married Eleanor, the heiress of reforms, 
 the great duchy of Guienne. He w^ a man "54-"6a' 
 made to rule, for he was always busy, and was very 
 
I' 
 
 26 
 
 History of England. 
 
 A.D. 1154. 
 
 Ill 
 
 III 
 
 liii 
 
 
 It 
 
 ■f'il' 
 
 resolute in all that he undertook. He was resolved to 
 govern England as an Englisli king, and lost no time in 
 setting right the abuses of Stephen's reign. The un- 
 lawful castles of the barons were pulled down ; the foreign 
 soldiers whom Stephen had brought into the land were 
 driven out ; the barons were compelled to give back the 
 Crown lands which Stephen and Matilda had granted 
 them. The law courts were again set at work, sheriffs 
 were put to govern the counties, and Henry II. set 
 himself to amend the laws and have them properly ad- 
 ministered. For the first ten years all went well with 
 Henry II. ; then he became engaged in a quarrel with 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury, which brought him much 
 evil. 
 
 6. This archbishop was Thomas Becket, who had 
 been Henry's friend and counsellor, and whom Henry 
 Henry I r. made archbishop that he might help him in 
 Beclcef°'"^* carrying out his reforms in Church matters. 
 1x63-1170. But Becket, when he became archbishop, 
 thought that he ought to serve the Church more than 
 the king, and Henry II. became very angry when he 
 found out this. He wished to simplify the law, and to do 
 away with many abuses that had arisen from the eccle- 
 siastical courts which William I. had set up to try the 
 clergy. He wished tj have the clergy tried before the 
 king's courts, that so they might be punished, like other 
 men, for their offences. Thomas at first agreed, when all 
 the other bishops did, but afterwards refused to consent 
 to this change. Then the king summoned him before a 
 great council, held .?t Northampton, but Thomas refused 
 
 made against him, and said he 
 
 by the Pope. So great was the 
 
 that Thomas fled in disguise to 
 
 the Pope to help him. But the 
 
 K 
 
 r<i' 
 
 to answer t< 
 could only 
 king's angev 
 France, and caiied 
 
 ■.-r'\- 
 
 Pope did not dare to oppose so powerful a king as 
 
J 173. 
 
 The Croivn and the Barons. 
 
 27 
 
 Henry II., and for six- years Becket remained in exile. 
 But Henry II. had many enemies in his large dominions, 
 who plucked up courage whc.i they saw the king in 
 difficulties ; so at last he judged it wise to make peace 
 with Thomas and let him return to England. The 
 archbishop had grown sterner in his exile, and at once, 
 on landing in England, excommunicated the bishops who 
 had gone most against him. When Henry II., who was 
 in Normandy, heard of this, he burst into a furious 
 passion, and exclaimed, * Will none of my cowardly fol- 
 lowers rid me from this insolent priest } ' Four knights 
 took the king's words to heart ; they hastened to Canter- 
 bury, urged the archbishop to obey the king, and when 
 he refused they returned with arms and slew him in 
 the cathedral itself, where he had gone for refuge 
 (1170). 
 
 7. The news of this murder filled men with horror, 
 and helped Henry II.'s enemies. Already the quarrel 
 with the archbishop had encouraged the Risings 
 barons to raise their heads. Henry II. had jfeiJ^'n., 
 had his son Henry crowned, to make it clear 1170-1173. 
 that he was to succeed in England, however his other 
 lands might be divided. The barons persuaded the 
 young Henry to rebel against his father; the King of 
 France invaded Normandy, and the King of Scotland 
 marched into England (1173). Henry II. was in great 
 danger ; but he made peace with the Church, did penance 
 at the tomb of the murdered Thomas, and called the 
 people to his aid. The people had learned from 
 Stephen's reign to trust the king rather than the barons. 
 The King of Scots, William the Lion, was taken prisoner 
 at Alnwick, the rebellious barons were defeated, and 
 Henry's sons were driven to submit. The king became 
 more powerful than before. 
 
 8. Just after Becket's death, Henry made an expedi- 
 
28 
 
 History of Eni^luud. 
 
 A.n. 1171- 
 
 1'^ 
 
 % 
 
 tion to, IrclaiKJ, and at this time the connexion Ijctwccn 
 England and Ireland began. The people of 
 
 Conquest of , , , , . . , /• ,1 
 
 Ireland. Ireland were the same kmd of people as the 
 
 «»7»- Britons, and in early times Ireland had been 
 
 flourishing ; but the Northmen laid it waste, and it hal 
 become barbarous. The land was divided, and thcrn 
 were many small kings, who strove ngainst one another 
 for mastery. Their struggles led one of them to seeV help 
 from England, and the Karl of Pembroke especially had 
 warred in Ireland and had bec^^me very powerful. 
 Already Henry II. had thought of conquering Ire'and, 
 and had got the Pope to approve of his doing so, on the 
 grou d that he was going to give order and peace. So 
 in 1171 Henry II. went over and took possession of tiie 
 lands which had been won ; but he soon went away, and 
 the island was never wholly conquered. The chiefs sub- 
 mitted to Henry II., but they kept their old laws and 
 customs, and the English really held only the country 
 along the east coast. English adventurers conquered as 
 much country as they could, and all the evils of feudal- 
 ism, which it had taken so much trouble to put down in 
 England, flourished unchecked in Ireland. The Irish 
 were never brought into entire submission, and the 
 English barons grew lawless, and often took the Irish 
 laws and customs. For a long time Ireland was little 
 cared for by the English kings, and was a scene of con- 
 tinual war and disorder. 
 
 9. In England Henry II. did much to make the 
 government better and stron^-er. He made the justices 
 Jlenry H.'s of the King's Council sherifts in the counties, 
 government, and SO lessened the power of the barons ; he 
 sent round itinerant justices to try wrong-doers, and 
 made changes in the law, by which twelve chosen rien, 
 called jurors, were to bear witness in trials. At first these 
 men were chosen because thev ^^^z likely to know the 
 

 1199. 
 
 The Crown and the Barous, 
 
 29 
 
 facts ; in time they came to summon others who knew 
 better than themselves, and so the jury which tries 
 prisoners at the present day sprung up. Henry II, also 
 caused all men to carry arms according to their pcftses- 
 sions, that they might fight in England, and from this 
 comes our militia. In every way Henry II. strengthened 
 the old customs, and brought the local government of the 
 shire into closer connexion with the King's Council, and 
 thus prepared the way for Parliament. 
 
 10. The last years of Hmry II. were made bitter by 
 the rebellion of his sons and of his wife Eleanor, who 
 were helped by the King of France ; and at Richard I., 
 last he died of a broken heart (1189), at "89-1199. 
 learning that his favourite son, John, had also turned 
 against him. His son Richard I., who succeeded him, 
 was nothing but a soldier, whose one desire was to go for 
 adventures to the Crusades. He only looked on England 
 as a pla? e from which money could be raised, and went 
 off to the Holy Land, where he wrought brave deeds that 
 became famous. Henry II. had trained up a class of wise 
 ministers, wno ruled England during the king's absence ; 
 and th< ugh John plotted against his brother he did not 
 succeed. On his way back from the Holy Land, Richard 
 I. was shipwrecked, and was made prisoner by the Duke 
 of Austria. England was heavily taxed to pay his ransom ; 
 but when Richard returned, he only wanted more money 
 to carry on war against ttie King of France. He was 
 killed by a chance shot of an arrow while besieging the 
 little castle of Chaluz, which he believed contained 
 some money. Richard did little for England ; but the 
 •Crusades took away many barons to the Holy Land, and 
 their need of money made them sell many of their pos- 
 sessions, and so lessened their power. The king's 
 absence also showed the strength of the system of 
 government which Henry II. had established, and made 
 
r 
 
 30 
 
 History of England, 
 
 A.D. 1199- 
 
 wen ft6l more ccnfidcnce in themselves. Towns had 
 been growing in power and number, and Henry II. had 
 given many charters to them, which allowed (hem to 
 appoint their own magistrates and collect their own 
 taxes. Richard I. and the barons who followed him to 
 the Crusade had sold many such charters as a means of 
 raising money. In every way the institutions of Henry 
 II. hid strengthened the people as much as they had put 
 down the barons. It only needed the reign of another 
 king, who tried to follow in the steps of William II., to 
 unite people and barons against the tyranny of the 
 Crown. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 
 
 
 THE GREAT CHARTER. 
 
 I. When John succeeded his brother, it is said that 
 the archbishop, Hubert Walter, at the coronation, asked 
 John's low the people if they would have John for their 
 ^j^Jjy'" king, and when they answered * Yes,' adjured 
 
 1199-1204. John to be true to his coronation oath. The 
 archbishop seems to have known how faithless John 
 was, and tried to give him a lesson. But it availed 
 nothing, and John's reign was nothing but disaster and 
 tyranny. First of all he lost Normandy; for the King of 
 France was now growing stronger against his vassals, 
 and wishing to weaken John, s'irred up Arthur, son of 
 John's elder brother, Geoffrey, to claim Normandy. 
 Arthur was taken prisoner by John, who is said to have 
 drowned him in the Seine (1203). Then the King of 
 France summoned him to answer for his deed, and when 
 John refused, he s.nt his troops into Normandy. The 
 
laij. 
 
 The Great Charter 
 
 31 
 
 Norman barons gradually left John's side, for they did 
 not like being ruled by one of the house of Anjou. John 
 could do nothing, and in 1204 Normandy and Anjou 
 were both lost. This loss of Normandy was most use- 
 ful for England, as it cut off the English barons from 
 Normandy and made them altogether Englishmen ; also 
 it cut off the kiag from foreign possessions, and left him to 
 settle matters with the English people only. 
 
 2. Jxhri was a violent, cruel, and crafty man, but he 
 had no real wisdom. In 1205 his wi&ebt adviser. Arch- 
 bishop Hubert Walter, died, and there was john't 
 
 a quarrel who should succetd him as arch- ^w PopT**** 
 bishop. John chose one man, the monks of 1205-1313. 
 Canterbury another ; both parties appealed to the Pope, 
 who caused the monks of Canterbury to elect a third, 
 Stephen Langton, a wise and learned Englishman, who 
 was living in Rome. John refused to let Langton come 
 into England, and the quarrel with the Pope lasted some 
 years. At last, in 1208, the Pope put the kingdom under 
 an interdict — that is, he forbade the clergy to perfoi-m 
 any of the services of the Church. John, in anger, 
 seized the lands of the clergy who obeyed it, and many 
 of the bishops fled from tl^e kingdom. In 121 1 the Pope 
 threatened to declare that John's subjects need no more 
 obey him, and to call on Philip, King of France, to lead a 
 crusade ag^tinst the unchristian king. Then John become 
 afraid, for he had oppressed the barons and the people, 
 and he knew that few would be on his side. He passed at 
 once from haughtiness to entire submission to the Pope, 
 and in 1 2 1 3 agreed to take Langton as archbishop, and pay 
 back the money which he had taken from the Church. 
 Moreover, to be safe from Philip of France, he gave up 
 his crown to the Pope, and took it back again as a vassal 
 of the Pope, to whom he promised to pay tribute. 
 
 3. The people were indignant at this ; for though they 
 
nr 
 
 V ' 
 
 32 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1213- 
 
 I \, 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 li'i 
 
 1 • 
 
 loved the Church, yet they did not wish to see their king 
 The struggle humble himself before a foreign power like 
 Chjupter ^^® Pope. Discontent grew against the king ; 
 
 1313-iaiS' and when he wished to lead an army against 
 the King of France, the barons refused to go, for they 
 said that they were not bound to serve out of England. 
 To try and settle matters Archbishop • Langton caused 
 a meeting of the Great Council to be held at St. Albans 
 in 12 13, to which, besides the b irons, went chosen men 
 from the townships on the king's domain. This is the 
 first instance of representatives attending a national 
 council. The government of Henry II. had made it 
 seem quite natural that men should be called from 
 different parts of the land to give information when it 
 was needed by the Council. Many things were said in this 
 and other meetings of the Council about the old laws of 
 Henry I., and the need there was that John should 
 promise to obey them. In 12 14 John went abroad, and 
 hoped that a great victory over the French would again 
 make him powerful. He had brought about a great con- 
 federacy of Germany, Flanders, and England, which he 
 hoped would crush France ; but at the battle of Bouvines 
 Philip defeated the combine<j army of these three powers. 
 John had to come back and meet his barons. During his 
 absence the barons and clergy had held many meetings 
 under the guidance of the good Archbishop Langton, and 
 had drawn out a list of the things they wanted to have 
 set right, and had put them in the form of a charter, such 
 as Henry I. had given. The barons, clergy, and people 
 were alike against John, and he was obliged to submit. 
 At Runnymede, a meadow by the Thames, near Windsor, 
 John met his barons, and signed the Great Charter (June 
 1215). There was nothing very new in this charter; but 
 its importance lay in the fact rhat clergy, barons, and 
 j)eople were all united to defend their liberties. It was 
 
1217. 
 
 The Great Charter, 
 
 33 
 
 a treaty between the king and his people ; and it was for 
 the good of all classes, for it bound the br^rons to treat 
 those under them as it bound the king to tiiMt the barons. 
 
 4. The Charter laid down that the Church should be 
 free, and that the king and all lords were not to go 
 beyond their feudal rights towards their vas- The Great 
 sals. The king was not to raise money Charter. 
 except by the consent of the Great Council, to which the 
 greater barons were to be summoned by name, the lesser 
 by means of a writ sent to the sheriffs of each shire. 
 Justice was to be properly administered, and no freeman 
 was to be punished except by judgment of his peers, or 
 equals, or by thfe law of the land. Twenty- five barons were 
 to be chosen by the rest to see that this Charter was 
 rerried out ; if not, they were to make war against the 
 king. 
 
 5. John signed this Cliarter, but never meant to 
 keep it. The Pope helped John, now that he was his 
 vassal, and set aside the Charter. John hired 
 
 troops from abroad, and war began. The and France, 
 barons were worsted, and wishing for help, "»s-"i7- 
 offered the crown to Lewis, son of King Philip of France. 
 Lewis and the \ arons were too strong for John at first ; 
 but his death, in 12 16, saved England from the chance of 
 having another foreign king. John left a son, Henry, who 
 vas but nine years old. Those who acted for him were 
 wise enough to accept the Great Charter, with a few alter- 
 ations. The papal legate crowned Henry IIL, and Wil- 
 liam Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, a wise old statesman in 
 whom men trusted, was made * ruler of the king and 
 kingdom.* The side of Henry HL was soon felt to be 
 the national side ; the barons and Lewis quarrelled. 
 Lewis' troops, which were besieging Lincoln Castle, were 
 defeated, and the ships which were t inging fresh troops 
 from France were overcome in a sea battle by Hubert 
 
\4 
 
 
 •li 
 
 i: 'i !! 
 
 I! i 
 
 ? 
 
 H 
 
 History of England. a.i>. 1217- 
 
 !!i 
 
 de Burgh. So, in 1217, Lewis left England, and men 
 settled down contented with the Charter they had won. 
 
 6. The. Charter had been won, but it was not so easy 
 to get it observed. William Marshall lived just long 
 
 enough to bring back peace to the land ; he 
 
 Hubert de ,. , . j ,, ^ . • j .u 
 
 Burgh, died in 1 2 19; and the man who carried on the 
 
 1817-1232. government was Hubert de Mtirgh, an official 
 who had been trained under Henry II. Hubert set him- 
 self to rid the land of the foreign adventurers whom John 
 '. had brought to England, and to free the government from 
 papal interference. By strictness and wise measures he 
 won back England for the English. But men did not love 
 him ; and when Henry III. was old enough to manage 
 affairs himself, he dismissed Hubert de Burgh from power. 
 
 7. Henry III. was quite unfit to govern ; though net 
 cruel or tyrannical, he was weak, and did not know his 
 Henry ill.'s Own mind. He was also decritful and suspi- 
 !Ii-ii°\t'!!l cious, so that no one could trust him. He 
 
 ment, 1233- ' 
 
 «358. was fond of power, and liked to make great 
 
 plans which he had no means of carrying out. From 
 1234 to 1258 Henry III. was his own chief minister, and 
 go-^erned the land very ill : he greatly angered the barons, 
 for he seldom asked their advice, but brought foreign 
 favourites into England, relations of his wife or of his 
 mother, who enriched themselves at the expense of the 
 English. Moreover, Henry III. was very pious ; and as 
 the Popes at this time were carrying on wars for which 
 they needed money, Henry III. allowed them to tax the 
 EngHsh' clergy as they pleased, and to put Italian priests 
 into English benefices. Men endured this for a long 
 time, for Henry III. made many promises, and broke 
 them when he could. At last the barons resolved to rid 
 the land of foreign favourites and papal tax-gatherers. 
 Their great leader was Simon de Montfort, Earl of 
 Leicester, who had himself come to England as a forei^jn 
 
 IM 
 
1265* 
 
 The Great Charter. 
 
 35 
 
 adventurer in 1232, and had married the king's sister 
 Eleanor. The king soon quarrelled with him, and Simon 
 more and more opposed his brother-in-law. 
 
 8. At last, in 1258, t4ie barons resolved to put matters 
 right ; they compelled the kingto give twenty-four barons 
 the power to reform the government. Half of 
 these twenty-four were chosen by the king, half war, 1258- 
 by the barons in Parliament, for by this name "'^7- 
 the National Council began at this time to be called. Par- 
 liament met at Oxford, and Henry III. was obliged to 
 dgree to its decrees, which were called the * Provisions of 
 Oxford.' The barons lost no time in taking away the 
 power of the foreign fav(Jurites, most of whom fled from 
 the land. But the barons could not make many real 
 reforms ; they began to quarrel amongst themselves. 
 The Pope released Henry HI. from his oath to keep the 
 provisions, and in 1261 he began to govern again for him- 
 self. The barons still opposed him, and an attempt was 
 made to settle their differences by an appeal to the King 
 of France, Lewis IX., who v»as so holy a man that he is 
 called St. Lewis. Lewis decided in favour of Henry III., 
 and war broke out. In 1264 Simon de Montfort defeated 
 and captured the king at Lewes, and then set himself to 
 govern the land in the king's name. He wished to 
 gevern well, and saw the great use of Parliament to 
 strengthen his government. The custom, which had 
 grown up under John, of summoning to the National 
 Council, besides the barons, men from each shire, had 
 been carried out more and more. Simon de Montfort 
 went further, and summoned also to Parliament, in 1265, 
 representatives from the towns ; so this Parliament was 
 the first that had in it what a Parliament of the present 
 day has. But though Simon might try to found his 
 power on Parliament, it was difficult for him to govern in 
 the king's name while keeping the king a prisoner in his 
 
 
 \ 
 
 D 3 
 
36 
 
 History of Efigland, a.d. 1265- 
 
 hands. Some of the barons took offence at him. Henry 
 III.'s son, Edward, escaped, and raised an army, with 
 which he surprised Simon on his way back from Wales, 
 at Evesham. Simon was slain in the battle, August 
 1265. Still the war went on, until fair terms were 
 granted. Henry III. had conquered because the people 
 did not like to see the king set aside altogether ; but 
 Henry HI. and his son knew that their victory had been 
 hardly won, and must be used with moderation. Henry 
 III. soon died, in 1272, and his son, Edward I., showed 
 how fully he had learned the lessons which Simon de 
 Montfort had taught. 
 
 9. Edward I. is one of thft greatest of the English 
 kings. He was wise enough to see what were the needs 
 
 of his people ; and though he liked to keep 
 the barons' thci power in his own hands, when once he 
 *^"* gave way he was honest in fulfilling his pro- 
 
 mises. During the reign of Henry III. knowledge had 
 been spreading in England, and the people knew better 
 what they wanted their king to do. This increase of 
 knowledge was greatly due to the spread of the Fran- 
 ciscans, or followers of a holy man, St. Francis of Assisi, 
 a little town in Central Italy. Francis had taught the 
 power and the duty of Christian love, and his followers 
 rapidly spread and worked zealously among the people. 
 Also they became teachers at the Universities, especially 
 at Oxford, and learning gradually increased. The barons' 
 war had made people think and talk about the way of 
 carrying on government more than they had done before. 
 The great merit of Edward I. was that he saw this, and 
 did his best to improve the laws, to strengthen, the 
 government, and, above all, to make Parli.iment more fit 
 to share in governing. 
 
 10. Edivard I. showed himself also to be a national 
 king in his desire to bring tlie whole of the island under 
 
1 'U 
 
 I 
 
 1282. 
 
 TAe Great Charter. 
 
 37 
 
 his sway. Wales, ^^hich had never been conquered 
 by the English, had since the Norman conquest been 
 gradually growing less before the power of -. . 
 the barons on the Marches. South Wales had and Wales, 
 gradually been conquered, and the Prince of "72-1282. 
 Wales had been driven to do homage to the English 
 king. When Edward I. was crowned, Llewellyn, the 
 Prince of Wales, refused to do him homage. In 1277 
 Edward made war on Wales and drove Llewellyn to 
 submit; but in 1282 Llewellyn and his brother David 
 again rose in rebellion. This time Edward was deter- 
 mined to bring the war to an end. Llewellyn was killed 
 in battle ; David was taken prisoner, brought to trial 
 before a Parliament at Shrewsbury, and condemned to 
 de<ath as a traitor. Edward set Wales in order, divided 
 it into shires, like England, and brought in many of the 
 English laws. He did not, however, join it to England, 
 but gave to his eldest son the title of Prince of Wales, 
 which since then has been the title of the king's eldest son. 
 Wales remained separate from England till Henry VI IL, in 
 1 536, gave it the right of sending members to Parliament. 
 1 1. After conquering Wales, Edward I. found himself 
 soon led on to try and conquer Scotland also. It was 
 uncertain whether, or how far, the kings of England and 
 Scotland were subject to the kings of Eng- Scotland. 
 land. The old land of the Scots was that north of the 
 Clyde and the Forth ; but in 945 the English king, 
 Edmund, had granted Strathclyde to the King of the 
 Scots, and soon after that Lothian was also granted. 
 After the coming of the Normans into England, many 
 of the English fled into Lothian, and their influence was 
 powerful with the Scottish king. Gradually the land 
 south of the Clyde and the Forth became the most 
 important part of the dominions of the Scottish king. 
 Thither went many Norman barons, who slowly displaced 
 
38 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1282- 
 
 » 
 
 the old nobles, and brought in their own feudal customs. 
 Thus Scotland had been affected by the Norman con- 
 quest almost ^s much as England, and had been drawn 
 closer to England in consequence. Many men held lands 
 both under the English and the Scottish king ; the 
 Scottish kings also frequently held English baronies. 
 The Scottish kings had done homage to various English 
 kings, and at the coronation of Edward I., Alexander III., 
 King of Scotland, paid him homage, and also again in 
 1278. But the question what this homage really meant 
 had never yet been raised, till it happened that Edward I. 
 was driven to raise it. 
 
 12. Alexander III., King of Scotland, di«^d in 1286, 
 leaving only a young grand- daughter, Margaret, whose 
 _. „ . ^ mother had been married to Eric, King of 
 
 The Scottish _. ^, . ^ ,. . , . \r, , i 
 
 succession, Norway. Thmgs were disturbed m Scotland, 
 1986-1293. ^^^ jjjg guardians of the kingdom turned to 
 Edward I. for advice. A treaty was made in 1290, by 
 which it was agreed that Margaret was to be married to 
 Edward I.'s son ; but this came to nothing by Margaret's 
 death at 0»-I ney, on her way to Scotland, a few months 
 later. Then many of the barons claimed the crown, and 
 as it was difficult to settle whose claim was the best. 
 Edward I. was asked to decide the matter. Edv/ard de- 
 manded that he should first be recognised as feudal lord 
 of Scotland, and to this the Scottish nobles agreed. Then 
 Edward gathered all the evidence he could, and sum- 
 moned his barons to help him to decide. Out of thirteen 
 claimants he adjudged the crown to John Baliol, as being 
 nearest of kin by descent to Alexander III. Baliol did 
 homage to Edward, and was crowned king in 1292. But 
 troubles soon arose, for some of the Scots called on 
 Edward I., as feudal lord of Scotland, to listen to 
 appeals from the Scottish law courts. Edward was by 
 nature a lawyer, and himself recognised, as Duke of 
 
 1: 
 
 ii 
 
1295- 
 
 IVie Great CJiarter^ 
 
 39 
 
 Aquitaine, tHe feudal power of the King of France. So 
 be exercised the same power over Scotland, and sum- 
 moned Baliol to answer appeals against him in the * ourt 
 at Westminster. This was galling to Baliol, who refused 
 to answer for his doings to a for« ign king. 
 
 13. At the same time that this difficulty arose with Scot- 
 land, Edward I. was drawn into a war with France. The 
 English sailors and the Norman sailors quar- Quarrel with 
 relied in the Channel, and in 1 293 the English France, 1293. 
 won a battle at sea, and avenged themselves on the 
 French. On this the French king, Philip, called Ed- 
 ward I. to account, because some Gascon sailors had 
 fought with the English, and Edward, as lord of Gascony, 
 was responsible to the King of France. To avoid war, 
 Edward I. sent his brother Edmund to settle matters. 
 Edmund was induced to give up Gascony for forty days 
 to satisfy the French king's honour ; but at the end of 
 that time Gascony was not given back, and war was 
 unavoidable. 
 
 14. To meet these difficulties Edward I. needed 
 money. He trusted his people, and believed rightly 
 that they would give money most freely if he Parliament 
 dealt with them openly. So he called together of "9S. 
 
 in 1295 a Parliament, which was to represent all the 
 classes, or estates, of the realm. This Parliament of 1295 
 was a model Parliament, and was founded on the same 
 ideas as our Parliament of the present day. In calling it 
 together, Edward I. "laid down the great principle on 
 which Parliament rests, that * what touches all should be 
 approved by all.' He»called to it the various classes of his 
 subjects — the greater clergy and barons, representatives 
 of the lesser clergy, two knights elected by every shire, and 
 two burghers elected by every borough. Up to this time 
 Parliament had been the council of the king's feudal 
 tenants, to which men had been called from the shire 
 
 f - 
 
40 
 
 History of England, A.n. 1295- 
 
 courts and th'? boroughs. Edward I. made Parliament 
 iimch more than this ; he made it a naiional council, in 
 which the greater clergy and barons sat ihemselves, and 
 the other estates of the realm sat by representatives. In 
 this way it may be said that Edward I. first clearly set 
 forth the great constitution.1l principles on which our 
 parliamentary government was ei;fablished. Things had 
 tended gradually ^to bring this about, but the wisdom 
 and patriotism of Edward I. first gave the system a 
 clear and definite shape. 
 
 15. The war with France v;?*:. ' ^t very successful, 
 and at last matters were settiet! 13 ' by the Pope's 
 
 mediation, and Gascony wis given back to 
 Scotland, England. But this \v:Lr led to an alliance 
 "^* between France and Scoti '>d, vLirh lasted 
 
 till the time of the Reformation. Scotland ?ookt d for 
 help against the power of England, which threatened its 
 national independence, and France was glad to have 
 an ally so conveniently placed to annoy England in time 
 of need. In 1296 the War of Scottish Independence 
 began, and lasted till 1328. At first Edward was suc- 
 cessful ; the Scots gave way before him, Baliol submitted, 
 an Englishman, Earl Warenne, was set up as guardian of 
 the kingdom, and Edward returned to carry on his war 
 against France. 
 
 16. For this he sorely needed money, and proceeded 
 to raise it in oppressive ways. First he demanded much 
 Confirmation money from the clergy, and when they 
 Charters refused he withdrew from them the protection 
 «a97- of the king's law courts until they gave way. 
 Then he seized on the wool of the merchants, and took 
 it as a loan. The barons alone were strong enough to 
 withstand the king ; they stood on their feudal rights, and 
 refused to follow him in his expedition abroad. More- 
 over, when Edward was abroad in 1297, they forced his 
 
1307. 
 
 The Great Charter. 
 
 41 
 
 young son to confirm and strengthen the old Charters, 
 and to add some new clauses, one of which said that no 
 new taxes should be taken without the common consent 
 and goodwill. Edward I. was tiue to his word, and 
 when he had been compelled to sign this, he loyally 
 accepted it. This confirmation of the Charters marks 
 the end of the struggle that had begun in John's time. 
 The power of self-taxation was now clearly laid down. 
 Parliament, which Edward I. had recogniged as repre- 
 sentative of the nation, was for the future to decide what 
 burdens the nation could bear. 
 
 17. The rest of Edwaiti I.'s reign was taken up with 
 the affairs of Scotland. In 1297 William Wallace, the 
 son of a Scottish knight, gathered together 
 a body of men discontented with the English Scotland, 
 rule, and did a few brave deeds against the "97-i307' 
 English. Warenne went against him, but allowed his 
 army to be divided in crossing the Forth near Stirling, 
 and was entirely defeated . On tins the Scots gathered 
 round Wallace, who ruled the land as guardian till, in 
 1298, Edward I. defeated him at Falkirk with a large 
 army. But Edward I. was obliged to withdraw and turn 
 his attention to other matters, and did not come back 
 till 1303, when Scotland was conquered for the second 
 time. Wallace, w ho had refused to surrender to the 
 king's mercy, was taken prisoner, and executed as a 
 iraitor in 1305. But peace did not last long ; for in 1306 
 Robert Bruce, grandson of the claimant of the Scottish 
 crown whose right was best after Baliol, fled from the 
 English court and got himself crowned King of Scotland. 
 At first his chances seemed small ; the Scots did not rise 
 to help him ; he was defeated by the English troops, and 
 wandered as an adventurer. Again Edward I. advanced 
 to Scotland — no longer mild and gentle, as he had been 
 before, but putting to death most of the Scottish nobles 
 
42 
 
 History of England. a.u. 1307- 
 
 who fell into his hands. He did not live to reach 
 Scotland, but died at Burgh by the Sands, near Carli^, 
 in 1307. 
 
 w 
 
 CHAPTER VH. 
 
 RISE OF THE COMMONS. 
 
 I. Edward H. had none of the great qualities of .his 
 father. He paid no heed to ruling his kingdom, but 
 Edwardll. Cared only for pleasures and amusements, 
 favourites, ^^^ neglected all business. He began his 
 1307-1312. reign by recalling a worthless friend of his. 
 Piers Gaveston, whom Edward I. had banished. The 
 nobles found themselves neglected by the king and treated 
 with insolence by Gaveston. Early in 1308 they 
 demanded that Gaveston should be banished, and 
 Edward II. with reluctance sent him to be regent of 
 Ireland. Without Gaveston Edward II. could do 
 nothing, for his father's old ministers had been driven 
 away by his ill treatment. The government fell into 
 disorder, and the Parliament of 1309 brought up a long 
 list of grievances, which the king promised to redress. 
 No sooner had he got money in this way than he recalled 
 Gaveston, who behaved as ill as before. The barons 
 assembled in arms in 13 10, an J compelled the king to 
 give up the government to a commission, called the 
 Lords Ordainers, which was to make reforms. The king 
 gave his consent to these reforms, amongst which was 
 the banishment of Gaveston in 131 1, but a few months 
 afterwards he set aside the ordinance about Gaveston. 
 Then the barons took up arms, and, with the help of 
 the king's uncle, Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, bcheadcQ 
 Gaveston in 131 2. 
 
isar. 
 
 Rise of the Commons, 
 
 43 
 
 2. Meanwhile in Scotland Bruce had been gaining 
 ground, and at last, in 1314, he had won most of the strong- 
 holds in the land, and was besieging Stirling. ^ , , . 
 
 V \ JIT J * * J \ England and 
 
 huward II. was roused to try and prevent Scotland, 
 its fall, and led a large army to its relief. ^314-1338. 
 Bruce chose his ground well, and the English were 
 entirely defeated in the battle of Bannockburn. This 
 was the last attempt on the part of England. Scottish 
 independence was henceforth established, though it was 
 not till 1328 that England admitted it and made peace. 
 
 3. The rest of Edward II.'s reign was full of troubles. 
 His government was feeble ; men were discontented ; 
 the ministers whom the king trusted, Hugh 
 
 L' Despenser and his son, were disliked for Edward II., 
 their avarice and arrogance ; Thomas of ^327- 
 Lancaster grew more and more powerful as the head of 
 the barons. In 1321 charges were brought against the 
 Despensers in Parliament, and they were condemned to 
 banishment. But Edward II. took up arms ; Lancaster 
 was taken prisoner, and was beheaded as a rebel at his 
 own castle of Pomfret in 1322 ; Edward II. was glad to 
 serve him as he had served Gaveston. After this 
 victory Edward II. became more and more reckless ; the 
 Despensers were more oppressive, and the barons, left 
 without any definite head, took to plotting against the 
 king. Queen Isabella, wearied of her husband, took to 
 plotting against him too. She went to France in 1325 
 to settle a dispute between her brother the King of 
 France and Edward II., and in 1326 landed in England, 
 declaring that she came to avenge Earl Thomas and 
 overthrow the Despensers. Most of the nobles and bishops 
 joined her side ; Edward II. fled, but was captured, with 
 the younger Despenser, who was at once put to death. 
 The revolution was finished by the Parliament of 1327, 
 which declared that Edward 1 1, was incapable of governing; 
 
 : 
 
44 
 
 History of England. a.u. 1327- 
 
 Ji! 
 
 his young son Edward was hailed as king, and the un- 
 happy Edward II. was prevailed upon to consent to his 
 son's election. Eight months afterwards the deposed 
 king was murdered in Berkeley Castle (1327). 
 
 4. But the country was no better governed by 
 Isabella and her favourite, Mortimer, till in 1330 Edward 
 Edwardiii., Ill- ^ook things into his own hands. Ho 
 1327- :377- was warlike, fond of glory and display, and 
 had little care for ruling his people well. But the war 
 which he began with France took up all the energy of 
 England fur the next hundred years. It brought much 
 misery on both countries, and cost much blood and 
 money, which were spent on a useless cause. Still, in 
 these wars England learned to feel fully the national 
 unity which Edward I. had set on a sure basis ; she 
 learned also her strength and her importance among the 
 nations of Europr. Moreover, the pressing need of 
 money which these wars brought upon the king enabled 
 Parliament to exercise the powers which had been 
 granted to it, and which in quieter times might have 
 been lost. 
 
 5. The war with France had its beginning in Scot- 
 land. Edward III. did not long remain at peace with 
 
 Scotland, and in 1333 had won back Lothian 
 
 War with 
 
 France, and set up Edward Baliol as vassal king of 
 
 i337-'346. the rest. The Scots stubbornly resisted, and 
 Philip VI. of France helped them, and attacked Guienne. 
 He hoped to use the :^cots against the Enghsh while he 
 conquered the English possessions in France. Edward 
 III. prepared for war, and, to gain allies more easily, 
 made out that through his mother, Isabella, he himself 
 had a claim to the French crown. England carried on a 
 great wool trade with Flanders, and the Flemish towns 
 joined Edward's side more readily when they could fight 
 for him as their rightful king. The war began in 1337, 
 
I36'> 
 
 Rise of the Commons. 
 
 45 
 
 and was at first carried on from the side of Flanders, 
 without much success. In 1340 Edward III. won a great 
 sea fight at Sluys, which did much to establish the 
 English supremacy over the Channel. In 1346 was 
 fought the battle of Crcssy, which was won by the 
 superiority of the English archers to the feudal forces of 
 France. After this battle Edward III. besieged and took 
 Calais, which he fortifiad and filled with Englishmen, 
 and which remained in the hands of England till the 
 'reign of Mary. In the same year the Scots, who had 
 attacked England, >yere defeated at Neville's Cross, near 
 Durham, and their king, David, was made prisoner and 
 kept in England for eleven years. 
 
 6. Everything seemed prosperous for Edward III.; 
 but in 1348 came a great plague on England, called the 
 Black Death, which killed nearly half the The Black 
 population. This terrible loss doubled the Death, 1348. 
 rate of wages, and made it hard to get the land tilled at 
 all. In this time of distress men murmured at the 
 extravagance of the king and the expenses of his court ; 
 for the En-jlish had begun to follow French fashions, and 
 chivalry, or the duties of a knight, which once had been 
 solemn and religious, had now become a matter of fashion, 
 and was costly and frivolous. 
 
 7. In 1355 the war began again, and in 1356 Edward 
 III.'s eldest son, who is known as the Black Prince, won 
 a great battle at Poitiers over the French, French war, 
 who tried to prevent him from getting back »355-i37o- 
 to Gascony, whence he had led a plundering expedition. 
 King John of France was taken prisoner, and brought to 
 England. Three years after thiS) in 1360, peace was made 
 with France, at Bretigny, by which Edward III. received 
 Poitou, and gave up his claims to the French crown. But 
 peace did not last long. The Black Prince, who was 
 left as governor of the English possessions in France, 
 
46 
 
 History of England. a.d. 136^ 
 
 foolishly mixed himself up with a dispute for the Spanish 
 crown, and wasted his money in a useless expedition into 
 Spain. He taxed the people grievously to pay for this, 
 and discontent arose amongst them, so that they pre- 
 ferred the French government to the English. War broke 
 out again in 1369, but the new King of France, Charles V., 
 was cautious, and would not fight in the open field, 'f he 
 Black Prince was broken in hedlth, and had to return 
 to England. Edward III. was old, and almost doting ; 
 the glory of his reign passed away in failure, and the 
 French gradually won back Poitou and much of Guienne 
 also. 
 
 8. Meanwhile in England the national spirit that 
 had been kindled by the French war showed itself in 
 The Church Opposition to the Popes, who were at this 
 Wk:l!f *"* ^'"^® living at Avignon, and were on the side 
 1356-1384. of the French kings. Laws were passed to 
 prevent the Pope from presenting to English benefices, 
 and to prevent anyone appealing from the king's courts 
 to the Pope. The result of this interference of the Pope 
 with the English Church was that the clergy did not do 
 their work with the same zeal as in former days, nor were 
 they so much respected by the people. Moreover, learn- 
 ing was spread amongst other classes, and there was 
 a desire on the part of the laity that they should hold 
 offices of government instead of he higher clergy, who 
 had mostly held them heretofore. An expression was 
 given to all this ill feeling against the clergy by a wise 
 priest who taught in Oxford — John Wiclif. At first 
 Wiclif defended the national Church against the Pope, 
 then he proceeded to reprove the worldly lives of the 
 clergy, and sent forth * poor priests * to teach the people, 
 as St. Francis of Assisi had done before. For their use 
 al$o he translated the Bible into English. At lart Wiclif 
 went further, and spoke against some of the doctrines of 
 
lyr^ 
 
 Rise of the Covtmcfis, 
 
 47 
 
 the Church, and said that men had not understood aright 
 the words of Christ. Then the clergy accused him of 
 heresy, and condemned his words ; but no ill befell him, 
 for he i in peace at his little living of Lutterworth 
 in 1384. 
 
 Q. Nor was it only in religious matters that disturb- 
 ances arose ; there were difficulties in the State also. 
 Edward III. had borrowed from France the Edward ill. 
 notion of gathering all the great lands of andhissoni. 
 England into the king's family ; in this way he hoped 
 that the Crown and the barons would for the future be at 
 one. So he married his five sons to great English 
 heiresses, and gave them the new title of duke, so that 
 the royal house was very powerful. But instead of bring- 
 ing Ent^nd together, this policy of Edward III. only 
 divider' • for the younger sons became ambitious as 
 they bc^- le powerful, and hoped that they might win 
 the crown . Quarrels began, and claims . to the throne 
 were put forward, and parties gathered strength, till a 
 long civil war was the result. The first steps towards 
 this were soon made ; for when the Black Prince was 
 aw'.y in Gascony, his younger brother, John, Duke of 
 Lancaster, held the chief place in England. When the 
 Black Prince came back to England, broken in health, in 
 137 1) John of Lancaster seems to have hoped that if his 
 brother died he might be made king instead of his 
 brother's young son. The discontent against the bad 
 government of the king broke out in the Parliament of 
 1376, which is known as the Good Parliament: 
 Parliament had now for convenience divided Parliament, 
 itself into two Houses ; the bishops and abbots '376. 
 sat with the lay peers, and made the Upper House, and 
 the knights of the shires and representatives of the 
 towns sat together in the Lower House. In 1376 the 
 Commons accused two of the king's officials of managing 
 
4B 
 
 History of England, a. n. 1376- 
 
 The pea- 
 sants' lising, 
 1481. 
 
 ill the king's' revenue ; they brought them to trial before 
 the Upper House, who sentenced them to punishment. 
 This is the first instance of impeachment^ as such trials 
 are called, and it is noticeable because it gave Parliament 
 power over the king's ministers, which made them afraid 
 of doing anything very tyrannical. 
 
 10. The Black Prince died while the Good Parliament 
 was sitting, and on his death it asked that his son 
 Richard should be brought I efore it as heir 
 apparent. Next year (1377) Kdward III. 
 di6d, and John of Lancaster lost his power, 
 and was not even one of the council who ruled for the 
 young Richard 1 1. But government was no easy task ; 
 the French war still went on, and taxes weighed heavily 
 on the people. The loss of labourers by the ravages of 
 ! .0 Black Di ath made the lords exact from the peasants 
 jaxpj of the feudal services that had been forgotten 
 befoie. The preaching of the Lollards, as the followers 
 of Wiclif weie called, stirred up the people. In 1381 a 
 heavy tax brought about a general rising of the peasaiits 
 of Kent and Essex, who marched into London. Sud- 
 bury, archbishop and chancellor, was put to death, and 
 everywhere was confusion. The peasants demanded 
 that bondage and tolls at market should cease, and that 
 a fixed rent for land should take the place of service to the 
 lords. The young king did not fear to meet the rioters, 
 and promised to grant their requests ; when their leader, 
 Wat Tyler, was struck down by the mayor of London, 
 Richard exclaimed, * I will be your leader,' and by his 
 presence of mind saved himself from death. The Lon- 
 doners soon gathered forces ; the rebels were dispersed, 
 and heavy vengeance was taken on them. Still after this 
 time we find that the hardships which they complained 
 of were gradually done away, and the lords did not 
 again venture to exact the old feudal services. 
 
ni 
 
 «397. 
 
 Rise of the Comtnons. 
 
 A9 
 
 1 1. Richard II., as he grew up, found himself in great 
 difficulties. His uncles, the Dukes of Gloucester and 
 York, were too strong for him; and when Ridiurd ii. 
 Richard II. tried to raise up against them JIlcie"i382- 
 his own servants, Michael de la Pole, who was 1397- 
 made Earl of Suffolk, and Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford, 
 the barons formed themselves again into a party, led by 
 Gloucester, to resist the king's favourites. The Parlia- 
 ment of 1 386 impeached De la Pole, who was condemned, 
 and a council of regency was appointed to carry out 
 reforms in the royal hou^sehold. In vain Richard tried 
 to free himself ; he only stirred his opponents to harsher 
 measures. In 1388 five lords, headed by Gloucesfer, 
 accused the king's ministers of treason before Parlia- 
 ment, and many of them were put to death. Richard 
 submitted at the time, but next year suddenly declared 
 that he was of age to govern, chose his own ministers, 
 and won the people to his side by his moderation. But 
 in 1396 he married a second wife, daughter of the King 
 of France, and se*^ms to have wished to make himst li an 
 absolute king, like the French king. In 1397 he took 
 violent measures against his former enemies ; Gloucester 
 was sent as a prisoner to Calais, where he died, and men 
 sard he had been put to death. Parliament, deprived of 
 iti leaders, seemed helpless before the king, granted him 
 taxes for life, and handed over its powers to a committee 
 of the king's friends. Richard II. set up the power of 
 the king as it had never been set up before, and it is 
 wonderful that Parliament should have given way. But 
 already the evil effects were felt of the great lords whom 
 ^dward III. had set up; men no longer held together 
 for the national good, as in the days of the strup^gle fov 
 the Charters, but were gathered round the rival lordS;, 
 and strove only for their int: rests. 
 
 12. Richard Il.'s imprudence brought his power to 
 E, If, E 
 
50 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1397- 
 
 Deposition 
 of Richard 
 II., 1399. 
 
 an end. Ir> 1398 he banished from England the Dukes of 
 Not folk and Hereford, who had had a quarrel 
 The Duke of Hereford was his own cousin, son 
 of John, Duke of Lancaster. In 1399 John 
 died, and Richard's need of money tempted him to seize 
 his uncle's estates, and soon after he went over to Ireland. 
 While he was away the Duke of Hereford landed in Eng- 
 land, saying he was come to recover his lands. The great 
 nobles of the north, ths Percies and the Nevilles, Joined 
 his cause. Richard was taken prisoner, was compelled 
 to resign the crown, and was deposed by Parliament. 
 Then Henry of Lancaster claimed the throne as * being 
 descended in the right line from Henry III.' Thus the 
 policy of Edward III. had produced different results to 
 what he hoped. The ambitious designs of the great 
 barons of the royal house were too much for the king to 
 keep down. Parliament was not strong enough as yet 
 to set itself above these struggles, and Richard II. had 
 aimed at setting himself above Parliament and barons. 
 The crown passed away from the son of the Black 
 Prince to the son of the Duke of Lancaster. 
 
 CHAPTER VIIL 
 DISSENSIONS AMONG THE BARONS. 
 
 I. Henry IV.'s reign was full of troubles. He wa? 
 willing to rule according to the law, and his need of 
 Henry IV., Hioncy made him listen to Parliament, and 
 1399-1413. agree to redress the grievances of the Com- 
 mons before they granted him a supply of money. But 
 the great lords who had set Henry IV. on the throne 
 expected him to please them more than he did. The 
 
1422. Dissensions among the Barons, 51 
 
 Percies rebelled, and Wales, under Owen Glendowcr, 
 defied the king. The Lollards also pressed for great 
 religious changes ; and the clergy, in alarm, prevailed on 
 the king to pass a law for the executioi^ of heretics. 
 Henry IV. had little peace or happiness during his reign f 
 jut he deserves praise for the way in which he strove to 
 overcome his difficulties by ruling according to the law 
 and with the help of Parliament. 
 
 2. His son, Henry V., brought to an end his father's 
 difficulties ; he put down a rising of the Lollards, 
 checked a conspiracy of some of the great Henry v., - 
 lords against himself, drew the nation i4»3-»422. 
 together around him, and took in hand the popular 
 national enterprise of war with France. In 141 5 he won 
 the great battle of Agincourt, with 9,000 troops against 
 60,000. In 1417 he conquered Normandy, for the 
 French were distracted by quarrels of parties, and could 
 not oppose him vigorously. At last, in 1420, a treaty was 
 made at Troyes, by which Henry V. was to wed the 
 French king's daughter, and was to succeed him on the 
 throne of France. Henry V. is the great military hero 
 in English history ; his wars were glorious at the time, 
 but they were wasted labour, and Henry V. led England 
 to undertake more then she could carry out. Yet 
 Henry V.'s wars united the people, and stopped for a 
 time the discord of families in England. He died in 
 1422, leaving a son ten months old to succeed him. 
 Henry VI. never grew up to be capable of governing, 
 and during his long reign the strife of rival nobles went 
 on increasing, till it broke out in the Wars of the Roses. 
 
 3. First the rivalry in England was between the kmg's 
 uncle Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and Cardinal 
 Beaufort, one of the younger sons of John, Parties 
 Duke of Lancaster. Another of the king's ^obJSf/''* 
 uncles, John, Duke of Bedford, managed ^aa-uss* 
 
 K a 
 
52 
 
 History of Eugland, a.d. i422>. 
 
 affairs in France, where at first all went well for the 
 English ; but in 1429 a young peasant girl, Jeanne d'Arc, 
 full of belief that she was bidden by heavenly voices to 
 free her country, led the French troops to victory. The 
 English thought she did it by witchcraft, and she was 
 taken prisoner and cruelly put to death. But the Eng- 
 lish power lost hold on France after this, especially 
 after Bedford's death in 1435, till at last only Calais 
 remained to the English. In England, Beaufort wanted 
 to make peace with France, Gloucester wished to carry 
 on the war. Beaufort so far had his way that in 1445 
 a truce was made and Henry VI. married Margaret 
 of Anjou, resigning the English claims on Anjou to 
 iier father. In 1447 Gloucester and Beaufort died, and 
 parties were made anew. Henceforth there was the 
 queen's party, headed by the Duke of Suffolk, and the 
 party of the Duke of York, who was next heir to the 
 throne. Before these parties all government gave way. 
 Suffolk was impeached, and was lawlessly seized and 
 beheaded at sea when on his way from England in 1450. 
 In 1453 a son was born to Henry VI., and York's hopes 
 of a peaceful succession came to an end. In the same 
 year Henry VI., whose mind had never been very power- 
 ful, lost his wits, and York was made Protector. When 
 Henry VI. recovered in 1455, York was dismissed, and 
 the queen's party came into power. Civil war broke out, 
 known as the Wars of the Roses, because the Yorkists 
 took a white and the Lancastrians a red rose for their 
 badge. 
 
 4. The Wars of the Roses, which began in 1455 and 
 lasted till 1485, are one of the most disastrous periods in 
 our history. They were fought for no great 
 Roses, 145s- objects, and prodi f'd no great men. They 
 1485' were waged not by the people, but by the 
 
 nobles on either side. The great nobles had become 
 
1483. Dissensions among the Barons. 
 
 53 
 
 fewer and fewer in the recent troubles, and the separation 
 between them and the people had grown greater in 
 consequence. In these wars the northern nobles were 
 mostly on the Lancastrian, and the southern on the 
 Yorkist side. The people were weary of the weak 
 government of Henry VI., and wanted a strong ruler ; 
 for in those days the government depended almost 
 entirely on the character of the king. Henry VI, was 
 amiable but weak, and followed any advisers of the 
 moment. Queen Margaret was self-willed and unpopu- 
 lar ; and though her courage kept the Lancastrians 
 together, she had nothing but her armed force to trust to. 
 Many bloody battles were fought, and the victors showed 
 no mercy to the vanquished. In 1460 the Duke of York 
 was victorious, and Parliament declared him next heir to 
 the crown ; but a few months later he was slain in battle 
 at Wakefield, and his son Edward, after the battle of 
 Mortimer's Cross, was hailed as king in 1461, and at 
 Towton, in the same year, destroyed Margaret's army. 
 
 5. But Edward IV.'s throne was not secure. His 
 marriage with Elizabeth Woodville, widow of a Lan- 
 castrian knight, did not please the nobles. Fdwardiv. 
 He quarrelled with his most powerful sup- 1461-1483' 
 porter, the Earl of Warwick, who joined Margaret in 
 exile, sailed to England in 1470, and restored Henry VI. 
 Edward IV. fled, but soon returned ; and at Harnet, in 
 1471, defeated and slew Warwick, while Margaret was 
 defeated soon after at Tewkesbury, and her son Edward 
 was slain. Henry VI. died soon afterwards, a prisoner 
 in the Tower; and now Edward IV. was secure. But 
 he was cruel, vicious, and extortionate ; there was no 
 one left among the nobles to check him. His brother, 
 the Duke of Clarence, was charged with treason, and was 
 put to death. England had exchanged the weak but 
 constitutional government of the house of Lancaster 
 
54 
 
 History of England, a.d, 1483- 
 
 for a strong but arbitrary rule of the house, of 
 York. 
 
 6. In 1483 Edward IV. died, and the old confusion 
 
 broke out again. Edward's sons were children, and the old 
 
 nobles were afraid that the queen's relations, 
 
 1 1 1.. 1483- whom they regarded as upstarts, would rule a^ 
 
 they chose. Accordingly they helped Richard, 
 
 1485. 
 
 Duke of Gloucester, Edward IV.'s brother, to put down 
 the queen's party. Richard was made Protector of the 
 kingdom, but he schemed to have himself made king. 
 The Duke of Buckingham especially helped him, stated 
 his cause to the men of London, and went to Richard 
 with a body of lords and others, who, in the name of the 
 three estates of the realm, asked him to become king. 
 After this Richard III. was crowned; his young nephews 
 disappeared in the Tower, and men believed that their 
 uncle had them smothered. Richard III. had waded to 
 the throne through too much blood to give peace to 
 England. His reign of two years was ended by the 
 coming to England of Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, 
 who was looked upon as head of the Lancastrian party. 
 ]^en wished for peace, and it was agreed that Henry 
 Tudor should marry Elizabeth of York, daughter of 
 Edward IV., and so unite these parties which had so 
 lon^' striven against '^ne another. In 1485 Henry landed, 
 and met Richard in battle at Bosworth, where Richard 
 was defeated and slain. Then all men gladly took Henry 
 for their king, and hoped for peaceful days. 
 
^ 
 
 14<». 
 
 55 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE TUDOR DESPOTISM. 
 
 1. Henry VII. undertook to give the country peace, 
 but had hard work to do. The Wars of the Roses had 
 lasted so long that they did not cease at Henry vii. 
 once. Many plots were made against Henry J^^jJJ^ 
 
 .VII., and his enemies set up pretenders, x485-i499> 
 whose schemes forced him to be very cautious. The 
 first of these pretenders was Lambert Simnel, the son of 
 a joiner in Oxford, who gave out that he was the son of 
 the Duke of Clarence, and found many supporters in 
 Ireland, but was defeated when he came to England in 
 1487, and w^s made a scullion in the king's kitchen. 
 More dangerous was a young man, Perkin Warbeck, 
 who came from Flanders, where he had been taught his 
 pdrt, and called himself one of the sons of Edward IV., 
 w^o was believed to have been murdered in the Tower. 
 He was helped by the kings of France and Scotland, 
 and some of the chief men in England plotted in his 
 favour. From 1492 to 1497 he kept Henry VII. in alarm, 
 but at last, when he landed in Cornwall, his troops 
 abcindoned him, and he was taken prisoner. He was 
 confined in the Tower, and was put to death for attempt- 
 ii% to escape in 1499. 
 
 2. Henry VI I., amid all these difficulties, learned that 
 there were two things to do, if he was to reign quietly. 
 One was to take away from the nobles their 
 
 power of disturbing the kingdom ; another and the 
 was to make peace abroad, so as to prevent "°^'*** 
 foreign kings from using these pretenders against him. 
 It was not very hard to reduce the power of the nobles, 
 for so many had been slain in the Wars of the Roses 
 
56 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1499- 
 
 that those • who remained were powerless against the 
 king, as the people were glad to see their privileges done 
 away ; for the nobles used to have crowds of retainers, 
 who wore their livery, and whom they protected by un- 
 dertaking to maintain their quarrels, and in this way the 
 law courts were overridden by the nobles, Henry VII. 
 caused the laws against the giving of liveries and against 
 maintenance to be carried out, and he set up a special 
 court of his chief ministers, to try the nobles who were 
 too powerful to be tried in the ordinary courts. This 
 court was called the Court of the Star Chamber, be- 
 cause the room in which it sat was ornamented with 
 stars. 
 
 3. Henry VI I. made peace abroad, and especially tried 
 to separate Scotland from its alliance with France ; for he 
 
 VII ' ^'^^® ^^^ daughter Margaret in marriage to 
 foreign * * King James IV. of Scotland, and so prepared , 
 ^^''^y* the way for the union of England and Scot- 
 
 land under one king. He made an alliance with the 
 King of Spain, to help him against France ; for France 
 and Spain, which before had been much split up, were 
 now becoming powerful kingdoms, more powerful than 
 England. Henry VII. married his son Arthur to the 
 Spanish king's daughter Katharine ; but Arthur d'ed 
 very soon afterwards, and Henry, anxious to secure a 
 connexion with Spain, got the Pope's leave that she 
 might marry his second son, Henry. 
 
 4. France and Spain both had become united, because 
 their kings had brought the different parts of the country 
 
 , , together ; so in both these lands the power of 
 
 Growth of , , . , I'll 
 
 the royal the kmg was great, much greater than it had 
 power. ht^w. before. The example of these coun- 
 
 tries, as well as the condition of England itself, favoured 
 the growth of the royal power in England also. The 
 nobles had been so weakened in tiie Wars of the Ruses 
 
r 
 
 IS!."?- 
 
 The Tudor Despotism. 
 
 57 
 
 se 
 
 that they could no longer stand against the king. The 
 Commons had lost their leaders, and the long wars had 
 made them forget their old care for their liberties an 1 
 jealousy of the Crown. They looked upon the king as 
 the only power which could secure peace, and they busied 
 themselves with commerce more than with state affairs. 
 The clergy had been so weakened by the constant inter- 
 ference of the Poj->es, and had been so frightened by the 
 attacks of the Lollards, that they looked to the king as 
 their only protector. So Henry VII. strengthened the 
 royal power, and made men obey the laws. He spent 
 little money, and tried to get it in other ways than 
 through Parliament. He sent for rich men and asked 
 thcni to give him money as a benevolence^ and then used 
 tlie law to compel them to keep their promises. He 
 sou;^ht out all the old rights of the Crown, and made his 
 jud.L;es fine men heavily for going against them. As he 
 did not go to war he soon became rich, and for the last 
 thirieen years of his reign only one Parliament met. 
 
 5. When Henry Vil. died, in 1509, his son, Henry 
 VIII., reaped the benefit of all his father's caution. He 
 was rich and powerful, and there was no one 
 in England to stand against him. He was viu/swar«, 
 also desirous to take a high position amongst '509-»5»3- 
 the kings of Europe, so he kept up the alliance with 
 Spiin which his father had begun, and married his 
 brother's widow, Katharine, to make this alliance more 
 sure. At this time there were wars in Italy, in which 
 France, Spain, .md Germany were taking part. Henry 
 VI 11. j-»ined with Spain against France, and invaded 
 France in 1 5 1 3. This only led to a renewal of the old 
 friendship between France and Scotland; and while 
 Hvnry VIII. was away fiom England James IV. of 
 Scotland invaded the North, but was defeated and killed 
 at Floddcn field, just after he had crossed the Tweed. 
 
5^ 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1513-^ 
 
 Henry 
 Vlll.^squar- 
 rel with 
 Spain, 1535- 
 1538. 
 
 The death df the king left the regency in Scotland in the 
 hands of his widow, who was Henry VIlI.'s sister, and 
 disturbances arose among the nobles which prevented 
 Scotland from troubling England for a time. 
 
 6. Henry VIII.'s chief minister was Thomas Wolsey, 
 who was made Archbishop of York and Chancellor. 
 
 Wolsey was a clever politician, and managed 
 to hold the balance between France and 
 Spain so that both countries courted the 
 English king. In 1525 the French king was 
 defeated and taken prisoner in Italy, and Henry VIII. 
 hoped that his ally, Charles V., King of Spain, who had 
 also been chosen King of Germany, would help him to 
 win back English lands in France. But Charles V. did 
 not wish to make Henry VIII. too powerful, and did not 
 help him as he hoped. Then Henry VI II. 's friendship 
 for Spain began to cool, and he thought of allying with 
 France instead. This made Him tire of his wife, who wi«s 
 older than himself and was entirely devoted to Spain. 
 Moreover, Henry had no son, which made men anxious ns 
 to what would happen on his death. Henry also had fallen 
 in love with a young lady of the court, Anne Boleyn. So 
 there was a mixture of political and personal reasons to 
 lead him to wish to put away his wife and marry another. 
 
 7. Henry VIII. was accustomed to have his own way 
 in all things, and Wolsey was ready to manage the 
 Henry divorce for him. Henry VIII. had needed 
 VIII.'s the Pope's leave, or dispensation, to marry 
 question, his brother's widow. Wolsey now asked the 
 1528-1531. pQpg ^Q g^y ^j^j^j ^^ dispensation which a 
 
 previous Pope had given was not lawful, and so the mar- 
 riage might at once be set aside. But Charles V. was so 
 powerful in Italy that the Pope dared not do anything 
 against his will, and Charles V. was not willing to have 
 his aunt put away. The Pope tried to please both Henry 
 
1530. 
 
 The Tudor Despotism, 
 
 59 
 
 VIII. and Charles V., and sent a legate to England who, 
 together with Wolsey, was to try the case ; but when it 
 came to the point nothing was done. Then Henry VIII. 
 was very angry with Wolsey, who had advised him to 
 take this course. In 1529 Wolsey's offices were taken 
 away from him, he was prosecuted for having held the 
 office o£ papal legate in England, though the king had 
 consented to it, and died in 1530, saying, * If I had served 
 my God as diligently as I have served the king. He would 
 not have given me over in my grey hairs.* After this 
 Henry was determined to get rid of his wife without the 
 Pope, and that led by degrees to great changes in the 
 English Church, which are called the Reformation. 
 
 8 (i). There had been growing up ever since the 
 reign of John a dislike of the Pope's interference in 
 English affairs. This increased in the four- . 
 
 teenth century, when the Popes sided entirety Reforma- 
 with the French king, and in the fifteenth "**"• 
 century, when they had busied themselves chiefly with 
 Italian politics. Men felt that the Popes raised heavy taxes 
 from the English Church, and spent the money for their 
 own purposes. So many men thought that the English 
 Church could manage its own affairs better without the 
 Pope's help at all. 
 
 (2). Besides this, the clergy were not so strong or so 
 popular as they once had been. Many abuses had grown 
 up among them. There were many small monasteries 
 in which monks did not live as they ought. Men saw 
 the faults of the clergy more clearly, for in the fifteenth 
 century was a great revival of learning, and the clergy 
 were no longer the best-educated men. Wolsey saw the 
 need of making some reforms. As papal legate he put 
 an end to some of the small monasteries, and spent the 
 money in founding his college at Oxford, which is now 
 called Christ Church. 
 
(So 
 
 History of Enghvid. a.d. 153?)- 
 
 ' \ 
 
 lish Churc 
 from Rome, 
 »53i-»535 
 
 (3). But this was not all. Some men thought that 
 many of the doctrines and practices which the clergy 
 taught were not in accordance wFth the Scriptures, and 
 they wished to have the beliefs of the Church made 
 simpler. In Germany, at this time, Luther set himself 
 against the doctrines of the Roman Church, and many 
 men followed his opinions. 
 
 9. So when Henry VIII. wished to oppose the Pope, 
 he had many means by which to do so. First, he wished 
 Separation *° frighten the Pope by showing his power 
 oftheEne- over the clergy. In 1531 all the clergy were 
 accused of breaking the law, because they 
 had treated Wolsey as the Pope's legate. 
 They offered to pay the king a large fine, but Henry re- 
 fused to take it unless in granting it they called hir» 
 * supreme head of the Church.' The clergy unwillingly 
 agreed, for they felt that they were entirely in the king's 
 power. Still the Pope could not give way, but in 1533 
 Henry secretly married Anne Boleyn. An Act of Parlia- 
 ment was passed declaring that the English Church 
 could settle its own affairs, and forbidding any appeal to 
 the Pope. Thomas Cranmer had just been made Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, because he had argued so well in 
 behalf of the king's divorce. He called Katharine to 
 trial, and declared that her marriage had been unlawful. 
 The quarrel with ^le Pope had now gone too far to be 
 made up. The English Church had been separated from 
 the headship of the Roman Church, and was independent. 
 This great step had been taken by the strong power of 
 the king, and the greater part of the people of England 
 agreed with it. Those who objected were sterrly put 
 down. Henry VIII. found in Thomas Crorrwell a 
 minister who served him as faithfully as Wolsey had 
 done. Cromwell had spies over the country, so that men 
 were afraid to raise their voices against the king's doings. 
 
IS39. 
 
 The Tudor Despotism, 
 
 6x 
 
 Henry did everything through Tarliament, which he so 
 managed that it enacted anything he wished. An Act 
 was passed making the children of Anne Boleyn his heirs, 
 and declaring his marriage with Katharine unlawful from 
 the beginning. Men were called upon to swear obedience 
 to this ; when Sir Thomas More, who had been Chan- 
 cellor, and was famous throughout Europe for his learn- 
 ing, refused to take the oath, he was sent to prison and 
 afterwards beheaded. 
 
 lo. The separation from Rome led to other changes 
 in the Church. The monks held fast to the Pope, and 
 were least under the king's power; so Henry, Diitsolution 
 as supreme over the Church, made Cromwell ^on^teries, 
 his Vicar-General, or minister in Church »S36-X539- 
 matters. Cromwell enquired into the monasteries, and 
 laid a report before Parliament, which, in 1 536, dissolved 
 the smaller monasteries, and in 1539 dissolved them alL 
 This made a great change in the country, for the 
 broad lands of the monasteries went to new men, who 
 were harder landlords than the monks had been, and 
 employed fewer labourers. Thus many men were thrown 
 out of work, and now that the monasteries were gone 
 there were no institutions to feed the poor. There was 
 great discontent, which broke out in armed risings in 
 1 536 ; but the old nobles still stood by the king, and the 
 rebels we'" ^^ut down. The dissolution of the monas- 
 ( '"fir also did away with much of the importance of the 
 ase of Lorr's ; for the greater abbots, who were gene- 
 ally membei -> of noble families, had seats there. Hence- 
 lorth ihe House of Lords was much smaller, and the 
 powei of the Church in Parliament was much less. 
 
I i 
 
 h i 
 
 lit 
 
 62 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1539- 
 
 \\\ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 THE REFORMATION. 
 
 1. Changes in the outward organisation of viur 
 Church soon led to inward changes also. Many mei» 
 The Pro- wishcd the doctrines of the Church to be re- 
 testanis. formed, and the example of Luther's follower? 
 in Germany soon spread to England. In 1537 a trans- 
 lation of the Bible was ordered to be put into every 
 church. Images were taken down, as leading to* super- 
 stition, and the shrines of the saints were robbed of theii 
 treasures. Questions of doctrine were found to caus<» 
 more divisions than questions of practice. The ex- 
 treme Protestants, to show their hn^ed of superstition^, 
 did many things which seemed to most men irreverent 
 Henry VIII. thought them disorderly, and in 1539 an Ad 
 of Parliament was passed to prevent them from going any 
 further. Two parties formed themselves — one that wished 
 to hold as closely as possible to the old Church, the 
 other that wished to follow the opinions of Luther. 
 Henry VII L held the balance between these two parties. 
 
 2. Cromwell wished to draw Henry VI II. to the Pro- 
 testant side ; so he arranged a marriage between the king 
 Henry VIII. and a German Protestant princess, Anne of 
 Stcsmnts. Cleves. But Henry VIII. did not like his 
 iS39-»547- * wife, and the cause of the Protestant princes 
 in Germany, who were opposing Charles V., did not 
 seem very prosperouo. So Ilenry was angry with Crom- 
 well ; he was accused before Parliament of deceiving the 
 king, and was condemned to death at once (1540). It is 
 amazing to see how powerful the king had become be- 
 cause there was nothing to keep the royal power in 
 check. Henry VIII. had also a strong character, so that 
 
XS47. 
 
 Thi Reformation, 
 
 63 
 
 men were willing to obey him. The chief thing that the 
 people wanted was quiet, and if the king gave them that, 
 they cared for little else. Henry's ministers served him 
 with devotion; but when they became unpopular, he 
 sacrificed them to the dislike which they had won by 
 doing his bidding. In his private matters Henry did as 
 he pleased. We have seen how he put away Queen 
 Kathariqe ; Anne Boleyn fared still worse, for she was 
 accused of misbehaviour and was put to death ; after her 
 Henry had four more wives, one of whom was put away 
 and another beheaded. The last years of Henry VIII.'s 
 reign were full of contentions between the two religious 
 parties, but gradually the Protestants gained more in- 
 fluence with the king. When Henry VIII. died, in 1547, 
 he left as his successor a young son, Edward VI. ; in his 
 will he named a council that was to rule till his son came 
 of age, but the head of the council was his son's uncle, 
 who was made Duke of Somerset, and whom the council 
 appointed * Protector of the Realm,' for they thought it 
 best that one man should hold the chief power. 
 
 3. Somerset was a decided Protestant, and he and 
 Cranmer made changes in the old services of the Church, 
 and put a new Prayer Book in the place of ^^^ -^.tiox- 
 the old service book, in such a way as to give 
 offence to many. It was difficult, amid all 
 the changes that were going on, to keep Eng- 
 land united and free from disturbances. Henry VIII.'s 
 harsh measures had been endured, because men felt that 
 Henry was striving to keep his kingdom together, and 
 that he held the balance of parties in his hand. But 
 under Somerset the Protestant party had their own way, 
 and they behaved with little wisdom and moderation. 
 Somerset was especially unwise in his dealings with 
 Scotland, which he attacked that he might compel the 
 Scots to give their young queen Mary in marriage to 
 
 mation 
 under 
 Somerset, 
 1547. 
 
64 
 
 i 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1547- 
 
 Edward VI. The Scots were defeated at Pinkie-Cleugh, 
 near Edinburgh, in 1547, and their lands were laid waste; 
 but this only made them draw closer to France, whither 
 Mary was sent, and was betrothed to the heir to the 
 French throne. 
 
 4. At home Somerset was not strong enough to keep 
 order. The social distress had gone on increasing among 
 
 , the labourers, and many men who were 
 mistakes, thrown out of work wandered through the 
 1547-1549- country and begged or stole. There were 
 complaints that the new landlords were enclosing the 
 lands that before had been common. Somerset behaved 
 so that the people thought he was on their side ; and in 
 1549 they rose in arms against the landlords in Cornwall, 
 Devon, and Norfolk. In Norfolk they were very strong 
 at first, but were put down by the Earl of Warwick. The 
 nobles blamed Somerset for this rising, and his rule was 
 unpopular; so that at the end of 1549 he was driven to 
 resign his office as Protector, and Warwick, who took 
 the title of Duke of Northumberland, succeeded him. 
 
 5. Somerset, though unwise, was sincere ; but North- 
 umberland was no wiser, and less sincere. He had no 
 
 care about religion, but he held by the Pro- 
 testants because the young king Edward VI. 
 was a strong follower of the Protestant be- 
 lief. So the Protestant party pursued their 
 reforms with little charity. It was not long before 
 Somerset was put to death, as Northumberland was 
 afraid of him (1552) ; indeed, in these days, when Par- 
 liament had little to say to the government, a minister 
 who lost office was sure to lose his life also. But North- 
 umberland wished to secure his own power. Edward VI. 
 was a weakly boy, and was not likely to live long. The 
 next heir to the throne was Mary, Henry VIII.'s daughter 
 by Katharine, who was a Catholic, and would ui^do all 
 
 Northum- 
 berland and 
 the Pro- 
 testants, 
 1549-1553- 
 
'SS4. 
 
 The Reformation. 
 
 (>% 
 
 that Edward VI. had seen done with pleasure. Nonli- 
 umberlaiid persuaded Edward VI. that he had the power 
 to settle who should succeed him. So Edward VI. had a 
 paper drawn up, by which Iris sisters were sel a-ide, and 
 the throne was left to his cousin, Lady Jane Grey, whom 
 Northumberland had married to his son, Lord Guild- 
 ford Dudley. When Edward VI. died, in 1553, Queen 
 Jane was proclaimed. But men did not like to see the old 
 laws set aside in this way ; they distrusted Northumber- 
 land, and did not care much about Protestantism as he 
 and his party had put it before them. Northumberland 
 found that few followed him ; he was taken prisoner, and 
 soon after put to death. In hopes of escaping death, he 
 said that he had always in heart been a Catholic. We 
 cannot wonder that selfish and untruthful men, such 
 as he, made Englishmen distrust Protestantism, and be 
 ready to try again the old religion which Mary brought 
 back. 
 
 6. But if the reign of Edward VI. showed men the 
 disadvantages of Protestantism, the reign of Mary showed 
 them still more t^he evils of Catholicism, p , . . 
 Mary was devoted to her cousin the Emperor under Mary, 
 Charles V., and wished to act according to ^553-1556' 
 his advice in all things. She would not marry an English- 
 man, but insisted on marrying the son of Charles V., 
 Philip II., who soon became King of Spain. Men in 
 England did not like this, and there was a rising of 
 Protestants, and those who disliked the queen's marriage, 
 under Sir Thomas Wyatt. But the men of London held 
 by Mary, and Wyatt was taken prisoner. After this Lady 
 Jane Grey and her husband were put to death, and 
 Mary married Philip (1554). Then Mary set up again 
 the headship of the Pope over the English Church ; and 
 Cardinal Pole, grandson of the Duke of Clarence, wh ' 
 
 A. U, F 
 
T 
 
 66 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1554-. 
 
 I 
 
 ^11! 
 
 ^' I 
 
 11 
 
 had fled to Italy rather, than agree to Henry VIII.'s 
 divorce, came to England as papal legate, and was made 
 Arciibishop of Canterbury in Cranmer's stead. The old 
 laws against the Lollards passed under Henry IV. were 
 put in force against the Protestants, who were brought to 
 trial before the bishops for their opinions, and, if they 
 would not lay them aside, were condemned to be burned. 
 BishoDS Latimer and Ridley, and Archbishop Cranmer, 
 were all burned at Oxford. But this persecution did not 
 terrify men so much as rouse their anger. Those who 
 were burned suffered death with a quiet courage that 
 made the crowd honour them. Persecution did not suc- 
 ceed ; yet Mary thought it her duty to carry it on. She 
 did not understand the English people, and thought 
 more about' Spain and Catholicism than she did about 
 England. 
 
 7. Abroad also the connexion with Spain led to 
 disaster, for Philip II. went to war with France, and 
 , England was drawn to join him. The 
 
 failure, 1556- French saw that the town of Calais, which 
 *558- was the last English possession in France, 
 
 was not properly guarded, so they attacked and took it 
 in 1558. Men looked on this as a grer.t disgrace, and 
 Mary felt it keenly. Everything combined to make 
 Mary miserable. Her husband, Philip II., whom she 
 fondly loved, cared little for her, and was busied abroad ; 
 the Pope had quarrelled with Spain about Italian affairs, 
 and paid off his grudge against Spain on Mary, who was 
 labouring to do all she could for the Pope's interests ; 
 England was deeply in debt, and had neither ships nor 
 soldiers in proper order, for the religious squabbles had 
 for the last ten years chiefly occupied the government, 
 and the defences of the country had fallen into disorder. 
 It was a gloomy outlook, and Mary, worn out by sorrpw. 
 died in November 1558. 
 
I5S9. 
 
 The Reformation, 
 
 67 
 
 8. Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VI IT. and Anne 
 Boleyn, came next to the throne, and had the courage, 
 wisdom, and energy to set England right Religious 
 again. It was on easy matter to get the undlVEilza- 
 country to settle down after the great changes beth, 1559. 
 which had passed over it. The question about the form 
 of religion to be adopted had become mixed up with 
 others. All throughout Europe those who held by the 
 Pope were opposed to those who rejected the Pope's 
 authority. Mary's reign had shown Englishmen that the 
 restoration of the Pope's supremacy meant the sacrifice 
 of national independence, for the Pope and the King of 
 Spain had meddled in English affairs, and had brought 
 nothing but disasters. So Elizabeth decided to do away 
 with the Pope's supremacy — indeed, as being Anne 
 Boleyn's daughter, she could scarcely do otherwise— and 
 go back to the policy of Henry VIII., which was to keep 
 as much of the old Church as possible, making only such 
 changes as would satisfy moderate men. So in 1559 a 
 settlement of religious matters was made, which lasted 
 for some time. The Crown, and not the Pope, was 
 declared head of the Church in England, but Elizabeth 
 would not call herself * supreme head of the Church,' but 
 only *in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, supreme.* 
 The Prayer Book was revised, and an Act of Uniformity 
 was passed, which forbade any services to be used except 
 those laid down in the Prayer Book. Of course many 
 of the clergy did not agree to this, but Elizabeth set up 
 new bishops to keep them in order. It was Elizabeth's 
 fault that she did not know how strong were conscientious 
 religious opinions. The system which she set up kept 
 much of the beliefs of the old Church, and also did much 
 that the Protestants wanted ; so she thought that all 
 men ought to be compelled to agree to it. There were, 
 however, soon separations from it, an^ the fact that 
 
 F 2 
 
68 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1559- 
 
 > I 
 
 1151' 
 
 |, -. 
 
 I i' 
 
 Elizabeth niade no place for those who separated from it 
 caused many troubles afterwards. Yet Elizabeth felt 
 that England must be kept one in religion if it were to 
 be kept an independent State ; for throughout Europe the 
 Catholic powers were trying to put down the Protestant 
 States, and both France and Spain were ready to make 
 an attack on England. The English people saw this 
 also, and for a time the danger of the country made tnem 
 sink their differences. 
 
 9. The first danger came from the side of France. 
 Mary of Scotland had become Queen of France in 1559, 
 The Refor- and began to call herself Queen of England 
 
 Scmbnd! ^^^y ^o'^ s^® W'^s descended from Henry VII. 
 1560. It was very dangerous to Elizabeth to have 
 
 France and Scotland banded together against her. But 
 luckily in Scotland also there was a strong party in 
 favour of a reform of the Church, and Elizabeth joined 
 with them and helped them against Mary and the 
 French. So in 1560 peace was made at Edinburgh ; 
 the French troops were withdrawn from Scotland, and 
 Mary was no longer to claim the English crown. After 
 this the Scottish Parliament met, did away with the 
 authority of the Pope, and formed their Church accord- 
 ing to the views of John Calvin, a great French reformer 
 at Geneva. The Scots went further away from the old 
 Church than the English had done, for they did away 
 with bishops, and allowed each congregation to manage 
 its own affairs by means q{ presbyters or elders. 
 
 10. The reformation in Scotland freed Scotland from 
 French influence, and religious troubles broke out in 
 
 France itself, where Elizabeth helped the 
 Huguenots^ as the French Protestants were 
 called, and so gave the French king enough 
 to do at home. But in 1561, Mary, who 
 had been left a widow, sailed to Scotland, and there 
 
 Elizabeth, 
 and Mary, 
 Queen of 
 Scots, 1560- 
 1569. 
 
 I 
 
 % 
 
1570. 
 
 The Reformation, 
 
 69 
 
 tried to raise up a party which would join wilh the Catho- 
 lics in England and set her on the English throne. In 
 1565 Mary married her cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord 
 Darnley, and so strengthened her claim on England, as 
 Darnley was grandson of Henry VI II.'s sister, Margaret. 
 But the marriage was not a happy one ; and though Mary 
 was very clever, her husband upset her plans by his 
 jealousy of Rizzio, an Italian, who was the queen's sec- 
 retary. Darnley caused him to be murdered in the 
 queen's presence at Holyrood, in 1 566. Mary never for- 
 gave her husband ; and in 1567 the house in which 
 Darnley was lying ill was blown up by gunpowder, and 
 Darnley was killed. The Earl of Bothwell was charged 
 with the deed, and there is little doubt that he was guilty; 
 yet in a few months Mary married him. Then the Scottish 
 nobles rose against her, and accused her of having joined 
 with Bothwell to murder Darnley. Mary was made 
 prisoner, and was compelled to give up the crown to her 
 young son, James VI. But in 1568 Mary escaped from 
 pdson, and raised her forces ; she was defeated, and fled 
 to England. Her presence in England was very trouble- 
 some to Elizabeth, who did not wish to side either with 
 her or with her nobles ; but she thought it was not wise 
 to let Mary escape to France, so she kept her prisoner in 
 England. There a Catholic party slowly gathered round 
 her, and the Catholic powers abroad were constantly 
 encouraging plots in her favour. In 1569 the Earls 
 of Northumberland and Westmorland rose to restore 
 the old religion, and their rising was put down with 
 severity. 
 
 II. In 1570 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth, 
 and so the Cathohcs were separated from the English 
 Church, which Elizabeth had set up, and _, . .. 
 
 . . , , , ■. .ii 1 Breach with 
 
 which she hoped would content them. Catholicism, 
 PhiUp n., King of Spain, as head of the '570-1587. 
 
70 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1570- 
 
 Catholic party in Europe, was foremost in all thes6 
 schemes against Elizabeth. But his subjects in the* 
 Netherlands, of which also he was ruler^ rose against 
 him, and Elizabeth sent them help, so as to encourage 
 them to hold out, and Philip had enough to do to make 
 war upon them. Still taere were troubles in Ireland, 
 where men had not liked the new Church ; and in Eng- 
 land there were constant plots against Elizabeth's life. 
 \oung Englishmen were trained abroad by a new religious 
 order of the Jesuits, to be priests of the Catholic Church ; 
 then they came into England and secretly set up the old 
 services, and so raised a strong opposition against the 
 queen. These Jesuits were severely dealt with, and the 
 Act of Uniformity was strictly enforced, so that per- 
 secution became again common in England, though now 
 it had more of a political than of a religious meaning. 
 Thus parties grew more bitter ; but during these years of 
 peace England had grown much richer and stronger. 
 The great mass of the people had gradually learned to be 
 Protestant in their hearts, and loved their queen and 
 reverenced their English Church. A love of adventure 
 also sprung up among them ; ships were built, and 
 English seamen went on voyages to America and the 
 West Indies, and brought back rich prizes which they 
 won from the Spaniards. Thus the power of Spain was 
 being constantly crippled; and at last Philip II. deter- 
 mined to crush the English power, and equipped a mighty 
 fleet to invade England. Before it came, Mary, Queen 
 of Scots, was found guilty of a plot against Elizabeth's 
 life and condemned to death by a commission of peers. 
 Elizabeth hesitated to put Mary to death ; at length 
 she signed the warrant, and Mary was executed (1587). 
 EHzabeth's condi . io Mary can scarcely be justified ; 
 yet, so long as Mary lived, she was a perpetual enemy to 
 Elizabeth and to England. 
 
isss: 
 
 The Reformation, 
 
 n 
 
 12. In 1588 Philip's < Inviilcible Armada' sailed to 
 England, and Catholics and Protestants alike gathered 
 together to fight for their country's freedom. ^ „ . . 
 The Spanish ships were larger than the Armada^ "^ 
 English ; but the English showed themselves ^^ss. 
 cleverer seamen, and managed their little ships better 
 than did the Spaniards. They took advantage of the 
 unwieldiness of the Spanish vessels, and threw them 
 into confusion. Then a storm arose, and the Spanish 
 ships were scattered, and were driven helplessly north- 
 wards, where most of them were wrecked. The attempt 
 •of Spain to conquer England entirely failed ; and after 
 this Englishmen lost their fear of the power of Spain, 
 and felt more their own strength. A war by sea was 
 carried on against Spain, and English seamanship 
 became more and more renowned. Now too, for the 
 first time, England became a colonising nation ; the first 
 English settlement in the New World was made by Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, in 1 584, and was called Virginia, after 
 the virgin queen. Thus England began to enter on the 
 course which ;afterwards formed the chief source of her 
 national greatness. 
 
 13. In many other ways Elizabeth's reign marked the 
 beginning of a new state of things. The new nobility 
 of wealthy men built themselves country 
 
 houses instead of the feudal castles which under Eliza- 
 before had covered the land. The houses of ^'^' 
 the poor were much improved, and there was more 
 wealth and comfort. The Poor Law was set up, by which 
 a rate was to be collected in each parish, to give means 
 of living to those who could not work. The new national 
 spirit also expressed itself in literature ; and the greatest 
 of English writers, William Shakespeare, shows us how 
 great must have been the minds of those amongst, whom 
 he lived. 
 
lit" 
 ■5' 
 
 7^ 
 
 History of England. a.d. isSft* 
 
 14. But .the end of the reign of Elizabeth gave signs 
 that this new spirit would soon force its way in politics 
 g. - also. When the fear of Spain was gone, 
 
 change men tumed their attention to things at home. 
 
 i588-i6o3' Parliament, which had been content to do as 
 the Tudor kings ordered, again began to form opinions 
 of its own. The Wars of the Roses had done away with 
 the power of the nobles, and the religious troubles had 
 compelled all to look up to the Crown as the only power 
 which could keep the nation together. The nobles and 
 the clergy had fallen under the power of the king ; and the 
 Commons were content to obey till they grew in strength 
 and vigour. After the defeat of the Armada they began 
 to feel their power again, and Elizabeth felt in her later 
 years that she was not obeyed as she once had been. 
 Her last years were unhappy, for parties formed in her 
 court, one in favour of peace, the other in favour of war 
 against Spain. At the head of the war party was the 
 queen's favourite Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, who 
 was sent to Ireland to put down one of the constant 
 risings which took place there. But he made terms with 
 the rebels, against the queen's orders, and fell into dis- 
 grace when he came back. Then he attempted to rise 
 against the queen, in 1601, but his attempt was useless ; 
 and Elizabeth, in her old age, found herself compelled to 
 sign the death warrant of the man whom she most loved. 
 Elizabeth had been a wise and useful ruler for England 
 in its difiiculties, for she loved peace and knew how to 
 take advantage of her enemies without going to war ; 
 she was more fitted to cherish in difficult times the 
 growing strength of England, than she was to direct the 
 energies which grew up under her protection. 
 
 w 
 
tics 
 he. 
 
 1603. 73 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 PRETENSIONS OF THE STUARTS. 
 
 I. When Elizabeth died, in 1603, the descendants 
 of Henry VIII. came to an end, and the descendants of 
 his sister Margaret came to the throne. The 
 accession of James VI., King of Scotland, noSm of 'he 
 son of Mary and Darnley, was in itself im- "*y** power, 
 portant for the future of England. The crowns of 
 England and Scotland were now united on one head, 
 and the old feud between the two countries was at an 
 end. Moreover, James had been for many years King 
 of Scotland, and came to England with his notions of 
 a king's position fully made up. The power of the 
 Crown under the Tudors arose from the troubled state 
 of the country and the difficulty of the questions which 
 had to be settled. The Tudor sovereigns were allowed 
 to act arbitrarily because they were doing on the whole 
 what the mass of the people wanted, and men were glad 
 to see them do it with a strong hand. But the presence 
 of danger had now gone by ; the Commons were wealthy 
 and energetic, and took more interest in politics ; they had 
 learned to stand by themselves without the aid of nobles 
 or clergy, and they began again to assert the old liberties 
 which Parliament had enjoyed before the troubles of the 
 Wars of the Roses. To meet this new spirit came James 
 I., with a lofty notion of the power of the king, convinced 
 that he had a right to do whatever the Tudors had done, 
 but forgetting that the Tudors had done what the people 
 had wanted, while he was prepared to do what he 
 thought best, whether the people liked it or not. The 
 powers that the Tudors had used in extraordinary times 
 he wished to establish as the ordinary power of the king. 
 
74 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1603- 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 James I.'s son and grandsons, who came after him, all 
 had the same ideas as their father. So through all this 
 Stuart period a continual struggle was going on between 
 king and Parliament, to settle what the limits of the 
 king's power should be. 
 
 2. Differences were not long in breaking out between' 
 James I. and his people. Indeed, there were hard ques- 
 
 . tions left over from Elizabeth's reign to be 
 
 James 1. and , , rr., ■,■,-, ■, 1 
 
 the Puritans, Settled. There had always been a number 
 '^** of earnest men who had not been content 
 
 with the services of the English Church as Elizabeth had 
 set them up. They thought that too much of the old 
 services had been kept, and that some of the ceremonies 
 led to superstition. Under Elizabeth these Puritans, as 
 they were called, had been kept down. Now that 
 James I. came from a land where Puritan opinions had 
 prevailed, it was hoped that he would allow greater free- 
 dom to the Puritans in the English Church. But these 
 hopes were not fulfilled, for James I. thought that the 
 equality in Church government, which existed in Scot- 
 land, would lead to equality also in politics, and that 
 greater freedom to the Puritans would lessen the power 
 of the Crown. * No bishop, no king,' he exclaimed ; 
 and after a conference between the bishops and the 
 Puritans at Hampton Court, he refused to make any 
 changes in Church matters (1604). Parliament was an- 
 gered at this, for Puritanism was strong among the well- 
 to-do middle class, of which Parliament was greatly 
 made up. 
 
 3. Moreover, James wished to be looked upon abroad 
 as a great king, and so to have a part in foreign politics. 
 
 During Elizabeth's reign England had stood 
 the Catho- alone, and had protected itself against the 
 hcs, 1603. Kings of France and Spain. James I. wished 
 to have peace, and to be on an equal footing with the 
 
i6i8. Pretensions of the Stuarts, 
 
 n 
 
 ames I. and 
 pain, 1605- 
 161 8. 
 
 French and Spanish kings. But he could not do this so 
 long as the Catholics were severely dealt with in Eng- 
 land So James wished to make the laws against the 
 Catholics less strict ; the Parliament was angered at 
 this, for they said that the Catholics were dangerous, as 
 they were always plotting to bring England under foreign 
 rule. The danger from the Catholics was indeed shown 
 by the plot of a few desperate men to blow up the Parlia- 
 ment House in 1605. This * Gunpowder Plot ' was found 
 out in time ; but it shows that Parliament was becoming 
 important again, when it was thought that the Catholics 
 would be better off if Parliament were destroyed. 
 
 4. James's desire to be a great king abroad led him to 
 wish for an alliance with Spain, and a plan was formed 
 of marrying Prince Charles to the King of 
 Spain's daughter. The English did not like s 
 this at all, for they hated the Spaniards as 
 being their old enemies, and their anger was increased 
 against the king when they saw him put to death on a 
 slight charge, to please the King of Spain, one of the 
 greatest of the Elizabethan seamen and statesmen, Sir 
 Walter Raleigh (1618). 
 
 5. Thus, in all these things, the king pursued a course 
 opposed to what his people wanted, and Parliament grew 
 bolder and bolder in going against him. 
 Elizabeth had been very economical, and so Parliament, 
 had managed to keep herself pretty free from 1603-1621. 
 the control of Parliament ; but James was extravagant 
 and always in debt, and had to go to Parliament for 
 money. The landed gentry had now grown strong enough 
 to take the place of the old nobles in opposing the 
 Crown, and they joined with the Puritans in remon- 
 strating against the king's doings. On the other hand, 
 there were many people who held that the king's power 
 came from God, and ought not to be meddled with. 
 
I 
 
 
 u 
 
 ?6 
 
 History of England, a.d. i6i8- 
 
 There were' also some statesmen and lawyers who upheld 
 the king's powei, because they thought that only by 
 means of it could useful reforms be made in law and 
 other matters. The king's great minister at first was 
 Robert Cecil, and so long as he lived things went on 
 protty well. But after his death the king took to 
 favourites, who owed everything to him and would do his 
 bidding. Chief of these was George Villiers, who was 
 made Duke of Buckingham. Everywhere evil practices 
 prevailed amongst the king's ministers. In 162 1 the 
 House of Commons impeached the Lord Chancellor, 
 Francis Bacon, for taking gifts as a judge. Bacon was 
 a wise man and a great writer, and he seems to have 
 taken these presents without looking on them as bribes. 
 Still his example was a bad one ; he was found guilty, 
 fined, and deprived of his orifice. 
 
 6. In foreign affairs, James and his subjects differed 
 more and more. In 161 8 a great war, known, from 
 James I. and the time it lasted, as the Thirty Years' War, 
 affaii?\6i8- broke out in Germany between the Catholics 
 1625. and Protestants. James's son-in-law, the elector 
 
 Palatine, was driven from his dominions, and the Eng- 
 lish people wanted to help him and the other Protestants. 
 But James would not quarrel with Spain, as he hoped 
 for the Spanish marriage for his son Charles. In 1623 
 Charles and the Duke of Buckingham went off to Spiin 
 to bring back the princess ; but there were difficulties in 
 the way, and, to the joy of England, Charles came back 
 disappointed, without his Spanish bride. Parliament 
 wanted to make war against Spain, and to marry Charles 
 to a Proteotant wife. But the desire for an alliance with 
 a great foreign power led him to marry Henrietta Maria, 
 sister of the French king, and to do this he agreed that 
 the laws against Catholics should not be put in force. 
 Soon after, in 1625, James I. died, and Charles I. found 
 
1629. 
 
 Pretensions of the Stuarts. 
 
 77 
 
 that he had the same difficulties with Parliament for at 
 the beginning of his reign they refused to grant him 
 money for life, as had been done to all kings since 
 Edward IV. 
 
 7. Charles I., though opposed by his Parliament, still 
 hoped to take an important position in foreign affairs. 
 He laid aside his father's peaceful policy, and Charles i. 
 so plunged deeper and deeper into difficulties. affaiSTS- 
 First he joined France in war against Spain, 1629. 
 
 and when France made peace with Spain he quarrelled 
 with France. To get supplies for these wars, he took 
 money without consent of Parliament, and called it a 
 loan ; but men were thrown into prison if they did not 
 pay, and when some of them complained that they were 
 imprisoned unlawfully, the judges ruled that the king 
 might send men to prison without giving any reason. 
 However, in 1628 Charles I. was obliged to call Parlia- 
 ment together to get money. Before granting him any, 
 the Commons drew up a * Petition of Right,' which laid 
 down that no one should be called on to pay loans or 
 taxes without the consent of Parliament, and that no one 
 should be sent to prison without cause being shown. 
 Charles I. gave his consent to this, and got a grant of 
 money for the purpose of carrying on war against France. 
 But just as Buckingham was going to sail with a fleet, 
 he was stabbed by a man callc-d Felton ; and the people 
 rejoiced at his death, for they thought that he was the 
 king's adviser in all his u ilawful doings. Charles failed 
 in his war against France, and had to make peace in 1629. 
 
 8. Now vhat Charles I. was free from war and from 
 the influence of Buckingham, it was hoped that he would 
 get on better with Parliament. But there church 
 were differences about the meaning of the ?»"'««. 
 Petition of Right, and there were religious diflerences. 
 For some men in the Church of England cared especially 
 
7i 
 
 History of England, a.d. 162^ 
 
 about those things in the Prayer Book which were like 
 the old Church, and were what we should now call High 
 Churchmen. These men angered the Puritans, who 
 wished to make the belief of the English Church more 
 like what the German reformers had taught to be good. 
 The king took the side of the High Churchmen, for they 
 taught that the king's power came from God, and that 
 men ought to obey him in all things. Pariiament, on the 
 other hand, was full of Puritans, and called on the king to 
 put down the High Churchmen, who, they thought, were 
 leading men back to Catholicism. So the king and 
 Parliament quarrelled more and more, and in 1629 
 Charles I. dissolved Parliament, and determined to try 
 to govern without one. 
 
 9. From 1629 to 1640 there was no Parliament 
 Charles I.'s chief advisers were Sir Thomas Wentworth, 
 Personal who afterwards was made Lord Strafford, and 
 of CharllTi. Laud, who was made Archbishop of Canter- 
 1629-1640. bury. Charles I. was convinced that he was 
 right in all he had done, and that Parliament was wrong. 
 He thought it his duty to maintain what he considered 
 to be the old rights of the Crown, and he cared little 
 whether his people agreed with him or not. Wentworth 
 and Laud devised a policy which they called ' Thorough,' 
 and which aimed at carrying things with a high hand and 
 putting down all opposition. Laud was a High Church- 
 man and was in favour of forms and ceremonies, which 
 he was unwearied in enforcing upon all the clergy. His 
 constant meddlesomeness caused great irritation, and his 
 doings provoked the Puritans in every way. The Court 
 of High Commission, which had been set up by Elizabeth 
 for ecclesiastical matters, was now used to punish all who 
 did contrary to Laud's wishes. The Star Chamber Court 
 also tried men who displeased the king, and was made up 
 of jm'ges only, without any jury. To raise money the 
 
164a 
 
 Pretensions of the Stuarts. 
 
 79 
 
 king set in force an old right of the Crown to call upon 
 the seaport towns to provide ships for the defence of the 
 kingdom ; now, under the name of ship money, he laid 
 this tax on the whole land. When a Buckinghamshire 
 gentleman, John Hampden, refused to pay, he was brought 
 to trial, and the judges ruled that the king had power to 
 take the money of his subjects. Wentworth ruled Ireland 
 as Lord P'^puty, and made all men there obey the com- 
 ma r ' Lhe king. 
 
 lu. For a time Charles I. seemed to have his own 
 way, but at last he raised a bitter opposition in Scotland 
 by following L. id's advice and trying to Disturbance 
 make the Scottish Church like the English. >« Scotland, 
 In 1637 a service book, like the English * ^* ^ ^'^ 
 Prayer Bo'-, was ordered to be used in Scotland. The 
 Scots did n:t like this service book at all, and detested 
 Laud's changes, which they thought led to idolatry and 
 superstition. So there were riots in Edi. .burgh. The 
 Scots banded themselves together to defend their reli* 
 gious liberties, and Charles I. was unable to put them 
 down. In 1640 the Scots invaded England, and then 
 Charles I. was forced to summon Parliament again. 
 
 II. The Parliament that met in 1640 is known as the 
 * Long Parliament,' from the length of time which it 
 lasted. Men in England had grown very xheLong 
 bitter against the king, and Parliament was Parliament, 
 resolved to strike a severe blow. Strafford ^ ^°' 
 had come back to England to help the king in his dif- 
 ficulties, and the first thing the Commons did was to 
 impeach him. When the trial seemed likely to last long, 
 they passed a Bill of Attainder declaring him to be a 
 traitor and condemning him to death. The king was so 
 powerless that he gave his consent to this Bill, and Straf- 
 ford was beheaded. Laud also was impeached, but his 
 trial was for the present put off. Parliament then went 
 
 
 li 
 
86 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1640- 
 
 on to declare ship money illegal, to abolish the High 
 Commission Court and the Court of the Star Chamber, 
 to enact that Parliament should be summoned at least 
 once every three years, and that the present Parliament 
 should not be dissolved without its own consent. 
 
 1 2. Charles agreed to these laws, for he could not do 
 otherwise ; but he did not mean to keep to them longer 
 Quarrels ^'^'^^ ^^ could help. He trusted to raise an 
 with Pariia- army, to get the Scots to help him, and also 
 men , i 41. ^^ ^^^ ^^^ {xQvci the Irish Catholics. So in 
 164 1 Charles went to Scotland and gave the Scots what 
 they wished ; but while he was away came news that the 
 Irish Catholics had risen against the Protestants, and had 
 put many of them to death. Men in England thought that 
 Charles, by trying to get the Irish to help him, had en- 
 couraged them to this dreadful deed. Parliament saw 
 that it was necessary to take measures for its own safety, 
 so it drew up the Grand Remonstrance, which was a 
 statement of all the misgovernment of Charles I. since 
 he came to the throne. This was not only sent to the 
 king, but was printed for the people to read. Charles 
 determined to terrify Parliament, so he accused five 
 members of high treason, and came down with his guards 
 to the House to take them prisoners ; but the members had 
 heard of his coming, and had fled. Thus his plan failed 
 entirely ; he had attempted to use force to Parliament, 
 and had done nothing. He did not get the five members 
 into his hands, but he had shown everyone that he was 
 ready to set aside the rights and privileges of Parliament. 
 After this, war between king and Parliament was un- 
 avoidable. The king left London to raise forces. There 
 was no standing army in England, but every county had 
 its militia, over which the kmg appointed the officers. 
 Parliament asked that they should appoint the officers 
 for a time instead of the king ; when the king refused 
 war broke out, in 1642. 
 
i64S. 
 
 8i 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE GREAT REBELLION. 
 
 I. Men in England were pretty equally divided, at 
 first, between the king and the Parliament. Those who 
 held to the Church of England join>;d tiie king, (-j^ji ^^^^ 
 while the Puritans were with the Parliament. 1642-1645. 
 The eastern counties and those round London were 
 generally on the side of Parliament ; the northern counties 
 and those near Wales sided mostly with the king. The 
 nobles and country gentry were the strength of the king's 
 army ; the farmers and shopkeepers made up the forces 
 of Parliament. At first the king's troops had rather the 
 advantage, and Parliament looked for h«.lp to Scotland. 
 The Scots agreed to join with them if they would set up 
 a Presbyterian Church in England, so Parliament entered 
 into the * Solemn League and Covenant ' with the Scots, and 
 accepted Presbyterianism. There were, however, some 
 earnest men who did not like Presbyterianism, or any other 
 form of worship which all v/ere to use, but thought that 
 each congregation should settle those matters for itself. 
 These men were called Independents, and their great 
 leader was a Cambridgeshire gentleman, Oliver Crom- 
 well. Cromwell thought that, instead of settling the war 
 by the help of the Scots, it would be better to train up an 
 army of godly and sturdy men, who would be fit to fight 
 against the Royalist gentry. So he trained a troop of 
 horse of his own, and by his skill and their discipline 
 won, in 1644, a decisive vicory over the king at Marston 
 Moor, near York. After this, Cromwell devised a plan 
 that the army should be new-modelled, and turned into a 
 regular army instead of being mere levies. This was 
 A. H. G 
 
 I 
 
 k 
 
 m 
 
 1 1 
 
 fii 
 
I 
 
 p.\ 
 
 III 
 
 82 
 
 History of England. a.d. 164J- 
 
 done, and CromweH's plan was proved successful by a 
 great victory over Charles, at Naseby, in 1645. 
 
 2. After this Charles could raise no more troops, and 
 his only hope was to set the Presbyterians against the 
 „ ,. , . Independents. For this purpose he took 
 
 Fall of the /••,., o t. ^ t. i. • 
 
 king, 1645- refuge with the Scots, but they gave him up 
 »649- to the English Parliament (1647). Attempts 
 
 were made to settle matters with the king, but he always 
 hoped that the Independents and Presbyterians would 
 quarrel, and men learned to distrust him more and more. 
 At last, in 1648, the Scots marched into England, and the 
 Royalists rose in favour of the king. But Cromwell soon 
 defeated the Scots, and Fairfaix the Royalists. Then they 
 marched back to London full of anger against Charles, 
 for they thought that they would have no peace nor 
 quietness so long as he lived. They were bent on putting 
 him to death ; and an officer, Colonel Pride, sent soldiers 
 to the House of Commons and turned away from it more 
 than a hundred members who were thought still to look 
 on Charles as their lawful king. Then the remaining 
 members, who were only about fifty, appointed a com- 
 mission to try the king. Charles was sentenced to be 
 put to death for his wrong doings, and was beheaded at 
 Whitehall in 1649. 
 
 3. Thus the struggle between the king and Parliament, 
 had led to the entire downfall of the king. This was 
 
 not what the majority of the English people 
 monweaith, had Wanted ; they wanted that the govt rn- 
 1649-1650. j^gj^j. i^Qjj^ Qf Church and State should go on 
 
 pretty much as it had done before, only that the king 
 should recognise the authority of Parhament, and govern 
 with its counsel and advice. But Parliament had won 
 the day by means of the Presbyterians and the Inde- 
 pendents. The Presbyterians wished to change the 
 character of the Church ; and the Independents wished 
 
tfiSJ. 
 
 The Great Rebellion. 
 
 83 
 
 to set up a new form of government altogether. So long 
 as the Presbyterians were in power ihey had tried to set 
 up the king again if he would agree to do as they wished ; 
 when the Independents got the upper hand by means of 
 the army, they overthrew the king and set up a Common- 
 wealth, which was to rest upon the sovereignty of the 
 people. The Crown and the House of Lords were both 
 abolished, and all power was to rest in the House of 
 Commons. 
 
 4. It was not to be expected that this sweeping change 
 would be at once accepted. In Ireland, men sent for 
 Prince Charles, eldest son of the late king ; Cromweli 
 but before he could get there Cromwell went mMt^^/g*^ 
 with an army, took Drogheda and Wexford 1653- 
 by storm, and slew all the garrison. Ireland submitted, 
 and Charles went to Scotland instead, where the Scots 
 took him for their king. Cromwell marched to Scotland 
 and defeated the Scots at Dunbar ; and when Charles 
 came into England to raise the people in his favour, 
 Cromwell at once pursued him, and defeated him at 
 Worcester, so that he had to flee from the land in dis- 
 guise, and made his escape with difficulty. After this, 
 in 165 1, there was no one to stand against the new 
 government ; there remained the difficulty of getting the 
 new government itself set right. The Parliament then 
 sitting was very small in numbers, and did not represent 
 the people, yet it thought that it could use all the powers of 
 the State. As it would not dissolve, Cromwell turned the 
 members out (1653), and tried to set up a better Parlia- 
 ment, chosen by himself and the chief officers of the 
 army. But this Parliament set to work to change so 
 many things, that men grew alarmed, and it dissolved 
 itself before the end of the year. Then those who were 
 in favour of the Commonwealth saw that the only way 
 to get a settled government was to go back so far to the 
 
 G 3 
 
84 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1653- 
 
 old consiitution of England as to have one man head of 
 the State ; so Cromwell was made head, with the title 
 of Protector. 
 
 5. Cromwell was a great rultr, but he had to do an 
 
 impossible work. He had to govern England as the 
 
 „ . . head of a religious icpublic, when the 
 
 Rule of ^ . ,*' , ,. , 
 
 Cromwell. great mass of the people did not want a 
 
 1653-1658. republic, and disliked the form of religion 
 which went with it. If Cromwell had been made king, 
 he might have gathered the people again round the old 
 consiitution ; but the InJependents and the army would 
 not hear of setting up monarchy again. So Cromwell 
 had to try and get a Parliament which would do what he 
 wanted ; but he could not succeed, for the Parliaments 
 which he called quarrelled amongst themselves and did 
 nothing, or else aitempted to do what was unwise and 
 had to be dissolved. Cromwell found all his efforts fad 
 to settle the government in a peaceable and orderly way. 
 He had to keep order by meaans of the army, and set up 
 major-generals in the place of the ordinary magistrates. 
 But he did not like doing these things, and he wanted 
 men to agree again ; but the great body of the Independ- 
 ents were not so wise as he, and tried to make all men 
 think and behave in religious matters as they did them- 
 selves, till men found their rule to be as oppressive as 
 that of Charles I. in his worst days. 
 
 6. While he lived Cromwell kept order and made 
 England respected by foreign countries ; for he asserted 
 Richard ^'^^ power of England over the Channel, and 
 ^eTT"' defeated the Dutch, who were England's 
 
 commercial rivals, and made war aUo against 
 Spain. But when Cromwell died, in 1658, there was no 
 one to keep together the different parties. His son, 
 Richard Cromwell, was made Protector, but he was too 
 easy-going to govern in difficult times. As he was not a 
 soldier the army felt no attachment to him, and a struggle 
 
x66a 
 
 The Revolution, 
 
 85 
 
 between Parliament and the army began. Parliament 
 was dissolved, and the ofificers of the army called together 
 again the members of the Long Parliament whom Oliver 
 Cromwell had turned out in 1653. But this Rump Par- 
 liament, as it was nicknamed, believed in its own powers, 
 and would not obey the army, so it was turned out, and 
 there was no proper government at all. 
 
 7. At last these difficulties in getting any fixed form 
 of government in the place of t^^ ir»onarchy which had 
 been overthrown made men wish to have a TheRestora- 
 king back again. So long as the army was ^'o". »66o. 
 united this was impossible ; but it happened that General 
 Monk, who w^s in command of the soldiers in Scotland, 
 looked with jealousy on the doings of the soldiers in 
 England. So he marched,to England, and declared him- 
 self in favour of a free Parliament. The old members of 
 the House of Commons,«who had be^n turned out of the 
 Long Parliament by Colonel Pride in 1648, were called 
 to take their seats by the side of the Rump. Then the 
 Long Parliament dissolved itself, and a new Parliament 
 was called, which invited Charles Stuart to come back as 
 king to England. The difficulty of finding out anything 
 which men would agree to set in the place of the old way 
 of governing led them at last to agree in bringing it back 
 again. 
 
 CHAPTER XIIL 
 
 THE REVOLUTION. 
 
 I. When Charles IL came back in 1660, he met with 
 no opposition. The army was paid off and broken up. 
 Everything that had been done since the Restoratioa 
 outbreak of the war was undone. Tlie tiilrch 
 Church of England was set up again as it »66* 
 
86 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1660- 
 
 and Parlia- 
 ment, 1660- 
 1670. 
 
 had been before, and the Puritans were again called 
 upon to submit to it. Those who refused were called 
 Dissenters, were punished for worshipping in their owrt 
 fashion, and were shut out from holding office in the towni. 
 
 2. If Charles II. had been a good or a wise man, he 
 would have learned how England wished to be governed ; 
 Charles II. but he bclicved in the powers of the king, 
 
 and in the right of the Stuarts to the English 
 throne, as much a.- his father had done. 
 He was not so sincere as his father, but meant to keep 
 his crown when once he had got it, and not run into 
 danger as his fathef had aone. The old questions of 
 the rights of the king and of Parliament seon began to 
 jrop up again ; but instead of openly defying Parliament 
 Charles II. deceived them in underhand ways. Nothing 
 prospered in his reign. He went to war with the Dutch 
 and was defeated, because the ships were out of repair, 
 as the king spent all the money he could get on his own 
 pleasures; A great plague visited London in 1665, and 
 destroyed a fifth of the population ; this was followed by a 
 fire, which burned nearly two-thirds of the city. Charles 
 II. lived an evil life, and set an example which men who 
 had been forced into hypocrisy by the piety of the Puri- 
 tans were only too ready to follow. The reign of Charles 
 II. is one of the most disgraceful times in our history. 
 
 3. Moreover, in foreign matters Charles II. held the 
 same views as his father and grandfather. He wanted 
 Charles II. ^° ^® ^"^ friendly terms with the great foreign 
 and France, power s. At this time France was the greatest 
 I 70-1 74- kingdom, as Spain had fallen into feebleness. 
 So Charles II. wished to ally himself firmly with France, 
 and for this purpose was willing to allow the Catholics 
 their own worship, as his father had been before. In- 
 deed, Charles II., though he cared little about religion 
 in bis doings, seems in his heart to have believed thaf 
 
1674. 
 
 Ihe Revolution, 
 
 87 
 
 ihe Catholics were right. So in 1670 Charles II. 
 made-a secret treaty with Lewis XIV., the mighty King 
 of France, in which Lewis agreed to give Charles money, 
 and so enable him to rule without his Parliament, and 
 Charles agreed to join Lewis in war against the Dutch 
 and to declare himself a Catholic. Soon after this 
 Charles published a Declaration of Indulgence, which 
 declared that Catholics and Dissenters might worship 
 in their own way. But Parliament was angry at this 
 because in this way the king set aside the laws by his 
 own power. Moreover, men were still so alarmed at the 
 remembrance of the doings of the Puritans, when they 
 were in power, that they believed the maintenance of the 
 Chtirch of England to be a necessary security for govern- 
 ment ; so they looked on the king's attempt to give 
 toleration as a plot against the constitution. Hence Par- 
 liament refused the king any money till he had with- 
 drawn his Declaration of Indulgence ; and, moreover, 
 they passed an Act known as the Test Act, which 
 required all who held office in the State to take the 
 Sacrament according to the rites of the Church of 
 England, and declare that they did not hold the Romish 
 doctrine of transubstantiation. Thus Charles II.'s 
 schemes were stopped for the time, and he was driven to 
 make peace with Holland in 1674. 
 
 4. After this Charles II. tried to please Parliament 
 by marrying" his niece Mary to his nephew William, 
 Prince of Orange, who was stadtholder, or Charles 11. 
 president, of the Dutch Republic, and was mett^Yej^- 
 the leader of the Protestant party in Europe. 1678. 
 Angry at this, Lewis XIV. determined, instead of paying 
 Charles II. money to keep him friendly with France, 
 that he would raise up troubles for him at home which 
 would prevent England from interfering in foreign 
 affairs. So he caused to be laid before Parliament 
 
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 History of England, a.d. 1674. 
 
 letters of Chai'les's chief minister, the Earl of Danby, 
 which spoke of the money which Lewis was to pay to 
 Charles that he might do his bidding. On this Parlia- 
 ment impeached Danby. To save his minister, Charles 
 dissolved the Parliament, which had sat from the begin- 
 ning of his reign, and had assembled full of loyalty and 
 desire to please the king. Just at this time the excited 
 feelings of men led an impostor, Titus Gates, who had 
 once been a Jesuit, to come forward and tell an untrue 
 story of a Popish plot to destroy the king and the consti- 
 tution of England. His story was at once believed, and 
 many innocent men were put to death on false testimony. 
 5. The Parliament that was elected in the midst of 
 this excitement set to work at once to provide for the 
 protection of Protestantism in England, 
 elusion Bill, Charles 1 1, had no children, and his brother 
 '^78- James, Duke of York, was heir to the crown ; 
 
 but James was a Catholic, and men had begun to speak 
 of setting him aside. There v*ore difficulties in the way 
 of this, for men in England wished to have a king over 
 them, and most of them held that the king's power rested 
 on Divine right. If so, it was clear that James's claim 
 could not be set aside. Those who thought that James 
 would destroy the liberties of the country held that the 
 king was bound to uphold the laws and liberties of the 
 land, and that if he did not do so he might be withstood 
 and set aside. Parliament had just succeeded in stopping 
 Charles II.'s scheme of allying himself with France, and so 
 making himself strong enough to set up again the power 
 of the Crown and overthrow the liberties of England. 
 James was himself a Catholic, and was more likely to 
 succeed in the same attempt. So a Bill to exclude James 
 from the throne was brought into Parliament. Feeling 
 ran higher on this question, and men were sharply divided 
 into two parties by the opinions which they held about iU 
 
Ms- 
 
 The Revolution, 
 
 89 
 
 T hose who wished to set James aside were called Whigs, 
 after the Whiggamores, a band of Presbyterian rebels in 
 Scotland ; those who were in favour of James were called 
 Tories, after a band of wild Catholic rebels in Ireland. 
 
 6. The strife between these two parties was bitter. 
 The new House of Commons, in 1679, passed the Exclu- 
 sion Bill, and was dissolved. The next House 
 
 of Commons did likewise, and was also dis- Charles 11., 
 solved. Charles II. showed surprising reso- 1679-1685. 
 lution in upholding the rights of his family to the crown, 
 for the man whom the Whigs wished to set up in the 
 place of James was the Duke of Monmouth, a natural son 
 of Charles, 6f whom he was very fond. In 1681 a fourth 
 Parliament was summoned at Oxford, which was more 
 violent than before, and was also dissolved. The violence 
 of the Whigs had by this time disgusted moderate men ; 
 the untruthfulness of the Popish Plot had now been found 
 out, and men's minds were calmer. Charles had shown 
 moderation, and had, after all, only been maintaining the 
 rights of his brother ; so public opinion gradually came 
 lound to his side. The king was soon strong enough to 
 bring the Whig leaders to trial on various charges ; and 
 the discovery of a conspiracy to shoot Charles and James 
 by the Pye House, in Hertfordshire, gave grounds for 
 accusing some of the principal Whigs of treason (1683). 
 After this Charles did as he liked ; and vhen he died, in 
 1685, James II. came to the throne without opposition. 
 A rising against him of the Duke of Argyle in Scotland 
 and of the Duke of Monmouth in the West of England 
 was quickly put down, and the rebels were punished with 
 terrible severity. 
 
 7. James II. completely justified all the fears of the 
 Whigs. He aimed, like all the Stuarts, at making the 
 power of the Crown supreme ; and he hoped james II., 
 10 do this by getting together a standing »685-»688. 
 
90 
 
 Misery of England. a.d. 1685- 
 
 army and by putting the Catholics in power. He knew 
 that he could not do this by means of Parliament, so he 
 put Catholics in office, and said that as king he had 
 power of dispensing in particular cases with the laws. 
 He made judges who would be likeily to obey him : and 
 these judges ruled that the king had this power. Then 
 James gave offices to Catholics as he pleased ; and think- 
 ing to get the Dissenters also on his side, he published 
 in 1687 a Declaration of Indulgenc. to Catholics and 
 Dissenters, as Charles 1 1, had done. This set the Tories 
 against him, for they were all firm upholders of the 
 English Church, and did not win over the Dissenters, for 
 they would not have toleration given them in an unlawful 
 way. 
 
 8. Still Jan\es went on with his plans, and in 1688 
 ordered all ministers to read the Declaration of Indulgence 
 on two Sundays in their churches. This the 
 bishops, clergy would not do ; and seven of the bishops 
 
 x688. drew up a petition to the king, asking that 
 
 the order might be withdrawn. James brought the 
 bishops to trial for libel, as their petition had been printed 
 and circulated throughout the country. In spite of all 
 the king's efforts to have the bishops found guilty, they 
 were acquitted ; and the rejoicing throughout England at 
 the verdict s4iowed James how entirely the people were 
 against him. His rule had been endured so long because 
 he was an old man, and men thought that on his death 
 the crown would go to his daughter Mary, who was a 
 Protestant and was married to the Prince of Orange. 
 But just before the trial of the bishops a son was born 
 to James, and men were afraid of a Catholic successor. 
 So on the day of their acquittal a letter was sent to 
 William of Orange, signed by v,even of the chief men 
 of England, Whigs and Tories alike, asking him to 
 come to England and protect its liberties from James. 
 
I6SS. 
 
 Ttie RevohUion. 
 
 91 
 
 9. William of Orange, besides being the leader of the 
 Protestant party in Europe, was also the leader of oppo- 
 sition to the excessive power of France, 'j-he Revolu- 
 Lewis XIV. had grown so strong as to "°"' ^^'^^' 
 threaten the freedom of all other European States ; he 
 was attacking Holland and looking forward to obtain 
 for his grandson the crown of Spain. England would 
 naturally have been alarmed at these aggressions of 
 France ; but the Stuart kings had been willing to help 
 the pohcy of Lewis XIV., that in return he might help 
 to strengthen their power in England. William of 
 Orange was ready to free England of James IL, that 
 England might take her natural place as leader of the 
 opposition to the growth of the power of France. So 
 William accepted the invitation to come to England, and, 
 with a small army, landed at Torbay in 1688. James 
 soon found himself deserted by all, even by the officers 
 of his own army. In despair of doing anything for him- 
 self, he fled to France, in hopes that Lewis XIV. would 
 set him again on his throne, and that he might rule 
 England by foreign aid. 
 
 10. William called together a Parliament, which de- 
 clared that James had abdicated, and that the throne was 
 vacant. The crown was then offered to The Bill of 
 William and Mary jointly, and a Declaration i^»8hts, 1689. 
 of Rights was drawn up, to do away with the chief griev- 
 ances of the Stuarts. This Declaration declared the 
 dispensing power, the raising of money without grant of 
 Parliament, and the keepii^ of an army in time of peace, 
 to be unlawful It declared the need of frequent Parlia- 
 ments, and the right of freedom of election and freedom 
 of debate. To this William and Mary gave their consent, 
 and the Declaration was afterwards turned into an Act of 
 Parliament. 
 
 • II. By the accession of William III. and Mary,th9 
 
 
02 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1688- 
 
 strugple which had so long lasted between king and Par- 
 liament was at last settled. The Commonwealth had 
 Results of attempted to settle it by abolishing mo- 
 the Revoiu- narchy. The Revolution, which set William 
 and Mary on the throne, settled it by setting 
 up a king by the will of the people in the place of a king by 
 Divine right. The full importance of this was not seen at 
 first; no changes were made in the constitution, and no 
 new rights were claimed by Parliament or by the people. 
 But gradually more and more power fell into the hands 
 of Parliament ; the king's ministers became more aiid 
 more answerable to Parliament for what they did, until 
 gradually the king found it wise to take for his ministers 
 those whom Parliament wished. The government came 
 to be, as it is ^ow, in the hands of a ministry, chosen by 
 Parliament, but consulting the Crown, which, however, 
 never opposes the will of the people. This change came 
 about slowly, and was greatly due to the personal 
 characters of the kings who came after the Revolution. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PARTY GOVERNMENT. 
 
 I. William 1 1 1, had many difficulties to face when he 
 came to the throne. He was (^Id and stern, and did not 
 Parties in know how to gain*he goodwill of English- 
 England, men; nor did he understand the questions 
 9-XG90. ^hich arose in Parliament, or the temper of 
 English politics. The Whigs, who had brought William 
 to the throne, expected that he would behave as leader 
 of their party ; but William disliked all questions of 
 party, for he wished to have England united, that it might 
 
1690. 
 
 Party Government 
 
 93 
 
 of 
 
 of 
 rht 
 
 make war against France. So he chose his ministers at 
 first from both parties, but they did not get on together. 
 Wilham wished to give liberty to the Dissenters ; but 
 Parliament would only pass a Toleration Act, which 
 allowed them to have their own places of worship and 
 services, and still kept the Test Act, which pre\entcd 
 them frum holding any office. Many of the clergy also 
 refused to take the oath of obedience to William and 
 Mary, for they th. ught that they were bound to the old 
 king, if he were to come back ; and 400 of them gave up 
 their livings and formed the sect of the Nonjurors, 
 which, however, gradually died out. In Parliament the 
 quarrels of parties were so violent that William despaired 
 of getting a settled government, and in 1690 even thought 
 of leaving England and going back to Holland. 
 
 2. But the dangers which sprung up on every side 
 made the next Parliament more reasonable, and William 
 could turn his attention to ward off, the wiiiiam IIL 
 schemes of Lewis XIV. and James, in Ire- and Ireland, 
 land, where most of the people were Catholics, ' °9-xo9o. 
 Jnmes felt that his cause was strongest. So in 1689 he 
 went to Ireland, called a. Parliament, and made war 
 against the Protestants, who held by William. The 
 Cathohc Parliament was very violent, and wished to 
 turn the Protestc.*its out of their lands ; so that the 
 war was very bitter. In 1690 William went to Ireland 
 and fought a great battle against James on the river 
 Boyne. James was defeated, and fled back to France, 
 and next year Ireland was again brought under Protest- 
 ant rule. But the Protestants in their turn treated the 
 Catholics harshly, took from them all power in the State, 
 and made many oppressive laws, forbidding them to send 
 their children to schools of their own religion, to inherit 
 lands from Protestants, or even to buy lands themselves. 
 The old enmity between the Irish people and the English 
 
94 
 
 History of England, a.d. 169^ 
 
 settlers had been joined with the religious opposition 
 between Protestants and Catholics which the Reforma- 
 tion had brought about. Now that the Reformation 
 struggles were beginning to settle down in England, they 
 were made more violent in Ireland. The English 
 settlers, who were the Protestants, were few in compari- 
 son with the Irish, who were Catholics ; yet they had all 
 the power in their hands, and oppressed the Irish; so that 
 ill-will was constantly kept up, and has not yet died 
 away. 
 
 3. In Scotland also there were some troubles, though 
 the. Scots were as weary of the Stuarts as were the 
 William III. English. The Scottish Estates, in 1689 
 SUfd^ieio- ^°P^ William and Mary as their king and 
 1690! queen, on condition that the Presbyterian 
 form -of Church government should be established in 
 Scotland. Still James had some friends in Scotland, 
 especially among the Highlanders. Viscount Dundee 
 put himself at their head, but he was killed in the battle 
 of Killiecrankie, and the Highlanders were gradually 
 brought to submit to William. • ■■<'-' 
 
 4. It was from France, however, that the danger was 
 greatest, for William's accession at once set England on 
 
 the side of those States— chief amongst whom 
 and France,' were Spain, Germany, and Holland— who 
 1689-1697. ^gj.g opposed to France. From 1689 to 1697 
 England was engaged with these States in war against 
 France. Lewis XIV. endeavoured to keep England quiet 
 by supporting James, and threatening to invade England 
 in his favour. In 1690 the English were beaten at sea, 
 off Beachy Head, by the French admiral Tourville, and 
 in 1692 Tourville again sailed against the English fleet. 
 Lewis XIV. had planned an invasion of England, and 
 James thought that he had many friends even in the fleet 
 who would take his side. Indeed, many of the chief men of 
 
 t ■■ \ 
 
x<597. 
 
 Party Govemtnmt 
 
 95 
 
 England behaved very basely, and did not hold firm 
 either to the side of James or of William ; many of those 
 who held office under William were ready to join James 
 when his cause seemed strong. So Tourville hoped that 
 the English would not fight against him; but he was 
 mistaken, for the English and Dutch ships attacked and 
 sunk many of his ships, and drove him back to La Hogue, 
 where James was ready to embark with his forces. After 
 this there was no more talk of an invasion for some time. 
 Indeed, James behaved so foolishly that his followers in 
 England grew fewer, and Lewis XIV. saw that it was not 
 much use trying to help h»m. The war on the Continent 
 was not very decisive; neither Lewis nor the allies 
 gained any great victories. But it was very costly, and 
 both parties at last were desirous of peace. So in 1697 
 was made the Peace of Ryswick, by which Lewis recog- 
 nised William III. as King of England, and promised to 
 give no further help to James ; he also had to give back 
 much of the territory which he had taken from his 
 neighbours. 
 
 5. This war pgainst France led to many important 
 results in England. William could only get money 
 through Parliament, and so had to summon wiiiiam ill. 
 Parliament often. So anxious was William fiajji^j*^' 
 to carry on the war with vigour, that he gave 1690-1699. 
 way to Parliament on many points which otherwise he 
 would have resisted, and Parliament did all it could to 
 strengthen its own power. Thus the Triennial Bill was 
 passed in 1694, enacting that a Parliament should not sit 
 for more than three years ; and the Mjitiny Bill, under 
 which the army is held together, was passed only for a 
 short time, so that Parliament had to be soon called to- 
 gether again to renew it. Moreover, the means taken to get 
 money for this war brought about some important changes^ 
 First of these was the National Debt, which wa$ «et on 
 
96 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1693- 
 
 ; 
 
 Ji 
 
 foot by Montague, Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1693. 
 More money was needed than the taxes brought in, so 
 Montague borrowed the money on the security of futuie 
 taxes, so that the payment of the money might be spread 
 over future years. The National Debt at the end of 
 William's reign was sixteen millions ; since that time it 
 has reached over seven hundred millions. Another way 
 of raising money was by borrowing from a banking com- 
 pany, and allowing them to treat the money lent to 
 government as part of their capital. In this way the 
 Bank of England sprung up. After the war was over, 
 William had more and more trouble with his Parliaments. 
 Mary died in 1694, to her husband's great grief, and after 
 her death William's unpopularity increased. He did not 
 understand the English people, and they did not under- 
 stand his wise plans in foreign politics, which were his 
 chief interest. Parliament showed its jealousy of the king 
 by insisting on disbanding nearly all the troops, although 
 William knew that it could not be long before war broke 
 out again. Moreover, in 1699 they insisted that the 
 king shouM send back to Holland his Dutch guards, for 
 whom he had a great liking. Parliament compelled him 
 also to take back from his friends some lands in Ireland^ 
 which he had granted them in reward for their services ; 
 for Parliament thought that these lands ought to be sold 
 to pay for the expenses of the war. 
 
 6. All this time William was anxiously trying to settle 
 a difficult question with Lewis XIV., which was the 
 succession to the throne of Spain. King 
 France, Chaijcs \\. of Spain" had no children, and 
 
 1699-1709. Lewis XIV. had married his sister, so that 
 Lewis's son was the nearest heir to the Spanish throne ; 
 but Lewis's wife, on marrying him, had laid aside all claim 
 to ihe Spanish crown. William III. was afraid that 
 Lewis's greed would lead iiim to pay no heed to this re- 
 
1702. 
 
 Party Government 
 
 91 
 
 nunciation, and he tried to settle by treaties a division of 
 the Spanish dominion, which would prevent Lewis from 
 gaining too much power. William was his own foreign 
 minister, and made these treaties without consulting any- 
 one. The Commons were so angry when they knew 
 this that they impeached the Chancellor, Somers, for 
 putting the seal to them. When Charles II. of Spain 
 died in 1700, leaving all the lands he ruled to the grand- 
 son of Lewis, Lewis XIV. paid no heed to the treaty, 
 but set his grandson on the throne of Spain. At first 
 Parliament was too much opposed to William for him to 
 do anything ; but in the next year James Stuart died, 
 and Lewis publicly recognised his son, James Edward, 
 as King of England. Then men in England saw that 
 Willipm was right in his distrust of Lewis XIV., and 
 that there would be no security for the country until 
 they had put down by force the power of Lewis XIV. 
 William died in 1702, before war was declared. He had 
 struggled manfully all his days against difficulties, and 
 he succeeded on the whole. For he drew England to see 
 that her own interests, as a nation, lay in upholding liberty 
 in Europe, and he led her to take the chief part in the 
 war which was to check the threatening power of France. 
 7. He was succeeded by Anne, second daughter of 
 James II., a kindly but stupid woman, who was very 
 popular, and had no quarrels with Parliament, panies 
 because she was content that it should do as ""d"" Anno, 
 it pleased. Hence in her reign the struggle lay more 
 decidedly between the two parties of Whigs and Tories ; 
 for when the Crown ceased to exercise a decided influ- 
 ence on affairs, it became clear that the power formerly 
 exercised by the Crown was to be in the hands of the 
 party which was in the majority, and each party s rove 
 to raise such questions as would gain most support for 
 itself. In this way party government arose, and as the 
 
 E.H. H 
 
98 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1702- 
 
 I 
 
 K 
 
 I 
 
 power of the Crown grew less, it became recognised as 
 the means by which parliamentary government was to 
 be carried on. In Anne's reign Whigs and Tories 
 violently opposed one another. The Tories held fast to the 
 Church, and went against the Dissenters ; while the Whigs 
 wished to see the laws against the Dissenters done away 
 with. Moreover, the Whigs were in favour of carrying 
 on th** war against France, while the Tories were at 
 first lukewarm and afterwards opposed it. 
 
 8. When Anne came to the throne she was entirely 
 under the influence of John Churchill, Duke of Marl- 
 
 , borough, and his wife. Marlborough was 
 ministry,"* ' wisc enough to understand the great p!ans 
 1702^1710. Qf William III., and wished to carry them 
 out. At first nis influence with the queen made him the 
 most powerful man in England ; and a Tory ministry, at 
 the head of which was Lord Godolphin, supported Marl- 
 borough in carrying on the war. 
 
 9. The war of the Spanish Succession, in which 
 Marlborough was the great general, lasted from 1702 to 
 War of the I? '3. and was fought by England, Holland, 
 ~«?^?^"*^" Austl-ia, Prussia, and Hanover against 
 1702-1713. France. The fighting chiefly lay in the 
 Spanish Netherlands — the country which we now call 
 Belgium. But in 1704 Marlborough led his army into 
 Bavaria, and a great battle was fought at Blenheim, to 
 prevent the French from attacking Austria. The French 
 were entirely defeated, and this was the first serious 
 check which Lewis XIV. had met with. In the same 
 year also an English admiral. Sir George Rooke, who 
 was cruising off the Spanish coast, made a sudden land- 
 ing and took Gibraltar, which England has kept ever 
 since, and has found very useful, because its possession 
 secures for English ships a free passage into the Medi- 
 terranean Sea, Marlborough's victories followed fast « 
 
I7IO. 
 
 Party Goverummt 
 
 99 
 
 in 1706 he won the battle of Ramillies, in 1708 Oudenarde, 
 and in 1709 Malplaquet. The French were driven out 
 of the Netherlands, their renown in war was lost, .nnd 
 their resources were drained to the utmost. In Spain the 
 allies did not succeed so well, as the Spaniards preferred 
 their French king to the Austrian prince whom the 
 allies wished to set up. This war was in its commence- 
 ment a Whig war, and Marlborough's victories made the 
 Whigs most popular; so that in 1705 the Whigs had a 
 majority in Parliament, and Marlborough found that it 
 was necessary for the ministry to have the support of that 
 party. So he asked the queen to make his son-in-law, 
 the Earl of Sunderland, a Whig, Secretary of State. For 
 some time Anne refused, for she agreed with the views 
 of the Tories and not of the Whigs ; but at last she gave 
 way to please Marlborough, and to help him to carry on 
 the war. After this the Whigs became still more power- 
 ful in Parliament, and more of them had to be taken into 
 the ministry, till in 1708 the ministry was entirely made 
 up of Whigs. Thus Parliament was seen to have taken 
 away from the Crown the power of choosing its own 
 ministers. If anything was to be done the Crown must 
 have such ministers as Parliament would trust and follow — 
 that is, must, as a rule, choose all ministers from the 
 party which for the time has the majority in the House 
 of Commons. 
 
 10. But Anne did not like her Whig ministers, who 
 were overbearing and meddlesome. They foolishly im- 
 peached a High Church clergyman. Dr. Fall of the 
 Sacheverell, for preaching that it was against Whigs, 1710. 
 God's law to disobey the king under any circumstances ; 
 the trial stirred up the people through the country, and 
 showed how strong was the love of the common people 
 for the Church. Moreover, men were weary of the war ; 
 and the queen was weary of the overbearing ways of the 
 
 H a 
 
100 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1710- 
 
 i 
 
 Duchess of Marlborough, and had got a new favourite, 
 Mrs. Masham, who was the cousin of Robert Harley, the 
 leader of the Tories. So Harley prevailed on the queen, 
 in 17 10, to dismiss her Whi^ ministers and appoint Tories, 
 with Harley, who was made Earl of Oxford, at their head. 
 The elections, which were influenced by Sacheverell's 
 trial, produced a Tory majority, and Oxford was power- 
 ful in England for the next four years. Thii was the 
 way in which, as the power of Parliament grew, the 
 organisation of party government gradually formed for 
 itself those principles and rules by means of which it is 
 now carried on. 
 
 11. Oxford at once set himself to make peace with 
 
 Lewis XIV., and Marlborough was recalled from his 
 
 , ,. office of general in 17 12. Next year peace 
 
 Rule of the • j . tt. u. . i. 
 
 Tories, 1710- was Signed at Utrecht on terms much more 
 •<7U' favourable to Lewis than those uhich he had 
 
 offered and which had been rejected a few years before. 
 Still England gained by it Gibraltar, Minorca, New- 
 foundland, and trading rights with the Spanish colonies ; 
 Lewis XIV. also promised to give no support to James 
 Edward, the Pretender, as he was called. Still the wish 
 of some of the Tories seems to have been to set James 
 Edward on the throne after Anne's death, for Anne had 
 no children. But an Act of Parliament, passed in 1701, 
 had provided for a Protestant being set on the throne, 
 and had settled the succession on the Princess Sophia 
 of Hanover, who was the grand- daughter of James L 
 Oxford was thought to be too indifferent and careless about 
 the question of the succesbion, and Lord Bolingbroke, a 
 powerful member of the ministry, contrived to win the 
 queen's favour, so that Oxford was dismissed in 17 14. 
 Directly after this, before Bolingbroke had time to take 
 any steps, the queen died, having appointed, the day 
 before her death, the Duke of Shrewsbury Lord Treasurer. 
 
I7I4. 
 
 Party Government,, 
 
 lor 
 
 Shrewsbury was a Whig, and took prompt measures for 
 the recognition as king of George, Elector of Hanover, 
 son of the Princess Sophia. The Jacobites were not 
 prepared to make any opposition ; George came to Eng- 
 land, and was peaceably received as king. 
 
 12. One great thing was done in Anne's days — the 
 union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland 
 into the kingdom of Great Britain. This was union of 
 brought about through the discontent of the f"^/,^" J^^ 
 Scots, who were hindered in their trade by 1707. 
 the taxes which England laid on their products. In 1699 
 the Scots had formed a plan of founding a colony on 
 the Isthmus of Darien ; but the colony failed miserably, 
 and many men in Scotland were ruined. The Scots put 
 down the failure to English jealousy, and the Scottish 
 Parliament spoke very bitterly against England ; in 
 1703 it passed an Act of Security, saying that the next 
 King of Scotland should not be the same person as the 
 King of England, unless security were given for religion, 
 freedom, and trade. This made England afraid that 
 Scotland might again fall under French influence, and 
 choose a king of its own ; so, to avoid this risk, they 
 wished to join the two kingdoms together. After many 
 discussions with the Scots, terms were agreed to, and the 
 Act of Union was passed in 1707, by which the Scots 
 were to have the same freedom of trade as the English, 
 were to keep their own Presbyterian Church, and were 
 to send forty-five members to the House of Commons 
 and sixteen peers to the House of Lords. 
 
 'v- 
 
 1' 'ii 
 
 I 
 
IC2 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1714- 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 RULE OF THE WHIG NOBLES. • f 
 
 I. In 1714 George I. came peaceably to the throne of 
 Great Britain ; but the Jacobites soon plucked up their 
 courage and rose against him in the High- 
 andSe ' lands of Scotland and in the North of 
 Whigs, 1714. England (17 15). They were defeated at 
 Sherrifmuir and Preston, and the Pretender fled back to 
 France. But their risings greatly disturbed men's minds 
 in England, and it was not thought wise that an election 
 to a new Parliament should be held just at that time. 
 So an Act, known as the Septennial Act, was passed, 
 which enacted that Parliament might sit for seven years 
 instead of three. The Whigs came into power, for 
 George I. entirely supported the Whig party, as they had 
 secured his accession to the throne. But George I. was 
 Elector of Hanover as well as King of England ; he had 
 been born and bred a German, knew little of the English 
 language and still less of the English government. He 
 was a plain, simple man, with no great plans which he 
 wished to carry out, and so was content to leave the 
 government entirely in the hands of his ministers. Thus 
 the power of the Crown passed into the hands of the 
 Whigs, who were strong in the House of Lords, and who 
 made it their object to gain influence over the House of 
 Commons. It was not hard to do so, as the great land- 
 owners could, by a little trouble, command the votes in 
 the counties ; many of the towns which sent members 
 were very small, and stood on land which belonged to 
 some nobleman, who could nominate his own member 
 for the borough. In the large towns the numbers of 
 voters were few, and could be bribed ; many of the townS; 
 
^722. Rule of the Whig Nobles. 
 
 103 
 
 especially the seaports, were under the power of the 
 king and his ministers, and voted as they were told. 
 Thus it was not difficult for the great Whig families to 
 get the House of Comn:ons under their influence, and to 
 use it as a means of keeping themselves in power. For 
 the next fifty years England was really governed by the 
 Whig aristocracy. 
 
 2. The chief man of George I.'s first ministry was 
 Lord Townshend ; but the king quarrelled with him 
 because he was slow in concluding a treaty, Ministries of 
 known as the Triple Alliance, between Eng- Townshend 
 land, Holland, and France. In France Jope, ?7i4- 
 Lewis XIV. was dead, and disputes had '^^i* 
 arisen between France and Spain, which made France 
 wish to have the Peace of Utrecht properly carried out. 
 So General Stanhope, who concluded this alliance in 
 17 17, became the chief man in the ministry. This Triple 
 Alliance secured peace to England for the next twenty 
 years ; for the Spanish fleet was defeated by the EngHsh 
 fleet off" Cape Passaro in 17 18, and Spain made peace. 
 
 3. In 1720 great commercial distress came over 
 England by wild speculation, owing to the increased 
 wealth of the country. A company for „. ^ . 
 trading with the South Seas wished to secure Walpoie, 
 government credit, and so agreed to take part i/ao-i?*/* 
 of the National Debt from government as part of its 
 capital. Many other companies were formed, and shares 
 rose high ; then came a panic, and the South Sea Com- 
 pany had not ready money to meet the danger. Ruin 
 was spread on every side ; but the financial talents of Sir 
 Robert Walpoie, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
 managed to put things on a better footing. After 
 Stanhope's death, Walpoie was made head of the mi- 
 nistry (1722), and continued to hold that position for 
 twenty years, till 1 742. Walpoie was a shrewd and acut9 
 
|il .«JiLL -IL, lUfi J 
 
 SSSSp 
 
 o^^n 
 
 104 
 
 History of England. A.t>. 172a- 
 
 
 ' I 
 
 '! 
 
 i 
 
 P) I 
 
 man, but not high-minded nor noble. He deserved well 
 of England for one thing— he thought that rest was what 
 England needed, and he tried to keep peace on every 
 siide. He held his position by managing the House of 
 Commons, and he spared nothing to win over the mem- 
 bers to his side, for he used to say, * Every man has his 
 price.' Indeed, those were days when morality was very 
 low. TIfe disputed succession, the violence of party 
 struggles, and the personal aspect which every question 
 wore had made men scheming and self-seeking ; and there 
 is little to admire in any of the statesmen of this time. 
 
 4. When George I. died, in 1727, Walpole managed 
 to win the good opinion of his son, George II., and kept 
 
 ^^ his office. But there was one great fault 
 ministry,"' which Walpole had, in spite of his cleverness ; ' 
 X7.17-X742. jjg could not allow anyone to share his power 
 with him, and always quarrelled with any other able man 
 who was in office. Thus an opposition to Walpole gradu- 
 ally grew up in Parfiament, which he had to face single- 
 handed. At length the anger of the nation at the restric- 
 tions which Spain put upon the English trade with South 
 America drove Walpole, against his will, to declare war 
 against Spain in 1739. The war was not carried on 
 successfully, and in 1742 Walpole was forced to resign ; 
 he went to the House of Lords as Earl of Orford. 
 
 5. After Walpole, Lord Carteret, who afterwards be- 
 came Earl Granville, was chief minister for two years ; 
 
 he was a great favourite with George II., for 
 tiie Peihams, he could speak German, and was willing to 
 1742-1754. help the king in strengthening his German 
 possessions. But the strongest party in the Commons 
 was that of the Duke of Newcastle and his brother, 
 Henry Pelham, who were followers of Walpole ; so 
 Granville was dismissed, in spite of the king's liking for 
 him, and the Peihams were in powa: from 1744 to 1754* 
 
mmmmm 
 
 1754. 
 
 Rii/e of the Whig Nobles, 
 
 105 
 
 They carried out mostly the measures of VValpole, with 
 one great diflference— that they had to carry on the war 
 of the Austrian Succession, in which England had en- 
 gaged, for the purpose of defending the right of Maria 
 Theresa to her father's dominions of Austria. France 
 and Prussia had joined together to weaken the power of 
 Austria, while England's dread t f France made her wish 
 to keep Austria sjtrong, and so hold France in check. 
 The war lasted from 1740 to 1748. In 1743 King George 
 himself took the field, and routed the French at Dettingen. 
 The French, to disturb England, again took up the cause 
 of Charles Edward, son of J ames Edward. The Pretender, 
 as he was called, in 1745 landed in the north of Scotland, 
 and was welcomed by the Highland chiefs. At Preston 
 Pans, near Dunbar, the English troops sent against him, 
 under Sir John Cope, were entirely routed ; Charles 
 Edward entered England, and marched down to Derby. 
 He wished to push on to London, but the Highlanders 
 were discouraged when they saw few English join them, 
 ' and retreated. Next year George H.'s second son, the 
 Duke of Cumberland, entirely overcame the Highlanders 
 at CuUoden Field, near Inverness ; Charles had to flee, 
 and, after many adventures in his attempts to escape, 
 managed to get safely back to France. The war with 
 France still went on, but without much result ; at last, in 
 1748, peace was made at Aix-la-Chapelle. Maria 
 Theresa was left in possession of Austria ; and Prussia 
 was the only country that gained from this war, for it 
 won Silesia from Austria. 
 
 6. In 1754 Henry Pelham died, on which the king 
 exclaimed, * Now I shall have no more peace,' for he 
 knew i.hat there would be a struggle who 
 should succeed him as leader of th^ House piu, 1754- 
 of Commons. The Duke of Newcastle was *757- 
 not capable of managing affairs, and was too fond ol 
 
 I 
 
r 
 
 i 
 
 io6 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1754- 
 
 power to trust anyone else sufficiently. In the House of 
 Commons William Pitr, though not a member of any 
 great family, had made himself a position by his eloquence 
 and by his talents. The king did not like him, because 
 he had spoken against the king's desire to use England's 
 influence to protect Hanover ; but Pitt was very popular 
 outside the House of Commons, because he was an 
 honourable and upright man, and had refused, though a 
 poor man, to enrich himself by taking bribes or using 
 the public money for his own advantage. Corruption 
 was very common amongst members of Parliament, and 
 members used their places chiefly to secure their own 
 interests. Gradually the English people had begun to 
 distrust the members when they saw them seeking only 
 their own profit, and thought highly of Pitt because 
 they thought hat he acted for the good of the nation. 
 Things looked threatening abroad, for there were many 
 causes of quarrel with France, and it was clear that a 
 war was coming on. The king was driven to make a 
 ministry in 1756, in which Pitt was Secretary of State ; 
 but he disliked him so much that he dismissed the 
 ministry in 1757, and again put Newcastle in power. 
 The people, however, showed their respect for Pitt by 
 paying him all possible honour, and |^ewcastle found 
 that he could not carry on the government without Pitt 
 So, in 1757, Pitt and Newcastle made a ministry between 
 them ; Pitt had the favour of the people, and Newcastle 
 had the support of the great Whig families. It was seen 
 that neither of these could get on without the other. 
 Since the Revolution, up to this time. Parliament had 
 been supreme, and the great Whig families had got Par- 
 liament into their own hands. Henceforth it was felt 
 that these great families were not to dispose of power 
 entirely as they chose, but that the voice of the people, 
 must be listened to. Pitt pleaded with the king for 
 
5759. 
 
 Rule of the Whig Nobles. 
 
 10/ 
 
 pardon for Admiral Byng, who was condenifted to death 
 for his negJigence in allowing the French to seize Minorca, 
 and urged that the House of Commons was inclined for 
 mercy. * Sir/ answered the king, * you have taught me 
 to look for the sense of my people in other places than 
 the House of Commons.' 
 
 7. So in 1757 Pitt was called to undertake the manage- 
 ment of one of the most important wars in which England 
 had yet been engaged. The cause of the 
 
 war was the rivalry between England and Years' War, 
 France in their colonies, both in America 1756-1763. 
 and India, and the disputes which arose about the 
 boundaries between the two powers. To this was joined 
 a war in Europe, where Austria, France, and Russia 
 united to put down the power of Prussia, while England 
 supported it. Thus in this war, which is known as the 
 Seven Years' War, because it lasted from 1754 to 1763, 
 England was fighting on the Continent, in America, and 
 in India at the same time. On the Continent many 
 brave deeds were done by English arms; in 1759, two 
 naval victories were won over the French, who were 
 threatening to invade England, and were bringing all 
 their ships together for that purpose. One fleet, sailing 
 from Toulon, was almost entirely destroyed off Lagos, on 
 the coast of Spain, by Admiral Boscawen ; when the 
 fleet from Brest put out to sea, it was defeated by Sir 
 Edward Hawke, in a storm, in Quiberon Bay, and was 
 driven to take refuge among the rocks at the mouth of the 
 river Vilaine, where almost all the ships were destroyed. 
 The naval superiority of England was completely asserted. 
 
 8. But the importance of this war was, that it decided 
 the position of England as a colonising nation. When 
 America was first discovered, the Spaniards ^ . 
 
 , , , . - , , , , Conquest of 
 
 made the chief settlements there; but the Canada, 
 voyage of Sebastian Cabot, a Genoese, who ^ysfi-ijfi* 
 
I08 History of England, a.d. 175^ 
 
 j 
 sailed from liristol and discovered Newfoundland in the 
 reign of Henry VII., gave England a connexion with 
 North America, which the seimen of Elizabeth's reign, 
 when England began to be a maritime power,' gradually 
 increased. It was not, however, till the reign of James I. 
 that English settlements began to take root in North 
 America. The religious troubles of the years beff^^e tie 
 Great Rebellion drove many Puritans to see^<c for religious 
 liberty in colonies of their own. Gradually these colonies 
 spread and flourished, till the English owned almost all 
 the land between the river Kennebec and the Gulf of 
 Mexico, extending inwards to the Alleghany mountains. 
 But the French also h^d founded colonies in North 
 America. On the Gulf of Mexico they had Louisiana, 
 and north of me river St. Lawrence they had Canada. 
 The French colonists were few compared to the English, 
 but they were most of them solJiers, while the English 
 were peaceful settlers. The French wished to spread 
 their colonies down the valley of the Mississippi, so as 
 to join Canada and Louisiana together ; in this way the 
 English colonists would have been cut off from trade 
 with the interior of the country, and would have been 
 prevented from extending farther. The French began 
 to build forts along the river Ohio, artd war was begun to 
 stop them in 1755. ^^ ^^st the English were defeated; 
 but in 1759 General Wolfe besieged Quebec, the chief 
 town in Canada, and, after hard fighting, succeeded in 
 taking it. After this victory the rest of Canada was soon 
 conquered, and when peace was made with France in 
 1763, Canada, and all Louisiana east of the Mississippi, 
 became English possessions. After this there was no 
 longer any doubt about the fortunes of the English 
 colonies in America. They were left in peace to pursue 
 their commerce, and grow in courage and in wealth. 
 9. In India also the English settlers freed themselves 
 
tl6s. 
 
 Rule of the W/u^ Nobles. 
 
 109 
 
 from the rivalry of the French. England's trade with 
 India began in 1600, when Queen Elizabeth gave a body 
 of London merchants a charter which con- 
 ferred on them the sole right of trading with in"^a, x6<»- 
 India. Thus the East India Company was ''56. 
 founded ; and it managed to have its charter renewed and 
 to keep up its privileges. The Company had no other 
 thought than trading ; but the Portuguese and Dutch, who 
 had traded with India before the English came, tried 
 to drive them away, so that there was fighting from 
 time to time. Gradually the English founded trading 
 stations, of which the chief were Madras, Calcutta, and 
 liombay. These trading stations were ruled by men 
 named by the Company, and h^d small armies, partly of 
 English and partly of natives, who were called Sepoys, 
 from the native word sipahiy a soldier. There was, how- 
 ever, no thought of making any conquests till the French 
 forced such a course upon the Company in self-defence ; 
 for the French also had stations at Mauritius and at 
 Pondicherry, south of Madras. During the War of the 
 Austrian Succession the French governor of Mauritius 
 took Madras, and Dupleix, the governor of Pondicherry, 
 claimed to deal with it as he pleased. When peace was 
 made in 1748 the JilngUsh got back Madras ; but they 
 were alarmed at the plans of the French, and soon had 
 reason to be more so. For the great Empire of India, 
 which had been founded by the Moguls in the sixteenth 
 century, was beginning to fall to pieces. The lieutenant 
 of the Great Mogul, as the emperor was called, no longer 
 j,':i d any heed to his commands, but governed inde- 
 pendently. • Dupleix S'lw the confusion of India, and 
 formed the scheme of S'.tting up a European empire in 
 tiic place of that of the Mogul. He accordingly began 
 to mix himself up in the quarrels of the native princes, 
 und puliecl down one ruler and set up another so that the 
 
 i: 
 
 I 
 
no 
 
 History of England. a.d. J754-. 
 
 1 
 
 ! 
 
 Tiatives began to look on him with reverence, and the 
 English at Madras were afraid that they would be driven 
 out of India by the French. At last, when the French 
 had almost succeeded in setting up a Nabob of the 
 Carnatic, who owed everything to them, and so would be 
 likely to obey them in all things, the English determined 
 to do something in behalf of the Nabob who was driven 
 out. They sent a young man — Robert Clive, who was 
 merely a clerk in the Company's service — with 500 men/ 
 of whom 200 were Europeans. He fell upon Arcot, the 
 chief city of the Carnatic, and took it by surprise, but 
 was at once besieged by an army of 10,000 men. For 
 fifty days Clive with his little troop kept them at bay, 
 and when they ^ tried to storm the city defeated them 
 utterly (1751). After this the Nabob whom the French 
 wished to set up had no chance ; and Clive did so many 
 daring deeds that the natives began to think more of the 
 English than of the French. Dupleix was recalled to 
 France, and there was no one left to carry out his 
 great plans. 
 
 10. In this way the English Trading Company had 
 become mixed up with the politics of India, and they 
 English were soon called upon to advance further. In 
 
 iSd?a*i756- '75^ Surajah Dowlah, the young Nabob of 
 X76i« Bengal, being jealous of the power of the 
 
 English, went against Calcutta and took it. His officers 
 thrust 146 prisoners into a narrow prison, known as the 
 Black Hole of Calcutta, which in that hot country was 
 scarcely fit to hold more than one ; next morning only 
 23 were left alive, for the rest had been stifled or crushed 
 to death. Then Clive was sent from Madras, and won 
 back Calcutta, and reduced the Nabob to make peace. 
 But he went further than this ; he promised to help 
 Surajah Dowlah's chief general to become Nabob in his 
 Stead; and in 1757 defeated Surajah Dowlah at the ' 
 
M 
 
 1763. 
 
 Ru/e of tJte Whig Nobles. 
 
 Ill 
 
 great battle of Plassey, where Clive with 3,000 men fought 
 against the Nabob with 55,000. The new Nabob whom 
 the EngHsh set up gave the Company much land as a 
 reward for their services. Afterwards, when the Seven 
 Years' War broke out, the French sent a brave general, 
 Count Lally Tollendal, to carry on war against the English 
 in Madras. At first he was successful, but in 1760 he was 
 entirely defeated at the battle of Wandewash by Colonel 
 Coote, who had learned to fight under Clive. Next year 
 the English took Pondicherry, and the power of the 
 French in India came to an end. 
 
 II. Thus the events that happened when Pitt was at 
 the head of affairs were most glorious to England. Her 
 power prevailed in Europe, her naval su- state of 
 premacy was asserted, North America was England, 
 successfully claimed for her influence, and the foundation 
 of a vast empire was laid in India. This was the result 
 of the gradual settlement at home that had followed the 
 disturbances of the Revolution time. There had been 
 throughout England a steady increase of wealth and in- 
 dustry ; and there had also begun a religious and moral 
 revival, which was sorely needed. The Church had 
 become mixed up with politics, and its beliefs and its 
 ceremonies had come to be badges of party, so that it had 
 lost much of its spiritual meaning, and had become cold 
 and formal. The Dissenters also were affected by the 
 same causes, and had lost their hold upon the people. 
 This general coldness in religious matters was at last 
 remedied by some pious students at Oxford, chief 
 amongbL whom were John and Charles Wesley and 
 George Whitefield, who went out and preached among 
 the people, and, by their eloquence and goodness, turned 
 many to lead religious lives. Wesley regarded himself 
 as working for the Church, but the Church looked with 
 some suspicion upon Wesley's followers, and gradually 
 
 : 
 
 i: 
 
112 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1760- 
 
 thc Weslcyans or Methodists became separated from the 
 Church. Still they stirred up a religious spirit, and ^woke 
 the Church and all Dissenting bodies to greater activity, 
 so that a much more serious and earnest tone of mind 
 prevailed in England than had been since the Restora- 
 tion, ^i- 
 
 The Seven Years' War was brought to an end by the 
 Peace of Paris in 1763 ; but before this was signed 
 George II. had died and Pitt had ceased to be minister. 
 
 V K' 
 
 « CHAPTER XVI. L 
 THE CROWN AGAINST THE WHIG NOBLES. 
 
 I. George II. died in 1760, and his grandson, George 
 III., entered upon a new course of government. George 
 George III. HI. was resolved to set up again the royal 
 Bi«e^i76o- power as it had been left by the Revolution ; 
 «763- for all power had really passed away from 
 
 the Crown to the great Whig families. George HI. 
 wished to break down the power of these families, do 
 away with party government, and make the royal autho- 
 rity once more the regulating element in the State. His 
 object was to get the control of the House of Commons 
 out of the hands of the Whig families and into the hands 
 of the king. George III., however, though well-meaning, 
 and resolute even to obstinacy in carrying out his ideas, 
 was not a man of great wisdom or of much prudence. 
 He made a mistake at first by putting his confidence in 
 the Earl of Bute, who had been his tutor. Bute, who 
 was unpopular as being a Scotchman and a favourite of 
 the king's mother, was at once put into the ministry, and 
 
1768. The Crown against the Whig Nobles, il* 
 
 soon afterwards Pitt, finding his advice neglected, re- 
 signed. In 1762 Bute !>ecame Prime Minister, and was 
 eager to bring the war t(» an end, 10 that the Treaty of 
 Paris, like the Trc4ty of Utrecht, was made under the 
 influence of party struggles rather than«irom wise con- 
 sideration. The members of the House of Commons 
 were shamelessly bribed to agree to the Peace, so that 
 only 65 voted against it and 319 for it. But the people 
 were so angry with Bute that he was frightened and re- 
 signed, for he thought it would be better to influence the 
 king privately than to be minister himself (1763). 
 
 2. He named as his successor George Grenville, who, 
 he thought, would do as he was bidden ; but in this Bute 
 was disappointed. Grenville, however, did George iii. 
 not please the king, who, to get rid of him, 'H^^J^^^ 
 was obliged to fall back upon the Whigs, and 1763-178'a. 
 maketheirleader,LordRockingham,Prime Minister (1765). 
 But the king disliked a party ministry, and, in 1766, pre- 
 vailed on Pitt, who was made Earl of Chatham, to get 
 together a new ministry not founded on party. Pitt's 
 second ministry was, however, a failure, as Jie lost his 
 popularity by taking a peerage, and was looked upon as 
 one of the king's friends, as the king's followers in his 
 new policy were called. Moreover, Chatham's mind gave 
 way, and he was at last obliged to leave the ministry, 
 which, under the leadership of the Duke of Grafton, 
 became more and more unpopular. The people showed 
 their discontent with the House of Commons by taking 
 up the case of Wilkes, who had been expelled from the 
 House in 1763 for publishing a libel on the kin;^ and 
 Lord Bute. He was looked upon by the people as a 
 martyr, and was elected member for Middlesex in 176S ; 
 the House again expelled him for uttering libels ; but 
 when a fresh election was ordered for Middlesex, Wilkes 
 was almost unanimously icturned ; and though a second 
 E.H. I 
 
 h 
 
. I 
 
 114 
 
 History of England. f,.ii. 176S- 
 
 
 election produced the same result, the House«declared his 
 opponent. Colonel Luttrell, to have been duly elected. 
 The separation between the House of Commons and the 
 people was growing wider. Grafton at last found himself 
 £0 unpopular that he resigned, in 1770. The Whigs were 
 divided into two parties, one of which followed Chatham 
 and the other Rockingham. So the king took advantage 
 of their disunion, and made Lord North Prime Minister. 
 North had a good deal of cornmon sense and great good- 
 humour ; he managed the House of Commons, arid at 
 the same time worked with the king. His ministry lasted 
 for twelve years (i 770-1 782), and marks the first triumph 
 of the king's policy. Helped by the people, who were 
 not represented in the House, the king bad managed 
 to overthrow th^ rule of the Whig families, and get a 
 ministry which would carry out the wishes of the Crown. 
 Political parties had entirely changed their objects since 
 the Revolution. The Whigs were those who wished to 
 keep the power in the hands of the great families of the 
 Revolution ; the Tories, now that all notion of bringing 
 back the old line of the Stuarts was impossible, were 
 those who wished to uphold the power of the Crown. 
 
 3. Under Lord North's ministry, George IIL prac- 
 tically governed England himself. But George IIL had 
 no notion of doing what was clearly neces- 
 mentand " sary — making the House of Commons more 
 the people. ^j-^jy representative of the people. His 
 notion was to govern for the people, and the House of 
 Commons was still opposed to them in many ways. In 
 1771 the Commons grew angry because their speeches 
 were reported in the newspapers, and they sent their 
 officers to bring the printers before them. But the Lord 
 Mayor of London put the officers in prison for trying to 
 arrest a citizen without a warrant. " Then the House sent 
 the mayor to the Tower ; but the people of London 
 
1775. ^^ Crown against the Whig Nohles. 115 
 
 broke out into riots, and the Commons were oblij^ed to 
 let the matter drop. Since that time reports of de- 
 bates in ParUament have been published more and more 
 fully, till now members speak for ihe purpose of being 
 reported, and complain that they are not reported fully 
 enough. 
 
 4. While George III. ruled the country himself, he- 
 showed little wisdom in settlitig a difficulty that had 
 arisen with the American colonies. After Warwith 
 the fall of the French power in America, in cdo^-^sf'''"' 
 1764, the colonies felt less than before their 1775-1778. 
 need of English help, and felt more keenly their disad- 
 vantages. By the Navigation Act, which had been passed 
 against the Dutch in 165 1, the colonies were not allowed 
 to trade with any other country than Great Britain ; but 
 to this they had not much objection. The Seven Years' 
 War, however, had been very costly to England, and it 
 was urged that America ought to be taxed to pay for it. 
 The king also was desirous that the power of England 
 should be felt over its colonies. So in 1765 duties were 
 laid on America, on the ground that * it was just and 
 necessary that a revenue should be raised there.' There 
 was great indignation at this in America, for it was a 
 new thing, and men said that it was contrary to all the 
 liberties of Englishmen that they should be called upon 
 to pay taxes when they sent no representatives to Parlia- 
 ment. The quarrel went on, and the mmisters tried to 
 get over it by making the taxes few and small ; but the 
 Americans objected to tLem altogether, and refused to pay 
 a duty on tea. Chatham was wise enough to say that it 
 was wrong to lay on these taxes ; tut the king was 
 determined to make America obey, and the people were 
 mostly of the same mind. So in 1775 Parliament 
 declared that a rebellion existed, and measures were 
 taken to put down the Americans. The thirteen colonies 
 
 1 s 
 
tid 
 
 History of England. a.©. 177J- 
 
 
 1 
 
 each governed themselves, but they sent men from each 
 to meet together in what was called Congress, and made 
 common cause against Ei^gland ; a brave and skilful 
 general, George Washington, of Virginia, was put in 
 command of their fighting men. Though they had no 
 tramed soldiers, yet every man knew how to use arms, 
 and they were determined to resist to the last. In 1775 
 the first battle was fought, at Bunker's Hill, near Boston, 
 in which the Americans were driven back, but the 
 English could scarcely claim a victory. Next year the 
 English were compelled to leave Boston. Then, in June 
 1776, Congress drew up a declaration that the united 
 colonies ought to be, and were, free and independent 
 states. Next year General Burgoyne was surrounded 
 and cut off in Saratoga, and had to surrender with all 
 his army. This great disaster made England willing to 
 make peace with America, and grant everything short of 
 independence. But France hastened to recognise the 
 Americans as a nation and make a treaty with them, and 
 then the whole question changed. Chatham, who before 
 had been in favour of the Americans, went to the House 
 of Lords, though suffering from illness, and spoke against 
 giving way at such a time , he was seized with a fit in 
 the House, and died soon after, in 1778. 
 
 5. War was now declared against France, who was 
 joined by Spain and Holland. Moreover, the northern 
 nations, Russia, Sweden, Denmark, and 
 disasters,* Prussia, all felt aggrieved at the claim which 
 1778-1783. England made to search all neutral ships 
 to see if they were carrying supplies to the enemy. 
 They entered into a league, called the Armed Neutrality, 
 to resist this right, saying that free ships made free goods, 
 and that anything might be carried which was not 
 forbidden by treaty (1780). Thus England had the 
 whole of Europe against her, and could not hope to keep 
 
r 
 
 1782. The Crown against the Whig Nobles, 117 
 
 • such hold of the sea as would enable her to cut off 
 America from receiving supplies ; yet if she could not 
 do this, she could not hope to conquer. In 1781 Lord 
 Cornwallis was surprised and surrounded in York Town 
 by the Americans and French, and was compelled to sur- 
 render wiih all his army. After this disaster there was 
 no hope of winning back America, and men in England 
 had seen that the war was hopeless. In 1782 Lord 
 North resigned, and the king, sorely against his will, was 
 compelled to form a Whig ministry, with Lord Rocking- 
 ham at its head ; Rockingham, however, died in a few 
 months, and Lord Shelburne, who succeeded him, made 
 the treaty of Versailles in 1783, by which the indepen- 
 dence of America was acknowledged, and a few of 
 England's conquests were restored to France and Spain. 
 The war against America was wrong in its beginning, 
 and no Englishman can now regret that it ended in 
 defeat. 
 
 6. Thus the policy of George II L, when he ruled 
 himself, was disastrous to the country, which was heavily 
 taxed to pay for a foolish and unsuccessful 
 war. The Whigs had come back into office, whit% 178a- 
 determined to lessen the power of the king. '783. 
 There were many eminent men among them, chief of 
 whom were Charles James Fox and Edmund Burke. 
 Burke had risen solely by his talents, and was one of the 
 wisest and most thoughtful politicians that England has 
 ever produced, so that his speeches will always be read 
 for their great political wisdom .' s well as for their 
 eloquence. Burke, while in opposition, had brought 
 forward a plan to lessen the king's power by doing away 
 with useless offices and pensions, by means of which the 
 king was able to bribe men to vote as he pleased. Sonic 
 htlle was done by Rockingham's ministry in this way ; 
 but in July 1782 Rockingham died, and the Whigs split 
 
 ' 
 
 
 
 ' ,'1 
 
ii8 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1782- 
 
 up into two parties — the old Whigs, and the party that 
 had followed Chatham. The king made Lord Shelburne, 
 head of the Chatham party, Prime Minister. Fox and 
 others refused to serve under him, and were so greedy of 
 power that they combined with Lord North, whom they 
 had so long attacked, to overthrow the ministry of Shel- 
 burne. They succeeded in the attempt, and in 1783 the 
 king was compelled to accept a ministry formed out of this 
 coalition, with the Duke of Portland at its head. It now 
 seemed that all the king's efforts to free himself from the 
 Whigs had entirely failed. He was hopelessly in their 
 hands ; there was no one to oppose the ministry except 
 the few remaining members of the old Chatham party, with 
 Chatham's son (the young William Pitt) at their head. 
 
 7. A difficulty which arose about Indian affairs upset 
 this government after it had been a little while in office. 
 . „ . . After the departure of the French, the English 
 
 India, 1764- power m India went on mcreasmg, ns the 
 1783' English became more and more mixed up in 
 
 the affairs of the native princes. In 1764 the Great 
 Mogul, Shah Alum, and his powerful vizier, the Nabob of 
 Oude, marched against Calcutta with a great army, and 
 were defeated at Buxar by Major Monro ; after this ^hah 
 Alum gave more lands to the English. But the East 
 India Company did not rule its lands very well; the 
 officials all wanted to be rich, and strove to get all the 
 money they could from the natives. Everything went 
 wrong, and in 1765 Clive was sent out to put matters 
 right. He made a treaty with the Nabob of Oude and 
 the Great Mogul, by which BCiigal, Orissa, and Bahar, a 
 d:<=i;rict larger than England itself, were given to the 
 English on payment of a yearly rent. Clive also put 
 down the wrong doings of the English, and set up order 
 and justice. Still misfortunes befell the East India 
 Company. There was a dangerous war in Madras, and in 
 
1783. The Crown against tJie Whig Nobles, itg 
 
 i 
 
 1770 a terrible famine laid waste Bengal. The Company 
 clearly could not manage its business, and in 1773 Lord 
 North was driven to pass the * Regulating Act/ which 
 put the three settlements, Bengal, Bombay, and Madras, 
 under the Governor of Bengal, who was made Governor- 
 General. A council of four members was sent to advise 
 the Governor-General, and a new law court, like the 
 English court at Westminster, was set up at Calcutta, 
 The first Governor-General was Warren Hastings, who 
 had long beeo in India, and who by his wise and resolute 
 conduct saved the English power in India during the 
 calamitous time of the American war. Hyder Ali, who 
 began life as a simple soldier, had founded a powerful 
 Mohammedan kingdom at Mysore, and attacked Madras, 
 The Mahrattas, the warlike people of the hills along the 
 western coast, attacked Bombay, and entered into 
 alliance with Hyder Ali. It required all the vigour 
 of Hastings, and the military skill of Sir Eyre Coote, to 
 ward off these formidable invaders. But Hastings suc- 
 ceeded, and did so much to set up strong government 
 and order, that he and Clive may be looked upon as the 
 two founders of our Indian empire. Hastings, however, 
 did many things which were harsh, and some things that 
 were wicked. He had great difficulties with his council, 
 some of the members of which constantly opposed him. 
 
 8. These quarrels led to complaints in England, and 
 it was at last felt that affairs in India had become too 
 important to be managed by a trading com- pox's India 
 pariy, and that government ought to have ^'"' ^783- 
 something to say to them. So Fox brought forward an 
 India Bill, which gave the government of India to seven 
 commissioners, who were to be named by Parliament at 
 first, and afterwards by the Crown. This Bill angered 
 the king, for the naming of the first commissioners by 
 Parliament seemed to be a plan to give pover to Fox's 
 
 
 il.; 
 
 % 
 
 I 
 
 ji- 
 
120 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1783- 
 
 
 
 friends and set aside the rights of the Crown. Accord- 
 ingly George 1 1 1, let it be known, when the Bill went to 
 the House of Lords, that he would look on every lord 
 who voted for it as his enemy. The Lords threw out the 
 Bill, and the king, who had opposed his own ministers, 
 felt obliged to dismiss them (1783). There was no one 
 but William Pitt, who was only twenty-four years old, to 
 take the oflfice of Prime Minister, and the House of 
 Commons was almost entirely against him. 
 
 9. The Coalition Ministry had never been popular, 
 and Fox was so sure of forcing Pitt to resign that he 
 «rir p- "^^*^ ^^^ tongue too violently and set men on 
 the younger, Pitt's side. Pitt waited for three months, till 
 '783. he thought his time had come, and then dis- 
 
 solved. The elect! jns were in his favour ; the king had 
 now got a minister whom he liked, and who was a man 
 of ability. The power of the Whigs was entirely broken, 
 and Pitt remained Prime Minister for eighteen years 
 (1783-1801). , ;; 
 
 CHAPTER XVI L 
 
 EUROPEAN WAR. 
 
 I. Pitt, like his father, did not at first wish to be the 
 head of a party, or to act solely to please the king, but 
 strove to carry out the wishes of the people. 
 Gradually, however, he came to care less 
 about the people, and join himself more and 
 \\ .., T^M-st of all he had to take up the 
 passed a Bill which set up a Board 
 ' nent of the English Government, 
 to manage poluiual n.atters in India; but the Company 
 Still carried on its own business and appointed its own 
 
 Pitt and 
 India, 1783- 
 1785. 
 
 more to th 
 question 
 of Control, 
 
 '■'•> 
 
1789. 
 
 European War. 
 
 121 
 
 officials. This method of double government satisfied 
 everybody at the time, and lasted till 1858, when India 
 was made part of the doftwnions of the Crown. The 
 conduct < f Hastings was severely judged in England, 
 and lie was impeached by the House of Commons. The 
 trial began in 1788, and lasted for seven years, at the end 
 of which time Hastings was at last acquitted. 
 
 2. Piit, as a minister in the years of peace 1783 1789, 
 was wise and careful. England was going through a 
 great change, and was turning into a great piuasa 
 manufacturing country. The discovery of P".*" ^ 
 imprpvcmcnts in spinning and weaving led 1783-1789. 
 to much larger trade in coiton, and the discovery that 
 iron cojLild be worked with coal gave the beginning to 
 England's great trade in iron. The invention of the 
 steam-engine largely incre^d manufactures. People 
 took to manufacturing rather than farming, and the class 
 of artisans quickly increased. The middle classes became 
 rich, and the artisans learned enough to be discontented. 
 The House of Commons, which represented the middle 
 classes, were afraid of changes, and when Pitt brought 
 in a Bill for reforming Parliament, it was thrown out 
 
 3. Soon the growing difference between the well-to-do 
 classes, who wanted things to be left alone, and those 
 who wished to have more power given to the Effects of 
 people, became a matter of the greatest Revo/u"ion 
 political importance. France had not been 1789-1793- 
 so fortunate as England in setting up Parliament to keep 
 the Crown in check. The monarchy of Lewis XIV. had 
 swallowed up everything in the king and his court, till 
 in 1789 the French Revolution broke out, and the king, 
 Lewis XVI., had to submit first to a National Assembly, 
 then to the people of Paris. The revolutionary opinions 
 of France quickly spread in England ; they pleased the 
 artisans, and they temfied the middle classes. English 
 
 «?■'■ 
 
 w 
 
 % 
 
 ^1;. 
 
I>22 
 
 ♦ • - 
 
 History of England. 
 
 A.D. 17S9- 
 
 statesmen d?d not at first know how to look iipoir the 
 events of the French Revohition. Pitt hoped that they 
 would end in setting up a constitutional monarchy, like 
 that of England ; Burke saw at once that they would 
 lead to confusion, which would spread through Europe ; 
 Fox approved of them, as being an expression of a desire 
 for liberty. On this point Fox and Burke quarrelled, 
 and the consequence was a further weakening of the 
 Whig party. But, as events in France showed more 
 and more an opposition between the king and aristocracy 
 on one side, and the people on the other, parties in 
 England also began to form themselves on the same 
 grounds. The Tory party now meant those who 'sup- 
 ported the king and government, and wished ijrder to lie 
 strictly kept in jhe dangerous times which were coming. 
 Many of the old Whigs, headed by Burke, joined Pitt 
 and the Tories. The new^hig party was made Up of 
 those who thought that there was nothing to fear in 
 England, that the people might be trusted, and that 
 reforms ought to be carried out ; at the head of this 
 party was Fox and Lord Grey. - 
 
 4. The government was bent on keeping order, and 
 on putting down all signs of sympathy with the French 
 Pitt's re- people, which some societies in England 
 measures, Openly expressed. In 1792 a proclamation 
 1793-1796. against seditious writings was issued, and the 
 militia was called out to keep down possible riots. The 
 execution of Lewis XVI. in 1793, and the publication by 
 the French Convention of a decree offering to help all 
 nations to recover their freedom, led England to join 
 Austria and Prussia in making war against the French 
 Republic. This war was not successful on the Continent, 
 though the English navy asserted its power at sea. Eng- 
 land's allies fell away from her ; taxes weighed heavily 
 on the people ; trade suffered severely, and men wished 
 
1797. 
 
 European War. 
 
 123 
 
 for pwace. Government had bcconrie more and moi< 
 convinced of the need of putting down sedition at home ; 
 men were imprisoned and brought to trial for writing or 
 speaking opinions against the king or the government. 
 Freedom of opinion had for the time come to an end in 
 England. 
 
 5. In 1796 an effort was made for peace ; but France 
 haughtily refused, and began to make preparations for 
 invading England. From this time the war 
 
 entirely changed ; it was now popular in France, 
 England, and Pitt, as the defender of his '796-1797 
 country, became stronger than ever. Holland and Spain 
 joined France, who hoped, with the help of their fleets, to 
 carry out its invasion. But the Spanish fleet was de- 
 feated off Cape St. Vincent, and the Dutch off Camper- 
 down. For the present, the plan of an invasion had to 
 be laid aside. 
 
 6, The side from which France was most likely to 
 injure England was Ireland, which had many grievances, 
 and was disaffected towards England. After , 
 William III.'s Irish war, the Protestants had Ireland, 
 been put in entire supremacy over the '690-1790. 
 Catholics, who were oppressed in every way. But, be- 
 sides this, England had not behaved wisely towards 
 Irel.ind, which she regarded as a colony, and subjected 
 its trade to the restrictions of the Navigation Act, so 
 that Ireland could not trade with the colonies except 
 through England English commercial jealousy stopped 
 Irish trade in every way ; her woollen trade and her 
 agriculture were alike prevented from becoming pros- 
 perous by the restrictive duties laid upon them. Thus 
 England set up in Ireland the ascendancy of a Protestant 
 minority over the Catholics, and then oppressed the 
 Irish Protestants, in the same way as she drove the 
 American colonists to rebellion. The success of the 
 
,v 
 
 ;. 
 
 i%4 
 
 HUtory of England. a.d. 1797- 
 
 Americans encouragCil the Irish to follow their example, 
 till Lord North, in 1780, had been obliged to give some 
 measure of free trade to Ireland. But when th? Irisli 
 had gone so far with the Americans, they determined to 
 go further, and, under the leadership of Grattan, the Irish 
 Parliament, in 1782, declared that the Irish Parliament 
 ought to make laws for Ireland free from the interference 
 of the English government and Parliament. Eng- 
 land was obliged to allow this. But this home rule of 
 Protestants did not benefit the Catholics. Lawless 
 societies formed themselves among the Catholic pea- 
 santry, and the Orange lodges of the Protestants were 
 set up against them. 
 
 7. The idej^s of the French Revolution spread rapidly 
 in Ireland, and a body called the United Irishmen was 
 Union of formed, to take in all who were discontented 
 Sirefand, ^'^^ England, whether Cathohcs or Pro- 
 1796-1800. testants. The hope of the society was, with 
 the aid of France to set up a republican government in 
 Ireland, apart from any connexion with England. In 
 1796 a French fleet, under General Hoche, set out for 
 Ireland, but was scattered by fogs and stormy weather. 
 The English government, in alarm, began injudiciously to 
 grant small measures of reform, which gave no real 
 satisfaction and showed weakness. The Irish organised 
 themselves for rebellion, which broke out in 1798, and 
 was marked by great savagery on both sides ; the Irish 
 peasantry showed their hatred towards their Protestant 
 oppressors, and the Irish Protestants, wild with distrust 
 strove to crush the rebellion by butchery. It was not 
 long before the rebellion was put down, and Lord Corn- 
 wallis, who was sent as governor-general from England, 
 strove to bring back order by conciliating the people 
 and dealing harshly with their leaders. It was clear, 
 however, that Ireland could not be governed by an Irish 
 
iSoa 
 
 European War, 
 
 12$ 
 
 Parliament, and Pitt set himself to work to bring about 
 a union between Ireland and England. The influence 
 of the English government prevailed on the Irish Par- 
 liament, in 1800, to pass an Act of Union, by which 
 was formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain and 
 Ireland, with one Parliament, to which Ireland was to 
 send four spiritual and twenty-eight temporal peers, and 
 a hundred members of the House of Commons. 
 
 8. This union had been brought about by the help of 
 the Catholics, to whom Pitt had promised some relief 
 from the laws that had been passed against y\vC% tciig. 
 them. But when he proposed to bring for- ""^wn* «8oi. 
 ward a Catholic Relief Bill, he found that the king 
 entirely opposed it ; George III. had been persuaded 
 that to give relief to the Catholics would be contrary to 
 the oath which he had taken at his coronation to uphold 
 the Church of England, and he was too obstinate to give 
 up his opinion. Pitt finding himself checked by the 
 king, resigned in 1801, and was followed by the best men 
 of his ministry. Addington, Speaker of the House of 
 Commons, was put at the head of the remainder. 
 
 9. Addington was not strong enough to carry on a . 
 war policy, and was anxious for peace. Indeed, in iSoi 
 things looked ill for England. Napoleon 
 Buonaparte had managed to put himself at withFnnce, 
 the head of the French government, and was »798-i8oa. 
 bent upon carrying out great schemes of conquest. In 
 1798 he had gone with an army to Egypt, intending to 
 conquer Syria and India. In Egypt Napoleon was at 
 first successful, but by a daring attack Admiral Nelson 
 succeeded in destroying the French fleet in the Bay of 
 Aboukir. Next year (1799) Napoleon entered Syria, but^ 
 was repulsed from Acre by the help which Sir Sydney 
 Smith gave to its Turkish commander. Soon after this 
 Napoleon hurried back to France, where the government 
 
 •\*.\ 
 
 U 
 
rp 
 
 126 
 
 History of Etigland, a.d. 1800^ 
 
 had fallen into disorder, and succeeded in setting up 
 himself as First Consul. Then he turned his attention to 
 affairs in Europe, and reduced England's allies to make 
 peace with him. More than this, the Northern States, 
 Russia, Sweden, and Holland, again formed a league to 
 resist England's right of searching their vessels. In 
 1 801 England was without allies, opposed to France and 
 the Northern League. But in Egypt Sir Ralph Aber- 
 crombie defeated the French at Alexandria so decisively 
 as to render success hopeless for their plans in the East ; 
 and at the same time Nelson attacked the Danish fleet 
 in the harbour of Copenhagen, and inflicted such damage 
 that the Danes sued for a truce, and the death of the 
 Emperor of Russia caused ^ change in the policy of that 
 country. After this England was ready for peace ; for 
 the country was weighed down by taxes, and two years 
 of scarcity, which had raised the price of com to 120 
 shillings the quarter, had almost produced a famine. 
 Peace was made at Amiens in 1802. 
 
 10. It soon became clear that Napoleon did not mean 
 to stop his aggressions, but spread his power in Holland, 
 Switzerland, and Italy. He also demanded 
 ministry^*"* that England should not receive French exiles, 
 1804-1806. Q,. allow them to unite against him. The 
 English nation was now thoroughly aroused. War was 
 declared in 1803 ; and Pitt, who agreed not to raise 
 a^ain.the question of Catholic Emancipation, was in 
 i8p4 called to manage the war. Pitt was not successful 
 as a war minister. He did not understand sufficiently 
 the nature of the power which he was opposing. He had 
 no other views of combating the revolutionary spirit of 
 the French Republic than by forming European coali- 
 tions, as had been done against the French monarchy. 
 He wished to form a ministry from both parties, but the 
 king objected, and the ministry was again Tory. His 
 
 
iSo;. 
 
 European War. 
 
 127 
 
 great object was to^inake a strong alliance with Russia, 
 Austria, and Sweden against Napoleon. This alliance 
 fiiiled ; but Napoleon's scheme of an invasion of England 
 failed also. His fleet, which had sailed to the West 
 Indies to draw away Nelson, was not quick enough in 
 returning; Nelson overtook the French and Spanish 
 fleets off Cape Trafalgar, and entirely defeated them. 
 But Napoleon meanwhile had attacked Austria, and won 
 a great victory at Aust^rlitz over the combined Russian 
 and Austrian armies. Pitt, who was in failing health, 
 was so disheartened at the news of this victory that he 
 died in 1806, at the age of forty-seven, after having ruled 
 England for nearly nineteen years. 
 
 11. He was s-jcceeded by Lord Grenville, who, with 
 Fox and Addington, formed a ministry which was called 
 ' of all the talents.' But the Catholic Eman- „ , „ 
 
 . . J J England* 
 
 cipation question was agam raised, and as difficulties, 
 the ministry would not promise to let it rest, ^^' 
 George III. again '\sserted the royal power by dismiss- 
 ing them (1807). The Duke of Portland then formed a 
 ministry, with Spencer Perceval and Canning. Mean- 
 while Napoleon's power was fast increasing ; he attacked 
 and overthrew Prussia at Jena, and then proceeded to 
 strike a blow which die thought would crush England. 
 From Berlin he issued a decree forbidding any commerce ' 
 with England, and so hoped to cut off England from 
 her sources of wealth. England answered by a series of 
 Orders in Council, which declared all ports from which 
 England was excluded to be in blockade, and forbade trad- 
 ing with them. New dangers threatened, for Russia made 
 peace at Tilsit with France, and it was agreed that the 
 Danish fleet was to be used for an attack on England. 
 The English fleet immediately sailed against Denmark, 
 bombarded Copenhagen, and captured the Danish vessels. 
 
 12. The only country in V^estern Europe which had 
 
 _ 
 
 m 
 
128 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1807- 
 
 not passed under the influence of France, and which still 
 tiaded with England, was Portugal; but in 1807 Spain 
 _ „ . and Portugal were occupied by the French 
 
 ThePenin- ^ .^ . .• • 1 *u r- v 
 
 suiarwar, troops. An insurrection against the French 
 1607-X812. sprung up immediately afterwards, and 
 English help was sent to the Peninsula. In 1808 Sir 
 Arthur Wellesley defeate4»,the French at Vimiera, and 
 forced them to leave Portugal. From this time the 
 successes of the English arms under Wellesle}', who was 
 made Lord Wellington in 1810, were almost continuous. 
 Wellington set to work steadily to drive the French out 
 of the Peninsula, and by judicious management and 
 great military skill he gradually succeeded. He was 
 badly supported by the government, who kept up the old 
 policy of trying to form coalitions against Napoleon's 
 power, and spent money on expeditions elsewhere instead 
 of carrying on war .vigorously in one quarter. In 1809 
 an expedition sent to Walcheren, unddr the command 
 of Lord Chatham, who was quite unfit for the post, ended 
 only in the loss by fever of a great number of troops. 
 This disaster led to a quarrel in the Cabinet ; Portland 
 rp signed, and another Tory ministry was formed under 
 Spencer Perceval. In 181 1 George III.'s madness made 
 it necessary to appoint the Prince ^ Wales Regent. In 
 1 81 2 Perceval was shot by a lunatic while entering the 
 House o^ Commons ; but his ministry remained in office, 
 with Lord Liverpool at its head. 
 
 13. Little by little Wellington drove the French 
 before him in the Peninsula, and Napoleon's enemies 
 plucked up courage once more. In 181 2 
 Napoleon marched into Russia 'and took 
 Moscow, but in his retreat lost most of his 
 army through cold and hunger. Then Austria and Prus- 
 sia rose against him, and advanced into France ; at the 
 same time the French were driven out of Spain by Wei- 
 
 Fall of 
 
 Napoleon, 
 
 1812-1815. 
 
\ 
 
 1815. 
 
 Parliamentary Reform, 
 
 129 
 
 lington, who followed them into France. Napoleon was 
 helpless and was comprlled to abdicate ; the old royal 
 line was restored to the French throne in 1814. But next 
 year Napoleon escaped from Elba, where he had been 
 placed by the allies, and again gathered an army. The 
 battle that ended Napoleon's career was fought at Water- 
 loo in 18 1 5, where the armies of England and Prussia, 
 under Wellington and Bliicher, entirely defeated the 
 French. Napoleon was sent as prisoner to St. Helena, 
 where he remained till his death. The allies set to work 
 to undo the results of Napoleon's conquests, and to set up 
 the old state of things in Europe ; but small States had 
 to give up much to large States, especially to Russia and 
 Prussia, and little heed was paid to the wishes of the 
 people themselves, how or by whom they should be ruled. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 PARLIAMENTARY REFORM. 
 
 I. England was greatly exhausted b]r the war, and 
 the peace brought no relief, for it threw many men out of 
 employment, and the change of prices which Results of 
 followed from trade beginning again to flow g* 7and" 
 naturally made a sudden difference both in 1815-182^ 
 agriculture and commerce. There was great distress, 
 and riots broke out in many places. In the general 
 discontent men began to look for some political change 
 as a means of setting things right. Parliameitt, it was 
 said, was elected only by the land-owners, and not by 
 the great body of the people. The Government was 
 still raising heavy taxes and keeping up a large army for 
 
 E.H. K 
 
ISB! 
 
 130 
 
 History of England, a. d. 1815- 
 
 purposes which the people did not care about. The 
 ministry could only be made responsible to the people if 
 Parliamentary representation were reformed. Thus a 
 movement for Parliamentary reform was set on foot. 
 The Tories opposed this in every way; for their opinion 
 was that the people should be governed by the land- 
 owners, who would protect themselves against the ignor- 
 ant masses. Political meetings were checked, seditious 
 writings were suppressed, and, in 1819, six Acts were 
 passed to increase their powers of government to carry 
 out their plan of forcing people to be content with things 
 as they were. Added to other causes of discontent was 
 the fact that the Prince Regent was deservedly unpopular 
 for his profligate life and dishonourable character. The 
 reign of George III. came to an end in 1820, amid general 
 discontent and distress. Ministry and Parliament were 
 not trusted by the people, and spent their energies in 
 putting down the efforts of the people to make their voice 
 heard in demands for reform. 
 
 2. George IV. did not change Lord Liverpool's 
 ministry; but its unpopularity was shown by a wild 
 „ .. . . scheme formed by some desperate men to 
 
 Political , . . - , A^ , . ,. 
 
 discontent, put the mmisters to death at a Cabmet dmner. 
 i8ao-i832. jj^g piQ^ ^^g discovered, and the conspirators 
 
 were taken prisoners in a stable in Cato Street. The 
 discovery of this plot strengthened the Government for a 
 time, but they soon roused the people against them by 
 bringing in a Bill to dissolve the king's marriage. George 
 IV. had from the first disliked his wife, a princess of 
 Brunswick, and accused her of ill conduct. The people 
 sided with the queen, who they thought had been ill-used. 
 The Bill was withdrawn, and it was clear that the king 
 and ministry were opposed by the people. In foreign 
 politics the ministry was equally unpopular. The Em- 
 perors of Russia and Austria and the King of Prussia 
 
x823. 
 
 Parliamentary Kejorm, 
 
 131 
 
 had formed what they called the Holy Alliance, to promote 
 peace on the principles of Christianity. By this they 
 meant to put down all attempts of the people throughout 
 Europe to act upon the ideas of freedom which the French 
 Revolution had spread among them and to endeavour 
 to get self-government as against their kings. England 
 would not join the alliance ; but Lord Castlereagh, the 
 Foreign Minister, did not try to prevent its policy, and 
 was thought secretly to favour it. This made the ministry 
 more unpopular, till on Castlereagh's death, in 1822, 
 Canning took his place, and the Government became 
 more liberal in its tone. Canning's first step was to make 
 it clear that England disapproved of the Holy Alliance 
 and its plan of settling the affairs of Europe by means of 
 congresses. The Duke of Wellington went to represent 
 Englandat the Congress of Verona in 1822, and on finding 
 that its object was to put down a rising in Spain, he with- 
 drew. Canning made Europe understand that England 
 wished to secure peace, and to allow other nations to 
 choose their own form of government, as she had done 
 herself 
 
 3. In commercial matters a new policy was introduced 
 by Huskisson, President of the Board of Trade. He saw 
 the advantages to be gained by free trade, 
 and took the nrst steps towards it. Hitherto reforms, 
 manufacturers had thought that they could ^823-1824. 
 best further their own interests by getting the highest 
 prices for their own manufactures, and raw foreign pro- 
 duce was prevented from competing with English produce 
 by heavy duties laid upon its import. We now know 
 that it is best for the public good, and best for the interest 
 of trade in the long run, that everything should be bought 
 as cheap as possibl«, and that as few restrictions as pos- 
 sible should be put in the way of freedom of trade. 
 Huskisson's first step in this direction was to alter the 
 
 K 3 
 
132 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1823- 
 
 Navigation Act, passed in the time of the Commonwealth, 
 forbidding foreign produce to be brought in any but Eng- 
 lish ships. America had passed a similar Act against Eng- 
 land, and the ships which carried goods from one country 
 to the other had to perforn) half their voyage empty. 
 Huskisson, in 1823, passed the Reciprocity of Duties Bill, 
 by which English and foreign ships were put on the same 
 footing. In 1824 Huskisson, in spite of the position of 
 manufacturers and workmen, reduced the duties on silk 
 and wool, and the result was soon felt in a great increase 
 of trade. Next year, however, foolish speculation brought 
 its results of commercial ruin and consequent distress 
 amongst the lower classes, which led to riots ; and it 
 was some time before quiet was restored and trade again 
 prospered. Huskisson saw that one way to lessen the 
 sufferings of the poor at such times was to allow foreign 
 corn to be brought into England, so that the price of 
 corn might not change so much as it did under the old 
 system of preventing by protective duties the import of 
 corn from abroad. But the Bill which he brought for- 
 ward wa' thrown out by the House of Lords.. 
 
 4. The Tory ministry consisted of two parties : one 
 headed by Canning and Huskisson, which was liberal on 
 
 all things but parliamentary reform ; the other 
 Lord Liver- headed by Lord Liverpool, which was opposed 
 pool, 1827. ^Q ^11 changes. The death of Lord Liverpool, 
 in 1827, broke the tie which held these two parties to- 
 gether, and Canning was made Prime Minister ; but he, 
 too, died in the same year ; and after an attempt to carry 
 on a moderate ministry under Lord Goderich, the king" 
 called on the Duke of Wellington, who formed an entirely 
 Tory ministry. 
 
 5. The Duke of Wellington way more fitted for a 
 general than a statesman ; in fact, he tried to carry on 
 public business as though he were managing a cain« 
 
1829. 
 
 Parliamentary Reform. 
 
 133 
 
 pnign. In foreign politics he did not act very wisely. 
 Englana *?ad been deeply interested in the Duke of 
 rising of the Greeks against the Turks, to win Sstl|*°"'* 
 for themselves independence. Russia was 1828-18^. 
 willing to help them against the Turks, but England and 
 France thought it well that Russia should not do so alone. 
 Canning accordingly brought about a treaty between the 
 three powers, that the Turks were to be called upon to 
 grant an armistice and arrange matters with the Greeks. 
 The Turks refused, and the Egyptian fleet sailed to help 
 them. The allied fleet was watching the Turkish fleet 
 while negotiations about the armistice were going on; but 
 the Turks invited a battle, and their fleet was entirely 
 destroyed in the Bay of Navarino in 1827. If the allies 
 had now pressed on to Constantinople, they could have 
 compelled the Porte to submit to their terms about 
 Greece. But Wellington did not care about Greek inde- 
 pendence ; he allowed the Russians to finish the matter 
 by themselves, till, in 1828, the kingdom of Greece was 
 established by the treaty of Adrianople. 
 
 6. In home affairs Wellington opposed all reforms, but 
 accepted them when he could no longer resist. In 1828 
 the Test and Corporation Acts, which shut ^ ^ ,. 
 
 - , I I. /./. . 11 1 . Catholic 
 
 out from holdmg office all who were not Emancipa- 
 members of the Church of England, were ^*°"' '^*9- 
 done away with, and Wellington accepted in their stead 
 a declaration of friendliness to the Church of England. 
 Next year also he gave way on the question of Catholic 
 Emancipation. A powerful association had been formed 
 among the Catholics, which returned its leader, O'Connell, 
 member for Clare. It was clear that the association was 
 too powerful to be put down. Wellington, to the disgust 
 of the High Tories, brought in a Bill for giving equal 
 rights to Protestants and Catholics, which was passed in 
 1829. 
 
 II 
 
134 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1829- 
 
 7. Next year a revolution again broke out in France 
 against the king, Charles X., who strove to set aside the 
 Pariia- Constitution and put down the liberty of the 
 
 reform7 prcss. No One stood by the king, and he 
 
 1830-1831. was obliged to flee. In England the quiet 
 and orderly spirit in which the French had upheld their 
 liberties produced a great impression on men's minds, 
 and made them more trustful of the lower classes. George 
 IV. died just about the time of these events, and a 
 new Parliament was chosen while they were fresh in 
 men's minds. The Whigs now . i up their mind to 
 take in hand the question of pari' ; ,PL..ry reform, which 
 had been put off by the war and by the long Tory rule. 
 The Whig families had learned that ■•'ey r ..!d not bear 
 rule again unles*^ they had the people on thcii side, so 
 they made common cause with them. Wellington de- 
 clared at once that he would resist all attempts at reform 
 of Parliament, and was compelled to resign. The new 
 king, William IV., was a man of simple character, popu- 
 lar, and without party feeling, who was not likely to set 
 his will against what the people wished. Lory Grey was 
 made Prime Minister, and in 1831 brought in a Bill for 
 the reform of Parliament. There were two chief points 
 to be provided for: (i) that no men should sit in Parlia- 
 ment who did not represent the people; and (2) that 
 those who sat should be chosen in such a way as to 
 represent the people fairly and justly. To bring this 
 about Government proposed that all places which had 
 very few electors should.no longer send members to 
 Parliament, but that many large towns that had grown 
 into importance in late years should send membefs 
 instead, and the counties should send more ; also, that all 
 men should have a vote who paid ^10 a year rent in 
 boroughs, or in the counties owned land worth ;£io a year 
 or paid J[^^o rent. 
 
1832. Goverttment by tlte People. 
 
 135 
 
 8. This seemed to be so great a change that many 
 were afraid of it, and many more had an interest in 
 trying to prevent it. The ministry could not T^g Reform 
 carry it through Parliament, and asked for a Bill, 1832. 
 dissolution. The new Parliament was pledged to reform, 
 and the Bill easily passed the Commons, but was thrown 
 out by the House of Lords. The anger in the country 
 was great, and there was much disturbance. Next year, 
 1832, the Bill again passed the Commons, and again met 
 with difficulties in the House of Lords. The ministers 
 resigned, and the Duke of Wellington in vain tried to 
 form a ministry which would repress the people by force. 
 A civil war seemed likely, but Wellington found it 
 impossible to carry out his views. Lord Grey's ministry 
 again came into office ; the king prevailed on the Lords 
 to withdraw their opposition, and the Bill was at last 
 passed. > 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. . 
 
 GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE. 
 
 I. The Reform Bill marked a great advance in the 
 English constitution. Parliament, which had grown 
 haphazard into its existing shape, was then p^^jj^^^^^. 
 made really representative of the English ary reform, 
 people. The House of Commons, which ^Saa-ise;. 
 had been increasing in power ever since the Revolution, 
 became undoubtedly the chief power in the State. It 
 had hitherto been to a large degree dependent on the 
 nobles ; henceforth the nobles had to justify their position 
 as leaders of the j^ople by learning the people's needs, 
 and trying to satisfy them. The immediate result of the 
 
136 
 
 History of England, a.d. 1833- 
 
 Reform Rill was to put the power into the hands of the 
 middle classes ; but they, in their turn, had to allow the 
 voice of the lower classes to be heard in the choice of 
 members to Parliament. Already, in 1 839, a body, the 
 Chartists, asked for greater reforms (amongst which was 
 universal suffrage), which they drew up in a document 
 called the People's Charter. This movemant failed at 
 first ; but gradually it was seen that the qualiBcation of 
 paying ;^io a year as rental, fixed in 1832, was too high 
 for the suffrage. In 1867, during the Conservative 
 ministry of Lord Derby, Mr. Disraeli carried a Bill 
 which gave the franchise in boroughs to all householders 
 paying rates, and in counties to all occupiers of property 
 rated at £^\^ a year. The government of England is 
 now in the hahds of the people, and neither the Crown 
 nor the ministry can venture on any important step 
 without convincing the people that it is for their benefit. 
 
 2. What has happened since the Reform Bill is too 
 near our own times for us to judge it impartially, or to see 
 
 its real meaning. History can only record 
 the last iifty the judgment which time has already passed, 
 years. 'pj^g future must yet declare what results are 
 
 to follow from the government of England by the people. 
 Yet a few of the things that have taken place in the last 
 fifty years may be mentioned as important. 
 
 3. The years since the Reform Bill have been marked 
 by a great increase of confidence between different classes. 
 Reforms, ^7 great Commercial prosperity, and by many 
 1833-1835. endeavours to improve the country and do 
 what is judged wisest and best for all. In 1833 a move- 
 ment, which had long been carried on underthe leadership 
 of Wilberforce, for putting down slavery in the English 
 dominions, was at last fully successful. Slaves were set 
 free, and England paid ;^20,ooo,ooo as compensation to 
 their owners. In 1834 the Poor Law was reformed, to 
 
^33- 
 
 1851. 
 
 Government by the People. 
 
 ^17 
 
 make the poor more thrifty and industrious, as well as to 
 lessen the heavy rates for their support. Farmers paid 
 their labourers badly, and relief was given to them out 
 of the rates. This state of things was altered by setting 
 up sufficient workhouses to receive the able-bodied poor, 
 and checking the granting of out-door relief. In 1835 
 municipal corporations were reformed on the same prin- 
 ciples as Parliament had been, and were made truly repre- 
 sentative of the people ; so that local self-government 
 became more of a reality. 
 
 4. In 1837 William IV. died, and was succeeded by 
 his niece, Victoria, who accepted entirely the position of 
 head of the people, governing according to pomjcai 
 their wishes. Political parties gradually took p*^'^* 
 
 a new form, and the old names of Whigs and victoria,"**" 
 Tories gave way to those of Liberals and '^37- 
 Conservatives. Both parties are compelled to rest on a 
 popular basis, and it is agreed by both that ^what concerns 
 all must be approved by all' The Conservatives wish to 
 preserve existing institutions ; the Liberals are willing to 
 make all such changes as they think the people want. 
 
 5. One great means of promoting the commerce of 
 England was the introduction of free trade in com, by 
 Sir Robert Peel, in 1846, who did away cornlaws, 
 with duties on foreign corn. The result of ' »846. 
 
 this was to make bread cheaper, and to keep its price 
 fairly uniform 1 in this way the manufacturing districts 
 were greatly benefited, and the population in towns has 
 greatly increased. Free trade in other matters also 
 greatly extended English commerce. 
 
 6. The years that followed the fall of Napoleon were 
 years of peace in Europe and in England, and so were 
 favourable for the growth of commerce, 
 
 which many men thought would render war p^<S,°x82o- 
 unlikcly for the future. Prince Albert, hus- '^54- 
 
 i».i. 
 
138 K 
 
 History of England. a.d. 1851- 
 
 band of Queen Victoria, formed the idea of a peaceful 
 I ivalry between ^U nations ; and in 185 1 a great exhibition 
 of industrial products was held in London, which was 
 the first of a series of such exhibitions which since then 
 have been held in all the chief countries of Europe and 
 in America. 
 
 7. These hopes of lasting peace soon came to an end. 
 Russia attacked Turkey, that she might rescue Christians 
 
 .of the same race as herself from Turkish 
 India, 1854- rule, and also might advance her own borders 
 1858. y^ ^jjg East. England and France joined to 
 
 prevent the advance of Russia, and a war in the Crimea 
 (1854-5) compelled Russia to come to terms. This war 
 was followed by a great calamity in India, where the 
 power of England, especially under the guidance of 
 Marquess Wellesley (i 798-1 805), had increased until the 
 entire peninsula, up to the Himalaya Mountains and the 
 river Indus, either belonged to England or was under 
 England's protection. The East India Company's sole 
 right to trade with India was done away in 181 3, and the 
 trade was made free to all English merchants. Its sole 
 right to trade with China was in like manner done away 
 in 1 834, when it ceased to exist as a commercial company, 
 though it kept its territorial position. In 1857 a serious 
 mutiny broke out among the native troops in India, 
 which was not put down without difficulty. After this 
 the government of India was handed over to the Crown. 
 
 8. Since then the condition of Ireland has occupied 
 the attention of English st tesmen. The English Church, 
 Ireland, which was only the Church of the minority 
 x869-i87a of the people, was disestablished by Mr. 
 Gladstone in 1869, and thus one grievance of the Irish 
 was done away. In 1870 an Irish Land Act aimed at 
 putting the relations between landlord and tenant on a 
 better footing. It is hoped that in tinle Ireland will feel 
 
 \ 
 
x87a 
 
 Government by the People. 
 
 139 
 
 that England is desirous of repairing the wrongs of her 
 government in the past, and will feel satisfied with her 
 position as part of the United Kingdom. 
 
 9. The object of these pages has been to trace how 
 England has grown into its present form. When we 
 look back upon the past, present difficulties, 
 however keenly felt, seem small compared ^°°<='"''°°- 
 with those which our forefathers had to face. The future 
 of England depends upon each generation showing the 
 same courage, wisdom, and moderation as was shown by 
 tnose who made England what she is. 
 
 
 .:(, r-^\rr-' 
 
, » 
 
 HISTORY. 
 
 ENTRANCE EXAMINATION. AUTUMN 
 
 TERM, 1872. 
 
 1. Kame the PiOTinoea of the Dominion of Cannda, and give (with 
 l^atet), lome of the important eTouto iu thoir liiittory. 
 
 yalueg. 
 10 
 
 18 
 16 
 
 18 
 12 
 
 \ 
 
 5. Give outline ot the reign of Edward lY. 
 8. State what you can about Villenago and its extinction. 
 4. Oive an auoonnt of Simnel*s imposture. 
 
 6. Mention (giving dates) any important events in the roign of 
 Elizabeth. 
 
 6. Oive some account of the Petition of Right, and of ship-monry. 
 
 7. Name the BatUcs of the Civil War (Chas I.) 
 
 8. What was the declaration of Bights ? Give its principal ood- 
 ditious. 
 
 9. Give date of the Union of England and Scotland, with tlie ohl if 
 terms of Unron. 
 
 10. Give brief accounts of the following battles -.—Dunbar, KiUi- 
 crankio, Boyuo, Oudeuarde. 
 
 NoTB— Seven and a-half for each of these questions. 
 
 JULY EXAMINATIONS, 1877. 
 
 1. What races effected settlements in England before the yettr 
 1900? 
 
 2. Tell what you know about the Korman (Conquest. 
 
 8. ** Edward the third, my lords, had seven sons, 
 
 The first, Edward the Black Prince, prince of Waloa { 
 
 Q'ho Bucond, William of Hatfield ; and the third, 
 
 Lionel, duke of Chtrence ; next -> whom 
 
 Was John of Gaunt, the duke of Lancaster ; 
 
 The fifth was lldniond Lan^'l^-y, duke of York ; 
 
 Q'he sixth was Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Olostor ; 
 
 William of Windsor was tlto seventh, and last.'* 
 
 Name in order the Kings that reigned in England between 
 Kdward 111. and Heury VIU., and state from which of these sons 
 each was descended. 
 
 4. Give a short account of the reign of Charles L \ 
 
 5 What different authorities must, according to tfie English 
 constitution, consent to a bill, before it becomes law f Which of 
 these Itas at pi^sont the gfKHtcst power? Mention a time at wliicti 
 one of the otltura touk the lehd. 
 
18 
 
 IS 
 
 IS 
 
 12 
 
 11 
 
 i)Kcr:MBE:R, 1877. 
 
 Fifty por rent is the mlnimnm for pnMing. 
 1. How did Cuiiiiiia come in poMeition of the Frouch, An4 bow 
 did t>ie llritiah auqiiiru it 1 
 
 8. 6 in order tho Tu<Inr novorciRni of England, and tell what 
 
 you know of tlie reign of (^ucun Klizubcth. 
 
 8. In whose roign wore the battles of Bannockbiim, OuUoden, and 
 Waterloo fouglit ; butweon what nations ; and who were the 
 principal commanders on each side F 
 
 4. When did Queen Victoria com« to the throne ? Whom did she 
 snccood, and wiiat have boon tho principal events in the history uf 
 Canada during her reign ? 
 
 «| 5. Say what yon know about OllTcr Cromwell, Joan of Are, John 
 Milton, liOrd Noliou. 
 
 6 When did the United States beromc an independent nation ; and 
 when did Canada l>ecoino a Uuiuiniuu. 
 
 Valoea. 
 
 «-H«+8 
 
 «+4-»-4 
 
 5 {-6+6 
 
 8+8 
 
 8f6+8 
 
 JULY EXAMINATIONS, 1878. 
 
 1. Dcflcribe the feudal system What was the condition of the 
 farm Ial)orors uudor it ? About what time did it prevail r 
 
 8. What was Magna Charta ? Why is it oonsidored Important F 
 By what King and under what circumstances was it signed ? 
 
 3. Name the Tudor sovereigns in order, explain how they were re- 
 latcd to one another, and tell wiiat you know about the history of 
 tho reign of the last one of them. 
 
 4. What was the canso of tho quarrel which resulted in the revolt 
 of tho American colonies and the estal)li8hment of the United States 
 of America ? In what ruign did those events occur f 
 
 5. Wliat is m-^ant by the Ministry or Cabinet f By what authority 
 are its mcinbiTS nominally, and by what really, appointed at the 
 presvut time f Who is. the present i*rime Minister of England f 
 
@E. J. (Sage ^ (2D}'0. £U\a €btuaitoitai SRorks. 
 
 GAGE'S NBW UNIVBOSITT TEXTDOOKS. 
 
 / 
 
 New Series of Classical Text-boolu with ample Hottin (Mtihrxlyitig^ the lat- 
 est ati<l most advaiice<1 results of scholarship ; also a Iii(><(ra|>Mical sketch of 
 each Author, showing; his position in relation to Cla«sir:ii l^itcrature, and a 
 Voca)>u!ary fivinr the newest teachlnifs of comparative Philology and An- 
 tiquarian research. 
 
 This Series will be the work of Canadian Scholars who have had personal 
 experience as Head Masters of Hifch Schools in Canada; and no endeavours 
 will be spared by the promoters of this Series to reouev U a credit to our 
 country. 
 
 Cicero, Cato-Major. 
 
 With Introduction. By Mauric 
 la Uuiversicy College, Toronto. 
 
 With Introduction. By Maurice lilutt'>n, Em., M.A., Professor of Claaslcs 
 - - - ~ - ^^ 
 
 Cicero, Pro Archia. 
 
 ^r D> 0. MaoHenry, M.A., Prlndpa!, OoUeglate Institute, Cobourf . 
 
 LEA&INQ FEATURES: 
 
 L bTRODUOTORT.— 1. A General Sketch of the Life of CIcoro. 2. Chrono- 
 logical Resume' of important events. 8. Periods and Authors of Ro- 
 man Literature. 
 
 II. NOTBS.— Clear and ocpioui, critical and explanatory : with numerous 
 references to Ilarkness' Latin Oranunar. 
 
 III. ^BTRAMsiiATiON. — Short Imitatire Exercises, consisting mainly of •» 
 lections from the oration. 
 
 IV. Stmontmu.— The most important In the oration. 
 
 y. YocABcrLART.— Inoludkif derivations and principal idioms^ 
 
 Caesar, Bellum Britannicum. 
 
 with Life. Notes and Vocabulary, edited by the Rev. Chftrles Pelham 
 Mulvany , H.A., Scholar and FlraC Honor Man in Classict, Trinity College, 
 Dablln. 
 
 Homer's Iliad. 
 
 By Samuel Woods, M.A., Classical Master, Stratford High SchooL 
 
 Caesar, Bellum Britanmcum. 
 
 With Sketch of Life, full Notes, copious references to IlArkness' Latin 
 Oranmiar, and carefully prepared Vocabulary. By .vaAuel Woods, M.A., 
 Clasalcal Master, Stratford High SofaDoL 
 
MASON'S GRADUATED SEEIES OF ENGLISH GRAMMARS 
 
 Mason's Outlines of English Grammar. 
 
 For the use of junior classes. 
 Price, 45 Cents. 
 
 Mason's Shorter English Grammar. 
 
 With copious and carefully graded exercises, 243 pages. 
 Price, 60 Cents. 
 
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 Including the principles of Grammatical Analysis By C. P Mason. 
 B. A., F. C. v., fellow of University College, London. Enlarged and 
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 27th Edition, price, 75 Cents. 
 
 " I asked a grammar school inspector iii the old country to send me the 
 best grammar pul)lished there. He itnmcdiatcly sent Mason's The chap, 
 ters on the analysis of difficult sentences is of itself 'Ufllicient to place the 
 work far beyond any English Grammar hitherto before the Canadian -ub 
 lie."— Alex. Sims, M.jA., H. M. H. S , Oakville. 
 
 English Grammar Practice. 
 
 This work consists of the Exercises appended to the " Shorter English 
 Grammar," published in a separate form. They are arranged in progressive 
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 English Grammar 
 
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 foi* the requirements of Competitive Examinations reaching at least the 
 standard of the Matriculation Examination of the University of London. 
 
 The Shorter English Grammar. 
 
 is intended for learners \vho have but a limited amount of time at their dis- 
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 WORKS FOR TKACHER8 AND STUDENTS. BY JAS. L. nUQUES. 
 
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 On tilt! Topical Methoi. Ry Jab. L. Huoiikr, fii8]»uctor of Schools, To. 
 routa A Primer tot Studentit prepftrini; for ElxamitiaUoa. Price, 25c 
 
 Mistakes in Teaching. 
 
 By Ja4. Lauouun IIckiiibs. Seoond edition. 
 
 AOOrrU BT 8TATB UtilV.tlUITT Of I0W4, AA AS BLSMUiTABT ^TORE FOR UBB 
 
 or TRACUKRS. 
 
 Price, 60c. 
 
 This work" disouMc* in » terse manner over one hundred of the raietalceB 
 commonly inadc by untrained or inoxperioncod Teachers. It is dcsi^^nud to 
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 older meiiihen of the profetiaion to discard whatever muthod« or habiu may 
 he preventing; their higher aucooiis. 
 
 The mistakes aro arranjjfod under the followinfr hoada : 
 
 1. Mlstalcofl in Mana{ren>ent. 2. lliataket in DiioipUna. I. Mistakes in 
 Method;}. 4. Mistaken iu Manner. 
 
 How to Secure and Retain Attention. 
 
 By Jas. Lauoului Buouia. Price, 25 Oente. 
 
 Comprising Kinds of Attention. CharooteriRtloi of Positive Attention! 
 GharacteristTcs of The Teootier. How to Control a Class. Developing Men 
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 ^From Till School and. UNiVRRsrrT Maoasinr, Londoit, Bno.) 
 "Replete with valuable hints and practical suLTgestions whioh are evident, 
 iy tlM result of wide experienoe in the soholastio pcofossiou." 
 
 Manual of Drill and Calisthenics for use in 
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 By J. L. nnoHBS,PubIio Robool Insp«otor, Toronto, Graduate of Militan' 
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 The woric contains : The Squad Drill prescribed for Publio Sohools In On- 
 tario, with full and explicit directions for teaching it. Free Gymnastio Ex- 
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 Several of the best Kinder\nkrton Oanios, and a few choice Exercise Songs. 
 The instructions throuk^huut the book are divestod. as far as possible, of 
 :im>coe88ary technicalities. 
 
 " A most valuable book for ov«<ry t'ocher, partionlarly In oountry plaoes* 
 It embraces all that & Hohool t>«acb«r iihould teach his pupils on thia subject. 
 Any teacher can um the ooxy drill lessons, and by doing w ho will be con* 
 terring a benefit on his ocvaiitr>-."~C. RAOCLirrR Drarnalt, M^'ir Flint 
 Ufs Guanis, Drill lugtrucior Normal a^l Model Schools, Tomufer. 
 
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 BOOKS FOR TEACHERS AND STUDENTS, BY DR. McLELLAN. 
 
 Examination Papers in Arithmetic. 
 
 By J. A. McLkllan, M. A., LL. D., Inspector of High Schools, Ont., and 
 Thomas Kirkland, M. A., Scionco Maxtor, Normal School, Toronto. 
 
 " In our opinion the best Collection of Problems on the Amerioan Con- 
 
 tinent."— National Tbaciikrm' Monthly, N. Y. 
 
 Seventh Complete Edition, - - Price. $1.00. 
 
 Examination Papers in Arithmetic— -Part I. 
 
 By J. A. McLellan, M. A., LL. D., and Thos. Kirkland, M. A. 
 
 Price, ----- 50 Cents. 
 
 This Edition has been issued at the request of a large number of Public 
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 pupils prcj)aring for admission to High School. 
 
 Hints and Answers to Examination Papers 
 in Arithmetic. 
 
 By J. A. McLELLAN.tM. A.| LL. D., and Tuos. Kirkland, M. A. 
 Foiirth Edition, - - - - - $1.00. 
 
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 Containing the Fundaments' Rules, Fractions and Analysis. 
 
 By J. A. MoLbllan, M. A., LL. !*>' , Inspector High Schools, Ontario. 
 
 Third Edition, - - . - 80 Cents. 
 
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 McLellan's Mental Arithmetic. ---Part II. 
 
 Specially adapted for Model and High School Students. 
 Third Edition, - • • Price, 45 Cents. 
 
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 By J. A. McLbllan, M. A., LL. D. 
 Second Complete Edition, ... $1.25. 
 
 Teacher's Hand Book of Algebra — Part I. 
 
 Prepared for the use of Intcnnediate Students. 
 Price, - . - • » 75 Cer*s. 
 
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 Second Edition, - • • Price, $1.50. 
 
HAMDLIN SMITH'S MATHEMATICAL WORKS. 
 
 Authorized for use, and now used in nearly all the princiiml Schook of 
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 Hamblin Smith's Arithmetic. 
 
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 M. A., of Gunvilleand CaiusCollcg'cs, and lutu lecLuier of St. Tctcr's Col- 
 lege, Cambridge. Ada]>ted tu Canadian Schools, by Thomas Kirkland, 
 M. A., Science Master, Normal School, Toronto, and William Scott, B. A., 
 Head Master Model School for Ontario. 
 
 12th Edition, * ., Price, 75 Cents. 
 
 KEY. — A complete Key to the above Ari^imetic, by the Authors. 
 Price, $2.00. 
 
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 by Alfred Kaker, B. A., Mathematical Tutor, University College, Toronto. 
 
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 K.Ii< Y. — A complete Key to Hambliu Smith's Algebra. 
 Price, 
 
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 with Exorcises and Notes, by J. Hambmn Smith, M. A., &c., and Examitia- 
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 Price, 90 Cents. 
 
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t 
 
 EXAMINATION SKKIES. 
 
 Canadian History. 
 
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 Prlco, , 25 Cents. 
 
 HISTOUY TAUOIIT BY TOPICAL MliTIIOD. 
 
 A PRIMRR IN CANADIAN III8T0RY, PDR 8( IIUOLH AND BTUUKNTS PUEPARINO FOR 
 
 EXAMINATIONS. 
 
 1. The history Is divided i?lto periods in accordance with the great na. 
 tional changes that have taken place. 
 
 2. The history* of each jfferiod is given topically initcad of in chronolog* 
 ical order. 
 
 3. Examination questions are given at the end of each chapter. 
 
 4. Examination paiwrs, selected from the oliicial examinations of the 
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 i:^ By the aid of this work students can preinre and review for exam- 
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 Epoch Primer of English History. 
 
 By Ubv M. Crbiohton, M. A., Late Fellow and Tutor of Merton College, 
 
 Oxford. 
 
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 and fo( admission to the High Schools of Ontario. 
 
 Its adaptability to Public School use over all other School llistories will 
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 work required for pupils preparing for entrance to High Schools. 
 
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 times as much in order to secure the same results. 
 
 Creighton's Epoch Primer has been adopted by tha Tov^jto School 
 Board, and many of the principal Public Schools in Ontario. 
 
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 THE UEST ELEMENTARY TEXT- BOOK OF THE YEAR. 
 
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 Price, 
 
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 AUTHORISED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS. 
 
 New and Improved Edition. For the use of Junior Classes, by P 
 Mason, B. A., F. C. P., Fellow of University College, London. 
 
 Sixth EnfiTlish, and fourth Canadian Editior price 45 cts. 
 
 From the Daily Globe, Toronto. 
 
 Mr. C. P. Mason, whose excellent " English Grammar" is now the author* 
 izod text book in the schools of Ontario, has prepared and issued a more el- 
 ementary and much-needed work entitled "Outlines of English Grammar.'* 
 The text of this work is substantially the same as that of the larger treatise 
 in both matter and form, except that the very elaborate notes is the latter 
 arc either omitted or very much reduced in extent. 
 
SB. J. (Sage ^ Cro'0. £it\o <Shixniio\\ni CBorks. 
 The Canada School Journal 
 
 HAS RSCB1?BD AM HONORABLB MUnON AT rAMM MIIIBmOa, ll7i 
 
 Adopted by nearly every County in Canada. 
 Kcoommended by the Minister of Education, Ontario. 
 Kecommended by theCounoil of Public Instniotion, <^uoboa 
 Reoommeiided by Chief Supt. of Education, New brunsHnek. 
 Keoonimended by Chief Supt. of Education, Nova Scotia. 
 Reooinuiended by Chief Supt. of Education, British Columbia 
 tteoouuueuded by Chief Supt. of Education, Mauitoba. 
 
 IT IB KDITICD BT 
 
 A Committee of some of the Leading Eduoatlonlsta In Ontario, aMiitea 
 by able Provincial Editore lu the Provlncus of (Quebec, Nova Sootia, Nbv 
 tiruitiiwlck, Prince Edward Island, Manitoba, and British ColuniLtii« Uius 
 bavini; each section of the Dominion fully represented. 
 
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 PKAoriCAL Dbpakmbn't will always contain useful hints on methods of 
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 Matubmatical Ubfautmb^'T ifives suiutions lo difficult problems also oo 
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 I have also received a No. of the" CaiiaJa Sohool Jounial," which seems 
 to me the britrbtest and luost readable of Educatioiiul MuKaAinus. I am very 
 truly thy friend,- Jolm Grevnkuf Whittivr. 
 
 A Club Of l.OOO Subrtcribors from Nova Scotia. 
 (Copy) EbucATiOii oppicb, IlAurAA, N. S., ^uT. 17, IbTS. 
 
 Messrs. Aoam Millbr dt Co., Toronto, Out. 
 
 Dear SirB,--In order to meet the wishes of our teachers In various part* 
 of the Province, and to secure for them the advantaKu of your excellent 
 periodical, 1 hereby subscribe in their behalf for one thousand (1,000) copies 
 at club rates mentioned in your recent esteemed favor. Subscriptions wil] 
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 days. Yours truly, 
 
 David Allibow, Chief Stn>t of Bduc •. n 
 
 Addrow, W. J. a AGE & CO Toronto, Cf.nudti.