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 56 ERASMUS (Desiderius, 1467-1536, scholar, editor of the first 
 pubUshed edition of the New Testament in Greek) Autograph 
 Inscription on the title of a Book. 
 
 At foot of title Erasmus has written, in a clear and steady hand, but 
 with quite characteristic forms of the letters : 
 
 .^- "Sum Erasmi, nee muto dnin." [/ belong to Erasmus, and I do 
 not change my master]. 
 He gave the book to a friend, who has written : 
 
 " Fui Erasmi, et mutaui dnm." [/ belonged to Erasunis, and I 
 
 \have changed my master]. 
 Below this Erasmus has written, in the straggUng hand so characteristic 
 of him : 
 " lure vfo mutaui, cu amicus sit alter ipse" [/ did right to cJiange, 
 \ since a friend is a second self]. 
 
 \ The book is one of exceptional interest in connection with the great 
 j editor of the Greek Testament, for it contains the first con- 
 
 I SIDERABLE PORTION OF THE NeW TESTAMENT PRINTED IN GrEEK. It 
 
 I is the Aldine edition of the Carmiva of Gregory of Xazianzen, 4°, 
 i Venice, 1504. 
 
 The Greek text is accompanied by a Latin translation, but Aldus so 
 ! printed them as to allow of the two languages being issued separately : 
 i this involved leaving blank the two inner pages of each gathering of 
 \ the Latin translation : on these Aldus started to print the Greek text 
 ; of St. John's Gospel with a Latin version, but only reached ch. vi.. 
 : v. 58. At the end of the book is a note that the rest of the Gospel 
 
 would be printed in the Latin translation of Nonnus, which however 
 
 was never carried out. 
 
 Good copy, with the four unsigned leaves at end. A few leaves 
 
 margined. From the collection of Michael Wodhull, who notes (under 
 
 date Mar : 23rd, 1770) "L : Davis's sale. 7/6, mending and binding 14/-. 
 
 I : 1:6." Diced russia gilt, gilt edges. ;^8o 
 
THE EISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE 
 
THE 
 
 EISE OF ENGLISH CULTUEE 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "the rise of CHRISTENDOM," " THE PAULINE EPISTLES," 
 "ANTIQUA MATER," ETC. 
 
 " 1 have thought that HISTORY was the one thing Uicking to the glory of your 
 Kingdom of England." 
 
 PoLTDORE Vergil of Urbino, Archdeacon of Wells, to Henry VIII., 
 in Preface to " Anglica Historia," London, August, 1533. 
 
 *' The love of my Country compriseth all love in it," 
 
 William Camden, " Britannia." 
 
 WITH A BRIEF ACCOONT OF THF aVTHOB AND 
 HIS WHITINGS 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NOEGATE 
 
 14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON 
 NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAIVrS SONS 
 
 1904 
 

 PKINTED BT 
 
 WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONg, LIMITEP, 
 
 LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
THE HON. SIR NORMAND MACLAURIN, 
 
 M.A., M.D., LL.D., 
 CHANCELLOR Oi^ THE UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY, 
 
 THIS WORK IS 
 
 DEDICATED. 
 
 M188879 
 
s 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 In offering this new Introduction to English History 
 to the public, I would call attention to the words 
 rendered from Polydore Vergil, which I have placed on 
 the title-page of the volume. For the first time since 
 the Kevival of Letters, I have endeavoured to state the 
 mere matter of fact concerning the manner in which 
 our national story was first schemed in the monasteries, 
 and gradually published to the external world during 
 the reign of Henry YIII. It may save my readers the 
 tedium of long explanations or apologies if I simply 
 say that the contents of my work may be regarded 
 as a series of comments on, and illustrations of, the 
 Preface of the first scholar of known personality who 
 undertook to write the history of our country since the 
 old Eoman time. 
 
 h-2 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dedication s v 
 
 Author's Preface vii 
 
 Edwin JoH^'soN and his Writings xvii 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 On the Revival of Letters, showing that the siguiticance of the Epoch 
 of Printing and Pubhcation has never been fully understood ; 
 consequently, that the true Method of investigation has not been 
 followed, and that the elements of Historical Science have yet to 
 be laid down .......... 
 
 PART I. 
 
 CHAPTER L 
 
 THE RISE OP THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. 
 
 The Monasteries, or Minsters — Coming of the Benedictines : various 
 theories — Ideals of the Benedictines : St. Augustine, St. Dunstan, 
 Lanfranc, Anselm — Probable Epoch of the Benedictines . . 40 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Opinion of Sir Christopher Wren — The Freemasons — Elias Ashmole — 
 
 Ignorance at Westminster — Stanley's " Memorials " . . -49 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RISE OF THE BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 
 
 PACK 
 
 Missions in the West — Benedictine Schools — The Benedictines of St. 
 Maur — Controversy with the Jesuits — Father Hardouin — Literary 
 History of the Benedictines, 1754 — Enghsh Critics ... 56 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 FABLES OF THE BENEDICTINE SCHOOLS. 
 
 Monte Cassino — Thomas Aquinas — His Bibhcal ideal — St. Thomas in 
 the " Divine Comedy " — Age of the manuscript — State of libraries 
 — Lists of scholars — Seeming inactivity until the Revival — Monte 
 Cassino in the sixteenth century ....... 63 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 
 
 Theology— The Eule of St. Benet— Church Law— Civil Law— Philo- 
 sophy — The Moral Philosophy of the Sermon on the Mount — 
 Medicine, Chemistry and Natural Magic, Mathematics, Music, 
 History, Sacred and Profane — Lives of the Popes and Bishops — 
 Church History — Profane and Civil History — Chronicles— Biblio- 
 graphies — Discourse of the Abbot of Erfurt on History — The 
 diplomatic art — Critical Study 72 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 The Chronological Passion — The Era of the Incarnation : when did it 
 come into Use ? — Researches of Mr. Thorold Rogers — The Eyes of 
 History — The Study of Astronomy and the Legend of Sacro Bosco 
 — Gresham College — Roger Bacon and Merton College — Robert 
 Bacon — Thomas Fuller on the Bacon Guild — The Story of the 
 Cycles — Merton — " Dionysius Exiguus," author of the Christian Era 
 — Bede — Marianus Scotus — Literary state of the Monastery of 
 Fulda, etc. 96 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF TRAVELLERS, GEOGRAPHERS, 
 AND NATURAL HISTORIANS. 
 
 Pilgrim Legends of St. Jerome and others — Maundeville — Monastic 
 Geography — The Hereford Wheel Map — Christian Topography — 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 The Sphere denied — Evil effects of the Dogma — The Polychronicon 
 — Geography of Edrisi — The Dogma of Natural History — Delight 
 in the Monstrous — The Power of the Monk over Nature — Fables 
 of Animals and Donations — The Legends of the Discovery of the 
 New World 114 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 FABLES OF EARLY IRISH CULTURE, AND OF FRENCH SCHOOLS. 
 
 Bobbio : the Legend of St. Columban — The Conversion of Ireland — 
 St. Patrick — St. Bridget — Fabulous Schools in Ireland — St. Colum- 
 ban : a parallel to St. Benet — His Wanderings with St. Gall — The 
 Irish monks were Benedictines — Paris: its schools — Attempts at 
 History in the seventeenth Century — St. Dionysius the Areopagite — 
 St. Germain — Charlemagne — Illustrious Scholars of Paris — Notre 
 Dame or St. Mary — Histories by Bulseus and Launoy — List of 
 Masters of Theology — Practice of Altercation — The Canons of St. 
 Victor — Doctors of Decrees — State of Literature in Paris — Rarity 
 of Books . . . . . . . . . . -159 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 
 
 Nicholas V. — Roman University — The Vatican Library — Alphonso 
 Borgia — Pietro Barbo — Francisco Rovere — Platina — The Secret 
 Archives— The time of Leo X. — Inghirami — Beroald — Aleander — 
 Urbino — Polydore Vergil — Bembo — Sadolet — The Humanists — 
 Poggio — Literary Condition of the Cloisters — Valla — The Printers 
 in Italy — The German Printers in Rome — The Greek Printing- 
 Presses — The Humanists and the Monks — Story of Linacre . . 181 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 
 
 The Catalogue of " Boston of Bury " examined — The method of Bene- 
 dictine Fiction — The " Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs " — 
 Gildas — Nennius — Bede — His self-testimony — Witness of Segebert 
 — Of John Boston — Of Polydore Vergil — Of John Leland — William 
 "of Malmesbury — Ralph de Diceto — Supposed thirteenth Century 
 writers — Matthew Paris unknown — Further ignorances — Supposed 
 fourteenth Century writers — Golden History of John of Tyne- 
 mouth — Silence on John Wiclif — St. Albans — John of Wheat- 
 hamstead, a parallel to Trithemius — " The Granary : " its character 
 — Fable of Abgarus — Article on John Wiclif — Article on Tacitus 
 — " The Granary : " an exposure of ignorance and dishonesty . 200 
 
xii CONTENTS. 
 
 PAET 11. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE INVENTION OP ENGLISH STORY — POLYDORE VERGIL. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Witness of Chalcondylas to ignorance of England — Polydore Vergil in 
 England — English History has yet to be discovered — Importance 
 of his testimony — His Sources — The Britons — " Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth." etc. — Gavin Douglas and the contemporary Invention of 
 Scottish Story — Hector Boece and his Critics . . . .221 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — continued. 
 
 The Saxons — Paul the Deacon — Rise of the English Empire — Polydore 
 on Himself— St. Frideswide — The Dacians, or Danes — King Alfred 
 — Legends of Oxford and Cambridge, and other Benedictine fiction 
 — Satire upon them — Canute, patron of the Benedictines — St. 
 Peter declares England to be the Kingdom of God . . .241 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — continued. 
 
 Tlie Normans — The Common Laws — Curfew — The Exchequer — The 
 Chancellors — The Grand Jury — The Census — Holy men of the 
 Time — Wicked Rufus — Myths of Customs — French Kings — 
 Thomas k Becket — English Kings again — The Charters — The 
 English Justinian — The Hanse League — Legends of Merton and 
 Balliol Colleges 258 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — continued. 
 
 Edward II. points a Moral — Edward III. — Glorification of the Archers 
 —The Order of the Garter— The Religion of St. George— The 
 Legend of Wiclif — Council of Constance — Richard II. — Popular 
 Insurrection — Death of Richard — An old wives' fable — Lancastrian 
 fictions — Henry IV. and his false title— Henry V. an edifying Prince 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 TAGK 
 
 — Feeling against the French — The Miracle of Agincourt — The 
 Romance of the Maid of Orleans — Rise of the House of Tudor — 
 Henry VI. and Margaret of Anjou — Fatality of the name of Gloster 
 — College Building — Loss of Normandy and Aquitaine — Fall of 
 Suffolk — Rising under Jack Cade — The Two Roses . . .275 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — Continued. 
 
 Edward IV. — The moral of Henry VI.'s troubles — His death a Parricide 
 — The Benedictines of Chertsey honour the most holy King — His 
 college of boy priests at Eton — Henry of Richmond his propheti- 
 cally designated successor — Edward IV. must on a priori grounds 
 be represented as a Murderer — Fabled fate of the Duke of Clarence 
 — The portrait of Edward IV. perhaps due to the canons of St. 
 George — The portrait of Richard III. an imitation of Tacitus' 
 style — His story a moral Lancastrian drama — The Grey Friars are 
 interested in it . . . . . . . . . . 295 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POLYDORE YERGih —continued. 
 
 Henry VII. comes to the throne by Prophecy — The Pretender Simnel 
 — The Regular Clergy and Politics — Hadrian Castello — Perkin 
 Warbeck — More clerical intrigues and fictions — The Religious 
 Houses centres of Sedition — The Royal Inquisition — Absence of 
 Right and Law in England — The Ideal of the Wise King — Henry 
 Patron of the Grey Friars — Picture by Mabuse — Cardinal Fisher's 
 portrait of the Lady Margaret — Hints of the State of Culture in 
 Erasmus' Letters . . . . . . . . .317 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JOHN LELAND. 
 
 Importance of his Testimony — His visits to the Religious Houses, 1533- 
 1539 — Paucity of all Literature in England — His visit to the Fran- 
 ciscans at Oxford — The forged Nennius — John Ross of Warwick — 
 Tales of Hebrew culture in old England — Visit to the Oratory of 
 Bede — Rabelais' jest on Bede — The rise of the Chaucer legend 
 and poetry ; the Beginnings of an Enghsh School ; the English 
 Homer as j'et unknown to classical scholars — The observp.tion of 
 Sidney on Chaucer explained 346 
 
xiv CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EARLY PRINTED BOOKS I LEGENDS OP THE PRESS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Legend of Caxton — "Recueyl of the History of Troye " — " The Book 
 on Chess:" the game derived from the Arabians — "Historv of 
 Jason"— "The Dictes"— "The Cordial "—" The Image of" the 
 World "— " Chronicle of England : " a deductive tale—" Story of 
 King John " — The Press at St. Albans — The Chronicle — Edward 
 IV. a terminal Name — Coat- Armour — Rise of Crusading Legends — 
 " The Festival Book "— " The Confessio Amantis "—Romance of 
 Chivalry — King Arthur — Chaucer and Lydgate — Ciceronian Tracts 
 — Legend of Tiptoft — Obscurity of the early Printers . . . 363 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 
 
 Froissart : his Romantic and Miraculous Style ; examples — Arthur and 
 the Table Round — Lancastrian Prophecies in " Brute of England " 
 — The Continuator Monstrelet — Comines : his manner — History 
 a Religious Drama — Lives of Edward V. and Richard III. ascribed 
 to Sir Thomas More — Fabian's "Concordance of Stories" — Rastell's 
 " Pastime of the People "—The Chronicles of Hall— Of Harding- 
 Fable in the interest of Ambition, English and Scottish — Grafton's 
 Chronicle : the delight in Falsehood — 'Fusion of Biblical and Classical 
 Legends — Holinshed — Stow and Howes — 'Defence of Brute — The 
 sceptics increase — Camden's " Britannia " — Speed — Daniel — Hay- 
 ward — Baker : his coldness towards the Playwright Shakespeare . 383 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE INNS OF COURT; ROMANCE OF THE LAW. 
 
 The Fortescue Tracts: their late origin — Brute the founder of the 
 Constitution — Yearnings for Liberty — Antipathy to the French — 
 Praise of the Archers — The Ideal of Robin Hood, the Outlaw 
 Archer — His Day and Culture — The Gentle Thief is a National 
 Hero — Satire on the Monks — Littleton and Coke — Blackstone on 
 the Tantalus — Fable of the Constitution 403 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 
 
 The Tower of London — Chancery Lane — Westminster; the Chapter 
 House — The late Beginning of all Records — How Records were 
 constructed — Macaulay's partial insight into the matter — Hallam 
 on Bacon and Coke — Richard Baxter's stern denunciation of Party 
 Falsehood m English History 422 
 
CONTENTS. XV 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Knowledge of the Bible dates from the Revival — The Hebrew 
 Bible, as the production of Jewish ecclesiastics, should be studied 
 in the Synagogues — The Latin Bible of Benedictine origin : ex- 
 plained by " John Boston of Bury " — The Greek Bible : a sixteenth 
 and seventeenth century study — English Scholars : Mill, Whitby, 
 Bentley, Conyers Middleton — Opinion of Hardouin — The Bible in 
 English : Tyndale — Ignorance of Oriental Literature till the seven- 
 teenth century 438 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE LIGHT OP THE REVIVAL. 
 
 State of Thought among the Orders — •Christological Conceptions — The 
 Book of Daniel as Source — Renunciation of the World — War 
 against the Jews — ^Denunciation of the Rich, Praise of Poverty — 
 Idyllic Scenes — Church Art suggestive — The Perfect Man — Pauline 
 Sayings — A great Schism — The effort after Unity and Order amid 
 diversities — Praise of Charity — Status of Women — The Holy 
 Communion and Tran substantiation — Satires on the Priesthood — 
 Pauline Allegory — Criticism of Jews and Greeks — Martin Luther's 
 discovery of the Bible 456 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 Illustrations from John Cassian the Benedictine — Allegories of the 
 Profession; the discipline idealized in Story — Structure of the 
 " Apostle " as a Book of Sentences — The Athlete of Christ — 
 Dsemonology — The Science of Allegorical Interpretation — The 
 Father of Lies — All History to be understood as Allegory — Know- 
 ledge and false Knowledge — ^Veracity : absolute statements for- 
 bidden — The intention and end of Action give value to the means 
 — Falsehood permitted ; it is like Hellebore — Veracity should yield 
 to Charity, as in the example of Paul — Promises and Oaths may 
 be broken — Illustrations from Bede of the New Testament as Book 
 of Precedents 470 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 SOME POETS AND CRITICS OF ENGLISH STORY. 
 
 Drayton : " The Barons' Wars," " Heroical Epistles," Legend of 
 Thomas Cromwell — " The Polyolbion : " coming of Brute, etc. — 
 
xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 Spenser: " The Faery Queene " — Phantasy, Judgment, and Memory 
 — Glorious ancestry of Queen Elizabeth — The Prophecy of Merlin 
 — ^Dismal actual State of England — Sidney : " Defence of Poesy " — 
 The Allegorical Use of English Story 493 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 JOHN SELDEN AS CRITIC OF ENGLISH STORY. 
 
 Notes to Drayton's " Polyolbion," 16 12 — The "Arcadian deduction of 
 the Monarchy " — Chronologies exploded — Merlin discredited — 
 Selden first criticizes the Benedictine system of Chronology — ^The 
 Chronicles all wrong : his contempt for the Monks — ^His opinion of 
 Arthur — The corrupt story of English Liberties — On the Right of 
 Sanctuary — Privilege of Highway — Discrepancies in copies of the 
 forest Charter — Error in the G-reat Charter — On William the 
 Bastard and his sons — Discrepancies in "Abjuration of the Realm " 
 — Apology for King John as Victim of the Hierarchy — The fables 
 of the Charters — The Two Roses — ^Polydore unjustly censured — 
 On the Duke of Clarence — The last Plantagenet and the first 
 Tyddour, or Tudor — English Story still in a fluid state — On the 
 Liberties of Kent — The Titles of Honour, 16 14 — On Fortescue 
 and Hengham, 1616 — On the S}Tian Gods, 1617 — On Tithes, 161 8 
 — Selden as learned Champion of English Liberty imprisoned — 
 Edition of the Benedictine " Eadmer," 1623 — Selden pleads for 
 Hampden, 1627 — His relation to the Great Charter : Personal 
 Liberty not yet defined — Suspicions of erasures and interpolations 
 of the Records — "Time out of Mind" — Selden in the Tower, 1628 
 — He is prosecuted in the Star Chamber — His Biblical writings — 
 The forged " Eutychius," 1642 — Selden Keeper of the Records, 
 1644 — Pococke : his labours in Arabic and friendship with Moslems 
 — John Lightfoot — Selden on Fleta, 1647 — on the Sanhedrin, 1650 
 — on the Ten English Writers, 1652 — his death, 1654 . . -51' 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 CONCLUSION 552 
 
 APPENDIX : Principal Writings of Edwin Johnson, M.A., published 
 
 and unpublished 561 
 
 INDEX 569 
 
EDWIN JOHNSON AND HIS WRITINGS. 
 
 As this is the first volume of the author's works to be 
 issued since his decease, it has been thought fitting 
 that it • should be prefaced by some account of his 
 life and writings. 
 
 Edwin Johnson was the second son of the Rev. 
 Alfred Johnson, Congregational Minister, and was 
 born at Upton, near Andover, Hampshire, on the 9th 
 November, 1842. If he had any pride of birth, it was 
 in the fact that his descent was from English yeoman 
 stock. His childhood was spent in the country, and he 
 never lost his love for its charms and associations. 
 A studious and thoughtful boy, he read English history 
 with delight, was proud of his country's greatness, and 
 ambitiously hoped that some day he would be in a 
 position to do something for it. Inheriting an old- 
 fashioned courtesy of manner and a very chivalric spirit, 
 he had but a poor opinion of money and the position it 
 is supposed to give. His home influences were, how- 
 ever, rather of a Puritan cast, and under the serene 
 guidance of his parents he drifted, scarcely knowing 
 how or why, towards the Pulpit. 
 
 In 1859 he entered New College, St. John's Wood, 
 to train for the Ministry, his tutors being the Rev. Dr. 
 Halley ; Dr. William Smith, editor of the Classical and 
 
xviii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 Bible Dictionaries ; Dr. Lankester, the chemist ; the 
 Rev. John Godwin, Dr. Samuel Newth, and Professor 
 Nenner. He won three Scholarships, took his M.A. 
 degree in Classics at the London University; and years 
 afterwards the aged Dr. (then Sir William) Smith wrote 
 of him as one of the most distinguished pupils he ever 
 had. Of his collegiate career a lifelong friend writes : — 
 " His contemporaries would agree that he easily dis- 
 tanced them in any mental contest which he undertook ; 
 while his courtesy, refinement, and quiet humour endeared 
 him to them all as a friend and comrade. He did not 
 possess the elan and force of expression which would 
 have commanded popularity ; but he had in debate, in 
 preaching, and in conversation a rare and delicate skill 
 in exhibiting some of the most charming sides of truth ; 
 and with quiet sarcasm he used to expose some of the 
 popular shams and delusions of the religious world. 
 Few men were so deeply loved and respected at College 
 as Edwin Johnson ; for while he was always an original 
 and daring thinker, he never willingly wounded the 
 susceptibilities of those wha differed with him." 
 
 He entered upon his first pastoral charge at Forest 
 Hill, near London, in 1865. There he married and 
 remained some years. His father-in-law's health break- 
 ing down, he went a tour with him on the Continent, 
 visiting France, Switzerland, North Italy, and Germany. 
 On their return in 1870, Johnson accepted a call to 
 Boston, Lincolnshire, where he was settled for nine years. 
 This was a very active period. Carefully fulfilling his 
 pastoral duties, he yet found time for writing and 
 lecturing on important topics of the day, taking especial 
 interest in the question of National Education. It was 
 in Boston that Johnson began to make his excursions 
 and explorations into the beginnings of history. Among 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xix 
 
 his unpublished manuscripts are " An Ancient History 
 in Anecdote," and a monograph on '* St. Beowulph's." 
 Of the same period are Essays on "Hebrew Poetry," 
 and on the " Science of Keligion." While at Boston 
 he also edited Erasmus for the eminent bibliophile 
 Robert Roberts, printer of an edition of the " Utopia." 
 The " Apophthegmes," with a memoir of Erasmus 
 by Johnson, issued in 1877, was followed by the 
 "Colloquies" in 1878. To the latter Johnson added 
 nearly one hundred pages of judicious and accurate 
 notes. " No one," a critic wrote, " could complain that 
 they were in excess, the work could scarcely have been 
 better done " — a remark applicable to all his work, 
 which is characterized by thoroughness and by con- 
 scientiousness. He was never influenced by any hasty 
 desire of seeing his writing in print. 
 
 Meanwhile, he continued his studies of Classical, 
 especially Greek literature, and read extensively in 
 other branches. His own library — never a large one — 
 was that of a poor scholar whose books are chosen for 
 use, well-thumbed and annotated. Among his favourite 
 authors were Horace, Seneca, Diogenes Laertius, 
 Erasmus, Lessing, Wordsworth, Scott, Jane Austen, 
 and Browning. The " Waverley Novels," he once told 
 me, he had read through at least a dozen times ; the 
 volumes of the double-column edition were always at 
 hand, and in later years helped him through many a 
 sleepless night. His own clear style owes not a little 
 to his favourite Scott. 
 
 In 1879 he was appointed Professor of Classical 
 Literature by the Council of his College, and returned 
 to London. This engagement enabled him to devote 
 much more time to study and research : henceforward 
 he became a constant worker at the British Museum 
 
XX EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 and at Dr. Williams's Library in Gordon Square, both 
 being within easy walk of his residence at Primrose 
 Hill. Greek Mythology and Philosophy, as well as 
 Greek Ecclesiastical History, were subjects taken up 
 to fortify his position at the College. These he studied 
 deeply, and upon some of them wrote elaborately. His 
 published literary work during this period included 
 translations of Ewald on the Psalms, Meyer on the 
 Romans, and a variety of miscellaneous articles and 
 papers. He also gave considerable attention to patristic 
 literature, and other branches of theological study. 
 A glance at the list of his writings during these years 
 gives a fair indication of the very wide range of his 
 reading and of his great industry ; while their perusal 
 shows that he had acquired at the same time a facility 
 and lucidity in expressing his ideas on learned and 
 abstruse subjects. His attainments in Latin and Greek 
 were those of a master ; a good French and German 
 scholar, he also became familiar with Oriental literature. 
 He had, moreover, a singular aptitude for teaching, 
 and was able to invest the study of history with a 
 living interest. Dr. Furnivall, who frequently met 
 Johnson, thought him one of the most pregnant-minded 
 and stimulating thinkers he had come across ; he 
 noticed his singularly attractive and genial manner, 
 and the breadth and depth of his culture. The College 
 work was more than congenial, but the Council, for 
 pecuniary considerations, removing the Arts Depart- 
 ment to University College, Gower Street, Johnson, 
 after eight years of professorial work, was left free 
 to devote his whole attention to literary pursuits. 
 His works on " Greek Mythology and Religion," and 
 on " The Origin and Process of Religion " were soon 
 completed, though not published. Another work was 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxi 
 
 the translation of a collection of South German Folk- 
 Tales, " In the Land of Marvels/' issued as a companion 
 volume to the North German '' Fairy and Household 
 Tales" of the brothers Grimm. The preface to this 
 work afforded its translator and editor an opportunity 
 for writing an interesting article on Folk- Lore, and of 
 criticising the so-called '' Nature Mythologists," whose 
 opinions he considered were based on a radical mis- 
 take, presenting in their result an inversion of the 
 truth. 
 
 In Patristic studies he had taken a bolder course 
 M^ than is usually pursued by an orthodox professor. In 
 England, Matthew Arnold had revealed to the layman 
 the purely literary character of the Old and the New 
 Testaments. Abroad, German and Dutch theologians 
 had undermined belief in the personality of the 
 supposed writers, while the author of " Supernatural 
 Religion" had shown that there was no evidence for 
 miracles. Johnson, after examining the literary cha- 
 racter and authorship of these Scriptures, proposed to 
 himself a re-examination of the history of Christianity 
 from its inception. The result of his earlier inquiries 
 appeared in his " Antiqua Mater," published anony- 
 mously towards the end of 1887, and in a Latin essay 
 which he wrote for a Dutch Theological Society. 
 
 The tracing down of the so-called early Christian 
 records was intensely interesting. Coming suddenly, 
 after months of earnest research, upon a clue, it was 
 gradually revealed to him that the actual writers of 
 the Church and Gospel histories were not ancient. Not 
 one only, or a few only, of the supposed ancient writers 
 seemed to write in a " sixteenth -century " manner, as 
 Canon Westcott had remarked of Jerome : nearly all of 
 them belonged to that late period. In some respects, 
 
 c 
 
xxii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 for one who had spent years in teaching so-called 
 orthodox Christianity, it was painful to have to record 
 the result. But with that peculiar sense of triumph of 
 which men are conscious when having cast away 
 the leading-strings of authority and having learned to 
 depend solely upon their own intelligence, he did not 
 dread any feelings of resentment which the results 
 might arouse upon their publication, and so sat down 
 to the onerous task of recording them. 
 
 "The Rise of Christendom" appeared in October, 
 1890. For a book of its high character the Press 
 notices were, on the whole, hesitating ; in some cases 
 discreetly silent. Few treated the work with the con- 
 sideration it deserved ; or challenged its statements or its 
 conclusions — a disappointment to its author. It may 
 be that Johnson assumed too much on the part of his 
 readers and the critics, to many of whom the work was 
 probably little more than a paradox. Gibbon and other 
 historians are supposed to rest on the bed-rock of 
 authority. It was the supposed bed-rock authorities 
 behind Gibbon who were attacked in ''The Rise of 
 Christendom." Fortunately for its author, the book was 
 understood by a few thoughtful men. The late Mr. 
 Froude read it with the closest interest and attention, 
 and asked the author to call upon him. This Johnson 
 did, the conversation on the occasion being followed by 
 a correspondence on the questions raised in the book 
 and on collateral subjects. In course of time notices 
 of the book and letters arrived from the Antipodes, 
 where, by a few, as in America, the import of the 
 work was perceived, and (by one or two able critics) 
 described as one of the most important books of the 
 century — an appreciation contrasting greatly with the 
 coldness or silence of the critics at home. 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxiii 
 
 Soon after the publication of " The Eise of Christen- 
 dom," Johnson, adopting the suggestion of a friend, 
 wrote a work of fiction, the idea being that the 
 results of his researches, if presented in romantic or 
 allegorical form, might possibly be more intelligible 
 to the large number of thoughtful persons unable, 
 through lack of the very wide range of reading and 
 knowledge assumed by the author on the part of his 
 audience, to follow the arguments contained in " The 
 Kise of Christendom." This romance, " The Quest of 
 Mr. East," completed in 1889, was not published until 
 ten years later, when, in 1900, it appeared over the 
 pseudonym of " John Soane." In it are embodied some 
 of the author's observations of the phases of religious 
 philosophy and its modern expounders. It was well 
 written, and has been very well received. 
 
 The author meantime continued his writings ; for 
 " The Rise of Christendom," comparatively small though 
 its circulation had been, had created among the few a 
 demand for further enlightenment. It was not possible 
 for a subject so vast — a critical subject, too, compre- 
 hending a wider field than that covered by Mosheim, 
 Gibbon and Milman, extending over the whole range 
 of European and Semitic literature, to be disposed of in 
 a single volume of 500 pages. 
 
 A complementary work — the present volume on the 
 " Rise of English Culture " — was completed towards the 
 end of 1 89 1. This work, which brings the results of 
 the author's researches into "Mediaeval " history nearer 
 home, shows that Celtic and Anglo-Saxon civilization 
 is not only mythic (as other critics had already dis- 
 covered), but also that the "History" of Bede and 
 som^ of the Chronicles could not possibly have been 
 written before the time of Henry VH. or Henry VIII. 
 
xxiv EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 While writing " English Culture " Johnson prepared 
 several short papers on " Saxon Charters," " British 
 Origins," " English Records," " Foundation Legends of 
 Oxford and Cambridge," " Biblical Legends," '* Biblical 
 Geography," "Gothic and Saracen Architecture," and 
 made notes for a work on " French Culture " which is 
 left unfinished. By way of relaxation he also wrote, 
 about this time, a series of papers on Robert Browning, 
 touching on a few characteristic points in the person- 
 ality and art of the poet. A " Primer or Elements of 
 Historic Science," undertaken at the suggestion of Mr. 
 Froude, was written in 1892, and a translation into 
 English of the " Prolegomena " of Father Hardouin, 
 copies of the Jesuit's work being scarce, and no full 
 translation from the Latin existing. To various liberal 
 and advance-thought publications he contributed from 
 time to time miscellaneous articles on the same subjects 
 written in more popular vein. These included chapters 
 on "English History," articles on ''Gibbon and the 
 Origin of Christianity," on the " History of Eusebius," 
 and "Notes on Jewish Literature and the Jews in 
 Spain : " some of these papers have been reprinted in 
 American periodicals. " The Pauline Epistles, re- 
 studied and explained," an account of the origin of 
 New Testament writings and of the Protestant Refor- 
 mation in Europe, issued in 1893, had a fair circulation. 
 
 The late Mr. Arbuthnot, Oriental scholar, met 
 Johnson on several occasions to discuss the subject of 
 Chronology with him, and there is no doubt that 
 Johnson would have produced a valuable work on 
 Calendars and Chronological Systems, but his health 
 breaking down, he was obliged to lay aside the mass of 
 notes and extracts which he had accumulated on this 
 subject. This material was subsequently acquired by 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxv 
 
 Mr. Arbuthnot. "The Mysteries of Chronology," 
 which appeared in 1900, was very largely based on 
 information which Johnson supplied. The suggestion, 
 however, for the formation of a new Era, ''The 
 Victorian," was Mr. Arbuthnot's own. 
 
 Beyond an occasional letter to a private correspon- 
 dent, Johnson wrote little more. His earlier and 
 unpublished work, except that on '' Greek Mythology 
 and Eeligion," was to some extent superseded by that 
 containing the result of his latest discoveries and re- 
 search. Of his work on the whole he has recorded 
 his own feeling and impressions towards the end of 
 " The Pauline Epistles." " It was," he writes, " a very 
 distressing curiosity that goaded me to undertake 
 these investigations. In one respect the result has 
 been a grievous disappointment, because, instead of 
 discovering a solid basis of witnessed and accredited 
 facts, I have found nothing but clear and irresistible 
 evidence of the schemes and devices of a secret literary 
 society,* whose bold statements have again and again to 
 
 * The author writes strongly : he has been over the ground, I have not, 
 and would try to find another explanation. Theologies and Ecclesiastical 
 systems, formulated by societies, councils, synods, have generally had their 
 origin in individual speculation or belief. See below, pp. xxxix., xl., lii. 
 
 " On the other hand, the intense esprit de corps of a convent of monks 
 went beyond anything that we can now reahze, and led to grave sins against 
 truth and honesty. The forgeries of charters, bulls, and legal instruments of 
 all kinds for the glorification of a monastery by its members was at least 
 condoned only too frequently. It can hardly be doubted that the scriptorium 
 of many a religious house must have been turned to very discreditable uses 
 by unscrupulous and clever scribes, with the connivance if not with the actual 
 knowledge of the convent, for such things were not done in a corner. If the 
 forgeries succeeded — and that they often did succeed we know — the monastery 
 got all the advantage of the rascality ; no inquiry was made, and it was tacitly 
 assumed that where so much was gained, and the pride of * our house ' was 
 gratified, the end justified the means."— Dr. Jessopp, '* Coming of the Friars," 
 and other Essays, etc., pp. i6o, i6i. 
 
 The subject of literary forgery by monks has been strongly commented 
 
xxvi EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 be contradicted out of their own writings. ' These things 
 were not done in a corner,' Paul is made to say. ^ut 
 they were done in a corner^ ' We have not followed 
 cunningly devised fables/ the brotlier- Apostle is made 
 to say, and yet the whole system is one of cunningly 
 devised fables. . . . One trained like myself to believe 
 in and defend these writings, and to look upon the 
 Church as, ideally at least, a glorious institution, free 
 from spot, wrinkle, blemish, or any such thing, cannot 
 reflect upon these things without pain. By instinct 
 and old affection my place is among her servants or 
 allies. But the duty of the literary critic is no less 
 serious and stern than that of the Judge upon the 
 Bench ; and my conscience, as a critic, compels me to 
 condemn an institution which is stained, and maculate, 
 and deformed by complicity with so much of falsehood 
 and fraud, and to make what effort I can towards a new 
 reformation. 
 
 " In these gentler days it surely is not too much to 
 hope that the Church naay resolve to turn down her 
 falsified and iniquitous pages, and begin the Chronicle 
 of a new era, inscribed with the records of her en- 
 deavours in the cause of knowledge, of truth, of human 
 love — records at the same time of the admiration and 
 gratitude of the world. May these things be ! " * 
 
 That, in brief, is the story of Johnson's literary 
 work. Of what he was in his own home, or of his 
 generous help to poor students, I am not permitted to 
 speak. He was modest to a degree, and rarely spoke 
 or wrote of himself or of his books. The modern inter- 
 viewer was a person to avoid. " If," said he (it was one 
 
 upon by Milman, Sir Harris Nicolas, M. Giry, Isaac Disraeli, and others. See 
 also Arbuthnot, "Mysteries of Chronology," pp. 24, 25, 37. 
 * " The Rise of Christendom," p. 494. 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxvii 
 
 of his last utterances) — " if, in the future, there are any 
 inquiries about me, say, *I live in my books.'" His 
 books are, however, with one exception, impersonal. 
 Johnson the man was greater than Johnson the author. 
 
 Some of his feelings and experiences may be found 
 in " The Quest of Mr. East ; " some are given above. 
 He was no "Dryasdust," no recluse, but eminently 
 human, genial by temperament, a cheerful companion, 
 and fond of society. Until his last illness, he was 
 saved from being cast down by a large sense of humour 
 which one of his friends remarked had '* a kind of 
 Charles Lamb flavour, without the mint sauce." Though 
 feeling the cold criticism, like St. John in " Mr. East," 
 he was on the w^hole cheered wdth kind words of men to 
 him unknown, who praised the candour, the human ity, 
 the this and that good quality of pages into which the 
 thought and struggle of years had gone (p. 242). 
 
 One who did not feel able, or profess to understand 
 the tendency of his writings, says — 
 
 " Words would fail to record all the spiritual sym- 
 pathies which were a living force in his character 
 to the last. Of his affectionate affinities, of his subtle 
 suggestiveness in conversation, of his power to make 
 men look their own thoughts in the face, many of his 
 old students and friends will now be thinking. ... To 
 those w^ho knew the peculiar flavour of his humour, * The 
 Quest of Mr. East ' was a book full of charm ; in reality 
 a long-drawn-out parable, depicting many salient 
 features of the modern religious world, and describing 
 the search of the soul for the true Christ. There was 
 great pathos about his life ; and the pain and difficulty 
 associated with his course brought out more clearly his 
 innate refinement, while even amid disabling suffering 
 he exercised a strange attractiveness which led into 
 
xxviii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 friendship with him men of all ways of thinking. He 
 will live enshrined not only in the tender love of those 
 who so patiently ministered to his dying wants, but in 
 the hearts of a large number who gained stimulus, 
 not merely from what he said, but from what he 
 was." 
 
 Another friend, member of an Association to which 
 Johnson belonged, wrote — 
 
 " Those who were present at our last annual Dinner 
 did not fail to recognize that the Valkyries had marked 
 out for death him who was the most learned of the 
 guests. During all the years the Dinner had obtained 
 the author of ' Antiqua Mater ' had, regularly, a place 
 at the table. . . . His reputation for sound erudition, 
 and the daring devotion to what appeared to him 
 historic truth which had subjected him to professional 
 and social martyrdom, rendered him a conspicuous and 
 honoured figure, year after year, in our festive conclave. 
 But we gradually came to lose sight of the accomplished 
 scholar in the genial man. The massive brow, furrowed 
 with the plough of thought, lost its classic severity in 
 the good man's genial and benevolent smile, and we, 
 his companions, lost sight of the most learned in the 
 most lovable of men. I have never known a man 
 more single-minded and of simpler heart. . . Our late 
 friend was too ingenuous and unselfish for this callous 
 and selfish world. He gave it the ripe fruitage of his 
 intellectual and moral manhood." " The world visited 
 him in return," continues the same writer, " with the loss 
 of his professorship and the rusting mildew of un- 
 merited neglect. He complained not ; no choleric word 
 did he utter by voice or pen ; but the wrong weighed 
 heavily upon his refined and susceptible nature ; old 
 age supervened prematurely, and he who should have 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxix 
 
 had the energy for valuable years of hard work still in 
 him has been blotted out of the present, and is, already, 
 an item of the past." 
 
 Closer friends, however, knew the man better ; 
 though he had put forth his hand and touched the 
 sacred Ark, and calamity had seemed to come upon him, 
 in the shape of an insidious and incurable disease, he 
 knew that he had contributed towards the solution of 
 the problem of the religious history of our Western 
 World— the solution of which will establish Spiritual 
 Unity. He was much encouraged by kind and 
 sympathetic and thoughtful letters, and while able to 
 continue his writing, had put his soul into it — 
 
 " STRIVING FOR THE NEARER VISION OF THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, 
 THE GOOD." 
 
 He passed from a death in life to Rest on the 
 3rd of October, 1901, at the comparatively early age 
 of 59. But his work was well done. 
 
 His last message for me, one of his latest friends, 
 who least expected a message, was to the effect that I 
 would see this book through the press. With the 
 generous help of a few friends in sympathy with the 
 author's life-work, that request is now realized. The 
 text is printed verbatim from the author's manuscript. 
 If it could have received his finishing touches, doubt- 
 less it would have been even more worthy of the reader's 
 perusal than it is. 
 
 In an appendix will be found a List of Johnson's 
 principal writings published and unpublished, including 
 separate volumes, essays, lectures, addresses, and other 
 papers, representing a great range of critical reading 
 and of original research in European and Oriental 
 literature. 
 
XXX EDWIN JOHNSOK 
 
 n. 
 
 The main results of Johnson's researches, as recorded 
 in his printed writings, are briefly these : — 
 
 That the History of Europe — especially Ecclesias- 
 tical History — is founded largely upon assumption as 
 well as upon tradition, legend, and error, the bio- 
 graphies of real persons being idealized. That the 
 Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are proleptic in cha- 
 racter. That there was no constituted Christian Church 
 before the "Eleventh" Century of our Era — eight 
 hundred years ago. That the larger part of the so- 
 called '* Middle^ Ages " is an imaginary or non-existent 
 period ; the Modern Period beginning soon_after the 
 breaking up of the old Koman Empire. We are there- 
 fore not so far removed in time from the Greeks and 
 Eomans as our Chronoloo^ical table teaches. Further : 
 Johnson has traced our Ecclesiastical System backwards 
 to the Arabians, who owe nothing whatever to Latin 
 or Greek Christianity — the indebtedness being in the 
 opposite direction. Christianity, in some form, w^as, 
 however, anterior to all these systems. 
 
 These are no wild theories to be summarily rejected. 
 Though some of the statements may seem too bold or 
 too arbitrary, the reader will find the author's argu- 
 ments quite intelligible, and not unreasonable. 
 
 Many have discovered inexplicable anomalies and 
 discrepancies in their reading of History : in Johnson's 
 printed writings they will, I think, find a solution of 
 their difiiculties, an explanation of many things hitherto 
 imperfectly or wholly misunderstood, especially of 
 matters in relation to our System of Chronology.* In 
 
 * Our own System of Chronology being impugned, I once asked the 
 author, •' How do we stand in relation to other Systems ? " and suggested 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxxi 
 
 the following pages I have endeavoured to bring to- 
 gether some of the anomalies noticed in my own reading. 
 Those given could easily be supplemented by many more 
 in support of our author's arguments. 
 
 The saying that Geography and Chronology are 
 the two "Eyes" of History has become so hackneyed 
 an expression that we are apt to forget the rational 
 "Mind" of the Observer behind them. Even careful 
 historians write of long stretches of a thousand and 
 fifteen hundred years as if historical time was un- 
 limited. The average educated person so easily, in 
 imagination, transfers himself from coDtinent to conti- 
 nent, or from century to century, and speaks or writes 
 of this or that event as having happened in the 
 " second," or the " seventh," or the " nineteenth," or 
 any intervening century, as if time had been reckoned 
 in this manner all through the Era. Speaking generally, 
 no Ancient Era was in use, or in force, from its com- 
 mencement, nor till loDg afterwards. The term " Anno 
 Domini," and the reckoning backwards to the sup- 
 posed beginning of the Era, has been in general use less 
 than four hundred years. Before that time reckoning 
 was by the reigns of kings and princes, and popes ; 
 indeed, our Acts of Parliament are still dated by the 
 year of the reign of the King. 
 
 Inscriptions and Manuscripts, when undated, are 
 allocated to particular centuries by the Palseographical 
 expert, who ascertains the dates from the language, or 
 contents, or the style of the caligraphy, which may, 
 perhaps, have been due to the caprice of the writers. 
 Accordingly, when we meet with statements that any 
 
 that he should make some attempt towards a reconstruction. The notes and 
 memoranda utilized by Mr. Arbuthnot may have been a step in the direction 
 indicated. 
 
xxxii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 Christian document belongs to the period between the 
 " second " and the " tenth " century, we may assume 
 that the date given is merely conjectural. Too much 
 emphasis cannot, therefore, be laid upon this subject of 
 Chronology, for upon it rests the credibility and 
 authenticity of Church records, and the true date of 
 the Church's foundation. 
 
 ) Like other Ecclesiastical Eras, the Christian Era has 
 
 been much exaggerated — antedated. A chronological 
 table being necessary, a " Dionysius Exiguus " was 
 found. The scheme of fourteen or fifteen anterior 
 
 ; centuries being laid down. Christian Historians, like 
 Christian Geographers, who, 
 
 " With savage pictures filled their Maps 
 And o'er unhabitable downs 
 Placed Elephants for want of towns," 
 
 very soon filled up the vacant Plan with names and 
 edifying deeds of Ecclesiastical Princes, Churchmen, and 
 Saints — or of their supposed opponents ; for. History 
 to the Christian writers was Allegory rather than a 
 Science of Observation or of Eeasoning. Glancing 
 over the Period between the " Fourth " and " Eleventh " 
 centuries we see that it is spaced out with Christian 
 and Ecclesiastical matters, or of secular matter which 
 interested the Church. For purely secular names we 
 look in vain ; between Galen and Ptolemy in the 
 " Second " and the Arabians of the '' Ninth " there is 
 a blank. Speaking of Ptolemy, one is reminded that 
 his "Geography" of the "Second" and that of the 
 '* Thirteenth " Centuries are almost alike. 
 
 The eleven centuries of the Eastern Empire (from 
 Constantine to the Fall of Constantinople) are filled up 
 by Byzantine historians, a long unbroken chain. Their 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxxiii 
 
 writings form a part of the world's annals which has 
 long been held up to contempt as the record of a 
 thousand years of moral and political emptiness. The 
 glowing pen of a Gibbon has failed to create an interest 
 in the lives and deeds of a long succession of blood- 
 thirsty tyrants and impotent debauchees."^ 
 
 Finlay and Freeman would dwell upon the nobler 
 characteristics of the Period — the deeds of Belisarius, 
 Heraclius, Leo the Isaurian, and other individuals, 
 largely idealized and of uncertain date ; but, while we 
 read we cannot lose sight of the scribes, who think 
 the same thoughts and write the same language, which 
 does not alter in a thousand years ! — to borrow the 
 expression of one of Johnson's correspondents, they 
 " all use the same pen and ink ! " Throughout these 
 Chronicles of corruption, calamity, crime, supposed to 
 be incident to a decaying empire, no link is lost. The 
 long-drawn-out Story as we have it, was probably | 
 written after the Turks had entered into possession. 
 
 Writing of another supposed Christian people — the 
 Ethiopians — Gibbon says of them, " they slept near a 
 thousand years forgetful of the world by whom they 
 were forgotten." f Christian Coptic contrasts strongly 
 with Old Coptic. J Of China, known to the Romans, it 
 may be said with as much reason as of Abyssinia, that 
 she also was forgotten by Europe for a similar period. 
 We have no notices of China between the time of 
 
 * Quarterly Review, No. i88, p. 526 ; Freeman, " The Byzantine Empire," 
 "Essays," iii., 1879, PP- 231, 232. 
 
 t There is a hiatus of about 700 years before the Abyssinian Annals 
 begin, a.d. 1268. Futile attempts have been made to bridge this gulf, and 
 to tell the History of the Church in Abyssinia — ^by Le Quien, "Oriens 
 Christianus," 1740, and Kev, Montague Fowler, "Christian Egypt, — Church 
 in Abyssinia," 1901. 
 
 % Mr. F. LI. Griffith, Oxford Reader in Egyptology, in " Ency. Brit.," 
 xxvii. 727. 
 
xxxiv EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 Arrian and Ptolemy and the mission of Carpini in 
 1246. But there are seeming references in Chinese 
 records to the Roman Empire at a comparatively recent 
 period when, according to the orthodox Chronology, 
 it had long been dead and buried. 
 
 In India, as in China, Chronology is in an unsettled 
 state. India has no history properly so-called before 
 the Mohammedan invasion in the thirteenth century.* 
 Not one of her races or small nationalities ever kept a 
 chronicle, f A learned philologer notices the absence of 
 written memorials or literature or data by which to 
 trace the current popular speech during a " dark age," 
 a " long night of nine centuries ! " " The curtain falls 
 on Indian languages about the first century, and does 
 not rise again until the tenth." " I very much doubt," 
 he continues, " whether the intervening space will ever 
 be filled up, the materials seem to be lost for ever. 
 Buddhism is our only chance — there seems to be no 
 more to hope for . . . and these nine centuries must 
 remain for ever a sealed book." J This state of things 
 is reported of a country to which Europe is indebted for 
 her figures and arithmetic and for some of her religious 
 
 * In Mr. Lane-Poole's '* Mediaeval India " (1903), the period of several 
 centuries between the Arab Conquest of Sind and the Mohammedan invasion 
 occupies less than two pages. He says : " The Arab Conquest led to notliing, 
 and left scarcely a vestige. . . . The Arab cities have perished, but the 
 wrecks of the castles and cities of their predecessors . . . still bear witness 
 to the civilization which they uprooted." Was there an Arab period such 
 as that hitherto represented ? 
 
 t Fergusson, "Indian Architecture," 1876, p. 6. 
 
 X Beames, "Compar. Grammar," vol. i., 1872, pp. 22, 23. 
 
 Later note (since the foregoing was in type) : " 1 he Indians continued, for 
 centuries after writing materials had become available to them, not only not 
 to feel the want of them, but even to prefer, so far as books are concerned, to 
 do without them, a state of things, as he remarks, unique in the history of 
 the world." — From review of Rhys Davids, " Buddhist Indla,'^ Atheiixum, 
 September 26, 1903. 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxxv 
 
 ideas — a country wherein the priestly and writing 
 Order has never died out. The Age of most Hindu 
 writings is unknown, and the authors are themselves 
 merged in Nirvana.* There is no hope, however, of 
 Buddhist records furnishing material for the " long 
 night." General Maiseyf is inclined to reduce the 
 Buddhist period by six hundred years, while Fergusson 
 would place the Buddha Gaya buildings, alleged to be 
 of the first century B.C., in the fourteenth century A.C. 
 
 Material of the most meagre character covers a 
 corresponding " dark age " in Persian history — material, 
 apparently, of Arabic, not Persian literature. 
 
 The Benedictine, or Christian, Chronology seems 
 therefore to be as little applicable to African and 
 Oriental civilizations as to those of Europe. When our 
 conventional nineteen hundred years J is applied to 
 Abyssinia, to India, to Persia, the history of each of 
 these countries shows a similar gap or night, extend- 
 ing over many centuries — gaps w^hich cannot be 
 bridged by any contemporary records. While the 
 ancient and modern periods are filled with authentic 
 records, more or less perfect, the middle or so-called 
 " Mediaeval " period is fabulous, or occupied with attenu- 
 ated matter borrowed from the earlier and later periods. 
 
 The historians of Christianity tell us of heresiarchs, 
 of apologists, of defenders of Church doctrines, and 
 of Councils convened to settle difficulties. These 
 Councils began early and have continued all through 
 the Ages covered by the Church History. They were 
 at one time so frequent that bishops and clergy had 
 
 * Caldwell, " Dravidian Languages," 1875, P* 128. 
 t " Sanchi and its Remains," 1 892. 
 
 X Or, say, 2200 years to Alexander the Great, whose conquests are 
 iccorded in authentic European, Asiatic, and African annals. 
 
xxxvi EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 (one would suppose) little else to do except to prepare 
 for and attend them. We read of Councils in Asia 
 Minor, Councils in Germany, Councils in France, 
 Councils in all parts of the Empire. 
 
 In Africa the Church found its most zealous con- 
 fessors of the Faith and its most gifted defenders.* 
 Tertullian and Cyprian, Arnobius and Lactantius, and 
 the greatest of all Churchmen, Augustine, were natives 
 of Africa. It was through Africa that Christianity 
 became the religion of the World. In North Africa at 
 one time there were no fewer than 600 bishops' sees. 
 At the Council of Carthage St. Augustine led 286 
 orthodox bishops, Petilanus 279 Donatists. Explorers 
 as well as historians inform us that while the Romans 
 have left enduring marks and a wealth of inscrip- 
 tions in North Africa, Christianity has left none, and is 
 completely extirpated I f The only explanation is that 
 Augustine and the other Confessors and their Church 
 Councils are myths. Strange to say, these "Africans " 
 wrote in Greek, when Latin was the language generally 
 spoken. *' But," adds the latest writer on Roman Africa, 
 " the Greek was not the Greek of ^schylus or of 
 Sophocles ... it possessed an originality that was 
 remarkable." J It was the barbarous Greek of the Monks 
 of the " Middle Ages," when Christian writers were 
 most prolific and most ignorant. § 
 
 The great number of MSS. of the New Testament 
 still in existence — " more than 3000 (besides the very 
 large number of versions) — as compared with the few 
 score of copies (often less) of the Classical writers — 
 
 * Mommsen, "African Provinces," ii. 345. 
 
 t Graham, " Roman Africa," 1902, p. xiii. ; Davis, " Ruined Cities," 1862, 
 pp. 140-146. 
 
 :j: Graham, p. 301. 
 
 § See Comparetti, " Vergil in the Middle Ages," 1895, PP* 125-127. 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxxvii 
 
 ^schylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Horace, Lucretius, 
 Tacitus, and many more " — has been adduced to 
 show '' how immensely superior is the position of the 
 New Testament." * Does this not tend rather to show 
 its more recent origin ? If there has been a careful 
 regard for New Testament documents, how is it that 
 the Old Testament documents were not preserved ? 
 That the New Testament writings are more recent 
 than the Classical is evidenced by the Palimpsests : 
 " The most valuable texts of Classical authors are 
 over-written by Syriac and Greek Christian texts ; 
 Christian texts underlying Classical texts are of late 
 date." t 
 
 To come to Eome itself. The Eternal City is her 
 own witness. In " The Eise of Christendom " Johnson 
 has commented on the absence of authentic Papal coins* 
 older than the twelfth century, while Mr. Arbuthnot,! 
 after a search through the museums of Europe, camel' 
 to the decision that there are no authentic Papal 
 records earlier than a.d. 1198.I The historians of 
 Architecture mark the eleventh and twelfth centuries 
 as the commencement of Cathedral building in Italy, 
 France, and England. There are no earlier remains of 
 any Ecclesiastical buildings in this country ; and on the 
 Continent they succeed the Eoman temples and palaces 
 without a break. The latest editor of Gibbon tells us 
 that the study of Byzantine Architecture has not yet 
 begun. § 
 
 Forty years ago an Eminent Historian and States- 
 man, happily still with us, observed that, *' The modem 
 
 ♦ Kenyon, " How the Bible came down to us: " Harper's Mag., Nov., 1902, 
 p. 922. 
 
 t Thompson, " Palseography," 1893, pp. 76, 77. 
 X "Mysteries of Chronology," pp. 30, 31. 
 § Bury's " Gibbon," i. p. Ixi. 
 
xxxviii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 traveller, after his first few days in Rome, begins to 
 seek for relics of the twelve hundred years that lie 
 between Constantine and Pope Julius 11. * Where,' he 
 asks, ' is the Rome of the Middle Ages ? ' To this 
 question," the writer adds, " there is no answer." * The 
 historian of " The Holy Roman Empire " is again in 
 Rome as I write (April, 1903) attending a Congress of 
 Historians. Does Mr. Bryce see more to-day than he 
 saw during his former visit ? I think not ; for, the late 
 Mr. Freeman was similarly impressed. Aware of the 
 continuity and unity of history, he noticed in Rome a 
 " gap " — " a wider gulf between the great periods of 
 history than can be found anywhere else — a yawning 
 gap indeed. ... At the first glance Rome seems to be 
 rich in monuments of the early days of her Emperors 
 and of the later days of her Pontiffs, and to have little 
 to show of any other intermediate age." f 
 
 The intelligent reader will remind me that under- 
 ground are the witnesses — the Catacombs. What (he 
 may ask) of the Christian Martyrs and the Ten Great 
 Persecutions ? The answer to this question is an easy 
 one. The Catacombs are the graveyards of the Roman 
 people. The Story of persecutions of any body of 
 believers in the Capital of the Roman World, the 
 government and rule of which was the most free and 
 tolerant known to us, is a libel and is inconceivable. 
 That Marcus Aurelius, " the most perfect man that ever 
 lived," should have permitted the torment and murder 
 of Christian men and women, for a belief as harmless as 
 his own, is a charge for which there is no evidence, 
 and it must be dismissed. In the Catacombs, disused 
 
 * " Holy Roman Empire," 1873, pp, 272, 273 ; 1889, pp. 261, 262 ; Mr. 
 Bryce, I see (January 4, 1904), refers the reader to Gregorovius, so that the 
 quotation may be from that writer. 
 
 t " Essays," iii. 2, 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xxxix 
 
 early in the " fifth " and reopened towards the end of 
 the " sixteenth " century, the same writers who give us 
 incredible Church history, see in the Cross, and other 
 Eoman and pre-Koman symbols, emblems of Chris- 
 tianity. In the innumerable inscriptions *' B.M." 
 which, to those who had sorrowed for the departed, 
 stood for " Bene Merenti " or " Bonse Memoriae " — 
 equivalent to our own " Blessed " or " Affectionate 
 Memory " — they saw another meaning, and in some 
 unexplained manner, these initial letters were taken 
 to mean " Blessed Martyr," and, extending over long 
 periods, there grew up the belief in Ten Great 
 Persecutions.* 
 
 Some of the Christian literature may have been 
 composed as themes for discussion and disputation, the 
 disputants using assumed names, merging themselves 
 in a sort of Nirvana, like the Buddhist writers. This 
 would explain the origin of much of the proleptic 
 writing, the authors little suspecting that in after ages 
 it would be taken as inspired. Some of the works of j 
 St. Augustine would come into this category. One man 
 at that time could scarcely have written all that is now 
 attributed to him. The " Confessions " is not an 
 autobiography, but a spiritual manual ; its style is 
 that of the " Imitation of Christ " (of the fourteenth or . 
 fifteenth century),f and the progress of Augustine ' 
 
 * There is a story of the Catacombs having been visited in the " Fourth " 
 century by St. Jerome, when a boy. He used to make the circuit of the 
 sepulchres of the Apostles and Martyrs on Sundays ; but Jerome {vide Bp. 
 Westcott) writes like a *' sixteenth-century scholar." More ; when he trans- 
 lated the Old Testament used the sixteenth century signs for punctuation — 
 a thousand years before they came into general use ! It is also to be noticed 
 that some of his works are of a late period, and written over older authors — 
 palimpsest. 
 
 t " St. Augustine's style in the ' Confessions ' belongs to the same family 
 
xl EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 from Neo-Platonism through Manichseism into Chris- 
 tianity is typical of the growth of Christianity itself. 
 In the " City of God," designed to inaugurate a new 
 order of things, the writer brought into clear light the 
 distinction between the kingdoms of greed and power 
 and that of righteousness and truth, as far as he knew it. 
 Edification rather than truth must be looked for in 
 Ecclesiastical writings. The scribes of that period wrote 
 not for a critical or sceptical age in a distant future. 
 In the Scriptorium they could take cognisance only 
 of such material as they collected in their neighbour- 
 hood — legendary or traditional, or of the Oriental 
 theology and literature, the wild, the marvellous, the 
 incredible, not infrequently, the indecent — which edified 
 or amused the European peoples from the twelfth to 
 the sixteenth century. The nobler class of men in 
 the monasteries lived, in a sense, a beautiful life, 
 which could have ended only in a state of Nirvana. 
 Believing in the transitoriness of this world, their hope 
 was fixed upon another. This one, they argued, was 
 " very evil, the time was waxing late," their duty 
 was, they thought, to "be sober and keep vigil," for 
 " the Judge was at the gate." 
 
 The first Christian missionaries were much surprised 
 to find evidence of Christianity among the Tartars ; they 
 discovered Nestorians and Jews in China as well as in 
 India. Certain tablets and inscriptions must have been 
 forged, say some sceptics ; but monasteries, processions, 
 pilgrimages, festivals, a pontifical court, and colleges of 
 
 as that of the * De Imitatione,' the dominant note is the same ... the same 
 musical flow, the same spiritual refinement and distinction." — Introduction 
 to Dr. Bigg's edition, 1898, p. 5. 
 
 Archbishop Ullathorne (" Autobiography," p. 41) also used the " Con- 
 fessions " as a Spiritual Manual, 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xU 
 
 clergy are found all through the historical period, and 
 all Ecclesiastical systems — Christian, Mohammed au, 
 Buddhist, Lamaistic — doubtless have a common origin.* 
 Again, the reader may ask: ''Do not the city of 
 Jerusalem and the Holy Land witness to the historical 
 truth of the Bible ? " Johnson shows that the 
 " narratives " in the Old and New Testaments have 
 come to us through Arabian and Persian Chronicles, 
 that the name " Jerusalem " is a poetical one like that of 
 '* Mount Zion " ; that the city now called Jerusalem was 
 known to the Arabs as the " iElia Capitolina " of the 
 Komans. The Holy Land of the Old Testament must 1 
 be looked for elsewhere than in Palestine. The Holy 
 Land of the New Testament Johnson found in Southern 
 Italy. Mount Sinai, Professor Sayce informs us, has 
 not y^t been correctly identified ; it is not in the 
 peninsula which is now called Sinai tic. f 
 
 * Isaac Taylor, in his " Ancient Christianity " (1840), traced Monasticism 
 to India, and Buddhism is believed to have established itself in Alexandria. 
 Gnosticism was anterior to Christianity, and open to Indian influence 
 (Kennedy, Asiatic Journal, April, 1902). Eomanism, Nestorianism, and 
 Mussulmanism have all one source, and are derived from Brahmanism and 
 Buddhism (Parker, " China's Intercourse," pp. 29, 33). The word 
 " Paradise " and the idea of the Resurrection are Persian in their origin. 
 The Magi or Parsees claim Abraham as their prophet and reformer, and he 
 is identified with Zoroaster in Mohammedan writings (Haug, " Essays," 1884, 
 p. 16). ■ Mohammedanism is indebted to the Zendavesta, but not to the 
 Christian Scriptures ; the latter, as Johnson has shown, is indebted to the 
 Koran. We do not find a single ceremony or doctrine of Islam in 
 the smallest degree moulded or even tinged by the peculiar tenets of 
 Christianity (Muir, " Life of Mahomet," p. 153). There is no evidence that 
 Mohammed had any practical acquaintance with the Old or New Testament 
 Scriptures (Sell, "Faith of Islam," 1896, p. 13). The Koran knows nothing 
 of Paul or of his doctrines. The Koran recognizes Jesus as a divine 
 messenger, and will be found to approach more closely the doctrines of Jesus 
 than those of Paul (Ernest de Bunsen, Asiatic Quarterly, Aipvil, 1889, p. 259). 
 This again confirms Johnson in his solution of the enigma of the Pauline 
 teaching in the New Testament (" Pauline Epistles," pp. 139-140). 
 
 t Asiatic Quarterly, July, 1893. 
 
xlii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 The Jewish chronological system is quite modern.* 
 The Hebrews wer e a sect among the Arabs in Spain, 
 and their own writings, as distinct from the historical 
 portions now held sacred, contain internal evidence of a 
 recent and local origin. The prophecies of Isaiah and 
 Jeremiah, with the Lamentations, Obadiah, etc., were 
 written during the troublous persecutions of the Jews 
 in modern times, and some partake of a local colouring. 
 Ford, and other travellers in the North of Spain, have 
 remarked upon the likeness of that country to the 
 Palestine of Scripture, f " I thought myself," wrote 
 Beckford, " suddenly transported to Palestine." J 
 
 One of the charges made against Servetus was that 
 he had impugned the Scripture geography as applied to 
 Palestine (the land of the Philistines). § For more than 
 forty years explorers have been searching for Hebrew 
 inscriptions in Palestine. Other inscriptions have been 
 found there in abundance, but not a single Hebrew 
 word. The Moabite Stone, if authentic, would have 
 been the oldest known specimen of alphabetic writing 
 in Western Asia. This is too great a demand upon 
 our credulity. It proves too much, and thus shows 
 its falsity. The inscription at the Pool of Siloam cannot 
 be Hebrew. II The oldest Hebrew writing at present 
 
 * There is no satisfactory account of an ancient Jewish chronological 
 system, and the modern Jewish Era was not known before the fourteenth 
 century a.d. See Cowasjee Patell, " Chronology," 1866, pp. 21, 22. 
 
 t " The situation of the Scripture Sepharad has always been a matter of 
 uncertainty, and cannot even now be said to be settled " (Sir George Grove). 
 On the Sephardim (Spanish Jews), Ashkenazim (German and Polish Jews), 
 and Jewish sects, Pharisees, etc., see Wolff, " Travels," vol. i. chap. vii. 
 
 % " Italy, Spain, and Portugal," 1840, p. 423. 
 
 § Servetus was not even original in this: at his trial (1553) he acknow- 
 ledged that he quoted from another writer, but, incautiously for himself, 
 added that the remark on Palestine (in the Ptolemy of 1535) contained 
 nothing that was not true. — Willis, " Servetus," pp. 96, 97, 325. 
 
 II Lieutenant Conder believed both to be genuine. Yet he tells us that 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xliii 
 
 known is generally referred to our so-called eighth or 
 ninth century a.d., 1800 or 1900 years later than the 
 alleged age of the Moabite Stone.* Square Hebrew, 
 Conder writes,f is scarcely older than Jerome's time 
 (whenever that was), and the Hebrew points have an 
 equally insignificant antiquity. To get over this 
 difficulty another eminent scholar suggests that the old 
 Hebrew died out, and that a kind of survival of it 
 exists in the Judeo-German and Judeo-Spanish jargons. J 
 If we accept the so-called orthodox history, we are to 
 believe that while the literature of Egypt, of Assyria, 
 of the Hittites, and other peoples, has been locked up 
 for 2000 or 3000 years, that of Israel has always 
 been available ! § No, the truth appears to be with 
 
 " the forgery of Jewish coins continues actively to be pursued in Palestine. . . 
 At Sidon, Phoenician antiquities, Moabite pottery, etc. At Nablous . . . 
 Samaritan rolls. . . . Synagogue prayer-books, steeped in coffee-gi'ounds, 
 assume an age of about three thousand years in the space of three weeks." 
 — " Heth and Moab," 1883, pp. 431, 432. 
 
 * On the Moabite Stone, see Dr. Ginsburg's edition ; Dr. Gust, " Essays," i. 
 pp. 326, 382, 383 ; ii. p. 30 ; Agnostic Journal^ October and November, 1893. 
 On the inscription at the Pool of Siloam, see Athenseurrif March, May, and 
 July, 1881 ; Academy, July, 1881 ; Agnostic Journal, October and November, 
 1893. On the Hebrews and Hebrew Manuscripts, see some remarks in 
 Smith -Williams Prefatory Essay to " Ency. Brit.," xxvii. pp. xii.-xiv., 1902. 
 
 t « Heth and Moab," 1889, 176,177. 
 
 X Dr. Gust, "Essays," iii. pp. 16, 17. 
 
 § Prof. Graetz, in the preface to the English translation of his " History 
 of the Jews" (London, 1891), remarks that "English readers . . . will the 
 better understand the miracle which is exhibited in the history of the Jews 
 during three thousand years. The continuance of the Jewish race until the 
 present day is a marvel not to be overlooked even by those who deny the 
 existence of miracles, and who only see in the most astounding events, both 
 natural and supernatural, the logical results of cause and effect. Here we 
 observe a phenomenon, which has developed and asserted itself in spite of 
 all laws of nature, and we behold a culture which, notwithstanding unspeak- 
 able hostihty against its exponents, has nevertheless modified the organism of 
 nations " (pp. v., vi). 
 
 Since this paper was in type, a book entitled " The Biblical History of the 
 Hebrews," by F. J. Foakes-Jackson, B.D., has been pubhshed. The author 
 
xliv EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 Johnson : " the Hebrew literature is modern literature ; 
 all our information about Hebrew books from the 
 Hebrews themselves is sixteenth-century information ; 
 the tales of ' Palestinian ' and ' Babylonian ' Schools are 
 but tales." * Some have supposed that Hebrew was the 
 parent of Arabic or a sister language. One of the 
 most ancient and most widely circulated books is the 
 "Fables of Bidpai;" the translations came to Europe 
 from the Sanscrit through the Arabic. From the 
 Arabic it was rendered into Greek, into Persian, into 
 Hebrew and into Spanish ; from the Hebrew into 
 Latin ; from the Latin into German, Italian, French, 
 English, Danish, and Dutch. This seems to indicate 
 that Arabic is older than Hebrew. Kobertson Smith 
 has told us that in grammatical structure Arabic 
 comes nearer than Hebrew to the original Semitic ; 
 Arabic represents the original wealth and primitive 
 subtlety of Semitic speech. f Arabic is singularly 
 copious, and possesses a vocabulary which rivals if it 
 does not exceed that of any other language in extent, 
 and is more fully developed than any other Semitic 
 tongue. J Hebrew is a comparatively poor language. § 
 The earliest European Arabic scholars claimed for 
 Arabic that its study was the only true road to the 
 understanding of the Hebrew. The word '* Hebrew" 
 has never been found in the early monuments of other 
 
 admits that the Old Testament histories (Genesis, etc.) are not contem- 
 poraneous documents, which has long been ascertained from internal evidence, 
 but he does not see, what Johnson shows, that thej are of very much later 
 date, or that they come to us in a less direct manner, than is generally 
 supposed. He is, however, rightly inclined to place their " spiritual " value 
 above any consideration of their literal truth ; and this is now the general 
 practice in the Enghsh Churches. 
 
 * "Pauline Epistles," pp. 134, 137. 
 
 t " Ency. Brit.," xi. 596. 
 
 :|: Canon Cook, " Origin of Religions," &c., 1884, pp. 277-280. 
 
 § Prof. Dr. Am. Montet, Asiatic Quarterly, Oct., 1899, p. 388. 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xlv 
 
 Eastern nations.* Not one Hebrew inscription of the 
 age of the Jewish Monarchy has come down to us.f 
 For more than 300 years the Holy Sites — the Church 
 of the Holy Sepulchre, Golgotha, &c. — have been cha- 
 racterized as frauds, scandalous cheats, and forgeries.J 
 A late traveller has recorded his conviction that the 
 " Giant Cities" in Bashan are an illusion. '* It is not 
 of Og, but of the Antonines ; not of the Israelitish, but 
 of the Saracenic conquest" that he is reminded.§ 
 
 But we have Jose^huS;, suggests the reader. The 
 " x^ntiquities of the Jews " is a compilation from the 
 Oriental Chronicles ; the narrative of the " Wars of 
 the Jews " a piece of fiction which carries on every 
 page its refutation as history. Like the works of 
 St. Augustine, Lactantius, and others of the fraternity, 
 that of Josephus is in Greek ; in one place the writer 
 says that *' the things told by the Jews who surrendered 
 in the siege of Jerusalem only he understood." The 
 story has no special local colouring, and may be remi- 
 niscentof_the_period of the Crusades — the wars between 
 East and West, not for a cross or sepulchre, but for 
 the rule of the World. The Church of Rome, in the 
 words of Johnson, " was founded in a time of darkness, 
 wrath, and dismay, and the sole apology for the mis- 
 deeds of the founders of her temporal sway lies in the 
 fact that it was at a time when violence alone reigned 
 in the earth." || 
 
 If Johnson is correct in his surmise that the breaking 
 
 * R. Smith, « E. B.," xi. 594 0. 
 f Cust, " Essays," i. p. 340. 
 
 X See quotations from Korte, and others, in Van de Velde's " Syria and 
 Palestine." 2 vols. 1854. 
 
 § Freshfield, " Caucasus and Bashan," 1869, p. 59. 
 11 " The "Rise of Christendom," p. 494. 
 
xlvi EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 up of the old Eoman Empire immediately preceded tlie 
 Modern Period, then the remark of Macaulay, that " in 
 Britain only an age of Fable separates two ages of 
 Truth," will apply also to the history of Europe. 
 
 HI. 
 
 Coming now to the subject of the present volume : 
 The nearness of Rome to us has been noticed by other 
 writers. While there are no Christian inscriptions or 
 remains of Christian art, or Christian architecture in 
 this country older than the " eleventh " century, Eoman 
 inscriptions abound — especially inscriptions in honour of 
 Mithra, the symbols of which have found their way into 
 Christianity.* There is a legend that the cathedral of St. 
 Paul in London is erected on the site of a temple of 
 Diana. As late as the time of Elizabeth a ceremony of 
 the offering of a doe, or a buck and doe, at the high 
 altar on the day of the Conversion of St. Paul was 
 observed, and manors were held upon the due perform- 
 ance of this service, f When the Orientals entered 
 Europe, the Roman legions were, no doubt, withdrawn : 
 their wives and families probably remained in Britain, 
 and their descendants are with us, along with Roman 
 laws and observances. The remembrance and traditions 
 are found in the " Bede " and other writings. The 
 remains of roads, and camps, and villas, the Latin 
 inscriptions, the large finds of Roman coins, all indicate 
 the comparative nearness of the Roman Empire. On 
 the other hand, Kemble long ago pointed out that the 
 narratives of Saxon immigration and settlement in 
 England are unhistorical. 
 
 * J. M. Robertson, "Religious Systems," pp. 194, 195. 
 t Jortin's " Life of Erasmus ; " Rees' Ency., art. '* Diana." 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xlvii 
 
 Throughout the Saga literature describing the 
 expeditions of Northmen to England not a single 
 instance is mentioned of their coming in contact with 
 a people called Saxons. The Northmen (or Sueones) 
 are mentioned by Tacitus, and not afterwards till the 
 ninth century. This hiatus has been filled up with the 
 Apocryphal Saxon history. The story of the Danes 
 in the Chronicles is as little trustworthy as that of 
 the Saxons, and bears the appearance of contradiction 
 and confusion in regard to names of people and facts.* 
 
 The truth is that the Teiat(mic„ or._S£andinavian 
 elem ent was in the country before the arrival of the 
 Romans. Johnson says the " Anglo-Saxon letters are a 
 sixteenth-century invention, and that it is impossible to 
 trace the study of them higher than the Elizabethan 
 scholars, or a hint of their being in existence before the 
 time of Henry VIII." f It is commonly supposed that 
 the days of the week are " Anglo-Saxon " : they were 
 introduced by the Romans, who borrowed them from 
 the Egyptians.^ 
 
 The stories of Brute and a long succession of British 
 kings before the Romans, of Joseph of Arimathea at 
 Glastonbury, have been relegated to the storehouse of 
 Fable. The " Histories " and " Chronicles " of Gildas, 
 Nennius, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Asser, Ingulf of 
 Croyland and other writers of English history, have 
 been for a long time Recounted spurious documents. 
 " William of Malmesbury picked up his history from 
 the time of Bede," says Aubrey, ** out of old songs." 
 The history of Bede (who copied Nennius) is still 
 
 * On this paragraph see Du ChaiUu, ''The Viking Age," i. 20, 21. 
 t *' The Pauline Epistles," p. 87. 
 
 i " Dio Cassius," lib. 36, quoted by Coote, " The Romans in Britain," 1878, 
 pp. 429, 430. 
 
 / 
 
 • 
 
 / 
 
xlviii EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 accepted as authentic, and his memory held in venera- 
 tion. He is also credited with a knowledge of Arabic 
 and Oriental history and science. Gerbert (Pope 
 Sylvester II.), who died in 1003, two centuries after 
 the supposed period of " Bede," is said to have been 
 the first European student of Arabic learning. 
 
 It is not possible to enter into elaborate arguments 
 in this short Essay, but I may point out some of the 
 anomalies in our "middle" history. Our later his- 
 torians do not now repeat with confidence the extra- 
 ordinary stories of Crecy and of Poictiers, when the 
 fiower of the French Armies were destroyed with the 
 loss of only a few English archers and footmen, or that 
 retaliatory French story of the burning of Joan of Arc 
 by the English. We must remember, however, that 
 upon the writers of these stories much of our early 
 English history is founded. The story of the Norman 
 Conquest originally occupied a poem, written fifty years 
 after the event. The accretions which have since gathered 
 around it now fill five stout volumes for William's reign, 
 and two additional for his son Eufus. The combatants 
 at the Battle of Hastings are variously estimated at from 
 60,000 to 150,000, of whom half were slain. The 
 site of the battle-field is shown, but where are the 
 remains ? 
 
 Domesday Book is supposed to be of the same 
 period. What collateral evidence is there that such 
 a ponderous and voluminous work could have been 
 compiled at that period ? Usually we are dependent 
 upon legends and traditions of history : here we have 
 records without any legends or traditions, preserved 
 for eight hundred years, perfect and in beautiful con- 
 dition ! * It is no doubt an authentic work, but what 
 
 * " The social history of England is almost a blank for two centuries 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. xlix 
 
 is its true date? Magna Charta, supposed to be two 
 hundred years later, is scarcely readable. Bracton, who 
 is said to have died in 1268, fifty years after the date 
 of Magna Charta, knows nothing of it. There is no 
 reference to it before the time of James the First or 
 Charles the First, when it was " found." 
 
 Johnson draws attention* to a very curious fact 
 observed by Mr. Thorold Rogers in the handwriting of 
 English mediaeval records. The styles of writing in 
 four short and successive reigns all differ ; the changes 
 are sudden and almost simultaneous. There are (what 
 is still more extraordinary) sudden changes in the 
 economy of agriculture. Such changes appear to be 
 due, as Johnson remarks, to art and craft in the 
 scribes. 
 
 The conventional histories tell us that when Europe 
 was in her " Dark Age," missionaries went out from a 
 civilized and cultivated Ireland to Scotland, Wales, 
 England, Scandinavia, and other countries, taking with 
 them a knowledge of the Faith and of Art. Mr. 
 Ruskin was a believer in this. " In the eighth century," 
 he writes, " Ireland possessed a school of art in her 
 manuscripts and sculpture which in many of its qualities 
 — apparently in all essential qualities of decorative in- 
 vention — was quite without a rival ; seeming as if it 
 might have advanced to the highest triumphs in 
 architecture and painting. But," he continues, ** there 
 was one fatal flaw in its nature, by which it was stayed, 
 and stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to which 
 
 afterwards, except for the little which may he gathered from the chroniclers. 
 The new light which is thrown on the economic and social condition of the 
 coimtry at the time when continuous archives inform us of the facts, reveals 
 a very different state of things from that which is exhibited in Domesday." 
 Rogers, "Work and Wages," 1901, p. 18. 
 ♦ " English Culture," p. loi . 
 
1 EDWIN JOHNSON 
 
 there is no parallel." * The cause of that arrest, the 
 Master explains as a national characteristic. The stay- 
 ing or arrest is a mistake : the dates must be wrong ! 
 The famous Book of Kells, a MS. copy of the Gospels, 
 upon which Mr. Kuskin founded his remarks, and which 
 is said to have belonged to St. Columban (sixth century), 
 founder of the monasteries of lona and Lindisfarne, is 
 perhaps the most beautiful book in the world,f the 
 work rather of angelic than human skill ; J and the 
 Durham Book,§ in a splendid binding of gold set with 
 precious stones, are both credited to that early period. 
 The story of Celtic Art in Ireland, of Celtic Art anywhere, 
 twelve hundred years ago, is a fable. St. Columban as 
 well as St. Patrick were ideals in the imagination of 
 fifteenth or sixteenth century writers ; and the Book of 
 Kells and the Durham Book doubtless belong to the time 
 of the monasteries — to a period of repose and of luxury. 
 The same remark applies to other manuscripts of sup- 
 posed early date. 
 
 It is commonly assumed that the Universities were 
 the offspring of the religious bodies. Our chief institutes 
 of learning at Cambridge and Oxford were, in all proba- 
 bility, in existence before the arrival of any Christian 
 order in England. || 
 
 The studious reader will gather from this volume 
 that the Period of the Tudors was not only a time of 
 severe repression and of harsh government, but also a 
 time when free speech was impossible. Able men could 
 only dissemble and speak in allegory. The Plays of 
 
 ♦ Dublin Lecture, " Mystery of Life and its Arts." 
 t Professor Westwood, " Facsimiles of MSS.," 1868. 
 % Giraldus Cambrensis. 
 § In the British Museum. 
 
 II See Dr. Jessopp, "The Building of a University," in *' The Coming of 
 the Friars," etc., pp. 262-301. 
 
AND HIS WRITINGS. li 
 
 Shakespeare and of other writers are doubtless a 
 reflection of the Period ; the names but a disguise — 
 the playwriters merely the spokesmen of those who 
 would have been sent to the Tower and the Block if 
 they had expressed their opinions openly. Mr. Legge 
 in " The Unpopular King " finds no evidence that 
 Eichard III. was a murderer, or that the two princes 
 were murdered.* Johnson shows how the Court 
 flatterers schemed several titles to the Crown for 
 Henry VII., but his only valid title was that of the 
 Sword — a sword that was never sheathed till the 
 Tudors had passed away. 
 
 The case, then, as it appears to me, is one which 
 resolves itself into a consideration of dates, or of 
 Chronology. Documents have been considered already 
 and found anomalous, or, to say the least, " extra- 
 ordinary." We have authentic] records and coins 
 illustrating twelve or thirteen centuries only of the 
 Era. For an intervening or Fabulous Period of, say, 
 six hundred years we have nothing of an illuminating 
 or contemporary character : all is either unreasonable, 
 intangible, impossible, or borrowed from the preceding 
 or subsequent periods. Eeduce the Christian Era to 
 one of twelve or thirteen centuries — the " first," 
 '' second," "third," "fourth," and the "eleventh" to 
 " nineteenth," and a legendary period only drops out 
 of the Chart. With the Fall of the Roman Empire, 
 the Northern and Eastern Civilizations, the Oriental 
 Religions and Ecclesiasticism enter Europe. A desire 
 on the part of the Roman Church to trace its origin 
 
 * I have only seen to-day (January 4, 1904) Sir Clements Markham's 
 paper on Kichard III. in English Historical Beview, 1891 (vi. 250 if.), and 
 Mr. Gairdner's Rejoinder. Sir Clements argues that while Richard had no 
 motive for the murder of the Princes, Henry VII., the real Usurper, had the 
 strongest motive for getting rid of tliem. 
 
Hi EDWIN JOHNSON AND HIS WRITINGS. 
 
 to Christ — who undoubtedly preceded Mohammed 
 — was presumably the motive for compiling Christian 
 Documents. In an uncritical Age, along with argu- 
 ment and homily, allegory and parable, and moral 
 teaching drawn from a variety of sources, numerous 
 forgeries were easily foisted upon a credulous clergy 
 as well as upon the laity. Later on, honest men 
 collated, copied, commented on, 'and translated these 
 writings, and, rejecting what they thought apocryphal, 
 collected the rest into books, which Time and Time 
 alone has sanctified. In such manner have all Sacred 
 Books been compiled. 
 
 In the " seventeenth " and " eighteenth " centuries 
 the European recovered the use of his intellect ; the 
 " nineteenth " revealed to him the world of natural 
 science ; the " twentieth " will probably bring to him a 
 reconstructed history. 
 
 Since the author's death, indeed while I have been 
 arranging these rough notes, several learned works have 
 appeared, bearing more or less directly upon early 
 English History, Art, and Law.* The subjects of all 
 these works are inferentially treated in this volume. 
 
 EDWARD A. PETHERICK. 
 
 Steeatham, 
 
 June, 1903. 
 
 * " The History of English Law before the Time of Edward I.," by Sir 
 Frederick Pollock. Second Edition, with Chapter on the " Dark Age," by 
 Dr. Maitland. 2 vols. 1903. Cambridge Press. 
 
 " Traces of the Elder Faiths of Ireland," by W. G. Wood-Martin. 
 2 vols. 1902. Longmans. 
 
 *' Time Table of Modem History, a.d. 400 to 1870," by M. Morrison. 
 
 1902. Constable. 
 
 "The Arts in Early England," by G. Baldwin Brown. 2 vols. 1903. 
 Murray. 
 
 " A Social History of Ancient Ireland," by Dr. P. W. Joyce. 2 vols. 
 
 1903. Longmans. 
 
THE 
 
 RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 About 400 years ago, according to the unanimous 
 opinion of our historians, the foundations of our modern 
 culture and institutions were laid. The invention or 
 the recovery of the art of printing led to the gradual 
 diffusion of useful knowledge, and the formation of 
 habits of study among a limited but very powerful 
 class ; but at the same time it led to the propagation 
 of great falsehoods and errors in respect to the past 
 and actual condition of the world, which became part 
 of our system of education, and w^hich have remained 
 in great measure uncorrected down to the present 
 time. These still exert, in the opinion of many, a 
 baneful influence upon our thoughts and habits by 
 hindering us from seeing the world as it is, and our 
 fellow-men as they actually are. There can be no 
 clear understanding of the present state of society, 
 and no well-directed effort for its improvement, unless 
 we attend to what the men of letters were doinor in the 
 world about 400 years ago. 
 
 6 
 
2 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 XL 
 
 I am attempting in the present work a re-examina- 
 tion of the legends relating to the Discovery of the 
 World. For, in fact, our knowledge of the world 
 in any adequate sense was but beginning at the time 
 when the first bold navigators rounded the southern 
 promontory of Africa, or sailed far westward of the 
 Azores in quest of the New Orb. Gradually the truth 
 stole into the general mind that the earth was not 
 based on a plane surface, surrounded by an innavigable 
 ocean, but was a sphere or ball, which might be 
 surrounded in ships. Gradually the belief in the 
 existence of monstrous forms of human or bestial life 
 gave way before repeated and accurate reports from 
 distant lands. Gradually the mind of Europe re- 
 covered from that hypertrophy of the imagination, from 
 that delirium of the phantasy which had been stimu- 
 lated by dreamers and sedentary recluses, and acquired 
 courage to face the dangers of the visible, and to ignore 
 the dangers of the invisible world. 
 
 IIL 
 
 How can the study of the progress of human 
 knowledge and of human endeavour during these four 
 centuries be other than interesting ; and not only so, 
 but in the highest degree encouraging to all who believe 
 in the still unexhausted resources and capabilities of 
 our nature ? It must indeed be the task, in some 
 respects a painful one, of the modern historian, to 
 expose many an illusion in reference to our traditional 
 and imagined past. We are still, year by year, re- 
 covering from that over-fed and over-stimulated habit 
 of imagination of which I have spoken. In other 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 words, we are recovering that habit of sane judgment 
 which has been so long depressed in the interests of 
 a blind and unquestioning faith. We begin to draw, 
 more and more sharply, the line of discrimination 
 between those mental representations which arise in 
 listening to Church music and oratory, or in witnessing 
 the drama of the stage, or in reading the poet's heroic 
 verse ; and those which arise from the experience of the 
 more outside and commonplace world. The need in 
 every branch of thought and inquiry is to separate 
 fancy from fact. The need is to control the licences 
 of the imagination, and to be controlled by the 
 authority of the seen, the proved and the known. 
 A judicious habit begins to prevail. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I desire to point out with more than usual emphasis, 
 that the time preceding the Discovery of the World was 
 a time of the grossest ignorance here in the West. The 
 period we speak of vaguely as " The Middle Ages " is 
 sometimes also called '' The Dark Ages." An age being 
 taken to mean one hundred years, it may be said that 
 the fifteenth age, or century, is of all the darkest ; and 
 by contrast with it, the impressions we form of the 
 sixteenth century are those of an extraordinary 
 brilliance. Now, this is not altogether like the actual 
 course of life and human affairs. Great movements are 
 long preparing, and it is not in the nature of the case 
 that great improvements should burst upon the world 
 without notice or warning, as they appear almost to 
 have done in the ordinary narratives of those times. 
 The contrast between the last half of the fifteenth 
 century and the first half of the sixteenth is this : 
 
4 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 that in the later period we can rely to some extent upon 
 the testimony of witnesses of different parties and 
 interests, as to what was actually happening in the 
 world ; but in the earlier period (I speak advisedly) 
 you cannot call forth a single witness for examination 
 and cross-examination in the usual judicial manner, 
 upon what he has seen and heard of the actual con- 
 dition of the world. The exceptions will be found to 
 be apparent rather than real. 
 
 V. 
 
 I am well aware that this is a novel statement, and 
 must appear to many who have not studied the subject 
 astonishing. It can, however, be proved in a variety of 
 ways. The shortest way is, perhaps, by pointing out 
 that until recent time^ history is not an affair of 
 contemporary testimony at all. It is because, under 
 the influence partly of instinct, partly of education, we 
 have persistently assumed the contrary, that errors so 
 great in the study of " History " prevail to the present 
 day. 
 
 We have been taught to believe that about 400 
 years ago, or a little more, books were printed and 
 gradually published — i.e. made known to the public — 
 which contained an authentic narrative of events in the 
 world from the Creation downwards from the tongue or 
 pen of a series of witnesses of those events. It is time 
 to say that such a notion is quite baseless, and unworthy 
 to be entertained by any truly educated or thoughtful 
 person in the present day. The Creation of the World 
 is a mystical or dream event. Creation itself is a 
 figure of speech which does not satisfy the demands of 
 thought ; nor have our men of science yet succeeded in 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 defining the terms *'Life " and " Grenesis." No man can 
 be witness of a creation, nor of any series of events 
 deduced from such an event. The Chronicles which came 
 to light after printing, and which had been penned by 
 the literary men of the Moslem, the Jewish, and the 
 Christian Churches, are not founded on testimonies of 
 contemporary observers, but on efforts of the poetic 
 and deductive imagination. 
 
 The like argument applies to a system of narratives, 
 composed in Latin and in Greek, which profess to 
 connect our modern culture with an event said to 
 have occurred in the reign of the Koman Emperor 
 Augustus. These narratives proceeded from the pens 
 of the faithful servants of the Holy Eoman Church. 
 There are a great number of them ; and in this 
 principle of *' History" they are all agreed. The 
 principle is that an Incarnation of God occurred in 
 the reign of Augustus, and that in the reign of his 
 successor, God Incarnate suffered death at the hands 
 of a Roman governor, under the instigation of an eccle- 
 siastical conspiracy of the Jews. If, so late as 300 
 years ago, you asked one of these writers when exactly 
 this event occurred, he would have said that it was not 
 certain, that there had been a mistake of twenty- two 
 years in the reckoning; but the event had occurred 
 nearly 1600 years before his time. If you inquired 
 further as to the sources of this opinion, he would 
 admit that it had been handed down through the 
 monasteries ; and that the literary state of the 
 monasteries was almost hopelessly obscure at the epoch 
 of printing. This he would admit, were he an instructed 
 and at the same time a candid man. 
 
 The Incarnation of God is a mystical event, and 
 is not related to testimony, in the proper and usual 
 
6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 sense of the word, as we employ it in tlie courts of 
 justice. It can be no more proved or disproved by 
 what men say than the existence of a celestial or an 
 infernal state. For, imagine that we have constituted 
 a Forum of Letters to determine this question. We call 
 up the Moslem. A tradition of the Son of Mary is part 
 of his religious system. He denies the possibility of an 
 Incarnation of God, and would abjure his faith if he 
 admitted such an event. The Jew, dissenter from the 
 Moslem in minor points, confirms in like manner the 
 solemn negative of his fellow-believer in the pure 
 spirituality or siiper-humanness of God. The monk 
 alone insists upon his principle, because he is ordained 
 and vowed to support it, with the whole system built 
 upon it. There is a conflict of opinion, not of testi- 
 mony. But if you inquire further how the story sprang 
 up, that the Jewish ecclesiastics had conspired against 
 the Founder of the Christian religion, the monk has no 
 documents that will bear examination in proof, the 
 Jew is wholly ignorant of any such tradition among his 
 people, while the Moslem says that he alone has the 
 authentic story of the Son of Mary, who was mere man , 
 and that the story has been misrepresented to the 
 world. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The question now arises. If neither a Creation nor 
 an Incarnation are proper subjects of human testi- 
 mony, where does testimony as to the events of the 
 past properly begin ? Of what event can we say, 
 This is proved according to the ordinary rules of 
 evidence — that is to say, by contemporary eye-witnesses, 
 men able to observe and willing to report, if not the 
 truth, the whole truths and nothing hut the truth, at least 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 the substance of the important fact? The Moslems 
 look back to the " Flight of the Prophet," and date 
 downwards from it. Can they, then, point to con- 
 temporary witnesses of that event ? On the contrary, 
 when the rise of their literature is considered, and its 
 nature, it will be seen that they began to write when 
 their great period of struggle and conquest had long 
 receded into the dim distance of enthusiastic fancy. The 
 literature is much later than is commonly supposed, and 
 is dictated by a brilliant effort of the imagination. 
 When it was said, on the expulsion of the Moors from 
 Spain, about 400 years ago, that they were entitled to 
 that land by a possession of seven hundred long years, 
 the statement rested on vague conjecture, like a number 
 of other statements of the same kind, and in the like 
 interest. We have no authentic narrative from any 
 side of the time and the manner of their entrance 
 into Spain, and of the succession of events from that 
 time. It is sufficient to point out that their " history " 
 is constructive, like that of all peoples, and that about 
 400 years ago the students of the West looked up to 
 them as the leaders in all branches of culture. 
 
 VIL 
 
 I desire not to be prolix, and to leave much to the 
 meditation of the intelligent reader. I am not writing 
 for those who think it the part of wisdom to receive 
 any fresh opinion with sneers and jeers, with exclama- 
 tion and declamation ; but for those who take an interest 
 in the solution of intellectual and moral problems. 
 Still, I have reason to believe that there are men of 
 the higher character who have found a stumbling-block 
 in what I have written ; and it is a delight to me to 
 
8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 address my arguments to sucli men. Let me, then, 
 point out that Testimony in the proper and ordinary 
 sense of the word is the function of the individual, 
 not of the corporation. If an embattled host of 
 Moslems shout their war-cry in unison, " There is no 
 god but Allah, and Mohammed is his Apostle," this is 
 the manifesto of a military corporation, the expression 
 of union and brotherhood among its members, the 
 denunciation of its foes. It is the exertion of united 
 wills, it is not testimony to fact. So of a hymn sung 
 by a chorus of Monks in praise of the salutary virtue of 
 the Cross, the recitation of the Creed or any *' history " 
 that has been merely learned by heart. It is among 
 the unhappy abuses of ecclesiastical language that men 
 should be called Martyrs who suffer not for being 
 witness to what they have seen, but for adhering to 
 a statement they have been taught to recite. 
 
 It will be found, when the subject is fully under- 
 stood, that it is the grossest blunder on the part of any 
 critical historian to treat the Chronicles which came 
 to light after the invention of printing as if they con- 
 tained the evidence of independent observers of the 
 world. They were, on the contrary, the production of 
 men who had been taught to agree upon a Dogma and 
 a Fable ; and though their manuscripts may be im- 
 pressive upon the mind of the unwary reader, their 
 opinion is of no more value than the opinion of a 
 solitary man. If that opinion be once fairly challenged, 
 and its foundation denied, the whole fabric falls to the 
 ground. 
 
 VIIL 
 
 The reader may ask how it is that these points have 
 been so long neglected, how it is that they have escaped 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 the attention of our most sceptical or thoughtful 
 tetorians ? There is a very instructive answer to this 
 question. During the Revival of Letters, and the great 
 rebellion against authority and dogma associated with 
 the name of Martin Luther, there were brought to light 
 some expressions of doubt, or even of contemptuous 
 denial, in reference to the tales which came from the 
 monasteries, the strength of which had never been 
 surpassed. It was said that the accomplished Pontijff 
 himself, Leo X., had avowed in a letter to a Cardinal 
 that the Christian story was nothing but a fable profit- 
 able to the clergy. It was said that young wits in 
 Rome had declared the story did not rest on authentic 
 testimony, but on saintly tricks. It was said that a 
 clerk in the Papal service, Laurence Valla, had exposed 
 the falsehood of legends which were part and parcel of 
 the system of ecclesiastical history — the legend of Epistles 
 exchano^ed between Jesus and Absrarus, legends con- 
 
 .^v,v.. ,, ^^^ ^ .V --^-^v 
 
 cerning the Apostles, legends concerning Constantine, 
 legends concerning St. Isidore and his decretals. All 
 these legends came from one and the same source, from 
 the forge and writing-houses of Fable in the monasteries. 
 Why were these warnings forgotten, these denuncia- 
 tions disregarded? It was because dishonest fabulists 
 were organized and disciplined in the use of the pen, 
 as critical and honest men were not. It was because 
 confederacies in falsehood do in this world constantly 
 triumph over solitary integrity and worth. It was 
 because, when men once renounce the virtue and in- 
 dependence of their souls for the sake of blind obedience 
 in the interests of empire over the world, they bid 
 farewell to the hope of dealing frankly and fairly by 
 their fellow-men. It is because the uneducated multi- 
 tude, ever " fiery hot for fable, and icy cold to truth," 
 
lo THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 tacitly encourage their would-be rulers in the cultivation 
 of the appetite for the absurd, the impossible, and the 
 incredible. 
 
 IX. 
 
 Since the Eevival of Letters, few have been the 
 clergymen who have had the wit and the courage to 
 expose and contradict the system of ecclesiastical fable. 
 Beyond a certain point, a man in Holy Orders cannot 
 proceed without facing the necessity of resigning his own 
 position, or being guilty of at least gross inconsistency. 
 Could we discover and bring to light a list of bishops 
 and other dignitaries, who, having discerned in studious 
 hours the rooted falsity of the whole system they had 
 been vowed in youth to defend, renounced everything 
 for truth's sake, they would indeed contribute a nobler 
 Roll of Martyrs than any of whom the world has yet 
 heard. But it seems human nature is not so constituted. 
 It may delight in the idea of renunciation for the sake 
 of an ideal Being ; but in practice it feels itself unable 
 to renounce material good for the sake of the most 
 ideal and most majestic of beings, if so we may speak 
 of Truth. 
 
 X. 
 
 Among the laymen who have dealt with *' History," 
 stands eminent one of the simplest and purest-minded 
 of our countrymen, David Hume. Here was an 
 admirable spirit, not to be deterred from telling what 
 he believed to be the truth by rude obloquy, or by fear 
 of poverty. He seems to have ofifended the absurd 
 among his countrymen by insisting that our ancestors 
 were in a very barbarous state until about 300 years 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTIOlSr. ii 
 
 ago. He was in the right ; but how was it that a man 
 who meditated so seriously the nature of Testimony, did 
 not discover, as he advanced in his work, the still 
 deeper barbarism and unculture of 400 years ago ? 
 It is no uncommon thing for a man who is strong in 
 his apprehension of general principles to be lax in his 
 application of them. Hume did not bring his critique 
 of human testimony to bear fully upon the documents 
 of English history. He says in effect in one place that 
 the name of Saint is synonymous throughout ages for 
 mendacity, and he frequently scoffs at the nonsense and 
 indecency of the monastic writers. But he never saw 
 that he had to do with a literary conspiracy rather than 
 with a number of distinct writers ; he did not investigate 
 Chronology. Neither he nor Gibbon appear to have 
 given attention to the remarkable assault on the part 
 of certain Jesuit scholars upon the early or Benedictine 
 Church Literature about 200 years ago. 
 
 There is a passage in Hume in which he points to 
 the knowledge of classical literature enjoyed by the 
 Monks. Had he made a wider study of the subject, 
 he would have seen that the fact is an infallible index 
 to the epoch of those writings, viz. the Revival of 
 Letters. It can be shown beyond dispute from documents 
 only brought to light duriug the lifetime of Hume, 
 that culture was only beginning in any worthy sense 
 among the men who had founded the colleges of 
 Oxford and Cambridge, during the reigns of the first 
 princes of the House of Tudor. The like holds good 
 of all the schools of the West ; but it is impossible to 
 produce the evidence in this place, which lies in mass 
 in the Annals of the Order of St. Benedict and its 
 Literary History, which has never yet been examined 
 with thorough critical attention. 
 
12 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 XI. 
 
 It is time to speak more pointedly concerning the 
 Order of St. Benedict. I have dwelt so much upon 
 their literary efforts in a previous work that a Catholic 
 writer has said of me, I have "Benedictines on the 
 brain." - A man who is constantly thinking of a par- 
 ticular subject may be said to have that subject on 
 the brain. It is Modern History which I have at 
 present on the brain ; and I know that this subject 
 cannot be understood without attention to the Benedic- 
 tine system. The case stands thus : The whole of our 
 Christian literature came to us from the hands of the 
 hierarchy of the Holy Eoman Catholic and Apostolic 
 Church. The oldest family in that hierarchy is the 
 Order of St. Benedict. The whole mystery of the 
 literature lies with them. About 400 years ago 
 they began to translate the Hebrew scriptures into 
 Latin ; and it should be well borne in mind that to 
 Martin Luther (they say about the year 1503) the 
 discovery of the complete Bible was as the discovery 
 of a treasure hid in a field. I need not dwell upon 
 the tales concerning the various editions of the Bible 
 since the invention of printing. The fact is clear and 
 indisputable that the general knowledge of the books 
 was but beginning, whether within or without the 
 monasteries, at the epoch to which I have so frequently 
 referred ; and that their previous history is utterly 
 dark, so far as direct evidence is concerned, whether we 
 inquire into the literary activity of the monasteries or 
 of the Jewish synagogues. All the literature designed 
 to illustrate the Bible — on the Jewish side, the Talmud, 
 containing the writings of the ** Fathers and Doctors" 
 of the Synagogue ; on the Christian side, the Patrology, 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 containing the corresponding writings of the Church- 
 men — slowly came to light during the sixteenth century. 
 We shall not greatly err if we rest our minds on the 
 year 1500 as that which roughly divides a published 
 literature from a preceding secret literature. 
 
 XII. 
 
 Who was St. Benedict? He is a person entirely 
 unknown outside the Cloisters where he was extolled — 
 along with St. Basil, the Patriarch of Eastern monachism 
 — as the great Patriarch and Lawgiver of the West. 
 They say that St. Benedict was born not far from the 
 time of Mohammed ; even as the two systems of religion 
 were rivals in the world at the time when the story 
 was circulated. And even as the devout Moslem was 
 taught to couple the name of his Prophet and Lawgiver 
 with that of the Almighty, so the devout unlettered 
 Christian of the West was taught to couple the name 
 of St. Benet with that of Christ as Almighty God 
 in prayer. It is a curious question for what reason 
 the Abbots fixed upon the general name Benedict, which 
 is the Latin rendering of the Divine Name (unutterable, 
 they say, among the Jews), as the proper name of their 
 ideal Head. The word " abbot " is of Hebrew origin, 
 and it was a comparatively novel word in the ears 
 of classical or humanist scholars of the early sixteenth 
 century, as was the Summary of Christianity, the Rule 
 ascribed to the pen of St. Benedict himself, but in 
 reality the composition of the literary Abbots of the 
 Order. 
 
 The Rule of St. Benet should be studied in close 
 connection with the New Testament ; and both should 
 be studied as literature first imhlished and known to 
 
14 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the general world during the period 1480- 15 20. It 
 will then appear that the authors of these books are one 
 and the same class of men. It will appear that they 
 who discovered the idea of a Christ in the Hebrew 
 writings different from the idea of the Messiah held 
 by the Jews themselves, wrote the Haggadah, or 
 allegory, of the Gospels in exposition of this idea. 
 They who circulated the legend of the Incarnate God 
 and his College of Twelve Apostles are they also who 
 said that St. Peter and St. Paul had founded numerous 
 churches in the West, that St. Joseph of Arimathaea 
 had come to Glastonbury, St. Dionysius to Paris on 
 a similar errand ; and so on. Practically masters of the 
 literary situation until the beginnings of a new literary 
 criticism in the seventeenth century, the Abbots of 
 the great Order were able to found their system firmly 
 on the imagination of the world. There was a time 
 when every Holy Father of a monastery, as the Kule 
 shows, hailed as '' Abba ! " by his flock, was regarded 
 as the vicar and proper mouthpiece of Christ. 
 
 The Orders which came into existence later than that 
 of St. Benet are all to be regarded as scions of the 
 parent-tree. If the Dominicans and Franciscans, who 
 addressed themselves to the towns, while their elder 
 brethren held the rural districts, allowed themselves to 
 be some 700 years younger than the Benedictines, this 
 is a mere figure of speech, which has a rough value as 
 evidence of the fact that city life and institutions were 
 relatively young compared with the lordly strongholds 
 of the nobility and the clergy. Not one of the Orders, 
 however, at that Era of Publication to which I have 
 referred, could produce Kegisters by which the inquirer 
 might trace them back to the beginning of their 
 institution. 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 XIII. 
 
 Let me now invite attention to the question of 
 Chronology. A Chronology originates in the impatience 
 of darkness and vagueness in notions of the past, which 
 are peculiarly painful to educated or reading people. 
 It may be safely laid down that our ancestors, as Jack 
 Cade says in Shakspeare, were content enough with the 
 use of the score and the tally, until the appetite for the 
 knowledge of Antiquity set in. 
 
 Time being a mental conception founded on expe- 
 riences of the senses, we can only make a clear image 
 of the Past from the analogy of measured and divided 
 space. We think of descending the course of a stream 
 when we advance from the early to the recent, or 
 of ascending the stream when we seek to recover the 
 earlier from the recent event. Or, we think of a 
 climax, scale, or ladder, by which we seem to descend 
 or ascend the length of a given period, the distance 
 between each rung being (by the connection which 
 has come down to us from the Kevival of Letters) an 
 age or period of one hundred years. 
 
 The question arises, at what epoch was this chrono- 
 logical scale laid down, and what is its value ? Again, 
 I would point the reader to the Era of Publication 
 (about " 1480-1520 " ) in the accepted figure of speech. 
 Our Christian Chronology is Benedictine Chronology, 
 and, like everything else in the system, has claimed 
 for it an imaginary antiquity, which disappears before 
 evidence from the Era of Publication itself. The Bene- 
 dictines say that the Chronology was laid down in the 
 age of St. Benet himself by one of the Abbots — 
 "Dionysius Exiguus," as they jestingly call him — 
 who introduced the custom of computing time by the 
 
i6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 years from the Incarnation. They say that some 500 
 years later, another member of the Order, Marian, the 
 Scot or Irishman who was connected with the famous 
 literary cloister of Fulda, discovered that there were 
 twenty-two or twenty-three years' error in the calculation, 
 and amended it accordingly. 
 
 Not to weary the reader with an unnecessarily 
 elaborate exposure of this fable, the mere fact is, that 
 it was not known to general scholars until about 300 
 years ago ; one of the most illustrious of them, John 
 Selden, says that he was the first to notice (on the 
 credit of the story) that the Chronology needed correct- 
 ing by the twenty-two years. The study of Chronology, 
 as distinguished from the invention of it, is a sixteenth- 
 century study ; and the name of Joseph Scaliger marks 
 a beginning. The invention of it cannot, I believe, be 
 traced higher than about 400 years ago. A large number 
 of early printed books are without date ; a large number 
 have been ante-dated for interested reasons ; therefore 
 we can only form the opinion, from this branch of the 
 evidence, that the custom of dating documents by the 
 Christian scheme had not become general at the time 
 of the establishment of the printing presses. 
 
 Again, in writings of the Monks, which may be 
 referred to about the same time, the habit is discovered 
 of dating by the year of an Abbot or of a Pontiff, or 
 a king designated vaguely, e.g., " Edward," without 
 specifying what Edward. I need allude merely to the 
 trouble thus occasioned to an industrious inquirer like 
 Mr. Thorold Rogers, who is a strong, though it seems 
 unconscious witness, to the lateness of any authentic 
 Registers. The " Paston Letters," again, ignored the 
 habit of dating by Christian years, though they recognize 
 the anniversary feasts of the Church. 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 17 
 
 Again, in writers during the Era of Pablication, there 
 is great diversity in the habit of dating the year. It is the 
 ** year of Salvation," the " year of human Salvation," or 
 the " year of the Virgin's delivery," or of '* the Incarna- 
 tion," or of *' the Nativity," or " from the natal day of 
 Christ," or the number of the year is simply given. I 
 have not been able to ascertain when the important abbre- 
 viation A.D. or A.C. came into use ; but it was hardly 
 before the sixteenth century. Upon this point the reader 
 may usefully consult some statements in Father Germon 
 (of the Jesuits) in the controversy with the Benedictines 
 about 200 years ago, to which I have before referred. 
 
 The intelligent student will at once grasp the im- 
 portance of these conclusions. If the custom of dating 
 by years and centuries came in about 400 years ago, and 
 very uncertainly even then, the documents supposed to 
 have been written before that time cannot be used as good 
 evidence of events. The higher runofs of our chrono- 
 logical ladder prove to be merely imaginary ; and we find 
 ourselves in the darkness preceding the Epoch of Publi- 
 cation without means of knowledge of what had been 
 occurring in the world, unless public impressions and 
 vague conjectures from what sixteenth-century writers 
 tell us, may be dignified with the name of knowledge. 
 The reader will begin to understand how it is that the 
 narratives of the conquest over the Moors in Spain, 
 the expulsion and dispersion of the Jews from their 
 beloved settlements in Spain ; the voyages of the Portu- 
 guese and the Spaniards are full of chronological 
 discrepancies, as well as devoid of all fullness and 
 accuracy of details. It must ever be so in a state of 
 life where not even annual Eegisters of events were 
 faithfully kept, and some bare outline of fact is all 
 that invention and fancy can build upon. 
 
1 8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 If we turn to the Jewish men of letters, our means 
 of exact knowledge are hardly improved. It is not, I 
 believe, held by competent critics among the Jews that 
 their calendarists and chronologers had completed their 
 system until some comparatively short time before or 
 after the terrible Spanish persecution. Few indeed are 
 the Jewish historians of what I have called the Era of 
 Publication ; and when you separate from their writings 
 what they have learned from some knowledge of the 
 Gentile chronicles, slight indeed is the material of 
 reminiscence or record in Jewish families. Their 
 chronologers ER. Zacuto and Ganz, both sixteenth- 
 century writers, have in reality no scale by which to 
 ascend through the darkness of the past ; they have 
 merely the mystical theory that deduces events from the 
 Creation, to which they had first mystically reckoned 
 back by a series of ''Days" or periods of a thousand years. 
 The Mohammedans had a similar theory of the religious 
 Day as equivalent to a thousand years. They, however, 
 made the world several thousand years older than the 
 Jews. The reason for these difi'erences we need not 
 discuss ; it suffices for the present purpose to point out 
 that the Chronologies are none of them founded on 
 Registers, but on guess-work and ecclesiastical dream, 
 and afford evidence mainly of the dream-life of the 
 enthusiastic members of the different corporations. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 Now, where no Registers are kept, and there is no 
 exact Chronology, men's notions of distance in time 
 must necessarily be extremely vague. The duration of 
 objects of human art, and of human life itself is but 
 roughly guessed at ; and in this ignorance, love or pride 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 19 
 
 or ambition are always at work, inducing an exaggerated 
 notion of antiquity. Registers of births and deaths do 
 not appear to have been kept until after the Council of 
 Trent, perhaps were not generally kept until the begin- 
 ing of the seventeenth century. 
 
 XV. 
 
 It was known, perhaps, only to the observant few 
 what the average duration of a man's life actually was. 
 And the vulgar could and did believe that it might 
 frequently extend to 100 or 150 years. Although a 
 Hebrew Psalmist gives the limit as 70 or 80 years 
 according to his actual experience, so imposing is vast, 
 imagined, and unrecorded distance upon the imagination, 
 he might find no difficulty in patriarchal longevity of 
 several centuries' duration. In our popular English 
 Chronicles, published during the sixteenth century as 
 '' History," you will find many iHustrations of these false 
 and absurd notions both as to Size and as to Dura- 
 tion. The reader is calmly invited to believe that in far 
 distant times, men possessed teeth many inches in length 
 and lived habitually to see many hundred summers. 
 These are not to be regarded merely as bold lies 
 invented for a lie-loving audience ; they appealed to 
 a state of belief and taste no longer possible in a news- 
 paper-loving age. The zest for tales concerning Size 
 and Duration is now dying out, or dead. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 It has been obviously objected to me, *' You say 
 that the monastic or Christian literature is at least 
 1000 years younger than it has been declared to be. 
 How can such an extraordinary deception or illusion 
 
20 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 have been possible?" The answer is: That when 
 books were rare, and prized on the mere ground of 
 a real or supposed antiquity, which men had no means 
 of measuring, anything could be asserted, anything 
 believed, and nothing could be contradicted. The Jews 
 have a well-known book on the Creation. When it was 
 brought to light (probably not before the Kevival of 
 Letters) the question would be asked: *'How old is 
 this book?" ''It is very old." ^^ How old?" 
 " Perhaps of the time of Abraham." " Surely that 
 is too old ? " '' Well, then, perhaps it is of the time of 
 the emperor Hadrian." Neither the one statement nor 
 the other amounts to more than a vague figure of 
 speech. 
 
 When, from the jealous seclusion of the Monasteries 
 the writings ascribed to St. Jerome were produced at 
 the Era of Publication, and it was said, '^ These writings 
 are more than looo years old," the statement could 
 not be authoritatively contradicted, although, doubtless, 
 by a few classical scholars it was entirely disbelieved. 
 It was gradually found to be useless to argue with 
 the masters of a legion of subservient penmen. A 
 chorus noisily affirmed what but a solitary had here 
 and there the courage and the knowledge to deny. 
 The bold pretension so passed into accepted convention ; 
 although there was not a scholar who could trace the 
 transmission of books downwards from lOOO years 
 before the erection of the printing presses. The state- 
 ment merely amounts to this, " The writings are very old, 
 that is, in our chronological scheme, lOOO years old 
 and more." It was received because the assertors were 
 masters of the literary situation, and on no other 
 ground. 
 
 But during these 400 years we have gained, and 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION, 21 
 
 are always gaining, conquests over the vague or in- 
 definite imagination by a variety of more defined 
 experiences. And the scholar is now guilty of rashness 
 or idle conceit who serenely says, ** I see no reason to 
 doubt that the Hieronyman writings were composed 
 a long thousand years before the people knew any- 
 thing of the Bible." For he assumes that he can 
 penetrate an obscurity which no scholar of the Revival 
 was able to penetrate. The cautious and sober critic, 
 on the other hand, has great advantages over the critic 
 of the Revival, because so many things that were once 
 secret have become fully known, so many things 
 once whispered in the ear have been published on 
 the house-top. We have all imbibed and absorbed, 
 more or less, the human experience of the last 400 
 years, and are able to look over the shoulders of a 
 Bacon and a Selden, a Polydore Vergil, or Erasmus, 
 or Luther, or a Laurence Valla. We have greater 
 knowledge of our early ignorance. We can now 
 perceive that the reason why scholars so willingly 
 yielded to the spell of " St. Jerome " is because they 
 had no " fourth or fifth century '' taste, but a 
 ^'sixteenth-century taste." Jerome (says Dr. West- 
 cott, the present Bishop of Durham)* writes like a 
 sixteenth-century scholar. He is so, indeed. The 
 Jesuits are sixteenth-century men ; and they say that 
 Luther was the spiritual child of St. Austin. Naturally, 
 he was an Austin friar. Not that it could be proved 
 that St. Austin, dead a thousand years agone, rose 
 again in the person of the reforming friar. They 
 say that St. Austin was the spiritual child of St. Paul ; 
 not that it could be proved that St. Paul had deceased 
 from the world 400 years before St. Austin. These 
 
 * Written June, 1891.— E. A. P. 
 
22 ■ THE. RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 literary saints existed for the purposes of chronological 
 literary catalogues, brought to light at the Era of 
 Publication. The Pauline, the Augustinian, the 
 Lutheran doctrines made a noise in the world at the 
 same time. I fail to trace the principle of Justifica- 
 tion by Faith beyond Luther ; it is, in fact, the 
 innovation of his time. 
 
 After all the discussion which has gone on in 
 recent years upon the Wiclevian writings, it can be no 
 rashness to assert that there was no talk of John 
 WhiteclifF and his connection with Bohemia until the 
 eve of the great Schism ; that there was no talk of 
 either of the '' Wiclifs" until the reign of Henry VIIL ; 
 that the name is allegorical and ideal, significant of 
 the strong body of reformers in certain colleges and 
 religious houses. 
 
 XVII. 
 
 The possibility of attaining an " insight into former 
 times" is the possibility of constructing for ourselves 
 a mental telescope. A mental telescope must be con- 
 structed from the lenses of the eyes of contemporary 
 observers. We must " borrow the spectacles " of a good 
 observer for a view of any particular period of the 
 past. It will be found that such good observers are 
 very rare, and hard to find ; because the power to 
 see what actually is, and then faithfully to report 
 it, implies high intellectual and moral qualities. A 
 man must have the taste for Science, as distinct from 
 the taste for Fable, and he must be at fair liberty 
 to gratify it. Such a man was Francis Bacon, in the 
 morning of our English culture. Whatever might be 
 urged as to the bias under which even he wrote, there 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 can be no question that a better witness cannot be cited 
 as to the state of letters and science in our world 
 at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Let us 
 for a moment, then, look through his eyes, and learn 
 something of the state of Historic knowledge during the 
 age that had passed. 
 
 Bacon, in the " Advancement of Learning," relates 
 History to Memory, which implies that it was something 
 to be recited and got by heart, like the plot or argument 
 of a fable. He divides Theology into Church History, 
 Parables, and Precept. Prophecy, he says, is a super- 
 numerary part, and is simply ''divine history before 
 the fact." So that by a simpler classification. Church 
 Precept may be clothed in three forms — History, 
 Parable, and Prophecy — which are substantially the 
 same. But he has another division. History, he says, 
 is National, Civil or Ecclesiastical, and Literary. Of 
 these the three first are extant, but the fourth is 
 defective. Bacon does not note that all these branches 
 had been in the hands of clergymen, and of them 
 alone. 
 
 But on Literary History he makes the important 
 observation that the general state of learning from age 
 to aoje has never been described. For want of this, 
 " the History of the World seemeth to me to be as the 
 statue of Polyphemus with his eye out, that part being 
 wanting which doth most show the spirit and life of 
 the person." Bacon does not add, that without such a 
 history of Letters the student cannot see any statue at all. 
 He goes on to say that in particular sciences there have 
 been set down some small memorials of the schools, 
 authors, and hooks, also some barren relations touching 
 the invention of arts and usages. But ''a just story of 
 learning" in all its branches is still wanting. He 
 
24 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 appears to feel that there is no history in the proper 
 sense of the word without this previous story of Letters. 
 The fact is, that it could not have been written in his 
 time, nor until the time of the Benedictines of St. 
 Maur. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 Again, Bacon divides " Just and Perfect History " 
 into Chronicles, or representations of a Time, Lives of 
 Persons, and Narrations or Eelations of actions. He 
 deplores the unworthy manner in which the History of 
 England has been written and the partiality and 
 obliquity in the latest History of Scotland. There is 
 great need of one history of the Island. If the period 
 from the '* Uniting of the Eoses " to the " Uniting of the 
 Kingdoms " were only adequately written ! Bacon, it 
 will be recalled, did attempt a history of the Reign of 
 Henry VII. ; but it will be found that he did not, 
 because he could not, add a word of genuine information 
 respecting that king which had not been written down 
 by Polydore Vergil near a hundred years before his 
 time. 
 
 Bacon knew that it required uncommon ability to 
 write good History. He is a witness to the fact 
 that it was impossible for the ablest man to write it, 
 simply because " actions memorable " had not been 
 " tolerably reported as they passed." If this state of 
 things, of which Bacon is not the only witness, 
 had been duly noted by students since his time, there 
 would not have been so great a waste of art on the 
 subject of English History, or of Church History in 
 general. Bacon is embarrassed in referring to Church 
 History. He appears to hint that it is artificial. 
 There is abundance of it, '' only,'' he sighs, '' I would 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 25 
 
 the virtue and sincerity of it were according to the mass 
 and quantity." Did he say to himself that it was a 
 branch of Poesy, that is, " nothing else but feigned 
 history which may he styled as luell in prose as in verse,'' 
 and that its use was to give " some shadow of satisfaction 
 to the mind of man in those points wherein the nature of 
 things doth deny it? " 
 
 XIX. 
 
 Let me come to the name of another Englishman 
 who is justly held to be one of the great ornaments of 
 our nation ; an Englishman of the highest quality for 
 the task of the historian, who attempted to supply that 
 desideratum of *' Literary History " so keenly felt by the 
 great scholar of King James's time. I refer to Henry 
 Hallam, whose works remain, the monument of his 
 industry, patience, his noble and disinterested zeal for 
 truth and liberty. With deep respect for the memory 
 of Hallam, I have to point out a serious, though not 
 singular, defect in his account of the *' Literature of 
 Europe " after the decay of the Eoman empire. The 
 defect lay in this, that Hallam never gave special 
 attention to the analysis of Monastic Literature — that is, 
 the Benedictine Literature ; and appears to have been 
 unaware of the extent to which suspicion had over- 
 clouded that Literature from the end of the age illus- 
 trated by the name of Bacon. 
 
 Hallam betook himself to the modern Benedictine 
 " Literary History of France," and to other compilations 
 of the writings of the Order ; and he accepted their 
 chronology as if it had been founded on record. He 
 repeats the fable that " Isidore of Seville " and 
 " Cassiodorus " flourished in the '^ general ignorance " 
 
26 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of the " sixtli century." That ignorance, he believes, 
 continued for about five long ages. He says that St. 
 Benedict bade his brethren " read, copy, and collect 
 books," but was " silent as to their nature." He alludes 
 to the tales of monastic culture in Ireland, to the tales 
 about ''Alcuin" and "Bede" and the "Cathedral Schools 
 under Charlemagne." He arrives at the " intellectual 
 night" of the *' tenth century/' He comments on the 
 "want of genius," the " prevalance of bad taste," the 
 " deficiency of poetical talent " during the "Dark Ages." 
 But he does not inquire as to the possibility of writing 
 a story of such ages. He holds to the faint clue 
 supplied by the Fathers of St. Maur to the rise of the 
 universities and the scholastic philosophy, the beginnings 
 of modern poetry, and so on. But unfortunately, he 
 leaves the all-important question as to the rise of a 
 reading or writing class among the laity unexplored. 
 Again, he copies unverified and unveracious statements 
 from the Benedictines upon this subject, and brings 
 the sketch of some 900 years in his first chapter to an 
 unsatisfactory close amidst still dense ignorance. He 
 was not aware that he had been contemplating an 
 imaginary retrospect, which had only come fully into 
 view since the time of Bacon. 
 
 The Benedictine " Literary History of France" reveals, 
 when critically examined, the collaboration of the monks 
 in Normandy with those in England in the writing of 
 the plausible tales connecting the fortunes of the two 
 peoples. It is true that Hallam could not make much 
 of the tales about " Lanfranc " and " Anselm," but he 
 supposes that " John of Salisbury " marks some advance 
 in education at the end of the "eleventh century." 
 He is willing to trace a little further improvement in 
 the next age. Yet, when he comes to the " thirteenth 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 27 
 
 century," he points out the '' incredible ignorance " of 
 elementary grammar in the writers assigned to that 
 period. " Koger Bacon is not a good writer." " The 
 MSS. of these latter ages before the invention of 
 printing, are by far the most numerous, but they are 
 the most incorrect and generally of little value." 
 Hallam did not perceive that this age and its literature 
 is still imaginary. He passes on to the next. 
 
 " The fourteenth century was not in the slightest 
 degree superior to the preceding ages. France, England, 
 and Germany were wholly destitute of good Latin 
 scholars." The writer called '' Eichard Aungerville of 
 Bury," poor as he is (in the estimate of Hallam), does 
 not belong to this ao:e. He is another masked 
 Benedictine, and belongs in all probability to the 
 early Tudor period. That a library was bequeathed 
 by him to Oxford is a mere fable, as also the statement 
 about a Royal library of 900 volumes at Paris. 
 
 XX. 
 
 Still adhering to the Benedictine scheme of 
 " Centuries," Hallam nevertheless finds that in Italy 
 the ignorance was very great in the middle of the 
 fourteenth century, so that "a man, supposed to be 
 learned, took Plato and Cicero for poets." But we come 
 to the name of Petrarch, ''the first real restorer of 
 polite letters," the aspirant after pure Latin. The 
 question arises. When did the writings ascribed to 
 Petrarch the clerk first come into reading ? Hallam, 
 copying his dates from the compilers, has not raised the 
 question. If he had done so, he would have seen how 
 slight were the grounds for crediting the existence of 
 the writings and of the tale about the Scholar long 
 
28 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 before Erasmus. Not a book from the library whicli 
 Petrarch is said to have collected, and to have left 
 behind him, has come down to us. Although the 
 tradition about Petrarch comes to us from sixteenth- 
 century scholars, like Corterius, their Lists of Learned 
 Men were contrived on a similar system. Their general 
 principle was that classical learning revived in Italy 
 towards the end of the fourteenth century. It was 
 vague guess-work eked out by invention. 
 
 XXI. 
 
 Let me follow Hallam a little way in his discussion 
 of the state of Letters in the ^' fifteenth century." Italy 
 was undoubtedly in advance of the rest of Europe ; yet 
 our Historian sees clearly that not until the latter half 
 of that age did good Latin set in. Our information as to 
 the lives of scholars like Poggio and Valla is still vague 
 and in great part made up of general conjecture. I 
 would invite the reader to remember that it was only as 
 monarchic institutions were beginning, and the founda^ 
 tions of civilization were being slowly laid, that what 
 Hallam calls the " barbarous jargon " of monks gave way 
 to the refined rhetoric of the Latin humanists. The 
 "jargon" denotes the first efforts of monks in Latin 
 composition. But the Latin Bible texts show a gradual 
 improvement ; and the best '^ historic compositions " of 
 the monks date, all of them, from the late fifteenth or 
 early sixteenth century. 
 
 Well may Hallam speak of the Kesuscitation of the 
 Greek language in Italy as " a very important event in 
 Literary History." The scattered traces which he 
 believed he found of the study of Greek in the 
 monasteries during the " Middle Ages " are not real ; 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 they are merely fictions of tlie Benedictine who writes 
 as " Bede," and others of the same fraternity, who were 
 beginning to push their writings into the light during 
 the reign of Henry VIII. Polydore could find only two 
 copies of "Gildas" about the year 1525, and his copy 
 of "Bede" was imperfect. Greek is here seen to be 
 in its infancy as a study. Hallam, however, still turn- 
 ing the pages of the " Literary History of France," cites 
 some legends of the monasteries of St. Dionysius the 
 Areopagite (St. Denis) and St. Germain des Pres in 
 Paris, of the monasteries of St. Gall and of Cologne, 
 of St. Albans, and so on. He appears to half believe 
 them ; but would wholly have discredited them had he 
 seen that it was part of the system to ^' give the air of 
 more learning than was actually possessed" to these 
 noted seats of monastic culture. 
 
 Among the incredibilities copied by Hallam is the 
 story of Italian universities founded in the fourteenth 
 century, and immediately dying out ; of decrees for the 
 establishment of professorships of Greek and Oriental 
 tongues, which '' remained a dead letter ; " and the exist- 
 ence of some ten persons in Italy who could read Homer 
 in the time of Petrarch. At last Hallam fixes on the 
 arrival of Chrysoloras in Italy late in the fourteenth 
 century as " the true epoch of the Eevival of Greek 
 Literature." But the date of Chrysoloras has never been 
 correctly given : for the simple reason, unknown to 
 Hallam, that the Humanists of the sixteenth century 
 who make these statements were only beginning to use 
 the system of dating by tbe years from the Incar- 
 nation ; and that; no Kegisters having been kept, it was 
 little more than guess-work when they said " Greek was 
 revived about 100 years ago." They were, however, 
 well aware that there was "no Greek in Western 
 
30 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Europe during the Middle Ages." Our chief authority, 
 L. Aretino, says, in an oft-quoted sentence, that Greek 
 had been lost in Italy for 700 years before Chrysoloras ; 
 in other words, according to this compute, 700 to 
 1400. 
 
 I would call pointed attention to this saying. It 
 was easy to write down the phrase *' 700 years ; " but it 
 may be well asked what reason the scholars of the 
 Eevival had for assuming this great, this terrible chasm 
 in the life of culture. That the beautiful speech of 
 Homer and of Plato, which gives (in the words of Gibbon) 
 " a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the 
 abstraction of philosophy," should have fallen dead 
 during a period hardly comprehensible by the imagina- 
 tion of man — a period of which, I have again and again 
 observed, the story has never been truly or even 
 approximately told ! There is here a great illusion, 
 the origin of which it may be possible to explain. 
 
 A corresponding statement was that of the Moors 
 when they said in the time of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
 " We have been 700 years and more in Spain, and we 
 have a title to the land." It is the interested statement 
 of a people whose culture had not very long begun, and 
 who had the usual motives to exaggerate their claims 
 to antiquity. It was the Moslem scholars who led the 
 way in the revival of Greek, and it was they who 
 were primarily responsible for this notion of the ex- 
 tinction of the old Grseco-Boman culture during the 
 period of their domination in Europe. There can be 
 no doubt whatever that the period has been guessed 
 rather than recorded, and that the supposed rapidity 
 of the Moslem conquests in Africa and Spain, with 
 the long endurance of their dominion, are ideas that have 
 been derived from poetic retrospection and legendary 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 narrative. Their dominion was no doubt long ; but 
 the probability of the case would be satisfied were we 
 to assume that two or three centuries of barbarism 
 had elapsed between the Arab conquest of the Medi- 
 terranean and the capture of Constantinople by the 
 Turks. Nor can we explain to ourselves the enthu- 
 siasm with which the Italian scholars addict themselves 
 to Latin and Greek at the epoch of the Revival, had 
 those tongues been so strange and dead as they are 
 supposed on the conventional theory to have been. 
 
 XXII. 
 
 I have lingered with Hallam because of the eminence 
 of the man, and because of the strict and lawyer-like 
 habit he constantly shows of carefully weighing evidence. 
 If a man like this made an unsatisfactory report on the 
 state of Letters in Europe before the Era of Publication, 
 it was because, like compilers much less careful, he 
 did not narrowly enough examine the few writers from 
 whom the statements originally proceeded ; whether 
 they were monks or classical enthusiasts — two classes 
 of men between whom there was little sympathy. Let 
 me close by referring to his treatment of a scholar 
 whose significance has never been duly appreciated as 
 a critic of the Monks, viz. Laurence Valla, the Latin 
 scholar and humanist. Hallam sees that this scholar, 
 in his declamation against the ** Donation of Constan- 
 tine " and the Temporal Power of the Pope, is in efiect 
 an ally of Luther, and writes in the same violent strain. 
 Had the slight story of Valla's life which refers him to 
 the fifteenth century been neglected, and the date of 
 the publication of his writings been attended to (about 
 1543) it would have been seen that beneath the mask 
 
32 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of "Laurence Valla^" is in fact hidden an ally of the 
 Reformers. In the same way the statement in the work 
 on the " Elegances of Latin " to the effect that these 
 classical principles are novel, and that for '' many ages" 
 none had been able to speak or to read Latin is only 
 fully appreciated when you trace it to a writer of the 
 earlier sixteenth century. It may be too strong, and yet 
 it cannot be much weakened, for it is the unanimous 
 witness of the more competent men of the time. 
 
 To Valla also are ascribed the earliest notes on the 
 Greek Testament, which was not, as Hallam believed (in 
 compliance with the Church tradition), the original text 
 of the canonical writings. Now, Valla, though com- 
 petent to feel the many inelegancies of the Latin version, 
 has been shown to have had but slight knowledge of 
 Greek. To later scholars it appeared that he had by 
 no means the perfection even in Latin, for which he 
 might have taken credit to himself amidst the barbarism 
 and ignorance which prevailed around him. 
 
 If among the enthusiasts for classical purity, few as 
 they were, and all too fulsome as they were in their 
 mutual admiration, such was the state of things 400 
 years ago, the accurate student may judge how it fared 
 in the monasteries, in which men were labouring not 
 to lead, but merely not to lag behind the beginning 
 march of education. The best Latin and Greek writing 
 ascribed to the " Fathers " is contemporary with or later 
 than Valla ; nor is there any reason to suppose that 
 the oldest and rudest manuscripts of portions of the 
 Latin Gospels date from very many decades before the 
 rise of such Humanists as the notable man whom we 
 salute as the enemy of fictions in the monastic and 
 Papal interest. 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 33 
 
 XXIII. 
 
 I have thus endeavoured to prepare the mind of 
 the reader for a fresh consideration of the evidence, and 
 for a conclusion which must come upon the unprepared 
 mind with a shock of surprise. The '* Histories " put 
 forward by the monks at the Epoch of Publication were 
 none of them narratives based upon authentic records 
 of the past ; they were plausible inventions, agreeable 
 to the sentiments of the classes for whom they were 
 written. The monks knew the actual state of the 
 world ; they were interested above all things in the 
 dominion and glory of their own Order. In the utter 
 ignorance which prevailed, and in the all-but-perfect 
 immunity from contradiction on the part of outsiders, 
 until the great Schism occurred, they traced up the rise 
 of the Church to causes in the far-distant past. They 
 fixed on certain epochs, from which they dated begin- 
 nings, and again new beginnings. They gradually re- 
 vealed a long imaginary retrospect to the mind of 
 their readers. They worked, consistently with their 
 rule, in collaboration ; they distributed the task of 
 filling in the great scheme among different members. 
 They thus produced an impression of great mass and 
 of general consistency of plan, amidst many and often 
 designed discrepancies, similar to that produced by their 
 architecture. They subjugated the imagination of the 
 world. Some resistance was made to their impositions 
 on the part of scholars of a better taste for the truth, 
 which proved ineffectual under the conditions of the 
 time, and the passionate credulity which prevailed in 
 all classes. The compilers of the monastic inventions 
 have far outnumbered the critics, and have, in the 
 eyes of the unthinking, overwhelmed them. And if 
 
34 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 faith in the monks is now generally giving way, it 
 is less clue to the efforts of solitary men of ability and 
 character than to the insensible prevalence of habits 
 of thought which are incompatible with faith. Such 
 in brief is the truth concerning English Story and in 
 general the Story of the West, as it began to be told, 
 about 400 years ago. 
 
 XXIV. 
 
 I might detain the reader at great length in 
 noticing a large number of distinguished men, who, 
 from the Tudor period down to that of the Fathers of 
 St. Maur, and since, have busied themselves in com- 
 piling, without understanding, the writings of the old 
 Benedictines. But it may be of some interest if I 
 refer to a few names of writers who lived in our own 
 times. The Comte de Montalembert has given a very 
 interesting review of Benedictine legends in his volu- 
 minous work on the Monks of the West. He entered 
 upon his task Avith a strong sentiment of reverence and 
 sympathy towards the founders of Christianity ; he 
 approached its close, as I believe, with some weariness, 
 and with something like disgust at the avarice and 
 ambition of men who had arrogated to themselves the 
 character of " men of God " and friends of the poor. 
 The stern censures of so devout and so believing a 
 man — for he appears to credit their miracles in the 
 most childlike spirit — are exceedingly impressive. But 
 whatever high qualities we expect and find in the work 
 of M. de Montalembert, the critical investigation of 
 his sources was to him an impossibility ; nor is there 
 a word of authentic record to be found from beginning 
 to end of his volumes. 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 
 
 35 
 
 f 
 
 Our countryman, Dean Milman, was a man of en- 
 lightened and philosophic mind. He too, in his " Latin 
 Christianity," addressed himself to the laborious com- 
 pilation of Benedictine tales. It is a work tedious 
 to peruse, which leaves upon the truly aroused and 
 attentive reader the impression of the utter unlife- 
 likeness of the whole series of the lives of the Popes, by 
 which it was sought to fill up the vast space of 1500 
 years. He will say to himself, with the experience of 
 these ages since the Era of Publication, or of human 
 and ecclesiastical nature in general, that things never did 
 and never could go on in that perpetual see-saw of 
 progression and retrogression in this mundane scene. 
 Milman did not investigate his sources. He did not 
 ask himself, When were these lines written ? The 
 scholar who sets himself seriously to answer that 
 question, and makes a speciality of the Papal biographies, 
 will, I doubt not, arrive at the firm conclusion that not 
 one of these biographies was attempted long before the 
 time of Platina and of Stella, and that they have all 
 been wTitten upon the poetical basis and the deductive 
 principle. 
 
 A German scholar of high merit, who lately passed 
 from us, Ferdinand Gregorovius, has also left behind 
 him a voluminous compilation on the '^ History of Kome 
 in the Middle Ages." He rested mainly on the same 
 Benedictine legends ; and though writing as the friend 
 of freedom and secular culture, was unable to strike at 
 the root of the ramified fictions of the Order. Yet the 
 views of the state of Letters which Gregorovius attempts 
 at the close of each century are valuable to the critical 
 student. Here, as in the corresponding pages of 
 Hallam, you observe that after bursts of culture and 
 bright gleams of awakening intelligence, darkness 
 
36 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 recurrently sets in, so that at the end of the fifteenth 
 century the world appears scarce nearer to culture than 
 it was after the calamities which are said to have 
 occurred one thousand or five hundred years before. 
 Once more the " Middle Ages " are perceived to be no 
 less a dream than any other temporal scheme of the fall 
 and recovery of man. 
 
 The proper use to make of Gregorovius, as of all 
 the compilers, is to begin with his last volume, and 
 thoroughly to digest the evidence there collected, which 
 shows how impossible it was for the scholars of the 
 early sixteenth century to ascend with certain footsteps 
 through even the dark age that had gone before, much 
 less through any preceding time. 
 
 XXV. 
 
 To those who are aware of the necessity of taking a 
 wide view for the purpose of understanding these 
 matters, it will not seem impertinent if I refer to some 
 masters in the art of historic fiction who have shed 
 some sidelights on the nature of '^ History." Let me 
 name Henry Fielding as the founder of a new manner of 
 writing, expressly based on the close study of human 
 nature. It may be that his characters and scenes are 
 no longer to our taste ; but there can be no question of 
 their fidelity to his time, nor of the conscientious 
 intentions of the artist. Fielding was an admirable 
 critic of human nature, and therefore of *' History." 
 Such a man will aid us to understand by contrast the 
 unreality of the Eomancers of the Monasteries. 
 
 Fielding points us to the " prodigious variety " in 
 human nature, and freely scofis at " the centuries of 
 monkish dullness when the world seems to have been 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 37 
 
 asleep." He is conscious of the power to foretell action 
 from character, and scarce refrains from the boast that 
 he, as the student of human nature, is the earliest of 
 our historians. " Truth distinguishes our writings from 
 those idle romances, which are filled with monsters, 
 the productions, not of nature, but of distempered 
 brains." He will discuss with his readers the pro- 
 bability of some of his incidents, so anxious is he to 
 keep close to the " vast authentic book of Nature.'' 
 He lays down rules, which few who have thought them- 
 selves serious historians have carefully regarded. He 
 will reject every circumstance " which, though never so 
 well attested, he must be well assured is false." Thus 
 he may fall into the marvellous, but never into the 
 incredible. Ironically, he draws the contrast between 
 himself as a '' private historian" and the public historian 
 who is supported by '' records " when he portrays men 
 "so very good and so very bad.'* He believes not in 
 these extremes, nor in the sudden conversions of the bad 
 into the good in popular drama. 
 
 Fielding refers to the universal contempt cast upon 
 historical writers, who do not draw their material from 
 records, and in so doing he slights " English History.' 
 He refuses to call his work a Komance for that reason. 
 He has good authority for all his characters, "no less 
 indeed than Doomsday Book ! " He lavishes satire 
 upon the pedants who have passed all their time in 
 colleges and among books, and who are incompetent 
 historians, because they have not conversed in the world 
 with human nature as it is. He has never in the world 
 met with the " model of perfection," nor with the monster 
 unredeemed by a single virtue. He flatly denies that 
 virtue is the certain road to happiness, and vice to 
 misery in this world. 
 
38 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Again and again the contempt with which he regards 
 " Alderman History " and " Monsieur Romance " breaks 
 out. It seems clear that he, with a taste so severely 
 educated for Truth, looked upon our History as a series 
 of dull conventional tales, " which certain droll authors 
 have been facetiously ]3leased to call the History of 
 England." The criticism of Fielding may be " sweep- 
 ing," but much nonsense still needs to be swept from 
 the memory and imagination of the world. 
 
 One of the greatest of all literary artists. Sir Walter 
 Scott, has not only devoted two of his novels to the 
 delineation of the life of a Benedictine monastery at the 
 time of the Eeformation ; he has in other works drawn 
 freely from the monastic legends. Sir Walter employed 
 the soft and pleasing colours of which he w^as so great a 
 master, to illustrate the better aspects of the life of the 
 monasteries ; he protests against the harsh and partial 
 judgment against them so commonly to be heard. The 
 "Abbot" and the "Monastery" may, perhaps, be 
 regarded as the best apologies on behalf of the Monks 
 ever written. Yet Scott was too extensively and too 
 accurately read in his subject to represent any great 
 learning as the property of the Monasteries at the time 
 of the Reformation, or at any preceding period. He 
 was well aware that any writing or reading class, 
 whether within or without the cloisters, was of the 
 smallest extent ; a fact which, if it had been duly 
 noted, would have saved much waste of labour in the 
 study of English History. 
 
 Honore de Balzac, whose carefully laboured fictions 
 produce a deeper effect of reality upon the reader than 
 any ordinary history, has sketched in one of his novels, 
 "Les Paysans," the portrait of a renegade and dis- 
 frocked Benedictine of our day. He presents the man 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 39 
 
 as a Type in French provincial life. It is no pleasing 
 picture — the avarice, the hypocrisy, the greed and glut- 
 tony of one who has learned the science of egoism in 
 the cloister. " Profound as a monk, silentious as a 
 Benedictine in historical labours, tricky as a priest, 
 dissimulant as every miser, keeping always within the 
 limits of the law, this man would have been Tiberius at 
 Kome, Richelieu under Louis XIII., Fouche, had he been 
 ambitious enough to go to the Convention. But he had 
 the wisdom to be a lowly Lucullus, a voluptuous miser." 
 Balzac notes the insect-like patience, due to the need 
 of observing decorum and reserve, which characterized 
 those who had been under the ecclesiastical discipline of 
 the Monasteries, and who came forth into the world at 
 the time of the Eevolution. The discipline was long 
 descended ; and not vainly will the reader attend to 
 the description of so consummate an observer of life 
 as the French novelist, if he desires to understand the 
 mind of the men who took upon themselves the task of 
 writing French and English History about 400 years 
 ao'o. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE RISE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. 
 
 I AM asking the reader to plant himself in imagination 
 at the epoch when the Printing Press had been set up 
 in England, when the field of Bosworth had been fought, 
 and Henry Tudor had been raised to the throne of Eng- 
 land. Before that time the country had been distracted 
 by the strife of factions known as the " Wars of the 
 Koses," of which we know little more than the mere 
 name. It has been noticed by our historians how dark 
 that period is, or, in other words, how devoid we are of 
 o[ood sources of information. In fact, a wall of dark- 
 ness seems to rise behind the faintly outlined figure of 
 Henry and the fiend-like Eichard, which shuts in the 
 view of the observer, and hides from him the earlier 
 past. This is not a mere phenomenon of English history ; 
 it is a phenomenon of the history of the West, the 
 causes of which I now proceed to trace. 
 
 What are the great, the massive monuments of our 
 The English past ? The answer is, They are the 
 
 (Mona?- great Minsters built and once occupied by the 
 teries). Order of St. Benedict, at Canterbury and 
 
 Westminster, and many other old seats of Catholic 
 religion. And what is the age of these Minsters ? No 
 definite answer has hitherto been given to that question. 
 
THE RISE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. 41 
 
 And is it not a remarkable circumstance that these 
 splendid ecclesiastical palaces should have been reared 
 and improved at so vast a cost of labour and of gold, and 
 no authentic record of their origin should have come 
 down to us ? There are, it is true, tales and tales on 
 the part of the monks, of how and when their churches 
 were dedicated, tales of previous wooden buildings, tales 
 of fires and of Danish devastations, and the like; but 
 not a single record that would satisfy the modern 
 statistician, or the architect and builder who feels a pride 
 in all the details of his art. Though our imagination in 
 this obscurity imposes upon us, and we acquiesce in 
 the sense of mystery, our intelligence teaches us that a 
 common-sense explanation must be found for the rise of 
 these buildings. 
 
 They were reared by men who honoured the sign of 
 the Cross ; these men formed one of the most superb 
 Hierarchies the world has ever known, and they had at 
 their disposal a large portion of the land and its revenue. 
 But they have not stated, except in a fabulous and 
 allegorical way, the manner in which they became 
 Domini, or lords, in England, and acquired the wealth 
 which is represented in these astounding documents of 
 their ambition. I am assuming for the moment, what 
 I shall later hope to prove, that there exists no con- 
 temporaneous history of the foundation of Westminster 
 or any other Benedictine foundation in Europe. If this 
 be so, then it is obvious that these ecclesiastical palaces 
 were designed, and for the most part completed, before 
 it occurred to the monks that it was necessary to write 
 histories, or what were to pass as histories, of them. 
 If this be so, the acquisition of land and wealth and 
 power was long the ambition of the Order before they 
 addressed themselves to the task of general literature. 
 
42 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 When did the monks of the order of St. Benedict 
 ^ . ^ arrive on these shores ? On that question the 
 
 Coming of , . ■•- . 
 
 the Bene- whole Question of the origin of Christendom 
 may be made to hinge ; because there is every 
 reason to believe that they came hither not much later 
 than their settlement in France ; and that they were in 
 France soon after their establishment in Italy. They 
 were, in their flourishing days, a highly militant, mis- 
 sionary, and aggressive body. Their earliest cloisters, 
 they say, were Subiaco and Monte Cassino, '' the Sinai 
 of the new Dispensation " in the Campagna. These 
 places are consecrated by the ideal association with St. 
 Benedict, Father of all monks, Patriarch and Law-giver 
 of the West, mythical head of a new Dispensation, 
 whose Kule was declared by Bossuet to be a Summary 
 of Christianity. Undoubtedly, we, who have been bred 
 in Christianity, must contemplate with a certain venera- 
 tion the monks and nuns of the first and most dig- 
 nified of all the Christian families. Beyond them it 
 is idle to search in any part of the w^orld for primitive 
 Christians. 
 
 It is now time to say that the ideas relating to the 
 coming of the Benedictines to England are involved in 
 absurdity and contradiction. Their dogma is that St. 
 Benet himself was nearly a contemporary with Moham- 
 med in the sixth century of their era. Therefore 
 Benedictines could not have been here or in. any part of 
 the West earlier than that age, according to their own 
 dogma. But there is a story that St. Joseph of 
 Arimathsea came and planted Christianity at Glaston- 
 bury in the first century. It is a Benedictine story 
 pure and simple, and could not have been circulated 
 until they began to teach Christianity in Britain. The 
 story of the British convert, King Lucius, in the second 
 
THE RISE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. 43 
 
 century, comes also from the Benedictines. And if these 
 ttales are no longer believed by any sensible person, the 
 credit of the Benedictines is entirely gone, because these 
 inventions are the foundation of their traditional system. 
 
 The belief, however, is still widely diffused that St. 
 Augustine came hither with a body of monks st. Augus- 
 at the instigation of Pope Gregory late in Benedictine 
 the sixth century. The tale is again purely ^^^^^' 
 of Benedictine origin, as M. de Montalembert, in his 
 work on " The Monks of the West," pointed out. Not 
 only so ; but St. Augustine and Pope Gregory are purely 
 ideals of the Benedictine imagination, as will appear 
 from a consideration of the literary evidence. The 
 epoch of their coming to England has therefore yet to 
 be discussed. 
 
 Some of our scholars, particularly Mr. Soames, have 
 distinguished themselves by the theory that Aisost. 
 they came in with St. Dunstan, that is, in the Ei"n/mnc', 
 tenth century. That age is called the Obscure ^^s^^"^- 
 or Dark Age in their system. It is the age when all 
 manner of incredible things are being done in Rome 
 and elsewhere, and the world is supposed to be drawing 
 to an end. This obscure age turns out, with St. Dun- 
 stan himself, to be the creation of Benedictine artists in 
 retrospective fiction, who sat down in the Scriptoria of 
 the monasteries many ages later. The Benedictines 
 were not in England in the tenth century, for they were 
 not in existence in any part of the world.* 
 
 They pretend that they instigated Crusades in the 
 eleventh century ; and the twelfth century they desig- 
 nate the Scholastic Age, which they decorate with writ- 
 ings ascribed to a number of ideal schoolmen. Once 
 
 * William of Malmesbury and the rest of the Benedictine chorus who 
 write on St. Dunstan, were not known till the sixteenth century. 
 
44 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 more, attention to the evidence convicts them of methodic 
 fiction, and ourselves of blank ignorance as to what 
 was passing in the world during that century. 
 
 Let us pass on to the next page. Here a pheno- 
 Riseofthe mcuou of extraordinary importance arrests 
 Sj-nagogue. attention. It is the uprise, according to the 
 Jewish tradition, of the corporation known as the 
 Synagogue. The early seats of Jewish prosperity and 
 culture are the cities of the land called Sepharad — that 
 is, Cordova, Toledo, and other cities of Spain. The 
 Jews say that late in the twelfth century one of their 
 Eabbins went out from Cordova to Cairo in Egypt, that 
 he served under the Mohammedan rulers, and that after 
 founding a school, he died early in the thirteenth 
 century, and was believed to have- laid his bones at 
 Hebron in Syria. They say that there was jealousy 
 of his authority among the Eabbins of Zarephath, or 
 France ; but that in the end the people agreed to honour 
 his memory as their greatest Doctor since the ideal fore- 
 time. They made pilgrimages to his tomb at Hebron. 
 
 Maimonides or Ben Maimun — here an Arabic name 
 — and his history are symbolic of the relation of the 
 Jews to their elder brethren, the Ishmaelites. But 
 Maimonides gave the Jews a Creed ; and it was near 
 to Maimonides' time that the Hebrew Scriptures were 
 written, began to be recited in the Synagogues and to 
 be commented upon by the Rabbins. It is the ecclesi- 
 astical dogma of the Jews that the Hebrew Scriptures 
 were of immense antiquity; but the facts about their 
 schools in Spain, and in France and Germany, so far 
 as they are known, enable us to distinguish sharply 
 between the ideal and the actual in their retrospect. It 
 is not that they have any exact dates even of Mai- 
 monides' birth and death. No registers were kept: by any 
 
THE RISE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. 45 
 
 people, so far as we know, in that dark time. There was 
 no exacter chronology with them than with other nations. 
 The Eabbins who began to write, under the influence of 
 the Revival of Learning,* the story of the people's woe, 
 show how little was accurately known of the past, but 
 some details of persecution. But it may, perhaps, be 
 assumed that they knew they had been united into a 
 corporation owning the memory of their great Doctor at 
 some time during the thirteenth century. 
 
 Now, the Benedictine corporation could not have 
 come into existence before the Hebrew Scriptures were 
 in some version known to them, because they base their 
 system of teaching upon a certain interpretation of those 
 Scriptures. They never raise the question of the 
 authority of the Jewish writings. They assume them 
 as axiomatic, and needing no demonstration. We 
 cannot well conceive the Benedictines having any 
 religious employment in England or elsewhere, until 
 they had the Psalter to chant, for example. This was 
 one of their chief occupations. Moreover, they say, in 
 writings the date of which has yet to be ascertained, 
 that the New Testament has been formed on a system of 
 correspondence with the Old. That may not be their 
 exact mode of expression ; but it is, the only way in 
 which a modern critic can understand the evidence they 
 adduce upon this subject. 
 
 Apart from all mysticism and dreams of an imagi- 
 nary antiquity, the general drift of the evidence is 
 perfectly clear. The Jewish ecclesiastics say that the 
 Christian Church is the child of Judaism — a child 
 which has cruelly ill-used its mother. The oldest 
 Christian family admits, in the New Testament, that 
 the teachers of the Law and of the Mishna were in the 
 
 * RR. Joseph ben Mair, A. Zacuto, D. Ganz. 
 
46 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 world before their owu teachers. So far there is agree- 
 ment ; and if the date of the first Hebrew Bible that 
 was known outside the Synagogue could be ascertained, 
 it would set up a most important landmark. Before 
 that time the Benedictine literature could not have been 
 written ; some considerable interval after that time it 
 must have been before the Benedictines could have 
 constructed out of their study of " the Old Testament," 
 as they called the Hebrew Scriptures, another book 
 which they chose to call ''the New Testament." 
 
 On this ground of Jewish tradition it is not in the 
 least safe, then, to assume that the Order of St. Benedict 
 was formed until some time late in the thirteenth 
 century. It is clear from all its writings, its sentiments, 
 and place in the world, that it was formed as a rival 
 system to that of the Jews at a time when the Jews 
 were very influential and the objects of the most pas- 
 sionate jealousy and envy on the part of the nations of the 
 West. The like feeling is shown against the Moham- 
 medans ; but the reason why the more deadly and vin- 
 dictive attack is made upon the Jews is that the Jews 
 have, from their first appearance as a distinct people, 
 been a European people, and have insisted upon living 
 and thriving in the midst of their persecutors. One of 
 the surest means of dispelling illusions about the people 
 is to keep this fact before us. The Jews have been 
 taught by the tradition which they share with the 
 Arabians, to look dreamily toward Syria as the seat of 
 David's mystic throne. But they have never been 
 numerous or happy in that land within the knowledge 
 of man. They never possessed a territory nor raised 
 an army ; yet their destiny was to carry on and com- 
 plete the conquest of the Arabians over the Western 
 imagination. 
 
THE RISE OF THE ORDER OF ST. BENEDICT. 47 
 
 To return to the question before us. We shall 
 never arrive at any exact knowledge of what was occur- 
 ring in Europe during the long ages when the Moslem 
 was master of the Mediterranean. A great number of 
 military Orders of the Cross may have been formed to 
 resist the Moslems and may liave passed away without 
 record, preparing the way for the monks. But the 
 monks themselves, as they stand revealed in their 
 dogmas and their malevolent theories about the 
 Orientals, could not have been established, so far as we 
 know% in any part of the world until some time in the 
 tliirteenth century. If so, they had ample time in the 
 two long ages that followed, to settle in our pleasant 
 valleys, to acquire that enormous ascendency over the 
 imagination of our peoples ; and thereby that enormous 
 prestige and wealth was never more matter for astonish- 
 ment and indignation than it is at this distance of time, 
 and under the light of the ever-increasing contrast of 
 our present culture. 
 
 The reader will observe that there is no proper 
 consideration of the subject before us until we have 
 given attention to the state of Schools, Libraries, and 
 Books, and also to the general state of intelligence out- 
 side the cloisters. The monks themselves, according to 
 the testimony of their own writers, were profoundly 
 ignorant and indisposed to learning at the end of the 
 fifteenth century. Outside, the condition of the nobles 
 and the laity in general was still darkness. It was 
 among secular scholars, who were mostly at the same 
 time clerks, that the stirrings of curiosity began, and 
 that a demand arose for some knowledge of the past, 
 which it was supposed the most ancient Order alone 
 could gratify. That a solitary monk here and there 
 took it into his head to write history, when there was 
 
48 THE EISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 no class of readers or listeners to appreciate it, is one of 
 those absurdities which, well considered, leads to the 
 detection of the whole system of fiction. 
 
 To sum up on this question. The epoch of the rise 
 of the Order or of the Christian Hierarchy iu 
 
 Probable , . " 
 
 epoch of the general, cannot be ascertained, unless we can 
 
 Benedictines. }; . ^ i r i -r» • p i 
 
 nrst ascertam the epoch oi the Kise oi the 
 Synagogue. Now the work of the Jewish Chronologers 
 of the Kenaissance show that they had no means of 
 knowing the exact truth respecting their ecclesiastical 
 antiquities. Like the members of the other Corporations, 
 they were obliged to fill the void with lists of names and 
 literary works, arranged in chronological retrospective, 
 which is artistic rather than scientific. It is probable 
 that the mass of Rabbinical writinof which was brou^^ht 
 to the Italian printing presses during the Revival of 
 Letters had been mainly the work of the precediog 
 hundred years. The Eabbins had considerable know- 
 ledge of Latin and Greek ; but Latin and Greek culture, 
 according to the only statements we possess, namely, 
 those of the Humanists of the late fifteenth or early 
 sixteenth century, was but faintly beginning at the end 
 of the fifteenth century. So far, then, as the literary 
 evidence is concerned, it seems impossible to ascend 
 beyond the last-named epoch. It must at present be 
 mere matter of conjecture how long any of the Cor- 
 porations had been in existence before that time. The 
 Society of Jesus and the Church of England are both 
 sixteenth-century institutions ; and it is a thing not well 
 conceivable, in the light of the evidence as a whole, that 
 any Christian Hierarchy had been in existence many 
 ages before them. 
 
49 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE ARCHITECTURE. 
 
 Sir Christopher Wren was, I believe, the first Englisli 
 scholar who seriously studied the Christian wrenonthe 
 architecture and who perceived that it was arThltec-"^ 
 an imitation of the architecture of the Moham- *'*'"®' i^^^- 
 medans. 
 
 His surveys of Salisbury Cathedral and other 
 examples of the so-called " Gothic mode " induced him 
 to make inquiry into its rise and progress.* In spite of 
 the erroneous views of his time in reference to the 
 chronological relation of the two religious systems, 
 Wreu saw that our Cathedrals were — to employ his 
 own phrase — of '' Saracen architecture refined by the 
 Christians." It was during '' the Holy War " that the 
 Christians learned to imitate their sacred buildings, and 
 that the confraternity of Freemasons was formed. 
 
 The Freemasons, according to Wren, were composed 
 of Italians, with a few Greek refugees from The 
 the East, of French, Germans, and Flemings, ^^^e^^^^^^. 
 They ranged from nation to nation as they found 
 churches to be built by the piety of the multitude. 
 They had a regular government, and were wont to pitch 
 their camps on hills near to the buildings they had in 
 hand. There was a chief surveyor ; and every tenth 
 
 * Dods worth, " History of Salisbury Cathedral." 
 
 E 
 
50 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 man was a warden, or overlooker of each nine. The 
 gentry of the neighbourhood, from motives of charity, 
 or to commute a penance, supplied the materials and 
 the means of carriage. The steeple is the pride of 
 Christian architecture, as the cupola is the pride of the 
 Mohammedans. The steeple of Vienna, for example, is 
 contrasted with the " Saracen " dome of St. Mark's, 
 Venice.* 
 
 Wren thought the " Gothic mode " to be " an in- 
 genious compound of work, suited to these Northern 
 climates," but tending to fantastic barbarity ; being him- 
 self an admirer of the pure Eoman or classic mode, 
 which, he said, was revived at the same time with the 
 pure Latin of the Augustan age. The classical architec- 
 ture and the classical literature, then, are parts of one 
 Phsenomenon of the human spirit. The so-called " Sara- 
 cenic" and " Gothic" — in other words, the Moslem and 
 the Monastic — architecture, with the corresponding 
 literature, belong to another class of Phsenomena. In 
 our own time Mr. Owen Jones has said that the 
 Alhambra should be compared with the Koran, and the 
 Cathedral with the Bible. 
 
 Elias Ash mole, the contemporary of Wren, was a 
 Eiias zealous Freemason, and busied himself on the 
 
 Ashmoie. autiquitics of the Order, which, however, form 
 but a part of the fabled antiquities of the Order of St. 
 Benedict. The tradition ran in Ashmole's time that 
 " St. Alban, the Proto-Martyr of England," established 
 Masonry here ; that in " the Saxon time " King 
 Athelstan granted them a Charter ; that in " the 
 Norman time" they enjoyed royal favour, and so on. 
 The whole of this retrospect is based on Benedictine 
 
 * See "Biog. Britann.," art. " Wren; " Dodsvvorth, " History of Salisbury 
 Cathedral." 
 
THE BENEDICTINE ARCHITECTURE. 51 
 
 fable. The initiation to the Order was said to resemble 
 a Benedictine initiation. It was said that a Bull had 
 been granted to the Freemasons in the time of Henry 
 III., in accordance with which they travelled over 
 Europe on their building errands. 
 
 It was believed that their inviolable secrecy and 
 mutual fidelity had exposed them to persecution in 
 troublous times. But when we come to the period of 
 the factions of the Roses, we are still devoid of authentic 
 information about the Freemasons. Some supposed that 
 by a statute of Henry VI. the Society was abolished and 
 its meetings proclaimed under severe penalties. Others 
 said that Henry VI. and some of his Court were fellows 
 of the craft. Later, the Freemasons w^ere believed to 
 have been generally Yorkists, and it was said that the 
 sagacious Henry VII. intruded some of his partisans 
 upon them in the guise of friends, but in reality as 
 spies. Such belief is in accord with the general notions 
 about the political state under the first Tudor king ; 
 but we have very few authentic particulars of his 
 time. 
 
 It is the general impression which alone we can 
 trust. At the end of the " Middle Ages," or at the 
 beginning of our Modern Culture, we find, by the light 
 of sixteenth -century evidence, that all the societies and 
 corporations of artisans had been working more or less 
 under the influence and control of the ruling Abbots of 
 the Order of St. Benedict ; and that the exact story of 
 their rise and progress was either unknown, or if known, 
 was deliberately concealed from the world under clouds 
 of fable. To this day it remains unknown when the 
 foundation-stone of Westminster was laid, or when the 
 chapel of St. Benedict was finished. And if the history 
 of the Masons in connection with that " greatest 
 
52 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 sanctuary and rendezvous of devotion in the whole 
 Howell, island " cannot be traced out, it cannot be 
 ^^^'' traced out, except by conjecture, in any part 
 
 of Christendom. 
 
 The sources, real or pretended, of our knowledge of 
 iffnoranceat Wcstminstcr are first the Archives in the 
 w.^^t Muniment Room. They were not brought 
 
 minster. ^ ^ -^ " 
 
 Stanley's to Hs^ht uutil the sixtccnth centurv. Then 
 
 "Memorials." 
 
 there are the Chapter Books, which begin 
 only with the year 1542. Yet there is a blank 
 from 1 554-1 558, the time of the last Abbot, Fecken- 
 ham. The " Customs " ascribed to ** Abbot Ware " of 
 the thirteenth century cannot be traced higher than 
 the Library of Sir Eobert Cotton, who collected 
 a great quantity of spurious material at the time 
 when the first antiquarian interest set in. No Bene- 
 dictine monastery, it will be shown, ever possessed 
 genuine " thirteenth-century " monuments. The monas- 
 tery of Westminster, like all the monasteries, derives its 
 sanctity from the belief that it is the place of sepulchre 
 of saints and princes. Yet its Burial Kegister does not 
 begin till the year 1606. Lastly, and perhaps most 
 important of all, it is not until late in the fifteenth 
 century that the Prior of the monastery, who passes 
 under the name of " Flete," is supposed to sit down to 
 trace its history from the foundation to the year 1386 — 
 a chronicle, not only most meagre, but fabulous from 
 first to last, and filled with trifles which are of no 
 service to the modern inquirer. 
 
 After all the loving diligence with which Dean 
 Stanley collected the fables concerning the Abbey, it 
 remains impossible to discern the state of the buildings 
 at the accession of Henry VIL Abbot Islip (1500- 
 1532) is said to have seen the completion of the 
 
THE BENEDICTINE ARCHITECTURE. 53 
 
 Chapel which bears that monarch's name ; and also 
 to have carried the Western Towers as high as the 
 roof. The close of the Middle Ages is marked here 
 in London, as throughout Christendom, by lavish 
 expenditure on Church architecture ; or — in the phrase 
 of Stanley — " the last efflorescence of monastic archi- 
 tecture coincided with its imminent downfall." The 
 monument of building Abbots remains, while their 
 persons are entirely obscure. 
 
 Stanley comments on the insignificance and in- 
 activity of the Coenobites at "Westminster down to the 
 time of the dissolution. He points out that the idea of 
 Property and of Jurisdiction occupied all their thoughts, 
 as with the monks on Mount Athos. He alludes to the 
 condition of Monte Cassino in 1868, where learning at 
 that time exacted the sympathy of Europe, and he adds, 
 "Those who have witnessed the last days of Vallom- 
 brosa must confess with a sigh, that like the ancient 
 Abbey of Westminster, its inmates had contributed 
 nothing to the general intelligence of Christendom." 
 
 The whole question, then, of the rise of Church 
 architecture in the West resolves itself into the question 
 of probability, or of a combination of probabilities. 
 What is the probable age of an art which was reaching 
 its maturity at the beginning of our Modern Culture ? 
 How long is it likely that these ambitious buildings had 
 been designed and carried out, for the glorification of 
 the Hierarchy, before they found it necessary to 
 cultivate literature in the interests of their system ? 
 There was a time when the sole intellectual occupation 
 of the monks appears to have consisted in the *' Perennial 
 Praise," or chanting of the Psalter, and in the ^^ Prayer 
 without ceasing." To the end of the fifteenth century 
 the Bible was known only in form of short lessons, or 
 
54 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 detaclied books. If these points be well considered, 
 instead of being evaded, it will be found difficult to 
 conceive liow the Benedictine architecture conld have 
 come into being at anything like the early epoch 
 commonly supposed. 
 
 The problem must admit in one way or other of 
 some reasonable solution. It will be recalled that one 
 of the earliest, probably the earliest of Church liturgies, 
 bears the name Mozarabic, and is associated with the 
 activity of Cardinal Ximenes, the patron of the scholars 
 who produced the early polyglot Bible in Spain at the 
 beginning of the sixteenth century. Are we to suppose 
 that before the Mozarabic ritual was used, some other 
 ritual more nearly allied to that of the Arabians was 
 once used in the monasteries ? There is no direct 
 evidence on the point, and no room therefore to 
 conceive of a Catholic Church which had rites entirely 
 independent of the rites of Judaism, and which was in 
 existence before its clergy began to use the Hebrew 
 Scriptures, and to make a deliberate attack on the 
 whole people of the Jews. I may content myself 
 with the remark that the monastic buildings must 
 be at least much younger than we have supposed them 
 to be ; and that the theory of " Saxon," " Norman," and 
 *' English" styles is but part of that theory of English 
 history which it is my business to explain in these 
 pages. I may add that there are experts in the study 
 of Architecture in our country who are persuaded 
 that we have nothing so enormously ancient in England 
 or the West as tradition has invited us to believe,* 
 And the reader may be reminded that "ancient" is a 
 very relative term, which bears no exact value when 
 people have no correct measure of past time. They had 
 
 I allude especially to Fergussou. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE ARCHITECTURE. 55 
 
 no such measure in the Tudor period ; and the legends 
 which then began to be circulated respecting the Palace 
 and the Monastery at Westminster had never been 
 authenticated by genuine Registers of the Abbots and 
 their works. 
 
56 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE RISE OF THE BENEDICTINE LITEEATUKE. 
 
 Assuming, then, that the Order of St. Benedict could 
 Missions in not havc bccH foundcd before some time in 
 the West. <<the thirteenth century," we may also assume 
 that the following age saw the beginning of the great 
 missionary enterprise in Sicily, in France, Spain, 
 England, and Grermany. They acquired land, they 
 built monasteries and churches, they styled themselves 
 Domini, or Lords, and they helped to set up the Papal 
 monarchy, the earliest seat of which appears to have 
 been the strong fortress-monastery on Monte Cassino. 
 It was from the first their policy to court the favour of 
 the nobles or great men of every land, and to acquire 
 ascendency over their minds, and to render them the 
 subservient instruments of this new monarchy. This 
 union of temporal with spiritual power was an imitation 
 of the Mohammedans. The Pope was the grand caliph 
 of the Nazarseans ; nor shall we widely err if we find, 
 through the medium of allegorical romance, his original 
 in some proud Abbot of Abbots on Monte Cassino. 
 
 The track of the Benedictines in difierent directions 
 is marked by the names of their ideal saints, and later by 
 those of their illustrious literary men, a Cassiodore in 
 Calabria, a St. Placid in Sicily, an Isidore of Seville, a 
 St. Maur, a Gregory of Tours, an Augustine, a Bode of 
 
THE RISE OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 57 
 
 Wearmouth, and the like. They had this advantage 
 whenever they began writing what was called History, 
 that they could place their productions under the 
 sanction of memorable names previously known and 
 honoured in popular local worship. The question before 
 us is not understood until it is observed that the ideal 
 always preceded the real in every part of their metho- 
 dical efforts. They dreamed of Illustrious Doctors in 
 distant ages, and advertised their names before they 
 sat down to write works under those names ; a process 
 which is clearly revealed to every careful student of 
 their literary catalogues. 
 
 Our object is now to ascertain, if possible, the begin- 
 nings of the Benedictine Schools. In order The 
 
 ,,. . ^ -, Benedictine 
 
 that this question may be understood, I will Schools. 
 ask the reader to quit for a moment his standpoint in 
 the Dark Ages, and to come down to the time of the 
 reformed Benedictines of St. Maur, among The 
 whom shine the scholars, Fathers Mabillon, of st. Maur. 
 Montfaucon, D'Achery, and some others. It was not 
 until their time — about 200 years ago — a time rich in 
 scholars of unusual ability, that the mass of Bene- 
 dictine literature became fully known and was exposed 
 to critical inquiry. Critical inquiry did begin, was 
 unhappily soon stifled, yet not without some very re- 
 markable results. 
 
 The Jesuits had, it seems, from their first appearance 
 in the world, looked upon the Benedictines with Controversy 
 
 T • 1 rrn T • with the 
 
 a certain suspicion and jealousy, ihe Jesuits Jesuits. 
 were devoted adherents to the Papal monarchy, the stern 
 antagonists of Lollards, Lutherans, and other Protestant 
 heretics. These heretics appealed to the New Testament 
 and to the writings of the '' Fathers and Doctors," in 
 other words, to writings which had been produced in 
 
58 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the Benedictine cloisters and other religious houses 
 affiliated to them. Luther himself was an Austin 
 friar, and had once been known as Brother Augustine. 
 The seeds of heresy had been sown by the monks, the 
 friars, and the canons themselves. The Council of 
 Trent, however, the first Council of which we have any 
 authentic information, did not see its way to supersede 
 the writings of the " Fathers.'' It was reserved for the 
 Jesuits of the following century to throw doubt upon 
 the pretended ancient documents of the Benedictines. 
 
 The genuineness of their Charters was strongly 
 ^questioned by Father Germon and others, who could 
 readily justify their suspicions by reference to the works 
 of Mabillon and Montfaucon. Eeplies were offered ; the 
 question was felt to be delicate, and the pursuit of it 
 was discouraged by the superiors of the Society of Jesus. 
 One scholar of that Society, however — perhaps the 
 greatest they have ever produced — persisted. And his 
 exposure of monkish fraud is the most remarkable event 
 that has occurred in ecclesiastical literary annals. I am 
 referring to Father Hardouin. 
 
 Hardouin's life was spent in the pursuits of the 
 Father Library. He was of mature age, when in 
 
 Hardouin. i5qo, as he tclls US, and in the month of 
 August, he began to suspect a fraud in the writings 
 ascribed to Augustine and his contemporaries. In 
 November his suspicions had extended to all the 
 *' Fathers ; " in May, 1692, he detected the whole system. 
 He had made long extracts from the Greek and Latin 
 *' Fathers," Cyril, Theodoret, Augustine, Jerome, etc. ; 
 had convinced himself that these writings were part of 
 a system of literature, devised and carried out by the 
 monks and friars from some time, as he believed, in the 
 fourteenth century. Hardouin insisted that it must be 
 
THE RISE OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 59 
 
 a Jesuit who should detect these frauds, because there 
 was no other Catholic family which had not been 
 imposed upon by spurious writings under the names of 
 distinguished men. 
 
 The Dominicans, he said, had " Thomas Aquinas," 
 " Vincent of Beauvais," and others ; the Franciscans had 
 " Bonaventura," " Scotus ; " the Carmelites, " Thomas Wal- 
 den ; " and so with other Orders. But the Benedictines, 
 he adds, possessed " a whole legion " of spurious writers. 
 Hardouin mingled theological and polemical matter 
 with his literary criticisms in a manner displeasing, 
 perhaps, to the more secular student. But the points 
 which he made against the old Benedictine writings have 
 never been answered, and are indeed incapable of being 
 answered. Having pursued a different path of inquiry 
 from his, I am able to say that I can confirm him by 
 having arrived at similar general conclusions. 
 
 It was not until 1754 that two Benedictine scholars 
 published a History of their Literature, in Dom 
 which are to be found some extremely "Lfteran?"^' 
 interesting references to Father Hardouin. JheBene^-^ 
 Let me bring a remarkable library scene ^^^^''^^s-" 
 before the reader's imagination. It seems that in the- 
 year 1 7 1 1 , Angelo Maria Quirinus, an esteemed Bene- 
 dictine scholar, later a Cardinal, called on Hardouin 
 in Paris. They conversed together on the questions 
 raised by the well-known opinions of the latter. 
 Hardouin stoutly maintained that Christianity had no 
 authentic documents save the Vulgate Bible, the decrees 
 of the Council of Trent, and a few coins. The two 
 scholars paced to and fro through the library ; the 
 Benedictine w^as no match for the Jesuit, and in order 
 to give a pleasant turn to the conversation, he seized 
 upon a dummy volume with a fictitious title which 
 
6o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 stood on one of the shelves, and triumphantly exclaimed 
 that here was a fraud which had not been contrived 
 in the libraries of the monks ! 
 
 The weakness of Hardouin's position as a scholar 
 obviously consisted in maintaining the antiquity of the 
 Vulgate, at the same time that he denied the antiquity 
 of the writings of the men through which alone the 
 Vulgate is known to us. But Hardouin was a priest ; 
 he must beg the question at some point ; and it appears 
 from other parts of his writing that, had he been driven 
 from the defence of the Vulgate, he would have taken 
 refuge in a purely mystical position, and would have 
 insisted that in the Sacrament of the Altar the pious 
 Catholic had an immediate revelation of God. He was 
 well aware of the danger of making any appeal to history 
 before the time of the Council of Trent. 
 
 A digression in these matters often saves the student 
 long travel. Hardouin was certainly in the right when 
 he declared that the age in which he lived was the first 
 truly critical age in the course of Church history. It 
 was the age of Richard Simon, of Le Clerc, of Lowth, 
 and many other admirable scholars. Lowth (1661-1732) 
 paid an honourable testimony to the great genius of 
 Hardouin, while he blamed what he thought his self- 
 confidence, his arrogance, and his rashness. Whenever 
 a new race of truly critical scholars appears, the debt 
 which the study owes to Hardouin will at length be 
 acknowledged. At the same time it will be seen that 
 his was the most daring attempt to reconcile the 
 conscience of the priest with the conscience of the 
 historian of which we have any record ; and that few 
 can hope to succeed where he has failed. 
 
 To resume. It was not until 200 years after the 
 establishment of the Press that the Benedictine literature 
 
THE RISE OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 6i 
 
 was cliallenged at the bar of critical opinion. Its claim 
 to genuineness and antiquity was then decisively 
 refuted — in one sense too early, in another sense too 
 late. We shall now be the better prepared to under- 
 stand how it was that the monks were enabled to make 
 that claim and to get their claim allowed, at a time 
 when there was a rage for false antiquity, and when 
 no scholar had any thorough knowledge of the critical 
 business. 
 
 In this connection it may be useful to remind the 
 reader of the labours of some of our English English 
 scholars of the late seventeenth century on the ^"*'^^* 
 Benedictine literature. From the time of Queen Eliza- 
 beth and King James the collection of MSS. had been 
 going on under the hands of Cotton, Spelman, Selden, 
 and others, without any exact critical inquiry into their 
 work, and without much careful sifting of their contents. 
 Sir William Dugdale, who belonged to the same indus- 
 trious tribe, published in 1655 the first volume of his great 
 work, ''Monasticon Anglicanum," a repertory of the docu- 
 ments of the Benedictines and connected Orders. The 
 remaining volumes appeared in 1661 and 1673. They 
 contain a large number of forged Foundation Charters 
 in the interests of the Order. The Donation Charters 
 were too numerous to be published. 
 
 These volumes escaped serious criticism. Thomas 
 Fuller was dead, and there was none upon whom his 
 mantle had fallen. Nevertheless, his Church History 
 of Britain remains, a monument of the piercing wit and 
 sagacity of the author, to whose extraordinary abilities 
 justice has been done by Coleridge. Fuller showed that 
 our early Church History was romance, and went far 
 toward destroying all confidence in the monastic 
 writers. In denying that the Church in Britain had 
 
62 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 been founded by the Apostles, he in effect denied the 
 Dogma on which all the history of the West reposes. 
 But after his death, the dullards of whom he was the 
 dismay, resumed their reign in the world of letters. 
 The collectors and conservators of fables had always 
 been in an overwhelming majority ; and thus the mass 
 of monastic matter which came to lio^ht during the 
 latter part of the seventeenth century has been used 
 again and again, with little protest, by our writers on 
 English history. Mendacity, in the opinion of many, 
 appears to be consecrated by time. 
 
 Mention should also be made of the work of Dean 
 Dean Gcorge Hickcs on the *' Northern Languages," 
 
 Hickes. published early in the last century, wherein 
 he makes some very damaging remarks at the expense 
 of Dom Mabillon's noted work, " De Ke Diplomatica,'' 
 already the object of the criticisms of the Jesuit scholars. 
 The modern scholar cannot review this controversy with- 
 out perceiving that had there been any sufficient number 
 of independent men of letters interested in the subject, 
 they would never have allowed these present sciences 
 of "Diplomatic" and "Palaeography" to be imj^osed 
 upon the ignorance of the world. 
 
( ^3 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 FABLES OF THE BENEDICTINE SCHOOLS. 
 
 If the reader will construct for himself a map showing 
 the centre of Christian, that is, of monastic, activity 
 during the Revival of Letters, he will understand better 
 than from mere verbal descri|)tion how mighty was 
 at that time the temporal empire of Christ, and how 
 entirely it was an empire of the West. The plains and 
 vales of Italy, of France, of Spain, of Germany, and 
 Austria are dotted with the Benedictine monasteries, 
 and magnificent churches are rising on every hand. 
 The literary centres were, however, few, and very 
 scantily supplied with books, according to modern 
 notions, during the whole of the first half of the 
 sixteenth century. It depended mainly on the instincts 
 of the particular Abbot whether literature should be 
 cultivated in compliance with the pressure of the age, 
 or whether attention should be almost wholly devoted 
 to the routine of the services, and the extension of the 
 temporality and jurisdiction of the abbey. 
 
 It should be remembered, however, that the produc- 
 tions of any of the more learned cloisters were joint- 
 stock property of the Order ; and that it signifies little 
 where a learned monk wrote, and on what subject he 
 wrote, since every work was a part of the system of 
 theology and of the New Law which it was the business 
 
64 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of the Order to promulgate to the world. It is not 
 necessary, therefore, to make the complete tour of the 
 learned monasteries ; but merely to show that in those 
 which the Benedictines say were the oldest and the most 
 flourishing, Culture, and in particular the writing of 
 Story, was in its infancy at the time of the introduction 
 of Typography. 
 
 They say that the oldest school is that on Monte 
 Monte Cassino, which was, during the period in 
 
 cassino. questiou, the seat of the Abbot of Abbots, 
 and the headquarters of the whole spiritual Army. 
 The probability is that the whole system of their 
 literature was devised in that cloister, in co-operation 
 with the Greek monks of Grrotta Ferrata, which was 
 under the control of Monte Cassino, and which stood 
 also in close sentimental connection with the cradle 
 cloister of Subiaco — the first foundation ascribed to St. 
 Benet, where the first Italian printing-press is said 
 to have been erected. 
 
 What, then, do the}^ say was doing at Monte 
 Cassino during ''the thirteenth century"? It is need- 
 less to detain the reader with " the twelfth century," 
 Thomas bccausc if Thomas Aquinas cannot be as- 
 Aquinas. ccrtaincd, it will be impossible to ascend to 
 any higher point and plant our feet on historic ground. 
 The tale, told in the usual flowery style of the Bene- 
 dictines, runs that Thomas of Aquino, a town at the 
 distance of a few miles from the great Cloister — that 
 Thomas of Aquino, "a star of the first magnitude," 
 illuminated Monte Cassino by his presence in the 
 thirteenth century. At the early age of five years he 
 became a monk, about the year 1230. In this tale 
 both the Benedictines and the Dominicans are agreed ; 
 and the particulars may be studied in the History of 
 
FABLES OF THE BENEDICTINE SCHOOLS. 65 
 
 the cloister by Dom Gat tola of the former Order,* 
 Abbot of Monte Cassino. 
 
 He admits that the truth of the tale has been dis- 
 puted ; and, in fact, to an external critic no particle of 
 satisfying evidence can be ojBfered that a known person 
 named Thomas of Aquino ever entered the cloister. 
 The question of the ideal and the real in personality 
 is constantly raised in the course of these studies. 
 The finest characters in history are always the purely 
 ideal ; next come the idealized characters. And few are 
 the conspicuous characters that have not been strongly 
 idealized. But Thomas Aquinas, like all the Saints of 
 the medisBval time, takes his place in the highest rank. 
 He belongs to the category of the pure ideal. He is 
 the product of Church hue and Church fantasy. More- 
 over, the source of his ideal is to be discovered in the 
 Latin Bible itself. 
 
 In Ecclesiasticus we read, " In the midst of the 
 Church the Lord opened his mouth and filled ji^^ i^gj^i 
 him with the spirit of wisdom and under- ?^i^f^^^ 
 standing. He clothed him with the robe of ^q^inas. 
 glory." So we read on March 7th, the feast of St. 
 Thomas, in the Service Book. The subject is not 
 understood until you perceive that the congregation of 
 Aquino raised the ideal of their patron before literature 
 began to be written under his name. 
 
 He is said to have been the son of the Count 
 of Aquino by a noble lady of Teatine family ; and a 
 pleasing view is given in the history of the convent 
 by the late Abbate Tosti, of the scene in which the 
 boy is led by his parents to the door, where the Abbot 
 awaits his coming. The scene is one of the allegories 
 of the alliance of monks and nobles. We are in the 
 
 * " Hist. Cassin.," sec. viii. v. 478. 
 
66 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 atmosphere of Church romance ; nor do we pass out 
 of it when we turn to Dante's page, enter Paradise 
 with him, and listen to the melodious accents of the 
 Anofelic Doctor. The Villani Chronicle — the date of 
 whose composition has never been ascertained — tells 
 how Thomas was poisoned at the instigation of Charles 
 of Anjou. There is an allusion to this in the " Divine 
 Comedy." 
 
 It is necessary to examine every literary document 
 St. Thomas of importance, if we would distinguish poetry 
 '^Diwne from fact. The ideal of St. Thomas is to be 
 Comedy." £^^^^ -^ ^^^ u p-^.-^^^ Comcdy." But it is to 
 
 be observed that the poet does not connect him with 
 Monte Cassino. How is this to be explained? It 
 is remarkable that Monte Cassino, so interested as she 
 must have been from the first in the contents of this 
 poem, does not know the date of her MS. copy of 
 the work. The Abbot, Dom Tosti, in discussing the 
 question, tells us that — apart from the tales in the 
 Chronicles of " Leo Marsicanus " — the earliest known 
 catalogue of the books in the monastery is of the 
 time of Paul 11. , c. 1464-147 1. The next dates from 
 the time of Clement VIL, 1 523-1 534. These are 
 statements of the utmost importance. I have no 
 hesitation in pointing to the period 1464-1534 as, 
 roundly speaking, the first great period of Italian 
 Benedictine literature. Whatever had been produced 
 before that time was most slight in point of quantity 
 and of no importance to the historical student. 
 
 Montfaucon, the great Benedictine Pala30grapher, pre- 
 served a silence on the subject of the ^' Divine Comedy " 
 which Father Tosti admits to be inexplicable, had the 
 existence of the MS. been known to him. It appeared 
 at last in the voluminous Catalogue of Federici. 
 
FABLES OF THE BENEDICTINE SCHOOLS. 67 
 
 Under this failure of external evidence, Tosti was 
 reduced to infer the age of the MS. from com- Age of the 
 parison of handwritings. He assigns it on that ^^* 
 ground to the period i;^26-iT,yS.^'' If, however, no 
 scholar who attends to the subject of Church chronology 
 can venture to assume that he proves anything about 
 fourteenth-century handwriting, the opinion falls for 
 want of support. Nor is it for a moment to be supposed 
 that a poem like the " Divine Comedy," which bears 
 strong internal evidence in parts of having been written 
 by a clerk imbued with that widespread anti-papal feeling 
 which led to the Keformation, should, if written in the 
 fourteenth century, have remained unknown at Monte 
 Cassino until so late an epoch. What we are to think 
 of the legend of Dante depends on the exacting critical 
 examination of the Villani Chronicle. Here, again, 
 Hardouin has anticipated the works of some recent 
 scholars. The doubts which beset the Villani Chronicle 
 are those which beset the whole system of the Chronicles 
 of the West. My object in this place is to point out 
 that the rise of the ideal of St. Thomas of Aquino is part 
 of one question with the rise of the ideal of the " holy 
 blissful martyr " of Canterbury, and many other analog- 
 ous forms. I must anticipate, and say that the origin of 
 these ideals was in the pious imagination of the monks 
 and friars ; and that their written legends cannot be traced 
 higher than the latter half of the fifteenth century, f 
 
 I take up the thread of the argument at the point of 
 Dom Tosti's statement in respect to a Library state of 
 at Monte Cassino. If you make an induction ^^^'■^"®^- 
 of the evidence, you will find that the legends of earlier 
 
 * See Tosti and Mai, " Specil. Rom.," v. 221 ; and '* Script. Vet.," iii. 2, 183. 
 t Cf. Thomas Stapleton, the translator of Bede— " On the Three 
 Thomases," 1588. 
 
68 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 libraries nielt away before the admitted fact of the late 
 origin of the Libraries in Monte Cassino, in Eome under 
 Nicolas v., in Venice under Cardinal Bessarion, at 
 Spanheim under Abbot Trithemius, at Paris, Canter- 
 bury or Oxford under various names. At Oxford the 
 legend of Duke Humphrey's Library survives. This was 
 late in the fifteenth century. It is said to have con- 
 sisted of a mere 129 books, which is probably near to 
 the truth. Nor can we for a moment think of any 
 collection of books worthy the name of an English 
 Library in modern acceptation until the time of Sir 
 Thomas Bodley. Thomas Aquinas could not have been 
 honoured as an Illustrious Doctor until library culture 
 was far advanced and the teachers called Summists 
 began to be busy in the schools of the West. 
 
 It is the same case with the lists of illustrious 
 Lists of scholars in Monte Cassino and the other 
 scholars. cloistcrs. Tlicsc Hsts had to be made out in 
 obedience to the theory of early Church culture, but 
 they prove on examination to be equally fragile with 
 the lists of books. It is the theory of Church studies, 
 which were quite in their infancy during the period of 
 forming libraries, which is illustrated in these Catalogues 
 of the past Illustrious. We come upon the remarkable 
 fact that, although the monks pretend they have had 
 important scholars like '* Dionysius Exiguus," Abbot 
 of Rome, as they call him, in the sixth century from 
 the time of the old Empire — at the brilliant epoch of the 
 Renaissance they can produce none, or next to none at 
 all, who flourished in the fifteenth century. 
 
 Thus the Monte Cassino tradition names in that age 
 Seeming nouc but the Very learned monk Pyrrhus, 
 intiftfe^ Referendary of Martin V., and Conservator of 
 Revival. ^j^^ rights of the church of St. Justina, under 
 
FABLES OF THE BENEDICTINE SCHOOLS. 69 
 
 Eugeuius IV. There are, says Dom Gattola, a number 
 of MS. sermons and expositions referable to this period, 
 but it is not known whether they were written by monks 
 of the cloister. How is this strange seeming silence and 
 somnolence at Monte Cassino amidst all the excitement 
 of reviving intellectual activity to be accounted for ? I 
 have stood long in imagination on Monte Cassino, 
 pondering these things. I have made many excursions 
 to the daughter cloisters of the West. I have made a 
 careful use of the historic telescope. And I may save 
 the student some profitless fatigue of research if I 
 announce at once the explanation which appears to me 
 the only correct one of this curious phenomenon. The 
 scheme of Benedictine literature was laid down and 
 began to be executed close upon the time when a collec- 
 tion of books is known to have existed in the cloister. 
 Our terminus a quo is the rough date of the Printing 
 Press (for it cannot be exactly discovered), or the 
 Pontificate of Paul II., and our terminus ad quern is 
 about the year 1524, when the noise of the great 
 Innovation and the attack upon the papal monarchy 
 had filled the world. The doings at Monte Cassino and 
 the other cloisters are wrapped in darkness during the 
 late fifteenth century. In the next age intense curiosity 
 is felt among the inquiring monks and friars to read 
 the book which is a novelty in the world — I mean, the 
 Bible. 
 
 When once by effort of steady attention to the 
 admitted facts you have pierced the cloud of fable that 
 has gathered about the height of Monte Cassino, you 
 will descry a Scriptorium there for the first time in the 
 late fifteenth century ; and you will observe a knot of 
 the Black Monks busy in writing works which are to 
 be issued to the world by-and-by with the names of 
 
70 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Paul the Deacon,* Peter tlie Deacon, Paul the Monk, 
 and many others, including St. Peter Damiani. The 
 ecclesiastical names of Peter and Paul are beloved in 
 Monte Cassino ; they took their rise on that spot. 
 
 It is in consistence with the opinion just indicated 
 Monte respecting the late origin of literature on 
 
 tiiTsix*te?nth Monte Cassino that there should have sud- 
 century. (Jenly occurrcd in the sixteenth century a 
 great outburst of learning and eloquence in that 
 Coenobium. Poets, Orators, Historians, Philosophers, 
 Theologians, Canonists, Polygiottists spring up as if at 
 some magic touch. Among them is distinguished the 
 name of an Englishman, Gregory Sayre, who alone (the 
 Benedictines say) would have been a great ornament to 
 the sacred mount. Abbot Angelo de Nuce gives a list 
 of other Englishmen of good family, learning and virtue, 
 who found a home during this age in the cloister. 
 
 In short, it was not until the sixteenth century that 
 the Benedictines were fully aroused from the long 
 intellectual indolence they had indulged. The use of 
 typography ; the discovery of a new world ; the disturb- 
 ance among the Orders in England, France, and Germany ; 
 the uprise of the Jesuits on the one hand, on the other 
 of the Lutherans ; — all stimulated the followers of the 
 Patriarch of Monachism to make good in literature the 
 position they had won and held so long by the sword. 
 Men looked to the monasteries, knowing that there, if 
 anywhere, must lie the best keys to knowledge. The 
 Benedictines seized the opportunity. They had no 
 registers, no genuine records of a long past. They had 
 little more than the bare Dogma of the Incarnation 
 out of which to construct a theory of history, to be 
 
 * This name is the link with England. He is said first to write of 
 " Anglo-Saxons." 
 
FABLES OF THE BENEDICTINE SCHOOLS. 71 
 
 converted into historic forms by the aid of Jewish, 
 Arabic and classical literature. 
 
 They did not altogether escape censure, as the 
 memory of Laurence Valla and of Poggio teaches. 
 There are floating sayings reported from Kome at the 
 epoch under consideration which hint of a state of mind 
 on the part of the more educated men of scoffing in- 
 credulity towards monkish history. They are not easily 
 forgotten. A monkish biographer of Paul 11. reports 
 that there was some club or guild of young men in 
 Kome who regarded the orthodox faith as ''resting on 
 certain tricks of saints, rather than on true testi- 
 mony.'' And who can dispossess his memory of the 
 saying put into the mouth of the genial and secular- 
 minded Pope Leo X, — " How projitahle to us that fable of 
 Jesus Christ ! " To organize men in the service of 
 interested Fable is easy ; and the systematic industry 
 of the Benedictines, directed by the coolest of intellects, 
 gained the day over the exposures and the protests of 
 struggling scholars who had a genuine taste for antiquity 
 and for truth. That saintly manner of the leading 
 Benedictines which some scholars knew to be the 
 disguise of hypocrisy and fraud has imposed upon a 
 multitude of others as if it were a guarantee of veracity. 
 They were not aware, or they were unwilling to own, 
 that the union of orthodoxy with daring fiction was 
 from the first inseparable. 
 
72 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 
 
 The reader who is conversant with the Latin tongue 
 may form for himself a very clear idea of the Scheme of 
 the Literature of the Order, executed under the direc- 
 tion of the ablest Prelates during a period I am en- 
 deavouring to determine, by consulting the History of 
 that Literature published in 1754 by Dom Ziegelbauer 
 and Dom Legipont. But, for the sake of readers who 
 do not find ready access to the work, or who are 
 acquainted only with English, I will here extract from 
 those volumes a general view of the subject-matter. 
 Theology is, of course, as with all the ecclesiastical 
 organizations, the governing principle of the 
 structure. And Theology is divided into 
 Positive, Scholastic, Dogmatic-Polemic, Moral, Mystic, 
 and Ascetic. 
 
 Positive Theology consists of two parts : the ex- 
 planation of the Scriptures, and the knowledge of the 
 dogmas of the faith. Both are derived from the reading 
 of the " Fathers," the Councils, and the Traditions. 
 The great Law-giver, St. Benet, constantly cites 
 Scripture in his Eule, thus showing his appre- 
 ciation of it. Generally he cites the Vulgate, 
 but sometimes the " Seventy." It is further said that 
 St. Benet follows the example of the Saviour in 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 73 
 
 blending two half-verses of a Psalm into one citation. 
 Father Haeften, a member of the Order, has also 
 pointed out that St. Benet in certain places does not 
 follow the Gospel in his allusions to persons of the 
 Gospel time. For example, the Publican is supposed 
 to say, "Lord, I am not worthy, sinner that I am, 
 to lift my eyes to Heaven." The explanation given 
 is that St. Benet infers these words from what St. 
 Luke relates. But the true explanation is that the 
 Kule and the Gospels were the production of the same 
 Order ; and the Rule may have been composed at a 
 time when the text of the Gospels was not yet fixed. 
 So lax, indeed, were the habits of the writers, yet so 
 fluid the tradition, St. Benet means by Scripture not 
 merely the sacred writings, but anything written by 
 saint or celebrated author. Again, the true explanation 
 is that the Benedictine Literature was constructed upon 
 the system of sentences. A series of " Says he," or 
 "It is written " were gradually made the property of 
 named, yet ideal persons. 
 
 Thus Flowers of Speech, supposed to be taken from 
 the Holy Fathers, adorn the chapters of the Rule. 
 But then the modern Benedictines say that it is hard 
 to make out how much of the " Fathers " the Legislator 
 knew. This may be understood to mean that the 
 process of constructing those writings had not long- 
 been begun when the Rule was edited. When " St. 
 Basil the Great " or " St. Clement of Rome" is named 
 as a great theologian, whose influence is owned in the 
 Rule, it is that the same wares seem enhanced in value 
 by being placed under various high-sounding names. 
 St. Benet is not made to name St. Clement of Rome, 
 although the modern Benedictines have seen that the 
 fourth chapter of the Rule is substantially the same 
 
74 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 with Clementine writings. The reason, they say, is 
 that the false " Isidore the Merchant " took the chapter 
 from St. Benet and set it down to Clement. It was 
 Mabillon* who exposed this trick of literary suborna- 
 tion ; but it was not for Mabillon to say that the names 
 and dates attached to the old literature were worthless 
 as evidence of anything, so long as the deeds of forgers 
 and suborners had not been fully ascertained and 
 exposed. 
 
 It is the fact of anonymous collaboration in the 
 Scriptoria which explains the doubt about the works 
 of " St. Augustine," whether they had been read by 
 St. Benet or not. It is clearly seen that phrases and 
 sentences in the Kule are identical with those in 
 works ascribed to *' St. Augustine ; " f a passage on the 
 bodily death of Ananias and Sapphira may be found in 
 the two documents, which shows a common origin. 
 Father Haeften would have it that the Legislator had 
 also deflowered that fragrant Garden, " The Epistles 
 of St. Jerome," of some of its sweets. But he owns 
 not the debt. Impossible not to smile at these con- 
 jectures. The good monks of a modern critical time 
 are so infatuated with their idol or ideal, the Proto- 
 parent or Paterfamilias of the Order, they must assume 
 his personality behind the Eule, and invent explanations 
 of these curious phenomena in accord with that theory. 
 But the plain literary fact is that the saints who precede 
 and those who follow the Leorislator are mere con- 
 veniences of romantic necessity, and were born into 
 the literary world about the same time. 
 
 There can be left no doubt upon the mind of 
 any clear-sighted reader, from the confessions of the 
 
 * Ann., lect. 1, 142. 
 
 t " Rule of St. Benedict," cap. 60, Augustin Ser. 148. 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINifi LITERATURE. 75 
 
 Benedictines themselves, that the Christian Scriptures, 
 from which they deduce all their system, had been by 
 them first deduced from the Scriptures of the Syna- 
 gogue. It is they alone who have the key to the 
 New Testament parables or allegories. By him " who 
 brings out of his treasury things new and old " is 
 meant each Abbot of the Order who is skilled in the 
 Divine Law. They were, indeed, partly imitators, 
 partly inventors in literature ; while the mass of their 
 monastic children were nothing but parrot-like reciters 
 of what they had been taught to commit to memory ; 
 which was little more than the Psalms, in the sinewing 
 of which their *' mind was to agree with their voice." 
 They must understand something of the meaning of 
 the words. 
 
 After St. Benedict, '' Cassiodore " of the Calabrian 
 cloister at Vivaria is made to declaim vaguely on 
 Divine learning. His companion was " Dionysius the 
 Small" (Exiguus), a great Scriptural scholar, the first 
 Christian chronologer who began dating the years from 
 the Incarnation. At Eome, during the same age, we 
 are introduced to " St. Gregory the Great," who had 
 made great j)rogress in Theology under an ex-monk of 
 Monte Cassino, the archmonastery of the Order, and 
 who took particular interest in the writings of "St. 
 Augustine." All the Gregorian literature and romance 
 is again a part of the product of what I have called 
 the Benedictine Round Table of the Revival of Letters. 
 The Gregorian system of Biblical interpretation, with 
 all its artifice and false science, shows how impossible 
 it was for the monk to admit the common people to 
 the unaided perusal of the Scriptures. We in England 
 are supposed to have great veneration for this our 
 apostle and distinguished allegorist. He is made to 
 
76 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 admit that he understands neither Hebrew nor Greek ; 
 he is content with the Italic and the " new version 
 of Jerome." In other words, the Gregorian style is 
 late fifteenth or early sixteenth century ; the time 
 when our ancestors began to hear of this Pontiff who 
 had sent Augustine and other Benedictines to those 
 shores, and a variety of other novel *' histories." 
 
 It is certainly a pleasant thing to be taught 
 Theology under the forms of Biography. The pro- 
 cession of Benedictine theologians seems to march 
 across the mental stage, each carrying his portly tomes 
 under his arm. But when you request permission to 
 examine these tomes, and discover that the contents 
 are all of one substance, and that not one of these 
 scholars has dared to speak a new or spontaneous 
 word, that they are all essentially in one tale, the 
 illusion vanishes. The great system dwindles into 
 small bulk ; and you cannot but suspect an amused 
 smile upon the faces of the men w^ho knew with how 
 little wit the world is deceived, and how a few simple 
 devices might succeed in producing the impression that 
 the secret theological toil of a few decades had been 
 going on for many ages. Bede, first heard of as an 
 ancient monk of Wearmouth in the early Tudor 
 time, and exalted to Venerability during the same 
 period, duly succeeds in the illustrious Roll, in turn 
 duly pointing to Greek and Latin scholars in the 
 South and North who had preceded him. You will 
 find in " Bede " the historical, mystical, and moral 
 theology of the Benedictines once more repeated. 
 
 Then " St. Boniface " and his coterie of imaginary 
 Benedictines of a monastery near Oxford make their 
 appearance — all luminous Biblical men in dark ages 
 when the Bible had never, been heard of. Then there 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 77 
 
 is the Northumbrian professor Iglac, after whose death 
 letters are again '* forgotten," as the imaginary " Council 
 of Cloveshoe " deplores " in the year 747." Then there 
 is a Eevival under " Alcuin," another imaginary Bene- 
 dictine, and his disciple, the Abbot of Fulda, who is 
 disguised under the curious appellation of " Kabanus 
 Maurus." The monks of the connected cloisters of 
 St. Gall, of Luxeuil, of Ferrieres, Auxerre, Kheims, 
 Orbais, Weissenburg, and other places, all set up their 
 corresponding ideals. The monastery of Corbey claims 
 the noted names of " Paschasius Eadbertus," and others. 
 All of them drink of the same fountain, the writings of 
 the four great Benedictine Doctors, " SS. Augustine, 
 Ambrose, Jerome, Gregory," besides "John of the 
 Golden Mouth," and the " Venerable Bede," also 
 "Tertullian." Corbey sends out a swarm to found 
 New Corbey in Saxony, which was conscious of all 
 the divisions of opinion brought to light at the Great 
 Schism. 
 
 The School of Bee can boast of her proud creations 
 in " Lanfranc," " St. Anselm," and through these of 
 a shoal of fresh theologians in an impossible age. We 
 come in the twelfth century to *' St. Peter Damiani," 
 who, the Benedictines themselves admit, could hardly 
 have had the University rank assigned to him in an 
 age when Universities could hardly be said to exist. 
 There are the Odos of Cluny and Canterbury, there is 
 Kalph of Westminster ; there is the romantic story 
 of Peter Abelard and his female disciple — an imitation 
 of that of Jerome and Paula and Eustochium. And 
 so we slowly descend the centuries, without marking 
 any progress in literary culture. When we arrive at 
 last at the epoch of the celebrated Trithemius, Abbot 
 of Spanheim, as it is said, during the important period 
 
78 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 1480-15 20, we find him in bitter conflict with his 
 slothful monks, who are not to be induced to study 
 the Scriptures nor any other books. The Abbot is 
 in the habit of calling his monks '^ frogs." They in 
 turn reviled their learned Father. " We want an abbot 
 who will plough the fields, not one who trades in 
 words " — an arator, not an orator. Eichard of Kidder- 
 minster, Abbot of Winchcombe, is said (on Antony 
 Wood's authority) to have been a great champion 
 against Luther. But the monks were forbidden to 
 read the Lutheran books ; and the study of Theology 
 must have been very limited among them until after 
 the Council of Trent. At last in the next age we come 
 to the name of a scholar of wide reputation, the 
 Abbot Calmet (1672-1757), one of whose controversial 
 opponents was a man who laid the cause of Letters 
 under great debt — Father Eichard Simon, the Oratorian, 
 1638-1712. 
 
 It is not necessary to pursue in a similar manner 
 the biographical story of the other branches of Theology 
 through the same series of ages. The same names, 
 wdth others of the like origin in the idealizing pro- 
 pensities of the literary faction in the monasteries 
 of the West, recur ; and the result is still the same, 
 that in the age immediately following the invention 
 of printing, these various branches of Theology are 
 only beginning to be known and studied, either in the 
 cloisters where they had been composed, or in the 
 outside world. 
 
 The next branch of Benedictine learning is Eccle- 
 church siastical Jurisprudence, civil and public, 
 ^^^' especially of the Eoman- German Empire. 
 
 Omitting the repetition of many imaginary names 
 already given, the notorious Decretum ascribed to 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITER ATUllE. 79 
 
 " Gratian " has been sufficiently exposed by writers 
 of our own time : a violent effort to secure privilege 
 and predominance for the Clergy by means of a series 
 of historic inventions under feigned names, analogous 
 to other parts of the system. No professor of this 
 branch of learning can be authentically ascertained in 
 England during the fifteenth century ; but to Fecken- 
 ham, last Abbot of Westminster, is ascribed a tract 
 against the Oath of Supremacy of the King of England 
 in spiritual causes. 
 
 Again, with reference to the study of Civil Law, the 
 Benedictines produce their St. Aldhelm of 
 Sherborne, then '* Capitularies of the French 
 Kings," then " Laws of the Sainted King Edward " of 
 England, confirmed by " William the Conqueror : " a 
 tale that comes from the noted forge of Croyland Abbey. 
 Theirs also is the tale of Eoger Vacarius, Abbot of Bee, 
 and his teaching of Koman Law in England during 
 the " twelfth century," whereas there is no evidence 
 outside the monasteries of any systematic study of 
 Law until the sixteenth century, whether within or 
 without the cloisters. 
 
 It is, I believe, one of the examples of a cynical, 
 half-jesting temper which may again and again be 
 detected in the contrivance of these stories, that when 
 the monks are asked. Who was the first Jurisperite 
 among you ? the bland answer is given, *' It was one 
 SpeciosuSy who was sent by the Holy Father Benedict 
 to Terracina and had the care of the temporalities." 
 The authority is the famous Gregorian " Dialogues ; " and 
 the initiated may admire the speciousness of the tale. 
 
 The Benedictines had no genuine philosophy, but the 
 dialectical sophistry which they dignify by that 
 
 , n 111 Philosophy. 
 
 name is as beiore, arranged under the names 
 
8o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of their imaginary illustrious men, from " Cassioclore " 
 downwards. The " logic of St. Augustine " is theirs ; 
 and they make King Alfred appoint a Benedictine first 
 professor of Philosophy at Oxford. It is doubtless true 
 that the Aristotelian philosophy has through their means 
 struck deep roots into the schools of Europe. Reaction 
 against it was reaction against Benedictine Eule. 
 
 In Moral Philosophy the most holy Father St. 
 Benedict was instructed from above. He is primate 
 in this science. " They say that Socrates was the first 
 to call down Ethics from Heaven ; but how much more 
 truly might this be affirmed of St. Benedict, whose 
 Sacred Rule was written under the afflatus of the Holy 
 Spirit, as the Sacred Councils attest ! Who would for 
 a moment compare the Greek philosopher's writing with 
 that inspired Eule ? " * Ethics, then, is the peculiar 
 boast of the Benedictines. Gregory the Great is 
 " the Christian Seneca ; " Peter the Venerable of 
 Cluny is distinguished in this department, with Peter 
 Abelard and Peter of Poictiers. 
 
 The motto of their philosophy is, " Come unto me, 
 and I will give you rest'' The Sermon on the Mount 
 is their composition. The blessing on the Poor in Spirit 
 is the blessing on the life of the cloister. The w^ay to 
 true beatitude is here laid open, for the God Man sits in 
 the cathedra of Truth. It is Benedictines who say that 
 all other philosophy is wisdom of this world and folly 
 with God. They insist on putting into the mouth of 
 Incarnate God the emphatic commendation of poverty 
 of spirit which is intended at the same time as a 
 denunciation of that natural joy and pride which the 
 mind feels in the acquisition of knowledge. They 
 insist on making their Apostle Paul exhort men to be 
 
 * Ziegelbauer, " Hist. Litt.," ii. 292. 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 8i 
 
 fools that they may be wise. A.way with the gabble 
 of Logic, the curious pursuits of Physics ; boast of 
 nothing except Christ Jesus, and Him crucified ! Similar 
 thinofs will be found in the writinsjs of the oft-mentioned 
 Abbot Trithemius of Spanheim ; a perfect " king " in 
 moral philosophy. It signifies naught whether the 
 Apostle Paul be supposed to speak, or the spiritual 
 head of a German monastery who represented Christ 
 and the Apostles in his own person. There is little 
 to be said, and it is said over and over again. The 
 Philosophy of the Christians is the only Wisdom, Truth, 
 Highest Good. It consists in knowing the will of your 
 superiors and in being submissive to it. If it is called 
 the " Knowledge of Jesus Christ," this is but a well- 
 understood figure for knowledge derivable only from 
 the Abbatial source. 
 
 According to their principles, the Canonical saying, 
 " I was sick, and ye visited Me," is made the 
 precedent for all acts of healing ; and in the 
 Kule of St. Benet it is taught in the same way that ser- 
 vice to the sick is in reality and truth service to Christ. 
 The language is very emphatic. Then, once more, the 
 illustrious men of the Order from ** Cassiodore " are 
 cited to the same eff'ect ; Bede is adduced as having 
 some knowledge of phebotomy, and Archbishop Theo- 
 dore was of opinion that the fourth day of the moon 
 is dangerous for bleeding, because the light and the 
 rheum of the ocean are on the increase. New Corbey 
 and St. Gall are said to have been noted for their 
 medical men. The monks of Monte Oassino claim 
 some part in the medical school of Salerno. The date 
 of its foundation is not known ; but it is clear from the 
 legends of the monks themselves that the Medical Art 
 was introduced by the Mohammedans into Italy and 
 
 G 
 
82 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the West. At some time the monks were forbidden to 
 practice outside the cloisters ; there is no reason to 
 suppose that there was much medical knowledge within 
 them at the time of the Eenaissance ; although it is 
 asserted that Paracelsus was indebted to the writings of 
 that omniscient scholar, Trithemius. An example of the 
 formulae by which diseases were supposed to be cured is 
 given : " In the blood of Adam death arose, in the blood 
 of Christ death was extinguished. In the same blood 
 of Christ, I command thee, blood, to restrain thy 
 flow." These were to be written on parchment and 
 suspended on the body. 
 
 The Benedictines delighted in the pseudo-science of 
 Natural Magic. It is they who have told the 
 and Secret romautic talcs about Gcrbcrt or Sylvester II., 
 1 osop y. ^^^ ^^^ make the great Trithemius a prac- 
 titioner of this art, of which the Three Magi from 
 the East are prototypical in the Gospel. Alchymy, 
 however, being exploded with the diffusion of sound 
 knowledge, it was discovered that the true way to 
 obtain money when it w^as needed, was by manual 
 labour or by prayer, according to the recommendation 
 of St. Benet. 
 
 The monastic Trivium consisted of Grammar, Ehe- 
 toric, and Logic; the Quadrivium of Arithmetic, 
 Geometry, Astronomy, and Music. Astro- 
 nomy was necessary for the Ecclesiastical Compute and 
 Calendar ; and it is one of the proofs of the late origin 
 of the Benedictine system of education that nowhere in 
 Europe was the study of astronomy beginning outside 
 the monasteries until the late fifteenth century ; w^hile the 
 increasing troubles about the observance of Easter which 
 led to the reformation of the Calendar in the sixteenth 
 century show how recent it was in cultivation by the 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 8 
 
 Order. In truth, no study seems to have been less 
 congenial to the true monk, who must have known, as 
 he was initiated into the science, that from this quarter 
 a fatal blow was to be dealt at his whole system. 
 
 There is some efifort to trace the rise of Church 
 Music to St. Benet himself, who, with his twin- ,^ , 
 Sister Scholastica, sang m his mothers womb. 
 The association of Gregory the Great with the art is also 
 conventional ; and the Benedictines boast of excelling 
 in this art, so congenial to a system resting more upon 
 emotion than intelligence, all the other Christian 
 families. 
 
 We come now to the subject of the greatest im- 
 portance. History ; the nature of which, in the History, 
 conception of the Benedictines, has been so ^^°'^^^' 
 long misunderstood. Sacred or Ecclesiastical History 
 consists of Hagiography, or Lives of the Saints, in which 
 " Gregory the Great " is said to have led the way. The 
 products of this branch of Benedictine art should be 
 compared with early Church painting, that their quality 
 may be understood. The portraits are not drawn from 
 the life, but from certain apostolic ideals of character to 
 be found in all their writings. 
 
 The Lives of the Eoman PontiiBfs is another branch 
 of the art. The fable of their beginning Lives of the 
 with Anastasius in the " ninth century " has '^^^^^' 
 long been exploded ; nor is there the slightest reason to 
 suppose that they were put in execution until that pecu- 
 liarly obscure time at Monte Cassino, the late fifteenth 
 century, which precedes the outbreak of admitted literary 
 efifort in the arch -monastery. This is not the place 
 to examine the principles of those Lives, which have 
 been written as examples to be admired or to be 
 shunned. Supposing them to have been conceived 
 
84 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 about the time of the great Schism, a careful 
 analysis might show that in them are to be found 
 in allegorical form reflections of the actual state 
 of things at the Papal Court which led to widespread 
 revolt. 
 
 Another part of the system, laboured upon similar 
 Lives of principles, was the Lives of the Bishops. An 
 ^^'^*^P'- example is the "Life of St. Dionysius the 
 Areopagite," written by a monk of his cloister in Paris, 
 and assigned to " Hilduin " of '* the ninth century." 
 There can be no question that St. Dionysius of the 
 Acts of the Apostles and St. Denis of Paris were 
 originally one and the same mythic person. A dis- 
 cussion, however, arose upon the question in the seven- 
 teenth century between the critics and the " Areopagites." 
 
 It would be extremely interesting if we could point 
 Church to the monastery where the first general 
 History. d^urch History, bearing the name of 
 *' Eusebius Pamphili," was composed. If " Cassiodore " 
 denotes the Calabrian monastery in a district where 
 there were many Greeks, it may have been there that 
 the " Tripartite History " was composed. But when they 
 pretend that it was rendered into Latin from the Greek 
 authors, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, by his friend 
 Epiphanius, this is a tale which should probably be 
 read in the inverse sense. About Eusebius we learn 
 the book was the peculiar delight of " Hay mo of 
 Halberstadt," and that he made an Epitome of it. But 
 once more it is the great Abbot of Trithemius who 
 appears to be above all master of Ecclesiastical History. 
 He discusses the story of ApoUonius of Tyana and the 
 fabulous propensities of the Greeks in a way that hints 
 how thoroughly old models were studied by the best of 
 the Benedictine artists. 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. S5 
 
 The stories of the Crusades, attributed to "Robert of 
 Rheims," "Fulcher of Chartres," " Guibert, Abbot of 
 Nogent," and some others, are all Benedictine produc- 
 tions. These fall under Sacred Story, as their object 
 was the " Recovery of the Holy Land." It is presumable 
 that they were useful in stimulating that an ti- Moham- 
 medan feeling which was aroused by the perils which 
 threatened Western Europe after the capture of Con- 
 stantinople by the Turks. 
 
 The object of the abbots in meddling with what 
 they termed Profane History at all was that profane and 
 they might teach their monks and all under ^^^^^^^'^''^• 
 their influence how vain were all the pleasures and 
 praises of "the world," and to wean them from the 
 love of it. Their feats of interpolating and mangling 
 the Roman classics I have referred to in another place. 
 They had thus contrived to confirm the falsehood that 
 Christianity began in the early days of the Roman 
 Empire, and had never ceased to exist 'in some form 
 down to the Revival of Letters. They are proud to 
 quote our countrymen, Sir John Marsham and j^ntony 
 "Wood, who insisted that all our knowledge of " English 
 History " before the Reformation was derived from " the 
 monks," although none of our countrymen were aware 
 that *Hhe monks" were not an irregular band or 
 succession of occasional writers, but a knot of systematic 
 artists. The long string of Benedictine writers under 
 various noms de plume need not here be cited. So 
 soon as we quit the shade of St. Albans, and inquire 
 at what time any member of the general public 
 knew of these writings and perused them, the answer 
 can be given with the greatest clearness, decision, 
 and emphasis, " Not until the reign of King Henry 
 VHL" 
 
86 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTUBE. 
 
 Father Mabillon thought the Chronicle of Fontanelle 
 iMonastic and ^0 be of '* the ninth century," and to be the 
 History*'^^ oldcst spccimen of this kind of composition 
 Chronicles, jj^ existcncc. Howcvcr, the " History of the 
 Abbots of Wearmouth " ascribed to ''the Venerable Bede" 
 has the prior claim ; only, it should be remembered that 
 this precious work was not brought to light until the 
 seventeenth century. Fulda and St. Gall also produce 
 *' ninth century " Chronicles ; but their literary activity 
 cannot have begun before the time of Abbot Trithemius, 
 whose "Annals of Hirschau" should be compared in 
 this connection. The Chronicle of Monte Cassino is 
 assigned to *' the eleventh century," also that of 
 Gemblours in the bishopric of Namur, and many 
 others. 
 
 By one of the curious accidents common in the case 
 of monastic literature in the thirteenth century, all the 
 chronograph ers suddenly vanish, and the Monasteriologi 
 did not numerously addict themselves to labour during 
 the following age. In the fifteenth century the inertia 
 of the monks increases, and we find the inevitable 
 Trithemius declaiming upon the subject towards the close 
 of that age. A bright exception to the general paucity 
 of labourers in this field is, however, furnished by 
 England, who can point to the Benedictines, " Hugh 
 Candid " and his story of Peterborough, Joscelin and 
 his " Chronicle of Bury," John of Wallingford with his 
 list of the defunct brethren of the profession of St. 
 Alban, Matthew Paris' " Chronica Majora" of St. Albans, 
 and his " Gesta " of the twenty- two abbots of the same 
 monastery, Matthew of Westminster and his " Kes 
 Gestae" at Westminster. But it will be shown that 
 none of these chroniclers were writing till the six- 
 teenth or late fifteenth century. 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 87 
 
 If we could certainly fix upon a Benedictine who 
 at the time of printing was able and willing jjgj^p^jig^.jjjg 
 to furnish a correct and authenticated list bibiio- 
 
 grapners. 
 
 of the writers of the Order and of their extant 
 writings, there might be an end at once to the discussion 
 on the antiquity of their literature. The difficulty is still 
 to find a secular scholar who examined and verified their 
 lists. Now, the Benedictines must have told John 
 Leland, who made the tour of the English monasteries 
 about the years 1533-39, that ''William of Gilling- 
 ham," a Canterbury monk, had made a Bibliography 
 of all the Benedictine writings. Their tale was false; 
 for our famous Abbot Trithemius of Spanheim knows 
 nothing about such a work. On the contrary, he 
 is said to deplore the fact that the Order had no 
 catalogue of its illustrious literary men, and himself 
 sets about the work with greater zeal than judgment, 
 as the historians of 1754 say. This is one of the 
 most striking pieces of evidence which goes to prove 
 that it was in the very time when literary study began 
 to flourish in Germany that the whole system of fiction 
 was laid down. Cluny, another great seat of this 
 activity, seems to have been later in the field. 
 
 I would now ofier to the consideration of the 
 reader a document of considerable import- _ .^^ 
 
 ' 1 r . /> 1 The Abbot 
 
 ance with reference to the question of the of Erfurt on 
 origin and epoch of Benedictine histories. It 
 is the " Claustral Discourse on History addressed to 
 the Fathers of the Sacred Cons^reeration of Bursfeld 
 by the Abbot of Erfurt, in the year 1481."* 
 
 In the usual flowery, somewhat schoolboyish style 
 of the monks, the good abbot compares History to 
 the sun ; for as there can be no light nor warmth 
 * " Hist. Rei Litt. Ord. S. Benedicti," 1754, Pars 2, p. 423. 
 
88 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 apart from the sun, so there can be no authority or 
 stability in human affairs without history. God Him- 
 self has left to us in the Books commonly called the 
 Bible nothing but history. Except the poetical books, 
 all is '^ pure story " written with Divine pen, full of 
 most weighty matters. The Prophets tell Stories. The 
 most holy Gospels are simply a book of Stories, the 
 Passion of the Lord is Story, and nothing more. In 
 preaching and exposition you must have Story, and 
 can do nothing without it. Story is soothing as the 
 song whereby the mother lulls the crying child to 
 sleep. Poets wrap up their mysteries, sacred and pro- 
 fane, in figments — that is, tales ingeniously feigned and 
 painted. 
 
 The good abbot is emphatic on the point: The 
 ivhole of Theology is an historical study. Legists 
 quote their Acts, which are histories, good or bad. 
 Medical men rely on reason and experience ; and this 
 is combined of many years' stories. Apart from History 
 the whole of Art is lame and stunted. History is 
 diflfused through the whole of Philosophy, whether 
 speculative or practical. Mathesis relies on observa- 
 tions, that is, on History. Each age and sex, every 
 human being, great and small, delights in story. 
 When the clowns talk with one another in taverns, they 
 are eager for stories, they want to know what has 
 happened in the neighbourhood, what news there is of 
 war or peace. In a word. Story rules, adorns, delights, 
 and sustains the whole world. 
 
 The Abbot of Erfurt, after this eloquent statement, 
 proceeds to express his wonder at the fact that Historical 
 Study (without which no man can be soundly educated) 
 is only taught so coldly, so poorly, so awkwardly in 
 our monasteries, " when it is taught at all." Again, he 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 89 
 
 is emphatic : " Sacred and Profane History must he 
 conjoined, if we ivould more accurately know, and more 
 studiously understand, the Divine providence by which 
 all things are governed. Therefore a learned Master of 
 History ought to have been appointed in all the 
 monasteries to inform the younger brethren — nay, the 
 elder brethren (for these are mostly babes in the study) 
 — faithfully at certain hours. How great would be the 
 gain from this, more than of silver or of gold ! how 
 great the experience of affairs ! how great the influence 
 and veneration to our Order ! 
 
 *' The writers on Natural History," he continues, 
 ** have noticed various monsters, but I have been unable 
 to find a brainless one. Man, indeed, according to 
 Plato, is a wonder monster, as the Most Holy Trinity 
 shows, and points out in him their highest artifice, 
 wisdom, clemency, and goodness, and man shows in 
 little the wonders of the whole world. He, forsooth, 
 who is ignorant of History I would call a monster, but 
 in another sense." The heads of the Sacred Congrega- 
 tion are then vehemently exhorted to see to it that this 
 Divine study flourishes. They must shun — " Monstrum 
 illud horrendum, cui lumen rationis ademptum " — 
 the ignorance of history 1 '* He that hath ears to 
 hear, let him hear." 
 
 The Abbot of Erfurt has been amazed, his tongue 
 has cleaved to the roof of his mouth, his utterance has 
 been choked, when he has found prelates of the Order 
 of St. Benedict actually more dumb than fishes when 
 they were questioned about the founders and the fore- 
 runners in the monasteries. They had nothing to say, 
 or they were confused and hesitating, utterly ignorant 
 of all antiquity. " The Institutes of our Order are not 
 to idle, to eat, or drink, or sing Psalms in the choir, or 
 
90 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 pray in the cell, but to beset the schools, and in 
 them faithfully to learn sacred letters and good arts and 
 sciences. Among these History triumphs and rules as 
 a Queen given us by God." 
 
 The following exhortations show how novel and how 
 irksome to the generality of the abbots was any literary 
 task. " If you agree among yourselves and make this 
 statute, so that any prelate ought to be anxious about 
 writing the Annals or History of his monastery, wbat 
 better, more useful, etc., could be done ? Suppose the 
 abbot himself has no leisure, surely he can delegate a 
 brother to the work. How useful this work, were it 
 but carried out ! Every mouastery would have its 
 privileges, documents, and acts in a small compass, like 
 Homer, in a nutshell." Further observations show the 
 intense anxiety about the conservation of privileges in 
 time of persecution, and about the discovery of founders ; 
 which led to the construction of so great a multitude of 
 foundation legends. 
 
 Certainly the good abbot insists that " the historian 
 must be a lover of truth, who will not knowingly write 
 anything but what has happened. But if you are 
 sometimes deceived by a false narrative, wearing the 
 appearance of truth, you will be pardoned by good and 
 candid men." It would have been more to the point if 
 the abbot had pointed out where the registers were, if 
 any, which supplied the materials to the would-be 
 historian. But he continues to the end in the same 
 vague manner of declaration. 
 
 " You are not human without History. We are not 
 monks without it ; nay, without History none can be 
 saved. The venerable saying came down from heaven : 
 Know thyself ! How are you to know yourself without 
 History ? 'Tis History that tells you how the holiest 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 91 
 
 man chose this life in preference to all the delights of 
 the world. The Passion of the Lord is our exaltation, 
 and exaltation our consolation and eternal salvation. 
 Who ever taught or learned it without History ? It is 
 admitted, indeed, that St. Benedict himself despised the 
 study of letters in his desire to please God. And yet 
 he did not despise History ; for St. Gregory the Great, 
 in writing St. Benedict's Life, wrote nothing but 
 historical narrations." 
 
 But it is needless to quote more of this tire- 
 some declamation, which, if composed in 1481, concurs 
 with other evidence to prove that literary culture 
 was yet in its infancy among the generality of 
 the abbots. As for their distinction of truth and 
 falsehood in writing, it is by no means that which 
 obtains with the common sense of the world. It would 
 be easy to prove, from other parts of Benedictine 
 writing, that plausible and well-executed fiction in the 
 interests of the Order is thoroughly orthodox, and that 
 mere adherence to plain matter of fact is regarded as a 
 dull or even a dangerous habit. 
 
 The date assigned to this wonderful sermon may be 
 nearly correct ; and if so the document sheds a 
 valuable sidelight upon the state of ignorance in the 
 monasteries about twenty years before Martin Luther 
 (according to the tradition) pounced with delight upon 
 a complete copy of the Latin Bible in that same 
 monastery of Erfurt. 
 
 Father Mabillon is universally admitted to be the 
 founder of the diplomatic art or science. Diplomatic 
 Before his time, in other words, there was no ^^''^^' 
 method or principle in the study of the MSS. which had 
 only been gradually brought to light from the recesses 
 of the monasteries from the time of the Invention of 
 
92 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Printing. About 200 years ago great suspicion arose as 
 to the genuineness, especially, of the Archives of the 
 French monasteries ; and Mabillon, with that ardour of 
 loyalty to his Order which is the mainspring of motive 
 with the true Benedictine, addressed himself to the task 
 of defence. 
 
 Fathers Henschen and Papebroch of the Jesuits had 
 made their vigorous attack on the Benedictine Archives, 
 especially those of St. Denis. They were followed by 
 Father Germon and again by Father Hardouin, who 
 may be considered the most audacious, perhaps because 
 the most knowing and clear-sighted of all ecclesiastical 
 critics. The story of this controversy w^ould be well 
 worth writing afresh from the standpoint of dispassionate 
 criticism ; meanwhile, this much may be said, that it is 
 remarkable any such controversy should have occurred 
 among members of the priesthood at all ; in nowise 
 remarkable that it should speedily have been quelled 
 by authority. The cool lay critic will certainly decide 
 that the Jesuits had reason on their side in demanding 
 proof of the antiquity and genuineness of the Benedictine 
 Archives. The Jesuits must have had good reason to 
 suspect that the elder Order in the Church was not 
 nearly so ancient as it believed itself to be, and good 
 reason to know that a mass of its Instruments were 
 forged. But had they been encouraged to push the 
 argument as far as Hardouin insisted on pushing it, 
 had they firmly denied, for example, that the authentic 
 records of the Catholic Church reached so high as a 
 century before the rise of the Society of Jesus, or the 
 first meeting of the Council of Trent, a revolution must 
 have occurred in the world of Church life and letters. 
 I have alluded to this controversy in another place. 
 Mabillon^s treatise on Diplomatic and his contemporary 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 93 
 
 Montfaucon s treatise on Palaeography remain the standard 
 works in this department. When the question is asked, 
 ''How old is this style, this handwriting ?" and they reply, 
 " It is of such or such a century," the rejoinder must be 
 made, "It is the same Order of monks who have arranged 
 the scheme of centuries, and who have produced corre- 
 sponding handwritings. You cannot prove the writing 
 to be genuine unless you have proved the chronology 
 to be genuine, nor the chronology to be genuine unless 
 you have ascertained the age of the handwriting." 
 Their apology runs in a vicious circle. 
 
 It needs hardly be said that the Benedictines had 
 no need of critical study until, with the spread critical 
 of knowledge and the spirit of inquiry, their ^^^^^^' 
 pretensions were exposed to public examination. The 
 reader may peruse in this connection the particulars of 
 a controversy raised by Cardinal Baronius on the question 
 whether '' Gregory the Great " was in reality a Bene- 
 dictine monk. How ridiculous it is to talk of a critical 
 defence of the position on the ground that Gregory 
 himself bears witness that he is an abbot of the Order, 
 when such self-testimonies are an essential part of the 
 system ! When it is argued against a pretended 
 Gregorian work that it was not published before 1537, 
 and that no MS. of it is extant, this is an argument 
 which applies in its measure to a great mass of "Patristic" 
 writings, which only began to be heard of during the 
 early sixteenth century. But when, on the other hand, 
 it is insisted upon that the missionaries sent by St. 
 Gregory into England were Benedictines, this begs the 
 question. The tale is a Benedictine tale, but the whole 
 question of their historic credibility must be raised at 
 this point, and how far back their records extended 
 at the time of the Revival. 
 
94 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Other attacks made by the Jesuit Father Briet upon 
 the Benedictines as ** Plagiaries of the Saints " may be 
 passed by. It must be allowed in fairness that they 
 have some excuse for the numerous false writings pro- 
 duced in their workshops, that, unlike the Jesuits who 
 are subject to a general, each monastery had, as a rule, 
 its own superior. The body should not be made 
 responsible for the faults of some of its members, the 
 critical laxity of some of the abbots. But amidst 
 unimportant discussions like these, the radical question 
 has always been evaded, namely : When was a literature 
 written by men under the same discipline and rule 
 schemed and elaborated? Idle questions as to where 
 are the relics of St. Benedict and Scholastica and the 
 bones of St. Denis may amuse and divert the mind from 
 the main question, the solution of which is one of the 
 most important tasks that the critic of literature could 
 ever impose upon himself. 
 
 The same problem still confronts us. When did 
 Antiquarian the class Called Autiquarii, ^.6. keepers and 
 study. copiers of MSS., come into existence ? When 
 
 was a writing-room (scriptorium) found a necessity ? 
 These questions have never been with probability 
 answered; and as one peruses the notices relating to 
 the matter in the usual string of writers from " Cassiodore " 
 down to Trithemius, the old clouds of suspicion gather 
 again. We may, however, safely infer from the silence 
 on the subject in so important a writer as John Leland, 
 that there were few writing-rooms or museums in any 
 English monastery in his time. 
 
 It is needless to detain the reader with a discussion 
 Polite on the relative merits of the styles of different 
 
 merature monks. Wc are told that some of the monks 
 philology. wrote in a barbarous age and perpetrated 
 
THE SCHEME OF BENEDICTINE LITERATURE. 95 
 
 barbarisms. We naturally find what we seek ; and more 
 elegant Latin in an elegant age. But we are no com- 
 petent judges of the kind of Latin that ought to have 
 been written in imaginary ages. The general fact, upon 
 all the evidence that can be collected, stands out clearly 
 enough, that the culture of Latin was being revived 
 during the latter half of the fifteenth century, and the 
 culture of Greek somewhat later, and among a very 
 limited class of students. The epochal Trithemius 
 deplores the want of polite culture among the monks, 
 and himself is perhaps the first abbot to apply himself 
 to Hebrew under the guidance of a Jewish convert. 
 We can well believe that during the sixteenth century 
 a thorough cultivation of the Latin Classics with the 
 writings of the Four Doctors set in ; but this went on 
 pari passu with the general march of education. 
 
96 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 
 
 The question of Chronology is so important, and seems 
 so little understood, that I may venture to detain the 
 reader with a few general observations. 
 
 There comes a time to every powerful family, 
 tribe, nation, and corporation when it needs 
 
 Thechrono- n - i 
 
 logical to reflect upon its age, and to give some 
 passion. account to itself and to the world of its 
 antiquity. In rude times, and in the absence of 
 all registers and records of the past, any such family 
 will readily persuade itself that it is equally old with 
 the earth ; or at least that it can trace back its ancestry 
 to the great recovery of mankind from the primaeval 
 flood. 
 
 Every people of culture has passed through a stage 
 of such willing belief ; and the legends of the Greeks, 
 the people of highest culture, bear abundant witness 
 in their case to this law of the imagination. When an 
 imaginary event, such as a creation of mankind from 
 the earth, has been fixed upon, the poets can proceed 
 to reckon downwards; and, by the construction of 
 a series of fictitious persons and generations, to make 
 out what appears to be a living and unbroken connec- 
 tion with the origin of things. Imaginary events of 
 another kind are fixed upon lower down — a '* Siege 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 97 
 
 of Troy," a " Return of Herakleides." These events, 
 being created by the poets, working under patriotic 
 passion, become real to willing belief, articles in the 
 national creed which it were almost treason to doubt. 
 Poetic chronology, laid down with no help from 
 authentic registers, is nothing but " plausible fiction," 
 to borrow the favourite phrase of Mr. Grote. It is 
 enough if when the people begins to listen to what 
 is called Story, it can persuade itself that it is as 
 old as any nation upon earth; and that, however 
 commonplace or dismal its own recent memories 
 may be, it was at a distant time in intercourse with 
 divine and heroic beings. But History, in the modern 
 acceptation of the term, does not begin until you 
 have evidence that a people knows the value of its 
 contemporary facts, and has learned to keep accurate 
 registers. 
 
 It satisfied the pride of the Romans in their literary 
 age to say that their Romulus had founded the city 
 more than 700 years agone, as it satisfied the Greeks 
 in the time of Herodotus to say that their ancestors 
 had been present at the siege of Troy more than 700 
 years before that poet's time. For, confessedly, Hero- 
 dotus was a poet rather than a historian in the modern 
 acceptation. It was ever the poets who constructed 
 that system of rude perspective and of rough time- 
 reckoning by means of genealogies which are passed 
 for authentic record of the past. 
 
 When the passions which stimulate this inventive 
 process are once understood, it will be seen that the 
 eflfect has been in the case of every people of culture 
 to lengthen immensely its imaginary age, and so to 
 place at an illusory distance from us objects which are 
 in fact comparatively near to our time. When we 
 
 H 
 
98 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 lay down the poet and the mythologist, and coolly 
 survey the durable monuments of Greece and Rome 
 and Egypt, of the Arabians, the Jews, and the Holy 
 Romans, the sense of illusion steals over us, and we 
 almost prefer to form our own rude guess at the 
 comparative antiquity of the stones from the mere 
 evidence of the stones themselves. At least, we turn 
 back to our poets with some preparation of judgment 
 for the fresh consideration of their schemes. 
 
 The Mohammedans found it necessary at some time 
 — much later, probably, than their conventional dates 
 would represent — to lay down a chronological scheme. 
 They were strictly logical — that is, theological — in their 
 principles. They said that with the Eternal one day 
 was as a thousand years. They applied this principle 
 to explain the duration of the world. They appear 
 to have argued that the last and greatest of the 
 Prophets must appear in the seventh day — that is, the 
 seventh millenary of the world. Consequently, he did 
 so appear in the fulness of times ; and the great 
 religious Organization which they contemplated in its 
 most glorious days was the witness to the truth of his 
 mission and its divine success. 
 
 AVith the Jews it was diJSferent. They were a com- 
 paratively poor, feeble, and dispersed folk. They had 
 never possessed a territory, a military force, except in 
 retrospective and prospective dream. Their time was 
 yet to come. The Regal Sprout from David's stock 
 was yet to make his epiphany. To the question, How 
 old is the world ? their chronologers replied with the 
 Mohammedans, It is so many days, that is, so 
 many millenaries, old. But in reckoning the number 
 of those mystic days they differed from the Moham- 
 medans, declaring that the Messiah would appear 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 99 
 
 in the sixth millenary of the world. It was not until 
 the revival of learning that the Jewish scholars began 
 to reduce the mystic retrospect of their sacred writers 
 to a definite scheme. The Spanish Rabbin, Abraham 
 Zacuto, brought this scheme down to about the year 
 5260 of the world, according to his computation of its 
 age. He was followed by the Rabbi David Ganz, in 
 his chronological scheme entitled Zemach David, 
 Ganz nourished in the latter part of the sixteenth 
 century ; and it is an illustration of the vagueness 
 caused by the absence of exact registers that he cannot 
 give precisely the time of his predecessor, Zacuto. He 
 believes it to have been late in the fifteenth century. 
 
 The abbots of the Order of St. Benedict followed 
 the Jews in adopting the mystical principle that the 
 time for the appearance of the Messiah was the sixth 
 millenary ''day" of the world. But since the monks, 
 in opposition to the Jews, maintained that the Messiah 
 had already come in the person of God Incarnate, they 
 said, in pursuance of this logic, that Jesus Christ was 
 born some time after the year 5000 of the world. 
 This strife of principles, derived not from knowledge, 
 but from ecclesiastical ambition, led to the greatest 
 discrepancies. As culture advanced in the sixteenth 
 century, scholars, ignorant of the mystical basis of 
 the system, treated the Latin, Hebrew, Greek Bibles, 
 treated Josephus and other books of Story as if they 
 had been registers, and tried, on what they thought 
 to be scientific principles, to fix the age of the world 
 anew. Joseph Scaliger (1582), whose name is a land- 
 mark in this subject, reduced the age of the world to 
 3950 years at the time of Augustus. About a century 
 later, Archbishop Usher raised the number to 4004. 
 It is only in our own time, when the speculations 
 
loo THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of natural philosophers on the antiquity of the world 
 have altered our conception of the Past, that men 
 are beginning to understand both that the natural 
 world is of immense duration, and that human art is 
 comparatively young. 
 
 The age of the world was determined by eccle- 
 siastical convenience, or by calculations upon rough 
 data in ecclesiastical books. When the Benedictine 
 Fathers of St. Maur began, in the eighteenth century, the 
 compilation of their work, '^ L'Art de Verifier les 
 Dates," there were no less than 200 different computa- 
 tions, many of which they have given. The interval 
 between the highest, which was derived from the 
 Mohammedans, and the lowest, which was derived from 
 the Jews, is no less than 3500 years. Yet, since the 
 completion of that voluminous work, no scholar appears 
 to have come forward to teach that such computations 
 are valueless to science, except in so far as they throw 
 light upon the passions and operations of the eccle- 
 siastical mind. 
 
 We come now to the question : When did the 
 ^ ^ Catholic Church fix upon the sera of the 
 
 The Mtsl . 11- 
 
 of the incarnation, and begin to employ it m annual 
 
 records ? In other words, when did the 
 expression, An7io Domini, or Anno Christi, or the year 
 from the Incarnation, or the Nativity, come into use ? 
 Here again the Benedictines are our sole informants, 
 and they give their information, as usual, in the form 
 of another system of fables, which can be shown, with 
 some clearness, not to have been laid down until some 
 time during the Eevival of Letters. 
 
 I would remind the reader again of what 1 have 
 elsewhere noticed, that the important Catalogue of 
 the monk of Bury constantly leaves a blank after the 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CElKONQLOG^i , ^o) 
 
 words " flourished in the year of Christ," showing that 
 at the time it was sketched out the chronological 
 scheme was not ready. I would remind him also that 
 some of the Pilgrims' narratives and the Paston Letters, 
 e.g., which are set down to the late fifteenth century, 
 are undated by the year. The mode of dating by the 
 annual feasts of the Church alone, as in a mass of 
 documents consulted by Mr. Thorold Kogers, continued 
 for some time in the fifteenth century. Another 
 custom was that of dating by the year of an abbot or 
 of a king, and that in a vague and uncertain manner. 
 Let me refer a moment to Mr. Eogers' studies. 
 
 Mr. Kogers observes that with the year 1259 con- 
 tinuous information as to the state of agri- j^^. Thoroid 
 culture and prices begins. He proceeds to 5^^?^^^'^^ 
 point out a phsenomenon which should have -^s*"'^,"^": 
 excited his suspicion, viz. the curious uni- 
 formity with which changes in habits and customs 
 make their appearance in Mediaeval records. The 
 changes, for example, in handwriting, he says, are so 
 marked that experts have little difficulty in gudden 
 determining an epoch by that test. The style J^J^?'' '"^ 
 of Henry HI. is quite different from that of ^"^^^s- 
 Edward I., which again is contrasted with that of 
 Edward H., and this again with that of Edward HL 
 and Richard H. The " change is in all cases sudden 
 and almost simultaneous ! " And then, corresponding to 
 these changes in handwriting, there are sudden changes 
 in the economy of agriculture ! Such changes are, in 
 fact, due to nothing but art and craft : to suppose them 
 real is to suppose something unnatural, and therefore 
 incredible. 
 
 The supposed thirteenth-century Kecords, on which 
 Mr. Kogers depended, are, in fact, part and parcel of the 
 
i62^ THIj: Rj;^E OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 same system of which "Matthew Paris" is the exponent ; 
 who was not known until the sixteenth century. It 
 was resolved, e.g., that in the reign of Henry III. the 
 Barons should be no more the tyrants, but the leaders 
 of the people, that Simon de Montfort should become 
 as a saint, or a " Cromwell of the thirteenth century," 
 in the phrase of Mr. Bogers. Mr. Rogers' first volume 
 is founded mainly on Rolls of Merton College ; and, by 
 the way, it confirms what is known from other sources, 
 that the personality of '^ Wiclif," so notoriously associated 
 with that corporation, has never been discovered. 
 
 In his next volume Mr. Rogers drew upon a larger 
 selection of alleged *' Records." But here he makes the 
 important note on the confusion of style in designating 
 the three kings of the name of Edward. They are not yet 
 known as First, Second, and Third ; so that the student 
 is foiled in the attempt to discover exact dates. Again, 
 in the Records of Ramsey Abbey, the year given is that 
 of the abbot, and the day is designated by the nearest 
 Feast of the answering religion. The true explanation 
 is that these documents were written at a time when 
 men had not yet learned to date by the year of the 
 Incarnation. 
 
 Mr. Rogers makes the inference from the use of a 
 barbarous Latin in these writings that the language 
 must have been generally understood even by traders 
 in the fourteenth century — a position very hard to 
 accept. 
 
 But when we come, in Mr. Rogers' third volume, to 
 ^, , , the records of the fifteenth century, we find our 
 
 Blank from . . *^ 
 
 the fifteenth explorcr Simply adding his voice to that oi a 
 
 chorus of writers who deplore the extreme 
 
 darkness that appears to fall on the world during that 
 
 momentous age. Merton College becomes scant or 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 103 
 
 barren of information. Accounts are not kept or 
 carelessly kept. Then Mr. Kogers alludes to Magdalen 
 College and to suspicions of " sharp practice " in con- 
 nection with the estates of Sir John Fastolf. Had 
 Mr. Eogers traced out the geneses of the Fastolf and 
 the Paston legends, he would have seen that it took 
 its rise after the Invention of Printing, and that the 
 Benedictines of the Holm at Norwich and the mendicant 
 friars were especially interested in it. In the time of 
 Elizabeth the tale of the great warrior under the three 
 Henries ha.d become a sort of national epic, until the 
 great Dramatist converted these heroics into burlesque, 
 and gave us the immortal Falstaff. 
 
 Mr. Kogers observes that the documents of Corpus 
 Christi College are unbroken only from the reign of 
 Edward VI. Their value even then is dubious. For 
 the space, then, of more than 150 years, the historian 
 of social history has practically nothing that he can 
 use with confidence. Not until the Statute of Elizabeth 
 came into force, by which wheat and malt prices were 
 regularly registered every six months by the corpora- 
 tions concerned, were records in any exact sense to 
 be found. This, in general, is the story not merely 
 of agricultural archives, but of the national archives 
 in general, as will be pointed out elsewhere. Until 
 about the time of Elizabeth the whole anxiety of 
 corporations was directed to the invention of mock 
 antiquities in their own interest. 
 
 When Mr. Kogers says, in his sixth volume, that the 
 House of Commons in the seventeenth century 
 " used fifteenth-century precedents " in legisla- " prece- 
 tion, the meaning is that ''precedents," so- 
 called, were freely invented by the great parties in the 
 State from the time of Elizabeth, and still more that 
 
I04 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of James. Let me emphasize all that Mr. Rogers has 
 said about the effect produced upon the imagination by 
 the study of the supposed records before the Tudors. 
 Looking back to Edward IIL and the second Richard, 
 you seem to perceive "Labour in the sunshine," nay, 
 English culture as a whole in the sunshine. Then 
 gathers a long dense cloud for abo.ut 200 years, until 
 it clears away to reveal the shocking miseries of the 
 lower orders in the reign of Elizabeth. 
 
 The illusion is due to the fact on the positive side 
 that we have been educated under the glamour of 
 impassioned retrospective art, which puts back its ideals 
 in the far past ; and on the negative side to the absence 
 of all trustworthy records until a time much later than 
 is commonly supposed. But now to return to the 
 question before us : When did the practice of dating 
 by the year from the Nativity of Christ set in ? 
 
 The Benedictines had a saying, that chronology and 
 The eyes o£ geography are "The two eyes of History." 
 History. Xhcy are aware also that any exact chrono- 
 logy must depend upon astronomy. It is also 
 clear from the writings ascribed to their " Bede " and 
 others, that their knowledge of astronomy was in its 
 inception during the sixteenth century. They fixed 
 upon the Incarnation of God as the great ecclesiastical- 
 poetical era from which they were to date the writings 
 in course of preparation. But in the attempt to define 
 the number of years that had elapsed since that ideal 
 event, they fell into great blunders, which are admitted 
 in their own writings. Only part of the truth in this 
 matter is, however, admitted by them ; for they pretend 
 that their blunders came to an end in the Norman 
 time, whereas the writings they refer to the eleventh 
 century were in reality continued in the sixteenth. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 105 
 
 It is necessary at this point to remind the reader 
 that a careful study of the evidence as a 
 
 11 11 r The study 
 
 whole shows that the knowledge ot astronomy of 
 was but beginning in Europe during the 
 Revival. The Arabians led the way ; they introduced 
 the " Almagest " or Syntaxis of Ptolemy (named in 
 the Canterbury Tales), which began to be read in the 
 reign of Henry YIII. It is true that the Arabian tradition 
 produces a line of illustrious scholars from so early as 
 the ninth or tenth century, and the Jewish tradition 
 from the twelfth. But this is due to the proleptic 
 habits already so often dwelt upon. The mere matter 
 of fact is that the science ascribed to Avicenna, to 
 Averroes and many others began only to be diffused 
 from Spain during the late fifteenth century. 
 
 It is true also that the monks and friars, in their 
 lists of illustrious scholars, plant their early astronomers 
 so high as the thirteenth century. But a critical exa- 
 mination of the particulars relating to Sacrobosco and 
 to Ro":er Bacon will show that the writinojs ascribed to 
 these ideal scholars were only beginning to be known 
 about the middle of the sixteenth century. The most 
 " ancient and classical " work of monkish astronomy 
 is set down to Joannes de Sacrobosco, alias joannesde 
 John of the Holy Bush, or Halifax. Our sacrobosco. 
 earliest informant in regard to him is John Leland, the 
 royal commissioner and bibliographer under Henry YIIL, 
 whose notes appear to have been penned about the 
 year 1550. Leland imagines that Sacrobosco must 
 have been of Halifax, the seat of the wool-trade. He 
 imagines that the monk studied at Oxford, and also 
 at Paris. He knows that a work on the " Ecclesiastical 
 Compute " has been set down to him. He knows little 
 or nothing more. 
 
io6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Sacrobosco is said to have died in Paris, and to have 
 been buried in the Church of St. Maturin. Lelaud does 
 not give the date of Sacrobosco, but Bale, who followed 
 him, adds that Sacrobosco is said to have " flourished " 
 in the year 1256 from the Nativity. It is impossible, 
 therefore, to find any evidence of the mere idea or idol 
 of this scholar before the sixteenth century. In the 
 mere inception of our culture we find Lei and puffing the 
 fame of Sacrobosco as an inimitable scholar, although 
 the treatises ascribed to him show but an elementary 
 knowledge of astronomy and chronology. The same 
 bibliographer mentions Regiomontanus * as a great 
 mathematician, but one who, though he is supposed to 
 have '^flourished" about two centuries after Sacrobosco, 
 had not superseded him. Philip Melanchthon wrote a 
 preface to the work of Sacrobosco on the "Ecclesiastical 
 Compute," and awarded to him magoificent praise.f 
 There is, adds Leland, a work of the monks on 
 "Algorism" in the Petrine library of Cambridge. 
 
 The speediest way by which the student may 
 convince himself of the vanity of this tradition about 
 John of Halifax, is by transferring the point of inquiry 
 to the time of zealous scholars like Usher, Selden, 
 and especially Glreaves, whose journeys to the East in 
 quest of Oriental MSS. are well worth recalling. 
 Greaves in 1652 published an astronomical treatise from 
 the tradition of Shah Cholgi, who is said to have 
 flourished about 1461. Here we discover a series of 
 supposed astronomers in the West from Gerard of 
 Cremona in the thirteenth century to George Purbach 
 and Regiomontanus in the fifteenth. It becomes clear 
 that in the first half of the seventeenth century our 
 
 * That is, Jo. Miiller of Konigsberg. 
 
 t *' Comm. de Scriptt. Brit.," c. ccclxxvi. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 107 
 
 scholars were still toiling to make out the history of 
 astronomy and chronology, and that the beginnings of 
 these efforts cannot possibly be dated earlier than 
 the epoch of the Revival of Learning. But under 
 the mechanical habit of the time, every branch of 
 culture was pushed up for its origin into dark ages 
 of which nothing was in reality known. 
 
 If you study the legend of the Gresham family and 
 of the College in Bishopsgate founded (they Gresham 
 say) about 1576, you will find in particulars ^"^^^^s^* 
 handed down about the Fosters and other early pro- 
 fessors, that the general study of astronomy, derived 
 from the Arabians, was coming into England only 
 at the time that Francis Bacon lay in his cradle ; 
 and that no immense interval can separate this new 
 knowled2:e from that of the monasteries. The name of 
 Melanchthon may mark the time when the work of 
 Sacrobosco began to be known. The associations of 
 Purbach and of Regiomontanus are with Cardinal 
 Bessarion and that intellectual activity in Italian 
 ecclesiastical circles in which the name of the cardinal 
 so strongly figures. 
 
 We come to a very celebrated name, the glory of 
 the Franciscan Order, Roger Bacon. Roger 
 
 Now, " Boston of Bury," though he sets ^"^°"°- 
 down the Franciscan house at Oxford as one of his 
 literary places, makes no mention whatever of Roger 
 Bacon. Yet Bacon is said to have died there in 1 248. 
 Polydore Vergil, always a good negative witness in 
 respect to the beginnings of English culture, says nothing 
 of Bacon. John Leland, on the other hand, is a good 
 witness to the existence in his time of the The idea of 
 vulgar and prevalent opinion that men of t^^w^^^'^'i- 
 science were an uncanny folk. He associates Bacon with 
 
io8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 reputed magicians, an Apnleius, a Merlin, or a con- 
 temporary Cornelius Agrippa. Any approach to the 
 tree of knowledge was an imitation of the first trans- 
 gression which brought death into the world. An 
 inventor courted the fate of Prometheus. He was in 
 alliance with infernal powers, or, what was the same 
 thing, he was opposed to the dogma of the clergy. Yet 
 such bold men were objects of great curiosity ; they 
 humoured the fools by hiding beneath the mask of the 
 wizard, while they turned eyes bright with intelligence 
 upon the faces of the few who had the sense to 
 appreciate them. Disguise and secrecy were the neces- 
 sary resources of our greatest men. 
 
 An illustration of the habits of mind in this respect 
 
 during the sixteenth century may be found 
 Merlin: in Lclaud's discussiou of Merlin, who was 
 
 referred to a thousand years before his time 
 by the Benedictine who writes as ^^ Geoffrey of 
 Monmouth." It is absurd, Leland says, to suppose tliat 
 Merlin, the eponym of Maridunum or Caermarthen, was 
 of daemonic parentage, according to the old wives' fable ; 
 but his mother may have been a nun. She may have 
 disguised her shame in the fable. The daemon may 
 signify some scientific man or philosopher in that 
 obscure age. The important circumstance is that, as 
 Leland learned from the people at Maridunum, there 
 had been — to use classical forms — a coenobium of sacred 
 virgins in old times in that town. They pointed to its 
 remains, and said that Merlin was there born of a 
 vestal. Leland proceeds in an interesting note to 
 discuss various traditions about Merlin and the time of 
 Arthur. It never occurs to him that he could not 
 possibly bridge over the immense interval between the 
 time of Prince Arthur, his contemporary, son of King 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 109 
 
 Henry VII., and that of the British prince and the great 
 British sage. In the utter absence of chronological 
 perspective, it was equally easy to believe that Merlin 
 had flourished in the fifth century as that Eoger Bacon 
 had flourished in the thirteenth. 
 
 Leland can only guess that Bacon, like Sacrobosco, 
 studied at Oxford and Paris. It is merely proof that 
 there was a strong connection between Oxford and 
 Paris in his time, and that Paris had the higher repute. 
 He found a system of literature laid down at Oxon 
 and elsewhere ; he found serious blemishes in it ; but 
 being himself apparently a straightforward man, he did 
 not suspect that it was nothing but a system. In 
 Merton Library or on Merton s bookshelf he found a 
 tract ascribed to Eoger Bacon on the *' Praises of the 
 Mathematical Art," dedicated to Pope Clement IV. 
 Here also he found one " William of Sherwood " 
 extolled to the skies as a scientific man. He proceeds 
 to complain bitterly of what he calls the extreme care- 
 lessness of writers of the thirteenth century in giving the 
 surnames of " illustrious men." The proper name was 
 constantly suppressed, and a name was supplied from a 
 native place or a dignity. 
 
 Eoger Bacon was guilty, he says, of this folly. 
 Instead of speaking of " William of Sherwood," he refers 
 to " William Chancellor of Lincoln." It was a common 
 error ''at that time," and let it pass. But Leland 
 petulantly adds, " I would take my sacred oath by all 
 the Muses, that there is nothing in the whole of this 
 labour of mine that has more tormented me than 
 the crass carelessness of writers in suppressing the 
 surnames of writers. Who can discover the personality 
 of 'William Chancellor of Lincoln?' The whole 
 ' mistake ' was that of the monks and friars, who, 
 
no THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 not content with their own names, excogitated new 
 portents of words." There was, however, no mistake ; 
 there was deliberate invention. The origin of Merton 
 College itself could not be ascertained by either Leland 
 or Poljdore. The latter simply repeats the fable that 
 it was founded by William Merton, Chancellor of 
 England, about the year 1285. 
 
 I will not weary the reader with further operations 
 Bacon ^^ what is Called destructive criticism — that 
 
 Merton^"*^ is, the aualysis and exposure of collaborated 
 College. fiction — but proceed to offer a positive opinion 
 on the rise of the Bacon mythology. During the 
 Eevival, the friars at Merton may have felt the neces- 
 sity of cultivating the little science that was current. 
 They selected the old English name of Bacon for the 
 designation of their ideal or idol scholar. Some wrote 
 short tracts on astronomy and alchymics and the like, 
 others on mystical theology. They ascribed these to 
 one or the other of their Bacons, for they had two of 
 them. They drew up a catalogue of their scholars, and 
 referred them to an earlier age. They made so much 
 noise about Bacon that scholars came to believe 
 that there had been such a wizard, the Miracle of the 
 thirteenth century. And yet, when men inquired after 
 the works of the Miracle about the end of Henry VIII. 's 
 reign, all that could be produced were some thirty of 
 those poor scientific and theological tracts. But the 
 " Opus Majus" — that work in which Eoger is supposed 
 to be anticipating Francis Bacon — was not forthcoming. 
 Poor Leland believes, indeed — still bewildered by the 
 tales of his monks and friars — that a vast number of 
 Eoger Bacon's works had been scattered through the 
 libraries of Britain. But alack ! what has become of 
 them ? Cut from their tetheriDg, thieved, ill kept. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY, in 
 
 mutilated, torn, " you might as well attempt to collect 
 the leaves of the Sibyl as to tell their names ! " 
 
 After Leland, Roger Bacon's greatness increased, as 
 the Baconian writings from the pens of Oxford and 
 Paris students were greatly swollen in bulk. He is 
 linked with the equally mythical " Robert Greathead " 
 of Lincoln. Under his name you may read the story of 
 the struggles and suflferings of our earliest lovers of 
 genuine knowledge, fumbling along their hard path 
 toward the light. You may discern their impatience of 
 the sloth, the bigotry and the vices of their brethren. 
 You will find the anti-papalists and reformers among 
 them. It is to Roger and to Robert of Lincoln 
 that the scheme of overthrowing the kingdom of anti- 
 Christ by the weapons of intelligence is ascribed. But 
 not until the time of Queen Elizabeth did men 
 begin to hear of a complete system of science under the 
 Baconian name. The story of John Dee, who died in 
 1608, a man of science and a reputed wizard, whose 
 pathetic story repeats in many particulars that of the 
 mythical friar, is full of instruction in this relation. And 
 not until 1733 was the *' Opus Majus " printed in London 
 for "William Bowyer, under the editorship of Dr. Jebb. 
 
 Robert Bacon appears to have been the idol of the 
 Dominicans ; and some have supposed that Robert 
 Leland's text has been corrupted, because he -^^^^^^ 
 names him not. The fact merely is that Robert is a 
 discovery of Bale and Pits, neither of them men of good 
 credit. But one of our truly greatest Englishmen, the 
 acute Thomas Fuller, penetrated to the core of the 
 whole Bacon tradition. His words are still worth 
 the attention of those who in historical study persist 
 in worshipping the idol rather than in studying the 
 idol-makers at their work. Says Fuller — 
 
112 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 " For my own part, I behold the name of Bacon in 
 Oxford not as of an individual man, but a 
 
 Fuller on . , ' 
 
 the Bacon Corporation of men ; no single cord, but a 
 twisted cable of many together. As all the acts 
 of strong men of that nature are attributed to a Hercules, 
 all the predictions of prophesying women to a Sibyl, 
 so I conceive all the achievements of the Oxonian 
 Bacons in their liberal studies are ascribed to one as 
 chief of their name. And this in effect is confessed 
 by the most learned and ingenious orator of that 
 university." He here refers to Sir Isaac Wake, author 
 of the "Kex Platonicus." Fuller adds that the 
 Benedictine Trithemius names a "John Bacon," else- 
 where called '* Baconthorpe." 
 
 The same critic proceeds to laugh at the anachro- 
 nism of making '' Eobert Bacon " read Philosophy in 
 Brasenose College a hundred years before it was 
 founded. He adds that the Cambridge Bacons, father 
 and son, Nicholas and Francis, the one of Bennet, the 
 other of Trinity College, hold the scales of desert 
 against all of their name in all the world besides.* 
 
 o 
 
 Hearne, coming after Fuller, is confused about the 
 two Bacons, Eoger and Eobert. Friar Wadding, the 
 historian of the literary men of his Order, points out 
 the anachronism in the tale told by Pits, who was 
 writing at the beginning of the seventeenth century, to 
 the eflPect that Eoger was called to Eome by the General 
 of the Order to answer a charge of magic arts.f 
 
 To bring this digression, occasioned by the name of 
 Roger Bacon, to an end. Neither the Franciscans, nor 
 any knot of scholars working under the shield of Bacon's 
 name, could have produced the '* OpusMajus" until the 
 
 * " Church History, Cent. XV.," p. 96. 
 t " Annal. Min.," a. 1266 and 1278. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF CHRONOLOGY. 113 
 
 Eevival : a fact which tends to account for the coinci- 
 dences between that work and the " Novum Organum," 
 more than once emphatically noticed by Hallam. At 
 the end of the fifteenth century the study of astronomy 
 could only have been beginning in the cloisters. And 
 nowhere are the early astronomical mistakes of the 
 Benedictines more keenly exposed than in the '* Opus 
 Majus " itself. 
 
114 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF TRAVELLERS, GEOGRAPHERS, 
 AND NATURAL HISTORIANS. 
 
 It was essential to the literary system of tlie monks 
 of the West that they should appear to have had from 
 very early times a series of pious writers who had 
 journeyed to the holy places in the East, and had re- 
 corded their impressions of travel. All the tales of 
 the Hermits of the Thebaid, among which is that of 
 " St. Porphyry '^ and his disciple Mark, who proceed 
 thence to Jerusalem and to Gaza, spring from this 
 source. There are other fibres in the network of legend 
 connecting the monks of Egypt with those of Syria, and 
 again with those of Italy and the West. 
 
 '^ St. Jerome " is said to have gone in company with 
 Pilgrim " St. Eusebius of Cremona " and a pilgrim band 
 legends. from Italy to Cyprus, where they were duly 
 received by " St. Epiphanius." Thence they proceed to 
 Antioch, and are duly ordained by St. Paulinus the 
 bishop. They repair to Jerusalem, and so to the 
 Thebaid in Egypt on a visit to the hermits. Finally, 
 they settle at Bethlehem, and found a monastery. The 
 religious ladies of the order find their prototype in St. 
 Paula, who is supposed about the same time to arrive 
 from Rome at Sidon. She visits the " Tower of Elijah," 
 the house of Cornelius, the centurion at Csesarea, and the 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF TRAVELLERS. 115 
 
 house of St. Philip and his four daughters, the tomb of 
 Queen Helena at Adiabene, who figures in the first 
 Church history ; the Holy Sepulchre, the true Cross, the 
 scenes of the Passion and of the descent of the Holy 
 Ghost at Pentecost, and other places consecrated by 
 canonical and extra- canonical legend. St. Paula also 
 is made to pay a visit to the Egyptian hermits, and 
 finally to retire to Bethlehem. 
 
 The "Epistles of St. Jerome," in which the particulars 
 are to be found, are written with spirit, and with many 
 dramatic touches. They were not coming into reading 
 use until late in the sixteenth century ; and they may 
 be understood as part of a great Church romance, 
 through the allegorical veil of which may be discerned 
 the state of monastic life in West and East during 
 that and perhaps the preceding age. The necessities 
 of Benedictine fiction required that the reader should 
 be induced to transfer these pilgrim adventurers to 
 an epoch a thousand years before the Revival of 
 Letters. 
 
 Again : We are invited to believe that in the seventh 
 century of the ecclesiastical era St. Antoninus visited 
 the Holy Land. This saint also, after witnessing im- 
 probabilities on Mount Sion in connection with the 
 '*idol of the Saracens," duly wends his way to the 
 hermits in Egypt. He travels to Mesopotamia, and 
 so returns to his native Italy. It is thus made out that 
 there had been settlements of monks in Syria and Egypt 
 before the conquests of the Mohammedans. 
 
 Then, — with so much perseverance was the system 
 of fiction carried out — another list of travellers after the 
 time of the Arabian conquests is supplied by the Bene- 
 dictines. There is Arculf, vaguely described as a 
 French bishop, and certified by Adamnan, Abbot of 
 
ii6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 lona, who is supposed to tell us that the returning 
 pilgrim was carried by contrary winds to that island. 
 Bede, in his turn, is made to offer a certificate in favour 
 of Adamnan, who is said to have presented his book 
 on Holy Places to a Northumbrian king — itself the 
 dictation of Arculf. The book shows the beginning of 
 an acquaintance with Mohammedan history, and was 
 composed at a time when the tolerance of Islam per- 
 mitted, on certain conditions, free access to the East. 
 It may be important to note, in passing, that in a book 
 conceived as if written in the seventh or eighth century, 
 the old Eoman buildings are described as intact. 
 
 We are now introduced to an English pilgrim, viz., 
 Willibald, who was the reputed son and also the father 
 of a saint. St. Eichard, the father, appears to owe his 
 renown to the monks of Lucca, while the credit of the 
 biography of Willibald is assigned to a nun of Heiden- 
 heim. It needs hardly to be added that there is no 
 native English feeling in the story of the saint and his 
 travels. It is enough if the apostolic succession of 
 pilgrims has been preserved. 
 
 Naturally, in the brilliant time of Alfred, of Charle- 
 magne, and of Haroun-el-Raschid, the stream of 
 pilgrims to the East flowed strongly. ''Bernard the 
 Wise," of the famous cloister of Mont St. Michel in 
 Brittany, is supposed to illustrate this period. But for 
 critical purposes it is all-important to note that the book 
 cannot be traced higher than the time of Sir Robert 
 Cotton, and that the Eheims copy was not brought to 
 light until the time of the Fathers of St. Maur. Dom 
 Mabillon was its discoverer. But this monk was one of 
 those travellers who had an interest in contrasting the 
 superior culture of the Mohammedans with the rude- 
 ness and barbarism of the West. The direction of the 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF TRAVELLERS. 117 
 
 pilgrims is here .by way of Egypt to Syria, as it is in 
 the case of Fidelis, another French monk of the Order. 
 In the narrative under the name of Frotmond, another 
 Breton monk, keen interest in the monks of the 
 Thebaid and in St. Cyprian of Carthage is again 
 shown. This wandering is a penance; and the stern 
 occupier of the Chair of St. Peter at this time is said to 
 have been a Benedict. 
 
 In the next age — that of the obscure and incredible 
 par excellence — the incredible Gerbert, or Sylvester 11. , 
 is said to have made the pilgrimage. The tale of the 
 Crusade under the instigation of Peter the Hermit of 
 Amiens follows; and in the wake of the crusaders another 
 Anglo-Saxon, " Saewulf," is supposed to make the pil- 
 grimage. This writer is a masked Benedictine, 
 vouched for by another masked Benedictine, viz., 
 " William of Malmesbury." The narrative is made to fit 
 in generally with the system of Norman fables, but the 
 monk dates by the annual feasts, and not by the years 
 from the Incarnation. The story of " Sigurd the 
 Crusader " is vouched for by a Benedictine under the 
 mask of " William of Tyre." But not one of these monks 
 was writing until far on in the Revival ; nor could any 
 considerable body of readers have been found for their 
 tales until the seventeenth century. 
 
 In accordance w^ith their system, Franciscan and 
 Dominican pilgrims are allowed to appear on the scene 
 during the thirteenth century. Marco Polo is also pro- 
 leptically placed in the same age, although his work did 
 not long precede the discovery of the Western Con- 
 tinents. And so at last we arrive at Maundeville, whose 
 place is given as St. Albans, and whose time is stated to 
 have been the brilliant close of the fourteenth century ; 
 but whose work only began to be known and read 
 
ii8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 during the sixteenth century. The book is in great 
 part a compilation from preceding writers, and was 
 . probably written in French late in the fifteenth or in 
 the beginning of the next century. 
 
 These works, then, originally inspired by the Bene- 
 dictines, and all of them written by clergymen, may be 
 used to reflect a certain amount of light upon the 
 condition of thought and knowledge in the West con- 
 cerning the East, at a time when in the East itself there 
 was but the faintest acquaintance with the military or 
 religious orders in Europe. They show that a dream- 
 geography of Syria and the Orient has been made out 
 from the study of the Bible, and that the monkish 
 travellers, in constant correspondence with one another 
 through all the principal monasteries, are going to the 
 East in order to verify their dreams and establish 
 them as a system. A few examples may be given. 
 
 They believe that the Holy City was the centre of 
 the earth ; and pretend to have seen a column in the 
 middle of the city which cast no shadow at noon of 
 the summer solstice. Thus the verse, Psalm Ixxiv. 12, 
 was verified. They can find the cave in which the Lord 
 was born, and the desert of Quarantania, where he was 
 tempted. They find a monastery and three churches 
 on Mount Tabor, in accord with the prediction of St. 
 Peter ; because it is the same fraternity who wrote the 
 legend and built the churches. The Colossians, to whom 
 St. Paul wrote, are found in the people of Rhodes, where 
 the Colossus stood. So " Saewulf." They strove to 
 turn the mosque of Omar into the Temple of Solomon, 
 near which is an oratory with the cradle of Christ, his 
 bath, and the bed of the Virgin Mary. They can dis- 
 cover the place where the Apostles made the Creed. 
 They think of Galilee as a chapel where the Lord 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF TRAVELLERS. 119 
 
 appeared after his Kesurrection ; and the Apostles were 
 called Galileans because they often rested there. There 
 is, however, a great city of Galilee by Mount Tabor. 
 In the architectural sense it was in the Galilee of Mount 
 Sion that Jesus appeared. They find at Cana no building 
 but the monastery of St. Architrictin, having turned the 
 general into a proper name. 
 
 Maundeville clearly shows in his Prologue, which 
 may usefully be compared with other ecclesiastical 
 prologues, that a pilgrim should not go to the Holy 
 Land without having his mind thoroughly possessed 
 by the theological poem of the Church : which teaches 
 that it was hallowed by the precious Body and Blood 
 of Christ. You must go thither prepared to find the 
 best and most virtuous land of all the world, its heart 
 and middle, for the philosopher says that " The virtue 
 of things is in the middle." We are further informed 
 that the land was left to us as a legacy by Christ, and 
 that we are bound to claim our heritage and drive out 
 the heathen and unbelieving men. 
 
 It would be tedious to criticize at leno^th the tales 
 in this curious book, which is perhaps tolerably well 
 known ; but it may be noticed in passing that the 
 writer is in his way a good commentator on the legends 
 of the Church, both canonical and extra- canonical. In a 
 curious passage he witnesses to the priority of the vulgar 
 Latin Testament over other versions. In the tomb 
 of St. John at Ephesus (he says) there is naught but 
 manna, which is called angels' meat, for his body was 
 translated into Paradise. *'And you shall understand 
 that St. John caused his grave to be made there in his 
 life, and laid himself therein all alive ; and therefore, some 
 men say that he did not die, but that he rests there till 
 the day of doom. And in truth there is a great marvel, 
 
I20 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 for men may see there the earth of the tomb many 
 times openly stir and move, as though there were living 
 things under." The legend with which the monk was 
 acquainted was that the Lord (John xxi. 22, 23) had 
 said to St. Peter concerning the beloved disciple, " I will 
 that he remain till I come," as we read in the Vulgate. 
 
 The pilgrim finds near Cairo the Seven Wells which 
 our Lord made with one of his feet when he played 
 with other children. The pyramids are, as usual, called 
 the Barns of Joseph. At Sinai the burning lamps in 
 the church of St. Catherine are supplied by the birds of 
 the land, which fly annually thither with olive branches 
 in their beaks, so teaching men to seek and worship that 
 glorious Virgin. And behind the altar is the place 
 where Moses saw our Lord God in a burning bush. 
 There is, as usual, no perspective in these representa- 
 tions. 
 
 In spite of the denunciations of pagans or infidels 
 in the Prologue, " Maundeville " is a good witness, 
 in spite of himself, to the fact that the Moslems are 
 older than the Christians in the religious tradition. It is 
 they who guard with jealous reverence the tombs of the 
 patriarchs at Hebron, and who suffer no Christians to 
 enter therein unless by the special grace of the Sultan. 
 It is they (he says) who hold Christians and Jews to be 
 dogs, and say they should not enter so holy a place. 
 But no desire is shown to ascertain what was the 
 genuine Moslem tradition. On the contrary, in his 
 chapter on the Koran, the legend of Mariam, Gabriel, 
 and Isa is made, as usual, falsely to appear a corruption 
 of the Christian legend, instead of its earlier form. 
 
 Yet in his desire to pass an edifying satire upon the 
 morality of the West, he offers a high tribute to the 
 culture of the Moslems. He finds that the Sultan of 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF TRAVELLERS. 121 
 
 Egypt is versed in French, the current medium of com- 
 munication, and that he with his court are more civilized 
 and relictions than the Christians. " The Saracens ben 
 good and faithful. For they keepen entirely the com- 
 mandment of the holy book Alcoran, that God sent 
 them by his messenger Mahomet ; to the which, as they 
 sayen, St. Gabriel, the angel, oftentime told the will 
 of God." * One mis^ht imamne that Maundeville w^as 
 cured by his travels and friendly intercourse with the 
 Mohammedans of the prejudices of his education against 
 the followers of *' Saint Mahoun." He seems to have 
 anticipated the thought of John Bunyan, '' that the 
 Turks had as good Scriptures to prove the Mahomet 
 'the Saviour, as we have to prove our Jesus is." 
 
 But it is not from Maundeville that we are to expect 
 a purely matter-of-fact account of the lands he visited, 
 and the humanity he observed. He knew — we may 
 suppose — that he was desired to bring back confirmation 
 of the tales he had. learned in boyhood in the cloister 
 of St. Albans, and that if he denied their veracity 
 he would be laughed to scorn and treated as an infidel 
 by men who had never crossed the Channel. So he 
 humours his readers with the tale of Gog and Magog, 
 with the tale of the Tailless men, and of the Madagascar 
 bird which could carry elephants through the air. He 
 prattles of the isle Mistorak, near the river Phison, of 
 the Vale which is full of devils who guard treasures 
 of gold and silver, and strangle the intruding robber. 
 
 Maundeville does not hesitate to assure us that he 
 entered this Vale Perilous, one of a party of fourteen, 
 among whom were two Fransciscan friars of Lombardy. 
 The whole party were shriven and houseld, marked 
 with the sign of the Holy Cross, but only nine returned. 
 
 * See a parallel account in the Benedictine " Roger of Wendover." 
 
122 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 In a tone of devout piety the traveller proceeds to tell 
 us how he viewed a multitude of dead bodies lying in 
 the Vale, as if there had been a great battle ; yet the 
 bodies appeared to be whole and incorrupt. Many more 
 illustrations might be given from this work of the utter 
 inability of men in general to observe and report either 
 on physical or political geography, or of the inability 
 of listeners to credit them, had they ventured too far on 
 the path of common sense. 
 
 With Maundeville may be contrasted the travels 
 ^^ ^ ascribed to a Franciscan friar, and dated in 
 
 The Fran- ^ ' 
 
 ciscanBoieter,the Same afirc. It is to be found in Hearne's 
 
 or William . " . 
 
 of Worcester, coUcctions. In vaiu does the reader expect 
 
 1322. 
 
 a reflection of the state of the Mediterranean 
 and of the East from this foolish treatise. There is 
 an absurd scene in which the friar and his companions 
 preach their dogma with insolence and rej)roaches to a 
 crowd of Moslems, who appear to have treated these 
 preachers with more civility than they deserved. The 
 friar obliges us with garbled extracts from the Koran, 
 ending each paragraph with the sentence, '' Thus saith 
 Mohammed, the pig and the lover of women" It is 
 pleasing to look forward to the time of Pococke, that 
 gentle and open-minded scholar, who lived among the 
 Mohammedans and was beloved as a brother. But 
 if not in his time, certainly at no previous epoch, could 
 any Western scholar have been permitted to ascertain 
 and to teach the true historical geography of the East, 
 which to this day remains unknown in our schools. 
 
 I have already cited the saying of the Benedictines 
 Monastic that Geography is the other eye of History, 
 geography. Clearly without a real geography, a real 
 history is impossible. Personality becomes indistinct 
 at a distance, and dates of time may be uncertain. But 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 123 
 
 places remain, the earth is firm, and whoso proves 
 himself incapable of seeing and describing the earth on 
 which he dwells, is disqualified for the task of writing 
 History. I propose to off'cr a few remarkable illustra- 
 tions of the monastic geography; from which it will 
 appear that the monks formed a Theological Geography 
 which concealed the earth from their disciples, and 
 actually excluded the possibility of genuine knowledge 
 wherever it was taught. 
 
 There is a coloured map which came into the 
 possession of Sir Eobert Cotton, and is to be seen in 
 his library in the British Museum. I should remind 
 the reader that Cotton was a mere collector of no 
 critical ability. Neither he nor John Selden, who was 
 in a limited sense a critic, ever thought of inquiring 
 into the authenticity of the mass of the MSS. ofi"ered to 
 them. They had the antiquary's passion, and they 
 were constantly imposed upon by mock antiquities, the 
 stock-in-trade of many an author and a bookseller in 
 those times. The map in question, for example, has 
 been assigned to the tenth century, which is an im- 
 possibility. It may have been contrived during the 
 Eevival of Learning ; but in fact we know nothing 
 of its history before it came into the hands of 
 Cotton. 
 
 The earth is conceived as nearly quadrangular in 
 shape. The spectator is supposed to be standing at 
 the western limit, where the Pillars of Hercules are 
 marked as a pair of gigantic objects. Our island is 
 divided into districts named Canri, Britannia, Marin- 
 pergis, Lundonia, Wintonia, Cantia. The Land's End 
 projects nearly as far west as Hibernia. North of 
 Hibernia lies another large island, marked Tyleri. More 
 than twenty islands lie to the north of Scotland. 
 
124 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Instead of France we find Sud Brytias on the map ;• 
 westward of this land on the other side of a mountain- 
 chain lie Brigantia and Ispania Anterior. To the south 
 of Sud Brytias the Alps are marked, and in the Lombardy 
 plain, Verona ; south of the Apennines are marked, with- 
 out names, two large cities, presumably Rome and 
 Naples. 
 
 The Mediterranean is conceived as a vast estuary, 
 crowded with islands, large and small. One of these, 
 a huge star-shaped land (Sicily), lies a little to the east 
 of the Pillars of Hercules. Africa is represented as but 
 a shallow tract of land ; in the south there is a huge 
 river, to the south of which again are marked the 
 monsters, Cunocephales. 
 
 The geographer places Island (Iceland) in the 
 north of Europe. The mainland opposite is distributed 
 between Scithia, Balgaru, Deira ubi et Gothea, Sleone, 
 Nerona, Reori. South of these parts occurs a great 
 blank ; then come Tracia, the Huns, Pannonia, Dal- 
 matia, Histica. 
 
 The gate of Constantinople is marked with fair accu- 
 An indication racy, and very far to the south of it flows the 
 of late origin. j)^j^^-^q^ Athcus is marked; far to the west 
 of it Attica, and Macedonia to the south of Attica. 
 Opposite Attica to the east lies the mainland Troia ; 
 and north of Troia, Ephesus, Asia Minor, Cilicia, and 
 Tharso Cilicia. North of the Black Sea are marked 
 Maeotides Paludes. In the extreme north, to the 
 west of the Caspian, which is figured as an estuary, lie 
 the Griphi, the Turks, Gog and Magog, and Swane, 
 and then the Colchians and Albanians. 
 
 The Armenian mountains are marked, and upon 
 Ark of Noe, them the monk sees resting the huge Ark of 
 
 the Ideal -vr 
 
 Israel. -IN OC. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 125 
 
 An immense tract of land is occupied by the tribes 
 of Israel, from Zabulon, near Cilien, on the north, to 
 Alexandria on the south, and from the Mediterranean to 
 the Euphrates. This part of the map is perhaps the 
 most instructive ; for it shows how occupation with 
 the Bible and with an imaginary history of the Jews 
 had fixed in men's minds an utterly absurd geography. 
 Hierusalem and Bethlaem are marked as cities ; 
 Hiericho as a district adjacent to Asser. 
 
 Babilonia is marked between the two great rivers ; 
 and beyond, in the far East, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, 
 Amonia, Egiptus Superior ; still further east, Aracasin, 
 Siria, Pisidia, Mount Sina, Arabin, Arabia Deserta, 
 Media, India. In the north-east corner of the map 
 Boreas is marked ; the figure of a lion is drawn, and 
 the statement is made. Hie abundant hones. 
 
 More than half the whole area of the w^orld is in the 
 map assigned to the Orient, eastward of Constantinople 
 and of Alexandria. Such was the system of the 
 mediaeval map-makers. Asia must equal in area 
 Europe and Africa. 
 
 The Hereford Map of the World — a facsimile of 
 which stands in the Kind's Library of the ^^ „ ^ ^ 
 
 ^ -^ ^ The Hereford 
 
 British Museum — bears the name of Richard wheeiMap 
 
 of the World. 
 
 de Haldingham, prebendary of Hereford, and 
 is said to have been drawn about the end of the 
 thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century. 
 It may be remarked that Boston of Bury, though he 
 names Hereford Cathedral among his literary centres, 
 says nothing of Haldingham. The date of the map is 
 uncertain ; but probably enough it represents the state 
 of geographical knowledge, or rather fancy, during the 
 fifteenth century. The map illustrates the monkish 
 habit of surveying the world through a poetical and 
 
126 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 theological medium. He finds, or believes himself to 
 find, a geographical theory in the Bible, which he then 
 proceeds, without examination of the facts, to embody 
 in a map. 
 
 He finds Jerusalem described as set in the midst 
 of the nations as the navel of the earth.* Whether 
 the Hebrew poets were thinking of a city or merely 
 of a community when they so sing of " Jerusalem," he 
 does not pause to inquire. It is a fixed idea with 
 him that the Holy Place must be the centre of a circle. 
 He draws the earth, therefore, as a circle, and plants 
 Jerusalem in the centre. It is orthodox Benedictine 
 geography, sanctioned by the writers who assume the 
 names of " St. Isidore and Eabanus Maurus." f Theory 
 requires that Asia shall comprise one half of the 
 world, because it is the inheritance of Shem, the first- 
 born of Noe. Europe and Africa must be regarded as 
 separate continents, on the ground that Ham and Japhet 
 had the separate dominions.^ 
 
 It is perhaps only in our day that the notion of an 
 actual Paradise, the abode of our first parents, some- 
 where in the Orient is beginning to die out. In the 
 fifteenth century it was a necessity of thought, and 
 it probably occurred to none to doubt its existence, 
 unless it were men who had travelled to the East, 
 not leaving their common sense behind them. The 
 Pseudo-Isidore says that Paradise is surrounded on 
 all sides by a wall of fire, so that the flame all but 
 reaches to heaven, and Gervase of Tilbury echoes the 
 statement. The fiery wall is depicted on the Hereford 
 map. So deeply this notion of a material Paradise 
 
 * Ezek. V. 5, xxxviii. 12; Ps. Ixxiv. 12. 
 
 t Isid., " Oi-ig.," xiv. 2 and 3 ; Rabanus Maurus, " De Univ.," xii. 4. 
 
 X Gervase of Tilbury, " Otia Imp.," ii. 2. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 127 
 
 with river founts — in the ignorance of the poetical 
 origin of the Arabian and Jewish legends — was (they 
 say) impressed on the mind of Columbus, he thought 
 the flood of the River Orinoco, in the Gulf of Paria, 
 must be the Fount of Paradise.* 
 
 We find figured in this map, also as objects of 
 sensuous perception, the Ark of Noah, the Tower of 
 Babel, the Barns of Joseph. The Ked Sea is painted 
 vermilion, with the exception of the part intended 
 to indicate the passage of the Israelites. Their wander- 
 ings are also shown. To the east of Jerusalem the 
 Crucifixion is depicted, Bethlehem is marked by a 
 cradle: details for which the monks never had any 
 authority than the Old Testament, out of which they 
 learned to construct the details of the Nativity and 
 the Passion in the New. 
 
 The Church centres in the West which appear to 
 be most attractive to the monkish imagination are the 
 Temple of St. James at Compostella, and the see of 
 St. Augustine at Hippo. In Numidia the saint himself 
 is figured under a canopy. Hard by, Aquae Tibilitanse, 
 meutioned in writings ascribed to the saint, is 
 martyred. f It may with confidence be asserted that 
 neither the saint nor his writings could have been 
 heard of until late in the fifteenth century. It is in 
 the "De Civitate Dei " J that a passage occurs about 
 monasteries which shows a similar state of the imagina- 
 tion to that revealed by the Hereford map. 
 
 Mediaeval students had evidently that keen relish 
 
 * " Life," by W. Irving, Bk. X., cap. 4; Baring-Gould's "Curious Myths,'* 
 pp. 250-266. I am indebted for these references to the Essay on Mediaeval 
 Geogi-aphy in illustration of the Hereford Mappa Mundi, by the Rev. W. L. 
 Be van and the Rev. H. W. Phillott. 1873. 
 
 t "Ep.," 112; " C. D.," xxii. 8. 
 
 t "C. D.,"xvi. 9. 
 
128 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 for monstrosities which the vulgar still evince. A great 
 Belief in numbcr of them are figured on diflferent 
 monstrosities, p^^j^g ^f ^j^q jj^gp — objccts, as repeated state- 
 ments show, of the most undoubting faith. The mere 
 sensation of wonder is coveted by all ; and to poorly 
 furnished minds it seems to supply the place of the 
 nobler intellectual pleasures. But it would hardly be 
 possible at the present day to amuse the most rustic 
 audience with pictures or descriptions of men with eyes 
 in the shoulders, or feet which serve as sunshades, 
 of centaurs, mermaids, or the pelican which feeds her 
 young with her own blood. The monks, however, made 
 it their business to stimulate the appetite for marvels of 
 all kinds, because their object was to produce the child- 
 like, weak, and all-believing state of mind in their dis- 
 ciples. Nay, the mass of them, unreading, unthinking, 
 immured in the cloister, and ignorant of the laws of the 
 great world, can have been little better than overgrown 
 children themselves. Fingunt simul creduntque. 
 
 The study of the Mediaeval maps in the valuable col- 
 lections of Jomard, Santarem, and others teaches many 
 a lesson, and dispels many an illusion from the mind 
 in respect to the Medisevalists. These men were never 
 fit to write History in any worthy sense of the word. 
 They who delight in causing their audience to gape 
 and stare at the strange and marvellous are not the 
 men to be eager for the facts, and to be zealous for 
 accuracy in the relation of them. Men so absolutely 
 possessed by a theory about a Book which they read 
 in the Cell had no need, as they thought, to travel 
 to distant countries that they might inspect their actual 
 condition. In any monastery of the West the monks 
 might sit down and draw such a map as that of 
 Hereford, and some others which resemble it in the 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEQGRAPHY. 129 
 
 general idea. He would pronounce his work to be 
 true and correct, because it was based upon the Bible. 
 He would never think of sendiug to im^uire of the 
 Arabian geographers, who began to busy themselves 
 with the science in the thirteenth century. Yet it 
 was then, and it is still, the x\rabians who alone know 
 the geography of Syria. 
 
 It is not the fact that the monks were praise- 
 worthy seekers for geographical truth, whose Geography 
 blunders were those of an ignorant age. ^^^^s^a. 
 They deliberately set their faces against the truth in 
 this as in other branches of science ; and to this day 
 many of their grave errors have remained uncorrected. 
 Geography is no part of Theology, but they treated 
 it as a deduction from Biblical sayings, and en- 
 deavoured to fix an opinion on Christians about the 
 world, which was to be fixed and unalterable. 
 
 In the " Library " of Photius — a compilation of not 
 earlier date than the fifteenth century — we christian 
 fiud the bare designs of a Christian Topo- Topography, 
 graphy sketched out.* It has been executed by a 
 monk of the Order of St. Basil, who writes under 
 the high-sounding name of " Cosmas Indicopleustes," 
 and who pretends that he lived — according to the 
 usual device of his Order — about 1000 years befure 
 his actual time. In his Christian Topography he 
 adopts a truly pious and theological tone and method. 
 He has no notion of visiting places, and of describing 
 them to his readers. No 1 Topography is a branch 
 of Theology, and may be proved by demonstrations 
 derived from the divine Scripture ; nor may Christians 
 hold such Topography in doubt. 
 
 Yet there are those who desire to be Christians, 
 
 * Cod. 36, on the " Book of Christians." 
 
 K 
 
I30 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 while they follow the doctrine of *' them that are 
 The world without." They think and opine that the 
 not a sphere. \^Q^yQj^ fg gpherical in shape. He proves 
 both from the Old and New Testaments that this 
 is not true, and consequently that he who holds to 
 the opinion in question cannot be a Christian. He 
 discusses at great length the Tabernacle which is an 
 Image of the world ; and proceeds to describe the great- 
 ness of the sun, the duration of the heavens, the course 
 of the stars. Passages from the Greek Fathers in support 
 of his propositions follow. 
 
 We then proceed to the description of the Indian 
 Indian animals : the Khinoceros, the Taurelaphus, the 
 
 animals. Camclopard, and many others. The monk 
 says of the Unicorn that he could not see a specimen 
 of it, but he had seen four bronze statues of it in 
 Ethiopia at the king's palace. It is a terrible beast, all 
 its strength being in its horn. When pursued, it will 
 cast itself headlong, turning so as to receive the whole 
 impetus and thrust upon the horn, and so escape unhurt. 
 It appears that the monk has had his fancy set on fire 
 by the passages in the Psalms relating to the Unicorn, 
 which he cites, xxi. 22 ; xxviii. 6 (Vulgate version). 
 
 In the map of the Cotton Library, above described. 
 The Isle ^ large island is figured on the extreme east 
 ofTapro- Called Taprobauc.* Our monk favours us 
 
 bane. . ^ 
 
 with a description of this island. The stone 
 Hyacinthus is found there; and two kings bear rule, 
 mutually hostile, one of whom holds the region of the 
 Hyacinth, the other the remaining part of the island. 
 There is a Church of Christ consisting of Persian 
 immigrants to whom a priest, ordained in Persia, was 
 sent, also a deacon. Our monk regards Sina, with the 
 * Milton names this isle, " P. R.," iv. 75. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 131 
 
 author of the maj), as a place on the adjacent mainland ; 
 and fills nine paragraphs with nonsense about the island 
 in the midst of India. In Christian Topography India 
 is to be identified with the Euilat of the Vulgate Bible 
 (Gen. ii. 10, 12). 
 
 It seems almost impossible to acquit the Christian 
 topographer of wilful mendacity when he insists, in a 
 separate book of his treatise, that many writers of 
 " them that are without " have borne testimony to the 
 antiquity of the Divine Scriptures by Moses and the 
 Prophets. He culminates with the bold assertion that 
 the Greeks seem to have learned Letters latest of all, 
 and retain a more deeply rooted disbelief towards the 
 Scriptures. We may understand what he means if we 
 suppose that he writes in an Italian cloister — possibly at 
 Florence — conscious of the Revival of Greek Letters and 
 Greek intelligence in that city. 
 
 The figures attached to this work enable us to enter 
 into the imaginations of the Christian topo- cosmo- 
 grapher, and of the Confederacy to which he sraphy. 
 belongs. The monks thought of the earth as if it were a 
 pavement, and shut in on every side by walls, which 
 rose to an immense height, and then assumed the form 
 of an arch or roof. Below the roof was placed the Fir- 
 mament ; below which, again, the sun, moon, and stars 
 were believed to move. A conical mountain of immense 
 height rose in the northern part of the earth. When 
 the sun, pursuing his circular course above the earth, was 
 behind the mountain, night fell on the inhabitants of 
 the world ; it became day when the sun shone on the 
 opposite side of the mountain. So with the moon and 
 the stars. The Christian topographer thinks of the 
 earth and the heaven as oblong in figure, the length being 
 double the breadth. The ocean surrounds the earth ; 
 
132 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 beyond there is auother earth, which touches the walls of 
 heaven on all sides. He supposes that on the east side 
 of this land beyond the sea man was created ; there 
 Paradise was situated. Expelled from Paradise, our first 
 parents betook themselves to the adjoining coast by the 
 sea ; whence, at the time of the Deluge, Noe and his sons 
 were borne in the Ark to this earth which we inhabit. 
 The four rivers of Paradise pass by subterranean channels 
 under the Ocean into this Earth, and burst forth at 
 certain spots. It was this theory which accounts for 
 the exclamation of Columbus at the sight of the mouth 
 of the Orinoco. 
 
 About the same time that the work ascribed to 
 Cosmas was known, the works ascribed to ^' Lactantius " 
 and to " Augustine " also became known. These writers 
 — in reality disguised Benedictines or Augustines — 
 attempt to hold up the ancient philosophers to ridicule 
 because they thought the earth was round, and that there 
 were Antipodes.* " 'Tis a fable, by no means worthy 
 of belief," says the Augustinian. It followed, in the 
 opinion of the sages of Salamanca, sitting in solemn 
 council, that Columbus' idea of circumnavigating the 
 world was not only profane, but absurd. Nor, in 
 truth, can it be denied that the discovery of America, 
 the very existence of the great continents of the West, 
 with their great republics, are theoretical absurdities 
 in the orthodox opinion, equally with the discoveries 
 of Copernicus and Galileo. 
 
 If the existence of America be not an absurdity, 
 but a fact of the highest interest, significance, and value, 
 then it must be admitted that our Benedictine cosmo- 
 graphers and geographers did their best to hinder the 
 existence of America. It ought never to have existed 
 
 * Lactant., "D. L," iii. 24; Aug., " C. D.," xvi. 9. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 133 
 
 at all, because it exists to put an end to a theory. 
 It soon became certain that the earth was round, that 
 there were Antipodes ; and that the statement * 'Jeru- 
 salem is the navel of the earth " was devoid of meaning. 
 The truth was won, in spite of the monks, by men 
 who were led by a divine inspiration which the monks 
 never knew — men who were haunted by the truth, and 
 were loyal to the instincts which led them in its 
 direction. 
 
 The English clergymen, to whom we are indebted 
 for the careful description of the Hereford evU effects 
 Map, remark with emphasis on the evil effects gra^phfcai 
 of the geographical dogma of the Greek and "^""sma. 
 Latin monks : — 
 
 ** Geography was henceforth forced into the mould of a pseudo- 
 orthodoxy ; and the language of the Bible, as interpreted by the 
 Fathers, became the test of truth in regard to cosmology : scientific 
 processes were discouraged, and all zest for discovery was quenched 
 by the announcement that there was little or nothing to discover : 
 in short, the ecclesiastical view impressed the stamp of finality 
 on geographical science, and both writers and map-makers fell 
 into a narrow groove, to which they adhered until they were forced 
 out of it by the grand discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth 
 centuries. . . . The specific fault in the Mediaeval map was that it 
 made Jerusalem the centre of the habitable world, that it conse- 
 quently fixed the form and the limits of that world, and that it 
 forced lands and seas into spaces that were not adapted to their 
 true form or size. The use of parallels and meridians was abso- 
 lutely incompatible with such a system of map-drawing. Hence 
 the distortion of outlines and the gross displacement of towns and 
 countries. The radical defect in the method vitiated the whole 
 treatment of the subject. ... A Mediaeval mappa mundi must to a 
 great extent be regarded as an illustrated romance^* * 
 
 These words strike closer to the mark than perhaps 
 the authors themselves intended. Jerusalem, ^he ideal 
 whether on a map or in a legend, becomes the Jerusalem. 
 
 * Bevan and Phillott, " Medioev. Geog./' xii. xxi. 
 
134 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 centre of Church romance. No such place was known 
 before the old Koman times. In the reign of Hadrian 
 there was a strong place in Syria known after the 
 Emperor Hadrian as ^lia Capitolina. Not a coin, not 
 a line of genuine Hebrew inscription on stone or parch- 
 ment has ever been discovered to bear witness to the 
 occupation of the place by a warlike people of Hebrews 
 or Judsei. The Children of Israel — i.e. the Muslim — con- 
 quered the land of Syria and the city of ^lia ; and they, 
 with slight interruption, have been its masters ever since. 
 They call the city the Holy Place or the Holy House ; 
 and their right to do so has never been successfully 
 challenged. The legends of the Muslim concerning the 
 Holy Place are to be found in the Koran and in the 
 great Chronicle of Tabari. They are ignorant of 
 any Jewish occupation. 
 
 It is not the least probable that the name '* Jerusalem " 
 was applied to the Holy Place of the Muslim in Syria 
 until some time in the fifteenth century. It is not the 
 Jews nor the Eabbins who are responsible for that appli- 
 cation. The Biblical and the Talmudical writers mean 
 by '' Jerusalem " an ideal city wherein the tribes are 
 supposed to gather. In a secondary sense the term may 
 denote any Jewry in Spain, in South Italy, in Holland 
 or France.* The passionate love and pride expressed 
 towards "Zion" and "Jerusalem" have certainly never 
 been generally felt towards the city in Syria, nor indeed 
 toward any city of whose inhabitants the majority are not 
 of Jewish blood. About the beginning of the thirteenth 
 century it seems that the excitement about Syria spread 
 among the Rabbins, and we hear of a number of them 
 following the fashion of pilgrimages. But if the words 
 uhi bene ihi patria hold good for the Jew, it is not in 
 
 ♦ D. W. Marks, " Notre Zion c'est la France." 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 135 
 
 Syria that he has ever found his most beloved Jerusalem, 
 or Ariel. 
 
 It remains to trace the designation of the Holy Place 
 of the Muslim in Syria as Jerusalem to the j^^^^^^^^ 
 primitive Christians — that is, to the Bene- Jj^^^^^^^^^ 
 dictines with their Greek allies, and to them 
 alone. It is clear that they, employing their usual 
 artifice in the interpretation of the Psalms and Prophets, 
 have converted the Jerusalem of poetry into the Jerusalem 
 the centre of a geographical system. They have then — 
 in pursuance of the same method — fixed the theory 
 that the word of the Lord must go forth, the Church 
 must take her rise, from that place. The Church is 
 impersonated in her ideal Founder ; and all the events 
 from the Nativity at Bethlehem to the Passion at 
 Golgotha have been arranged in accordance with the 
 same system of Biblical a priori, of prophetic types and 
 mystical adumbrations. 
 
 On the whole, there can be no better way in which 
 to enter upon the study of Church history than by the 
 examination of the Hereford Map. It yields an insight 
 not merely into the habits of imagination of our English 
 monks, but of the whole ambitious Order to which they 
 belonged. Their eye falls with interest upon Jerusalem 
 because the place is symbolic of the dogma by which 
 they rule, but still more upon Kome, which is described 
 as " Head of the world," and as holding the reins of the 
 terrestrial orb. But the map is a geographical and 
 historical invention ; and little gratitude do we owe our 
 first teachers at the close of a long night of ignorance 
 who offered us stones instead of bread, and barren, 
 blightinor theories of the world instead of the facts 
 which kindle imagination and inspire for useful ex- 
 ertion. 
 
136 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 In connection with the Mappa Mundi of Hereford 
 The "Poly- may be perused the first book of the Poly- 
 chronicon" ^hronicon, ascribed to Ealph Higden, a 
 Higden. Benedictine of St. Werburgh's, Chester, which 
 sprang from the school of Bee. As usual, nothing is 
 known of the personality of the monk, w^ho is said to 
 have lived into the late fourteenth century. The 
 *^ Chronicon " was used in England soon after Caxton. 
 
 The work shows the usual system of a priori con- 
 struction. It is planned in seven books because of 
 the seven days of Creation ; and has been written on 
 the Benedictine scheme of history as laid down in the 
 works ascribed to the Eusebii, Isidore, Augustine, and 
 the rest. He has a better library at his command than 
 had Boston of Bury St. Edmunds, who was ignorant of 
 Higden's work. 
 
 Our monk follows the noted passage in the Pseudo- 
 Augustine " Civ. Dei," xvi. 8. With the members of his 
 confederacy he assumes that Asia forms half the world. 
 The ocean encircles the mass of earth. The Ked Sea 
 and the Caspian Sea are byways to the ocean, which 
 is 370 miles from the Euxine. The Firth of Gades or 
 of Atlas is the third great bay of ocean. 
 
 Paradise is in the extreme east, and, as usual, sur- 
 rounded by the fiery wall, whose flames reach to heaven. 
 
 There are monstrous trees and men in India. There 
 are satyrs and pygmies a cubit high, who generate in 
 the fourth year of their age, and in the fifth turn white. 
 They collect in a body, and sitting on rams, make war 
 against the cranes, and break their nests and eggs. 
 There are gymnosophists who keep their undazzled gaze 
 on the sun throughout the day. The dog-headed and 
 other quaint beings are also to be found yonder. Ophir 
 is an isle of India with abundance of gold. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 137 
 
 The Chester monk has a chapter on the region of 
 Juda3a, in which he coincides with a perfect chorus of his 
 Order who have discovered this imaginary land in Syria, 
 and have inserted the fable of its having been made 
 tributary by Pompey the Great into the Latin literature. 
 He, too, distinguishes a celestial and a terrestrial Jeru- 
 salem. The city is corruptly called by the poets Solima, 
 which name the Benedictines have inserted into many 
 Latin poets. He repeats the fables about the Dead Sea. 
 But the illustrations need not be pursued. The 
 monk is simply one of the many mouthpieces of the 
 orthodox Benedictine dogma of geography. It provokes 
 a smile when we find some English scholars denouncing 
 with heat this monk as a wicked plagiary, a villainous 
 forger, who had vamped the Chronicle of his brother 
 Benedictine of Chester, Roger. There is no question of 
 plagiate where there is no question of originality. They 
 are all obsequious to the geographical form of the dogma, 
 as to every other form, theological, historical, physio- 
 logical, astronomical. And we may shrewdly suspect 
 that the dogma of geography was laid down about the 
 time when the abbots of the Southern province were 
 compelled, by the growing curiosity of the age, to 
 bestir themselves for the education of their young- 
 alumni at Oxford and Cambridge. But let us correct 
 this dogma by reference to the Arabian, Edrisi. 
 
 We are forced to pause before using the work ascribed 
 to Edrisi as evidence, in order to inquire its Geography 
 probable date. It cannot have been com- ^*^^'^^^^- 
 piled in the twelfth century, as the eloquent and some- 
 what florid Oriental language of the preface intimates. 
 The principal MS. in the Royal Library of Paris is dated 
 1344, a statement equally untrustworthy. The ideas, 
 however, of this geography may be fairly considered as 
 
138 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 those of the travelled and instructed Moslems who visited 
 the West during the Middle Ages. 
 
 This Edrisi may have read some Christian books, or 
 may have listened to some oral Christian traditions. He 
 is a witness to the fact that his people have ever recog- 
 nized the famed city of Syria which the Benedictines 
 make the centre of the circle of the earth. Its proper 
 name is El Mocaddas, the Holy Place or Sanctuary in 
 the Mohammedan tradition. But Edrisi writes at a time 
 when, owing to the influx of Christian pilgrims into 
 Syria, his belief has been partly confused by listening 
 to the tales.* 
 
 The two principal cities of Palestine are Kamleh and 
 Beit-el-Mocaddas (the Holy House). The 
 
 Beit-el- ^ . .,, . • i p n 
 
 Mocaddas latter IS an illustrious town, ancient and lull 
 of ancient monuments. It once bore the name 
 of Ilia (iElia Capitolina). Situated on a mountain, of 
 easy access on all sides, it stretches from west to east. 
 At the west is the gate called of El-Mihrab. Below is 
 the Cupola of David (on whom be blessing ! ) ; on the 
 east, the gate called of Pity, which is usually shut, and 
 only opened on the feast of branches ; on the south, 
 the Gate of Seihun (Sion) ; on the north, the Gate of 
 Amoud-el-Ghorab. Starting from the western gate of 
 El-Mihrab, you pass towards the east by a broad street, 
 and you come to a church of the Kesurrection — so called 
 by the Muslim called Comame. This church is the 
 object of pilgrimage to the Nazarenes from all lands of 
 the East and West. You enter by the western gate and 
 pass under the dome which covers the whole enclosure, 
 and which is one of the most remarkable things in the 
 world. The church is below this gate, and it is not 
 
 * *' Geographie d'Edrisi traduite de I'Arabe en Fran^ais," par P. Aniedee 
 Jaubert, 1836, 1. 339, seqq. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 139 
 
 possible to descend into the lower part of the building 
 by this side. You go down on the northern side by a 
 gate opening on a staircase of thirty steps. The gate 
 is called Bab Santa Maria. On entering the church the 
 spectator finds the Holy Sepulchre, a considerable build- 
 ing with two doors, and surmounted by a cupola of very 
 solid construction, very strong, and made with admirable 
 art. One of the two gates faces, on the north, the Gate 
 of Santa Maria ; the other faces the south, and is called 
 Bab-el- Saloubie, Gate of the Crucifixion, on this side 
 of the peristyle of the church, opposite which, toward 
 the east, is a considerable church, where the Nazarenes 
 celebrate their holy offices and make their prayers and 
 oblations. 
 
 On the east of the church you arrive by a gentle 
 decline at the prison where the Lord Messias was 
 detained, and at the place where He was crucified. The 
 great cupola is circularly pierced to the open sky, and 
 you see there all around and inside paintings represent- 
 ing the prophets, the Lord Messias, Saint Mary his 
 mother, and Saint John Baptist. If you go from the 
 principal church towards the east, you will find the 
 holy dwelling built by Solomon, son of David, and 
 which was a place of pilgrimage from the time of the 
 power of the Jews. The temple was taken from them, 
 and they were driven out when the Muslim arrived.* 
 Under the Muslim domination it was enlarged, and 
 it is the great Mosque known by the Muslim under 
 the name of Mesdjid el-Acsa. Its equal does not exist, 
 always excepting the great Mosque of Cordova in 
 Audalus. 
 
 The author, in a further description, says that on 
 the south was a chapel which had been used by the 
 
 * There is naught of this in Tabari's " Chron." 
 
I40 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Muslim, but the Nazarenes had taken possession of 
 it by force, and had converted it into a Convent of 
 Templars ; that is, Servants of the House of God. He 
 shows in several places that he has confused the tradi- 
 tions of the monks with those of the Koran, in so far, 
 that is, as to suppose the canonical Christian legends to 
 be told of the Lord Messias of the Arabian tradition. 
 He mentions a church of St. Mary and the tomb of 
 the Virgin in sight of the Mount of Olives, the church 
 of Our Father, the tomb of Lazarus, who was raised 
 by the Lord Messias ; and, two miles from the Mount 
 of Olives, the village whence the she-ass was brought 
 which the Lord Messias rode on his entry into 
 Aurashlim.* 
 
 He speaks of a church near the Jordan under tlie 
 protection of St. John, served by Greek monks. On 
 the south of Jerusalem as you go out by the Gate of 
 Seihun you come to a fine church wherein is the hall 
 in which the Lord Messias ate with his disciples, with 
 the table still extant, and which is visited on Thursdays. 
 Below is the Valley of Hell and the Church of St. Peter. 
 Here is the source of Selwan (Siloe), where the Lord 
 Messias gave sight to a blind man who before had 
 never rejoiced in the light of day. South of the spring is 
 the field which was bought by the Messias for the burial 
 of strangers. At Bethlehem he describes the church, 
 the grotto where the Messias was born, and the cradle 
 in which he was placed. Eight miles south of Bethlehem 
 is the Mosque of Ibrahim, where repose the remains of 
 Ibrahim, Isaac, and Yakoub, with their wives. At 
 Nablous he mentions the well dug by the patriarch 
 Yakoub (on whom be peace !), near which the Lord 
 
 * Here the author is following a Christian writer or preacher, and corrupts 
 the word "Jerusalem." 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 141 
 
 Messias sat and asked water of the Samaritan woman. 
 But the most important church next to that at 
 El-Mocaddas is that of Sant Jacoub or St. James of 
 Compostella.* Other indications fairly agree with the 
 hypothesis that the Arabian lived not far from the time 
 of Chaucer. 
 
 He appears to have learned English names from 
 the Norman French ; some are scarcely decipherable. 
 Dartmouth, however — notable in Chaucer — appears as 
 Djartmouda, Dover and London as Dobres and 
 Londres. But what are Ghounester and Gharcafort ? f 
 Of interest, also, are the views of the Arabian geographer 
 of Christian centres in the West. He sees at Rome the 
 Palace of the Prince, called the Pope, who is mightier 
 than all the princes of the earth. He refers to the 
 three Metropolitan sees, Antioch, Alexandria, and 
 El-Mocaddas. The latter, he says, is the most recent. 
 It did not exist from the time of the Apostles, which 
 seems to be a clear indication that the Arabian was 
 aware of the absence of all Christian antiquities at 
 his Holy Place. He adds that it was instituted for 
 the glorification of the Holy House ; again, an indica- 
 tion that the Muslim regarded the Christians as holding 
 a junior branch of their own sacred tradition. He says 
 there is a church in Rome m.odelled after the temple 
 of Jerusalem, that there is another of St. Peter and 
 Paul, and that there are 200 churches in Rome.;|: 
 
 It may be well to offer some further illustrations 
 from monastic writings of the influence of Bibiicai 
 Theological Dogma upon man's views of the Naw^""^ 
 natural world. Here again it prepossesses the ^^^*^°^- 
 mind, dulls the faculty of observation, and leads the 
 student into insuperable difficulties and inconsistencies. 
 
 * Edrisi, II. 227. f H. 374. J II. 250-252. 
 
142 THE RISE OF EJSTGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 There are three great variants of the great human tra- 
 dition of the Deluge with which we Europeans are 
 concerned — the Greek, the Arabian, and the Hebrew ; 
 all of them full of interest to the student of the 
 aitiologic vein of human fancy, by which it travels from 
 effects to causes. 
 
 But the monks fastened upon the Hebrew tradition 
 as if it were sole and authoritative, and endeavoured 
 to fuse the facts of the Natural world into harmony 
 with it. They met inevitable difficulties, not by inquir- 
 ing into the authors and sources of the literary tradition, 
 not by study of aitiology, but by violent attempts to 
 deny the truth that Nature herself offers everywhere 
 to the most careless spectator. The fruits of travelled 
 observation and experience must be sacrificed on the 
 shrine of that idol which they called Incommutable Truth, 
 but which in reality was nothing but ecclesiastical vision 
 and dream. 
 
 The question, e.g., arose. If all animals not found in 
 the Ark at the time of the Flood were destroyed, 
 
 The Flood. • i • i • i i o 
 
 how came there to be animals m the islands { 
 Frogs, indeed, spring out of the earth by spontaneous 
 generations, but wolves and other beasts are known 
 to be propagated by the union of the sexes. How did 
 they come to the islands ? The parents must have 
 swam to the nearest islands from the Ark ; but it was 
 impossible that islands, remote from the continents, 
 could thus be reached. Men may have carried them 
 thither in the interests of sport, or they may have been 
 transferred thither by the command or permission of 
 God and by the agency of Angels. Or they may 
 have sprung up from the earth according to the first 
 Origin, when God said, Let the earth bring forth the 
 living soul. If so, it becomes clear that the reason why 
 
BENEDICTINE NATURAL HISTORY. 143 
 
 all kinds were brought into the Ark was not that 
 animal life must be renewed, but for the sake of a 
 Church mystery ; that is, for the sake of setting forth 
 in type and figure the various nations of the earth. 
 So the monk retires from the ground of fact and proof 
 into the region of dream and mystic. 
 
 Again. The Monk wishes to reconcile the undoubted 
 fact, as he regards it, that there are monstrous Belief in 
 races of human beings in the earth with the Sces^oT"^ 
 legend of the Flood. His notion of history ™''°- 
 is so lax that he believes history vouches for the 
 existence of such monsters. Some races have but one 
 eye in the middle of the forehead, like Polyphemus, 
 others have their feet turned behind their legs. Others 
 have the nature of both sexes, the right breast being 
 virile, and the left muliebre ; the functions of genera- 
 tion are alternate. Some have no mouths and breathe 
 by the nostrils. There are pygmsei of a cubit in 
 stature. There are races where females are mothers at 
 five, and die at eight years of age. There is a race of 
 one-legged men, who bend not the knee, and are of 
 wonderful swiftness. There is the race of the shadow- 
 footed, who lie on their backs on the earth in the summer 
 and protect themselves from the sun by the shadow of 
 their feet. There are neckless men, with eyes in the 
 shoulders. He has seen mosaics representing other 
 human curiosities from the shores of Carthage. There 
 is the dog-headed race, who bark like beasts. 
 
 We arc studying the impressions of a time when 
 travel is becoming a fashion, when a restless curiosity 
 about the great world disturbs men's minds, when 
 shipmen returning home to Dartmouth or Hull will 
 disappoint their open-mouthed audience, unless they 
 can glut their appetite for marvels and monsters. The 
 
144 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 monk has no interest in sifting such stones. It makes 
 for the general coarse of credulity that those things 
 should be accepted. He is concerned only to bring 
 these tales within the rim of his Biblical system. It is 
 not necessary, he says, that we should believe in all 
 the races of men that we hear of. But no faithful man 
 will doubt that all human beings, all rational mortal 
 animals, however strange in form or colour and other 
 attributes, claim their origin from the one great Proto- 
 plast, Adam. 
 
 God is the Creator of all, and His universe is fair, 
 though the parts may to us appear deform ; for we 
 know not their relations and their congruences. We 
 know that there are men with more than five digits on 
 hands and feet ; but we must not suppose that the 
 Creator erred, and knew not why he made men 
 thus. 
 
 Perhaps God created some races of monsters with 
 a view to convince ns that his wisdom did not err, that 
 he was not an imperfect workman when he suffered the 
 monstrosities in particular cases which are known to 
 us all, to come into being. 
 
 It should not seem absurd to us that, as there are 
 individual monsters to be found in every people, so 
 there are monstrous peoples excepted from the whole 
 human race. At all events, we may draw the cautious 
 conclusion that the tales of monstrous races are null and 
 void ; or, if they exist, they are not men ; or they sjDring 
 from Adam if they are men. So the theory of the 
 primaeval Protoplast and the descent of all men from 
 him through the sons of Noe, is saved. 
 
 Such was the stupor of men who had been trained 
 to wonder and believe as the first article of wisdom and 
 first principle of education, in presence of the great 
 
BENEDICTINE NATURAL HISTORY. 145 
 
 world. A marvellous Book is the mirror of a marvellous 
 world. An incredible Oriental legend finds confirmation 
 or it finds opposition in travellers' tales of incredible 
 ethnology. Men found refuge from the oppression of 
 one belief in submitting to another equally oppressive, 
 or in forced eff'orts at reconciliation. We see the taste 
 for belief in " men whose heads do grow beneath their 
 shoulders," and other monstrosities surviving in Shake- 
 speare's days, nay, down to our own. There have been 
 men of high accomplishment, but weak in reason, of our 
 own time, who would gladly have welcomed any fresh 
 evidence substantiating the existence of pygmies. But 
 one cannot but admire that inborn spirited energy of 
 Nature which we call Eeason or Genius, which, 
 operating in chosen minds, has gradually emancipated 
 the world from the dominion of the low appetite for 
 wonder and the habit of believing tales because they 
 are told.* 
 
 The accusation against the clergy is not that they 
 created the idle appetite for wonder, but that stimulation 
 as teachers they took no pains to correct it ; appetite for 
 they stimulated the appetite in the interests ^°^^^^- 
 of Church rule. There is a strong and wide-opened 
 disposition among the European peasantry to believe, 
 for example, in men with tails. So obstinately rooted 
 is this belief in Greece and Albania that students have 
 even consulted medical evidence to satisfy themselves 
 upon the question. Now, in the seventeenth century the 
 French bishop, Simon Mayole, WTote to the efiect that 
 in England there were families with tails, a penal 
 infliction upon ancestors who derided an Augustinian 
 sent by St. Gregory to preach in Dorset. They sewed 
 
 * See the Augustinian " De Civ. Dei.," xvi. 7, 8, of ad Fratres in Eremo, 
 ser. 37, where he asserts that in Ethiopia he saw a one-eyed nation. 
 
 L 
 
146 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the tails of different animals to his clothes ; but it was 
 soon found that these tails were entailed on them and 
 their posterity for ever.* 
 
 The phantasy, acting under the conditions of 
 ignorance, remoteness from the object of rumour, and 
 intense curiosity, will of itself generate unreal forms, in 
 which something is added to, or withdrawn from, the 
 materials of experience. But the monks are equally 
 unable to present the near object in the forms of matter 
 of fact. The MS. cited by Mr. Sharon Turner, in his 
 "History of the Anglo-Saxons," shows, with other sources, 
 that the monkish writer conceived the Red Sea as 
 actually red. Near it were red hens, the touch of which 
 caused burning to the hands and body. Pepper is 
 black, because fire is used to drive away the serpents 
 which guard it. He has the usual array of dog- 
 headed, boar-tusked, horse-maned, flame-breathing men. 
 There are ants as big as dogs, with feet like grass- 
 hoppers, red and black. They dig gold for fifteen days. 
 Men go to fetch it with female camels and their young. 
 The ants surrender the gold in exchange for the young 
 camels, which they devour. Ignorance might excuse 
 these representations, but the monk should have known 
 Gaul more exactly. Yet in Gaul he says there are 
 men twenty feet high, with heads like lions, and mouths 
 as the sails of windmills. 
 
 So also it is not merely the Near in space, but the 
 Near in time as well as the Remote which was filled 
 with Monstrous animals and men by our early historio- 
 graphers. They must discharge the function with 
 which their minds are overloaded into all their retro- 
 spective views. The time before King Arthur may be 
 
 * Goldsmith, " Citizen of the World," xvi. Mr. Baring-Gould witnesses in 
 the *' Red Spider " to the tenacity of the idea in Devon. 
 
BENEDICTINE NATURAL HISTORY. 147 
 
 somewhat more miraculous than the time after King 
 Arthur ; but the stream of events continues in the same 
 channel of Biblical and old Roman deduction from first 
 to last. England was filled with giants till the coming 
 of Brutus. A rain of blood during three days marked 
 the reign of one of his successors. Another engaged in 
 single combat with a monster from the Irish sea, which 
 devoured him like a fish.* Arthur engages two giants 
 in single combat, and slays them. One was the giant 
 of Mont St. Michel, a cannibal, who swallowed his 
 victims half alive. The other clothed himself in a robe 
 made of the beards of slain kings. 
 
 It is but a step from these monsters to the tyrants 
 of whom Britain and other lands were once fertile, men 
 of diabolical parentage and spirit, who by mere force 
 of logic are filled with the most unreasoning hatred 
 and cruelty toward all children of Holy Church. This 
 habit of painting human beings as devils under the 
 influence of Church partisanship passed over into the 
 political sphere. History written in the Lancastrian 
 interest was thus to furnish us with the portrait of a 
 Richard III. born into the world with claws upon his 
 fingers. 
 
 Often in perusing this fantastic lore we are reminded 
 of the passage in which Milton describes the nature of the 
 dream-life of the mind. Reason, he sings, is chief over 
 the faculties of the soul, among which fancy holds the 
 next place. 
 
 " Of all external things, 
 Which the fine watchful senses represent, 
 She forms imaginations, aery shapes, 
 Which Keason, joining or disjoining, frames 
 All what we afiirm or what deny, and call 
 Our knowledge or opinion ; then retires 
 
 * Galfredi, « Hist. Brit.," p. 51. 
 
148 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Into her private cell when Nature rests. 
 
 Oft in her absence mimic Fancy wakes 
 
 To imitate her ; but misjoining shapes, 
 
 Wild work produces oft, and most in dreams." * 
 
 By the system of monastic education the memory 
 was overcharged with prodigious ideas, the fancy suffered 
 from hypertrophy, the judgment was kept in a state 
 of imbecility ; and men wandered through the world 
 without relish for the matter of fact, unless it could 
 be deduced from matter of fancy, ignorant alike of 
 themselves and of the world in which they lived. 
 
 The consideration of this part of the subject would 
 The power not be complctc if we failed to remember that 
 monk^over the tcachcrs who impressed these fantasies 
 Nature. about Nature on the minds of the ignorant 
 represented themselves as having supernatural dominion 
 over its wild forces. They revert, as usual, to the 
 Scriptures of the Hebrews and to their own canonical 
 writings for the authority of these representations. Be- 
 cause a Hebrew poet sings of the desert becoming a 
 delight, the solitudes as a Garden of the Lord, they 
 pretend that Graul and Britain, covered with savage 
 forests and haunted by wild beasts, had by their coming 
 been converted into a smiling Paradise. Because the 
 Jewish patriarchs had once dwelt in tents, so must the 
 pioneers of Monachism have tenanted cabins in solitary 
 exile, and have sung psalms in oratories of wicker, while 
 the howling wolf gave the responses. 
 
 In these retreats they had exerted their power over 
 the wild creatures — the elan, the buffalo, the bison, the 
 urus and the bear, and over the not less fierce hunter 
 and bandit. Such tales f are told of a St. Calais or 
 
 * " Paradise Lost," bk. v. 
 
 t "Orderic Vital," iii. 182, ed. Leprevost. 
 
BENEDICTINE NATURAL HISTORY. 149 
 
 St. Karilef in the Merovingian time. St. Giles, of 
 widespread fame, whose name points back to Greek 
 influence in the cloisters (^gidius), had grown old. in 
 the forests of the Rhone, nourished on the milk of a 
 fawn in a cave. A king in the course of the chase had 
 pursued the fawn, and the arrow which was aimed at 
 her heart pierced the hand of the solitary. The com- 
 punctious king insisted on replacing the grotto by a 
 monastery, of which St. Giles duly became the abbot. 
 So was the Abbey and the town of St. Giles furnished 
 with an appropriate myth of origin, and at the same 
 time the great truth was inculcated that the very beasts 
 of the field were at peace with the men of God ; and 
 that earthly possessions were rightly bestowed on those 
 who could produce such divine titles to enjoy. 
 
 So the real Breton Abbey of Nermok traces its 
 origin to the romantic time when a prince pabied 
 pursuing a stag found it in church at the feet <^«^^*^^°«- 
 of the young abbess. At the end of seven days he 
 placed on the altar an Act conveying lands with several 
 hundred herds of horses and cattle to the congrega- 
 tion. Similar was the behaviour of King Clotaire the 
 Second towards the Irish monk Deicole in Segraine, 
 whose lonely altar had sheltered a wild boar. So for 
 many ages the Cross of St. Basle in the forest of Rheims 
 was a refuge for game, respected alike by the hounds 
 and their masters when in full chase. Moreover, the 
 doe fleeing from the wolves, presented an apt allegory 
 of the Christian soul pursued by the devil and his hosts, 
 as in the legend of St. Lanmer. 
 
 The monks having recovered the primaeval innocence 
 of our first parents, and leading the life of angels, had 
 likewise recovered Adam's lost ascendency over the 
 lower creation. The English Benedictine who writes 
 
I50 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the life of St. Cutlibert of Lindisfarne argues tliat it 
 is matter of course and not of surprise that he who 
 serves the Creator faithfully should command the 
 service of all creatures. The promise of the Book of 
 Job (v. 23) was meant to be made good, and it was 
 made good in the experience of this new elite of 
 humanity. Not less was the canonical promise to 
 the disciples, '* Greater works shall the believer do," 
 intended to be made good ; and the reader must confess 
 that the miracles of St. Cuthbert are more astounding 
 both in quantity and in quality than those of the 
 Apostles. He charms a spring out of the dry ground ; 
 he raises a crop of barley from seed sown after the 
 proper time. The man of God " laughs at impossibilities, 
 and says the thing is done." 
 
 The ecclesiastical interest is apparent in all this 
 violent contempt for the plainest truths which are 
 impressed upon human experience. One of our earliest 
 Tudor chroniclers tells in English, after the Benedic- 
 tines, how St. Germain came into England to reform 
 " King Vortigern " from the Arian heresy. It was a 
 snowy evening, passing cold. He was denied lodgings 
 with the king, aud took refuge with the king's herd- 
 man, whose wife killed the fatted calf for the bishop's 
 supper. The holy man bade her gather the bones, and 
 wrap them in the skin, and place them in the stall. 
 The calf was shortly restored to life, and ate hay. On 
 the morrow the bishop repaired to the king, denounced 
 his want of hospitality, bade him and his depart from 
 the palace, resigning it to the herdman, from whom 
 all the subsequent British kings descended. 
 
 About the same time the monks were writing their 
 stories about " St. Anselm." He put out fires, calmed 
 tempests, healed diseases. He produced a spring at 
 
BENEDICTINE NATURAL HISTORY. 151 
 
 the top of a hill by prayer. A leaky ship leaked not 
 while he was on board. A Flemish nobleman was 
 cured of leprosy by drinking of the water wherein the 
 saint had washed his hands, and soldiers cured of ague 
 by eating of crumbs from his loaf. After his death, 
 his girdle was applied to women in child-birth. So 
 '* John of Salisbury." Thus the canonical word was 
 fulfilled that the apostolic men should work greater 
 works than their Master ; and it is a most uncanonical 
 and fallacious proceeding on the part of the modern 
 historian to remove the envelope of wonder from these 
 Figures who are adapted to wondrous landscapes and 
 climates. 
 
 It is the same class of writers who, under the 
 names of St. Athanasius and St. Jerome, carry us into 
 the Thebaid and to Syria, and who tell us of Abbot 
 Gerasimus and his grateful lion whose foot he had 
 relieved of a thorn, which fed on milk and cooked 
 vegetables, daily fetched water from the Jordan, and died 
 in grief on his master's tomb. It is a French monk who 
 writes under the notorious pseudonym of Sulpicius 
 Severus, garbler of Koman history, who tells us of the 
 lion and the she- wolf who ate of vegetable food at the 
 hands of the men of God as if they had been by nature 
 herbivorous. And why not, since the Hebrew prophet 
 had sung of carnivora eating straw like the ox ? 
 
 The origin of the name of " Martin fishers " for 
 certain birds is traced up to the art of St. Martin, who 
 saw in these divers an image of the devil, and sent 
 them away into the desert. St. Benet himself, at 
 Subiaco, had his familiar crow which regularly attended 
 on his meals. Sparrows followed the Abbe Maixent ; 
 rotelets laid their eojcrs and hatched them in the cloaks 
 of monkish toilers in the vines. When St. Keivin, a 
 
152 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Breton monk, extended his hands in prayer, birds made 
 a nest of them. When St. Magloire came into his 
 endowment near the sea, all the birds of the woods 
 and all the fishes of the deep came swarming towards 
 his property. The noble donor, who had been cured 
 of leprosy and had surrendered half his property, sought 
 in dismay an exchange, but in vain. The birds and 
 fishes again followed their true lord. 
 
 The monachic mythology afibrds abundant entertain- 
 ment to the student of the human mind. "We observe 
 how the fancy, operating by the constant motive of 
 desire and self-interest, will certainly produce the same 
 forms of thought in endless iteration. We read in the old 
 religious myths of Greece how Athamas, once tyrant 
 of Boeotia, going into exile, inquired of the god where 
 he should dwell. In the place where he should receive 
 hospitality from wild beasts, was the response. He 
 wandered far till he came upon wolves devouring the 
 carcases of sheep. When they beheld him they left 
 their prey and fled. And there he built the place 
 Athamantia. So were the sites of monasteries indi- 
 cated by wild beasts. So the chased stag pointed out 
 Fecamp, seat of St. Leger, the white eagle that of the 
 Abbey of St. Thierry, or the dove that of Hautvilliers. 
 
 St. Corbinian of Freisingen, on his way to Rome, turns 
 a bear, which had killed one of his litter horses, into a 
 beast of burden, and the bear follows him like a broken 
 horse. St. Malo is followed by a wolf as if he had 
 been a domestic dog. St. Paul of Leon does what he 
 will with buffaloes, bears, crocodiles, or sea-serpents, 
 and causes the sea itself to retire four thousand paces 
 from the monastery of his sister. The nuns place flints 
 to mark its bounds, which are instantly magnified into 
 lofty rocks. St. Herv^ of Brittany had a wolf which 
 
BENEDICTINE NATURAL HISTORY. 153 
 
 was stabled with the sheep, and did the work of an 
 ox. The Irish monks performed similar feats with 
 stags. Whitby and many another abbey can produce 
 analogous legends. 
 
 This phsenomenon — this enormous architectural 
 system of interested fable — is part of the phaenomenon of 
 the Benedictine system. If, pacing thoughtfully the 
 floor of one of our cathedrals, we call up to the imagi- 
 native ear this vast volume of fiction, gazing mean- 
 time at the painted windows, we begin to realize the 
 insatiable ambition of the Order, its inveterate alliance 
 with the spirit of falsehood, and the consequent profound 
 depression of all active intelligence, which dared not 
 exert itself in the cause of useful knowledge, which 
 timidly retired into obscure places, followed by de- 
 nunciations of wizardry, magic, and inspirations of the 
 devil. 
 
 The monastic books called " Bestiaria," with their 
 curious designs, prove how completely the lust The " Besti- 
 for sensation and fable had taken possession of ^^^^" 
 the minds of our early teachers, and how zealously 
 these new ^sops sought for analogies of the religious 
 life, not in the real habits, but in the theoretic nature 
 of animals. It is a Benedictine who writes, under the 
 name of a Cardinal and a Saint P. Damiani, an opuscle 
 on this subject, in which all the real and fabulous 
 animals of the "Bestiaries" furnish in various ways 
 examples of monastic virtues. 
 
 It may be thought that such matters are hardly 
 worth serious criticism. Not so by those who wish 
 to know the competence of the monk to tell us the 
 truth about any matter of common human interest. 
 Not so by those who hold that the educator should 
 draw aside rather than thicken the veil which screens 
 
154 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the objects of Nature from our gaze. In reference to 
 Church uses, the fables so massively told were highly 
 profitable ; but in reference to all other uses pernicious. 
 The people needed no stimulation to wonder about 
 animals ; thousands of folk-tales show the contrary. 
 They needed not the lesson of kindness to animals ; 
 it is taught over again in the tales of the three grateful 
 beasts who help the hero at the time of need. The monks 
 dignify their fabulous natural history with the name 
 of physiology ; but had their will prevailed, the founda- 
 tion of that great branch of science would never have 
 been laid. It may, perhaps, be maintained, without fear 
 of contradiction, that the beasts of the field have never 
 consented to Church dogma, nor evinced a distinct 
 regard for the persons of monks over those of ordinary 
 humanity. 
 
 The monk was incorrect in what he calls his animal 
 tropology. He may indeed have been wise as a serpent, 
 but the greed for spoil which constantly betrays itself 
 in the legends of animals, the denouement of which is a 
 splendid Donation to a cloister, remind rather of the 
 beak and talons of the hawk than of the harmlessness 
 of the dove. The whole scientific theories of the 
 orthodox monk are based upon the dogma that every 
 law of Nature which we respect has in turn been set 
 aside in the interest of his ecclesiastical corporation. 
 With the denial of this, his theories fall to the ground. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length on these matters 
 because I desired to point out the fallacy of our 
 historians who have thought they must use the monkish 
 stories as material for an objective knowledge of our 
 past. The notion has obtained, that if you omit the 
 prodigious and the impossible, the residuum may be 
 accepted as record and registration. It is a vain 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 155 
 
 notion. If you deny the prodigious, you kill the root 
 of the whole fabulous organism. Nothing is under- 
 stood on this subject until it is perceived that the 
 men of God have persuaded themselves that all space 
 and time belongs to them, and that they are at liberty 
 to occupy the whole field of human contemplation with 
 unreal objects and events, which shall serve as symbolic 
 of their own aspirations and ambitions. 
 
 Legends of the Discovery of the New Orb. 
 
 The year 1892 is the conventional 400th anniversary* 
 of the discovery of America ; but a critical inspection of 
 the evidence brings to light the fact that we have no 
 contemporary evidence whatever from the late fifteenth 
 century in the Latin language to show that the East 
 and West Indies had been discovered. There is 
 evidently a knowledge of the East Indies in the 
 Arabian tale '* Sindbad," probably also in the Hebrew 
 Bible ; but the date of this literature has yet to be 
 ascertained. The reader will find the materials for a 
 reconsideration of the subject in the industrious com- 
 pilation of Mr. Justin Winsor. It is the chronology 
 of these legends which is fictitious, as also the personal 
 details. 
 
 The plain matter of fact is this. True astronomical 
 and cosmographical knowledge was gradually creeping 
 into the world, partly from the studies of scholars, 
 partly from the adventures and observations of illiterate 
 seamen during the sixteenth century. The leaders of 
 religious thought ofiered a stubborn resistance to the 
 reports which came from either quarter, until it was 
 no longer possible to deny what the world had accepted. 
 It was the first great conflict of the Church with science, 
 
 * Written 1890— E. A. P. 
 
156 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 and the Church was defeated. The Eeligious Orders 
 then resolved to make the best of the situation. Since 
 they could no longer deny the existence of the New 
 Orb, they would Christianize it, they would go as far 
 as possible in claiming the credit of the discovery. It 
 was not until the later sixteenth century that they 
 sat down to the task of composing plausible legends 
 in the Portuguese, the Spanish, or Italian interest, in 
 which members of great families, patrons of the religious 
 houses, w^ere represented, in the void of all authentic 
 reports and memorials, as discoverers of the East and 
 West Indies. In this way the ideals of Gama, of 
 Columbus, of Amerigo Vespucci arose. It is another 
 example of the necessity of looking closely to the 
 alleged dates of the sixteenth-century literature, that a 
 considerable number of the tracts in Mr. Harris's "Biblio- 
 graphy " have been antedated, as comparison shows. 
 There is no publication relating to the discovery of 
 the East or "West Indies that bears the least resemblance 
 to contemporary narrative. We have nothing but the 
 usual smooth, plausible tales of origins. What Bacon 
 says of the style of Osorio, the Portuguese bishop, so 
 flatulent and empty, may be applied to all the rest. 
 
 Let me recall to the reader how^ Francis Bacon 
 declares that it w^as only in the time of " our fathers " 
 that lights were made in this great structure of the 
 w^orld. Let me point him to the History of Spain by 
 Father Mariana, the Jesuit, a man of enlightened 
 judgment, although he wrote under the restrictions of 
 his profession and of the censorship. His life is said to 
 have covered the important period 1537-1623 ; and his 
 work, published late in the sixteenth century, shows 
 how easy it was to tell, in the course of a few columns, 
 the pith of the stories relating to early discoverers. 
 
THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF GEOGRAPHY. 
 
 157 
 
 One of his sources was the false Epistles of *' Peter 
 Martyr Anghiera, of Milan," the flimsy structure of 
 which has been torn to pieces by the ruthless hand 
 of Hallam. But none of his other sources are of greater 
 value. The clerical artist is everywhere apparent ; the 
 world is viewed through a clerical medium. The great 
 ambition is to subjugate the new world to the Papal 
 Empire, to baptize every new geographical discovery 
 with the names of Christ, of Mary, and the saints. 
 
 The monks of St. Die in the Vosges have the 
 honour — apparently in league with their brethren of St. 
 John Deo, Florence — of inventing the name ** America," 
 after a member of the Vespucci family. The tales 
 edited by Richard Hakluyt need to be examined with 
 the like severe circumspection. The commercial and 
 patriotic interest has here also led, in conjunction with 
 the clerical interest, to the concoction of a number of 
 tales of English enterprise, which might partly serve to 
 stimulate the men of the Elizabethan time to new 
 exertions. We obtain, however, some glimpses of that 
 sturdy, patient, enterprising character of Englishmen 
 which began to be formed in the school of the sea, and 
 which has been the source of so much of the national 
 greatness. 
 
 It may seem strange that the discovery of the world 
 as an orb made so little impression on the minds of 
 intelligent men. One would have supposed that so 
 soon as it became known that the facts within the ken 
 and experience of many a plain illiterate sailor flatly 
 contradicted the statements of our Christian cosmo- 
 graphers, and of the Bible on which they founded 
 themselves. Church teaching must have been discredited 
 and utterly overthrown. That it was not so is a 
 proof partly of the enormous strength and influence 
 
158 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of the Church organization, partly of the extreme 
 languor of intelligence which resulted from inveterate 
 indulgence in falsehood. 
 
 It is perhaps only now that we are beginning to 
 realize the immense significance of the rise of culture in 
 America. When we cast a steady glance at all that 
 has been accomplished in the West during the memory 
 of men now living, we see a fulfilment of the saying 
 concerning " nations born in a day ; " and the absurdity 
 comes home to us of continuing to found education 
 upon a book in which the Almighty appears to ignore 
 the nature of the earth He has made, and the coming 
 into existence of so many millions of souls who cannot 
 trace their parentage to Shem. 
 
 r 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 fables of the schools. 
 
 The Monastery at Poggio and the Fables of 
 Early Irish Culture. 
 
 I would DOW ask the reader to pay a visit to a literary 
 monastery which was concerned in the coustruction of 
 the mytholoory of culture in Ireland at an early and 
 impossible date. 
 
 In a lonely gorge of the Apennines between Genoa 
 and Milan, not far from the banks of famed Bobbio: 
 Trebia, stood till 1803 the Benedictine abbey ft's^!^'""^ 
 of St. Columban, Bobbio. The old church was c^Uban. 
 under the patronage of St. Peter. I ask the reader to 
 make an effort of imagination, and to seat himself in 
 the Scriptorium of that abbey at some time in the late 
 fifteenth century, or in the following age, by the side 
 of a monk who is tracing, according to the Rules of 
 Benedictine art, the romance of the life of St. Columban. 
 Bobbio was the child of Monte Cassino, and could have 
 possessed no library, no staff of historical writers, until 
 that age. The theme of the monk Jonas is the life of a 
 new monastic legislator. 
 
 Jonas boldly imagines that the Scotti, or Irish, in 
 their remoteness from other nations, were '' the more 
 flourishing in dogmatic vigour." He is bold, because 
 he writes in obedience to a theory of Church history. 
 
i6o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 The theory was that Ireland must be brought into 
 connection with the Italian and French cloisters ; and 
 the method must be that of Church romance. To 
 the analyst, the clue lies in the names of the cloisters. 
 Thus St. Patrick, a Gallo-Koman, is related to St. 
 Legend of the Martin of Tours, and had been sold to slavery 
 irellnd.'"'' ""^ by piratcs in Ireland. He is restored to Gaul, 
 St. Patrick. ^^^ studies at Marmontier and Lerins. He 
 goes, with St. Germain of Auxerre, to trample out the 
 Pelagian heresy in Graub. He repairs to Eome, obtains 
 a mission from the Pope, and goes back to Ireland with 
 the rank of bishop. At his death he is regarded with 
 the most passionate devotion, Ireland is converted, and 
 is full of schools. Ossian, the Homer of Ireland, has 
 been converted, and the monasteries have become the 
 asylum of bards and of Celtic poetry. Every holy 
 Roman defies tyrants and protects slaves, and St. 
 Patrick forms no exception to the rule. 
 
 At Kildare, the Cell of the Oak, St. Bridget had 
 
 wrought miracles, had driven out daemons, and 
 
 an inextinguishable fire had been kindled by 
 holy women on her tomb. The fame of the Abbess of 
 Kildare had spread to Cologne and to Seville, and her 
 name had become the commonest baptismal name of 
 Irish girls. Prodigious was the effect of the exertions 
 of St. Patrick and St. Bridget. The young men and 
 women were crazy to be monks and nuns. It has been 
 seriously maintained that the Round Towers were the 
 belfrys of cathedrals and abbeys erected before the 
 English conquest. 
 
 Nor was the quality of the monks inferior to their 
 
 quantity. French and Roman missionaries 
 schools in disembarked at Cork with copies of Ovid and 
 
 Virgil in their robes. Greek was cultivated 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. i6i 
 
 with passion ; and the devotees of the faith indulged in 
 the greatest boldness of speculation. All this in the 
 fifth and sixth century of the era, and before the 
 monks themselves had begun to calculate the age of 
 the Church from the Nativity. For we must wait for 
 more than 500 years before an Irish Benedictine, 
 Marianus, will provide us with a chronicle in which 
 he will state for the first time correctly the number of 
 solar years from the Incarnation. 
 
 All the romantic stories of Ireland were not heard of 
 until some time in the fifteenth or sixteenth st. Coium- 
 century. But now to return to our Jonas in pamiiei to 
 Bobbio, whom the Benedictines in their bio- st.Benet. 
 graphic system make nearly a contemporary of St. 
 Columban. It was so ordained that Columban should 
 be born the very year that St. Benedict died ; and his 
 life iterates the traits of his predecessor. He is tempted 
 by the young Irish beauties of Leinster. He flees to 
 holy Bangor, and finds protection under the pastoral 
 staff of Abbot Congall. But the unresting Irish blood 
 urges him across England and the sea to Gaul. He 
 enchants King Gontram of Burgundy with his eloquence. 
 He fixes his abode in the old Koman castle of Auegray, 
 and works the usual spells by Scriptural means upon 
 wild men and wild beasts. He removes to old Roman 
 Luxeuil, at the foot of savage Vosges. He founds a third 
 cloister at Fontaines. 
 
 It is conventional that the French and Burgundiau 
 
 lobles should bring their sins to him, and entreat him 
 
 shear off their noble locks, and convert them into 
 
 lonks. The Laus Perennis set in ; not an hour of 
 light or day was silent from the sounds of Psalms on 
 
 le slopes of Vosges and Jura. The monks rose to toil 
 [n the fields before they had finished their sleep, and 
 
 M 
 
1 62 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 walked dormitant to their cells at night. So passed 
 twenty years. But St. Columban stumbled on the 
 stone of offence — the question of the observance of Easter 
 on the fourteenth of the moon. He persisted in the 
 Jewish practice, as he must do at his date, according to 
 the system of ideas in which he figures. 
 
 Then he is persecuted, also conventionally, by Kiug 
 Thierry and Queen Brunehault on the question of royal 
 marriage. He is carried to Besan^on, but escapes and 
 returns to Luxeuil. An armed force is sent for him ; 
 but, after canonical examples, the soldiers fall at his feet 
 and beg his pardon. The scene, no doubt, has been 
 constantly iterated, both in fact and in fiction ; for the 
 fact creates the ideal, the ideal in turn generates the 
 fact. The saint goes into exile. At Autun, at Avallon, 
 at Auxerre, and at Nevers you may still hear of his 
 miracles en route; and at Orleans the legend of his 
 entry into the house of a Syrian couple, and his cure 
 of the blind husband, may still be recited. At Tours, 
 the boat in which he sails miraculously arrests itself, 
 and the saint prays at the tomb of St. Gregory. At 
 Nantes he is released. 
 
 Then St. Columban finds shelter with the kings 
 of Neustria and Austrasia. He becomes a 
 
 His wander- . . . 
 
 ingswith missionary again. He goes up the Rhine 
 to Bregenz ; and along with his bold 
 compatriot, St. Gal], makes spiritual war on the 
 pagans, who offered boiling beer to Woden. The pair 
 live like savages on the banks of the lake, and listen 
 to dialogues of daemons. Then St. Columban leaves 
 the poor ailing St. Gall, passes into Lombardy, and 
 fights with the Arians at Milan. Then Agilulf, the 
 king, presents him with the estate at Bobbio. This 
 was the last stage of his earthly journey. The old man 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 163 
 
 works at the building, which becomes a citadel of 
 orthodoxy against the Arians and pagans, and a centre 
 of classical learning. 
 
 The dmouement of the romance of St. Columban is, 
 the reader will observe, the point at which the critical 
 history of Bobbio begins. That there were Irish monks 
 in the cloister, perhaps from the late fifteenth century, 
 and that the allegorical story of the saint was con- 
 ceived at some time in the next age, are the elementary 
 facts from which the whole narrative may be under- 
 stood. The Irish Benedictines of Bobbio, Luxeuil, 
 and the connected monasteries gratified both a national 
 and a religious sentiment in compiling the Acts of 
 their patron saint. These flowers of poesy sprang 
 from the same spot whence a miraculous herb sprang 
 up beneath his footsteps, specimens of which the 
 Abbots of Bobbio were once wont to send to kings 
 and princes " for the benediction of St. Columban." 
 
 But the Irish monks under his rule were but a 
 branch of the Benedictines, and it is im- ^, , . , 
 
 . T« Thelnsh 
 
 possible to admit that there were Benedictines monks were 
 in Ireland before, at the earliest, the thirteenth 
 century. The daring fable of literary culture in that 
 island in early ages conceals the fact of its dense 
 ignorance. The less evidence, the greater the need 
 of extraordinary efi'orts in fiction, by which a magical 
 light is cast athwart the darkness of a dismal past. 
 The fascination of these tales lies in their improba- 
 bilities, nay, in their utter impossibilities. It may be 
 taken for granted that whenever a monk alludes to 
 classical learning, he is writing during the Kevival. 
 
 Paris has been, at least from the time of the Revival 
 of Letters, an important centre of culture. . 
 The Benedictines were the founders of its 
 
1 64 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 schools, at some time a little earlier, though not much, 
 than the schools of Oxford and Cambridge. 
 
 But a history of the Paris Academy was not 
 attempted until the seventeenth century, 
 history in Claudius Homerseus, Doctor of the Sorbonne, 
 teenth and Cauou of the Royal Church of St. Quintin, 
 
 in a slight treatise of the year 1637 dedicated 
 to Cardinal Richelieu, assumes — for it is part of the 
 scholastic convention — that the illustrious glory of 
 the Paris Academy began in the early twelfth century. 
 It was understood that the Paris Academy originated 
 in certain " Schools of the Bishops," and that one of 
 its earliest seats had been Mont St. Genevieve, in the 
 time of Louis the Fat, Louis the Younger, and Philip 
 Augustus. 
 
 And what is known of the Episcopal Schools ? 
 Absolutely nothing definite ; for there is no record of 
 the bishops themselves, independent of the tales of the 
 cloisters. Hardly can it be in the taste of the present 
 day to discuss the historic personality of St. Dionysius 
 the Areopagite, commonly called St. Denis, 
 who figures slightly in the canonical Acts of 
 the Apostles, and much more strongly in certain extra- 
 canonical narratives of the eclipse at the time of 
 the Passion. There are also later Benedictine tales, 
 written under the names of " Gregory of Tours " and 
 " Venantius of Poictiers,'* which relate how " Eusebius, 
 a Syrian trader," bought the episcopal palace, turned out 
 the Schola — that is, the band of readers and chapters 
 of his predecessor — and introduced Syrian ministers.* 
 The mythological thread is continued. St. Ger- 
 manus, born of Eleutherius and Eusebia, suc- 
 ceeded to Eusebius. St. Germanus, accordiug 
 ♦ " Hist. Franc," 10. 26. 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 165 
 
 to a tale which can hardly be introduced with decency 
 into a modern page, prophetically showed his virtue 
 in a remarkable manner before his birth. Thus he 
 preluded a life which was a continuous series of miracles. 
 Study cannot have been a necessity in such an age ; 
 and we must descend much lower than the sixth 
 century in the quest of the schools of Paris. We come 
 then to the ideal of *' Charlemagne," the off- charie- 
 spring of the same imagination which created ™^g"^- 
 our "Alfred the Great," "the venerable Bede " and his 
 disciples — a romantic link between the culture of 
 England and France. For in the prosaic mood we 
 must treat all the voluble talk of Charles's patronage 
 of learning, and his institution of a University of 
 Letters as bright bubbles of retrospective fancy. Nor 
 is there anything more authentic in the tales of Louis 
 the Pious and Eugenius the Second. 
 
 A list of illustrious scholars — " Alcuin, Kabanus 
 Maurus, Lupus of Ferrieres, ^neas of Paris, ,„ 
 
 -r\ ' n k -r» j Illustrious 
 
 Eric of Auxerre, Eemy, Odo of Cluny, ' and scholars of 
 others— stretches down to King Robert of 
 the Capetian line. It will be found that the works 
 planned and executed under these names are part of 
 the same Benedictine literary system that we suppose 
 to have been devised in the cloisters of the Campagna. 
 There was little or no reading of such works until 
 some time in the sixteenth century. It will be im- 
 possible, it is to be feared, to ascertain more than 
 the faintest dawn of literary culture in Paris before 
 that age, I subjoin a few particulars from the meagre 
 works of Hemerseus and others, warning the reader 
 at the same time that the dates given are not to 
 be trusted. Even were they to be trusted, the scant 
 supply of facts would show how dim and uncertain 
 
1 66 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 were the retrospective glances that French scholars 
 of a brilliant time cast upon the culture of mediaeval 
 Paris. 
 
 There are indistinct references dated in the thir- 
 NotreDame, tccnth ccnturj to the Schola in the Parvis, 
 or St. Mary.' ^^ ^^^^^ ^£ g^^ ^^^^ ^^^ cxamplc, in a 
 
 document dated 1268 there is a story of armed men 
 who attacked clerical scholars meeting in the Parvis for 
 the purpose of walking or discussion, and wounded 
 some of them. In 1285 certain clerics murdered a 
 scholar who was walking there at eventide, and were 
 sentenced to deprivation. The Parvis must have been, 
 like that of our St. Paul's, London, in Chaucer's time, a 
 place of resort for scholars ; but of any teaching that 
 went on we have no authentic record. There are florid 
 allusions in late Benedictine or kindred orders who 
 write under the names of Philip, Abbot of Good Hope, 
 Peter of Blois, and the like. 
 
 Many documents have been collected by Du Boulay 
 „. ^ . , or Bulseus, who wrote several folios on the 
 
 Histories by ' 
 
 Buiaeusand Paris school somc thirty-seven years later 
 
 Launoy. "^ "^ 
 
 than Hemerseus. He adds little or nothmg to 
 our definite information. Still later, Launoy of the 
 Sorbonne, writing in 1672 — a sceptical time — frankly 
 admits that fable had been busy with the origin 
 of the school. He knows that it was founded by 
 the monks of the Order of St. Benedict; he cites a 
 number of their pretended writers of early times : a 
 St. Kemy, a Flodoard, an Almoin, a Wilram ; but he 
 could do little more. Thirty years later, had he so 
 chosen, Hardouin could have given the truer story of 
 the Paris Academy to the world. His extant hints on 
 the subject are worthy of attention. He points to the 
 cloisters of St. Germain, of St. Denis, of St. Victor, and 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 167 
 
 to others connected with them at Rheims, Floriac, 
 Luxeuil, Corbey, as among the chief forges of Patristic 
 literature. He thinks that the work coukl not have 
 been begun until the fourteenth century. 
 
 The list of great Masters of Theology before that age 
 is certainly fabulous. A list has, of course, ^ . ^ ^ 
 been made out m accord with the Benedictme Masters of 
 system. There is Peter the Eater, Peter of 
 Poictiers, Peter Abelard, Peter Lombard, all of the 
 twelfth century, because the theory held that this was 
 the Scholastic age. But profound ignorance of the 
 works ascribed to these divines obtains even in the 
 late fifteenth century. 
 
 Authentic particulars of the time when literary 
 polemic began against the Jews in the French schools 
 entirely fail us, both on the Benedictine and the Jewish 
 side. Equally uncertain is it when the teaching of the 
 Bible began. But a large glance at the state of Europe 
 may convince us that the class of teachers called 
 Biblical professors, those called Professors of Sentences, 
 and those called Summists, was not considerable at the 
 time of the Reformation. Luther is one of the first 
 Biblical Professors who stands forth in the daylight ; nor 
 is it possible to discover much use of the Bible in teach- 
 ing before the end of the fifteenth century. The same 
 remark applies to the " Sentences " ascribed to Peter 
 Lombard, and the *'Summa" ascribed to St. Thomas 
 Aquinas. 
 
 It is a reflection of the habitually barbarous and 
 fighting habits of the Middle Ages that the ^^ 
 
 ^ o . p The practice 
 
 system of Altercation or Wranorlmg seems to of Aiterca- 
 
 11 1 n ° ^ T . tion. 
 
 have been the great leature m education. 
 
 Clever boys were trained in rhetorical Latin as an 
 
 instrument of ofi'ence and defence ; and some readers will 
 
1 68 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 recall the picture which our chronicler Stow gives of the 
 scenes in the streets of London in the late sixteenth 
 century, when the boys of St. Antony's School en- 
 countered those of St. Paul. Of the proverbial soften- 
 ing eflfect of letters upon manners, there is little evidence 
 during the sixteenth century. The reader is astounded 
 at the resources of scurrility and foul invective which 
 ecclesiastics have at their disposal in their mutual con- 
 troversies, at the low buffoonery which passes for wit. 
 It is sometimes a pleasure to reflect that men's hearts 
 were often much gentler than their tongues. Euffianly 
 manners have now all but passed away from the 
 sphere of ecclesiastical letters ; although offences of this 
 kind at the present day more frequently proceed from 
 that than from any other quarter. It was one of the 
 effects of a principle of education based on absurdity. 
 Passion in controversy implies that men are contending, 
 not for the fact of truth, but for themselves or for their 
 convent, which is the same thing. 
 
 In Paris the Canons of St. Victor had much to 
 The Canons ^o with important parts of Church literature, 
 of St. Victor, rj.^^^ ^^^ ^j^-^ ^^^ houours of the '^Summa," 
 
 probably also of much of the literature ascribed to 
 St. Augustine ; but it is futile to suppose that such 
 literature had been produced long before we can find 
 traces of students who busied themselves with it. As 
 for history, in any modern sense of the word, or indeed 
 in any sense whatever, the serious attempt to ascertain 
 the past cannot be traced higher than the time of 
 Francis I. The theological dream possessed and en- 
 grossed the minds of all students ; and such a mood is 
 fatal to accurate inquiry in any department of human 
 knowledge. 
 
 The faculties of Arts, of Medicine, of Canon Law, 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 169 
 
 were all filled by clergymen, and all subordinated 
 to the theological and ecclesiastical interest. The Doctors 
 Arts and Medicine were under great debt ''^^^'''^^^' 
 to the Arabians and Jews. The Canon Law of 
 the Decretum was a Benedictine system. It was 
 antedated from Bologna several centuries before the 
 time of its actual fabrication. There is a story to 
 the effect that in 1384 there was a quarrel between 
 the Canons of Paris and the Doctors of Decrees, on 
 account of the objection of the former to the setting 
 up of a separate school of sacred law, as it was 
 termed. The Canons gained their point in an appeal 
 to Clement VIL, and brought back the faculty of 
 law to the cloister school. They acquired the style and 
 dignity of Regents, their disciples that of Scholars. 
 The whole story is probably one of a mass of analogous 
 fictions from a late time, designed to secure antiquity 
 for those privileges. 
 
 We inquire what was the state of literature in Paris, 
 what in mere point of bulk were the books ^ 
 
 ^ . state of 
 
 to be found in the cloisters at the close of literature 
 the fifteenth century ? Certain lists have been 
 handed down to us, but again the reader must be 
 warned against the rash acceptance of the dates affixed 
 to them. On the application, however, of any critical 
 test, it will be apparent that at any time before that of 
 the Medicis, a very small room would have held the 
 whole of the books extant in Paris. 
 
 An old agreement has been produced between the 
 Chapter and the Chancellor, from which we learn that 
 the duty of the Chancellor is to correct, to bind and keep 
 in good order, the books of the Paris church not used 
 at the mass. What were these books ? In a document 
 dated some sixty years later, a custodian mentions only — 
 
lyo THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 A Bible, in four volumes ; 
 
 Lives of the Saints and Expositions, in five volumes ; 
 Martrivetus ; 
 
 A new and an old Pastorale, a Collectarium, five 
 Psalters, etc. ; 
 
 Again, a few years later, Stephen, Archdeacon of 
 Canterbury, is supposed to bequeath some books to the 
 poor scholars of the Parvis at Paris. They are com- 
 mitted to the care of the Chancellor, John of Orleans, 
 and consist of the following works : — 
 
 A Bible, without gloss, complete ; 
 
 Genesis and Exodus, glossed, in one volume ; 
 
 Exodus, glossed, by itself ; 
 
 Ezechiel, glossed, by itself; 
 
 The Gospels, glossed, in one volume by themselves ; 
 
 A Psalter, glossed, complete ; 
 
 Four books of Sentences ; 
 
 Books of Numbers ; 
 
 Joshua, Judges, Euth, Deuteronomy, glossed, in one 
 
 volume ; 
 The Epistles of Paul, glossed ; 
 Job, glossed ; 
 Summa on Vices ; 
 
 The Epistles of Paul, glossed, with a lesser gloss ; 
 Book of Machabees i and 2, glossed to cap. x. ; 
 Gospel of Mark, glossed. 
 
 Given in the year 1271, on the day of the Apostles 
 Symon and Jude. 
 
 Postillate Bible, in two volumes, which Bishop Stephen 
 
 added ; 
 Originale of the Sentences of Master Peter Lombard 
 
 . . . of calf-skin, partly depilate to the year 1271. 
 
 Another list of the books for common use in the 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 171 
 
 Armary of St. Mary of Paris names thirty-eight volumes 
 of books of the Bible and one volume of Sentences of 
 Master Peter of Poictiers. These particulars are sup- 
 posed to come from the thirteenth century. There is a 
 general value, and but a very general value, in inven- 
 tories of books like the above. Our English scholars have 
 collected similar lists referring to about the same period ; 
 but it must be borne in mind that it is very doubtful, as 
 we shall hereafter see, whether the custom of dating 
 Anno Domini had begun in the thirteenth century. It 
 does not follow that documents so dated are supposit ; but 
 they would wear a better appearance of genuineness were 
 they dated by the year of a pope, an abbot, or a bishop. 
 After all that has been adduced on the rarity and 
 dearness of books in " the thirteenth century " Rarity of 
 and the following ages, it is still not easy 
 to appreciate this negative evidence and its historical 
 significance. Hemerseus mentions that a Paris doctor 
 who enjoyed a rich deanery, Nicolas a St. Just, ordered 
 in his will, 13 19, that a volume of the Bible should be 
 restored to a college which had lent it to him. It was 
 common enough for a scholar to give a bond for the 
 restoration of a book so borrowed. There is a tale so 
 late as the time of John Selden, though contradicted, in 
 this relation. Books were so far from being necessaries, 
 they were the last of luxuries men thought of indulging, 
 even in the colleges. Through the long period covered 
 by Mr. Thorold Rogers' laborious researches, from the 
 thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it is remarkable how 
 few are the items relating to the purchase of books in 
 England by the learned bodies. The small libraries said 
 to have been extant at the end of the fourteenth century 
 or at the beginning of the next were the collections of 
 princely donors. 
 
172 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 The negative evidence is here quite massive. Steady 
 attention to it dissipates the dream of the early 
 glory of the Paris School, and leaves us till near the 
 close of the fifteenth century with a few Bibles, 
 Missals, Lives of Saints, copies of the Benedictine Eule 
 — that Summary of Christianity, as Bossuet has called 
 it — Books of Sentences, and the like. 
 
 A Benedictine School which is linked with England 
 The School ^y legendary memories is that of Bee in 
 of Bee. Normandy, illustrated by the name of Lan- 
 
 Lantranc. *' •' 
 
 franc. The monk of the Order who writes 
 under the nom de plume of " Orderic," and probably 
 at the time to which I have so often referred — 
 " Orderic of St. Evreuil " — writes with a view to glorify 
 the antiquity of Bee, and the memory of his illustrious 
 confreres. In other words, he writes to advertise 
 certain productions of his collaborators in fiction. He 
 wields the usual flowery Benedictine style; he pre- 
 tends that under Lanfranc " a library of 'philosophic 
 and divine letters shone forth," that the sage was " very 
 able in the solution of knotty questions in both sub- 
 jects,'' and that "under his mastership the Normans 
 first applied themselves to the literary art," and that 
 "from the school of Bee there went forth eloquent 
 sophists in divine and secular studies." And so forth. 
 
 All this is part of the Benedictine system : tales 
 easily invented and easily believed at the time when the 
 same class of men were entertaining our ancestors with 
 tales of the Normans. It must be repeated in the interests 
 of the fact, that neither in the eleventh nor the twelfth 
 century was any such culture possible in any coenobium 
 of the Order. Beneath the fable, however, may lie the 
 fact that Bee had been founded by Italian monks from 
 Pavia during the Revival. Another writer of the same 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 173 
 
 Order, who adopts the nom de plume of *'Milo 
 Crispinus, Abbot of Westminster," produces a life 
 of Lanfranc, which proves to be, like many other 
 similar biographies, a lesson in allegorical form on the 
 proper virtues of the monks. The absurd affectation of 
 abject humility cloaking an ambition the most thirsty 
 and insatiable, is obvious enough in the story of Lanfranc. 
 Strange that sober English laymen, who are supposed to 
 detest such affectations with a perfect hatred, should 
 continue to copy and edit these tales as if they were 
 genuine narrative ! 
 
 In those ideal days, the glorious days of Lanfranc, 
 the more the monk hid himself from the crowd, the 
 more his fame went abroad. He was dear to the 
 aristocracy. Young nobles from far and near came to 
 study with Lanfranc under lowly Abbot Herluin. 
 From the generous root of the great spiritual tree in the 
 garden of Bee, what vigorous scions sprouted forth ! 
 There was Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury ; Gil- 
 bert Crispinus, Abbot of Westminster ; Henry, Dean 
 of Canterbury ; Hernostus, Bishop of Eochester ; and 
 Gundulf, his successor — all pupils of Bee ! 
 
 How warm is the love of the monk to his Alma 
 Mater ! He will freely sacrifice all scruple about 
 historic fact to this love. How entertaining the picture 
 which the Abbot of Westminster sketches of Lanfranc 
 as Archbishop of Canterbury in the presence of the 
 Pope at Rome ! The Holy Father rises from his chair 
 to meet him, telling him that this honour is due not 
 to the archbishop, but to the School of Bee, where he 
 had sat at Lanfranc's feet. " I rise in your presence, 
 for you are my master ; I embrace you as my paeda- 
 gogue, and not as an archbishop." 
 
 At what time did this manner of literary art set in ? 
 
 k 
 
174 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 A reference to the parallel art of Church painting might 
 enable us nearly to solve that question. But without 
 touching further on that point, it may be sufficient to 
 observe that these pretended ** Eeminiscences of Bee" 
 could not have been offered to the reading world at any 
 time before there was something in the way of litera- 
 ture and of culture at Bee to justify such pretensions to 
 a learned past. It is to the seeker of facts an ab- 
 surdity to suppose such a state of things at Bee before 
 the dispersion of Italian scholars through the West in 
 the late fifteenth century. 
 
 Other Benedictine confederates who write under the 
 noms de plume of " William of Malmesbury," " William 
 of Jumiege," and date their writings in the twelfth 
 century, are agreed on the same fable of the glory of 
 Bee, of the Lombard Lanfranc and his disciple Anselm. 
 And yet — surprising fact ! — when we open the work of 
 the Benedictine of St. Albans, who is planted about the 
 middle of the fifteenth century, and writes under the 
 name " Thomas Walsingham," you find that the legend 
 of Lanfranc and of Anselm appears to have shrivelled 
 down to a dry notice. He describes Anselm as a 
 Lombard boy of good education and character, who 
 studied three years in Gaul, who crossed into Normandy 
 and joined himself to the Prior of Bee, who then ruled 
 the public school by the permission or command of Abbot 
 Herluin. 
 
 We have heard in our time talk of a *' historical 
 ^. ,,^ school of St. Albans." There never was a 
 
 Rise of the . i i • i i • 
 
 Lanfranc historical school m that cloister. A few 
 Benedictine mythologists may have been busy 
 there in the time of King Henry VII. in correspondence 
 with Italian head-quarters. The facts correspond to 
 those of Monte Cassino at the same period. It appears 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 175 
 
 probable that Walsingham, as be calls himself, had the 
 first sketch of the legend which was to be elaborated by 
 his literary confreres somewhat later. It may be noticed 
 that among the Lanfranc legends an epitaph on 
 him has been ascribed to Philip, Abbot of Good Hope 
 in Hainault, of the connected Order of Premontre, in 
 the twelfth century. The lines are, perhaps, of sufficient 
 elegance for the sixteenth century. Other threads in 
 the same web of fiction may be traced under the names 
 of "Ivo of Chartres," " Sigebert of Gemblours," and 
 his continuator, " Robert de Monte." 
 
 The fables about Bee were devised about the same 
 time with the fables about Monte Cassino. If, say the 
 Benedictines, Monte Cassino was the oldest. Bee was the 
 most splendid of their seats of learning. Rome looks 
 up to Bee, Greece worships Bee, the wonder of all 
 Europe is Bee. How fine the description, " Disciples of 
 Lanfranc ! " How great the joy to study where the 
 kinsmen of Pope Alexander had studied ! Yet one 
 small bookcase or shelf would have been ample 
 accommodation for all the books that Bee could produce 
 at the time of the invention of printing, if, indeed, it 
 could produce any books at all. 
 
 But Bee furnishes another legendary link with 
 England in the name of Roger Yacarius, prior Roger 
 of the monastery and afterwards abbot, who, ^^^^'^'^^• 
 according to the tradition, passed into England and was 
 the first to teach our people what the monks called 
 " the Law of the Csesars." It is a slander upon the 
 memory of the Caesars, however, that the codes bearing 
 the names of Theodosius and of Justinian — the fabrica- 
 tions of the monks themselves — should have been 
 labelled the Law of the Caesars. The Benedictine 
 tradition concerning these false codes refers to the 
 
176 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 twelfth century. But it is certain that neither at 
 Bologna nor in any other city of Europe was there 
 an audience at that time capable of listening to lectures 
 on Roman Law. The personality and activity of 
 Vacarius rests upon no genuine testimony whatever, 
 but merely on the concerted fable of a knot of monks 
 who write under the names of John of Salisbury, Bishop 
 of Chartres ; Theobald, ex-Abbot of Bee and Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, and perhaps a Canon of St. Victor. 
 
 If the reader can figure to himself '^ many rich and 
 poor" coming to the lectures of Vacarius in the year 
 1 149, he should be able, in support of his imagination, 
 to fix on the place where these lectures were held. 
 Was it Oxford, Cambridge, or London ? Or in the 
 house of Theobald of Canterbury ? The Benedictines 
 of St. Maur may well admit, after perusing the tales 
 of their romancing predecessors, that on this point non 
 omnino liquet. Without dwelling longer on these 
 absurdities, it suffices to remark that the study of law 
 in general did not begin in any school before the 
 sixteenth century. In our own country the study was 
 yet in its infancy in the days of Coke, of Selden, and 
 of Bacon. 
 
 After what has been said of Charles the Great and 
 The School his fabulous schools on the Continent, it is 
 of Oxford, xieedless to detain the reader with the fables 
 respecting his English counterpart in the Benedictine 
 scheme of fiction. King Alfred the Great. St. Neot, 
 also, may take his place in the ideal distance. Oxford, 
 like Paris and like Cambridge, is a Benedictine founda- 
 tion. Its early name was the Priorate of St. Benedict 
 of Oxon, or Gloucester College. The abbots and priors 
 of the province of Canterbury were the directors of 
 study. It is said that in the year 1290 thirty Abbots 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 177 
 
 and Priors met at Abingdon, and provided for the 
 building of the Priorate. But we have to wait for half 
 a century before we hear of the erection of a Theo- 
 logical Chair with a stipend in the College (1343). 
 This was at a Provincial Chapter at Northamption. A 
 century elapses, and we hear of another Provincial Synod 
 in the same town (1444), when the studies in Oxford 
 College are discussed in subordination to the great 
 question of monastic discipline. The Theological Chair 
 was always to be held by a Benedictine. 
 
 During this period, it is said, the Benedictines had 
 colleges also at Canterbury and at Durham. But it 
 will presently appear how difficult it is to obtain, 
 whether from the sources or from John Leland, who 
 made the tour of the religious houses just before the 
 Dissolution, a genuine list of scholars, or of writings 
 before the introduction of printing. Leland was 
 baffled by the systematic tricks of the monks and 
 friars in disguising their personalities and ante-dating 
 their writings. We read of miracles of learning, like 
 Adam Eston of Oxford, Cardinal Priest of St. Caecilia, 
 or of Roger Bacon the Franciscan, and many others. 
 But our search for matter of fact is constantly dis- 
 appointed down to the time when John Feckenham, 
 last Abbot of Westminster, dies in the Tower of 
 London ; or of Wisbeach, after long imprisonment, " an 
 unvanquished athlete of the orthodox faith" (1585). 
 
 The facts or the fables about Cambridge are of similar 
 character. The Benedictines were its founders, 
 as of Oxford ; and whether that be an honour 
 or otherwise it may be left to the members of the 
 University to determine. Nothing is gained by examin- 
 ing the annals of the other great Orders, since they 
 proceed upon the like principles of historic imagination 
 
 N 
 
178 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 with their predecessor. It is only by the rigorous 
 scrutiny of the catalogues of books that we can hope 
 to arrive at some rough estimate of the state of culture 
 in England at the time of the rise of the House of 
 Tudor. 
 
 The orthodox Benedictine theory, however, is that 
 the School of Cambridge is older by more than 200 
 years than that of Oxford, and owed its foundation 
 to King Sigebert — a theory that still prevailed in the 
 time of Edmund Spenser. In the general and gradual 
 subsidence of fable, these theories have been abandoned ; 
 and equally must those who desire to touch historic 
 terra firma in this matter abandon the hope of finding 
 it in the twelfth century. But Oxford and Cambridge 
 were mere boys' schools, and so remained during that 
 time when the most splendid, though unchartered, 
 University in England was flourishing — I refer to the 
 society of wits, of poets, soldiers, lawyers, travellers, 
 statesmen, who were to be found in the Temple and 
 other Inns of Court, of whom we begin to hear in the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth. 
 
 England was a little later than France and Burgundy 
 English ill possessing the means of literary culture, 
 libraries. -j"]^^ tradition runs that the library of 900 
 volumes collected by Charles V., or the Wise, was 
 carried into England by the Duke of Bedford, 1429, 
 but its destination has not been traced. 
 
 In reference to Oxford, we have the tradition about 
 u„d ^^ book-loving Richard Aungerville of Bury, 
 Aungerviiie Bishop of Durham. Durham College at 
 Oxon, the Benedictines say, had been founded 
 by him about 1290; and at his death in 1345, he left 
 his books, which are said to have been greater in 
 number than those of all the rest of the bishops, to 
 
FABLES OF THE SCHOOLS. 179 
 
 Durham College. But we hear of a library, in the 
 sense of a separate building or room, for the first time 
 in the reign of Henry IV. The books were chained to 
 pews or studies ; and it needs an effort of imagination 
 to make clear to ourselves how few they were, how 
 barren of interest, and how little used. We have no 
 list of the books ; but the names of William Appalby 
 and Thomas Rowe have been handed down as the first 
 custodians. 
 
 It was not, in fact, until more than a century after 
 the death of Richard of Bury that the faint beginnings 
 of literary culture in England can be traced. At the 
 end of the fifteenth century, Trithemius, the Abbot of 
 Spanheim, sets down to the authorship of Aungerville 
 the little treatise called the "Philobiblon," per- 
 
 1 in 11-11 %. The "Philo- 
 
 naps the first work which shows any dis- biWon," pro- 
 interested zeal for liberal studies in England, fifteenth 
 The author has a passion for books. They ^^° ^^' 
 are the masters who train us without the use of the rod. 
 They are without wrath and threats, without promises 
 and bribes. You find them awake when you draw near. 
 They do not run away when you ask a question. You 
 may blunder, but they do not growl ; nor will they 
 laugh at you, though you may be a dunce. Books 
 alone are liberal and free ! They give to all that 
 ask ; they set all at liberty, themselves your attentive 
 slaves. 
 
 He thinks, after the fashion of his time and order, 
 that so great a blessing as books must be found 
 typified in the Old Testament. They are the Wells of 
 Abraham, or the Golden Pot with the manna, the Rock 
 flowing with honey, the Tree of Life, the River of 
 Paradise, the Ark of Noah, the Ladder of Jacob, the 
 Stones of Testimony, the Sling of David, the Ears of 
 
i8o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Corn rubbed by apostolic hands. Books are to be 
 preferred to riclies and bodily pleasures. Good religious 
 men will write books, and the bad will occupy themselves 
 with other things. He praises the early Mendicants, 
 and blames, in the like temper to that of the poet of 
 Canterbury Tales, or the author of " The Beggar's 
 Petition," the sloth, the greed, the luxury of the 
 friars of his day. The example of Paul is cited as 
 that of a diligent literary Apostle, who sends for his 
 travelling-case, his books, and especially his parch- 
 ments.* 
 
 The late date of the author of the " Philobiblon " may 
 also be inferred from the fact that he insists on the 
 necessity of Arabic and Hebrew, as well as of Greek 
 and Latin, of grammar and poetry. No considerable 
 audience could have been found at Oxford or elsewhere, 
 to listen to eloquent exhortations like these earlier than 
 the late fifteenth century. f Most certainly, down to 
 the time of the dissolution of the monasteries, a very 
 small apartment at Oxford would have sufficed for 
 the books and for the reading men in the University. 
 According to the tale, the library founded by Duke 
 Humphrey of Gloucester consisted of merely 129 
 volumes. 
 
 * 2 Tim. iv. 13. 
 
 t The book is said to have been first printed in 1483 at Spires. 
 
( i8i ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 
 
 The name of Pope Nicholas V. has come down to us 
 from some time durinoj the Kevival of Letters 
 
 . . Nicholas V. 
 
 as epochal in connection with books and 
 libraries. But it will be found that his biographers 
 wrote at a very late date, and give us only general 
 impressions of the state of culture at the Papal Court. 
 Thomas Parentucelli of Sarzana, then, was a Florentine 
 humanist, and one of the proteges of Cosmo de Medici. 
 He is said to have *' arranged " the Library of St. Mark 
 (1444), and to have been a zealous copyist of MSS., 
 and student of all the science of the time. Wisdom 
 and virtue were supposed to ascend with him the Chair 
 of the Pontiff ; but it has never been explained how the 
 pale sickly scholar won his way to that seat, unless the 
 reader thinks the enthusiastic explanation of one of his 
 biographers sufficient : that it was due to his '' Ciceronian 
 eloquence." 
 
 In Eome, if we may trust a Bull of Eugenius IV., 
 an institute of learning bearing the name of Roman 
 a University had been established at St. University. 
 Eustachio in 143 1, but it enjoyed no wide reputa- 
 tion, though George of Trapezant and Pico of Mirandola 
 taught there.* There Nicholas V. is supposed to have 
 
 * Manetti and Vespasiano in Mur. III., ii. 908 and xxv. ; Piccolomini. 
 
i82 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 turned the Vatican into a workshop of copyists, and 
 to have been followed on his journeys by a small 
 The Vatican ^ost of thcse Hbrarii. The translation of 
 Library. ^j^^ Grcck classics is also said to have 
 gone forward at a rapid pace under the direction of 
 Poggio, Valla, and others. Then the institution of 
 libraries naturally followed the collection of MSS., for 
 there had been no library in Eome. According to the 
 Letters of Trauersari, the Camaldolese monk, there 
 was nothing noteworthy either in Eome or in the 
 Abbey of Grotta Ferrata about the year 1432. And 
 this report of the nakedness of the land is amply 
 confirmed by statements of the Benedictines. But if 
 they suppose that the libraries had been partly destroyed 
 for the sake of the parchments in which ^' to paint the 
 divine face of Veronica/^ the conjecture is ludicrous and 
 inadequate. 
 
 There is incidental evidence that there were more 
 books at Avignon than in Eome ; a fact which should 
 be connected with the legend of the migration of the 
 Popes from that city. If, then, Nicholas V. did anything 
 for the Vatican Library, he must have been the creator 
 of it. The tale runs that at his death the catalogue 
 contained 5000 volumes ; but it is evident, from 
 what follows, that we have here one of the numerous 
 library myths of the time. For the Spaniard, Alfonso 
 Borgia, succeeded to the tiara under the title of Calixtus 
 Alfonso in. He had been professor at Lerida, and 
 fcailxtus passed for the first jurist of his time, an old 
 ^^^'^' man of seventy-seven at the time of his election. 
 
 Is it well conceivable that such a man, at such an epoch, 
 would neglect the recent literary collections of his pre- 
 decessor ? 
 
 Yet the tale runs that Calixtus III. gave away several 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 183 
 
 hundred Greek MSS. to Cardinal Isidore, and that he 
 was barbarian enough to tear away the gold and silver 
 clasps from the books which his predecessor had lovingly 
 clothed in red samite. Bessarion and Filelfo are supposed 
 to lament over these outrages. Concerning iEneas 
 Sylvius Piccolomini there are interesting tales, and 
 many writings which saw the light during the 
 sixteenth century have been set down to his 
 authorship ; but Pius II. was busy with political intrigues 
 and nepotism, and did nothing, so far as we know, for 
 libraries. His successor, Pietro Barbo, Cardinal p. Barbo 
 of St. Mark and Paul K., is said to have been (p^"^"-)- 
 fond of antiques, greatly addicted to show and splendour, 
 an emulator of the Sultan ; in this Pope's court literary 
 men found little countenance. With the exception of 
 the statement of the Benedictines, that he ordered a 
 catalogue of the books at Monte Cassino, there is nothing 
 to connect Paul II. with libraries. 
 
 Francesco Eovere succeeded him as Sixtus lY. ( 147 1 ). 
 He was a nominee of the Orsini and the Borgia, p. Rovere 
 and General of the Franciscans, one of the (Si^^usiv.). 
 most learned monks of the time. Yet in his portrait 
 the traits of the ascetic quite melt away in the expression 
 of the secular and ambitious prince. Sixtus was a great 
 nepotist, like his predecessors, and the Papacy was 
 manifestly nothing but a '' kingdom of this world " in 
 his time. However, he who had formerly been a doctor 
 at Padua is reported to have built a library consisting 
 of four rooms (1475). His secretary was the 
 noted Platina, who was made librarian. But 
 the relics of this library are scarce discernible, and 
 few are the particulars which Assemanni, the faithful 
 conservator of Yatican traditions, can give. The Secret 
 The Secret Archives are, however, first named ^'^cWves. 
 
i84 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 in this connection ; they were contained in three 
 presses and four chests of cypress wood. This particular 
 is most important in reference to the late beginning of 
 any Papal literature. It is well known that in these 
 so-called Archives there is hardly a document referring 
 to an earlier period than the eleventh century ; and the 
 fact undoubtedly is that, about the time of Platina, 
 the whole enterprise of making out a Succession of the 
 Popes from the time of St, Peter was being put into 
 execution. 
 
 About 15 18 the Secret Library is said to have been 
 placed in the Castle St. Angelo, yet it acquired apparently 
 no great bulk till the time of Paul V. At the end of 
 the last century the Secret Archives were united with 
 the Vatican Library.* 
 
 With regard to the state of libraries in Kome in the 
 The time of brilliant time of Leo X. He is said to have 
 Leox. brought the remains of the library of St. 
 
 Mark's, Florence, which had been dispersed during 
 her ill fortunes, to Eome about the year 1 508 ; 
 he is said to have acquired the first five books of 
 Tacitus' " Annals." But the particulars are, as usual, 
 extremely meagre in reference to the amount of books 
 in any collection in Kome. There is a mention of the 
 rich Grimani collection in a letter of Erasmus in 1515 ; 
 it was removed to Venice a few years later, and was 
 destroyed by fire. 
 
 We meet constantly with flattering eulogies of 
 
 particular scholars and libraries, but fail to find any 
 
 mass of literary facts corresponding to the expectations 
 
 thus raised. Thus Inghirami, librarian of the 
 
 Vatican, who died in 15 16, is extolled as the 
 
 " Cicero of his age " because he was a fine speaker. As 
 
 * Gregorodus, " Gesch d. Stadt Rome," viii. 293. 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 185 
 
 a collector, he is said to have brought classical MSS. 
 from the Benedictine cloister at Bobbio, perhaps among 
 them the " Republic " of Cicero, which saw the light 
 only in the time of the zealous literate. Cardinal Mai. It 
 is not his own pen, but the pencil of Raphael, which 
 has assured to Inghirami immortality, as Gregorovius 
 observes. It was Beroald, his successor, who ^ ,^ 
 
 ' ' Beroald 
 
 edited the noted MS. of Tacitus, the one a^d 
 important " find " of the time of Leo X. 
 Aleander, a little later in the same office, an early 
 friend of Erasmus and Aldus, but a bitter opponent 
 of Luther, passed away in 1542, without leaving any 
 literary monument behind him. 
 
 Eetrospective fancy has delighted to glorify the 
 epoch of Leo ; yet all the studies in the Eoman 
 university must have been quite elementary, according 
 to our modern ideas, in his time. In 1735 there was 
 published in Rome an Oration which embraced '' nearly 
 the whole of the Roman history," and is said to have 
 been delivered in the Capitol at the feast of the Palilia, 
 when the statue of Leo was unveiled. It is characteristic 
 of that fusion of old Eoman with Oriental ideas which 
 began to prevail, that the orator begins with Adam and 
 with Romulus ; descending the stream of time, he depicts 
 the glories of the old Roman empire, then of the Papacy, 
 finally of the great living Pontiff himself The good 
 things of this life and of the life to come — all are due 
 to the beneficent rule. We listen for hours to this 
 strain of declamation, imaginary members of the 
 audience. His closing words remind us of the pre- 
 tensions, quite recent, of the " Hebrew Boy " (in the 
 phrase of the monks) to supplant great Jove on that 
 high and sacred seat. Addressing the Virgin : *' Where- 
 fore Thee, and no longer Jupiter, Thee, Virgin of the 
 
i86 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Capitol, who dost preside over the relics of this city 
 and hill, dost guard Kome and the Capitol, I pray," etc. 
 — for the long life of the Pope.* 
 
 Special attention is called to Urbino, because it is 
 
 linked with the England of Henry YIII. in the 
 Poiydore pcrson of Polydorc Vergil. He, in his work 
 Bembo, on " Invcntors," refers to the fame of its 
 
 library. Bembo, the noted Ciceronian, was 
 a member of its learned circle about 1506. Sadolet, 
 reputed author of a prohibited commentary on the 
 Epistle to the Romans and friend of the Reformers, 
 is supposed to extol Urbino as a very focus of genius 
 and learning, unrivalled in Italy. Yet Sadolet had 
 studied at Ferrara ; and Ferrara, no less than Padua, 
 might readily be conceived the most illuminated place 
 in the world, if we listened to the declaimers in its 
 favour. The same monotone of flattery always prevails, 
 and always conceals a great dearth of genuine culture. 
 John Colet, founder of St. Paul's School, no doubt 
 visited all these learned circles. He was an epochal 
 man in every respect, but especially as the discoverer 
 of Paul's Epistles to the English clergy and people, 
 as one who was regarded, in virtue of his gifts as 
 preacher and scholar, as "the Apostle Paul of England." 
 The significance of the Humanists, the lovers of 
 The letters and of liberty, is not only that they bear 
 
 Humanists, ^j^^css to the truc scntimeut of Rome and 
 Italy in general, but that they were committed, by their 
 tastes and their enthusiasms, to an antipathy to the 
 literature of the monks, the rise of which they witnessed. 
 It is sufficient to cite some traditions about Posforio 
 
 'OO" 
 
 ♦ Gregorovius (viii. 297) points to the irony of the inscription of the new 
 Magistrate m memory of Sept. 20, 1870, when the Papacy fell, a few steps 
 from the statue of Leo. 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 187 
 
 and Yalla to show that the notion of culture in the 
 monasteries during ages preceding the revival is pure 
 illusion ; and that in fact the hydra of the Church fable 
 began to rear its head at the time the classical literature 
 began to be zealously cultivated. As before, the dates 
 are not to be trusted, but the general impressions are to 
 be carefully noted. 
 
 Thus of Poggio it is said that he entered the Papal 
 service at a very early age, and was scribe under 
 eight Popes, without ever residing in Eome, 
 that he went with the Court to Constance and saw Jerome 
 of Prague suffer ; that he then entered on a career of 
 literary discovery in Germany, France, and England. 
 He scoured the Campagna searching for relics of 
 antiquity, all his zest being in the classical direction. 
 His attacks upon the regular clergy, especially the 
 Franciscans, were unsparing, while Nicholas V. is said 
 to have protected him. The greatest work ascribed to 
 him is the '^ History of the Florentine Eepublic from 1 350 
 to 1455." The date of his death is given in 1459 by 
 sixteenth-century writers. 
 
 The important question arises : How many classical 
 or ecclesiastical MSS. did Poojorio find in the ^. 
 
 °° . Literary 
 
 Benedictine cloisters before the time of the state of the 
 
 cloistprs 
 
 printers ? For his fame is that of the dis- 
 coverer of MSS. in the monasteries of St. Gall (where 
 Quintilian reposed, which he copied in thirty-two days), 
 New Corbey, and other cloisters of that Order. Again, 
 the reader must be warned against reliance on any 
 representations which seem to hint of classical culture 
 in the monastic seats until quite on the close of the 
 fifteenth century. It is in the " Diatribe " of Cardinal 
 Quirinus, himself a Benedictine, that you may 
 read a description of the neglected state of 
 
i88 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 St. Gall at the same time that culture has hardly begun 
 in Eome, from the pen of Cincius, a contemporary of 
 Poggio. At the time these tales were written down 
 none dared openly to confess that discoveries of books, 
 real and imaginary, had only been beginning with the 
 latest decades of the age ; but that is the iterated and 
 confirmed impression which the student derives from 
 the perusal of a number of such tales. 
 
 More significant than the name of Poggio is that of 
 Valla as a symbol of the struggles and achieve- 
 ments of the Humanists in their opposition 
 to the false literature which the monks were foistino^ in 
 the name of antiquity upon the world. Here again the 
 exact period of Valla cannot be defined. The discrepancy 
 in the dates has been pointed out in an essay by Zumpt. 
 His education is said to have been in Rome, under 
 Bruni and Aurispa, at a time when Rome, in the 
 language of another Humanist, was one of the freest 
 places in the world for the honest scholar. He, like 
 Poggio, held up the monkish ^idea of virtue to scorn, 
 and even announced the opinion that women of pleasure 
 were of more use to the world than nuns. He refuted 
 the false '' Donation of Constantine " — in all probability 
 immediately after it had been composed and saw the 
 light. He also denied the genuineness of the Epistles 
 of Jesus and Abgarus ; in other words, he assailed the 
 first attempt at Church History which had been recently 
 produced in the cloisters. Nothing could exceed the 
 bitterness with which he declaimed against the " new 
 tyranny," as, indeed, it was, of the Pope. Reginald 
 Peacock, Bishop of Chichester, is said to have denied the 
 genuineness of the " Donation " about the same time : 
 a statement which requires examination. My opinion is 
 that these writings were not heard of until some time 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 189 
 
 in the sixteenth century, when men began to talk of 
 Wiclif, Luther, and Marsilius of Padua. 
 
 When the system of literature of those times is 
 better understood, it will be perceived that a variety of 
 writings have been set down to Valla of the authenticity 
 of which there is no proof. But all the more impressive 
 is the general fact that there was a knot of scholars 
 in the West whose pride was in the revival of pure 
 Latin as the vehicle of all true civility and humanity, 
 and who could not endure the fables and the false logic 
 of the rising clerical and scholastic system of the 
 convents. It remains to observe that some notes on the 
 Vulgate ascribed to Valla saw the light in 1505 at 
 Paris. He is said to have died in 1457, a Canon of the 
 Lateran. 
 
 With regard to the Greek scholars of the Revival 
 we are dependent on one or two writers like P. Cortese, 
 Ph. Villani, and P. Jovius, who furnish us indeed with 
 lists of learned men from the late fourteenth century 
 — a Chrysoloras, a George of Trapezant, a Theodore of 
 Gaza, a Bessarion, and some others. But their chrono- 
 logy is of doubtful worth ; and as it is abundantly clear 
 that neither in Paris, nor London, nor Oxford, nor any 
 other Northern city did Greek begin to be cultivated 
 until the time of our Henry VHL, so it is not safe to 
 assume a very much earlier culture in that language in 
 any city of Italy. 
 
 All the facts that can be collected about the activity 
 of anti-monkish Humanists appear to me to be con- 
 firmatory of the opinion that a stealthy literary activity 
 had been going on in Subiaco, Grotta Ferrata, and 
 Monte Cassino about the time of Torquemada and 
 Bessarion ; but that men were not fully conscious that 
 the foundations of a fictitious Church History had been 
 
I90 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 laid until the time of Leo X. The wretched compila- 
 tion called the ** Library " of Photius, which is said to 
 have been printed from a MS. of Bessarion, and which 
 is one of the earliest attempts to make out a list of 
 imaginary Church authors, may be cited as a notorious 
 specimen of that secret activity. 
 
 I would now invite the attention of the reader to 
 The Printers somc particulars relating to the Printers in 
 m Italy. Italy, bccausc the establishment of Libraries 
 and the practice of Typography were clearly parts of one 
 great movement in reviving art. The quantity and 
 quality of the Printers' work must be one of the best 
 indices to the state of writing, reading, and thinking in 
 the small educated class of four hundred years ago. 
 
 The expense of copying teaches us how small the 
 purchasing and reading class must have been, however 
 large the thoughtless class of listeners to oral recitation. 
 It was held for an extraordinary thing that Yespasiano, 
 the Florentine bookseller, could deliver to Cosmo di 
 Medici 200 volumes in the course of twenty-two 
 months. He had employed forty- five scribes on the 
 operation. A copy of Cicero's Epistles cost about ten 
 ducats, a Bible at least three or four pounds sterling, 
 probably much more. It has never been sufficiently 
 considered that the work of the early printers was to 
 extend the enjoyment of a rare luxury in a very small 
 class, by no means to provide a necessary for the 
 multitude.* 
 
 Using our sources, as before, with great caution, we 
 learn from a biographer of Paul II. that it was 
 
 The German . . , 7m . oi i • 
 
 printers in m his time the German prmters oweynheim, 
 Pannartz, and Hahn came to Kome, about 
 
 * See the particulars in Gregorovius' seventh volume of the " History 
 of Rome." 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 191 
 
 1464 or 1465. They had been apprentices of Faust 
 at Mainz, whose press the Benedictines claim to have 
 patronized. In Rome the printers found no patron, 
 as indeed, according to the foregoing evidence, there 
 was little for them to do ; but gained shelter in the 
 cloister of Subiaco, which was filled with German 
 monks and under the protection of Torquemada. It is 
 but probable that the Benedictines had sent for them. 
 Here Donatus, the grammarian, was printed ; then the 
 work of the monk who assumes the name of Lactantius ; 
 Cicero, " De Oratore," and Augustine, " De Civitate 
 Dei/' Most certainly neither of the " Fathers " was 
 heard of until late in the fifteenth century, and their 
 Latin is the Latin of the Renaissance. 
 
 A little later we find the Germans in the palace of 
 the Massinii in Rome, printing Cicero's Letters. Then 
 we hear of their falling into great poverty and distress 
 about 1472, owing, as it is said, to competition and the 
 absence of trade. They are supposed to tell Sixfcus IV^. 
 that they have nothing but printed sheets in their 
 house. In the course of seven or eight years they had 
 printed more than 12,000 volumes. This statement is 
 made in the fifth volume of the Bible with the Com- 
 mentary of Nicolas de Lyra, bearing date 1472. Hardly 
 can it be received as credible, or even intelligible, 
 especially as Sweynheim and Pannartz seem to vanish 
 from the field of knowledge without leaving a trace 
 about the year 1476. Slight particulars of other 
 German or Italian printers who are supposed to have 
 set up their presses in cloisters or in the houses of the 
 nobility in Rome have come down to us from a time 
 never exactly ascertained. 
 
 From about 1469 printing is said to have gone on 
 in Venice and Milan and other Italian cities to some 
 
192 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 extent until the rise of Aldus (1494-1515), who gave 
 
 new life to the art ; before whose time, in fact, 
 
 there was little printing of Greek books, nay, 
 
 if the whole truth were known, little printing of any 
 
 books at all. 
 
 If a critical scholar would undertake the examination 
 of the whole statistics relating to this subject, he would 
 render a considerable service to exact knowledge, for 
 the want of which we remain under the spell of many 
 illusions. It should be defined in the first place how 
 many early printed books have come down to us ; next, 
 how many of these bear no date at all ; and again, how 
 many have, as comparison with Chronicles would show, 
 been ante-dated, for interested reasons. It should also 
 be considered how little consciousness is shown of any 
 wonderful invention until the sixteenth century is far 
 advanced, and how comparatively small is still the mass 
 of printed books at the end of that age. The great 
 jealousy and opposition which the printers had to 
 encounter from various quarters should be borne in 
 mind ; also the fact that all artisans wrought in guilds 
 with more or less of secrecy and mystery, and with free 
 resort to a variety of protective fictions and interested 
 statements. 
 
 When these points have been well weighed, it will 
 be understood how certainly it follows that in no age 
 of Italy were there more than a few readers of the 
 Latin and Greek classics or of the Vulgate in the 
 closing decades of the fifteenth century. When the 
 Italians in troublcs of their native land dispersed the 
 England. Italian scholars westward, and men like C. 
 Vitelli, Hadrian Castello, and Polydore Vergil came to 
 England, it was little indeed in the way of substantial 
 knowledge that they had to impart, however they might 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 193 
 
 impress upon their disciples the almost religious duty 
 of turning over Cicero by night and by day, and of 
 presenting even the most fabulous and worthless matter 
 in the forms of pure Latin. 
 
 The erection of Greek printing-presses is ascribed to 
 Chiori who had one in his house, where in ^^ ^ , 
 
 o ' , . . ' . The Greek 
 
 15 1 5 an edition of Pindar was printed, the printing- 
 first of Greek books that issued from any 
 press in Eome. Leo X. had also a Greek press, whence 
 issued the Scholia to Homer and to Sophocles about 
 15 1 7-18. Nearly at the same time the first Greek 
 press was set up in Paris ; indeed, according to the 
 dates handed down, a little earlier than in Kome. 
 
 The Humanists and the Monks. 
 
 In one of his lectures, given about fifty years ago, 
 Edgar Quinet makes an observation to the efiect that 
 what the eighteenth century was to the Frenchmen, 
 the sixteenth century had been to the Italian scholars. 
 In naminoj some of the distino^uished Humanists of that 
 age, he says that to them the 1500 or 1600 years 
 claimed by the Church appeared a " subtle dream." 
 The phrase is striking, all the more because Quinet did 
 not apprehend its full force. It is now time to say, 
 with the utmost emphasis, that the Humanists had good 
 ground for knowing that the Eetrospect of the monkish 
 Historians was in fact the subtle dream of art. 
 
 The whole evidence needs to be re-studied. The 
 printers' and booksellers' statements should be analyzed. 
 The dates of the scholars who are said to have flourished 
 during the late fifteenth century should be revised. It 
 should be noted that their individual personality is 
 seldom discovered ; that the names serve as Signs and 
 
 
 
194 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Symbols of the activity of certain undiscovered knots 
 of scholars, who were forced to adopt various disguises 
 and concealments. It is facts like these which explain 
 the diversity of the works often assembled under a 
 single name, a " Machiavelli '^ or the like ; and which 
 hint the nature of a literary life both without and 
 within the Monasteries. 
 
 Here again I must content myself with a few 
 general results in a field that should be thoroughly 
 worked. There were Greeks in Italy who knew the 
 Christian system of Ideas to be novel and more recent 
 than the Mohammedan. There were Arabian philo- 
 sophers who held the relativity of the truth of all 
 religious systems, and whose ideas were in sympathy 
 with those of the Greeks. There were also broad- 
 minded Jews of the same school. The charming fable 
 of the Three Kings in Boccaccio, taken up by Lessing, 
 is significant of this tendency of opinion. There were 
 cultivators of Platonism and neo-Platonism, followers 
 of Porphyry and others of the good old times, who are 
 denounced by the Benedictines as " mad dogs against 
 Christ." There were men in Florence and Rome and 
 Padua who could distinguish a spurious from a genuine 
 Aristotle. There were men who saw in the system of 
 the monks a reproduction of many of the features of the 
 Orphic mysteries, or a continuation of them. Others 
 struck at the very root of the system of Church 
 fable which was coming into currency as a false repre- 
 sentation of the Roman Empire. It was clearly seen 
 by some that a new dogma in modification of El Islam 
 was arising in the world. The monastic philosophy 
 was denounced as barbarous. 
 
 A great effort was made to rise above the confusions 
 of rival ecclesiastical parties. God as Supreme Being 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 195 
 
 was defined as the one immortal intellect present in 
 all members of the human race, while miracles and 
 personal immortality were denied. It could not be con- 
 cealed that such doctrines were diametrically opposed to 
 the Church ; and in the spirit of compromise or of self- 
 defence the juggling of a " double Truth " was invented, 
 an ecclesiastical and a rational : an illusion which, alas ! 
 continues to deceive the judgment of many in our day. 
 Men pretended to conform to the Catholic Church ; or 
 it has been pretended on their behalf that they did so, 
 whose opinions were entirely subversive of the system. 
 The pictures of the court of Leo X. have been mostly 
 drawn by unfriendly hands ; yet it is evident that there 
 was that wide and varied culture which inevitably 
 tends to tolerance. I say, without fear of contradiction, 
 that the state of intellectual life in Italy, once elucidated 
 by an unprejudiced examination of the sources, leaves, 
 both in mass and in quality, nothing to be desired as 
 proof that the monastic system of teaching was recent in 
 the world. It was a yeasty time ; and men knew not 
 what direction the Church would ultimately take. 
 
 There are things in the writings ascribed to Machia- 
 velli and many others which come upon the reader with 
 all the force of a Kevelation when they are read in this 
 light. Old Roman religion and virtue are contrasted 
 with the supineness and passivity of the monastic 
 system. The idea of the State cannot be reconciled 
 with the idea of what the monks call the Civity of 
 God. The unity and freedom of Italy are threatened 
 by the Church. It is the criticism of men who are not 
 introducing an innovation into the world, who are, on 
 the contrary, loyal to the noblest traditions of antiquity, 
 and who see in the ecclesiastical systems a menace to 
 liberty and intelligence. 
 
196 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 To bring this part of the argument to a simple issue. 
 If I have convinced the reader that the Christian — that 
 is, the Monastic Literature was in the early period of its 
 life during 1480- 1520, it is unnecessary to urge the 
 evidence from the side of the Humanists. If, on the 
 other hand, the reader hesitates to accept what seems 
 so startling a novelty of opinion, he may be invited to 
 refer the question afresh to the testimony, negative 
 or positive, direct or indirect, of the classical scholars 
 whose writings may fairly be referred to the same period. 
 If he confines his attention to England alone, the 
 testimony is very striking. We see Colet coming from 
 Italy to discover the Apostle Paul and his writings to 
 an aroused and curious English public ; we find Erasmus 
 here, one of the earliest names associated with the Greek 
 Testament ; here are Grocyn and William Latimer, and 
 Lily, and Linacre, all of them classical Eenaissance 
 men, none of them, though clergymen, knowing much 
 of Epistles, Gospels, or any other branch of the monastic 
 literature. 
 
 Linacre had studied Latin and Greek under the 
 most eminent scholars in Italy. He is said to 
 have been the first Englishman who could read 
 Aristotle and Galen in the original. He lived in the 
 intimacy of the first two Tudor princes, founded the 
 College of Physicians, enjoyed several Church prefer- 
 ments. His death is believed to have occurred in 1524, 
 at the age of sixty-four. Such is the tradition. Now 
 let me call attention to the remarkable story told of 
 Linacre by Sir John Cheke in his tract on the ** Pro- 
 nunciation of the Greek Tongue " : " At an advanced 
 age, broken by study and disease, and near to death, 
 being a priest, he then first took the New Testament 
 into his hands, and is said to have read through a few 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 197 
 
 chapters of Matthew. Having gone over the fifth, 
 sixth, and seventh chapters, he cast away the book again 
 with all his force, and swore that either this was not 
 the Gospel or we were not Christians." Thomas Fuller 
 in his *' Worthies " tries to give a good sense to the 
 speech, as if the scholar were indignant with the 
 practice of Christians, so at variance with God's precepts. 
 But that does not explain the passionate gesture with 
 the book. Suppose the scholar knew the Sermon on 
 the Mount to be the moral philosophy of the monks 
 and friars, one can understand the indignation with 
 which he might repudiate such philosophy as a mere 
 affectation on the part of men notorious for greed, 
 ambition, intolerance, and every vice which in that 
 philosophy they profess to condemn. 
 
 The recollection of incidents like these will the better 
 enable the reader to appreciate the testimony of Polydore 
 and of John Leland as to the state of Enojlish culture 
 during the two first Tudor reigns. Both of these men 
 were Humanists, religious lovers of the Classics ; both 
 were anti-monastic in temper ; yet both were clergy- 
 men who acquiesced rather than believed in Church 
 history. Polydore does not name Linacre ; John Le- 
 land names him, only incidentally, in an article on 
 William Tilly, alias Selling, a monk of Dover, The monk 
 who, in the reign of Henry YH., was one of ^^^^^'" 
 the first to add the study of Classics to the study of 
 piety, and who took the young Linacre with him to 
 Italy, and left him at Bologna under the charge of 
 Politian. There is, by the way, an attempt to account 
 for the non-existence of a '* treasure of books " brought 
 back by Tilly to St. Saviour's, Dover, by the story of a 
 riot and a fire. But the reader who has studied these 
 stories will have no difficulty in understanding that 
 
198 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 they are convenient inventions, designed to explain the 
 great dearth of worthy books in the religious houses 
 even so late as 1 533-1 539. 
 
 The reader might expect me in this place to say 
 something of the " Utopia " ascribed to Sir Thomas More, 
 as the work of an independent thinker whose opinions 
 were alien from the system of the Church. There is, 
 however, no contemporary testimony to the literary 
 activity of More ; the story of his life and works which 
 has come down to us is a tissue of contradictions. We 
 have the pleasure of gazing at the canvas of Holbein 
 and of calling up the image of one of the sweetest and 
 noblest spirits of the time ; that is all. The " Utopia " 
 dates from Louvain, 1566, and the allusions to the New 
 World coincide with the general state of knowledge at 
 that time, as I have elsewhere pointed out. It is said 
 that learned men believed in the existence of Utopia as 
 a territory in the West, and desired to send missionaries 
 thither. However, let us use the famous passage on the 
 nature of belief and the consequent duty of toleration in 
 order to cast a light back, perhaps, to the time of 
 Erasmus and his friends. '^ A man cannot make hi in- 
 self believe anything he pleases. They do not drive any to 
 dissenible their thoughts by threatenings, so that men are 
 not tempted to lie or disguise their opinions ; which, being 
 a sort of fraud, is abhorred by the Utopians'^ 
 
 Admirable words ! But under the pressure of an 
 ecclesiastical inquisition our noblest and dearest spirits 
 could not openly utter their opinions. There has been 
 much fraud on the part of all the religious parties, much 
 of innocent disguise on the part of secular scholars from 
 the Caxton and Chaucer guild downwards. I believe 
 I am the first to point out that the men of Letters 
 who took shelter under the mask of '* Chaucer " are 
 
LIBRARIES IN FLORENCE AND ROME. 199 
 
 in reality men of the English Renaissance, if that term be 
 employed to denote the beginnings of our culture. They 
 were men living under the first or second Tudor prince ; 
 that they were Humanists, Tolerants, keen but genial 
 critics of the monastic system and in part of the 
 monastic writings, must be apparent to all who study 
 those varied pages. 
 
 The Humanists, despite many exaggerated state- 
 ments about their activity, undoubtedly rendered a 
 great service to culture. It is to them that we owe the 
 traditional love of the Latin and Greek Classics, of those 
 books which, as Gibbon says, " have much to teach," 
 and the books which teach us *'to live, to reason, and 
 to die." It can hardly be doubted that the leading 
 spirits among the regular clergy would have neglected 
 or even have destroyed the Classics, as utterly in- 
 compatible with the system, had it not been for the 
 Humanists. As it is, the monks have done a great 
 injury to the Latin Classics by a deliberate practice of 
 contemptible interpolation at the time when they were 
 becoming masters of the education of Europe. The 
 Humanists, though united with one another in a kind 
 of unchartered corporation, as close attention to their 
 literary remains appears to prove, were unable to hold 
 their ground against the organized preachers of eccle- 
 siastical fables. About the middle of the sixteenth 
 century Paulus Jovius is mourning over the loss of 
 freedom ; and Gyraldi is launching a bitter invective 
 against men who were unworthy to carry on the great 
 cause of Letters. 
 
200 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 
 
 It is necessary to point to the Catalogue ascribed to 
 TheCata- " Jqlin^_BostonofBur2^^_StJ the 
 
 Boston of examination of which will show that during 
 ^^^^' the Revival that system of invention was 
 
 begun which we have so long confounded with records 
 of past events in our land. 
 
 The Catalogue, like so much else of the first im- 
 portance on this subject, was not printed until the i8th 
 century, in the '* Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica '' of 
 Bishop Tanner. There were then five MS. copies of it 
 extant* So late as 1747 the editors of the excellent 
 ** Biographica Britannica " had not seen a copy, and 
 complain that the work is still withheld from the public. 
 Since its publication it has never been critically 
 examined ; otherwise the great illusion as to our early 
 literature would long ago have been dispelled. 
 
 We have no reference to the monk of Bury and his 
 Catalogue until the time of Bale and Pits. The silence 
 of John Leland upon the matter is inexplicable ; and all 
 that can be fairly said upon the question of the date is 
 that it must have been compiled at some time during 
 the Revival of Letters. Let me assume, provisionally, 
 that it may have been schemed during the period 
 1 480-1 520. 
 
 ^\n)o%r^^ 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 201 
 
 Boston's Catalogue is arranged on the alphabetical 
 principle, a departure from the usual Benedictine method. 
 A dictionary of writers, in the modern acceptation, it 
 is evident that the compiler could not arrange it upon 
 the chronological principle. The first recognition of this 
 fact gives another shock to our preconceived notions. 
 Here is a monk who points to no less than 197 religious 
 houses in England where books are to be incipient 
 found. He is anxious to make out a complete ^'^'^^"^^• 
 list of them. Yet of famed writers who are supposed 
 to have flourished from the time of " Gildas " and of 
 " Bede," from the time of William the Conqueror or of 
 Henri Beauclerc, Stephen or John, he has not yet dis- 
 covered the date. He knows not their works. He has 
 their names, and nothing more. 
 
 One of the devices of the Benedictines (as I have 
 shown elsewhere) was to invent names of writers, with 
 surnames which assigned them to various cloisters in 
 their world. They were given out as " illustrious men," 
 as " luminaries of the Church." So a Catalogue was 
 sketched out and sent round to the leading monasteries. 
 The names of the illustrious were inscribed. Then, 
 lastly, their date was set down, and the various monks 
 were employed to write Church romance under their 
 names. Under such a system it was of no consequence 
 in what monastery of the Order the works were really 
 written. They formed a really anonymous and circulat- 
 ing library ; nor was a monk ever permitted to enjoy 
 the credit of his own production. 
 
 The structure of Boston's Cataloo;ue reveals the 
 operation of this system of fiction. At the ^ , , 
 
 ■•■ . . *' The method 
 
 first mspection many more books appear to be of Benedic- 
 
 ^ tine fiction. 
 
 known in England than actually existed in the 
 cloisters. But when we observe that against many 
 
202 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 names no copy of the work named is indicated, or the 
 mere date of the writer has not been discovered, the 
 collection reduces itself to something like a skeleton. 
 It is as if a library had been ordered for England, but 
 the books had not yet arrived, because they have not 
 yet been written. In other cases, books are for the first 
 time introduced to notice as if old which have been but 
 recently written. An interesting example is the work 
 known to students of early Christianity as the '' Testa- 
 ments of the Twelve Patriarchs/' 
 
 " Kobert Grostete, Bishop of Lincoln," is one of the 
 The "Testa- fixcd forms of Bencdictinc literary history. He 
 Twdve^^^^ is said to have "flourished" about the year 
 Patriarchs." ^^50. Now, the book iu qucstiou (says the 
 mouk of St. Edmunds) had long been unknown and 
 hidden '' through envy of the Jews." Jerome knew it 
 not, no other Latin writer knew it until Grostete 
 rendered it from Greek into Latin. Grostete is one of 
 the allegorical names in which the Benedictines delight ; 
 and a mass of his writing has been referred to the 
 thirteenth century which was produced at a later time. 
 The work, says Boston, manifestly contains prophecies 
 of the Saviour. In fact, it converts the Patriarchs of 
 Jewish lore into Christian apostles, or, if you will, into 
 monks.* 
 
 Nothing is understood of early English History 
 until we see that it is a branch of Church 
 
 Writers of , 
 
 English History. Nothing is understood of Church 
 History until we see that it is Benedictine 
 History, and that Benedictine History is a branch of 
 theological art. After all that has been said on this 
 subject, a brief examination of the writers whose fables 
 
 * Chaps. 240 and 283 of Leland's " Commentaries " show how the legend of 
 Greathead had grown during the reign of Henry Vill. 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 203 
 
 have given rise to so deep-seated illusions in reference 
 to the English past may now be made. 
 
 It has been assumed that the Be nedict ine who writes 
 under the nom de plume of '' Gildas " lived in the ^. 
 
 . , / "Gildas." 
 
 Sixth century ; but on no other ground than 
 that on which children and simple people believe this or 
 that, "because they are told so,'' or "because it is so 
 written." And yet, had a genuine sceptical habit set in 
 among English scholars, it would long ago have been 
 perceived that there is no reason whatever for entertain- 
 ing such an opinion. When you can discover neither 
 the personality of a man nor his place, you will fail to 
 discover his epoch. That a solitary obscure monk should 
 be sitting down in his cell in some retired spot of 
 Britain, at Bangor, or wherever else you fix your con- 
 jecture, writing stories which there is not a reader to 
 peruse, is an idea which may excuse a smile, even in 
 the presence of grave believers. 
 
 This " Gildas " is a monk who has an admirable 
 command of the Latin Bible, which no monk had or 
 could have until the late fifteenth century. His writing 
 is only one among a multitude of illustrations of the 
 fact that the Benedictine literature — the most important 
 of it — has been antedated by a full thousand years. It 
 is the old story of the world resting on the elephant, the 
 elephant on the tortoise, the tortoise on nothing. " Gildas " 
 is certified by another solitary of three centuries later, 
 Bede; Bede by William of Malmesbury, and so on. 
 The system is perfectly intelligible, so soon as you insist 
 on exact particulars of person, place, and time before you 
 consent to use the work as e^ddence of fact. 
 
 This " Gildas " has a string of inventions about 
 imaginary British kings, who were called into existence 
 about the time when the greatness of the Tudor House 
 
204 THE BISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 and the glories of King Arthur began to be spoken of. 
 It is needless to waste the patience of the reader at this 
 point by a long demonstration. A single hint may be 
 given. For example, " Gildas " tells a sensational tale 
 about one '* Constantine, Tyrant of JDamnonia." * But 
 the very late Benedictine who poses as *' Matthew of 
 Westminster," and has been planted in the fourteenth 
 century, produces the same story in a more concise form, 
 which seems to contrast with the timid declamation of 
 " Gildas," as the earlier and the later account of the same 
 thing. On reference to the Catalogue of " Boston of 
 Bury," we find that he has the name of '' Gildas " on his 
 list, but has not yet discovered when he " flourished." 
 He names his work " De Gestis Britonum Historia," and 
 says that it ended with the word fecerunt. But he 
 indicates no copy of it in any library. One can only 
 infer that the work or works ascribed to " Gildas " had 
 been written quite late in the fifteenth century. Almost 
 the first thing that Polydore Vergil discovered (1520) 
 in searching for the materials of English History in the 
 next age was a " forgery " set down to " Gildas." About 
 the middle of the sixteenth century we find John 
 Leland painfully labouring to discover a historical 
 "Gildas." These scholars were too near the subject of 
 study to detect the great Benedictine fraud. 
 
 It may now, at this distance of time, be cleaily per- 
 ceived that ** Gildas " belongs to the same literary 
 faction with the monks who pass under the names of 
 " Bede " and " Alcuin." It is the two latter who agreed 
 to recommend their collaborator as the " wisest of the 
 Britons." St. Albans or Bury must have been possessed 
 of the secret of all these compositions. They all evince 
 the intention of the monks to write English History in 
 
 * " De Gest. Brit," pt. 2, e^j. 2. 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 205 
 
 illustration of Church principles ; in other words, to 
 embody what was dear to the ecclesiastical heart in 
 the form of allegorical tales respecting British, Saxon, 
 Norman, and Plantagenet kings. 
 
 In '* Grildas " the Latin is not disagreeable to good 
 taste, but the sentiment is affected, the rhetoric con- 
 ventional, and fables violent, sensational, and therefore 
 edifying to the popular mind. The stock phrases pall 
 upon the jaded ear. You have heard it all before ; 
 Pseudo-Gildas echoes Pseudo- Jerome, his contemporary, 
 when he calls Porphyry a " mad Oriental against the 
 Church" and puts into his mouth the saying that 
 " Britain is a province fertile of tyrants." 
 
 The work is clearly discovered to be part of the 
 system of Ecclesiastical History. The object of the 
 writer is to rmpress upon us the dogma that " Christ 
 the Sun of Eighteousness first indulged his rays to this 
 icy cold island" in the late days of Tiberius. He 
 insists on the theory of Diocletian's persecution. Britain 
 had her full supply of holy martyrs, the places of 
 whose passion and burial kindle the ardour of charity 
 in our minds. There was St. Alban of Verulam, 
 Aaron, Julius, and others. Dramatically he tells the 
 tale of St. Alban, in whose cloister he was possibly 
 writing. 
 
 He repeats the ecclesiastical principle, in accord- 
 ance with which so much of Ecclesiastical History has 
 been constructed, "There must be Haeresies." The 
 Church is essentially combative ; her orthodoxies and 
 her heterodoxies always assume the form of persons. 
 Therefore the perfidious Arians came over the ocean 
 into Britain with deadly eflfect. He proceeds with his 
 tales of tyrants, of devastations, of pestilences and the 
 overthrow of cities. He finds these things in texts 
 
2o6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 from the psalms and prophets. At last peace is granted 
 to the Israel in Britain. 
 
 He proceeds in the second part of his work with 
 what he calls *^ Increpations," or, in plain English, 
 with volleys of "strong language" levelled at the 
 fantastic tyrants of Britain, a Constantine, an Amelius, 
 a Vortiporius, a Cuneglassus, a Maglocunus. The windy 
 sentences affect us as men are affected by violent and 
 unanswerable pulpit declamation. Safely does the 
 orator launch the thunderous oracles from the Hebrew 
 Prophets against these crouching shades, while possibly 
 English lords, magnates, satraps, sit listening in the 
 presence of the populace, who gaze upon their counte- 
 nances to see whether the arrows of conviction had 
 gone home, and who exult in the protection which 
 Mother Church affords the suffering English liberties. 
 For it was one of the objects most anxiously pursued 
 by the monks of the Order of St. Benedict, when they 
 undertook the writing of English History, to represent 
 that Order as the constant friend of the people in its 
 struggles against the oppressions of the great. 
 
 With regard to the writer who passes under the 
 name of ''Nennius," a forgery was in this 
 case discovered by John L eland quite analo- 
 gous to that discovered in the case of *' Gildas " by 
 Polydore Vergil. Leland found in the Abbey of Eurevale 
 in Yorkshire a MS. on British History ornamented 
 with ridiculous fables. But he drew the same kind 
 of inference that Polydore drew, that the manifest 
 forgery implied the existence of the genuine article ; 
 and no doubt the inference was designed to be drawn. 
 We come again to Bede. I have not met with 
 any professed critic who has ever asked the 
 questions which are elementary iu the critical 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 207 
 
 business in reference to Bede. W^io vouches for his 
 personality, his place, his epoch ? These questions are 
 no sooner asked than answered. Bede, whose name 
 is allegoric of the idea of prayer, is one of the figu- 
 rants in the Benedictine literary confederacy. When 
 you examine the statements which he is supposed to 
 make about himself at the end of the '' Ecclesiastical 
 History," when you find these statements copied, wath 
 slight variations, in the writings of other Benedictines 
 planted in the *' twelfth century," when you perceive 
 that no scholar outside the Order knew anything of 
 Bede until the sixteenth century — the critical problem 
 is essentially solved. 
 
 The canonical principle laid down by the Benedictines 
 is that no man should bear testimony, un-t Hisseif- 
 supported, of himself. But they constantly *««^i^«°y- 
 violate the principle. For the sole testimony to 
 the existence of ^' Bede " in the eighteenth century 
 is the testimony of ''Bede" himself at the end of 
 his " History." Before citing it, let me observe that the 
 earlier copies of the work did not contain the last 
 chapter. Polydore Vergil does not appear to have seen 
 this last chapter, while Leland distinctly tells us 
 that it was not to be found in any of the printed 
 copies. On comparison with " Boston of Bury," it is 
 remarkable that this monk evidently has seen the last 
 book. No other conclusion can be drawn than that 
 the following so-called self-testimony was not penned 
 down, perhaps, until some time about the middle of 
 the sixteenth century. The statement runs : — 
 
 " These on the Ecclesiastical History of Britain 
 and chiefly of the Nation of the Angles, as far as I 
 could ascertain, whether from the Letters of the 
 Ancients, the Tradition of the Elders, or from my 
 
2o8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 own knowledge, with the help of the Lord, I have 
 digested. — Bseda, servant of Christ, and priest of the 
 monastery of the Blessed Apostles, Peter and Paul, 
 which is at Uiuremuda and Ingous (Wearmouth and 
 Jarrow). 
 
 " Born in the territory of the same monastery (679), 
 at the age of seven years, by the care of my relatives, 
 I was given to be educated to the most reverend 
 Abbot Benedict, and then to Ceolfrid ; and passing all 
 my lifetime thereafter in the habitation of the same 
 monastery, I gave all labour to meditating the Scrip- 
 tures ; and between the observance of the regular 
 discipline and daily care of singing in the church, I 
 ever found it sweet either to learn, or to teach, or to 
 write. 
 
 " In the nineteenth year of my life the diaconate 
 (691), in the thirtieth the grade of the priesthood (702), 
 both through the ministry of the most reverend Bishop 
 John, at the command of Abbot Ceolfrid, I under- 
 took. 
 
 " From the time I received the priesthood unto the 
 fifty-ninth year of my age (731) these works on Holy 
 Scripture for my own necessity and that of my friends 
 from the opuscles of the venerable Fathers I have taken 
 pains to annotate, or even to superadd to the form 
 of their sense and interpretation." 
 
 Then follows a list of works, and then the con- 
 cluding words : — 
 
 " And Thee, I pray, good Jesus, that Thou in Thy 
 kindness wilt grant to him to whom propitiously Thou 
 didst give sweetly to draw from the words of Thy 
 knowledge, that he may one day come to Thee, the 
 Fount of all wisdom, and appear forever before Thy 
 face." ? 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 209 
 
 In the first place, it was impossible for a Benedictine 
 to write Commentaries on the Books of the Old and the 
 New Testament in the seventh and eighth centuries, 
 simply because those books were not in existence. 
 Yet it is pretended that more had been done at the 
 remote monastery at the mouth of the Wear in those 
 early times than in the cloister of St. Mary, Paris, 
 500 years after the stated time of Bede. Here, also, 
 for the first time, we hear of the Opuscles of St. 
 Augustine on "the Apostle," which, according to all 
 the evidence attainable, were not known until the 
 fifteenth century. Clearly, the name Baeda is merely 
 the mask for the literary activity of the Benedictines 
 in that later age. 
 
 It is, moreover, a brother Benedictine — Sigebert of 
 Gemblours — who in his long Catalogue of 1 7 1 „,.^ 
 
 r. 1 • . 1 • P 1 ^ n Witness of 
 
 names 01 ecclesiastical writers 01 the Order, sigebert, 
 
 supports the statement of the Pseudo-Bede by 
 
 simply repeating it in his Catalogue. His words are — 
 
 " Bede, the monk, by nation an Angle, himself 
 opens in his own words, who or whence he was, what 
 or how much he wrote." * Then comes the citation of 
 the words above given, with the list of the works. 
 
 Boston of Bury also copies the list of Pseudo- 
 Bede's works — not quite exactly, however — of John 
 and says they are from his " History of the ^°^^°°- 
 Angles." He also gives difi*erent closing words to the 
 ''Ecclesiastical History" from those in our text. He 
 then adds a considerable number of works which are 
 also said to be Bede's. With regard to Sigebert, Boston 
 simply notes his name without ascribing any work to 
 him. As Bede rests upon Sigebert, Sigebert rests on 
 his own testimony. 
 
 * Catalogue, c. 68. 
 
 P 
 
2IO THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Bede has been discovered the great luminary of 
 the Church in England, and the greater part of the 
 literature has been set down to him. But he is not yet 
 the Venerable Bede, he is merely monk and priest of 
 the venerable monastery at Wearmouth and Jarrow. 
 It has been discovered that he flourished c. 706, and 
 that he died in 734, at the age of fifty-nine. But the 
 whole of his '"' Ecclesiastical History " has not been dis- 
 covered as yet. Comparison of the Abbot of Spanheim's 
 notice of him at the end of the fifteenth century, and 
 of the notice in John Leland's " Commentaries " of the 
 next age teaches us that the theory of the Venerable 
 Bede and his writings was in a fluid state until some 
 time in the sixteenth century. 
 
 Our historians since that time have been wont to 
 build on the Church History of Bede, for the most 
 part without examination of the evidence, although the 
 shrewd Thomas Fuller, in the sceptical seventeenth 
 century, scoffed freely at its fictions. But what was 
 the state of historical speculation in England about the 
 middle of the fifteenth century, when we consider that 
 ofPoiydore Polydorc Vergil, writing about the year 1530, 
 Vergil. -j^^^ j^Q^ gggj^ ^Yie statement of the dates of 
 
 Bede's birth and death. He merely says that Bede died 
 in the reign of King Ceoloulph, to w^hom he dedicated 
 his " History." He adds that Bede also wrote — 
 
 On the Acts of the Apostles ; 
 
 On the Gospel of Mark ; 
 
 On Times ; 
 
 Homilies frequently used, especially among the English ; 
 
 On Vn. Canonical Epistles ; 
 
 On the Apocalypse ; 
 
 On Genesis ; 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 211 
 
 On Ezra ; 
 
 On the Books of Kings ; and 
 
 Many other missing Writings. 
 
 The following is the account of " Bede " given in 
 Trithemius's * Catalogue, cap. 242 : — 
 
 " Bede, monk and priest of the Monastery of the 
 Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, which is in England, 
 of the Order of St. Benedict, a man most studious 
 in the Divine Scriptures, and right learned, also most 
 skilled in secular letters, philosopher, astronomer, cal- 
 culator, and distinguished poet, not ignorant of Greek, 
 of excellent ability, not nice in his style, but sweet and 
 composed. He wrote many volumes in which the 
 sharpness of his wit is shown. When he was seven 
 years of age, by the care of his friends, he was handed 
 over to Abbot Benedict to be educated, and then to 
 Ceolfrid, of the said monastery of Muramutha (Wear- 
 mouth), and speeding all the rest of his life thence- 
 forward in the dwelling of the same monastery, he 
 devoted himself to scriptural meditation ; and between 
 the observance of regular discipline and the daily care 
 of singing in the church, he found it sweet ever to 
 be learning or teaching, or writing something. In the 
 nineteenth year of his age he gained the decree of 
 Deacon, in the thirtieth that of Priest, both by the 
 ministry of Bishop John, at the bidding of Abbot 
 Ceolfrid; from which time of the accepted priesthood 
 to the end of his life he composed the subjoined 
 opuscles." There follows a list of no less than fifty- 
 two treatises, chiefly commentaries on Biblical books. 
 Trithemius then goes on — 
 
 " Many other things he also published, which have 
 
 * Trithemius, " De Scriptoribus Ecclesiae— J. A. Fabricius, Bibl. Eccles., 
 1718, p. 65. 
 
212 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 not come to the notice of our reading. His opuscles, 
 even while he was living and always writing new 
 things, were of such authority that at the Ordination 
 of Bishops of England they were publicly read in the 
 churches. And when in the imposition of Homilies 
 they wrote the name, after custom, of the author, the 
 Venerable Bede, Priest, not being able to call him other- 
 wise while he lived, the title once attributed in the 
 beginning has obtained to the present day, so that 
 he is called Bede the Venerable rather than Saint. For 
 it was not allowed to call him otherwise while he lived 
 (saint though he was). Some there are who invent 
 other reasons of this title " Venerable" — from an in- 
 scription of an epitaph. Others dream that Bede was 
 blind. They err, for Bede was not blind, nor do we 
 know such an epitaph written on his tomb. Indeed, if 
 I did not consult brevity, I could easily confute these 
 ravings. He died in the emperor Leo's time, in the year 
 of the Lord 732, in the Indiction XV., the year of his 
 age seventy-two, the day before the Calends of June.* 
 
 The reader will observe that though the preface 
 of Trithemius is dated 1492, this and many other 
 articles could not have been written down till several 
 decades later, as comparison with Leland and other 
 bibliographers clearly shows. 
 
 John Leland witnesses to a still existing un- 
 certainty as to the dates of Bede. He thinks — con- 
 trary to Trithemius — that he lived to the age of sixty. 
 But all that Leland advances in support of his 
 opinion is the statement Bede was fifty-nine when 
 he finished his *' History " and did not long survive. 
 Leland has derived this from a MS., for he says ex- 
 pressly that in the printed copies the last chapter of 
 * Engelhusius' " Ciironicle " gives the year 735, and his age fifty-nine. 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 213 
 
 the fifth book is always wanting. He also cites 
 " William of Malmesbury " for the self-testimony. 
 He appends a list of works ascribed to Bede, five or 
 six times longer than that produced by Polydore some 
 ^ve years earlier. Yet he admits that many works 
 were falsely ascribed to Bede. Notwithstanding this, he 
 indulges himself in an outburst of idolatrous homao-e 
 to the extraordinary learning of " Bede," who had now 
 been placed on a pedestal, from which it would have 
 been an outrage to remove him. 
 
 The name of " Bede," then, is a symbol of the 
 literary activity of a knot of Benedictines who were 
 told oif to the duty of illustrating the imaginary past 
 of England and the Northern Province. And the 
 opportunity may be taken of insisting on a law which 
 finds its application not only again and again in 
 English history and literature, but in the broader field of 
 the history of human culture. It is not that the known 
 personality is the creation of a body of literature ; it is 
 that a body of writers, intent upon the cultivation of 
 their owm ideas, in history, in science or in dramatic 
 art, create the ideal or idol personality, under whose 
 patronage their work is to be carried on and bequeathed 
 to posterity. Of this principle the tradition about 
 " Bede " is a remarkable illustration. Further illustra- 
 tions, equally important, will occur to us in the course 
 of these studies. 
 
 I pause to remind the reader of the point at which 
 we have hitherto arrived in the course of these investi- 
 gations. The determination of the epoch of the com- 
 position of the " History " ascribed to Bede depends 
 on the determination of the epoch of the beginning of 
 the Benedictine literature, which again is the epoch of 
 the Invention of Printing. The contents of the work 
 
214 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 itself, carefully examined, show it to have been written 
 near the same time with the first general Church History. 
 But the work of '' Bede " shows a much fuller acquaint- 
 ance with the Bible, especially with the New Testament. 
 When all the evidence that can be collected concerning 
 the first appearance of the Bible in the cloisters has 
 been considered, and the independent testimony of 
 scholars like Polydore and Leland has been brought 
 to bear on the earliest knowledge of the " Ecclesiastical 
 History " of " Bede," it will be found impossible to 
 assign to the latter work a higher antiquity than the 
 latter decades of the fifteenth century. It was not 
 known till the reign of Henry VHI., outside the 
 monasteries, not printed till 1643, nor criticised in 
 any adequate sense till it came into the hands of the 
 admirable Thomas Fuller. 
 
 But of more general interest, perhaps, is the dis- 
 Engiish covery that Boston of Bury indicates no copies 
 ShemJd, but of works wliich had been used during the 
 not written, j^g^. ^qq years as sourccs for English History. 
 Famous, for example, is the name of William of 
 Malmesbury. Boston gives the following notice of 
 him : — 
 
 " William of Malmesbury, a monk, flourished circa 
 A.c. . . ., and wrote '' De Gestis Kegum 
 
 " William . . 
 
 of Maimes- AnglisB " lib. V., " Dc Gestis Pontificum." He 
 ^^^' has heard the name of William, but knows not 
 
 — though he is theoretically 300 years later than William 
 — his epoch, and is ignorant of a single copy of his 
 works in England.* In like manner he has heard 
 Ralph de ^f Kalph dc Diccto and his " Imagines His- 
 Diceto. toriarum." This writer is said to have 
 been Dean of St. Paul's early in the thirteenth 
 
 * Cf. Leland "Comm," c. 166, who can enumerate fourteen works. 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 215 
 
 century ; * but Boston, who has visited St. Paul's, names 
 no copy of the book. 
 
 In like manner, a number of chroniclers who have 
 been referred to the age 1 200-1 300, and have been 
 used for historical purposes, are unknown to our 
 Bury monk. Among these are Walter Mapes, supposed 
 Gervase of Dover, Benedict of Peterboro', eenw*" 
 Eoger of Hoveden, Koger of Wendover. One ^"*^^^- 
 copy of the work of William of Newburgh is indicated. 
 The name of Gervase of Tilbury and of his work 
 " De Solatt. Imperii " is given, but no copy of it is in- 
 dicated. Four copies of the " History of the Kings of 
 England '^ by " Henry of Huntingdon " are indicated. 
 But Simeon of Durham, John and Kichard of Hexham, 
 Ailred of Kievaulx, John of Brompton, are conspicuous 
 by absence. 
 
 And what of the eminent historian of Magna Carta ? 
 What of Matthew Paris ? Surely this lumi- ,, ^ 
 
 •^ . Matthew 
 
 nary of St. Albans and of Enojland in the Paris un- 
 
 1 • 1 11 11 n known. 
 
 thirteenth century must be known both at St. 
 Alban's and at Bury in the middle of the fifteenth. Not 
 so. Boston has not found any work of Matthew Paris 
 either at St. Alban's or in any other English cloister. 
 He has but discovered his name, and the fact that 
 he wrote an historical work, but no more. He says : 
 *' Matthew Paris flourished about the year of Christ 
 . . ., and wrote a History or Book of Chronicles.*' 
 That is all. Paris is advertised before his work 
 appears.f 
 
 Equally ignorant is the monk of St. Edmund's of 
 works theoretically ascribed to the late fourteenth 
 
 * Leland says he was " about 400 years " before his time, 
 t Cf. Leland, "Coram.," c. 249, who is aware of his fame and liis 
 " History." 
 
2i6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 century. He knows nothing of the work ascribed to 
 Further " Kichaxd of Hexham" on the Archbishops 
 Sup°po?eT* of York, nothing of what has been called the 
 cenfuT^" " Plagiate from Eichard " by Thomas Stubbs, 
 writers. ^]^q jg gg^^^j ^^ havc *' fiourislicd " A.D. 1373. 
 To talk, indeed, of Plagiaries in such connection is 
 sheer misunderstanding of the nature of Benedictine 
 literature. The same matter is put under the names of 
 Hexham and of Stubbs in order to secure a show of 
 antiquity. The merits of William Thorn of Canterbury, 
 dated about 1380,* and of Henry Knighton,f canon of 
 Leicester c. 1395, have not yet been displayed to the 
 religious world. 
 
 The danger is rather of understating than of over- 
 stating the profundity of English ignorance on the 
 evidence of this Catalogue. Take away from it the 
 Commentaries on Scripture and works of devotion, and 
 there is scarce anything left. 
 
 There were to be found only about seven copies of 
 Bede's " History " in the whole island, about six copies of 
 a work on General Geography, and of another on the 
 Holy Places and site of Jerusalem. The truth is simply 
 that in England neither geography nor history was 
 understood at this time by the monks themselves. 
 They were merely taught a dogmatic theory of the 
 world from the Old Testament, which was swiftly over- 
 thrown by the discovery of the New World in the 
 West. 
 
 The telling of Winter's Nights' Tales was no doubt 
 going on ; but the literary Eomance of King Arthur, 
 which grew up side by side with Church Eomance, 
 cannot be traced much higher than John Lydgate, 
 himself said to have been another monk of St. Edmunds. 
 
 * Leland, c. 410. t Ibid., c. 429. 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 217 
 
 In illustration of this point it may be mentioned that 
 Boston names the " Golden History of John of "Ooiden 
 
 XT' f -P 
 
 Tynemouth" (who was later said to have jXnlV 
 flourished in 1366). This is no doubt one of tynemouth." 
 the earliest attempts at Church Romance. It consists 
 of " diverse stories and events in the world from the 
 Creation down to the time of King Edward." Four 
 copies of the *' Golden History" only are indicated: 
 one was at Bury, the others at St. Albans, Spalding, and 
 Tynemouth. 
 
 One more illustration of the hollowness of this 
 skeleton Catalogue may be given. Thomas Thomas de 
 of Aquino may long have been honoured by ^^"'°°- 
 Benedictines and Dominicans in England before they 
 had read a line under his name ; but Wolsey seems to 
 be the first eminent man outside the cloisters who is 
 designated a Thomist. 
 
 Now, in Boston's Catalogue the mere name of 
 Thomas de Aquino is set down. But he tells us of one 
 Robert de Oxford, a Dominican, who, we Robert de 
 learn from other brethren, wrote about 1340 ^-''^^'■^• 
 against the Benedictine Henry of Ghent, the latter 
 having attacked the Angelic Doctor. This clue carries 
 us to the School of Paris, where, according to tradition, 
 there was great trouble with the Mendicants from the 
 thirteenth century, and where the beginnings of in- 
 tellectual activity appear to be signalized by censures 
 of Mendicant scholars at the end of the fourteenth 
 century. Boston has heard some rumour of these 
 things. But why in the world is he silent about 
 Johannes Vicoclivus, cdias Wiclif, and that ^ , „^. 
 
 11 T n 1 -T 1-11 1 . JohnWichf. 
 
 detestable Lollardry amidst which he ought 
 to be living ? St. Albans may atone for this silence. 
 Supposing the Catalogue of Boston of Bury to have 
 
2i8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 been compiled late in the fifteenth century, it shows 
 that at that time Bury was the chief literary centre in 
 
 England, while St. Albans lagged behind it. 
 
 For only a very few books are set down to the 
 credit of that cloister. The evidence which comes from 
 St. Albans itself by no means lessens the impression of 
 intellectual penalty, even in the palmy days of the 
 great literary abbot, Joannes Frumentarius, otherwise 
 John of Wheathamstead. 
 
 The genesis of the ideal of this Benedictine luminary 
 
 may be traced with tolerable accuracy. It 
 
 John of '' . n 1 Ml 
 
 Wheat- corresponds m outline to that oi the still more 
 brilliant literary Abbot of Spanheim, John of 
 Trittenheim, commonly called Trithemius. At some time 
 late in the fifteenth century or early in the sixteenth, 
 it was thought desirable to represent a state of flourish- 
 ing culture at St. Albans under the symbol of a flourish- 
 ing name. The village of Wheathamstead supplied that 
 name. The monks, perpetrating a wretched pun, con- 
 vert John of that place into Joannes Frumentarius. 
 Not content with this master-stroke, they proceed to 
 rpj^g write a work under his name, which, pun- 
 
 "^'^^°^'^''" ning a second time, they call his *' Granary." 
 Those who are familiar with these waitings of the 
 Order will be aware that the monks think as highly 
 of the art of punning as the Jews of the Cabbala. 
 The canonical writings are not exempt from this 
 
 folly. 
 
 It is impossible to praise either the quantity or the 
 quality of the corn in the Granary of the wheaty Abbot 
 of St. Albans. The book — extant in MS. in the 
 Cotton Library — consists of two parts, and may be 
 described as a first effort towards the production of a 
 Classical, Mythological, and Ecclesiastical Dictionary. 
 
BENEDICTINE SYSTEM OF ENGLISH HISTORIANS. 219 
 
 Aaother title of the work describes its contents as 
 " historiograpliic historical." 
 
 The first name is that of *' Abgarus of Edessa." 
 Few readers are perhaps aware of the im- 
 
 . . 1 n ^ ^ i Abgarus. 
 
 portance m a critical aspect 01 the legend 
 
 of the interchange of letters between Jesus and this 
 
 kino^ Augarus, Abgarus, or Abagarus of Edessa. It is 
 
 •o ^^"ir>^ 
 
 given at great length in the first Church History 
 ascribed to Eusebius of Csesarea. Indeed, that flimsy 
 system of fables, in wdiich there are but a few lines 
 correspondent to anything in the New Testament, con- 
 tains no narrative about Jesus so circumstantial as 
 this. It must either be older than or coseval with 
 canonical narratives. But the exclusive attention which 
 has been gradually fixed on the New Testament since 
 the Keformation has thrust this and a mass of other 
 myths of Jesus into the background . 
 
 At St. Albans, then, at this late period, the monks 
 are beginning to be acquainted with that system of 
 Fable which they are pleased to call Church History. 
 And wdiat their notions on the subject were may be 
 gleaned from various handfuls in the '' Granary," from 
 the articles on Antichrist, on Basil the Great, on the 
 Church, and on Ecclesiastical History, on Faith, 
 Heresy, and the like. The theory about '^ Bede " is not 
 yet fixed. He is described as " priest and monk of the 
 monastery of Jarrow, or, as others say, of Wearmouth.'* 
 He has not yet attained to the honours of Venerability. 
 
 It seems that now, about a hundred years after his 
 conventional date, John Wyclif (or Vicoclivus 
 in Latin) is beginning his career. He is de- 
 scribed as " a man of all men the most wicked," and his 
 very name is expressive of the fact. All the labours of 
 scholars in recent years have not enabled us to get 
 
220 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 beyond this notice of Wiclif in the " Granary " of St. 
 Albans. Is it not time to say, with the view of saving 
 further expense of vain toil, that neither John Wiclif nor 
 the other man of the same name is to be considered a 
 historic personality ? The name, as in a multitude of 
 other cases, is a convenient figure of the poor priests at 
 which the monks and friars discharge their polemical 
 arrows, a foil to their own orthodox opinions. 
 
 It seems that the Latin classics are beginning to be 
 read, or at least talked about, in St. Albans. 
 Tacitus is called, after the monk who writes 
 under the name " Tertullian," " the most chattering of 
 liars," and reference is made to his account of the Jews 
 as if they were Egyptians, gens Egipeia. The works 
 ascribed to Josephus do not appear to be known, but 
 there is a fable about Jesus, son of Ananias. There is 
 an article on Joseph of Arimathcea, and how he came to 
 Britain. The stock fables about Koman emperors and 
 about Charles the Great are adopted. 
 
 The " Granary " is simply another exposure of dis- 
 graceful ignorance, passionate hatred of the light which 
 is coming in to England, and desperate determination 
 and falsehood as the only means of saving a false 
 system. As if to complete the exposure, it is said of 
 John of Wheathamstead, as of Trithemius, that his monks 
 caballed against him because he expended too much on 
 literature, and neglected their temporal interests. Was 
 it the object of the Benedictines at the time of Printing 
 and the Reformation to pretend that much more would 
 have been done in the monasteries in the way of literary 
 culture, had it not been for the stupidity and sensuality 
 of the mass of the monks ? The truth is, that culture 
 was forced upon the cloisters by the growing curiosity 
 of the world. 
 
( 22 [ 
 
 PAET II. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY — POLYDORE 
 VERGIL. 
 
 If I have at all succeeded, by means of the foregoing 
 illustrations, in indicating what the state of English 
 imagination and English knowledge was at the end of 
 the fifteenth century, the reader will be prepared for 
 the conclusion which can be made clear on other 
 grounds, that what we call early English History is the 
 poetic invention of the Tudor period. 
 
 Englishmen were from the first too near to the 
 subject, and too infatuated by national vanity, to admit 
 this plain fact. It so happens, however, that two 
 foreigners can be cited, who naturally approached the 
 subject in a calmer mood and from a distance, whence 
 the truth could be more clearly discerned. 
 
 The first is Chalcondylas, one of the writers in the 
 so-called Byzantine series of chroniclers, chaicondv- 
 Chalcondylas is a dry and poor writer. He ^^^' 
 was an Athenian, an officer of the Duke of Athens, and 
 is believed to have been living quite late in the 
 fifteenth century. He is conversant with the Moham- 
 medans, and gives a reverent and fair account of their 
 religious beliefs. He is another witness to the fact that 
 they were the true people of culture of his time. He sets 
 
222 THE RISE OP ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 down the little he knows about the West in the spirit 
 of a Mohammedan. He knows nothing of Christians, 
 but employs the term " Nazaraeans " as the Moslem desig- 
 nation of heretics. The Nazarseans are in his thought 
 a military confederation, who have settlements in 
 Rhodes, in Spain, in Prussia. He has heard some tale 
 about the wizard Joachim, the Calabrian abbot, an 
 ideal of the monks. There is nothing extraordinary in 
 the Greek's ignorance nor his apathy, in the light of 
 the general evidence I have reviewed. He is not a 
 violent fabulist ; but he could be imposed upon by idle 
 travellers' tales from the West. Possibly he has read, 
 more probably he has listened to some French romancers. 
 Chalcondylas draws a faint picture of Britain and its 
 institutions, and the passage to which attention may 
 be particularly called shall be cited from Gibbon's 
 rendering. " Their language bears no affinity to the 
 idioms of the Continent ; in the habits of domestic 
 life they are not easily distinguished from their neigh- 
 bours of France ; but the most singular circumstance of 
 their manner is their disregard of conjugal honour and of 
 female chastity. In their mutual visits, as the first act 
 of hospitality, the guest is welcomed in the embraces of 
 their wives and daughters ; among friends they are 
 lent and borrowed without shame ; nor are the islanders 
 offended at this strange commerce and its inevitable 
 consequences." 
 
 Let me bring into emphasis the following comment 
 
 of Gibbon, because it is a criticism upon his 
 "Canon of owu work, and upon much beside that has 
 
 fallen from the pens of modern English 
 historians. '' Informed," says Gibbon, " as we are of the 
 customs of old England, and assured of the virtue of 
 our mothers, we may smile at the credulity or resent 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 223 
 
 the injustice of the Greek, who must have confounded 
 a modest salute with a criminal embrace. But his 
 credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson : 
 to distrust the accounts of foreign and remote nations, 
 and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from 
 the laws of nature and the character of man J' 
 
 Yet the name of Chalcondylas reminded Gibbon of 
 the revival of learning at the same period under the 
 teaching of Greeks in Ital3\ Gibbon had in fact 
 arrived, very late in the progress of his work, at the 
 point where the critical study of his materials should 
 have begun. He supposed that histories of Britain had 
 been current for near 1000 years before Chalcondylas. 
 He was profoundly mistaken. 
 
 If this witness of ignorance on the part of the Greek 
 stood alone and isolated, it mig;ht be explained 
 
 ^1 ? . P T Polvdore 
 
 away. On the contrary, it is connrmed virgiiin 
 beyond contradiction by an Italian scholar 
 from the court of the Pope, who came to England a 
 little later, at a time when the Italian scholars were 
 dispersed in the West. I refer to Polydore Virgil. 
 This scholar tells Englishmen, in the plainest terms, 
 that nothing was known by educated foreigners of their 
 history. 
 
 I have before me the Basle edition of the " Anglica 
 Historia " of Polydore, dated 1 5 70. On the title-page 
 are some lines from the pen of Simon Gryna3us, 
 flattering the martial renown of England, and adver- 
 tising the work as a fine poetic recital of her glorious 
 deeds during the space of no less than 1900 years. 
 The " Latian trumpet " of Polydore's style is duly 
 belauded. In faith, a mocking and most ironical 
 advertisement ! 
 
 The dedicatory epistle to King Henry VIII. is dated 
 
224 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 from London in August, 1533. Polydore conceives 
 that he has accomplished a very important work. After 
 speaking of History, in the fashion of the time, as a 
 History and g^^^^ mcaus of moral education, he insists that 
 morality. History is the one thing lacking to the glory 
 of Henry's name. So great, he continues, is the general 
 ignorance of the greatness of England, there is scarce a 
 Ignorance of work cxtaut which givcs information as to the 
 England. naturc of the soil, the origin of the nation, 
 the manners of kings, the life of the people, the causes 
 of the growth of the empire. 
 
 There was, indeed, Gildas, and there was Bede ; 
 there had been later obscure writers. Annalists had 
 lately begun their crude attempts to record passing 
 events. But those writers were as '* meat without 
 salt." They had, however, supplied Polydore with 
 some materials, which he has compared with foreign 
 annals. He has been busy for a long time with the 
 composition of this new History, which he now offers to 
 Credulity of ^^^ pubUc in a polished and ornate form. He 
 Englishmen, jg ^^j] a^^rc that it will not be immediately 
 acceptable to Englishmen, who have been given to 
 credit the dreamy tales of their grandfathers. If these 
 tales be omitted, good heavens ! how will the people 
 lash the author with their tongues ! The words were 
 prophetic of the treatment Polydore actually received 
 at the hands of some of our most learned men. 
 
 Before passing on, let me call the person of Polydore 
 as distinctly as I can before the reader. He was quite 
 a young man at the end of the fifteenth century ; he 
 had imbibed the best classical culture of his time ; and, 
 from his knowledge of the state of affairs, is one of our 
 best witnesses as to the rise of the art of History in the 
 West, and the condition of the popular mind to which 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 225 
 
 it appealed. Like all his contemporaries, he is vague in 
 his dates for the times within his own knowledge, but 
 in speaking of the reign of Henry VII. he says — 
 
 " In those times Perfect Letters (or correct classical 
 learning), both Latin and Greek, were cast Learning in 
 out of the bounds of Italy by wicked wars. ^^eWest. 
 They poured over the whole of Germany, Gaul, England, 
 and Scotland. The Germans, having been the most 
 illiterate, are now the most learned of all." After an 
 enthusiastic praise of Letters as the means of immor- 
 tality, he proceeds to associate their rise in England, 
 like a good courtier, with the name of Margaret, the 
 most holy mother of King Henry, and the exhorta- 
 tions of John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, a man of 
 the highest learning and character. Two magnificent 
 churches were built at Cambridge, with two colleges of 
 disciples, one dedicated to Christ Saviour, the other to 
 St. John the Evangelist. A little before, John Alcock, 
 bishop of Ely, had founded Jesus College. Then 
 William Smyth, bishop of Lincoln, after the example 
 of Margaret, founded Brasyn Nose College at Oxford, 
 so called from the image fixed before the doors. Richard, 
 bishop of Winton, founded Corpus Christi. 
 
 There follows the story of John Colet, " Dean, as 
 they call him, of St. Paul's." In England he johnCoiet, 
 passes for a second Apostle Paul, having ^ndst. Paui. 
 chosen him for his master. Educated at Oxon, and 
 Cambridge, and in Italy, he began to read the Pauline 
 Epistles in London upon his return, and often to preach 
 in the temples. Sole survivor of a family of twenty- 
 two sons, he was heir to his father's property. He 
 loved his fellow-citizens, but thought they would be 
 improved by a little learning. So he founded the 
 splendid school on the east side of St. Paul's Churchyard, 
 
 Q 
 
226 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 and appointed William Lily, who had studied in Italy, 
 first master. Lily was, indeed, first of Englishmen to 
 teach the Classics in England. Before him Cornelius 
 Vitellius, the Italian, of Corneto, in Tuscany, had been 
 the first teacher of " good Letters " at Oxford. 
 /% It is impossible, I think, to bring this passage into 
 
 too great emphasis. It distinctly teaches that literary 
 culture was not beginning in England, whether at 
 Oxford, Cambridge, or London, until the Tudor time. 
 I would remind that the exact year of the foundation 
 of St. Paul's School has never been discovered, still less 
 that of any earlier learned foundations in England. 
 The Italian scholar cannot be contradicted ; he is deci- 
 sively confirmed from every other available genuine 
 source. The tales he writes down about British culture 
 in distant times he has copied, as we shall see, from the 
 historians of the great Benedictine collaboration. 
 
 Polydore came hither as collector of Papal dues, or 
 Peter's Pence, appearing early in the reign of Henry VIII. 
 He made himself acceptable in England, and was pre- 
 ferred to the archdeaconry of Wells, an office in which 
 he expresses a modest pride. In his personal tastes 
 Polydore was, before everything, the man of Letters. 
 It was with him, as with the Humanists in general, a 
 religion to cultivate that good Latin (along with a little 
 Greek) which had come into England shortly before his 
 arrival. If he does not write pure Ciceronian, his style 
 is very careful. He knows the contents of the Latin 
 Classics well ; and it is probable that if he ever preached 
 he mingled good moral sayings from Cicero with passages 
 from the Sermon on the Mount. He shows no particular 
 interest in theology. A decorous conventional Church- 
 man, of easy temper, he seems to have passed through 
 an agitated time without trouble. He disappears from 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 227 
 
 our view under Edward VI., who grants him permission 
 in his old age to visit his native Italy. 
 
 As a critic, Polydore takes a line of his own, and 
 steers between the extremes of gross credulity on the 
 one hand and radical criticism on the other. His works 
 show him to have been acquainted with the outline of 
 Church Story as told by " Eusebius " and the rest. He 
 must have known of the sceptical opinions current at 
 the Court of Leo X. ; and it is to me at least an almost 
 certain inference that he held it in very lax belief, if, 
 indeed, he held it at all. Had he been closely questioned 
 about the matter, I believe he would have dismissed it 
 with a smile and a wave of the hand, and some remark 
 to the effect that the Church, like other institutions, 
 must necessarily begin her story with gods and heroes ; 
 and that if questions of origin were probed to the root. 
 History could never be written at all. 
 
 He is a much better critic than any English writer 
 of the time ; he should receive a long-delayed justice at 
 our hands. Polydore is a witness who cannot be shaken, 
 from the fact that literary culture was merely beginning 
 with the Tudor period, that the Benedictine writers 
 were just beginning to be known, that about the year 
 152 1 and later, writers in England and Scotland were 
 in the full swing of those habits of violent invention 
 which Polydore vainly strove by a better judgment and 
 example to check. I may now leave the Archdeacon of 
 Wells to speak for himself. 
 
 In his first book Polydore proceeds to give an 
 account of the geography of Britain, which is 
 divided into Anglia and Scotia, and has four HistoV,' 
 parts, inhabited respectively by the Angles, 
 the Scots, the Welsh, and the Cornish, who differ from 
 one another in language, manners, and customs. He 
 
228 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 proceeds with the same air of novelty to enumerate 
 the English convents or counties, and the pontifical 
 jurisdictions, or in Greek, dioceses of bishops. Eccle- 
 siastical terms are given with the same freshness ; and 
 Polydore apologizes for the use of such a designation 
 as "abbot" instead of "praefect of monks." He is a 
 classical purist ; but incidents like these are important 
 evidence that the monastic vocabulary had not come 
 into use incalculable decades before his time, and that 
 Greek terms were new. 
 
 It will be unnecessary to detain the reader with 
 Poiydore's Polydorc's description of the island, in which 
 orig'nar^ he makes use of Tacitus, Pliny, and Ptolemy. 
 observations, jj^ dcscribcs the Highlanders of Scotland, 
 and says they speak Irish. The Scoti have only the 
 Municipal, not the Civil Law, like England. They 
 have great natural ability and considerable learning. 
 The idle among them are content to boast of their high 
 descent. The Welshmen — meaning in the German 
 tongue "foreigners" — were so called by the invading 
 Angles. The Britons lost their name and the kingdom 
 at the same time. There was a theory that Welsh was 
 partly a Trojan, partly a Greek dialect. In Cornwall, 
 whose lead and tin mines are mentioned, the nation of 
 Britons alone remains. Their origin was traced to 
 Brittany, and they use a similar dialect, which has 
 much in common with the Welsh. Polydore marvels 
 that in one and the same island there should be such 
 diversity of tongues. Ireland lies between Britain and 
 Spain. 
 
 In his description of our climate and productions 
 Polydore extols the English wool as the true " golden 
 fleece : " the source of our wealth. He admires the 
 greatness of that wealth, illustrated in the costly 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 229 
 
 Church vessels and in the articles of plate which are 
 to be seen on the tables of men of even moderate 
 fortune. England abounds in all kinds of cattle, 
 except asses, mules, camels, and elephants. The great 
 herds of oxen wander over the pastures almost without 
 keeper, there being no poisonous or rapacious animals 
 except the fox. On the whole, it is the rustic England 
 we all know which Polydore describes, allowing for 
 the smallness of population and the backwardness of 
 agriculture. 
 
 The English of the upper classes, he says, differ 
 little in manners from the Italians. They are kind- 
 hearted and hospitable to strangers. But the common 
 people of the towns are of a rougher sort. They are 
 first-rate bowmen and splendid warriors. There is also 
 a great number of learned men now to be found in the ' 
 island. The dress is like the French, and the ladies 
 are remarkable for beauty and for becoming apparel. 
 
 According to " Gildas," Britain embraced Christian 
 piety at the beginning of the Gospel. There follows an 
 allusion to the tale of St. Gregory. There is, continues 
 our witness, no more religious nation : as the fine 
 temples, the frequent congregations, and the costly 
 tombs of the saints demonstrate. So much by way of 
 preface, before Polydore proceeds to narrate our wars, 
 the principal occupation of the pens of the annalists of 
 the time. 
 
 It is refreshing to read so sensible an introduction on 
 turning from the daydreams of the monks. But ^he edition 
 disappointment soon replaces expectation as we ^* "Giidas." 
 proceed. Polydore, in search of sources, had found and 
 published the first edition of " Gildas " in 1525. He 
 had been unable to discover more than two copies of 
 the work in the country. A second book, ascribed 
 
230 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE, 
 
 to " Gildas " witli the story of Brute, he strongly 
 denounces as a forgery. The genuine Gildas and Bede 
 are "very holy and very truthful men." On the other 
 hand, there are authors of common repute, greater than 
 they deserve, from the twelfth century, who have 
 theories of the origin of the people different from those 
 of the earlier writers. Polydore is induced to cling to 
 Gildas, because William of Newburgh, who lived in 
 1 195, bears testimony to him as an unbiassed writer. 
 On the other hand, there is a ridiculous contriver of 
 fiction recently come to light, who extols the virtue 
 of the British over that of Macedonians and Komans 
 with impudent vanity. This was Geoffrey, surnamed 
 Arthur, " because he disguised in Latin colour and 
 under the honest name of History many tales about 
 Arthur, taken from old pigments of the Britons." 
 
 With still iQjreater audacity this Geoffrey published 
 
 the false divinations of one Merlin with 
 
 Arthur of additious of his own, as if they had been pro- 
 
 Monmouth. , . t t , • i i 
 
 phecies approved and restmg on unshaken 
 truth. It is a most remarkable circumstance that 
 Polydore should write in this way for the delectation 
 of his patron. King Henry, whose elder brother is said 
 to have been named after the old British king, and 
 whose father had come to the throne in accordance 
 with the prophecies of Merlin. Did Polydore, in 
 youthful ardour for truth, begin with the severity of 
 a true critic, and under the pressure of general opinion 
 end as a tame conformist to the fictions in vogue ? 
 
 He proceeds to tell the story from the book he despises, 
 The Btory of ^f how Brutus, the SOU of Sylvius, the son of 
 Brutus. Ascanius, the son of -^neas, came into Aqui- 
 taine, thence to Britain, where he overcame the giants 
 who then tenanted the island, and called it after himself, 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 231 
 
 " Britain." But what, he asks, did Livy or Dionysius 
 of Halicarnassus, and many other Eoman writers know 
 of this Brutus ? Nothing at all. Besides, does not 
 " Gildas " say that all books had long ago perished, 
 and was he not writing about the year 580 ? Polydore, 
 referring to the fine preface of Livy, well understands 
 how the pleasing and plausible fable of Brutus should 
 have obtained currency. He goes on to refer to Henry 
 of Huntingdon and the author of '' Polychronicon " as 
 continuators of the tradition. 
 
 He ofiers some sensible remarks on the question of 
 our national origin. Our white clifis have ^ 
 
 y The yearn- 
 
 always been visible from the French shore, ingfor 
 
 Hence, possibly, the isle was called Albion. 
 It must always have had inhabitants ; it must have 
 been peopled at the same time with other lands and in 
 the same way ; not by a fugitive or criminal from 
 Spain, Germany, Gaul, or Italy. He leans upon the 
 Semitic tradition ; he thinks the isle may have been 
 peopled after the flood of Noe. So " Gildas " also 
 thinks. Such an origin is glorious enough to satisfy 
 national vanity. Polydore alludes to the foible of the 
 time — without the recollection of which History cannot 
 be understood — which measures nobility *' by length of 
 time and other gifts of mere fortune,'' If the indigenous 
 of Latium boasted of a long reign in their land, so may 
 the British aborigines rely upon a like monument of 
 eternal glory. 
 
 After all this discussion, and after renewed com- 
 plaints of the utter obscurity of the subject, Polydore 
 at last seems to give up criticism in sheer weakness and 
 despair. He must, it seems, run through the Lines of 
 Kings as contained in the recent revelations of " Geoffrey 
 Arthur," where they appear to have come into existence 
 
232 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 at a single birth. " We ivill do this,'' he says, " and 
 Theneces- ^^^^ ^^'^^^ impatience, partly because we want 
 royafsuc- ^ Chrouologij , aud partly because ive must 
 Tchrono'io-i- deprccatc ill-feeling. We shall try at the 
 cai scheme", ^^amc time to tear out the mistakes, and they 
 are infinite.'' He then starts at last upon his road, 
 beginning with Brutus, or Brito, briefly narrating the 
 tales of his posterity, as they were to be repeated and 
 learned by heart in our schools or dramatized upon our 
 stages for more than a hundred years. 
 
 We might do injustice to the taste of Polydore were 
 we not to bear in mind that no great national play- 
 wright had arisen in his time to amplify the tragic tale 
 of King Leyre, eponymous hero of Leicester, and his 
 daughter Cordilla, or the equally tragic legend of Ferrex 
 and Porrex. They were to him tiresome myths con- 
 structed on the same principle with the old myths of 
 Greek and Eoman cities. Moreover, with all the desire 
 for precision of statement which is evidently congenial 
 to his mind, Polydore becomes hopelessly bewildered in 
 the attempt to make a Chronology out of these 
 
 British ^ ^ -r^ • • i i • tt ^ t^ 
 
 Chronology talcs 01 British kings. He says that Brutus, 
 ope ess. ^^ Brito, camc, according to the story in the 
 Benedictines, to Britain in the 4100th year of the world. 
 Seven hundred and ten years later, according to Euse- 
 bius' " Epitome," Kome was taken by the Gauls under 
 Brennus. But Brennus, according to recent writers in 
 England, flourished here about 400 years after the 
 advent of Brutus. There is a discrepancy of 310 years. 
 Yet Polydore does not infer that he is in the hands of 
 clumsy schemers. 
 
 But let us be charmed with their artistic work, 
 and throwing ourselves into warm sympathy with our 
 ancestors, delight in the picture of the good King 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 233 
 
 Molmucius, the legislator on the right of Highways, 
 and again in that of the beautiful and wise Queen 
 Martia, wife of Gurtolin, who inaugurated an era of 
 liberty, and gave her people the Martian Laws. King 
 Lud again ! the restorer of London, and builder of 
 the western gate which bears his name. Why could 
 not the Italian precision allow our ancestors to regale 
 themselves with the memory of King Lud ? Why will 
 he intrude the remark that no serious author older than 
 Tacitus has any mention of London ? Why will he 
 parade his Caesar and his Strabo, and his Ptolemy, and 
 his Pliny, and remind us that they knew nothing of 
 Canterbury, Bath, Carlisle, or Leicester ? 
 
 After the series of sixty-eight British kings has been 
 exhausted, Polydore proceeds to narrate the juHus 
 conquest of Julius Caesar. He says that ^*^^'** 
 Britain was conquered about the sixtieth year before 
 Christ. Kin 2: Cymbeline is reported to have ^ , ,. 
 
 <~> '' ... Cymbeline. 
 
 served under Augustus ; and in his reign 
 Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary. Advancing 
 from this point, our author is again in difficulties, 
 owing to the reckless and discrepant statements of his 
 authorities, whose age and genuineness he has not 
 ascertained. For example, after finding mention of the 
 British prince Arviragus in the time of Nero, 
 Polydore reads the Benedictine tale that Joseph of* 
 Joseph of Arimathaea came hither with a 
 large following at that time. He finds in the Evan- 
 gelist Matthew the statement that Joseph was of Ari- 
 mathaea, and appears to consider this a confirmation of 
 the tale which rooted itself at the splendid cloister of 
 St. Benedict at Glastonbury, on which he often gazed. 
 He is aware, however, that the tale of the 
 
 r^^ ' ' TT T • f« • • Lucius. 
 
 great Christian King Lucius is of recent origin. 
 
234 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 So entirely unconscious is he of chronological 
 critique, he mentions that some assign to King -Lucius 
 West- (of the second century) the Church of St. Peter 
 
 mmster. ^^ Wcstmiustcr. But othcrs assign it to 
 Sibert, King of the East Saxons. Westminster is famed 
 for the tombs of kings, the Eoyal Palace, the coenobium 
 of the Benedictines, and the Church of St. Stephen. 
 Here is an asylum for criminals, and a Court of Justice. 
 In an old anonymous MS. Polydore has read that the 
 place was once surrounded with water, and called the 
 Isle of Thorns. What with the criminals and the crowd 
 of servitors, the name seems appropriate to the piercing 
 *' goads of their vices ! " 
 
 Polydore himself repeats the tale of Diocletian's 
 persecution in the next age, and of the mar- 
 
 St. Alban's. ^ ^ p o. * n tt i 
 
 tyrdom oi St. Alban. He says the monastery 
 of St. Alban's is by far the most celebrated of the 
 Order of St. Benedict. But he says nothing of its 
 literature, nor did he suspect that his " Gildas " came 
 from that cloister. He sketches the usual Church tales 
 of Constantine and Helena, and of the Invention of the 
 Cross. His whole manner of dealing with these matters 
 hints that the Benedictine literature is only just begin- 
 ning to be generally perused. But passing by these 
 and other stale matters, in which he seems to feel 
 little interest, we come to an incident in Polydore's 
 own literary experience which he narrates with perfect 
 candour and insouciance, but which casts a sudden light 
 upon the impostures in the name of History that were 
 being contrived, so to say, under the very nose of Polydore. 
 There were monks and canons busily engaged at 
 Scottish t^® same time in constructing a mythology 
 legend is f^j, Scotland that should gratify the people, 
 written. especially as a plausible invention in Biblical 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 235 
 
 and classical tradition. The name of Gavin Douglas, 
 bishop of Dunkeld, figures in our literature, however 
 dimly. But here for a moment he emerges into the 
 daylight as a forger or patron of forgers, to dis- 
 appear into the mist again for ever. Let us listen 
 to the naive story of Polydore. 
 
 Gavin came to England in the year 1521, '* I know 
 not why," says Polydore. He was a man of Gavin 
 the highest nobility and virtue. " He heard ^°"^^"'- 
 that I had long been busily writing History, and he 
 called on me. We became friends. Presently he 
 earnestly begged me not to make use of the ' History ' 
 shortly before published by one of his countrymen, 
 when I came to deal with Scotch affairs. He promised 
 that in the course of a few days he would send me a 
 little note-book, which I ought to make careful use of. 
 And he did so." 
 
 In this precious " Commentariole " Polydore found the 
 following " very ancient " origin of the nation, origin of 
 Gathelus was the son of Neolus, King of the ^^^Iscotcb. 
 Athenians. Fleeing the harsh rule of his father, he 
 repaired to Egypt, and helped Pharaoh — the Pharaoh 
 to whom Moses had been sent — against the Ethiopians. 
 In return for these services, Pharaoh bestowed on 
 Gathelus his daughter Scota. Gathelus, seeking a new 
 seat, came to Spain, which he took possession of, and 
 which was afterwards called Portugallia after him — that 
 is. Port of Gathelus ! He called his people Scots, after 
 Scota. Three hundred years later, the Scots, under 
 King Simon Brech, went to Ireland and founded a new 
 kingdom there. At last, before the Advent of Christ, 
 they repaired to Albion. Soon after, the Picts came 
 into Albion from Scythia, and these two foreign nations 
 propagated themselves in the part now called Scotia. 
 
236 THE RISE OP EIS^GLISH CULTURE. 
 
 They warred with Britons and Romans, and were never 
 overcome. In the end, however, King Rentha was 
 unfortunate with the Britons, fled his country into 
 Ireland, and returning with an Irish force, regained 
 possession of his pristine seat. All this was before the 
 Advent of Christ. 
 
 *' I," says Polydore, " when I read these things, 
 Poiydoreas sccmcd to bchold the she-bear bringing 
 Scottish forth, as the proverb runs. And on Gavin's 
 ^^^'^- asking for my opinion of the book, I replied 
 
 that I would not dispute the origin, because it was a 
 popular custom to seek origins from gods or heroes. 
 The consequence was that really thoughtful people in 
 their search for origins found it difiicult to trace out 
 anything certain, and were forced to believe rather than to 
 toil any more in vain. But in point of fact," continued 
 our Italian scholar, " I can by no means make out how 
 these two powerful peoples, the Picts and Scots, should 
 have reigned so long and carried on so many wars with 
 Britons and Romans, and yet there is no old and 
 serious author who mentions them." Caesar, Tacitus, 
 Ptolemy, Pliny, and others, make mention of the peoples 
 of Britain, but not of Picts and Scots, because those 
 names were not known in Britain. It is "more recent" 
 writers who have " very lately " made mention of them. 
 Polydore, in conclusion, told Gavin with great friendli- 
 ness, but with great regard to truth, that he could not 
 admit any advent of Picts and Scots into Britain before 
 that related by " Bede." He was, he says, bound 
 by the Ciceronian law for the historian Ne quid falsi, 
 etc. " The good honest Gavin heartily agreed with me, 
 as reason agrees with truth. So easy is it ever to dis- 
 tinguish truth from fiction ! " Gavin died that year 
 of the plague. Scottish story, then, was being planned 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 237 
 
 and written upon the like system as English story 
 during the reign of Henry YIII. The monks and 
 canons employed their false etymological key, and 
 derived the Scots from Scythia ; and explained the 
 identity of the language with Ireland and Scotland by 
 the theory of wanderings, precisely as in the old Greek 
 mythology. They set their faucy to write upon the 
 royal ensign of the Ked Lion, and assigned its origin 
 to a distant Fergus, then declared a line of kings from 
 him, and so on. Gavin Douglas, in 1521, appears to 
 allude to the Chronicle of " John Major," published the 
 preceding year, and in which the system may be 
 studied, as well as in the better known " Hector Boece." 
 
 The story of " Hector Boece " is part of the story of 
 the Canons Regular of Aberdeen, and of jjg^,^^^ 
 King's College in that city, which is said to ^°^<^^- 
 have been founded about the year 1 500. Boece is said 
 to have been one of those canons, and all the particulars 
 offered us concerning him, late as they are in date, 
 point to the rise of learning in Scotland in his time. 
 Scholars were beginning, in accord with the fashion of 
 historic fabrication, to make out lists of the Bishops of 
 Aberdeen in the interests of Episcopacy in general, and 
 to forge charters and grants, also in accord with the 
 fashion of the time. The *' Lives," published at Paris 
 in 1522, are a very clumsy performance. They begin 
 with Beanus, and end with the contemporary Gavin 
 Douglas, whose name, as we have shown, has been used 
 as that of a patron of other literature. 
 
 The so-called " History of Scotland" was published 
 at Paris in 1526. It was later improved and continued 
 till about 1550. Needless to give a long account of 
 this work. It furnishes one more illustration of that 
 wildness of fantasy, that weakness of judgment, that 
 
238 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 impotence for observation of the world, which resulted 
 from monastic education. The author delights in 
 the physically marvellous and the morally impossible. 
 He writes for an audience of easy belief, who could 
 relish the tale of the goose-footed otter which struck 
 down great oaks, and drove the fishermen into the trees. 
 He declares himself to have been a witness of the 
 impossible in Nature. He tells the tale of Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus of Egypt, and how he sent ambassadors to 
 Kentha, King of Scots, to explore the country, and how 
 they were delighted to find in Scotland a land of the 
 same language, manners, and government with their 
 own. This charming patriotic romance found translators 
 in Bellenden, archdeacon of Moray, 1536, and in 
 Holinshed ; it regaled Scottish and English readers 
 during the same period that Geofirey of Monmouth was 
 so beloved a classic. 
 
 The object of the writer was, as usual, to make out 
 a succession of kings from Fergus the First to Fergus the 
 Second, and so onwards, and then to fill in his sketch 
 with the colours of romantic poetry. He belongs to 
 the same literary conspiracy with the writers who pass 
 under the names of Fordon and Major, with whom in 
 general he agrees, though he names them not. It is 
 Boece who appears to have called into existence the 
 order of Culdees in prae- Christian times. The work is 
 a mass of absurdity, its only merit being the fair 
 Latin style. 
 
 Yet it was very late before men ceased to praise 
 and began to be conscious of the worthlessness of such 
 a production. The critics began by denouncing Boece 
 as a blockhead, and ended by suspecting that he was a 
 forger. Some of their remarks are well worth quoting 
 because they apply not only to Boece, but to the whole 
 
THE INVENTION OF ENGLISH HISTORY. 239 
 
 historiographic tribe of monks and canons. Thus 
 Bishop Lloyd of Worcester, in 1684, pertinently 
 observes that Boece could invent *' authors no less than 
 stories." He personifies the Bishop of St. Alban's 
 cloak, for example; and thus one '* Amphibalus " is 
 called into being. He quotes authors who did not 
 exist, and ignores his real authority, Fordon. 
 
 Stillingfleet offers similar criticisms. Neither he 
 nor Lloyd had made that wide induction of the 
 literary evidence which would have enabled them to 
 pronounce that these tricks were essential to the system 
 of fabrication. Stillingfleet supposes that Boece had 
 very meagre lists of kings before him ; that he " made 
 up" the rest, placed them under feigned names, as 
 of Veremund, and then filled up their story, not from 
 srenuine sources, but from his own invention. The 
 bishop writes cautiously ; but it is easy to «orig.Brit.," 
 perceive that had he pursued his critical Preface, 
 inquiries into our literature, he might have laid bare 
 the historical imposture to the root. "When he calls 
 Boece the " Geoflrey of Scotland " he has unconsciously 
 indicated the true age of the Geofirey, as a con- 
 temporary of Boece. 
 
 The illumination of Lloyd and Stillingfleet was, 
 however, hateful to the foolish majority. In 1685 
 Sir George Mackenzie of Eosehaugh made a bitter 
 attack upon Lloyd, because Lloyd had cruelly cut oft' 
 forty-four kings, and had pilloried as forgers the many 
 and grave Scotch historians. Was it not a species of 
 high treason to injure and shorten in this way the 
 Eoyal Line? It was in defence of his brother bishop 
 that Stillingfleet wrote the preface to which reference 
 has just been made. Lloyd the antiquary declared the 
 lies in Hector's " History " to be as numerous as the 
 
240 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 waves of the sea or the stars of heaven. The book is of 
 accidental interest to us because it supplied Shakespeare 
 with the story of Macbeth. 
 
 Incidentally it should be noted that the narrative of 
 the more plausible " Bede " was not accepted, even so 
 late as 1520, in Scotland. There was a rumour about 
 him ; but " Hector Boece " pretends that he studied in 
 Italy, lived at Melrose, and died at Durham : for which 
 he is soundly rated by John Leland, writing about 
 1540. But now to return to Polydore Vergil. 
 
 I 
 
( 241 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — Continued, 
 
 After Darrating the arrival of the Saxons under the 
 allegorical Hengst and Horsa, Polydore again "An-iica 
 confesses his difficulty in discovering the truth Lib*^m.' 
 from the differing accounts of his authorities. HenfsTand' 
 To Bede and Gildas he now adds the name ^''^^• 
 of " Paul the Deacon," the Benedictine of Monte Cas- 
 sino, another member of the same family of p^uius 
 mythologists, who vouch for the Pelagian i^'*co°"«- 
 heresy ; which is nothing but one of the articles of 
 their Theological Syllabus presented in dramatic form. 
 They warn us by the example of the wicked Pelagius 
 against the error of supposing that man can of his own 
 effort attain salvation or be born without original sin, 
 and so be independent of Baptism. For to deny the 
 need of sacraments is to deny the need of the priest- 
 hood. Again : the actual connection between the Bene- 
 dictines of France and of England is represented in 
 the legend of St. Germain and St. Lupus of Troyes 
 coming on a mission into England. St. Serf, who was 
 beginning to be celebrated by Scottish poets in Poly- 
 dore's time, goes to the Orkneys. Polydore, of whose 
 self-complacent scepticism we have just seen an ex- 
 ample, exhibits his self-complacent credulity in follow- 
 ing " Gildas " in the description of the battle scenes of 
 the year 492. 
 
 B 
 
242 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 He compares King Arthur to Eoland, the relative of 
 Arthur and Charles the Great, whose fame was sung in 
 Roland. Italy, and had reached the ears of Chalcon- 
 dylas. But Polydore is unpardonably cold to Arthur, 
 whose praises are the theme of vulgar declamation, and 
 whose splendid tomb had, a few years ago, been placed 
 in the cloister of Glastonbury. Yet Polydore adds that 
 the Coenobium did not exist in the time of Arthur. At 
 last we arrive, at the end of sixty-two pages, 
 
 Fall of the . . Jl o ' 
 
 British at the fall of the British Empire, which our 
 
 .mpire. ^^thor comparcs to that of the Assyrians, 
 Medes, Persians, Macedonians, and Komans. Yet as 
 Troy was succeeded by Alba and Rome, so the British 
 was succeeded by the English Empire. 
 
 We now briefly pass in review the Annals of the 
 Heptarchy. The mission of the monks Augus- 
 
 Lib. iv. . ■•• *^ . . ^ 
 
 The English tiuc and Milctus to Britain by St. Gregory 
 '"''"^^' is dated in the year 603. Polydore recites 
 the usual Benedictine tale, without the pun on Angles 
 and Angels, which he either has not read, or does 
 not appreciate. He is very slight in his reference to 
 those *' indecent and ridiculous tales," as Hume calls 
 them concerning the ecclesiastical state of women, 
 which are more fully told in our " Bede." The expla- 
 nation probably is that Polydore had but an early and 
 The Episco- nieagre edition of the book. In narrating the 
 pal See. death of Augustine, he is anxious to explain 
 the words sit or see as applied to the rule of a bishop. 
 He refers us to his work on " Inventors," where it has 
 been shown that to sit is to *' preside over sacred things 
 and administer the Church." We are not to suppose 
 that Polydore would employ " barbarisms " if he could 
 avoid them. Similarly, Chancellor, Abbot, and Prior are 
 unclassical terms ; but long use justifies them. Sixty 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 243 
 
 or seventy years, one may remark, would have been 
 a very long time. Who can ignore the importance of 
 such incidental evidence to the recency of the monastic 
 literature ? 
 
 Polydore admits, as a good Churchman, that many 
 miracles are daily wrought through St. Augustine, 
 "the Apostle of the English," as he is called. Hence 
 he infers that his soul returned in joy to God our 
 Father, and that he possesses his heavenly reward. He 
 despatches briefly the tales of Kentish kings and 
 bishops, and a short paragraph suffices for the South 
 Saxons. 
 
 Of the East Angles, Sigebert founded the Gym- 
 nasium, or Boys' School, at Cambridge about the year 630. 
 But Polydore does not name his source for this legend. 
 It is another illustration of the dulness of observation 
 toward the actual, and the facility of belief about the 
 ideal, that he should say of the cloister of St. Benet 
 at Croyland, " It is still a flourishing religious insti- 
 tution." He means that it is relatively old, and he can 
 readily believe that it began to be celebrated about 695, 
 because of the memory of St. Guthlac. He says that 
 the body of St. Edmund still lies at Bury, in the cloister 
 of the monks of St. Benet, and narrates, with some 
 hesitation, the tale of the martyrdom and the discovery 
 of the bleeding head by the awe-stricken Wolf, c. 871. 
 The doubts of Polydore here arise from reading Saxo 
 Grammaticus' account of the Danes, which will not 
 square with the story of St. Edmund. 
 
 Polydore passes rapidly over the tales of the East 
 Saxons and of the Mercians. He sketches the legend 
 of Offa and his connection with the cloisters of St. 
 Albans and of Bath, and the institution of Peter's 
 Pence, c. 775. The glorification of Offa proceeds wholly 
 
244 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 from the Benedictines, as also that of the holy martyr, 
 St. Kenelm, at Winchelcombe. 
 
 An illustration of the inability of our author, with 
 all his goodwill, to deal critically with the age of the 
 cloisters which he visited, may be given from the North- 
 umbrian legends. He has seen the fine minster of 
 York, which is dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin. It 
 was built, at some time unknown, by most excellent 
 monks from Whitby. Some, however, assign the work 
 to Alan, Earl of Eichmond. He knows not the truth. 
 Whitby Abbey had been "restored" by the Bene- 
 dictines " a long time after" the Danish invasion. The 
 nunnery there refers its origin to Oswey, the Mercian 
 king. He recites the legend of Ely, founded by St. 
 Augustine for the Benedictines (600) destroyed by 
 Penda, restored by Etheldreda, again destroyed by the 
 Danes (870), restored again in a few years. The present 
 monks trace themselves back to Ethelwold, monk and 
 bishop of Winton, who cast out a college of secular 
 priests. This is but one of a mass of parallel Bene- 
 dictine fictions. 
 
 They may be tiresome in their selfish monotony ; 
 but Polydore himself is interesting in relation to our 
 present studies. Among the West Saxons he should be 
 more at home, for he was often in residence at Wells. 
 King Ina, he relates, after his warlike exploits against 
 Kentishmen and East Saxons, resolved to " take up his 
 Cross and follow Christ," or, in secular speech, to become 
 a monk. In his wisdom, he considered it would be 
 folly to commit his wealth to the care of another when 
 he might best bestow it on religion. Therefore he 
 built the magnificent cathedral of Wells, dedicated it 
 to St. Andrews, made it the see of a bishop, and richly 
 endowed it. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 245 
 
 Now comes the autobiographical touch. " There 
 flourishes at Wells in our memory a very 
 
 t* ' • I'll Polydore 
 
 celebrated college of priests, m which there uponhim- 
 
 self • Wells. 
 
 are to be found continually men of good 
 morals and great learning. I consider it a great per- 
 sonal honour that, fourteen years ago,* I became one of 
 that College as Archdeacon of Wells, and that I exer- 
 cise in the Diocese of Wells a jurisdiction which some- 
 times improves our character. In truth, as I have to 
 labour to make others live well, I must of necessity lay 
 down first the law to myself, that others may more 
 rightly measure their way after that of their ruler." 
 He proceeds to tell that it was Ina who founded and 
 endowed the Benedictine convent of Glastonbury, which 
 excels all others in hospitality and due monastic obser- 
 vances. He alludes again to the fame that Joseph of 
 Arimathsea had built a small chapel there, and is of 
 opinion that this was the reason for Ina's foundation. 
 It was he who instituted the tax of Peter's Pence, and 
 Offa followed his example. 
 
 Polydore himself had been Collector of the Pence 
 for some years, and on this business had first come to 
 England. In following sentences he imparts a few 
 more unconscious self-revelations. After relating the 
 leojend of St. Frideswide of Oxon, the holy 
 
 . . 11- m 1 ' 1 ITT Legend of 
 
 Virgin who, being onered violence by Lord st. Frides- 
 Algar, fled into the town, while the gate 
 closed on the pursuer, and he fell blind at the same 
 moment, Polydore says the report ran that from that 
 time the kings feared to enter Oxford. " So easily," 
 he comments, '' is the human mind carried away to 
 superstition." " But," he continues, " I remember how 
 Henry YIII. removed this scruple from men's minds. 
 
 * The year of his writing this is not clear, c. 15 10? 
 
246 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Armed with a good conscience, he entered Oxford with- 
 out any inconvenience, to the joy of the whole people. 
 There is at this day a Convent of Eegular Canons of 
 St. Frideswide's at Oxon," he concludes. 
 
 The act of Henry VIII. may have had an educational 
 influence at Oxford. But the authors of the " super- 
 stition " were the authors of the legend of the saint. 
 What was Polydore's opinion of that and a multitude 
 of similar legends ? Were they credible ? Were they 
 part of History ? We imagine his smile, his shrug : 
 " We must believe something, otherwise we cannot write 
 English History at all." 
 
 When Bede fails him, Polydore goes on with the 
 Benedictine tale in its outline, seldom naming 
 The Daci, his authoritics. His discussion of the Dacians, 
 or Danes, reveals another system of fiction. 
 He denounces " Saxo Grammaticus " as the first heretic 
 who confounds the two peoples — that is to say, if Poly- 
 dore had a correct copy of his work. He always calls 
 those devastators '' Daci." In his account of 
 King Alfred he faithfully notes discrepancies 
 in the tales concerning his coronation by Pope Hadrian 
 II. or by Leo IV. He narrates the coming of Kollo the 
 Dacian and first Duke of the Normans ; the apparition 
 of St. Cuthbert to Alfred in the guise of a poor man, 
 the consequent donations to Chester and to Durham ; 
 the building of the splendid monasteries of Winton, of 
 Shaftesbury, and, above all, of Athelney, for the monks 
 of the family of St. Benedict, in memory of the com- 
 forting apparition (893). 
 
 Polydore repeats the tale of the literary achieve- 
 ments of Alfred : his translation of the Bene- 
 Church dictine " Dialogues of St. Gregory," "Boethius," 
 and the Psalms of David into English from 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 247 
 
 the Latin. The Italian seems pleased with this tale, 
 and rejects the version that a scholar — to wit, the bishop 
 of Worcester — did some of the work at Alfred's request. 
 The Psalms he left unfinished. But let the reader be 
 reminded that it was only during Polydore's time that 
 English people were beginning to read the Bible at all 
 in the mother-tongue. The New Testament was young 
 in the knowledge of the world ; and Polydore has no 
 difficulty in thinking of Alfred as one who made a 
 " Royal Priesthood " of the clergy by encouraging holy 
 and learned men. He does not observe the g^ jj^g^t 
 monkish artist in the picture of St. Neot, that ^°^ ^-^^"'•^• 
 most eminent monk at whose instigation the School at 
 Oxford was founded. 
 
 But when you know how to read the Benedictine 
 mythology, you will find in the following legend of 
 Charlemagne and the scholar Alcuin, and the foundation 
 of the Paris Academy and that at Pa via in Lombardy ; 
 and again in the legend of the two Irish or Scottish 
 monks who went to Paris and to Pa via to sell learnins: 
 for food and clothing, cases of " reversed migrations," 
 so frequent in the old Greek mythology. The general 
 truth is that Letters came hither from Italy and France 
 in the latter part of the fifteenth century. To reverse 
 the direction is one of the flattering falsehoods of the 
 system. Polydore believes the tale because the Bene- 
 dictines agreed in it, and there was no contradiction. 
 
 Turning his gaze on the Oxford of his time, he pre- 
 pares the way, by some flowery compliments, for a 
 severe censure on the bad example set to the boys by 
 the lazy monks who are allowed to spend their useless 
 lives in the place. He anticipates Gibbon. He says 
 in effect to Englishmen : " You are going on with the 
 building of colleges almost every day. You should fix 
 
2 48 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 a term of study for the disciples, and at the end of 
 it they should either go home learned men, or, like 
 ' asses to the byre,' as the proverb runs, they should 
 leave their places to others, who might profit in letters." 
 
 The boast of Cambridge is that she has never had 
 
 unorthodox alumni. Not so splendid as 
 
 Oxford, she is 265 years older. The town 
 
 itself can be traced to the eponymous early Cambridge 
 
 of the old British time. ''But I return to History," 
 
 says Polydore. 
 
 He is a charming guide. The conviction grows 
 upon us that he does not intend to deceive ; that he 
 will not amuse at the expense of what he holds to be 
 the truth. You may easily distinguish Polydore the 
 observer of England from Polydore the student of 
 MSS., the trickiness of which he, like excellent John 
 Leland, was unable fully to detect and expose. Some 
 one brought him a MS. which looked " very old," was 
 said to be '* very old," and was by him believed to be 
 " very old." He looked into it and found some " very 
 holy laws," ascribed to Alfred. Why does he withhold 
 them ? " Because," he answers, " they have so long 
 heew forgotten in England, there is no use in doing so." 
 On the contrary, fame of the royal lawgivers — Alfred, 
 Edward the Confessor, and the rest — is but beginning 
 in England. It is not the languor of oblivion, but that 
 of incipient fiction, which our good Polydore reflects. 
 The young lawyers were just beginning their crude 
 studies in the Inns of Court. 
 
 It is worth noticing that of Winton it is said the 
 college of secular priests there was founded after Alfred's 
 death, and that the monks displaced them. This, too, 
 is part of the Benedictine system of coined precedents. 
 
 Pausing after the death of Alfred, Polydore shows 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 249 
 
 how English story conforms to the ages of man's life. 
 The infancy of the English empire was under King 
 Hengst, about 450. Its youth was during the reigns 
 of the seven or eight kings to Egbert, who first brought 
 in the names " England " and " the English" — a period of 
 some 350 years. The age of manhood began from Egbert, 
 and extended to St. Edmund the Martyr. Then our 
 melancholy old age set in — the period of the Dacians and 
 the Normans. Yet again this age, strange to say, passed 
 into youth. The Norman name was changed into the 
 English, little by little, and the people were generally 
 called English. Such was the dogma of our History, in 
 support of which a variety of fictions were conceived 
 and written during, and later than, the time of Polydore. 
 He now enters the " Dark Age " of the Benedictine 
 
 ue 
 
 Lib. VI. 
 
 system, or the tenth century. His cl 
 through this age is the Regal and Episcopal 
 Succession. A string of the names of the Archbishops 
 of Canterbury will serve to remind that the electric 
 current of grace has not ceased to flow in the benighted 
 Isle. 
 
 We resume the tale of kings in this decrepit century. 
 We read of Edward that, after he had freed the kingdom 
 from the feud of the Dacians, he studied Legislation. 
 But his salutary laws were easily " antiquated." This 
 means that they were being contrived, in order to come 
 to light in the time of Selden and Coke. Edward is 
 supposed also to have built a fort at Bedford, " not a 
 trace of which now remains in that village," adds 
 Polydore. He gives reluctantly the monkish tales of 
 the dream which announced the birth of Athelstan, 
 from the lowly Edgina, the Moon which should illustrate 
 England with its light. *' You must satisfy the vulgar 
 taste for prodigies," he says. 
 
250 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 During this age Cliristian piety was chilled among 
 the Western English, because they had no Bishop. 
 Menaced by Pope John X., Edward, with Pleimund, 
 archbishop of Canterbury, made a new batch of bishops 
 and apprised the pontiff. The fact is that the Bene- 
 dictine writers followed by our author, having exhausted 
 their system of fiction upon the narrative of previous 
 ages, now recommenced it anew. St. Dunstan revives 
 Christianity, but St. Dunstan is equally ideal with 
 St. Augustine. 
 
 It was during the reign of Henry VIII. that retro- 
 Engiandand spcctivc fictious bcgau to bc circukted, tend- 
 scotiand. jj^g ^^ justify the supremacy of England over 
 Scotland. Keferred to the tenth century they assume 
 this form : " Athelstan conquers Constantine of Scotland, 
 and compels him to make a precedent by swearing 
 allegiance to himself." Polydore says that recent 
 Scottish writers dispute this story. And here he some- 
 what flinches, perhaps, from his duty. He refuses to act 
 the part of a judge ; he will confine himself to copying 
 the old English annals, as he calls them. He will not 
 embroil himself in the disputes of England and Scotland, 
 and give offence to this people or to that. And yet, a 
 few sentences later, he cannot refrain from denouncinef 
 the falsity of those tales. 
 
 He shows, unconsciously, that Athelstan is the hero 
 of the Benedictines. They say that he built two con- 
 vents for them, one at Melton, in the diocese of Salisbury, 
 and one in Michelney Marsh, in Somerset, that the 
 monks might not wander, especially in the winter, 
 contrary to the law of their Order, for the place was 
 then inaccessible, except by boat. Both Athelstan and 
 his successor Edmund were legislators, but their monu- 
 ments in this department of culture are " forgotten." 
 
► 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL. 25 r 
 
 To Edmund succeeded Eldred. Here a brief list of the 
 Scottish kings down to Macbeth (or Maccabseus, as 
 Polydore calls him) is interposed. 
 
 The pious ambition of Eldred was to outvie Ethel- 
 wold, that most holy monk of the Order of ,^ ^ 
 
 ' *' 1 1 • f> ^lore Bene- 
 
 St. Benedict. He restored the cloister of dictine 
 Abingdon, the foundation of Ina. Yet he 
 sent into exile Wulstan, archbishop of York, who was, 
 however, recalled. Odo of Canterbury and the Kingston 
 legend are but slightly mentioned ; but the impressive 
 legend of Edwin and Dunstan is given in more detail, 
 the indecency of which shall not sully our pages. Poly- 
 dore frequently gives proof of his own great taste and 
 at the same titne of the necessity he felt laid upon him 
 to gratify the appetite of his readers for the gross no 
 less than for the prodigious. Dunstan, the holy Abbot 
 of Glastonbury, denounces Edwin's crime ; Edwin 
 perishes of grief, and Edgar succeeds. We w^ill not 
 detain the reader with the tale of the vast fleet which 
 he raised to guard our coasts, nor of the tribute of 300 
 wolves imposed on the Welsh, nor of how he called 
 Dunstan from exile, and made him bishop of Worcester, 
 and bishop of London. " At that time," adds our arch- 
 deacon of Wells, with a certain slyness, " bishops had 
 not more money, but more learning, more holiness, more 
 wisdom than other people." 
 
 A little later, he appears to indulge himself in some 
 satire against the Order. He says that the satire on 
 monks are very clever in their pretences of t^^'^^nks. 
 learning and sanctity. He can understand how they 
 could have prevailed on the king to invoke the Apostolic 
 authority of Rome that the wedded secular priests might 
 be cast out of Win ton and Sherborne. He does not 
 observe that we have here polemic in the guise of story ; 
 
252 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 and tHat the hatred of the monks towards lovely women 
 outside the cloister takes form in the legend of Alfreda, 
 daughter of the Duke of Cornwall, beloved of Edgar. 
 Nor does he note that the great love of Edgar towards 
 those choice privy councillors, Dunstan, Ethelwold and 
 Oswald, all of them Benedictine ideals, is an important 
 moral instruction to the kings of the House of Tudor. 
 
 Polydore, however, must have been aware that the 
 pretence of learning and sanctity cloked the most in- 
 satiable greed and ambition ; for he immediately pro- 
 ceeds to tell how the time of Dunstan was the time 
 of the acquisition of boundless wealth. There was in 
 consequence a terrible degeneration. Infected by the 
 plague of wealth, they became tyrants, they forgot to 
 observe the prophetic word, '^ If riches increase, set not 
 your hearts upon them." He observes a strong contrast 
 between the idyllic pristine piety of the old solitudes 
 and the social sensualities that now prevail. Such con- 
 trasts abound in the literature of the monks, and they 
 are parts of a mass of evidence which proves the dis- 
 content of many of the regular clergy, and their hatred 
 of the hypocrisy of popes, bishops, and abbots, which 
 had been strained to an intolerable pitch. Discovering 
 neither learning nor sanctity in the contemporary rulers 
 of the Church, they are doing something to call those 
 virtues, according to their notions, into being by rele- 
 gating them to a remote and impossible past. 
 
 Edgar is made to endow the Benedictines at Wilton. 
 He is also made the giver of laws, " long forgotten," 
 like those of his predecessors. In the time of his 
 successor, Edward II., there was a Council at Winton 
 under Dunstan. Certain ambitious young men sided 
 with the expelled secular priests. The majority was in 
 their favour, when suddenly a voice was heard, " They 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 253 
 
 are in the wrong who favour the priests." As if, com- 
 ments Polydore, it decided in favour of the thieving of 
 the monks than of the rights of the priests. But since 
 the voice appeared to come from the image of Christ 
 crucified, the oracle was believed ; the priests lost their 
 case, and the disturbance was at an end. Did the 
 monks, indeed, enjoy divine aid ? Polydore, for his 
 part, considers that the affair savoured more of the 
 tricks of Delphi than of the inspiration of God. The 
 tale of Alfreda, wicked stepmother of the king, who 
 treacherously murdered him at Corfe, was also useful. 
 In the violence of her penitential grief she lavished 
 her property on Church building, on the nunnery at 
 Amesbury of the Order of Cluny, and that of St. 
 Benedict at Wherwell, where she passed the rest of 
 her days. 
 
 We pass on to the next age, to the legend of how 
 the Dacians impiously strove to eradicate 
 the Christian religion from the minds of men, Sweyn the 
 along with the English name ; how Sweyu 
 destroyed the monastery at Bury, and so on. " The 
 monks are fond of miracles/' observes our critic. They 
 tell that Sweyn, in the moment of victorious exultation, 
 was pierced by a dagger thrust down from heaven, and 
 fell dead on the spot. The gods must have been wrath 
 with him. A prettier fable (says Polydore) supplanted 
 this : he was struck with the very knife that St. Edmund 
 had worn in his lifetime. But Sweyn appeared in 
 quite a different light to the monk called Saxo Gram- 
 maticus, and naturally so, for he did not write in the 
 English interest, but in that of the '' Dacians." Did 
 not the Dacians receive the Christian dogma under 
 Sweyn ? Did he not conquer the English, and die like 
 a Christian ? Polydore is of that opinion. 
 
254 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Canute was also an eminent Christian ; he appeased 
 the wrath of St. Edmund, and richly endowed 
 
 Lib. VIII. ^ , ,, ' . -r* 
 
 Canute, the mouKS. About the same time, reter- 
 theBene- borough cloisters rose under the devout 
 ic ines. exertions of Ethelwold, bishop of Win ton ; 
 and those of Ramsey, of the same highly favoured 
 Order, owed their origin to Oswald, archbishop of 
 York. St. Cuthbert's body was carried to Durham, 
 which became an episcopal see. Canute was also very 
 fond of the family of St. Benedict, and justly : he owed 
 his empire to them, which is still undiscoverable, unless 
 in their phantasy and works of art. St. Benedict's, seven 
 miles from Norwich, was his foundation, and a second 
 in Norway. The monks say in allegory they went 
 hence to Bergen. The resemblance, indeed, between 
 Drontheim cathedral and our own buildings of the same 
 period is well known ; but these buildings do not date 
 from the tenth or the eleventh century. The fine story 
 is told of how Canute bade the waves retire, and delivered 
 a sermon on the contempt of the laws of Nature for 
 kings. To defy the laws of Nature is a privilege 
 exclusively reserved for the saints of the cloisters. At 
 Winton he placed his crown on the head of Christ 
 crucified, and never wore it again. 
 
 When Canute died, the English succession to the 
 St. Peter thronc became a subject of great anxiety to 
 ki^irmo^ the monks of the Order of St. Benet, and in 
 kingdom o^f^ particular to Brithowold, that most holy monk 
 ^^^' of Glastonbury. In the stillness of the night 
 
 the Apostle Peter appeared to him in the act of con- 
 secrating Edward, son of Ethelred, King of England, 
 though he was at the time an exile in Normandy. 
 Inquiring who should succeed Edward, the apostle 
 replied, " Take no thought of such things. The Kingdom 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 255 
 
 of England is the Kingdom of God'' Polydore appears 
 to think tliat the tale will provoke a smile. 
 
 " But," he gravely argues, " the Apostolic proposi- 
 tion is proved by many good arguments. The English " 
 — he means the upper classes — " are most indifferent to 
 politics. They are all for monopolies. They let the 
 kingdom be overrun by Dacians and Normans ; they 
 were themselves all but destroyed. Yet for all that, 
 the Kingdom of England stands, and looks as if it 
 would stand for ever. We should believe that this is 
 due to the favour of God Almighty in return for the 
 remarkable and increasing glow of piety which con- 
 trasts the English with other peoples." This comment 
 illustrates how any plausible sentiment in the mind of 
 the clergy may with propriety be put in the mouth 
 of an apostle or of God himself. 
 
 As to the tales that follow about Harold and Canute 
 the Second, Polydore notes that again " Saxo Gram- 
 maticus " varies from the English Benedictines, but he 
 does not note the interested reasons for this. We 
 arrive at the end of the Dacian, or Danish, rule, ^^i^^ 
 and the Norman dynasty makes its appearance ^^^'^'"a^s. 
 on the theatre of English History. Its greatness is 
 concentrated in the person of William the Bastard, by 
 no means a title of dishonour in those days, as Selden 
 has noticed. The belief common to all the mythologies 
 is that founders of new lines must always be born 
 out of the usual and legitimate course of things. The 
 tale of how Eobert his father must make a pilgrimage 
 to Jerusalem, must on his way visit Benedict IX. at 
 Kome, and clothe the statue of Constantine with a 
 golden pall, is part of the great system of the romance 
 of the Crusades, composed in the cloisters at the time 
 when the power of the Turk threatened the West. 
 
256 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Polydore repeats some of the amusing tales about 
 Duke Eobert and his marriage. 
 
 Polydore is a great witness to the rise in his time 
 
 of that yearning of the English imagination 
 
 "Common after the " Common Laws " of the time of old, 
 
 Laws." . . 
 
 which gradually led to the discovery of the 
 " Common Law " about the time of Sir Edward Coke, 
 its great Oracle. The theory was that Edward, styled 
 by the Benedictines the Confessor, had made a selection 
 from British, English, and Dacian laws, of which the 
 tyranny of the Normans deprived them. It was the 
 admirable Edward who, seeing a devil playing about 
 a heap of gold collected by the tax-gatherers, was 
 horror-struck, and ordered the sum to be repaid to the 
 people. Such a picture was agreeable to the taste of a 
 time when Henry VII. and his ministers were chiefly 
 remembered as cruel extortioners. 
 
 Of the many miracles told of Edward, Polydore 
 selects one which envelops a prophecy after the event. 
 During the Mass he saw the boy Jesus in the Eucharist. 
 Leofred, Earl of the Mercians, also saw and laughed, 
 declaring that he had beheld in vision the Dacians 
 sailing for England, but shipwrecked and driven back, 
 which actually occurred. Edward was wont to heal 
 strumous persons by his touch, an immortal gift which 
 flowed to his successors. Another extant royal custom 
 is that of consecrating rings on the day of the Paras- 
 ceve as a safeguard against paralysis ; it also is traced 
 up to Edward and the ring brought by pilgrims from 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 With the battle of Hastings and the death of 
 
 Lib IX Harold, we arrive at the end of the series 
 
 of the kings of the English, 617 years after 
 
 Duke Hengst ; and at the end of the 1 48th page of 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 257 
 
 Polydore's " Anglican History." He pauses to moralise, 
 and we may also pause to remind ourselves that this 
 series of ecclesiastical historical frescoes were indeed 
 quite freshly painted, and had a fresh appearance to 
 the imaginative eye of the public in the time of King 
 Henry VIII. 
 
258 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — Continued, 
 
 I SHALL not ask tlie reader to travel through the 
 whole tale of the Normans in England, even in the 
 brief form of Polydore's narrative. It might be tedious ; 
 and it is mostly but an abstract from the system of the 
 Benedictines. It is only important to point out how- 
 faint and feeble the dramatic impression is compared 
 with that which had been produced by the incessant 
 labour of our literary artists at the end of Elizabeth's 
 reign. The tragedy of the tyrant Maccabseus, or 
 Macbeth, of Scotland, for example, is dismissed in a 
 few cold lines. 
 
 Polydore heard the Curfew bell ring each night, and 
 was told that the custom had come down from 
 
 The Curfew. ^„.,,. i -xr /-^ • 
 
 William the JNorman. Certam strong towers, 
 he read, had been built by him. All that affected the 
 imagination with gloom and discontent — the condition 
 of the tenantry of the land, and of the mass of slaves — 
 went back to the stern and awful figure of William the 
 Norman. There was arbitrary jurisdiction at West- 
 minster in the hands of the king's judges ; in the country 
 districts the people smarted under the rule of the 
 sheriffs and the justices of the peace. Outlaws every- 
 where abounded ; the magnificent outlaw ideal of Kobin 
 Hood was the darling of the people's heart. And these 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 259 
 
 phaenomena of the Tudor reign were easily traced to 
 an iron man of 500 years agone. The odium of the 
 Exchequer and its Barons was cast back upon him. 
 And it is worth the notice of modern students who 
 believe in the mock antiquities of the Exchequer that 
 Polydore ignores the barbarous word Scaccarium. He 
 refers to it as Sacrariwn, and, with the poor etymology 
 current in his time, says that William called it Stata- 
 rium, because it was the stable seat of the kingdom. It 
 is Kegina Pecuniawho establishes a kingdom.* 
 
 Polydore refers to the supreme office of Chancellor 
 (a new word), who is at the head of a College r^^^ 
 of Scribes, their business being to draw up chancellors, 
 diplomata. This institution must also derive from 
 AVilliam the Conqueror. Had Polydore bent his mind 
 on the subject, he would have found it impossible to 
 trace up an authentic list of the Chancellors much 
 beyond the Tudor constitution. The laws were bad ; 
 and the tale with which the English people were amused 
 in their misery was that William had done away with 
 the laws of his holy predecessors. Yet here Polydore 
 comes upon a startling, wonderful, and incredible fact. 
 The laws are still written in the Norman tongue, and are 
 not understood either hy English or French. The fearful 
 injustice of such a system reflects most shamefully upon 
 the Norman character. And,' indeed, says our witness, 
 in the arts of calumniation, prevarication, and tergiver- 
 sation, the Normans surpass all others. 
 
 Polydore describes what he calls the terrible insti- 
 tution of the Grand Jury as it existed in his The Grand 
 day. He had found in a MS. an account of '^"^y- 
 the Ten Men of the Hundred in Alfred's time. He 
 
 h 
 
 * The materials in Madox's " History of the Exchequer" are all derived 
 from the Black Monks, writing near Polydore's time. 
 
26o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 thinks it is a strong case against the injustice of the 
 Norman laws that the successors of William are 
 always promising to restore " the old laws of St. 
 Edward." After all, the stern fact remains, that these 
 fearful " Norman Laws " are in force — very many of 
 them— in Henry VIII.'s reign, especially those which 
 are of use to the king rather than to the people. 
 
 Nay, more. The very acts of violence allegorically 
 Tudor ascribed to William are the acts of Henry YII. 
 
 allegories. ^^^ RenTj VHI. The opprcssivc taxation of 
 the Tudors, their spoliation of churches and monasteries 
 is an imitation of the evil example of the Conqueror, 
 who was only beginning to be heard of when Henry 
 Tudor conquered the throne. But there is always some 
 redeeming trait in bad men ; and it stands to the credit 
 of William that he deprived some criminal bishops and 
 abbots of their offices. Stigand, for example, the pos- 
 sessor of the sees both of Canterbury and Winton — 
 Stigand, who had dared to take the pall from the hands 
 of the desecrated Pope Benedict X., was himself dese- 
 crated, at the instigation of William, and perished in 
 prison. But some say that the motive of the act was 
 the substitution of Norman for English bishops. The 
 tale of Lanfranc, his successor, has already been dis- 
 cussed in connection with the rise of the Benedictine 
 Schools. 
 
 The talk of Domesday Book and the Census of 
 The census William was not very prevalent until after 
 of William. Polydorc's time, among the antiquaries of the 
 reign of Queen Elizabeth. Our author bluntly says that 
 William's object in holding the census was that he 
 might know how much wool there remained on the 
 English sheep to be shorn. He draws a dark picture of 
 his tyranny in depopulating the land from Salisbury to 
 
POLYDORE YERGIL. 261 
 
 the ocean — a distance of thirty miles — to make the 
 New Forest. 
 
 Yet William in old age was of wondrous piety 
 towards the Christian religion ; the proof being that 
 he built three magnificent monasteries and endowed 
 them. One was St. Martin s, at Battle ; the second, 
 St. Saviour's, near London ; the third at Caen, where 
 also his wife, Matilda, built a convent for nuns. As 
 usual, there was a moral attached to the tale of these 
 foundations. The marriage between William and 
 Matilda had not been rightly contracted, because they 
 were near akin. Manger, archbishop of Rouen, laid, 
 therefore, an interdict upon them. The wife in revenge 
 — it is well known how revengeful women are — urged 
 William to deprive the good Manger on the pretence of 
 negligence in his duties. Now, the archbishop was 
 actually William's uncle by an illegitimate connection. 
 In penitence for their impiety, the two Norman cloisters 
 were built by the royal pair. The Benedictines lose 
 no opportunity of inculcating the lesson that the 
 greatest crimes may be atoned, late in life, by donations 
 to the Order ; and the greatest crimes are offences 
 against the Order. 
 
 There is great instruction in English History to be 
 derived from their writings, of which Polydore was one 
 of the first honest students, if you employ them, not as 
 Thierry and Freeman and Stubbs have employed them, 
 without inquiry into their origin, but with a view to 
 discover some reflections of the Tudor period. Polydore, 
 in fact, sees that the system of English and French 
 government is essentially that ascribed to William. 
 The laws and institutions are the same ; the royal 
 insignia are the same. Polydore mentions the lions 
 and the lilies. 
 
262 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 He is instructed by his monkish guides to discover 
 Holy men ^^^J ^^ Icamcd men of the Order in AVilliam's 
 of the time, ^i^q^ survivors of the blessed Edward, who, 
 however, is not yet known as the Confessor. Such were 
 the absolutely illiterate but very holy Wulstan, bishop 
 of Worcester, Hermann, first bishop of Salisbury, and 
 Osmund, his successor, whose equal both in holiness and 
 learning has hardly since been known. This great 
 reputation, however, rests solely on some ruins at Salis- 
 bury, the miracles there wrought by his corpse, and 
 the ** Horary Prayers," or " Divine Office," as it is 
 called, now in use through nearly the whole of England. 
 Yet we must deny to any Sarum Service Book an 
 antiquity much higher than the fifteenth century. The 
 figure of Berengarius of Andagavencis is also intro- 
 duced. He (a heretic of Benedictine invention) was 
 led by devilish arts to deny the true Body of Christ 
 in the Eucharist except as the ** sign of the Mystery." 
 He afterwards publicly confessed his error. Lanfranc 
 opposed him and Alberic. The method of these romantic 
 theologians is to define the dogma of the Order by 
 setting up an imaginary heretic to teach its opposite. 
 
 They had made up their minds to represent William, 
 called Rufus, as a wicked king. Consequently, 
 The wicked thundcr and lightning, with fires all over the 
 land, ominated his advent to the throne, to 
 which he was raised by the busy offices of Lanfranc. 
 Polydore sketches the character of that inimitable 
 prelate ; but he did not know so much of him as our 
 contemporary and countryman, Mr. Freeman.* The 
 portrait is one of the Benedictine chef d'ceuvres, well 
 executed perhaps, although with a too emphatic afiecta- 
 tion in certain attitudes. After Lanfranc's death, Kufus 
 
 * Written December, 1890. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL, 263 
 
 behaves very ill. He is very greedy of Church monies, 
 he has ever before his eyes the old proverb of the 
 Hebrews, " Money is the master of all." The oft- 
 repeated charges of greed against English kings are con- 
 ceived somewhat crudely. They remind of the tale of the 
 two children, each of them intent upon the possession 
 of a cake. The one takes it, the other complains of his 
 greed, for, says he, "I meant to have the cake myself.'' 
 
 Occasionally, even Rufus was capable of doing what 
 was right. Two needy and greedy monks Myths of 
 went to him to buy an abbacy at his hands, ^^'^^^o"^^- 
 They named their price. The king's glance wandered 
 to a third who had come in their company, and asked 
 for a bidding. He replied meekly that he had merely 
 " his holiness and chastity " to offer. Whereupon the 
 king appointed him abbot, and sent away the others in 
 disgrace. ''Queen Interest,'' observes our moral his- 
 torian, in giving this story, ^* often turns black into white 
 in the case of men inflamed hy greed." The custom of 
 taxing vacant abbacies and bishoprics, and of giving the 
 conge d'elire to the monks, is traced up to William 
 Rufus. 
 
 It is necessary strictly to distinguish between what 
 Polydore knows from observation and what he has 
 merely read, and perhaps half believes. For example, 
 he says the custom in Scotland still obtains, by which 
 the maiden on her wedding pays a fine in gold to the local 
 lord for the redemption of her modesty. He is taught 
 to trace this institute to the holy Margaret, wife of 
 Malcolm, contemporary of Rufus. As if the tale offered 
 him by his friend Gavin Douglas in MS. had been 
 ** ower-true," and the Scotch were really Orientals, he 
 says that they were at first polygamous in their institu- 
 tions, that the nobles had the wives of the plebeians in 
 
264 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 common, and that the local lord had the right to inter- 
 fere in the nuptial relations of his dependents in a 
 manner which he states in plainest language (jus primas 
 noctis). 
 
 The law Ne exeas regno is put in force when required, 
 Ne excas uudcr Heurj yill. It also is traced up to the 
 regno. tyrauuic system of exaction and confiscation 
 
 under Eufus. The unfortunate victims are not per- 
 mitted to flee across the sea, that they may shun the 
 sight of the miseries of the country. Norman fable 
 again proves to be Tudor fact. Our Italian' gazed at 
 Westminster Hall, the place of Quarter Sessions, the 
 sad resort of litigants. That building, the adjacent 
 Basilica, and the Walls of London, reminded the people 
 of new excuses for taxation, and they were now begin- 
 ning to be taught to frown at the name of Eufus the 
 builder. The unhappy man, unrestrained by the most 
 holy Anselm, who is a Lanfranc redivivus in 
 
 The most i • rv 
 
 holy these violent enorts at contrast m art, is 
 
 assisted to a tragic end, which reflects great 
 credit on the dramatic talent of the Benedictines. He 
 breaks blood-vessels. A monk dreams, and sees the 
 king biting the image of Christ crucified, gnawing the 
 legs with his teeth, then cast upon the ground by 
 the feet of Christ himself. Fate urges him into the 
 New Forest, to be transfixed by the Frenchman Tyrell's 
 arrow. He is buried in the temple of SS. Peter and 
 Paul at Winton. Polydore proceeds to draw the moral 
 from his career, and traces all his vices to the fount of 
 Avarice. 
 
 Polydore copies the story of Anselm from the Bene- 
 Chester dictiucs, and reports their tradition that he 
 legends. founded the cloister at Chester. He names as 
 his works, the a priori treatise on the Incarnation (" Cur 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 265 
 
 Deus homo "), the treatise on Free-will, on Similitudes, 
 on the Cross, and John the Baptist. 
 
 The beginnings of Parliament are traced to the time 
 of Henry L, and our author sees in the Two ^^ 
 Houses an imitation of the two Houses of Origin of 
 
 . Parliament. 
 
 Convocation. The reign of the last Norman 
 prince is tediously told, one of the objects being to find 
 the origin of the relations between England, Normandy, 
 and Flanders in this time. The Benedictines of Keading 
 claimed the body of the king. The French- 
 
 Lib XII 
 
 men must now have their turn in the reign, French 
 and Stephen of Blois is accordingly raised to '°^*'* 
 the throne by a Benedictine bishop from Glastonbury. 
 Matilda must not be suffered to reign, because " the 
 rule of woman is a base thing." Feversham monastery 
 receives the body of Stephen, and another Frenchman 
 succeeds to the throne in the person of Henry H. The 
 most siojnificant thing in the tales of this reign 
 
 Lib XIII 
 
 is the elaborate apology for the rights, or 
 rather the ambitions, of the priesthood elaborated under 
 the form of the biography of Thomas Becket, Thomas 
 archbishop of Canterbury, who secured the ^^'^^^*- 
 palm of martyrdom, or the reward of conspiracy and 
 rebellion, in the year 11 71. 
 
 Polydore was writing about the same time that the 
 immortal " Canterbury Tales " began to be read to the 
 English public, and Chaucer is the best historian of 
 the Benedictine times. Compare them, and there is no 
 difficulty in understanding how the legend of St. Thomas 
 grew up and acquired enormous influence over the 
 English imagination. The tomb (says the Italian) is 
 the chief sight in England. A vast harvest of donations 
 of all kinds is being gathered in day by day, for " the 
 multitude suppose thai God is better approached with 
 
2 66 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 gold, silver, and precious stones than with prayers!' 
 They believed that miracles were constantly wrought at 
 the tomb on behalf of the sick. The saint had died in 
 the cause not only of religion but of English liberty ; so 
 it was pretended by men whose policy it was to divide 
 the interests of the king and the people, and to rule by 
 means of the dissensions they provoked. 
 
 An interesting passage on Ireland occurs, from which 
 story of we Icam the theory that Ireland had been 
 Ireland. peopled from Spain, the name Hybernia point- 
 ing either to a chieftain Hyber, or to the river Ebro. 
 The Scots from Scythia, or Egypt, came in and called 
 the island Scotia. A description of the character and 
 manners of the people, apparently drawn from personal 
 observation, and the fidelity of which may be admired, 
 is given. It may be again remarked that Polydore is 
 a good witness, because he has a distaste for miracles. 
 He dryly observes that those in vulgar currency about 
 Ireland recede from you further and further as you 
 advance by diligent inquiry toward them — an observa- 
 tion, as we have seen, of very wide application in the 
 whole field of historic inquiry. 
 
 However, he indulges his readers occasionally with 
 the food of marvels, as in the tale of the fishes who 
 leapt out of the lake in Normandy on the death of 
 Henry II. The lake was found empty in the morning. 
 Henry was the last of the French kings of England — a 
 circumstance which agitated even the brute creation. 
 Some say he was buried at Chinon, but the Benedictines 
 of St. Ebrulph laid claim to the possession of his body. 
 We are treated to a homily on the king's vices, and it 
 appears that our Italian scholar had read the punning 
 inscription on the tomb of Eosamund in the cloister of 
 Godstowe: — 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 267 
 
 " Hoc jacet in turaulo Rosa mundi, non rosamunda, 
 Non redolet, sed olet, quae redolere solet." 
 
 At last English kings begin to reign, and England is 
 herself. London appears worthy of notice ; lj^. xiv. 
 and a pretended member of the Order writes khf^f°^^'''^ 
 a meagre tract on the subject, which the Richard i. 
 reader will find prefixed to Stowe's ** Survey." It is 
 idle to expect a glimpse of London before the time of 
 Polydore, who describes the City Guilds or The city 
 Companies. He is good enough to explain to ^^ London, 
 us from the Greek what monopolies are, and what is the 
 status of apprentices, whom, curiously, he calls p)aremp' 
 tilii, deceived by false etymology. He mentions the 
 Common Council, the twenty-four Wards, with their 
 Aldermen or Senators. He ignores the designation 
 " Lord Mayor," and calls him the '' Pr^tor." The wealth 
 of London is great, and the best society of the kingdom 
 is there to be found. There are no details given. Not 
 a word is said of that splendid society of scholars and 
 wits who were gathering in the Inns of Court, and were 
 preparing to shed lustre upon our literature. 
 
 The mention of the haunt of the lawyers reminds 
 us of the epochal reign of King John. Is it Li^. xv. 
 to repeat the same thing ad nauseam, when i^»°sJo^°- 
 the reader is informed that the whole tale, so far as it 
 was developed in Polydore's time, was the recent tale 
 of the Benedictines ? It is they who say that the great 
 men came to the cloister of St. Edmund at Bury to talk 
 of revising the laws of St. Edward, under the pretext 
 of a visit for pardon to the shrine. To Bury, then, on 
 this theory should the lover of English liberty cast his 
 reverent gaze. Polydore narrates the train of events 
 which led to the meeting of the king with the armed 
 barons near Windsor Castle but he names neither 
 
268 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Eunnymede nor Magna Carta. Another place will be 
 more convenient for the exposure of the impossibility 
 of the whole story. It is a monk who has the honour 
 of handing a cup of poisoned wine to the heartless king 
 in the Cistercian cloister of Swineshead, goaded to the 
 act by patriotic indignation, because John had threatened 
 to raise the price of bread. 
 
 Under the reign of Henry III., Polydore names two 
 T M. ^,rr law books which were extant, the Ma^na 
 
 Lib. XVI. •! 
 
 The Carta and the Forest Charter, and he ascribes 
 
 Charters. n • n -, - -, 
 
 the collection oi laws, without evidence, to 
 that reign. The whole history of these pretended docu- 
 ments of antiquity begins with the reign of Henry 
 Vni., and is a history of fraud, illusion, pedantry, idle 
 declamation, ending in the Civil War. The mass of 
 the people never heard of this " Bible of the English 
 Constitution " until our own times ; nor was there the 
 slightest intention to secure the rights of any below the 
 rank of gentlemen (liberi homines) in the most cele- 
 brated clause of that Charter. Its significance is best 
 ascertained when read in the light of the tragic story 
 of John Hampden. 
 
 We pass on to the reign of Edward I., who has 
 
 XVII ^^^^ styled by some of our writers, because of 
 
 The English his imasjincd efforts in legislation, the Eno^lish 
 
 Justinian. ,. • • t-» i t i i i • i 
 
 Justmian. rolydore, however, knows little 
 or nothing of this. He does not name his services ; 
 nor is it probable that the work of Trivet, the Domini- 
 can, had come into his hands. As usual, it is an ecclesi- 
 astic of the great Order, the Chancellor William Marton, 
 founder of the College of Oxon, who is supposed to be 
 managing the affairs of the kingdom. The Francis- 
 cans also began to make themselves felt in the legend, 
 by appointing one of their Order to the diocese of 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 269 
 
 Canterbury. This was after tlie elevation of the princely 
 archbishop to the Cardinalate by Pope Gregory. 
 
 In commenting on this legend, Polydore observes that 
 in that happy time an ecclesiastic was seldom allowed 
 to obtain two provinces at the same time. Alas ! how 
 great the contrast presented by the time of Henry 
 VIII. ! " Law, now all but overthrown ! " he ex- 
 claims. " x\ny man may have a plurality of bishoprics, 
 according to his wealth and powers. You cannot believe 
 that he governs any of them rightly. The care of the 
 flock committed to them is measured not by a sense of 
 duty, but by mere covetousness." It may be observed 
 that the Franciscans and Dominicans cannot begin their 
 legends earlier than the thirteenth century. They had, 
 however, done next to nothing in general literature at 
 the end of the fifteenth century, as the examination of 
 John Leland will abundantly prove. 
 
 Our witness to the actual Constitution under the 
 Tudors is taught to transfer many of its principles to 
 the reign of Edward I. He gives an account of the 
 custom of Copyhold tenure ; and his tale runs, that 
 Edward, being the chief landlord in the kingdom, knew 
 that the tables, or copies, or evidences, as they are 
 commonly called, relating to property had been de- 
 stroyed by time, the ravages of war, or other causes. 
 He therefore issued an edict, requiring all owners of 
 estates in town or country to establish their right and 
 title to them, and to sell to him at auction or to redeem 
 all possessions of which he was the lord. This intoler- 
 ably harsh edict aroused the greatest grief and wrath 
 among the people. Plebeians who could produce no 
 " copies " could not establish their rights at all. The 
 state of general feeling is condensed, as usual, for the 
 aid of imagination in the form of a personal incident, 
 
2 70 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Jolin Warren, Earl of Surrey, a popular man, saw the 
 king spreading his net to take fish, and none dared 
 to gainsay him. Warren interfered ; and when cited 
 before the Justices and required to produce his title, 
 drew his sword and declared there lay his right, and 
 there the means of his defence. Some say he was slain 
 on the spot. But the king desisted from his encroach- 
 ments. 
 
 Our author is aware that the German Hanse League 
 TheHanse claim to havc had their liberties and privi- 
 League. leges givcn by Henry III. and confirmed by 
 Edward I. In fact, every important guild was seeking 
 during Henry VIII. 's time to find a foothold in old Eng- 
 lish history. Literary fiction was freely resorted to as a 
 means of defence against violence and encroachment. 
 The excusable and the inexcusable grew up together 
 and constituted the conventional system of ideas that 
 was called English History. 
 
 Among a variety of matters, it is interesting to note 
 Merton ^^^^ Mcrtou, or Marton, College, Oxon, is said 
 College. ^Q hsive bccn founded in this reign by William 
 Marton, who afterwards became Bishop of Eochester. 
 Merton College was in reality founded by the Friars, 
 and the legend of origin is from them. This being so, 
 it was certain that they would produce some pretended 
 literary antiquities of that college, the worth of which 
 may be learned from John Leland. In our own time a 
 scholar whose long researches command our gratitude, 
 has examined the archives of Merton, and has laid some 
 results before the public. This data should be tested 
 by a critical examination of the legend of Merton ; and 
 such an examination will lend to the conclusion that 
 these documents are not of the thirteenth or fourteenth 
 century at all, but were fabricated during the very 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 271 
 
 period when Oxford appears to be doing nothing in 
 literature, in common with all the religious houses. 
 
 The conventional tale of the expulsion of the Jews 
 in 1290 is ffiven. It was at the instigation of ^^ ^ 
 
 T p • T» 1 • 1 • The Jews. 
 
 the monks and friars. But this tale is not 
 really confirmed by the Jews themselves, whose his- 
 torian, the Spanish Eabbi Joseph ben Meir, was writing 
 during Polydore's time. His work, studied with the 
 least critical care, shows that the people had not kept 
 any exact records of the times of their sufferings, and 
 that the Jewish chronicler was dependent for his dates 
 upon the chronicles of his enemies, the monks. In fact 
 — and it is necessary to repeat the remark in different 
 places — it has been found impossible by our contem- 
 porary, the late Dr. Graetz, to do more than present 
 the merest outline of the fortunes of the Jews during 
 the 300 years or thereabouts that are said to have 
 elapsed between the death of Maimonides and the 
 establishment of the Inquisition in Spain under Ferdi- 
 nand and Isabella. The date, 1290, is therefore merely 
 a guess, an attempt to define the aoristic in the past of 
 the Jews in England. 
 
 Polydore offers an observation about the Jews which 
 is worth recallino; for several reasons. He says 
 
 1 IT -1 . 1 1 The feeling 
 
 that were the J ews entirely to perish, the rest in reference 
 of mankind would not be sorry, provided only 
 they left their Letters behind them ; for without their 
 books, how could the Church system be carried on ? 
 Such is the stupid inhumanity bred in men's minds by 
 Church teaching. It is one of the first of laws in the 
 study of literature that the love of a book is the love 
 of the mind and heart of the writer. To admire the 
 Psalms or the Prophets is to admire the Jewish genius 
 and the Jewish soul; but to admire in Psalms and 
 
272 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Prophets a meaning that is not in them, but which 
 you have forced upon them, is a sin against the Jewish 
 soul. And after this, to desire the extirpation of the 
 people itself is a wickedness which runs into the last 
 extreme of absurdity. 
 
 Again we find a mention of Magna Carta. Chapter 
 XXXVI. , forbiddino^ the endowment of mon- 
 
 Mortmam. ...-,, . , ^ 
 
 asteries, is said to have received confirmation 
 in this reign. The law is called ad Manum mortuam, 
 or Mortmam. Polydore is merely a witness for the fact 
 that the law is strictly observed in his time. It can 
 only be set aside by the king's permission. Certainly, 
 it will be impossible for any critic to trace the " law " 
 or edict higher than the Tudors, with whom begins the 
 series of statutes, as Mr. Eeeves has observed, on which 
 any certainty can be built. 
 
 Balliol College is associated with the legend of John 
 Baiiioi Balliol, King of Scotland, who desired by its 
 
 College. foundation and endowment to win the favour 
 of the English. The root of the legend, as were a great 
 number of other international legends, is to be found 
 in the interests of certain nobles and clergy.** The i 
 latter class thrust themselves into everything. They 
 pretend that Edward sacrilegiously seized all their 
 wealth in order to make war on the Welsh, and refused 
 to repeal the statute of Mortmain. His punishment 
 was that his brother Edmund was defeated by the 
 Welsh. Another incident is that during a raid on the 
 French on the coast of Kent a very innocent monk 
 named Thomas perished. Honoured as a martyr, 
 miracles were frequently sought through him. 
 
 On pursuing the tedious tales of domestic and foreign 
 
 * There is a mass of fiction and counter-fiction about Balliol, all dating 
 from the Tudor time. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 273 
 
 wars during this reign, we find clear revelations of the 
 mental habits of the monk. True, he wrote in turbulent 
 times, but he delights to magnify the turbulence beyond 
 all actual possibility. He is like " the prophet Zecha- 
 riah," uneasy, distressed when the world is quiet, sure 
 only of the favour of heaven when the nations are in 
 strife, because then his corporation profits and prospers. 
 How absurd it is to take these wonderful wars of Edward 
 too seriously, the mere fact of the non-existence of a 
 regular military force to the end of the fifteenth century 
 reminds us. 
 
 The tale runs that Pope Boniface VIII. , whose 
 memory began to be blackened by certain literary priests 
 on the eve of the Keformation, determined to exempt 
 the clergy from taxation in this reign ; and that Edward 
 levied a tax upon the people and the priesthood in a 
 Council at St. Edmund's Bury. The people being un- 
 able to refuse, said they would pay, but the clergy 
 replied that they were not allowed to pay by the pre- 
 script of the Pope. The king was wrath, and ordered 
 the goods of the priesthood to be published and sold. 
 Most of the clergy submitted for the sake of a quiet 
 life, but Kobert of Canterbury had the courage to resist 
 the prince and to repeat the Apostolic word, " We 
 must obey God rather than men." So thus mere self- 
 interest takes upon itself the airs of sanctity and the 
 merit of martyrdom. It is this same archbishop of 
 Canterbury who is put forward by the monkish artists 
 to soothe the multitude when they break out into 
 insurrection. 
 
 The sources for this reign, only partly brought to 
 light in Polydore's time, are simply a mass of fiction 
 and fraud. Without examining the whole tale relating 
 to Scottish afi"airs, it may be sufiicient to refer the 
 
 T 
 
 L 
 
274 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 reader to the analysis of it in David Hume, who used 
 the collection of Eymer, that painstaking antiquary of 
 Queen Anne's time. Hume denied that there was any 
 truth in early Scottish history except the mere succession 
 of the kings. Had he looked more closely into his 
 authorities, he would have seen that the succession 
 itself was an invention of the time of Gavin Douglas ; 
 and had he tested the value of the so-called " Eecords " 
 collected by Kymer, he would not have set down to the 
 credit of King Edward that string of impudent fabri- 
 cations by which he traces the English monarchy up to 
 the time of Eli and Samuel, and claims on such grounds 
 feudal superiority over the kings of Scotland. The 
 student who will consult Strype, another scholar of 
 Queen Anne's time, will see from the strange tales he 
 tells about the Records, that they were not begun till 
 about the middle of the sixteenth century, and were 
 then written in support of the dogma of British history 
 already received. In no one department of learning 
 had men the honesty to say openly that no such thing 
 as notes of events in Edward's reign had descended to 
 the Tudor period. 
 
 We have now arrived at about halfway through 
 Polydore's volume, or the 346 th page ; we are supposed 
 to have travelled through a space of several hundred 
 years, and are still in the dreamland of monkish inven- 
 tion, of political and ecclesiastical allegories, which may 
 be understood in the light of the changes that were 
 occurring in the reign of Henry VIH. 
 
( 275 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — GOlltiniied. 
 
 There was a political reason for making Edward II. 
 a Welshman, which Hume calls " a vulgar Lib. xviii. 
 tale suited to the capacity of the monks/' It ^^"^^'^ "' 
 was suited to the interests for which they wrote ; and 
 it also appears that Edward I. and Edward II. as 
 English kings correspond to William I. and William II., 
 the Normans. The second Edward also falls off in like 
 manner from the stern virtues of his arbitrary father. 
 The tragic tales of Pierre Gaveston and of Isabella, and 
 the fate of the- hapless king made a deep impression on 
 the mind of our young poets in the rising school of the 
 Inns of Court. But, as usual, the Benedictines, who 
 claim his body for St. Peter's, Gloucester, were the 
 original inventors of the argument. Polydore, with his 
 usual sobriety, reads the warning against evil com- 
 panions and counsellors. The Stories are ever Moral. 
 
 The general idea on which the monks worked at this 
 reign was probably the favourite one that the sins of the 
 fathers must be visited on the children, and vengeance 
 for Edward I.'s anti-ecclesiastical policy must fall on 
 the head of the luckless son, the vanquished of the 
 Scots, whom his father had conquered. Bannockburn 
 is a criticism upon Longshank. It is clear that the 
 monks do not conceal their sympathy with ** Thomas 
 
276 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of Lancaster," the rebel whom they convert into a 
 martyr. However, Polydore witnesses to a violent 
 difference of opinion on this question, and passes over 
 the matter with his usual contempt for the opinions 
 of the vulgar. Hume, comparing the accounts in the 
 monks and canons, denounces Thomas as a traitor, and 
 the worse because a hypocrite. The legend has no more 
 base in particular facts than that of the Canterbury 
 Thomas ; its object is the same : to glorify rebellion and 
 throw a cloke of sanctity over crimes which became 
 virtues when related to the interests of the Church. 
 Kings are constantly objects of contempt, because they 
 are part of the system of " this present evil world." 
 
 We come to the reign of Edward HI. It is to be 
 Lib. XIX. presumed that Polydore used the Chronicle 
 Edward III. ascribed to Froissart, Canon of Chymay, which 
 became known early in the sixteenth century, and was 
 translated into English about 1529, according to the 
 bookseller's statement, by Lord Berners. The story of 
 this reign was conceived in a manner gratifying in the 
 highest degree to that natural vanity which is traceable 
 elsewhere in our early literature. Englishmen were 
 taught to believe themselves much better men than 
 Frenchmen by the story of Edward's wars. Froissart's 
 work is written in a pleasing style of retrospective art, 
 as I have elsewhere shown. He is in the secret of the 
 system supported by Walsingham, Knighton, Heming- 
 ford, and others. 
 
 The glorification of the English Archers is very con- 
 spicuous in the Scottish and French wars; 
 but how is it that our sceptical Hume passed 
 with the remark " Almost incredible " the story that 
 at Halidon Hill the loss of the Scotch was 30,000, 
 that of the English the knight, the esquire, and 13 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 277 
 
 private soldiers ? Edward III. must have been, in 
 the opinion of the artists of the religious houses, a 
 heaven-favoured king. The like absurd disproportion 
 obtains in the accounts of the Battle of Crecy ; this 
 time it is the esquire and 3 knights, with a few of 
 lower rank, who fall on the English side, against 1 200 
 knights, 1400 gentlemen, 4000 men-at-arms, and 30,000 
 of lower rank on the French side ! On the story of 
 the burghers of Calais, Hume merely remarks that, 
 " like all other extraordinary stories, it is somewhat to 
 be suspected." Who that has a feeling for what poetry 
 and art is, can for a moment confuse such representation 
 with reported fact ? The whole manner of these chro- 
 niclers is quite consistent with the ascertained fact that 
 they were writing in the dawn of our national poetry, 
 and referring their ideals to a time actually unknown 
 except through the medium of vaguest rumours. The 
 loss of France is thus imaginatively avenged. 
 
 Eegarding the pictures of the time of Edward, 
 Philippa, and the Black Prince as the work of Tudor 
 artists, it is interesting to observe how a fresh tone and 
 colouring begins to suffuse these representations. The 
 monk has done his work ; he has made ancient history 
 his own ; he will not incautiously thrust himself into 
 the near foreground of reminiscence, where he would 
 be detected as out of place. He aptly sets his im- 
 pressive figures in the more mysterious background, 
 and leaves his gay secular brethren, artists such as 
 Wolsey might delight to patronize, to busy themselves 
 with the ideals of chivalry and gallantry. The tale of 
 the origin of the Order of the Garter pleases The order of 
 by its truth in relation to such sentiments. <^^e Garter. 
 The quaint badge with the smiling motto once assumed 
 in honour of the ladies, it was easy to find for it a 
 
278 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 plausible and a royal origin. We delight in the time, 
 because by the literary convention the artists of the 
 " Canterbury Tales " fill it with figures that move at 
 last with ease and lifelikeness. It is a very jolly party 
 that makes the annual pilgrimage to Canterbury in 
 honour of' St. Thomas, a more sedate yet splendid 
 throng that betakes itself to Windsor Castle on the 
 feast of the divine warrior, St. George. 
 
 The College of Heralds or Kings of Arms (it may be 
 r.,. r. ,, observed), begins to be heard of in Henry 
 
 The Heralds. , {' f . . , . *^ 
 
 Viii. s time, but the nrst distmguished man 
 in their science is William Camden. The origin of 
 that science they love to trace to Edward HI.'s time by 
 the proleptic habit that was universal. Let us be 
 lenient to their fables. It is they who have amused us 
 with the tales of the descent from " the Normans " of 
 men who perhaps had no authentic record of their great- 
 grandfathers ; and showed a power of imagination 
 almost equal to that of Jews or Arabians in the con- 
 struction of genealogies and pleasing tales. But the 
 good Polydore is at our elbow, warning us not to con- 
 fuse our English facts with our English poesies. 
 
 His remarks on the popular tale of the Garter shed 
 an useful light upon the habits of some of our literary 
 men all through the century. He finds fault with some 
 of them as too *' modest and superstitious " because 
 they pass the tale in silence. They fear lest they may 
 be guilty of high treason in assigning such an origin 
 to this august Order of the Garter, as is told in the 
 vulgar tale. It appears to them too mean or low. 
 " Why," exclaims Polydore, " you have plenty of 
 other examples of great and dignified things coming 
 from a small and sordid origin. Consider the razed 
 crown of the priesthood ; was anything more ugly and 
 
 J 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 279 
 
 despised in days of yore among the peoples ? But now 
 it is the unique distinction of the sacred from the pro- 
 fane head. Look at the old Koman College of Arval 
 Brothers, traced up to Komulus ; its early honour must 
 have been but small (see my work on ' Inventors '). 
 Bead, again, what Livy says about the censorship, and 
 the early despite in which it was held." 
 
 Our Italian courtier kindles into enthusiasm over 
 the Order of the Garter. Suppose its origin ^^^ ^^j. .^^ 
 to have been from Love. What nobler than of st. 
 
 George. 
 
 Love? Does not Ovid say, Nohilitas sub 
 amove jacet f ** I tell you positively that the vulgar 
 story of the cause of the Garter is no idle story ! '* 
 exclaims Polydore ; and we thank him, clergyman 
 and Papalist as he is, for his warm interest in the 
 religion of St. George. He sees the head of the English 
 soldiery seated in armour on horseback with the red 
 cross shield, his servants clad with the white cloke with 
 the double red cross. A fair and magnificent sight to 
 behold the English legions glistening and sparkling afar 
 like the Orient sun, a brilliant contrast to the dull-hued 
 soldiery of other nations ! 
 
 These are the pictures of our past to which the true 
 English mind loves to turn, after the monotony and 
 the affectation and grimace of the cloister. Strength 
 and tenderness to the weak are true attitudes of the 
 English character ; love and reverence toward woman 
 an essential in the general national religion ; and more 
 congenial to our nature has been from the first the 
 cult of St. George than that of St. Benedict. 
 
 To turn to other matters of national interest, which 
 are said to have stirred during this long reign. Franciscan 
 Polydore says that about the middle of the ^"sends. 
 fourteenth century two false monks, as he describes 
 
28o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 them, of the Order of St. Francis, were burned in 
 London for heresy. There follows the curious state- 
 ment that the king's mother, Isabella, a lady worthy of 
 immortal fame for goodness, died next year and was 
 buried in the cloister of the Franciscans, or Grey Friars. 
 It was true that she had persecuted her husbajid, but it 
 was from patriotic motives. The probability is that both 
 these stories came from the Franciscans themselves in 
 Polydore's own time. The latter legend tends to cast 
 the lustre of royalty upon their cloister ; the former may 
 have been designed to act as a deterrent in a time that 
 was now rife with heresies. 
 
 Of this principle in English History another notorious 
 example is presented in the tale of Wiclif, as 
 Poly dor e briefly tells it. He spells the name 
 Wythcliff, probably for Whitecliff, as a personal symbol 
 of England. Not to repeat his words, but to give the 
 sense of them as evidence : our Archdeacon bears witness 
 that in his time poor people of the common herd were 
 occasionally burned alive along with certain tracts 
 found in their possession, which were said to have come 
 from the pen of Wytclifl*. Even this is mere hearsay, 
 apparently, like the heartless talk of Hugh Latimer 
 about the burning of Anabaptists. But the wickedness 
 of the tracts consisted in the fact that they contained 
 Wytcliff's " pernicious superstitions " in the English 
 tongue. He was a violent enemy of the priesthood, he 
 '^ wrongly rendered the Scriptures," he founded a new 
 sect at Oxford School. He was moved to this by 
 disappointed ambition in his profession, and was the 
 head and front of " a band of infamous men of like 
 disposition." He went in solitary exile to the Bohemians, 
 and taught them to despise the priesthood and the 
 Koman pontiff. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 281 
 
 Substantially this was all that was known or 
 rumoured of the English haeresiarch in the middle of 
 the sixteenth century. And this mere rumour had 
 been derived by Polydore from some bare entries in the 
 monastic chronicles. John Leland, a little later, gives 
 two short entries from '' Tyne Annals " (as he calls 
 them), scoflfs at Polydore because he talks about Wiclif 
 going to the Bohemians, and gives his version of the 
 tale, which is, that certain Bohemians came to Oxon, 
 and became acquainted with Wiclif s opinio as. John 
 Leland knows next to nothing about either Latin or 
 English writings ascribed to the Oxford scholar.* 
 
 We may advance to the epoch of " the Council of 
 Constance," some forty years later, only to 
 
 J. I ^ n ti ' 1 • 1 . . . The Council 
 
 find that Polydore, lollowmg his authorities, is of Con- 
 still moving in the atmosphere of fable. He 
 says that at this Council the heresy of John Wytcliff 
 was condemned, and that John Huss and Jerome of 
 Prague, the heads of the sect at that time, were 
 burned. The rest of the conspirators in England, on 
 hearing of this, were infuriated, and engaged in con- 
 spiracies against the priesthood and against the king, 
 Henry V. They resolved to defend their opinions by 
 arms. Under John Oldcastle and Koger Acton, a band 
 of desperate men rushed to London. They were antici- 
 pated by the prompt action of the king, were dispersed, 
 slain, or taken prisoners. Koger was put to death, and 
 Oldcastle escaped by night from the Tower. The sec- 
 tarians were denounced as enemies of their country, 
 who were to be treated with the utmost severity. It is 
 represented that Henry V. was bent upon the destruction 
 of the sect c. 141 5. 
 
 It will be found that we have not from any part of 
 
 * The fourteenth century is Dr. Wm. Cave's " Wiclevian Age." 
 
282 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Europe a writer whose dates, or whose particulars in 
 reference to person and place can be trusted for this 
 period of " Wiclif, Huss, Jerome of Prague, and the 
 Council of Constance." * The writers are few in number ; 
 they are the immediate predecessors or the coevals of 
 Poljdore ; they reflect the commotion that was going 
 on among clergy and people, the discontent of the 
 papal tyranny, the incipient reformation. It may be 
 quite true, and it probably is true, that these move- 
 ments had been felt for a century before men began 
 to write them down. But they, in accordance with the 
 universal habit of the time, conceal their ignorance of 
 the exact origin in the circumstantial tale of Wiclif and 
 his secret sect, who are destined to be regarded by the 
 one party as infamous rebels and traitors, by the oppo- 
 site party as heroes or martyrs of the Eeformation. 
 
 By Hume and others remark has been made on the 
 Lib. XX. untrustworthiness of the sources for the reign 
 Richard ii. Qf Richard II. Had they explored those 
 sources, so few in number and so poor in quality, they 
 would have seen them to be neither contemporary 
 nor founded upon any extant records ; and that the 
 interest of the tales in Froissart and Walsingham 
 consists in the fact that they present a partial mirror of 
 the actual condition of the country under the Tudors. 
 Analogous phsenomena in the tales of the Continent 
 indicate a similar state of things in France and in 
 Flanders. But, according to Froissart, the slavery of the 
 masses was more general in England than elsewhere. 
 
 While, therefore, the tales of popular insurrection 
 Popular ^^^ liot to bc uudcrstood as contemporary 
 insurrection, rccords of passiug cvcuts, they are of still 
 higher value as materials of genuine English history, 
 
 * See the " Wiclevian Age," in Dr. Wm. Cave's " Hist. Litt." 
 
I 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL. 283 
 
 when their rise in literature is correctly understood. 
 The march of the rustic rebels to Black Heath in the 
 time of Henry VIL, when the good yeoman Latimer, 
 as his son tells us, donned his armour in the service of 
 the king, may be accepted as fact. The event was so 
 exciting and so charged with social and political signifi- 
 cance, it stimulated our historic romancers to produce 
 the tale of the insurrection of the Tilers, the Thatchers, 
 the Carters, and the Millers a hundred years before that 
 event. General sentiments, recurrent events of tragic 
 oppression, are cast into the form of the popular historic 
 drama. 
 
 A thousand outrages at the hands of the tax- 
 gatherers are perhaps condensed into the tale ^^t the 
 of the Tiler's daughter and her vengeful father. '^^^^^• 
 Scenes of riot and murder in London, when the people 
 discharged their fury upon the heads of the great and 
 the rich, whose luxury affronted their misery, are pre- 
 sented under similar forms of poetic retrospection. The 
 fact escapes that there was no defined system of law and 
 government in England ; that charters and rights were 
 only talked of in the presence of imminent danger, and 
 if granted, were withdrawn so soon as the danger was 
 overpast. Ringleaders were executed, the people sunk 
 back again into dejection and slavery, outlaws swarmed 
 in the woods, law was another name for the interests 
 and the tyranny of the strong ; and the despairing 
 battle for freedom was bequeathed, as a stern legacy, 
 from one generation to another.* 
 
 There were men among the mendicant friars, no 
 doubt, who mingled with these popular movements and 
 perhaps rendered the people service. At all events, 
 
 * Polydoie never names his sources. But, cf. Froissart, ii. 74 ff. ; 
 Walsingham, 248 flf. 
 
284 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 they appear anxious to claim the honour. Significantly 
 it is stated in ^' Walsingham " that the rebels intended 
 to murder all the nobility, gentry, lawyers, all the 
 bishops and priests, " except the mendicant friars." 
 Fate of The tale runs that Eichard II. was put to 
 Richard II. ^qq^\}x ^^j glow and tantalizing starvation at 
 Pomfret — " an old wives' fable," says Polydore, " though 
 the vulgar would have it so " — and that his body was 
 carried to the cloister of the monks, preachers, or 
 Dominican Friars at Langley, twenty miles from 
 London. Later, it was removed to "Westminster. There 
 is not, however, a single particular statement referring 
 to either the life or death of Richard II. which can be 
 exempted from the province of romance and allegory. 
 
 Polydore advances to the reign of Henry IV. Honest 
 Lib. XXI. though he be, it is not to be forgotten that 
 ficSon?"^"^ he was himself a protege of the Lancastrian 
 Henry IV. party, and that he can do little more than 
 repeat the fictions which they began to circulate on the 
 accession of Henry III. What is reported of Henry IV. , 
 that he did not wish to appear to have become king 
 by violence, is precisely what Bacon was instructed 
 to say about Henry VII. For his title, Henry IV. is 
 made to go back 200 years to Henry III. and his son 
 Edmund, who, it is pretended, was the elder son of that 
 king. The blasphemous assertion of this claim will be 
 found in " Knighton, Canon of Leicester," as he is called ; 
 and the constant connection of the names of Christ or 
 of the Trinity with the most cynical mendacities is one 
 of the most repulsive features in these canonical histories. 
 Polydore, with his usual fidelity to his conscience, refuses 
 to build on this tale. He reports that other titles were 
 furbished up : that of the sword, the bequest of Eichard, 
 and kinship of blood to him ; that Eoger, Earl of March, 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 285 
 
 was the true heir, but that, as usual, violence prevailed 
 over right. 
 
 Travelling on this spiral course of fanciful story, the 
 brain becomes giddy with the constant revolutions. 
 The parricides of the late Duke of Gloucester are 
 executed, the exiles of Richard are recalled, and every- 
 thing begins anew. Henry seats himself in power, calls 
 John Holland, Duke of Exeter and brother of Richard, 
 to his side, makes him commander of Calais. And 
 John Holland begins at once to conspire against Henry. 
 The end of this new tragedy is that Holland meets his 
 retributive doom at the house of the Duke of Gloucester, 
 whose murder he had instigated. The innocent Richard 
 fell a victim to the fears of Henry on this occasion. 
 
 Discontent set in among the people. They yearned 
 for dead Richard ; lampoons were levelled against Henry 
 with curses ; the mendicant friars were busy inflaming 
 these passions, and eight Franciscans were put to death. 
 Then a rumour spread, that King Richard yet lived 
 among the Scots. The people believed, and were ready 
 to rise again, but were quickly suppressed. The same 
 year the Carmelites, or White Friars, claim to have 
 received the body of Robert Canol, who had returned 
 from the government of Aquitaine. Henry himself, 
 at the end of his turbulent reign, is carried to Christ 
 Church, Canterbury. The rule is invariable, that they 
 who guarded the relics of the great were mainly re- 
 sponsible for the stories of their lives. 
 
 Polydore, in briefly narrating the tale of Henry V.'s 
 early laxity and subsequent reformation, in- Lib. xxii. 
 dulges his readers with a short sermon on the ^^'"'"^ ^'* 
 proper behaviour of young princes. To point the moral, 
 no doubt designed for the benefit of the reigning king, 
 the examples of Edward II. and of Richard II. are again 
 
286 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 brought forward. Henry V. makes an edifying begin- 
 ning of his reign by building two monasteries — that at 
 Eichmond, and that in London called Bethleem, dedi- 
 cated to Jesus, for the Carthusian Friars. Sion monas- 
 tery, dedicated to Jesus, St. Mary and St. Bridget, was 
 also founded by him in order to *' perpetuate the 
 memory of the Holy Land " in the kingdom. It was 
 about half a century before Polydore that the craze for 
 pilgrimages thither began to set in. 
 
 The ecclesiastics say that Henry held a Council, at 
 I'eeiing which it was resolved to check the proceed- 
 for^iSn*"^^ ings of the many French monks who held 
 clergy. abbacics and other benefices in England, and 
 
 who constantly sent money to their brethren in France. 
 Foreigners were to be excluded from English benefices, 
 except at the will of the king. Others refer this decree 
 to the time of Richard H., who (says Polydore), it is 
 allowed, decreed that no foreigners should receive the 
 fruits of benefices in their absence from their cures. 
 But the Italian clergyman is never able to give the 
 reference to any statute, with the chapter, king, and 
 year of reign ; for the attempt to antedate legislation 
 was beginning in his time. 
 
 Following our guide to France, and reading the story 
 of Agincourt, we find occasion again to admire 
 the miracii- that our later English historians have not had 
 the good sense to take his hints against the 
 credulous reception of miracles. Ten thousand French- 
 men fell, and there was an equal number of captures. 
 Hardly a hundred English fell, with Edward, Duke of 
 York : '^ if we believe tliose who ivrite miracles,'' adds 
 our critic. The reader may find some amusement in 
 referring to the statistics in Walsingham, St. Remy, 
 Monstrelet, and some others on this point ; and then in 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 287 
 
 consulting the opinion of David Hume.* The latter is 
 struck by the close resemblance in the style of the battles 
 of Crecy, Poictiers, and Agincourt, or Dagincourt, as 
 Polydore calls the place. Hume did not perceive that 
 he was studying the works of a school of artists, and 
 that one Englishman was naturally equal to a few 
 hundred Frenchmen, seeing the English fought under a 
 king who was a conspicuous respecter of churches and 
 fierce persecutor of heretics. If, as we proceed, Poly- 
 dore be compared with the usual sources, which, contrary 
 to his early practice, he never names, it will be seen 
 that these works of art are being elaborated during the 
 time of Henry VHL, and that unconscious preparation 
 is being made for the advent of Shakespeare. The facts 
 are very rare ; but among them may be noticed the use 
 of cannon, or bombards, as the Italian calls them, which 
 Polydore says (in his work on " Inventors ") were not 
 known to the French till the year 1480. Yet he de- 
 scribes the English under Bedford as employing them 
 in the year 1425. The improbability does not appear 
 to affect him. It is one of the striking incidental proofs 
 of the utter recklessness of truth and fact in the artists 
 whom he follows. 
 
 It is again of importance, in reference to the aesthetic 
 of this romantic art, to note how Polydore treats the 
 tale of the Maid of Orleans, whom the French The Maid of 
 regarded as a prophetess of God, the English ^^i^ans. 
 as a witch. He accepts the tale just as he accepts the 
 old tale of Cloelia ; and, pitying the cruel fate of the 
 Maid of Orleans, he brings forward the noble example 
 of Porsena, who rewarded the brave virgin who had 
 fallen twice into his power, and sent her home. This 
 was a rebuke to the intolerable savagery of the English 
 
 * England, III. 106. 
 
288 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE 
 
 leaders. Even now, he says, the French honour her as 
 a heaven-sent deliverer. The meaning is that the tale 
 had sprung up in his time, having probably originated 
 at St. Catherine's, Tours. In the absence of chrono- 
 logical criticism, one affecting tale is equally acceptable 
 with another, although an immeasurable distance lies 
 between the epochs of their origins. 
 
 At the same time Polydore is a good witness to the 
 Antipathy ficrcc hatred that prevailed between the two 
 Frencrand peoplcs. The Ethiopian will sooner change 
 English. ]^jg gj^jj^ ^^^^ ^-^Q French people love the Eng- 
 lish. It is this fact which explains so many changes that 
 were going on in language, literature, manners, during 
 the reign of Henry YIII. The great Duke of Bedford, 
 the column of the English power, is said to have died 
 in 1435, and to have been buried in the great Church 
 of Rouen. Yet no authentic memorials of him can there 
 be discovered. 
 
 At last the Tudor, or Tyder, family makes its appear- 
 The Tudor aucc. Catherine, the young widow of Henry 
 family. y^^ ^^^ sccrctly married one Owen Tyder, a 
 noble Welshman of great virtue, who could trace his 
 pedigree back to Cadwallader, last king of the Britons. 
 She had by him three sons, Edmund, Gaspar, and a 
 third who became a monk of the Order of St. Benedict 
 and died young ; a daughter, also a member of the 
 Order.* Edmund became Earl of Richmond, and 
 Gaspar Earl of Pembroke. Edmund married Margaret, 
 daughter of the Duke of Somerset, and became father 
 of Henry, later known as King Henry VII . The un- 
 fortunate Owen himself, on the death of Catherine, was 
 twice cast into prison " because he had dared to mix 
 his blood with that of kings." At last he was beheaded, 
 
 * The story comes from the Benedictines of Croyland, apparently. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL 289 
 
 by the command of the Duke of Gloucester. If Henry 
 Tudor had been the hero of a modern novel, he would 
 hardly have been accounted for by so ingenious a plot. 
 The death of Catherine is said to have occurred about 
 the year 1436. 
 
 The wedding of Henry VI. with Margaret of Anjou 
 is said to have occurred about 144s. It may 
 
 . Lib. XXIII. 
 
 seem irrelevant to introduce, immediately Henry vi. ' 
 after the notice of such an event, a refer- garetoY' 
 ence to the state of farming. And yet such ^^^^' 
 particulars may be of far greater interest to many 
 readers in the present day. The quarter of wheat was 
 sold at only 65. 8c?. (says Polydore), of winter wheat at 
 45., and of barley at 35. Henry granted the* privilege 
 to all of buying and exporting corn to foreign parts, 
 " provided only it was not carried to the enemies of 
 England." Edward IV. afterwards *' approved" this 
 law. 
 
 In the same year the figure of the Duke of Gloucester 
 is supposed to appear on the stage, scenting revolution 
 at hand, and seeking opportunities for intrigue. Henry 
 Chicheley, Archbishop of Canterbury, dies, having 
 founded the convents of All Souls and of St. Bernard's 
 at Oxon, like two " altars of all the virtues." Polydore 
 passes over the state of learning at Oxon in these 
 colleges with one of those flattering flourishes of the 
 pen which decorates either his ignorance or theirs. It 
 suffices to say that Chicheley' s labour and expense were 
 not in vain. But we are forced back from the cloistered 
 retreat into the thick of the eternal civil broils. 
 
 Queen Margaret, a perfect foil in point of tempera- 
 ment to her meek and saintly husband, Henry VI., now 
 appears on the stage. Clever, ambitious, endowed with 
 an intellect of masculine strength, she pursued her plans 
 
 U 
 
290 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 with the greatest perseverance and vigilance. Still, 
 she was a woman, and fickle. She was jealous of the 
 influence of Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, and con- 
 trived his overthrow. A Council was called at the 
 cloister of Bury St. Edmunds. Gloucester was seized 
 and foully done to death by strangling ; his body was 
 carried to St. Albans, whose monks have handed down 
 the tradition of the good Duke Humphrey as patron 
 of their learning. The tale must have come from them. 
 
 How fatal, Polydore reflects, was the name of 
 Gloucester to the earls and dukes who bore it ! 
 theGiouces- Thcrc had been Hugh Spenser and Thomas 
 Woodstock, son of King Edward IH. ; they 
 had been executed. Then Humphrey and Richard HI. 
 The name was a proverb for calamitous men, like the 
 Sejan Horse of old. He does not, however, reflect that 
 such a curse on the name of Gloucester *' causeless 
 did not come " from the mouth of the Lancastrians. 
 
 Against the year 1447 Polydore again offers a 
 Building of glimpse of Oxford ; but we can discern nothing, 
 tfomthe except that the building of colleges is rapidly 
 th'e'^filteenth g^i^^g ^^' H^nry, Cardinal Bishop of Winton, 
 century. ]^^^ heen thc stout crutch on which the king 
 had leaned. He died this year, and was succeeded by 
 the admirable William of Waynflete, long Chancellor 
 of England. He built and endowed the College of St. 
 Mary Magdalen, " so that, even as that good woman 
 once refreshed the feet of Christ with sweet ointment, 
 good minds might there, under her presidency, be fed 
 on the perennial nectar of learning." And this, adds 
 the Italian, with smiling courtesy, "they sedulously 
 do." How much politer his language than that of 
 Hume, when he talks of " bad Latin and worse logic," 
 or of his friend Gibbon, with his allusions to the 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 291 
 
 " monks of Oxford, sunk in port and prejudice," even 
 in his late time. 
 
 The loss of Normandy by the English is fixed in the 
 year 1451, and that of Aquitaine in the year loss of 
 1452. Polydore thinks that the cause may ^^ITq^^ 
 better be found in the great hatred aroused *^'"^* 
 asfainst the Enorlish in France and the combinations 
 against them, than in any deficiency of the English 
 arms. And again, he bears witness to the intense 
 mutual hatred of the two peoples in his own time. 
 Here, then, as in a multitude of analogous cases, the 
 recent fact, with all the passions which it excited, gave 
 rise to the remote picture. Our early historiographers 
 reasoned thus : " Our ancestors have been masters of 
 Normandy and Aquitaine. What title had they to 
 those possessions ? Our kings must have been of the 
 houses of Normandy and Anjou. How could that have 
 been ? Norman and French princes must at some time 
 have conquered England." And the whole Norman and 
 Plantagenet lines were made out, to give plausibility 
 to the hypothesis ; while the title to France was still 
 nominally retained to a late date by our English 
 sovereigns. 
 
 It is impossible to understand the subject without 
 dwelling upon that intense national vanity or pride 
 which had been wounded during these fruitless raids 
 into France ; and which was consoled, when it contem- 
 plated in the theatre the heart-stirring exploits of the 
 Black Prince, or of young King Harry in the fields of 
 France. The reading of the tales of the Norman or 
 Anjou princes taught young Englishmen the false 
 lesson that our kings had a right to a great part of 
 that land, and so kept alive that spirit of animosity 
 between two great peoples which has been a hindrance 
 
292 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 to civility and to culture. The flattery of the English 
 archers has had much to do with these tales of victories 
 in France. Exact truth on this subject will never be 
 discovered ; but in the want of a standing army it is 
 hardly possible that the English could have obtained 
 any durable hold of the cities of France. 
 
 And what, now, is the exact worth of the reminis- 
 cences or impressions of English affairs during the latter 
 half of the fifteenth century, as they came to the ears 
 of Polydore, or were derived by him from books ? He 
 tells us that the failure of the war in France left our 
 princes or leading men in a state of bitter disappoint- 
 ment. They blamed one another for the misfortune ; 
 Fall of ^^^ presently William, Duke of Suflfolk, was 
 
 Suffolk. singled out by universal consent as the scape- 
 goat of the guilt. It was he who had wasted the public 
 money, he who had failed to pay the soldiers, he who 
 had neglected to send reinforcements, he who had 
 cleared the Court of good counsellors, and had carried 
 on everything with a high hand. He and his party were 
 tumultuously accused of parricide and of peculation, 
 and their lives were demanded. The Queen, in her 
 fear of sedition, causes her weak consort to have Suffolk 
 cast into prison. He is restored to the Court a few 
 days later, but on the renewal of the furious demands 
 of the multitude, is exiled ; and falls by the blow of 
 an assassin as he is embarking for France. His death 
 is regarded as an act of divine vengeance on the 
 plotter of the death of Gloucester. 
 
 No sooner is this chapter of domestic tragedy closed 
 than another opens with the insurrection of 
 under Jack the Kcntishmcn under Jack Cade — for so Poly- 
 dore gives the probably collective or allegorical 
 name. The scenes of horror on old London Bridge — 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 293 
 
 an object which inspired the Italian with great admira- 
 tion — the burning houses, the shrieks of the dying, 
 the bodies falling into water, the fate of the brave 
 soldier Matthew Gogthus, or Gough, are feelingly de- 
 scribed. The fury of the men of Kent could only be 
 appeased by lenity and promises of pardon to all but 
 the ringleader. The unhappy people, ground down by 
 exaction, knew not how to find relief from their suffer- 
 ings except by seeking the blood of the evil counsellors 
 of the Court. Some suspected that the insurrection 
 had been stirred up by Eichard, heir of the House of 
 York. 
 
 Soon after, Richard raises a large force and leads it 
 into Kent, pitching his camp ten miles from London. 
 The object of his determined hostility is the Duke of 
 Somerset, who, according to Polydore, was the states- 
 man of highest character in the kingdom. The two 
 lords appear before the king in Council, in London, and 
 load one another with criminations and recriminations. 
 At last the Duke of York, though roundly denounced 
 as a traitor by Somerset, is suffered to return home ; 
 and the power of Somerset, with that of Queen Margaret, 
 is firmly established for a time. 
 
 But after a vain effort to recover Aquitaine in 1453, 
 the strife of factions in England broke forth ^he Two 
 with renewed fury. Polydore writes with ^'''^^• 
 perfect good faith, as it appears, on the Lancastrian 
 side ; not because he has weighed the merits of the 
 Two Roses, but because there were no other than Lancas- 
 trian views officially upheld at the time that he was 
 writing. Incidentally he mentions, after the short 
 account of the battle of St. Albans in 1456, that the 
 same year Osmund of Salisbury was canonized, and that 
 the cult of his miracle-working body began. This is a 
 
294 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 good note or ideal terminus a quo, by whicli we may 
 calculate tlie rise of much similar Church fiction. 
 
 Not to follow needlessly all the incidents of the 
 struggle, Polydore describes the captivity of Henry VI. 
 ( 1 460) in a tone of the most pious sympathy with that 
 holy king, who was soon to exchange the terrestrial for 
 the celestial crown. The vulgar believed that a little 
 before, when Henry appeared in the senate in royal 
 apparel, the crown had suddenly fallen from his head. 
 " It was to be," as the current phrase of their indolent 
 fatality still runs. The clerical feeling is here and there 
 apparent in the narrative, as when Henry is forced 
 against his will to fight the disastrous battle of Towton 
 on Palm Sunday, when there should have been cessation 
 of arms. 
 
^95 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — continued. 
 
 AViTH Edward IV. another revolution — another in the 
 long list of " reversals," of which, as Hume Li^,. xxiv. 
 says, our early English history consists — sets ^^""^"^^ i^- 
 in. All the acts of his predecessor are rescinded. Henry 
 is in Scotland, Margaret in France. For four years 
 Edward is busy with a new settlement of the kingdom. 
 Then he and his great henchman, Beauchamp of Warwick, 
 quarrel, from causes that were darkly guessed but not 
 known ; the kingdom is again thrown into misery, and 
 at length Henry is set at liberty and restored to the 
 throne (1471). Warwick is master, and another revolu- 
 tion has occurred. The king sits like a puppet on his 
 throne, while his queen on the one side and Edward on 
 the other are moving heaven and earth in the interests 
 of their parties. The fortune of battle again inclines to 
 Edward, and he comes back in 1472. 
 
 The misfortunes of Henry YI. are, however, regu- 
 lated by the moral purpose of our historiographers. 
 Henry IV. obtained the kingdom by violence, and the 
 sins of the fathers being visited upon the children, it 
 could not remain long in his family. Their hopes 
 perished ; the men of Kent who rose under Falconbridge 
 were severely punished by Edward. Henry VI. died in 
 the Tower. So ends the brief tale of this fearful Civil 
 
296 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 War of twenty years, which must have left behind it so 
 many blackened ruins and desolated fields and orphaned 
 homes, sacrificed to appease the lust for power of a few 
 of our English satraps, whom Hume compares to the 
 Polish nobility of his day. 
 
 The story, so far, has little that is incredible. Its 
 mere baldness, in the absence of public records, is what 
 could only be expected from writers who were sitting 
 down to trace the outline of events for the amusement 
 of the public a few decades later. But it is a warning 
 against placing any reliance upon particulars, as dis- 
 tinguished from general impressions, that the incredible 
 begins again with the death of Henry YI. Once more 
 Polydore is a fair witness. But the best witness will 
 not be suffered in a court of justice or letters to give in 
 mere rumour as evidence, however persistent and un- 
 challenged that rumour may be. Nor must he mix the 
 question of fact with theories, or deduce the fact from 
 a foregone conclusion. 
 
 But let" Polydore speak. It is, he says, the constant 
 The Duke of ^^port that Richard, Duke of Gloucester, him- 
 Gioucester. ggj£ gmotc Hcury VI. with his sword in the 
 Tower, that he might deliver his brother Edward from 
 fear of his enemy. But whoever it was that assassinated 
 *Hhat most holy man," it is clear enough that the 
 parricide and the authors of the parricide were punished 
 for their deed ; for afterwards, having no enemies on 
 whom to wreak their cruelty, they exerted it upon 
 themselves, and polluted their hands in their own blood, 
 as the sequel will show. 
 
 Polydore then reports the fixed idea that King 
 Henry, a saintly and innocent man, had been done to 
 death in the Tower about seventy years before he came 
 to London. He thinks of the act as parricide, and infers, 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL 297 
 
 being a theologian and a moralist, that the authors of 
 the act must have been punished. And he confirms 
 this opinion by later pointing to occurrences for which 
 he has no more evidence than for the assumed fact on 
 which his reasoning is based, or occurrences which, apart 
 from the colour cast upon them by prejudice, have no 
 such significance. 
 
 Polydore adds that the body of Henry was borne 
 from the Tower, unhonoured, to the temple of St. Paul, 
 lay there for a whole day in capulo, and next day was 
 carried to the convent of the monks of the Order of 
 St. Benedict, which is in the village called Chertsey, 
 and is distant from London fifteen miles. Not long 
 after it was carried to Windsor Castle, and was placed 
 in the new mausoleum of St. George. So do our con- 
 stant attendants, the Benedictines, accompany us from 
 the first to the last page of the Mediaeval story. It was 
 they who must have spread the renown of the unfor- 
 tunate Henry as " a very holy man," who serves as an 
 admirable foil to the energetic, highly intellectual, and 
 consequently devilish Richard. The monks who told 
 the tale were naturally anxious to call attention to 
 Chertsey. It was very pleasant to receive visitors to 
 the cloister ; to show them where the body of a king 
 had lain, and to receive a small contribution to the 
 funds. Chertsey Monastery, Polydore would remind us, 
 referring to his fourth book, was founded by that holy 
 bishop, St. Erchemwald of London, in the seventh 
 century. 
 
 You would almost think Polydore a monk himself, 
 so fascinated he is by the holiness of Henry 
 
 TTT 1 1 1-11 T • Theholv 
 
 VI., by whose name, while he was yet livmg, Henry's 
 " God wrought miracles." But all this is 
 explained by the fact that a few years before the time 
 
298 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of Polydore's writing, Henry VII. had negotiated with 
 Pope Julius for the enrolment of Henry VI., who had 
 foretold his own greatness among the saints ; but death 
 interfered with the execution of the duty. It is under- 
 stood, then, that we see the unfortunate prince through 
 the medium of Lancastrian religious contemplation. He 
 is all but the saint and actually the martyr of that 
 House ; it is but fitting that his murderer should be of 
 the detested House of York. Let us not forget how 
 true a lover he was of learning ; how his holy shade 
 may be supposed to linger about the precincts of that 
 fine college for boy priests at Eton, near Windsor, who 
 were to be fed there and taught grammar gratuitously. 
 He also was the author of King's College, Cambridge. 
 How graceful is the tribute of Polydore to that institu- 
 tion ; so " flourishing in the cult of disciplines, it is easily 
 first of all colleges " ! * 
 
 Curious also are the devices by which it is endea- 
 Edward IV. vourcd to make out Edward IV. to be a mur- 
 iSri^r''^' d^i^^r at heart, though neither so crafty nor 
 Richmond, g^ determined as his brother. The thought 
 of young Henry, Earl of Eichmond, last of the blood of 
 Henry VI., disturbs his hard-earned repose. He would 
 bribe the Duke of Brittany to give him up ; he sends 
 legates laden with a great w^eight of gold to the duke, 
 and bids them declare that he desires to form a marriage 
 connection with Henry, and so utterly put an end to 
 the party strife. He seemed to divine (says Polydore) 
 that such an affinity would be formed ; but he meant 
 to uproot Lancaster by murdering Henry. The incon- 
 sistency of two such thoughts is obvious ; but the mind 
 of Polydore is full of that unspeakably happy event 
 
 * See the curious discussion on the burial of Henry VI., a. 1499, in 
 Stanley's " Memoirs of Westminster," Appendix. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 299 
 
 which filled the mind of all our Tudor writers, the 
 wedding of Henry with the heiress of York. So he 
 puts his ex post facto conceptions into the mind of 
 Edward. The Duke of Brittany reluctantly yielded 
 to the bribe, and handed over Henry like a sheep to 
 the wolf ; while he thought that he was handing over 
 the son to the future father-in-law. So, again, in 
 working out the theory of the Union of the Roses, 
 confusion is introduced into the mind of the duke, who 
 need not have been reluctant, had he believed in the 
 honest intentions of Edward. 
 
 And then we are told that Henry knew he was 
 being dragged to his doom, and that in his anxiety 
 he fell into a fever at St. Maclou. A circumstantial 
 story is told, with the most lively emotion, of how the 
 good Lord John Chenlett heard the news, hastened to 
 the duke, and by his representations succeeded in pre- 
 vailing on him to countermand his orders, and to send 
 Peter Landos to intercept Henry, who was found half- 
 dead with terror, and was conveyed to a place of safety. 
 In the eloquent speech put into the mouth of Chenlett, 
 King Edward is alluded to as a torturer, a hangman, 
 or a murderer in purpose. The friends of the Duke of 
 Brittany will grieve to behold his noble name stained 
 with eternal infamy by this act of treachery, the sur- 
 render of young Henry. " Peace, John," replies the 
 luke, " you are mistaken ; Edward desires Henry for 
 lis son-in-law." And Chenlett retorts, " On my word, 
 llustrious duke, Henry is a dead man if he is suffered 
 quit your territories." One can imagine how Shake- 
 jpeare might have elaborated the critical scene. 
 
 A compromise was arrived at, and Henry was kept 
 
 ider guard for three days. King Edward, meanwhile, 
 
 ras on the tenterhooks of anxiety ; but hearing that 
 
300 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Henry was not at liberty, he turned his attention to 
 
 other selfish interests. He suddenly ordered his brother, 
 
 the Duke of Clarence, to be seized and put to 
 
 Fate of the ^ . . / ^ n rn ' 
 
 Duke of death — as they say, m a cask oi Cretan wme, 
 a deed of unexampled horror. However, Poly- 
 dore can state nothing certain as to the cause of the 
 crime. It was but " 30 or 40 years agone " at the time 
 he began his inquiries. He had questioned '* many who 
 at that time were high in authority among the king's 
 counsellors," but quite fruitlessly. They could not give 
 him the correct tradition 1 
 
 The modern reader may well shudder at this calm 
 declaration on the part of a witness, the sense of whose 
 fairness grows upon us the more carefully we examine 
 him. That so horrific a tale should have been allowed 
 to circulate among the Lancastrians against the crowned 
 head of the Yorkists is disgraceful enough. But that 
 those who circulated it should not have had the wit to 
 invent a plausible motive for the crime ; that men of 
 rank who recollected Edward could apparently believe 
 him to have been a cruel fratricide, without evidence 
 either of fact or of motive ; that, in addition to this, 
 they should believe the mode of the crime to have 
 been fantastic beyond dreams ; how can we meditate 
 these things without disgust for the liars who were 
 responsible for these Lancastrian romances ? 
 
 But a cause or excuse must be invented. The fame 
 went forth, about the year 1840, that King Edward 
 had been terrified by the prophecy of a soothsayer, to 
 the efi"ect that Edward's successor should have a name 
 beginning with G. Under the influence of this devilish 
 illusion he slew George ; but the prophecy was fulfilled 
 in the succession of the Duke of Gloucester. Another 
 cause suggested was that there had been old hatred 
 
 J 
 
» 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL. 301 
 
 between tlie brothers ; that the Duke of Clarence, on 
 becoming a widower, sought through his sister Margaret 
 the hand of Mary, only daughter of Charles of Burgundy. 
 Edward was jealous of this alliance, and the old strife 
 between the brothers was renewed. A servant of the 
 Duke of Clarence was convicted of poisoning, and exe- 
 cuted. The duke vehemently resented this as an act 
 of injustice ; he was thrust into prison, condemned, 
 " rightly or wrongly," for high treason, and executed. 
 
 Supposing Edward TV. to have been, as he is repre- 
 sented to have been, the actual murderer of his brother 
 George, and the murderer in heart and deliberate inten- 
 tion of young Henry Tudor ; it may assuredly be said, 
 " Such men never repent." But the Lancastrians say 
 he did repent; and their proof is, as usual, derived from 
 imagination. He was wont to exclaim, when prayer 
 was made for the life of a condemned person, " my 
 unhappy brother ! " as if remembering that for his 
 safety none had prayed, and so hinting that George 
 had perished through hate. It was not until the days 
 of John Selden that a few English and foreign writers 
 began to puzzle themselves over the tale of the drowning 
 of him in wine. A German professor thought it must 
 be a figure of speech, describing George as a great toper. 
 
 The belief was that Edward would have established 
 a reign of terror, had he lived. He died, however, of 
 an obscure disease three years later, " having reconciled 
 himself to God after the Christian fashion, whom he 
 thought he had often offended by his sins." He left 
 his two young sons to the guardianship of his brother 
 Richard. His body was carried to Windsor Castle, and 
 buried in the Temple of St. George. 
 
 It is probably to the canons of St. George, the saint 
 of chivalrous devotion, that we owe the portrait of 
 
302 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Edward. Their style of art, it will be observed, differs 
 much from that of the monks of the Order of St. Bene- 
 dict. We should forget the murderous associations 
 attaching to the name of Edward, and then we may 
 admire the full-length picture of a gallant knight : tall 
 of stature, open of countenance, bright-eyed, broad- 
 chested ; quick of intelligence, high-hearted ; strong in 
 memory, clever in business, prompt in danger, eager 
 and honourable towards his foes, generous to his friends, 
 fortunate in war. He was addicted to the pleasures of 
 love, and had so much of mere bonhommie in private 
 life that he hardly did justice to his majesty. There 
 were suspicions in consequence that he died of poison. 
 Towards the end of his life he glided into avarice ; yet 
 he left the exhausted kingdom much richer than he 
 found it, and was greatly regretted for his many 
 virtues.* 
 
 However interesting the caprices of popular and 
 political or clerical art may be, it must be admitted that 
 we have no authentic portrait of Edward TV. in such 
 descriptions. Still less have we any study from the 
 life of that fascinating incarnation of wickedness, his 
 brother, Kichard HI. 
 
 In the accounts of the latter we recognize that 
 peculiar manner of writing which has been 
 
 Thepor- m n m • n i i 
 
 trait of ascribed to Tacitus, and which inconsiderate 
 
 Richard III. , .,10., -to-, 
 
 readers mistake tor "wonderful penetration 
 into the recesses of the human heart." It is given 
 to none to penetrate the recesses of his neighbour's 
 heart, or perhaps of his own. It is, however, possible 
 to conceive a human epitome and abstraction of vices, 
 and to call this Tiberius or Kichard III., or by any 
 name you will. It is possible to make him think and 
 
 * Polydore does not mention Jane Shore, 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 303 
 
 feel on every occasion as he ought or ought not to 
 think and feel, and to call such writing biography. So 
 Polydore, with his Lancastrian copy before him, proceeds 
 to deal with Kichard of York. 
 
 On hearing of the death of his brother, he is inflamed 
 with the desire of becoming king ; but as he can find 
 no honest excuse for such a design, he is forced to con- 
 ceal and postpone it. He writes a letter full of kind- 
 ness to Queen Elizabeth, consoling her and promising 
 " seas and mountains " on his own behalf. The young 
 Prince of Wales, Edward, is sent for from Ludlow to 
 London to be proclaimed king. Richard meantime 
 meets Henry, Duke of Buckingham, at Northampton ; 
 and it was believed that an understanding was come 
 to between them that Richard should be king. 
 
 Our chronicler proceeds to report for us the secret 
 purposes of Richard's heart. He would seek 
 
 n r-n T • t n t'pi Divination 
 
 first to enect his purpose by crait ; and 11 that of Richard's 
 failed, he would openly approach it. " It did 
 not occur to the unhappy man that he could not sin 
 without the greatest injury to the State and to his own 
 house. So it happens to wicked men ; the violent deal- 
 ing they intend for others comes back upon their own 
 heads." The development of the ethical drama goes 
 forward in strict accordance with this grand ethical 
 principle. We are following an English analogue of 
 the tale of Pelops' line. In the province of York men 
 looked upon the old Tower of Pontefract with much the 
 same feeling of awe and horror that the Londoners 
 looked upon the Tower on "Tamise ripe." It could 
 easily be believed, and it was believed, that within 
 those gloomy walls, whence no cry could escape, the 
 dark deeds of Richard had been done. One of his first 
 acts, according to the tale, was to send some of the 
 
304 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Queen's party to Pomfret, from his halting-place at 
 Stony Stratford. 
 
 The Londoners, on hearing of this, were filled with 
 wonder and dismay. Queen Elizabeth fled to West- 
 minster for asylum, with her son, the Marquess of Dor- 
 chester, and other nobles. Then Hastings, in jealousy of 
 Dorchester and others of the Queen's party, gathers a 
 party of Prince Edward's friends at St. Paul's. Some of 
 them show the same power of divination of Richard's 
 evil mind that was common among the Lancastrians. 
 They were for a swift appeal to arms. The more prudent 
 preferred to tarry until Richard should arrive and give 
 an account of his proceedings. The Dukes of Gloucester 
 and of Buckingham presently appear, and young Edward 
 is placed in the house of the Bishop of London, hard by 
 St. Paul's. Polydore's own house, in which he was 
 writing down this story, was in the same quarter. 
 One wonders whether he ever curiously visited the 
 bishop's house in search of memories of the ill-fated boy. 
 
 But to proceed with the revelation of the secrets of 
 Richard's breast. Though at the head of affairs, he was 
 greatly distressed because he saw that he could not get 
 possession of the person of his other nephew, young 
 Richard, Duke of York, whom his mother had in safe 
 keeping. He despaired of effecting his purpose, unless 
 he could obtain possession of both the lads. He must 
 therefore snatch Richard from the bosom of his mother. 
 Violence being of no avail, he resorted to craft. He 
 called together a large number of nobles. " May I 
 perish," he exclaimed, "if I do not consult the advan- 
 tage of my nephews ; because I know that their calamity 
 means that of the State as well as my own. When 
 my brother Edward, our king, died, he appointed me 
 governor of the kingdom. My first act was to come 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 305 
 
 hither, and to bring with me his elder son, Prince 
 Edward, that all things might be done according to the 
 mind of the Council. I have determined to do nothing 
 without your authority. You shall be my associates 
 and partners in affairs. Your testimony will be for me. 
 Whatever I may hereafter do in the administration of 
 the kingdom you will say that I have done all with the 
 best faith, with a view to serve the State of Prince 
 Edward. We believe you to be well aware that his 
 father entrusted the care and tutelage of him to me for 
 that reason. 
 
 "Now, Antony Kivers has lately attempted to 
 hinder me in the discharge of this duty. I was forced 
 to cast him and others into prison, that others might 
 learn by their example to respect our commands. What 
 shall I say of the evil counsels of men who always 
 hated me, to Queen Elizabeth ? She, for no just reason, 
 has pretended to be afraid, and has dared to carry off 
 the sons of a king into the one asylum on earth which 
 is the refuge of the needy, of debtors and criminals, 
 as if we were going to destroy them. The act is a dis- 
 honour to us and to the kingdom ; yet we must make 
 allowance for the sex, which is so liable to these 
 crazes." 
 
 Richard goes on to paint with glowing rhetoric the 
 approaching spectacle of the Coronation, destined to 
 )e deprived of all its popular joy, if the mother and 
 )rother and sister of the young king shall be absent, 
 rembling in their asylum. The people will greet their 
 )vereign with groans rather than with cries of joy. 
 'hey will begin to tremble for themselves, and to 
 )elieve that all the majesty of the laws has been 
 iolated. Richard ended by urging that some of those 
 )resent should approach the queen, and induce her to 
 
 X 
 
3o6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 return with her children to the palace, or, at least, to 
 give up Eichard on the public faith, that he might be 
 present at the Coronation. 
 
 The nobles listened, suspected no fraud, and thought 
 the proposals of Eichard just and honest. The arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, the duke of Buckingham and John 
 Howard waited on the queen, and endeavoured to pre- 
 vail on her, with offers both of private and public faith, 
 to return to the palace. Her soul was prophetic of ill, 
 and she was inflexible. At last these lords persuaded 
 her to surrender Eichard to their custody. And so the 
 innocent boy was torn from the embraces of his mother. 
 
 The reader will observe that we have to do here 
 with speeches and with actions which are most becoming 
 to the stage, but not with testimonies which were ever 
 produced in an English court of law. You are sup- 
 posed to be a spectator in the national theatre ; you 
 have the playbill in your hands ; you know already 
 the villain and the victims of the piece. You under- 
 stand that the devilish uncle has already one nephew 
 in his hands, and that he is certain to get possession 
 of the other. Your expectations are fulfilled, and you 
 receive a satisfactory theatrical pleasure. But if for 
 a moment you assume the judicial cap, and try the 
 case over in your own mind, you find it impossible to 
 acquit or to condemn any of the parties concerned, 
 simply because no proof is forthcoming, and because 
 the tale resolves itself into one of the grossest im- 
 probability. 
 
 Eichard then removed his two nephews from the 
 bishop's house to the Tower — a proceeding which 
 attracted no suspicion, because the custom was on 
 the occasion of Coronations to bring forth the king 
 thence in procession to Westminster. Yet, although his 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. ^ 307 
 
 contemporaries were blind to Richard's character, or 
 were fascinated by his extraordinary eloquence, we enjoy 
 the privilege of penetrating to the spring of his motives. 
 The fire of ambition was glowing in his heart, but at 
 the same time he was tormented by his guilty con- 
 science, and his punishment was ever present to his 
 mind. Restlessly he sought to soothe the multitude 
 with largesses, to overcome his adversaries by bribes. 
 Daily he was weaving new plots in the Tower, working 
 on the minds of the nobles, delaying the public pomp, 
 concealing his purpose from all but a few, who are 
 supposed to have seen through his hypocrisy from the 
 beginning. 
 
 But Hastings — a man, be it observed, of great 
 popularity and influence with all ranks, and especially 
 with all honest men — insists that there shall be no 
 further delay with the Coronation. Richard resolves 
 to put him out of the way, and having prepared an 
 ambush in the adjoining room, summons a special 
 Council to his presence. Among them were Thomas 
 Rotherham, archbishop of York ; John Morton, bishop 
 of Ely ; Henry, duke of Buckingham ; Thomas Stanley, 
 William Hastings, John Howard, and many others 
 whom he could trust. The rest of the Optimates, or 
 Great Men, with the Chancellor, John Russell, bishop 
 of Lincoln, whom he was unwilling should be present 
 at the dire spectacle, he ordered to attend at the Court 
 of Westminster, that a day for the Coronation might be 
 fixed. 
 
 Early in the morning the meeting was held in the 
 Tower. Richard, with his usual theatrical eloquence, 
 complained that his life was in danger. His health 
 
 Ead been wasting for the last few days ; he could enjoy 
 
3o8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 it all shrunken to the company. He denounced " that 
 witch, Queen Elizabeth," as his poisoner, the active 
 cause of his gradual dissolution. His remarks were 
 thought to be irrelevant by his audience, and none 
 replied. At last Hastings, as one who loved Eichard 
 and was on intimate terms with him, said that the 
 queen should be branded with infamy, and should be 
 severely punished, if it was proved that she had injured 
 Eichard's life by magic arts. " I say," repeated Eichard, 
 *' that I am dying by the woman's foul acts." And on 
 William's confirming his previous remark, the other 
 raised his voice as a signal : " How now, William ? Am 
 I to perish by your ifs ? " 
 
 Scarce had he spoken, when the assassins rushed in, 
 seized William, both the Bishops, and Stanley. They 
 were cast into different prisons, and William, hardly 
 allowed time to be shriven, is beheaded. And here 
 we listen to the solemn voice of the chorus of the 
 drama, preaching an old moral. Thus did Hastings 
 learn at last by his own peril that the law of Nature, 
 according to the word of the Gospel, ^' All things that 
 ye would meyi should do unto you, do ye also unto them,'' 
 cannot be violated with impunity. For he had been 
 one of the assassins of Prince Edward, son of Henry VI. 
 Oh, would that examples of such a kind might be a 
 warning to men who think that their pleasure is their 
 licence ! 
 
 Through all the Tower were heard cries of Treason ! 
 Treason 1 The noise went through the city, and all the 
 people believed this first report they heard, not knowing 
 what had gone on within the walls. They echoed the 
 cry, but when the terrific rumour had been dissipated, 
 and they understood what had been done, a fresh panic 
 set in. They who loved the sons of Edward deplored 
 
I 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL. 309 
 
 the loss of Hastinors, and looked for fresh victims to 
 Richard's lust of power. But Kichard held his hand for 
 the time. He dismissed Thomas Stanley unhurt, fearing 
 the popularity of his son, Lord Strange. He gave John 
 Morton, bishop of Ely, into the custody of the duke of 
 Buckingham, who sent him to his strong place near 
 Brecknock. Rotherham, the archbishop of York, w^as 
 given into the custody of Sir James Terell. 
 
 Richard then sent orders to Pomfret for the assassi- 
 nation of Antony Rivers, Richard Gray, and Thomas 
 Wagham. In London he surrounded himself with a 
 body of armed men, and gained over the great nobles 
 either by bribes or by threats. He then devised means 
 for influencing the imagination of the common people. 
 Rodulph Shaw was a preacher at that time of great 
 name. He was called to a secret conference by Richard, 
 who expounded to him his hereditary right to the 
 throne. He was, he said, the eldest son of Richard, 
 Duke of York, and Cecilia his wife. Edward he 
 declared to have been illegitimate. He proposed to 
 Shaw that he should preach to the people on this topic 
 at Paul's mound,* and lead them to the acknowledg- 
 ment of their true prince. He tells this divine that he 
 will rather cast a slur upon the memory of his own 
 mother than suffer the kingdom to be debased any 
 longer by a bastard stock of kings. 
 
 Shaw lends himself to this villainous scheme. On 
 the day appointed, Richard, strongly escorted, goes in 
 royal style to St. Paul's, and listens to the sermon with 
 ears pricked up. Shaw takes " matter of tragedy and 
 not of divinity " for the theme of his discourse. He 
 argues that Edward IV. was not the son of the Duchess 
 of York by her husband Richard. The latter was a 
 
 * Paulinum suggestum. 
 
310 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 short, small-visaged man, an entire contrast to the tall 
 and broad-faced Edward. The present Duke of Gloucester 
 was evidently the genuine son and heir of the late Duke 
 of York. Gloucester should be elected to the vacant 
 throne. 
 
 The emotion that followed is depicted with poetic 
 power. The audience were astounded at the revelation 
 of the effrontery of the preacher and at the unspeakable 
 wickedness of Richard, who could thus in public blast 
 the memory of a virtuous mother, a kind brother, and 
 inflict an eternal reproach upon his innocent nephews. 
 They stood fixed in astonishment and in terror. Our 
 narrator remarks that the fame went abroad that it was 
 the sons of Edward IV., not Edward himself, who were 
 denounced as illegitimate in that sermon. But Polydore 
 flatly contradicts this opinion. He refers to many good 
 princes who are yet living, to whom Cecilia complained 
 of the false charge of adultery brought against her by 
 her son Eichard. After the sermon it was plain to all 
 observers that he returned with his suite in joy to the 
 'J ower, as if he had been already proclaimed king. 
 Shaw, the herald of these turpitudes, underwent a 
 severe castigation at the hands of his friends, returned 
 to a sound mind, repented of his deed, and soon died of 
 grief. 
 
 Then comes the scene in the Common Council of 
 London. The mayor, Eobert Byles, the sherifls, Thomas 
 Norland and William Martyn, and the aldermen are 
 bidden to assemble. The Duke of Buckingham is sent 
 to them with other lords of the Council to plead the 
 cause of Richard, and to request the decision of the 
 City fathers. The duke repeats the statement that 
 Edward IV. had defrauded Richard of the kingdom, and 
 claims judgment in his favour. Such judgment would 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 311 
 
 not only be just, but politic, because of the high 
 character ' of Richard, which would ensure the welfare 
 of his subjects. The awe-struck audience listened in 
 silence to this argument, and their silence was con- 
 strued for assent. 
 
 Next day Richard made a progress from the Tower 
 to Westminster, and for the first time took his seat 
 upon the throne. The news was received with pleasure 
 by the Lancastrian party throughout the country, and 
 with displeasure even by the Yorkists, who detested the 
 person of the usurper. The current of feeling began to 
 set in favour of Henry of Richmond. Yet, so great 
 must have been the magnetic powers of this bold bad 
 man, he is able to call an army of 5000 men from York 
 under the command of Richard RatclifF. He is crowned 
 early in July amidst the same hush of dismay. 
 
 He sets out for Gloucester on his way to York. 
 The veil is again drawn from his heart, and we again 
 inspect a conscience gnawed with guilt, and trembling 
 with anxiety, yet goaded on from crime to crime, like 
 another Macbeth. His nephews must die ; he sends a 
 despatch to Brackenbury, Governor of the Tower, 
 bidding him effect this " in some honest manner." On 
 arriving at York he is received by the citizens — strange 
 to say — with gladness, and some days are spent in 
 public rejoicings. There must have been something 
 different in the moral climate of York from that of 
 London. The rustics are gathered together to applaud 
 the new sovereign ; the archbishop appoints a solemn 
 day of supplication, and the king with his queen 
 proceeds to church, wearing his crown. 
 
 Meantime Brackenbury delayed the execution of his 
 fell commission in the Tower of London. Terell is 
 therefore despatched on the bloody errand, and puts 
 
312 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the boys to death in an almost unheard-of manner. 
 Yet, adds our careful narrator, " the kind of death the 
 wretched boys died is not clearly known." He dwells 
 with the greatest believing sympathy on the grief of 
 the people and the bereaved mother against this fearful 
 enemy of God and man. And yet he exposes, in spite 
 of himself, the a priori, or argument, which produced the 
 dark tale. The deductive murder of these innocents 
 was the vengeance of Heaven on the sin of the father, 
 who had taken a false oath at the gates of York, and 
 had murdered his brother George. It is the Lancastrian, 
 or orthodox, theory of Yorkist wickedness which governs 
 the whole representation. 
 
 Yet the knowledge of this horror of the Tower of 
 Richard's Loudou did not interfere with the thanks- 
 aspedfat giviugs, the praycrs, in the cathedral of York, 
 York. jjQp ^Ni\h the loud cheers of the populace, as 
 
 Kichard and his queen, leading her young Edward by 
 the hand, passed on to the sacred edifice. Presently 
 the boy is declared Prince of Wales, John Howard is 
 made Duke of Norfolk, and his son Earl of Surrey. 
 Thomas Hutton is sent to the Duke of Brittany to pray 
 him still to keep Henry of Kichmond in safe custody. 
 The king returned to London, and found again a great 
 change of climate. 
 
 Whenever bad weather set in or was threatened, the 
 people set it down to the wickedness of Eichard, which 
 Heaven was avenging in their persons. The detested 
 tyrant sank into deep melancholy. He resolved, if 
 possible, to efface the stigma on his name. He must, 
 by an efibrt of hypocrisy, engage in good works, and so 
 lessen his unpopularity with men, and earn his pardon 
 from God. He began many public and private works ; 
 he founded a college of a hundred priests at York. But 
 
 J 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 313 
 
 all was vain. His son Edward died in the third month 
 after he had been made Prince of Wales, and a conspiracy 
 broke out against him under the Duke of Buckingham. 
 
 The details of the quarrel furnish another illustra- 
 tion of the violent passions under the influence of which 
 the Lancastrian tale was composed. The estate of the 
 Earl of Hereford had descended in part to the family of 
 Lancaster, in part to the Stafifords, the originals of the 
 House of Buckingham. On the extinction of the line 
 of Henry VL, the Duke of Buckingham laid claim to 
 the rest of the Hereford estate, which Richard now 
 held by kingly right. " Do you think, Duke Henry," 
 replied Richard, in wrath, " to claim the rights of 
 Henry IV. , who was a usurper ? " Such was the rise of 
 the quarrel. Buckingham went to Wales, and conspired 
 with his prisoner, the Bishop of Ely, to bring over 
 Henry of Richmond, and to wed him to Elizabeth, 
 daughter of Edward IV. Another story ran, that 
 Buckingham had all along been the secret enemy of 
 Richard. But transparent in all these retrospective 
 fictions is the fixed Lancastrian idea — the fated wedding 
 •of the Two Roses— an idea that took root some years 
 after the event. 
 
 But the details of the drama are all of interest. 
 Margaret appears on the scene again, meditating the 
 tSame profound design — how to mix the blood of 
 Henry VL and of Edward IV., and so put an end to 
 ;the two factions. Through the agency of Lewis, the 
 'Welsh medic, Elizabeth, the queen dowager, is brought 
 [into the scheme, and the plot is developed by the assist- 
 ance of others. They hear that Buckingham is working 
 for the same object. All events are leading up to the 
 arrival of Henry of Richmond, according to a Divine 
 providence, as he readily believes. 
 
314 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Buckingham is betrayed, and meets his doom at 
 Salisbury at the hands of Richard ; the moral of which 
 he is the martyr being that goodnever came of helping 
 wicked men, especially of the Yorkist party. After 
 many delays, Henry of Richmond enlists the help of 
 the King of France and many English fugitives in that 
 land, among them Richard Fox, an intimate friend of 
 Henry, who enjoyed the bishopric of Winton at the 
 time Polydore was writing. Meantime the wizard 
 King Richard is actually able to prevail on Queen 
 Elizabeth, mother of the murdered boys, to consent to 
 his marriage with her daughter, so that he may circum- 
 vent the Lancastrians with their own toils. Therefore 
 Richard's queen must die, and she falls a victim a few 
 days after receiving the hypocritical kisses and soothing 
 assurances of her lord, who then begins to prepare for 
 his weddino; with his own niece. The other dauo^hter of 
 the late king is disposed of by a marriage to an obscure 
 " son of the soil." 
 
 Henry of Richmond must make haste, if he would 
 secure Elizabeth, the indispensable condition of the 
 Crown. "We may omit the details of his campaign after 
 landing at Haverford. We come to the eve of Bosworth 
 field. It was easy to imagine, after classical examples, 
 how terrible were Richard's dreams ; how the horrific 
 shapes of devils surrounded his restless couch ; how he 
 presaged the event of the morrow, and with pale coun- 
 tenance related his dream to many when he arose. " It 
 was no dream," observes the chorus of the national 
 drama, " but the conscience of guilt ; conscience, I say, 
 all the heavier, the greater the sin. At life's end, if at 
 no other time, conscience will represent the memory of 
 our ill deeds and their impending pains, so that, repent- 
 ing of our evil life, we shall depart hence in sadness." 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 315 
 
 The battle next day is said to have lasted for 
 more than two hours, with the loss, as usual BosAvorth 
 in the battles of the period, of about 1000 ^^^^- 
 to 100, or ten to one on the side of the vanquished. 
 Kichard is described as having fought with all the 
 courage of a desperate man, who had staked his all on 
 the event of the battle. His sudden and miserable end 
 points the moral that such must be the fate of those 
 who confound right and honour with their own self-will 
 and impiety. These examples should be the greatest 
 deterrents to men who have no leisure for aught but 
 cruelty and crimes. The naked body of the tyrant was 
 thrown upon a horse. So does hate, inspiring dramatic 
 art, gloat upon the details of the last scene : his head, 
 his arms, his legs, hang down on either side, as he is 
 deported to the convent of the Franciscans, or Grey 
 Friars, at Leicester. Two days later he was buried, 
 without funeral rites. 
 
 Polydore sketches the conventional portrait of 
 Kichard, as it was to be copied over and over again 
 by writers in the Tudor interest. Short of stature, 
 deformed in body, one shoulder being higher than the 
 other ; of a small and truculent countenance, that 
 seemed redolent of malice and to cry aloud of craft and 
 fraud ; he had a habit of incessantly biting his lips 
 while engaged in thought, showing the savage nature 
 that raged within his little body. He would half draw 
 the dagger that he ever wore, and then restore it to its 
 sheath again. His intellect is allowed to have been of 
 a high order ; although one does not see how he could 
 have been like Catiline, so apt at simulation and dis- 
 simulation, if his evil countenance so evidently betrayed 
 him. He is, moreover, allowed to have been of a haughty 
 and undaunted courage, as his last moments showed. 
 
3i6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 As we read we seem to see the actor, over-made-up 
 for his part, and with overstrained gestures, prowling 
 over the stage. The description is theatrical beyond 
 mistake ; and perhaps, a hundred years before the great 
 Master of the art, schoolboys were wont to act in the 
 tragedy of Eichard at the holiday festivities. The 
 teaching of the dark fable was very effective against 
 the Yorkist party in London ; but whether it was 
 equally acceptable in York is another question. 
 
 It was not to be expected that in this case the Grey 
 
 Friars of Leicester should offer the visitors any other 
 
 legend of a prince who had died and been carried to 
 
 his OTave under the ban and excommunication of the 
 
 Church, and whose name has been connected with no 
 
 Church foundation. Moreover, the G-rey Friars were 
 
 under the especial patronage of Henry Tudor. Not 
 
 until the reign of James L did George Buck take up 
 
 his pen as an hereditary friend of Eichard's party, to 
 
 represent him as a pattern monarch and all but a saint. 
 
 Late, also, were the historic doubts of Horace Walpole. 
 
 The suspicion will haunt us that none but a man of 
 
 extraordinary genius and great powers of personal 
 
 attraction could have given rise to such a magnificent 
 
 effort of detraction on the part of his foes. We must, 
 
 however, resign the hope of attaining more than a 
 
 general attention. The portrait of Eichard is simply 
 
 the monument of the passions of the victorious party 
 
 in a long and fierce struggle for the possession of 
 
 power. 
 
( 317 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 POLYDORE VERGIL — continued, 
 
 PoLYDORE was Writing the life of Henry VII. perhaps 
 about a quarter of a century after that king 
 
 *^ . ^ Henrv VII. 
 
 had passed away ; and he writes it, as usual, 
 not from records, but from reminiscences, and still 
 more from theories current in his own time. Henry 
 came to the throne by the will and providence of God, 
 he says ; because, 797 years before his accession, Cad- 
 wallader, last king of the Britons, had delivered an 
 inspired prophecy to the effect that his stock should 
 reign once more in the land. Henry VI. had repeated 
 the tradition. It is an indirect witness on the part of 
 Polydore to the fact that the dogma of the Kegal Suc- 
 cession, the backbone of English story, dates from after 
 the accession of Henry VH. 
 
 It was no more possible for Polydore to look back 
 upon that time except through the medium of the regal 
 dogma than it was possible for any monk to treat any 
 part of history except as a deduction from the eccle- 
 siastical dogma. Again and again we are reminded 
 that the epoch of peace to the English people is the 
 epoch of the union of the two equally rich and powerful 
 families of York and Lancaster in one house, whence 
 the royal stock should spring, the future possessors of 
 the kinsfdom. But the whole evidence tends to show 
 
3i8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 that these prophecies after the event could not have 
 been believed so long as pretenders continued 
 after the to risc, and Henry's power remained precarious. 
 We are told that Henry was the first of 
 English kings who surrounded himself with a body- 
 guard (of 50 men) in fear of assassination : an imitation 
 of the French kings. How, then, can we conceive of 
 a settled monarchy before his time ? The kings must 
 have been the temporary heads of what Hume calls a 
 " Polish aristocracy." 
 
 To retrospection from the time of Henry VUI. it 
 seemed that the reign of his predecessor had been any- 
 thing but the beginning of a settled Constitution. A 
 tradition there was of a fearful pestilence during the 
 first year of that reign. As usual, the plague is mag- 
 nified till it becomes the prophecy of his harsh rule, 
 or that he would never draw a quiet breath till the last 
 moment of his life. No sooner is he wedded to the 
 lady of the White Kose, and crowned, than Lovell and 
 other Eicardians, having escaped from asylum, begin to 
 trouble him. Sedition is stirred both in York and 
 Gloucester, and Bedford with difiiculty succeeds in 
 putting it down. However, Prince Arthur — the name 
 that recalled the ancient Britons — is happily born the 
 same year. 
 
 Then another ironical criticism on the blessed Union 
 
 of the Eoses is the tale of the immediately 
 pretender followiug scditiou uudcr the pretender Simnel. 
 
 Polydore speaks of the whole plot with the 
 greatest contempt, not observing how fatal are his 
 admissions to the fine dogma of the establishment of 
 the great regal House. A low-bred cunning priest, with 
 his adroit pupil, form the brilliant design of making 
 themselves respectively Primate of England and King. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 319 
 
 The pupil is to personate one of the two sons of 
 Edward IV., who are conveniently brought to life again 
 in the popular imagination. Edward of Warwick, heir 
 of murdered Clarence, is also, for the purposes of the 
 plot, believed not to have perished in prison, as men 
 had previously thought. Simnel must personate 
 Edward, under the direction of his Oxford tutor. And 
 the bait is easily swallowed in Ireland. The restless 
 Margaret, sister of Edward IV., and Duchess of Bur- 
 gundy, gladly promises her aid to the plotters against 
 the detested Henry Tudor. 
 
 The king holds a Council in the cloister of the Car- 
 thusians at Kichmond, from whom perhaps Polydore 
 derived his particulars. So weak is his position, it is 
 resolved to issue a general pardon to all capital 
 offenders, and to parade the genuine son of the Duke 
 of Clarence before the eyes of the people. Elizabeth, 
 the queen-dowager, is also mulcted of all her posses- 
 sions, because she had handed over her sons to Richard, 
 and had lent herself to his project of wedding her 
 daughter to him. Our moralist thinks that Elizabeth 
 was hardly dealt with for her levity, because, he says, 
 she increased the wrath of God against Richard, and 
 brought on his ruin. One place will ever honour her 
 memory, at all events. If you visit Queen's College, 
 Cambridge, you will hear nothing but good of their 
 founder and benefactress. 
 
 Henry, harassed between the dangers threatened 
 from Ireland on the one hand, and from Flanders on 
 the other, keeps watch on the eastern coast. He was 
 doubtless well received among the Benedictines at St. 
 Edmund's Bury. Thence he travels to Norwich and to 
 Walsingham. On Christmas Day he enters the temple 
 of the Blessed Virgin at that spot so famed for miracles 
 
320 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 (as Erasmus, Poly dor e's friend, reminds us). He prays 
 and performs his vows, so that by Divine help and 
 the guidance of Mary he may be preserved from the 
 snares of his enemies and defend the country from 
 danger. In this connection it may not be irrelevant 
 to mention the name of Walsingham, the historian, 
 doubtless the contemporary of Polydore, but never 
 named by him. 
 
 The quarrel is brought to a decision at the Battle of 
 Battle of Stoke, whcrc, notwithstanding the bravery of 
 stoke. ^]^g English soldiers under Lincoln and Lovell, 
 
 of the Germans under Swart, and the Irish under Gerar- 
 din, Henry defeats them with a loss of 4000 men on 
 their side, only half that number on his own. The 
 valour of the Germans and the Irish being so specially 
 extolled, we may perhaps understand how one Lan- 
 castrian was not on this occasion equal to more than 
 two soldiers under the opposed banner. Simnel and 
 his tutor arc taken ; the priest is condemned to perpetual 
 imprisonment ; while Simnel, as the mere tool of a party, 
 is contemptuously appointed to the office of turnspit in 
 the king's kitchen, and afterwards promoted to be the 
 trainer of hawks. *' Lambert is still living," says Poly- 
 dore. But Lambert's reminiscences of the time have 
 never been produced any more than those of Jane Shore, 
 who (they say) was still living in the reign of Henry 
 VIII. Margaret was profoundly disappointed by the 
 failure of the expedition, and began to devise new plots 
 against Henry. Supposing the tale to be in substance 
 based on fact, we may amuse our fancy with the thought 
 that the royal falconer, but for the fortune of war, 
 might have been in the place of his vulgar-looking 
 master, Henry VIL, with an equally good title to the 
 throne. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 321 
 
 The clergy were busy in all the political intrigues of 
 the time : and they have been the sole re- 
 
 ' « , . , . The regular 
 
 porters of events from their own standpoint clergy and 
 and in their own interests. It is they who 
 tell us that Henry, after his victory, sent his standard 
 to St. Mary's, Walsingham, in recognition of the aid of 
 the Virgin. Watching from their secure retreats the 
 turmoil of war, they prepared to profit by its results, 
 to whichever side Fortune inclined. Cardinal Morton, 
 Bishop of Ely, was from the year 1489 Chan- Morton and 
 cellor and Primate, the actual governor of the ^"''• 
 country. Richard Fox, now Bishop of Exon, was 
 employed as ambassador to Scotland ; and bishops 
 continued to be employed in such service during the 
 Tudor period. A holy monk. Abbot of the Benedictine 
 cloister at Abingdon, John Lily, who was at the same 
 time a lawyer and a quaestor of the Pope, was em- 
 ployed in similar service to the Court of France. 
 Amidst domestic troubles, the great remedy is to send 
 for a Pope's legate. The constant embroilments of 
 England, France, and Scotland were no doubt largely 
 due to the annoying policy of the servants of the 
 Christian Empire, Divide et impera. 
 
 An ecclesiastic who played an important part in 
 1490 was Hadrian Castello, who came hither Hadrian 
 on the errand of pacifying Scotland. He was ^^^^eiio. 
 too late. King James having been slain. Cardinal 
 Morton and King Henry loaded this Hadrian with 
 benefits with a view to secure his influence with the 
 Popes, Innocent and Alexander VI . He enjoyed first 
 the bishopric of Hereford, then that of Bath and Wells. 
 On arriving in Rome he passed through all the degrees 
 of honour. Innocent made him his Collector in Eng- 
 land, Alexander VI. raised him to the Cardinalate with 
 
32 2 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the title of St. Chrysogonus. These distinctions, re- 
 marks the candid Polydore, are bestowed alike on the 
 slothful and the energetic. The true and lasting praise 
 of Hadrian consists in the fact that he was so highly 
 accomplished in Ciceronian Latin — in fact, thejirst of all 
 the revivers of pure Latinity. This incidental remark 
 is of great value in connection with other evidence to 
 the effect that the monks were not cultivating the 
 classics until the latter half of the fifteenth century. 
 It was at that time, as Polydore himself says, that 
 
 the Italian scholars, dispersed from their own 
 of Italian land by the terrible discords which there pre- 
 
 vailed, and of which he has given a most feel- 
 ing description, came into Germany, Flanders, and 
 England. We should have been grateful to him had 
 he given us more details on this subject and on the 
 general state of learning. We could well be spared the 
 monotonous recital of the plots and counterplots of 
 factions, the insurrections, the battles, the executions, 
 the barbarisms which constitute, to the view of the 
 historians of the time, the state of Europe. It is not 
 that they can have been wholly uninterested in the 
 progress of the arts and sciences, but that these were 
 in their feeble and almost unheeded infancy, cradled in 
 so stormy a time. 
 
 Margaret of Burgundy persevered in her design of 
 harassing the successful enemy of her house. It is 
 utterly impossible to detect the germ whether of truth 
 or fiction in the tale of the new pretender, who threw 
 Flanders, England, Ireland, and Scotland into commo- 
 tion. Polydore tells the tale from the Lancastrian side, 
 and yet fairly, as one who knew that the Yorkists had 
 much to say in their defence. But victory in argument 
 must follow victory in arms. 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 323 
 
 The Lancastrians might say, when they were weary 
 of taunting the duchess with having brought p^ter 
 forth two monsters within a few years — Lam- Warbeck. 
 bert and Peter — " The burden of proof rests with you. 
 What have you to show against the title of the king in 
 possession ? " And Margaret might retort, *' It is 
 rather with you that the burden rests. You have set 
 up a usurper, the son of an illegitimate Beaufort, whose 
 title to the English throne has never been proved. We 
 defend the hereditary right of York." When it came 
 to the question of whether the young man put forward 
 as Richard, son of Edward IV., was indeed the genuine 
 son of that king, the Lancastrians showed uneasiness. 
 They sent agents into Flanders, and said they had 
 identified him as Peter (or in derision Peterkin) War- 
 beck of Tournay. But after all, the argument on which 
 they most relied was their own dogma, that Richard III. 
 was a murderer, and had actually slain his elder nephew. 
 Was it likely that he would have spared the younger ? 
 But their argument was founded on a petitio principii ; 
 for they had never proved that Richard was an assassin. 
 
 Notwithstanding the smoothness of the Lancastrian 
 tale, the partisans of that house do not and cannot con- 
 ceal the fact that in Kent, as well as in the North, the 
 people were easily to be excited to take up arms in 
 |the rival cause. The clergy were also divided. Among 
 the conspirators brought to London in consequence of 
 information received in Flanders were the Dean of St. 
 Paul's, two Dominican friars, and others of sacerdotal 
 rank. The fate of William Stanley, who had saved 
 Henry's life at Bosworth, seems to have been felt to call 
 for apology. He fell a victim to the informer Robert 
 Clifford. But the only excuse that can be offered for 
 Henry's ingratitude is that Stanley presumed too much 
 
324 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 on his past services, and in disappointment of their 
 recognition went over to the opposite side. 
 
 When it is found necessary to raise money for war 
 Rising of the against Scotland, which has taken up the cause 
 comishmen. q£ ^j^^ Pretender, the Cornishmen, unable to 
 endure the tax, take up arms. They cast the blame 
 of these wretched wars and this intolerable oppression 
 on the king's counsellors, especially Archbishop Morton 
 and Eeginald Bray. Polydore takes occasion to observe 
 that if any good is done, it is placed to the credit of the 
 king ; if any evil, to that of his counsellors : an observa- 
 tion perhaps inspired by Morton himself. The march 
 of the poor Cornish miners to Wells, to Salisbury, 
 Winton, and so into Kent is described. They are 
 disappointed of the assistance of the Kentishmen, who, 
 warned by their past sufferings, flee before them, refusing 
 even to hold a parley with the rebels ; for the Earl of 
 Kent and other lords were under arms, and their bold 
 spirit was subdued. Nothing daunted, the Cornishmen 
 advanced to Blackheath, and spread terror through 
 London. Henry marches against them, slaughters 
 2000 rebels, takes an immense number prisoners at 
 the expense of 300 lives on his own side. Such was 
 the fury of the Cornishmen who remained at home, that 
 Henry dared not send the bodies of the two ringleaders, 
 Flammock and Joseph, to be cut up and suspended in 
 different parts of the county, as he had intended to do. 
 
 A little later they rallied under the Pretender, who 
 had left the Court of Scotland in consequence of the 
 influences brought to bear on James by Ferdinand of 
 Spain. The Pretender lays siege to Exeter. On the 
 advance of Henry's force he takes sanctuary in the 
 monastery of Beaulieu, where he is captured. On the way 
 back to London the excitement of the multitude is 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 325 
 
 intense ; all crowd to look upon the young man, who 
 has been able, without any real pretensions, to win 
 over so many princes and peoples to his support. In 
 Devon and Somerset there had been many supporters 
 of the rebellion. Sir Amias Paulett, and Sherburn, dean 
 of St. Paul's, are sent down to punish, by means of 
 heavy fines, all who had been implicated in it. 
 
 An illustration of the manner in which English 
 history was made and then written by the ihebe- 
 same class of men may be found in the cir- prf^ctsf 
 cumstances leading to the betrothal of the ^i^rgaret. 
 Princess Margaret to James of Scotland. There had 
 been a dispute between young English and Scotch 
 soldiers at Norham Castle. Some of the Scots had 
 been slain, and the wrath of King James was aroused. 
 Eichard, the active Bishop of Durham, who was the 
 commander of the English soldiers, endeavoured to 
 pacify King James, and gained permission from King 
 Henry to accept an invitation from the Scottish monarch 
 to a conference. At Melrose, in the famed cloister of the 
 Cistercians, the meeting took place. James confided to 
 the bishop in secret, apart from all witnesses, his project 
 for cementing an alliance with Henry by wedding 
 Margaret. Henry is delighted with the proposal, 
 which, after due formalities, is carried before the Council. 
 
 Polydore says that on this occasion there were some 
 counsellors who showed hesitation. The inheritance of 
 [the kingdom might come to Margaret, and they thought 
 [it should not go to a foreign prince. Henry is reported 
 [to have answered, " What then ? Suppose such a thing 
 [should happen — which God forbid ! — I foresee no loss to 
 >ur kingdom. The accession of Scotland to England, 
 |not of England to Scotland, would be the result. 
 England is the noblest part and the head of the whole 
 
326 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 island. The smaller part should be made to increase 
 the honour and glory of the greater : just as in days 
 gone by Normandy came into the power and authority 
 of our English ancestors." Such was the dictum of the 
 wise king, and with unanimous approbation Margaret 
 was betrothed to James. 
 
 A king like Henry VIL, who had been taught by 
 his clerical friends to regard himself as a living fulfil- 
 ment of ancient British prophecy, might well be con- 
 scious of a like afflatus at such a moment. But without 
 discussing too curiously the historical learning or the 
 prophetical gifts of Henry, it is tolerably clear that the 
 above passage was written down at a time when it was 
 desirable to make the prospect of a Scottish successor 
 to the English throne agreeable to those who had any 
 voice in such matters. These events are said to have 
 occurred in the year 1499. 
 
 The same year the Pretender, Peter Warbeck, 
 attempts to escape from prison, and takes refuge with 
 the Carthusians at Bethleem monastery. The prior is 
 said to have gone to the king and to have interceded 
 for the young man's life. Peter is loaded with chains 
 and cast into the Tower. There he becomes acquainted 
 with the poor innocent, Edward, Earl of Warwick, 
 " who did not know a hen from a goose," and who is 
 dragged to destruction by another's crime. An Augus- 
 tinian monk named Patrick tells a pupil of his that he 
 will gain the kingdom for him if he will follow his 
 advice. This disciple, crazed by an ambition which 
 was common, and which defied all law and all danger, 
 eagerly enters into the plot. The pair set out for 
 Kent, and the young man gives himself out for Edward, 
 Earl of Warwick, lately escaped from the Tower by 
 Patrick's aid. The tale was believed, but the new 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. • 327 
 
 sedition " lost its head before it was raised." The friar 
 and his disciple were seized, the latter was slain, the 
 former in respect for his sacred character was spared for 
 the doom of " eternal darkness " in prison. 
 
 Polydore always speaks of the Augustinians, Fran- 
 ciscans, and Dominicans, as monks. So great respect, 
 he says, do the English show the Order, that even a 
 priest who is condemned for high treason, or other 
 guilty person, members of other Orders, have their 
 lives spared. By long custom, the bishop has no 
 cognizance of such criminal cases. They are not per- 
 mitted to desecrate priestly criminals ; and unless they 
 are desecrated they cannot be put to death. 
 
 mi 1-111 1 '^^® P"^i- 
 
 I he custom also is, that those who can read, leges of 
 if condemned for any crime except high 
 treason, enjoy the same privilege, because they are 
 considered as almost ordained persons. They are kept 
 in custody ; if they escape they are branded in the left 
 palm, the homicide with the letter M for murderer, the 
 thief with the letter T. If again detected, these 
 branded ones are then put to death. 
 
 It is an example of the vagueness of Polydore's 
 knowledge of English laws when he says that Henry 
 was the author of the above institute in a Council of 
 the second year of his reign, and that Henry borrowed 
 it from the French, as he believes. The custom with 
 the French is to cut off one of the ears of the male- 
 factors. Bishops have the custody of prisoners, that the 
 privileges of clerks may be preserved ; and they are 
 fined if a prisoner is suffered to escape through negli- 
 gence. Polydore observes that this practice directly 
 fosters and encourages thieves. The means of escape 
 are innumerable ; and criminals are poured out upon 
 society. There is no public prosecutor ; and if the 
 
328 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 offended or injured person does not pursue his action, 
 the accused goes free from the first, according to the 
 law of the land. 
 
 The Pretender plotted his escape from prison along 
 with the Earl of Warwick. The plot was discovered ; 
 he, with his associates, were brought up for judgment 
 and condemned. A few days later, the young man, 
 whose name has been handed down as Peter Warbeck, 
 was hanged with his accomplices. The Earl of Warwick 
 was beheaded on the mere ground, as rumour went, 
 that he had attempted flight. This was a capital 
 offence, according to the laws of the time. It was also 
 believed that the Austin friar had designed, by his 
 scheme, to bring suspicion upon the poor half-witted 
 boy. The whole tale needs no comment ; it is one of 
 a multitude of proofs of the absence of all defined 
 personal rights in England, and of the positive 
 tyranny that prevailed, at a time when the lawyers 
 began to talk of the privileges conferred by the Great 
 Charter. 
 
 We come to the last year of this terrible age, fitly 
 marked by a great plague which carried ojQf 30,000 
 lives in London alone. According to reasonable com- 
 putation, this might be about half the population ; but 
 the figures are not to be trusted. There was also a 
 great fire at Henry's villa on the Thames, which he re- 
 built and called Richmond, because he had formerly 
 been earl of that region. He went over to Calais to 
 avoid the plague ; renewed his treaty with Philip of 
 Flanders, and returned to England on the abatement 
 of the pestilence. Caspar Pons, the Spaniard, arrived 
 on a mission from Pope Alexander, in order " to show 
 the English the road that leads to heaven.'' The Jubi- 
 lee was celebrated at Rome. Legates came, bearing 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 329 
 
 the boon of celestial grace to Christians who were 
 hindered from visiting Rome. 
 
 Our candid ecclesiastic, himself a minister of Pope 
 Alexander, tells us that the grace of heaven was not 
 imparted gratuitously. Alexander thought that he 
 might himself consult the salvation of man and his 
 own interests at the same time. He fixed a price upon 
 the Grace, and declared that he would shortly undertake 
 a war against the Turks. A great sum of money was 
 collected ; but though the Turks w^ent on taking town 
 after town, the war was not begun. 
 
 In the midst of the terrible desolation of London, 
 it seems that the citizens could summon up Roy^i 
 their festive spirits to celebrate the wedding of ^e^^^^^ss. 
 the Princess Margaret with James of Scotland, and of 
 Prince Arthur with Catherine, daughter of Ferdinand of 
 Spain. Yet the royal joy was immediately over- 
 darkened by the dread of a new conspiracy. Edmund 
 Pole, of Suffolk, nephew of Edward IV., had slain a 
 commoner, and had been brought up for trial. The 
 king spared his life. But the haughty spirit of Pole, 
 resenting his trial as a disgrace, fled to his aunt 
 Margaret in Flanders without the royal licence. But 
 this offence was also overlooked, and he returned to 
 England, only to pay another visit to Flanders with 
 his brother Richard, while Henry and all London were 
 occupied with the nuptials of Arthur. Another Yorkist 
 plot came to light, in which young Courtenay, of Devon, 
 son-in-law of Edward IV., and a third brother of the 
 Pole family were believed to be engaged ; also James 
 Terell. Courtenay was imprisoned on mere suspicion, 
 and was only released by Henry VIII. William Pole 
 obtained at the same time an easier custody. His 
 character was of the purest. James Terell and John 
 
 i 
 
3 so THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Wyndham were put to deatli. Edmund Pole, after 
 wanderings on the Continent, gave himself up to Philip 
 of Flanders. Eichard continued also to weather the 
 storm. 
 
 It has already been hinted that the religious houses 
 and sanctuaries must have been conscious of 
 
 The re- 
 ligious all these conspiracies. Henry VII., we are 
 
 centres of iuformcd, kucw that members of the opposite 
 
 sedition. 'ni'T -i at 
 
 party were still hidmg m these retreats. And 
 yet he dared not take strong measures to suppress the 
 hotbeds of rebellion, without reference to the Pope. 
 In response to an application by letters and legates, 
 Alexander VI. exerted his authority, and declared all 
 English exiles enemies of religion, because disturbers 
 of the people. Those who had once quitted asylums 
 were not again to be received to its privileges. In the 
 result, many returned to a sound mind, and those who 
 were in safety refrained from exposing themselves to 
 further peril. 
 
 These anxieties are no sooner set at rest in Henry's 
 Death of mind than he is plunged into grief by the 
 ^'^'^''^' death of Arthur, in the fifth month of his 
 marriage. According to the habit of the time, it is 
 supposed that Catherine had presage of the unhappy 
 event of her marriage, because she had had a stormy 
 voyage from Spain to England. The Queen Elizabeth 
 died shortly after, having given birth to a daughter, 
 who lived but a few days. Eeginald Bray, the true 
 Father of his Country, the faithful monitor of King 
 Henry, followed the queen to heaven. Morton, the 
 other faithful counsellor, had been dead two years. 
 Polydore is warm in his praises of these men. He is 
 well aware that the vulgar held the contrary opinion 
 of them as corrupters of the mind of the king. The 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 331 
 
 true temper and training of tlie ecclesiastic are manifest 
 in Polydore, when he abruptly observes that the vulgar 
 are always with the wrong, and that the king, so long 
 as he patiently listens to the monitors of his duty, can 
 do no wrong. It was in the year 1502 that Henry 
 held a Council, the only constitution of which given is 
 that concerning thieves and murderers, who had the 
 privilege of the " Three Letters " — that is, who can read ; 
 they were to be branded, as was mentioned above. 
 
 When shall we turn the last page of these "rude 
 wars, nefarious seditions, massacres, and executions " ? 
 Advancing into the year 1503, it is only to meet with 
 new varieties of suffering on the part of an unhappy 
 king and his unhappy subjects. Henry was now stricken 
 in years. Painful experience had taught him to dread 
 civil war more than death ; and he cast about for the 
 means of providing against the recurrence of such ills. 
 He conceived that this end miojht be secured 
 
 1 f, -, . 1 • Domestic 
 
 were he to reduce the strength 01 his subjects policy of 
 a little ; being aware, in his great wisdom, that 
 riches produce insolence, and that the fear of losing or 
 the hope of gaining wealth are very strong motives of 
 human nature. At the same time, he was careful of his 
 reputation for justice, and was anxious to devise some 
 honest cloke for his design. While brooding over this 
 question, it occurred to him that his Englishmen had 
 fallen into neglect of " the accepted laws." Suppose an 
 Inquisition were held on this matter ? The ^he Royai 
 certain result would be that a vast number of Mu»sition. 
 the Great Men, also of the merchants, craftsmen, advo- 
 cates, herdsmen, might be caught in the violation of the 
 said " accepted laws." The king rose from his studies, 
 resolved to carry out this design. 
 
 He began to recognize " the laws," and to inflict 
 
332 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 slight fines on those who had not kept them. He then 
 appointed two Fiscal Judges, Eichard Hemson, and 
 Edmund Dudley, who were lawyers. The reader may 
 be reminded that the study of Law and the invention of 
 the fictions about the origin of English Law were but 
 beginning during this reign. These men vied with one 
 another in the endeavour to ingratiate themselves with 
 the king. They surrounded themselves with a band of 
 informers, who supplied them with the names of suspect 
 persons. In their eagerness to raise money they were 
 reckless of danger, contemptuous of humanity. The 
 leading men, however, warned them to keep their hands 
 off. A great sum of money was made by the king, who 
 could then afford to remember pity toward his suffer- 
 ing people, whose cries were directed to Heaven. He 
 bethought him of clemency, humanity, and grace ; and 
 resolved to dismiss the two judges, and to restore the 
 moneys which had been unjustly exacted. 
 
 In 1505 a prophetic incident occurred. Philip of 
 Philip of Flanders had wedded Joanna of Castile, who 
 Flanders. ]^^^ bccomc hcircss of that kingdom. Philip set 
 out with his consort for Spain, but was driven ashore 
 by a storm at the English port called by Polydore, Wyn- 
 mouth. Worn out with fatigue and sea-sickness, Philip 
 landed from a boat and cast himself headlong upon the 
 earth, in spite of the warnings of his suite, who appear 
 to have foreseen that the descent would cause the vexa- 
 tion of a longer delay. The English nobles of the Coast 
 prepared to resist an enemy, but on learning that it was 
 _ aT friend, they invited King Philip to the house of Sir 
 -/"^bmas Trencherd. Sir Thomas despatched a swift 
 'post to King Henry with the news; and Philip was 
 prevailed upon, by hospitable persuasion or by fear, to 
 . remain till Henry should arrive. A meeting was at 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 333 
 
 last arranged at Windsor Castle. Philip was prevailed 
 upon to deliver up Edmund Pole, on the promise of 
 Henry that his life should be spared. Then Henry 
 insists upon taking his reluctant guest to London. 
 
 Polydore is not lavish of prodigies, yet he cannot 
 altoo^ether free his mind from the confusion of facts 
 with fancies, which was the habit of his time. Philip, 
 shortly after these events, died in Spain. And then the 
 people began to talk about the storm that blew him on 
 these shores, and they began to remember that a brass 
 eagle fixed on the top of St. Paul's as a weathercock 
 had been blown down, and had in its fall broken another 
 eagle, the sign of a tavern hard by; and how the 
 religious observers of such portents were persuaded that 
 the Imperial Eagle would come to grief. Certainly the 
 Emperor Max had lost his son ; but as to the history of 
 the weathercocks of St. Paul's from early times, such 
 researches may be left to the learned. 
 
 The lingering embers of Pole's conspiracy continued 
 to trouble Henry ; and the return of the terrible sweating 
 sickness was symptomatic of a physical state not less 
 deplorable than that of the body social and political. 
 But medical remedies had made some progress, and men 
 were beginning to have some conception of the need 
 of an established Right in England. The language of 
 Polydore should here be brought into strong emphasis. 
 A third pestilence, he says, suddenly broke out. By 
 the operation of the fiscal judges, gradually a very large 
 number of the wealthier citizens were deprived of their 
 riojhts as Englishmen. The thinor is strange to ^ ^ 
 
 r> n 00 Absence of 
 
 speak of; the facts are wretched; "but men ngbtand 
 call that Law or Eight which is the perversion 
 of Right and the corruption of Judgment." An absent 
 person is summoned before the judges. He knows 
 
334 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 naught of what is going on. He has to appear on a 
 fixed day ; he fails to answer to his name when it is 
 called in court. How is he to answer, being ignorant 
 of the whole business, and often a hundred or two 
 hundred miles away ? Then he is condemned, is 
 deprived of all his goods, and handed over to perpetual 
 chains as the enemy of his country. His property is 
 confiscated to the Prince. These condemned persons are 
 commonly called Outlaws — that is, men deprived of all 
 rights of their country given by law to a man. By 
 such acts a multitude of Englishmen were circumvented ! 
 
 It is in the light of facts like these that we begin to 
 understand by what idle figures of speech we have been 
 deceived, when our historians have talked of the growth 
 of the English Constitution and the Palladium of our 
 liberties. No sooner do we hear of rights founded on 
 law as theoretically admitted, than they are actually 
 and contemptuously denied by the very guardians of 
 those rights and the interpreters of the majesty of the 
 law itself. It is in the light of such a witness that we 
 understand how the very names of law, judge, sheriff", 
 bishop, were greeted with deep curses by the mass of 
 Englishmen, and how the passionate love of the people's 
 heart flowed forth to the ideal Outlaw of Sherwood, 
 whom poetic fancy referred, with other English ideals, 
 to a much older age, in reality the reflection of this 
 lawless fifteenth century. 
 
 It is with the greatest pleasure that I recognize in 
 a Koman clergyman like Polydore Vergil so sincere and 
 glowing an indignation against the iniquity of such an 
 administration. And yet the blame of it must fall in 
 largest part on the shoulders of the Hierarchy. We 
 do not hear of a word of protest or remonstrance 
 being raised against these gross violations of the first 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 335 
 
 precepts of tlie Gospel by either the Pontiff or any 
 of the Bishops. It is the clergy who have made the laws 
 in the interests of their Order ; it is the clergy who sit in 
 the seat of injustice ; and the clergy who are shielded, 
 even when they bear upon them the stain of crime. 
 
 Alexander VI. was succeeded in the Chair of St. 
 Peter by Pius III., who had long "been ''Protector of 
 the realm of England " at the Papal Court, by the 
 appointment of Henry YII. The king sent a knight, 
 William Talbot^ with the Abbot of Glastonbury and 
 the Dean of St. Paul's, to congratulate the new pontiff, 
 who, however, died before the deputation arrived in 
 Rome. Julius II. succeeded him ; and the embassy 
 which carried the royal congratulations were commanded 
 to deliver the vestment of the Order of the Garter to 
 Guido Ubald, Duke of Urbino. About the same time 
 Richard, bishop of Winton, is despatched to Calais to 
 negotiate the betrothal of the Princess Mary, then ten 
 years of age, to Charles of Castile. The meagre narra- 
 tive has now passed over the events of seven years in . 
 about three pages. 
 
 We come to the end of a period of three years, 
 supposed to be fatal to the king. He felt his health 
 to be languishing ; and, desirous to win the goodwill 
 of the people by an act of gratuitous liberality, he 
 published an edict of universal pardon to all who had 
 broken the laws, except thieves and murderers. For 
 these last had not injured him, but their neighbours. 
 The conception of Law was therefore the expression of 
 the king's will, and the violation of it an offence against 
 himself. It may be fairly said that to think of the 
 Law as something agreed on by all classes of the 
 people through their representatives, and binding on 
 all by common consent, was foreign to the mind of 
 
336 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Englishmen. Their sovereign lord the king was a 
 being endowed with the usual attributes of an Oriental 
 despot in the teaching of the clergy, whose ideas were 
 derived from Oriental models. 
 
 Henry died at Richmond in 1509, and was buried 
 in the chapel he had built at Westminster, leaving three 
 out of eight children behind him— Henry, Prince of 
 Wales, Margaret, and Mary. Polydore furnishes us 
 with the conventional portrait of Henry, in which his 
 The "wise extraordinary ''wisdom" is brought into re- 
 king." markable emphasis. The portrait may be 
 
 compared in general with that of Louis XL, as illus- 
 trating a contemporary mode of art. It is conceived, 
 on the whole, in a flattering temper, and can hardly be 
 received, considering the barrenness of authentic sources, 
 as one of great fidelity to the original. When it is 
 said that Henry hated pride and arrogance, and that 
 he would not brook the rivalry of any will with his 
 own, not even that of his highly sagacious mother, and 
 that he used to say " he would rule, not be ruled : " 
 we infer that the general impression left behind was 
 that of a strong man, who wielded the sceptre with 
 severe regard to justice, yet with relentings to mercy. 
 But it is a very ironical commentary on the theories of 
 a constitutional Government during this reign that it 
 should be said of the king, he allowed the people to be 
 bled by the fiscal judges to put down their ferocity. 
 When they were nearly faint to death, he would relieve 
 them, and " let their feathers grow again." 
 
 The tales of incessant plots, insurrections, and fearful 
 massacre on Blackheath, the arbitrary imprisonments 
 and confiscations, all show that there was not, and 
 could not have been as yet, any strong Grovernment, in 
 the proper sense of the word, in England ; but that all 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 337 
 
 things tended, if a stable monarchy were to be erected 
 at all, to an absolute tyranny. In despair of arriving 
 at any certainty as to the true character of Henry, we 
 may regard him as a soldier of fortune who profited by 
 the general movement in Europe towards a settled 
 system of government, after long and wasteful civil 
 strife. It is no doubt not by mere convenience that 
 we think of the Middle Ages as drawing to an end. 
 The craze for fruitless expeditions to the East was sub- 
 siding ; and the more steady interests of legitimate 
 commerce, with the acquisition of wealth, and all the 
 tastes that wealth brings in its train, created a demand 
 for law and order. But the response to this demand 
 came in the shape of experiments in tyranny, which 
 were to run their course during the following century. 
 
 The clergy who have darkened and damned the 
 memory of the Yorkist princes have done their best to 
 convert the founder of the Tudor monarchy into a saint. 
 The Franciscan Friars have been especially 
 
 T r T n Henry and 
 
 eager to honour his memory as the founder 01 the Fran- 
 three convents of the Observants, one at Eich- 
 mond, one at Greenwich, a third at Newark. The 
 other family of the same Order, the Conventuals, 
 assigned their houses at Canterbury, Newcastle, and 
 Southampton to his donation. It is probably an echo 
 of the praises of the Friars that we read in Polydore, 
 who cannot doubt that so glorious a king has returned 
 to heaven that he may enjoy eternity, in reward for his 
 diligent practice of religious duties. 
 
 No business was suffered to detain him from the 
 sacred office. He heard two or three " masses, as we 
 call them " (says Polydore) daily, and sermons often. 
 He gave alms in secret, according to the precept of 
 Christ, and he had a royal almoner. He prayed much, 
 
338 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 and especially on feast days recited the Canonical Hours. 
 But, not relying on his own prayers, he was aided by 
 priests of every order, and bestowed upon them great 
 largesses, that they might pray for him and for the 
 whole kingdom. An annual income was assigned for 
 the rite of prayers on behalf of his soul. He gave 
 direction in his will, that monies unjustly obtained by 
 the fiscal judges should be restored, and that the Savoy 
 Hospital for the poor should be completed. This work 
 was hindered, says Polydore, by the violent demands 
 made for restitution by men who had suffered from 
 heavy fines. The lesson is, remarks the moralist, that 
 when we have goods to distribute we should do it 
 " with our own, and not another's hand." The scene 
 which followed on the accession of the new king, when 
 a clamorous multitude thronged the royal gates, de- 
 manding not only restitution of goods, but the lives 
 of Hemson and Dudley, who were sacrificed to their 
 vengeance, is an ironical commentary on the memory of 
 the sainted king. 
 
 The closing page of Polydore's twenty-sixth book 
 thus reminds us, and in a very emphatic, if indirect 
 way, that the study of the history of our country is in- 
 volved in the study of the rise of English Letters ; and 
 this again in the study of Italian Letters during the 
 fifteenth century. It will be found that Polydore has 
 given us all the essential information on this subject ; 
 and that if later writers appear to know more, it is 
 because they resorted to pure invention, and because 
 every name that had been puffed into greatness by the 
 adulation of scholars became still greater with the lapse 
 of time, as a variety of interested fables were gathered 
 around it. The fact remains, and should be insisted 
 on, all the more because the imagination, in spite of 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 339 
 
 ourselves, recoils with pain from the thought of utter 
 darkness : that the ignorance in England was almost 
 inconceivably dense ; the English fancy, on the other 
 hand, extremely excitable and inventive at the begin- 
 ning of the sixteenth century. During the whole of 
 that age the English mind continued in that habit. 
 Lying became a fine art in the service of political and 
 ecclesiastical interests. 
 
 Some writers, as Hume and Hallam, have preferred 
 the " Life of Henry VH." ascribed to Francis Bacon to 
 the more slender narrative of Polydore. But Francis 
 Bacon, writing for the pleasure of King James and 
 Prince Charles, had discovered no fresh material for his- 
 tory. He admits that he is at a great distance from his 
 object, and that his light is but uncertain. The additions 
 he makes to Polydore are either drawn from spurious 
 Records, or are of his own imagination. Hallam has 
 noticed some inconsistencies in the account of the pre- 
 tended laws of '' the wise king." Supposing the life 
 to have been actually written by Bacon, and not far 
 from the time of his disgrace, it may reflect the sub- 
 serviency of the courtier, but the reasoning is that of 
 the advocate and the sophist. While Polydore seems 
 to think that the title of Henry to the crown rested 
 merely on ancient British prophecy, Bacon is fulsome 
 on the subject, and makes out five titles for Henry, each 
 of them bad ; but together constituting what he calls a 
 wreath of titles. The philosopher — if he it was — thinks 
 that five bad reasons, if added together, will produce 
 one good one. It was reserved for another distinguished 
 lawyer. Chief Justice Blackstone, to rend asunder the 
 web of fiction about Henry Tudor's title. He was a 
 violent usurper ; nothing could conceal that fact from 
 the conscience of the English people. His fictitious 
 
340 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 prototype, Henry IV., was also a violent usurper, as 
 Polydore calls him, and he is fitly traced to a fictitious 
 ancestor Edmund, son of Henry HI. 
 
 Polydore is merely a witness for the fact that the 
 common people in the beginning of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury still call the two great Houses the Two Roses. 
 The literary fictions on this subject were but beginning 
 in his time ; and it is one of the many curious illustra- 
 tions of the efiect of dogma on invention that Bacon 
 should venture to say Henry never truly loved his 
 White Rose queen, who bore him so many children ; 
 because he could not surmount his inveterate Lancastrian 
 antipathies. Curious, again, it is to note the influence 
 of the same dogma on the kindred art of painting. We 
 have no portrait on canvas or panel of Henry VH. that 
 can be regarded as authentic, or taken from the life. 
 There is, however, a large half-mythological painting by 
 Jan de Mabuse, which represents the nuptials of Henry • 
 with Elizabeth. 
 
 The artist has followed the clerical ideal of Henry. 
 Picture by The king has a slender, almost emaciated 
 de Mabuse. fQ^ni ; in appropriate dress he would pass 
 for a monk and an ascetic. Instead of advancing with 
 joy to meet his bride, he stands in a reluctant attitude, 
 his eyes cast to the ground ; while the pleasant English 
 face of the Yorkist heiress confronts the spectator. A 
 portentous saint or prelate of almost superhuman 
 stature imposes from the background on your gaze. 
 
 The picture was lent by Mrs. Dent of Sudely to the 
 Tudor Exhibition of 1890. It was formerly in the 
 Strawberry Hill collection, and Horace Walpole thus 
 describes it : " On one hand, in the foreground, stand 
 the king and the Bishop of Imola, who pronounced 
 the nuptial benediction. His Majesty is a trist, lean, 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 341 
 
 ungracious figure, with a downcast look, very expressive 
 of his mean temper, and of the little satisfaction he had 
 in the match. Opposite to the bishop is the queen, a 
 buxom, well-looking damsel, with golden hair. By her 
 is a figure above all proportion with the rest, unless 
 intended, as I imagine, for an emblematic personage, 
 and designed from its lofty stature to give an idea of 
 something above human. It is an elderly man, dressed 
 like a monk, except that his habit is green, his feet bare, 
 and a spear in his hand. As the frock of no religious 
 order ever was green, this cannot be meant for a friar. 
 Probably it is St. Thomas, represented, as in the martyr- 
 ologies, with the instrument of his death. The queen 
 might have some devotion to that peculiar saint, or 
 might be born or married on his festival." 
 
 Another example of the ecclesiastical literary art 
 of the early sixteenth century is the portrait pisher's 
 of the Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of l^^^'j^lf 
 Richmond, assigned to the pen of her Con- Margaret. 
 fessor John Fisher, who became Bishop of Rochester. 
 There seems little reason to doubt that his funeral ser- 
 mon in her honour was written down about the year 
 1509. It offers many valuable incidental illustrations 
 of the habit of the clerical imagination at that epoch. 
 Martha in the Gospel is taken for the prototype of the 
 Lady Margaret, and Martha is thought of as a noble 
 lady of the feudal time, who has inherited the " Castle 
 of Bethany." 
 
 The lineal descent of the countess is duly asserted 
 from King Edward III. It is then shown that she had 
 not only nobleness of blood, but also of manners and of 
 nature. Her intelligence and her learning are highly 
 praised. She is said to have possessed a great number 
 of books both in English and French. She translated 
 
342 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 devotional books from French into English. She 
 regretted that her knowledge of Latin was slight ; 
 nevertheless she could follow the Kubric of the Ordinal 
 of the Mass. 
 
 In the ninth year of her age, when her betrothal 
 to the Earl of Eichmond was proposed, she was taught 
 to commend herself to St. Nicholas, the patron and 
 helper of all true maidens. In answer to her prayers, 
 on the eve of her day of decision, the saint appeared to 
 her, arrayed in his episcopal attire, and bade her take 
 Edmond for her husband. And thus her mind inclined 
 to him. By lineage and by affinity she had thirty kings 
 and queens within the four degrees of marriage to her, 
 beside earls, marquises, dukes, and princes. 
 
 It is upon her devotion especially that the Cardinal 
 loves minutely to dwell : her faithful observance of the 
 fast of Lent, her painful wearing of shirts and girdles of 
 hair on certain days of the week. The greater part of 
 each morning from soon after five till ten or eleven, 
 was occupied with matins and with masses. After 
 dinner, the stations to three altars were duly gone, the 
 dirges and commendations and the evensongs were 
 said. She brought pain and disease upon herself by 
 constant kneeling ; yet daily when she was in health 
 she said " the Crown of our Lady," which demanded 
 sixty -three genuflexions. When wearied of prayer, she 
 betook herself to her French books of devotion. Mar- 
 vellous was her weeping about every third day, and 
 especially when she was houseld, which was nearly a 
 dozen times a year. 
 
 To these descriptions correspond the few extant 
 paintings which are supposed to represent the Lady 
 Margaret in ecclesiastical attire, almost as a nun. The 
 overcharged and affected style of such representations 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 343 
 
 displease the eye of the lover of Nature ; while the 
 admirer of the worth of Englishwomen is offended by 
 the attempt to bring them into so abject a submission 
 to clerical domination. And then again the irony of 
 History will force itself upon us when we recall that the 
 domestic relations of this very Beaufort-Tudor family, 
 over whom the priesthood is said to have acquired so 
 enormous an ascendency, are to cause the greatest 
 disaster to the sacerdotal interest in England. 
 
 The praises of learned men in England during the 
 reign of Henry VII. are much exaggerated. And when 
 we look for more exact information concerning the life 
 and work of Colet and his contemporaries in other 
 sources it is still rhetorical flourish and adulation rather 
 than impressive facts that are ofiered to us. There 
 are, for example, in the letter of Erasmus to Erasmus' 
 Jodocus Jonas, eulogies of John Colet, from ^^"^'■^* 
 which a few particulars may be gleaned, in addition to 
 those in Polydore. 
 
 Greek was all but unknown at Ox on. It was 
 positively discouraged by the Churchmen. The saying 
 ran, according to Erasmus' "Adages," ''Beware of Greek, 
 lest you become a heretic, and of Hebrew, lest you 
 become like unto the Jews." Little of the writings of 
 the Benedictines called the " Fathers " was as yet 
 studied in England. It was abroad that Colet is said 
 to have studied " Dionysius, Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose, 
 and Jerome." Erasmus, or the writer of the letter 
 above named, applauds him for his contempt of the 
 writings ascribed to St. Austin. He sometimes looked 
 into Scotus and Aquinas. He was also read in Church 
 History and in such English poets as were then 
 extant. 
 
 It is Erasmus who confirms Polydore upon the 
 
344 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 merits of Colet as an expositor of PauFs epistles, 
 perhaps from tlie year 1497. So great was the novelty 
 of such readings, that Abbots and other dignitaries 
 came to hear him at Oxon. He also established a 
 similar lecture in St. Paul's, London. He is said to 
 have drawn upon him the evil eye of the Bishop Fitz- 
 james, because of his attacks on the abuses of the 
 Church. He denounced, it is said, the worship of 
 images, and this was an article against him. A curious 
 particular of New Testament exegesis is given in 
 reference to his alleged attacks on the temporal pos- 
 sessions and power of the Bishops. It was pretended 
 on their side that the command of Christ to St. Peter — 
 Feed my sheep — was to be understood of the duty of 
 hospitality. This Colet denied, arguing that the 
 Apostles were poor and should not practise hospi- 
 tality. The text must be understood of a good 
 life and doctrine. In general, it may be understood 
 that Colet was one of the first Biblical professors of 
 whom we have any historical knowledge. And the 
 mystery of the Theological Reformation is essentially 
 part of the mystery of the Pauline epistles. But the 
 unprincipled zeal of Bale, the ex-Carmelite friar, who 
 joined the Protestants in the late sixteenth century, 
 has ascribed many things to Colet which are quite 
 unhistorical. 
 
 It is necessary at every point in the inquiry to 
 guard ourselves against the illusions which are begotten 
 by listening to the large and exaggerated talk of the 
 flourishing state of letters and the tales of great 
 scholars. If faith came by hearing, we might indeed 
 refuse to disbelieve these representations. But we have 
 the power, by the aid of a little patience, of providing 
 ourselves with an historical telescope, and of penetrating 
 
POLYDORE VERGIL. 
 
 345 
 
 the interior of libraries, whose scanty contents at the 
 end of the fifteenth century reveal the actual state of 
 things. The mere ignorance of the Bible among the 
 only learned class is a fairly correct gauge of the state 
 of culture. It is a typical fact when we learn that to 
 Luther and his brotherhood, the Austin friars, the Bible 
 was a novel book. 
 
346 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JOHN LELAND. 
 
 I HAVE now to call the attention of the reader to a 
 Witness of the greatest importance in reference to 
 the state of Letters in England during the reign of 
 Henry VIII. I refer to John Leland. It is probable 
 that he was born late in the reign of the first Tudor 
 prince ; but, as I have had repeated occasion to observe, 
 Kegisters were not kept in those times, and a man 
 might know the anniversary of his birthday without 
 knowing the year in which he was born. Leland was 
 educated under Lily at St. Paul's School and at Christ's 
 College, Cambridge. Later he was at Chicheley's 
 College, All Souls, Oxford. To acquire Greek, he 
 repaired to the Academy of Paris. Henry VIII. gave 
 him the office of Librarian, with the title" Antiquarius." 
 Leland, then, lived in the dawn of our literary 
 culture. He is a good Latin scholar ; he wields the 
 language with ease, but indulges himself too much 
 in that timid rhetoric which conceals an absence of 
 force and a dearth of facts, so common with the 
 Benedictines. He was virtually a pupil of theirs ; he 
 loved the society of the lean and learned rather than 
 the fat and jolly of the Abbots, as he says. He had 
 imbibed their system ; and although he was aware 
 of much trickery and fraud in the monkish literature, 
 
JOHN LELAND. 347 
 
 he passionately defended the fables about the English 
 past which he had learned from " Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth " and the rest of the great chorus. He can 
 inform us with the greatest confidence about the 
 flourishing state of Letters in remote and impossible 
 times from the epoch of the " Druids " downwards ; 
 but he knows not, or does not choose fully to tell, 
 of the spirit of invention that has been so energetically 
 at work in the monasteries since his boyhood. The 
 Abbots were able without difficulty to deceive a man 
 whose mind was possessed by the craze for false 
 antiquity, and who thought it part of his patriotic 
 duty to protest against the cool scepticism of Polydore 
 Vergil. Yet, notwithstanding all this, John Leland 
 is, with his Italian contemporary, a witness who cannot 
 be gainsaid to the fact that English History was the 
 recent invention of his time. 
 
 But let me quote his own account of his literary 
 tour. In a letter addressed to the king, he says — 
 
 " There was through the whole of this kingdom no 
 promontory, port or bay, river, stream, flux of waters, 
 pool, lake, incursion of waters, marsh, mountain, valley, 
 plain, thicket, forest, glade, wood, city, town, burgh, 
 castle, township, villa, village, college, csenobium, 
 abbey, monastery, church, manor, farm, or any note- 
 worthy place that he did not visit ; and he omitted 
 to note down nothing that was worthy of observation." 
 
 He is believed to have been a young man of 
 twenty-five when, in the year 1533, Henry granted 
 him a royal warrant, empowering him to search through 
 the kingdom for writings, records, and archives. He 
 was six years engaged in the labour. It is believed 
 that the subsequent work of digesting his material was 
 too great a tax upon his brain, and that he died of 
 
348 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 frenzy in 1552. His MSS. came into the hands of 
 John Cheke, on whose death they passed to Lord 
 Paget and to Lord Burghley, then to the Rev. Humfrey 
 Purefoy and his son, and so to "William Burton of 
 Lindley, who presented the greater part to the 
 Bodleian. 
 
 The " Commentaries " with which we are here 
 concerned, came into the hands of the reckless John 
 Bale, who garbled them in his '' Centuries." Pits, also 
 an unprincipled man, is denied by his pupil, the Bene- 
 dictine Mayhew, to have ever seen the book, though 
 he loudly praises Leland. It is a remarkable illustra- 
 tion of how young the critical study of English History 
 really is that the Commentaries were only published 
 by Antony Hall of Queen's College, Oxon, in 1709 ; 
 and that they have not since been used, in any 
 thorough way, by the historians of our country. 
 I propose briefly to point out the value of this book 
 by examining Leland on the actual state of Letters 
 from the beginning of the reign of Henry VHL ; and 
 then by examining the state of English imagination 
 in the educated classes as represented by him. What 
 did he know, and what did he dream concerning the 
 past state of the country ? 
 
 Let us accompany John Leland on some of his 
 visits to the religious houses of our cities and towns. 
 London appears to have furnished him with very little 
 literature. However, he tells us that he saw in the 
 Dominican or Black Friar's Library a treatise of 
 " Alured the Englishman " on " the Motion of the 
 Heart." Another copy was in the Petrine Library 
 at Cambridge. This author, said to be nearly a 
 contemporary of " Roger Bacon," and who wrote also 
 " On the Education of Hawks," is said to have 
 
JOHN LELAND. 349 
 
 commented the " Vegetables of Aristotle," and to have 
 translated many things into Latin. 
 
 In Paul's Library Leland refreshed himself with /jv . 
 the perusal of " Colman the Wise," a very little-known // 
 author to the public of Henry VIIL's time. He wrote, ^ , 
 it appears, a " Description of England " in his native 
 '* Saxon " tongue. Poor Leland found it very hard 
 reading, and thought our tongue must have much 
 degenerated since that time ! John Harding (who, it 
 is assumed, wrote in Henry IV. or V.'s time) often cites 
 Colman's Chronicle and his Catalogue. But these were 
 merely Tudor productions ; and Colman was set back 
 to the time of King John. 
 
 Of the Carmelites, or White Friars' Library, Leland 
 says it is the largest in London. He tells the tale 
 of their famous doctor, '' Thomas Wallden," who, dying 
 in 1430, left the friars a library worth at least 2000 
 golden pieces. Yet this library has been strangely 
 reduced in the course of a century ; and Leland can 
 but copy down a short list of worthless treatises 
 ascribed to this great doctor, whose name is interwoven 
 with the legend of Oldcastle and the Hussites. 
 
 One would have been glad if Leland had given us 
 an exact account of the number and nature of the MSS. 
 he found at St. Albans, where (he says) a learned 
 monk named "Koyal Court" showed him "the parch- 
 ment treasures" of the monastery. He names the 
 poem of " Ralph Alban " in heroic verse, and wonders 
 that " Matthew Paris " makes no mention of him. 
 Perhaps Ralph was dead in Matthew's time ! " Nicolas 
 Radcliff" was another very celebrated monk of St. 
 Albans and foe of Wiclif. But the monks at St. Albans 
 did not even know his name. It was at Wells that 
 Leland heard of him. 
 
350 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 At Wells, Leland found in the library the work 
 of '* William the Little," alias of Newburgh, on English 
 History, and he is angry with him for attacking the 
 credit of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and with Polydore 
 for following him, ignorant as they were of the remote 
 antiquity of Britain ! The name of William calls for 
 an outburst of admiration at the great learning of 
 the monks in the time of Eichard L, of lament at 
 their present luxury and sacred sloth. So fixed in 
 his mind was the accredited literary superstition about 
 antiquity. 
 
 Leland went to Malmesbury, his head full of the 
 fame of the great '* William the Librarian" of that 
 cloister and English historian. On asking for the 
 place of his burial, he found that but one or two 
 monks had even heard his name. Leland's knowledge 
 was derived from the titles of books — in other words, 
 from the Benedictine system of fiction. 
 
 When Leland was at Battle Abbey he looked upon 
 the fine tomb in Lydian marble which was called 
 the " tomb of Odo," and the monks told him that 
 in olden time it had been sacred to the vulgar, for 
 Odo was a saint. Leland seems to have his doubts, 
 but he tells us the name is in English merely Wode, 
 or Wood. He could believe in the treatises ascribed 
 to Odo merely because he found them in the Catalogues. 
 
 He refers to a library at Evesham and its 
 "treasures," but all that he sets down are an 
 '' Exhortation to the Sacred Virgins," " On the Miracle 
 of the Eucharist," and "Epistles," all by "Adam of 
 Evesham," the abbot. 
 
 Leland talks of libraries at Oxford and Cambridge, 
 but adduces hardly anything of historical interest. 
 His account of his visit to the house of the Franciscans 
 
JOHN LELAND. 351 
 
 at Oxford is most amusing, and offers one of the 
 most remarkable proofs, not only of the dearth of 
 all useful books, but of the apathy or hostility towards 
 knowledge that prevailed down to the dissolution of 
 the religious houses. 
 
 He is writing about the legendary " Robert Great- 
 head " and his friendship for " Adam Marsh " the 
 Franciscan, to whom, as head of the Oxford house, 
 he left all his books, of which there was a great 
 number. "I was lately at Oxford, and had a great 
 desire to see these books. I sought permission to 
 view the Franciscan library. The few asses there were 
 amazed, and brayed out that no mortal was allowed 
 to visit those sacred recesses and view the mysteries, 
 except their Guardian, as they called their head, and 
 the sacred Bachelors of their College. I insisted, being 
 armed with the king's commission, and all but forced 
 them to open that sacred repository. One of the 
 greater asses, still braying to himself, at last opened 
 the door. Great Heaven ! what did I find ? Dust, 
 cobwebs, moths, worms, filth ! The books ! I would 
 not buy them for three halfpence ! I asked for 
 treasures, and they showed me coals. These are 
 the sacred mysteries, so religiously observed by the 
 Oxford Franciscans." And yet, so duped is Leland 
 by the tales he has heard, he can believe that Bishop 
 Robert's volumes and copies have been thieved away 
 by the wandering Franciscans. " Go now, bishops," 
 he bitterly concludes, '' and hand over by will your 
 literary treasures to friars like these." 
 
 No doubt Leland came upon many illuminated Service 
 Books of value in the course of his travels. He refers, 
 for example, in his usual fulsome style, to one *' William 
 Gray" of Balliol, a man of fortune who travelled in 
 
352 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Italy, and became Bishop of Ely. He acquired a large 
 number of finely written books, and bequeathed them 
 to the library. We hear of similar collections by 
 Gundorp and Free, but without particulars ; nor is 
 there the slightest evidence, from end to end of Leland's 
 work, of books being valued more for their intrinsic 
 worth than for their money value ! There is not the 
 slightest mention of any collection of Chronicles or 
 Histories which were being turned over with eager 
 curiosity by either churchmen or laymen. In fact, 
 there is strong evidence of a listening class, but not 
 of a reading class in any studious modern sense of the 
 word. 
 
 Whenever your eye falls upon Leland diverting 
 himself in a library with eager curiosity, and you ask 
 what he is reading, you meet with a disappointment. 
 It is no treasure in the hioher intellectual sense. You 
 see him in Magdalen Library, Oxford, " devouring " a 
 little poem, half obliterated, called "Dares Phrygius 
 on the Trojan War." This was in his student days. 
 Two years later, when studying in Paris, he visited 
 the library of St. Victor, immortalized by the derision 
 of the ex-Benedictine, Kabelais. He found another 
 imperfect copy of the book, and a third, this time 
 anonymous, in a private house. He borrowed the 
 book, being curious about the authorship, and found a 
 hemistich where the poet speaks in the first person. 
 Somebody had written on the margin in Latin, '' Supply, 
 I Joseph" Was this, then, that splendid star of Britain, 
 that incomparable poet, Joseph Iscan (of Exeter) ? 
 While on his literary tour in later days, Leland found 
 in Thorney Library a perfect copy of the inestimable 
 Joseph. He found that Thomas Baldwin, Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, had been the patron of Joseph who had 
 
JOHN LELAND. 
 
 353 
 
 paraphrased Dares from the Greek. Some taste of 
 the verses is given for the delectation of the " greedy 
 reader ; " they may pass for Kenaissance hexameters 
 by a poet inspired with the Trojan craze, and also, as 
 it seems, with hate to the " Saracens " and the " Sultan 
 of Babylon," and love to King Richard, as witnessed in 
 the poem called the '* Antiochene War." It is incidental 
 evidence of the fact that the romances of the Crusades 
 were but beginning ; that Leland's hunt after a copy of 
 this work was not rewarded, save by the discovery 
 of a fragment at Abingdon. This is incidental evidence 
 of value. 
 
 More remarkable is the following, as illustrating the 
 achronological habit which still prevailed. I mean 
 that, although a list of kings had been made out, it 
 was as yet little regarded. Some one, says Leland, 
 had revised the " Trojan War " " after the death of 
 Baldwin." For King Henry III., " who was second king 
 of the English from Richard," is compared with Hector. 
 Leland adds, that since he wrote the above, a German 
 printed edition of Joseph has appeared, but so corrupt, 
 that Joseph would not recognize his offspring were he 
 alive. Moreover, the book has been falsely put out 
 under the name of " Cornelius Nepos, the Roman." 
 So fast and loose did the literary interest play with 
 names and dates. 
 
 Another amusing article is that on Nennius. What 
 has become of Nennius, so illustrious in the days of 
 yore, as Leland has heard the monks tell. Quite 
 obscured ! Yet if not a window, perhaps a chink may 
 be opened to the light from our tourist's experiences. 
 Riding through Yorkshire, he came to Wharfedale 
 Abbey. The Abbot read the Royal Warrant, and 
 received his visitor with the|. greatest kindness, and led 
 
 2 A 
 
354 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 him straight to his library, well stocked with books. 
 The Abbot went about his public duties, and the eager 
 scholar pounced upon an ^* old copy " inscribed in 
 Latin, " Nennius on the Origin of Britain." Here was 
 a treasure indeed ! But after he had read a little way 
 Leland's heart sank within him ; but he would not lay 
 it down till he had finished. " Was there ever such 
 a fool of a book ? — no profit in it at all, except the 
 discovery that some sciole of a monk had done the like 
 in honour of Nennius that some one had done for 
 Gildas. An affair of splendid lies, old wives' fables, and 
 prodigious barbarism ! Yet so halting is poor Leland's 
 reasoning, he thinks that the true Nennius ought to 
 be found somewhere. Perhaps a great many ancient 
 authors have been destroyed by these forgers and 
 deflowerers ! At last, with much labour, he discovered 
 two old copies of Nennius ; but, alas ! it was no incorrupt 
 "History." There was much about the Britons and 
 Arthur and the Saxon tyranny. This writer must have 
 been a Briton ; he uses British words ; he studied in 
 Ireland. '' Henry of Huntingdon " knew Nennius' 
 " History," but not by his name. Such is Leland's 
 credulity towards written statements about works that 
 are not too impossible in their nonsense ; so little 
 suspicion he has that he has been the dupe, not of 
 occasional, but of systematic falsehood. 
 
 Supposing Leland to have been arranging these 
 notes on British writers about 1540, it is remarkable 
 that he has hardly a word to say of his literary 
 contemporaries, with the exception of Polydore and one 
 or two other foreigners. He ends with Henry VH. ; 
 and perhaps the most important name among those 
 who flourished in that reign is that of John Koss or 
 Rowse, of Warwick, who settled on Guy's Hill, near St. 
 
JOHN LELAND. 355 
 
 Maiy Magdalen, under the protection of the Earl, and 
 busied himself in the study of antiquity and in writing. 
 Leland had seen and read his works on the Antiquity 
 of Warwick and of Guy's Hill, also one against the 
 false History of the Antiquity of Cambridge. He had 
 also written an unfinished work on the Antiquity of 
 British Academies. He died in 1491, having set up a 
 library in the Porch of St. Mary's, Warwick. If the 
 reader will consult the work on English History in 
 Hearne's collection ascribed to this author, he will see 
 that, supposing it to have been written in Henry YH.'s 
 reign or a little before, the theory of English History 
 could only recently have been laid down. 
 
 It is impossible to give an exact account of the 
 number of books in England at the time of Leland's 
 tour. By far the greater part were Biblical and mystical 
 writings in illustration of the system of the Black 
 Monks and the other Orders. Arranged in Catalogues 
 of their imaginary Illustrious men, they make a deceptive 
 show, when it is remembered that many of them are 
 merely advertised, and that they consist of endless 
 repetitions of the same things. The well-written Bene- 
 dictine treatises on English History are the same with 
 those used by Polydore ; the main difference being 
 that Leland brings to light trash which Polydore passes 
 over in contemptuous silence. 
 
 But what was the state of belief of this man's mind, 
 so honest and naturally truth-loving as he shows himself 
 to be? It is the state produced by listening to and 
 readino; uncontradicted tales at St. Paul's and Cambridge 
 and during his literary tour. When he was a child 
 the monks had noised abroad that they had in their 
 mysterious recesses documents of a vast Antiquity, that 
 they could show how true culture had begun in the 
 
356 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 days of Christ under King Lucius, and had gone on, 
 with all its strange interruptions, through some 1500 
 years. His earlier articles are full of the curious legends 
 which made up the orthodox teaching of the time, and 
 of observations which show the utter imbecility of 
 judgment on the part of the most learned Englishman 
 of his time. He supposes, for example, that the British 
 tongue before the arrival of Caesar was partly Hebrew 
 and Greek and partly barbarian, even as French ; then 
 by use it became " sesquilatin." He explains English 
 words as if he were a foreigner. Lost in his bookish 
 day-dreams, he never compares what he reads with the 
 actual condition of human nature, never thinks of 
 exploding the mock mysteries of the monasteries, or 
 of asking himself how old his " old copies " are, and by 
 what miraculous means these wonderful traditions had 
 been handed down, in spite of fires and Danes and other 
 enemies of books, to the lazy monks of his own time. 
 He believes the substance of the long string of tales to 
 be quite true, because he has been cradled in them and 
 they were part of the Christian religion. He is annoyed 
 even by the disbelief of Polydore in the monk of 
 Monmouth ; and would have been horrified had he 
 chanced upon a literary abbot who could assure him 
 that the whole system was about half a century old. 
 
 We cannot point to a single Hebrew scholar, whether 
 monk or secular, in England during the reign of Henry 
 VHL Yet Leland can believe the fine tale that Hebrew 
 culture has flourished in England, and has died away, 
 like a plant on uncongenial soil. A monk at Ramsey 
 Abbey told him that one " Laurence Holbeck " had com- 
 piled a Hebrew Dictionary in the time of Henry IV., 
 but "that polypus Robert Wakefield" had carried it 
 off a few years ago. Not content with this, Hebrew 
 
JOHN LELAND. 357 
 
 lore must be deduced from the time of " William the 
 Conqueror " and the learned Gregory, a monk of the 
 cloister. It is a dogma that the Jews came hither with 
 the Normans from Rouen ; consequently they must 
 have brought Rabbinical learning with them. But 
 Edward Longshanks sent them into exile ; their 
 synagogues were profaned, their books sold by auction 
 at Ramsey and Stamford. Gregory hurried thither 
 with the needful cash, and exchanged his copper for the 
 gold of literature. The Jews knew nothing of all this ; 
 they were themselves attempting slight Chronicles only 
 during the Revival of Letters. In short, the state of 
 mind of Leland is that of one who seems to see afar in 
 his daydream of learning the light shining on inacces- 
 sible peaks, while an impenetrable mist and darkness 
 gathers over the whole foreground of his retrospect. 
 
 I am tempted to give one more illustration of this 
 state of mind, because it is peculiarly instructive to 
 every student of human thought and life. Leland, in 
 the course of his tour, paid a visit to what was called 
 the '' Oratory of Bede." He stands and wonders. 
 " How has this sacred place been preserved from the 
 ferocity of William the Conqueror down to the present 
 day ? " He does not resolve his doubts. He reads the 
 account of the death of Bede by Cuthbert, and is affected 
 by the exhibition of so much sanctity. His doubts, 
 perhaps, disappear. He is no humorist ; he is vexed 
 because all is not so clear as it might be. Those 
 monstrous Danes ! how could the works of Bede have 
 escaped their hands ? But whatever doubt there may 
 be about these matters, it is clear that " Hector Boece," 
 the Scot, is an old w^oman and a fool in his talk about 
 Bede. He provokes laughter and wrath. Why, he 
 pretends that Bede studied in Italy, that in his old 
 
358 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 age he stayed at Melrose, that he died at Durham. As 
 if Bede did not say himself something very different 
 from this, and Cuthbert that he was buried at Jarrow. 
 See what Simeon of Durham and Eoger Hoveden say 
 about Bede : he never was in Italy ! Leland was not 
 aware that the canon who writes as " Hector Boece " 
 was but little older than himself, and that his allusions 
 to Bede show how the literary legend was yet in its 
 plastic state. 
 
 Leland was not a man of genius like his con- 
 temporary, the jesting monk who wrote under the mask 
 of " Rabelais," and poured contempt upon the whole 
 system of historic fiction that was coming into vogue. 
 In the Catalogue of Absurdities in the library of St. 
 Victor, Paris, Rabelais sets down " Beda, de Optimitate 
 Triparum ! " Nor had Leland taste enough to under- 
 • stand that no man ever passed in England under such 
 a name as Beda, which is merely allegorical of the idea 
 of prayer ; or that his praying-place was a part of 
 the same holy convention. So far on the nature of 
 Lehind's testimony to the state of Letters in England. 
 He was not aware, in his grief at what he thought to 
 be the decadence of culture, that he was living in the 
 great intellectual seed-time of England. 
 
 The Rise of the Chaucer Legend and Poetry. 
 
 The story of the rise of English culture might be 
 written almost exclusively from the rich material 
 supplied by the " Canterbury Tales." For this poet, or 
 this guild of poets, is full of a knowledge of the actual 
 world to be found nowhere else. I may remind the 
 reader — but it is unnecessary — of the praises of Roger 
 Ascham. But let me briefly show that the work should 
 
JOHN LELAND. 359 
 
 be studied as a mirror of the manners, the ideas, the 
 reminiscences and the beliefs about the past, during the 
 early Tudor period. It is John Leland who, writing 
 perhaps about 1540, first informs us of the growth of 
 the legend about Geoffrey Chaucer. He knows, as 
 usual, nothing definite of any personality. He merely 
 argues the matter on the basis of rumour, which pro- 
 ceeded from some writers in the interests of the 
 Nobility, who wished to refer the beginnings of Natural 
 Poetry to the imagined brilliant time of Richard of 
 Bordeaux and the two Henries who followed. 
 
 The effort was made to represent Chaucer as a 
 universal genius, dialectician, rhetor, poet, philosopher 
 and mathematician, an ornament of Oxford. There 
 is some ground for believing that the White Friars 
 had part in this construction, because a book on the 
 " Sphere *' is set down to Chaucer, wherein he is made 
 to own his debt to two Carmelites. He must also be 
 represented as *'a holy Theologian'' to complete the 
 tale of his perfection. He must be made to sojourn in 
 France, so as to adorn himself with all the graces of 
 French culture. And finally, he must, like all our 
 English illustrious, be at home in the Inns of Court and 
 the colleges of the lawyers. He must be the friend of 
 Gower, and his one object must be the adornment of 
 the English tongue " in all numbers." He must lay 
 the Italian and French poets under contribution, 
 Petrarch and Alan, and must rival them. He must 
 translate from French and Latin into English ; and 
 then he must proceed to write verses '' out of his own 
 head." He must bring our language to that pitch of 
 purity, eloquence, and grace, that it may take its place 
 among the polished tongues of the world. So England 
 shall place her National Poet in the same rank with 
 
 k 
 
36o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Dante and with Petrarch ; nay, with Maeonides of 
 Greece, and with Virgil of Eome. 
 
 Leland quotes his own Epigrams, and also some 
 verses written a few years before at the request of the 
 printer Bertholet. But Chaucer is not yet known to 
 the Humanist Latin poets, Leland laments. He will 
 therefore give a list of Chaucer's pieces. He says that 
 William Caxton — who, it is agreed, was our first printer 
 — collected all the works he could acquire in one 
 volume. Better was the edition of Bertholet and 
 Thynne, who, after research for old copies, made many 
 additions. Brian Tuck, a friend of Leland's, added a 
 preface to the last impression. Leland's testimony, 
 therefore — omitting the uncertain Caxton edition — 
 reaches only to " a few years before " the time of his 
 writing, and cites the edition then printed for the list 
 of Chaucer's works, which he gives in Latin. There 
 are the twenty-four Cantian Tales, two in prose. 
 ''Peter Ploughman" is Chaucer's by common consent 
 of scholars, but in both editions it is suppressed, because 
 of its attacks on the morals of priests. He then gives 
 a list of twenty other pieces, mostly of Humane poetry, 
 the first of which is the '' Eomaunt of the Rose," adding 
 that these books " are read everywhere at the present 
 day." Further, Leland finds that in the prologue to the 
 " Loves of the Heroides," the poet confesses that he 
 had written a little book on the death of the Duchess 
 Blanche of Lancaster, and that he translated an 
 opuscle of Origen on Magdalen, " if, indeed, Origen 
 wrote anything of the kind." 
 
 In this vague way does Leland speak of the rise of 
 English poetry and of the supposed great founder of 
 the art of writing with " torrent eloquence " in our 
 native tongue. So little pure-hearted love is there for 
 
JOHN LELAND. 361 
 
 art as art, it must needs be added, that it was an 
 addition to Chaucer's glory that he had a sister wedded 
 to William Pole (unless the name escapes me), Duke 
 of SuiFolk. She lived in great splendour at Ewelme, 
 and there died and was buried, as Leland has heard. 
 Chaucer himself died in London, and was buried at 
 Westminster, leaving his son Lewis heir of his 
 property and his seat at Woodstock, hard by the royal 
 villa. " Some time after " W^illiam Caxton affixed a 
 distich on his monument, taken from a certain dirge 
 written by Stephen Sarigono of Milan. 
 
 Nothing whatever was discovered about Chaucer 
 after John Leland's time, but much was invented under 
 the pressure of curiosity, and the great desire, as the 
 works grew in favour, to know who he really was. 
 There is great want of humour in these researches and 
 fables. The simple fact is that a coterie of wits, 
 scholars, under the powerful protection of certain noble 
 houses, chose, as in many analogous cases, to set up an 
 ideal personality whom no one could discover ; to plant 
 him in " good old times " in the society of kings and 
 nobles, and, secure under the mask of his name, to 
 describe the manners of the early Tudor time, and 
 launch the shafts of satire at the religious orders. The 
 allusions to Ewelme and Woodstock would doubtless 
 be understood by the initiated ; but the secret was well 
 kept ; and John Leland knew no more of the source of 
 this literary activity than he knew of the origin of the 
 legend of Wiclif. Merton College may very probably 
 have been in the secret. 
 
 The remarks of Sidney in the " Defence of Poesy " 
 may be recalled, that it was strange the poet should see 
 so clearly in a misty time, and that in brighter ages 
 men should go stumblingly after him. The difficulty 
 
362 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 is solved when we once understand that the admirable 
 men of the Chausir or Chaucer guild were, in fact, men 
 of the Kenaissance, working under the stimulus of the 
 great time when, as Polydore says, Letters flowed over 
 the Alps to these Northern climes. They lead us out 
 of the gloomy cell into the light of day ; they reveal 
 the England and Europe of the fifteenth century by 
 their retrospective pictures, and the actual England of 
 the early Tudor period by their faithful studies of 
 manners and costumes from the very life. Their know- 
 ledge of their ignorance is the measure of the knowledge 
 and ignorance of the best-educated men during the 
 reign of Henry VIII. 
 
( 363 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 EARLY PRINTED BOOKS — LEGENDS OF THE PRESS. 
 
 A BRIEF examination of the legends of the early Printing 
 Presses and of the books issued therefrom will show, in 
 the first place, how small in amount was the literature 
 produced down to the end of the reign of Henry VII. 
 In the second place, it will show that the notion of 
 making out a Chronicle of the past is but in its incep- 
 tion. In the third place, the quality of the Chronicle 
 itself reflects a state of willing credulity among the 
 English audience, and of utter ignorance, to which no 
 fable, however monstrous, was unacceptable. Again, it 
 will be seen that what was called English Story was 
 contrived upon etymological fancies and deductive prin- 
 ciples, that its substance was partly borrowed from, and 
 partly invented in analogy to, old historical legends 
 of Greece. 
 
 I may also call attention to the uncertainty in the 
 dating of the early books ; because I believe that by an 
 induction of such instances from the English Presses 
 and from those on the Continent, the probability or 
 almost the certainty will be made out, that the custom 
 of dating from the era of the Incarnation was only 
 beginning at some time subsequent to Typography. 
 
 We have been taught to repeat the name of William 
 Caxton as that of the man who first introduced The Caxton 
 the mystery of printing into England. This ^'*^^^* 
 
364 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 is part of our national literary dogma or convention. 
 But tlie facts are quite negative in their teaching as to 
 the personality of Caxton ; as the patient researches of 
 the late Mr. William Blades have shown. 
 
 We must dismiss from our minds the patriotic 
 imaginations of late writers like Thomas Fuller, and 
 attend strictly to the manner in which the legend of 
 Caxton grew up, in analogy to the legends of the 
 Illustrious men of the Church. 
 
 The reader needs, perhaps, no reminder that our 
 early British story was brought into currency by 
 scholars who were acquainted with the legend of Troy. 
 When the prologue to the '' Recuyell of the Historic of 
 Troy " was put before the public, it contained a state- 
 ment referring Caxton's origin to the Weald of Kent. 
 From the prologue to the " Life of Charles the Great " 
 it is intimated that the printer had learned to read and 
 write a fair hand. So the figure of Master William 
 Caxton of the Weald of Kent, Mercer, arose before 
 English imagination, and doubtless it was agreeable to 
 connect the patriotic tradition of Kent with the art of 
 Typography. 
 
 But the reader must be warned, on the strength of 
 a long induction of cases, against supposing that the 
 statements in our early printed books are of any 
 biographical value. The habit of fiction prevails every- 
 where, and in the case of this noble art on its intro- 
 duction, secrecy and disguise were means of mere self- 
 protection and defence. The " Recuyell " referred to is 
 believed to have been the first book printed in English, 
 and the purport of the title-page is to convey to the 
 reader the impression that a priest and chaplain of the 
 House of Burgundy had translated the collection from 
 Latin into French, and that William Caxton, the Mercer 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 365 
 
 of London, had rendered them from French into English 
 at the command of the Lady Margaret, Duchess of 
 Burgundy, the Yorkist princess who played so impor- 
 tant a part in English politics after the death of her 
 brother Edward IV. Further, the reader was invited to 
 believe that the work was begun in Bruges in the year 
 of the Incarnation of our Lord God, 1468, and finished 
 in the holy city of Colen in 1471. Not the slightest 
 confidence can be placed in the literal accuracy of the 
 dates, but it may be quite safe to infer that the House 
 of Burgundy and the Mercers' Company of London had 
 great part in the patronage of the printers' enterprise. 
 
 The prime authority for any statements about 
 Caxton is the early printed books ; and the statements 
 or allusions then made are of that vague and un- 
 supported kind on which nothing definite can be built. 
 On closer attention, it appears that the stealth and 
 deliberate craft with which a system of literature had 
 been begun in the Benedictine cloisters, attended on all 
 the movements of the printing press. How idle an 
 anachronism to refer the modern habits of the Press to 
 that turbulent time ! It is indeed a proof of the secrecy 
 and jealousy of the early printers that the old habits 
 so mechanically continue in certain matters that may 
 seem unimportant to laymen : as Mr. Blades, a learned 
 member of the craft, has told us. 
 
 It is believed that the book on " Chess " was the 
 earliest printed in England. The actual year The Game 
 of the publication is uncertain ; though one ^* ^^^^^• 
 edition bears date 1474 and no place, a second edition 
 bears no date at all. But here the printers, behind the 
 mask of Caxton, entertain us with a story of a French 
 Doctor of Divinity of the Order of St. John's, Jerusalem, 
 who wrote a book called " Chess moralized." It had 
 
366 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 been translated at Bruges into English. The figures 
 are rudely cut, and the Game, itself of Oriental origin, 
 is seen to be in its infancy in the West. It has, how- 
 ever, assumed an ecclesiastical stamp. Curious, and 
 not merely curious, but important to observe, that the 
 Rooks are said to be Vicars and Legates of the King ; 
 and that they are represented with caps or hoods on 
 their heads, similar to that in the well-known figure 
 of Caxton. It has been assumed, and with good reason, 
 that the print of Caxton has been invented from these 
 figures, until seeing has become believing, and we think 
 we know William Caxton in his hood. 
 
 The eff*ort is to make the unfortunate Duke of 
 Clarence patron of the book and protector 
 
 Conjectures f J- 
 
 as to author- oi the prmtcrs, and so to confirm the notion 
 that it had been produced in England : of 
 which there is really no evidence. If we pursue the 
 history of the book a little higher, we come upon one 
 of the catalogues of the friars, which are all constructed 
 upon the principle of making out an imaginary antiquity 
 for their illustrious writers. Thus Antonius Senensis, 
 the Chronicler of the Order of Preachers, or Dominicans, 
 gives the author as Jacobus de Cezolio of the year 
 1295. Then it is said by Lambecius that the name 
 was Casalis, from the town of Casali, and that this was 
 corrupted to Thessalis or Thessalonica in the work of 
 Oudain. Then Du Fresne adds another to these wild 
 conjectures by supposing two different men of the same 
 Order, the later of whom lived about 14 10. There is 
 another tale in Pits of one Simon Ailward, c. 1456, 
 who wrote Latin rhymes on the Game. All that is 
 really established — and this is of historic 
 
 Chess of 
 
 Arabian importaucc — is that the Game, as a part of 
 Arabian learning, came into use in the West 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 367 
 
 through the means of the learned monks and friars. 
 The printers to this day call their room a chapel ; but 
 it will never be discovered in what church they were 
 first sheltered. 
 
 On further attention to the evidence it becomes 
 apparent that the printers were working under the 
 patronage and protection of the influential persons who 
 invented our English mythology. In the , 
 '* History of Jason," an undated book, the toryof 
 
 •^ . Ill 1 . . Jason." 
 
 statement is made that the work was written m 
 French by the chaplain of the Duke of Burgundy, whose 
 son, Philip the Good, founded the Order of the Golden 
 Fleece. The book is translated in honour of King 
 Edward IV., as a Knight of that Order. A tale is also 
 told of paintings in the chateau of Hessdin in Artois, 
 which represented the fine old Greek legend, and of 
 contrivances which illustrated the craft of Meden. We 
 are in the Revival of Letters and Art, when Instinct 
 at first directed men to the old Greek lore as a source 
 for a poetic construction of the history of the West. 
 But ecclesiastical interest substituted Gideon's Fleece 
 for Jason's, as the preface of the Caxton Guild already 
 intimates. 
 
 This guild — for such they were — put forth " The 
 Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers " at t^j^ 
 some time not ascertained. The book, how- "i^'^tes." 
 ever, bears the date 1477, and it is pretended that Earl 
 Rivers, a member of the Woodville family, so ill-fated 
 in our national story, had translated the book from the 
 French. A great effort has been made to glorify this 
 Antony Woodville as a chevalier and man of letters ; 
 and in the romances about him we discern those habits 
 and tastes which contributed to form our national epics. 
 He is supposed to have become acquainted with the 
 
368 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 book while on a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella, 
 and to have acquired a very just relish for the " sweet 
 saying of the Paynems " from Homer down to Galen. 
 There is a sly chapter at the end, containing sarcasms 
 on women, imputed to Socrates, with a protest against 
 the notion that they could be possibly applied to the 
 ladies of England. 
 
 Another book put out under the name of Lord 
 Ttje Kivers was the " Cordial," a book of religious 
 
 "Cordial." nieditation from the French. It bears the date 
 1 478. The Epilogue, pretended to be written by Caxton, 
 bears a very strong stamp of Catholic devotion. It 
 will be observed how negative the evidence is, so far, 
 on the question of historical writing or reading in 
 England. We have nothing more as yet than a hint 
 of the influence of the Greek mythology at work in 
 the poetic and inventive brains of our enterprising 
 chroniclers. 
 
 We come to the year 1480. Three books bear this 
 date, viz. "The Image of the World," "The Meta- 
 morphoses of Ovid," and " The Chronicles," with a 
 " Description of England." 
 
 The Prologue to "The Image of the World" is 
 
 fictitious. But it may be collected from its 
 
 Image of s'tatcmcuts that what passed for Science in 
 
 the World." . . nn ^ i -, n 
 
 the late liiteenth century was translated from 
 Latin into French, and so into English. And again, the 
 Caxton guild show their desire to claim the protection 
 of French and English nobles, of the Goldsmiths' Com- 
 pany, and of the Abbots of Westminster. The memory 
 of Edward IV. and Lord Hastings, his Chamberlain, is 
 preserved in the prologue. 
 
 The contents of the book reveal that great hyper- 
 trophy and that excitement of phantasy which was 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 369 
 
 leading some men into great illusions, others on the 
 path of genuine invention. Here are the tales of the 
 great Wizard Virgil, his copper fly which chases all other 
 flies from his presence, and his brazen horse which cures 
 all animals that look upon it. Here, too, we have the 
 legend of the Brasen Head (repeated in connection with 
 Roger Bacon), which answers all questions and foretells 
 all events. The precious relics of Virgil are said to 
 have been seen at Naples when the book was first 
 written, i.e. in that magical century, the thirteenth. 
 The general facts suggest the existence of some company 
 of scholars who made capital out of the great name 
 of the old Roman, and used it to give solemnity to 
 their prodigious stories. The popularity of the book, 
 together with the nature of its contents, enable us to 
 form a clear idea of the general state of the public 
 mind — ignorant, credulous, yet full of that curiosity 
 which leads in the end to genuine knowledge. The 
 over-stimulation of the appetite for the miraculous led 
 to a jaded state of the imagination, which began to 
 recover itself in healthful contact with the facts of the 
 world. 
 
 But we are more immediately concerned in this 
 place with the book of *' Chronicle of " chronicle 
 England." The compilers of the book are ^^^"^1^"^." 
 necessarily unknown. It may, however, be taken for 
 certain that they belonged to the literary clique who 
 were in the whole secret of the invention of English 
 story ; and the interest of the book consists in the fact 
 that it contains the first argument of that long Drama 
 of Kings which our poets and chroniclers elaborated. 
 It is, and naturally so under these conditions, a very 
 meagre production, although it is supposed to cover 
 the immense period of time from the lady Albine 
 
 2 B 
 
370 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 eponymous heroine of the isle Albion, down to the 
 beginning of the reign of Edward IV. 
 
 The idea of our mythographers was to deduce the 
 The story is whole story of the British Isles from the 
 deductive, legends of the East, that is from the Greek 
 mythology, with which was later mixed that of the 
 Jews and Arabians. Out of the names of places those 
 of heroic personalities are derived, precisely after the 
 analogy of the old mythologies. This Albion 
 gives rise to Albine, who is feigned one of 
 thirty daughters of Diocletian, a great " king of Syria." 
 The rest of the story is framed upon the model of 
 the myth of Danam and ^gyptus, the eponyms of 
 Danaon Argos and Egypt : which was invented by the 
 Greek settlers in the Delta to account for their presence 
 there, and to ascertain their title to the land. 
 Daughters and sons are symbolic expressions for lands 
 and tribes ; weddings stand for alliances or conquests 
 and the like. So Albine, daughter of the Syrian king, 
 comes to our island, and by her wedding with a 
 daemon, becomes the parent of a race of monsters, 
 who peopled the land until the coming of Brute the 
 Trojan. [Other writers of the same faction were busy 
 with similar inventions concerning the origin of the 
 Scotch, Irish, and Welsh. So late as about 1520 a 
 writer had produced a story connecting Athens, Egypt 
 in the time of Moses, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland in 
 one web of legend, the principal figure in which is 
 Scota, daughter of Pharaoh and ancestress of all the 
 Scots.] 
 
 But to return to the " Chronicles " of the " Caxton 
 Guild." When they pause after their immense retro- 
 spect at the beginning of Edward lY.'s reign, they have 
 not yet touched a single authentic fact in their course ; 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 371 
 
 and the few decades which intervene between that reign 
 and their own time form a blank almost entire in 
 their memory ; so that it had to be filled up with the 
 forms and colours of an awful domestic drama of the 
 two royal houses. The whole is pure invention in 
 the same sense in which an epic is an invention. 
 The motive is to establish a dogma of English His- 
 tory, and to make the stories of kings illustrative of 
 that dogma. If the tradition is that the Caxton 
 *' Chronicles " were printed in a Benedictine abbey, the 
 certainty is that the composition of them was mainly 
 the work of the literary monks of that Order. 
 
 One of the curious illustrations of their system is 
 that they tell the tale how King John was stonof 
 poisoned at Swineshead Abbey by a monk, ^^"sJohn. 
 which is repeated again and again in other Chronicles. 
 The reason is because King John has to play the part 
 of the tyrant, and the monk that of the patriot in the 
 English drama. It is the same thing over again when 
 the Benedictine " Matthew Paris " and. the Scotch canon 
 Major represent the Prior of Clerkenwell in the follow- 
 ing reign as threatening to dethrone the son of King 
 John if he should cease to do justice to the prelates. In 
 the dramatic reply of Henry he is made to confirm the 
 tale of his father's murder at the instigation of the 
 Order. The tale receives the support of Langtoft, 
 Higden, John of Tynemouth, Otterbourne the Fran- 
 ciscan, and others of the monastic Orders. 
 
 The times were violent when these Chronicles were 
 written down. But the language is probably more 
 violent than the deeds. It might be going too far to 
 assert that the lines of Yorkist and Lancastrian princes 
 were constantly threatened from the cloisters, unless 
 they complied with the politics of the Abbots. And 
 
372 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 yet it is clear enough, from the best authority we have 
 \ on the reign of Henry YIL, that he had reason to dread 
 the religious houses as hotbeds of conspiracy and 
 rebellion ; and that he desired to suppress their rights 
 of sanctuary. However, the tales about King John, 
 here to be found in their germ, are among the most 
 significant in the whole invention. At a time when 
 the people of England were goaded to madness by the 
 oppressions of the Hierarchy, they who were mainly 
 responsible for the misery sit down to draw the por- 
 trait of an impossible tyrant, who tramples on the 
 people without being able to defend himself, and of 
 equally impossible lovers of liberty in the persons of 
 barons and prelates of the Order of St. Benedict. 
 
 It is equally clear that the description of these 
 Description islauds affixcd to the Caxton " Chronicles " 
 of Britain, procccds from the Benedictines. It has been 
 derived from the " Polychronicon," a production to 
 which we have referred in another part of this work. 
 This is the only English Geography we have before 
 the time of Henry VIII. It was not known until late 
 in the preceding age ; and it reveals the astounding 
 ignorance of the subject, together with the conceit 
 of orthodox knowledge which prevailed before the 
 discovery of America. The English translation of the 
 " Polychronicon " is dated 1482. 
 
 But let us pass from Westminster to St. Albans. 
 The press at The Icgcud ruus that Caxton and the St. 
 St. Albans, ^iba^g printer were in correspondence, which 
 resolves itself into the general fact of a close guild, 
 the members of which wrought in concert, under 
 Benedictine superintendence. There is the story that 
 a " Treatise on Rhetoric," compiled in Cambridge by 
 a Franciscan, was printed at St. Albans in 1480. But 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 373 
 
 where the symptoms of confederacy clearly appear is 
 in the case of the '' St. Albans Chronicle," » st. Aibans 
 so called, and dated 1483. Our late Tudor Chronicle." 
 chroniclers, Grafton and Foxe, confounded it with 
 Caxton Chronicles, for it is of the same mint. De 
 Worde's edition of 1497 merely ascribes the book to 
 a schoolmaster of St. Albans. All that is proved is 
 a wish to connect the monastery with the production. 
 
 The same principle of resting on the reign of 
 Edward IV. as an epoch down to which invention 
 might freely range without fear of contradiction, is 
 here observable. This Chronicle contains the tale 
 of the Woman-Pope, which is solely a Benedictine 
 invention, repeated many times in these Chronicles. 
 The writer says that this Pope, " Joan the English- 
 man," was a great Scriptural scholar ; and that after 
 her election she gave birth to a child, and was the 
 sixth Pope who contrasted the name of Holiness with 
 a vicious life. She was not numbered in the Book 
 of Popes. There are other books bearing the St. 
 Albans mark which have no slight importance in their 
 bearing on the beginnings of our English Culture. 
 The lore of heraldry was beginning in the Tudor 
 period. The " Book of Biasing of Arms " is dated St. 
 Albans, i486. It contains the elements of heraldry, 
 with the science of hawking and hunting, and other 
 curious matters of interest to the gentlefolk, who were 
 beginning to read a very little. 
 
 In the tract on " Coat-armour " the object is to 
 distinguish gentle from ungenteel men, and coat-armour, 
 to trace the origin of Bondage up to Adam, ^nd Bo"nT' 
 and from him to the Angels. The '* Legends *^®- 
 of Troy " are also sources of the history of Arms. 
 The laws of Arms are before the Ten Commandments 
 
374 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of God. Christ is a Gentleman by his mother's side, 
 and prince of coat-armour. The Coat of King Arthur 
 is figured. The jieur de lis of France are said to 
 have been given from heaven in sign of everlasting 
 trouble, battle, and sword. Other particulars show- 
 that the author, a man who mixed in the best society 
 of his time, is working on the theory of French and 
 English History as laid down in Froissart. It is very 
 curious at first sight that this book, which contains 
 many coarsenesses, should be dedicated to an illustrious 
 and holy lady. Abbess of Sopwell, and sister of Lord 
 Berners ; and that she should be said to have versified 
 a tract on hunting by Sir Tristram, a monk and an 
 old forester. And yet these incongruities, according 
 to our present taste, correspond to the revelations of 
 English society in the " Canterbury Tales." 
 
 Among other works ascribed to the Caxton press 
 Siege of at about the same time is the "Siege and 
 Jerusalem. Couquest of Jerusalem," giving the story 
 of Godfrey of Boulogne, and the kingdom of the 
 Latins. It was written, not to teach the facts of 
 ancient times, of which nothing was really known, 
 but with the object of stirring up Christendom against 
 the Turks, and to *' recover " a land from the Moslems 
 which the Christians had never possessed. It is 
 miraculous romance ; disguising the military passions 
 and ideals of the time in a cloke of religion. The 
 reader is invited, as usual, by the printers, to imagine 
 that the book had been presented to Edward IV. It 
 may be tedious to repeat the same thing so often, 
 but the editors of these works were utterly unable to 
 find any true record of the reign of that king, as 
 their statements, in publishing the " Polychronicon," 
 show. 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 375 
 
 Another illustration of the entire incapacity for 
 either writing or reading History, except as The Festival 
 poetry and allegory, may be seen in the ^^*^^* 
 " Liber Festivalis," or " Directions for keeping Fast all 
 the Year," dated 1483, at Westminster. This became 
 a popular book, and was reprinted by De Worde and 
 others. The sermons and tales give an insight into 
 the nature of oral religious instruction in England. 
 The " odd stories," as Hearne calls them, are not here 
 alluded to for the purpose of ridicule, but merely to 
 show that the state of the English mind precluded 
 historic thought. To enter the church walls was to 
 enter the world of sacred romance, and to disbelieve 
 all that the experience of the senses had taught the 
 worshipper in his worldly hours. Similar observations 
 apply to the " Golden Legend," dated 1483. It is 
 not necessary to cite the legend of St. Ursula and the 
 Eleven Thousand Virgins, the curious origin of which 
 was exposed by Father Soimond, if, indeed, his theory 
 was correct.* Here, again, the taste of the seventeenth 
 century recoiled from the chosen food of the sixteenth - 
 century imagination, on which all our poets had from 
 childhood been nourished. 
 
 In connection with the "Confessio Amantis " ascribed 
 to John Gower, it is said to have been printed 
 by Caxton in the "first year of Kichard III.," "Confessio 
 or that of our Lord " 1493." Is this a printer's 
 error ? Is there an X too many ? Is there one too 
 few in an early book of the Oxon Press ? Or is it that 
 the printers had not yet arranged the Chronology of 
 English History ? Leaving this point, there is the 
 personality of Gower to be discussed, who remains 
 
 * That St. Undecimilla, V.M., was converted into eleven thousand virgin 
 martyrs. 
 
376 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 utterly unknown ; or resolves himself into a shade in 
 an undiscovered past, an object of reverence to the first 
 cultivators of the English Muse. The effort is made 
 to flatter the great by representing that our bards 
 sprang of noble or gentle blood. The Canons of St. 
 Mary, Southwark, were the sole depositaries of the 
 secret. 
 
 The '' Book of the Order of Chivalry " shows with 
 Romances of what casc they, who knew nothing authentic 
 chivalry. ^£ ^j^^ royal Edwards, the very flowers of 
 chivalry, could bound back to the days of Brennus and 
 Belin, long anterior to Christ, and to those of Arthur. 
 And how cheerfully may it be recognized that in the 
 Arthurian legends some education in manliness and 
 gentleness was provided for the youth of England by 
 a class of writers who may be regarded in a sense as 
 rivals of the ascetic monks and friars. This book is 
 undated, but it shows that the scheme of the history 
 of early kings is known. Hardly can it have been 
 dedicated to Richard III., King of England and France, 
 at a time when he was unanimously held to be a 
 murderer, and all but a fiend. The legend of Richard 
 was not circulated till some time after the accession of 
 the Tadors. 
 
 The " Life of King Arthur " has been dated 1485. 
 j^.^g The tales of manly prowess and of illicit love 
 
 Arthur. wcrc adapted to the taste of at least a large 
 section of the nobility, and were severely censured by 
 Roger Ascham in his " Schoolmaster." He hints that 
 they were written by " idle monks and wanton canons " 
 in the monasteries ; but he does not note that the 
 immoralities he disapproves were not in the least in- 
 consistent with that kind of devotion which it was the 
 object of the monks and canons to encourage. There 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 377 
 
 is no notion of a common moral law binding alike on 
 all ; what would be a principal vice in the character of 
 the monk is a pardonable levity in the conduct of the 
 knight who is vowed to the service of our Lady, and is 
 ready to take up the Cross against the Turks, Saracens, 
 and miscreants in general. 
 
 That these books are nearly all said to be translated 
 out of French is one of the proofs that that tongue was 
 the fashion of the upper classes at the time. It is no 
 proof of the backward state of English, of which many 
 were beginning to be not unashamed as their native 
 and mother tonoue. It is the Caxton Guild, ^, 
 
 • 1 1 1 n r^i J Chaucer. 
 
 who were m the whole secret of Chancers 
 works, who lauded the ideal Geoffrey as the worshipful 
 father and first founder and embellisher of ornate 
 English, whose soul was to be prayed for, and who was 
 eternally to be remembered ; who, they said, lay buried 
 in the Abbey before the Chapel of St. Benet. They, it 
 seems, put out an imperfect edition of the " Canterbury 
 Tales." It was they also who introduced Lydgate as a 
 Benedictine of Bury to the public ; who is said to have 
 written the " Life of our Lady," with the remarkable 
 chapters on her midwives ; also the narrative of the 
 raising from the dead of two bodies by St. Augustine, 
 the Apostle of England, and other matters. 
 
 How often has remark been made on the poverty, 
 both in point of quantity and quality, of the works 
 that issued from the Caxton Press 1 Why, it has been 
 asked, were the Classics not printed ? The answer is, 
 they were only beginning to be needed during the reign 
 of Henry VIII. Why was the New Testament not 
 printed ? The answer is, there was no talk of its being 
 given to the people in the vernacular, or of its having 
 been so given in the ancient days of Wiclif, until the 
 
378 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 same reign. It is also clear that the Press was from 
 the first under ecclesiastical censorship in England ; and 
 that on this account the Testament had to be printed 
 and imported from abroad, with consequences of very 
 doubtful good. 
 
 The productions of the Press, thus briefly noticed, 
 sufiiciently reveal what was the nature of the intellectual 
 pleasures thought proper for the small reading class in 
 England at the end of the fifteenth century. They were 
 pleasures in the gift of the Churchmen, and in return 
 for the boon they reaped in many ways an abundant 
 reward. They made themselves masters of the young 
 English imagination, which in its pride of country was 
 seeking to realize a brilliant past. Taking the dates 
 given us as merely approximate to the truth, it was 
 when the Wars of the Eoses were drawing to an end 
 that young Englishmen of good family began to busy 
 themselves with the reading of Chronicles at the Inns 
 of Court. That patriotic passion and fancy which was 
 destined to flower so splendidly a century later was 
 here nourished. It was cultivated at reckless expense 
 of the faculty of judgment. The Italians of the Eoman 
 Court had the more correct taste ; and it was necessary 
 for one of them to relate the English legends in a 
 manner agreeable to the more cultivated readers of the 
 time of Henry VIII. 
 
 There are some further particulars in the legends 
 Ciceronian of the Prcss which may throw light upon the 
 tracts. general state of England at the end of the 
 
 Wars of the Eoses. The tracts of Cicero on " Old Age 
 and Friendship " bear the date 148 1. The latter is said 
 to have been translated by the famous Earl of Worcester, 
 John Tiptoft, whose memory is extravagantly praised, 
 and who is said to have late piteously lost his life. 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 379 
 
 But if the book was printed in 1481 we have to wait 
 more than thirty years before John Leland notices this 
 legend of Tiptoft, on which Polydore Vergil is silent. 
 
 From Leland's article we gather that there was a 
 party of the clergy strongly interested in the praises of 
 Tiptoft ; and if they can be identified at all, they must 
 have been the Black Friars, or Dominicans, who once had 
 a church near Fleet Gate, London. In Henry VIII. 's 
 time there was — if we can trust Leland — a chapel 
 with a marble tomb in this church. And the reading 
 of the Latin inscription is : " Jane, Lady Ingulsthorpe, 
 sister of Earl John, made this Chapel ; and here with 
 him she rests.^' 
 
 Leland in this article copies down what purport to 
 be the statements of " William Caxton, First Printer 
 of England," concerning the learning and virtues of 
 Tiptoft, his high esteem with the Pope and with 
 Italian scholars, his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and other 
 matters. 
 
 It would be long to unravel the strange story of 
 this learned and pious earl, who is said to have been 
 the chief victim of the Wars of the Eoses. When 
 Edward IV. had cast out Henry VI., it seems, that 
 Tiptoft escaped to Jerusalem. When Henry VI. came 
 back for a short time, Tiptoft came back from his wan- 
 derings also. He presided at the trial of certain nobles 
 at Southampton, who were accused of high treason. 
 Among them was Clapham. They were cruelly pro- 
 ceeded against, their bodies being impaled after death, 
 as an example to malefactors. The common folk said 
 they had never seen the like. Yet Tiptoft was in 
 general a merciful man. Why did he act thus ? 
 John Leland knows not; but he knows that he was 
 punished for the deed. He was suspected of favouring 
 
38o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Edward IV., and was executed on Tower Hill. His 
 corpse was buried in the Dominican Church. 
 
 It may seem a strange thing to call in Shakespeare 
 Reminis- as a wltucss to anything connected with the 
 pr?nt?ng*in ^rt of printing. And yet where all is imagina- 
 shakespeare. ^^^^ ^^ rcspcct of the details, the great master 
 of imagination is one of the best of witnesses. He makes 
 the rebel Jack Cade charge his victim, Lord Say, with 
 the crime of having erected a Grammar School, and 
 having caused printing to be used instead of the score 
 and the tally, which were all the " books " our fore- 
 fathers had. He had also built a paper-mill contrary 
 to the Crown and dignity of the King. The speech is 
 no doubt intended to represent the blind and besotted 
 state of the popular mind, not to teach exact chrono- 
 logical fact. This was beyond the reach of any student 
 of the Elizabethan time. It may be inferred that one of 
 the sins of the aristocracy, in the eyes of the Socialists 
 of the time, was the erection of the barrier of book 
 learning between themselves and the multitude. Or 
 such was the opinion of the poet. 
 
 Lord Herbert, who writes down his imaginations 
 In Lord. about thc Tudor time as if they were History, 
 Herbert. supposcs that the Prcss was established to the 
 great dismay of the Koman Hierarchy, especially of 
 Cardinal Wolsey. Foxe, the martyrologist, 
 looks back upon typography as the great provi- 
 dential means for the discovery of the errors and frauds 
 of the old Church. In that opinion he receives great 
 support from a sect to whom he was bitterly opposed, 
 viz. the Jesuits. But neither in our brilliant period of 
 Letters under the last of the Tudors and the first of the 
 Stuarts could men account for the origin of 
 this remarkable instrument of culture. The 
 
EARLY PRINTED BOOKS. 381 
 
 Chronicler Stow, who either has no information about 
 the English past save what he found set down in the 
 books of the monks and friars, or dares not impart any 
 independent opinions to the public, says that the science 
 was found at Magunce in Germany about 1459, by 
 Cuthemberg, and was brought into England about 147 1, 
 by William Caxton, Mercer. With him the chroniclers 
 Baker and Howell, who write as mere hacks and to 
 please a foolish public, agree. But the facts were not 
 known, nor were they later discovered. Fuller, a man 
 of genius and independence, writing about 1655, sets 
 down the introduction of printing against the year 
 1 500, as the approximate date. 
 
 Then, in 1664, appeared the work of Atkins on the 
 
 Origin of Printing, which contained a fresh romance 
 
 worth noticing, because the writer has touched on 
 
 general facts which had been previously ignored, and 
 
 on which he bases his theory. Atkins says he found a 
 
 book printed at Oxon in 1468. It was the Benedictine 
 
 work, " St. Jerome on the Apostles' Creed." He says 
 
 that from the same hand he received the copy of a 
 
 Lambeth MS. in which the circumstantial story was 
 
 found, which agreed with Atkins' idea of the origin of 
 
 the art. Omitting many details, the story ran that 
 
 Archbishop Bourchier conspired with Henry YI. to 
 
 bring a printing-mould into England ; that they knew 
 
 it could not be done without great secrecy and great 
 
 expense. They must bribe some of the Haarlem 
 
 printers, superintended by Cuthemberg. So they send 
 
 over Turnour, a royal servant under the protection of 
 
 the able trader Caxton, who had much business in 
 
 Holland. Turnour must disguise himself, Caxton 
 
 needed no disguise. They went to Amsterdam and 
 
 Ley den, but dared not enter Haarlem. They laid 
 
382 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 out looo marks in judicious bribery, and sent to the 
 king for more money. At last they brought off a work- 
 man named Corsellis in disguise. He is carried under 
 guard to Oxon, and is not allowed to escape till he has 
 taught his art. Thus the romance would prove that 
 the press at Oxon was the earliest in Europe except 
 those of Haarlem and Mentz. He would further prove 
 that there were no printers except the King's sworn 
 servants. 
 
 But at Oxon Leonard Aretino's translation of the 
 Ethics of Aristotle bears date 1479, and the same year 
 sees the production of the treatise on Original Sin by 
 the Austin Friar Egidio Komano. At the end of the 
 former work are verses, professedly honouring Thomas 
 Hunte as the first to print Latin books at Oxon, as 
 N. Jenson had done at Venice. His partner, Theodoric 
 Kood, is supposed to print these verses, and is said 
 to be a native of Cologne. Yet the inquisitive have 
 been able to discover no more than four books printed 
 by these new candidates for fame. Hunt and Kood. 
 Neither at Oxon nor at Cambridge was there much 
 printing until the reign of Henry YHI. 
 
 Where a number of particular statements are made, 
 not one of which can upon examination be trusted, we 
 are forced upon some probable construction of the facts. 
 The Caxton Guild were naturally anxious to claim as 
 high antiquity as possible for their art ; yet they have 
 not ventured above the reign of Edward IV. If this 
 date be lowered by some twenty or thirty years, we 
 arrive at the last decade of the century ; that is to say, 
 at the period during which Polydore, our best witness, 
 conceives that culture spread from Italy over the West. 
 
( 3^3 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 
 
 The Chronicle imputed to Jean Froissart, who is 
 described as a Canon of Chymay in Hainault, 
 was printed in Paris late in the fifteenth 
 century or at the beginning of the sixteenth. The 
 English translation was imputed to Lord Berners, and 
 appeared in London in 1523. It is to Berners that 
 we are also supposed to be indebted for a " History of 
 Arthur." Both compositions may be said to have 
 been conceived in the interests of the nobility and 
 of chivalry ; always, of course, with due regard to the 
 interests of the Church. 
 
 In connection with this writer there are the like 
 evidences of that method and system which are 
 apparent in the writings of the Benedictines. Each 
 chronicler must link himself to a predecessor, and must, 
 in turn, be followed by a continuator. In this case 
 Froissart is supposed to depend on Jean le Bel, Canon 
 of St. Lambert, Liege (the friend of Jean of Hainault), 
 and his " very veracious chronicles." Then, again, 
 as is so often the case, there are said to be two Jeans 
 le Bel — one of the late fourteenth, the other of the 
 late fifteenth century. And then this literary fable 
 of Hainault is connected with the historical fable into 
 which are introduced the Lady Philippa of Hainault. 
 
384 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Queen of England. It is pretended that both she and 
 King Eichard III. received copies of these works from 
 the hands of their authors. And then it is said that 
 Froissart wrote at the request of Eobert of Namur. 
 All that can be inferred is that the canons of Liege and 
 the monks of Gemblours were in the secret of this 
 system. St. Maternus of Liege, it may be remarked 
 in passing, was "son of the Widow of Nain," or 
 " disciple of St. Peter." We fall again upon the tracks 
 of " Apostolic Men." 
 
 The Froissart Chronicle is purely romantic, and 
 style of throws a clear light on the habit of mind, 
 Froissart. ^^ ^-^q mauiere de voir of clerics who wrote 
 in the royal and chivalrous interest. The style is 
 very pleasing, but the imagiuation of reciter and listener 
 is supposed to be steeped in the spirit of ecclesiastical 
 wonder. Many things are to be seen in this company 
 which never were beheld by the waking eyes of sane 
 humanity. The vision of the English past is not from 
 the light of Eecords, but from inspiration and the 
 poet's dream. If the Chronicle be turned into blank 
 verse, the nature of it will be at once felt and 
 appreciated. 
 
 For example. At the battle of Eoseb^que (given 
 The in the year 1342), the Oriflamme of France 
 
 onflamme. ^^^^ displayed, that precious Banner, first 
 sent from Heaven for a Mystery, and ever a great 
 comfort to them that saw it. On that day the 
 Oriflamme showed its virtue by dispersing a dense 
 mist from the sky. Then came a Dove, which flew 
 over the King's camp, and alighted on one of the 
 King's banners. This was held to be a good omen. 
 Again : In the town of Burburke during the wars 
 of French and English, a villain leapt on the altar 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 385 
 
 of St. John's, and tried to take a stone out of the 
 crown on the head of the image of our Lady. The 
 image turned its head away, and the thief fell dead. 
 This, asserts the Chronicle, was " a true tiling ; many 
 men saio the miracle^ A second attempt was made 
 on the sacred object ; and all the bells, the ropes 
 of which had been tied up, rang an alarm. The king 
 and all the lords made gifts to the image, and the 
 church was much visited because of the miracle. 
 
 The plan of such Chronicles was, so to say, laid 
 down in these local and profitable legends of miraculous 
 shrines. The attentive reader can never forget that he 
 is viewing the world through the mystical medium of a 
 church interior. 
 
 Without miracles the Chronicle would be divested 
 of its charm, and would collapse into the Miracles at 
 dry record of vague reminiscences. Holy St. ^^^s^^^- 
 Peter of Luxembourg, Cardinal, and son to Earl Guy 
 of St. Paul, who died in the battle of Juliers, was 
 called to God in his early manhood in the full bloom 
 of his sanctity. He was buried in the chapel of St. 
 Michael at Avignon, and wrought great miracles after 
 his decease. The Pope and the Cardinals, seeing the 
 miracles daily increase and multiply, wrote to the King 
 of France, also to the brother of the Cardinal, desiring 
 him to come to Avignon. The Earl Yaleran of St. 
 Paul came, gave goodly lamps of silver to hang before 
 the altar, and marvelled at the belief of the people. 
 
 One would no more think of cross-examining 
 Froissart as to his geographical statements than one 
 would interrupt the talk of a pretty woman. He tells 
 the tale how the Christian lords and the ^^ . . 
 
 1 • n k n ' Christians 
 
 Genoese went to lay siege to the city of Africa and 
 
 _ - A 1 Moslems. 
 
 m Barbary. A messenger was sent to the 
 
 2 
 
386 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Saracens to inform them that the quarrel which 
 entitled the lords to make war on them was that their 
 race had crucified Jesus Christ, and that they did not 
 believe in the Virgin Mary, nor in Baptism. The 
 Saracens laughed, and said it was the Jews who put 
 Christ to death. It appeared, however, that God was 
 against them ; for when the Saracens were on the 
 point of surprising the Christians, the apparition of 
 a multitude of ladies and damsels, clad all in white, 
 daunted them. One lady excelled all the rest in 
 beauty. A mysterious dog, called by the Grenoese 
 "Our Lady's Dog," and unowned by any of their 
 company, also aided the Christians by his baying. 
 So did the Virgin and her company defend the 
 Christian men. 
 
 The chronicler pretends that Windsor Castle was 
 Arthur and ^cguu by King Arthur when the Table 
 Rould^^^ Eound began. King Edward rebuilt Windsor, 
 founded the Order of the Blue Garter and 
 the anniversary feast of St. George. So the Chapel 
 of the Canons came into existence about 1344. 
 Froissart, or the writer under that mask, declares 
 that he himself was at Berkhamsted, the seat of the 
 Prince of Wales, in 1361. The Prince and Princess 
 were on the point of departing for Aquitaine. King 
 Edward and Queen Philippa, with the Dukes of 
 Clarence, of Lancaster and York, Lord Edmond, after- 
 wards Earl of Cambridge, and their children were 
 present. Froissart was Clerk of the Chamber to the 
 Queen. He heard a knight talking to the ladies. 
 He told them that there was a book in Eng- 
 " Brute:" l^ud callcd the "Brute," full of wondrous 
 Lancastn^* prophecics. According to that book the 
 greatness. Ciowu was uot to comc to the Priucc of 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES, 387 
 
 Wales nor to the Duke of Clarence, but to the House 
 of Lancaster. It was seven years and more before 
 the birth of Henry, Earl of Derby. But the chronicler 
 adds that he lived to see that same earl King of 
 England as Henry the Fourth. He repeats this story 
 in another place, and, in fact, the Chronicle was 
 probably written chiefly for the sake of the story. It 
 was quite proper in the time of the Tudors, when the 
 Chronicle began to be read, to believe that such 
 prophecies concerning the House of Lancaster had been 
 uttered more than a hundred years agone. 
 
 From the same literary fraternity proceeded the 
 Chronicle of Monstrelet, which is put forth e. de 
 as a continuation of Froissart, and which brings ^^^^^^^^^let. 
 the narrative down to 1444. De Coucy takes up the 
 thread, and carries it on to 1 46 1 . Cambray is indicated 
 as the place of Monstrelet. Possibly there is some im- 
 provement in judgment and falling off of style in this 
 writer, as compared with Froissart. But there is not 
 the slightest reason to doubt that both Chronicles are 
 of the time of Henry VIII. The object of the artists 
 is to cast pleasing pictures from the camera of fancy 
 athwart the intolerable darkness of the preceding ages. 
 
 The Chronicle of Comines, who is referred to 
 Argenton, covers the period 1464-1483. The 
 
 1 1 T 1 1 • x% • • 1 Comines. 
 
 work was published m Fans m 1524, but 
 contained only the first six books, which bring the 
 narrative to the year 1477. The Chronicler says that 
 he wrote at the instigation of the Archbishop of 
 Vienne. He is in any case a clersjyman, 
 
 T , , -^ 1 1 T His manner. 
 
 and looks upon History through the medium 
 of theological theory. His favourite adage is, *' Provi- 
 dence would have it so!' He tells us that the Peace 
 of Amiens, 1475, was believed by some to have been 
 
388 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 made by the Holy Spirit. All men " founded them- 
 selves on prophecies" — that is, on supernatural revela- 
 tions. A white pigeon had been found on the tent of 
 the King of England on the day of the review ; it would 
 not stir for all the noise of the host. Some thought 
 there had been rain, and that the pigeon had lighted 
 on the loftiest tent to dry itself. The Chronicler says 
 naively that a Gascon gentleman who disliked the peace 
 gave that common-sense explanation. 
 
 Comines allows us to see under what influences the 
 dark tales concerning Kichard III. or Louis XL have 
 been composed. The course of events was held to be 
 a religious drama. War itself was sent as a divine 
 chastisement upon princes and peoples, and the chief 
 victims of civil broils must necessarily be regarded as 
 the chief criminals. 
 
 The pleasing style of the work has deluded many 
 critics into the belief that it is a contemporary record. 
 And somewhat fulsome praise has been lavished on 
 Comines, as if he were the founder of Modern History. 
 He is certainly superior to the Benedictines, but he 
 writes, like them, at a distance from his objects, and is 
 in sympathy with the system of chroniclers who under 
 the Tudors unfold the tragedies which led to the over- 
 throw of the House of York and the establishment of 
 the Lancastrian line. 
 
 It is, perhaps, sufficient to observe in general terms 
 that the legends of the Press, together with the internal 
 evidence of the Chronicles, suffice to establish a close 
 connection between the printers and booksellers of the 
 Low Countries and their patrons and those of Eng- 
 land. There was essentially one close corporation, the 
 guiding spirits of which must have been the most 
 intelligent of the clergy. The legend that Caxton 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 389 
 
 besfan his career as member of the Guild of St. John at 
 Bruges coincides with the above particulars. Except 
 by strict co-operation of French and English scholars, 
 the dogma of French and English history of the 
 fourteenth and fifteenth centuries could not have 
 been elaborated in the pleasing and highly artistic 
 manner which recommended it to the nobles of the 
 court of the Tudors * 
 
 It will be necessary only, by a few examples taken 
 from chroniclers who were writing under Heury VIII., 
 to show that they were following, as it were like school- 
 boys, a copy set them by the literary authorities of the 
 time, and that English story had become a branch of 
 the Tudor establishment. 
 
 A life of Edward V. and of Kichard III. has been 
 ascribed to Sir Thomas More for no other . ^ 
 
 . Sir Thomas 
 
 reason than that his was one of the conspicuous More: Lives 
 
 PI- mi • 1 T 1 1^ ^^ Edward 
 
 names 01 the time. I here is not the slightest v. and 
 
 (, . , . , 1 . c l.^ Richard III. 
 
 reason tor imputing to nim any ot the ascribed to 
 writings, either good or bad, which have been 
 published under his name. Polydore, writing in the 
 time of Edward VII., dismisses the subject of his 
 martyrdom in a few graceful lines, and says nothing 
 whatever of any of his literary achievements. Erasmus 
 indulges in vague eulogies. It was not until thirty 
 years after More's death that he was discovered as an 
 English historian. 
 
 This unknown chronicler, then, proceeds to in- 
 tensify the odious picture of Richard handed down 
 by Polydore. The habit had begun of considering 
 political and ecclesiastical opponents as '' men of sin," 
 and of pursuing imaginative researches into the evils 
 
 * Cf. Mr. Blades' •' Life and Typography of William Caxton," 1 86 1, i. 77, 
 81, 277 ; ii. no. 
 
390 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of their infantile or ante-natal life. Kicbard was born 
 with teeth in his head and with his feet foremost, 
 according to the general report, which, as the Yorkist 
 critic. Buck, was later to remark, never proceeded from 
 Eichard's mother. It was quite logical to assume that 
 a fiendish life must have had a fiendish beginning. 
 He was cold, merciless, ambitious, but brave, incapable 
 of friendship, reckless of human life. The tale is 
 repeated that he murdered Henry VI. in the Tower 
 with his own hands. Thus the name of Thomas More 
 — the gentle spirit whose virtues appear to be revealed 
 by the pencil of Holbein as by the pen of Erasmus — 
 has been used to sanction the conventional odium in 
 which the last of the Yorkist princes was held. 
 
 To Fabian, Alderman of London, has been imputed 
 the " Concordance of Stories," printed by 
 Pynson in 1516. The personality of Fabian 
 is entirely unknown, as the inquiries of Sir H. Ellis 
 have shown. It is one more example of fictitious 
 authorship dictated by booksellers' and writers' interests, 
 designed perhaps to please the Fathers of the City. 
 The work is plainly the production of a clergyman. 
 He mentions among his sources the Chronicle ascribed 
 to Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, which was 
 perhaps composed at some time in the late fifteenth 
 century ; for it extends from the Creation of the 
 World down to the year 1457. 
 
 Since we are studying a European system of 
 Chronicle-writing, it may be well to remind the reader 
 of the clue which thus leads from London to Florence, 
 as one of the earliest fifteenth-century seats of culture. 
 Antoninus himself depends on the Villani Chronicles, 
 which have been assigned in the system of tradition to 
 the fourteenth century, but with little or no reason. It 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 391 
 
 is more probable that they were beguu in the time of 
 the Medici in the same spirit of romance, and with the 
 same system of continuation we have elsewhere noted. 
 
 The Fabian chronicler follows the few Benedictine 
 works as yet known. He alludes to Gildas and the 
 St. Albans Chronicle, but Matthew Paris is not yet 
 known. As an illustration of the entirely anachronistic 
 view of the past may be mentioned the fact that he 
 conceives of Brute the Trojan as he would conceive of 
 a contemporary noble warrior, clad in a suit of armour. 
 Then, again, it is significant that the engraved portraits 
 of the kings of England and of France appear to have 
 been all executed from two blocks. There is no more 
 perspective than in a Chinese picture. He can readily 
 deduce English story from Brute down to Henry VHL, 
 because the whole is an epic, fresh and smooth from the 
 mint. Kichard HI. points a moral equally with any 
 Homeric hero. He is born, and comes to the throne, 
 and dies that he may remind us of the punishment of 
 sinners. Fabian gives no date of day or month for 
 important occurrences simply because he had no Kegisters. 
 Horrible executions and deaths are in great demand with 
 his readers, and he takes care to supply them with these 
 sensations. He is one of the first to attempt the in- 
 vention of a history, consisting of bare lists of names, 
 for the corporation of the City, now conscious of its 
 growing wealth and power in the State. 
 
 It is a great illusion to suppose that the succes- 
 sion of City fathers or ofiicials from Norman times is 
 genuine. And the like remark applies to the pretended 
 antiquities of all our great cities. If you compare 
 Fabian with Stow of the Elizabethan time, who prefixes 
 to his " Survey " a meagre Benedictine tract bearing 
 the name of Fitzstephen, you will find that nothing 
 
392 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 whatever had been written down concerning the anti- 
 quities of London before the establishment of the 
 printing-presses. 
 
 A quasi-historical work called '^ The Pastime of the 
 Rasteii, People " is said to have been produced about 
 1^2^* 1529 by John Eastell, of whom nothing is 
 
 really known. We have simply before us another 
 edition of the ^' Winter Fireside Tales," in which our 
 ancestors delighted as yielding them the kind of amuse- 
 ment which the reading aloud of novels may now afford 
 to the family circle. The chronicler follows, and can 
 do no more than follow, the " Polychronicon " of the 
 Benedictines, Caxton and Fabian. He begins with 
 the fantastic myth of Diocletian and his thirty-two 
 daughters, and the derivation of the name Albion from 
 the youngest of them, Albine. He seems to have some 
 doubt of it, but proceeds to speak with more confidence 
 of Brute and the Trojan origin of the British people, 
 after the age of giants had come to an end. He then 
 follows the Benedictines " Gildas,'' " Geoffrey," and 
 " Bede " ; offers a string of biographical notices extend- 
 ing to the end of the reign of Richard III., who is, as 
 usual, both by birth and nature, a monster rather than 
 a man. 
 
 The Chronicle ascribed to Edward Hall, a lawyer 
 and judge in the Sheriff's Court (for so he 
 is designated), was printed at Grafton's Press 
 in 1 548. No more is known of Hall than of Thomas 
 More. The interest of the booksellers is here t6 cultivate 
 the patronage of the young wits who were beginning 
 to read these stories in the Inns of Court. The political 
 interest is, as usual, the Lancastrian dogma of the Union 
 of the Two Houses. The Shakespearian drama lies here 
 in germ. Hall constantly coincides with Polydore, the 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 393 
 
 general truth being that tliey both followed the orthodox 
 copy set them, but Hall, perhaps, with less judgment 
 than Polydore. It has been said of Fabian and Hall 
 that their Chronicles are *' written in a dull and tedious 
 manner, without any exercise of taste or judgment, with 
 an absolute want of discrimination as to the comparative 
 importance of the facts ; " that they offer " masses of 
 matter which only a modern reader of a peculiar taste, 
 or a writer in quest of materials, would now willingly 
 peruse." And yet without attention to them we have 
 no proper understanding of the poetic invention from 
 which an early story entirely sprang. Notwithstanding 
 the above strictures, the reader will find in the vigorous 
 English of Hall and in the dramatic power with which 
 the tragical tales about the Duke of Gloucester are told, 
 the explanation of the manner in which the Art of a 
 guild becomes the Truth of belief for the uncritical 
 multitude. 
 
 Another Chronicle assigned to the Grafton Press 
 (1543) is that under the name of Harding, 
 which is brought down to the year 1464, and 
 is continued by Grafton. Such are the statements ; but 
 the internal evidence points still to the literary society 
 of monks and canons and friars. It is the ex-Carmelite 
 Bale who first pretends to inform us about Harding as 
 a gentleman and soldier, a friend of the House of Percy. 
 The old fables of an early past reappear ; and that of 
 Brute is employed for the dishonest purpose, elsewhere 
 betrayed, of making out the dependence of the Scottish 
 on the English Crown. It is an illustration of the fine 
 belief in these inventions which had been fixed in the 
 English mind, that the homage of the Scottish kings is 
 traced up to Locrine the son of Brute. Other forgeries 
 in the same interest have duly found their place in the 
 
394 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 collection of the toilsome but too credulous Rymer of 
 the reign of Queen Anne. 
 
 The true method of studying these Chronicles is 
 always to begin at the end, because we there discover 
 the passions and the interests under which the writer 
 works. The Court interest is in this case obvious. 
 The king's title to all his lands is made out : to England 
 and Wales on the strength of the tale of Brute, and the 
 sequent tales of Saxons and Normans. The Plantagenet 
 tales supply the title to Scotland. Is it not written that 
 John Balliol * resigned the gift and right into the hands 
 of King Edward ? Why should it now be void and 
 repugned ? To France the king is entitled because 
 Edward TV. descended from St. Louis ; to Normandy 
 and Guienne and Poitou, through Queen Eleanor ; to 
 Anjou, by Geoffrey Plantagenet ; to Ireland, by King 
 Henry le Fitz and Maude. The right by blood descent 
 to Leon and Castile is also asserted. 
 
 The impression of a desperate effort in fiction, 
 principled or unprincipled, according as we use those 
 terms, grows upon us in surveying the mass of these 
 Chronicles, which must be dismissed with a swift and 
 sweeping regard. Passing over those under the names 
 of Lanquet and Cooper (1549), which once had their 
 voojue, we come to that under Grafton's own 
 
 Grafton. / ,- x t i i •. i 
 
 name (1569). It shows how writers at that 
 late date were still working over the same ground 
 that had been chalked out by the Benedictines. The 
 Chronicle covers the period 1 189-1558. But Matthew 
 Paris has not yet been discovered. Nor is there the 
 slightest trace of the consultation of any public Records. 
 Nothing, indeed, could be more alien from the purpose of 
 
 * See the extraordinary mass of English fable and Scottish counter- 
 fable, all of the Tudor time, on this question : " Biogr. Brit.," s.v. Baliol. 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 395 
 
 the writer than to make exact statements about any- 
 thing. Polydore's example has had no influence with 
 him. He delights in seeing, hearing, and relating the 
 impossible. He would excel St. Austin and the monks 
 in audacious lies. 
 
 He cites St. Austin for the opinion that men were 
 in the beginning of the world much larger and ^^^ marvei- 
 longer-lived than they are now. St. Austin lousin 
 
 . TT • 1 • Grafton. 
 
 had seen in Utica a human tooth equal m 
 size to a hundred. '' And I," exclaims our chronicler, 
 "did see on the loth day of March, 1564, the cheek- 
 tooth of a man, and had the same in my hand, which 
 was as great as a hen's egg, and the same did weigh ten 
 ounces of Troy weight. And the skull of the same man, 
 as I am credibly informed, is extant and to be seen, 
 which will hold five pecks of wheat ; and the shin-bone 
 of the same man is also to be seen, which is reported to 
 be six foot in length, and of a marvellous greatness." 
 
 In these methodical ravings the Greek mythology is 
 still blent with the Biblical legends as sources Blending of 
 of English history. Brute is traced up to and Biwicai 
 Jupiter, and Jupiter is traced up to Japhet. ^^s«°^^- 
 Albine is contemporary wdth Saul, King of Israel. York, 
 London, and Edinburgh were founded in the time of 
 Eehoboam, son of Solomon. King Bladud, founder of 
 Stamford, was contemporary of Amaziah, King of Judah, 
 and Joash of Israel. King Lear and his daughters 
 figure in a similar way. It appears that Cambridge 
 was built 309 years before Christ, and the Tower of 
 London about the same time. King Lud, the builder of 
 Ludgate, flourished before Julius Caesar. 
 
 The Incarnation fell in the time of King Cymbeline, 
 who died in London. Britons first received the faith of 
 Christ in the year of our Lord i88. And so the first 
 
396 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 volume of fable gathers as it goes through the ages, 
 until we arrive at the corouation of Edward IV. (1460). 
 
 In the second volume the Chronicle follows 
 Comines, and repeats the old tales about the loves of 
 Edward IV., and about the monstrous person and 
 murderous deeds of Kichard III. In later reigns the 
 material is of the same kind as that to be found in the 
 pages of Latimer or of Foxe : a series of hearsays, a 
 fascinating string of tales about sieges and peaces, and 
 rebellions ; of committals to the Tower, beheadings, 
 dying speeches, and the like. The Chronicler appro- 
 priately closes ten years after the accession of Queen 
 Elizabeth, with loyal compliments to that princess. 
 
 There seems to be no evidence that, so late as the 
 tenth year of Queen Elizabeth, our historiographer had 
 yet discovered the fine theory concerning King John 
 and the Great Charter, which is one of the earliest 
 data of our modern childhood. Here, perhaps, for the 
 first time appears the famous Benedictine chronologer, 
 Marianus Scotus. But still no Matthew Paris has been 
 discovered, and if no Paris, no Magna Carta. 
 
 The first edition of Holinshed's Chronicles is of 1577. 
 Hoiinshed, The list of the sources is, as usual, Classical and 
 tfnJedto' Benedictine, with Froissart and Monstrelet. 
 1586. rpj^g name of Matthew Paris at last appears, 
 
 but the " Greater History '' imputed to him could 
 hardly have been in the writer s hands. Here too, 
 perhaps, is the fit mention of the Venerable Bede, 
 instead of Bede of the venerable monastery of Wear- 
 mouth. But the names of authors show a considerable 
 enlargement on the Benedictine material available in the 
 time of the earliest Tudor Chroniclers. More classical 
 authors have also become known. 
 
 But in the list of Holinshed's sources the mention 
 
 J 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 397 
 
 of Jolin Stow is especially noteworthy. Stow has lent 
 the chronicler " diverse rare monuments, ancient writers, 
 and necessary register books of his, out of his own 
 library." We have arrived at the time of the first 
 Society of Antiquaries in London. They were men who 
 deserve all praise for their love of country, and for their 
 diligence in collecting and editing what purported to be 
 the monuments of its past. They had, in common with 
 men of their class, a strong tendency to credulity, and 
 were entirely without critical training. Some of them 
 were exposed to persecution because they meddled so 
 much with Popish books, as they were called, which 
 were then the only sources of information. Others were 
 timid and superstitious. It is no wonder, under these 
 conditions, that the stream of fable flowed on, almost 
 unchecked. A moderate scepticism, however, began to 
 make itself felt toward the end of the century. 
 
 Stow, the antiquary, has a higher repute than 
 his contemporary, Grafton. His work, the 
 "Annals," was continued by Howes to 16 14. "Annais" 
 The sources are still our old acquaintances, Howes to 
 Gildas, Geoffrey, Sigebert of Gemblours, the 
 Benedictines. Matthew Paris puts in an appearance, 
 not, however, as author of the " Greater " or the " Lesser 
 History," but of a " Golden History." The chronicler 
 thinks it necessary to offer afresh what they designate 
 a " brief proof of Brute." Here we observe that kind 
 of reasoning, which is not yet extinct, from consent and 
 use of opinion to matter of fact. 
 
 " You must not blow away with so light a breath," 
 says the Chronicler to the impugners of these Defence of 
 old stories, '' the authority of so many grave ^'■"*^* 
 testimonies, the succession of so many princes, the 
 founders of so many monuments, and laws, and the 
 
398 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 ancient honours of the nation, that first with public 
 authority received Christianity." He then proceeds to 
 cite his witnesses. They are Gildas and Nennius before 
 the Conquest ; then Sigebert's Chronicle, Henry of Hunt- 
 ingdon, the " Golden History " imputed to Matthew 
 Paris, Geofirey of Monmouth, Matthew of Westminster, 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, Eanulph of Chester, the '' Poly- 
 chronicon," Hoveden, Gervase, Simeon of Durham, Peter 
 Langtoft. 
 
 Stow had, moreover, a French Chronicle in verse. 
 He had Alanus ab Insulis on the " Prophecies of Merlin." 
 He had the treatise of Sir John Price in defence of 
 British History, John Leland, John Copgrave, Kobert 
 Kehog's " Keports of Law," Fabian, Grafton, Lanquet, 
 Cooper, and Lambarde's " Perambulation of Kent." 
 
 On the other hand, the critics of the story of Brute 
 are John of Wheathamsted, who said there was no such 
 thing in Koman History ; Petit, a Frenchman, who 
 attacked Geoffrey of Monmouth as the forger of British 
 History. Here Stow admits that he cannot believe all 
 he reads in Geofirey ; for example, the tale of the green 
 children caught in the sea is incredible. The envious 
 Italian, Polydore, with one dash of the pen cashiers sixty 
 princes together, with all their histories and historians, 
 yea, and some ancient laws also. Most inconsiderate 
 was such conduct on the part of Polydore. There 
 were other sceptics, but as they did not understand 
 English or Welsh, their arguments are not to be 
 regarded. 
 
 Howes, in his '* Historical Preface," as he calls it, 
 refers to the attack of William of Newburgh on Geofirey 
 as distinguished more by system than by judgment. 
 Homes supposes that William of Newburgh wrote in 
 1165, and was the first to attack Geofirey; whereas 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 399 
 
 Newburgh could not have been writing until the latter 
 half of the fifteenth century, at the earliest. 
 
 The industrious William Camden's " Britannia " 
 appeared in 1586. If industry and love of 
 country could have discovered our past, Cam- "Britannia," 
 den would have enlightened Englishmen on 
 their history. The reading of his preface to the edition 
 of 1607 inspires us with respect for the man, as attention 
 to the body of his work may convince us that it was 
 impossible for him to extricate himself from the mesh of 
 Benedictine fables. All the trouble and the travel in 
 the world will not make a man more than a collector of 
 curiosities if he be no born critic. And here is the good 
 Master of Westminster School still talking about Brutus, 
 and planting him, on the authority of Geofirey, in the 
 year B.C. 1108. Yet Camden cites the objections of 
 W^heathamsted and others to the story of Brute, and 
 proposes some other etymologies of Britain than those 
 sanctioned by authority. 
 
 Speed, who was in debt to Sir R. Cotton, openly dis- 
 cusses the question of the Trojan descent as 
 one of sentiment, not of critique. It is, he says, " History 
 
 11- r n n of Great 
 
 a praiseworthy thmg to challenge descents Britain," 
 from famous personages, and therefore let us 
 listen to Geofirey of Monmouth. He has brought us to 
 rank with the rest of the Gentiles who claimed to be ofi"- 
 spring of the gods. Brute conquered this island B.C. 
 1059, in the time of Eli the priest. The opinion of 
 Geofirey is naturally much applauded. But Speed 
 goes on to discuss the arguments about Brute at 
 length. It seems that Brute is becoming incredible, 
 although a writer must not express himself too sharply 
 on that side. Gildas, Bede, William of Malmesbury, are 
 coming to be preferred to that position as authorities 
 
400 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of English History which they have enjoyed until this 
 day. 
 
 Daniel, when he writes on general historical principles, 
 ^ . , adopts the tone of the critic or even of the 
 
 ■Daniel ^ . . , . 
 
 as a critic, sccptic. Hc shows m his prcfacc that the 
 
 1562-1619. 
 
 practice had been to go to monastic Registers 
 and Catalogues of Kings, and thence to deduce a Eoyal 
 Succession. But Daniel asks how came the British 
 Kings with a Catalogue ? and finding no satisfactory 
 answer, modestly resolves to begin with William the 
 Bastard. He would draw a line at that point, and 
 rebuke the curiosity which explored our earlier time. 
 The beginnings of peoples, he says, are obscure as the 
 sources of great rivers. If we could ascertain them, 
 there would be little pleasure or profit in our success. 
 Poverty, piracy, robbery and violence — these are the 
 spring-heads of nations. Heroic and miraculous begin- 
 nings are but an abuse of our credulity. States, like 
 individuals, " show best at their maturity, not in their 
 cradle." The object of the student is not to amass a 
 quantity of matter, but to improve his intelligence. 
 Human nature is always the same. Virtues and vices 
 recur. Like causes have like effects, and every event 
 has its precedent and its consequent. In short. History 
 repeats itself. 
 
 In this truly scientific spirit Daniel limited himself 
 to the period from the Norman Conquest to the end of 
 the reign of Edward III. He appears to have had 
 some work ascribed to Matthew Paris in his hand. Yet 
 when he writes of Charters he must need trace them 
 back to Henry 1., and beyond him to Edward the 
 Confessor, in the darkness which he professedly closes 
 to our curiosity. Another example of his want of 
 attention to the nature of his sources is in his account 
 
FRENCH AND ENGLISH CHRONICLES. 401 
 
 of Wiclif. Though Daniel was hostile in theory to the 
 monks, it has been remarked that he has taken from 
 them the envious account of the mysterious divine of 
 Balliol College. In short, when it comes to practice, 
 Daniel is found to be no better critic than his pre- 
 decessors. The Table of Remarkable Occurrences, ap- 
 pended at the end of each reign, reveals, so to speak, 
 the habit of thought, the structural basis on which the 
 artistic edifice is reared. Daniel will as readily quote 
 Sir John Hayward as any earlier writer for the state- 
 ment of a dreadful earthquake in the second year of 
 William II., or Holinshed for similar violences of 
 Nature in that time. Curiously, Daniel supposes the 
 Norman times to have been ignorant aod superstitious 
 and prone to exaggeration in their stories. He is not 
 aware that his own times begot these stories. It 
 signifies, in fact, very little whether he cites William 
 of Malmesbury or Sir John Hayward for these prodigious 
 events ; the monk and the knight were, in fact, nearly 
 contemporaries. But the reign of Edward III. is quite 
 as marvellous as any of the Norman reigns. In the 
 thirty-fourth year, says Daniel (if we may credit the 
 Dominican Nic. Trivet's " History "), there was not only 
 great mortality, but two castles were seen in casties in 
 the air, out of which there seemed to sally ^^^^''** 
 several troops of armed men, who fought for a time. 
 One castle was in the south-east, the other in the south- 
 west. The battle of these black and white aerial troops 
 Pis described. There are a number of other similar 
 prodigies scattered through the pages. 
 
 Such is the irony of the subject, Daniel ends at the 
 
 very point where a man of his principles should have 
 
 K begun, namely, when public Records were said to have 
 
 ^^ been kept, however faintly. Or had he been strict in his 
 
 I 
 
402 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 application of his principle, he would have advanced up 
 the stream of time towards the obscure, instead of plant- 
 ing himself at an epoch which is, in fact, -equally obscure 
 with that of British kiags. But with Daniel History 
 was still a deduction from the past to the present, not, as 
 it has yet to be understood, a deduction from the known 
 and visible present to the obscure and unknown past. 
 
 Hay ward, writing about the same time, continues to 
 Hayward bcg the Critical question, and to write Histories 
 and Baker. ^£ EugHsh kiugs iu the dramatic spirit of 
 Livy. Sir Richard Baker ( 1 568-1 645) in his Chronicles 
 offers us a most entertaining narrative, distinguished 
 by its fine vigorous English style. Baker is a good 
 classical scholar, but critical habits are foreign to his 
 mind. His sources are, as usual, chiefly Benedictine, 
 Gildas, and the rest. But at last it appears that Brute 
 and his creator have had their day. A distaste for 
 Geofirey of Monmouth has set in ; for it is no distaste 
 for incredible stories, as such, that induces the denial 
 of Brute. Baker is full of curious tales, which he either 
 relishes himself or serves up for the delectation of the 
 prototypes of Sir Roger de Coverley. And while he is 
 full of vulgar wonder, he is indifi*erent towards objects 
 that may well excite intelligent wonder ; that is, the 
 great intellectual achievements of his own time. It is 
 impossible to read without a smile his account of the 
 great men who flourished in the reign of Queen Eliza- 
 beth. After a list of names that have now become 
 obscure or forgotten, he mentions the actors AUeyne and 
 Burbage with high praise. But the mere playwrights 
 Benjamin Jonson and William Shakespeare receive a 
 cold compliment at the end of his list. Whenever the 
 legend of Shakespeare shall be thoroughly examined, 
 this passage should receive more special attention. 
 
( 403 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE INNS OF COURT — THE ROMANCE OF THE LAW. 
 
 To turn from the roar of the Strand or of Holborn into 
 the quiet haunts of the lawyers among green trees and 
 sparkling fountains is one of the keenest of pleasures to 
 an Englishman who loves to meditate on the history of 
 his country. In these retreats began to gather from 
 the time of Henry VIII. the best scholars and wits, 
 the ablest men in arts and arms, the travellers, and the 
 pioneers of science. It is impossible to think of any 
 numerous society of the kind until that reign ; for, 
 indeed, there is no evidence, in buildings or in literature, 
 that it existed before the civil factions were giving way 
 to an attempt at a settled constitution. 
 
 There was next to nothing in the shape of legal books 
 to be studied, and the consequence was that the brightest 
 spirits gave themselves to the study of poetry and 
 literature, and to the cultivation of the rhetorical re- 
 sources of our mother tongue. Yet the efforts to make 
 out an antiquity for English laws are worthy of 
 attention. 
 
 The story of the Fortescue Tracts is another example 
 of the system of collaboration to which our Fortescue 
 English story was due. By about the middle ^''^''^^' 
 of the sixteenth century nothing whatever had been 
 heard of Sir John Fortescue as an author. John Leland 
 
404 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 knows nothing of the tracts. The rise of the Fortescue 
 legend may be traced in the untrustworthy Bale and 
 Pits, who followed Leland, and in MSS. which came 
 into the possession of Selden, and other antiquaries of 
 the reign of Elizabeth. At that time it w^as desired to 
 have some history of the Inns of Court ; and in the 
 utter ignorance of the pre-Tudor past it was agreed to 
 accept the statement that they had been flourishing so 
 early as the time of Henry VI. At the same time the 
 attempt was made to frame a list of Chancellors, and the 
 powerful Fortescue family was gratified by the eminence 
 thus conceded to their ancestor. 
 
 Coke and others extolled Fortescue as a great author ; 
 but the utter poverty of the tracts ascribed to him, 
 nay, of the productions imputed to Coke himself, is 
 the most decisive proof that can be imagined of the 
 little progress that had been made in the definition of 
 the idea of Law during the reign of Elizabeth. The 
 title of one of the Tracts is " On the Praises of the 
 Law," and it shows little more than the fact that the 
 laudation of constitutional government rather than 
 the observance of it began to set in during our great 
 literary period. 
 
 With regard to the treatise on the " Difference 
 between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy," Selden 
 had a MS. which passed into the Bodleian Library. 
 Archbishop Laud and Sir Kenelm Digby had other 
 MSS., Sir Kobert Cotton a third. The latter bore an 
 inscription purporting to be from the hand of Sir 
 Adrian Fortescue, written in the year 1532, and was 
 the fairest and most complete of all. This Sir Adrian 
 is said to have been beheaded for taking part in an 
 insurrection under Henry VIII. The copy of Arch- 
 bishop Laud, however, appeared to be the oldest. 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 405 
 
 Such were the particulars given by Mr. Fortescue Aland ^ 
 afterwards Lord Fortescue, in his edition of 17 14. As 
 before remarked, the silence of John Leland seems 
 decisive against the genuineness of the copy dated 1532. 
 
 When we inspect the contents of this book, we find 
 that they reflect the state of mind of politicians, moving 
 about in a world not yet realized, and groping after 
 the elements of a constitutional life. The diflerence 
 between a " Royal Dominion " or " Absolute Monarchy " 
 and a '* limited or political monarchy " is that between 
 government by laws of the king's arbitrary will and 
 government by laws made with the consent of his 
 subjects. The reader will observe that the memory of 
 the turbulent times of the nobles with their bauds of 
 retainers is still quite fresh, although referred to a 
 distant time. 
 
 The indispensable Brute must be conceived as having 
 brouo-ht a settled Constitution to the island, 
 
 PIT • 1 1 • p n Brute and 
 
 founded on an agreement with his followers, the Consti- 
 The fable being dogma, so also is it dogma that 
 "there never was an absolute government in Eng- 
 land." The rule, "By their fruits ye shall know them,'' 
 is applied to the Governments of France and England, 
 to the disadvantage of the former. The writer represents 
 that the King of France's revenues are double those of 
 England because the former takes what he pleases, and 
 the latter what the people will please to give him. He 
 has some curious reasoning by which he would prove 
 that a poor king must imply a poor people, and deals 
 with the ordinary and extraordinary expenses of the 
 Crown. He is alive to the danger of subjects becoming 
 too powerful ; and here again reflects the turbulence of 
 the aristocracy in his allusions to French and Scottish 
 Chronicles. 
 
4o6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 There are more curiosities in these Lancastrian Tracts. 
 They hint that the very foundations of Eight had to 
 be laid in England, and that laws and constitutions are 
 being freely forged in the interests of parties. Church 
 sympathies are also betrayed in the upholding of the 
 Papal and Hierarchical pretensions, and of the inspired 
 Canon Law, derived from the forged Benedictine 
 Decretum. These obscure writers are full of " talk of 
 Chronicles." That is to say, they are beginning to turu 
 over the pages of the Black Monks and Black Friars — the 
 works imputed to Peter of Poictiers, Kalph de Diceto, 
 and others, which have newly come into their hands. 
 
 In this strange tract the attempt is renewed to 
 English and flatter the vulgar vanity of Englishmen who 
 French. bclicve thcmselvcs to be physically and morally 
 far superior to the Frenchmen. The French are cowards, 
 says this strange "Chief Justice," and therefore do not 
 rebel like the Englishmen. In England one thief is 
 equal to two true men. In France one thief is only 
 equal to half a true man. Consequently, an English 
 thief must be better than his French counterpart in the 
 ratio^of four to one. He exults, this curious minister 
 of the law, in the fact that more men are hanged in 
 England in a year for robbery and manslaughter than 
 during seven years in France. The poor-spirited 
 Scottish thieves, again, are unequal to the daring of 
 robbery from the person ; they must be content to be 
 hanged for petty larceny. 
 
 The might of England depends on her poor Archers, 
 The Archers ^ud uulcss tlic archcrs be supported the 
 of England, ^^^i^^ ^^.|j |^^ dcstroycd. You canuot put 
 
 down an insurrection without the Archers. The poor 
 men have always been the authors of insurrection, and 
 have compelled the thrifty to go along with them ; and 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 407 
 
 if you make the poor man still poorer, you may expect 
 the more insurrection. The argument is addressed to 
 those who advocate an absolute monarchy in England. 
 The writer says, " You ought not to weaken the 
 Commons." He means you cannot put the Commons 
 down. He makes a virtue of necessity; he accepts a 
 limited monarchy, because the stubborn yeomen have 
 bent their formidable bows, and have resolved there 
 should not be a Tyranny in England. 
 
 The Civil Wars had tried and proved the prowess 
 of the British Archers. Comines bears his admirinor 
 testimony to their worth. Sir Walter Scott, following 
 him, has brilliantly depicted them in the court of 
 Louis XI. The archers must have been the champions 
 of the only freedom known. 
 
 The yew tree is sacred in the eyes of the English- 
 man. The bow is the instrument of our TheSacred 
 freedom. Well may Hugh Latimer remind ^^^* 
 young Englishmen of the fact. The art of shooting, 
 he says, is a gift of God that He hath given us to 
 excel all nations withal — God's instrument, whereby 
 He hath given us many victories against our enemies. 
 To practise shooting is a sacred duty. Latimer's 
 father and all good yeomen thought it an essential 
 of education. The boy was taught to lay his body 
 in his bow, and to draw with the strength of his 
 body rather than with his arms, as other nations do. 
 Stow gives a glimpse of the youths of London engaged 
 in martial exercises on holidays after every evening 
 prayer, while the maidens danced to a timbrel under the 
 eye of masters and mistresses in the garlanded streets. 
 
 It is not without reason that the memory of the 
 English robbers and outlaws have been glori- TheOutiaw 
 fied in our ballad poetry, and that Shakespeare ^'■^^®^- 
 
4o8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 himself did not scruple to represent a Crown Prince 
 of the fifteenth century as an associate of that class. 
 It was felt, as it was felt about the Highwaymen of 
 the eighteenth century, that bad times and the cruel 
 pressure of poverty had forced some of the most manly 
 spirits in England into the woods and upon the roads. 
 The glorification of the Outlaw shows that there was 
 no trust in the law. The love of the Outlaw as 
 the friend of the poor and the redresser of social in- 
 equalities shows that there was no appeal from the 
 iniquities of the oligarchy save to the stout arm and 
 the strong bow. It is hardly correct, then, to say, 
 with Hal lam, that highway robbery was from the first a 
 national crime, because a crime is called into existence 
 by general sentiment, and is then defined by the 
 law. But if the documents imputed to the reign of 
 Edward III. and Kichard 11. may be used as evidence, it 
 is clear that neither sentiment nor law had condemned 
 robbery. The grant of Charters of pardon to Kobbers 
 was common, and was not protested against until about 
 that time. Where authority is so ready to pardon, its 
 own weakness is proved, and the strength that is arrayed 
 against it. The documents, however, are not genuine. 
 They were designed to give ancient sanction to Tudor 
 practices. It may seem a sudden and abrupt tran- 
 sition to pass from the haunts of legislators in 
 London to the green glades of Sherwood. But the 
 transition is suggested by the reading of Fortescue and 
 much other contemporary evidence. We are still in a 
 time when law meant the arbitrary pleasure of the 
 king or his clerical and noble advisers, and when the 
 name of it was detested as synonymous with odious 
 injustice and oppression b}^ the mass of the people. It 
 is one of the most remarkable contrasts of the sixteenth 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 409 
 
 century : the talk on the part of clerical chroniclers of 
 Magna Carta and the noble services rendered to the 
 cause of English liberty by archbishops, bishops, and 
 abbots ; and the passionate defiance and contempt of the 
 Order breathed in those animated ballads of " Robin 
 Hood," which sprang from the very heart and core of 
 the English people. 
 
 Latimer tells how on one occasion he gave notice 
 overnight that he would preach in a certain Robin 
 town on the following holiday. It was on his Hood's Day. 
 way from town. He expected to see a large congrega- 
 tion, but found the church door fast locked. At last 
 one of the parishioners came and told him it was Robin 
 Hood's Day, and all the parish was gone abroad to 
 gather for Robin Hood. The good bishop was indig- 
 nant that neither his eloquence nor his rochet was 
 regarded, and he had to give place to Robin Hood's 
 men. It was no laughing matter, it was a weeping 
 matter, that the memory of a traitor and a thief should 
 be thus preferred to God's Word. But the popular cult 
 of Robin Hood was rooted in something deeper than the 
 mere neglect of preaching on the part of the bishops, as 
 Latimer thinks. 
 
 The popular heart is always right. It knew itself 
 when it chose the outlaw archer for its ideal, ^^ ^ ,^ 
 
 The Cult 
 
 and the love of the Lincoln green was in- of Robin 
 
 ° Hood. 
 
 compatible with reverence for the rochet of a 
 bishop. In fact, the old English ballads of Robin 
 Hood are among the most precious sources of English 
 history. There is to be seen the splendid reflection of 
 the true Englishman of our most glorious periods — the 
 man who created the liberties which slowly and reluct- 
 antly found recognition in the parchments of Church 
 lawyers. In them stand revealed the inveterate enemies 
 
41 o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of that liberty — the luxurious bishop and abbot, the 
 tyrannical sheriff, upon whom are poured streams of 
 joyous satire. The legend about Eobin himself plants 
 him in the far-distant time of Henry II., a youth of noble 
 blood, high-spirited and generous, juggled out of the 
 remains of his patrimony by a sheriff and an abbot in 
 league. So he was driven to the forests to wage war 
 against the oligarchy on behalf of the poor and the 
 needy, the desolate and the oppressed. He made church- 
 men disgorge their ill-gotten purses. Michael Drayton 
 well understood, as a poet, what the legend meant — 
 
 " From wealthy abbots' chests and churls' abundant store, 
 What oftentimes he took, he shared amongst the poor ; 
 No lordly bishops came in lusty Kobin's way, 
 To him before he went, but for his pass must pay." 
 
 The matchless Archer reigns in Sherwood till age 
 creeps upon him, and he must seek the aid of a leech. 
 And then the lancet of the Benedictine Prioress of 
 Kirkley, his cousin, treacherously bleeds him to death. 
 
 We understand, in these days, better than the 
 Love of scholars of the Tudor period could do, the 
 Sensed theory of Art, and can trace the rise of 
 upon Robin, ^j^'g ^^.^^^ Figurc to the passions that stirred 
 in English hearts at the very dawn and beginning 
 of our national life. This " gentlest of Thieves," in 
 the phrase of Camden, is our first National Hero, 
 because the kind of thieving recommended by his 
 example was held a virtue rather than a crime. He 
 is our Archer-god, by whose Bow and whose pity men 
 were wont to swear, whose annual feast was more 
 endeared than that of any saint in the ecclesiastical 
 Calendar ; whose grave was visited by pilgrims, who 
 left his name to a Well, whose weapons were still shown 
 down to our own times in Fountains Abbey. It is 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 411 
 
 a fine testimony that a cool writer like Eitson bears 
 to the worth of an ideal which he confounds with an 
 actual historic person. He describes Kobin as " a man 
 who, in a barbarous age and under a complicated 
 Tyranny, displayed a spirit of freedom and indepen- 
 dence which has endeared him to the common people, 
 whose cause he maintained, and which, in spite of 
 the malicious endeavours of pitiful monks, by whom 
 history was consecrated to the crimes and follies of 
 titled ruffians and sainted idiots, to suppress all record 
 of his patriotic exertions and virtuous acts, will render 
 his name immortal." 
 
 These praises are, in fact, due to multitudes of 
 hearty yeomen and peasantry whose lives and ^^ ^ 
 serious aspirations have been gathered up of National 
 under the common name and symbol of this 
 worship. Nor is it less pleasing to observe how into 
 the same ideal there enter the natural joys and gaieties 
 of our old English life, which so genially rebuke the 
 affectations of the cloister. Robin loves to dance with 
 the village lasses round the Maypole when the moon 
 is up, as the English did in the time of Stow. He 
 is tender towards Women ; when the Black Monks are 
 in his power, he makes them promise that they will 
 meddle with maids and wives no more. When on his 
 death-bed, and Little John begs to be suffered to burn 
 Kirkley Hall in vengeance on the cruel prioress, Eobin 
 answers, '' Nay, nay, I never hurt a woman in all my 
 life, nor yet a man in woman's company ; and as it 
 has been during my life, so shall it be at my end.'' 
 He will not shed the blood of his pursuer, the Bishop 
 of Hereford ; he lets him off after he has sung a mass 
 under the Greenwood tree. 
 
 When we recall the time at which the ** Geste of 
 
412 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Eobin Hood " was issued from the press of De Worde 
 Reflections iH Fleet Street, we may use the Ballads of 
 Monastic ^he Archer as strong evidence of the state of 
 Period. popular feeling and imagination during the 
 pre-Reformation period. They form a very strong 
 indictment against the monastic clergy, their mendacity, 
 their lust, their greed ; they are indirectly a defence 
 of the yeomen, the husbandmen, the poorer knights 
 and squires, and all the respectable classes, against 
 the monastic usurpations, and against the clerical 
 administration in the hands of the high sheriffs. On 
 the other hand, they betray no ill-will to the persons of 
 the kings, who are depicted as good fellows, fond of 
 adventure in disguise, and ready to extend the royal 
 pardon to the freemen who have lived on their venison, 
 and have constituted their parliament under the old 
 oak. It cannot be said that there is any recognition 
 of the majesty of the Common Law, before which kings 
 and subjects must alike humble themselves. But an 
 unwritten law, a solemn sense of right and wrong, 
 is contained in the very lawlessness of the exiles of 
 Sherwood, who appear devoutly to recognize the 
 patronage of Our Lady. 
 
 To return from this digression to the Inns of Court. 
 We may from the tract " On the Praises of Laws " 
 sketch a picture of the society of the young nobles 
 and gentlemen who there pursued all the elegant 
 accomplishments of the time — singing, music, dancing. 
 They read a little Roman Law on working days, and 
 on holidays a little of Holy Scripture, and after service 
 the Chronicles, which supplied in so great abundance 
 food to the patriotic imagination. The Inns were the 
 cradle of new-born civility. 
 
 It is quite possible and probalile that, with tlie 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 4^3 
 
 exception of Paris, there was no French university 
 where so many young men were found as in the Inns. 
 Whether they were the school for the cultivation of 
 all virtues and the eradication of all vices that the 
 author pretends, is another matter. The whole picture 
 is that of a beginning, a dawning conception of the 
 need of study to the ruling classes, not so much of 
 extant laws as of methods of trial and judgment, that 
 the reproaches of barbarous ordeals and tortures may 
 be done away. The fictions of ancient Laws prepare 
 the way for actual legislation. 
 
 Passing by the fable about Littleton, reputed 
 author of the work on Tenures, we do not Li^^igton, 
 and cannot move out of the region of mere 
 conjecture as to the state of law and its administration 
 until we arrive at Coke, so fondly called the ^ 
 Oracle of the Common Law, and his con- 
 temporaries Selden, Bacon, and others. And even 
 then how dim and uncertain are the Institutes and 
 Eeports, especially when contrasted with the fulsome 
 talk about Coke, against whom Blackstone launched 
 a sneer that would have been undeserved had it been 
 frankly stated that he was among the first to ascertain a 
 Code of Law. But the antiquarian folly, the inveterate 
 propensity to run everything into the mists of fable, 
 the absolute inability to admit that any custom had 
 a recent beginning, hides every fact from us. 
 
 The lawyers persisted in thinking of the Common 
 Law as springing from sources as inscrutable inscrutable 
 as those of the Nile ; and in talking about common 
 King Molmucius, then King Alfred, as legis- ^'''' 
 lators, and the like, when all the while they had 
 not tracts enough on the subject to fill a moderate 
 book- case. It was necessary to believe that primitive 
 
414 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Britons and primitive Saxons had held the laws in 
 memory alone. Local customs had become so various, 
 it was necessary for King Alfred to construct a Dome 
 Book for the use of the whole kingdom. It must be 
 supposed that this book, after being extant for 600 
 years, had been lost in the time of Edward IV., 
 which is, in fact, the highest point to which general 
 reminiscence could reach. 
 
 The dogma of History demanded that the Danes 
 should have had their part in legislation ; so that in the 
 beginning of the Norman time three different systems 
 must have prevailed in different parts of the kingdom. 
 This theory is traceable to the Benedictines " Koger 
 Hoveden" and "Kanulph of Chester." Then the great 
 ecclesiastical portrait of Edward the Confessor shines 
 out of the gloom. He must frame a new Digest for 
 general use. 
 
 Another of the same fraternity, Eadmer, edited by 
 Selden, would better this theory by making Edgar, the 
 grandfather of Edward, the projector of the work. This, 
 too, was believed, even, as it seems, by the powerful 
 understanding of Selden. It was pleasing to the pro- 
 fessor to consider that Alfred had been the founder, 
 Edward the restorer, of Anglican Laws. And it was 
 one of the great feats of the ecclesiastics to represent 
 the Confessor as the protector of English liberties in so 
 far distant a time. 
 
 It was believed, again, still on the statements of the 
 Roman Law Black Mouks, that the Civil or Eoman Law 
 in England. ^^^ made Its Way hither from Bologna in 
 the twelfth century, when a new and holy Eoman 
 Empire began. Then there had been strife between 
 the upholders of the two systems of Law ; but the free 
 constitution of England had flourished upon that strife ; 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 415 
 
 and the collection of maxims and customs known as the 
 Common I^aw had gradually been made. A The Common 
 Folk-Eight had been established, based on ^*^* 
 immemorial usage. A Common Council of Wise Men 
 had been formed ; magistrates had been elected by the 
 people ; the Crown had been made hereditary ; military 
 service of landholders had been established. There had 
 been no right of primogeniture, so necessary to an 
 oligarchic government. The King's Court had been 
 movable, and had been held on the Church feasts of 
 Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. There had been 
 county courts, presided over by the Bishop and the 
 Sheriff. Trials were by Ordeal, or by morsel of Execra- 
 tion, or by Wager of Law, or by Jury. 
 
 Then the Normans came in. Our lawyers of the 
 Tudor period believed that the Norman kinoes ^ , 
 
 •'- o Enslavement 
 
 had found favour with the Black Monks by under the 
 
 - . *' Normans. 
 
 exemptmg the sanctity irom the secular power, 
 and by separating the ecclesiastical courts from the 
 civil. The Normans had also depopulated vast tracts 
 of land for the purposes of the Chase. They had made 
 the Game, some said, the sole property of the King by 
 the forest-laws. The King's Court had been erected, 
 and the Chief Justice, with almost boundless authority, 
 had become the proper Tyrant of the people, and the 
 rival of the King himself. 
 
 The Chief Justice was originally of the Order of 
 Black Monks. Proceedings were carried on in The Chief 
 the French language, and the judges were '^"^*^^^^- 
 Frenchmen who understood not our mother-tongue. 
 This went on for 300 long years, till a heroic King 
 conquered the French abroad and their language at 
 home. Yet a mischievous subtle scholastic system of 
 jurisprudence had replaced the simple wisdom of our 
 
41 6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Saxon forefathers. The custom of Trial by Combat had 
 also come in, and the fiction of feudal tenure of land. 
 
 The nation was enslaved. It lay at the mercy of 
 four foreign ecclesiastics, devoted to a foreign rule and 
 a foreign superstition. The laws were in an unknown 
 tongue. The people were treated as children, debarred 
 from many pleasures by day, and sent to bed by sound 
 of bell at eight o'clock each night. The King was a 
 Despot; the sole landlord, the licensed pillager of his 
 submissive vassals, the head of an army of 60,000 men. 
 He had, however, no fleet. The mass of the people 
 were mere bondmen. Life was hardly worth living to 
 any but the clergy and the barons, or, in short, to a small 
 Oligarchy. It was, in the words of Blackstone, ** a 
 complete and well-concerted scheme of servility " under 
 which Englishmen languished, or were believed to have 
 languished . 
 
 But Henry I., the fine Clerk, took counsel of the 
 
 Black Monks, and restored the glorious Con- 
 Restoration , . n ■r\ ^ t ^ rn n xt 
 
 of the stitution of Edward the Confessor. Henry, 
 
 Constitution. ^ . . 
 
 as Spelman believed, abolished Curfew ; he 
 published again the Confessor's Code. He favoured 
 the freedom of the Church. Yet the restitution of the 
 glorious Confessor's system was not complete, and Henry's 
 reforms were forgotten as soon as they were established. 
 It was believed that in Henry 11. 's time a Chief Justice, 
 Glanville, had written on the codification of the laws. 
 At last there uprose that great monarch whom the poets 
 call Longshank, whose physical stature corresponded to 
 
 that of his mind. He was head and shoulders 
 
 Edward I. . . 
 
 above his contemporaries. He was the English 
 Justinian ; he led our laws to victory. Yet before his 
 time great battles of the Constitution had been fought 
 and won. The Great Charter and the Forest Charter 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 417 
 
 had been wrested from King John and his son. The 
 Bible of the Constitution had been delivered to the 
 people. For all that, the Pope was our lord during those 
 two reigns, and Chief Justice Bracton was showing the 
 improvement of the constitution of a realm sold to the 
 Pope. 
 
 But the change under Edward I. was nothing less 
 than magical. Suddenly the Law stood revealed The English 
 in her perfection like a statue from the hand •^"s*'°^^°- 
 of Phidias. Most marvellous ! for Sir Matthew Hale 
 does not scruple to affirm that more was done in 
 the first thirteen years of his reign in the interests of 
 distributive justice than in all the ages since his time. 
 To enumerate the just deeds of Edward would be an 
 endless task, said Blackstone in his later day. At last 
 Englishmen, amused and tantalized so long by spectral 
 Charters, could breathe freely and call their bodies and 
 souls their own. Are not the principles contained in 
 the treatises of Britton, Fleta, Hengham, and the rest, 
 law to this day, or nearly so? demands Blackstone. 
 At last Magna Carta begins to be observed. Yet 
 military tenures continue to weigh down for many ages 
 the rising head of English liberty. 
 
 But then in the reigns of the next Edwards our 
 rulers began to take from us what the first contests 
 
 with the 
 
 army 
 
 Edward had given. The Pope had still to be JapJ 
 fought with the weapon of Prcemunire, and ^*™°°^s- 
 the Monks and Friars made the Laws of the Land an 
 implement of persecution. For a hundred long years 
 laws were silent amidst the din of arms, and there was 
 no improvement of the perfect Constitution of Edward L 
 during the quarrel of the White and Eed Eose factions. 
 At last Lancaster triumphs, and Henry Tudor seizes the 
 throne. But the Constitution is obliterated. The reign 
 
 2 E 
 
4i8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of Henry YII. is remembered as the period of royal ex- 
 Extinction of tortion, of penal legislation to that end, of the 
 tion^^ei^''" erection or revival of the hideous Star Cham- 
 theTudors. ^^^ Court, the period of a swollen Treasury, 
 an impoverished and wrathful people. There is, says 
 Blackstone, hardly a statute in this reign introductive 
 of a new law or modifying the old but what either 
 directly or obliquely tended to the emolument of the 
 Exchequer. 
 
 The reign of Henry VHI. is recalled as a time 
 of strained prerogative and of pusillanimous parliaments, 
 a time for the creation of an " amazing heap of wild 
 and new-fangled treasons." After the brief sunshine of 
 Edward YI.'s reign, religious slavery is re-established 
 under his sister by bloody measures, which in turn are 
 defeated by the accession of Queen Elizabeth. The 
 religious liberties of the nation have now to be guarded 
 in their infancy, against papists and other nonconformists 
 by further sanguinary laws. The power of the Star 
 Chamber is increased, and the High Commission Court 
 is erected. The Parliaments are kept at an awful 
 distance by the Queen, who had equal power to play 
 the tyrant with the predecessors of her House. Per- 
 haps she lacked the opportunity or the inclination. 
 " Her days were not those golden days of a liberty 
 that we formerly were taught to believe ; for the true 
 liberty of the subject consists not so much in the 
 gracious behaviour as in the limited power of the 
 sovereign." 
 
 During the reign of James I. the claim to absolute 
 The Consti- powcr inherent in the kingly office was made, 
 J^derttT^ and the people heard doctrines preached from 
 Stuarts. ^Y^Q throne and pulpit subversive of liberty 
 and property, and all the natural rights of humanity. 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 419 
 
 The morning of the next reign was overclouded, and 
 though its noon brightened, the sun went down in 
 blood, and left the whole kingdom in darkness. At 
 last the People are heard of, and begin to make them- 
 selves felt through their leaders. The Petition of Right 
 is a second Magna Carta. A s^reat Rebellion ^ 
 
 1 rNi 1 1 Tir 1 Resurrection 
 
 breaks out ; the Church and Monarchy are of the 
 overturned, the sovereign is with deliberate 
 solemnity tried, condemned, and executed. In the 
 next reign, wicked, sanguinary, and turbulent as it 
 was, English Liberty was at last completely restored, 
 for the first time since its total abolition at the 
 Norman Conquest. The Habeas Corpus Act is as a 
 second or third Magna Carta ; the Constitution arrives 
 at its full vigour, and the true balance between 
 liberty and prerogative is at last happily established 
 by law in the reign of King Charles II. Yet our 
 civil liberties were not fully and explicitly acknow- 
 ledged and defined till the era of the happy Revo- 
 lution. 
 
 Need I remind the reader of all that it has been 
 found necessary to do, since the time of Blackstone, by 
 way of completing the edifice of constitutional freedom ? 
 Need I recall the days of our own boyhood, or of 
 times yet more recent ? Shall I remind him that the 
 word " Emancipation " has had a meaning, and a very 
 precious meaning, for the ears of Jews and of Catholics 
 within this generation? Or that it is even now only 
 slowly dawning on the minds of the mass of our country- 
 men that a man may be none the less worthy a citizen 
 and a patriot because he cherishes, and cherishing, dares 
 to express, opinions concerning the nature of the gods 
 diverse from those of the established cult ? If English 
 liberty has ever attained to adult maturity, it has 
 
420 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 been only in these Victorian times in which we have 
 lived. 
 
 The romantic story which has been briefly sketched 
 , from pajo;es of the historians of the Law 
 
 The Tantalus ^ ^ 
 
 fable of the reprcscnts the Jiinglish people as a Tantalus, 
 
 Constitution. oi- i i i p i 
 
 or {Sisyphus, condemned tor unknown sins 
 to grasp at fruits that are swept at the moment of 
 fruition from out its reach, or to roll the burden of its 
 oppressions uphill in vain and ceaseless efforts to be 
 free. It is a tale replete at every point with self-contra- 
 diction and absurdity. At the close of the Lancastrian 
 civil wars, says the learned judge, " a motion of general 
 liberty had strongly pervaded and animated the whole 
 constitution. Yet the particular liberty, the natural 
 equality, and personal independence of individuals, 
 were little regarded or thought of; nay, even to assert 
 them was hinted as the height of sedition and rebellion. 
 Our ancestors heard, with detestation and horror, those 
 sentiments rudely delivered, and pushed to most absurd 
 extremes by the violence of a Cade and a Tyler, which 
 have since been applauded, with a zeal almost rising 
 to idolatry, when softened and recommended by the 
 eloquence, the moderation, and the arguments of a 
 Sidney, a Locke, and a Milton." 
 
 The truth is, that not until long after those wars 
 Epoch of were over were the people taught to dream 
 spectitT" such dreams, and see such visions of an ideal 
 dream. English Constitution in the past. There is 
 
 not the slightest reason for imputing any of the 
 writings on the subject to an earlier time than the 
 era of the Tudors and Stuarts. And the writinsfs were 
 composed under the influence of the Benedictines. It 
 is they who represent the Abbot of Battle and the Prior 
 of Lewes, joining with squires, yeomen, and tradesmen 
 
THE INNS OF COURT. 421 
 
 in the rebelliou of the Men of Kent. It is they who 
 flatter the archers of England. It is they who grant 
 under the name of Matthew Paris of St. Albans the 
 Great Charter to Englishmen, undiscovered until late 
 in the sixteenth century. 
 
42 2 . THF RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 
 
 I HAVE sliown that English History in the sense of 
 Komancing and Story-telling began with the Tudor 
 period ; I have now to point out that it was not until 
 after the great Eevolution of 1688 that History in the 
 sense of contemporary record can be said to have 
 properly begun. 
 
 Stow, writing about 1 598, in his '' Survey of London," 
 The Tower IS our earliest contemporary authority for the 
 of London, j^^ii^ings of the city. Unfortunately, Stow 
 seldom offers glimpses of the London of his own ob- 
 servation. The industrious collector is always poring 
 over his monkish MSS., and repeating the tales he 
 finds therein. He knew nothing of the state of 
 " Kecords " half a century before his time ; but he is 
 aware that Wakefield Tower and the Chapel of Julius 
 Caesar in the White Tower had long been used as 
 Eepositories. The early " Kecords '' themselves would 
 persuade us that they had been begun so early as the 
 14th year of Edward HL 
 
 We should reason strictly upon this question. One 
 may assume that " Records " were made to be kept, and 
 kept in order to be consulted. At what epoch can we 
 first descry the studious antiquary wending his way 
 thither ? It will not be much later than the time when 
 
 J 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 42^ 
 
 the '' Kecords " became an institution. But there was 
 no known Society of Antiquaries until the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, which consisted merely of a knot of 
 the most distinguished scholars in London. The curious 
 story has come down to us that it was only under Queen 
 Elizabeth the Records began to be used. In the time 
 of her brother, Edward VI., an officer of ordnance had 
 stumbled upon a heap of parchments, the " Records," 
 which had lain dormant for the space of a long hundred 
 years. 
 
 Who is it that tells this singular story ? It is Mr. 
 Strype, the industrious old Essex clergyman, to whom 
 we are indebted for so much material relating to the 
 reign of Elizabeth — Mr. Strype, who died in 1737 at the 
 great age of ninety-four. Writing in 17 18, he tells us 
 that William Bowyer in 1567 had digested the Records 
 into six great volumes, covering the period from King 
 John to Edward IV. But they have vanished ! Then 
 we hear of poor Prynne, who in his study of the 
 " Records " had come upon " mere spurious forgery and 
 imposture," and who had contemptuously denounced 
 the indolent credulity of Coke and others. Yet Prynne 
 himself did not see, or dared not avow, the whole of the 
 imposture. He rejected Parliament Rolls of Edward III. 
 He supposed that in dark times like the Wars of the 
 Roses kings embezzled Records, or suppressed what 
 was contrary to their interests. He found gaps in the 
 series, he saw that they had been filled up out of 
 " Matthew Paris " and the Benedictine faction. Yet he 
 does not seem to have rejected the Chronology from 
 Brute the Trojan to William the Norman, though he 
 protests against " overmuch laziness and credulity." 
 
 At last, in the time of Queen Anne, a great stir was 
 made, and several years were occupied, under the 
 
424 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 direction of Lord Halifax, Bishop Nicolson, and other 
 scholars in reducing to order the confused heaps of 
 parchment in the Chapel of the White Tower. It does 
 not appear, however, that there was anything of much 
 value there for the purposes of matter-of-fact history. 
 
 Stow repeats the tale from the Monks, that the 
 Chancery Chapcl had bccu built by Henry HI. for 
 ^^''®' the custody of the Eolls ; that it had been 
 
 the House of Jewish Converts under the Carthusians, 
 who describe them as Ccelicolce Christi, as in other of 
 their writings. There is a fabulous system, as usual. 
 A Eabbi is described as " Bishop of the Jews '' in 1403, 
 and so on. We only move into daylight, as our eye 
 rests on the Eenaissance monument of Dr. Young, Dean 
 of York, 1 5 16, a date nearly corresponding to that over 
 the Arch of Lincoln's Inn opposite. The reader will 
 not far err if he assumes that the fabrication of these 
 stories about the Eolls was quite recent in that time. 
 Strype says that in 1529, the year of Wolsey's fall, 
 there was at the Eolls no more ancient Eecord than of 
 the reign of Henry VII., with the exception of a few 
 years of Eichard III. 
 
 The question of Chronology is all-important ; there- 
 fore I would once more insist that it is 
 impossible to find authentic Eecords in any 
 precise sense of the events above the Tudor time. The 
 documents relating to the question of the sepulture of 
 the holy Henry VI., raised, it is said, in the year 1498, 
 are in my opinion decisive of the question. I assume 
 that they are genuine. If not, they are cleverly 
 fabricated ; but the argument is equally good. The 
 story was current that the bones of the saintly king had 
 been removed from Chertsey to Windsor by Eichard III. : 
 a story of which there was no proof. However, St. 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 425 
 
 George's, Windsor, Chertsey, and Westminster all put 
 in their claims to be the receptacle of the relics. The 
 question was referred to the Chancellor and the Council, 
 and the decision was given in favour of Westminster. 
 On what grounds ? 
 
 The Abbot of Chertsey said that the tyrant Richard 
 had violently exhumed and carried off the body against 
 the consent of the Convent. The Dean of Windsor 
 asserted that it had been done by the consent of the 
 Chertsey monks, and further, that Henry had chosen 
 Windsor for his resting-place. The Abbot of West- 
 minster contradicted this assertion, and declared that 
 Henry had chosen Westminster, which was the place 
 of burial of his ancestors. Not one of the parties could 
 produce a scrap of authentic written evidence as to the 
 actual receptacle of his remains. 
 
 But the depositions of the Westminster witnesses 
 are amusing and instructive. Not one of them dates 
 by the year of the Lord ; but each had his circum- 
 stantial story to tell of a visit of Henry VI. to the 
 Abbey for the purpose of selecting his burial-place. A 
 clerk of the King's Signet deposed to a visit " about 
 twelve years before the King's death, between All- 
 hallowtide and Candlemas." A blind harbour and 
 servant (68) of the Abbot deposed to a visit " about the 
 feast of Allhallowtide two or three years before the 
 coming in of King Edward." The Falconer of the Abbot 
 deposed uncertainly to ** some time before the feld 
 of Northampton." A Scrivener, aged 70, said the time 
 of the visit was ** the latter end of the 36th year of the 
 King's reign." A Chanting priest (69) from Paul's 
 Churchyard, said that he had been shown the place 
 '* diverse times before Yorke felde." Another Scrivener 
 (63) said he had seen the will of Henry VL, devising his 
 
426 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 sepulture, on the table of the clerk of the king's works. 
 A servant of the late Prior Flete (66) deposed to having 
 witnessed the visit of Henry V^I. "about 40 year past," 
 and repeated what he had heard from the Prior to the 
 same efifect with the other witnesses. A weaver (76) 
 said he was present on the occasion of the visit " before 
 Palm Sunday field, but how long before he now re- 
 membereth not." A marbler of London (66) defined 
 the time as " the Friday before AUhallowsday next 
 before the first feld of St. Albones ; " and some of his 
 mates had bargained with the king for his tomb to be 
 made. They had received part payment, but nothing 
 was done, because of the great trouble that followed. 
 An old Cavendar of Westminster (90) deposed to the 
 visit " about 40 years past, or els moore." Dan John 
 Ramsay, an aged monk (S^), deposed to his having 
 received orders from the king himself as to the place 
 of his sepulture. But, unlike many of the witnesses 
 who pretended to remember the names of the great 
 men in the king's company, the monk could neither 
 remember who was present, nor how many years past 
 it was. A London tailor (y^) deposed that *' about 
 44 year past" he heard say from the under-keeper 
 of the St. Edward's shrine that King Henry VL had 
 chosen his sepulture on the north side of the shrine. 
 
 If you attempt to define the date of this Visit from 
 the dreamy reminiscences of these aged witnesses by 
 comparison with conventional English story, you must 
 fix it in the year 1454, or 1457, or 1458, or 1460, or 
 1 46 1. The judgment of the Privy Council is itself un- 
 dated by the year of the Incarnation. It was given in 
 favour of Westminster, on the ground that the holy king 
 had chosen it, and also that it was regarded as the 
 place of sepulture of kings. Yet, after all these solemn 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 427 
 
 proceedings, the remains of Henry VI., if they had ever 
 been at Windsor, were never translated thence, nor was 
 he ever canonized. The aspiring blood of Lancaster 
 sank into the ground, and has left no trace behind. 
 
 Such was the state of mind of the teachers and the 
 taught in English History that in 1555 the last Abbot 
 could defend the Sanctuary and Tomb of Kings by 
 going back to the foundation under King Lucius, 
 although its condition was utterly dark to him 100 
 years before the time of his Address to the House of 
 Commons. The system of fable about Westminster 
 breaks in pieces and falls in ruin so soon as you attend 
 to the state of men's minds during the early Tudor time. 
 What was not then known has never since been dis- 
 covered.* 
 
 The old Palace of Westminster was to Stow a place 
 of leo;end rather than of reminiscence. It was ^^ ^^ ^ 
 
 P . The Chapter 
 
 a ruin in is 20 when Henry VIII. removed to House at 
 
 , . , WestiDinster. 
 
 York Place, afterw^ards known as Whitehall. 
 The monkish tales about the old palace and the old kings 
 were, as I have shown, beginning to be in circulation 
 about that time. The Inscription relating to Edward I. 
 has been traced to the time of the last Abbot, John 
 Feckenham, who came back with his fourteen Black 
 Monks in the reign of Queen Mary. I would emphasize 
 the remark of Dean Stanley in his *' Memorials " on the 
 " pause and break " in English History denoted by the 
 first Tudor, whose name is connected with the eastern 
 chapel. Beyond him, our glance ever plunges into the 
 obscure. 
 
 When did the Chapter House become a Kecord 
 Office ? It was in the year 1 540 that the Abbacy was 
 dissolved, and that the Chapter House became public 
 
 * See Appendix to Dean Stanley's " Memorials of the Abbey." 
 
428 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 property. The Commons are said to have met in the 
 Chapel of St. Stephen in 1547, and the Chapter House 
 became a Eecord Office. What was the nature of the 
 '' Kecords/' and what was doing during the reign of 
 Queen Mary ? We know not ; but some idea of the 
 loose habits of the time may be collected from the fact 
 that the first Burial Eegister of the Abbey begins in 
 1606. The Record Office remained secret. And how 
 significant is the picture sketched by Stanley and Mr. 
 Eymer, the zealous compiler under Queen Anne, who 
 sits at his daily task in the vestibule, while the docu- 
 ments are doled out to him through the jealously 
 guarded door. 
 
 If the reader desires a fuller comprehension of these 
 matters, he may ransack the collections of Hearne, 
 another Queen Anne scholar ; and he may ascend with 
 some pains to the society of the Elizabethan and 
 Jacobin antiquaries, Agard, Camden, Cotton, Selden, 
 Spelman, Stow, Parker, and others. Conservative and 
 timid as these men mostly were, they could not pursue 
 their studies without being aware of great falsehoods in 
 the literary tradition. Yet so severe was the pressure 
 of ecclesiastical tyranny, they were unable to reveal 
 much important truth to the world. Their studies 
 were invaded, their persons imprisoned, their meetings 
 broken up, all independence of thought discouraged, and 
 the ecclesiastical interest rooted itself the more firmly 
 in protected fiction. Never will the Englishman under- 
 stand how there comes to be so great a mystery 
 enveloping the noblest names in his literature, until he 
 has entered the study of Selden, and conversed with 
 him and the friends who were worthy to partake his 
 intimacy. 
 
 As an example of the absurdity of the tales told us 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 429 
 
 concerning Eecords and Reports, it is said that in the 
 fifteenth year of James I. two stipendiary Reporters of 
 Law were appointed at the instance of Bacon, but 
 '' nothing came of it." From the time of Henry VIII., 
 it is said, such Reports as existed had been drawn up by 
 private hands. Yet Sir E. Coke, it appears, could 
 believe that in the barbarous times before Henry YIII. 
 Reports had been taken by protonotaries at the 
 expense of the Crown ; and that Year Books in a 
 regular series were extant from the time of Edward II. 
 to Henry YIII. ! Prynne made a partial attack on the 
 Institutes of Coke ; but the subject will not be under- 
 stood till it is remembered who were the first jurisperites 
 in England, and W'ho started the theory of the English 
 Justinian. 
 
 I would here call attention to a passage from 
 Macaulay w^hich illustrates in the clearest manner the 
 passions which led to much fabrication in the " Records." 
 " Every source of information as to our early history 
 (says Macaulay) has been poisoned by party spirit. 
 Our statesmen have always been under the influence of 
 the past, and our historians have always been under the 
 influence of the present. They have regarded History 
 as a repository of title-deeds, on which the rights of 
 Governments and nations depend. Under such con- 
 ditions the motives to falsification become almost 
 irresistible." Macaulay goes on to point out that down 
 to our own time the precedents from the Middle Ages 
 have been held valid, and have been cited on the 
 gravest occasions by our most eminent statesmen. 
 Those who have written concerning the limits of pre- 
 rogative and liberty in England have generally shown 
 the temper, not of judges, but of angry and uncandid 
 advocates. They were discussing not a speculative 
 
430 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 matter, but a matter which had a direct and practical 
 connection with the most momentous and excitino^ dis- 
 putes of their own day. From the commencement of 
 the long contest between the Parliament and the Stuarts 
 down to the time when the pretensions of the Stuarts 
 ceased to be formidable, few questions were practically 
 more important than the question whether the adminis- 
 tration of that family had or had not been in accordance 
 with the ancient constitution of the kingdom. The 
 question could only be decided by reference to the Records 
 of preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the Mirror of 
 Justice and the Rolls of Parliament were ransacked to 
 find pretexts- for the excesses of the Star Chamber on 
 one side and of the High Court of Justice on the other. 
 During a long course of years every Whig historian was 
 anxious to prove that the old English Government was 
 all but republican, every Tory historian to prove that 
 it was all but despotic. 
 
 " With such feelings both parties looked into the 
 Chronicles of the Middle Ages. Both readily found 
 what they sought, and both obstinately refused to see 
 anything but what they sought. . . . Those who saw 
 only one half of the evidence would have concluded that 
 the Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultan of 
 Turkey ; those who saw only the other half would have 
 concluded that the Plantagenets had as little real power 
 as the Doge of Venice, and both conclusions would have 
 been equally remote from the truth." 
 
 Now, it is evident that when there existed so strong 
 a craving for precedents, the temptation would be irresis- 
 tible to create them in this or that interest. In fact, 
 as I have pointed out, this was a leading motive in 
 the invention of the whole history of our kings ; and 
 the literary Churchmen have endeavoured to conciliate 
 
 J 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 431 
 
 opposing interests in their retrospect. There is no diffi- 
 culty in finding examples of this method of writing 
 down precedents in story form and calling them fact, — so 
 concealing violence with all the adornments of imaginary 
 antiquity. Let us note how this was done in support of 
 the pretensions of the Tudor monarchy. 
 
 Francis Bacon, if he it was who wrote the " Life of 
 Henry VI L," under the patronage of James L and his 
 son, shows in this treatise none of the qualities of the 
 sound reasoner, merely those of the courtly advocate. 
 He admits that Henry Tudor is now " far ofi" and in a 
 dim light " — a part of ancient History. He has dis- 
 covered no genuine Records ; Henry is but the repre- 
 sentative of an idea — the Union of the Roses, and the 
 Union of the Kingdoms. What was the title of Henry 
 to the Crown ? In the first place, there was the title of 
 the lady, Elizabeth of York, whom he had promised to 
 marry. Therefore Elizabeth was the true heiress to the 
 Crown. Second, Henry was heir of the House of Lan- 
 caster. How so ? He claimed descent from John of 
 Ghent, fourth son of Edward III. — in other words, the 
 usurping branch of the family established by the sword 
 of Henry IV. But John of Ghent's line had been broken 
 by the accession of Edward IV. and Richard III. of the 
 York branch. The three Henries had been declared 
 usurpers. Moreover, Henry Tudor claimed descent 
 from the usurping line through the illegitimate Earl of 
 Somerset. He knew (says Bacon) that his Lancastrian 
 title was condemned by Parliament, and yet resolved 
 to rest upon it in the main. Was there ever such a 
 tissue of contradictions ? The title amounts to this : 
 He was a usurper and no genuine member of the Royal 
 Family of Edward ; but there had been usurpers before 
 him. Then this must be eked out or remedied by the 
 
432 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 title of the Sword, which Henry is said to have pre- 
 ferred. He then (says Bacon) obtains from Parliament 
 a Statute entailing the Crown in his family. Finally, 
 this is confirmed by a Papal Bull. So the wreath of 
 three Titles is made a wreath of five. They are, after 
 all, naught but the ornaments and disguises of the Lan- 
 castrian sword. And these inventions are of late 
 date. 
 
 Coke, the Oracle of Law, says that Elizabeth of 
 York was rightful successor to the Crown after the 
 death of Richard IH., for she was eldest daughter of 
 Edward IV. and heiress of " the Conqueror." The only 
 good title that Henry had was as husband of that 
 princess. And as for the Act in Henry's favour, it was 
 never printed in the Statute Books. In other words, 
 the Statute was an invention, probably of the late 
 sixteenth century. Men who were capable of such 
 devices were capable of anything. Bacon talks of 
 Records in which there was any memory of the king's 
 attainder being " defaced, cancelled, and taken off the 
 file." Deeds like that were being done in his day, 
 and his fancy transfers them to the ancient time. 
 
 It must not be forgotten that Bacon's master, James 
 Stuart, was made to derive his title from the rotten 
 title of Henry Tudor, through his daughter Margaret 
 wedded to the King of Scotland. By the system of 
 imaginary precedents, the lawyers went back to Saxon 
 times and descried an earlier Margaret, daughter of an 
 earlier Edward, the Outlaw, who had wedded Malcolm 
 of Scotland, ancestor of the extant royal line of 
 Scotland. So James Stuart was traced even to Egbert 
 in these elegant constructions which so amused our 
 ancestors. 
 
 But sharply Hallam denies that James was a 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 433 
 
 legitimate sovereign, or had anything but the good will 
 of the people to rest upon, the title which his flatterers 
 affected to disdain. It is clear that in the reign of 
 James men were still inventing English History, or 
 grafting new fictions upon the old stock. The " excel- 
 lent laws " of that barbarous first Tudor reign and the 
 Star Chamber, "one of the sagest and noblest institu- 
 tions of the kingdom," are duly referred to by Bacon. 
 What can we think of "the Constitution" when he 
 talks of Henry " remunerating " his people with good 
 law^s in return for their money contributions ? He 
 discovers the origin of the Statute of Fines in Henry's 
 reign, and traces it back to some imaginary " ancient 
 statute." Hume and Hallam have both criticised 
 Bacon as if he had been careless in many of his state- 
 ments, which they contradict from spurious evidence 
 that is probably of later origin than Bacon's own time. 
 It does not appear that the Star Chamber was described 
 by any contemporary till the reign of Elizabeth. Had 
 Hallam, with all his good will to the truth, looked 
 closely into the question of the Records, he would have 
 given to these matters a more satisfactory treatment. 
 
 Hallam went to the documents with a sincere desire 
 to discover traces of the rise of English Liberty ignored 
 by Hume. But Hallam was foiled. How^ could so 
 violent and illegal a government as that of the Tudors 
 be maintained ? What had become of the old English 
 spirit of the days of King John or Richard II. ? Why 
 this retrogression toward al)solute monarchy during the 
 period of the Revival of Culture ? How could the Tudor 
 princes intimidate if they had no military force where- 
 with to effectually put down repeated popular insurrec- 
 tions ? Hallam thinks it must have been the nobles and 
 clergy who upheld the tyranny, and there would have 
 
 2 F 
 
434 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 been all the greater force in his argument if Hallam 
 had known that the fine talk about Common Laws and 
 Great Charters was not in the air until the time when 
 the tyranny was becoming insupportable, and civil war 
 most fierce and bitter was in view. The immense 
 gulf which appears to yawn between the Magna Carta 
 and the Petition of Right is purely illusory. They 
 are documents of one great period of struggle on the 
 part of the people to obtain the elementary rights of 
 civil existence in the face of a cruel and rapacious 
 oligarchy. 
 
 I would call attention to the opinion of Mr. Eeeves 
 in his " History of Common Law," that '* the order of 
 statutes on which legal opinions may be founded with 
 certainty" begins only with the reign of Henry YII. 
 — a most moderate opinion, as I have already shown. 
 The inconsistencies and absurdities of the current story 
 respecting the Great Charter have been noted by Sir 
 J. F. Stephen and others. When once it is seen that 
 the " Bible of our Constitution " or the Palladium of 
 our Liberties is in fact an elaboration of the sixteenth 
 century, it will then be interesting to inquire what 
 class of men were responsible for its elaboration and 
 publication, how far they were true English patriots, 
 and why it was that the Charter remained practically 
 a dead letter until the time of the Petition of Right. 
 
 I need not enlarge on this subject. The necessity of 
 keeping Archives was not felt in any city of the West 
 until about the middle of the sixteenth century, and a 
 great part of the early entries consists merely of 
 fictions in support of a Scheme of History already 
 laid down. I know that the reader w^ho has not looked 
 closely into these matters may find it hard to believe 
 that systematic falsehood was practised in the interest 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 435 
 
 of ecclesiastical parties so long and so vehemently. 
 But I would ask him, has he studied the political 
 and ecclesiastical life of our own times ? Things 
 have mended with us ; there are improvements in taste ; 
 there are greater checks upon mendacity ; audacious 
 fables do not thrive as they once did ; yet by the arts 
 of emphasis and suppression a vast amount of falsehood 
 is daily circulated in our world. 
 
 Let me here recall a voice — the voice of one whom 
 we believe to have been a man of truly lofty character — 
 from the great critical time of 200 years ago. The 
 words of good Eichard Baxter on the study of History 
 contain, in fact, one of the most awful censures on a 
 great mass of writing that had been produced during 
 the preceding 200 years. 
 
 Richard Baxter, in his "Narrative of Memorable 
 Passages," published 1696, says that in his Richard 
 old age he has become very cautious in his fhTst^Jdy'^of 
 belief of History. There were two sorts of ^'^*^'^' 
 men who had written History— ungodly men and party 
 men. You may sooner believe an honest heathen with- 
 out theological bias than a debauched Christian. Not 
 only is he alien from the spirit of his religion, but he 
 is under the bias of faction. There is no believing the 
 word or the oath of the man who is at once ungodly, 
 ambitious, and factious. Baxter goes on to denounce *' the 
 prodigious lies '' which have been published in his age 
 for matters of fact, and that with the most unblushing 
 effrontery in the face of thousands of eye and ear 
 witnesses who know all to be false. Reporters had been 
 privileged by power and violence. None dared to 
 answer them or detect their frauds. If they did, their 
 writings were suppressed. Great men had written 
 History or had employed flatterers to do it. Do not 
 
436 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 believe more than you are constrained to believe, he 
 urges, because you cannot get at the truth " unless 
 men are at liberty to examine and contradict one 
 another.'' 
 
 Baxter denounces indiscriminately the lies of 
 Catholics, Lutherans, Zwinglians, Calvinists, as malicious 
 and impudent ; yet they are believed by the multitude 
 of their seduced ones. The same practice had gone on 
 in the writer s day. There had been vehement, iterated, 
 unblushing persistence in falsehoods, generated of hatred 
 on the part of writers who knew that witnesses even of 
 their own party contradicted them. Baxter concludes 
 by saying that he himself expects no more credit for 
 the story of his own life than the " self-evidencing light 
 of the matter " shall constrain, supposing the reader to 
 know nothing of Baxter's character for himself. But 
 where shall we find an Englishman of the sixteenth 
 or seventeenth century who corresponded to Baxter's 
 ideal of the historian — a man who knew what he was 
 writing about, was honest and conscientious, was free 
 from ill will, personal interest, or faction ? 
 
 Bishop Burnet was writing about the same time his 
 " History of His Own Times," which was not published 
 till some forty years after his death, and then bitterly 
 assailed, as inspired by a spirit of hatred and revenge. 
 A distinguished member of the Benedictine Order, 
 Cardinal Angelo Maria Quirinus, came to London about 
 171 1, called on Burnet, and drew from Burnet the 
 admission that he had been aided by others in his 
 " History of the Eeformation." The Cardinal says that 
 he reproached Burnet with his partiality as a historian, 
 and actually succeeded in drawing a slight blush to his 
 cheek. These things should be borne in mind whenever 
 we are referred for information about the state of afifairs 
 
THE PUBLIC RECORDS. 437 
 
 in the Tudor time to the collection of a clergyman who 
 lived and wrought in London at the epoch when the 
 fast-flowing tide of party fable had risen to its height, 
 and deposited its miscellaneous ^(9^5am and y^tsam on the 
 shores of modern times. 
 
438 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 
 
 Let me briefly point out that the immense influence 
 which has been exerted by the Scriptures of the Hebrews 
 upon our imagination is due to the fact that they were 
 introduced at the beginning of our culture, at the same 
 time with the Classics ; but that, unlike the Classics, a 
 mystical authority was given to the Scriptures, the 
 whole weight of the Church organization was thrown 
 into their defence, and they became part of that 
 Anniversary Eeligion which the Church established, 
 partly on Jewish and Moslem precedent, partly on the 
 ruins of old Eoman religion. The New Testament has 
 never been properly studied, either in our schools or in 
 private. But it rooted itself in men's imagination in a 
 twofold way. It told the external story of the Church's 
 rise in a plausible manner ; and it told at the same time 
 the mystical story of our inner life from year to year. 
 Here are no " solar myths ; " but the annual course of 
 the sun, as in other religions, serves to illustrate the 
 course of that mystical life from our baptism to our 
 death and resurrection. 
 
 The Jewish Chronology needs revision. I have, 
 perhaps, leaned too heavily in other writings upon what 
 the Jewish scholars of the Kevival said of their epochal 
 Maimonides. The question is, whether those statements 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 439 
 
 rest on authentic Records, or upon vague retrospective 
 system. If the latter, it will be the future task of 
 Jewish scholarship to endeavour to ascertain more 
 closely how old were the oldest Hebrew writings at the 
 epoch of the Eevival. 
 
 Meantime, it is quite clear that the Hebrew Scriptures 
 could have been known to very few persons outside the 
 synagogues before the erection of the printing presses. 
 In other words, the Bible became known to a very small 
 reading w^orld about 400 years agone. It is important 
 to point out that for the earlier fifteenth century we 
 have no epochal name in the Jewish more than in the 
 Gentile world. But the year 1484 is said to be illus- 
 trated by the name of Don Isaac Abarbanel, as Finance 
 Minister of Spain. It appears that about this time 
 there was a great flux of Jewish scholars to the centre 
 of learned attraction in Italy. The entire Hebrew Bible 
 is said to have been first printed at Soncino, near 
 Cremona, about the year i486. A few years later the 
 Targummum, or Commentaries, so important for the true 
 understanding of the Bible, began to appear. Not until 
 1520 was the Talmud printed at Venice, which contains 
 some few and confused references to the Christian dogma. 
 It was the time of Pfefferkorn and of Reuchlin, the time 
 when the Jewish scholars show themselves aware of the 
 attacks made upon their people in literature, and are 
 tempted to some retaliation. But the Jewish scholars 
 were not much versed in the little Christian literature 
 that existed ; while the notion of any fair and open 
 controversy as to the true meaning of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures never entered the minds of the various literary 
 factions. 
 
 When the question is once clearly understood, it will 
 be seen that the earliest period at which critical inquiry 
 
440 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 into the origin and antiquity of the Hebrew literature 
 should begin is the Eevival of Letters. Without pre- 
 judging any point, it will, I believe, be found difficult, 
 if not impossible, =to refer the origin of the literature, 
 by any certain chain of witnesses, to a very remote 
 time. That a correct canonical text of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures had been preserved among the Rabbis for 
 a very long period is quite improbable, when we consider 
 the confusion and embarrassment on the subject shown 
 in the Talmudic authorities, the admitted lateness of 
 the vowel points, and other matters. On these questions 
 we may expect much light in future from the candour 
 and stricter scrutiny of modern Jewish scholars. Such 
 light was not to be expected from the men of the 
 Revival, immersed as they were, like the Moslems, in 
 dreamy lore, suflfering, moreover, from a terrible devas- 
 tation of their culture, w^hich may have destroyed many 
 an authentic link with the past. 
 
 The fact remains, that to this day the meaning and 
 the worth of the Hebrew Bible has never been discovered. 
 If, dismissing all our inherited prejudices, we sit down 
 to study the book by the mere aid of the Lexicon, we 
 discover at once the existence of great illusions. It has 
 been a great sin against good taste even to treat the 
 books as if they contained definite geographical, ethno- 
 graphical, or chronological information. The proper 
 names, from the first ideal Parents of the Race and 
 the '' Garden of Pleasure " (Eden) in which they dwelt, 
 and from which they were expelled through the whole 
 retrospective scheme, are in the great mass symbolical 
 and allegorical of general ideas and relations. A great 
 fund of interest is opened up so soon as we understand 
 the poetical structure and forms of thought, and arrive 
 at the simple substance of Jewish thought and passion. 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 441 
 
 There is a great variety of opinion revealed, which is 
 due to the differences among the Jewish clergy them- 
 selves, a foreshadowing of corresponding differences to 
 be revealed in the bosom of the Catholic Church. What 
 we habitually consider to be the faults of the Jewish 
 people, and what we should regard as their shining 
 excellences : all are mirrored from early pages of the 
 Bible onward. There is but one way to read the book, 
 and that the right way, which we have yet to discover. 
 We should compare this national lore with that of the 
 Greeks and the Arabians more accurately than has 
 hitherto been done. 
 
 We should take back the Hebrew Scriptures to the 
 Synagogues, and in the synagogues we should study 
 them, listening to that soul-moving music which bears 
 the imagination by the swiftest and surest clue through 
 all the story of the past. Our antipathies will thus 
 melt into sympathies, and we shall be doing some- 
 thing to repair old errors, and bring about a better 
 civility and culture. Esau and Jacob may learn from 
 one another, and the old jealousy and hostility may 
 gradually abate. For the last 400 years the Jews 
 and their writings have been thrust into an absurd 
 position ; and, since all absurdity in thought reflects 
 some corresponding barbarity in life, it is the interest 
 of both Gentile and Jew that common-sense views 
 should prevail in reference to all literary works of art. 
 
 With regard to the Latin Bible or Bibles, I do 
 not enter upon the details to be found in so many 
 compilations. The essential point in the study has 
 been missed, which is to recognize the extreme paucity 
 of any Latin texts at the end of the fifteenth century 
 throughout the Christian — that is, the Monastic — world. 
 The Latin Bible was a new book at the beginning of 
 
442 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the next age ; with a mysterious — that is, a concealed — 
 history behind it, it was impossible that it should 
 not be misunderstood. All the figures of speech — 
 " Eevelation," 'inspiration," "Word of God," and the 
 like — which have so long bewildered weak thinkers, are 
 of ecclesiastical origin ; and were never designed to 
 elucidate anything. The sole important question is, 
 what were the literary men of the monasteries doing 
 in the time that preceded the publication of the 
 edition of Ximines ? You cannot attentively peruse 
 the story of that edition without perceiving how 
 densely falls the curtain in front of the Scriptoria at 
 the epoch to which I have so often referred. 
 
 The Latin New Testament is the earlier. The 
 designation is of Benedictine origin ; nor can the 
 reader find a better guide to the structure of the book 
 than the tract of the Benedictine of Bury to be found 
 in Bishop Tanner's " Bibliotheca." It is the book of 
 the Latin Christians — that is, of the Monks of the 
 West; but it is open to question whether in our 
 sixteenth- century editions, the hands of other thao 
 members of the primitive Order may not be detected. 
 Let me, however, point out that. Dogma apart, the 
 structure of the book has been, during these ages, 
 entirely misunderstood. 
 
 1. The monk derives his information from brethren 
 of his Order writing, as I have shown, under 
 
 "Boston of „ . _ _ ^! ^ -r* . 1 p 
 
 Bury "on leigned names durmg the Kevival : from 
 " Burcard of Worms, Hugo of St. Victor, 
 Vincentius, Gratian, Isidore, Cassiodore." He is aic 
 courant with the tale of the old anonymous Vulgar 
 version, and the preferred version of "Jerome." He 
 has the fable of the Seventy Greek translators, the 
 versions of Aquila and others — indications which 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 443 
 
 unerringly point to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth 
 century. 
 
 2. He is a witness to the fact that the books of 
 the New Law have been written on a system of corre- 
 spondence with the Old ; that they are not books of 
 Eecord, but works of mystical art. The four Volumes 
 of the Gospels correspond to the four symbolical beasts 
 of Ezekiel. He explains the " Ammonian Canons," 
 which again reveal the artifice of the structure. He rests 
 on that famous Catalogue to which I have so often 
 referred — " Jerome on Illustrious Men ; " but at 
 present it is known as '' On Catholic Writers." 
 
 3. In a second rank are Four Volumes : the Epistles 
 of Paul, the Seven Canonical Epistles, the Acts of 
 the Apostles, the Apocalypse. 
 
 4. In a third rank the monk enumerates as parts 
 of the New Law : (1) the Decretals from the imaginary 
 Constantine ; the Four Councils of Nicsea, of Constanti- 
 nople, of Ephesus, of Chalcedon, with the Heresies con- 
 demned in them ; (2) the writings of Holy Fathers and 
 Doctors of the Church, viz. the Benedictine faction under 
 the guise of Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, Gregory, 
 Basil, Origen, Isidore, Bede, and other Orthodox. 
 
 5. On the system of Correspondence, he shows that 
 to the Legal hooJcs of the Old Covenant answer the 
 Evangelists of the New ; to the Prophetical books, the 
 AiDOStles ; to the Agiograiyhi, the Doctors of Decrees 
 and the Originalia. To the Historical books of the Old 
 Testament answer the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistle 
 of James, the Epistle of Peter, the Epistles of John, 
 the Epistle of Jiide, To the Sapiential hooks of the 
 Old Testament answer the other eleven Epistles; and 
 the Apocalypse to the Prophetical hooks of the Old 
 Testament. 
 
444 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 We find here the tale of Pamphilus and his 
 wondrous Library ; also a list of the Apocryphal or 
 secret volumes which reveal to the initiated the 
 connection which exists between the Gospels and the 
 Arabian tradition of the Koran. 
 
 This production cannot, as I have said, be referred 
 with probability to an earlier period than 1480- 1520. 
 The student who follows out its indications with 
 rigorous scrutiny will find himself on the way to 
 discover all that can be known concerning the origin 
 of the Latin Bible in the cloister of Corbey, of St. 
 Germain, St. Gall, Bobbio ; of Lindisfarne, Hereford, 
 and the other seats of the great monastic literary 
 activity. 
 
 The elaborate fable of "St. Jerome" and his con- 
 temporaries will be properly understood when read as 
 allegorical of sixteenth-century relations ; as Dr. ^est- 
 cott, the late Bishop of Durham, has remarked, the 
 supposed saint writes like a sixteenth-century scholar. 
 Numberless allusions there are in these Hieronyman 
 writings which may be regarded as of genuine historical 
 value, so soon as they are placed in the light of the 
 beginning Biblical time. You detect the Machiavellian 
 policy of the Churchmen, the supercilious contempt 
 of the folly and credulity of the world. But I must 
 content myself with pointing out where a considerable 
 mine of material lies, for the illustration of early 
 Biblical study with the assistance of " Barabbases " from 
 the Jewish community, as the monks call the Hebrew 
 scholars. 
 
 The study of the Greek versions is a purely sixteenth 
 and seventeenth century study, from the Complutensian 
 or Alcala edition of 1522, where the Greek and the 
 Hebrew are treated as " thieves," one on either side of 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 445 
 
 the Latin, the editions of Erasmus, Aldus, Stephens, 
 Beza. The study of the particulars shows how young 
 the study of Greek was, how inveterate the habit of 
 fiction in all relating to the publication of books. Not 
 until 1633 is the announcement made to the world in 
 connection with the Elzevir edition of Ley den, that 
 there was a text " universally received." 
 
 How melancholy has been the study of scholarship 
 in England in this relation ! Strange spell by which the 
 energies of our best men have been benumbed, so that 
 they have been disabled from telling a few plain truths 
 to the world ! Or, unhappy profession which admits 
 not of the truth as it stands in Letters being told ! 
 
 John Mill, Canon of Canterbury, published in 1707 
 his edition of the New Testament, based on 
 that of Stephens* of 1550, with various readings 
 that had come into existence since that date. The 
 ecclesiastical interest took alarm. 
 
 Whitby, who was a simple man, came forward to 
 complain of these various readings, and to 
 impugn the literary character of Mill, because 
 lie had thrown doubt upon the plain rule of faith and 
 practice of the English Church. Whitby could not 
 endure the thought that the New Testament should 
 have been interpolated from the very beginning, and that 
 since Stephens' time the uncertainty about the text 
 should have so greatly increased. In spite of himself, 
 Whitby, in discussing the matter, blurts out the truth 
 concerning these variant readings. " They must have 
 been inserted," he says, " by a ' confederacy ' of those 
 who had the custody of the Christian archives." His 
 remarks are undesignedly an excellent critique upon the 
 system of the Benedictines (1706). 
 
 Some years later, Richard Bentley, who had given 
 
446 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 strong proof of his critical acumen in dealing with the 
 forced Epistles of Phalaris, stepped into the 
 
 Bentley. r . tt 
 
 arena oi controversy. He was a man superior 
 in sense and in courage to Whitby. He said that it was 
 not poor Mill's fault if he found the various readings ; 
 he did not coin them. " Depend on it/' says Bentley, 
 '' no matter of fact laid fairly open can ever subvert 
 true religion. You must admit the 30,000 various 
 readings, and more if necessary. If,'' continues Bentley, 
 " there had been but one Greek MS. at the Eevival of 
 Learning, you would have had no various readings, 
 but the suspicions of fraud and foul play would 
 have been immensely greater in the best copies of it. 
 You have more anchors than one." So would Bentley 
 calm the men who were affrighted at a '' scarecrow," as 
 he says. 
 
 Bentley showed that Whitby did not understand his 
 subject. The present text had been " settled," as he 
 says, by Robert Stephens, v/hereas Whitby is dreaming 
 of some Sacred Original in every word and syllable. If 
 this goes on, adds Bentley, Stephens will soon be regarded 
 as infallible, like an Apostle or an Evangelist. You 
 must remember that the Originals had been long lost, says 
 Bentley. In his "Proposals" for printing a new^ edition 
 of the Greek Testament he further pointed out that the 
 MSS. of the old Vulgar Latin and of the Greek used by 
 the first editors were of no great antiquity ; and yet he 
 could believe that in the course of 200 years, older 
 MSS. in Eoman and Greek uncials had been discovered. 
 He thought he had some twenty of them. The dis- 
 covery was noised abroad, but in fact it was the discovery 
 of a mare's nest. Bentley, misled by the talk of the 
 Benedictines about their Jerome and their Origen, com- 
 pared the oldest copies of the Greek with Jerome's 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 447 
 
 LatiD — none of them, perhaps, older than the sixteenth 
 century— and believed that he could thus discover the 
 Original, and lead the world out of the labyrinth of the 
 30,000 readings. He had the ambition to present to 
 the whole Christian Church a /cxTJ/xa is det, a spiritual 
 Magna Carta ( 1 72 1 ). 
 
 But an untimely frost nipped these hopes in the bud. 
 Conyers Middleton came forward to defend Cardinal 
 Ximines' edition and those of Erasmus and Stephens ; 
 while he impugned the credit of Bentley's twenty MSS. 
 Bentley withdrew his design, and spent the remainder of 
 his days with the Latin and English poets. Middleton 
 later denied the " inspiration " of the Evangelists, and 
 treated them as inventors. 
 
 About the time of the " Proposals," Father Hardouin 
 was writing in Paris in passionate defence of opinion of 
 the old Vulgate. He maintained, and justly, hardouin. 
 that the Greek MSS. were really younger, although it 
 was pretended they were much older. The old Vulgate 
 was once in the hands of all the Orders. It could not be 
 corrupted ; therefore the forgers applied their attention 
 to the stealthy corruption of texts — Latin, Greek, and 
 Hebrew — which were to be produced in due time for 
 polemical purposes. They invented various readings in 
 Greek copies, so as to produce the impression that the 
 Latin had suffered in a similar way. *' And now%" con- 
 tinued the indignant priest, " any scoundrel or liar may 
 invent various readings, as they call them. If I at this 
 day desired to forge a Greek MS. and send various 
 readings to Oxford for the new edition, I should cry 
 up my copy with great pomp of words ; I should get 
 my readings admitted, and they would be in esteem 
 first with a few, then with many. Everybody has the 
 Vulgate, therefore I cannot injure it. It is only the 
 
448 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 learned who read the Greek MSS., and it is believed 
 that they have not yet all been extracted from the 
 libraries." 
 
 When one of the Benedictine Fathers of St. Maur 
 objected to Hardouin that this kind of reasoning might 
 lead to doubts about the Vulgate itself, Hardouin 
 retorted in eJSect : " You mean to say that your 
 diplomata and the Vulgate stand on the same footing. 
 If we deny the antiquity of the former, we at the same 
 time deny the antiquity of the Vulgate. No ; we deny 
 indeed the genuineness of your ' Fathers ' and of your 
 charters. But we denounce as a madman or an impious 
 person him who declares that the Vulgate cannot be 
 proved to be older. Why ? Because of the testimony of 
 the Roman and of the universal Church, which declares 
 that the Vulgate is older than any other writing!' 
 
 But it was no question of testimony : and if the 
 Benedictine was in the right, the Vulgate cannot be con- 
 ceived as more ancient than the Order itself. 
 
 Everything that relates to Tyndale must be received 
 
 with great caution, seeing that our sources of 
 
 in English, kuowlcdgc are tainted with the spirit of 
 
 ^ * partisanship and malevolence. Foxe is little 
 worthy of credit ; and if we take away the essays of 
 Genealogists, who imagined an antiquity for the 
 name of Tyndale, little remains but a vague rumour 
 lingering about certain haunts of the English Reformers. 
 Tyndale bears the alias of Kitchens. 
 
 Hall, the Chronicler, has some indistinct memory or 
 conception of a virtuous youth at St. Mary Magdalen, 
 Oxford ; and Foxe confirms the impression. Then the 
 latter has a glimpse of the same young man as tutor in 
 the family of Sir John Welch in Gloucestershire, and 
 preacher in the neighbourhood of Bristol. The house 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 449 
 
 of the knight is remembered as the resort of abbots and 
 other Church dignitaries, for whom the young man 
 proved more than a match in theological argument. 
 The Oxford scholar, having imbibed the spirit of the 
 religious awakening, looked with contempt upon the 
 poor monks, who knew naught but Missal and Breviary, 
 if even those. The place becomes too hot for him, and 
 he repairs to London, ingratiates himself with Erasmus, 
 with Bishop Tonstall, and Sir Henry Gruildford, a friend 
 of Sir John Welch. Disappointed of preferment in these 
 high quarters, our scholar finds shelter with Alderman 
 Humphrey Monmouth, a Lutheran, and a member of 
 the Drapers' Company. The great excitement produced 
 by the apostasy of the German monk caused an intense 
 curiosity to know what was really in the New Testa- 
 ment. Tyndale's name is representative of the move- 
 ment in favour of a translation ; and the rest may be 
 understood as the story of the enterprise, told in the 
 manner alone suitable to popular taste, as that of a 
 heroic scholar and a martyr. 
 
 The English colony of merchants at Antwerp are 
 brought into this story, as they are brought into 
 the story of Thomas Cromwell. They are said to have 
 been Lutherans, probably in correspondence with the 
 Drapers of London, and patrons of their protege, who 
 was no doubt one of a company of collaborating 
 scholars, two of whose names are given . The tale 
 runs that 1500 copies of the New Testament were 
 printed about 1526 or 1527. Yet it is doubtful 
 whether one or more than one copy of this first edition 
 has ever been discovered. The Dutchmen continued to 
 print the book with many errors; till in 1534 George 
 Joy, a Peterhouse man, was employed to correct the 
 press. The jealousy of Tyndale was aroused, and he 
 
 2 G 
 
450 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 assailed Joy in the abusive style that was conventional 
 in those days. And Joy retorted in similar strain. 
 The business appears to have been a profitable one for 
 the times. 
 
 Now, it is not in the least probable that the secular 
 oligarchy in England dreaded the eflfect upon the minds 
 of the people of a book they could little understand. 
 The priesthood saw that the flag of defiance was hoisted. 
 They were conscious that the Latin book was part of a 
 mystical and sacerdotal system. To translate it into 
 the vernacular was equivalent to a profanation of their 
 mysteries, a determination to drag into the light of 
 common day the arcana of a profession. They insinuated 
 in the minds of the temporal lords that the book would 
 promote rebellion ; and if the tale in Foxe and the 
 record of the Council in Wilkins' Collection be genuine, 
 they resolved to have the book publicly burned, and 
 carried out their resolve at Paul's Cross. As the tale 
 runs, Tyndale rejoiced at the folly of the clergy, who 
 were putting money into his pocket by increasing the 
 demand for the book. 
 
 Then an inquisition for copies began, and Humphrey 
 Monmouth is supposed to have been imprisoned in the 
 Tower and almost ruined. And then, since violence 
 would not avail, ridicule must be tried. A Dialogue 
 was put forth under the name of Sir Thomas More 
 wherein the book was denounced as Tyndale's or 
 Luther's, rather than the true New Testament. Later, 
 the Star Chamber proclaims the book. The conduct of 
 the clergy is denounced in Tyndale's preface to " Jonas " 
 as that of fleshly minded hypocrites, who treat the 
 Scriptures as their own property and merchandise and 
 monopoly, and will neither use the Word of God nor 
 suffer others to enjoy it. It was the interests of a 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 451 
 
 profession and the interests of popular liberty which 
 were at stake in this quarrel. The book is the mere 
 pretext. 
 
 With regard to the fate of Tyndale, no confidence 
 can be placed in the tales of Foxe, who has an 
 
 • 11 1 P T^ 1-1 His Fate. 
 
 insatiable greed for rrotestant martyrological 
 material. He says that after Tyndale's sojourn at 
 Hamburgh with Coverdale he returned to xA.ntwerp 
 under the protection of Pointz, the English merchant. 
 Then an emissary is sent from the English court to play 
 the spy upon Tyndale and Pointz. The translator is 
 imprisoned at Vilvorden for a year and a half. Pointz 
 is subject to a false accusation, is also imprisoned, but 
 escapes. The English merchants, with their old friend 
 Cromwell, vainly intercede with the Imperial Court at 
 Brussels on behalf of Tyndale. He is condemned at 
 Augsburg by an Imperial decree, and executed in 
 
 When it is remembered that these tales were written 
 down some quarter of a century after that -j^^ ^^yji^ug 
 date by a man reckless of veracity and authority of 
 
 •^ . "^ "Foxe." 
 
 unchecked by the fear of confutation from 
 Public Records, we may well suspend our belief in 
 them as they stand. Miles Coverdale, the translator 
 of the Bible and the coadjutor of Tyndale, is said to 
 have died at a good old age in London, leaving behind 
 him no very distinct impression, and no memorials of 
 his connection with the Magdalen scholar. The truth 
 is that in the tale of Foxe, as in other tales of his 
 '* Golden Legend," as the Catholics ironically called it, 
 you may recognize many autobiographical reflections. 
 Foxe w^as also of Magdalen, Foxe lived as tutor in power- 
 ful families, Foxe went in exile to Antwerp and Frank- 
 fort, Foxe knew the passions of the exiles under Queen 
 
452 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Mary, and wrote for the pleasure of the Puritans under 
 Queen Elizabeth. So much we gather from the life by 
 his son, published in 1641. 
 
 The reader is convinced that there has been gross 
 invention and exaggeration of details in the tales of 
 Foxe when he turns back to Polydore, and finds com- 
 plete silence respecting this event of the translation of 
 the New Testament into English. x\nd yet Polydore 
 was still living about ten years before these tales began 
 to be written down ; and had dismissed the subject 
 of Henry YIIL's innovations in religion in a single 
 paragraph, where he praises the consistency of Cardinal 
 Fisher and Sir Thomas More. Who can peruse the 
 lineaments of More — the gentlest and humanest face 
 that looks out from the canvases of the Tudor period, 
 and willingly believe that he wrote the virulent abuse 
 ascribed to him against Tyndale? Writing under the 
 date 1530, Polydore says that both More and Fisher 
 preferred to depart from life than from their principles, 
 that they might the more quickly enjoy eternity in the 
 heaven to which they aspired. The new hypocrisy 
 which was to vie with the old hypocrisy of the monks 
 began to show its repulsive forms in the time after that 
 where Polydore enters his last date, 1538. . 
 
 After all the fulsome talk of love of the people and 
 love of knowledge in connection with the 
 
 Evil Results . . ^ , . . . 
 
 of the mtroduction 01 the Jinglish Uible, it is im- 
 
 n erpns . p^gg^j^j^ ^^ j^^j^ ^^|.]^ complaccucy ou the 
 
 conduct of the men who were responsible for the work, 
 or upon the subsequent event of its introduction. 
 Greed of gain, ambition, party spirit, a desire by fair 
 means or foul to get the better of their opponents, is 
 manifest everywhere on the part of those who desired 
 to wrest the Scriptures from the hands of the Roman 
 
THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 453 
 
 priesthood, and put them in the hands of the vulgar. 
 Nowhere is there the slightest sign of a disposition to 
 inquire into the origin and proper interpretation of the 
 book. There were, indeed, perhaps no critics capable 
 of imagining that the book was not of remote origin. 
 But as to its immediate origin, they knew very well it 
 had come from the monasteries, that it was monastic 
 in spirit and originally Petrine, Pontifical in its teach- 
 ing. They kne\v that its pages could never justify 
 Henry VIII. in thrusting himself into the Apostolical 
 SuccessioD, or his son in replacing the Missal by a new 
 Liturgy. They repeated the sin of the abbots, when 
 the abbots laid hands on the Hebrew Scriptures, and 
 made them utter false voices. 
 
 The ethics of the New Testament, quietist and 
 subservient as they are to authority, did not suit those 
 angry times, and became a dead letter ; while in the 
 unintelligible Pauline logic and polemic, and in the 
 fierce invectives of the Old Testament, all classes found 
 fuel to feed the flames of their political and ecclesiastical 
 zeal. It is easy to imagine, had there been any strong 
 and sincere desire to bless the people with good books 
 that should come home to their bosoms and their 
 business, how the scholars of Oxford and Cambridge 
 could have combined for the work. They might have 
 made the best wisdom of antiquity and of their own 
 time current coin and familiar as household words. 
 But their desire was to establish ecclesiastical organiza- 
 tion at the expense of the people ; and the people have 
 suffered sorely from their selfishness and neglect. Whose 
 fault is it if at the present day a great mass of English 
 people still prefer an exotic literature which they cannot 
 comprehend to the homely wisdom distilled in the 
 pages of our English poets ? The people are ignorant 
 
454 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 that the English heart and brain have created a literature 
 which ought to be, and actually is, far higher in worth 
 to us than the sacred books of the Arabians, the Jews, 
 or the Monks. Kegrets on this subject maybe idle, but 
 they are impossible to restrain. 
 
 If we trust an Act assigned to the year 1542, the 
 The Act of Scriptures had hardly been made known in 
 ^^^^' our mother tongue before a prohibition was 
 
 issued against their use by all but gentlemen and 
 merchants. And they were only to read " quietly and 
 Avith good order." In short, the Scriptures were to be 
 read, but only that arguments in favour of the institu- 
 tions which the Oligarchy were trying to set up might 
 be found in them. Under such conditions reading 
 became a solemn farce. And from that time onwards 
 the history of the Bible and its interpretation in 
 England has been a melancholy story of absurdity and 
 confusion. 
 
 Learned men did not address themselves to the 
 , ^ serious study of the Oriental peoples. They 
 
 Ignorance of -^ r r j 
 
 Oriental had uo cncourasjement to the task. A bright 
 
 matters. . F* , '^ 
 
 exception may be noted, a century later, in the 
 case of Prideaux and of Pococke. The latter travelled 
 to the East, enjoyed the friendship of learned Moslems, 
 and delighted himself in the riches of the Arabian 
 literature. His story is pathetic ; he and his learning 
 were rudely despised by the fanatics who claimed 
 possession of "the Spirit " which made them indepen- 
 dent of the resources of human learning. Ignorance 
 under the guise of erudition may perhaps be said to 
 have culminated after the Eestoration in the work 
 of Thomas Gale, " The Court of the Gentiles," in 
 which the attempt is made to prove that Hebrew is 
 the mother-tongue of the world, and the Jewish 
 
 I 
 
I 
 
 THE BIBLE IN ENGLAND. 455 
 
 Church the source of all philosophy. Enlightened 
 scholars at the present day, in a city which possesses 
 more Oriental literary treasures than any other in the 
 world, have still to wrestle with these ridiculous 
 superstitions. 
 
456 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE NEW TESTAMENT IN THE LIGHT OP THE REVIVAL. 
 
 The New Testament books, then, become for the first 
 ^„ ^ ^. time of vital interest when we read them in 
 
 Illustrations /» i t-» • 
 
 of the state the hght of the Kevival and the Schisms of 
 amonsthe the Church, during about the period 1480- 
 1520. For both the Jewish and the Classical 
 writings have been employed in the construction of the 
 books. 
 
 The Christ of the Gospels is from the first the 
 creation of the consciousness of the Catholic Church, or, 
 more precisely, of the literary men who were founding 
 a third great Book-religion in Europe. Because the 
 Church claimed to be Catholic, she must represent in her 
 New Law and Prophets the various sects and opinions 
 which obtained within her gates at the eve of the 
 Keformation. Hence it is insisted upon that, amidst 
 m. ^1- . . the many gods and lords reco2:nized in the 
 
 The Chnsto- i n i ^i i 
 
 logical world, the Church must assent to one God the 
 
 Father, and one Lord Jesus Christ. To this 
 Christ the Jewish Messiah must give way. A schism 
 on this subject, a divided Christ, can no more be 
 admitted. Contention is going on in reference to 
 this supreme subject, yet the good Catholic editors 
 rejoice that in anyway '* Christ is preached," because 
 this common enthusiasm is the mainspring of Church 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 457 
 
 activity and success. Though some speak of the 
 " Man Christ Jesus," others of '' Christ as God," it 
 signifies little so long as the people are thrown upon 
 the great ecclesiastical corporation for guidance. She 
 will launch the great sentence, Verhum Caro factum 
 est, and condense its meaning in the Sacrament of the 
 Altar. 
 
 The Book of Daniel, one of the latest of the Jewish 
 Canon and of the most doubted — probably The Book of 
 written in the time of the Abarbanals — was ^omcloi^ 
 •found to be a great source of types of the ^^^^^oiogy. 
 Christ. Hence he is called 'Hhe Son of Man." The 
 mystical and awful representations of the Coming One 
 were suitable to be read and listened to and dis- 
 coursed upon at each anniversary Advent. A severe, 
 a wrathful Christ, clement to the lowly, but implac- 
 able towards obstinate dissenters from the Church, is 
 among the earliest ideals. He has not come to send 
 peace, but a sword. There must be bitter conflicts 
 between theological or ecclesiastical loyalty and the 
 dear instincts of flesh and blood. Men are not worthy 
 of Christ if they are not prepared to hate father and 
 mother for his sake. 
 
 In absolute contempt for this ivorld and its joys, all 
 property must be renounced for the sake of the 
 celibate and militant life ; otherwise men are ation of the 
 as savourless salt, fit only for the dunghill. 
 The world outside the Cloister is composed of a low and 
 grovelling herd. They are not fit to know anything. 
 They may be deceived by parables, the inner sense of 
 which the faithful only know. Whatever you do or 
 say, you will be misunderstood. The proper attitude 
 toward the multitude is therefore that of watchful 
 craft under the guise of innocence and simplicity. 
 
458 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 There is equal jealousy of intelligence in the broader 
 sense. God has hidden Wisdom from the knowing, and 
 has revealed it to the babes and little ones of the 
 monasteries. Weakness and ignorance are glorified and 
 converted into strength by means of organization. 
 
 The warfare of the Army of Grod is directed against 
 _ _ the whole nation of the Jews. The Sabbath 
 
 The War 
 
 against the is a supcrstition, and the Incarnate God defies 
 it as He passes through the fields, plucking 
 corn on that day. The examples of David and of Elias, 
 taken from their own Scriptures, are turned against 
 them. The Pharisees, the teachers of the Mishna, are 
 a race of vipers shedding their venom upon mankind. 
 How can those foul-hearted men utter anything that is 
 good ? Their unresting zeal is the cloke of their in- 
 satiable ambition. The most violent figures of speech 
 are exhausted in these fierce invectives. The mere 
 pagans, or those w^ho hold aloof in watchful impartiality, 
 fare scarce better. All who fail to serve the interests 
 of the Christian Empire are to be regarded as enemies 
 of Christ. 
 
 The rich and the noble are denounced with no less 
 vehemence if they are guilty of withholdino^ 
 
 Denuncia- pi- mi 
 
 tionofthe their support from the same mterest. ihe 
 luxuries and splendour of this life must have 
 their sequel in the Inferno. It is indeed doubtful if 
 any rich man can be saved, short of an exercise of the 
 The Praise prerogative of Omnipotence. Mere Poverty is 
 of Poverty. ^ passport to Paradisc, and he that expects 
 the least reward of his toil will receive the most. 
 The great Taskmaster will reap where he has not 
 sowed, and gather where he has not strawed. Vain 
 is all talk of common justice where the ethics of such 
 an Empire are concerned. An impression as of some 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 459 
 
 fierce host, like that of the Moslems in their conquering 
 days, sweeping through the world, makes itself evident 
 in these representations. The soldiers of Christ advance 
 upon the villages and towns, lamb-like in their aspect, 
 but with desperate courage in their bosoms. They 
 lodge with the reputed worthy ; if they are deceived, 
 they quit their lodgment with dire threats and execra- 
 tions. The word is Forward ! Forward ! Only he who 
 perseveres to the end in the Holy War will receive the 
 crown. The most striking passages in the New Testa- 
 ment are those which reflect the strongest passions. 
 Such passions were those engendered and stimulated in 
 the life of the missionary monks and friars. But perhaps 
 there was no more actual violence and bloodshed in the 
 towns and hamlets during those operations than there 
 has been in our own time during the progress of similar 
 enthusiasts. 
 
 But the Churchmen, in their mystic portraitures, 
 meet the needs of a gentler class of minds, idyiiic 
 Sweet are many of the idylls of the third Gospel, ^''®''®'' 
 derived in great part from the Arabians and the Jews. 
 There is the new Joshua, or Jesus, full of grace and of 
 consolation, the fulfiller of beautiful dreams of the most 
 tender-hearted Jewish mystics ; a social, not a gloomy 
 and aversive god in human form ; one tolerant alike of 
 Pharisees and Samaritans, of prodigals and Magdalens ; 
 the revealer of a clement Father in the heavens ; the 
 recoverer of the lost ; one who could never have excited 
 the antipathy of a religious corporation which laid 
 emphasis on the duties of charity and humanity. But 
 then, again, the theological or metaphysical Christ of 
 the fourth Gospel appears, and the invectives against 
 the teachers of the Mishna and the whole race of the 
 children of Abraham are renewed. The complete study 
 
46o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of the subject in all its details would require a com- 
 parison with the kindred art of painting during the 
 Eenaissance. 
 
 It is an imperfect or suggestive kind of art. Not 
 Church Art one of the imagcs of the Christ is fully drawn 
 suggestive. ^^^ colourcd. Hastc is apparent with the 
 workmanship. There is adumbration rather than illu- 
 mination. The listener or spectator is left to suppose 
 that much more 'might have been said or might have 
 been shown. You draw near to the portrait, and find 
 mere spots of colour; you retire a little, and sym- 
 pathy with the intent of the artist enables you to 
 complete: his sketch. The Perfect Man, for whom all 
 hearts long, is at least hinted, and the Virgin Mother. 
 Presently the genius of a Eaphael will fling the thought 
 upon canvas. It will be admired, but its very clearness 
 and definiteness will refuse satisfaction to the yearnings 
 of the private mystic of each observer. 
 
 In listening to the Church Lessons or sermons we are 
 The Perfect Hiorc affcctcd than in gazing at the canvas, 
 ^*"* because we have more liberty for our own 
 
 creative fancy. We are moved, we know not well 
 why. But in the critical mood we become aware that 
 the emotion is the result of an immense effort to 
 educate the world by the presentation of this divine 
 human Image, to which we may direct all our secret 
 aspirations to higher things. For this reason, it has 
 been said, the name of Christ links an Ignatius Loyola 
 with a Calvin, a Francis Assisi with a Melanchthon, 
 with a Lessing and a Theodore Parker, or with a 
 weeping Magdalen and a child at play. They are 
 looking at different objects, but they give those objects 
 the same designation. Modern Humanists and Stoics 
 may choose to call the being who thinks naught human 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 461 
 
 alien from himself by the name of Christ, and by the 
 same name the intolerant orthodoxist may denote his 
 ideal of a being who is in possession of exclusive truth. 
 In like manner each lover of St. Paul has his own Paul. 
 
 The author from whom I have borrowed in the fore- 
 going paragraph remarks that the pleasure of the 
 intelligent student lies in tracing out how the unique 
 image of Christ arose in fact before the world at a time 
 when religion was associated with art, so that the one 
 supported the other and corrected the other. So in- 
 timate, he justly adds, is this connection that not the 
 dialectics of the philosopher, but the truly poetic soul of 
 the pious man is the fountain-head of the best things. 
 The more those soul aflfections are valued, in the greater 
 esteem will the Catholic image of Christ be held and 
 the like condition of life will recur in which the imaore 
 first arose.* 
 
 Some further illustrations may be given for that 
 collection of Sentences early known as the Pauiine 
 '* Apostle," but from the time of Luther ^"^^''^^• 
 associated with the name, then beginning to be famous in 
 literature, of St. Paul. 
 
 In the Epistles, then, you discover the same theory 
 which you find set forth in the first Church History. 
 A new kind of Judaism is supposed to have arisen, 
 which has cast ofi" circumcision and other ceremonies of 
 the Law. The Son of Man is said to have already come 
 to be the Saviour of the human race, and this Advent 
 is yearly commemorated. The Jewish eschatology of 
 the Book of Daniel becomes a Christian Christology, and 
 Michael, Guardian Angel of the Jews, becomes a Protector 
 of the Christian host. In the apocalypse of the Epistles 
 to the Thessalonians the attributes of the Son of Man 
 ♦ «* Verisimilia," Amsterdam, 1887- 
 
462 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 have been transferred to Jesus, who is now declared to 
 be the invisible Head of Saintdom, Lord of the faithful, 
 who has died and risen again. There is complete silence 
 on his earthly life and teaching, his Cross and the 
 remission of sins, in early Sentences. 
 
 In another Epistle, amidst the strangest confusion 
 Revelations of Scntenccs, violcut disscusions are seen to 
 schifm in ^^ g^^^^g ^u in rcspcct to different and rival 
 the Church. Q-Qspcls or Kevclations and on the question 
 whether justice is by observance of the Mosaic Law or 
 by faith alone. It is claimed on behalf of the new 
 sect or nation that they are the true children of 
 Abraham. They who have been initiated into the 
 Church are a New Creation. There is evidence of 
 halters between two opinions, as in a time of violent 
 revolution. The policy of those who would Judaize or 
 Christianize at the same time is denounced. He who 
 submits to circumcision is bound by the Law, and he 
 who would be a Christian must submit to the scandal 
 of the Cross and crucifixion. It is to be supposed that 
 Martin Luther understood his favourite epistle ; and if 
 so, it must have been because its half-expressed thoughts 
 were those of the religious fraternity to which he him- 
 self belonged. Only they who have applied the literary 
 microscope to the document are aware of its extraordinary 
 obscurity and incoherence. 
 
 In another Apostolic ejQfusion Christ is spoken of, 
 along with Paul, ApoUos and Cephas, as if all were 
 human masters, each at the head of a guild of disciples. 
 Then Christ is Head of the Church, or stands symbolically 
 for the Church itself, which cannot be divided, like the 
 seamless vestment. Passages are written to console the 
 weaker sex in their efforts for the martyr's crown, after 
 the type of a St. Agatha. They have a mystic persuasion 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 463 
 
 of the truth which renders them superior to all the wisdom 
 of the world. There is a strange mixture of affected 
 humility and real arrogance in many of these Apostolic 
 utterances. It is proper to such a state of mind that the 
 Crucifix, which offends a great religious sect, and which 
 is absurd to the taste of the educated, should be fixed 
 on as a victorious sign. There is much talk of Mystery 
 and of the Spirit. The priest in other passages defends 
 himself against the charge of avarice, or indicates the 
 right of taking about a " sister " as an Apostolic practice, 
 and other liberties. He claims to have enjoyed visions 
 of the Lord. The doctrine of expediency is pushed as 
 far as any Jesuit could have pushed it ; it enables him 
 to live lawlessly or lawfully, as the occasion demands. 
 The great desire which governs the Apostolic mind 
 is to bring all into the Communion of the Catholic 
 Church. 
 
 Hence the diversity of opinions which is openly 
 encouraged on the same questions ; whether Diversity of 
 the priesthood are to " speak in tongues " Opinions, 
 unintelligible to the common folk with a view to 
 impress their imagination or not. Order is the thing 
 to be aimed at, and peace. The Church is a body 
 with many members. The Apostolic editor in his love 
 for the Church would promote unanimity 
 
 . , . 1 Ti . T . rr\T Order and 
 
 With a View, above all, to united action, ihe Unity aimed 
 interest of the Convent is before the private 
 thoughts of any member. The strain after Unity in 
 variety is proper to the Catholic Church from the first. 
 *' Clearly it appears in the history of the Canon of the 
 New Testament. In the volume which the Church has 
 consecrated there is place for the cool common sense 
 of James, for the fervour of the Apocalyptic, for the 
 prudence of Paul in the Acts, and the vehemence of 
 
464 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Paul in the Galatians. . . . The volume which com- 
 prises such diversities might for that reason satisfy 
 
 all." * 
 
 The singular laudation of ''Charity" in a well- 
 The Praise kuowu passagc cau ouly be understood when 
 of Charity. ^^ ^g remembered that this peculiar creation in 
 Ethics belongs entirely to the Cloister, and there alone 
 can flourish. But this matter is more fully explained in 
 the quietist teaching of Cassian, the great moralist of 
 the Order. 
 
 It appears that at the time of the edition of the 
 "Apostolic" writings diverse manners and customs 
 obtained in the different cloisters, and correspondingly 
 The status divcrsc opiuious of what was the status of 
 of Women, ^onicn. Now the sexes are said to be on a 
 level ; now the woman is said to be inferior to the 
 man. She need not veil, or she ought to veil, her 
 head. Again the desire is manifest to suppress private 
 caprice in the interests of unity. Marriage is alternately 
 disparaged and approved, or conceded as a necessity. 
 The celibate state is superior. Divorce is prohibited 
 on grounds of ecclesiastical expediency. 
 
 Amidst the obscurities concerning the Holy Com- 
 TheHoiy muuiou, it is plain that there had been two 
 Communion, goiej^nities I thc Breaking of the Loaf, as at 
 the Pasch of the Jews in sign of fraternal love, and the 
 other the symbolic use of the Cup as representing the 
 new Paschal Sacrifice of the Church. The latter cere- 
 mony, abhorrent to the Jews, may have been derived from 
 the Orphic ceremonies of old Greek cults. There arc 
 hints in the " Apologists " that they were well acquainted 
 with such orgies, and there are tales of the intemperance 
 indulged in on the anniversary feasts of martyrs. Justly 
 * "Verisimilia,"p. 67. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 465 
 
 it is affirmed that " Transubstantiation is in the New 
 Testament, and that the Eoman Church en- Transubstan- 
 tirely depends on it. Luther would not *'**'"''• 
 give up the Hoc est Corpus meum. Calvin obstinately 
 retained against Zwingle the spiritual eating of the 
 Body. There is nothing older in the Church than 
 Transubstantiation, even though the dogma was not laid 
 down till the beginning of the thirteenth century, and 
 the Cup not denied to the people before the beginning of 
 the fifteenth." * But attention to the literary sources, 
 all of the Benedictine system, will convince the reader 
 that these statements were not made until the Eevival. 
 
 The same writer adds : " The dogma is the glory of 
 the Catholic Church. When she taught how mortal 
 man might change divine substance into blood, she 
 satisfied longings which were felt in our world five 
 centuries before our era ; but when she substituted 
 bread for wine, she separated herself entirely from the 
 orgies of the Greeks and Romans. This was no accident, 
 because the Church, represented from the beginning by 
 bread, had been changed into the mystical Body of 
 Christ, eminent above the faithful, and comprehending 
 therein. She alone was the bearer of salvation in the 
 same manner in which it was pronounced by the Mystical 
 Head. By one and the same sacrament men are united 
 with the invisible Head and the visible Church." 
 
 The value of the work to which I have been referring: 
 
 o 
 
 is greatly increased when you carry its analytic results 
 into the light of the time immediately preceding the 
 Eeformation. Passing over for the moment the curious 
 historic allusions in 1 Cor. 16 and elsewhere, ^ ,. 
 
 Satires on 
 
 I would call attention to a passacje where thePriest- 
 the uneasy conscience 01 ecclesiastics who 
 * " Verisimilia," p. 90. 
 
 2 H 
 
466 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 are aiming at exalted repute for piety with the crowd 
 while at bitter variance with one another is reflected. 
 Commenting on the passage about the " Thorn in the 
 Flesh/* the critic observes what sacerdotal pride and 
 wrath breaks out amidst boasts of visions and revelations, 
 against the false apostles, the tyrants who devour the 
 patrimonies of the faithful and do violence to the Church. 
 "So he writes, and so sprang up that kind of writing 
 which the Archbishop of the Roman Church will through 
 the course of ages down to our own time faithfully 
 imitate. The exaggeration of the words inevitably 
 weakens their force. Here the sacerdotal mind confounds 
 the honour of the man with the authority of the minister. 
 Educated people ask whether a thing is true, and care 
 not who said it. Otherwise in the Church, where the 
 vulgar cling to proper names.^' 
 
 Then who is it that writes this strange story in 
 The Pauline 2 Cor. uudcr the mask of *' Paul," and with 
 Allegory. ^^ much of vchcmence and passion ? How 
 can we reconcile these outbursts of obscure declamation 
 with the reputed statements of the first Church History, 
 that Paul wrote but a very few Sentences ? The riddle 
 may be hard to read, yet not be insoluble. The 
 monastic editors who sought the patronage of the Pope 
 for their work must have known their own mind. And 
 this much is clear, that the portrait of an Apostle 
 tossed on the waves of adverse fortune; a humble-seeming 
 man who is forced to apologize for indistinct faults, 
 who in his great tenderness is reluctant to punish the 
 Church, who avoids offences and is anxious for a well- 
 won popularity ; a meek spirit who cannot endure the 
 Stoic's self-reliance and contempt of pain ; — is traceable 
 only to a thorough Monk, as he is elsewhere clearly 
 revealed in the writings of the Order. 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 467 
 
 But not to pursue this subject further than the 
 requirements of an Introduction like the present reach, 
 I desire to show merely that the Bible, on which our 
 culture has been said, and justly in a certain sense, to 
 rest, could only have become an instrument of culture 
 in any part of the West during the Eevival of Learning. 
 And in particular the New Law, which is essentially 
 the same with the Kule of St. Benet, could only have 
 been committed to letters during that period. The 
 whole process can be sufficiently traced in the monastic 
 writings by which the New Law was gradually enlarged, 
 by which opposing principles in the mystical and the 
 ceremonial life were admitted, by which finally a his- 
 torical setting was given to the whole. The dogmatic, 
 theological, or mystical element was creative, as may be 
 plainly seen in the Prefaces to the Service Book, to 
 the Church History, to the third and fourth Gospel. 
 Especially the Church History ascribed to Eusebius 
 Pamphili, when compared with the Gospels and the 
 Acts, shows how little progress had been made in this 
 department at the time it began to be read ; that is, 
 early in the sixteenth century. 
 
 The stories of the origin of the Church did not escape 
 criticism either from the Jews or the Classical ^^ ^ .,. . 
 
 The Criticism 
 
 scholars. The Jews, themselves little educated, of Jews and 
 except in mystical dreams, could not disprove 
 those tales, but they well knew them to have been 
 invented in bitter hostility to their race, and were 
 bound to repudiate them. The Greeks — that is, the best- 
 educated men — smiled at these new " Homeric fables," 
 as they said, but, with one or two honourable exceptions, 
 refrained from openly denouncing them. They took the 
 preferments offered them, and held their peace. The 
 Church was but one of many Corporations, and the most 
 
468 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 powerful, which were engaged in inventing a history for 
 themselves. The weaker or the more enthusiastic minds, 
 caring little for antiquity and plunged in reverie, were 
 engaged in discovering the Divine in their own conscious- 
 ness, or in making "the Apostle" the mouthpiece of 
 their sentiments. So it was that organization triumphed, 
 and the ambitious dream of the Cloisters, by the aid of 
 pictorial and dramatic art, obtained currency in the world 
 as the story of human salvation. 
 
 I know that it is hard to dispossess the mind of 
 the long and profound illusion of our educa- 
 
 Luther's dis- . i • i • -n i 
 
 coveryof tiou on this subjcct ; still, there are cold hard 
 facts to be detected amidst the legends of the 
 time, the touch of which brings awakening to the least 
 attentive reader. It is said that a young man, who 
 later became the great religious hero of the age, was 
 busy among the books of a scant library or bookshelf in 
 a German town. He was examining the books with a 
 view to discover the names of the authors. He came 
 upon a Latin Bible, which was to him a discovery as of 
 a treasure hid in a field, but which he had not the means 
 to obtain possession of. Not long after he entered a 
 convent of Austin Friars ; and is said to have passed 
 through soul-agonies analogous to those set down as 
 autobiographies of St. Paul. His name became linked 
 with that of St. Paul as the promulgator of the dogma 
 of gratuitous justification by faith only. But this 
 theological discovery was of Martin Luther's own 
 time. 
 
 The scene at Erfurt is said to have passed about 
 the year 1503. And certainly it is no illusion, but 
 the mere bold fact, that from about the beginning of 
 that age men began to talk of a New Testament ; and 
 a little later that intense general curiosity was excited 
 
THE NEW TESTAMENT. 469 
 
 and the desire felt to have these writings rendered into 
 the vernacular tongues. The reader may find further 
 illustrations of the religious conditions under which 
 the New Law was produced in the Benedictine who 
 wrote and began to find readers in the sixteenth century 
 under the mask of Matthew Paris. 
 
470 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 
 
 The importance of the subject is so great, that at 
 the risk of being tedious, I will dwell a little longer 
 on the proofs that the Gospels and the Apostle were 
 still in course of growth during the early sixteenth 
 century. In them we see mirrored the enthusiasm 
 which was essentially military, and which continued 
 to operate long after the original foes of the Church 
 had ceased to inspire fear. We mark the regular and 
 stern discipline which obtained in the army of the 
 Soldiers of Christ ; the absolute renunciation of the 
 world required in view of celestial rewards ; the 
 ignorance that was encouraged of all but the will 
 of their Superiors, conveyed allegorically under the 
 name of precepts, or interdicts, or examples of the Lord 
 and the Apostles. 
 
 There was published at the Vatican Press in 1538 
 TheCoiia- the Writings ascribed to *' Joannes Cassianus 
 CassianVtt'' ^hc Hermit," which are said to have been 
 Hermit. corrcctcd from a vast number of faults by 
 the aid of most ancient MSS. The book was dedicated 
 to Gregory XIII. And we are told that these works 
 of Cassian were recommended by the high authority 
 of Pope Gregory I., of St. Benedict in his Kule, of 
 Thomas Aquinas and many others. Cardinal A. Carafa 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 471 
 
 was the patron of this edition, and P. Ciaconius was 
 of great assistance to it. All that the editors knew 
 about Cassian was derived from Benedictine sources, 
 Trithemius and others who wrote during the Eevival ; 
 nor is it possible to find a trace of the existence of 
 these works before the late fifteenth century. 
 
 The Latin of this edition is of admirable lucidity 
 and precision ; nor is it easy to overrate the value 
 of the work as a revelation of the enthusiasm which 
 created the great Christian ideals, and of the literary 
 process by which these ideals were presented Allegories 
 in historic forms. Thus the dress of the Monastic 
 monk as soldier of Christ is said to have p^o^^s^^^^- 
 been worn by Elias and Eliseus, the founders of 
 the Profession in the Old Testament, and then by 
 the princes and authors of the New Testament — John 
 Baptist, Peter, Paul, and others. The camels'-hair 
 vestment and the skin girdle of John, the sandals 
 of Peter, and again the girdle of Paul, are all treated 
 as figurative of the Profession ; as are the saints of 
 old said by the Apostle to have w^andered in sheep- 
 skins and goatskins. The interdict of Shoes is made an 
 Evangelical Interdict, and the conceded Sandals must 
 be removed at the celebration of the holy mysteries. 
 
 That passion for Uniformity which continued for so 
 many generations to inspire the Church is essentially 
 a military necessity, and dictates the precepts concern- 
 ing the canonical prayer and labour without ceasing, 
 in all their details. Unanimity is idealized in ,, . ., 
 
 •^ . Unanimity 
 
 the scene of the Acts, where all believers have and 
 
 . Uniformity. 
 
 one heart and soul, and there is none but 
 common property. Common prayer at the canonical 
 third, sixth or ninth hour is encouraged by correspond- 
 ing representations. For example, not only at the 
 
472 THE [RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 sixth hour was the Immaculate Victim our Lord 
 oflfered, but Peter at the same hour saw the Vessel 
 let down from heaven by the four corners, which 
 meant the quadriform story of the Evangelists. ''As it 
 were a sheet" is well said, because a sheet is the sign 
 of mortification ; and since the Passion was voluntary 
 on the part of the Lord, who died according to the 
 flesh, but not according to the spirit, it is but a 
 quasi sheet, containing all the nations, purified by 
 faith. The ninth hour is rendered awful by the descent 
 to the Inferno, or beautiful, by the memory of 
 Cornelius, or of Peter and John going up to the 
 temple. 
 
 The once weekly monastic custom of washing of 
 feet as a mutual service gave rise to the prototypical 
 scene of the Gospel. 
 
 There are many illustrations of the manner in which 
 a. J. . our Apostolic text has been confused by 
 
 structure of -,-,.. n irr> ^ iT-1 
 
 the Apostolic additions from different hands ; or the logical 
 connection has been broken. Our monk, for 
 example, read in his Latin Apostle the Sentence : " Who 
 was made to us of God, wisdom, justice, sanctity and 
 redemption.^' It was intended to teach that these and 
 other virtues were distributed among the brethren of 
 the Order ; so that " Christ was divided " by members 
 among each of the saints. Another Sentence seems 
 to have stood : " We see not yet Christ made all 
 things in all,'' which implies that partially he may 
 be found in all, each brother having his own peculiar 
 virtue. Then another Sentence, " When all concur to 
 the Unity of faith and virtue, we return to the perfect 
 man," — that is, Christ perfects the fulness of His body 
 in the framework and propriety of the singular 
 members. Another Sentence ran, " Until the time luhen 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 473 
 
 God shall he all .things in all,'' implying, as before, 
 that this ideal can at present be but partially realized 
 by the distribution of virtues. Now these Sentences 
 are scattered in four different epistles in our New 
 Testament. 
 
 The idea of the monk as the athlete of Christ, 
 whose life is an Olympian struggle for the TheAtwete 
 Crown, is the clue which serves to unite <^f^^^'«*^- 
 several passages, now sundered in the Aioostle. Kestored 
 to their proper connection, we read : — " He who strives 
 not lawfully can neither contend in the agon, nor earn 
 the glory of the crown of victory. And if we fail in 
 this contest we are shown to be slaves of carnal con- 
 cupiscence, and must forthwith be repelled with disgrace 
 from the spiritual competition ; for every one who does 
 sin is the slave of sin. Legitimate strife is when we first 
 conquer our own flesh. Failing in this, the Apostolic 
 word becomes applicable to us, Temptation seizes you 
 not, unless what is human; the meaning being that if 
 we have not acquired vigour of mind in that lower 
 kind of temptation, we shall not deserve to try the 
 more serious contest with celestial wickedness . For we 
 have been unable to subjugate the frail flesh which 
 resists our spirit J' 
 
 Here, the Benedictine says, some have misunderstood 
 the testimony of the Apostle, and have substituted the 
 optative for the indicative mood : " May temptation not 
 seize you, unless human ! " But the Apostle, he adds, 
 was giving utterance to a reproach, or a declaration, not 
 a wish. Again the passages in the Apostle : 
 
 " / run, not as uncertainly, I fight not as heating the 
 air, hut I chastise my hody, etc. ; forgetting the things 
 that are hehind, I stretch to those which are hefore, etc. ; I 
 have striven in the good agon, / have finished the course. 
 
474 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 I have kepi the faith ; there is laid up for me a crown 
 of justice, and not only for me, but for all who love 
 His advejit : " are all to be understood as illustrating the 
 first principle of the spiritual contest, viz. that the flesh, 
 especially the lust of gluttony, must be subdued. 
 
 To '* love the Advent of Christ" is above all to love 
 that daily intercourse of the soul with him which is 
 attained by the castigation of the body, as the Sentences 
 read : / and my Father will come unto him and make our 
 abode with him. I stand at the door and knock, etc. 
 Naturally, passages in the Canticles are drawn upon to 
 illustrate this mystic daily communion, this dwelling of 
 Christ in the interior man through faith in the heart. 
 The interior peace of the monk is gained by a spiritual 
 abstinence from his besetting sins, and he thus merits to 
 receive Christ into himself as his guest. The narratives 
 in the Gospel about entertaining Christ have the same 
 meaning. The duty of fasting being voluntary may 
 give way to the necessity of charity, as when brethren 
 come in the course of travel to a monastery. AUe- 
 gorically this is the visit of the Bridegroom himself. 
 While it lasts, fasting will be suspended. When He is 
 gone the suspended fast will be resumed. 
 
 In this warm atmosphere of the mystical life there 
 is no place allowed for idle tales, nor even for history 
 sacred or profane. These spiritual babes may dispense 
 with Greek, and may find the solution of any scriptural 
 difficulties in prayer or in the correction of carnal vices. 
 Then the veil will be withdrawn from dark questions, 
 and revelations will be made by the grace of the Holy 
 Spirit. To the coenobites alone it is given to know 
 the mysteries of the kingdom : the multitude out- 
 side may be amused with parables which really convey 
 nothing. 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 475 
 
 There are two passages in the Apostle which should 
 be connected together, if we would understand Dsemon- 
 the range of ideas to which they refer. As we ''^^^' 
 have seen, the conflicts of the Athlete of Christ are 
 graduated ; if he has vanquished flesh and blood, he has 
 then to encounter " principalities and powers." The fol- 
 lowing sentences are rendered from the Latin Apostle : 
 
 " Our struggle is not against Flesh and Blood , hut 
 against Principalities , against the Rulers of this darkness 
 of the world, against wicked spiritual beings in celestial 
 places, . . . Neither angels, nor principalities, nor 
 virtues, nor other creature can separate us from the 
 charity of God, iMch is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'' 
 
 Behind these Sentences is an elaborate angelology and 
 daemon ology. And in the discussion of the question we 
 clearly understand why it never could be right to give 
 the book to the common people in their own tongues. 
 Some things in Scripture may be plain even to the 
 dullest minds ; but other matters open an immense 
 field of discussion to the studious. God, it is main- 
 tained, never intended that all should be placed on one 
 level in point of knowledge. The Scripture is like a 
 fertile field which furnishes a variety of food for the 
 needs of men. But some of these foods are ready for use, 
 others need the operation of cooking over the fire. All, 
 for example, can understand the Shema Israel of the 
 Old Testament, repeated in the New : Hear, Israel, the 
 Lord thy God is one God I But other sayings require 
 softening by means of the allegorical interpretation ; 
 otherwise they will do more harm than good. 
 
 There are narrow, modest monks who are in danger 
 of takinsj many passasjes too literally, because, . , 
 
 T A 7' 11 1 7 Allearoncal 
 
 owing to the Apostolic word, they have a zeat interpre- 
 for God, but not according to hwwledge. For 
 
476 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 example, take the following Evangelical or Dominical 
 passages : — 
 
 " Let your loins he girt, and lamps burning. . . . He 
 that hath not a sword, let him sell his tunic and buy one. 
 . . . He that takes not up his cross and follows me, is not 
 worthy ofme.^' 
 
 Some of these monks, in their simplicity, made 
 wooden crosses, and carried them on their shoulders, and 
 so exposed themselves to the laughter of the spectators. 
 The thing was not done to edification : the interpreta- 
 tion was too literal and historical. There are Sentences 
 which may be understood in both senses, and thus may 
 minister to the vital juices of the soul. For example : — 
 
 " If one strikes thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the 
 other also. . . . When they pursue you in this city, flee 
 to another. . . . If thou wouldst he perfect, go, sell all 
 that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shall have 
 treasure in heaven, and come, follow me!'' 
 
 To employ another analogy. Scripture produces 
 hay for the Cattle. Its fields are full of it. That is to 
 say, you have simple and pure Stories adapted to the 
 small capacity of the meaner minds of whom it is said 
 in the Psalms, Thou shall save men and cattle, Lord ! 
 The object is to fit them for the work and toil of actual 
 life. But the obscure passages are for the student, and 
 admit of double interpretations. For example, the 
 passages in the Gospel concerning the Advent, which in 
 one sense were fulfilled before " the taking of Jerusalem," 
 in another are yet to be fulfilled at the end of the 
 world. These considerations prepare the way for the 
 discussion of Principalities and Powers. 
 
 There was a Beginning before the temporal beginning 
 of the World, as Sentences in the Gospel and the Apostle 
 teach : — 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 477 
 
 " All things were made hy him, and without him 
 nothing was made. In Christ tvere created all things, 
 whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, 
 angels or archangels, thrones, dominations, principalities 
 or powers ; all things were created by him and in himT 
 
 But some of these spiritual Princes fell. The lapse 
 of the Devil and his angels was followed by the descrip- 
 tion of Eve, as the Apostle says, " Adam was seduced, 
 or rather was not seduced, but yielded to the seduced woman 
 (cf. 1 Tim. ii. 14). The Serpent was punished with 
 perfervid curse. And we need the greatest caution in 
 guardino^ ao^ainst his malevolent counsels. For the 
 daemons gather together in the air, ever in a state of 
 restless activity. These are the Powers of the Air, or 
 the Wicked Spiritual Beings which rule over different 
 nations, and they command legions of inferior spirits 
 and daemons, as is confessed in the Gospel by them- 
 selves. There too the Pharisees speak of Beelzebub, 
 Prince of Daemons. The blessed Apostle looks forward 
 to the time when these grades of devilish Power shall 
 come to an end, saying : " When he shall have given up 
 the kingdom to God and the Father, when he shall have 
 20ut an end to every Principality and Power and Domi- 
 nation'' 
 
 Again, the Sentence stands in the Gospel concern- 
 ing the Prince of Daemons : *^ In truth he stood not, 
 because there is not truth in him. When he speaks a 
 lie, he speaks of his own, because he is a Liar and its 
 father!' 
 
 This is to be understood of all slanders directed 
 against the purity of the saints i.e. the The Father 
 monks themselves. The " truth " they desire ^* ^'®^' 
 to be acknowledged, is that they themselves are the 
 elect, the very pick and flower of humankind : all who 
 
478 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 venture to deny this are logically children of the devil, 
 and he is in a figure the mouthpiece of all their 
 blasphemies. The '' truth " is, that the monks have had 
 experience by perspicuous visions of this daemonic 
 hatred. For example : a friar was on his road through 
 the desert and at eventide entered a cave to celebrate 
 vespers. Midnight passed as he sang the psalms. As 
 he lay down to rest awhile, bands of daemons, some pre- 
 ceding, others following their Prince, gathered about 
 him from all sides. The Prince took his seat on a lofty 
 tribunal, reviewed his host, bestowed dire reproaches on 
 those who had failed to circumvent their rivals and 
 praise on those who had deceived the persons assigned 
 to their tempting power. Then one very wicked spirit 
 boasted of his victory over a well-known monk, whose 
 chastity had been overcome after fifteen years' resistance 
 by the charms of a sacred maiden or nun . He had even 
 solicited her in marriage, that he might renew the 
 attempt on her virtue. 
 
 There was immense applause at the end of the story, 
 and the Prince of Darkness bestowed upon his faithful 
 warrior the highest applause. But when day came on, and 
 the host of devils had vanished, the good friar began to 
 doubt of the charge of incest thus brought against 
 perhaps an innocent brother. He repaired to the city 
 where the accused one dwelt, and ascertained that on 
 the very night when the evil spirit had announced his 
 fall to the Prince and his band, the monk had in fact 
 quitted his old monastery, and repairing to a village, 
 had sufiered a miserable lapse from his virtue. 
 
 The curious thing is that in these teachings, no 
 sooner is the saying of the Gospel or the Apostle taught 
 in its abstract generally than its force is attenuated by 
 remarkable exceptions. You are to treat attacks upon 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 479 
 
 the character of monks as emanations of the Father of 
 Lies ; but you are to remember that among his active 
 emissaries who are watching your conduct, there are those 
 who will detect and make known the truth to your 
 discredit. "Watch, therefore, watch ! Eemember that 
 each of you has a bad or a good angel attending his steps, 
 as is plainly taught in the Shepherd of Hermas, in the 
 Gospel concerning the '* little ones " (who are always the 
 monks), in the legend of Peter's angel, and in the book 
 of Job ; or in the example of the devil who stood at 
 Judas's right hand. 
 
 The illiterate brethren may derive great solace from 
 the example of the illiterate St. Antony. Evil spirits 
 were sent to his cell by the arts of certain magical 
 philosophers. When they saw him sign breast and brow 
 with the sign of the Cross they retired. Other spirits 
 more accomplished in the craft were sent, but with the 
 like result. A third attack was made upon the Soldier 
 of God, the object being merely to drive him out of 
 his cell. But they could not make him budge a point, 
 so great was the virtue inherent in the profession of 
 Christians. And yet these fierce spirits of darkness 
 could by their numbers have overclouded sun and moon, 
 had tbey been directed thither. These discussions must 
 end with a prayer that we may have more of that Charity 
 which is the same with the Fear of the Lord and the 
 beginning of wisdom, which will protect us against the 
 diabolic shafts and snares. Outside the cloister is a 
 world lying in darkness and the power of the Wicked 
 One. 
 
 If the reader demands of what relevance are these 
 discussions to the subject of English History, principles of 
 the answer is that they are of the greatest in"mstTr*y 
 relevance, because they bring to light the ^s^ii^g^^'- 
 
48o THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 principles of our early educators, and the peculiar 
 economy in their importation of ideas. The knowledge 
 of *'this world" is treated as either useless or merely 
 of present convenience ; while spiritual knowledge is 
 either practical and moral, or theoretic and contempla- 
 tive. There is no room whatever in such a scheme 
 for mere matter of fact respecting a world already 
 condemned as dark and wicked. The way in w^hich 
 Scripture was written and designed to be understood is 
 also the way in w^hich the stories of our kings were 
 written for a similar purpose. 
 
 You are to understand nothing au pied de la lettre, 
 you are carried offyour feet into tropological, allegorical, 
 anagogical meanings, in imitation of the science of the 
 Jews. And thus, while History seems to contain the 
 knowledge of past things, it is really the envelope of 
 present and visible things. Abraham had two sons ; but 
 you have not Science till you see with the Apostle, that 
 the Two Testaments are meant. The Jerusalem above 
 means the Church of Christ, or else the Soul of Man. 
 When the Apostle refers to speaking " in revelation " he 
 refers to Allegory or spiritual sense in historic form. 
 The baptism of Moses in the cloud and the eating of 
 spiritual food and drinking of spiritual drink is the pre- 
 figurement of the Body and Blood of Christ It is, how- 
 ever, the ''simple order of historic exposition" without 
 occult meaning when the Apostle says, ''I delivered to 
 you first of all that which I received, that Christ died 
 for our sins according to the Scriptures." In the 
 simplest acceptation, therefore. History is the deduction 
 from a previous theory about the Old Testament. To 
 inquire further would be to seek the knowledge which 
 puffs up rather than illuminates. 
 
 One cannot but smile at the grimaces with which a 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 481 
 
 brother confesses to the good Abbot who is supposed to 
 be listening, that his mind is infected with poetic songs, 
 and that the tales of Wars and the images of Heroes 
 will intrude upon him at the time of prayer and psalm- 
 singing. The remedy is more earnest concentration upon 
 that spiritual science which is so superior to all else, and 
 which none but pure minds can enjoy. Whatever 
 appears to the contrary, neither Jews nor Hseretics can 
 possess true knowledge ; for the treasures of it are in 
 Christ alone, that is, in the monasteries. The rest is 
 '* knowledge falsely so called," against which the Apostle 
 warns young Timothy. Let it be remembered that, as we 
 read in the Acts, Peter and John were admired for their 
 constancy, albeit they were unlettered men and idiotes 
 in the old sense of the word. Remember also how in 
 an Apostolic passage the connection of virtues shows that 
 vigils and fasts prepare chastity, and chastity leads to 
 science, and science to long-suffering, etc. 
 
 In short, the good monks who are true to their 
 discipline and to the credulity towards their superiors, 
 which is the principle of their education, have no need 
 of any other teaching. Are they not gifted with diverse 
 gifts, are they not in receipt of an unction from the 
 Holy One, do they not know all things ? How 
 absurd to suppose that under such a system it had been 
 
 ^ found necessary in the monasteries to keep registers of 
 
 f^ passing events in this idle world ! 
 
 Amidst these fascinating Collations there is not an 
 Abbot who comes forward to lecture us on the con- 
 venience or the duty of telling the whole truth and 
 nothing but the truth concerning any matter of fact. 
 Nor can we at all understand the conditions under 
 which English Story was composed, until their principles 
 in this respect are understood. In the Collation or 
 
 2 I 
 
482 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Definition, then, you are taught that " perfect men " 
 
 should never make an absolute statement. 
 
 tion of But if a rash statement has been made, it is 
 
 ^^^^'^* pardonable and praiseworthy to alter it or 
 
 to break your word for the sake of greater spiritual 
 
 gain. You must not look upon it as quibbling, but as 
 
 correction of rash and faulty statements. It can be 
 
 'most plainly shown from Scripture that this is right. 
 
 Examples prove how fatal it would often be to adhere 
 
 to our word, and how often useful and salutary to 
 
 retire from it. 
 
 How rash was the Sentence of Peter, the holy apostle : 
 
 Thou shalt not wash my feet for ever ! He 
 
 statements departed from it and so earned the immortal 
 
 forbidden. ■*■ . n r^^ • n n i • r\ n i 
 
 society of Christ, and all the saints. Of the 
 two Sons in the parable, he who refused to go into the 
 vineyard at the behest of his father was not injured by 
 his refusal because he " corrected his statement," while 
 his brother made a good statement but did not fulfil it. 
 How much better would it have been for the cruel 
 Herod, if he had not kept his oath and had not slain 
 the Forerunner ! Through fear of perjury he incurred 
 damnation to perpetual death. 
 
 You must consider in all afiairs the end and direct 
 
 your course accordingly. In all cases, it is 
 Actions in uot the proccss of the work, but the will of 
 
 the worker that you must look at. It does 
 not signify what is done so much as the wish of the 
 doer. Men have done things out of which good has 
 arisen and they have been condemned and contrariwise. 
 You need not show a blameworthy beginning, if you 
 have a necessary and holy end in view. The Traitor 
 procured the saving Passion of the Lord, an event of 
 highest use to the world. And yet of him it was said, 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 483 
 
 Better for him if he had not been horn ! On the other 
 hand, the patriarch Jacob from holy motives lied and 
 cheated his brother out of his heritage, and was exempt 
 from blame. God inquires merely into the "desti- 
 nation of the mind," not into the means by which it 
 arrives. 
 
 This is the reference in the Apostolic saying con- 
 cerning " thoughts mutually excusing or accusing one 
 another." All that is done for the charity of God and 
 love of piety which has the promise of the present 
 and the future life is worthy of the highest praise, though 
 the beginnings appear to be harsh and adverse. You 
 have to offer a pure heart to God, and therefore need 
 not shun to break your incautious promises. There is 
 no occasion to talk of a lie, but merely of ''prudent mid 
 salutary correction of a thoughtless statement, '' It seems 
 that, after the analogy of a physical life, we may advance 
 from spiritual infancy to "the perfect man, and the 
 measure of the age of. the fulness of Christ," not by a 
 " course of various lying," as some would say, but by 
 a " series of changes " which mark our " growing robust- 
 ness." It is implied that ordinary truthfulness is the 
 affair of babes in Christ, not yet weaned or out of their 
 swaddling-clothes. 
 
 It is true that a prophet says, " Thou shalt destroy 
 all them that speak lies," and the Gospel Falsehood as 
 says, " Let your speech be Yea, Yea ; Nay, ^^^i^^ore. 
 Nay." And may not " our conscience " give occasion 
 to falsehood among " the weak brethren " ? The 
 answer is that you must not charge the truth of 
 Scripture for fear of scandals to the weak. You 
 must understand that Saints use falsehood like helle- 
 bore — a poison, yet in dangerous disease the means of 
 health. Consider the venial lie of Eahab, by which, 
 
484 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 though an unchaste person, she earned eternal benedic- 
 tion, with a place in the list of patriarchs and pro- 
 genitors of our Lord. Delilah, on the other hand, who 
 betrayed the truth to those who sought it, has left a 
 memory of crime. If some scrupulous brother objects 
 that this lying was only permitted *^ under the law," 
 and the "rudiments of the times," it is hard to find 
 an answer to him. But if, as is clear, the licence of 
 lying was not indulged under the Old Testament, yet 
 was often venially practised, the superiority of the present 
 dispensation will be evinced by greater indulgence in 
 favour of others' good. 
 
 In the Apostle it is written, '' Lie not one to 
 
 another." But it is also written, " Let no 
 
 must yield ouc scck his owu, but another's good ; charity 
 
 ^" ^* seeks not her own ; I do not seek my own 
 profit, but that of many." The argument conducts us 
 at last to the conclusion that it is very selfish to speak 
 the truth when it is merely useful to ourselves. We 
 shall quite satisfy the Apostolic command if we prefer 
 others' welfare to our own caprices, and then we must 
 of necessity lie. We must relax our strictness, and 
 become with the Apostle weak for the weak's sake. 
 How noxious truth often is, may be seen in the examples 
 of the Apostles. James and the Princes of the primitive 
 Church desired the apostle Paul to play the hypocrite 
 by shaving his head and conforming to Judaism for 
 the sake of gaining the weak. How salutary was the 
 hypocrisy to the whole Church. Paul's life was saved 
 by it. 
 
 You may observe that he was always of the same 
 
 The Ex temperament: *'as a Jew to the Jews'' etc., 
 
 ample of «« all tMugs to all men" You hear him telling 
 
 the GalatiaDS, '' If you he circumcised^ Christ 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 485 
 
 shall projit you nothing,'' and yet you find him taking 
 up a certain shade of Jewish superstition when he 
 circumcises Timothy. Although you read his word, 
 '' I through the laiv am dead to the law,'' you find him 
 in the Acts ''purifying himself" according to the law. 
 You hear him at Athens talking as if he were not under 
 the law and citing a profane Inscription and a Gentile 
 poet, as if he knew nothing at all of that divine law, 
 nothing of Moses and Christ. He advanced through 
 falsehood to the truth. Then you notice that he 
 *' indulges " those who cannot contain themselves, 
 instead of " commanding." He feeds the Corinthians 
 with milk and not with meat. He has a word for 
 matrimony, and a word against it. He practises what 
 he preaches, and is without ofience to Jews, Greeks, 
 and the Church of Christ, pleasing everybody, not 
 seeking his own utility, but the salvation of many. 
 He compared the Eighteousness of the Law to loss and 
 to dung that he might gain Christ or make Christ a gain. 
 His heart was not in the ofierings of the Law ; he says 
 himself that it would be prsevarication in him to build 
 again the things he had destroyed. 
 
 But his principle was to make light of the act itself 
 in the intensity of his aflPection for souls. He knew that 
 truth was hurtful to some, and falsehood profitable. 
 Immortal Paul ! how worthy of a place beside the 
 immortal Eahab and to be contrasted with those truth- 
 tellers who deserved to be rooted out of the earth, a 
 Saul and a Delilah, of whom we are again eloquently 
 reminded. And what exemplary figures of speech Paul 
 uses when he desires to half conceal the truth : " / know 
 a man in Christ caught up to the third heaven." The 
 Doctor of the Gentiles prefers to put forward his revela- 
 tions under the mask of another. So, it may be added. 
 
486 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 do all the Benedictine historians. They admit it, a 
 useful and edifying practice in reference to the younger 
 brethren. It is more in accord with rectitude to lie 
 under the colour of these figures than to stick to the 
 observance of the absurd *' truth," and to incur the 
 reproach of vanity by talking of our virtues. To hold 
 our peace might be equally to deprive our young friends 
 of edification. 
 
 Our good Abbot labours his point, so anxious is he 
 to sanction the licence of fickleness and inconstancy 
 under the example of the Apostle, as well as of Old 
 Testament saints. Though in writing to the Corinthians, 
 Paul makes an absolute promise to return to them, 
 saying, '^ I will come to you when I have passed through 
 Macedonia, for I will pass through Macedonia, hut 
 ivith you I will remain or even winter with you,^' in 
 a second letter he recalls the subject : ''In this confidence 
 I desired first to come to you that you might have a 
 second grace, and through you I might cross into 
 Macedonia, and again from Macedonia come to you, 
 and by you be led into Judcea!' However, a sounder 
 counsel supervened, he did not execute his promise, as 
 he evidently confesses when he asks, " Did I use levity 
 in this purpose f Are my thoughts according to the 
 flesh, that my word should be a Yea-Nay?'' He 
 goes on to declare ivhy he preferred to break his word, 
 swearing a solemn oath as he does so : *' I call God as 
 witness against my soul, that to spare you I came not 
 beyond Corinth, For I resolved this with myself, that 
 I would not come to you in sadness.'' 
 
 A monk should not bind himself on oath under 
 Th obii a ^^^ influence of any passion ; but if he has 
 tionof the douc SO, he sliould be, like the sweetly reason- 
 
 Oath. ' ' o ' ^ 
 
 able Fathers, as wax before the fire in the 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 487 
 
 presence of reason and better counsels. They that will 
 obstinately stick to their word are unreasonable men 
 and without discretion. So are the obligations of the 
 word and the oath broken asunder like tow, so is the 
 best morality that prevails in " I would " treated with 
 utter disdain. The New Law establishes a new morality, 
 according to which the monk need only swear and 
 resolve to keep the " principal commands " on which 
 his salvation depends. For these, if necessary, he must 
 be willing to die. For the sake of that new and 
 peculiar virtue called Charity, for the sake of Chastity, 
 sobriety and justice, there must be unflinching per- 
 severance to the end; and the slightest recession is 
 damnable. But as for bodily exercises which profit little 
 — fasting, abstinence from wine or oil, confinement to 
 the cell, reading and meditation — you are bound by no 
 law, the question is one of utility. Let the Apostolic 
 word be recalled, ''Where there is no Laiv, there is no 
 prcBvarication. ' ' 
 
 It was the masterpiece of Benedictine art thus to 
 portray the character and temperament of an astute 
 Abbot under the person of the Apostle Paul, who is 
 made to claim a boundless licence to trespass upon 
 the common morality of the world in the interests 
 of his conscience, of Christ, and all-grasping ambition 
 of his Charity. It is common to lay at the door of 
 the Jesuits all the slipperiness, the duplicities, the 
 sophistries, the juggles with words and ideas which are 
 here recommended. This is unjust ; for these vices were 
 of earlier introduction, and they are the canker at the 
 root of every ecclesiastical organization founded on the 
 New Law. And once more, the employment of such 
 an enginery of falsehood as that disclosed in the 
 authoritative documents of the earliest Christian family 
 
488 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 can only be excused on the assumption of a state of 
 perpetual War, where every species of craft or of violence 
 is permissible in pursuit of the one object and end of 
 a universal conquest. 
 
 Let us take some illustrations of the method of sacred 
 Illustrations fiction from other writings of the Order, nearly 
 
 fromBede. ^£ ^^^ ^^^^ ^^j,-^^ ^-^^ ^^^ CoUatioUS of 
 
 Cassian. The Sentences of the Gospel and the Apostle 
 once inscribed and quoted, stimulated the production 
 of a great quantity of these fictions. The following 
 are taken from the legends concerning England, all 
 of them Benedictine of origin, during the Revival of 
 Letters. 
 
 It was their law that a man should not wed his 
 brother's wife, and John Baptist is made a martyr in 
 defence of it. He died for " the Truth,'' and the Truth 
 is identical with Jesus Christ. So St. Gregory is made 
 to explain to St. Augustine, our English Apostle. Since 
 the English practise that execrable custom, the policy 
 of utility must be pursued toward them. In some 
 cases there must be connivance, in others denunciation 
 and excommunication. We are not far from the time 
 of Henry VIII. The " rude nation of the English " are 
 to be informed that matrimony is not in itself a fault, 
 but they are forbidden to associate any pleasure with 
 the connection. The Apostle " indulged " matrimony 
 and so proved that there was scandal in it. That great 
 soldier of the Dominical army spoke of himself as a 
 fighter, yet a captive in reference to those carnal 
 pleasures. 
 
 The Sentence " Lord, in thy name even the devils 
 are subject to us^^ may equally well apply to the 
 apostles in England, who draw the souls of the people 
 by outward miracles to inward grace, as to the apostles 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 489 
 
 in France or Germany ; and simple people may be 
 frightened by the idea of the coming end of the world, 
 and then be soothed, in the seventh age as well as 
 any other. The blessed apostles Peter and Paul are no 
 less at home in Canterbury than in Kome ; and the 
 saying " Though he is not an apostle to others, yet he is so 
 to ics, for we are the seed of his apostleship " is quite 
 fittingly applied to the blessed Pope G-regory, the 
 converter of England from the power of Satan to that 
 of Christ. But the wealth of the Gregorian mind was 
 not fully disclosed to the world until the year 1707, 
 when the Fathers of St. Maur collected and published 
 his works, an important part of their structure. 
 
 They who are responsible for the ideal of the Meek 
 and Lowly Hearted One reveal to us in the person of 
 St. Augustine an apostle who refuses to imitate it in 
 the presence of turbulent " British bishops," who refused 
 to come under the yoke of the Koman observance of 
 Easter. The saint, on the contrary, launches a fatal 
 threat of vengeance at their heads. So terrible is 
 Christ to his proud foes, as the slaughter of the monks 
 of Bangor proved. The system of the Christian Empire 
 is parcere subjectis, et debeUare superbos. 
 
 The New Testament had been framed as a Book of 
 Precedents. Because Peter ordained Clement 
 
 . . The Book 
 
 nis successor, Augustme ordains Laurance m ofPrece- 
 his lifetime, and similar successions are con- 
 tinued elsewhere. The holy Laurance stands over 
 against the impure King Eadbald, as the Apostle 
 against the impure Corinthian who was guilty of un- 
 heard-of sin. St. Peter favours Laurance with one of 
 his apparitions, in consequence of which Eadbald is 
 terrified and converted, and builds the Church of the 
 Holy Mother of God. 
 
490 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 The anxiety about the question of mixed marriages 
 shown in the Apostle leads to the composition of the 
 story of the wedding of King Edwin, the pagan, to a 
 Christian maiden. After extraordinary eflforts, natural 
 and supernatural, on the part of the holy Paulinus and 
 of Pope Boniface, Edwin and his people are at last 
 baptized by Paulinus. To him might well be applied 
 the words in the Apostle — he was intensely desirous to 
 espouse Northumbria ''as a chaste virgin to Christ.'' 
 One easily detects the motive in these allegories. The 
 Church must gain the Englishwomen ; they must 
 convert the husbands ; a little leaven will leaven the 
 lump ; a Christian maiden from Christian Kent will be 
 the means of filling dark Northumbria with light. 
 It is against all correct critical principle to apply in 
 such cases what our authors call the " simple historical 
 interpretation." 
 
 But the subject again and again pressed upon our 
 notice in Bede's Allegories is the observance of Easter. 
 The monk over and over again labours to impress upon 
 us that the Jewish custom had prevailed before the 
 arrival of the Holy Koman missionaries. There was a 
 precedent for this in the practice of the holy evangelist 
 John, the beloved disciple. But it must give way 
 before the dictate of the Prince of the Apostles, the 
 Rock on which the Church was built, and who had the 
 awful power of the keys. There was similar diversity 
 of custom as to the Tonsure ; but the Holy Roman 
 tonsure must prevail over the Pauline Oriental tonsure. 
 Here again the difficulties of the New Testament 
 legends are solved, when they are carried into the light 
 of the dogmatic principles of the Church History. 
 
 Other stories and sketches illustrate the Apostolic 
 school of art in its principles as traced by Cassian. The 
 
MONASTERIES AND THE NEW TESTAMENT. 491 
 
 most reverend Father Egbert, in speaking of his early- 
 friend St. Chad to the abbot of Lindsey, said, '* I 
 know a man in this island still in the flesh, who when 
 that prelate passed out of this world, saw the soul of 
 his brother Chad with a company of angels descending 
 from heaven, who having taken his soul with them, re- 
 turned thither again." The comment on this discloses 
 the Benedictine opinion of the nature of historical testi- 
 mony. " Whether Egbert said this of himself or some 
 other, we do not certainly know ; hut the same being 
 said hy so great a many there can he no douht of 
 the truth thereof" 
 
 When the Abbess St. Hilda of the Benedictine 
 monastery of Whitby died, St. Bees, a nun of the cell 
 at Hackness, thirteen miles distant, saw her soul in like 
 manner conducted to heaven by angels. Another nun 
 in Whitby itself had the like vision ; and " the truth'' 
 was known to the whole monastery in the morning. 
 No wonder that in this favoured monastery was a certain 
 brother, remarkable for the grace of God, on whom 
 the gift of writing verses was bestowed by heaven. 
 This was the incomparable Caedmon, whose gifts and 
 graces remained nevertheless concealed from the English 
 public for eight long hundred years. 
 
 The miracles are after the canonical type. If 
 Peter's mother-in-law was healed by a touch of the 
 Divine hand, it was logical that an earl's wife might be 
 cured by applications of holy water, sent by the hand 
 of a bishop, and that she should arise and minister to 
 the men of God. For the waters of the earth have 
 been consecrated by the descent of Christ into them. 
 The cripple cured by Peter and John is a prototype of 
 a dumb youth cured by the holy St. John of Beverley 
 by the application of the sign of the Cross to his tongue. 
 
492 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 We have the story from the abbot of the monastery of 
 St. John, who was " a man of undoubted veracity T 
 Another man of God, and successor of St. Cuthbert, 
 quells with ease from the isle of Fame a storm which 
 endangers the lives of his brethren on shipboard. 
 
 So did the good Fathers apply their panacea, their 
 trusted drug hellebore, their edifying mendacities, in 
 the spirit of the greatest holiness and charity, for the cure 
 of the rude matter-of-fact imagination of our ancestors. 
 It might seem that there has been an overdose ; for 
 certainly from the time when this work began to be 
 known early in the sixteenth century, a certain stupe- 
 faction in reference to the history of the English Church 
 has prevailed in the minds of Englishmen. 
 
( 493 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 POETS AND CRITICS. 
 
 I PROPOSE to select in these chapters a few illustrations 
 from the Poets, of the manner in which the conventional 
 Fable of the English past once firmly laid down during 
 the reign of Henry VIII. continued to be recited and 
 sung, to be enlarged by new inventions and additions, 
 and so to be firmly planted in the imagination of the 
 people ; until some critical energy began to make itself 
 felt, with little general eflPect, in the seventeenth 
 century. A brief account of John Selden, one of the 
 greatest of our scholars and a man naturally of a keen 
 critical turn, will show how impossible it was, even for 
 his acumen, to penetrate to the roots of the system, and 
 to discover the secret of a Literature which had issued 
 from the obscurity of the Monasteries a little more than 
 a century before his time. 
 
 The ambition of Drayton was to produce English 
 epics in imitation of the masterpieces of Greek Michael 
 and Roman antiquity. He never thought ^''^y*''°- 
 of inquiring whether he had material of authentic fact 
 which he might render in poetic form. He took the 
 Chronicles for authoritative, as did all of his con- 
 temporaries, and was concerned only with the division 
 and arrangement of his work in a manner agreeable 
 to precedent and to the taste of his readers. 
 
494 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 In his "Barons' Wars in the Eeign of Edward IL," 
 The Barons' he, as usual, belleves that portents and 
 ^^^^' prodigies must have foreshown the great 
 
 calamity. His tale revolves about the persons of the 
 Queen, the Mortimers and the Barons, the battle of 
 Barton Bridge and the victory over the Barons ; how 
 Lord Mortimer escapes from the Tower, and how 
 France was stirred up to invade England, how king 
 Edward is finally put to death with incredible bar- 
 barity, how his successor seizes Mortimer at Notting- 
 ham, and how Mortimer expiates his crimes with his life. 
 
 In his " Heroical Epistles " he reproduces the old 
 Heroicai talcs of thc lovcs of Hcury II. and the fair 
 Epistles. Eosamond in the labyrinth of Woodstock, 
 — the oldest park in England, as Stow says, and 
 which, as Drayton says, contains still the ruins of the 
 labyrinth. Then king John eloquently woos Matilda, 
 daughter of Lord Fitzwater, who replies to him from 
 the nunnery of Dunmow. Drayton candidly admits 
 that the language of John's letter is more poetical than 
 historical ; but he has striven to preserve the character 
 of the king, as traced in the Benedictine chronicles ; and 
 that of the chaste Matilda. 
 
 Then again fair Isabel, wife of Edward II. , appears 
 on the scene, exchanging letters with her lover, Mor- 
 timer, with a view to impress the tales about Gaves- 
 ton on the minds of the reading English public. 
 Edward the Black Prince pays his suit to the Countess 
 of Salisbury in her husband's absence, and is by her 
 discreetly checked. The references of Drayton to the 
 tale as it appears in Bandello, as compared with Poly- 
 dore and Froissart, are amusing. The Italian poet, 
 it seems, prefers " the grace of conceit to the truth of 
 circumstance." A suspicion that the story is pleasing 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 495 
 
 fiction does not appear to cross the mind of Drayton, 
 who tells us that the Black Prince was so called because 
 of the dismal battles he fought in France rather than 
 because of his complexion. 
 
 Richard 11. and Isabel also exchange epistles ; and 
 the critical notes on the past are in general analogous 
 to those of Walter Scott appended to his historical 
 novels. The substance of the tales is not for a moment 
 suspect ; but in the formation a certain license is 
 allowed. Queen Catherine, widow of Henry V., inti- 
 mates by letter her favour to Owen Tudor, and takes 
 occasion to discourse on her late husband's descent from 
 John of Gaunt, and on English and French blood, 
 with appropriate allusions to the Greek mythology. 
 Then we have allusions to Welsh kings, to Camelot and 
 King Arthur, to the invasions of Welshmen in the 
 time of Eufus and his successors. Naturally, Owen in 
 his reply has to dwell on the ancient crest of the 
 Tudors, the Three Helmets, and must make an ap- 
 propriate reference to the prophecies of Merlin, and to 
 Bards who kept the records of pedigrees. Owen must 
 also boast of Cadwallader, last of the Britons, and of his 
 descent from him. 
 
 Next comes an epistolary interchange between the 
 good duke Humphrey of Gloucester and his wife Elinor, 
 who according to the Chronicles had been convicted of 
 sorcery and conspiracy against the Crown, and who 
 writes from her prison in the isle of Man. She alludes 
 to the slanders of Cardinal Beaufort against her ; he is 
 stigmatized and cursed as a Judas. Allusion is also 
 made to the dark tale that Bolingbroke the necromancer 
 had used magical instruments consecrated by the priest 
 Southwell in Harnsey Park. It is maintained against 
 Beaufort that he designed — 
 
496 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 " The crosier staif in his imperious hand, 
 To be the sceptre that controls the land.'* 
 
 The poet is full of the question of the Title which 
 Beaufort wished to find for the house of Cambridge 
 as descended from Edmund Langley, duke of York, 
 younger brother of John of Gaunt, so that he might 
 smother the counter-claim of the Yorkists from Lionel 
 of Clarence, the eldest brother. From these fierce de- 
 clamations the transition is very sweet to lines of great 
 tenderness in which the duke declares his heart to be 
 divided between England and Elinor. 
 
 William de la Pole, duke of Sufi'olk, in writing to 
 his beloved Margaret, for whose sake he had given up 
 Anjou and Maine, and had been driven into exile, 
 reports these scandals and tales about the Yorkist title, 
 the original of which was in Hall's Chronicle. Inci- 
 dentally we hear of Tours as the place where perpetual 
 peace was made between the English and French kings 
 in the time of Henry YI. The city is said to have 
 been founded by Brutus on his way into Britain. In 
 France, the duke of Suffolk is made to say that he spent 
 a fifteenth's tax which he had raised in England for 
 the nuptials of Margaret. His robe at the wedding was 
 worth more than her father's crown. Margaret in her 
 reply deals with the like material, and with feminine 
 spite sneers at the duchess of York, who is represented 
 as teaching her four sons that they are the true heirs 
 of royalty. If three sons fail, she'll make the fourth 
 a king. Kichard III. is thus characterized : — 
 
 " He that's so like his dam, her youngest Dick, 
 That foul, ill-favour'd, crook-back'd stigmatic, 
 That like a carcass stol'n out of a tomb, 
 Came the wrong way out of his mother's womb, 
 With teeth in 's head " 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 497 
 
 Some clue is given to the manner in which heraldic 
 devices set the creative fancy of the chroniclers to work. 
 The vermilion rose of Lancaster is proudly contrasted 
 with the bastard weed of York, and the Margarite or 
 Daisy is said to have been worn by princes in honour 
 of the queen. The unruly Bear is a synonym for the 
 earl of Warwick, and bearded staves for his followers. 
 Analysis of these poesies teaches us that from the hints 
 supplied by the badges and arms of the great houses 
 impassioned imagination was set upon its constructive 
 work. The love of Edward IV. for Mistress Shore is 
 presented with all those fascinations of detail which im- 
 pose upon the understanding, even of the wariest. The 
 king s amorous eloquence is for the most part true to 
 nature, and the curiosity of the reader is set in motion, 
 however vainly, to discover the original of the peerless 
 city beauty. The theory was fixed, from Comines 
 onwards, that Edward IV. must be the ideal of a hand- 
 some, chivalrous and amorous king. His besetting sin 
 must be visited, according to the ideas of the times, on 
 his innocent offspring. And the tales were conceived 
 so as to illustrate the theory. Drayton's treatment of 
 the subject is quite moral and improving; he offers 
 some hints as to the current opinion of the theatre as 
 unfit for the resort of respectable women. 
 
 The next correspondents are Mary, sister of Henry 
 VIII. , widow of king Lewis, and Charles Brandon, 
 duke of Suffolk. The queen writes in a style of most 
 entertaining candour to her lover concerning her 
 relations to the French king, to whom she was wedded, 
 as she declares, in consequence of the intrigues of 
 Wolsey. In his reply Brandon offers magnificent com- 
 pliments to his royal wooer, refuses to boast of his own 
 descent, but is proud to be son of the man who beat 
 
 2 K 
 
498 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Richard from his horse on Bosworth field, and laid 
 down his life in the cause of Henry Tudor. William 
 Brandon was standard-bearer of Henry, and according 
 to Polydore, chief of the hundred soldiers who fell on 
 Henry's side. But he fell at the first onset of Richard, 
 and nothing is said about his having pulled Richard 
 from his horse. 
 
 Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, the prince and poet, 
 the restorer of English glory, writes to the beauteous 
 Geraldine who sprang from the Geraldi of Florence. 
 He had travelled to Italy on the high errand of main- 
 taining the peerlessness of her beauty in public jousts, 
 and indites his epistle from Tuscany. The lines are 
 charming. Drayton half apologizes for representing 
 that Cornelius Agrippa, the wizard, showed Surrey his 
 absent lady in a magic mirror. He makes the earl 
 boast of his blazon, the lion set in the bright silver 
 head and its association with the victory of Flodden. 
 His authorities are Camden and George Buchanan. It 
 is interesting to note the English and Scotch theories of 
 that battle. The English maintained that the wilful 
 perjury of King James V. was punished from heaven 
 by the hand of the Earl of Surrey ; but Buchanan saw 
 in his badge — a silver lion tearing in pieces a lion 
 prostrate gules — an insolence which was visited on that 
 earl and his posterity. A good illustration of the 
 manner in which history was the embodiment of party 
 passions and dogmas. 
 
 A point of interest in connection with authorship 
 here arises. Surrey is made to praise the poet Sir 
 Thomas Wyat, both here and in the writings ascribed 
 to his name. There is little or no reason for believing 
 that either Surrey or Wyat wrote poetry, when we con- 
 sider what the habit of authors and booksellers was, and 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 499 
 
 what the literary morality of the time. While it is 
 contrary to all probability that so many men of rank 
 addicted themselves to literature during the Tudor 
 period, it is, on the other hand, tolerably clear that men 
 of rank were flattered by the ascription of fine works of 
 genius to them. If they believed the name of poet to 
 be more divine than that of prince (as Drayton sings), 
 they may have been content to wear it in exchange for 
 patronage extended to a needy bard. 
 
 We come upon abundant illustrations of the extra- 
 ordinary tension of the amor pati^ise in the poet and 
 his compeers ; and the consequent fabrication of an- 
 tiquity for places and for families of consideration 
 in England. There was a time before Drayton when 
 Windsor Castle was of obscure history ; in his time it 
 has become so magnificent that it may stand, as it were, 
 on its own merits, needing not so much decoration of 
 legendary lore. However, Drayton says that Walter 
 of Windsor was the ancestor of his contemporaries, 
 Lord Windsor and the Earl of Essex. Walter waiter of 
 of Windsor was planted in the time of the ^^^'^^sor. 
 Conqueror. A son of his wedded the daughter of Kees, 
 the great prince of Wales. Nesta, their daughter, be- 
 came mistress of Henry I. From the same ancestor 
 sprang the Fitzgerald family, of whom was the first 
 Earl of Kildare, ancestor to the lady Geraldine. Dray- 
 ton leans on the antiquary Francis Thynne, who has 
 satisfied himself of the English original of the Fitzgerald 
 family, to which it appears the Geraldi of Florence 
 belong. The lady of the Earl of Surrey becomingly re- 
 pudiates Italy in favour of her Irish and English blood. 
 
 The letters of Lady Jane Grey and Lord Guilford 
 Dudley give rise to further discussions of Brandon 
 family titles. The sorrows of the young pair ^"^^ Dudley. 
 
50D THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 are a judgment upon the ambition of their fathers, the 
 duke of Suffolk and the duke of Northumberland. 
 Then we are led back by the clue of the Brandon 
 family to the dowager queen Mary of France, one of 
 the fruits of the union of the pure vermilion rose and the 
 purer white on one stalk. Occasion is taken to repre- 
 sent that Henry VIII. distrusted his daughter Mary, 
 and strove to prevent her coming to the throne. The 
 lady Jane is supposed to exult from her room in the 
 Tower in the prospect of martyrdom before — 
 
 " The dark and dismal days begin, 
 The days of all idolatry and sin," 
 
 the days of persecution, of tyranny and of torture. 
 She foresees the accession of Elizabeth who will 
 eradicate idolatry, will restore the glory of Sion, will 
 gather up the sound bones of martyrs from the cinder- 
 heaps, and will extirpate the power of Rome and 
 cast off the yoke of Spain. Drayton supports the 
 theory of the extraordinary intellectual gifts of the 
 lady Jane, and produces an epigram which says that 
 she was born Graia, and no wonder she was a Greek 
 scholar. 
 
 Dudley, in telling the story of his father's expedition 
 against the Norfolk rebels, represents him as going 
 forth with the approval of the whole Council of the 
 land, and that of the Church. He was thought irre- 
 sistible. " But," the speaker continues — 
 
 ** But what, alas ! can Parliaments avail 
 ' Where Mary's right must Edward's acts repeal ? " 
 
 The touch is significant. Hereditary right to the 
 throne was yet young in English recognition. The 
 struggle between rival king-makers was still going 
 on. The people in Shoreditch, who gazed in silence at 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 501 
 
 the troops of the Duke of Northumberland marching 
 toward the North, perhaps murmured among themselves 
 against the man who had put down the rebels under 
 Kett in the Eastern counties. However it may have 
 been, the men of Suffolk are said to have successfully 
 resisted the duke, who found himself . forsaken at 
 Cambridge and reduced to despair. 
 
 Drayton must be one of our best authorities for 
 those events of which he treats, no doubt with the 
 partiality of an Elizabethan and a Protestant. But 
 with such evidence of the state of things in the middle 
 of the sixteenth century, where the Parliament and the 
 people are still the subjects of manipulation on the 
 part of the principal nobles, how can it be maintained 
 that there was any settled Constitution in England ? 
 
 The great mass of Drayton's poetry which deals 
 with English legends is in itself a proof that the subject 
 was more interesting than any other to an English 
 audience, and that there was every temptation to the 
 artist to colour his tragic pictures according to the 
 taste of his patrons. It would be sufficient to point to 
 these works alone as evidence of the fact that English 
 history as it has been taught in our schools since the 
 time of Edward VI. owes its charm mainly to the great 
 artists who laboured during the reign of the Virgin 
 Queen. The persons who pass across the stage of fancy 
 in the Norman or the Plantagenet time do not essen- 
 tially differ from those who were contemporaries of 
 the Elizabethans. They move in the like atmosphere 
 of the creative ideal. 
 
 There is good criticism in Drayton. In narrating, 
 for example, the Legend of Thomas Cromwell, Thomas 
 earl of Essex, he hints that the statesman Cromwell. 
 might tell, if summoned from the dead, much truth 
 
502 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 that had been suppressed. He had been the object of 
 extreme praise, and of blame equally extreme. He is 
 disguised in fables, and pleads to be heard. Born in a 
 blacksmith's cottage at Putney, he felt the sacred fire 
 glow within his bosom. He desired to travel ; and 
 became secretary to the guild of English merchants in 
 Antwerp. He went to Rome and became of influence 
 among his countrymen there. He had to struggle 
 against adverse fortune and lived as a play actor in the 
 company of other poor Englishmen. His busy brain led 
 him to j)luDge into the political intrigues of the turbu- 
 lent time, and he returned to England with a knowledge 
 of State secrets professed by few. He found men at 
 home expecting a revolution, and the courtiers slily 
 fishing in troubled waters with an eye to future ad- 
 vantage. 
 
 Cromwell made himself known to Wolsey, the Atlas 
 of the government. He met More and Gardiner. He 
 was employed in the business of the foundation of 
 Christ's College, Oxford, the necessity of raising funds 
 for which suggested the scheme for the spoliation 
 of the monasteries. After his early reverses at the 
 Court, he invented the doctrine of ^^ra^mi^mV^ and won 
 his way to the favour of the king and to high fortune. 
 He rapidly ascended the steps of promotion till he 
 became vicegerent of the realm. He liberally repaid all 
 debts of gratitude to old friends he had known in Italy, 
 especially the ruined merchant Friscobald, whom he 
 helped to begin the world anew. 
 
 Cromwell is made to explain in a lucid manner the 
 causes of the great revolution which brought low the 
 great seats of old religion in England. The greatness 
 of the Church suffered nothing to grow beneath its shade. 
 There was general turbulence, poverty, discontent 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 503 
 
 without her walls. There was the awakening of a 
 spirit of incredulity towards the Church dogma, and of 
 impatience of the lavish expenditure of former times 
 upon Church institutions. There was a stern determina- 
 tion to get back the wealth that by the Church had 
 been ill-gotten. Cromwell's skill and experience was 
 brought to bear upon the king, who was taught how 
 limb by limb he might gradually lame the old system. 
 Abbeys as they fell vacant were filled with bad men, 
 so that the system might be brought into contempt. 
 Then the spirit of dissent spread rapidly through the 
 world. The craft and imposture of the churchmen 
 became daily more apparent, and men looked with 
 suspicion on the easily bought salvation. 
 
 At last these ill humours came to a head. The 
 religious houses were despoiled, and a number of obscure 
 and base men gained wealth, office, and title by the 
 plunder. There are allusions to Piers Plowman's 
 invectives against the sensuality and hypocrisy of the 
 friars. Then Cromwell somewhat abruptly narrates the 
 event of his fall. In self-defence against his foes, he 
 forwarded the confederacy of the German princes and 
 the marriage of Henry with Anne of Cleves. But the 
 wrath of Henry and the malignant slanders of his enemies 
 brought the greatest man in England to inquest before 
 Parliament, who had himself been instead of Parliament, 
 and so to Tower Hill scaffold. 
 
 It will be seen that Drayton, writing at an interval 
 of about sixty years after Cromwell's execution, draws 
 the lines of his character with a sympathetic yet un- 
 certain hand. Thomas Cromwell is indeed one of the 
 seuigmas of the English history. How is it that 
 Polydore, who was living in England during the whole 
 period of Cromwell's rise and fall, and for ten years later, 
 
504 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 says nothing about him ? The whole Legend must have 
 been forming during the latter part of the sixteenth 
 century, and must be in great measure, as Drayton 
 knows, derived from pure invention. The principle of 
 it may in part be traced. The astonishment and the 
 half-superstitious terror with which men looked upon the 
 ruined abbeys and reflected on the great sufferings that 
 had followed in political and social life, created the idea 
 of a punishment and a victim. This was in strict 
 analogy to many other cases that have been noticed. 
 Thus the name of a man of whom next to nothing is 
 historically known has proved the centre of a great 
 system of fable which was still being massed up more 
 than a century after he is said to have perished on the 
 scaff'old.* 
 
 The " Polyolbion " of Drayton contains a great mass 
 The " Poly- of mythological lore, and may be compared, to 
 oibion." ^-^^ advantage of our countryman, with the 
 " Periegesis " of old Pausanias. Those readers who may 
 find the legends of our streams and villages tedious or 
 wanting in deep popular root, will nevertheless be inte- 
 rested in the sentiment which pervades the verse, and 
 which is similar to that under whose influence the Greek 
 poets built the local legends of Hellas into a system. 
 
 This glorious isle of Albion, says the poet, existed 
 long before the all-earth-drowning flood in the time of 
 the Giants. His thought reverts to the ancient British 
 bards who sung the deeds of heroes to their harps, and 
 engraved the prophecies and the genealogies of the aged 
 world in their dreadful verse. He narrates the landing 
 
 * Hall, on the other hand, allows us to observe a division of feeling in 
 reference to the fate of Cromwell. Though odious to the prelates, there 
 were many of the people who thought him a useful man and prayed for him 
 on hearing of his doom. — " Biog. Brit.," s.v. '' Cromwell." 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 505 
 
 of Brute with his Trojans at Totnes, of the wrestling- 
 bout between Gogmagog the giant and Corrie coming of 
 at the Hoe of Plymouth, and of the bestowal ^'■"*®- 
 of Cornwall upon the victor. Travelling eastward, our 
 chorographer relates the splendid legend of . 
 Bevis of Southampton, whose type partly 
 corresponds to that of Hercules, partly to that of a 
 Christian knight victorious over the foul Pagans. His 
 adventures in Damascus find a reflection in the legend 
 of Count Kobert of Paris, as treated by Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 At Avalon, the grave of Arthur, the poet's musings 
 yield an insight into the state of sentiment Musings of 
 prevailing in the Elizabethan time in reference ^^^^°°- 
 to the decay of the old religion — a wistful yearning for 
 a believed holy and splendid past, with a due conscious- 
 ness that the doom of the monasteries must have been 
 deserved. Whose the guilt of the ruin of the proud 
 pile of Glastonbury ? How was it that neither great 
 Arthur's tomb nor that of holy Joseph of Arimathsea, 
 who had carried God-in-man to his sepulchre, could 
 save these bones from sacrilege ? Was it mere fate and 
 course of time or human error that had brouij^ht on 
 decay ? The legend of the blossoming thorn in winter 
 w^as still acceptable. So also was the legend that with 
 Brutus there had come Greek philosophers to Grecklade, 
 the original of Oxford University, although Leland had 
 shown in his "Swan Song" that the place was more 
 properly called Lechlade or Creclade. 
 
 We follow the chorographer to the Wansdike, and 
 to Stonehenge, which are personified for the purpose of 
 representing Briton and Saxon rivalries. We ascend to 
 the fount of the Thames, pass down the Avon to Bath 
 and to Bristol. We listen to the musical nymphs of 
 
5o6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 England and of Wales discoursing on the question 
 of their claims fco the isle of Lundy. The glory of 
 Arthur is compared with the story of the Saxons, and 
 the wordy strife on the banks of the Severn becomes loud 
 and long. We travel to Carmarthen and listen once 
 more to the tale of Merlin's birth ; we visit the cell of 
 St. David. Long does the Muse hover over Wales, un- 
 wearied of the theme of the great British kings, the 
 prophecies of Merlin, and the never-to-be-forgotten 
 Brute. Keturning to England, she chants the great 
 devotion of the religious Saxon kings, with whose 
 fame the Wrekin rings. Guy of Warwick is cele- 
 brated. 
 
 From Aylesbury vale we pass to Oxford and thence 
 to Windsor, the seat of the Eoyal Garter. At St. 
 Albans, the Ver and the Watling are made to dis- 
 course of the old Eoman roads, and of the Seven Saxon 
 kingdoms. The site of London is extolled ; and satires 
 are launched against the idle and luxurious gentry, and 
 the use of tobacco and other foreign commodities. 
 Thames is called upon to sing once more the catalogue 
 of the English kings. We listen to the praises of the 
 men of Kent and of the Eastern folk. At Cambrido^e 
 the giant Gogmagog is awakened from his slumber to 
 woo the Giant. By the Ouse we are entertained at 
 great length with the tale of the Civil Wars down to 
 the time of the camp on Blackheath. On the isle of 
 Ely the memory of the ancient English saints is revived. 
 The Witham in Lincoln and holy Botolph's town is 
 visited. Justice is done to Sherwood, and the splendid 
 reminiscence of Eobin Hood, the darling of the popular 
 heart. The Northern counties are sung, and the poet 
 reposes at length from what he well called his Her- 
 culean toil, on the banks of Eden, pointing to the little 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. $07 
 
 rising bank which commemorates Arthur, and which 
 men call his Table. 
 
 The poem has been illustrated in the earlier Songs 
 by the rich learning of John Selden, a man who united 
 strong common sense with his erudition ; but who, as 
 will be presently seen, was unable to direct the sceptical 
 energy of his mind to the ascertainment of the actual 
 source of these splendid fictions. The study of the 
 poem together with his notes teaches us to what a 
 height the tide of patriotic passion had risen during 
 the sixteenth century, what a mass of false documents 
 had been produced to gratify it, and how utterly 
 impossible it was for any truly critical spirit to make 
 itself felt in the examination of them. It was no doubt 
 to be expected in our poets if they endeavoured to 
 kindle a warm affection for all parts of the island in the 
 minds of the upper classes, the only readers of or 
 listeners to these legends. English mythology was 
 made a sacred thing, a means of uniting the people in 
 one political faith, the personal object of which was the 
 sovereign. It was a great feat of art to make out these 
 long pedigrees of British, Saxon, and Norman kings, 
 and to rescue out of these so hoary and indefeasible a 
 title for the princes of the House of Tudor. 
 
 And yet a great mischief was done. The glory and 
 greatness of England did not consist in the ability to 
 produce a long Catalogue of Kings, and a mass of 
 imaginary archives. It lay in the stout hearts and 
 the strong hands of the mass of the people. Useless to 
 blame men of letters because they work within the only 
 conditions prescribed for their successful activity. And 
 yet one cannot but regret that there were not among 
 those splendid creators some who listened more closely 
 to the beating of the heart of the unlettered people ; and 
 
5o8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 who could anticipate the oracle of the modern poet, that 
 title, rank, and decoration are mere gewgaws in the light 
 of the worth of man as man. We should not have had 
 to wait so long before a fine articulate utterance was 
 given to the cry of the poor commons demanding where 
 the gentlefolk were in the days of the ancestral Gardener 
 and his spinster spouse, who 
 
 " From yon blue heavens above ns bent i 
 
 Smile at the claims of long descent." 
 
 In reference to Spenser, the remark must be re- 
 Edmund peated, that there is no such gulf between 
 Spenser. ^^^ ^^^ Chauccr as the fictitious theory of our 
 literature has pretended to fix. The distance of the 
 earlier from the later school is but a distance of two 
 generations or thereabout. And again it must be re- 
 peated, that the name of Spenser serves only to mask 
 and protect some unknown poet or band of poets, whose 
 real names have perhaps never been disclosed. 
 
 The Spenser family, said to have been one of the 
 richest in the kingdom, was ennobled in the time of 
 James I., and it is of course possible that a namesake 
 was concerned in the composition of the " Faery Queen," 
 but nothing certain is known. The legend concerning 
 Spenser's associates in Cambridge and London leads us, 
 by an indirect clue, into the heart of the mystery of the 
 literary society of the time. Thus Gabriel Harvey is 
 said to have been Spenser's friend at Cambridge, and 
 Harvey becomes a barrister in London. Thomas Nash 
 is supposed to lash Harvey with his satire because of his 
 astrological Almanacs. And Harvey in his turn is said 
 to trample on Eobert Greene, after the death of the 
 latter from a surfeit of pickled herrings and Ehenish 
 wine. Such are the curious stories reported by Wood, 
 who in his dulness did not perceive that they formed 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 509 
 
 part of a system of jest and disguise on the part of the 
 litterateurs of the late sixteenth century. 
 
 Through all the dim Spenser legend we can discern 
 nothing certain, unless it be the fact that the poet 
 lived and died a poor man supported by the patronage, 
 it may be, of Spenser, Raleigh, Desmond and other great 
 men of the Court, whom he rewarded by the splendid 
 allegorical flatteries of his verse. The bitter complaints 
 of indigence, of neglect, of positive enmity to the poet 
 and his writings to be found in the " Faery Queen," 
 echoed in the *' Return from Parnassus," and in the 
 " Purple Island " of Phinseas Fletcher, may be regarded 
 as the general complaints of the poets in a turbulent 
 time, amidst influences unfavourable to the Muses. To 
 cite from Fletcher's words, the poet was no doubt one of 
 those 
 
 •' Lurking strawberries, shrouded from high-looking eyes, 
 Shewing that sweetness low and hidden lies." 
 
 A few illustrations of the way in which this great 
 poet conceives of English History may here be given. 
 
 In the course of the captivating allegory of Spenser, 
 he leads us to the house of the Soul, figured as the 
 lady Alma. In the turret which represents the Intel- 
 ligence are three Rooms, occupied by three diflPerent 
 Sages. The first is Phantastes, who is still young in 
 years, but dark and melancholic of aspect, born under 
 Saturnine skies. His chamber is depicted with im- 
 possible and possible shapes, with monsters, 
 animals, and human beings ; while the buzz- 
 ing of a multitude of bewildering flies represents the 
 confusion of — 
 
 " idle thoughts and fantasies, 
 Devices, dreams, opinions unsound, 
 Shows, visions, soothsays, and prophecies ; 
 And all that feigned is, as leasings, tales, and lies." 
 
5IO THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 In such a chamber English intelligence had been 
 dwelling since the revival of learning. 
 
 In the second room sits Judgment, a man of mature 
 ^ , a^e, who by meditation on philosophy and by 
 
 Judgment. \.ii t - ci • 
 
 practice has become wondrous wise, bcenes m 
 the courts of justice, representations of all the achieve- 
 ments of art and science adorn this room ; and the 
 visitors, Prince Arthur and Sir Guyon, are attracted to 
 the goodly reason of the grave occupant, and desire to 
 be his disciples. But the chamber of the Critic was 
 as yet frequented by few of the choicest spirits in 
 England. 
 
 In the third chamber, old and ruinous, yet strongly 
 
 walled, sits a man aged and decrepit, but 
 
 vigorous of mind. His years exceeded those 
 
 of Nestor or of Methusalem, whose infancies he could 
 
 call to mind — 
 
 " His chamber all was hang'd about with rolls 
 And old records from ancient times derived, 
 Some made in books, some in long parchment scrolls, 
 That were all worm-eaten and full of canker-holes." 
 
 He sits in his chair, endlessly turning over these, 
 and waited on by a little boy who reaches them down 
 from the walls. It is an allegory of Memory and 
 Recollection. Nor is it to be doubted that Spenser 
 believed literary monuments to have been handed down 
 from the times — 
 
 " of King Nine, 
 Of old Assaracus and Inachus divine." 
 
 He is a witness to that confusion between classical 
 and Biblical lore which prevailed. And although he 
 distinguishes in the allegory between the products of 
 phantasy and historic records, in practice he was unable 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 511 
 
 to separate the one from the other. For Prince Arthur, 
 in examining the library of Memory, comes upon 
 " Briton Moniments," which contain the inventions of 
 Geofifrey of Monmouth ; Sir Guy on selects a treatise 
 on the " Antiquity of Faery Land." The passion which 
 stimulates their curiosity is still Amor Patrice, of which 
 Polydore had spoken as tending to blind the judgment. 
 Both— 
 
 " burn with fervent fire, 
 Their country's ancestry to understand." 
 
 It is here that our great poet feels the need of 
 resources for the haughty enterprise of relating 
 the famous ancestries of Queen Elizabeth. Ancestry of 
 In this respect she surpasses all earthly 
 princes. There is no lineage like hers under the sun. 
 It stretches to heaven, it is the wonder of the world, 
 an argument worthy of the pen of Homer or even 
 of the rote of Apollo. Elizabeth derives from Arthur. 
 The noble deeds of her sires were told in the Old 
 man's book in the ruined chamber. We are wafted 
 back to the time when Britain was a savage desert, 
 " unpeopled, unmanur'd, unprov'd, unprais'd." Then 
 the adventurous seafarer, steering free of the white 
 rocks, named the isle Albion. In the interior were 
 hideous giants and half-beastly men, lurking in their 
 lairs, or flying like the roebuck through the fen. At 
 last Brutus of old Assarac's line conquered Brutus 
 the isle, aided by the eponymous heroes of ^^^'°* 
 Cornwall and Devonshire, viz. Comiens and Devon, 
 and Canute, the hero of Canutium or Kent. The series 
 of tales concerning the nymphs of rivers, or the 
 founders of cities, follows. The boiling waters of Bath 
 are traced to the art of King Bladud, whose soaring- 
 ambition led to his destruction. 
 
512 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 The story of King Lear and his three daughters is 
 told. Lear dies in ripe age ; Cordelia, oppressed 
 by her nephews, hangs herself in prison. So 
 we pass on to the brothers Ferrex and Porrex, and the 
 end of Brutus' sacred progeny, which had held the 
 sceptre for 700 years. Discord and faction followed, 
 Moimutius until thcrc uprose the matchless Molmutius, 
 again. ^j^^ Sacrcd Legislator, the recipient of visions 
 
 and revelations, as some men say. He freed the High- 
 way, protected the Church and the Ploughman. He 
 was the Numa Pompilius of Britain. And the tale 
 flows on, through the exploits of Brennus and Belin 
 and others, till we arrive at King Lud, founder of 
 London out of the ruins of Troynovant, who lies in his 
 solemn tomb at Ludgate. We come to the times of 
 Cassibelaun and Csesar, of Cymbeline and the Incarna- 
 tion of the Eternal Lord — 
 
 " from wretched Adam's line 
 To purge away the guilt of sinful crime." 
 
 Good King Lucius is named as the first recipient of 
 King Lucius Christianity, though long before Joseph of 
 again. Arimathssa had come hither, bringing the Holy 
 
 Grail. Then there pass in review the splendid figures 
 of Boadicea, our British Semiramis, and her successors, 
 to King Cole of Colchester, the renewer of the decayed 
 monarchy, the father-in-law of the emperor Constantine. 
 The tales of the Picts and Scots, and of the Saxons 
 with their eponymous heroes, Hengst and 
 Horsa, follow, till we repose at Stonehenge 
 by the tomb of the peaceful Aurelius. Prince Arthur 
 reads on till he comes to the name of Uther Pendragon, 
 with which the Chronicle abruptly ends. Meantime 
 Sir Guyon is tracing the genealogy of the race of elves 
 from Prometheus down to Gloriana. 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 513 
 
 But Spenser takes occasion to indulge in a fine 
 patriotic outburst, wliich is placed in the mouth of 
 Arthur : — 
 
 " Dear country ! how dearly dear 
 Ought thy remembrance and perpetual band 
 Be to thy foster-child, that from thy hand 
 Did common breath and nouriture receive ! 
 How brutish it is not to understand 
 How much to her we owe, that all us gave ; 
 That gave unto us all whatever good we have ! " * 
 
 Spenser's Muse is splendidly subservient to the 
 courtly theory of English history. Later in Meriinpre- 
 the poem, the prophet Merlin, on the fall of R\se%?^ 
 Cadwallader and the failure of the antique ^"*^°''* 
 Trojan blood, foretells how after twice four hundred 
 years the Britons shall be restored to rule. But first 
 the Danish raven shall send his faithless chickens 
 over the fruitful plains of England, and the roaring 
 Lion of Neustria shall tear the crown from the head 
 of Harold. On the accomplishment of the time, a 
 long-hidden spark of fire shall be kindled anew in 
 Mona, and burst into flame that shall reach to the 
 house of royal majesty. There shall be eternal union 
 and sacred peace between the factions. And at last 
 the Eoyal Virgin shall reign, shall stretch her white 
 rod in protection over the Belgic shore, and smite the 
 great Castile a deadly blow. 
 
 Then again we have references to the design of 
 Brute's huge mind to make Highgate the bound of this 
 great city of New Troy or London ; and other swelling 
 vanities of English ambition. The poet nowhere pre- 
 tends to be a critic, he leaves such matters to more 
 learned men. His inspiration teaches him only to 
 exalt the island and the Virgin Queen. Dimly we see 
 
 ♦ " The Faery Queen," Bk. II. Cantos ix. and x. 
 
 2 L 
 
514 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 moving through, the mist of ideal and allegorical 
 intuition the Earl of Leicester and other great men of 
 the time, whose persons and whose deeds are magnified 
 to correspond to some poetic prototype. We under- 
 stand how the stimulation of the poetic faculty in that 
 age, how the large and exundant flow of song has 
 caused a great illusion in our own minds. We behold 
 types of mere human grandeur on the scene ; the 
 dwarfed and the mean are hidden from us. 
 
 And yet there are occasional glimpses in Spenser of 
 a repulsive state of society. Who can forget the 
 picture at the end of his great work, of the Blatant 
 Beast, by which he seems to signify the spirit of envy, 
 of faction, of hate and slander which was everywhere 
 fiercely active, attacking all classes and all ranks in 
 society. Some might call it the spirit of Criticism in 
 awakening England. The Beast had left traces of 
 havoc everywhere. The sacred class, the professional 
 upholders of purity, had not been spared. The cloisters 
 had been invaded, the monks had been hunted into 
 their dormitories ; their cells had been overhauled. 
 The discovery of filth and ordure were irksome to 
 report ; but the foul Beast was reckless of religion and 
 of the holy calling of these men. He broke into the 
 church, robbed the chancel and defiled the altar, cast 
 the images to the ground. 
 
 The gentle spirit of the poet is appalled at the 
 The violence of the language he hears, directed 
 
 Puritans. agaiust thc old institutions. It is like a 
 thousand tongues, of barking dogs, of wrawling cats, 
 of growling bears, or grinning and snarling tigers. 
 Worst of all were the reckless tono^ues of mortal 
 men, with which were mingled the three-forked tongues 
 of poisonous serpents. After he has been more than 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 
 
 515 
 
 once subdued, the Beast is still raging again beyond 
 restraint, assailing alike the innocent and the guilty. 
 He spares neither the learned men nor the poets, he 
 rends without regard of person or of time. The homely 
 verse of the '* Faery Queen " may not hope to escape 
 his venomous spite, any more than the poet's former 
 writings ; though they were cleanest from blameful 
 blot. The Poet concludes by exhorting himself to 
 please the public for which he writes ; for that is now 
 accounted the chief part of wisdom. 
 
 The poet of the " Faery Queen " is one more witness 
 to the fact, that the man of letters in the Elizabethan 
 time must please by supporting and glorifying the 
 national fables, which once received, had become equally 
 sacred with the Bible, not to say more sacred. And he 
 is in general a witness to the fact, that no man of 
 letters in that time dared to tell what he might think 
 to be the truth about his contemporaries and the passing 
 events of his time. 
 
 Spenser believed, in common with his contem- 
 poraries, that his Cambridge was of much Cambridge 
 higher antiquity than Oxford. ^^^ ^-^*^'^- 
 
 The Sidney family is another of those houses who 
 have been honoured by splendid flatteries in . 
 the person of the Philip of the Elizabethan Sidney, c 
 time, the darling of his age. The antiquaries 
 have pretended that the family came from Anjou in the 
 time of Henry II. ; yet nothing but the usual vague 
 stories have come down to us concerning Philip himself. 
 The " Arcadia " was put down to him for authors' and 
 booksellers' reasons ; though there is no more ground for 
 this than for similar ascriptions. The second and last 
 part have been ascribed to an anonymous, as also a 
 sixth book to an obscure name. The Sidney literature 
 
5i6 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 may be regarded as the production of scholars in the 
 Inns. The active life of Sidney himself is something- 
 altogether different from the life of the man of letters. 
 He perished in war, was greatly lamented ; and the 
 publication of poetry under his name was one of the 
 ways in which his memory was honoured. 
 
 After reading the tiresome adulations of Sidney, it 
 is refreshing to come upon the shrewd common sense of 
 Horace Walpole, who is astounded at so much noise 
 about Sidney. He points to the contrast between the 
 character of a hot-blooded young man, who after having 
 lived to write with the sang froid of Mdlle. Scuderi, 
 died with the rashness of a volunteer. But Walpole 
 did not notice that the interest of authors and book- 
 sellers was to pass off their wares under the sanction 
 of names that had been made objects of idolatry by 
 subservient scribes. How amusing is the remark of 
 another writer, in the light of such facts, that Sidney 
 should have looked into his '' noble heart " rather than 
 his " metaphysical head " before he wrote. 
 
 Taking the name, however, of Sidney merely as one 
 of the masks of the litterateurs of the Inns of Court, 
 there is incidental evidence of value in this literature 
 with reference to the conditions of intellectual activity 
 Defence of duHug the pcriod. Thus in the ''Defence 
 Poesy. q£ Poesy," one of our bright countrymen 
 
 defends art against the sour Puritans, who look upon 
 artists as " caterpillars of the Commonwealth." They 
 had need to resort to disguises to hide themselves 
 from the envy of that powerful party. Another point 
 of interest is that in defending the moral use of poetry, 
 the writer in effect defends the allegorical use of 
 English Story. You may tell any tale that pleases 
 and at the same time tends to win the mind of the 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 517 
 
 listener from wickedness to virtue. Most men, he 
 argues, are childish in the least things, till they are 
 cradled in their graves. AVhen they listen to tales of 
 heroes, they will bear the right description of wisdom, 
 valour and justice. If these had been set out in a bald 
 and philosophical manner, they would swear they had 
 been brought to school again. 
 
 In a Sonnet ascribed to Sidney, the writer praises 
 Edward IV. above all our kings ; and this not because 
 of his traditional beauty, wit or valour, not because he 
 overcame the Flower de Luce and the paws of the Ked 
 Lion. Small matter of praise in all this ! Edward is 
 to be loved, because he w^ould risk his Crown rather 
 than fail his love. This is quite true to the sentiment 
 with which that king was regarded from the first rise of 
 our national poesy of Kings. 
 
5r8 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 POETS AND CRITICS. 
 
 In his Illustrations to Drayton's Polyolhion, 1612, 
 Selden showed some sense as a Critic. He 
 would " separate the cockles from the Corn." 
 Drayton in his story of early Britain followed Geoffrey 
 of Monmouth, the " Polychronicon," Matthew of West- 
 minster, and " such more," to borrow the phrase of 
 Selden. For his own part Selden rejects the tradition of 
 the Trojan Brute. Further, he has strong suspicions 
 in regard to other parts of these traditions. He has 
 subjected the writers to tests unusual before his time. 
 He has " weighed the reporter's credit," he has " com- 
 pared with more persuading authority." Selden was 
 aware, like Bentley in a later time, that chronological 
 errors were the surest means of detecting imposture. 
 " Synchronism," he says, " is the best touchstone in 
 this kind of trial." With watchful jealousy he had 
 refused to pass any narrative which did not " bear a 
 mark of most apparent truth." For he had found 
 *' intolerable antichronisms, incredible reports and brutish 
 impostures " in these reported ancient writers. These 
 faults proceeded, Selden was aware, not merely from 
 ignorance, but from license of invention assumed by the 
 writers. 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 519 
 
 Selden draws a distinction between the elder and the 
 later monkish writers. He is not aware that critique of 
 the writers used by Polydore Yergil near a ^^^^^°* 
 century before him were of recent origin in that writer's 
 time. But Polydore himself, who, it will be remembered, 
 is said to have written at the request of Henry VHI., is 
 accused of error in reference to the statute of the ist 
 Henry VH. when he asserts that it was death by the 
 English laws for any man to wear a vizard. Other 
 errors in Polydore were in reference to the institution of 
 Trial by Twelve jurors, the Sheriffs, the Court of the 
 kingdom. Parliaments and other matters. Selden also 
 alludes to the notorious story in the Athenian Chal- 
 condylas concerning British customs of salutation — or 
 slander derived from misunderstanding ; and to other 
 palpable falsities and untruths in his predecessors. 
 
 Selden proceeds to criticise what he calls " the 
 Arcadian dedicction of our British monarch^/,'' He is 
 well aware that from Brute, the contemporary of. 
 Samuel, judge of Israel in the year about 2850 of the 
 world, to the time of Julius Caesar, there are no sources 
 of British history extant. There is not an author after 
 Caesar and Tacitus before Gildas, who is said to have 
 been later than 500 a.d. What, then, is the worth of 
 the pretended Chronologies before his time ? chronologies 
 '' For my part," says Selden, '' I believe as exploded. 
 much in them as I do the finding of Hiero's shipmast in 
 our mountains," a notion derived from a corrupted place 
 in Athenseus. Nor does Selden believe that Ptolemy 
 Philadelphus sent to Eentha king of Scots about 300 
 B.C. for the discovery of this country, which was later 
 inserted in the geography of Claude Ptolemy. He does 
 not believe that Julius Csesar built Arthurshoffen in the 
 sheriffdom of Stirling. He does not believe " Joseph of 
 
520 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Exeter," wlio writes under the mask of Cornelius Nepos, 
 when he describes Britons as present with Hercules at the 
 rape of Hesione. Such notions may be placed in the 
 same category with the fairy tales of Ariosto, or the 
 droll discoveries of Eabelais. Before the time of Csesar, 
 Selden will trust nobody. 
 
 His sources after Caesar are Tacitus, Dion, the 
 Augustan History, Gildas, Nennius, Bede, Asser, Ethel- 
 word (the supposed kinsman of king Alfred), William of 
 Malmesbury, Marianus, Florence of Worcester, and the 
 rest of the Monkish and other Chronographers. Selden 
 observes that " Florence of Worcester " is a copyist 
 of '^ Marianus," and that the common printed chronicle 
 under the name of the latter is an epitome made by 
 " Eobert of Lorraine," bishop of Hereford, as he supposes, 
 under Henry I. Our critic was too early in the field to 
 be able to detect the proleptic nature of this pretended 
 authorship. He believes in the dates assigned to 
 Gildas and the rest ; and as for the contents of their 
 books, he will give most credit to the least passionate 
 writer. He begs us not to credit the prophecies of 
 Merlin Mcrliu and other matters in illustration of 
 
 denied. British fable which he has introduced in his 
 notes. 
 
 It is worth while to cite what Selden has to say 
 about Marianus and the chronological question. 
 ' None before Selden had called attention to the 
 system of the Dionysian cycles. And in discussing the 
 story that the Saxons came hither at the invitation of 
 the Britons, harassed by Picts and Scots, which Selden 
 denies on several grounds, he aims to ascertain in what 
 year this change occurred in the state of Britain. The 
 general opinion following Bede, fixed the arrival of the 
 Saxons in 449 or 450. Selden, on the other hand. 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 521 
 
 tiiinks the date must be fixed as 428, the fourth 
 of the emperor Yalentinian. The proof is in an 
 old fragment annexed to Nennius, and followed by 
 Camden and others. But how did this discrepancy 
 originate ? 
 
 Selden, in explaining it, is led to criticise the Diony- 
 sian system of Chronology. The abbot 
 Dionysius in the sixth century made his nionysian 
 
 1 „ ,^ T 1 . System. 
 
 cycle of 532 years. But accordmg to his 
 compute, the fifteenth moon following the Jews' Pass- 
 over, the Dominical Letter, the Friday and other 
 " coincidents of the Passion " must fall in the twelfth 
 year after the Nativity. Consequently, if Christ died 
 at the age of thirty-four, twenty-two years must be 
 omitted from the older reckoning. After the abbot, 
 later chronologers added these twenty-two evangelical 
 years to the previously accepted dates. Thus the date 
 of the Saxon landing in 42S plus 22 gives 449 or 450, the 
 conventional date of that event in Bede's copies, and in 
 the chronicles ascribed to Marian, Florence, Robert of 
 Lorraine, White of Basingstoke, and others. Selden 
 thought that if the number 22 were subtracted from 
 or added to the conventional dates, gross blunders 
 in our chronologies would be rectified. By transcription, 
 interpolation, misprint, and anachronisms (he adds), the 
 Chronicles had become strangely disordered. Selden 
 thought that abbot Dionysius made a mistake in his 
 calculations, and that he regretted it. He was not 
 aware that Dionysius was an imaginary person, and that 
 the whole Benedictine system was artificial. 
 
 Great as were the critical powers of Selden, he 
 was not able to efiace from his imagination that 
 ideal retrospect which he had learned at school, and 
 which his friend Camden was teaching the children at 
 
522 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Westminster. He couples with Camden's name that of 
 Girald of Cambria as his British teachers ; but it never 
 occurred to him that Girald's work had been written 
 not long before Camden's time. He confesses to an in- 
 tellectual thirst which compelled him ever " to the 
 fountain-head that he might thereby judge the nature 
 of the river." He denounces the habit of trusting 
 authorities at second hand, and of rashly collecting, as 
 it were, from visual beams reported through another's 
 eye. He has great contempt for the purblind ignorant ; 
 and them whose learning has been borrowed from such 
 books as Eabelais characterizes in his description of 
 the library of St. Victor. With these he connects the 
 '* Polychronicon," and the chronicles of Caxton, Fabian, 
 Stow, Grafton, Lanquet, Cooper, Holinshed, Polydore, 
 and the rest of the compilers. 
 
 The great learning embodied in these " Illustrations 
 of Drayton," together with the constant effort after the 
 truth, reflect the greatest credit upon the early student 
 life of Selden. Nor can it be the slightest disparagement 
 to so great a man, when we recognize that he was unable 
 wholly to disembarrass his mind from a massive load of 
 fable. He thought there must be some basis of historic 
 truth at the bottom of all the hyperboles and exaggera- 
 tions. He did not arrive at the conclusion that the 
 whole system of fable sprung from the ideal faculty, 
 acting in part under the influence of old classical 
 mythology. He wishes that the " poetical Monks," in 
 celebration of Bevis of Hampton, of Arthur, and other 
 such worthies had contained themselves within bounds 
 of likelihood. He wishes that judges like the old 
 Hellanodikai of the Games had given such exorbitant 
 fictions their desert. Statues ought to come down if 
 they exceed the symmetry of the victors. Belief is 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 523 
 
 yielded, as Pindar sings, to the sweet giver of an 
 enchanting poem. But the undigested reports of barren 
 and monkish invention have given rise to doubt, and 
 even to denial of the truth. 
 
 Selden mentions that the sword of Bevis is kept as 
 a relic at Arundel Castle ; but he adds that it does not 
 equal in length the sword of Edward III. at West- 
 minster. The sword of Edward, it may be remarked, 
 was no more and no less authentic than that of Bevis. 
 With regard to Arthur, Selden appears to think that a 
 historic personality was concealed in the cloud of 
 legend, " a man right worthy to have been celebrated 
 in true story, not false tales." To have carried scepticism 
 any further, if it existed in his mind, would have given 
 dire offence to all English readers. 
 
 Selden was also to some extent under the influence 
 of the courtly theory of English history. At least, in 
 these illustrations he did not venture to impugn it. 
 He refers to the current story of Henry Tudor, earl of 
 Eichmond, and his defeat, with French aid, of the tyrant 
 Eichard III. He relates the legend of Macbeth, and 
 how Fleance, son of murdered Banquo, fled for refuge 
 to the Prince of Wales, and wedded his daughter. 
 Fleance later became lord high steward of Scotland. 
 Eobert II. descended from him ; and the royal name 
 came down to the mighty sovereign James L, in whom 
 also the blood of Tudor the Plantagenet mixed. The 
 wedding of Henry YII. united those bloods, and the 
 Two Eoses. The Muse of Drayton is subservient to 
 the theme of his Majesty's descent and spacious empire. 
 So were the prophecies of Merlin concerning the line 
 of Llewelyn fulfilled. Cambria was glad, Cornwall 
 flourished, the isle was filled with the name of Brute, 
 and the name of strangers had perished. 
 
524 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Some further illustrations of Selden's acumen may 
 be given. , We have seen that he draws a line at 
 Julius Caesar, and refused to admit any anterior sources 
 of knowledge for Britain ; and that he denounced a 
 poem falsely ascribed to Cornelius Nepos. The glory 
 of it belongs to an English writer, dated, and we may 
 add falsely, in the time of Henry II. and Bichard I. 
 The holy father Thomas Becket is here said to have 
 bought peace at the price of his life. He was murdered 
 in his house at Canterbury, because he urged grievances 
 intolerable to the king and laity, because he diminished 
 the liberties of the Common Law, and maintained the 
 supremacy of Rome. Now, on the question of liberties, 
 Selden refers us above all to Matthew^ Paris, whose 
 Chronicle (" Hist. Maj.") had been published by Arch- 
 bishop Parker about half a century before ; also to the 
 epistles of John of Salisbury, which have been but lately 
 published ; and finally to his own " Janus Anglorum." 
 In this last work the liberties have been " restored from 
 senseless corruption " and are " more themselves than 
 in any other whatsoever in print." 
 
 But Selden had no sources for his ideas of Common 
 Law and Liberties but the tales in the monks who 
 write under the names of Hoveden, Gervase of Tilbury, 
 William of Malmesbury, or the Book of the Exchequer, 
 or Lambarde's " Archeion." The theory which Selden 
 and his younger contemporary Coke lived under was 
 that the Common Law was immemorial, that it had 
 been specially honoured by Edward the Confessor ; and 
 that " under his name the laws had been humbly desired 
 by the subject, granted with qualification, and contro- 
 verted, as a main and first part of liberty in the next 
 age following the Norman conquest." 
 
 It is evident, from other passages, that Selden could 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 525 
 
 produce no certain history of English legislation. More 
 than once he refers to the fabled king, Molmutius, who 
 had been planted at an epoch 500 years before Christ, yet 
 who legislated in favour of Churches or Temples. They 
 were to have liberty of refuge and sanctuary. Right of 
 Then King Lucius, of more than six centuries s^^^^"^^-"'- 
 later, who according to the fable was a Christian and 
 a great patron of the Church, laid down that every 
 Churchyard was a Sanctuary. After his time, an im- 
 mense chasm of about fourteen centuries occurred, until 
 we come to the twenty-second year of King Henry VIII. 
 According to the Kecords, the licence of Sanctuary 
 was then taken away by Act of Parliament because of 
 its abuses. In a Parliament of James (says Selden), 
 all statutes concerning abjuration or sanctuary made 
 before the 35th Elizabeth were repealed. But Selden 
 will not pronounce an opinion on the question whether 
 the right of sanctuary has or has not been thus 
 restored. 
 
 This uncertainty in regard to the Plea of Sanctuary 
 is remarkable in so great an antiquary and lawyer. The 
 privilege was, of course, of Ecclesiastical origin ; and the 
 witness to very incivil times, when it was a greater 
 offence to violate the peace of a Churchyard than to 
 suffer the criminal who had gained its precincts to go 
 free. Except in case of treason or sacrilege, the accused 
 person might flee to the Churchyard, and if within forty 
 days he went in sackcloth before the Coroner and con- 
 fessed his guilt, abjuring the realm, that is, swearing to 
 quit the kingdom, he might save his life. He repaired 
 with a Cross in his hand to the port assigned him, and 
 embarked, never to return without leave from the king. 
 His blood was attainted, and he forfeited his goods and 
 chattels. Now, though Selden has said that the privilege 
 
526 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 of Sanctuary in Cliurchyards was taken away in the 
 22nd Henry VIIL, it is the statutes of the 27th and 
 the 32nd of that reign which only (according to Black- 
 stone) " abridge the immunity " of these places. The 
 latter adds that it was the statute of 2 1 James which 
 abolished the privilege of sanctuary and abjuration 
 entirely : one of the few acts of that reign which con- 
 tributed to the cause of justice. It seems that Selden, 
 writing in the midst of the struggle that was going on 
 between King James and the popular party represented 
 by Coke, is unable to state whether the privilege of 
 Sanctuary is in force or not. 
 
 In discussing the privilege of the Highway, Selden 
 Privilege of g^^^ back to Molmutius in the statute of 
 Highway. Marlbridge, dated in the time of Henry III. 
 He cites a phrase to show that none could distrain in the 
 King's highway or the common street, but the king and 
 his ministers, " having a special authority for that 
 purpose." The omission of the last words greatly alters 
 the law, he says, and judgments are given on behalf of 
 the king where common bailiflfs have acted, without 
 special authority. Again, Selden states that distress 
 may be taken in certain cases on the highway, and he 
 is at the pains to cite several statutes from the time 
 of Edward I. Yet he adds that the original Rolls, 
 with many others, have been lost; he has seen only 
 a fair MS. copy which omits the words in question. 
 So does the Kegister. Other MSS. have not any 
 part of the chapter of the statute to which he refers ; 
 and the great lawyer wonders at this, seeing that a 
 formal Writ is grounded upon it. Yet he does not 
 entertain the suspicion of forgery, or does not ex- 
 press it. 
 
 Selden proceeds to call attention to a discrepancy in 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 527 
 
 the language of different copies of the Forest Charter. 
 The charter printed in Matthew Paris as Discrepan- 
 given by King John and the best MSS., yield Ji? Forest 
 a sense inconsistent in art. VIII. with that ^^^'^*^''- 
 in the copies commonly read. But apparently it did 
 not occur to Selden to inquire into the history of the 
 Charter before it was printed under the eye of arch- 
 bishop Parker. Conscientious as he was, and impatient 
 of inaccuracies and discrepancies, nature and habit un- 
 fitted him to cope with systematic fabrications, who 
 never knew what a literary conscience meant. He was 
 one of those men who, striving with all their might to 
 tell the truth themselves, as nearly as possible, are not 
 well capable of conceiving that others may conspire 
 together for the opposite end. 
 
 In the same place, Selden digresses for a moment 
 to point out an error in the Great Charter 
 of 9 Henry III. Boniface, archbishop of Great 
 Canterbury, is made a witness to that Charter. 
 It is a senseless blunder, he says, because " Boniface 
 was not archbishop until some sixteen years later." 
 The best copy of the Great Charter that Selden ever 
 saw had the name of " Simon, archbishop of Canter- 
 bury." This was a still worse blunder, because there was 
 no such prelate of that see in those times. The tran- 
 scriber had mistaken the letter S, as if it signified 
 Simon instead of Stephen. For Stephen of Langton 
 was archbishop at the time. But the fact is, that there 
 has never been extant an authentic list of the archbishops 
 of Canterbury for the thirteenth century, any more 
 than there has been a corresponding list of the Popes 
 from that age. Selden concludes his note on Molmutius' 
 highways by pointing out discrepancies in the accounts 
 of these roads in the Benedictines who write under the 
 
528 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 names Ranulph of Chester, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger 
 Hoveden, and Adam of Bremen. 
 
 In the seventeenth Song of the *' Polyolbion," the 
 poet resumes his personifications, and — 
 
 " Great Thames as king of rivers, sings 
 The catalogue of the English kings." 
 
 It begins with William the Bastard, as the Conqueror 
 was commonly called. Selden shows that the title was 
 once a proud one, inserted in the style of great princes. 
 His chief authority for the ideas about William is that 
 master in Benedictine fiction, William of Poitiers, who 
 pretends that the Conqueror on his death-bed claimed 
 to have won the Crown from Harold by the sword, and 
 that he restored it to the Creator. At the same time an 
 anxiety is shown to make out a Title for William, 
 founded on the adoption of St. Edward the Confessor, 
 the oath of Harold, the consanguinity of the conqueror 
 with the conquered. 
 
 Selden discloses the idea which generated the myth 
 of William Rufus' death in the New Forest. It was 
 believed in the sixteenth century that William I. had 
 destroyed thirty-six parish churches to make dens for 
 wild beasts. In divine revenge upon him his son 
 Richard is then blasted with infection, Richard his 
 nephew has his neck caught by a bough and broken, 
 and Rufus falls by the unfortunate hand of Tyrrell. 
 With regard to the story of the pulling out the eyes 
 of Duke Robert in Cardiff Castle, Selden compares it 
 with the tales so often to be met with in the so-called 
 " Byzantine historians," like Cantacuzene, who may be 
 said to have belonged to that " mob of monks '' whom 
 Selden is constantly citing. 
 
 In discussing a tale about Robert, where Polydore 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 529 
 
 Vergil differs somewhat from " the common monks," 
 Selden again takes up the subject of abiura- 
 
 (^ 1 TT 1 1 • 1 Abjuration 
 
 tion of the realm. He declares it to be an of the 
 obsolete law, which seems to have had its 
 beginning from the time of the Confessor. " Bracton " 
 is here cited as an authority ; who in turn follows 
 Eoger Hoveden, and also Glanville, and John le Breton. 
 There are discrepancies between them on this subject ; 
 and when Matthew Paris and others are added, resolu- 
 tion of the question is difficult, reconciliation of state- 
 ments impossible. It cannot be made out from the 
 tales in the monks whether the Forty Days were to 
 be spent in sanctuary or were allowed as the period of 
 the journey to the port and embarkation. Selden's 
 precision is foiled by their vague talk. 
 
 The Story of the Interdict laid upon the kingdom in 
 the time of King John, and his submission to 
 
 Apolo"'v 
 
 the Pope, leads Selden to offer some apology forKmg 
 for that monkishly maligned king. John was 
 the victim, he thinks, of papal usurpation, the active 
 agent in which was Stephen Langton. The clergy 
 treacherously conspired against his crown ; and Selden 
 appears to credit the tale that John sent ambassadors 
 to *' Amiramully king of Morocco " for the Moham- 
 medan religion. It was a wicked action ; but poor 
 John Lackland was maddened by the persecution he 
 endured from the Christian hierarchy. Langton is no 
 sooner installed than in a Council he stirs up the Barons 
 against John, produces the old Charter of Liberties 
 granted by Henry I. and containing St. Edward's Laws, 
 amended by the Conqueror, and provokes the Barons 
 to demand observance of the same from the king as an 
 absolute duty to subjects of a free state. Armies were 
 mustered to extort these liberties, and at length, by 
 
 2 M 
 
530 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 treaty in Eunningmede near Staines, John gave Two 
 Charters, the one of liberties general, the other of the 
 Forest. These Charters were nearly the same as what 
 were called in the time of King James " the Grand 
 Charter " and " the Charter of the Forest." The Pope 
 confirmed the Charters ; but the same year, on learning 
 what injuries the see of Rome had suffered from these 
 liberties, sent a Bull cursing in thunder all who 
 maintained those Charters. Incurable broils were thus 
 bred between king and subject, the guilt of which 
 Selden, using a strong phrase of reproach, lays at the 
 door of the Pope and his archbishop. Now they 
 excited the subjects by censures of the prince, now they 
 abetted the king in his betrayal of the popular liberties, 
 on pretence of " an universal interceding authority." 
 
 Selden is here, it may be observed in reality making 
 a strong attack upon the policy of the Catholic priest- 
 hood of the age. It is not surprising that he, living 
 in the midst of the restless intrigues of Jesuits and 
 Seminarists, should have recognized a verisimilitude in 
 the tales about Innocent and King John. It would 
 perhaps have been surprising had he detected the fact 
 that the monkish annalists had been writing these 
 fables as allegories, partly conscious and partly uncon- 
 scious, of the mind and policy of the Church in their 
 own time. The monks were friends or enemies of the 
 popular or of the royal interest, as it suited the design 
 of the moment. They were, in their own reported 
 confessions, the turbulent faction in every land. 
 
 It may perhaps be thought that Selden was some- 
 what near-sighted ; so keen is he in the detection of 
 inconsistencies in the monkish tales, so dull to their 
 significance as representing the mind of a corporation or 
 of what he designates a Mob of Monks. But, as he 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 531 
 
 himself in effect observes in his " Table Talk," the 
 " Popish books " must be used, otherwise no English 
 history is attainable. And the contents of the " Popish 
 books " corresponded closely to the activity and am- 
 bition of the Papal faction in his contemporary world. 
 They were in one sense probable tales, however im- 
 probable in their details. Therefore Selden could 
 believe that liberties granted by King John were by 
 King John repealed, were confirmed in the infancy 
 of Henry III., who, when he arrived at maturity, cancels 
 all the Charters of the Forest, repeals the rest, and 
 makes his subjects buy at the price of great sums, rated 
 by the Chief Justice, Hugh de Bouch, the renewal of 
 their liberties. He could believe that the intestine 
 troubles of the kingdom began again ; the barons 
 demanding the restoration of the cancelled charters of 
 Oxford, until the king once more with full parliament 
 grants again their desired freedom. 
 
 Again Selden accuses not the King, but '' the ill 
 counsel of alien catei^pillars crawling about him, being 
 CIS scourges then sent over into this kingdom." And here 
 he cites the rhymed Chronicle of " Robert of Gloucester," 
 who depicts the misery of kindly Englishmen, and 
 how the barons gained the expulsion of the French, and 
 the grant of 
 
 " good laws and the Old Charter also 
 That so oft was igranted er, and so oft undo." 
 
 We are also referred to the Benedictines, Matthew 
 Paris, and William Rishanger, with the remark that 
 these so controverted Charters had no settled surety 
 until Edward I., since whose time they have been 
 " more than thirty times in Parliament confirmed." 
 But Edward Longshanks, the English Justinian, is 
 
532 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 himself a conversion of the mythologists of the Con- 
 stitution. In the same note we are informed, on the 
 authority of Hector Boece, that Edward brought the 
 Coronation Stone, a highly fantastic object in the Scot- 
 tish stories, to Westminster, after his Northern wars : 
 about which Dean Stanley's "Memorials" may be 
 consulted. 
 
 In discussing the wars of the York and Lancaster 
 ^ , faction, Selden contradicts as false and absurd 
 
 On the 
 
 legend of thc opiuiou of Polvdorc that the root of the 
 
 the Roses. 
 
 Lancastrian title was in Edmund, eldest son 
 of Henry III., who was deprived of the throne on the 
 ground of his deformity. Matthew Paris, he adds, who 
 is better authority than most of the monks, and who 
 was the king's chronologer of those times, expressly 
 gives the dates of their births, and says that " the 
 Crookback was four years younger than his brother 
 Edward." Had Selden considered that the work of 
 Matthew Paris was not yet known in Polydore's time, 
 he would not have censured the Italian scholar ; he 
 would rather have denounced the circumstantial in- 
 vention of the Benedictine monk. Yet a little further 
 on, Selden points out that in both the printed Chronicles 
 of Matthew Paris against the year 1086, Stephen earl 
 of Blois is described as earl of Bee, and that he is made 
 son of Tedbald earl of Blois, who was in fact his 
 brother. 
 
 Selden accepts the theory of the happy union of 
 the Two Eoses in the persons of Henry earl of Eich- 
 mond and Elizabeth of York. He accepts the con- 
 ventional characters of Edward TV. and Eichard III. 
 He discusses the question why George duke of 
 Clarence was put to death. One theory was that 
 a prophecy foretold Edward's successor's name should 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 
 
 53: 
 
 begin with G, and parallels to this are found in the 
 monk of St. Basil, " Nicetas Chomiates/' in his tales 
 of Alexis and Manuel. Selden alludes to the serious 
 but insufficient charges laid against George in the 
 Chronicles of Polydore, Hall, and the rest of that crew. 
 But he himself has a theory about the mode of his 
 death by drowning in a hogshead of malmsey. He 
 cites one F. Matenesius, professor of history and Greek 
 at Cologne, who in a work on drinking customs 
 describes a class of drunkards who would like to be 
 turned into whales provided the sea might be turned 
 into most o^enerous wine. Such a one was Georore 
 Earl of Clarence, who, on his own condemnation, chose 
 to be drowned in malmsey. 
 
 Selden's criticism on this story is, first that there 
 never was such a title as Earl of Clarence, TheEariof 
 though there had been Earls of Clare in Clarence. 
 Suffolk, according to Polydore and Camden. That 
 earldom was converted into a dukedom by the creation 
 of Lionel, second son of Edward III., duke of Clarence, 
 since whom there have been none but dukes of that 
 title. Secondly, Selden thinks it an inexcusable injury 
 to the dead prince to tell such a tale of him, because 
 our English stories make his death a tyrannous murder, 
 without any such election of the mode of death. Why 
 did not Matenesius give his authority in the margin ? 
 But it does not occur to Selden to ask for the authority 
 of an eye-witness for the tale of the death of the 
 duke in so singular a manner. It seems that Matenesius 
 endeavoured to give a touch of probability to an 
 otherwise absurd tale. 
 
 Selden notes that the name " Plantaorenet " came to 
 an end with Margaret, countess of Salisbury and 
 daughter of George of Clarence. The rise of the 
 
534 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 Tyddour (or Tudor) name is, as usual, traced to Owen, 
 TheTyddour descendant of the British Cadwallader, who 
 family. wcddcd quccu Catherine dowager of Henry V. 
 Their son was Edmund of Hallam, created earl of 
 Eichmond by Henry VL, who wedded Margaret 
 daughter of John first duke of Somerset, and son of 
 John of Gaunt by Catherine Swynford. Neither 
 Selden nor Bacon had any genuine materials out of 
 which to frame any exact representation of Henry YII. 
 or his times. Those times were to them ancient, more 
 ancient, it may be said, owing to the illusions of art, 
 than the times of the Normans. 
 
 One would have supposed that Selden as a school- 
 boy had learned by heart the dates of the accession 
 of the English kings from William the Conqueror. 
 But it was not so. Towards the end of this note he 
 is good enough, in order to " ease the reader's conceit 
 of the kings here sung " in Drayton to add a chronology 
 of them from William to Elizabeth. It is one of many 
 signs that the poetic imaginary retrospect of England's 
 kings from the Norman epoch, which has so long 
 passed for historic truth, was beginning to be fixed, 
 and the gradual subsidence of the turbid fables of 
 Brute the Trojan and the British kings. He gives 
 other Catalogues of Kings in his notes. 
 
 In the eighteenth Song of the '' Polyolbion " the 
 Muse inspires the poet with the praises of 
 Liberties the mcu of Kcut, the home of English free- 
 dom according to the legend. The land is 
 thus apostrophised — 
 
 " noble Kent, quoth he, this praise doth thee belong, 
 The hard'st to be controll'd, impatientest of wrong, 
 Who, when the Norman first with pride and honor sway'd, 
 Threw'st off the servile yoke upon the English laid ; 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 535 
 
 And with a high resolve, most bravely didst restore 
 That liberty so long enjoj'^'d by thee before. 
 Not sufiPring foreign laws should thy free customs bind, 
 Thou only shew'd thyself of the ancient Saxon kind. 
 Of all the English shires be thou surnamed the free 
 And foremost ever plac'd when they shall reckon'd be. 
 And let this town, which chief of thy rich county is, 
 Of all the British sees be still Metropolis." 
 
 Selden illustrates this passage by citing "an old 
 monk," an Augustinian of Canterbury, who writes 
 under the name of Thomas Spot, and who tells how 
 archbishop Stigand and abbot Egelsin as chiefs of 
 the Shire assembled all the country against Duke 
 William in defence of their liberties. For there had 
 been hitherto no villeins in England, and the Norman 
 threatened all with servitude. They met at Swanes- 
 court, took boughs in their hands and went forth to 
 meet duke William, oflferinoj him either submission on 
 condition of the enjoyment of their ancient liberties, 
 or instant war. William acceded to their demand, 
 and the Kentish men conducted him to Eochester and 
 delivered to him the county and the castle of Dover. 
 Selden has doubts of this fine story, and indeed it 
 was probably not written down so much as a century 
 before his time. It is one of the obvious attempts 
 made by churchmen in the Tudor time to represent 
 the Hierarchy as in sympathy with the popular cause. 
 Selden's criticism, however, is that Spot is assigned 
 to the time of Edward L, and had no authority for 
 his tale, and again that he was clearly guilty of 
 falsehood in pretending that there was no villeinage in 
 England before the Norman time. The Laws of Ina 
 and of the Confessor recognize it. Selden points out 
 further evidences in the monkish writings, of desire 
 to claim peculiar privileges for Kent. 
 
536 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 While still quite a young man, Selden published his 
 "Titles of "Titles of Honour," 1614, wherein he seeks 
 Honour." ^^ trace out the origin of Kingship and of 
 noble titles. He begins with Adam as the first king, 
 and amasses a quantity of material, necessarily derived 
 in the main from the Benedictine sources. The work 
 is of value because it reminds us that the upper classes 
 were still in the reign of James I. ignorant of their 
 origin, unable to trace their families with any certainty 
 beyond the now ancient time of Henry Tudor. In 1 6 1 6 
 
 he produced his notes on the legal tracts which 
 commen- bear the name of Fortescue and of Heng- 
 
 ham. This also was symptomatic of the time. 
 There was a powerful Fortescue family at that time ; 
 but as for any Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor in the 
 time of Henry YL, neither Selden nor any preceding 
 scholar had any authentic particulars concerning him. 
 Leland knew him not, it is the lax Bale and Pits who 
 first begin to spread abroad his fame. And the name 
 of Hengham, decorating the reign of the English 
 Justinian, belongs to the scheme of the Succession of 
 Chief Justices. Selden was a careful collector and 
 collator of MSS. ; but strong suspicion as to the date 
 and genuineness of MSS. does not appear to have 
 entered his mind. 
 
 Next year appeared his treatise on the Syrian Gods, 
 which was intended to illustrate the passages in the 
 Old Testament which allude to the idols of the Gentiles. 
 Selden takes a wide sweep in this still valuable survey 
 of religious ideas and rites ; and had it occurred to him 
 to investigate the origin of the Hebrew Scriptures and 
 their relation to the Koran, he might have produced an 
 intellectual revolution. In one respect indeed he struck 
 out a path which scholars might have followed up to 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 537 
 
 important issues. He cited the writings of the Kabl)ins, 
 who were the only proper commentators on the Old 
 Testament. True, they wrote romantic stories by way 
 of comments, but their stories were the clue to the 
 actual state of the Hebrew imagination at the time the 
 Law and the Prophets were written. Le Clerc com- 
 plained of Selden for using the mediaeval Kabbins ; but 
 had the passions and beliefs of our scholars allowed them 
 calmly to examine the question of the relation between 
 the Jewish clergy and their sacred books, we should 
 have been spared an enormous waste of labour. There 
 are many curious things in this work, read in the light 
 of the present day. But in a state of thought to which 
 Adam presented himself as the first king, and Seth as 
 the first mathematician, no scholar knew of a distinction 
 between ancient and mediaeval lore. 
 
 However, Selden was aware that the time when the 
 Jews first came into England was uncertain. He saw 
 by the reputed "Laws of Edward the Confessor" that 
 they had merely the rights of king's men. Perhaps he 
 did not doubt the horrible tales of their practice of 
 crucifying boys at Easter : an invention designed to 
 support the great Church theory of the relation of the 
 Jews to the Drama of the Passion. He repeats these 
 tales in his tract in Purchas' " Pilgrimage." Unless a 
 scholar lived among the Jews on terms of confidence and 
 friendship — and few were there of the persecuted race in 
 England at the time — he could not be aware how utterly 
 repugnant was the bare idea of such atrocities to their 
 religious sentiments. 
 
 In 161 8 Selden came forward as the critic of the 
 " divine right " of Tithes, and drew upon 
 himself a storm of reproach from ignorant and 
 interested men among the clergy. Neither the king 
 
538 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 nor the bishops could endure calm reasoning on such a 
 subject, if it gave any handle to Presbyterians or other 
 rivals of the Church. Selden also questioned the 
 traditional date of the Birthday of the Lord on 
 December 25th. For these offences he was summoned 
 before the High Commission Court ; and according to 
 an Act of that tribunal, dated 28th January, 16 18, he 
 appeared personally and made his submission in his own 
 handwriting. His fellow antiquary Lancelot Andrewes, 
 bishop of Win ton, who alone is said to have approved 
 the book among the bishops, was a member of that 
 Court. Such is the tale. 
 
 On the other hand, Selden is quoted as having 
 denied that he ever appeared before that Court, 
 although to certain Lords of the High Commission he 
 had expressed regret for having written the book. His 
 antagonist accused him of prevarication, and there was 
 the usual petty attempt to make Selden out a mere 
 rummager of Cotton's Library and copier of MSS. The 
 whole reminiscence shows with what difficulty an able 
 scholar laboured who desired to tell the truth upon any 
 subject connected with the interests of the oligarchy. 
 The reader will find an allusion to the subject in the 
 " Table Talk." 
 
 About three years later, Selden is sent to prison for 
 having dared to dispute the proposition of King James, 
 that the privileges of Parliament were originally grants 
 from the Crown, and for joining in the protest of the 
 House of Commons. What can be thought of the 
 *' Constitution " when it is reported that James in his 
 rage tore this document out of the journals with his 
 own hand ? After five weeks in prison, " poor Mr. 
 Selden " has to set in motion the machinery of Court 
 favouritism to obtain his release. Lancelot Andrewes 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 539 
 
 had, in all probability, something to do with it. Hence- 
 forth, it seems, Selden became a '' State Puritan," a very 
 different thing from a Church Puritan. For the 
 admirable sense of Selden revolted from the conceit 
 and folly of that party. 
 
 During his imprisonment, Selden was busy with his 
 edition of the monk Eadmer, published 1623 Edition of 
 with a dedication to Bishop Williams, the ^"^"'"'• 
 Lord Keeper, who had aided in his release. Here 
 again we have an illustration of the want of critical 
 spirit, or of the blind belief in the self- testimony of 
 parchments. The Benedictine, who secured a purchaser 
 for his trash in Selden, pretends that he was an eye- 
 witness of events from 1 066-1 1 22. A miserable readinsf 
 of the Laws of the Conqueror is produced, destined to 
 be improved upon by Spelman and later scholars, down 
 to Wilkins. So ineradicable had the Norman Dogma 
 become at this time. 
 
 Another remarkable evidence of the absence of all 
 settled principles of public right in England, is the 
 incident of the Sibthorp sermon. After the dissolution 
 of the Parliament of 1626, the Court meditates imposing 
 a Loan in virtue of the king's prerogative. Dr. Sibthorp 
 preaches a sermon in defence of it ; and the Bishop of 
 London's chaplain signs an imprimatur, not, as it 
 seems, without misgivings. He sends it to Selden ; and 
 Selden, not caring to give his opinion in writing, sends 
 for the chaplain and tells him that the book strikes at 
 the foundation of property, and that should a change of 
 times come, the chaplain will be hanged for his impri- 
 matur. The chaplain in a fright erased his name, and 
 the sermon was not published till some two years later. 
 The case of Hampden was to show clearly that the 
 menace against the rights of property on the part of 
 
540 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 the Court roused good Englishmen into a desperate 
 struo^gle to obtain a Constitution. 
 
 We see Selden in 1627 pleading in the King's 
 Bench as Counsel for Hampden : one of the earliest 
 occasions on which a lawyer was heard to refer to Magna 
 Carta. And how ? The document was but recently 
 known ; its provisions had never been observed. Were 
 Chapter XXIX. fully executed, as it ought to be (says 
 Selden), every man would enjoy his liberty better than 
 he does. What does the text say ? That no free man 
 shall be imprisoned without due process of law. What 
 does the phrase " according to the law of the land " 
 mean ? Either presentment or indictment, answers 
 Selden. Otherwise the freeman would have no privi- 
 lege above the villein ; who might be imprisoned by 
 his lord, but not by another than his lord, unless at 
 the risk of an action of false imprisonment. In truth, 
 the name of Selden links the Charter with the Petition 
 of Eight as productions of one period of our national 
 life. The dreams of the Charter perhaps aided Selden 
 to the realization of the Petition of Eight. 
 
 In the course of subsequent discussions, rays of light 
 often break upon that stealth in the midst of which 
 precedents for wrong-doing were invented and en- 
 rolled. On April 2, 1627, Selden is said to have 
 spoken in the House on the question of confinement of 
 men to their houses at Christmas by proclamation. He 
 declares it to be contrary to law. He cites " Bracton," 
 believing his treatise to be ancient. He makes the note- 
 worthy observation that to understand the question we 
 should " compare ourselves to villeins." He cites a 
 statute dated in the time of Henry VI. by which a 
 villain regardant must not be out of his lord's manor. 
 The Domesday Book, on the other hand, defines a free 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 541 
 
 man as one who can go where he pleases. The Jews 
 were confined to their Jewries. But '* English confine- 
 ment " followed upon judgments in court. The debate 
 ended with an order of the House that no person should 
 be confined in his house or elsewhere. How happy 
 must the ideal days of the Domesday Book and of King 
 John have appeared to our Members of Parliament in 
 the time of James and Charles ! 
 
 On the question of levying military force, Selden 
 goes back to William the Conqueror and the later kings 
 for support to his arguments against pressing and com- 
 pulsory service out of the kingdom ; and on April 7 he 
 made a long speech in favour of Liberty on the ground 
 of precedents and legal decisions. If these literary 
 precedents were questioned, what proofs of argument 
 could there be against the encroachments of the 
 oligarchy ? i\.t last both sides were wearied of the 
 talk of popular liberties, and sharpened the sword in 
 preparation for a trial of strength. Still, these argu- 
 ments, coming from one of the most book-learned men 
 in the kingdom, no doubt made a considerable im- 
 pression upon the minds of those who had been taught 
 to lean more on parchments than on their native sense 
 of right and wrong, or on unwritten Custom. 
 
 On this occasion some one reported that the Earl of 
 Suffolk had said Selden ought to be hanged for erasing 
 public documents and promoting sedition. It was 
 always easier to suspect and to prove the erasure than 
 the forgery of a text. And a charge of this kind is one 
 of many incidental proofs that there was an uncertain 
 feeling about the Kecords which men did not care to 
 probe to the bottom. But we can feel with Selden in 
 his indignant reply as given by Wilkins. He said, " I 
 hope no man believes I ever did it. I cannot guess 
 
542 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 what the lord means. I did deliver in whole copies of 
 divers records, examined by myself, and divers other 
 gentlemen of this house. These I delivered into the 
 Lord's House, and the Clerk of the Crown brought in 
 the records of the Office before the Lords. I desire 
 that it may be a message from this House to the Lords 
 at the Bar, to make out a charge against the lord that 
 spoke this, and I hope we shall have justice." But the 
 words were denied by the Earl. 
 
 In listening to the debates in the Parliament we 
 feel that we are acquiring much knowledge of the true 
 English history. For example, on May i6 a Bill was 
 brought forward for restraining tumultuous preaching. 
 Sir Henry Martyn, in defending the privileges of the 
 clergy, went back to Magna Carta for those privileges. 
 We do not read that any member rose and observed that 
 " it was a long time ago and a great many things had 
 happened since then." No ; to men taught as boys to 
 believe in Brute the Trojan, the thirteenth century 
 seemed perhaps quite a modern time. But Selden said 
 that the Church had many liberties, yet that they had 
 been lessened by many acts of parliament. Since the 2nd 
 Henry VHL, for example, the clergy had been wholly 
 subject to lay jurisdiction. 
 
 On May 21, the debate was on a clause added by 
 Bishop Williams to the Petition of Eight, " saving the 
 King's sovereignty." Selden argued that such a clause 
 was unprecedented. True, there was such a clause in 
 French in the Forest Charter and the Confirmation under 
 Edward I. of the Great Charter, savant le droit et 
 signory. But the original EoU was not extant. The 
 clause, he said, was a later insertion, and there was no 
 Parliament Poll of the year. He adduces a Benedictine 
 MS. which has the obnoxious words in Latin " saving 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 543 
 
 the Crown right of the King." And the Chronicle ran, 
 that the people, on hearing of the added clause, broke 
 into execrations, and that the king and nobles cleared it 
 at the next Parliament. But there was no confirmatory 
 Roll of that time, and so on. This is not the only case 
 where the Rolls accessible to politicians under the Stuarts 
 taught allegorical lessons in current politics. 
 
 During the debate on Tonnage and Poundage of the 
 same year, Selden replied to the argument of the King's 
 Counsel that it had been granted " time out of mind " 
 to the King. " I fear," said Selden, " his Majesty is 
 told so." But it was far from the truth. He refers 
 to the statutes i Elizabeth and 1 James, and shows 
 that "time out of mind" meant the time of Henry 
 Vn. and other progenitors of the Royal House : a 
 time which, in fact, Francis Bacon regarded as 
 " ancient." Subsidies, indeed, the King always had ; 
 and in that sense it was " time out of mind." The 
 incident shows what loose talk prevailed on these 
 subjects. 
 
 After the memorable scene in the House of Commons, 
 when the Speaker was held in his chair while seiden in 
 the protest of the Commons was being read, ^^^ ^'''^''''• 
 March, 1628, Selden was committed to the Tower and 
 his study was sealed up. His offence was said to be 
 contempt of the King and the Government, and sedi- 
 tious conduct. After eight months' confinement, he 
 and his companions were threatened with eight years 
 by the Chief Justice, if they did not submit. Selden 
 refused to give security for his good behaviour, as 
 illegal; and was in Hilary term 1629 removed to the 
 King's Bench prison in pursuance of his own suit. He 
 remained here a year, with the liberty of going abroad 
 in the daytime. During this period he wrote a work 
 
544 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 on Hebrew legislation, dedicated to Laud, whose library 
 had been of service to him. 
 
 Here Selden takes up the intermediate position 
 DeSuc- between those who blindly submit to the 
 ifBonl^De- Romau Church, and those who rashly think 
 functi, etc. ^Yiej can understand the Scriptures by the 
 light of nature, without regard to the Church histories, 
 the Fathers, and the Councils. He appeared plainly to 
 perceive that the references to Jewish high priests in 
 the New Testament in reality veiled the institutions 
 of the Synagogue. Had he pushed the point a little 
 further, he might have discovered that the Pontificate 
 of the Hebrews with its ideal Succession was the 
 mediseval dream of the Jewish Churchmen of the time 
 of Maimonides. It was then that the Rabbis began to 
 talk of Princes and Fathers of the Synagogue, and they 
 were followed by the Benedictines in the composition of 
 the Book of the Gospels, and of Josephus. 
 
 To return from the study to the political world. 
 This same year Selden was prosecuted in the Star 
 Chamber for having taken part in the dissemination 
 of a libel called a " Proposition for his Majesty's 
 Service, to bridle the impertinence of Parliaments." 
 There are variant accounts of this affair ; but this 
 much is clear, that the Court suspected several dis- 
 tinguished men, especially Sir Eobert Cotton, the Earls 
 of Bedford and Clare, Oliver St. John and Selden, of 
 having fomented the spirit of sedition by encouraging 
 the notion that there was a plot in high places against 
 the liberties of the people, similar to that afterwards 
 associated with the name of Strafford. The story of 
 Foulis (writing about 1674) is that the tract in 
 question had been writen in 161 3 by Sir Robert Dudley 
 at Florence. Whatever the truth of the details may 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 545 
 
 have been, the most convincing proof of the idleness of 
 all the talk about the Great Charter and the liberties 
 of the subject lies in the fact of the despotic treatment 
 of the foremost literary men in the kingdom — Selden, 
 Cotton, and others. 
 
 We learn that Selden was removed to the Gate 
 House at Westminster, May 30, 1 630, and that he was 
 at liberty to pass the Long Vacation at Wrest. Next 
 Michaelmas term his Habeas Corpus was again refused, 
 the Court reprimands the Marshal of the King's Bench 
 prison because he had released his prisoner without a 
 breve from them. The judges also called the Lord 
 Treasurer, who had removed Selden, to account for his 
 conduct, and a writ was made out for removing him 
 to the King's Bench prison. In May, 1631, he was 
 admitted to bail, which was renewed from term to term, 
 until he was finally freed in 1634. 
 
 To this period belong his other writings on Hebrew 
 antiquities. Here again, he showed his appreciation of 
 the Eabbinical learning. He laid stress upon what the 
 Rabbins practically called " the Seven Noachic precepts," 
 a knowledge of which is evinced in the canonical Acts 
 of the Apostles. But he missed the opportunity of 
 ascertaining when that so-called " Tradition " was first 
 heard of in our world. The determination of the point 
 would have been the determination of the approximate 
 date of the New Testament writings, and the relation 
 of the Writers to the Eabbins. Whenever learning 
 shall revive in England, our scholars may yet find 
 in the material accumulated by Selden, and his con- 
 temporaries Lightfoot and Pococke, a precious fund of 
 instruction on these and kindred matters. 
 
 Passing over the next few years of Selden's life 
 as a politician, which appear to reflect the highest credit 
 
 2 N 
 
546 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 on his patriotism, we come to the year 1642, when he 
 printed a tract on " Ecclesiastical History." Under the 
 name of " Eutychius, orthodox patriarch of Alexandria," 
 an Arabic writing had recently become known to a very 
 few of the learned in the West. Selden too rashly 
 publishes a passage from this book with notes, believing 
 in its authenticity, as he believed in the authenticity 
 of the "History of Bede." He believed also in the 
 imaginary archives of a Church at Alexandria in the 
 tenth century, the stated time of this Eutychius. He 
 never questioned Erpenius, who gave him the MS., as 
 to how it came into his hands. Such doubts were 
 foreign to the time. Yet these monkish " Annals " had 
 probably been forged near to his own time by a writer 
 whose mind is full of dishonesty and absurdity. The 
 whole work was published by Pococke in 1658. That 
 scholar published the " History of Abulfaragius,'' which 
 is a production of the same confederacy of primitive 
 monks in the interests of the theory of Church antiquity 
 in the East. But so far was that theory from being 
 fixed at the time this Eutychius was compiled, he places 
 Origen in the time of the emperor Justinian. 
 
 It is interesting to call up (by the aid of Whitelocke) 
 the picture of Selden sitting in the Westminster Assembly 
 of Divines, 1644, and correcting the clergymen who 
 quoted from their pocket bibles, by referring them to the 
 Hebrew or the Greek text. His lectures on Rabbinical 
 lore must have been a revelation to most of them. 
 But when he called in Maimonides and the Talmud to 
 illustrate the Acts of the Apostles, he could not explain 
 that both the one and the other class of writings 
 belonged to the sphere of poetic art, and that the reason 
 of their correspondence was that they were composed 
 at near the same time. Had he been able to see this. 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 547 
 
 aud to state it, he would no doubt have been *' cried 
 down," in spite of all his scholarly ascendency. Still 
 more so, if he had told them that the canonical pictures 
 in the x4.cts were conceived in the monasteries to repre- 
 sent the early Christians as a sect of Jews in Jerusalem, 
 living the true Coenobite life. This year he published 
 a tract on the " Civil Year and the Jewish Calendars ; " 
 but he did not ascertain at what time the Jews began 
 to have a Calendar. 
 
 This year also Selden was appointed by Parliament 
 Keeper of the Records in the Tower. In what state 
 did he find them, and of what value were they ? To 
 that question no direct answer is forthcoming. The 
 same year also Laud was attainted, and his endow- 
 ment of the Arabic lecture to which Pococke had been 
 appointed was seized. Selden interfered, but it was 
 not till three years later that the endowment was 
 restored to Pococke. It is a convenient place to refer 
 to that scholar. 
 
 He was of Magdalen Hall and Corpus Christi. He 
 had been chaplain to the English factory at 
 
 . Pococke. 
 
 Aleppo, 1630. He found the Jewish Rabbins 
 there illiterate ; but under a Mohammedan scholar he 
 made great way in Arabic. We find a most pleasing 
 representation of the love borne him by Phatallah his 
 master, who on his death-bed, in the year 1670, told 
 an Englishman he doubted not he should meet Pococke 
 in Paradise under the banner of Isa. A letter couched 
 in the true Oriental style from his dervise Ahmed is also 
 extant. Laud wrote to him in 1631 for Greek coins 
 and MSS. As for Greek MSS., they were not forth- 
 coming ; an incidental piece of evidence that the mass 
 of Greek MSS. were not to be found in the East, as 
 scholars had vainly supposed. When Pococke came 
 
548 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 home in 1636, he must have entertained very different 
 views of the Mohammedans from those so long nourished 
 by ecclesiastical prejudice. He opens his lectures with 
 a discourse on Arabian poetry. 
 
 Next year, he visited Constantinople. Here he 
 succeeded in finding some learned Jews ; and the 
 patriarch Cyril gave him some account of the books 
 at Mount Athos. However, Pococke did not explore 
 that literary centre of the monks of St. Basil. There 
 was a dark tale current that the patriarch, an enemy 
 to the Koman and a friend to the Anglican Church, 
 had been assassinated at the instigation of the Jesuits. 
 There are other particulars in the memorials of Pococke 
 which hint of sympathy between the Greek patriarch 
 and the Anglican clergy, and on the other hand of 
 intense antipathy on the part of the Eoman clergy 
 both to the Mohammedans and to the Greek Church. 
 
 In 1640 Pococke returned home, calling on his way 
 upon Grotius at Paris, whose treatise on Christian 
 evidences he had either translated or intended to trans- 
 late into Arabic. He told Grotius that the Moham- 
 medans had been misrepresented in his treatise ; and 
 Grotius — as we may readily believe — frankly submitted 
 to correction. Pococke on arriving at London found 
 his friend and patron Laud in the Tower, and all 
 hopes of liberal culture for the time extinguished in 
 England by the passions of bigots and fools. The 
 first Orientalist in Europe came unto his own, and his 
 own received him not. In 1643, he received the living 
 of Childrey in Berks from his college, and thither 
 he retired from Oxford, which had become noisy with 
 the drum and the clash of arms. There was no leisure 
 for attention to Arabic in the following years, during 
 which his endowment was seized and again restored. 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 549 
 
 He became Hebrew professor at Oxford in 1648, and 
 in 1649 published his "Specimen Historise Arabum," 
 wherein, without going to the heart of the subject, 
 he did something to clear the Mohammedans from 
 misrepresentation . 
 
 But the poor scholar, not being of the politics of the 
 ruling party, was greatly harassed during these years, 
 and all but turned out of Oxford and of Childrey. 
 Dr. John Owen, the Independent, did himself honour 
 by interfering on Pococke's behalf. In 1655 he pub- 
 lished his "Porta Mosis," in 1658 the "Annals of 
 Eutychius " already referred to. The restoration brought 
 him back to Oxford, but all interest in Oriental studies 
 languished during the last thirty years of his life. He 
 died in 1691. 
 
 The name of Pococke, then, is a landmark. It 
 reminds of a time in the history of English and 
 Western culture when first it was possible to under- 
 stand the Mohammedans and to do them justice for 
 long, current calumnies. And, alas ! owing to the barba- 
 rism and absurdity to which the Church teaching had 
 reduced the imagination of the world, the opportunity 
 was lost. From the Roman and the Anglican clergy 
 down to the besotted Puritan fanatics who would have 
 driven Pococke out of his living because he had not " the 
 spirit," what furious clamours would have been raised 
 against the man who dared to assert openly that the 
 Mohammedans were as sincere as the Christians and 
 believed still more profoundly in their Gospel. John 
 Bunyan mentions that such a notion had occurred to 
 him ; but it was a " temptation." Passion blinded 
 English scholars then and has blinded them ever since 
 to the truth about the Arabian, the Jewish, and 
 the Catholic literature, which will be found by the 
 
550 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 attentive reader unconsciously expressed in the works 
 of Pococke.* 
 
 The points on which I am touching are amongst the 
 most curious in the history of culture. Pococke may be 
 cited as one of the first scholars who was aware of the 
 extraordinary wealth and power of the Arabic language. 
 He knew also that the early Eabbins were the pupils of 
 the Arabians, that they referred to them in every 
 difficulty, that they clothed Arabian ideas in a new 
 dialect. He knew that the Old Testament could not be 
 understood without Arabic, nor the Jews apart from the 
 Mohammedans. Did he perceive that the Jews were a 
 sect from the Muslim and that the Bible teaches 
 as much ? That the Bible in both parts was a disguised 
 Arabian tradition ? Perhaps not. But at least he had 
 seen the great object of the scholar's research from both 
 sides. He had viewed Islam with the eyes of the 
 Churchman, and the Church with the eyes of Moslem. 
 Until his countrymen follow him, absurdity will still 
 reign in the schools of England. 
 
 At the same time John Lightfoot was labouring 
 John with deep enthusiasm at Cambridge in Kabbi- 
 
 Lightfoot. ^-^^2 YoYe, and publishing his works in the 
 face of every discouragement from the ignorant conceit 
 of the enthusiasts and the indifference of the general 
 public. His Commentaries on the New Testament still 
 remain perhaps the most valuable that have been 
 written by an Englishman. His favourite principle 
 that the New Testament was written by Jews, among 
 Jews and for Jews, taken with certain qualifications 
 leads to the heart of the truth, provided it be once 
 seen that the book must be referred to " the splendid 
 period of Judaism." 
 
 * Cf. also the story of Prideaux and his " Life of Mahomet." 
 
POETS AND CRITICS. 551 
 
 But to return to Selden. In 1647 he published the 
 Commentary on English Law which bears the name of 
 Fleta — as Selden supposed — in allusion to the author's 
 writing in the Fleet prison. He had but one and the only 
 MS. of this writer, he referred it back to the thirteenth 
 century, although the internal evidence shows it to pro- 
 ceed from the same confederacy of writers who had 
 produced Bracton and Thornton, and the Year Books 
 also pretended to be of the thirteenth century. He con- 
 tinued his Hebrew studies, and in 1650 printed part 
 of his book on the Sanhedrin. It has been thought a 
 strange thing that he should have spoken of the Jewish 
 Courts as assembling "before Moses." Yet this was 
 allegorically true, were it understood that the Eabbins 
 were describing under personal forms and referring to 
 distant times the institutions founded in Spain and 
 Egypt. In 1652, he wrote a preface to the Decern 
 Scriptores Anqlicani, in other words the Ten 
 Benedictines who were good enough to invent English 
 English history for us. So little did he under- 
 stand their system, he thought that the monk Simeon 
 did not write the " History of the Church of Durham," 
 but that it was the Prior who wrote it, named Tergotus. 
 He did not observe that the monks had a variety of 
 masks at their disposal. The great " Explorator " of 
 mediaeval literature, being himself an independent 
 writer of the highest worth, never to the last suspected 
 that the writers whom he edited wrought on an utterly 
 different system from his own. Selden died in the 
 White Friars in 1654 at the age of seventy. 
 
552 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 CONCLUSION". 
 
 I HAVE written at much greater length than I in- 
 tended, yet withhold my pen from many observations 
 which might be of interest, on various parts of the 
 subject. I hope that in these matters " the half is 
 more than the whole ; " and that intelligent readers 
 will prefer a suggestive rather than an exhaustive 
 treatment of the subject. Indeed, I shrink from the 
 task of draining the wells of fiction dry, in order to 
 discover what truth may be lurking at the bottom. I 
 set out with the intention of showing to my readers 
 that English Story is a branch of Church Story, and 
 that it rests not on the testimonies of witnesses who 
 were living in the times of which they profess to relate, 
 but on the dreams and theories of Church artists, who 
 were sitting down to their work at an epoch much 
 nearer to our own than we are wont to suppose. 
 
 In my work on "The Rise of Christendom" I 
 laboured to ascertain and offer to my readers positive 
 results, feeling, in common with many, that we have 
 had enough of what is called " negative criticism ; " and 
 that if one could not write to affirm the positive Truth 
 as it stands in Letters, it were perhaps better not to 
 write at all. I showed that our civilization was to be 
 
CONCLUSION. 553 
 
 traced in Europe to the great Corporations, — namely, 
 the Roman Empire, the Mohammedan Empire, the 
 Jewish and Christian corporation of Teachers. I 
 pointed out that the relation in time of these different 
 bodies had been hitherto falsely represented in ignorant 
 days, by the founders of the Christian empire. The 
 Jews as a people of literary culture are European ; 
 and there is no reason to suppose that they would 
 have established that culture in Spain, had it not 
 been for the invasion of their kinsmen the Arabs, and 
 the immense influence once possessed by the Moham- 
 medans alike in East and West. With regard to 
 Chronology, I was forced to lean heavily upon the 
 date assigned to Maimonides, not at the time suspecting 
 that this date might be a convention rather than a 
 registered fact. Let me leave the question open, let 
 me refer it to the decision of Jewish experts in their 
 own literature. I merely name the point to show that 
 I was by no means rash when I referred the beginnings 
 of Jewish literature to so late a date ; and that if I 
 retract my conclusions, it cannot be in a conservative 
 direction. 
 
 It has been a great relief to me to find myself in 
 the present work on common ground with previous 
 historians. We all look back upon the Revival or 
 Resurrection of Letters, — so it is sometimes called, — 
 as a great turning-point in culture. But we need to 
 understand what we mean by these strong figures of 
 speech. A Resurrection implies a previous entomb- 
 ment of Letters, and we have too carelessly accepted 
 that idea. That a Christian Literature, however, dating 
 its rise from some 1300 or 1400 years before the 
 Revival was to be found in the Monasteries at the 
 epoch of Printing and Publication is an utterly false 
 
554 THE RISE 0¥ ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 proposition. Everything, on the contrary, was begin- 
 ning ; and our sole hope of illuminating any higher 
 period must be by rays of conjecture cast from the 
 standpoint of that time. 
 
 I have desired to be useful to professional students 
 by pointing out that special researches must be com- 
 paratively futile and useless, unless we know the right 
 point at which to begin. We admire the extraordinary 
 industry of German scholars ; and yet that industry 
 has been relatively misapplied in historic science, 
 because they have begun at ideal epochs when their 
 land was wrapped in darkness like our own. To the 
 general reader I have endeavoured to render as faithful 
 a report as I could of what is really meant by History ; 
 and of how this branch of art took its rise at the close 
 of a long period of barbarism. There is in reality 
 only one way of understanding these matters, and 
 that the right way. So far from having led the reader 
 on bye-paths of learning, I have pointed out to him 
 how he may regain the high-road of knowledge, and 
 pursue it up to a point where the darkness closes 
 around him. 
 
 I have hoped to assist some good men through 
 clearer knowledge of the Past, toward better endeavours 
 for the future. It is true that Self-interest is the 
 mainspring of human life ; and how often I have 
 recalled in the course of these studies the saying of La 
 Eochefoucauld, that " whatever discoveries we have 
 made in the territory of Love Proper, there remain 
 still many unknown lands." Our social institutions 
 repose on the architecture of Self-interest, foundations 
 so thickly laid that they may deceive the eye, and pass 
 for the granite rock itself Yet Society is ever crumbling, 
 and by the action of the same force. To multiply 
 
CONCLUSION. 555 
 
 self-interests, is to deprive any one of its ascendency ; is 
 gradually to melt all into one truly catholic or universal 
 interest. There is not one of us who is not more 
 interested in his own welfare than in the knowledo^e of 
 the Truth ; but it must be an immense gain to the 
 commonweal if we can succeed in uniting love-proper 
 with the love of the Truth. 
 
 Does the reader mockingly inquire, And what is 
 Truth ? I answer there is a Truth in Letters and 
 Science which stands fast, which needs to be more and 
 more strictly defined with the increase of our experi- 
 ence of man and his world, but which cannot be over- 
 thrown. And with that Truth, the rival Truth which the 
 Church has proclaimed during these four ages is utterly 
 incompatible. Gradually the sense of this has dawned 
 upon the minds of men, especially since the great schism 
 between the Church and Science, signalized by the dis- 
 covery of the Sphere, and again by the complete dis- 
 coveries of Galileo, Bacon, and the knot of scholars 
 perhaps sheltered beneath those great names, and their 
 successors down to our own times. The clergy of our 
 own day have ceased to denounce, and have learned to 
 sit with reverence at the feet of the masters of physical 
 science. 
 
 The Church must now abandon her claim to be the 
 teacher of History, which is the science of Letters and 
 of human nature. The more secular Truth has in this 
 department more slowly come to light from various 
 causes, which I hope have been sufficiently explained 
 in the foregoing pages. It can now be known and told, 
 and is of its nature as incapable of refutation as any 
 accepted truth in physical science. I believe there is 
 a growing feeling in the minds of many who are of 
 our blood and language in America and the Colonies, 
 
556 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 against the teaching of History as it has been hitherto 
 conceived. They do not believe that the Church has 
 told the Truth in the common and valuable acceptation ; 
 and they are in the right. And how injurious to society 
 to continue a system of education rooted in false opinions 
 of life and human nature ! 
 
 The question arises, If the religious organizations 
 can no longer teach History, what can they teach that 
 is profitable to mankind ? Morality ? But the purest 
 morality of the Bible condemns them. Theology ? 
 How can they teach a mystical Theology in neglect of 
 History ? To a certain extent this may be done, and 
 is done, but only among the most enthusiastic and 
 ignorant of mankind. All that needs to be taught or 
 can be taught of Theology falls to the province of the 
 mere laymen. Men of Letters are acquainted with the 
 theory and the history of the gods, as the devotees of 
 the sects are not allowed to be. When the ecclesiastic 
 says that men are created in the image of God, it is 
 obvious that before he can say so, he has himself 
 imagined God. And the truth stands fast, that it is 
 men who have created the gods in their own image ; 
 and have not always created them well. 
 
 The creed of the student of Letters is the old, 
 gentle, all-tolerant creed of polytheism. He knows 
 that all forms of the divine and the heroic have a value 
 because they exist in thought, and are symbolic of the 
 passions and aspirations of the human soul. But he 
 will not be enslaved by any of them ; it is nothing but 
 to grovel before the idol or ideal of our own creation. 
 And never will men stand erect in proper dignity and 
 self-respect, until they know that the world of ideas is 
 their own creation, which it is their duty continually to 
 revise, to reform, and to enrich by new additions. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 557 
 
 They can contain all the gods and heroes in their own 
 mind, and still find room for more. 
 
 I should know something of my own countrymen, 
 and I believe it is no singular opinion that while the 
 Englishman is capable of doing anything and under- 
 standing anything, the last thing he is expected to 
 understand is this Church system of ideas which was 
 forced upon him by those who had the mastery of 
 Letters at a time when in that respect he was little 
 better than a barbarian. He was overawed and over- 
 come by the eloquence and adroitness of those who 
 were his superiors in culture. No sooner did he acquire 
 the instruments of learning, than he showed of what 
 admirable intellectual things he was capable. He 
 threatened to cast off the yoke that had been imposed 
 upon him ; but it was then too late. All that he 
 could do he did, in protests against tyranny, and in 
 the inventions of new sects and religions, which have 
 troubled our sociality, and preserved our liberties. 
 What is more needed is that the Englishman should 
 probe the causes of his long spiritual ailments. 
 
 An education founded on the ancient and the modern 
 Classics is a humane and a noble education. We should 
 at this hour be a more intelligent, a more virtuous, or 
 less hypocritical people, had our attention and our love 
 been solely directed to these. But an education partly 
 based on the Classics, partly on Jewish and semi- 
 Jewish writings misunderstood, is a confused, a self- 
 contradictory, a troubling education and never was 
 suitable to the training of a freeborn Englishman. I 
 cannot think that when the story of Letters is truly 
 understood, the absurdities, the dishonesties and injuries 
 of such a system of education will long continue. My 
 dream for the future is the revolution of the present 
 
558 THE RISE OF ENGLISH CULTURE. 
 
 religious bodies into a University of men of Letters 
 and Science, of which some forecast has been given in 
 the formation of non- ecclesiastical learned corporations 
 in our own time ; and which may include in Human 
 Love all that can be known of the actual and the 
 imaginary worlds. The prospect may be distant, but it 
 is certain ; because it cannot for ever be concealed 
 from the general mind, that the pretensions to obtain 
 knowledge about so-called supernatural things, by so- 
 called supernatural channels, is, of its nature a fraudulent 
 imposition on society. 
 
 I now leave my work to the candour and intelligence 
 of the best audiences of my time. Although there are 
 many things which fill the mind with pain and shame in 
 contemplating the actual public life of England during 
 these 400 years, there is on the other hand much to 
 inspire us with hope for the future. How much of evil 
 has been overcome by the exertion of a vigorous in- 
 telligence and courage among all classes of the people, 
 how much more will be overcome, when our countrymen 
 are better taught, see more clearly into the past, dispel 
 their servilities and superstitions, acquire a juster con- 
 fidence in themselves and a larger conception of their 
 duty and destiny among the nations of the world. Let 
 us turn from the dreams of the cell, the glowing visions 
 of poet and playwright of a "past which never was 
 present," and congratulate ourselves that this Victorian 
 era is the clearest and most splendid that England has 
 ever known. Let us cherish a boundless faith in the 
 possibilities of a sound education : an education based 
 on rectitude of thought, on that purer taste for fact as 
 fact, and poetry as poetry, which is the love of Truth, 
 and the canon of all that is good in morals. I have 
 written with warm love to my native land, not 
 
CONCLUSION. 559 
 
 doubting that in spite of temporary obloquies, the 
 truths I have endeavoured to cast abroad will spring 
 up and bear fruit in the general conscience, to the 
 greater good and glory of England, and the welfare of 
 mankind. 
 
PRINCIPAL 
 WRITINGS OF EDWIN JOHNSON, M.A. 
 
 INCLUDING TRANSLATIONS, 
 PUBLISHED AND UNPUBLISHED. 
 
 1877. 
 
 " The Apophthegmes of Erasmus." Translated into English by 
 Nicolas Udall. Literally printed from the Edition of 1564. 
 With Memoir of Erasmus by Edwin Johnson. 
 
 [Boston. R. Roberts. 
 
 1878. 
 
 " The Colloquies of Erasmus." Translated by N. Bailey. Edited, 
 with Notes, by the Rev. E. Johnson, M.A. 
 
 [2 vols. 8vo. London. Reeves & Turner. 
 
 Since reprinted in 3 vols., fcp. 8vo, 
 1879. 
 
 *' Observations on Hebrew Poetry." [pp. 24. Uajrrinted. 
 
 "Meyer's Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New 
 Testament." Part IV., Epistle to the Romans, Vol. II. 
 
 Chapters IX. to XVI. translated by Edwin Johnson (pp. 109-392). 
 
 lEdinhurr/h. T. & T. Clark. 
 
 Ewald's " Commentary on the Psalms." Translated by Edwin 
 
 Johnson. [2 vols. 8vo, London. "Williams & Norgate. 
 
 2 
 
562 EDWIN JOHNSON'S WRITINGS. 
 
 1880-82. 
 " The Course of Religious Philosophj." [59 pp. Unprinted. 
 
 Review of Caird, " Introd. Pliilos. Religion," 1880. Pfleiderer, " Religious 
 PhiloB auf Geschichtlicher Grunlage," 1878. E. Feller, " Vortrage und 
 Abhandlungen." 2 vols. 1875. Lipsius, "Lehrbuch der Evangelisch 
 Protestantischen Dogmatik." 2nd edition. 1879. 
 
 " The Reconstruction of Belief." IDitto. 
 
 I. The Spheres of Faith and Belief; 2. Human Need of Faith ; 3. Associa- 
 tion of Faith and Belief; 4. Separability of Faith from Belief; 5. 
 The Practical Mental Dependence on Faith or Belief ; 6. Subordina- 
 tion of Belief to Faith ; 7. The Progressive, Educational, and Pro- 
 visional Character of all Belief; 8. Knowableness of Relations between 
 God and Man; 9. The Test of the Value of Dogmas; 10. On the 
 Essential Elements of Christianity. 
 
 " The Genesis of Religion in Eleven Chapters : " 
 
 I. General Notions of Religion ; 2, 3, 4. Theories of the Genesis of Religion ; 
 5. Revelation; 6. Lines of Direct Investigation — Language and 
 Literature ; 7. Literature ; 8. Relations of the Mind to the Unknown ; 
 
 9. Relations of the Mind to the Unknown — Aspects of Nature; 
 
 10. The Revelations of Art; 11. Poetry and Dancing. 
 
 " Religion ; its Origin and Progress : " a Sketch of the Psy- 
 chology and History of Religion. In Twenty Chapters. 
 
 [600 pp. Unprinted. 
 
 In this work were incorporated the three last-mentioned essays, re- written 
 and welded into one comprehensive whole. 
 
 " The Emperor Julian." [45 pp. Unprinted. 
 
 1882-83. 
 " Greek Mythology and Religion." \_Ditto. 
 
 Introduction— Elements of Greek Religion ; Relation of Mind and Nature 
 in Mythology ; The Tomb, the Departed and their Fate ; Religious 
 Symbolical Myths (15 chapters); The Rise of Greek Polytheism. 
 Tribal Relations and the Nature of the Gods — Hermes, Demeter, Apollo, 
 Artemis, The Dioskouroi, Helios, Hera, Herakles, Athena, Hephaistos, 
 Aphrodite, Ar^s, Zeus, Apollo, Dionysos, The Arakidi, Poseidon, Hades, 
 Persephone. The Leleges ; The Dioskouroi ; Religion of the Leleges. 
 
 1884. 
 
 " In the Land of Marvels ; " Folk-Tales from Austria and 
 
 VERNALEKEN (Theodor) In the"iTl^^oiiil^wi^i'f^^^^^ ^}'auren}ef^nZ 
 
 Qd Bohemia, with Preface by E. Johnson, cr. 8vo. cl., t. e. 9., with Sir Laurence tromim 
 
 ' ' l^ief/ ^L^^l'u^ction. -Sonnen^ckein. The prefacer. E^ohfison, m^a, would «f «- °JJ^^° ^^bf i'^eS^^^^^ 
 rHampstead, the sujiefcaCfifiiic, who believed the Bible anTEKelTHHIe of Classical literature to be a Clerical lort, y 
 le early Renascence. ■ . ... ^ » • 
 
EDWIN JOHNSON'S WRITINGS. 563 
 
 Bohemia. By Theodor Vernaleken. Translated, with Preface and 
 additional Notes, by Edwin Johnson, M.A. 
 
 [Or. 8vo. pp. 363. London. Swan Sonnenschein, 1884. 
 
 An Illustrated edition issued in 1889. 
 
 A collection of sixty tales from Lower Austria and Bohemia, made by 
 Professor Vernaleken, and published by him as a sort of supplement to 
 the stories of the Brothers Grimm, which were derived mostly from 
 North-Western Germany. 
 
 In these excursions into the land of marvels, Johnson found .not only 
 delightful stories for youthful readers, but some rich material for the 
 study of the human spirit, and an opportunity for criticising some of the 
 far-fetched ideas of modern mythologists. 
 
 1886-87. 
 " Antiqua Mater : " a Study of Christian Origins. 
 
 '• He had an earnest intention of taking a review of the original principles 
 of the primitive Church : believing that every true Christian had no better 
 means to settle his spirit, than that which was proposed to iEneas and 
 his followers to be the end of their wanderings, Antiquam exquirite 
 Matrem.''—" The Life op Mr. A. Cowley," by Dr. Sprat. 
 
 [Or. 8vo., pp. XX., 308. 
 ^London. Triibner & Co. ; now Williams & Norgate. 
 
 This work was written in answer to the inquiry, "TF^af may we learn — 
 apart from the hooks of the New Testament— ^from the old Christian and 
 the Grxco-Roman literature of the second century^ in respect to the origin 
 and the earliest development of Christianity ? " Examining first External 
 History, supposed references in Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Suetonius, 
 and in the writings ascribed to the " Apostolic Fathers," and to " Justin 
 Martyr," he found no evidence that any historic founder or founders of 
 a new religion were at the end of that period known. The theology of 
 Jewish and Hellenic sectarians being examined in detail, it is shown that 
 " Christianity " began with a theology, which was gradually converted 
 into a history of past earthly events. In arriving at a negative result, 
 the author further discovered that certain commonly alleged fabrications 
 -^vere the work of a much later age, and at once began to trace them 
 downwards. The results of this search were afterwards embodied in 
 " The Kise of Christendom." 
 
 " De Voce 'Aytos." Motto : (f>L\a\rjOoi<s. [pp. 353. Unprinted. 
 
 I. De' Sanctis ; 2. Sanctificatis et de sanctificatione ; 3. De Spiritu sancto ; 
 4. De Messia, Sancto Dei; 5, De Ministris, dei Sanctis ; 6. De rebus 
 Sanctis vel sacris ; 7. De osculo sancto ; 8. De ol oiyioi, &c., in Apo- 
 calypsi; 9. Conclusio. 
 
 Ad essay in Latin contributed to a Dutch Theological Society. 
 
564 EDWIN JOHNSON'S WRITINGS. 
 
 1889. 
 
 " The Rise of Christendom." [8vo., pp. xvi., 499. 
 
 [^London. Kegan Paul, Trench, Triibner & Co., Ltd. ; now 
 Williams & Norgate. 1890. 
 
 " Quis nescit primam esse historisB legem ne quid falsi dicere audeat, 
 deinde ne quid veri non audeat ? ne quae suspicio gratise sit in scribendo ? ne quae 
 simultatis?" — Cicero, de Or.^ ii. 15. 
 
 Contents — ^Prefatory note; Introduction; Object of the Inquiry; The 
 Koman Church and Christendom; Glimpses of Mediaeval Rome and 
 Italy ; Moral and Religious Teaching among the Romans ; The Ethics of 
 the Monasteries ; The Traditions of the Mosque ; The Rise of Hebrew 
 Literature; The System of Church Literature; Early Forms of the 
 Christian Legend ; The Interpolations in the Literature of the Roman 
 Empire ; Summary and Conclusion ; Index. 
 
 1890-92. 
 
 " The Prolegomena of Jean Hardouin." Translated, with 
 Biographical Introduction, by Edwin Johnson, M.A. Prolego- 
 mena to a Censure of Old Writers by Jean Hardouin, Jesuit, from 
 his Autograph. London: at the expense of P. Vaillant, 1766. 
 
 \Unprinied. 
 
 The only English Translation, it is believed, of Hardouin's work. 
 Miscellaneous Papers : 
 
 " The Saxon Charters," 18 pp. Suggested by an article in the Contemporary 
 Beview by Mr. Freeman. 
 
 " Socialism in Early Englisb History," 9 pp. 
 
 " The Master of the Rolls Series of English Historians," 23 pp. 
 
 " British Origins," 27 pp. Suggested by obscure problems besetting the 
 History of the English language and Institutions to German Scholars. 
 
 " Construction and Record in English History," 14 pp. Suggested by an 
 observation in a Lecture by Max Miiller : " All the most ancient history 
 is constructive rather than authentic — that is, founded on deductive 
 rather than on contemporary evidence." 
 
 " Foundation Legends of Oxford and Cambridge," 24 pp. 
 
 " Baker's Chronicle," 17 pp. 
 
 " The Paradox of English History ; " " Tudor Historiography ; " " Biblical 
 Geography ; " " Legends of Origin ; " " Garden of Pleasure (Eden) ; " 
 "The Deluge;" "Cursed (Dark) Peoples;" "Origin of Tongues;" 
 " Cosmography ; " " Moslem Geographers ; " " Sacrobosco (Holy wood) 
 Cosmas Indicopleustes ; " " Voyages of Discovery," &c. 
 
 *^* These papers formed the foundation of the work on " The Rise of 
 English Culture," 
 
EDWIN JOHNSON'S WRITINGS. 565 
 
 " The Quest of Mr. East," by John Soane. 
 Nee vixit male, qui natus moriensque fefellit. — Horace, Ep. i, 17, 10. 
 
 [i vol. London. Constable, May, 1900. 
 
 " Gothic and Saracen Architecture." 
 
 [Vol. CXXXVI. Westminster Eevietv- 
 
 " The Rise of English Culture." With a Brief Account of the 
 Author and his Writings. [8vo., pi^. 640. 
 
 \_London. Williams & Norgate. 1904. 
 
 " Elements of Historic Science ; or, a Primer of History." 
 
 [171 pp. Unprinted. 
 
 Contents : Persons — real, ideal, idealized ; Places, Times, State of Europe, 
 1490-1510; The Kevival of Letters ; The Bible; Knowledge the inverse 
 of Belief; Records; Prejudice; Testimony; The Court of Letters; 
 Applied Criticism ; The Jews and their Literature ; Chaucer as Biblical 
 Student ; Mystical terms not relevant in Historical Science ; The Jewish 
 Sources; Hebrew Letters ; Synagogue Rolls; Dates of MSS.; Rabbinical 
 Interpreters ; The Talmud and the New Testament Writers ; The Itinerary 
 of Benjamin of Tudela ; Josephus, etc. 
 
 *^* This work was undertaken at the suggestion of the late Mr. Froude. 
 
 1893-94. 
 
 " Gibbon on the Origin of Christendom," in The Agnostic 
 Journal, June, 1893, to February, 1894. 
 
 " Eusebius' Church History." Ten Articles contributed to The 
 Freethinker, August to November, 1893. 
 
 "Historical Notes." Unfinished Series in Watts's Literary 
 Guide, August to November, 1893. 
 
 Introductory ; The New Biblical Criticism ; Jews and Romans ; Obadiah's 
 Prophecy ; Sepharad ; The Jews in Spain. 
 
 "The True History of the Bible." [The Agnostic Annual, 1894. 
 
 " The Pauline Epistles, Re-studied and Explained." 
 
 [Cr. 8vo., pp. 152. London. Watts & Co., 1893'. 
 
 Introduction — The Pauline Question in Relation to the Revival of Letters, 
 Dean Colet, and the Beginnings of Literary Culture under the Tudors ; 
 
566 EDWIN JOHNSON'S WRITINGS. 
 
 Polydore Vergil on the- Origin of Cliristianity, on Chronology and Dates, 
 the " Middle Ages ; " the Beginnings of the Pauline Legend, Eusebius's 
 Church History and the " List of Illustrious Men," Apostolic Succession ; 
 Paul the " Illustrious " and the Apostle of the Nations ; Feast Days and 
 the Pauline Epistles as seen in the Missal; Structure of the Pauline 
 Epistles and the " Collations of Cassian ; " Fabricated Testimonies of the 
 " Illustrious " and of Apocryphal Writings to Paul ; Jerome and Augus- 
 tine, the "Hand-book of Cassiodorus," the Monasteries and Latin 
 Writings ; Leiand on British Writers — Bede, Alcuin, Wiclif, and others ; 
 Editions of the Vulgate or Latin Bible, Jerome, the Complutensian 
 Polyglott ; Paul the Mouthpiece of Catholic Dogma — Regenerati on, 
 Justification, Matrimony ; Luther, the Augustines and Paul ; the 
 Authors of " Verisimilia," 1886 (Professors Pierson and Naber), their 
 analysis of the Epistles and remarkable coincidences with the Author in 
 certain conclusions of his " Antiqua Mater," Author's Conclusion that the 
 Pauline Epistles come to us from the Revival and the Lutheran Move- 
 ment, the Scriptures and the Catholic Church grew together and present 
 one Problem to the Inquirer ; Paul as Hebrew Scholar, Hebrew Letters 
 are Modern, and our Earliest Information about the Hebrew Books from 
 Hebrews themselves is Sixteenth Century Information, The Sepher 
 Juchasin or " Book of Families " attributed to Rabbi Zacuto, written 
 about " A.D. 1502," the Tales of " Palestinian " and " Babylonian" Schools 
 and of Spanish Schools of Hebrew Learning in the Eleventh or Twelfth 
 Century, Richard Baxter on Faction and Fiction, Tillotson on Truth and 
 Falsehood. Addenda ; Polydore on " Inventions," Palasography and the 
 Age of Manuscripts. 
 
 1894-95. 
 
 " The Rise of French Culture." \_Incomplete. 
 
 '* Chronology and other Papers : " Tabulated Extracts, Notes 
 and References. Contributed to " The Mysteries of Chronology " 
 by Mr. Arbuthnot, published in 1900. 
 
 Lectuees. 
 
 In addition to his principal works enumerated above, Johnson 
 wrote four lectures on Robert Browning, three of which are to be 
 found among the pages of the Browning Society : — 
 
 " Robert Browning." 
 
 Characteristic points in the personality and art of the Poet, 
 
 On " Bishop Blougram's Apology." Browning Papers, No. XIV., 
 read at the 7th Meeting of the Browning Society. 
 
EDWIN JOHNSON'S WRITINGS. 567 
 
 " Conscience and Art in Browning." I. The Poet of Conscience. 
 II. Points of Art and Esthetic. III. Religious Piiilosophy. 
 Browning Papers, No. XVIII. 
 
 "Mr. Sludge, the Medium." Browning Papers, No. XXIX., 
 read at the 31st Meeting of the Browning Society. 
 
 Other lectures included : 
 
 "The Humorous Poems of Tennyson — The Northern 
 
 Farmer." 
 " Peter the Great." 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbot, a word of Hebrew origin, 13 ; an 
 unclassical term, 242 
 
 Abelard, Peter, tj, 80, 167; his "Sen- 
 tences," 170 
 
 -\bgarus, Jesus and. Epistles of, 219 ; 
 Laurence Valla on, 188 
 
 Abingdon Cloister, 251 
 
 Abjuration of the Realm, 529 
 
 Abulfaragius, 546 
 
 Acts of the Apostles conceived in the 
 Monasteries, 547 
 
 Adam of Bremen, 528 
 
 Adamnan of lona, and his book on the 
 Holy Places, ii6 ; on Roman build- 
 ings, 116 
 
 A.D., or Anno Domini, or Christi. See 
 Chronology, Dionysius Exiguus, Incar- 
 nation, Scaliger, Selden 
 
 Agincourt, battle of, 286 
 
 Alban, Saint, of Verulam, Martyr, 205, 234 
 
 Albans, Saint, and Writers there, 85, 86, 
 174, 204, 218, 219, 234, 349 ; connection 
 with Offa, 243 ; Press at, 372 ; " Book 
 of St. Albans," 373 ; "Chronicles of," 
 
 391 
 
 Albine, d. of Diocletian, Syrian king, 
 and "Albion," 370, 392; contempo- 
 rary with Saul, King of Israel, 395 ; 
 Drayton's " Polyolbion," 504 
 
 Alcuin, 'j'j, 165, 204, 247 
 
 Aldhelm, of Sherborne, 79 
 
 Alexander VI., Pope, and English clergy, 
 321, 328, 329, 330 
 
 Alfred the Great, 165, 176 ; his donations 
 to Athelney, Shaftesbury, Winchester, 
 &c., 246 ; literary work, 246 ; laws of, 
 248, 259, 413; his alleged "Dome" 
 book, 414. See Anglo-Saxons, Eng- 
 lish, &c. 
 
 Alured, his works on " The Motion of the 
 Heart," &c., 348, 349 
 
 Ambrose, Saint, 443 ; read by Colet, 343 
 
 America, existence of, an absurdity, 132 ; 
 legends of discovery, 2, 155; the name, 
 and the Monks of St. Die, 157 
 
 Amesbury nunnery endowed by Alfreda, 
 
 253 
 Anglo-Saxons, written of by Paul the 
 
 Deacon, 70 ; date of their coming, 521 ; 
 
 Heptarchy, 242 ; tales of, 229, 242, 243, 
 
 394, 512 ; Selden's authorities, 520. 
 
 5ee Alfred, Athelstan, Edgar, English, 
 
 Harold, Hengst and Horsa 
 Animals, wild, and Monks, 149 flf. 
 Anselm,St., 26, 43, 'jj; stories of, 150, 
 
 i73> 174 ; li's works, 264 
 Antipodes, Lactantius and Augustine on, 
 
 132, 133 
 Antiquarii or Keepers of MSS. , 94 ; 
 
 Antiquaries : Agard, Parker, Spelman, 
 
 and others, 428, 539. See Camden, 
 
 Cotton, Selden, Libraries, &c. 
 Antiquity, the yearning for, 231 
 Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence, his 
 
 " Chronicle," used by Fabian, 390 
 Apocryphal Writings reveal connection 
 
 between the Gospels and the Koran, 
 
 444 
 Apollonius of Tyana, 84 
 Arabian Scholars, 105 ; Geography of 
 
 Edrisi, 137 ; Arabic language to be 
 
 studied, 180 ; " Lecture" and Pococke, 
 
 547 ; Medical Art, 81 
 Archers of England, 406 
 Architecture, Benedictine, Gothic, Fer- 
 
 gusson and Wren on, 49-55, 565 
 Arculf, and his book on the Holy Places, 
 
 115, n6 
 
570 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Aristotle, a spurious and a genuine, 194 
 
 Army : on Standing Army, 416 ; on 
 levying Military force, 541 ; no regular 
 force till end of 15th century, 273 
 
 Arthur, King, and Arthurian legends, 
 108, 216, 242, 376 ; Drayton on, 505, 
 506 ; his Table, 507 ; Spenser on, 513 ; 
 Selden on, 523 
 
 Arthur, Prince, 318 ; wedded to Princess 
 Catherine of Spain, 329 ; his death, 330 
 
 Ascham's " Scholemaster," 376 
 
 Assemanni, 183 
 
 Astronomy : Regiomontanus, Greaves, 
 and others, 82, 105, 107 ; its study 
 uncongenial to the Monks, 83 
 
 Athanasius, Saint, 151 
 
 Athelney Monastery, 246 
 
 Athelstan, his birth, 249 ; conquers Con- 
 stantine of Scotland, 250 ; builds con- 
 vents, &c., 250 
 
 "Augustan History," The, 520 
 
 Augustine, Saint, Bishop of Hippo, 21 ; 
 a Benedictine ideal, 43 ; whether his 
 works read by St. Benedict, 74 ; site of 
 Hippo, 127 ; against Antipodes, 132 ; 
 some literature ascribed to him may be 
 claimed for the Canons of St. Victor, 
 168 ; his " De Civitate Dei," printed 
 at Subiaco, 191 ; Colet's alleged con- 
 tempt for the writings, 343 ; on giants, 
 
 393 
 Augustine, Saint, monk, an "ideal," 250 ; 
 
 his Mission to England, 43, 76, 242 ; 
 
 miracles wrought through him, 243, 377 
 Aungerville, Richard of Bury, Bishop of 
 
 Durham, and his " Philobiblion," 27, 
 
 loi, 178, 179 
 Averroes and Avicenna, 105 
 
 Bacon, Francis, Lord, 156, 176 ; on 
 History, Theology, Prophecy, 22-25 I 
 his life of Henry VH., 339, 431 ; and 
 Coke, 413 ; Reporters of law appointed, 
 429 ; on the Star Chamber, 433 ; on 
 Statute of Fines, 433; Hume and 
 Hallam on, 433 ; influence of his dis- 
 coveries, 555 
 
 Bacon, Roger, mythical Friar, 105, 107, 
 109, no, III, 112, 177, and the Wizard 
 John Dee, in ; " Opus Major " printed 
 1733. .111 
 
 Bacons, the. Fuller and Hearne on, 112 
 
 Baker's " Chronicle " entertaining but un- 
 critical, 402, 565 ; on Printing, 381 
 
 Baldwin, Thomas, Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury, 352, 353 
 
 Bale, 106, III, 200, 344; garbles 
 Leland's " Commentaries " in his 
 "Centuries," 348; on Harding, 393; 
 untrustworthy, 404, 536 
 
 Ballads of Robin Hood most precious 
 sources of English history, 409 
 
 Balliol, John, and Balliol College, 272 ; 
 and the Scottish Crown, 394 
 
 Balzac's " Les Paysans," 38, 39 
 
 Barbo, Pietro, Pope Paul H., 183 
 
 Barons' Wars, Drayton on the, 494 
 
 Basil, Saint, the Great, 13, 73 
 
 Basilian Monks at Mount Athos, 548 
 
 Battle Abbey, 261, 350 
 
 Baxter, Richard, on the Study of 
 History, 435 
 
 Bee, School of, t] ; William of Jumiege, 
 Abbot Herluin, Vacarius, &c., xj'z-x'jt^ ; 
 Theobald, 176. See Lanfranc, Anselm 
 
 Becket, Abp. of Canterbury, 67, 265, 524 
 
 Bede, the Venerable, 26, 29, 56, 76, 77, 
 81, 86, 104, 116, 165, 201, 203, 204, 
 246, 392 ; his personality, place, epoch, 
 self-testimony, 206, 214, 219, 240 ; 
 Oratory of, visited by Leland, 357 ; 
 account of his death, 357 ; Hector 
 Boece's talk about, 357 ; Rabelais on, 
 358; the "Venerable," 396; illustra- 
 tions of Benedictine teaching from, 
 488 ; on observance of Easter, 490 ; 
 used by Selden, 520, 546 
 
 Bedford, Great Duke of (d. 1435?), no 
 authentic memorials of, 288 
 
 Bembo, Card., and Leo X., 9, 71, 186 
 
 Benedict, Saint (or Benet), 13 et infra, 
 and Church Music, 83 ; Life of St. 
 Gregory the Great, 91 ; and his familiar 
 crow, 151 ; his " Rule," 72 ; the "Rule " 
 essentially the same as ' ' the New 
 Law," 467 ; parts of, identical with 
 works of St. Augustine, 74, 80 
 
 Benedictine Order, 12 ; Dominicans and 
 Franciscans, 14, 40-48 ; their arrival 
 in England, 42, 93 ; Saints, 56 ; 
 missions, 56 ; schools, 57 ; and the 
 Jesuits, 57, 92 ; Archives, attacks on, 
 by Germon, 58, 92 ; by Henschen, 
 Papebroch and Hardouin, 92 ; Litera- 
 ture, 56-62, 70, 72-95 ; Church and 
 
INDEX. 
 
 571 
 
 Civil Law taught by, 78, 79 ; Phi- 
 losophy, 79, 80, 195 ; Chronology, 98- 
 113 ; Geography and Science, 1 14-158. 
 See Franciscans 
 
 Benedict of Peterboro', 215 
 
 Bernard the Wise, pilgrim, n6 
 
 Berners* "Book of St. Albans," 374; 
 transl. of " Froissart," 383 
 
 Bessarion, Cardinal, 107, 183, 189, 190 
 
 Bethlehem, 135 ; monastery, 114 ; grotto 
 of, 140 
 
 Bevis of Hampton's sword, 523 
 
 Bible, a disguised Arabian tradition, 550 ; 
 curiosity felt for, 69 ; a novel book, 
 345 ; Luther's discovery of, 12, 468 ; 
 printed with Nicholas de Lyra's Com- 
 mentary, 1472 (?), 191 
 
 Bible in England, 247; Bede's know- 
 ledge of, 214; Colet one of its first 
 expositors, 344 ; its introduction and 
 mystical authority, 438 ; correspond- 
 ence of Old and New Testaments, 443 ; 
 Coverdale's, 451 ; its reading pro-, 
 hibited to all but gentlemen and mer- 
 chants, 454 ; an instrument of Culture 
 only during the Revival of Learning, 
 467. See Hebrew Bible, New Testa- 
 ment, Vulgate, &c. 
 
 Biblical Legends, sources of English 
 History, 395 
 
 Blackstone on Henry VH.'s title, 339 ; 
 on Coke, 413 ; on servility under the 
 Normans, 416 ; on laws of Edward L , 
 417 ; his history, 419 ; quoted, 420 
 
 Bladud, King, founder of Stamford, 395 ; 
 and Bath, Spenser on, 511 
 
 Boadicea, Spenser on, 512 
 
 Bobbio, and legend of Saint Columban, 
 159-163 ; MSS. at, 185, 444 
 
 Boece, Hector, his " History of Scot- 
 land," 237-239; talk about Bede, 357; 
 the " Coronation " Stone, 532 
 
 Boethius, translated by Alfred the Great, 
 246 
 
 Boleter, or WiUiam of Worcester (Bris - 
 tol ?), his travels, 122 
 
 Boniface VHL, Pope, 273, 490 
 
 Books, Early Printed, pp. 363 et seq. ; 
 Catalogues of, in Paris, 170, 171 ; rarity 
 of, 171, 179; books bequeathed to 
 Balliol library by Gray, Bp. of Ely, 
 352 ; books in England in 1538. . 355 ; 
 more at Avignon than at Rome, 182 ; 
 
 Bestiaries, monastic books, 153. See 
 Aungerville, Libraries, Manuscripts 
 
 Boston, John, of Bury St. Ekimunds, 107, 
 136; his "Catalogue," 200, 204, 209, 
 215 ; Tract on the Bible, 442 
 
 Botolph's town, Drayton on, 506 
 
 Bracton, 417, 430; follows Hoveden, 
 Glanville, and John Le Breton, 529, 
 551 ; cited by Selden, 540 
 
 Brandon, Charles, Duke of Suffolk, 
 Drayton on, 497, 499 
 
 Bray, Reginald, 324, 330 
 
 Bridget, Saint, 160 
 
 British History, no sources anterior to 
 Caesar, 524 ; defence of, by Sir John 
 Price, 398 ; British Kings ignored by 
 Polydore Vergil, 398, by Daniel, 400 ; 
 Arcadian deduction of British Monarchy 
 by Selden, 519 ; History of Britain by 
 Speed, 399. See Brute, Cole, Cymbe- 
 line, Drayton, Lear, Lucius, Molmutius, 
 Selden, Spenser, Vortigern 
 
 Brute, or Brito, the Trojan, conqueror 
 of Britain, 230-232, 370, 386, 391 ; de- 
 fence of, by Matthew Paris, 397 ; " no 
 such person " (John of Wheathamsted), 
 Stow on, 398 ; Speed on, 399 ; and 
 his Constitution, 405 ; Drayton on, 
 505 ; Spenser on, 511 ; taught in 17th 
 century, 542 
 
 Buchanan, George, 498 
 
 Burnet, Bishop, his Histories, 436 
 
 Bury St. Edmunds, hterary activity there, 
 204, 216, 217, 267 ; Council at, ij^ J 
 and Henry VH., 319. See Boston of 
 Bury, Edmund, Saint 
 
 Byzantine History, 528. <S^g Chalcondylas 
 
 Cade's, Jack, insurrection, 292, 420 
 Caesar, Julius, knew nothing of Canter- 
 bury, Bath, Carhsle, or Leicester ; 
 Polydore Vergil on, 233 ; and Arthurs- 
 hoffen, 519 ; no anterior sources of 
 English history (Selden), 524 
 Calendar, Reformation of the, 82 ; Sel- 
 den on Calendars, 547. See Easter 
 Calmet, 78 
 
 Calvin and Calvinists, 436, 465 
 
 Cambridge, beginning of Culture at, 11, 
 
 177 ; school founded by King Sigebert, 
 
 178, 243 ; churches and colleges 
 
 I erected, 225 ; older than Oxford, 248 ; 
 
572 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 (Spenser) 515 ; King's College founded 
 by Henry VI., 298; introduction of 
 printing, 382 ; foundation legends of, 
 
 565 
 
 Camden, and his " Britannia," 278, 399, 
 428, 498, 521, 522 
 
 Cannon, known to the French in 1480 . . 
 287 
 
 Canterbury, College at, 177 ; Robert of, 
 273; Archbishops of, succession of, 
 249 ; no authentic list of, 527. See 
 Anselm, Baldwin, Becket, Chicheley, 
 Lanfranc, Stigand, Theobald 
 
 Canute and the Benedictines, 254 
 
 Cassian and his Writings, 470, 481 
 
 Cassiodorus, of Calabria, 25, 56, 75, 442 
 
 Castello, Hadrian, 192, 321 ; Cardinal 
 (St. Chrysogonus), 322 
 
 Cathedrals. See Architecture 
 
 Catholic Emancipation, 419 
 
 Caxton and St. John's Guild, 198, 388 ; 
 facts negative as to his personality 
 according to Mr. Blades, 364 ; in the 
 secret of Chaucer's Works, 360, 377 ; 
 poverty in quantity and quality of 
 works issued, 377; "Game and Playe 
 of the Chesse," 365 ; "Troye," 364; 
 " English Chronicle," 369, 522 
 
 Chad, Saint, 491 
 
 Chalcondylas, Byzantine historian, his 
 picture of Britain, 222, 223, 519 ; on 
 Roland, 242 
 
 Charity, Praise of, 464 
 
 Charlemagne, 165, 176, 247 
 
 Charles I. and II., their reigns, 419 
 
 Chaucer, 198; the "Canterbury Tales," 
 265, 278, 358 ; a universal genius, 359 ; 
 national poet, 360 ; works collected and 
 printed, 360 ; an ideal personality, 361 ; 
 and the Caxton Guild, 377 
 
 Chertsey Monastery founded 7th century, 
 297 ; claim to be receptacle of the 
 remains of Henry VI., 425 
 
 Chester Cathedral, 246 
 
 Chicheley, Archbp., 289 
 
 Chief Justices, 415 ; Hugh de Bouch, 
 531 ; Glanville, 416, 529 ; Hengham, 
 
 417. 536 
 Chivalry, Romances of, 376. See Arthur, 
 
 Roland 
 Christ of the Gospels, the Christ of the 
 
 Church, 456 ; imperfectly drawn, 460 ; 
 
 ideas of the Perfect Man, 460 ; Chris- 
 
 tian Church, the Child of Judaism, 45- 
 48 ; Christian Scriptures deduced from 
 the Jewish, 75 ; not a literature dating 
 1300 or 1400 years before the Revival 
 of Letters, 553 
 
 Chronicles. See English, French 
 
 Chronology, 15, 16; necessity of, 96-113; 
 by Polydore Vergil, 232 ; Poetic, 
 "plausible fiction," 97. See Anno 
 Christi or Domini, Benedictine, Dating, 
 Dionysius Exiguus 
 
 Chrysoloras, 29, 189 
 
 Chrysostom, St., "John of the Golden 
 Mouth," 77 
 
 Cicero's "Republic," 185 ; " De Oratore," 
 printed at Subiaco, 191 ; " Letters," 
 printed Rome, 191; "Old Age" and 
 " Friendship," 1481, translated by 
 Tiptoft, 378 
 
 Classics, interpolating of, 85, 199 ; 
 revival of, 322 ; why not issued by 
 the Caxton Guild, 377 ; Classical 
 Education, humane and noble, 557 
 
 Clement, St., of Rome, 73, 74 
 
 Clergy, sole reporters, 321 ; subject to 
 lay jurisdiction, 542. See Benedictine 
 Monks, &c. 
 
 Cluny, seat of literary activity, 87 
 
 Coke and the Common Law, 249, 256, 
 413, 524 ; the " Institutes" attacked by 
 Prynne, 429 ; on Fortescue, 404, works 
 imputed to, 404 ; on title of Henry 
 VII., 432; on law reports before 
 Henry VIII., 429 
 
 Cole, King, of Colchester, 512 
 
 Colet, John, a second Apostle Paul, 186, 
 196 ; founds St. Paul's School, 225 ; 
 Erasmus on, 343 ; his expositions, 344 
 
 Collaboration of monks and scholars, 38, 
 74, 82, 85, 177, 194, " Bede" an illus- 
 tration, 213 ; in the " Fortescue Tracts," 
 
 403 
 Colman the Wise, Saxon " Chronicle " of, 
 
 349 
 Columban, Saint, 159, 161 ff. 
 Columbus, 156 ; at Salamanca, 132 
 Comines, Philip de, his " Chronicle,'' 
 
 387 ; on English Archers, 407 
 Communion, the Holy, 464 
 Confederacy of Custodians of the Christian 
 
 Archives, Mill on, 445 
 Constance, Council of, 281 
 Constantine, Helena and Invention of 
 
INDEX. 
 
 573 
 
 the Cross, 234 ; Donation of, 31 ; Bp. 
 
 Peacock on, 188 ; " Decretals," 443 
 Constantine of Scotland conquered by 
 
 Athelstan, 250 
 Constitution, English, 334 ; Tantalus 
 
 fable of, 420 ; laudation rather than 
 
 observance of, 404 ; no settled, in 
 
 middle of the i6th century, 501 ; 
 
 struggle for, by Hampden and others, 
 
 541 
 Cooper's "Chronicle," 394, 398, 522 
 Corbey, Monastery of, 'jt, 167, 444 ; New 
 
 Corbey, 81 
 Cornelius Agrippa and the Earl of Surrey, 
 
 498 
 Cornelius Nepos. See Joseph of Exeter 
 Cornish rising, 324 
 Cosmas Indicopleustes, his Christian 
 
 Topography, 129-132 
 Cotton, Sir Robert, 428 ; suspected of 
 
 sedition, 544 
 Creation a mystic event, 4, 5, 96 
 Cr^cy, battle of, 277, 287 
 Critical study, beginning of, 93, 400 
 
 et seq. 
 Cromwell, Thomas, Earl of Essex, 449, 
 
 451 ; his career, according to Drayton, 
 
 501, 502 ; one of the enigmas of English 
 
 history, 503 ; not mentioned by Poly- 
 
 dore Vergil, 504 
 Cross, Invention of, 234 
 Croyland Abbey and St. Guthlac, 243 ; 
 
 Monks of, 288 
 Crusades, 43, 85 ; William of Tyre and 
 
 Sigurd, &c., 117 ; Peter the Hermit, 
 
 romance of, 255, 353, 374 
 Culdees, called into existence by Boece, 
 
 238 
 Culture, Literary, not begun in England 
 
 until Tudor time, 226 
 Curfew, 258 ; abolished by Henry I., 416 
 Cuthbert, Saint, 246 ; his body carried 
 
 to Durham, 254; account of the death 
 of Bede, 357 
 Cymbehne, King, 233 ; died in London, 
 
 395 
 Cyprian, St., read by Colet, 343 
 Cyril, Patriarch, and Pococke, 548 
 
 Damiani, St. Peter, 70, 'jt, 153 
 Danes, or Daci, 246, 249, 253, 255 ; 
 Danish kings, Sweyn, 253 ; Canute, 
 
 254 ; Danish legislation, 414. See 
 
 Canute, Sweyn 
 Daniel, Book of, a source of Christology, 
 
 457. 461 
 Daniel, Samuel, as critic, 400 ; no better 
 
 than his predecessors, 401 
 Dante's " Divine Comedy," 66 ; Tosti on 
 
 date of MS., 67 
 Dares Phrygius "on the Trojan War," 
 
 352. 353 
 Dating other than by A.D. or A.C., 16, 
 
 17, 29 ; by Feasts of the Church, loi ; 
 
 of early books, 363. See Chronology 
 Decern Scriptores Anglici, 551 
 Denis, Saint, orDionysius.the Areopagite, 
 
 84, 92, 164 ; read by Colet, 343 
 Dionysius Exiguus, abbot, and the 
 
 Ecclesiastical Chronology, 15, 68, 75, 
 
 520, 521 
 Dome Book of Alfred, 414 
 Domesday Book, 260, 541 
 Douglas, Gavin, and the History of 
 
 Scotland, 235, 237, 263, 274 
 Drayton, Michael, on Robin Hood, 
 
 410; his "Baron's Wars," "Heroic 
 
 Epistles," 493, 494, 495 ; on Lancaster 
 
 and York, 497 ; on Thomas Cromwell, 
 
 501-504; "Polyolbion," 505; Selden 
 
 on, 507, and his " Illustrations of Dray- 
 ton," 518 et seq. 
 Dudley, Lord Guildford, 499 
 Dunstan, Saint, 43 ; an " ideal," 250, 251 ; 
 
 his time, 252 
 Durham, College at, 177 ; Cathedral, 
 
 246, 254 ; History of, by Simeon or 
 
 Tergotas, 551 
 
 Eadmer, edited by Selden, 539 
 
 Easter, 82 ; observed by St. Columban, 
 
 162 ; Bede on, 490 
 Ecclesiastical Heresies, 205 ; falsehood 
 
 and suppression, 435 
 Ecclesiastical Law and Jurisprudence, 78, 
 
 79 ; Canon law derived from the forged 
 
 Benedictine Decretum, 406 ; strife with 
 
 Civil or Roman Law, 414, 415 
 Edgar, King, and his fleet, 251 ; endows 
 
 Wilton, 252 ; projection of a digest, 
 
 414 
 Edmund, Saint, the Martyr, 243, 249 ; 
 
 legislator, 250 
 Edward the Confessor, 248 ; his laws, 
 
5 74 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 249, 256, 414, 524, 529 ; miracles of, 
 256 ; Charters of, 400 ; his Constitution 
 restored by Henry I., 416 
 
 Edward I., "The English Justinian," 
 268, 270, 272, 275, 416, 429, 431 ; Sir 
 M. Hale on, 417 ; inscription relating 
 to, in Westminster Abbey, 427 
 
 Edward H., 275, and Queen Isabel, 
 Drayton on, 494 
 
 Edward HI., reign of, 400 ; marvels of, 
 401 ; documents referred to, 408 ; sup- 
 posed Parliament Rolls of, 423 ; his 
 supposed sword at Westminster, 523 ; 
 title of Henry VII. traced to, 431 
 
 Edward IV., 295, 298-302 ; no true 
 record of, 374 ; tales of, 396 ; and Jane 
 Shore (Drayton), 497 ; Sonnet on, as- 
 cribed to Sidney, 517 ; Selden on, 532 
 
 Edward V., life of, attributed to More, 
 
 389 
 Edward VI., reign of, 418 
 Egbert, 249 ; James I., title traced to, 432 
 Elizabeth of York and Henry VII., 431 
 Elizabeth, Queen, her reign, 418 ; Court 
 
 patrons, 509 ; Spenser on her ancestry, 
 
 511 
 
 Ends, Actions, and Means, 482 
 
 England, the name, 249 ; topography of 
 (Higden's " Polychronicon "), 141 
 
 English Chronicles, 86, 277, 370; begun 
 to be read at the Inns of Court, when 
 the Wars of the Roses were drawing to 
 a close, 378 ; Selden on disorder in, 
 521. See Baker, Caxton, Colman, 
 Cooper, Decern, Fabian, Grafton, Hall, 
 Harding, Holinshed, Lanquet, Mat- 
 thew Paris, Monstrelet, William of 
 Malmesbury, &c. 
 
 English History before the Reformation 
 derived from the Monks, 85, 86 ; a 
 branch of Church History, 202, 552 ; 
 the poetic invention of the Tudor 
 period, 221, 250, 261, 389 ; its construc- 
 tion and analogy to historical legends 
 of Greece, 363, 395 ; begun in romanc- 
 ing and Story-telling in Tudor times, 
 as contemporary record, after Revolu- 
 tion of 1688 . . 422 ; English historians. 
 Poly dore Vergil on, 224 et infra; Poets 
 and Critics of, 493 et seq. See Caesar, 
 Daniel, Spenser, Selden, Tacitus, &c. 
 
 English Kings, Selden's Chronology of, 
 534. See also their respective names 
 
 English Law. See Coke, Fleta, Fortescue, 
 
 Littleton, Selden, &c. 
 English hterature higher in worth than 
 
 the sacred books of the Arabians, of 
 
 the Jews, or of the Monks, 454 
 English Monarchy, the titles to Scotland, 
 
 France, Normandy, Guienne, Poitou, 
 
 Anjou, Ireland, Leon and Castile, 394. 
 
 See British 
 English vanity flattered, French de- 
 preciated, 406 ei seq, 
 Erasmus, 184, 196, 320, 343 ; on Sir T. 
 
 More, 389 ; his Greek Testament, 445 ; 
 
 Conyers Middleton on, 447 ; edited 
 
 by Edwin Johnson, 561 
 Erfurt, Abbot of, on History, 87-91 
 Erpenius and " Eutychius," 546 
 Eugenius II., 165 ; Eugenius IV., 69 
 Eusebius Pamphili of Csesarea, and his 
 
 Church History, 84, 219, 227, 232, 467, 
 
 by Edwin Johnson, 565 
 Eusebius, Saint, of Cremona, 114 
 Eutychius, patriarch of Alexandria, his 
 
 " Ecclesiastical History," 546 
 
 Fabian, personally unknown, 390 ; his 
 
 Chronicle, 391, 398, 522 
 Fable, Fabrication, Falsehood, Fiction, 
 
 Fraud, creation, invention, suppression, 
 
 71, 74, 166, 189, 198, 201, 219, 268, 346, 
 
 394, 429, 430 ; Baxter on, 435 ; P alse- 
 
 hood, as hellebore, 483 
 Fathers, the, 73, 443 ; works not heard 
 
 of till late in the 15th century, 191 ; 
 
 little study of, 343. See Augustine, 
 
 Basil, Bede, Chrysostom, Gregory, 
 
 Isidore, Jerome, Lactantius, Origen, 
 
 Patristic Writings 
 Federici, Catalogue of, 66 
 Fielding's View of History, 36-38 
 Fisher, Bp. of Rochester, 225 ; Cardinal, 
 
 452 
 Fitzgerald family, 499 
 Fleta, "Commentary on English Law," 
 
 417, 430 ; published by Selden, 551 
 Fletcher, Phineas, " Purple Island," 509 
 Flodden Field, theories of, 498 
 Flood, the, and Noah's Ark, 142, 143 
 Florence of Worcester, 520, 521 
 Fordon, History of Scotland, 238, 239 
 Forest and Game Laws, 268, 415, 416, 
 
 527. 530, 542 
 
INDEX. 
 
 575 
 
 Forged Charters, 6i. See Magna 
 
 Fortescue, Sir John, and his "Tracts," 
 403 ; not known to Leland, 404 ; con- 
 temporary evidence antedated, 408 ; 
 Selden's notes on, 536 
 
 Fox, Richard, Bishop of Exeter, 314 ; 
 ambassador to Scotland, 321 
 
 Foxe, Chronicler, 373 
 
 Foxe, John, martyrologist, on printing, 
 380 ; ref. to, 396 ; on Tyndale, 448 ; 
 burning of the New Testament, 450 ; a 
 dubious authority, 451 
 
 France, retention of title to, by English 
 Sovereigns, 291 ; Zarephath of the 
 Hebrews, 44. See French 
 
 Franciscans, 14 ; attacked by Poggio, 
 187 ; at Canterbury, 268 ; privileges of, 
 327 ; and Henry VH., 337 
 
 Freeman's " History of the Norman Con- 
 quest," 261 ; William Rufus, 262 
 
 Freemasons, 49-51 
 
 French Chroniclers, 383 et seq. {see 
 Comines, Froissart, Gemblours, Mon- 
 strelet) ; French language fashionable at 
 time of early printing, 377 ; French 
 Schools, 163 et seq. ; French Wars, 277, 
 291 {see Agincourt, Crecy, Poictiers) ; 
 French and English compared, 405 
 
 Froissart's Chronicle, 276, 282, 374, 383 ; 
 his style, 384 ; miracles recorded, 385 
 
 Fulda, Chronicles produced there, 86 ; 
 Abbot of, see Rabanus Maurus 
 
 Fuller, Thomas, criticism of "Church 
 History," 61 ; on the Bacons, 112 ; on 
 Linacre, 197; on Bede's "History," 
 210 ; on Caxton, 364 ; Printing, 381 
 
 Galilee, 118, 119 
 
 Galileo and his discoveries, 555 
 
 Gall, Saint, 162 ; MSS. in Monasteries of, 
 187, 444 
 
 Gama, Vasco da, 156 
 
 Ganz, Rabbi, 18; his chronological 
 scheme, 99 
 
 Garter, Order of the, 277 
 
 Gemblours, Chronicle- of, 86 ; Monks of, 
 and Froissart, 384. See Sigebert 
 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth and his History, 
 108 ; Polydore Vergil on, 230 ; defended 
 by Leland, 347, 350, 356; used by 
 Rastell, 392 ; by Stow, 398 ; Petit on. 
 
 398 ; distaste for set in, 402 ; use of, by 
 
 Spenser, 511 
 Geography and Travel, 114 et seq. ; 
 
 dream geography, 118; Hereford Mappa 
 
 Mundi, 125-135 ; Cosmas, 129 et seq. ; 
 
 Edrisi, 137 et seq. 
 George, Saint, of England, 279 
 Gerbert, or Sylvester H., and Magic, 82 ; 
 
 pilgrimage of, 117 
 Germain, Saint, 164 ; his mission to 
 
 England, 241 ; and Vortigern, 150 ; 
 
 cloister of, 444 
 German Writers of Christian History, 
 
 554 ; Printers in Italy, B^aust, Hahn, 
 
 Pannartz, Sweynheim, 190 et seq. 
 Gervase of Tilbury, 126, 215, 398, 524 
 Gervase of Dover, 215 
 Giants in Gaul, 146 ; and in England, 
 
 147 ; St. Augustine on, 393 
 Gibbon on the Classics, 30, 199 ; on Chal- 
 
 condylas, 222 ; and Oxford, 247, 290 ; 
 
 "Gibbon and the History of Chris- 
 tianity," by Edwin Johnson, 565 
 Gildas of St. Albans, 29, 201, 234; his 
 
 history found and published 1525 . . 
 
 229 ; and supposed period ante-dated 
 
 1000 years, 203 ; Polydore Vergil on, 
 
 224, 229, 241 ; used by Fabian, 391 ; 
 
 by Rastell, 392 ; by Stow, 397 ; by 
 
 Matthew Paris, 398 ; Baker, 402 ; 
 
 Selden, 520 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, 398, 522 
 Glastonbury Abbey, 245, 254, 265 ; 
 
 Drayton on, 505. See Arthur, Joseph 
 
 of Arimathea 
 Gloucester, a fatal name, 290 ; Humphrey 
 
 of, 289 ; his library, 180 ; buried at St. 
 
 Albans, 290; Drayton on, 495 ; Robert 
 
 of, 531 
 Gospels, the, and Rule of St. Benedict, 
 73 ; Gospel of Luke derived in great 
 part from the Arabians and the Jews, 
 
 459 
 Gower's " Confessio Amantis," 375 
 Graetz, Dr., Jewish historian, 271 
 Grafton's "Chronicle," 373, 393, 394 
 Gratian, 442 ; Decretum of, exposed, 78, 
 
 79 
 
 Greathead (" Grosstete"), Robert, of Lin- 
 coln (and Friar Bacon), iii, 202, 351 
 
 Greek, Revival of, Aretino and others on, 
 28, 29, 30, 95, 189, 193, 228, 343 ; 
 Bentley and others on, 446; Greek 
 
576 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 MSS. not forthcoming in the East in 
 1631 . . 547 ; several hundred given by 
 Calixtus III. to Cardinal Isidore, 182 ; 
 Greek printing presses, 192, 193 ; 
 Greek scholars: Chrysoloras, George 
 of Trapezunt, Theodore of Gazas, 
 Bessarion, &c., 189 
 
 Greek Testament, i6th and 17th century 
 studies, 196 ; Linacreand, 197 ; various 
 readings, 444 ; Whitby, Bentley, Beza, 
 Middleton and Hardouin on, 445-448 
 
 Greene, Robert, poet, 508 
 
 Gregorovius, his " Rome in the Middle 
 Ages," 35, 36, 185, 190 
 
 Gregory, St., the Great, 75 ; his style 
 15th or i6th century, 76 ; the Christian 
 Seneca, 80 ; and Church Music, 83 ; 
 and Ecclesiastical History, 83, 91 ; was 
 he a Benedictine Monk ? 93 ; his Tale of 
 the Angles or "Angels," 229, 242; his 
 dialogues translated by Alfred the 
 Great, 246 
 
 Gregory of Tours, 56, 164 
 
 Gresham College, 106 
 
 Grey, Lady Jane, 499 ; Drayton on, 500 
 
 Grotius on the Mohammedans, 548 
 
 Grotta Ferrata, Greek Monks of, 64, 182, 
 189 
 
 Habeas Corpus Act, a second or third 
 
 Magna Carta, 419 
 Hakluyt's Voyages, 157 
 Hall's "Chronicle," 286, 392, 393, 448 
 Hallam, dependent upon Benedictine 
 Writers, 25 et seq. ; on the "Opus 
 Majus " and the "Novum Organum," 
 113 ; on P. Martyr Anghiera, 157 ; on 
 laws of Henry VII., 339 ; on Bacon, 
 433 ; his desire to discover traces of the 
 rise of English liberty foiled, 433 
 Hampden, John, 268, 539 ; defended by 
 
 Selden, 540 
 Handwriting, changes in style of, loi 
 Hanse League, the, 270 
 Harding's " Chronicle," 349, 393 
 Hardouin, his detection of Fraud in the 
 "Fathers," 58; Lowth's tribute to, 
 60 ; attack on Benedictine Archives, 92 ; 
 on the Paris Academy, 166 ; the ' ' Vul 
 gate" older than the Greek MSS., 447' 
 Translation of his " Prologomena 
 (MSS.), 564 V 
 
 ;t/' 
 
 Harold, King, 255 
 
 Harvey, Gabriel, friend of Spenser, 508 
 
 Hastings, battle of, 256 
 
 Hayward, Sir John, 401, 402 
 
 Hearne, antiquary, 112, 428 
 
 Hebrews never occupied Syria, 134 
 
 Hebrew language to be studied, 180; 
 Erasmus on, 343 ; no Hebrew scholar 
 in England time of Henry VIII., 356 ; 
 "The Mother Tongue of the W^orld " 
 (Gale), 454 
 
 Hebrew Antiquities, Selden on, 545 
 
 Hebrew Dictionary, /^;«/, Henry IV,, 356 
 
 Hebrew Scriptures, 44-46, 95 
 
 Hebrew Bible printed at Soncino about 
 i486. . 439 ; its meaning and worth, 440 
 
 Hebrew Literature, its origin, 440 
 
 Hebrew Rabbins, 537 ; High Priesthood 
 and Succession, 544. See Jews, 
 Josephus 
 
 Helena, Queen, tomb of, 115 ; and In- 
 vention (Discovery) of the Cross, 234 
 
 Hemeraeus, Claudius, Doctor of the Sor- 
 bonne, 164, 165, 171 
 
 Hengst and Horsa, 241, 249, 256, 512. 
 See Anglo-Saxons 
 
 Henry I., Parliament traced to, 265 ; his 
 charters, 400 ; restored Constitution of 
 Edward the Confessor, 416 
 
 Henry II. and Becket, 265, 524 ; and 
 Rosamond, 266 ; Drayton on, 494 
 
 Henry III., 268 
 
 Henry IV. and Lancastrian fictions, 284, 
 387; his quarrel with Warwick, 295. 
 See Roses 
 
 Henry VI., 289 ; restored, again de- 
 throned, and dies, 295 ; buried at 
 Windsor, 297 ; his character, 298 ; 
 Eton College, 298 ; said to have been 
 murdered by Richard III., 390 ; docu- 
 ments relating to his sepulture, 424 
 
 Henry VII. in Brittany, 298, 313 ; Bos- 
 worth Field, 315 ; and the settled 
 monarchy, 318 ; Lambert Simijel, 318, 
 and the Battle of Stoke, 320 ; Laws of, 
 327, 333, 339 ; his death and character, 
 336 ; his titles to the Crown, 339, 431 ; 
 and the religious houses, 372 ; alleged 
 extinction of the Constitution under 
 him, 418 ; history of, by Bacon, 431 ; 
 an Usurper, 431 ; Selden on, 523 
 Henry VIII, 's reign a period of strained 
 prerogative, 418 
 
INDEX. 
 
 577 
 
 Henry of Huntingdon, 215, 231, 354, 398, 
 528 
 
 Heralds, College of, 278 
 
 Hereford monastery, 444 ; " Mappa 
 Mundi," 125-135 
 
 Heresies, Arian, 205 ; Pelagian, 241 ; 
 Berengarius on the Eucharist, 262 
 
 Hermits of the Thebaid, 114 
 
 Herodotus, "a poet," 97 
 
 Higden's " Polychronicon," 136, 231, 
 371. 372, 392. 398. 522 
 
 Highways Privilege, Selden on, 526. See 
 Molmutius 
 
 History, Sacred, and Lives of the Saints, 
 83 ; Eusebius on, 84 ; Trithemius on, 
 84 ; Profane, 85 ; Abbot of Erfurt on 
 ignorance and writing of, 87-89; be- 
 ginning of History, 97 ; Monks incap- 
 able of writing, 128 ; Church History 
 criticised by Valla, 188 ; History, a 
 deduction from the past with Daniel, 
 402 ; as written by Party writers, 430 ; 
 Richard Baxter on, 435 ; History as 
 Allegory, 479 ; growing revolt against 
 Church teaching of History, 555. See 
 Chronicles, Ecclesiastical History, 
 English History, Fable, &c. 
 
 Holinshed's " Chronicle " and its sources, 
 238, 396, 397. 401. 522 
 
 Holy Places, visited by Saint Paula, 114, 
 115; book of, by Adamnan, 116; 
 legends of, in the Koran and Tabari, 
 134 (El Mocaddas), 138, 139. See 
 Crusades, Pilgrimages 
 
 Howard, Earl of Surrey, 498 
 
 Humanists, the, and the Monks, Poggio, 
 Valla, Ph. Villani, Paulus Jovius, 
 Gyrald, and others, 186-199 
 
 Hume's view of English History, 10, 11 ; 
 on Edward I. H. HI,, 274, 276, 277; 
 on battles of Cr6cy, Poictiers and Agin- 
 court, 287 ; on " bad Latin and worse 
 Logic," 290; on Bacon, 433 
 
 Iglac, Northumbrian professor, jj 
 Illustrious Men, Catalogues of, 355, 443 
 Ina, founder of Wells Cathedral, 244; 
 
 his laws of villeinage, 535 
 Incarnation, a mystic event, 5, 6, 99 ; 
 
 the aera fixed, 100 ; dating from, 104 ; 
 
 and beginning at some time subsequent 
 
 to typography, 363 
 
 India, 130, 136 
 
 Inns of Court flourishing when Oxford 
 and Cambridge mere boys' schools, 
 178 ; crude studies of laws beginning 
 at, 248, 267 ; and the Romance of the 
 Law, 403 et seq. ; cradles of the new- 
 born civility, 412 
 Ireland, Round Towers of, 160 ; Fabulous 
 Schools in, 160 ; Irish Chroniclers, see 
 Marianus ; peopled from Spain, 266 ; 
 Monks of, Benedictines, 163 ; Mission 
 of Miletus to Britain, 242 ; Irish Cul- 
 ture, 159 et seq. See SS. Bridget, 
 Columban, Patrick. 
 Isidore, St., of Seville, 25, 56, 126, 442- 
 Israel, Children of, i.e. the Muslim, 134 
 Italian Universities, 29 ; seats of learning : 
 Urbino, Padua, Ferrara, Pavia, 186, 
 247 ; and scholars : Bembo, Piccolomini, 
 Beroald, Aleander, Filelfo, P. Cortese, 
 Sadolet, Poggio, Valla, Bruni, Villani, 
 and others, 183-189 ; scholars in Eng- 
 land : Vitelli, Castello, etc., 192, 322; 
 painters, 190. See Humanists, Bembo, 
 Petrarch, Poggio, Polydore Vergil 
 
 James I. and the claim to absolute power, 
 418 ; and Privileges of Parliament, 539 
 
 Jerome, Saint, production and date of 
 his writings, 20, 21, 77 ; his visits to 
 Cyprus, &c., 114, 151; on "Mad 
 dogs" against the Church, 194, 202, 
 205; his "Garden of Sweets," 74; 
 " Epistles," 115 ; work on the Apostle's 
 Creed, printed at Oxford, 381 ; his 
 version of the Bible, 442 ; on " Catholic 
 Writers," 443 ; Bentley misled by, 445 ; 
 Westcott on, 444 
 
 Jerome of Prague, 187 
 
 Jerusalem or ^lia Capitolina, or El 
 Mocaddas, 125, 133; " Jerusalem " an 
 ideal city converted by Christians to a 
 geographical one, 135, 138 ; Godfrey 
 of Boulogne, 374. See Holy Places 
 
 Jerusalem above, means the Church of 
 Christ, 480 
 
 Jesuits and the Benedictines, 57, 92 ; and 
 printing, 380 
 
 Jesus Christ, "Fable" of, Leo X. and, 
 9, 71 ; the " Hebrew Boy," 185 
 
 Jews in Spain, 17 ; Rise of the Synagogue, 
 44 ; Jews a sect of the Muslim, 550 ; as 
 
 2 P 
 
578 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 a literary people are Europeans, 553 ; 
 tneir Jewries, 541 ; Polemic against the, 
 167 ; alleged coming in with William 
 the Conqueror, 357 ; and expulsion of, 
 from England, 271, 357; emancipa- 
 tion of, 419 ; Churches' War against, 
 458 ; Selden on, 537. See Hebrews, 
 Messiah, Rabbinical Writings, &c. 
 
 Jewish Chronology, 98, 438 ; Chronologers, 
 48 ; Calendar, 547 ; Historians, 18, 
 271 ; Criticism of the Church, 467 ; 
 Jewish Courts "before Moses" only 
 allegorically true, 551 ; Jewish Scholars 
 — Pfefferkorn, Reuchlin, 439 
 
 Joan, Pope, the " Englishman," 373 
 
 Joan of Arc, 287 
 
 John, King, 267 ; Tales about, 371, 372 ; 
 Selden's Apology for, 429. See Magna 
 
 John of Ghent, Henry VH.'s title traced 
 through, to Edward HI., 431 
 
 John, Saint, of Beverley, miracle of, 491 
 
 John (and Richard) of Hexham, 215, 216 
 
 John of Salisbury, Bp. of Chartres, 151, 
 
 524 
 John of Trittenheim. See Trithemius 
 John of Tynemouth, 217, 371 
 John of Wheathampstead (Joannes Fru- 
 
 mentarius) and his ' ' Granary, " 218, 220 ; 
 
 no such thing as " Brute," 398, 399 
 Jonson, Ben, noticed by Baker, 402 
 Joseph of Arimathea, 42, 220, 233, 245, 
 
 505. See Glastonbury 
 Joseph Iscan (of Exeter), mask of 
 
 "Cornelius Nepos," Poet, 352, 353, 
 
 520, 524, 540 
 Josephus, a book of Story, 99, 220, 544 
 Justinian, 546; Code of, 175; "the 
 
 English Justinian." See Edward I. 
 
 Kenelm, Saint, Martyr, 244 
 
 Kentish men, Drayton and Selden on, 
 
 534. 535 
 Kett and the Norfolk Rebels, 501 
 King's Prerogative, Sibthorp on, 539 ; 
 King's Sovereignty, Bp. Williams on, 
 
 542 
 Knighton, Henry, Canon of Leicester, 
 
 216, 276, 284 
 
 Lactantius on Antipodes, 132 ; his 
 book printed at Subiaco, 191. See 
 Fathers, 
 
 Lambarde's " Perambtilation of Kent,' 
 
 398; his "Archeion," 524 
 Lambecius, 366 
 Lancaster, House of. See Henry IV. 
 
 and Roses 
 Land Tenure, 416 
 Lanfranc, 26, 43, yj, 172, 173, 262. See 
 
 Bee, Canterbury 
 Langtoft, Peter, 371, 398 
 Langton, Stephen, 527 ; and K. John, 529 
 Lanquet's " Chronicle," 394, 398, 522 
 Latimer, Hugh, 280, 396 ; and English 
 
 bowmen, 407 ; on Robin Hood, 409 
 Latimer, Wm., 196 
 Latin, Monkish, 26-28, 95, 102 ; Classics, 
 
 revival of, 322 ; Cornelius Vitellius first 
 
 teacher of, at Oxford, 226 ; Virgil, use 
 
 of his name, 369 
 Latin Bible or Bibles, new at beginning 
 
 of i6th century, 441 ; cannot be referred 
 
 to earlier period than 1^80-1520. . 444. 
 
 See Vulgate 
 Laud, Pococke and the Arabic Lecture, 
 
 547 
 
 Law, Faculty of, in France, 169 
 
 Laws of England, 256, 326; sources of, 
 413-417 ; Chancellors and the Ex- 
 chequer, 259 ; list of, 404 ; Courts of 
 Justices, 415 ; Chief Justices, 415 ; 
 Statute of Fines, 433 ; Law Reporters 
 said to have been appointed time of 
 James L, 429 ; Reports of Kehog, 398 ; 
 Law Studies in England, 176, 248 ; 
 beginning, 332. See Inns of Court, 
 402 et seq. Alfred, Coke, Edgar, 
 Edward the Confessor, Edward L, 
 Fortescue, Fleta, Forest and Game 
 Laws, Glanville, Henry VII., Littleton, 
 Mortmain, &c. 
 
 Lear, or Leyre, King, 232, 395 ; Spenser 
 on, 512 
 
 Leland, John, 87, 105, 107, 177, 197, 
 200; on "Grosstete," or Greathead, 
 202 n., 204, 346-362; notice of Bede, 
 210, 212, 215, 240, 248, 270 ; his educa- 
 tion, 346 ; appointed librarian by Henry 
 VIII. ; his literary tour, 347 ; his death, 
 348 ; his " Commentaries " pass to John 
 Bale, 348 ; praised by Mayhew, 348 ; 
 published by Antony Hall in 1709 . . 
 348 ; John Tiptoft, 378, 379 
 
 Leo X. and the " Christian " Fable, 9, 
 71 ; accumulation of books, 184 ; 
 
INDEX. 
 
 579 
 
 Oration on, 1735 . . 185 ; his Greek Press, 
 193; Rationalism at his Court, 194, 
 
 195, 227 
 
 Lessing and the "Three Kings," 194 
 
 Liberty, attained to adult maturity in 
 Victorian times, 420 
 
 Libraries in Rome, 68, and in Florence, 
 181 etseq. ; Inghirami, Vatican librarian 
 and beginning of Papal Archives, 184, 
 and literature, 185 ; English, 178 ; 
 scanty contents of, end of 15th century, 
 345 ; of Religious Houses in England, 
 201; Carmelite Library (Dr. Wallden's), 
 349 ; at Evesham, Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, visited by Leland, 350. See 
 Bale, Pamphilius, 444; Photius, 129, 
 ' 190 ; Pits, Polydore Vergil 
 
 Lightfoot, John, 545 ; his enthusiasm in 
 Rabbinical lore. &c., 550 
 
 Lily, John, Abbot of Abingdon, am- 
 bassador to France, 321 
 
 Lily, Wm., classical master, St. Paul's 
 School, 196, 226, 346 
 
 Lindisfarne, literary activity at, 444 
 
 Literature, Monastic, not begun in 
 England until Tudor time (1480-1520), 
 
 196, 226 
 
 Littleton, "Tenures," 413 
 
 Lloyd, Bp. , on Boece and Scottish Kings, 
 
 239 
 
 London, the city, guilds, etc., 267; 
 History of, by Fabian, 391, and Stow, 
 391 ; nothing recorded of its antiquities 
 before the invention of printing, 392 ; 
 Drayton on, 506 ; King Lud, 233, 395, 
 512 ; its bounds to be limited by Brute, 
 in Spenser, 513 
 
 Louis XL, the dark tales concerning, 
 336, 388 ; Scott on, 407 
 
 Lucius, King, 233; alleged founder of 
 Westminster, 427; and "Sanctuary," 
 525 ; Spenser on, 512 
 
 Lupus, Saint, of Troyes, his mission to 
 England, 241 
 
 Luther, 9 ; his discovery of the Bible, 12, 
 91, 468 ; Biblical Professor, 167 ; 
 spiritual child of St. Augustine, 21, 58 ; 
 and St. Paul, 462, 468 ; and Transub- 
 stantiation, 465 ; Lutheran books for- 
 bidden, 78 
 
 Lydgate, 216, and the Caxton Guild, 377 
 
 Mabillon, 57, 58, 62, 86, 91, 92, n6. 
 
 See Maur, St., Monks of 
 Macaulay quoted on fabrication in the 
 
 " Records," 429; on Party Historians, 
 
 430 
 Macbeth of Scotland, 251, 258, 523 
 Machiavelli, Writings ascribed to, 194, 
 
 195 
 " Mad dogs against Christ," 194 ; " Mad 
 
 Oriental against the Church," 205 
 Magic and the Benedictines, 82 ; the 
 
 Three Magi, 82 
 Magna Carta, 215, 268, 272, 396, 409, 
 416 ; begins to be observed, 417 ; its 
 origin, 420 ; " discovered" late in i6th 
 century, 421 ; linked with the Petition 
 of Right, 434, 540 ; Selden on error in, 
 527 ; King John's Two Charters, 529, 
 and Pope Innocent, 530 ; referred to in 
 trial of Hampden, 1627.. 540; and 
 privileges of clergy, 542 ; Original roll 
 not extant, 1627 . . 542. See John 
 Maimonides, 44, 45, 544, 546, 553 
 Major's Scotch Chronicle, 232,g^:5§u. 371 
 Malcolm, 263 ; wedded to Margaret, 
 daughter of Edward the Outlaw, 
 through whom title of James I^traced, 
 432 
 Manuscripts said to have been given away 
 by Calixtus HL, 182, 183 ; alleged 
 discovery of MSS, by Poggio, 187. 
 Antiquarii, or Keepers of, 94. See 
 Books, Libraries 
 Maps of the "Middle Ages," 123-135. 
 
 See Geography 
 Marco Polo, 117 
 Margaret of Anjou, 289 
 Margaret of Burgundy, plots against 
 Henry VH., 319, 322, 323. Patron of 
 Caxton, 365 
 Margaret, Lady, Beaufort, Countess of 
 
 Richmond, 225, 341-343 
 Margaret of Salisbury, last of Plantagenet 
 
 name, 533 
 Margaret Tudor, Princess betrothed to 
 James of Scotland, 325 ; wedded, 329 ; 
 James L , title to English throne traced 
 through, 432 
 Mariana's History of Spain, 156 
 Marianus Scotus, his Irish Chronicle, 161, 
 396 ; an epitome of Robert of Lorraine 
 copied by "Florence of Worcester," 
 520 
 
58o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Martia, Queen, and her Laws, 233 
 
 Martin, Saint, and the birds, 151 
 
 Martin v., 68 
 
 Martyn, Sir H., against restraint of 
 preaching, 542 
 
 Marvels, appetite for, 145 ; in the 
 Chroniclers, 394, 401 
 
 Mary, Queen, reign of, 418 
 
 Mathematics, Regiomontanus, Greaves, 
 Sacrobosco, &c., 82, 105 
 
 Matilda of Flanders, 265 
 
 Matthew^ Paris, 86, 102, 215, 371 ; not 
 known to Fabian, 391 ; or Grafton, 
 394, 396 ; his " Golden History," 397 ; 
 authority for Stow, 397, 398 ; perhaps 
 for Daniel, 400 ; and Magna Carta, 
 421; gaps in "Records" filled up 
 from, 423 ; and religious conditions, 
 i6th century, 469; on question of 
 Liberties, 524 ; Selden on, 527, 529, 531, 
 
 532 
 
 "Matthew of Westminster," 86, 204, 398 
 
 Maundeville and his book, 1 17-122 
 
 Maur, St. , Benedictines of, 26, 29, 56 ; 
 their work " L'Art de Verifier les 
 Dates," 100. See Mabillon, Mont- 
 faucon 
 
 Medicine, and Medical Monks, Alchemy, 
 Paracelsus, &c. , 81, 82; Medical 
 Art introduced into Italy by the 
 Mohammedans, 81; School at Salerno, 
 81 ; Faculty of Medicine, France, 169 
 
 Merlin, 108, 230, 523 ; Drayton on, 506 ; 
 in Spenser, 513 
 
 Merton College, Rolls of, 102; Wiclif 
 associated with, 102 ; fable of its 
 foundation, no, 270; probably in the 
 " Chaucer" secret, 360 
 
 Messiah of the Jews, 98 ; of the Monks, 
 
 99 
 
 Middle or Dark Ages, 3 
 
 Milman's " Latin Christianity," 35 
 
 Minsters, Age of the, 40, 41, 51, 53. 
 Ely, 244. See Architecture, West- 
 minster,: York 
 
 Mohammedans misrepresented by 
 Grotius, 548; justice done to them 
 by Pococke, 549 ; Bunyan on their 
 sincerity, 549; their Chronology, 98; 
 Moslem history constructive, 7 ; Moza- 
 rabic liturgy, 54 
 
 Molmutius, King, legislator on highways, 
 233. 413. 512, 513. 525-527 
 
 Monasteries, centres of sedition under 
 Henry VH., 330; and the New Testa- 
 ment, 470-492; Dugdale's " Monas- 
 ticon," 61 
 
 Monks and mock antiquities, 103 ; Her- 
 mits, 114 ; power of, over Nature, 148, 
 149, and wild animals, 149-153 ; 
 satire on, by Polydore Vergil, 247, 250 ; 
 hatred of women, 251 ; greed and 
 ambition, 252; "idle monks and 
 wanton canons," 376 ; their mendacity 
 reflected in the History of Robin Hood, 
 412 ; Selden on inconsistencies in 
 Monkish tales, 530, 531 ; Soames on 
 coming of St. Dunstan and Monks in 
 loth century, 43 ; Montalembert on 
 " Monks of the West," 34 
 
 Monstrelet's "Chronicle," 286, 387 
 
 Monstrosities, tailed men, &c., 127, 128, 
 143, 144, 146. See Giants, Pigmies 
 
 Monte Cassino, fortress-monastery of, 
 42. 53i 56 ; headquarters of the Chris- 
 tian Spiritual Army, 64, 66, 69 ; in the 
 16th century, 70 ; Englishmen at, 70 ; 
 and the Medical School of Salerno, 
 81 ; literary effort, 83 ; Chronicle of, 
 86, 175 ; catalogue of books, 183 ; 
 literary activity at, 189 
 
 Montfaucon, 57, 58, 66, 93 
 
 Moors in Spain, 17, 30 
 
 More, Sir Thomas, the gentle and hu- 
 mane, 452; and the "Utopia," 197; 
 Polydore Vergil and Erasmus on, 389 ; 
 and the lives of Edward V. and 
 Richard HL, 389 ; and Tyndale's New 
 Testament, 450 
 
 Mortmain, law of, 272 
 
 Morton, Cardinal and Bp. , 309 ; Chan- 
 cellor, 321, 324 ; his death, 330 
 
 Music, Church, traced to St. Benedict, 83 
 
 NAZARi«EANS, military confederation and 
 their settlements, 222 
 
 Nennius, and his history, a forgery, 206, 
 207 ; Leland on, 354 ; authority for 
 Matthew Paris, 398 ; Selden on, 520 
 
 New Testament constructed, 46 ; why 
 not issued by the Caxton Guild, 377 ; 
 in the Light of the Revival, 456 etseq. ; 
 Acts of Apostles, 545 ; conceived in the 
 Monasteries, 547; Epistles, Diversity 
 of Opinions and desired Order and 
 
INDEX. 
 
 581 
 
 Unity of the Epistles, 463 ; Tyndale's 
 New Testament, 449 ; its results, 452 ; 
 Gospels and the Apostle, in course of 
 growth during the early i6th century, 
 470 ; structure of the Apostolic Text, 
 472 ; and the Monasteries, 453, 470-492 ; 
 a Book of Precedents, 489 ; written by 
 Jews, Lightfoot's Commentaries, 550. 
 Sec Acts, Bible, Gospels 
 
 Nobles, turbulent times of, still fresh at 
 beginning of 17th century, 405 
 
 Normans : Rollo, 246 ; tales of the, 254, 
 255. 394. 401 ; Norman Laws, 259, 
 415 ; Normans and Plantagenet charac- 
 ters do not essentially differ from the 
 Elizabethans, 501 ; Norman name 
 changed in English, 249 
 
 Normandy, Robert of, 256 ; loss of Nor- 
 mandy and Aquitaine, 291 
 
 Oaths, obligation of, 486, 487 
 Ofia, King of the Mercians, 243 
 Origen, read by Colet, 343 ; alleged 
 translation of his "Magdalen" by 
 Chaucer, 360 
 Ossian, 160 
 
 Outlawry, 334, 408. See Robin Hood 
 Oxford, beginning of Culture at, 11, 176 ; 
 libraries, Duke Humphrey's, Bodley's, 
 68 ; Magdalen College and Falstaff, 
 103 ; Brasenose, 112, 125 ; Corpus, 
 io3» 547 ; Durham, 178 ; Adam Eston, 
 177 ; Saint Frideswide, 245 ; School 
 founded by St. Neot, 247 ; College 
 founded by Chancellor Wm. Marton, 
 268 ; censure on Monks at, 247, 290 ; 
 Balliol College, 272 ; founding of All 
 Souls and St. Bernard's convents, 289 ; 
 College building, middle of 15th cen- 
 tury, 290 ; Magdalen by Waynflete, 
 290 ; introduction of printing, 381, 382 ; 
 Grecklade, Lechlade, or Creclade, 
 original of Oxford, 505 ; foundation 
 legends of, 564. See Merton 
 
 Painting, Church, 83 ; Portrait, 340 
 
 Paradise, situation of, 126, 136 
 
 Parchments, alleged destruction of libra- 
 ries for, 182 
 
 Paris schools and scholars : Alcuin, 
 Rabanus, Lupus of Ferrieres, vEneas, 
 Eric of Auxerre, Remy, Odo of Cluny, 
 
 Launoy, Peter of Blois, Peter the 
 Eater, Peter Lombard, and others, 
 163-167, 247 ; Canons of St. Victor, 168 
 Parliament, origin of, 265 ; supposed 
 precedents of, 103 ; Selden on Privileges 
 of, 538, 544 ; King's Prerogative, 539 ; 
 King's Sovereignty, 542 
 Paston Letters, lot, 103 
 Patrick, Saint, and Ireland, 160 
 Patristic Writings, came to light during 
 i6th century, 12, 13, 93 ; Hardouin on, 
 
 166, 167. See Fathers 
 
 Paul, the Apostle of the Benedictines, 14, 
 21, 80; literary apostle, 180 ; Paul and 
 Colet, 186 ; each lover of St. Paul has 
 his own Paul, 461 ; Pauline Allegory, 
 466 ; Paul and Luther, 468 ; example 
 of, 484 et seq. ; The Pauline Epistles, 
 
 565 
 
 Paul the Deacon, writes of Anglo-Saxons 
 at Monte Cassino, 70, 241 
 
 Paulinus, Saint, Antioch, 114; baptizes 
 Edwin and his people, 490 
 
 Persecution under Diocletian, and Martyrs 
 in Britain, 205 
 
 Peter, Saint, 14 ; Peter's Pence, institu- 
 tion of, 243, 245; Polydore Vergil 
 collector of, 226, 245 
 
 Peter Martyr Anghiera, 157 
 
 Peter of Poictiers, Works imputed to, 80, 
 
 167, 171, 406 
 
 Petition of Right, a second Magna 
 Carta, 419, 434 ; Selden on, 540, 542 
 
 Petrarch, his date, 27, 28 
 
 Philip, Abbot of Good Hope, 166, 175 
 
 Photius, his " Library," 129, 190 
 
 Picts, 512, 520 
 
 Piers Ploughman's invectives, 503 
 
 Pigmies, 127, 143, 145 
 
 Pilgrimages of St. Jerome, St. Antoninus, 
 Arculf, Adaranan, Willibald, Frot- 
 man, Saewulf, and others, 115-122; 
 Rabbins go on, 134 ; Nazarenes, 138 ; 
 Tiptoft to Jerusalem, 379. See Cru- 
 sades, Holy Places, &c. 
 
 Pits, biographer, iii, 200, 348, 404, 536 
 
 Pius IL, 183 ; Pius HL, 335 
 
 Plague and Pestilence, 328, 333 
 
 Platina, librarian to Sixtus IV., 35, 183 
 
 Pliny, used by Polydore, 228 
 
 Pococke, his travels, and study of 
 Oriental literature, 122, 454, 545, 547 
 et seq. ; publishes " Abulfaragius," 546 
 
582 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Poggio, scholar and critic, 28, 71, 182 ; 
 his " History of the Florentine Re- 
 public," 187 
 
 Pole, William de la, Duke of Suffolk, his 
 fall, 292 ; Drayton on, 496, 499 
 
 Polydore Vergil, Archdeacon of Wells, 
 245 ; quoted, title page, pref. vii, 
 107, 186, 192, 197, 204, 210 ; his 
 personality, 224 ; collector of Peter's 
 Pence, 226 ; as critic, 227 ; analysis of 
 his " Anghcan History," 227 et seq. ; 
 on Arthur, 242 ; on the Monks, 247, 
 251 ; on Sir T. More, 389 ; strikes out 
 sixty British Princes, 398 ; on Henry 
 Vni/s innovations in Religion, 452 ; 
 his authorities of recent origin, 519 ; 
 errors in, 519 ; Leland against Poly- 
 dore Vergil, 347 ; Selden on, 532 
 
 Popes, the, grand-caliphs of the Na- 
 zaraeans, 56; their "Lives," 83; 
 beginning of Papal literature, 184 ; 
 Papal biographies, 35 ; no authentic 
 list of Popes, 527. See Alexander VL, 
 Barbo, Boniface VHI,, Gerbert, Joan, 
 Leo X., Pius n., HI., Sixtus IV., &c. 
 
 Porphyry, 114 ; " A mad dog," 194 ; "A 
 Mad Oriental against the Church," 205 
 
 Poverty, Praise of, 458 
 
 " Praemunire," 417, 502 
 
 Preaching, Bill to restrain tumultuous, 542 
 
 Prideaux, Dr. Humphry, his Oriental 
 Studies, 454 ; " Life of Mahomet," 550 
 
 Printing Press, early printed books in 
 Rome, 190, Subiaco, &c. , 192 ; in 
 England, 363, 382 ; secrecy of, 365 ; 
 under ecclesiastical censorship, 378 ; 
 reminiscences of, by Shakespeare, Lord 
 Herbert, Foxe, Stow, 380 ; Atkins on, 
 1664. . 381 ; at Oxford, 381, 382 ; at 
 Cambridge, 382. See Books, Greek 
 Testament, New Testament, Vulgate, 
 &c. 
 
 " Providence would have it so" (Comines), 
 
 387 
 Prynne, on forgery of Records, 423 ; on 
 
 Coke's " Institutes," 429 
 Ptolemy's Astronomy, 105 ; Geography, 
 
 228 
 Puritan fanatics and Pococke, 549 
 Pyramids, barns of Joseph, 120 
 Pyrrhus, learned monk, 68 
 
 QuiNET, on the Era of the Church, 193 
 Quirinus, Cardinal, "Diatribe" of, 187; 
 on Burnet's " Reformation," 436 
 
 Rabanus Maurus, Abbot of Fulda, ^j, 
 126, 165 
 
 Rabbinical learning, Selden's use and 
 appreciation of, 537, 545 ; Lightfoot's 
 enthusiasm in, 550 ; Early Rabbins 
 pupils of the Arabians, 550. See Jews, 
 Zacuto 
 
 Rabelais, 352 ; on Bede, 358 ; discoveries 
 of, 520 ; books in the Library of St. 
 Victor, 522 
 
 Ralph de Diceto, works imputed to, 214, 
 406 
 
 Ramsey Abbey, 254 ; records of, 102 
 
 Ranulph of Chester, 398, 414, 528 
 
 Rastell, John, his " Pastime of the 
 People," 392 
 
 Readers, paucity of, 352 ; of Latin and 
 Greek, 192 ; of English in time of 
 Caxton, 378 
 
 Rebellion, the Great, 419 
 
 Records, the English, none authentic 
 before Tudor times, 104, 424 ; dating 
 of, loi ; Strype on, 274 ; alleged digest 
 of, by Wm. Bowyer in 1567 . . 423 ; Rolls 
 Chapel, 424 ; in the Chapter House, 
 Westminster, 428 ; Macaulay on fabri- 
 cation in, 429 ; Selden charged with 
 erasing, 547 ; appointed Keeper of, 
 547, See Antiquaries, Libraries 
 
 Registers of Births and Deaths not kept 
 till after the Council of Trent, 19 
 
 Rentha, King of Scots, 300 B.C., 519 
 
 " Return from Parnassus," 509 
 
 Revolution of 1688 . . 419 
 
 Rich, denunciation of the, 458 
 
 Richard II., tales of his time, a mirror of 
 that of the Tudors, 282, 284 ; Richard 
 and Isabel, Drayton on, 495 
 
 Richard III., 147, 293, 297; portrait of, 
 302 ; divination of his heart, 303 ; his 
 proceedings, 306 ; a drama, 309 ; 
 further details, 313 ; Bosworth Field, 
 315 ; George Buck and Horace Wal- 
 pole on, 316; Comines on, 388 ; More 
 on, 389 ; Buck and Polydore Vergil 
 on, 390 ; Fabian, 391 ; Drayton on, 
 496 ; at Bosworth Field, 491 ; Selden 
 on, 532 
 
INDEX. 
 
 583 
 
 Robert of Lorraine, 520, 521 
 
 Robin Hood and outlaws, 258, 407-412 ; 
 Drayton on, 506 
 
 Rochefoucauld, 554 
 
 Roger of Hoveden, 215, 358, 398, 414, 
 524, 528, 529 
 
 Roger of Wendover, 215 
 
 Rogers, Thorold, on dating of records, 
 loi, 102 
 
 Roland, 242 
 
 Rome, foundation of, 97 ; Roman build- 
 ings described by Adamnan as intact, 
 J16 
 
 Roman or Civil Law taught by Vacarius 
 of Bee, 79 ; Codes of Theodosius and 
 Justinian, 175; statements regarding 
 its introduction into England in the 
 i2th century, 414 
 
 Roman religion and virtue contrasted 
 with the monastic system, 195 ; Uni- 
 versity established at St. Eustachio, 
 1431, George of Trapezunt and Pico 
 of Mirandola teach there, 181, 189 
 
 Roses, Wars of the, 40, 293 ; battles 
 of St. Albans, 293, Towton, 294, Bos- 
 worth, 315, Stoke, 320 ; violent times, 
 more violent language, 371,417; Union 
 of, 318 ; literary fictions on subject, 
 340, 388 ; Selden on, 532. See Lan- 
 caster, York 
 
 Ross, or Rowse, John, writer on Warwick 
 and Cambridge, d. 1491 .. 354, 355 
 
 Rymer and his " Foedera," 274, 394; and 
 Westminster Chapter House Records 
 
 Sacrobosco, or Holybush, or HaHfax, 
 his "Ecclesiastical Compute," 105; 
 prefaced by Melanchthon, 106, 107 
 
 Salisbury, 262 ; Sarum Service, 262 
 
 Sanctuary, right of, 525 ; license taken 
 away, 525, 526 ; repealed, 525 ; of 
 Ecclesiastical origin, 525 ; Selden seems 
 to be uncertain if the privilege in force 
 or not, 526 
 
 Saxo-Grammaticus, 246, 253 
 
 Scaliger and Chronology, 16, 99 
 
 Scholastic invective and scurrility, 168 ; 
 the Scholastic Age, 43 
 
 Scots, legendary origin, 235 ; descended 
 from Scota, daughter of Pharaoh, 370 ; 
 Scottish History, 235, 393, 512, 520; | 
 
 Hume on, 274. See Boece, Gavin 
 Douglas, Major 
 
 Scotland, Fable of England's Supremacy 
 over, 250, 326, 393 ; her kings, 251. 
 See James, Macbeth, Malcolm, Mar- 
 garet, &c. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, his "Abbot" and 
 "Monastery," 38; on English archers, 
 407; on Louis XL, 407 
 
 Selden, 106, 171, 176, 249, 255, 404, 413, 
 428, 493 ; on Drayton's " Polyolbion," 
 507 ; as critic of monkish writers, 519 ; 
 on the "Arcadian" deduction of 
 British monarchy, 519 ; on the Diony- 
 sian chronology, 521 ; unable to divest 
 his mind from massive load of fable, 
 522 ; his "Janus Anglorum," 524 ; on 
 Polydore Vergil, 532; his "Titles of 
 Honour," 536; "Syrian Gods," 536; 
 "Tithes," 537; on Birthday of Christ 
 and his difficulties with the bishops, 
 538; on the privileges of Parliament 
 538 ; sent to prison, 538 ; his edition of 
 " Eadmer," 539; on the King's Pre- 
 rogative, 539 ; defends Hampden, 540 ; 
 the Petition of Right, 540 ; on Military 
 Force, 541 ; King's Sovereignty, 542 ; 
 in the Tower, 543 ; on Hebrew Legisla- 
 tion, 544 ; in Star Chamber, 544 ; in 
 King's Bench, freed in 1634.. 545; 
 Bulstrode Whitlocke on, 546 ; his 
 " Ecclesiastical History," 546 ; ap- 
 pointed Keeper of the Records, 547 ; on 
 the Civil Years and the Calendars, 547 ; 
 published Fleta's "Commentaries" 
 and other works, 551 ; death, 551 
 
 Sepharad, or Spain, 44, 565 
 
 Septuagint, cited by Dr. Benedict, 72 ; 
 fable of, 442 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, the Benedictine 
 philosophy, 80 
 
 Shakespeare, 287 ; his reminiscences of 
 printing, 380 ; noticed in Baker's 
 "Chronicle," 402; Falstaff, 103. See 
 Henry VL, Richard HL, &c. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Phihp, on Chaucer, 361 ; his 
 " Arcadia " and other writings produced 
 in the Inns of Court, 515 ; Horace 
 Walpole on, 516 
 
 Sigebert of Gemblours, 175, 397, 398 ; his 
 Catalogue of Writers, 209 
 
 Simeon of Durham, 215, 358, 398 ; his 
 History, 551 
 
584 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Simnel, Lambert, the Pretender, 318, 320 
 Simon, Father, the Oratorian, 78 
 Sinai and Church of St. Catherine, 120 
 Sixtus IV., his Hbrary, 183; and German 
 
 printers, 191. See Platina 
 Spenser and Chaucer, no gulf between, 
 
 508 ; the names mask unknown poets, 
 
 508 ; the " Faerie Queene," 509 et set/. 
 
 See Chaucer 
 Stanley's Memorials of Westminster 
 
 Abbey, 52, 53, 427 
 Star Chamber, 418, 430, 433 ; proclaims 
 
 Tyndale's New Testament, 450 ; Selden 
 
 in the, 544 
 Stephen, King, 265 
 Stigand, Abp. of Canterbury, 260, 535 
 Stonehenge, Drayton on, 505, 512 
 Stow, antiquary, 428 ; on printing, 380 ; 
 
 his " Survey of London," 391 ; 
 
 "Annals," and Howes' "Continua- 
 tion," 397; and authorities, 398; on 
 
 Tower of London, 422 
 Strype, 423 ; on the Records, 274 ; on 
 
 Bowyer's digest of them, 1567 . . 423 
 Stubbs' Constitutional History, 261 
 Subiaco, a hterary and typographical 
 
 centre, 42, 64, 189, 191 
 Sulpicius Severus, a French monk, 151 
 
 Tabari, Chronicle of, 134 
 
 Tacitus' "Annals," 184, edited by 
 Beroald, 185 ; Tertullian on, 220 ; used 
 by Polydore Vergil, 228 ; no mention 
 of London, 233 ; authority for Selden, 
 520 
 
 Talmud, came to light during i6th cen- 
 tury, 12, 13 ; first printed 1520 . . 439 ; 
 referred to by Selden, 546 
 
 Tanner, Bp., his " Bibliotheca Britannico- 
 Hibernica," 200, 442 
 
 Testimony the function of the individual, 
 not of the corporation, 8, 10 
 
 Theobald of Bee and Canterbury, 176 
 
 Theology taught under the form of Bio- 
 graphy, 76 
 
 Thierry's Norman Conquest, 261 
 
 Thomas of Aquino, 64, 65 ; in the 
 " Divine Comedy," 66; the " Summa," 
 167 ; written against by Henry of 
 Ghent, defended by Robert de Oxford, 
 217 ; Wolsey a Thomist, 216 
 
 Thomases, the Three, 67 
 
 Thorn, Wm., of Canterbury, 216 
 
 Tiler's, Wat, insurrection, 283, 420 
 
 Tilly, monk of Dover, 197 
 
 Tiptoft, translator of Cicero, 378 ; pilgrim- 
 age to Jerusalem, &c., 379 
 
 Tonnage and Poundage, 543 
 
 Tonstall, Bp., and Tyndale, 449 
 
 Torquemada, 189, 191 
 
 Tower of London and the Records, 422, 
 424 
 
 Transubstantiation, Luther, Calvin, and 
 Zwingle on, 465 
 
 Trent, Council of, 78 
 
 Trials by Ordeal, Combat, Wager, and 
 Jury, 255, 415, 416, 519 
 
 Trithemius, Abbot of Spanheim, 68, 77, 
 81 ; Paracelsus indebted to, 82 ; and 
 Magic, 82 ; master of Ecclesiastical 
 History, 84 ; his " Annals of Hirschau," 
 86 ; his Catalogue, 87 ; catalogues the 
 " Philobiblion," 179; notice of Bede, 
 210-212 ; authority for Cassian, 471 
 
 Trivet's " Annals," 268 ; quoted, 401 
 
 Troy, Siege of, 97; Caxton's "Troye," 
 
 364 
 
 Truthfulness, absolute statements for- 
 bidden, 482. See Fable, &c. 
 
 Tudor, or Tyder family, their history and 
 relationships, 288 ; titles and pedigrees, 
 507 ; Drayton on, 495 ; Merlin and 
 Spenser on, 513 ; Selden on, 534 
 
 Turks threatening the West, 255, 329 
 
 Tyndale, personality of, 448 ; his New 
 Testament, 449 ; corrected by George 
 Joy, 449 ; Wilkins on, 450 ; his fate, 
 451 
 
 Ursula, Saint, and the "Seven Thou- 
 sand Virgins " explained, 375 
 
 Usher, Abp., on the "Age of the World," 
 99, 106 
 
 Valla, Laurence, his period and criti- 
 
 cisims, 9, 28, 31, 71, 182, 188 
 Veracity, question of, 482 ; must yield to 
 
 Charity, 484 
 " Verisimilia," author of, quoted, 460, 
 
 463, 464, 465, 466 
 Vespucci, 156 
 Victor, Saint, Canons of, 168 ; Hugo of, 
 
 442 ; books in library of, 522 
 
INDEX. 
 
 585 
 
 Victorian Era, the clearest and most 
 
 splendid that England has ever known, 
 
 558 
 Villani Chronicles, 66, 67, 189 ; Abp. 
 
 Antoninus dependent on, 390 
 Villeinage, Selden on Ina's Laws, 535, 
 
 540 
 Virgil, use of his name, 369 
 Vortigern, King, and St. Germain, 150 
 Vulgate, The, Hardouin on, 59, 60, 448 ; 
 
 cited by St. Benedict, 72 ; no older 
 
 than the Order of St. Benedict, 448. 
 
 See Latin Bibles 
 
 Walpole, Horace, on Richard IIL, 
 
 316 ; on Sir P. Sidney, 516 
 Walsingham, Thomas, 174, 276, 282, 
 
 284, 320 
 Warbeck, Peter or Perkin, 323 
 Wells Cathedral, founded by Ina, 244, 
 
 245 ; visited by Leland, 350 
 Welsh, the, 272 ; and their language, 
 
 228 ; tribute of wolves to Edgar, 251 
 Westminster Abbey, 52, 53, 234, 425 ; 
 
 supposed place of sepulture of King 
 
 Henry VL, 426 ; Chapter House at, 
 
 427 ; first burial register begins 1606 . . 
 
 428 ; Feckenham, last abbot of, 79, 
 427 {see Minsters) 
 
 Westminster Old Palace, monkish tales 
 about, 427; Chapter House Records, 
 428 
 Wharfdale visited by Leland, 353 
 Whitby Abbey, 244 ; St. Hilda of, 491 
 Wiclif, age of, 22 ; personality of, 102, 
 189 ; silence of Boston of Bury on, 
 217 ; not a historic personality, 219, 
 220 ; went to the Bohemians, 280 ; why 
 his New Testament not issued by 
 Caxton Guild, 377 ; Daniel on, 400, 
 401 
 Wilkins, 450, 539 
 
 William the Conqueror, 255, 258 ; Daniel 
 on, 400 ; Selden and William of 
 Poitiers on, 528 ; and Military Force, 
 
 541 
 William Rufus, 262 ; death of, 528 
 William of Malmesbury, 117, 174, 203, 
 
 214, 350, 399, 401, 520, 523 ; not known 
 
 till the i6th century, 43 note. 
 William of Newburgh, 215, 350, 398 
 William of Worcester. See Boleter 
 Windsor Castle in Drayton's time, 499, 
 
 506 ; St. George's, Windsor, claim to 
 
 be receptacle of relics of Henry VL, 
 
 425 
 Winton, or Winchester, Monastery, 246, 
 
 248, 254, 260 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, a Thomist, 217 
 Women, Status of, 464 
 Wood, Anthony a, 508 
 World, age of the, fixed by i6th and 
 
 17th century scholars, 99 ; Renunciation 
 
 of the, 457, 480 
 Wrangling, or Altercation, 167 
 Wulstan, Abp. of York, 251, 262 
 Wyat, Sir Thomas, poet, 498 
 
 XiMiNES' edition of the Bible, 442 
 
 Year Books, supposed, Edward II. to 
 
 Henry VHL, 429, 551 
 York and Lancaster. See Roses 
 York, Abps, of, by Thomas Stubbs, 
 
 Plagiate from Richard of Hexham, 
 
 2i6 ; Minster, 244 
 
 Zacuto, Rabbi, 18 ; his chronology, 98 
 Zarephath, or France, 44 
 Ziegelbauer, Dom, his history, 72 
 Zumpt, on discrepancies in dates, 188 
 Zwingle and Zwinglians, 436, 465 
 
 THE END. 
 
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