UC-NRLF John Hey wood's Kducational Works. LIBRARY OF THE University of California. OfT^T OF Received aX^^/^ , i8g n . Accession No. fa J~j J- . Class No. JolUl HeywOOd's New Code Readers. In Five Books. Designed to supply the requirements of the Education Department for a second Series of Reading Books. These books are compiled on the principle recommended in the ' ' Instructions to Inspectors," that books for teaching reading should be of a nature to interest children. The earlier books consist of a number of simple tales specially adapted for the amusement and instruction of the young. Neither spelling, writing, nor arithmetic lessons are introduced, as the object of the New Code Readers is simply to supply extra reading matter, and not to take the place of distinct manuals on other subjects of education. In the higher standards the books are varied in nature, and made up of lessons on subjects calculated to excite the interest of the children, while conveying to them valuable information. The lessons are carefully graduated, so that each standard is perceptibly more difficult than the previous one. Pieces of poetry are interspersed throughout, and care has been taken to exclude from each book any extracts which would be difficult of comprehension to the child in the particular standard. The compiler, impressed with the conviction that every series of reading books must finally stand or fall upon the simple issue whether they are found successful in teaching children to read, has striven to attain this object throughout, and it is hoped that by making these books interesting, instructive, and carefully graduated, the work of the teachers in securing fluency' in reading may be greatly facilitated. F'cap Svo, bound in strong cloth. First Book, adapted to Standard 1 96 pp., Price 6d. Second,, „ ., II 128 pp., „ 8d. Third Fourth j Fifth , III 160 pp., „ 10d. IV 192 pp„ „ Is. Od. V. rebellion against the Romans, in a.d. 50. Caractacus was sent a prisoner to Rome with his family. 5. In a.d. 60, Christianity was introduced into Britain by Roman converts, who settled in the country. 6. Suetonius Paulinus took possession of Anglesea [a.d. 61] , whither the Druids and a number of Britons had retreated. The severity of the Romans excited a general rebellion. Boadicea, queen of the Iceni, massacred the settlers at Camalo- dunum (now Colchester), defeated the Roman troops, and destroyed London. She was then defeated by Suetonius Paulinus, and killed herself with poison. 7. Agricola, who was sent into Britain [a.d. 78] by Vespasian, promoted civilisation and the arts of peace. He made great roads through the island, and protected the northern portion from the inroads of the Caledonians, by building a wall from the Clyde to the Forth [a.d. 81]. Three years after [a.d. 84], Agricola totally defeated the Caledonians under Galgacus. 8. The Emperor Hadrian visited Britain in a.d. 120, and built a wall from the Solway to the Tyne, to defend the northern dis- tricts from the invasions of the Caledonians. After his death the power of the Romans began to be weakened ; but Severn s [a.d. 207] entered Britain and drove back the Caledoniaus. He rebuilt the wall of Hadrian, and died at York [a.d. 211]. 9. Soon after, the pirates of the north countries lauded at various places in the north of the island. Carausius defeated them [a.d. 286] , assumed the title of Emperor of Britain, and was killed at York by Allectus [a.d. 297]. 10. Allectus was defeated and slain by Constantius, who suc- ceeded Diocletian as emperor, and died at York [a.d. 306]. Under his government, Alban, the first Christian martyr in Britain, was put to death, in the persecution of the Christians ordered by Diocletian. 11. The Caledonians, now called Picts and Scots, pushed their predatory incursions far into the interior of Britain, after the death of Constantine, the son of Constantius [a.d. 337] . They were defeated and driven back by Theodosius [a.d. 343], and by Maximus [a.d. 382]. 12. About this period the invasion of the Roman empire by the Goths, Vandals, and other German tribes commenced, and the greater part of the Roman troops were recalled from Britain [a.d. 403] . 13 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 13. As Marcus was chosen emperor by the Britons [a.d. 407 J r who rose in rebellion against the Koman authorities left in charge of the province, Honorius refused to provide troops for the protection of the country from external foes, and gave up all claim to Britain as part of the empire [a.d. 410]. Marcus was succeeded by Constantine [a.d. 411]. 14. The Britons, harassed by the incessant inroads of tho Picts and Scots, applied to iEtius for aid [a.d. 415], and a legion was sent to their assistance. 15. The Romans once more drove back the barbarians of the north, and again repaired the wall of Hadrian or Severus. Shortly after [a. d. 420] , the Roman troops were entirely with- drawn from the island, the Britons were left to their own resources, and the connection of Britain with Rome, as a depen- dency of the Roman empire, was broken off for ever. The Revolt of Boadicea. [Abridged and slightly altered from the translation of the Epitome of the History of Dion Cassius, by John Xiphilinus, in the " Monumenta Historica Britannica." John Xiphilinus, who flourished in the latter part of the 11th century, was the nepheio of a Patriarch of Constantinople of the same name, and who held this high office from 1066 to 1075. The Epitome of Dion Cassius, which he wrote by order of the Emperor Michael Ducas, is valuable as a means of supplying a large part of the historical facts recorded in those parts of the writings of Dion Cassius which are lost]. While Nero trifled at Rome, a dreadful calamity hap- pened in Britain, for two cities were destroyed, eighty thousand of the Romans or their allies were slain, and the island became in a state of insurrection. And the more to increase their shame, all this calamity was brought upon them by a woman. Indeed, the Divinity had in some measure foreboded this disaster : for in the night a barbaric murmuring, attended with laughter, was heard from the senate-house, and a muttering with lamentation from the theatre, although there was no human being either to clamour or bewail. Certain dwellings also appeared under water in the river Thames, and the ocean between the island and Gaul flowed with blood at the time of high tide. The cause of the war was the sale of property, which MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. \ 9 Claudius had given up to their chiefs, and which Decianus Catus, the prefect of the island, said it was necessary should be recalled. And to this was added that Seneca having lent them, against their will, a thousand myriads of money, in expectation of interest, suddenly and violently called in his loan. She, however, who chiefly excited and urged them to fight against the Romans was Boadicea, who was deemed worthy to command them, and who led them in every battle — a Briton of royal race, and breathing more than female spirit. Having collected, therefore, an army to the number of about one hundred and twenty thousand, she, after the Roman custom, ascended a tribunal made of marshy earth. She was of the largest size, most terrible of aspect, most savage of countenance, and harsh of voice, having a profusion of yellow hair which fell down to her hips, and wearing a large golden collar. She had on a party-coloured vest drawn close about her bosom, and over this she wore a thick mantle connected by a clasp. Such was her usual dress ; but at this time she also bore a spear, that thus she might appear more formidable to all ; and she spoke after this maimer : — " You must be convinced by experience how much free- dom surpasses slavery ; for if any of you formerly, through ignorance of which might be the better, have been deceived by the seducing promises of the Romans, now, having tried both, you must have learned how much you have erred in esteeming slavery of your own seeking preferable to the usage of your country ; and you must have felt how superior is poverty with liberty to opulence with thraldom ; for what, indeed, is there more base, what more grievous, that we have not suffered since these men cast their eyes on Britain 1 Have we not been despoiled of all our best and amplest possessions ? Do we not pay tribute for the remainder ] Do we not, in addition to both pasturing our cattle and tilling the ground for them, pay also a yearly tribute even of our very bodies ? And how much better were it to be sold to slavery once for all, than to be ran- somed year after year, under the delusive name of liberty ? How much better to be slain outright and perish than to bear about a head subject to perpetual tribute ] But why 20 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. say I this, when even to die is not unattended with some claim on their part ] for you are aware of what we pay even for the deceased. Among other men, indeed, death liberates the slave altogether ; but to the Eomans alone the very dead survive for the purposes of lucre ; and, more- over, if none of us possess money (and how and whence can we possess it ?) we are stripped and spoiled like those who are slain. And what consideration can we expect in future, when even at the very outset, a time when all men treat with kindness even the beasts they have taken, we have been thus used by them ] " I say these things not that you may abhor the present circumstances, for you have long abhorred them, nor that you may dread those that are future, for you have long dreaded them — but that I may applaud you for choosing of yourselves to do all that behoves you, and thank you that you readily succour both me and yourselves. Dread not the Eomans in anywise, for they are neither more in number* nor braver than ourselves : and the proof is that you are armed with helmets, breastplates, and greaves, and moreover are provided with stockades, and walls, and ditches, so as no longer to suffer from the secret incursions of the enemy, for such they prefer making, through their fears, to fighting, as we do, openly : indeed, we are endowed with courage so superior that we deem our tents more secure than their walls, and our shields a better defence than their complete armour. Wherefore, when superior in battle, we capture them ; when defeated we flee far away ; and if we choose to retreat to any place, we hide ourselves in marshes and mountains, where we can neither be dis- covered nor taken ; whereas they, from the weight of their armour, are neither able to pursue others nor to escape themselves ; and should they at any time effect their escape, they could fly only to places well known, and there be enclosed as in a toil. In such things, therefore, they are far inferior to us, as well as in these, that they can endure neither hunger nor thirst, nor cold nor heat, as we do ; moreover, they stand so much in need of shade and shelter, pounded corn, wine, and oil, that if one of these things fail them they perish ; while to us every herb and root is food, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 21 every juice is oil, every stream is wine, and every tree a house. Again, to us these places are familiar and friendly, to them strange and hostile ; we swim the rivers naked, they can hardly pass them in boats. Wherefore, confiding in our good fortune, let us go against them, and let us show them that, being hares and foxes, they strive for the mastery over dogs and wolves." Having thus spoken she let loose a hare from her bosom, using it as a kind of omen, and when it ran propitiously for them, the whole multitude, rejoicing, gave a shout, and Boaclicea, extending her hand towards heaven, and invoking the British goddess of victory, exclaimed : " I give thee thanks, Andraste, and I a female, invoke thee, a female also, ruling over British men, unskilled, indeed, in husbandry or handicraft, but who, having thoroughly learned to fight, deeming all other things common, and even children and wives common also, who, in consequence, display equal courage with their husbands. Reigning, therefore, over such men and women, I pray and entreat thee for victory, and security, and liberty, in their behalf, against men who are revilers, unjust, insatiable, impious." Having thus harangued, Boadicea led her army against the Romans, who were at that time without a chief, because Paulinus, their commander, was warring against Mona (Anglesey), a certain island adjacent to Britain. Where- fore she overthrew and plundered two Roman cities, and there, as I have said, wrought indescribable slaughter : and as to the captives, both male and female, there was nothing of the most dreadful kind which was not inflicted upon them. And these cruelties were practised in mockery, while they were sacrificing and banqueting in their several sacred places, but more especially in the grove of Andraste, for so they denominated Victory, whom they venerated supremely. But it happened that Paulinus had now subdued Mona, and, having heard of the disaster in Britain, he forthwith sailed back thither from Mona. He was unwilling, indeed, to risk the chance of a battle immediately against the barbarians, dreading their number and fury ; wherefore he deferred the conflict to a more fitting opportunity. But 22 Manchester historic reader, when he was in want of provisions, and the barbarians, pressing forward, allowed him no respite, he was compelled to attack them contrary to his intention. Boadicea, there- fore, having an army amounting to two hundred and thirty thousand men, herself rode on a car, and drew up the others singly. Paulinus, however, was neither able to extend his phalanx in opposition to them — for he could not have equalled them had he drawn up his men singly, so much inferior were they in number — nor did he dare to engage in one compact body, lest he should be surrounded and cut to pieces. He therefore divided his army into three bodies, that they might fight in several places at once, and closed up each of the divisions in such wise that they could not be broken through. Having drawn up and posted his men, and exhorted each body to do their duty bravely as Roman soldiers, he raised the signal for battle ; and immediately they advanced towards each other, the barbarians with loud clamour and songs of defiance, but the Romans with silence and order, until they came within a javelin's cast ; when the enemy now proceeding slowly onward, they gave the signal alto- gether, according to previous arrangement, and rushed violently upon them, and in the shock easily broke through their array ; then, being hemmed in by the multitude, they fought des23erately at the same time on all sides. Their conflict was various, for it was thus : Here light-armed opposed light-armed ; there heavy-armed contended with heavy-armed ; horse encountered horse ; and the Roman archers fought against the chariots of the barbarians, who, falling on the Romans, overthrew them with the rushing of their chariots ; and these, as their men were fighting with- out breast-plates, were driven back by the flights of arrows ; horseman discomfited footman, and footman overthrew horseman ; some, in compact bodies, dashed against the chariots, others dispersed by them ; some, advancing in troops against the archers, put them to flight ; others saved themselves by keeping aloof ; and this occurred not in one, but in three several places at once. For a long while each contended with equal spirit and boldness. Finally, though late, the Romans conquered : they killed numbers in the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 23 flight and near the wagons, and in a wood ; they also took many alive. Great numbers,Jtoo, escaped, and made ready again as if for battle. But about this time Boadicea, dying by disease, they bewailed her sorely, and buried her with great funeral splendour ; and, as if they were now really discomfited, they became completely dispersed. The End of Roman Rule in Britain. [Translated from the " Historia Ecclesiastical or " Eccle- siastical History," of the Venerable Bede, a famous English monk of Jarrozv, who lived from 672 to 735, and ivas remarkable for his knowledge of the early history of Britain. He wrote a great number of works, and translated the Gospel according to St. John, and other writings into Anglo-Saxon.] From that time the south part of Britain being left destitute of armed soldiers, of all sorts of martial stores, and of all its active youth, which, being led away by the rashness of tyrants, never returned home, was wholly exposed to rapine, as being totally ignorant of the use of weapons. At length, on a sudden, it groaned and languished many years under two very savage nations — the Scots from the west, and the Picts from the north. We call these foreign nations, not for their being seated out of Britain, but because remote from that part of it which was possessed by the Britons, two inlets of the sea lying betwixt them, one of which runs in far and broad into the lands of Britain from the eastern ocean, and the other from the western, although they do not reach to touch one another. The eastern has in the midst of it the city Guidi. The western has on it, that is, on the right hand thereof, the city Alcluith, which, in their language, signifies the rock Cluith, for it is close by the river of that name. On account of the irruptions of these nations, the Britons sending messengers to Rome with letters in mournful manner, prayed for succour and promised perpetual sub- jection, provided that the impending enemy might be driven further off. An armed legion was immediately sent them, which, arriving in the island and engaging the 24 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. enemy, slew a great multitude of them, drove the rest out of the territory of the allies ; and having delivered them from most cruel oppression, advised to build a wall between the two seas, across the island, that it might secure them and keep off the enemy ; and thus they returned home with great triumph. The islanders raising the wall they had been directed, not of stone, but sods, as having no artist capable of such work, made it of no use. However they drew it for many miles between the two bays or inlets of the sea we have spoken of; to the end that where the defence of the water was wanting, they might defend their borders from the irruptions of the enemies by the help of the rampart. Of which work there erected, that is, of a rampart of extraordinary breadth and height, there are evident remains to be seen to this day. It begins at almost two miles distance from the monastery of iEbencuring, on the west, at the place in the Pictish language called Peanfahel,. but in the English tongue Pennelture, and running to the eastward, ends by the city Alcluith. But the former enemies, when they perceived that the Roman soldiers were gone, immediately coming by sea, broke into the borders, bearing down all before them, and, as if it had been ripe corn mowed, trampled and overran all places. Hereupon messengers are again sent to Rome, imploring aid in a mournful manner lest their wretched country should be utterly extirpated, and the name of a Roman province so long renowned among them, being overthrown by the wickedness of foreign nations, might grow contempti- ble. A legion is sent again, which, arriving unexpectedly in autumn, made great slaughter of the enemy, obliging all those who could escape to fly beyond the seas, whereas before they were wont yearly to carry off their booty without any opposition. Then the Romans declared to the Britons that they could not for the future undertake such troublesome expeditions for their sake, advising them rather to handle their weapons and undertake the charge of engaging their enemies, who would not prove more powerful than them- selves, unless they were dejected with cowardice ; and in MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 25 regard that they thought it might be some help to their allies, whom they designed to abandon, they built a strong stone wall from sea to sea, in a straight line, between the town that had been built there for fear of the enemy, and where Severus had cast up the trench. The which wall, still famous and to be seen, they built at the public and private expense, being assisted by a number of Britons, eight feet in breadth and twelve in height, in a straight line from east to west, as is still visible to beholders. That being finished they gave that dispirited people notable advice with patterns to furnish them with arms. Besides they built towers on the sea coast to the southward, at proper distances, where their ships were, because there also the irruptions of the barbarians were apprehended, and so took leave of their friends as never to return again. They being gone home, the Scots and Picts understanding that they had declared they would come no more, speedily returned, and growing more confident than they had been before, secured to themselves all the northern and farthest part of the island as far as the wall. Hereupon a timorous guard was placed upon the top of the wall, where they pined away day and night with fearful hearts. On the other side the enemy plied them with hooked weapons, by which the cowardly defenders being miserably dragged off the wall, were dashed against the ground. In short, forsaking their cities and wall they fled and were dispersed. The enemy pursues, the slaughter increases, more cruel than all the former, for the wretched natives were torn in pieces by their enemies as lambs are by wild beasts. Thus being expelled their dwellings and small possessions, they tried to ward off the danger of famishing, which was imminent, by robbing and plundering one another, adding to their calamities occasioned by foreigners by their domestic broils, till the whole country was left destitute of all sorts of food except the support of wild beasts. The domination of Rome over Britain lasted from the first invasion of the island by Caesar, B.C. 55, to the final withdrawal of the Roman troops in the time of Honorius, about 420. It lasted for about 475 years. 26 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Part II— BRITAIN UNDER THE SAXONS. (421—1066.) I. — The Saxon Heptarchy. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. In the distress occasioned by the incessant inroads of the Picts and Scots, Vortigern, a British prince, proposed to his countrymen to call to their aid the Saxons, a piratical people inhabiting the southern shores of the Baltic Sea. 2. Accordingly Hengist and Horsa, brothers, and Saxon chiefs •of renown, landed in Britain (449). After defeating the Picts and Scots, they concluded treaties of alliance with the Britons, and received the Isle of Thanet as a reward for their services. 3. The Saxons, having gained a footing in the island, soon turned their arms against the Britons, whom they defeated at Stonehenge. Hengist then established the kingdom of Kent — the first of the seven kingdoms of the Saxon Heptarchy (473). 4. Encouraged by Hengist's success, fresh bands of Saxons crossed the North Sea ; and Ella founded the kingdom of Sussex (491), and Cerdic and Cynric that of Wessex (519) along the south coast of England. 5. Escwin, or Ercenwine, founded the kingdom of Essex (527). The Britons were then compelled to retreat into Wales and Cornwall, where Arthur, who held his court at Tintagel, fell in fighting against the invaders (542). 6. The kingdoms of Bernicia and Deira, united soon after their formation under the common name of North umbria, were founded, the former by Ida (547), the latter by Ella (560). East Anglia was occupied by Uffa (571), and the remaining midland districts of Britain, Wales excepted, were erected into the king- dom of Mercia (585) by Crida. 7. The seven kingdoms of the Heptarchy were severally subject to their own kings, and jointly to the most powerful of these princes for the time being, who took the title of Bretwalda, -or Wielder of the Sovereign Power in Britain. 8. The ancient British Church, established in the lime of the Romans, had been nearly destroyed by the Saxons, who were, however, converted to Christianity by the teaching of Augustine ;and forty monks, sent into Britain by Pope Gregory I. (597). 9. The University of Cambridge was founded by Sebert, king -of Essex, in 604, about which time the Bretwalda was styled MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 27 King of the Angles, and the country itself Anglia, which soon merged into the more familiar sound of Angles-land, or England. 10. The Danes, who had already appeared in Ireland, began their attacks on England in 787, Egbert, king of Wessex (800), after a long struggle, totally defeated the Danes at Hengist- down, in Cornwall, in 815, and for some years after they ceased to trouble England. 11. Egbert then determined to assert his power and sovereignty over the whole country. He reduced Kent, Essex, and East Anglia in 823, Sussex and Mercia in 825, and Northumbria in 829, when he became the first Saxon king of England, 12. Towards the end of his reign the Danes renewed their attacks, but were defeated by Egbert at Charmouth in 833. In 836 Egbert died, and was succeeded by his son Ethel wulf. How the Saxons Established Themselves in England. [From a "History of England' 1 by the eminent statesman, orator, and essayist, Edmund Burke, who teas born in Dublin January 1, 1730, and died at Beaconsfield July 9, 1797. He entered the House of Commons in 1766, and from that time to his death he took a prominent part in public affairs, and especially in the prosecution of Warren Hastings, for mal-practices while governor-general of India. His writings and political pamphlets are numerous, but his " Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful,' 1 which first brought him into notice, is perhaps the best of his miscellaneous productions. He ivas the editor of the early volumes of the " Annual Register.'"'] After having been so long subject to a foreign dominion, there was among the Britons no royal family, no respected order in the state, none of those titles to government confirmed by opinion and long use, more efficacious than the wisest schemes for the settlement of the nation. Mere personal merit was then the only pretence to power. But this circumstance only added to the misfortunes of a people who had no orderly method of election, and little experience of merit in any of the candidates. During this anarchy, while they suffered the most dreadful calamities from the fury of barbarous nations which invaded them, they fell into that disregard of religion, and those loose, disorderly manners which are sometimes the consequence of desperate 28 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. ■ and hardened wretchedness, as well as the common dis- tempers of ease and prosperity. At length, after frequent elections and deposings, rather wearied out by their own inconstancy than fixed by the merits of their choice, they suffered Vortigern to reign over them. This leader had made some figure in the conduct of their wars and factions .; but he was no sooner settled on the throne than he showed himself rather like a prince born of an exhausted stock of royalty in the decline of empire, than one of those bold and active spirits whose manly talents obtain them the first place in the country, and stamp upon it that character of vigour essential to the prosperity of a new commonwealth. However, the mere settlement, in spite of the ill administration of government, procured the Britons some internal repose, and some tem- porary advantage over their enemies, the Picts. But having been long habituated to defeats, relying neither on their king nor on themselves, and fatigued with the obstinate attacks of an enemy whom they sometimes checked, but never could remove, it was resolved, in one of their national assemblies, to call in the mercenary aid of the Saxons, a powerful nation of Germany, which had been long, by their piratical incursions, terrible not only to them but to all the adjacent countries. This resolution has been generally condemned. It has been said that, through mere cowardice, they seem to have distrusted a strength not yet worn down, and a fortune sufficiently prosperous. But as it was taken by general counsel and consent, we must believe that the necessity for such a step was felt, though the event was dubious. The event indeed might be dubious. In a state radically weak, every measure vigorous enough for its protection must endanger its existence. There is an unquestioned tradition among the northern nations of Europe, importing that all that part of the world had suffered a great and general revolution by a migration from Asiatic Tartary of a people whom they called Asers. These everywhere expelled and subdued the; ancient inhabitants of the Celtic and Cimbric original. The leader of this Asiatic army was called Odin, or Woden, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 29 first their general and afterwards their tutelar deity. The time of this great change is lost in the imperfection of traditionary history and the attempts to supply it by fable. It is, however, certain that the Saxon nation believe them- selves to be the descendants of those conquerors ; and they had as good a title to that descent as any other of the northern tribes, for they used the same language which was then, and is still, spoken with small variations of the dialect in all the countries which extend from the Polar Circle to the Danube. This people most probably derive their name as well as their origin from the Sacse, a nation of Asiatic Scythia. At the time of which we write they had settled themselves in the Cimbric Chersonesus, or Jutland, in the countries of Holstein and Sleswick, and thence extended along the Elbe and Weser to the coast of the German Ocean, as far as the mouths of the Ehine. In that tract they lived in a sort of loose military common- wealth of the ordinary German model under several leaders, the most eminent of whom was Hengist, descended from Odin, the great conductor of the Asiatic colonies. It was to this chief that the Britons applied themselves. They invited him by a promise of ample pay for his troops, a large share of their common plunder, and the Isle of Thanet for a settlement. The army which came over under Hengist did not exceed fifteen hundred men. The opinion which the Britons had entertained of the Saxon prowess was well founded, for they had the principal share in a decisive victory which was obtained over the Picts soon after their arrival — a victory which for ever freed the Britons from all terror of the Picts and Scots, but in the same moment exposed them to an enemy no less dangerous. Hengist and his Saxons, who had obtained* by the free vote of the Britons that introduction into this island which they had so long in vain attempted by arms, saw that by being necessary they were superior to their allies. They discovered the character of the king ; they were eye- witnesses of the internal weakness and distraction of the kingdom. This state of Britain was represented with so much effect to the Saxons in Germany that another and 30 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. much greater embarkation followed the first : new bodies daily crowded in. As soon as the Saxons began to be sensible of their strength they found it their interest to be discontented ; they complained of breaches of contract which they construed according to their own designs ; and then fell rudely upon their unprepared and feeble allies,, who, as they had not been able to resist the Picts and Scots, were still less in a condition to oppose that force by which they had been protected against those enemies when turned unexpectedly upon themselves. Hengist, with very little opposition, subdued the province of Kent, and there laid the foundation of the first Saxon kingdom. Every battle the Britons fought only prepared them for a new defeat, by weakening their strength and displaying the inferiority of their courage. Vortigern, instead of a steady and regular resistance, opposed a mixture of timid war and unable negotiation. In one of their meetings, wherein the business, according to the German mode, was carried on amidst feasting and riot, Vortigern was struck with the beauty of a Saxon maiden, a kinswoman of Hengist, and entirely under his influence. Having married her he delivered himself over to her counsels. His people harassed by their enemies, betrayed by their prince, and indignant at the feeble tyranny that oppressed them, deposed him and set his son Vortimer in his place. But the change of king proved no remedy for the exhausted state of the nation and the constitutional infirmity of the government : for even if the Britons could have sup- ported themselves against the superior abilities and efforts, of Hengist it might have added to their honour, but would have contributed little to their safety. The news of his success had roused all Saxony. Five great bodies of that adventurous people, under different and independent commanders, very nearly at the same time broke in upon as many different parts of the island. They came no longer as pirates but as invaders. Whilst the Britons contended with one body of their fierce enemies another gained ground and filled with slaughter and desolation the whole country from sea to sea ; a devouring war, a dreadful famine, a plague the most wasteful of any recorded in our MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 3 J history, united to consummate the ruin of Britain. The ecclesiastical writers of that age, confounded at the view of those complicated calamities, saw nothing but the arm of God stretched out for the punishment of a sinful and disobedient nation : and truly when we set before us in one point of view the condition of all the parts which had lately composed the Western Empire, of Britain, of Gaul, of Italy, of Spain, of Africa, at once overwhelmed by a resistless inundation of most cruel barbarians, whose inhuman method of war made but a small part of the miseries with which these nations were afflicted, we are almost driven out of the order of political inquiry — we are in a manner compelled to acknowledge the hand of God in those immense revolutions, by which at certain periods He so signally asserts His supreme dominion, and brings about that great system of change, which is, perhaps, as necessary to the moral as it is found to be in the natural world. But whatever the condition of the other parts of Europe,, it is generally agreed that the state of Britain was the worst of all. Some writers have asserted that except those who took refuge in the mountains of Wales and in Corn- wall, or fled into Armorica (Britanny), the British race was- in a manner destroyed. What is extraordinary, we find England in a very tolerable state of population in less than two centuries after the first invasion of the Saxons ; and it is hard to imagine either the transplantation or the increase of that single people to have been in so short a time sufficient for the settlement of so great an extent of country. Others speak of the Britons not as exth^ated, but as reduced *to a state of slavery ; and here these writers fix the origin of personal and praedial servitude in England. I shall lay fairly before the reader all I have been able to discover concerning the existence or condition of this unhappy people. That they were much more broken and reduced than any other nation which had fallen under the German power, I think may be inferred from two con- siderations : first, that in all other parts of Europe the ancient language subsisted after the Conquest, and at 32 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. length incorporated with that of the conquerors ; whereas in England the Saxon language received little or no tincture from the Welsh, and it seems, even among the lowest people, to have continued a dialect of pure Teutonic to the time in which it was itself blended with the Norman. Secondly, that on the continent the Christian religion, after the northern irruptions, not only remained but flourished. It was very early and universally adopted by the ruling people. In England it was so entirely extinguished, that when Augustine undertook his mission it does not appear that among all the Saxons there was a single person professing Christianity. The sudden extinction of the ancient religion and language seems sufficient to show that Britain must have suffered more than any of the neighbouring nations on the continent. But it must not be concealed that there are likewise proofs that the British race, though much diminished, was not wholly extirpated, and that those who remained were not merely as Britons reduced to servitude, for they are mentioned as existing in some of the earlier Saxon laws. In these laws they are allowed a compensation on the footing of the meaner kind of English (Angles), and they are even permitted, as well as the English, to emerge out of that low rank into a more liberal condition. This is degradation, but not slavery. The affairs of the whole period are, however, covered with an obscurity not to be dissipated. The Britons had but little leisure or ability to write a just account of a war by which they were ruined ; and the Anglo-Saxons, who succeeded them, attentive only to arms, were, until their conversion, ignorant of the use of letters. II— The Saxon Kings of England. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. During Ethel wulfs reign the kingdom was much disturbed by the incursions of the Danes. At this time [845] Turgesius, a Dane, was king of Ireland. The Danes were defeated at Wembury [851] by Ethelwulfs illegitimate son Athelstan, and in a sea fight ; but after this they sailed up the Thames and sacked MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 33 London. In their retreat they were defeated by Ethelwulf. Tithes were first paid to the church in Ethelwulf s reign. By his wife Osburga he had four sons — Ethelbald, Ethelbert, Ethelred, and Alfred. He died in 857. 2. No event of importance occurred in the reigns of Ethelbald and Ethelbert. The latter was succeeded in 866 by Ethelred I., in whose reign the Danes renewed their incursions, and pene- trated far into the kingdom, destroying the monasteries of Ely, Peterborough, Croyland, Coldingham, and many others. Ethelred I. encountered the Danes in nine battles, and died in 871, leaving the crown to his brother Alfred. 3. Alfred, surnamed the Great, was born at Wantage, in Berkshire. He visited Rome in 853, and was there anointed future king of England by Pope Leo IV. At his accession the north of England was in the hands of the Danes, who had also overrun the western counties. After many battles Alfred defeated the Danes at Exeter, in 876, and drove them into Mercia. 4. In 878, the Danes attacked Alfred at Chippenham and defeated him. After this Alfred retired to Athelney, in Somer- setshire, where he remained in hiding until 879, when, after visiting the Danish camp in disguise, and learning their numbers and disposition, he hastily gathered some Saxon troops and totally defeated the Danes at the battle of Ethandune. After this Guthrum, the Danish general, and many of his officers, embraced Christianity, and were permitted by Alfred to remain as settlers in East Anglia. 5. Alfred then turned his attention to the better regulation of the internal affairs of his kingdom. He encouraged learning, founded the University of Oxford [866 or 872], and translated the Scriptures into Anglo-Saxon. 6. He also divided the kingdom into counties or shires, and hundreds ; he embodied a code of laws, in which the administra- tion of strict justice was tempered with mildness, and he estab- lished the form of trial by jury. 7. The Danes landed again in Kent, under Hastings [897], but they were defeated by Alfred in numerous battles, and their ships driven from the coast by his navy. Alfred, having gained enduring fame as a soldier, statesman, and scholar, died at Farringdon, in Berkshire, in 901. 8. The reign of Edward the Elder was disturbed by civil war, Ethelwald, the son of Ethelbert, his cousin, claiming the throno. Ethelwald was supported by the Danes, but was defeated by Edward at Wimborne and in other battles. 34 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 9. Edward the Elder followed for the most part in the foot- steps of his father Alfred. He encouraged learning, augmenting, some say founding, the University of Cambridge, and consider- ably lessened the power of the Danes. He died in 925. 10. Athelstan, his son by Egwina, the daughter of a shepherd, succeeded him. This prince caused the whole of the Scriptures to be translated into Anglo-Saxon, and caused a copy to be placed in every church. He defeated the allied forces of the Danes, Irish, Welsh, and Scotch in the famous battle of Brunanburgh, in 937. He added many good laws to the code drawn up by his grand- father Alfred, and ennobled every merchant who made three voyages to foreign countries. The only blot on his character is the murder of his brother Edwin, whom he suspected of con- spiring to obtain the crown. 11. Athelstan died in 941, and was succeeded by his brother Edmund. This king defeated the Danes under Anlaff in several battles, and introduced the punishment of death for robbery xmd murder. He was stabbed at a feast at Packlechurch, in Gloucestershire [946], by Leolf, a freebooter, then under sentence of banishment. 12. Edmund was succeeded by his brother Edred. Dunstan, born in 926, abbot of Glastonbury, and High Treasurer of the kingdom, exercised considerable influence over this prince, and obtained many immunities and privileges for his order. 13. Edred, dying in 955, was succeeded by Edwy, called the Fair, the eldest son of Edmund. In his reign the Roman Catholic clergy, under Dunstan, began to claim and exert great power. Edwy had married his cousin Elgiva, a lady of great personal beauty. As the marriage was within the degrees of consanguinity forbidden by the Church of Rome, Dunstan dragged her from the king's presence, spoiled her beauty by branding her face with hot irons, and banished her to Ireland. 14. Dunstan, in his turn, was banished to Flanders, where he spent his time in fomenting, by his agents, civil discord in England. Elgiva having returned from Ireland, was murdered by the priests at Gloucester in 956. Edwy died in 959. 1 5. Edgar, the brother of the late king, had been proclaimed by the monks during his brother's lifetime. He recalled Dun- stan, and made him Archbishop of Canterbury. In his reign the wolves in England and Wales were all destroyed. He kept up a large army and fleet, which prevented the Danes from making descents on his kingdom. 16. Edgar, dying in 975, was succeeded by his son Edward MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 35 the Martyr, who was murdered at Corfe Castle in 978, by order of his stepmother, Elfrida. 17. Edward was succeeded by Elfrida's son, Ethelred II. The expeditions of the Danes were renewed during his reign. In 994, Sweyn and Olaus, the kings of Denmark and Norway, plundered the southern counties. Induced to retire for a while by the payment of 16,000 pounds of silver, they did not revisit England until 1001, when they demanded a still greater sum of money. This was the origin of the tribute call d the Dane-geld, paid by England to Denmark for some time. A massacre of the Danes was resolved on, and carried out in 1002, in revenge for which Sweyn ravaged England, and at last succeeded in driving Ethelred out of the kingdom (1011). 18. After this Sweyn usurped the royal authority in England, and dying shortly after, left his dominions to his son Canute. Ethelred was recalled by the English in 1015, and died in 1016, leaving his crown to his son, Edmund Ironside. 19. Many battles were fought between Edmund Ironside and Canute ; but their rivalry was ended by a division of the kingdom between them, Edmund taking the part south of the Thames, and Canute the country north of that river. In 1017 Edmund died, and Canute became monarch of all England. Alfred the Great. Part I. — His Boyhood and Great Battles. [Abridged and adapted from an account of this monarch in the u Penny Magazine" by Charles Macfarlane, one of the authors of the il Pictorial History of England," planned by Charles Knight, and a contributor to most of the works undertaken by that eminent publisher. He died in the Charter -house in 1858.] This darling of England was of the most ancient and illustrious lineage. His father, Ethelwulf, traced his descent from the most renowmed of Saxon heroes ; and his mother, Osburga, descended from renowned Gothic progenitors. He was born at the royal manor of Vanathing (now Wantage), in Berkshire, in the year 849. Of four legitimate sons Alfred was the youngest ; yet, in 853, when King Ethelwulf repaired to Borne, partly as a pilgrim to that holy city, and partly to take counsel of the pope, he carried Alfred with him. Leo IV., who then wore the tiara or triple crown, consecrated the boy as king. This conferring of royal 30 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. inaugural honours upon a child in the fifth year of his age, and the youngest of his family, has often been made a matter of wonderment. The fact is, however, most dis- tinctly stated by Asser and the Saxon Chronicle. But at this time the seven states which had formed the Heptarchy were not thoroughly fused and amalgamated into the one great and undividable kingdom of England ; and Ethelwulf, who allowed one of his sons (the illegitimate Athelstan) to reign in Wessex during his lifetime, may have contem- plated, as other Saxon sovereigns did even at a later period, a re-division of the kingdom, and may have been eager to secure one of the crowns for Alfred, his darling boy, and the fairest and most promising of his sons. - The earliest stoiy related of Alfred treats of his aptitude for learning and his love for poetry and books. He learned to read before his elder brothers, and before he could read he had learned by heart a great many Anglo-Saxon poems, by hearing the minstrels and gleemen recite them in his father's hall. This passionate love of letters never forsook him. In the year 871, when Alfred was in the twenty- second year of his age, Ethelred, the last of his kingly brothers, died of wounds received in battle with the Danish invaders, and the voice of the nobles and people immediately designated him as successor to the crown of all England. Alfred had already fought many battles, and had given proofs of political ability and wisdom, but it was with reluctance that he shut up his books and took up the sceptre. At this point his exciting and well recorded adventures commence. For many years the hero has to fight for territory and life against the formidable Danes, who, having conquered a large portion of the kingdom in the time of his brothers and predecessors, continued to receive, every spring and summer, fresh forces from the Baltic. He has scarcely been a month upon the throne ere he fights the great battle of Wilton. In the next year he fits out a small fleet of ships, a species of force which the Saxons had entirely neglected, and forms the embryo of the naval glory of England. His enemies, however, are too numerous to be resisted, and too faithless and cruel to be trusted ; and MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 37 after fighting many battles lie is obliged to retire to an inland island called Athelney, or the Prince's Island, near the confluence of the rivers Tone and Parret. It is Asser who tells the story that is endeared to us all by our earliest recollections. In one of his excursions from Athelney, Alfred takes refuge in the cabin of a swineherd, and tarries there some time. On a certain day, it happens that the wife of the swain prepares to bake her loudas or loaves of bread. Alfred chances at the time to be sitting near the hearth, but he is busied in thinking of war, and in making ready bows and arrows. The shrew soon beholds her loaves burning, and runs to remove them, scolding the stranger. "You man," saith she, " you will not turn the bread you see burning, but you will be glad enough to eat it." " This unlucky woman," adds Asser, " little thought she was talking to King Alfred, who had warred against the pagans, and gained so many victories over them." Some of his friends have gathered armies together, and have obtained successes over the enemy in various parts ; Alfred himself has raised a small band into a for- midable force, and he has good reason to believe that the Danes are becoming incautious and negligent. Putting on the gleeman's dress, and carrying instruments of music in his hand, he gains a ready entrance into the Danish camp; and as he amuses these idle warriors with songs and inter- ludes he espies all their sloth and negligence, and hears much of their counsels and plans. The Danes love his •company and his songs so much that they are loth to let him depart, but he is soon enabled to return to his friends at Athelney, with a full account of the habits and state of this army ; and secret and swift messengers are sent to all quarters to request all true Saxons to meet in arms at a given time, at Egbert's Stone, on the east of Selwood Forest. The true Saxons meet, and fight and defeat the Danes in the great battle of Ethandune, on the banks of the river Avon. And now follows the touching picture of the conversion and baptism of Guthrun the Dane, with King Alfred standing by him at the baptismal font as his sponsor. The converted Guthrun kept his contract, but other 38 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. hosts of pagan Danes came from beyond the seas. After six years of warfare, with several battles fought in each year, Alfred was enabled to rebuild and fortify the city of London, which the Danes had burned. His infant navy gained divers victories ; and when a Danish host sailed up the Medway and laid siege to Rochester, Alfred, with a land force, fell suddenly upon them, and drove them back to their ships. But in the course of six or seven years, Hastings, the greatest and ablest of all the Danish warriors and sea-kings, came over to England with a more desperate army than had ever been seen before, and a new war commenced, which was prosecuted successfully in nearly every corner of England, and which lasted with scarcely any intermission for nearly four years. The combats were many, and King Alfred was personally present in most of them. Great was the aid he received from the restored citizens of London, whose gratitude and affection knew no bounds. These generous citizens not only furnished him with money and pro- visions, but they also put on warlike harness, and went out, young and old, and fought under him. The valley of the Lea, from its mouth on the Thames near London up to Ware and Hertford, and the country above Hertford, was the scene of many remarkable exploits in war, in which the Londoners had a very distinguished part. The pleasant river Lea was very different a thousand years ago from what it is now. It was both broader and deeper, being filled with a far greater volume of water from the then undrained country. Nor did the Danish ships of war draw so much water as a modern trading sloop. Thus Hastings was enabled to carry his great fleet of ships up the river as far as Ware, or, as some think, Hertford, where he established one of his fortified camps, in the construction of which this Danish commander displayed extraordinary skill. On the approach of summer,, the burgesses of London, with many of their neighbours, who saw that their ripening corn was exposed to be reaped by a Danish sickle, attacked Hastings in this stronghold, but were repulsed with great loss. But presently, Alfred,, marching from a distant part of the country, came and MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 39 encamped his army round about the city of London, and stayed there until the citizens and their neighbours got in their harvests ; he then marched away to the Lea, which seemed covered with the enemy's ships, and, at great personal risk, surveyed with his own eyes this new fortified camp of the Danes. His active mind presently conceived a plan which was much safer and surer than any assault which could be made upon those formidable works. Bringing up his forces, and calling upon the alert and brave Londoners for assist- ance, he raised two fortresses, one on either side the Lea, a little below the Danish camp, and then dug three deep caflals or channels from the Lea to the Thames, in order to lower the level of the tributary stream. So much water was thus drawn off that the whole fleet of Hastings was left aground and rendered useless. Upon this the terrible sea-king broke from his intrenchments by night, and hardly rested till he had traversed the whole of that wide tract of country which lies between the river Lea and the Severn. While King Alfred followed after Hastings, the Lon- doners fell upon the Danish ships and galleys : some they broke to pieces, and some they got afloat again, and carried round in triumph, with Saxon horns and other music, to the city of London. At Quatbridge, on the Severn (the place is now called Quatford, and it lies not far from Bridgenorth, in Shropshire), Alfred found the Danish host in another camp, which they had already strongly fortified. The Saxon king was compelled to respect the intrench- ments at Quatbridge, and to leave the Danes there undis- turbed through all the winter ; but he established so good a blockade, that the Danes could not plunder the country, or often issue from their works, and, at the approach of spring, hunger drove them all out of England ; and Hastings, after escaping with difficulty from the sword of Alfred, crossed the Channel without profit or honour, as Asser says. The sea-king ascended the river Seine, obtained some settlement in France, and never more troubled King Alfred. This was the last great campaign of our Saxon hero. 40 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Part II. — His Statecraft and Works of Peace. Alfred, who had much mechanical skill, and who thought it no unkingly occupation to wield the ship-carpenters' tools, now applied himself more vigorously than ever to the creation of a national navy. For a long time he went . daily to the ship-yard with his good steel adze in his hand. He caused vessels to be built far exceeding those of his enemies in length of keel, height of board, swiftness, and steadiness ; some of these carried sixty oars or sweepers, to be used as in the ancient Roman galleys, when the wind failed ; and others carried even more than sixty. They were all constructed after a plan of Alfred's own invention, and they were soon found to be peculiarly well adapted to the service for which they were intended. Before the close of his reign the flag of Alfred floated over more than a hundred vessels of this sort. This truly royal fleet — the first that England ever had, and as such entitled to our veneration — was divided into squadrons, some of which were stationed at different ports round the island, while some were kept constantly cruising between our island and the continent, and the outlet from the Baltic Sea. The flag of England was already a meteor flag, and no ship of any other nation met it at sea without paying honour to it. Yet was Alfred even greater in peace than in war. In every interval of repose allowed him by the furious invaders he gave himself up to study and contemplation, and occupied his mind by devising the means of improving the moral as well as the physical condition of the people, and of advanc- ing their civilisation by books and schools, and a better administration of the laws. When he rebuilt London he gave to it many admirable civil institutions and laws. He rebuilt Winchester and many other cities, and wherever he rebuilt a town he gave the people rules for reconstructing and improving their municipal institutions, and trained them to that system of self-government which has since become the pride and strength of England, and without which there can be no lasting liberty in any country. There had been codes of law in England long before the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 41 days of Alfred, and some of these, though rudely simple had a fine free spirit about them. Alfred collected the codes, or dooms as they were also called, of his predecessors, and apparently without adding much of his own, and without introducing any new matter whatsoever, he compiled a very intelligible and consistent code, and submitted it to the Witenagemot, or parliament, or great council, for their sanction. It was rather to the proper administration of plain and simple laws than to the con- struction of any new theory, that Alfred directed his attention. In practice the judges had become shamefully corrupt. Asser mentions that he exercised great vigilance over the judges, frequently reprimanding those who did amiss, and threatening them with deprivation and other punishments. We have the same good authority for the facts that the courts became pure ; that the laws, such as they were, were fairly administered ; and that town people and villagers kept such good police that robbery and theft became almost unknown. Towards the close of his reign it was generally asserted that one might have showed golden bracelets and jewels on the public highways and cross-roads, and no man would have dared to touch them for fear of the law. Alfred was not only the first warrior, the first statesman and legislator, but he was also the first scholar in his dominions. From Asserts interesting memoirs the fact may easily be gathered that Alfred vastly exceeded even the most learned of his prelates in scholar-like accomplish- ments. He states that the king's noble mind thirsted for knowledge from the very cradle, and that when a mere child he had got many of the Anglo-Saxon poems by heart. It appears highly probable that Alfred diligently studied the Latin language between his twelfth and eighteenth year ; that he had a few Latin books with him in his solitude at Athelney, and that he was (for that time) a good Latin scholar before he invited Asser to his court. ' But whenever or however he obtained his knowledge of that learned tongue, he certainly showed in his literary works a proficiency in Latin which was almost miraculous for a prince in Alfred's age. The style of his works in his 42 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. native language proves that his acquaintance with a few good classical models was familiar, and extended to higher things than mere words and phrases. Even as an author, no native of England of the old Saxon period, except the Venerable Bede, can be compared to Alfred either for the number or the excellence of his writings. These works were in great part translations* from the Latin into Anglo- Saxon. He was an elegant poet, and wrote a great number of Anglo-Saxon poems and ballads, which were sung and recited in all parts of England, but of which we believe no trace has been preserved, though we have a few verses of a still more ancient date. Asser tells us that his first attempt at translation was made upon the Bible, a book which no man ever held in greater reverence than King- Alfred. He and the king were engaged in pleasant conversation, and it so chanced that Asser quoted a passage from the Bible with which the king was much struck. Alfred requested his friend to write the passage in a collection of psalms and hymns which he had with him at Athelney, and which he always carried in his bosom, but not a blank leaf could be found in that book. At the monk's suggestion the king called for a clean skin of parchment, and this being folded into fours, in the shape of a little book, the passage from the Scriptures was written upon it in Latin, together with other good texts ; and the king setting to work upon these passages translated them into the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Nothing is more astonishing in the story of this mar- vellous man than how he could find time for these laudable literary occupations ; but he was steady and persevering in all things, regular in his habits when not kept in the field by the Danes, and a rigid economist of his time. Eight hours of each day he gave to sleep, to his meals, and -■Alfred's translations were : 1. Orosius's History, six books ; 2. St.. Gregory's Pastorale ; 3. St. Gregory's Dialogues ; 4. Bede's History^ five books; 5. Boetius on the Consolation of Philosophy ; G. The Merchen • Lage, or Laws of the Mercians ; 7. Asser's Sentences; 8. The Psalms of David. His original works were : 1. An Abridgement of the Laws of the Tro'ans, the Greeks, tbe Britons, the Saxons, and the Danes ; 2. Laws of the West Saxons ; 3. Institutes ; 4. A Book against Unjust Judges ; 5. Sayings of the Wise ; 6. A Book on the Fortunes oi Kings ; 7. Parables and Jokes ; 8. Acts of Magistrates ; 9. Collection of Chronicles ; 10. Manual of Meditations. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 4£ exercise ; eight were absorbed by the affairs of govern- ment, and eight were devoted to study and devotion. Clocks, clepsydras, and other ingenious inventions for measuring time were then unknown in England. Alfred was no doubt acquainted with the sun-dial, which was in common use in Italy ; but this index is of no use in the hours of the night, and would frequently be equally unserviceable during our sunless, foggy days. He there- fore marked his time by the constant burning of wax torches or candles, which were made precisely of the same weight and size, and notched in the stem at regular distances. These candles were twelve inches long ; six of them, or seventy-two inches of wax, were consumed in twenty-four hours, or fourteen hundred and forty minutes ; and thus, supposing the notches at intervals of an inch, one such notch would mark the lapse of twenty minutes, and three such notches the lapse of an hour. These time- candles were plaGed under the special charge of the king's mass-priests or chaplains. But it was soon discovered that sometimes the wind rushing in through the windows and doors, and the numerous chinks in the walls of the royal palace, caused the wax to be consumed in a rapid and irregular manner. This induced Alfred to invent that primitive utensil the horn lantern, which now-a-days is never seen except in the stable-yard of some lowly country inn, and not often even there. Asser tells us that the king went skilfully and wisely to work ; and having found out that white horn could be made transparent like glass, he, with that material and pieces of wood, admirably made a case for his candle, which kept it from wasting and flaring. And therefore, say we, let no one ever look upon an ostler's horn lantern, however poor and battered it may be, and however dim the light that shines within it, without thinking of Alfred the Great. This Saxon king, who could practise with his own hand the mechanical arts, extended his encouragement to all the humble but useful arts, and always gave a kind reception to mechanics of superior skill, of whom no inconsiderable number came into England from foreign countries. " No- man," says Milton, " could be more frugal of two precious 44 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. things in man's life — his time and his revenue. His whole annual revenue, which his first care was should be justly ■his own, he divided into two equal parts : the first he employed in secular uses, and subdivided those into three : the first, to pay his soldiers, household servants, and guard ; the second, to pay his architects and workmen, whom he had got together of several nations, for he was an elegant builder, above the custom and conceit of Englishmen in those days ; the third he had in readiness to relieve or honour strangers, according to their worth, who came from all parts to see him and live under him. The other equal part of his yearly wealth he dedicated to religious uses — those of four sorts : the first, to relieve the poor ; the second, to build and maintain monasteries ; the third, to a school where he had persuaded the sons of many noble- men to study sacred knowledge and liberal arts (some say Oxford) ; the fourth was for the relief of foreign churches, as far as India, to the shrine of St. Thomas." This great prince was anxious above all things that his subjects should learn how to govern themselves, and how to preserve their liberties ; and in his will he declared that he left his people as free as their own thoughts. He fre- quently assembled his Witenagemot, or parliament, and never passed any law, or took any important step whatever, without their previous sanction. Down to the last days of his life he heard all law appeals in person with the utmost patience, and in cases of importance he revised all the proceedings with the utmost industry. His manifold labours in the court, the camp, the field, the hall of justice, the study, must have been prodigious. " One cannot help being- amazed," says Burke, " that a prince who lived in such tur- bulent times, who commanded personally in fifty-four pitched battles, who had so disordered a province to regu- late, who was not only a legislator but a judge, and who was continually superintending his armies, his navies, the .traffic of his kingdom, his revenues, and the conduct of all Iris officers, could have bestowed so much of his time on religious exercises and speculative knowledge ; but the exertion of all his faculties and virtues seemed to have given a mutual strength to all of them. Thus all historians MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. ±$ speak of this prince, whose whole history is one panegyric ; and whatever dark spots of human frailty may have adhered to such a character, they are entirely hid in the splendour of his many shining qualities and grand virtues, that throw a glory over the obscure period in which he lived." Our amazement at all this bodily and mental activity must be increased by the indisputable fact that all these incessant exertions were made in spite of the depressing influences of physical pain and constant bad health. At the age of twenty or twenty-one he was visited by a tor- menting malady, the inward seat and unknown nature of which baffled all the medical skill of his "leeches," or physicians. The accesses of excruciating pain were fre- quent, at times almost intermittent, and then, if by day or by night, a single hour of ease was mercifully granted to him, that short interval was embittered by the dread of the sure-returning anguish. But the good monk Asser, who withdraws the curtain and admits us into the sick room of the great Saxon sovereign, tells us that Heaven vouchsafed him strength to bear these mortal agonies, and that they were borne with a devout fortitude. The disease never quitted him, and was no doubt the cause of his death. "The shepherd of his people," "the darling of the English," "the wisest man in England," the truly illus- trious Alfred, expired in the month of November, on the festival of Saint Simon and Saint Jude, in the year 900, when he was only in the fifty-first year of his age. He was buried at Winchester in a monastery he had founded. BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. Asser, whose name is so frequently mentioned in the above lesson and that which precedes it, was a monk of St. David's, Wales. He became the tutor and friend of Alfred the Great, and wrote an account of the life of that monarch. Some suppose that he was afterwards bishop of Sherborne, as a monk of the same name is mentioned in the Saxon Chronicle as having held this office. He died in 91 0. 46 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. III. — The Danish Kings of England. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Canute married Emma of Normandy, the widow of Ethelred II. He sent the sons of the late king, Edmund Ironside, into exile, and executed many of the Saxon nobles, confiscating their estates to the crown. With the aid of a body of English troops, commanded by Earl Godwin, he conquered Norway, and thus became king of England, Denmark, and Norway. 2. The lasb acts of his reign were a visit to Rome and an attack on the Scots to punish the Scottish king Malcolm for refusing to do homage for the earldom of Cumber] and. Malcolm gave way, and the war was averted. Canute died in 1035. 3. His son and successor, Harold I., stained his short reign with the crime of murder, being privy to the slaughter of Alfred (one of the sons of Ethelred and Emma his stepmother) by the retainers of Earl Godwin, whom he had won over to permit the commission of the crime. 4. Dying in 1039, he was succeeded by his brother Hardi- canute, a prince famed only for bodily strength and intemperate habits. This king burdened the English with taxes, compelling them to pay Dane-geld to the Danes. He died in 1041, after a drinking bout at Lambeth. How the Danes Got the Upper Hand in England. [Edmund Burlce.'] Edgar had two waves, Elfleda and Elfrida. By the first he had a son called Edw T ard ; the second bore him one called Ethelred. On Edgar's death, Edward, in the usual order of succession, was called to the throne ; but Elfrida caballed in favour of her son, and finding it impossible to set him up in the life of his brother, she murdered Edward with her own hands in her castle of Corfe, whither he had retired to refresh himself, wearied with hunting. Ethelred, who, by the crimes of his mother, ascended a throne sprinkled with his brother's blood, had a part to act which exceeded the capacity which could be expected in one of his youth and inexperience. The partisans of the secular clergy, who were kept down by the vigour of Edgar's MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 47 government, thought this a fit time to renew their preten- sions. The monks defended themselves in their possession ; there was no moderation on either side, and the whole nation joined in these parties. The murder of Edward threw an odious stain on the king, though he was wholly- innocent of that crime. There was a general discontent, and every corner was full of murmurs and cabals. In this state of the kingdom it was equally dangerous to exert the fulness of the sovereign authority, or to suffer it to relax. The temper of the king was most inclined to the latter method, which is of all things the worst. A weak govern- ment, too easy, suffers evils to grow which often make the most rigorous and illegal proceedings necessary : through an extreme lenity, it is on some occasions tyrannical. This was the condition of Ethelred's nobility, who, by being permitted everything, were never contented. Thus all the principal men held a factious and sort of independent authority ; they despised the king, they oppressed the people, and they hated one another. The Danes, in every part of England but Wessex as numerous as the English themselves, and in many parts more numerous, were ready to take advantage of these disorders, and waited with impatience some new attempt from abroad that they might rise in favour of the invaders. They were not long without such an occasion ; the Danes pour in almost upon every part at once, and distract the defence which the weak prince was preparing to make. In those days of wretchedness and ignorance, when all the maritime parts of Europe were attacked by these formidable enemies at once, they never thought of entering into any alliance against them : they equally neglected the other obvious method to prevent their incursions, which was to carry the war into the invaders' country. What aggravated these calamities, the nobility, mostly disaffected to the king, and entertaining very little regard for their country, made, some of them, a weak and cowardly opposition to the enemy ; some actually betrayed their trust ; some even were found who undertook the trade of piracy themselves. It was in this condition that Edric, ost of deputy- keeper of the public records. His other historical ivories are a " History of the Anglo-Saxons" and the "Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth" He was born in 1788, and died in 1861. His surname was Cohen, which he subsequently changed to that of Palgrave.'] William after his landing had been most actively em- ployed. As a preliminary to further proceedings he had caused all the vessels to be drawn on shore and rendered unserviceable. He told his men that they must prepare to conquer or die — flight was impossible. He had occupied the Eoman castle of Pevensey, whose walls are yet existing, flanked by Anglo-Norman towers, and he mid personally surveyed all the adjoining country, for he never trusted this part of a general's duty to any eyes but his own. One Bobert, a Norman thane who was settled in the neighbour- hood, advised him to cast up intrenchments for the purpose of resisting Harold. William replied that his best defence was in the valour of his army and the goodness of his case. In compliance with the opinions of the age, W r illiam had an astrologer in his train. An oriental monarch, at the present time, never engages in battle without a previous horoscope ; and this superstition was universally adopted in Europe during the Middle Ages. But William's "clerk " was not merely a star-gazer — lie had graduated in all the occult sciences ; he was a necromancer and a soothsayer. These accomplishments in the sixteenth century would MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 53 have assuredly brought the clerk to the stake ; but in the eleventh, although they were highly illegal according to the strict letter of the ecclesiastical law, yet they were studied as eagerly as any other branch of metaphysics, of which they were supposed to form a part. This sorcerer, or sortilegus, by casting sortes, or lots, had ascertained that the duke would succeed, and that Harold would surrender without a battle, upon which assurance the Normans entirely relied. After the landing William inquired for his conjuror. A pilot came forward and told him hat the unhappy wight had been drowned in the passage. t William then immediately pointed out the folly of trustin g to the predictions of one who was utterly unable to tell what would "happen to himself. When William first set foot on shore he had shown the same spirit. He stumbled and fell forward on the palms of his hands. " It is a bad sign, '* exclaimed his troops, affrighted at the omen. " No," answered William, as he rose ; " I have taken seizin of the country," showing the clod of earth which he had grasped. One of his soldiers, with the quickness of a modern French- man, instantly followed up the idea ; he ran to a cottage and pulled out a bundle of reeds from the thatch, telling him to receive that symbol also as the seizin of the realm with which he was invested. These little anecdotes display the turn and temper of the Normans, and the alacrity by which the army was pervaded. Some fruitless attempts are said to have been made at negociation. Harold despatched a monk to the enemy's camp, who was to exhort William to abandon his enter- prise. The duke insisted on his right ; but, as some historians relate, he offered to submit his claim to a legal decision, to be pronounced by the pope, either according to the law of Normandy, or according to the law of England; or, if this mode of adjustment did not please Harold, that the question should be decided by single combat, the crown becoming the meed of the victor. The propositions of William are stated by other authorities to have contained a proposition for a compromise — namely, that Harold should take Northumbria, and William the rest of the Anglo-Saxon dominions. All or any of these proposals are 54 MANCHESTER HISTORIC RE\DER. such as may very probably have been made, but they were not minuted down in formal protocols, or couched in diplo- matic notes ; they were verbal messages sent to and fro on the eve of a bloody battle. Fear prevailed in both camps. The English, in addition to the apprehensions which even the most stout-hearted feel on the eve of a morrow whose close they may never see, dreaded the papal excommunication, the curse en- countered in support of the unlawful authority of a usurper. When they were informed that battle had been decided upon, they stormed and swore ; and now the cowardice of conscience spurred them on to riot and revelry. The whole night was spent in debauch. " Waes healP and "Drink heal" resounded from the tents ; the wine cups passed gaily round and round by the smoky blaze of the reel watch fires, while the ballad of ribald mirth was loudly sung by the carousers. In the Norman leaguer far otherwise had the dread of the approaching morn affected the hearts of William's soldiery. No voice was heard excepting the solemn response of the litany, and the chant of the psalm. The penitents confessed their sins, the masses were said, and the sense of the imminent peril of the morrow was tran- quillised by penance and prayer. Each of the nations, as we are told by one of our most trustworthy English his- torians, acted according to their " national custom," and severe is the censure which the English thus receive. The English were strongly fortified in their position by lines of trenches and palisades, and within these they were marshalled according to the Danish fashion — shield against shield, presenting an impenetrable front to the enemy. The men of Kent formed the vanguard, for it was their privilege to be the first in the strife. The burgesses of London, in like manner, claimed and obtained the honour of being the royal bodyguard, and they were drawn up round the standard. At the foot of this banner stood Harold, with his brothers Leofwin and Gurth, and a chosen body of the bravest thanes. Before the Normans began their march, and very early in the morning of the feast of St. Calixtus, William had MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 55 assembled his barons round him, and exhorted them to maintain his righteous cause. As the invaders drew nigh, Harold saw a division advancing composed of the volun- teers from the county of Boulogne and from the Amien- nois, under the command of William Fitz Osbern and Roger Montgomery. " It is the duke," exclaimed Harold ; " and little shall I fear him. By my forces will his be four times outnumbered." Gurth shook his head, and expa- tiated on the strength of the Norman cavalry, as opposed to the foot-soldiers of England ; but their discourse was stopped by the appearance of the combined cohorts, under Aimeric, viscount of Thouars, and Alan Fergant, of Brittany. Harold's heart sunk at the sight, and he broke out into passionate exclamations of fear and dismay. But now the third and last division of the Norman army was drawing nigh. The consecrated Gonfanon floats amidst the forest of spears, and Harold is now too well aware that he beholds the ranks which are commanded in person by the Duke of Normandy. Immediately before the duke rode Taillefer the minstrel, singing with a loud and clear voice the lay of Charlemagne and Roland, and the emprises of the Paladins who had fallen in the dolorous Pass of Roncevaux. Taillefer, as his guerdon, had craved permission to strike the first blow, for he was a valiant warrior, emulating the deeds which he sung. His appellation, Taille-fer, is probably to be consi- dered not as his real name, but as an epithet derived from his strength and prowess ; and he fully justified his demand by transfixing the first Englishman whom he attacked, and by felling the second to the ground. The battle now became general, and raged with the greatest fury. The Normans advanced beyond the English lines, but they were driven back, and forced into a trench, where horses and riders fell upon each other in fearful confusion. More Normans were slain here than in any other part of the field. The alarm spread ; the light troops left in charge of the baggage and the stores thought that all was lost, and were about to take flight ; but the fierce Odo, bishop of Bayeux, the duke's half-brother, and who was better fitted for the sword than for the mitre, succeeded in re-assuring 56 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. them, and then returning to the field, and rushing into that part where the battle was hottest, he fought as the stoutest of the warriors engaged in the conflict. From nine in the morning till three in the afternoon the successes on either side were nearly balanced. The charges of the Norman cavalry gave them great advantage, but the English phalanx repelled their enemies ; and the soldiers were so well protected by their targets that the artillery of the Normans was long discharged in vain. The bowmeji seeing that they had failed to make any impression, altered the direction of their shafts, and, instead of shooting point- blank, the flights of arrows were directed upwards, so that the points came down upon the heads of the men of England, and the iron shower fell with murderous effect. The English ranks were exceedingly distressed by the volleys, yet they still stood firm ; and the Normans now employed a stratagem to decoy their opponents out of their intrenchments. A feigned retreat on their part induced the English to pursue them with great heat. The Normans suddenly wheeled about, and a new and fiercer battle was urged. The field was covered with separate bands of foemen, each engaged with one another. Here the English yielded — there they conquered. One English thane armed with a battleaxe spread dismay among the Frenchmen. He was cut down by Roger de Montgomery. The Normans have preserved the name of the Norman baron, but that of the Englishman is lost in oblivion. Some other English thanes are also praised as having singly, and by their personal prowess, delayed the ruin of their countrymen and country. At one period of the battle the Normans were nearly routed. The cry was raised that the duke was slain, and they began to fly in every direction. William threw off his helmet, and galloping through the squadrons rallied his barons, though not without great difficulty. Harold on his part used every possible exertion, and was distinguished as the most active and bravest amongst the soldiers in the host which he led on to destruction. A Norman arrow wounded him in the left eye ; he dropped from his steed in agony, and was borne to the foot of the standard. The- MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 57 English began to give way, or rather to retreat to the standard as their rallying point. The Normans encircled them, and fought desperately to reach this goal. Kobert Fitz-Ernest had almost seized the banner, but he was killed in the attempt. William led his troops on with the inten- tion, it is said, of measuring his sword with Harold. He did encounter an English horseman, from whom he received such a stroke upon the helmet that he was nearly brought to the ground. The Normans flew to the aid of their sovereign, and the bold Englishman was pierced by their lances. About the same time the tide of battle took a momentary turn. The Kentish men and East Saxons rallied and repelled the Norman barons ; but Harold was- not amongst them, and William led on his troops with desperate intrepidity. In the thick crowds of the assail- ants and the assailed the hoofs of the horses were plunged deep into the gore of dead and the dying. Gurth was at the foot of the standard without hope, but without fear ; he fell by the falchion of William. The English banner was cut down, and the Gonfanon planted in its place announced that William of Normandy was the conqueror. It was now late in the evening. The English troops were entirely broken, yet no Englishman would surrender. The conflict continued in many parts of the bloody field long after dark. By William's orders a spot close to the Gonfanon was cleared, and he caused his pavilion to be pitched among the corpses which were heaped around. He there supped with his barons, and they feasted among the dead ; but when he contemplated the fearful slaughter, a natural feeling of pity, perhaps allied to repentance, arose in his stern mind ; and the Abbey of Battle, in which prayer was to be offered up perpetually for the repose of the souls. of all who had fallen in the conflict, was at once the monu- ment of his triumph and the token of his piety. The abbey was most richly endowed, and all the land for one league round about was annexed to the Battle franchise. The abbot was freed from the authority of the metropolitan of Canterbury, and invested with archiepiscopal jurisdiction. The high altar was erected on the very spot where Harold 'h. 38 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. standard waved ; and the roll deposited in the archives of the monastery recorded the names of those who had fought with the Conqueror, and amongst whom the lands of broad England were divided. But all- this pomp and solemnity has passed away like a dream. The " perpetual prayer " has ceased for ever — the roll of Battle is rent. The shields of the Norman lineages are trodden in the dust, the abbey is levelled with the ground, and a dank and reedy pool fills the spot where the foundations of the choir have been uncovered, merely for the gaze of the idle visitor, or the instruction of the moping antiquary. SUMMARY OF SAXON AND DANISH KINGS FROM EGBERT TO HAROLD II. SAXON. Name. Date of Acces. Egbert 827 Ethelwulf 836 Ethelbald 857 Ethelbert 860 Ethel, ed 1 866 Mfre I (the Great) 872 Edward I (the Elder) , Athelstan Edmund I Edred Edwy (the Fair) Edgar (the Peaceable) Edward II. (:he Martyr) . 900 925 941 946 955 959 975 SAXON. Name. Date of Acces. 14. Ethelred II. (the Unready) 978 15. Edmund II. (Ironside) . . 1016 DANISH. 16. Canute (the Great) 1017 17. Harold I. (Harefoot) .... 1036 18. Hardicanute 1039 SAXON. 19. Edward II. (the Confessor) 1041 20. Harold II 1060 CLOSE OF THE SAXON LINE. Part III.— THE NORMAN DYNASTY (1066—1154). I. — William I. (the Conqueror), 1066 — 1087. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. William the Conqueror was born at Falaise in Normandy in 1024. He was crowned King of England at Westminster, December 25, 1066. He died at Hermentrude, near Rouen, September 9, 1087, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and the twenty -first of his reign, and was buried at Caen in Normandy. 2. He married Matilda of Flanders, by whom he had four sons — Robert, Richard, William, and Henry, and six daughters, one of whom, Adela, married the Count of Blois, and became the Another of Stephen of Blois. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 59 3. After his coronation William brought the rest of England into subjection and invaded Scotland. Many insurrections were raised in various parts of the country, of which the one headed by Hereward at Ely was the most formidable. Hereward was subdued (1073) and swore allegiance to William. 4. A quarrel arose between William and his eldest son Robert, on account of the latter claiming and invading Normandy (1077). In 1080, after his return, William caused the famous Doomsday Book to be commenced : a record of English estates and their liabilities in crown dues at that time. 5. Harsh and tyrannical to his English subjects, all offices of trust during his reign he gave to Normans . His forest laws were unexampled for severity, the life of a bird or a beast being esteemed more valuable than that of a man. In 1085, he laid waste the greater part of Hampshire to make the New Forest. 6. In 1087, he quitted England in consequence of a quarrel with Philip I., king of France, and laid siege to Mantes. After the siege, while riding through the smouldering ruins of the town his horse fell, and William died shortly after of injuries internal caused by the accident. 7. William built the Tower of London, and other fortified castles, with Battle Abbey in Sussex. He parcelled out England into about 60,000 knights' fees, each bound to provide a mounted soldier in time of war, the estates being held on this condition. In his reign Jews from Rouen first took up their residence in England. 8. During his reign Edgar Atheling, son of Edward the Exile and Agatha of Hungary, was in England. This prince was the rightful heir to the English crown — Edward the Exile being the son of Edmund Ironside who was sent into banishment by Canute. Margaret, the sister of Edgar Atheling, married Malcolm III. of Scotland. How the Conqueror Established his Power. [From the li History of the Norman Conquest " by Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry, a distinguished French historian, ivho was born at Blois in 1795, and died in 1856, In addition to this he wrote " Letters on the History of France" " Stories of the Times of the Merovingian Kings," and the " History of the Third Estate," as the commons or the representatives of the people were called in France.] Whilst the army of the King of the Anglo-Saxons and 00 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. that of the invaders were confronting each other, a fresh detachment of vessels from Normandy had crossed the Channel to join the great fleet stationed in the roads of Hastings. Their commanders landed by mistake several miles further north, at a place called Rumen-ey, now Romney. The inhabitants of the coast received the Normans as enemies, and a battle took place in which the foreigners were vanquished. William learnt their defeat a few days after his victory, and to spare a similar misfortune to the recruits that he still expected from across the strait, he resolved, first of all, to secure possession of the south- eastern coast. Instead, therefore, of advancing towards London he inarched back to Hastings, and remained there some time, in order to try if his presence might not induce the people of I the neighbouring country to submit themselves voluntarily. But receiving no peaceful advances, the Conqueror resumed his march, with the remains of his army and the fresh troops which had arrived in the interval from Normandy. He proceeded along the shore from south to north, devastating all in his course. At Romney, he avenged the defeat of his soldiers by burning the houses and putting the inhabitants to death. From Romney he marched towards Dover, the strongest place on the coast, of which he had formerly attempted to obtain peaceful possession by means of the oath he had extorted from Harold. The fortress of Dover, recently finished by the son of Godwin under happier auspices, was situated on a rock, which naturally rose precipitously from the sea that washed its base, and on which much pains and labour had been expended in trimming it on all sides, so as to render it as smooth as a wall. The details of the siege by the Normans are not known ; all that we learn from historians is that the town of Dover was burnt down, and that, influenced either by terror or treason, the garrison of the fortress surrendered it. William passed eight days at Dover in constructing new walls and works of defence ; then chang- ing his route and discontinuing his course along the coast, he marched towards the metropolis. The Norman army advanced by the great Roman way, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Q\ called by the English Watling Street, the same which had so often served as a common boundary in the divisions of territory between the Saxons and the Danes. This road led from Dover to London through the middle of the pro- vince of Kent ; the conquerors traversed a portion of it without their passage being disputed, but in one place, where the road approached the Thames, on the border of a forest well adapted for an ambuscade, a large body of armed Saxons suddenly appeared. They were commanded by two priests, Egelsig, abbot of the monastery of St. Augustine at Canterbury, and the archbishop of Canter- bury, Stigand, the same who had crowned King Harold. It is not exactly known what occurred in this encounter, whether there was a battle followed by a treaty between the two armies, or whether the capitulation was concluded without fighting. It appears, however, that the army of Kent stipulated for all the inhabitants of that province, who engaged to offer no further resistance to the conquerors, on condition that they should remain as free after the con- quest as they had been before it. In thus treating for themselves and separating their own fate from that of their country, the men of Kent (if indeed it be true that they entered into this compact) acted in a manner more hurtful to the common cause than advanta- geous to themselves ; for no edict of the time gives any evidence that the foreigners kept faith with them, or dis- tinguished them from the rest of the English in their oppressive measures and laws. Archbishop Stigand, either having joined in this capitulation or vainly opposed it (which is the most probable conjecture, considering his proud and intrepid character), quitted the province which had laid down its arms, and repaired to London where submission had not yet been thought of. The inhabitants of this great town, and the chiefs who were assembled there, had resolved to fight a second battle ; which, well ordered and ably commanded, would be, to all appearance, more fortunate than the first. But a supreme commander was needed, under whom all the troops and all volunteers might rally ; and the national council, which ought to have name'cl this commander, (52 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. delayed making a decision, agitated and divided as it was by divers intrigues and pretensions. Neither of the brothers of the late king, who were men capable of worthily filling his place, had survived the battle of Hastings. Harold had left two sons, who were still very young and too little known to the people ; it does not appear that they were then proposed as claimants to the throne. Amongst all the candidates, the most powerful from their wealth and renown were Edwin and Morcar, brothers-in-law of Harold, the chiefs of Northumbria and Mercia. They had the suffrages of all the men of the north of England ; but the citizens of London, the inhabitants of the south, and some others, set up in opposition to them young Edgar, the nephew of king Edward, who was surnamed Atheling or the Illustrious, on account of his descent from several kings. This young man, feeble-minded and without any acquired reputation, had been unable, a year before, to stand against the popularity of Harold ; but he now outweighed that of the sons of Alfgar, and was supported against them by Stigand himself, and by Eldred, archbishop of York. Amongst the rest of the bishops, there were several who were in favour neither of Edgar nor of his competitors, but demanded that submission should be made to him who had brought the pope's bull and the jconsecrated standard. Some of these men were influenced by a sentiment of blind obedience to ecclesiastical power ; others by political cowardice ; and others of foreign origin, and bought before- hand by the foreign pretender, played the part for which they had been paid, either in money or in promises. They did not, however, prevail ; the majority of the great national council fixed their choice on a Saxon, but on the one least fit to command in these trying circumstances — the young nephew of Edward. He was proclaimed king after long hesitation, during which much precious time was lost in useless disputes. His accession did not conduce to rally the unsettled spirit of the nation. Edwin and Morcar, who had engaged to put themselves at the head of the troops assembled in London, retracted their promise, and retired to their governments in the north, taking with them the soldiers of these countries, over whom they had MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Q$ entire influence. They vainly hoped to be able to defend the northern provinces distinct from the rest of England* Their departure weakened and discouraged those who remained in London with the new king ; depression, the fruit of civil discord, succeeded the first ebullition of spirit- and enthusiasm excited by the foreign invasion. Meanwhile the Norman troops were approaching at several points, and traversing in all directions the provinces, of Surrey, Sussex, and Hants, plundering and burning the towns and hamlets, and massacring the men, whether armed or unarmed. Five hundred horse advanced as far as the southern suburb of London, came to an engagement with a body of Saxons who opposed them, and in retreating burnt all the buildings on the right bank of the Thames. William, judging from this proof that the citizens had not yet renounced all intention of defending themselves., instead of approaching and laying siege to London, pro- ceeded towards the west, and crossed the Thames at Wallingford, in the province of- Berkshire. He established an intrenched camp in this place, and left troops there to intercept any succour from the western provinces ; then directing his course towards the north-east, he himself encamped at Berkhampstead, in Herefordshire, to cut offin the same manner all communication between London and the north, and to prevent the return of the sons of Alfgar, in case they should repent of their inaction. By this manoeuvre the Saxon metropolis was hemmed in on all sides. Numerous foraging parties ravaged the environs, and intercepted the supplies, without engaging in any decisive battle. More than once the Londoners gave battle to the Normans, but by degrees they were wearied out, and suc- cumbed, not so much to the strength of the enemy as to the fear of famine, and to the discouraging thought that they were cut off from all succour. King Edgar, the Archbishops Stigand and Eldred, Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, several other priests, chiefs of high rank, and the principal citizens of the town, obeying necessity, says a contemporary Saxon chronicle, repaired to the Norman camp at Berkhampstead, and there tendered their submission, to the misfortune of their country. They gave hostages to f,4 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. the foreigner, and took the oaths of peace and fidelity to him, and, in return, he promised to be kind and clement towards them. Then he marched towards London, and, regardless of his promise, permitted everything in his course to be devastated. II.— William II. (Rufus), 1087—1100. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1 . William II. was the third son of William the Conqueror. He was born in Normandy in 1057, and crowned at Westminster October 1, 1087. When hunting in the New Forest he was shot, perhaps accidentally, by an arrow from the bow of Sir Walter Tyrrel, one of his retinue. He died in the 43rd year of his age, and the 13th of his reign, and was buried at Westminster. 2. Normandy had been assigned to Robert by his father, and England given to William ; but a plot was formed by the Conqueror's half-brother, Oc!o, bishop of Bayeux, to give the crown of England to Robe it. The conspiracy was crushed by the aid of the Saxons. 3. In 1091, Rufus invaded Normandy, but after a short cam- paign was reconciled to his brother Robert. After his return he invaded Scotland, in the same year, to avenge a raid into Eng- land made by Malcolm III., during his absence. The war was renewed in 1093, a quarrel having arisen about the building of Alnwick Castle by the English, and Malcolm III. and his son Edward were killed while besieging the castle. 4. In 1086, Robert, to obtain funds to join the first Crusade, an expedition for the recovery of Jerusalem from the hands of the Saracens, mortgaged Normandy to his brother William. The Normans, disliking the change of masters, raised the standard of revolt in Maine ; but Rufus speedily laid siege to Mans, and reduced the disaffected provinces to submission. 5. I i 1100, William II. fell by the hand of Sir Walter Tyrrel, in the New Forest, unlamented by the English, who were crushed and worn out by his exactions and oppressions. West- minster Hall was built in the reign of William II. The First Crusade. [Abridged from the "History of England" by David Hume, a famous historian and miscellaneous writer, who was born in Edinburgh in 1711, and died in 1776. Among his other work* MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. ftfy may be mentioned his "Treatise on Human Nature" "Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary," anl an "Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals;" but none of them contributed so much to establish his celebrity as his " History of England"} After Mahomet had, by means of his pretended revela- tions, united the dispersed Arabians under one head, they issued forth from their deserts in great multitudes ; and, being animated with zeal for their new religion, and sup- ported by the vigour of their new government, they made a deep impression on the Eastern empire, which was very far in the decline, with regard both to military discipline and civil policy. Jerusalem, by its situation, became one of their most early conquests ; and the Christians had the mortification to see the Holy Sepulchre and the other places consecrated by the presence of their religious founder, fallen into the possession of infidels. But the Arabians or Saracens were so employed in military enterprises that they had no leisure for theological controversy. They gave little disturbance to those zealous pilgrims who daily flocked to Jerusalem : and they allowed every man, after paying a moderate tribute, to visit the Holy Sepulchre, to perform his religious duties, and to return in peace. But the Turco- mans, or Turks, a tribe .of Tartars who had embraced Mahometanism, having wrested Syria from the Saracens, and having, in the year 1065, made themselves masters of Jerusalem, rendered the pilgrimage much more difficult and dangerous to the Christians. The barbarity of their manners exposed the pilgrims to many insults, robberies, and extortions ; and these zealots, returning from their meritorious fatigues and sufferings, filled all Christendom with indignation against the infidels, who profaned the Holy City by their presence, and derided the sacred mysteries in the veiy place of their completion. Peter, commonly called the Hermit, a native of Amiens, in Picardy, had made the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Being deeply affected with the dangers to which that act of piety now exposed the pilgrims, he entertained the bold, and, to all appearance, impracticable, project of leading into Asia, from the farthest extremities of the West, armies sufficient to subdue those potent and warlike nations which held E 6(3 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. the Holy City in subjection. He proposed his views to Martin II., who filled the papal chair, and who summoned a council at Placentia, which was so numerous that no hall could contain the multitude, and it was necessary to hold the assembly in a plain. The harangues of the pope and of Peter himself, representing the dismal situation of their brethren in the East, found the minds of men so well prepared that the whole multitude suddenly and violently declared for the war, and solemnly devoted themselves to perform this service, so meritorious, as they believed it, to God and religion. But though Italy seems thus to have zealously embraced this enterprise, Martin knew that in order to insure success it was necessary to enlist the greater and more warlike nations in the same engagement ; and having previously exhorted Peter to visit the chief cities and sovereigns of Christendom, he summoned another council at Clermont, in Auvergne. The fame of this great and pious design being now universally diffused, procured the attendance of the greatest prelates, nobles, and princes ; and when the pope and the hermit renewed their pathetic exhortations, the whole assembly, as if impelled by an immediate inspi- ration, not moved by their preceding impressions, exclaimed with one voice, "It is the will of God; it is the will of God/" words deemed so memorable and so much the result of the divine influence, that they were employed as a signal of rendezvous and battle in all the future exploits of those adventurers. Men of all ranks flew to arms with the utmost ardour : and an exterior symbol, too, a circumstance of extreme moment, was here chosen by the devoted combatants. The sign of the Cross, which had been hitherto so much revered among Christians, and which, the more it was an object of reproach among the pagan world was the more passionately cherished by them, became the badge of union, and was affixed to their right shoulder by all who enlisted themselves in this sacred warfare. Eobert, duke of Normandy, impelled by the bravery and mistaken generosity of his spirit, had early enlisted himself in the crusade ; but being always unprovided with money, he found that it would be impracticable for him to MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 07 appear in a manner suitable to his rank and station at the head of his numerous vassals and subjects, who, trans- ported with the general rage, were determined to follow him into Asia, He resolved, therefore, to mortgage, or rather to sell his dominions, which he had not talents to govern, and he offered them to his brother William for the very unequal sum of ten thousand marks. The bargain was soon concluded. The king raised the money by violent extortions on his subjects of all ranks, even on the convents, who were obliged to melt their plate in order to furnish the quota demanded of them. William was put in possession of Normandy and Maine, and Kobert, pro- viding himself with a magnificent train, set out for the Holy Land. After the adventurers in the holy war were assembled on the banks of the Bosphorus, opposite Constantinople, they proceeded on their enterprise, but immediately experienced those difficulties which their zeal had hitherto concealed from them, and for which, even if they had foreseen them, it would have been almost impossible to provide a remedy. The Greek emperor, Alexis Comnenus, who had applied to the western Christians for succour against the Turks, entertained hopes, and those but feeble ones, of obtaining such a moderate supply as, acting under his command, might enable him to repulse the enemy ; but he was extremely astonished to see his dominions overwhelmed on a sudden by such an inunda- tion of licentious barbarians, who, though they pretended friendship, despised his subjects as unwarlike and detested them as heretical. By all the arts of policy, in which he excelled, he endeavoured to divert the torrent ; but while he employed professions, caresses, civilities, and seeming services towards the leaders of the crusade, he secretly regarded those imperious allies as more dangerous than the open enemies by whom his empire had been formerly invaded. Having effected that difficult point of disembarking them safely in Asia, he entered into a private correspondence with Soliman, emperor of the Turks, and practised every insidious art which his genius, his power, or his situation (Jg MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. enabled him to employ, for disappointing the enterprise and discouraging the Latins from making thenceforward any such prodigious migrations. His dangerous policy was seconded by the disorders inseparable from so vast a multitude, who were not united under one head, and were conducted by leaders of the most independent, intractable spirit, unacquainted with military discipline, and determined enemies to civil authority and submission. The scarcity of provisions, the excesses of fatigue, the influences of unknown climates, joined to the want of concert in their operations and to the sword of a warlike enemy, destroyed the adventurers by thousands, and would have abated the ardour of men impelled to war by less powerful motives. Their zeal, however, their bravery, and their irresistible force still carried them forward, and continually advanced them to the end of their great enterprise. After an obstinate siege they took Nice, the seat of the Turkish empire ; they defeated Soliman in two great battles ; they made them- selves masters of Antioch, and entirely broke the force of the Turks, who had so long retained those countries in subjection. The soldan of Egypt, whose alliance they had hitherto courted, recovered, on the fall of the Turkish power, his former authority in Jerusalem ; and he informed them by his ambassadors that if they came unarmed to that city they might now perform their religious vow^s, and that all Christian pilgrims who should henceforth visit the Holy Sepulchre might expect the same good treatment which they had ever received from his predecessors. The offer was rejected ; the soldan was required to yield up the city to the Christians ; and on his refusal, the champions of the Cross advanced to the siege of Jerusalem, which they regarded as the consummation of their labours. By the detachments which they had made, and the disasters which they had undergone, they were diminished to the number of twenty thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse ; but these were still formidable from their valour, their expe- rience, and the obedience which, from past calamities, they had learned to pay to their leaders. After a siege of five MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. $0, weeks they took Jerusalem by assault ; and impelled by a mixture of military and religious rage, they put the numerous garrison and inhabitants to the sword without distinction. This great event happened on the fifth of July, in the last year of the eleventh century. The Christian princes and nobles, after choosing Godfrey de Bouillon king of Jerusalem, began to settle themselves in their new con- quests, while some of them returned to Europe in order to enjoy at home that glory which their valour had acquired them in this popular and meritorious enterprise. Among these was Kobert, Duke of Normandy, who, as he had relinquished the greatest dominions of any prince that attended the Crusade, had all along distinguished himself by the most intrepid courage, as well as by that affable disposition and unbounded generosity which gain the hearts of soldiers and qualify a prince to shine in military life. In passing through Italy, he became acquainted with Sibylla, daughter of the Count of Conversana, a young lady of great beauty and merit, whom he espoused. Indulging himself in this new passion, as well as being fond of enjoying ease and pleasure after the fatigues of so many rough campaigns, he lingered a twelvemonth in that delicious climate ; and though his friends in the north looked every moment for his arrival, none of them knew with certainty when they could expect it. By this delay he lost the kingdom of England, which the great fame he had acquired during the Crusade, as well as his undoubted title, both by birth and by the preceding agreement with his deceased brother, would, had he been present, have infallibly secured to him. III.— Henry I. (Beauclerc), 1100—1135. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Henry I., the fourth son of William the Conqueror, was born at Selby, in Yorkshire, in 1070, and crowned at West- minster, August 6, 1 LOO, four days after his brother's death. He died of a surfeit at St. Denis, in Normandy, December 2, 1135, in the 66th year of his age and the 36th year of his reign, and was buried at Reading Abbey. 70 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 2. He married Matilda, of Scotland, granddaughter of Edgar Atheling, the legitimate heir to the English crown, by whom he had a son and daughter. At Matilda's death he married Adelais y of Louvain. 3. The early part of Henry's reign was occupied by disputes with the barons, who showed an inclination to dispute his right to the crown in favour of Robert. The Saxons, however, supported Henry's claim, as he was an Englishman by birth, and had made numerous concessions to them, granting them a charter of liberties. 4. In 1103, Robert landed in England to assert his claim to the crown ; but he resigned his pretensions on receiving a promise from Henry to pay him two thousand pounds of silver yearly as an indemnity for the loss of England. 5. Disputes between the brothers soon recommenced ; Henry invaded Normandy, and took Robert prisoner at the battle of Tenchebrai (1106). Normandy fell into Henry's hands, and Robert was deprived of sight by order of his brother, and im- prisoned for life in Cardiff Castle, where he died in 1135. 6. In 1110, Matilda, Henry's little daughter, was married to Henry V., emperor of Germany, and heavy taxes were laid on the English to furnish the marriage dowry. 7. In 1118, Henry was obliged to visit Normandy to quell a rising in favour of his nephew William, the son of Robert. On returning, two years after, his only son, William, heir to England and- Normandy, was lost in the wreck of the White Ship (1120). 8. The remainder of Henry's life was passed in gloom and misery. He named his daughter Matilda as his successor, who had contracted a second marriage with Geoffrey, count of Anjou (1127). From this marriage was born, in 1133, at Mans, a son, afterwards Henry II., the founder of the line of the Plantagenets. 9. Henry I. died at St. Denis, in Normandy, in 1135. His reign is remarkable for the introduction into England of the manufacture of woollen stuffs, by Flemish immigrants, who settled in many towns of England and Wales. In 1112, the plague raged in London and other parts of the country. The Wreck of the W^hite Ship. [From the "Naval History of England" by Robert Southey, a poet, biographer, and miscellaneous writer of eminence, who was born at Bristol, in 1774, and died March list, 1843. He was made poet laureate in 1813. To give even the names of a tithe of his voluminous ivritings is impossible ; but among his poems may MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 71 he named " Thilaba the Destroyer" and the "Curse ofKehama;" among his historical ivories, the "Naval History of England," and the il History of Brazil;" and, among his biographical works, the "Life of Lord Nelson" His "Booh of the Church," "The Doctor," and " Common Place Booh" evince marvellous research and a ivide range of reading. ] While his elder brother was preparing an armament in Normandy for the purpose of asserting his right to the English crown, the Red King permitted his subjects to fit out cruisers ; and these adventurers, who seem to have been the first that may be called privateers, rendered him good service, for the Normans, knowing that there was no navy to oppose them, and that when they landed they were more likely to be received by their friends and confederates than to be attacked before ihey were collected in sufficient numbers for defence, began to cross the Channel, each at their own convenience, without concert or any regard to mutual support ; and so many of them were intercepted and destroyed by these enemies, that the attempt at inva- sion was in consequence abandoned. The remainder of Rufus's reign, short as it was, sufficed through his own vigorous policy and the carelessness of his antagonist, for him to acquire a superiority at sea, which enabled him at any time to invade Normandy. Once, when he was hunting, a messenger from beyond sea brought him news that the city of Mans, which he had added to his possessions, was besieged. He instantly turned his horse and set off for the nearest port. The nobles who were in his company reminded him that it was necessary to call out troops, and wait for them. " I shall see who will follow me," was his reply ; " and, if I understand the temper of the youth of this country, I shall have people enough." Waiting for nothing he reached the port almost unattended, and embarked immediately, although it blew a storm. The sailors intreated him to have patience till the weather should abate, and the wind become more favour- able. But he made answer : " I never heard of a king that was shipwrecked ; weigh anchor, and you will see that the winds will be with us." He has been extolled for this act of characteristic impatience and resolution, because the 72 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. event happened to be fortunate : celerity was of great importance, and the news of his landing, as it was supposed that he came in force, sufficed for raising the siege. It was not in him a bravado imitation of Caesar — that well-known story was known to very few in those ages ; the Red King had neither inclination nor leisure for learn- ing ; and it was even more in character with him than with -Caesar, the act itself being of more daring and less reasonable hardihood. On the other hand, he has been condemned, and with more justice, as manifesting here a spirit of audacious impiety, for which, among his other vices, he was peculiarly noted ; and there are writers who, falling into an opposite extreme, have presumed to say that this special sin was visited by a special judgment upon the person of his nephew Prince William — the pride and hope of his father, and indeed of the English nation, who saw in him the representative by his mother's side of the old Anglo-Saxon line. William's bravado would no doubt be remembered after that catastrophe with poignant feelings by the bereaved father ; but Henry Beauclerc had in his own conscience an unerring witness that his own sins of ambition had too surely deserved such a chastisement. Many shipwrecks have been attended with far greater loss of life, and with far more dreadful circumstances ; but none can ever have produced so general an emotion in this country, nor has any single event ever been the occasion here of so much national sufferings as this which opened the way for Stephen's usurpation. After a successful campaign in France, happily concluded, through the pope's mediation, by a 'peace, Henry embarked from Barfleur for England with this, his only legitimate son, then recently married and in his seventeenth year. One of the finest vessels in the fleet was a galley of fifty oars, called the White Ship, and commanded by a certain Thomas Fitz Stephens, whose grandfather had carried over the Conqueror when he invaded the kingdom which he won. Upon this ground Fitz Stephens solicited the honour of now conveying the king upon an occasion as much more joyful as it was less momentous. Henry was pleased with a request preferred for such a motive ; and though, having MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 73 chosen a vessel for himself, he did not think proper to alter his own arrangements, he left Prince William, with the rest of his family and their friends and attendants, to take their passage in the White Ship, and embarking towards evening on the 25th of November, in fair weather, he sailed for England. There were with the prince his natural brother Richard ; and their sister, the Lady Marie, countess of Perche, Richard, earl of Chester, with his wife, who was the king's niece, and her brother, the prince's governor, and the flower of the young nobility both of Normandy and England, one hundred and forty in number, eighteen being women of the first rank ; these and their retinue amounting with the crew to about three hundred persons. The prince, being detained a little after his father, imprudently ordered three casks of wine to be distributed among the men ; and the captain as well as the sailors drank in the joy of his heart too freely, and promised to overtake every ship that had sailed be*fore them. Accordingly he hoisted all sail and plied all oars. The evening had closed before they started, but it was bright moonlight ; the men exerted, themselves under all the excitement of hilarity and pride of emulation, dreaming of no danger ; the captain and the helmsman, under the same excitement, were unmindful of any; and when the ship was going through the water with all the stress of oars and sails, she struck upon a rock called the Catee-raze, with such violence that several planks were started and she immediately began to fill. A boat was immediately lowered and the prince was escaping in it — which he might easily have done, for the shore was at no great distance — when his sister, whom there had been no time to take off, or who in the horror of the moment had been forgotten, shrieked out to him to save her. It was better to die than turn a deaf ear to that call : he ordered the boat to put back and take her in ; but such numbers leapt into it, at the same time, that the boat was swamped, and all perished. The ship, also, presently went down with all on board : only two persons, the one a young nobleman, son of Gilbert de Aquila, the other a 74 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. butcher of Rouen , saved themselves : by climbing the masts and clinging to the top, they kept their heads above water. Fitz Stephens rose after the vessel had sunk, and might have taken the same chance of preservation ; but calling to mind, after the first instinctive effort, that he had been the unhappy occasion of this great calamity, and dreading the reproaches, and perhaps the punishment that awaited him, he preferred present death as the least evil. The youth became exhausted during the night, and commending his poor companion to God's mercy with his last words, he lost his hold and sank. The butcher held on till morning, when he was seen from the shore and saved ; and from him, being the only survivor, the circum- stances of the tragedy were learnt. IV — Stephen of Blois, 1135 — 1154. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Stephen, the grandson of William the Conqueror, the last of the Norman line of kings was born at Blois in 1104. He was crowned at Westminster, December 26, 1135, and died at Canterbury, October 25, 1154, in the 50th year of his age, and the 19th year of his reign. He was buried at Faversham Abbey. 2. Stephen married Maud of Boulogne by whom he had three sons and two daughters. He claimed the throne after the death of Henry I., a^ nearest heir-male to William the Conqueror, and in right of being the holder of large estates in England through his marriage with Maud of Boulogne. His claims were admitted in England and .Normandy to the prejudice of Matilda and her son. 3. In 1137, Robert of Gloucester, half-brother of Matilda, and natural son of Henry I., raised an insurrection in Matilda's favour. In the following year England was invaded by David of Scotland, and the Battle of the Standard was fought between the English and Scotch at. North Allerton (August 22, 1138). 4. Stephen fell into the hands of Matilda in 1141, but regained his liberty towards the close of the year. After a series of struggles for supremacy, Robert of Gloucester died of a fever in 1147; and Matilda, despairing of gaining the crown, lift England. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 75 5. Henry, her son, then Count of Anjou, married Eleanor, the divorced queen of Louis VII. of France, and so became lord of the provinces of Poitou, Guienne, and Aquitaine in France, in right of his wife (1152). 6. Strengthened by these possessions he landed in England to claim the crown of his grandfather ; but Stephen, unwilling to be the cause of further bloodshed, proposed a conference at Wallingford, at which the young prince was declared Stephen's successor (1153). 7. Stephen died in the following year. He was a brave man and kindly disposed to his subjects ; but owing to the civil wars, civilisation and the arts of peace made but little progress in his reign. The Battle of the Standard. [Abridged and adapted from the History of the Norman Conquest, by Jacques Nicolas Augustin Thierry. See page 59.] For a long time the emissaries of the English people had flocked to the court of the Scotch kings, who were nephews of the last of the Anglo-Saxon monarchs, to implore them, by the memory of their uncle Edgar, to come to the assist- ance of the oppressed nation to whom they were bound by ties of kindred. But the sons of Malcolm Canmore were deaf to the complaints of the English and to the suggestions of their own courtiers during the lifetime of Henry I., with whom they were also connected by his wife Matilda, the daughter of Malcolm. When Henry made the Norman barons swear to give the kingdom after his death to his daughter Matilda, David, then king of Scotland, was present at the assembly, and took the oath with the Normans as the vassal of Henry I. ; but when the nobles of England, regardless of their vow, chose Stephen of Blois, instead of Matilda, the king of Scotland began to think that the Saxon cause was lost, and assembled an army and marched towards the south. It was not in the name of the oppressed Saxon race that he made his entry into England, but in the name of his cousin Matilda, dispossessed, he said, by Stephen of Blois, usurper of the kingdom. The English people had no more affection for the wife of Geoffrey of Anjou than for Stephen of Blois ; but, neverthe- less, the population nearest the borders of Scotland, impelled 70 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. by the instinct which causes men to seize eagerly every means of relief, received the Scotch as friends, and came to the Scotch camp in great numbers, and without any order, on little mountain ponies, which were their only property. In general, with the exception of the knights of Norman or French origin that the king of Scotland brought in his train, and who wore complete and uniform suits of mail, the greater part of his troops presented a most disorderly variety of arms and habiliments. The inhabitants of the eastern part of the Lowlands, men of Danish or Saxon descent, formed the heavy infantry, armed with cuirasses and great spears. The inhabitants of the west, and especially of Galloway, who still retained strong marks of their British descent, were, like the ancient Britons, with- out defensive armour, and carried long sharp-pointed javelins, with slender, fragile shafts. Lastly, the true Scottish race, both mountaineers and islanders, wore bonnets adorned with the feathers of wild birds, and with large plaids fastened round the body by a shoulder belt of leather, to which hung a broadsword called the claymore ; f hey carried on the left arm a round buckler of light wood covered with a thick hide ; and some of the Highland clans had armed themselves with two-handled battleaxes in the manner of the Scandinavians. The armour of the chiefs was the same as that of the clansmen, the only distinctive mark being their longer and lighter plumes waving more gracefully than those of their retainers. This army appears to have committed many cruelties in the places which it traversed ; and the principal Normans in the north, and especially Toustain, the archbishop of York, took advantage of the report of these barbarities, which were spread in a vague and exaggerated form, to prevent the minds of the Saxon inhabitants of the banks of the Humber from being inspired with the interest which they would naturally feel in the cause of the enemies of their enemies. In order to induce their subjects to join them against the Scottish king, the Normans also were cunning enough to awaken the ancient local superstitions. They invoked the names of the saints of the English race, that they themselves, had formerly treated with so much MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 77 contempt ; they made them, in a manner, generalissimos of their army, and Archbishop Tonstain unfurled the banners of St. Cuthbert of Durham, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfred of Eipon. The popular standards, which since the conquest had probably hardly ever seen the light of day, were dragged out of the dust of the churches to be carried to Elferton — now Allerton — thirty-two miles north of York, the place at which the Norman chiefs resolved to await the enemy. William Piperel and Walter Espee, of the county of Not- tingham, and Gilbert de Lacy and his brother, of the county of York, were the commanders. The archbishop was pre- vented by illness from being there, and he sent in his place Kaoul, bishop of Durham, who had probably been expelled from his church by the invasion of the Scotch. An instinct, half religious, half patriotic, caused a great number of the English inhabitants of the neighbouring towns and plains to flock to the camp at Allerton, and to enlist themselves under the Saxon banners erected by the lords of a foreign race. They no longer carried the great battleaxe, the favourite weapon of their ancestors, but were armed with large bows and arrows two cubits long. The Conquest had effected this change in two different ways. Such of the natives as had submitted to serve in battle under their foreign masters for bread and for pay had, of course, accustomed themselves to Norman tactics ; and those who, being more independent, had embraced the life of guerillas on the roads and free hunters in the forests, had in the same manner laid aside the arms suitable for close combat for others more capable of reaching the Norman knights or the king's deer. The sons of each having been since their infancy exercised in drawing the bow, England had become, in less than a century, the land of good archers, as Scotland was that of good spearmen. Whilst the Scotch army was passing the river Tees, the Normans were actively preparing to receive its attack. They set up a mast of a ship on four wheels, and on it placed a small box containing the consecrated elements, and around this box were hung the banners which were to excite the English to fight with spirit. This standard, of a 78 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. kind very common in the Middle Ages, occupied the centre of the army during the battle. The flower of the Norman chivalry, says an ancient historian, stationed themselves around it, after having confederated together by faith and oath, and having sworn to remain united in defence of their territory in life, and to the death. The Scotch army, with only a lance for a standard, marched, divided into several bodies. Young Henry, the son of the Scotch king, commanded the Lowlanders and the English volunteers of Cumberland and Northumber- land. The king himself was at the head of all the mountain and island clans, and the knights of Norman origin, com- pletely armed, formed his guard. One of these, called Eobert de Brus (Bruce), a man of advanced age, who held for the Scotch king by reason of his fief of Annandale, and had no cause for personal enmity against his country- men of England, approached the king at the moment when he was about to give the signal of attack, and with an air of melancholy, thus spoke to him : " Oh, king, hast thou considered against whom thou art going to fight ? It is against the Normans and the English, who have always served thee so well with advice and arms, and have assisted thee to bring into subjection thy people of the Gallic race. Thou thinkest thyself quite sure of the submission of these tribes ; thou hopest to be able to maintain them in sub- jection with the assistance only of the Scotch men-at-arms, but reflect that it is we who have reduced them to obedience, and that this is the cause of the hatred with which they are animated against our countrymen." This discourse appeared to make a great impression upon the King of Scotland, but his nephew William exclaimed impatiently, " These are the words of a traitor." The old Norman only replied to this affront by immediately retracting, according to the forms of the age, his oath of fealty and homage, and galloped towards the enemy. Then the Highlanders who surrounded the king raising their voices shouted the ancient name of their country, A Iben ! Alben ! This was the signal for the combat. The men of Cumberland, of Liddisdale, and Teviotdale made a firm, quick charge upon the centre of the Norman army, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 79 and, as an ancient narrator expresses it, broke it like a cobweb ; but being ill-supported by the other Scotch divisions they could not reach the standard of "the Anglo- Normans. These latter formed again and repulsed the assailants with loss, and in the second charge the long javelins of the Scots of the south-west were broken against the mailed hauberks and the shields of the Normans. The Highlanders then drew their broadswords to come to close combat, but the Saxon archers, extending themselves on the flanks, assailed them with a shower of arrows, while the Norman knights charged them in the front, in close ranks and with lances couched. " It was a fine sight," says a contemporary, " to see these stinging flies start buzzing from the bows of the southern men and darken the air like thick dust." The Gaels, hardy and brave, but little practised in regular evolutions, dispersed immediately that they found themselves incapable of breaking the enemy's ranks. The whole Scotch army, forced to make a retreat, drew back towards the Tyne. The conquerors did not pursue them beyond that river ; and the extent of country wrhich had revolted on the approach of the Scotch remained, notwith- standing their defeat, free from the Norman dominion. For a long time after this battle Westmorland and Northum- berland were part of the Scotch kingdom. The new political state of these three provinces prevented the Anglo-Saxon character from dying out there so quickly as in the southern part of England ; the national traditions and popular romances survived and were perpetuated north of the Tyne. From thence the old English poetry, all traces of which had been lost in places inhabited by the Normans, in which a foreign poetry had replaced it, again appeared at a later time in the southern provinces. SUMMARY OF KINGS OF THE NORMAN DYNASTY. Name. Date of Access. Name. Date of Access. J. William I. (the Conqueror) 1066 I Henry I. (Beauclerc) 1100 2. William II. (Rufus) 1087 | Stephen (of Blois) 1135 Duration of the Norman Dynasty, from 1066 to 1153. SO MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, Part IV. — Feudalism and Chivalry. HISTORICAL NOTICE. It must be plain to the reader, from the portions of history already cited, and especially those relating to the "Battle of Hastings " and the " First Crusade," that the chief and greatest institutions of the Middle Ages were Feudalism and its offspring Chivalry, and it is found a fitting resting point between the Norman an I Plantagenet dynasties whereat to stay awhile and examine their nature, and the influences which each exerted on society in manners, customs, and tenure of property. The following extracts from Haydn's " Dictionary of Dates " (1868) will afford the best and most complete epitome of 'the rise, progress, and extinction of each, while the selections that follow will clearly show their nature and scope, and the principles on which they were based. Feudal Laws. — The tenure of land by suit and service to the lord or owner was introduced into England by the Saxons about 600. This slavery was increased in 1068. The kingdom was divided into baronies, which were given on condition of the holders furnishing the king with men and money. The vassalage restored and limited by Henry VII. (1495) was abolished by statute, 1660 ; the feudal system was introduced into Scotland by Malcolm II. in 1008, and the hereditary jurisdiction were finally abolished in that kingdom 1746-7. The feudal laws established in France by Clovis L, about 486, were discountenanced by Louis XI. in 1470. Chivalry arose out of the feudal system in the latter part of the 8th century {chevalier or knight, being derived from the caballarius, the equipped feudal tenant on horseback). From the 12th to the 15th century it tended to refine manners. The knighi swore to accomplish the duties of his profession as the champion of God and the ladies, to speak the truth, to maintain the right, to protect the distressed, to practise courtesy, to fulfil obligations, and to vindicate in every perilous adventure his honour and character. Chivalry expired with the feudal system. By letters patent of James I. , the earl marshal of England had " the like jurisdiction in the Courts of Chivalry when the office of the lord high constable was vacant, as this latter and the marshal did jointly exercise." MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 31 The Feudal System — Its Origin and Progress. [Abridged and adapted from a " History of France" by Emile de Bonnechose, a French historian of considerable eminence, who has also written a " History of England" and acquired celebrity as a dramatist. He u'as born In 1801.] The accession of Hugh Capet to the throne of France, after the extinction of the Carlovingian kings, inaugurated the feudal monarchy, which lasted from his time to that of Francis I., and had for result the development of the feudal system by consolidating it. Under the Merovingian kings the lords had rendered the cession of benefices (or places of emolument and office or estates granted by the crown) irrevocable, and made them hereditary in their families, and as the German customs authorised the possessors of estates to regard as their own property not only the soil acquired, but also everything that existed on the soil at the moment of cession or conquest, they soon persuaded themselves that they had a right to exercise civil, judicial, and military power in their domains by virtue of their sole title as owners. Authority was con- sequently established by possession, and by a strange fiction power was attached to the land itself. Such was in France the origin of feudalism, and from thence it spread under the same conditions into other countries. Under the second race, namely, the Carlovingian kings, the sovereigns ever sacrificing the future to the present, had in turn abandoned to the dukes and counts all the regal or royal rights — those of raising troops, administering justice, coining money, making peace or war, and fortifying themselves ; and from the moment when they recognised the transmission of offices to the next heir as legal, the dukes and counts regarded themselves as possessors of the provinces in which their will was law. While in reality independent of the crown, the majority, however, still remained subordinate to it by the bond of the oath of fidelity. They distributed of their own free will domains among the nobles, who received them on faith and homage ; and the latter granted inferior benefices to freemen upon the same title. A great number of independent proprietors, 82 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. alarmed by the ravages of external foes, and the commotion of civil discords, sought support from their powerful neigh- bours, and obtained it by doing them homage for their lands, which they received back from the lords to whom they offered them as fiefs, the possession of which hence- forth entailed the obligation of rendering faithful service to the suzerain. Thus he who gave a territorial estate in fief became the suzerain of him who received it on this title, and the latter was called a vassal or liegeman. But it must not be supposed that land alone could be the object of a feudal concession. Immaterial things, such as a large number of rights, were also constituted into fiefs, and conceded on the same conditions. Amongst these may be mentioned the rights of fishing and hunting, of establishing taxes on high- ways and rivers, and the exclusive right of grinding corn> etc. The landholders and holders of fiefs of any kind were thus considered throughout the entire extent of the king- dom as subjects or vassals of each other. This system, which extended to the provinces as well as to simple private domains, established a connecting link between all parts of the territory. In the feudal hierarchy the first rank belonged to the country or state which bore the title of kingdom, and to this all other ranks were subordinate in regular gradation. The first portion of this period resembles an interregnum in which the king was only distinguished from other lords by honorary prerogatives. Each fortress of any importance gave its owner rank among the sovereigns ; and as the civil discords made the nobles feel the necessity of attaching to themselves a considerable number of men for their personal security, they divided their domains into a multitude of lots, which they gave in fief, granting to their vassals per- mission to fortify themselves ; and thus a number of castles were erected round the principal fortress. It is the general opinion that doing homage for a fief ennobled, and the nobility thus sprang up to a great extent from the ninth to the tenth century. The right granted to subjects of providing for their own defence arrested the devastations of foreigners, strengthened the national char- acter, revived a feeling of self-respect among the members MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, S3 of a numerous class, and authorised them in demanding equal politeness from those from whom they held estates, as well as from those to whom they ceded them, the feudal contract being annulled by the violation of the obligations contracted on either side. This new subordination was partly based on the faith of the oath ; and respect in sworn fidelity and loyalty thus became one of the distinctive traits in the character of the nobility. The following was the formula of the oath pronounced by the vassal on asking the investiture of his fief : " Sire, I come to your homage, in your faith, and become your man of mouth and hands, and swear and promise to you faith and loyalty toward all and against all, and to keep your right in my power." The principal obligations contracted by the vassal under this system were to bear arms for a certain number of days on every military expedition ; to recognise the jurisdiction of the suzerain, and to pay the feudal aids — a species of tax raised for the ransom of the lord if he were made prisoner, or on the occasion of the marriage of his eldest daughter, or when his son was made a knight. Whenever a fief passed from one to another, either by inheritance or by sale, a fee was paid to the suzerain, who, oirhis side, promised his liegeman justice and protection. On these conditions the vassal was independent on his own land, and enjoyed the same rights, and was bound by the same duties towards his own vassals, as his suzerain. When a peer was summoned before the rest, the king pre- sided in early feudal times at the trial. All laws, conventions, and usages relating to the holders of fiefs, concerned the holders of fiefs only ; the people were counted as nothing ; and the nobles and gentry, isolated from them in their habitations and through their privileges, were even more distinguished by their dress and weapons. It was thus that they kept the wretched and defenceless population in subjection. The military art underwent a change, and the cavalry henceforth became the strength of armies. Bodily exercises, equitation^ the management of the lance and sword, were the sole occupation of the nobility, and the sale of arms one of the principal trades in Europe. The first period of feudalism witnessed the birth of chivalry, respect for women, and modern languages and poetry. 34 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Such were the chief effects of this system as concerned the general policy and interests of the nobility. We have now to examine it in its relations with the church and the people. The clergy, at the period of the progressive establishment of the feudal system, saw with terror the great vassals encroaching on their domains, and soon comprehended that, as all the authority was in the hands of possessors of fiefs, they must themselves form part of the new confederation. They therefore did homage for the church domains, and then divided them into numerous lots, converting them into fiefs, and thus obtaining suzerains and vassals. As the obligation of military service was inseparable from the possession of fiefs, the clergy were subjected to it like all the other vassals ; they took up arms at the summons of their suzerains, and constrained their liegemen to fight for them. From this time a great number of bishops and abbots lived the lives of nobles ; arms occupied them as much as the religious services, and they neglected the most sacred duties of religion for the licence of camps. Whenever the clergy did not embrace a martial life, the temporal lord obtained an immense advantage over them ; and the bishops and abbots often found it necessary to place themselves under the protection of a noble who was paid to defend them. The clergy, through these feudal organisations, were diverted from the object of their insti- tution, the people more rarely obtained consolation and succour at their hands, and most of the dignitaries of the church joined the ranks of the oppressors. An immense majority of the people lived in a servile condition ; and it may be fairly said that at the end of the 10th century there was no middle class between the nobles, the sole possessors of all the enjoyments of life, and the wretches whose humble cabins surrounded their castles, and who were called serfs, or men of servitude attached to the glebe — that is to say, to the land they cultivated. They were bought and sold with the land, and were unable to leave it of their own accord to establish themselves else- where when they found themselves too cruelly oppressed. They possessed nothing of their own ; neither the huts in MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER §5 which they lived, nor their implements of labour, nor the fruit of their toil, nor their time, nor their children. Every- thing belonged to the lord ; and if they were guilty of any fault in his sight they could not invoke for their defence any law or authority, for the right of seignorial justice of life and death was absolute. The condition of the freemen who did not hold fief, and lived on seignorial domains, seems to have been equally deplorable. Designated as villeins, they hardly enjoyed the right of marrying whom they thought proper, or of disposing of their property as they pleased. They were gradually crushed by intolerable burdens, or subjected to humiliating obligations ; they had not the slightest pro- tection, and had incessantly to fear the imposition of some fine or the confiscation of their goods. A great number of them took refuge in the towns, where equally great evils followed them. The counts exercised there over them an authority equal to that of the seigneurs on their lands ; the tolls and dues of every description were infinitely multiplied, and the towns were eventually subjected, like the country, to arbitrary imposts. They were obliged to keep their lord and his people when he came within their walls ; provisions, furniture, horses, vehicles — in short, everything they possessed was taken by main force from, the inhabitants, at the caprice of the master or his followers, without payment or compensation of any kind. In a word, all social force and influence resided in the possessors of fiefs, who alone had liberty, power, and enjoyment. Chivalry — its Customs and Usages. [Selected from the writings of William Robertson, author of a " History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and King James VI., till his accession to the Crown of England," a "History of the Reign of Charles V," a " History of America" and a " Historical Disquisition upon Ancient India" He was bom at Borthwich, near Edinburgh, in 1721, and entered the Church in 1743. He first became known as a historian in 1759, and shortly after became principal of the University of Edinburgh and his- toriographer for Scotland. He died in 1793]. 8(3 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, Among uncivilised nations there is but one profession honourable — that of arms. All the ingenuity and vigour of the human mind are exerted in acquiring military skill or address. The functions of peace are few and simple, and require no particular course of education or of study as a preparation for discharging them. This was the state of Europe during several centuries. Every gentleman, born a soldier, scorned any other occupation. He was taught no science but that of war ; even his exercises and pastimes were feats of martial prowess. Nor did the judicial character, which persons of noble birth were alone entitled to assume, demand any degree of knowledge beyond that which such untutored soldiers possessed. To recollect a few traditionary customs which time had confirmed and rendered respectable, to mark out the lists of battle with due formality, to observe the issue of the combat, and to pronounce whether it had been conducted according to the laws of arms, included everything that a baron, who acted as a judge, found it necessary to understand. But when the forms of legal proceedings were fixed, when the rules of decision were committed to writing and col- lected into a body, law became a science, the knowledge of which required a regular course of study, together with long attention to the practice of courts. Martial and illiterate nobles had neither leisure or incli- nation to undertake a task so laborious, as well as so foreign from all the occupations which they deemed entertaining or suitable to their rank. They gradually relinquished their places in courts of justice, where their ignorance exposed them to contempt. They became weary of attending to the discussion of cases which grew too intricate for them to comprehend. Not only the judicial determination of points which were the subject of controversy, but the conduct of all legal business and transactions were com- mitted to persons trained by previous study and application to the knowledge of law. An order of men to whom their fellow-citizens had daily recourse for advice, and to whom they looked up for decision in their most important concerns, naturally acquired consideration and influence in society. They were advanced to honours which had been considered MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 37 hitherto as the peculiar rewards of military virtue. They were entrusted with offices of the highest dignity and most extensive power. Thus another profession than that of arms came to be introduced among the laity, and was reputed honourable. The functions of civil life were attended to : the talents requisite for discharging them were cultivated. A new road was opened to wealth and eminence. The arts and virtues of peace were placed in their proper rank and received their due recompense. While improvements so important with respect to the state of society and the administration of justice gradually made progress in Europe, sentiments more liberal and generous had begun to animate the nobles. These were inspired by the spirit of chivalry, which, though considered commonly as a wild institution, the effects of caprice and the source of extravagance, arose naturally from the state of society at that period, and had a very serious influence in refining the manners of the European nations. The feudal state was a state of almost perpetual war, rapine, and anarchy, during which the weak and unarmed were exposed to insults or injuries. The power of the sovereign was too limited to prevent these wrongs, and the adminis- tration of justice too feeble to redress them. The most effectual protection against violence and oppression was often found to be that which the valour and generosity of private persons afforded. The same spirit of enterprise which had prompted so many gentlemen to take arms in defence of the oppressed pilgrims in Palestine, incited others to declare themselves the patrons and avengers of injured innocence at home. When the final reduction of the Holy Land under the dominion of infidels put an end to these foreign expeditions, the latter was the only em- ployment left for the activity and courage of adventurers. To check the insolence of overgrown oppressors ; to rescue the helpless from captivity ; to protect or to avenge women, orphans, and ecclesiastics, who could not bear arms in their own defence ; to redress wrongs and remove grievances, were deemed acts of the highest prowess and merit. Valour, humanity, courtesy, justice, honour, were the characteristic qualities of chivalry. To these were added religion, which gg MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. mingled itself with every passion and institution during the Middle Ages, and, by infusing a large proportion of enthusiastic ^al, gave them such force as carried them to romantic excess. Men were trained to knighthood by a long previous discipline ; they were admitted into the order by solemnities no less devout than pompous. Every person of noble birth courted that honour ; it was deemed a dis- tinction superior to royalty, and monarchs were proud to receive it from the hands of private gentlemen. This singular institution, in which valour, gallantry, and religion were so strangely blended, was wonderfully adapted to the taste and genius of martial nobles, and its effects were soon visible in their manners. War was carried on with less ferocity when humanity came to be deemed the ornament of knighthood no less than courage. More gentle and polished manners were introduced when courtesy was recommended as the most amiable of knightly virtues. Violence and oppression decreased when it was reckoned meritorious to check and to punish them. A scrupulous adherence to truth, with the most religious attention to fulfil every engagement, became the distinguishing char- acteristic of a gentleman, because chivalry was regarded as the school of honour, and inculcated the most delicate sensibility with respect to those points. The admiration of these qualities, together with the high distinctions and prerogatives conferred on knighthood in every part of Europe, inspired persons of noble birth on some occasions with a species of military fanaticism, and led them to extravagant enterprises ; but they deeply imprinted on their minds the principles of generosity and honour. These were strengthened by everything that can affect the senses or touch the heart. The wild exploits of those romantic knights who sallied forth in quest of adventures are well known, and have been treated with proper ridicule. The political and permanent effects of the spirit of chivalry have been less observed. Perhaps the humanity which accompanies all the operations of war, the refinements of gallantry and the point of honour — the three chief circumstances which distinguish modern from ancient manners — may be ascribed in a great measure to MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. §). (died 1321). (died 1328). of England. J ANE=Philip, C. JoAN=Eudes, Margaret=Loius, Edward III. of Evreux. D. of Burgundy. C. of Flanders. Charles the Bad, Philip, Count Louis of Male, Philip de Valois. of Navarre of Artois Count of Flanders (b. 1332). (b. 1332.) (b 1330.) Edward III. at first grounded his claim on his being the male nearest in blood to the last king who was capable of succeeding, he being his nephew, and Philip de Valois his cousin-german. According to the phraseology in which the dispute was conducted, he claimed not by right of representation — that is, as representing his mother — but by right of proximity. The objections to this confused mode of argument appear to be unanswerable- Edward's right was derived through his mother ; his claim, there* fore, in fact, rested on his being grandson to Philip the Fair, the father of the last three kings, and consequently his heir, in preference to his nephew. The first objection set up against this was the celebrated Salic law, which excluded females from succession to the crown of France. It being evident, however, that if the right of female suc- cession were established, the daughters of any of the last three kings would have a claim preferable to his own, Edward admitted the authenticity of the Salic law as far 138 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. as it regarded the exclusion of females themselves ; but he alleged that this was on account of the natural imbecility of their sex, and did not apply to their heirs, though it did to themselves. To this was opposed the almost universal usage of feudal inheritance, and the doctrine that no person could transmit a right which was not vested in himself. The extreme confusion that would arise from such a preposterous prin- ciple of succession is demonstrated by the circumstances of the present case. According to this doctrine Edward would have succeeded to the French crown in 1328, on the death of Charles the Fair ; but he would have been super- seded by Louis of Male, who was born in 1330, of Margaret, second daughter of Philip the Long, who must again have given place to his cousin Philip, count of Artois, the son of Joan, Philip's elder daughter ; and this prince, in the very year of his birth, must have yielded to Charles of Navarre, the grandson, through a female of Louis Hutin, the last king who had inherited through a direct male line. A reference to the foregoing table will set this before the reader at a glance. Recent circumstances also had combined to give peculiar force to the Salic law. From Hugh Capet to Louis Hutin the crown had descended from father to son through eleven generations. At his death the queen was left preg- nant, and his brother was appointed to the regency, in order to await the birth of the infant, that its sex might be ascertained. The queen produced a boy, but he died at the expiration of a few days, and Philip the Long was declared king. In the interim a council, held July 17, 1316, at which all the princes of the blood and the great barons assisted, determined that if the queen bore a female the crown of France descended of right to Philip the Long ; but that of Navarre would belong to Jane, daughter of Louis Hutin, as females were not excluded from that crown. Notwithstanding this, on the death of the infant son of the queen, the duke of Burgundy, who was maternal uncle to Jane, protested against Philip being crowned until his niece's claims had been investigated, although he had him- MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 139 self coincided with the decision of the council. Philip the Long, however, to set the question for ever at rest, convoked an assembly of all the great nobles of the state, including the bishops and the University of Paris. This was held on the 2nd of February, 1317, when it was unanimously decided " that the laws and customs observed among the French inviolably excluded females from the crown." To this decision the duke of Burgundy and the count de la Marche, afterwards king as Charles IV., or the Fair, who had joined in his former remonstrance, subscribed. Philip the Long also died without male issue, and his brother, Charles the Fair, succeeded without opposition. He also died leaving only a daughter and his widow preg- nant. It was now that the claim of Edward III. was first brought forward ; for, as it was intended to appoint to the regency the prince who would succeed in the event of the queen bearing a daughter, Edward asserted that that person was himself. He sent, in consequence, ambassadors to Paris, who pleaded his cause before the peers of France in a solemn hearing of the cause, when the regency was con- ferred upon Philip de Valois. The queen was delivered of a daughter, and then Philip succeeded to the crown. Some months after Philip's accession Edward did homage to him as king of France for his duchy of Acquitaine, thereby acknowledging the right of that prince. He was at that time engaged in wars with Scotland, and was also very young, and but recently seated on the throne. When, therefore, he assumed the title of king of France, in 1339, he pleaded these circumstances as having enforced his previous submission. We will admit for a moment the excuse of present necessity — the excuse of all others to be admitted with most jealousy — for this acknowledgment ; and still, upon his own showing, and, indeed, upon each and every view of the question, the right of Edward was utterly null and futile. Admitting the Salic law fully, Philip was the rightful heir ; denying it fully, Jane, the daughter of Louis Hutin, was the rightful successor to the throne, and the last two kings had been usurpers ; admitting it partially (to the exclusion, namely, of females, but not of their male heirs), Charles of Navarre, who at that time was 140 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, seven years old, had the best right to the crown. As for the idle talk about proximity, without tracing whence that proximity arose, it is a principle too extravagant even to be discussed ; and, indeed, the case was really argued on the ground of females transmitting their rights as above stated. Surely, therefore, it is clear that there never was a claim less founded than that of Edward III. to the crown of France. VIII.— Richard II., 1377—1399. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Richard II., the son of Edward the Black Prince and Joan of Kent, was born at Bordeaux, January 6, 1367. He was crowned at Westminster, July 16, 1377, and murdered at Ponte- fract Castle, February 14, 1400, in the thirty-fourth year of his age, having been deposed in the previous year in the twenty- third of his reign. He was buried at King's Langley, Herts. 2. He married, first, Anne of Luxemburg, and, secondly, Isabel of France. He left no children to inherit his throne, and with him ended the main line of the Plantagenets. 3. The accession of Richard was followed by the insurrection of Wat Tyler, who led to London a large body of peasants, demand- ing a redress of grievances and a repeal of the poll-tax. Tyler was slain in Smithfield by Sir William Walworth, lord mayor of London, during an interview with the king. 4. Richard had the address to lead away the mob, who had done much mischief in London, from the city ; and, pardoning the rebellion, promised them a charter and the abolition of serfdom, which the barons strenuously opposed. 5. In 1385, the Scotch, incited by the French, who furnished them with money and troops, entered Northumberland. Richard retaliated by driving them back, and destroying Edinburgh and other Scottish towns. 6. Richard, wearied of the control exercised over him by his uncles, especially the Duke of Gloucester, assumed the reins of government (1389), and reigned for many years with much discretion and ability ; but at last, having procured an assign- ment of fixed taxes for the remainder of his life, and a Parlia- ment servilely compliant to his wishes, he neglected the interests of the people, grew lavish in his expenditure, and proscribed the nobles opposed to his views. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. \±\ 7. Henry Boliugbroke, earl of Hereford, the son of the duke of Lancaster, and the king's cousin, had accused the duke of Norfolk of high treason. Norfolk challenged him to mortal combat ; but when the combatants entered the lists, Richard stopped the duel and banished both of them (1398). 8. In the following year, Bolingbroke, who had succeeded to the dukedom of Lancaster, enraged at the confiscation of his estates by Richard, returned to England and landed at Raven- spur, a town which once stood opposite Grimsby, but which was long ago washed away by the sea. 9. He was joined by Percy, earl of Northumberland, and other discontented nobles. Richard was deserted by all, and deposed shortly after the meeting of Parliament, by which Henry of Lancaster was acknowledged king. Richard was sent a prisoner to Pontefract, or Pomfret, Castle, where he was murdered a year after his deposition. Some historians assert that he*escaped from prison and lived for many years in retire- ment in Scotland. The Rising of Wat Tyler and the Kentish Peasants. [From the "History of England" by David Hume. See page 64]. Edward III. left his grandson, Richard II., involved in many dangerous wars. The pretensions of the duke of Lancaster to the crown of Castile made that kingdom still persevere in hostilities against England. Scotland, whose throne was now filled by Robert Stuart, nephew to David Bruce, and the first prince of that family, maintained such close connections with France, that war with one crown almost inevitably produced hostilities with the other. The French monarch, whose prudent conduct had acquired him the surname of the Wise, as he had already baffled all the experience and valour of the two Edwards, was likely to prove a dangerous enemy to a minor king ; but his genius, which was not naturally enterprising, led him not at present to give any disturbance to his neighbours, and he laboured, besides, under many difficulties at home, which it was necessary for him to surmount before he could think of making conquests in a foreign country. England was master of Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne, had lately acquired possession of Cherbourg from the cession of the 142 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. king of Navarre, and of Brest from that of the duke of Britanny ; and having thus an easy entrance into France from every quarter was able, even in its present situa- tion, to give disturbance to his government. Before Charles could remove the English from these important posts he died in the flower of his age, and left his kingdom to a son under age, who bore the name of Charles VI. Meanwhile the war with France was carried on in a manner somewhat languid, and produced no enterprise of great lustre or renown. Sir Hugh Calverley, governor of Calais, making an inroad into Picardy with a detachment of the garrison, set fire to Boulogne. The duke of Lan- caster conducted an army into Britanny, but returned without being able to perform anything memorable. In a subsequent year the duke of Gloucester marched out of Calais with a body of two thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry, and scrupled not with his small army to enter into the heart of France, and to continue his ravages through Picardy, Champagne, and other parts of the country, till he reached his allies in the province of Britanny. The duke of Burgundy, at the head of a more considerable army, came within sight of him ; but the French were so overawed by the former successes of the English, that no superiority of numbers could tempt them to venture a pitched battle with the troops of that nation. As the duke of Britanny, soon after the arrival of these succours, formed an accommodation with the court of France, this enterprise also proved in the issue unsuc- cessful, and made no durable impression upon the enemy. The expenses of these armaments, and the usual want of money attending a minority much exhausted the English treasury, and obliged the Parliament, besides making some alterations in the council, to impose a new and unusual tax of three groats upon every person, male and female, above fifteen years of age ; and they ordained that in levying that tax the opulent should relieve the poor by an equitable compensation. This imposition produced a mutiny, which was singular in its circumstances. All history abounds with examples where the great tyrannise over the meaner sort ; but here the lowest populace rose against their rulers, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 143 committed the most cruel ravages upon them, and took vengeance for all former oppressions. The faint dawn of the arts and of good government in that age had excited the minds of the populace in different parts of Europe to wish for a better condition, and to murmur against those chains which the laws, enacted by the haughty nobility and gentry, had so long inrposed on them. The commotions of the people of Flanders, the mutiny of the peasants in France, were the national effects of this growing spirit of independence ; and the reports of these events being brought to England, where personal slavery, as we learn from Froissart, was more general than in any other country in Europe, had prepared the minds of the multitude for an insurrection. One John Ball also, a seditious preacher, who affected low popularity, went about the country, and inculcated on his audience, the principle of the first origin of mankind from one common stock, their equal right to liberty and all the goods of nature, the tyranny of artificial distinctions, and the abuses which had arisen from the degradation of the more con- siderable part of the species, and the aggrandisement of a few insolent rulers. These doctrines, so agreeable to the populace, and so conformable to the ideas of primitive equality which are engraven in the hearts of all men, were greedily received by the multitude, and scattered the sparks of that sedition which the present tax raised into a conflagration. The imposition of three groats a head had been farmed out to tax-gatherers in each county, who levied the money on the people with vigour : and the clause making the rich ease their poorer neighbours of some share of the burden being so vague and indeterminate, had, doubtless, occasioned many partialities, and made the people more sensible of the unequal lot which fortune had assigned them in the distribution of her favours. The first disorder was raised by a blacksmith in a village in Essex. The tax-gatherers came to this man's shop while he was at work, and demanded payment for his daughter, whom he asserted to be below the age assigned by the statute. One of these fellows offered to produce a very indecent proof to the |44 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, contrary, and at the same time laid hold of the maid, which the father resenting, immediately knocked out the ruffian's brains with his hammer. The bystanders applauded the action, and exclaimed that it was full time for the people to take vengeance on their tyrants, and to vindicate their native liberty. They immediately flew to arms ; the whole neighbourhood joined in the sedition. The name spread in an instant over the county ; it soon pro- pagated itself into those of Kent, Hertford, Surrey, Sussex, Suffolk, Norfolk, Cambridge, and Lincoln. Before the government had the least warning of the danger, the disorder had grown beyond control or opposition ; the populace had shaken off all regard to their former masters, and being headed by the most audacious and criminal of their associates, who assumed the feigned names of Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, Hob Carter, and John Miller, by which they were fond of denoting their mean origin, they committed everywhere the most outrageous violence on such of the gentry or nobility who had the misfortune to fall into their hands. The mutinous populace, amounting to a hundred thousand men, assembled on Blackheath under their leaders Tyler and Straw; and as the princess of Wales, the king's mother, returning from a pilgrimage to Canterbury, passed through the midst of them, they insulted her attendants, and some of the most insolent among them, to show their purpose of levelling all mankind, forced kisses from her ; but they allowed her to continue her journey without attempting any further injury. They sent a message to the king, who had taken shelter in the Tower, that they desired a- conference with him. Richard sailed down the river in a barge for that purpose : but on his approaching the shore, he saw such symptoms of tumult and insolence that he put back and returned to that fortress. The seditious peasants, meanwhile, favoured by the populace of London, had broken into the city, had burned the duke of Lancaster's palace of the Savoy, cut off the heads of all the gentlemen they laid hold of, expressed a particular animosity against the lawyers and attorneys, and pillaged the warehouses of the rich merchants. A great body MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 145 quartered themselves at Mile- end ; and the king, finding no defence in the Tower, which was weakly garrisoned and ill-supplied with provisions, was obliged to go out to them and ask their demands. They required a general pardon, the abolition of slavery, freedom of commerce in market towns without toll or impost, and a fixed rent on lands, instead of the service due by villeinage. These requests which, though extremely reasonable in themselves, the nation was not sufficiently prepared to receive, and which it was dangerous to have extorted by violence, were how- ever complied with ; charters to that purpose were granted them, and this body immediately dispersed, and returned to their several homes. During this transaction another body of the rebels had broken into the Tower ; had murdered Simon Sudbury, the primate and chancellor, with Sir Robert Hales, the treasurer, and some other persons of distinction, and continued their ravages in the city. The king, passing along Smithfield very slenderly guarded, met with Wat Tyler at the head of these rioters, and entered into a conference with him. Tyler having ordered his companions to retire till he should give them a signal, after which they were to murder all the company except the king himself, whom they were to detain a prisoner, feared not to come into the midst of the royal retinue. He there behaved himself in such a manner that Walworth, the mayor of London, not able to bear his insolence, drew his sword, and struck him so violent a blow as brought him to the ground, where he was instantly dispatched by others of the king's attendants. The mutineers, seeing their leader fall, prepared them- selves for revenge ; and the whole company, with the king himself, had undoubtedly perished on the spot had it not been for the extraordinary presence of mind which Richard discovered on the occasion. He ordered his company to stop ; advanced alone towards the enraged multitude, and accosting them with an affable but intrepid countenance, asked them : " What is the meaning of this disorder, my good people? Are ye angry that ye have lost your leader % I am your king : I will be your leader." The populace, overawed by his presence, implicitly fol- K |46 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. lowed him. He led them into the fields, to prevent any disorder that might have arisen from their continuing in the city. Being there joined by Sir Robert Knolles and a body of well-armed veteran soldiers who had been secretly drawn together, he strictly prohibited that officer from falling on the rioters, and committing an undistinguished slaughter upon them ; and he peaceably dismissed them with the same charters which had been granted to their fellows. Soon after, the nobility and gentry hearing of the king's danger — in which they were all involved — flocked to London with their adherents and retainers, and Richard took the field at the head of an army forty thousand strong. It then behoved all the rebels to submit. The charters of enfranchisement and pardon were revoked by Parliament ; the people were reduced to the same slavish condition as before, and several of the ringleaders were severely punished for the late disorders. Some were even executed without process or form of law. It was pretended that the intentions of the mutineers had been to seize the king's person, to carry him through England at their head ; to murder all the nobility, gentry, and lawyers, and even all the bishops and priests, except the mendicant friars ; to dispatch the king himself afterwards ; and having thus reduced all to a level, to order the kingdom at their pleasure. It is not impossible but many of them, in the delirium of their first success, might have formed such projects ; but of all the evils incident to human society, the insurrections of the populace, when not raised and supported by persons of higher quality, are the least to be dreaded. The mischiefs consequent to the abolition of all rank and distinction become so great that they are immediately felt and soon bring affairs back to their former order and arrangement. Part VII.— THE HOUSE OF LANCASTER. 1399—1461. (Plantagenet Dynasty continued.) I.— Henry IV. (1399—1413.) HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Henry IV., son of John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, was MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 147 born at Bolingbroke, in Lincolnshire, in 1367. He was crowned at Westminster, October 13, 1399, and died at Westminster, March 20, 1413, in the forty-sixth year of his age and the fourteenth of his reign. He was buried at Canterbury. 2. He married, firstly, Mary de Bohun, by whom he had four sons and two daughters ; and secondly, Joan of Navarre. 3. The position of Henry on his accession was far from secure. To strengthen his position, however, he made numerous conces- sions to the people ; but various conspiracies were formed against his life, and his reign was troubled with insurrections at home. 4. In 1400, in consequence of a report of the escape of Richard II. to Scotland, Henry demanded homage from the {Scottish king, and led an army into Scotland to enforce it, but the advance of his troops was checked by the duke of Rothesay. A serious insurrection in Wales, under Owen Glendower, followed, who successfully resisted the attempts of Henry to check and subdue it. 5. A quarrel arose between the Scotch earls of March and Douglas. March did homage to Henry, and being attacked by Douglas was assisted by the Percys of Northumberland, who defeated the Scotch in the battles of Nesbitt Moor and Homildon Hill, 1402. 6. In consequence of Henry's refusal to allow the Percys to admit the prisoners taken in these battles to ransom, they determined to drive him from the throne, and, with this end in view, entered into a league with the Scotch and Owen Glendower. The king defeated the confederates in the battle of Shrewsbury, in which Harry Percy, better known as Hotspur, is slain (1403). 7. Shortly after the French made a descent upon Guienneand the West of England, and burnt Plymouth. The English retaliated by burning and destroying towns on the French coast. These events were followed by a rising in the north, which was put down by treacherous conduct on the part of the leaders of Henry's troops towards the heads of the rebel forces. 8. In 1405, Owen Glendower, assisted by French troops, suc- cessfully resisted Henry's authority in Wales. Prince Henry, however, continued the contest there, and in 1409 completed the subjection of the country. 9. Percy, the earl of Northumberland, encouraged by dissen- sions between Henry and his Parliament, made another effort to drive him from the throne. Supported by some Scottish nobles he fought the battle of Bramham Moor (1408), in which his troops were completely defeated, and he himself slain. 148 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 10. The last act of importance of Henry's reign was an attack ou France by the English troops under the duke of Clarence. They had entered that country to assist the partisans of the duke of Orleans against the Armagnac faction. Being refused money to defray the cost of the expedition, Clarence laid waste many provinces, ostensibly for the reason named, but in reality to avenge the hostility shown by the French to his father throughout his reign. 11. In 1413, Henry died. Handsome, cheerful, and gay in his . youth, death reached him early. The prime of manhood changed to a premature old age, by disease, remorse, grief, and the cares of a troubled reign. 12. In his youth Henry supported Wycliffe and his followers ; but on coming to the throne he purchased the support of the Church of Rome by cruelly persecuting them, for in his reign the early reformers, then called Lollards, were first burnt at the stake. The Duke of Exeter's Conspiracy. [From " The Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York, with all the Acts done in the Times of the Princes both of one lineage and the other" being a chronicle of English history during the reigns of the kings of England, from Henry IV. to Henry VI II., compiled by Edwa/rd Hall, a lawyer and judge in the Sheriff's court of London, who died in 1547.] At this time was an abbot in Westminster, a man of apparent virtues, openly professing Christ, Christian charity, and due subjection and obeisance to his prince, which abbot hearing King Henry once say, when he was earl of Derby and of no mature age or grown gravely, that princes had too little, and religious men had too much, imagined in himself that he now obtaining the crown of the realm, if he were therein a long continuer, would remove the great beam that then grieved his eyes and pricked his conscience. For you must understand that these monastic personages, learned and illiterate, better fed than taught, took upon them to write and register in the book of fame, the noble acts, the wise doings, and the politic governances of kings and princes, in which history, if a king gave to them pos- sessions, or granted them liberties, or exalted them to honour and worldly dignity, he was called a saint ; he was MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 149 praised without any desert above the moon, his genealogy was written, and not one iota that might exalt his fame was either forgotten or omitted. But if a Christian prince had touched their liberties, or justly claimed any part of their possessions, or would have intermitted in their holy franchises, or desired aid of them against his and their common enemies, then tongues talked and pens wrote that he was a tyrant, a depressor of holy religion, an enemy of Christ's church and his holy flock, and an accursed persoi i with Dathan and Abiram to the deep pit of hell. Where- fore the proverb began, " Give and be blessed ; take away and be accursed." Thus the fear of losing their possession^ made them pay yearly annates to the Komish bishop : thus the fear of correction and honest restraint of liberty made them from their ordinaries, yea, almost from obedience of their princes, to sue dispensations, exemptions, and immunities. The abbot that I spoke of, which could not well forget the saying of King Henry, and being before in great favour and high estimation with King Richard, called to his house on a day in the term season, all such lords and other persons which he either knew or thought to be as affectionate to King Richard, and envious to the estate and advancement of King Henry, whose names were John Holland, duke of Exeter and earl of Huntingdon ; Thomas Holland, duke of Surrey and earl of Kent ; Edward, duke of Aumerle and earl of Rutland, son to the duke of York ; John Montague, earl of Salisbury ; Hugh Spenser, earl of Gloucester ; John, the bishop of Carlisle ; Sir Thomas Blount, and Magdelen, one of King Richard's chapel, a man as like to him in stature and proportion in all lineaments of his body as unlike in birth, dignity, or conditions. This abbot highly feasted these great lords and his special friends ; and when they had well dined, they all withdrew themselves into a secret chamber and sat down to council. When they were set, John Holland, duke of Exeter, whose rage of revenging the injury done to King Richard was in no way mitigated nor mollified, but rather increased and augmented, declared to them their allegiance promised, and by oath confirmed, to King Richard, his brother, forgetting not the high pro- 150 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. motions and notable dignities which he and all others there present had obtained by the high favour and munificent liberality of his said brother, by the which they were not only by oath and allegiance bound, and also by kindness and urbanity incensed and moved, to take part with him and with his friends, but also bound to be revenged for him and his cause on his mortal enemies and deadly foes, in doing which he thought policy fitter to be used than force, and some witty practice rather to be experimented (made trial of) than manifest hostility or open war. And, for the expedition of this enterprise, he devised a solemn tournament to be undertaken between him and twenty on his part, and the earl of Salisbury and twenty on his part, at Oxford : to the which triumph King Henry should be invited : and, when he was most busily regarding the martial play and warlike disports, he suddenly should be slain and destroyed. By this means King Richard, who was yet alive, should be restored to liberty and repossessed of his crown and kingdom. And the plotters appointed farther who should assemble the people, the number, and persons which should accomplish and perform this invented essay and policy. This device so much pleased the seditious congregation, that they not only made an indenture sextipartite, sealed with their seals and signed with their hands, in the which each bound himself to other to use every endeavour, both for the destruction of King Henry and the creation of King Richard, but also swore on the Holy Evangelists the one to be true and secret to the others, even to the hour and point of death. When all things were thus appointed and concluded, the duke of Exeter came to the king at Windsor, requiring him, for the love that he bore to the noble acts of chivalry, that he would vouchsafe not only to repair to Oxford to see and behold their manly feats and warlike pastime, but also to be the discoverer and indifferent judge (if any ambiguity should arise) of their courageous acts and royal triumph. The king, seeing himself so earnestly desired, and the great wish of his brother-in-law that he should come, and imagining nothing less than that which was pretended. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 151 gently gave assent, and, in a friendly manner, condescended to grant his request, which thing obtained, all the lords of this conspiracy departed to their houses (as they declared) to set armourers at work in trimming their harness for the solemn tournament. Some had the helm, the visor, the two baviers, and the two plackards of the same curiously graven and cunningly adorned ; some had their collars fretted, and others had them set with gilt bullions. One company had the plackards, the rest, the burley, the tasses, the lamboys, the backpiece, the tapul, and the border of the cuirass all gilt, and another band had them all enamelled azure. One part had the vambraces, the paceguards, the grandguards, the poldren, the pollettes, parted with gold and azure, and another lot had them silver and sable. Some had the mainfers, the close gauntlets, the guissettes, the flamards, dropped and gutted with red, and others had them speckled with green ; others had the cuisses, the greaves, the surlettes, the sockets on the right side and on the left side silver. Some had the spear, the bur, the cronet, all yellow, and others had them of divers colours. One band had the scafferon, the cranet, the band of the horse all white, and others had them all gilt. Some had their arm- ing swords freshly burnished, and some had them cunningly varnished. Some spurs were white, some gilt, and others coal black. One part had their plumes all white, another had them all red, and a third had them of several colours. One wore on his headpiece his lady's sleeve, and another bore on his helm the glove of his darling ; but to declare the costly bases, the rich bards, the pleasant trappings both of goldsmiths' work and embroidery, no less sump- tuously than curiously wrought, it would take a long time to declare, for every man after his own devised his fancy, verifying the old proverb— " So many heads, so many wits." The duke of Exeter came to his house and raised men on every side, and prepared horse and harness meet and apt for his compassed purpose. When the duchess, his wife, which was sister to King Henry, perceived this, she imagined that some trouble was being prepared against her brother, as was indeed imminent and at hand, where- fore she wept and made great lamentation. When the X52 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. duke perceived her dolour he said : " What, Bess, how chanceth this 1 When my brother, King Richard, was deposed of his dignity and committed to hard and sharp prison, which had been king and ruled this realm nobly by the space of twenty-two years, and your brother was exalted to the throne and dignity imperial of the same, then my heart was heavy, my life stood in jeopardy, and my comb was clearly cut, but you then rejoiced, laughed, and triumphed ; wherefore I pray you be content that I may as well rejoice and have pleasure at the delivering and restoring of my brother justly to his dignity, as you were jocund and pleasant when your brother unjustly and untruly deprived and disseized my brother of the same. For of this I am sure, that if my brother prosper you and I shall not fall nor decline, but if your brother continue in his estate and magnificence I doubt not your decay nor mine, but I suspect the loss of my life, besides the forfeit- ure of my lands and goods." When he had spoken he kissed his lady, who was sorrowful and pensive, and he departed towards Oxford with a great company both of archers and horsemen, and when he came there he found ready all his mates and confederates, well appointed for their purpose, except the duke of Aumerle, earl of Rutland, for whom they sent messengers in great haste. This duke of Aumerle went before from Westminster to see his father, the duke of York ; and sitting at dinner, had his counterpart of the indenture of the confederacy, whereof I spoke before, in his bosom. The father espied it and demanded what it was ; his son lowly and benignly answered that it might not be seen, and that it touched him not. " By Saint George," quoth the father, " I will see it," and so by force took it out of his bosom. When he perceived the contents and the six signs or seals set and fixed to the same, whereof the seal of his son was one, he suddenly rose from the table, commanding his horses to be saddled, and in a great fury said to his son, " Thou traitor, thief ; thou hast been a traitor to King Richard, and wilt thou now be false to thy cousin King Henry 1 Thou knowest well enough that I am thy pledge, bail, and surety, body for body, and land for goods, in open MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 153 Parliament, and goest thou about to seek my death and destruction 1 By the Holy Kood, I had rather see thee strangled on a gibbet." And so the duke of York mounted on horseback to ride towards Windsor to the king, and to declare the whole effect of his son and his adherents and partakers. The duke of Aumerle, seeing in what case he stood, took his horse and rode another way to Windsor, riding in haste thither, which his father, being an old man, could not do. And when he was alighted at the castle gate, he caused the gates to be shut, saying that he must needs deliver up the keys to the king. When he came into the king's presence he kneeled down on his knees, beseeching him for mercy and forgiveness. The king demanded the cause. Then he declared to him plainly the whole confederacy and entire conspiracy in manner and form as you have heard. " Well," said the king, " if this be true we pardon you ; if it be feigned at your extreme peril be it." While the king and the duke talked together, the duke of York knocked at the castle gate, whom the king caused to be let in, and then he delivered the indenture, which he had previously taken from his son, into the king's hands, Which writing when he had read and seen, perceiving the signs and seals of the confederates, he changed his former purpose. For the day before, having heard that the challengers were all ready and that the defenders had come to do their devoir, he purposed to have departed towards the triumph the next day ; but by his prudent and forecasting counsel, some- what stayed until he might see the air clear and no dark spot near to the place where the lists were. And now being advertised of the truth and verity, how his destruc- tion and death were compassed, was not a little vexed, but with a great and merciless agony perturbed and unquieted, and therefore determined to make his abode, not having time to look and gaze on jousts and tourneys, but to take heed how to keep and conserve his life and dignity, and in that place tarried until he knew what way his enemies would set forward ; and shortly wrote to the earl of Northumberland, his high constable, and to the earl of Westmorland, his high marshal, and to others of his 154 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. assured friends, of all the doubtful danger and perilous jeopardy. The conspirators, perceiving by the lack of the duke of Aumerle's coming, and also seeing no preparations made there for the king's coming, imagined to themselves that their enterprise was divulged and made known to the king. Wherefore that thing which they attempted to do privily they now determined to set forth, and advance with spear and shield with all diligent celerity. And so they adorned Magdelen, a man much resembling King Richard, in royal and princely vesture, calling him King Richard, affirming that he, by favour of his keepers, was delivered out of prison and set at liberty ; and they followed four abreast with the determination to destroy King Henry, as the most pernicious and venomous enemy to them and his own natural country. While the confederates, with this new-published idol, accompanied by a puissant army of men, took the direct way and passage towards Windsor, King Henry, being admonished of their approaching, with a few horse, in the night, came to the Tower of London about twelve o'clock, where he in the morning caused the mayor of the city to apparel in armour the best and most courageous persons of the city, which brought to him three thousand archers and three thousand billmen, besides them which were deputed to defend the city. The lords of the confederacy entered Windsor Castle, and, not finding their prey, they determined, with all speed, to pass forth to London. But on their way, changing their purpose, they returned to the town of Colbrook, and there tarried. These lords had much people following them, what for fear and what for entreaty, surely believing that King Richard was there present, and in company. King Henry issued out of London, and came to Hounslow Heath r where he pitched his camp, abiding the coming of his enemies. But when they were advertised of the king's puissance, or else amazed with fear, or forethinking and repenting their bygone baseness, or mistrusting their own company and fellows, departed from thence to Berkhamp- stead, and so to Chichester, and there the lords took their lodging — the duke of Surrey, earl of Kent, and the earl MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. J 55 of Salisbury in one inn, and the duke of Exeter and the earl of Gloucester in another, and all the host lay in the fields. The bailiff of the town, with fourscore archers, set on the house where the duke of Surrey and others lay. The house was bravely assaulted, and strongly defended a great space. The duke of Exeter, being in another inn with the earl of Gloucester, set fire to divers houses in the town, thinking that the assailants would leave the assault and rescue their goods, which thing they nothing- regarded. The host lying without, hearing noise, and seeing fire in the town, believing that the king was come thither with his puissance, fleet without measure to save themselves. The duke of Exeter and his company, seeing the force of the townsmen increasing more and more, fled out of the town by the back, intending to repair to the army, which they found dispersed and retired. Then the duke, seeing no hope of comfort, fled into Essex, and the earl of Gloucester, going towards Wales, was taken, and beheaded at Bristol. Magdelen, flying into Scotland, was apprehended, and brought to the Tower. The lords who fought still in the town of Chichester were wounded to death, and taken, and their heads struck off and sent to London ; and there were taken Sir Bennet Shelley and Sir Barnard Brokas, and twenty-nine other lords, knights, and esquires, and sent to Oxford, where the king then sojourned, where Sir Thomas Blount and all the other prisoners were executed. When the duke of Exeter heard that his accomplices were taken, and his counsellors apprehended, and his friends and allies sent to execution, he lamented his own chance, and bewept the misfortunes of his friends, but most of all bewailed the fatal end of his brother, King- Richard, whose death he saw as in a mirror, by his unhappy sedition and malicious attempt to be brought near at hand ; and so wandering, lurking, and hiding himself in privy places, was attacked in Essex, and in the lordship of Plasshey, a town of the duchess of Gloucester, and there made shorter by the head; and in that place especially, because that he in the same lordship seduced and falsely betrayed Thomas, duke of Gloucester, and by 156 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. his treachery and deceit brought about his death and destruction. So the common proverb was verified : " As you have done, so shall you feel." II.— Henry V., 1413—1422. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Henry V., the eldest son of Henry IV., was born at Monmouth in 1388, and crowned at Westminster, April 9, 1413. He died at Vincennes, near Paris, August 31, 1422, in the thirty- fourth year of his age, and the tenth of his reign. He was buried at Westminster. 2. He married Catherine of France, by whom he had one son, who succeeded him. Contrary to all expectation this monarch acted wisely and discreetly after his accession to power. His youth had been marked by dissipation and thoughtlessness. He had even struck the Chief Justice in open court, for committing one of his worthless associates tt> prison, for which the prince himself was punished by imprisonment (1407). 3. The commencement of his reign was marked by an insur- rection of the Lollards, many of whom were taken and burnt at the stake. 4. In 1415, Henry determined to invade France. He made a descent on Harfleur, which he took after a siege of two months. Leaving his uncle, the earl of Dorset, in Harfleur, as governor, he marched into Picardy ; but finding his army thinned by disease, and the French approaching in great force, he retreated on Calais. 5. At Agincourt, a village on the road to Calais, the English encountered the French on October 25, 1415, and completely defeated them, though with a force very inferior in point of numbers to the imposing array of the French. Henry then pursued his march to Calais, and returned to England. 6. In 141G, the duke of Bedford relieved Harfleur, besieged by the French and Genoese ; and the following year Henry entered Normandy, and after the capture of Rouen (1419) pressed on to Paris. 7. Peace was made by the treaty of Troyes (1420). Henry married Princess Catherine of France, and is declared Regent of the kingdom and the successor of Charles VI. ; but in the height of his glory, and the early prime of life, this chivalrous king died at Vincennes. Had he lived two months longer he would have been king of the united countries of France and England. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, X57 8. In 1417, the Scotch, under the duke of Albany and earl Douglas, invaded England. This inroad is known as the M Foul Raid. " A body of Scotch in the pay of the Armagnac faction rendered considerable assistance to the French in their wars with Henry, V. The Massacre of the Prisoners after Agincourt. [Of late years some writers have attempted to cast a slur on the reputation of Henry V. by asserting that after the fighting was over he ordered unnecessarily a massacre of the prisoners taken in the battle of Agincourt. The following, from the pen of the Rev. J, E. Tyler, is not only valuable as a defence of Henry's character, but also as an example of dispassionate inquiry and argument.] The name of Henry of Monmouth is inseparable from the battle of Agincourt ; and immeasurably better had it been for his fatr fame had himself and his little army been crushed in that tremendous struggle by the overwhelming- chivalry of France, than tjiat he should have stained that day of conquest and glory by an act of cruelty or vengeance. If any cause, except palpable and inevitable necessity, could be proved to have suggested the dreadful mandate for his soldiers to put their prisoners to the sword, his memory must be branded by a stigma which no personal courage, nor a life devoted to the deeds of arms, nor any unprecedented career of conquest could obliterate. The charge of cruelty, however, like some other accusations, is of comparatively recent origin, and our duty is to ascertain the facts from the best evidence, and dispassionately to draw our inference from those facts, after an upright scrutiny and a patient weighing of the whole question in all its bearings. Our abhorrence of the crime may well make us hesitate before w T e pronounce judgment against one to whose mercy and chivalrous honour his contemporaries bore willing and abundant testimony ; the enormity of so dreadful an example compels us, in the name of humanity and justice, not to screen the guilty. We may be wisely jealous of the bias and pre- judice which his brilliant talents, and his life of patriotism and glory, may unconsciously communicate to our minds ; ]58 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. we must be also upon our guard lest an excessive resolution to do justice foster imperceptibly a morbid acquiescence in the condemnation of the accused. The facts, then, as they are gleaned from those authors who wrote nearest to the time (two of whom are French, the other English, were actually themselves present on the field of battle, and were eye-witnesses of some portion at least of the circumstances which they narrate), seem to have been these in their order and character. At the close of one of the most desperate struggles ever recorded in the annals of ancient or modern warfare, whilst the enemy were in the act of quitting the field, but had not left it, the English were employing what remained of their well-nigh exhausted strength in guarding their prisoners and separating the living from the dead, who lay upon each other, heaps upon heaps, in one confused and indiscriminate mass. On a sudden a shout was raised, and reached Henry, that a fresh reinforcement of the enemy, in overwhelming numbers, had attacked the baggage, and were advancing in battle array against him. He was himself just released from the furious conflict in which, at the close of his almost unparalleled personal exertion, he engaged with the duke of Alencon and slew him on the spot. Precisely also, at this juncture, the main body of the French who had been engaged in the battle, and were apparently retreating, were seen to be collecting in great numbers, and forming themselves into bodies throughout the plain, with the purpose, as it appeared, of returning to the engagement. To delay might have been the total sacrifice of himself and his gallant little band ; to hesitate might have been death. Henry instantly, without a moment's interval, by sound of trumpet ordered his men to form themselves, and attack the body who were advancing upon his rear, and to put the prisoners to death, " lest they should rush upon his men during the fight." These mandates were obeyed. The French reinforcement, advancing from the quarter where the baggage was stationed, no sooner felt a shower of arrows, and saw a body of men ready to give them battle, than they turned to flight ; and instantly MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 159 Henry, on seeing them run, stopped the slaughter of the prisoners, and made it known to all that he had had recourse to the measure only in self-defence. Henry, in order to prevent the recurrence of such a dreadful catastrophe, sent forth a herald to those companies of the enemy who were still lingering very suspiciously through the field, and charged them either to come to battle at once or withdraw from his sight ; adding that should they array themselves afterwards to renew the battle, he would show no mercy, nor spare either fighting-men or prisoners. Of the general accuracy of this statement of the facts little doubt can be entertained, though, in the midst of the confusion of such a battle-field, it would not be matter of surprise were some of the circumstances mistaken or exag- gerated. In reflecting on this course of incidents, the thought forces itself upon our mind that the mandate was given not in cool blood, nor when there was time and opportunity for deliberation, and for calculating upon the means and chances of safety, but upon the instant ; on a sudden unexpected renewal of the engagement from a quarter from which no danger was anticipated ; at a moment, too, when just after the heat of the battle was passing over, the routed enemy were collecting again in great numbers in various parts of the field, with a view evidently of returning to the charge and crushing their conquerors ; at a moment, too, when the English were scattered about, separating the living from the dead, and all was yet confusion and uncertainty. Another fact, as clearly recorded as the original issuing of the mandate, is, that no sooner was the danger of the immediate and inevi- table sacrifice of the lives of his men removed by the retreat of the assailants, than, without waiting for the dispersion of those menacing bodies then congregating around him, Henry instantly countermanded the order, and saved the remainder of the prisoners. The bare facts of the case, from first to last, admit of no other alternative than for our judgment to pronounce it to have been altogether an imperative and inevitable act of self-preserva- tion, without the sacrifice of any life beyond the absolute and indispensable necessity of the case. IQQ MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. But, perhaps, the most striking and conclusive testimony in vindication of Henry's character on that day of slaughter and victory is borne both by the silence and also by the expressed testimony of contemporary historians. This evidence deserves to be put more prominently forward than it has ever been. Indeed, as long as there was no charge of cruelty or unnecessary violence brought against his name in this particular, there w r as little need of alleging any evidence in his defence. It remained for modern writers, after a lapse of centuries, to stigmatise the command as an act of barbarity, and to represent it as having tarnished and stained the victory of him who gave it. It is, however, a most remarkable and satisfactory circumstance that, of the contemporary historians, and those who followed most closely upon them, who have detailed the proceedings with more or less minuteness, and with a great variety though no inconsistency of circumstances, in whose views, more- over, all subsequent writers, with few exceptions, have unreservedly acquiesced, not one single individual is found to cast the slightest imputation on Henry for inju ^tice or cruelty ; while some, in their account of the battle, have not made the most distant allusion to the circumstance. All the earlier writers who refer to it appear with one con- sent to have considered the order as the result of dire and unavoidable necessity on the part of the English king. Not so only ; whilst no one who witnessed the engagement, or lived at the time, ever threw the shadow of reproach or of complaint on Henry or his army ; various writers, especially among the French historians, join in reprobating the unjustifiable conduct of those among the French troops who rendered the massacre inevitable, and cast on their own countrymen the entire responsibility and blame for the whole melancholy affair. Instead of any attempt to sully and tarnish the glory won by the English on that day, by pointing to their cruel and barbarous treatment of unarmed prisoners, they visit their own people with the very strongest terms of malediction, as the sole culpable origin and cause of the evil. And that these were not only the sentiments of the writers themselves, but were participated in by their countrymen at large, is evidenced by the record of a fact MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. \Qi which has been generally overlooked. Those who were deemed guilty of thus exposing their countrymen to death, by unjustifiably renewing the attack when the conflict was acknowledged to be over, and after the French soldiery had given up the field, not only were exposed to disgrace in their characters, but suffered punishment also for the offence in their persons. Anticipating censure and severe handling as the consequences of their misconduct, they made valuable presents to such as they thought able to screen them ; but so decided was the indignation and resentment of their countrymen, that the leaders of the offending parties were cast into prison and suffered a long confinement, as the punishment for their misconduct on that day. The inference, then, which the facts as they are delivered by French and English writers compel us to draw, coincides with the professed sentiments of all contemporaries. Those on the one hand who shared the glory and were proud of the day of Agincourt, and those, on the other, whose national pride and wounded honour, and participation in the calamities poured that day upon the noblest families of France, and in the mourning spread far and wide throughout the land, caused them to abhor the name of Agincourt, all sanction our adoption of that one inference : Henry did not stain his victory by any act of cruelty. His character comes out of the investigation untarnished by a suspicion of his having wantonly shed the blood of a single fellow- creature. III.— Henry VI., 1422—1461. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Henry VI. was born at Windsor, December 6, 1421, and crowned at Westminster, November 6, 1429. He was murdered in the Tower in the forty-ninth year of his age, May 23, 1471, having been deposed in the thirty-ninth year of his rei^n (1461). He was buried at Chertsey, but his remains were subsequently removed to Windsor. 2. He married Margaret of Anjou, by whom he had one son, murdered after the battle of Tewkesbury (1471) by the duke of Clarence. L MAN iUS|,»Kl( KiWOK ;\ \ftot tho death of llcmv V , tho duke of Ulouoo^tor was inado logout i»t l-'u ■■.l.iu.l. \;ul tho duko of IVdfoid tho logout of h.nuv . and tlni!) \ I was proclaimed king of Franco on tho Joath oi fail uatuiai grt uult.it hoi, Chailo-. \ I t I'ho dauphin of France, uudor tho title of Charles VII., .i . -erted lus el.iini to the limine Tho Soot oh adventurers tlooked to hi. r.taild aid. hut tllO I'll-.ll-ll took UiaUY I.UV11:, .111*1 Castle*. and \x "u-. in i ho batth •• of Crevant [\ i'13) and \ emend iiul, Hodford wis ohlio.ed to quit hi. D I some months. Short h aftet his return the English laid siege to Orleans (1 r:s^ Q At tin. time Jeanne Dare, commonly ^ni erroneously called JottB (4 ^JOt I pmttit girl of Ponironn in Champagne, unao.uiod that l from ahovo to relievo Franco, ami Charles Yll on tho throno o\ his i Means unl defeating tho Kiu.h-.h at Tat ay. i thovo Charles w.is crowned iutheeftthedr*l(142^ sho thoie>w-died to rot no to IViuremy, with tho troons ut tho solicitation of tho k oiu Compny.no, wluoh xn.: lvMO ? -.ed . -ho toll into tin I './li\erod Up to tho Fn^lish. Condemned as a witch ior own ooui tunned at the atake at Rouen s in i •<• to of tUnlfovd died at Rouen, ana the duke Tho I mam on in I i ti» In a few years '> ho had done goool v: \ a . to tho oi own, and it w that ho -..\uot \ ,>i Jack Cade < I Tho j mod to fa\ and tho faction with wluoh Uc.ivn was -an', oundod | tho king being deranged in mind, the formei ■ u\\ to-, ot \ . -nod llonr\ . how . recovered hia faculties, end ordered him to be released* v MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 1(53 12. A hollow peace was made between the Yorkists and Lancastrians, to be broken in 1459. The battle of Bloreheath (September 23, 1459) was adverse to the duke of York, and he retreated to Ireland, but took the field again in the following year. 13. The landing of Warwick and Edward of York, the duke's son, was followed by the battle of Northampton (July 10, 1460). In this battle Henry was again taken prisoner, and York claimed the crown ; but the Lancastrians, rallying round Queen Margaret, defeated the Yorkists at the battle of Wakefield (December 31, 1460), in which the duke of York was killed. 14. Edward, now duke of York, prosecuted his father's claim. He gained the battle of Mortimer's Cross, near Hereford (February 1, 1461), and entered London at the end of the month, though Margaret had been victorious over Warwick in the battles of Barnet and St. Albans (February 17, 1461). 15. He was proclaimed and crowned after the battle of Towtoii (March 28, 1461), in which the Lancastrians were totally routed, and the king, queen, and prince of Wales obliged to take refuge refuge in Scotland. 16. Edward's right to the crown as Edward IV. was formally acknowledged by Parliament, and the actual reign of Henry VI. closed with his deposition. The Insurrection of Jack Cade. [Adapted from "The Concordance of Stories" a general aer>,v„t of English History, written by Robert Fabian, alderman and sheriff of London, who died in 1512.] In the month of June, 1450, the commons of Kent assembled in great multitude, and chose a captain, and named him Mortimer, and cousin to the duke of York ; but of most he was named Jack Cade. This kept the people wondrously together ; and he made such ordinances among them that he brought a great number of them together to the Black Heath, where he devised a bill of petitions to the king and his council, and showed therein what injuries and oppressions the poor commons suffered by such as were about the king, a few persons in number, and all under colour of being done by the king's authority. The king's council seeing this bill disallowed it, and counselled the king, who by the seventh day of June had 1(54 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. gathered round him a strong host of people, to go against the rebels, and give them battle. Then the king, after the said rebels had held their field upon Black Heath seven days, made towards them. Whereof hearing, the captain drew back with his people to a village called Sevenoaks, and there arranged his followers in order of battle. Then it was agreed by the king's council, that .Sir Humphrey Stafford, knight, with William, his brother, and certain other gentlemen, should follow the chase, and the king with his lords should return to Greenwich, thinking that the rebels were fled and gone. But when Sir Humphrey with his company drew near unto Sevenoaks, he was warned of the captain that there abode with his people. And when he had counselled with the other gentlemen, he, like a manful knight, set upon the rebels and fought with them long ; but in the end the captain slew him and his brother, with many others, and caused the rest to fall back. All which season the king's host lay still upon Black Heath, there being among them sundry opinions, so that some and many of them favoured the captain. But, finally, when word came of the overthrow of the Staffords, they said plainly and boldly, that except the lord Saye and others were committed to ward, they would take the captain's party. For the appeasing of which rumour the lord Saye was put into the Tower. Then the king having knowledge of the discomfiture of his men, and also of the rumour of the disaffection that was showing itself among his hooting people, removed from Greenwich to London, and there with his host rested himself awhile. And as soon as Jack Cade had thus overcome the Staf- fords, he forthwith apparelled himself with the knight's apparel, and put on his brigganders set with gilt nails, and his salet, and gilt spurs ; and after he had refreshed his people he returned again to Black Heath, and there again pitched his camp, as he had heretofore done, and lay there from the twenty-ninth day of June, being St. Peter's day, till the first day of July : in which season came unto him the archbishop of Canterbury and the duke of Buckingham, with whom he had long communication ; but they found him right discreet in his answers ; howbeit they could not MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 1£5 persuade him to dismiss his people and to submit himself to the king's grace. In this while, the king and queen hearing of the increasing of the rebels, and the lords also fearing their own servants, lest they should take the captain's part, removed from London to Killingworth, leaving the city without aid, except only the lord Scales, which was left to keep the Tower, and with him a manly and warlike man named Matthew C4owth. Then the captain of Kent, who remained still at Black Heath, to the end to blind the people the more, and to bring him in fame that he kept good justice, beheaded there a petty captain of his, named Paris, because he had offended against some orders that he had eujoined for the regulation of his host. And hearing that the king and all his lords had thus departed, he drew nearer to tho city, so that upon the first day of July he entered the burgh of Southwark, being then Wednesday, and lodged there that night, for he was not suffered to enter into the city. And upon the same day the commons of Essex, in great numbers, pitched a camp upon the plain at Mile End. Upon the second day of the said month the mayor called a common council at Guildhall, to take measures lor the withstanding of these rebels, and other matters ; but there were divers opinions among those assembled, so that some thought good that the said rebels should be received into the city, and some otherwise, among which Robert Home, stock fishmonger, then being an alderman, spoke sore against them that would have them enter. For which sayings the commons were so moved against him that they ceased not till they had him committed to ward. And the same afternoon, about five of the clock, the captain with his people entered by the bridge ; and when he came upon the drawbridge he hewed the ropes that drew the bridge in sunder with his sword, and so passed into the city, and in sundry places thereof made proclamations in the king's name, that no man, upon pain of death, should rob or take anything by force without paying for it ; by reason whereof he won many hearts of the commons of the city, but all was done to beguile the people, as after 1(J(3 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. shall evidently appear. He rode through divers streets of the city ; and as he came by London Stone he struck it with his sword and said, " Now is Mortimer lord of this city." And when he had thus showed himself in divers places of the city, and showed his mind to the mayor for the ordering of his people, he returned into Southwark and there abode, as he before had done, his people coming and going at lawful hours as they would. Then upon the morn, being the third day of July, and Friday, the said captain entered the city again and caused the lord Saye to be fetched from the Tower and led into the Guildhall, where he was arraigned before the mayor and other of the king's justices. In which pastime he intended to have brought before the said justices the aforesaid Eobert Home ; but his wife and friends besought him so incessantly for his release, that finally, for five hundred marks, he was set at liberty. Then the lord Saye, being, as it has been before said, at Guildhall, desired that he might be judged by his peers ; whereof hearing, the captain sent a company of his unto the hall, who by force took him from the officers and then brought him unto the standard in Cheap, where, before he was half shaven, they struck off his head, and that done put it upon a long pole, and so bore it about with them. At this time and season the captain had caused a gentle- man to be taken named William Crowmer, which had previously been sheriff of Kent, and had been guilty, as they said, of extortion. For which cause, or because he was a supporter of the lord Saye, because he had married his daughter, he was hurried to Mile End and there beheaded in the captain's presence. And at the same time there was also beheaded another man called Baillie, the cause of whose death was this, as I have heard some men report : This Baillie was a familiar and old acquaintance of Jack Cade; wherefore so soon as he espied him coming towards him, he cast in his mind that Baillie would discover his living and old manners, and show off his vile kin and lineage. Wherefore knowing that the said Baillie used to carry rolls of paper about with him and pretend to utter prophecies, he told his company that the poor man was an enchanter and of an ill disposition, and that they should MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 167 well know this by such books as he bare upon him. Then he bade them search him, and if they found as he said, then they should put him to death ; all which was done according to his commandment. When they had thus beheaded these two men they took the head of Crowmer and put it upon a pole, and so entered the city again with the heads of lord Saye and of Crowmer ; and as they passed the streets they joined the poles together, and caused either dead mouth to kiss the other diverse and many times. And the captain, the self-same day, went unto the house of Philip Malpas, draper and alderman, and robbed and spoiled his house, and took thence a great part of his goods ; but he had been warned of his coming beforehand, and so had time to convey away much of his plate and money, or else he had been undone. At which spoiling were present « many poor men of the city, which, at such times, have ever been ready in all places to do harm whenever such riots have taken place. Then towards night he returned into Southwark, and in the morning re-entered the city, and dined that day in a place in St. Margaret Patyn parish, called Gherstis House ; and when he had dined, like an uncourteous guest he robbed his host, as he had robbed Malpas the day before : for which two robberies, albeit that the poorer and more needy people drew unto him and were partners in his ill deeds, the honest and thrifty commoners cast in their minds the sequel of this matter, and feared lest they should be dealt with in like manner, by means whereof he lost the people's favour and hearts. For it was to be though that if he had not executed that robbery he might have gone fair and brought his purpose to good effect if he had intended well ; but it is fair to suppose that his intention was not good, wherefore it might not come to any good conclusion. Then the mayor and aldermen, with the assistance of the worshipful commoners, seeing this misdemeanour of the captain, in keeping safeguard of them- selves and of the city, took counsel how they might drive the captain and his adherents out of the place, wherein their fear was the more, inasmuch as the king and his lords, 1(38 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. with all their forces, was far from them. But yet in order to avoid apparent peril, they determined to withstand any further coming on his part into the city. For the perfor- mance thereof the mayor sent unto the lord Scales and Matthew Gowth, who then had the Tower in their keeping, and obtained their consent to the carrying out of that which they contemplated. Then, upon the 5th day of July, the captain, being in Southwark, caused a man to be beheaded for having done something to displease him, as the story went ; and so he kept himself in Southwark all that day, though he might have entered the city if he pleased. And when night was coming the mayor and citizens, with Matthew Gowth, according to the arrangement which had been made, kept the passage of the bridge, being Sunday, and offered opposition to the Kentishmen, who sought to enter the city in great numbers. Then the captain, seeing this bickering begun, put on his harness and called his people about him, and set so fiercely on the citizens, that he drove them back from the bridge foot in Southwark as far as the drawbridge. Then the men of Kent set fire to the drawbridge, and in defending it many a man was drowned and slain, among which, of men of name, were John Sutton, alderman, Matthew Gowth, gentleman, and Roger Heysand, citizen. And thus con- tinued this skirmish all night, until nine o'clock in the morning, so that sometimes the citizens had the advantage, and sometimes the Kentishmen, but both sides always maintained a footing upon the bridge, so that the citizens never got much beyond the bulwark at the bridge foot, nor the Kentishmen much further than the drawbridge. Having thus continued this cruel fight to the destruction of much people on both sides until the time stated, when the Kentishmen were getting the worst of it, a truce was agreed for certain hours, during which truce the archbishop of Canterbury, then chancellor of England, sent the captain a general pardon for himself, and another for his people, by reason whereof he and his company departed the same night out of Southwark, and so returned every man to his own. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 1(59 But it was not long after that the captain and his com- pany had thus departed, that proclamations were made in divers places of Kent, Sussex, and Surrey, that whoever might take the aforesaid Jack Cade, either alive or dead, should have a thousand marks for his trouble. After which proclamation was thus published, a gentleman of Kent, named Alexander Iden, awaited so his time that he took him in a garden, in Sussex ; but in attempting to capture him the said Jack was slain, and so, being dead, was brought into Southwark on a day in the month of September, and then left in the King's Bench that night ; and on the morrow the corpse was drawn through the chief streets of the city unto Newgate, and there beheaded and quartered, his head being sent to London Bridge, while his four quarters were sent to four different towns of Kent. And this done the king sent commissions into Kent, and rode thither himself, and caused inquiry to be made of this riot in Canterbury ; wherefore eight men were judged and put to death in the same city, and in other good towns of Kent and Sussex divers others were tried and executed for the same riot. Part VIII.— THE HOUSE OF YORK, 1461— 1485s (Plantagenet Dynasty continued.) I.— Edward IV., 1461—1483. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Edward IV. (descended through his grandmother from Lionel, duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III., and through his grandfather from Edmund, duke of York, the fifth son of that monarch) was born at Rouen, April 29th, 1441. He was crowned at Westminster, June 29th, 1461, and died at Westminster, April 9th, 1483, in the forty-second year of his age and the twenty-third of his reign, and was buried at Windsor. 2. He married Elizabeth Gray, by whom he had three sons and seven daughters. 3. In 1464. a few gleams of success shone on the Lancastrians, whom Queen Margaret had again rallied, to make another effort 170 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. to regain the crown for her husband. They were soon defeated by Edward in the battles of Hedgeley Moor (April 25, 1464) and Hexham (May 15, 1464). 4. Margaret retired to Flanders, and Henry, after eluding the pursuit of his enemies for a twelvemonth, was taken prisoner and lodged in the Tower. All hope seemed then to have deserted the Lancastrians ; but Edward offended Warwick, and ill-requited the important services he had rendered him in obtaining the crown. Warwick, therefore, declared against Edward, and, in conjunction with other nobles, imprisoned the king in Middle- ham Castle (1469). 5. Edward was allowed to return to London soon afterwards, and [defeated the partisans of Warwick in the battle of Erping- ham (March 12, 1470). Warwick and the duke of Clarence, a brother of the king, who had married one of Warwick's daugh- ters, retreated to Calais, in France. 6. The pair set various intrigues on foot for the restoration of Henry, and, returning to England, entered London in triumph, in 1470, Edward making his escape to the Hague. Bat Henry was soon to return to his prison ; for, having procured the assist- ance of some Burgundian troops, Edward landed at Raven spur in the following year, and, summoning his partisans, defeats and kills Warwick in the second battle of Barnet* (April 30, 1471). 7. On his return Clarence had deserted his father-in-law, the earl of Warwick, and taken part with his brother. He brutally murdered the son of Henry, who had landed with his mother in England, and had been taken prisoner soon after at the battle of Tewkesbury (May 4, 1471), which proved a final and fatal blow to the Lancastrian cause. 8. A few days after the battle of Tewkesbury, Henry was found dead in the Tower, murdered, it is believed, by Richard, duke of Gloucester, the king's brother. The remaining years of Edward's reign were not marked by proceedings of any moment. He invaded France (1475), but withdrew his troops after concluding a treaty of peace with Louis XI. 9. In 1478, Clarence was put to death in the Tower. He had endeavoured to gain the hand of Mary of Burgundy, daughter of charles the Bold, afterwards married to Maximilian, emperor of Germany. This had roused Edward's jealousy : he and Glou- cester had thwarted the match, and in consequence of Clarence's violent expressions against them on account of his disappoint- ment, they took an early opportunity of destroying him on a charge of treason. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. \J\ 10. In 1485, Edward died, having shortened his days by a life of dissipation and excess, leaving the crown to his little son Edward, under the management of his uncle, Kichard of Glou- cester. The Death of the Duke of Clarence. [Taken from Shakespeare's Historical Play of Richard III. Act\. Scene 4.] SCENE* IV.— London. A Room in the Tower. Enter Clarence and Brakenbury. Bral\ Why looks your grace so heavily to-day I Clar. 0, I have passed a miserable night, So full of fearful dreams, of ugly sights, That, as I am a Christian faithful man, I would not spend another such a night, Though 'twere to buy a world of happy days, — So full of dismal terror was the time ! Bred: What was your dream, my lord ? I pray you, tell me. t 'leer. Methought that I had broken from the Tower, And was embarked to cross to Burgundy ; And, in my company, my brother Gloucester ; Who from my cabin tempted me to walk Upon the hatches : thence we looked toward England, And cited up a thousand heavy times, During the wars of York and Lancaster, That had befallen us. As we paced along L T pon the giddy footing of the hatches, Methought that Gloucester stumbled ; and, in falling, Struck me, that thought to stay him, overboard, Into the tumbling billows of the main. O Lord ! methought what pain it was to drown ! What dreadful noise of water in mine ears ! What sights of ugly death within mine eyes ! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks ; A thousand men that fishes gnawed upon ; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl. Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scatter'd in the bottom of the sea : 172 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Some lay in dead men's skulls ; and in those holes Where eyes did once inhabit, there were crept (As 'twere in scorn of eyes) reflecting gems, That wooed the slimy bottom of the deep, And mocked the dead bones that lay scattered by. Brak. Had you such leisure in the time of death, To gaze upon these secrets of the deep 1 Clar. Methought I had ; and often did I strive To yield the ghost : but still the envious flood Stopt in my soul, and would not let it forth To find the empty, vast, and wandering air ; But smothered it within my panting bulk, Which almost burst to belch it in the sea. Brak. Awaked you not with this sore agony ? Clar. No, no ; my dream was lengthened after life ; 0, then began the tempest to my soul ! I passed methought, the melancholy flood, With that grim ferryman which poets write of, Unto the kingdom of perpetual night. The first that there did greet my stranger soul, Was my great father-in-law, renowned Warwick ; Who cried aloud, " What scourge for perjury Can this dark monarchy afford false Clarence % " And so he vanish'd : then came wandering by A shadow like an angel, with bright hair Dabbled in blood : and he shrieked out aloud, " Clarence is come, — false, fleeting, perjured Clarence, — That stabbed me in the field by Tewkesbury ; — Seize on him, Furies ! take him to your torments ! " With that, methought, a legion of foul fiends Environed me, and howled in mine ears Such hideous cries, that, with the very noise, I trembling waked, and, for a season after, Could not believe but that I was in hell, — Such terrible impression made my dream. Brak. No marvel, lord, that it affrighted you ; 1. am afraid, methinks, to hear you tell it. Clar. Brakenbury, I have done these things, That now give evidence against my soul, For Edward's sake ; and see how he requites me ! — MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. J 73 God ! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee, But thou wilt be avenged on my misdeeds, Yet execute thy wrath on me alone : O, spare my guiltless wife and my poor children ! — 1 pray thee, gentle keeper, stay by me ; My soul is heavy, and I fain would sleep. Brak. I will, my lord : God give your grace good rest. [Clareinxe afejqts. Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours, Makes the night morning, and the noon-tide night. Princes have but their titles for their glories, An outward honour for an inward toil ; And, for unfelt imaginations, They often feel a world of restless cares : So that, between their titles, and low name, There's nothing differs but the outward fame. Enter the two Murderers. 1st Murd. Ho ! who's here % Brak. What would'st thou, fellow? and how earnest thou hither % 1st Murd. I would speak with Clarence, and I came hither on my legs. Brak. What, so brief] 2nd Murd. 'Tis better, sir, than to be tedious. Let him see our commission ; and talk no more. A paper is delivered to Brakenbury, who reads it. Brak. I am, in this, commanded to deliver The noble duke of Clarence to your hands. I will not reason what is meant hereby, Because I will be guiltless of the meaning. There lies the duke asleep, — and there the keys : I'll to the king ; and signify to him That thus I have resigned to you my charge. 1st Murd. You may, sir ; 'tis a point of wisdom : Fare you well. [Exit Brakenbury. Clar. [ Waking.'] Where art thou, keeper ? give me a cup of wine. lit Murd. You shall have wine enough, my lord anon. 174 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Clar. In God's name, what art thou ] How darkly, and how deadly dost thou speak ! Your eyes do menace me : why look you pale ] Who sent you hither ] Wherefore do you come ? Both Murd, To, to, to — Clar. To murder me 1 Both Murd. Ay, ay. Clar. You scarcely have the hearts to tell me so, And therefore cannot have the hearts to do it. Wherein, my friends, have I offended you? 1st Murd. Offended us you have not, but the king. Clar. I shall be reconciled to him again. 2nd Murd. Never, my lord ; therefore prepare to die. Clar. Are you drawn forth among a world of men To slay the innocent ] What is my offence 1 Where is the evidence that doth accuse me ? What lawful quest have given their verdict up Unto the frowning judge I or who pronounced The bitter sentence of poor Clarence's death 1 Before I be convict by course of law, To threaten me with death is most unlawful. I charge you, as you hope to have redemption By Christ's dear blood shed for our grievous sins, That you depart, and lay no hands on me : The deed you undertake is damnable. 1st Murd. What we will do, we do upon command. 2nd Murd. And he, that hath commanded, is our king. Clar. Erroneous vassals ! the great King of kings Hath in the table of his law commanded, That thou shalt do no murder : will you, then, Spurn at his edict, and fulfil a man's ] Take heed ; for he holds vengeance in his hand, To hurl upon their heads that break his law. 2nd Murd. And that same vengeance doth he hurl on thee, For false forswearing, and for murder too : Thou didst receive the sacrament to fight In quarrel of the house of Lancaster. 1st Murd. And, like a traitor to the name of God, Didst break that vow ; and, with thy treacherous blade, Unripp'dst the bowels of thy sovereign's son. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 175 2nd Murd. Whom thou wast sworn to cherish and defend. 1st Murd. How canst thou urge God's dreadfid law to us, When thou hast broke it in such dear degree ? Clar. Alas ! for whose sake did I that ill deed ? For Edward, for my brother, for his sake : He sends you not to murder me for this ; For io that sin he is as deep as I. If God will be avenged for the deed, O, know you yet, he doth it publicly : Take not the quarrel from his powerful arm ; It needs no indirect or lawless course, To cut off those that have offended him. 1st Murd. Who made thee, then, a bloody minister, When gallant -springing brave Plantagenet, That princely novice, was struck dead by thee 1 Clar. My brother's love, the devil, and my rage. 1st Murd. Thy brother's love, our duty, and thy faults, Provoke us hither now to slaughter thee. Clar. If you do love my brother, hate not me ; I am his brother, and I love him well. If you are hired for meed, go back again, And I will send you to my brother Gloucester ; Who shall reward you better for my life, Than Edward will for tidings of my death. 2nd Murd. You are deceived, your brother Gloucester hates you. Clar. 0, no, he loves me, and he holds me dear. Go you to him from me. Both Murd. Ay, so we will. Clar. Tell him, when that our princely father York Blessed his three sons with his victorious arm, And charg'd us from his soul to love each other, He little thought of this divided friendship : Bid Gloucester think on this, and he will weep. 1st Murd. Ay, mill-stones ; as he lessoned us to weep. Clar. 0, do not slander him, for he is kind. 1st Murd. Bight, as snow in harvest. — Come, you deceive yourself : 'Tis he that sends us to destroy you here. Clar. It cannot be ; for he bewept my fortune, 276 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. And hugged me in his arms, and swore, with sobs, That he would labour my delivery. 1st Murd. Why, so he doth, when he delivers you From this earth's thraldom to the joys of heaven. 2nd Murd. Make peace with God, for you must die, my lord. Clar. Have you that holy feeling in your souls, To counsel me to make my peace with God, And are you yet to your own souls so blind, That you will war with God by murdering me ? — O, sirs, consider they that set you on To do this deed will hate you for the deed. 2nd Murd. What shall we do ? Clar. Relent, and save your souls. 1st Murd. Relent ! 'tis cowardly, and womanish. Clar. Not to relent is beastly, savage, devilish. — Which of you, if you were a prince's son, Being pent from liberty, as I am now, — If two such murderers as yourselves came to you, Would not entreat for life 1 — My friend, I spy some pity in thy looks ; O, if thine eye be not a flatterer, Come thou on my side, and entreat for me, As you would beg, were you in my distress : A begging prince what beggar pities not ? 2nd Murd. Look behind you, my lord. 1st Murd. [Stabs him.] Take that, and that : if all this will not do, I'll drown you in the malmsey-butt within. [Exit, with ike body. . II.— Edward V., 1483. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Edward V., who was never crowned, reigned nominally for about three months. He was born at Westminster, November 4, 1470, and is said to have been murdered in the Tower, in August, 1483, in the thirteenth year of his age and the first of his reign. It is believed that his brother, the duke of York, perished with him. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 177 2. Richard, duke of Gloucester, returned from Scotland Immediately after the death of his brother, Edward IV., and commenced a slaughter of the principal adherents of his brother's family and the relatives of the queen. 3. Shortly after his appointment as Protector he caused Lord Hastings to be beheaded, on a charge of treason against him. The duke of Buckingham then persuaded the citizens of London to offer the crown to Richard, who accepted it with pretended reluctance, having secured the persons of Edward V. and the duke of York in the Tower. How Lord Hastings was Put to Death. 'From the " Union of the Two Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York, 1 ' d-c, by Edmund Hall. See page 148]. The Lord Protector caused a council to be set at the Tower on Friday the thirteenth day of June, where there was much communing for the honourable solemnity of the coronation, of the which the time appointed approached so near, that pageants were being made day and night at Westminster, and victual killed, which afterwards was thrown away. The lords thus sitting, communing of this matter, the Protector came in among them about nine o'clock, saluting them courteously, excusing himself that he had been from them so long, saying, merrily, that he had been a sleeper that day. And after a little talking with them he said to the bishop of Ely, " My lord, you have very good strawberries in your garden at Holborn ; I require you let us have a mess of them." " Gladly, my lord," quoth he. " I would I had some better thing as ready to your pleasure as that ;" and with that in all haste he sent his servant for a dish of strawberries. The Protector set the lords fast in communing, and thereupon prayed them to spare him a little ; and so he departed, and came again between ten and eleven o'clock into the chamber, all changed, with a sour, angry countenance, knitting his brows, frowning and fretting, and gnawing his lips, and so sat himself down in his place. All the lords were dis- mayed, and ^ ore marvelled of this manner and sudden change, and what things should ail him. When he had M 178 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. sat awhile he thus began : " What were they worthy to have that compass and imagine the destruction of rae, being so near of blood to the king and protector of this his royal realm ] " At which question all the lords sat sore astonished, musing much of whom the question should be meant, of which every man knew himself clear. Then the lord Hastings, as he that, for the familiarity that was between them, thought he might be boldest with him, answered and said that they were worthy to be punished as heinous traitors whatsoever they were, and all the others affirmed the same. " That is," quoth he, " yonder sorceress, my brother's wife, and others with her, n meaning the queen. Many of the lords were sore abashed which favoured her ; but the lord Hastings was better content in his mind that it was moved by her than by any other that he loved better. Howbeit, his heart grudged that he was not before made counsel of this matter, as well as he was of the taking of her kindred, and of their being put to death, which were by his assent previously to this appointed to be beheaded at Pomfret this self-same day, in the which he was not aware that it was determined by another that he himself should the same day be beheaded in London. " Then," said the Protector, " see in what wise that sorceress and others of her counsel, as Shore's wife, with her affinity, have by their sorcery and witchcraft thus wasted my body ;" and therewith be plucked up his doublet sleeve to the elbow of his left arm, where he showed a very withered arm and small, as it always had been. And therefore every man's mind misgave them, well per- ceiving that this matter was but a quarrel ; for well they knew that the queen was both too wise to go about any such folly, and also if she would, yet would she of all folk make Shore's wife least of her counsel, whom of all women she most hated, as that concubine whom the king her husband most loved. Also there was no man there but knew that his arm was ever such since the day of his birth. Nevertheless, the llord Hastings, which from the death of King Edward maintained an intimate acquaintance with Shore's wife, on whom he somewhat doted in the king's life, somewhat MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 17Q grudged in his heart to have her whom he loved so highly accused, and that, as he knew well, untruly ; therefore he answered and said, " Certainly, my lord, if they have so done they be worthy of heinous punishment." " What ! " quoth the Protector, " thou servest me I ween with if and with and; I tell thee they have done it, and that I will make good on thy body, traitor ! " And therewith, as if in a great anger, he clapped a great rap on the board with his fist, at which token given one cried " Treason" without the chamber, and therewith a door clapped and men in harness came rushing in, as many as the chamber could hold. And immediately the Protector said to the lord Hastings, " I arrest thee, traitor." " What me, my lord \ " quoth he. "Yea, traitor," quoth the Protector. And one let fly at the lord Stanley, which shrunk at the stroke and fell under the table, or else his head had been cleft to the teeth, for as shortly as he shrunk yet ran the blood about his ears. Then was the archbishop of York and Dr. Morton, bishop of Ely, and the lord Stanley taken, and divers others, which were bestowed in divers chambers, save the lord Hastings, whom the Protector commanded to take with speed and shrive him apace. " For by St. Paul," quoth he, " I will not dine till I see thy head off." It booted him not to ask why ; but heavily he took a priest at a venture and made a short shrift, for a longer would not be suffered, the Protector made so much haste to get to his dinner, and might not go to it till this murder was done for saving of his ungracious oath. So was he brought forth into the green, beside the chapel within the Tower, and his head laid down on a log of timber that lay there for building of the chapel, and there tyrannously stricken off, and afterwards his body and head were interred at Windsor by the remains of his master, King Edward the Fourth, whose souls Jesu pardon. Amen. Now flew the fame of this lord's death through the city and farther about, like a wind in every man's ear ; but the Protector, immediately after dinner, intending to set some colour on the matter, sent in all haste for many substantial men out of the city into the Tower, and at their coming he 13Q MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. himself, with the duke of Buckingham, stood harnessed in old, evil-favoured briganders, such as no man would think they would have vouchsafed to have put on their backs, except some sudden necessity had constrained them. Then the Lord Protector showed them that the lord Hastings and others of his conspiracy had contrived to have suddenly destroyed him and the duke of Buckingham there the same day in council, and what they intended further was not yet well known ; of whose treason he had no knowledge before ten o'clock the same forenoon, which sudden fear drove them to put on such harness as came next to their hands for their defence, and so thus he required them to report. Every man answered fair, as though no man mistrusted the matter, which, of truth, no man believed. The Murder of Edward V. and the Duke of York. [From the " Union of the Tito Noble and Illustrious Families of Lancaster and York" by Edmund Hall. See 'page 148.] And forasmuch as his mind misgave him that, his nephews living, men would not reckon that he could have right to the realm, he thought therefore, without delay, to rid himself of them, as though the killing of his kinsmen might end his cause, and make him king kindly. Where- upon he sent John Green, whom he specially trusted, to Sir Robert Brakenbury, constable of the Tower, with a letter, and credence also, that the same Sir Robert should in anywise put the two children to death. This John Green did his errand to Brakenbury, kneeling before our lady in the Tower, who plainly answered that he would never put them to death to die for the deed. With this answer Green returned, recounting the same to King Richard at Warwick, who was yet on his journey ; and at •Brakenbury 's reply he took such displeasure and, thought, that the same night he .said to a confidential page of his, " Ah ! whom shall a man trust 1 Even they that I have brought up myself, they that I thought would have most surely served me, even those fail me, and will do nothing for me at my commandment." " Sir," quoth the page, "there lieth one m the pallet chamber without that I MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. JgJ dare well say the thing were hard which he would refuse to do your grace pleasure ;" meaning by this James Tyrrel. James Tyrrel devised that they should be murdered in their beds, and no blood shed ; to the execution whereof he appointed Miles Forrest, one of the four that before kept them, a fellow who had been guilty of murder before time ; and to him he joined one John Dighton, his own horsekeeper, a big, broad, square, and strong knave. . Then all the others being removed from them, this Miles Forrest and John Dighton about midnight, the poor children lying in their beds, came into their chamber and suddenly lapped them up among the clothes, and so bewrapped and entangled them, keeping down by force the feather bed and pillows hard unto their mouths, that within a while they smothered and stifled them; and, their breath failing, they gave up to God their innocent souls into the joys of heaven, leaving to the tormentors their bodies dead in the bed; which after the wretches perceived, first by the struggling with the pangs of death, and after long lying still, to be thoroughly dead, they laid the bodies out upon the bed, and fetched James Tyrrel to see them ; who, when he saw them perfectly dead, caused the murderers to bury them at the stair-foot, at a suitable depth in the ground, imder a great heap of stones. Then rode James Tyrrel in great haste to King Richard, and showed him all the manner of the murder; who gave him great thanks, and, as men say, there made him a knight. Ill— Richard III., 1483—1485. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Richard III. was born at Fotheringay Castle in 1453, and crowned at Westminster, July 6, 1483. He was killed at the battle of Bosworth, August 22, 1485, in the thirty-third year of his age, and the third of his reign, and buried at Leicester. He married Anne Neville, second daughter of the great earl of Warwick, by whom he had one son, who died in infancy. 2. Some of the English nobles who still remained well-affected to the house of Lancaster began an agitation in favour of Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, a descendant of John of Gaunt through Lis mother, the daughter of John, duke of Somerset. 182 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 3. They were joined by the duke of Buckingham, who already began to distrust the king. He headed an insurrection in favour of Richmond, but his troops were dispersed, while he himself was betrayed to Richard and beheaded. 4. Richard now desired to divorce his queen, Anne Neville, and marry hi3 niece, Elizabeth of York ; but she was betrothed to Richmond, the nobles desiring by this arrangement to amalgamate the interests of the houses of York and Lancaster, and so put an end to the contests that had so long embroiled the land. 5. Richard saw with rage and fear the nobles making common cause with Richmond, and nocking to his standard in France. Richmond landed at Milford Haven, August 7, 1485 ; and meeting Richard near Bosworth in Leicestershire defeated his forces (August 22, 1485), Richard himself falling in the battle, fighting with desperation. The Battle of Bosworth. [The following affords a good account of the important hattle Which brought to a close the duration of the Plantagenct line and established a new dynasty on the throne of England.'] Richard III. having by his tyranny, cruelty, and oppression made himself odious to the nation, even the Yorkists were incensed against him, while the Lancastrians made every effort they were able towards dethroning him. Their emissaries were sent into all parts of the country, and instructed to excite insurrections in order to divide Richard's troops and distract his attention, while Henry, earl of Richmond, should invade the kingdom, proceed to the capital, and seize the crown. The duke of Buckingham, who was at the head of this scheme, used every art to elude the vigilance of Richard, who suspected some mischief, though he was ignorant of the medium. But the fatigues and necessities Buckingham's adherents under- went soon dispirited them, and, notwithstanding all his remonstrances and entreaties, the desertion was so great that at length he was left wdth one domestic only. In this forlorn situation he saw no other resource than that of hiding himself until he should be able to take other measures : he therefore retired to the house of one Banister, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. X83 who had lived in his service, and owed his all to the bounty of the duke and his father. Richard was no sooner informed of the dispersion of his enemies than he published a proclamation, setting the price of a thousand pounds on the duke's head, and Banister was such an ungrateful wretch as to betray his master and benefactor for the reward. The duke was carried to Shrewsbury, and there beheaded without any form of trial. The earl of Richmond still continued to think his affairs in England prosperous, notwithstanding this severe check, which rather exasperated than dispirited him ; and Richard, on the contrary, thought it would make such an impression upon all his enemies, that none would dare oppose his measures, and with this view he laid up his fleet, which had been equipped to oppose the designs of Richmond, who, seizing this opportunity, embarked his troops at Harfleur, and in six days arrived in Milford Haven. Next day he advanced to Hereford, where he was received amidst •the acclamations of the inhabitants: from hence he dispatched an express for his friends to join him upon his route, and set out for Shrewsbury, where he proposed to pass the Severn. Richard being informed of his landing, ordered Sir Thomas Herbert to assemble the militia of Wales, and stop the progress of the earl, until he should be in a condition to march against him ; but Herbert, having been already gained over by Richmond's friends, allowed him to pass unmolested. He was joined on his route by Sir Rees ap Thomas, the most powerful commoner in Wales, and a great number of gentlemen of that country, 80 that his army daily increased, and in a few days arrived at Shrewsbury, which he entered without opposition. Meanwhile, a body of 5,000 men was raised by the lord Stanley and his brother Sir William, on pretence of serving Richard, and they advanced to Lichfield, as if their design was to oppose the invader ; but Sir William had a private interview with Richmond, whom he assured of his brother's assistance as soon as he could declare himself with any safety to his son, the lord Strange, who was detained as an hostage by the tyrant. The monarch had by this time assembled his forces at 184 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Nottingham. Hearing that the earl's design was to march to London, he resolved to give him battle on his route ; and, with that view, encamped between Leicester and Coventry. Henry in the meantime advanced to Lichfield, from whence the lord Stanley retired at his approach, and took post at Atherstone ; and the earl having taken his measures with the two brothers, continued his march to Leicester, where he proposed to venture a decisive engagement. In the neighbourhood of Tamworth lie dropped behind his army, and, in a fit of musing, lost his way, so that he was obliged to lay all night at a village, without daring to ask the road, for fear of being suspected, and falling into the hands of his enemies. Next morning he made a shift to rejoin his army at Tamworth, where, finding his friends had been greatly alarmed at his absence, he told them he had gone to confer with some noblemen, who did not choose to appear as yet in his behalf. That same day he privately visited the lord Stanley at Ather- stone. Next day, being informed that Richard had marched from Leicester to give him battle, he ordered his troops to march to meet him one half the way. On the 22nd day of August the two armies came in sight of each other, on a plain called Redmore, near Bosworth, which is rendered famous in history by the battle which terminated the dispute between the houses of York and Lancaster. Richard's army consisted of 12,000 men, well accoutred. The command of the van he conferred on the duke of Norfolk, and he himself took post in the centre, with the crown upon his head, either as a mark of distinc- tion or to appal his adversary. The earl of Richmond drew up his troops, amounting to 5,000 men, ill armed, in two lines ; the command of the first he gave to the earl of Oxford, while he himself conducted the other. Lord Stanley, who quitted Atherstone, took post on a piece of ground fronting the interval between the two armies ; and his brother, at the head of 2,000 men, stood facing him on the other side. Richard, suspecting Stanley's design, ordered him to join his army ; and receiving an equivocal answer, would have put his son to death, had he not been diverted from his purpose by the remonstrances of his ytfa MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 185 general, who observed that such a sacrifice would be of no service to the royal cause, but would infallibly provoke Stanley and his brother to join the foe, though perhaps his intention was to remain neuter and declare for the victor. Richard was appeased by these representations : but he committed a fatal error in permitting the two brothers to be at liberty to act as they should think proper. His army being equal in number to that of Richmond and the Stanleys when joined together, he ought to have posted two bodies opposite the brothers, with orders to attack them if they should attempt to join the enemy, while he himself, with the remainder, might have given battle to Henry. The two leaders having harangued their soldiers, the earl of Richmond made a motion on the left, in order to avoid a morass which divided the two armies ; and by this prudent measure not only secured his right flank, but gained another advantage in having the sun at his back, while it shone full in the face of the enemy. Richard, seeing him approach, commanded the trumpets to sound, and the battle began with a general discharge of arrows, after which the king's army advanced to close combat. The lord Stanley perceiving that the duke of Norfolk extended his line to the left in order to surround the enemy, suddenly joined the earl of Richmond's right wing in order to sustain the attack. Norfolk seeing his junction, made a halt to close his files, which had been too much opened for the extension of the line. The match being now pretty equal, the fight was renewed with equal ardour on both sides ; the king's troops seemed to act with reluctance, and were in all probability dispirited by the conduct of the two Stanleys, not knowing but their example might be followed by others in the heat of the engagement. On the other hand, the earl of Oxford charged them with such impetuosity as contributed to damp their courage, and fill their hearts with despondence. Richard, in order to animate them with his presence and example, advanced to the front of the battle : there per- ceiving his competitor, who had quitted the second line for the same purpose, he couched his lance, and clapping spurs to his horse, ran against him with such fury that he 1813 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. killed his standard-bearer, Sir William Brandon, father of Charles Brandon, afterwards duke of Suffolk, and unhorsed ♦Sir John Cheeney, an officer remarkable for his strength and prowess. Henry, though he did not seem very eager to engage such an antagonist, advanced to meet him, and kept him at his sword's point until they were parted by the soldiers who interposed. While Richard made this furious effort against the person of his adversary, Sir William Stanley declared for Richmond, and, attacking the royalists in flank, drove their right wing upon the centre, which was so disordered by this shock that it began to fly with the utmost precipitation ; w T hile the earl of Northum- berland, who commanded a separate body, stood motionless, .and refused to act against the enemy. The king seeing all his endeavours ineffectual to rally the troops, which were by this time in the utmost con- fusion, and either scorning to outlive the disgrace of an overthrow, or dreading the thoughts of falling alive into the hands of his enemies, rushed into the midst of the battle, where he fought with the most desperate courage until he was overpowered by numbers, and fell dead in the midst of those he had slain. Though the battle lasted near two hours, including the time in the pursuit, not above .1,000 of the royalists were slain, because the greater part fled without fighting ; and the earl did not lose above 100 men, of whom Sir William Brandon was the most consi- derable. On the side of the vanquished, besides Richard himself, the duke of Norfolk lost his life ; Lord Ferrers, Sir Richard RadclifF, and Sir Robert Brakenbury met with the same fate ; the earl of Surrey, son of the duke of Norfolk, was then prisoner, and confined in the Tower of London, from which, however, he was soon set at liberty ; the earl of Northumberland, and several partisans of Richard, were taken into favour, and others had the good fortune to escape ; but Catesby, the infamous minister and confidant of the tyrant, who had so villanously betrayed Hastings, having fallen into the hands of the victors, was executed two days after the battle of Bosworth, with some others of the same stamp, who had devoted themselves to the service of Richard. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 187 Immediately after the engagement, the earl of Eich- mo-nd fell down on his knees in the open field and thanked the Almighty for the blessings he had bestowed on his arms ; then riding up to an eminence, he applauded the soldiers for their gallant behaviour, and promised to reward them according to their deserts. Richard's crown being found among the spoil of the field, was by the lord Stanley placed on the head of Henry, who was saluted as king by the whole army, and from that moment he assumed the title. King Richard's body being stripped stark naked, covered with wounds, filth, and blood, was thrown over a horse's back, with the arms on one side and legs on the other, and carried to Leicester, where, after having been exposed two days, and treated with the utmost indignity, it was buried in the Abbey Church in a private manner, though Henry, in respect to his family, afterwards ordered a tomb to be erected over his grave. SUMMARY OF KINGS OF THE PLANTAGENET DYNASTY. MAIN LINE. HOUSE OF LANCASTER. Name Date of Access* 1. Henry IV 1390 2. Henry V 1413 3. Henry VI 1422 HOUSE OP YORK. 1. Edward IV lif-1 2. Edward V 1483 3. Richard III 1483 CLOSE OF THE PLANTAGENET DYNASTY, 1485. Name Date of Access. 1. Henry II 1154 2. Richard I. (Cceur de Lion) ..1189 3 . John (Sansterre) 1199 4. Henry III. (of Winchester).. 1216 5. Edward I. (Longshanks) . . . . 1272 6. Edward II 1307 7. Edward III 1327 S. Richard II 1377 Part IX.— THE TUDOR DYNASTY, 1485—1603. I.— Henry VII., 1485—1509. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Henry VII. was born at Pembroke, in 1457 : his grand- mother was Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V., who had married after her first husband's death, Owen Tudor, a gentleman of Wales. He was crowned at Westminster, October SO, 1485. He died at Richmond, April 22, 1509, in the fifty- 133 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. third year of his age, and the twenty-fourth of his reign. He was buried at Westminster. 2. He married Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV. By her he had three sons and four daughters. 3. Scarcely was Henry established on the throne than a claimant to the crown appeared in the person of Lambert Simnel, who declared himself to ba the earl of Warwick (son of the late duke of Clarence), who had been imprisoned by Henry in the Tower immediately after the battle of Bosworth. 4. Simnel was taken prisoner in the battle of Stoke (June 16, 1487), and pardoned by Henry, who employed him in his kitchen, and exhibited the true earl of Warwick to the people to expose the imposture which Simnel had practised. 5. Henry's great failing was avarice. Being compelled to support Britanny against France in 1489, he raised money for the expedition by imposing heavy taxes on the people, which caused a rising in the north of England. After landing with an army in France he made peace with the king, who indemnified him for the expenses of the war, this being the second payment in aid of the same object. 6. There was resident at this time at the French Court (1491) one whom the king's friends called Perkin Warbeck, and his enemies the duke of York, who was said to have been assisted to escape from the Tower when his brother Edward V. wa c j murdered by Richard III. 7. As soon as Henry had concluded peace with Charles VIII. of France, Warbeck retired to Flanders, where he was favourably received by Margaret of Burgundy, the sister of Edward IV. After unsuccessful attempts to rouse the people in his favour in Ireland and England, Warbeck went to the court of Scotland, where James III. received him with respect, and gave him his cousin, the lady Catherine Gordon, in marriage (1496). 8. James invaded England in Warbeck's behalf, but soon retreated. Warbeck then landed in Cornwall, and advanced to Taunton, where he deserted his followers, and took refuge in the Sanctuary of Beaulieu, in the New Forest (1497). 9. He surrendered to Henry, on the promise of his life being spared, and was confined in the Tower ; but for attempting to escape with his fellow prisoner, the earl of Warwick, he was hanged at Tyburn, and Warwick was beheaded (1499). 10. The remaining years of Henry's reign were untroubled either by wars abroad or revolts at home. He was a cruel but politic king, as is shown by his treatment of Warwick, and the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. ^89 uuirriage of his eldest son Arthur to Catherine of Arragon, and his daughter Margaret to James IV. of Scotland. 11. His love of money led him to many acts of meanness, injustice, and oppression, carried out by his unscrupulous agents, Empson and Dudley. The Story of Perkin Warbeck. Part I. — How Warbeck was Prepared to Play his Part. [A bridged and adapted from a u History of King Henry VII." oy Francis, Lord Bacon, who was born in 1561. After serving as king's counsel, solicitor-general, judge of the Marshalsca Court, le of England were so distasteful, that if they had loved him never so well, yet they could never have taken his part in that company. But if he had been so happy as to have been in Cornwall, at the first, when the people began to take up arms there, he had been crowned at Westminster before this time. For these kings, as he had now experience, would sell poor princes for shoes. But lie must rely wholly upon the people ; and, therefore, advised him to sail over with all possible speed into Corn- wall, which he accordingly did, having in his company four small barks, with some sixscore or sevenscore fighting men. He arrived in September, at Whitsand Bay, and forthwith came to Bodmin, where there assembled to him about three thousand men of the rude people. There he set forth a new proclamation, stroking the people with fair promises, and humouring them with invectives against the king and his government. And as it fareth with smoke which never loseth itself till it be at the highest, he did now before his end raise his style, entitling himself no more Richard, duke of York, but Richard IV., king of England. His council advised him by all means to make himself master of some good walled town, as well as to make his men find the sweetness of rich spoils, and to allure to him all loose and lost people, by like hopes of booty, as to be a sure retreat to his forces, in case they should have any ill day or unlucky chance in the field. Perkin, acting on this advice, went on and besieged Exeter, the principal town for strength and wea'th in those parts ; but hearing that preparations were making against him from many parts, he raised the siege and marched to • Taunton, beginning already to cast one eye upon the crown and the other upon the sanctuary, though the Cornishmen were become, like metal often fired and quenched — churlish, and inclined sooner to break than bow, swearing and vowing not to leave him until the uttermost drop of their blood were spilt. He was, at his rising from Exeter, between six and seven thousand strong, many having come to him after he was set before Exeter, upon fame of so MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 197 great an enterprise, and to partake of the spoil, though upon the raising of the siege some did slip away. When he was come near Taunton he dissembled all fear, and seemed all the day to use diligence in preparing all things ready to fight : but about midnight he fled with three- score horse to Beaulieu, in the New Forest, where he and divers of his countrymen registered themselves sanctuary men, leaving his Cornishmen to the four winds, but yet thereby easing them of their vow, and using his wonted compassion, not to be by when his subjects' blood should be spilt. The king, as soon as he heard of Perkiii's flight, sent presently five hundred horse to pursue and apprehend him before he should get either to the sea or to that same little island called a sanctuary. But they came too late for the latter of these. Therefore all they could do was to beset the sanctuary, and maintain a strict watch about it till the king's pleasure were further known. As for the rest of the rebels, they being deprived of their head, without stroke being stricken, submitted themselves to the king's mercy. And the king, who commonly drew blood as physicians do r rather to save life than to spill it, and was never cruel when he was secure, now he saw the danger was passed, pardoned them all in the end except some few desperate persons, whom he reserved to be executed, the better to set off his mercy towards the rest. There were also sent with all speed some horse to St. Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, where the lady Catherine Gordon was left by her husband, whom in all fortunes she entirely loved, adding the virtues of a wife to the virtues of her sex. The king sent in the greater diligence, not knowing whether she might be about to give birth to a child, whereby the business would not have ended in Perkin's person. When she was brought to the king, it was commonly said that the king received her not only with compassion but with affection, pity giving more impression to her excellent beauty. Wherefore com- forting her, to serve as well his eye as his fame, he sent her to his queen to remain with her, giving her very honourable allowance for the support of her estate, which she enjoyed both during the king's life and many years after. The 198 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. name of the " W hite Kose," which had been given to her husband's false title, was continued in common speech to her true beauty. Perkin, induced by the promise that his life should be spared to submit himself to the king's mercy, was brought to the king's court, but not to his presence, though Henry, to satisfy his curiosity, saw him sometimes out of a window in a passage. He was in show at liberty, but guarded with all the care and watch that was possible, and con- strained to follow the king to London. But from his first appearance upon the stage in his new person of a sycophant or juggler, instead of his former person of a prince, all men may think how he was exposed to the derision not only of the courtiers, but also of the common people, who flocked about him as he went along, that one might know afar off where the owl was by the flight of the birds, some mocking, some wondering, some prying and picking matter out of his countenance and gesture to talk of, so that the false honour and respect which he had so long enjoyed was plentifully repaid in scorn and contempt. As soon as he was come to London the king gave also the city the solace of this May game, for he was conveyed leisurely on horse- back, but not in any ignominious fashion, through Cheap- side and Cornhill to the Tower, and from thence back again to Westminster, with the noise of a thousand taunts and reproaches. Soon after, now that Perkin could tell better what he himself was, he was diligently examined, and after his confession was taken, an extract was made of such parts of it as were thought fit to be divulged, which was printed and dispersed about. But in this the king did himself no good ; for as there was a laboured tale of particulars of Perkin's father and mother, and grandsire and grandmother, and uncles and cousins, by names and surnames, and from what places he travelled up and down, so there was little or nothing of anything to purpose con- cerning his designs, or any practices that had been held with him ; nor the duchess of Burgundy herself, that all the world did take knowledge of as the person who had put life and being into the whole business, so much as named or pointed at. So that men, though missing that which MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. I99 they looked for, looked about for they knew not what, and were in more doubt than before, for the king chose rather not to satisfy than to kindle coals. It was not long before Perkin, who was made of quick- silver, which is hard to hold or imprison, began to stir, and, deceiving his keepers, he took to his heels and made with all speed for the sea coast ; but presently all corners were laid for him, and such diligent pursuit and search made, that he was fain to turn back and get him to the House of Bethlehem, called the Priory of Sheen, which had the privilege of sanctuary, and put himself into the hands of the prior of that monastery. The prior was thought a holy man, and much reverenced in tho^e days. He came to the king and besought him for Perkin 's life only, leaving him otherwise to the king's discretion. Many about the king were again more hot than ever to have the king take him forth and hang him. But the king that had a high stomach and could not hate any that he despised, bid " Take him forth and set the knave in the stocks ; " and so, promising the friar his life, he caused him to be brought forth ; and within two or three days after he was fettered and set in the stocks for the whole day, upon a scaffold set up in the palace of Westminster. And the next day after the like was done to him at the cross in Cheapside ; and in both places he read his confession, of which we made mention before, and was from Cheapside conveyed and laid up in the Tower. But Perkin, after that he had been awhile in the Tower, began to insinuate himself into the favour and kindness of his keepers, servants to the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Digby, being four in number — Strangeways, Blewet, Astwood, and Long Roger. These varlets, with mountains of promises he sought to corrupt to obtain his escape ; but knowing well that his own fortunes were made so contemptible that he could feed no man's hopes, and by hopes he must work, for rewards he had none, he had contrived with himself a vast and tragical plot, which was to draw into his company Edward Plantagenet, earl of Warwick, then a prisoner in the Tower, whom the weary life of a long imprisonment and the often renewed fears of 200 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. being put to death, had softened to take any impression of counsel for his liberty. This young prince, he thought, these servants would look upon, though not upon himself ; and therefore, after that by some message by one or two of them he had tasted of the earl's consent, it was agreed that these four should murder their master the lieutenant secretly in the night, and make their best of such money and portable goods of his as they should find ready at hand, and get the keys of the Tower, and presently let forth Perkin and the earl. But this conspiracy was revealed in time before it could be executed ; and in this, again, the opinion of the king's great wisdom did surcharge him with a sinister report that Perkin was but his bait to entrap the earl of Warwick, And in the very instant while this conspiracy was in working, as if that also had been the king's industry, it- was fatal that there should break forth a counterfeit earl of Warwick, a shoemaker's son, whose name was Ralph Wilford, a young man taught and set on by an Augustin friar, called Patrick. They both from the parts of Suffolk came forward into Kent, where they did not only privily and underhand give out that this Wilford was the true earl of Warwick, but also the friar, finding some light credence in the people, took the boldness in the pulpit to declare as much, and to incite the people to come in to his aid. Whereupon they were both presently apprehended, and the young fellow executed, and the friar condemned to per- j)etual imprisonment. This also happening so unfortunately to represent the danger from the earl of Warwick to the king's estate, and thereby to colour the king's severity that followed ; together with the madness of the friar so vainly and desperately to divulge a treason before it had gotten any manner of strength, and the saving of the friar's life, which, never- theless, was indeed the privilege of his order; and the pity in the common people, which if it run in a strong stream doth ever cast up scandal and envy, made it generally rather talked than believed that all was but the king's device. But howsoever it were, Perkin, that had now the third time offended against grace, was at the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 201 last proceeded against, and arraigned at Westminster upon divers treasons committed and perpetrated after his coming- on land within this kingdom (for so the judges advised, for that he was a foreigner), and condemned, and a few days after executed at Tyburn, where he did again openly read his confession, and take it upon his death to be true. This was the end of this little cockatrice of a king that was able to destroy those who did not espy him first. It was one of the longest plays of that kind that hath been in memory, and might, perhaps, have had another end, if he had not met with a king both wise, stout, and fortunate. II.— Henry VIIL, 1509—1547. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Henry VIIL (the second son of Henry VII.) was born at Greenwich, June 21, 1492, and crowned at Westminster, June 24, 1509. He died at Westminster, January 28, 1547, in the fifty-sixth year of his age and the thirty-eighth of his reign. He was buried at Windsor. 2. Henry's wives were six in number : 1. Catherine o£ Arragon, his brother's widow, by whom he had a daughter, Mary ; 2. Anne Boleyn, who gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth ; 3. Jane Seymour, who bore him a son, afterwards Edward VI. ; 4. Anne of Cleves ; 5. Catherine Howard ; and 6. Catherine Parr, who survived him. 3. After his accession, Empson and Dudley, by whose agenc}' his father had extorted money from his subjects in every con- ceivable way, were put to death (1510). In 1512, he entered on a war with France in the pope's behalf. After landing at Calais, he was joined at the siege of Terouenne by Maximilian, emperor of Germany, and the allied forces defeated the French troops in the "battle of the Spurs" (August 27, 1513). 4. During Henry's absence in France, James IV. of Scotland had invaded England, and taken Norham Castle. He was killed, and the Scottish army totally routed in the disastrous fight of Flodden Field (September 9, 1513). 5. After the capture of Tournay, Henry returned to England. At this time the eminent statesman and prelate Wolsey, the son of a butcher of Ipswich, who had risen to the position of cardinal, archbishop of York, and chancellor of England, entirely managed the affairs of the nation. He was created papal legate- in 1517. 902 .MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 6. In 1517, the Reformation in Germany was commenced by Luther, who openly exposed the sin and error committed by the Church of Rome in the sale of indulgences for past sins, and even for offences that men might commit in time to come. 7. In 1520, Henry and Francis I. of France, held the Confer- ence of the " Field of the Cloth of Gold," near Calais. After his return Henry wrote a treatise against Luther in defence of the sacraments of the Church of Rome, for which the pope styled him " J defender of the Faith," a title which the monarchs of England retain to this day. 8. In 1521, the Duke of Buckingham, being suspected of treason, is beheaded. During the four following years domestic troubles arose in consequence of a property tax imposed by Wolsey, and the levy of taxes for a war with France without the sanction of Parliament. 9. The validity of Henry's marriage with his brother's widow having been questioned, the king sought a divorce from the pope. Wolsey, who was aspiring to the papal chair, and there- fore anxious not to offend Charles V. of Germany, who had promised him his interest, and who was the queen's nephew, showed a disposition to side with the queen. 10. This led to the fall of Wolsey. The pope appointed him, with Cardinal Campeggio, to try the right of the proposed divorce. They delayed their decision, and Henry at last denied the pope's supremacy, and caused Wolsey to be arrested for high treason. 11. Wolsey died soon after at Leicester Abbey (1530). The universities decide in favour of the divorce with Cranmer, who had become archbishop of Canterbury, and who had always espoused the king's side. Henry declared himself to be, and was acknowledged by the clergy as "head of the Church" in England. He also married Anne Boleyn, and from this union the princess, afterwards Queen, Elizabeth was born (1553). 12. Henry then defended the reformed faith as eagerly as he had previously supported the Church of Rome. The Act of Supremacy was passed (1534), and a persecution of the Roman Catholics followed. Fisher and Sir Thomas More were sent to the scaffold ; Frith, Elizabeth Barton, called the Maid of Kent, and others, were burned for heresy. 13. In 1536, Queen Catherine died at Richmond, and Anne Boleyn was beheaded on a false charge of infidelity to the king, who, immediately after her death, married the lady Jane Seymour, one of the late queen's maids of honour. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 203 14. The doctrines of the Reformation were readily embraced by the middle classes. Henry completely severed himself from Rome by the confiscation and destruction of the religious houses and monasteries throughout England (1537). At this time the Holy Bible was first printed in English and placed in all the churches. 15 Jane Seymour having died in giving birth to a son, the king then married Anne of Cleves ; but as he greatly disliked her personal appearance a separation was agreed on, and Cromwell, earl of Essex, who had promoted the marriage, was executed for treason, though on what he had committed treason does not clearly appear. Cromwell was one of those who were chiefly instrumental in promising and bringing about the Reformation in England. 16. Towards the close of the year 1540, Henry married Catherine Howard, who was beheaded in the year following on a charge of treason and infidelity. In 1543, the king married his sixth wife, Catherine Parr, who outlived him. 17. Henry was desirous of bringing about a union between his son Edward and Mary, the daughter of James V. The match was opposed by the Scotch, and Henry, furious at their resistance, sent an army into Scotland and destroyed Edinburgh (1544). 18. Henry's last act of uncalled-for severity and injustice was the execution of the earl of Surrey, w ho was accused of harbouring a design on the throne. Sentence of death was also passed on his father, the duke of Norfolk, whose life was saved by the death of the kinsr (1547). 1 9. Henry's character after his accession presents no redeeming qualities. He was cruel and truculent, self-willed and obstinate. He favoured the Reformation only through motives of self- interest. Changeable in his views he burned Protestants and Roman Catholics indiscriminately as heretics, if their opinions did not invariably coincide with his, and change as his might alter. 20. The great point of interest in Henry's reign is the Reformation, which was aided in its progress by the important discovery of the invaluable art of printing. The Trial and Execution of Queen Anne. [From a " History of England" by David Hume. For biograplii- col notice see page 64]. While the retainers of the new religion were exulting in 204 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. their prosperity, they met with a mortification which seemed to blast all their hopes. Their patroness, Anne Boleyn, possessed no longer the king's favour ; and soon after lost her life by the rage of that furious monarch. Henry had persevered in his love to this lady during six years that his prosecution of his divorce lasted ; and the more obstacles he met with to the gratification of his passion, the more determined zeal did he exert in pursuing his purpose. But the affection which had subsisted and still increased under difficulties had not long obtained secure possession of its object when it languished from satiety ; and the king's heart was apparently estranged from his consort. Anne's enemies soon perceived the fatal change, and they were forward to widen the breach when they found that they incurred no danger by interposing in those delicate concerns. She had been delivered of a dead son, and Henry's extreme fondness for male issue being thus for the present disappointed, his temper, equally violent and superstitious, was disposed to make the inno- cent mother answerable for the misfortune. But the chief means which Anne's enemies employed to influence the king against her was his jealousy. Anne, though she appears to have been entirely innocent and even virtuous in her conduct, had a certain gaiety, if not levity, of character, which threw her off her guard and made her less circumspect than her situation required. Her educa- tion in France rendered her more prone to those freedoms ; and it was with difficulty she conformed herself to that strict ceremonial practised in the court of England. More vain than haughty, she was pleased to see the influence of her beauty on all around her, and she indulged herself with an easy familiarity with persons who were formerly her equals, and who might then have pretended to her friend- ship and good graces. Henry's dignity was offended with these popular manners ; and though the lover had been entirely blind, the husband possessed but too quick discern- ment and penetration. Ill instruments had put a malig- nant interpretation on the harmless liberties of the queen. The viscountess of Bochford, in particular, who was married to the queen's brother, but who lived on bad MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 205 terms with her sister-in-law, insinuated the most cruel suspicions into the king's mind ; and as she was a woman of profligate character, she paid no regard either to truth or humanity in those calumnies which she suggested. Henry N orris, groom of the stole, Weston and Brereton, gentlemen of the king's chamber, together with Mark Smeton, groom of the chamber, were observed to possess much of the queen's friendship ; and they served her with a zeal and attachment which, though chiefly derived from gratitude, might not improbably be seasoned with some mixture of tenderness for so amiable a princess. The king's jealousy laid hold of the slightest circumstance ; and finding no particular object on which it could fasten, it vented itself equally on every one who came within the verge of its fury. Had Henry's jealousy been derived from love, though it might on a sudden have proceeded to the most violent extremities, it would have been subject to many remorses and contrarieties, and might at last have suffered only to augment that affection on which it was founded. But it was a more stern jealousy, fostered entirely by pride. His love was transferred to another object. Jane, daughter of Sir John Seymour, and maid of honour to the queen, a young lady of singular beauty and merit, had obtained an entire ascendant over him ; and he was determined to sacrifice everything to the gratification of this new appetite. Unlike to most monarchs, who judge lightly of this crime of gallantry, and who deem the young damsels of their court rather honoured by their passion, he seldom thought of any other attachment than that of marriage ; and in order to attain this end he underwent more difficulties and committed greater crimes than those which he sought to avoid by forming that legal connection ; and having thus entertained the design of raising his new mistress to his bed and throne, he more willingly hearkened to every suggestion which threw any imputation of guilt on the unfortunate Anne Boleyn. The king's jealousy first appeared openly in a tilting at Greenwich, where the queen happened to drop her hand- kerchief ; an incident probably casual, but interpreted by 206 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. him as an instance of gallantry to some of her paramours. He immediately retired from the place, sent orders to con- fine her to her chamber, arrested Norris, Brereton, Weston, and Smeton, together with her brother, Kochford, and threw them into prison. The queen, astonished at these instances of his fury, thought that he only meant to try her ; but, finding him in earnest, she reflected on his obsti- nate, unrelenting spirit, and prepared herself for that melancholy doom which was awaiting her. Next day she was sent to the Tower ; and, on her way thither, she was informed of her supposed offences, of which she had hitherto been ignorant. She made earnest protestations of her innocence, and, when she entered the prison, she fell on her knees and prayed God so to help her, as she was not guilty of the crime imputed to her. Her surprise and con- fusion threw her into hysterical disorders, and in that situation she thought that the best proof of her innocence was to make an entire confession, and she revealed some indiscretions and levities which her simplicity had equally .betrayed her to commit and to avow. She owned that she had once rallied Norris on his delaying his marriage, and had told him that he probably expected her when she should be a widow. She had reproved Weston, she said, for his affection for a kinswoman of hers, and his indif- ference towards his wife ; but he told her that she had mistaken the object of his affection, for it was herself, upon which she defied him. She affirmed that Smeton had never been in her chamber but twice, when he played on the harpsichord ; but she acknowledged that he had the bold- ness to tell her that a look sufficed him. The king, instead of being satisfied with the candour and sincerity of her confession, regarded these indiscretions only as preludes to greater and more criminal intimacies. Of all those multitudes whom the beneficence of the queen's temper had obliged during her prosperous fortune,, no one durst interpose between her and the king's fury ; and the person whose advancement every breath had favoured and every countenance had smiled upon, was now left neglected and abandoned. Even her uncle, the duke of Norfolk, preferring the connections of party to the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 20 T ties of blood, was become her most dangerous enemy ; and all the retainers to the Catholic religion hoped that her death would terminate the king's quarrel with Rome, and leave him again to his natural and early bent, which had inclined him to maintain the most intimate union with the Apostolic See. Cranmer, alone of all the queen's adherents,, still retained his friendship for her ; and, as far as the king's impetuosity permitted him, he endeavoured to moderate the violent prejudices entertained against her. The queen herself wrote Henry a letter from the Tower, full of the most tender expostulations and of the warmest protestations of innocence. This letter had no influence on the unrelenting mind of Henry, who was determined to pave the way for his new marriage by the death of Anne Boleyn. N orris, Weston, Brereton, and Smeton were tried, but no legal evidence was produced against them. The chief proof of their guilt consisted in a hearsay from one Lady Winkfield, who was dead. Smeton was prevailed on, by the vain hopes of life, to confess a criminal corres- pondence with the queen ; but even her enemies expected little advantage from this confession, for they never dared to confront him with her, and he was immediately executed, as also were Brereton and Weston. Norris had been much in the king's favour, and an offer of life was made him if he would confess his crime and accuse the queen ; but he generously rejected the proposal, and said that in his con- science he believed her entirely guiltless, but, for his part, he could accuse her of nothing, and he would rather die a thousand deaths than calumniate an innocent person. The queen and her brother were tried by a jury of peers, consisting of the duke of Suffolk, the marquis of Exeter, the earl of Arundel, and twenty-three more. Their uncle, the duke of Norfolk, presided as high steward. Part of the charge against her was that she had affirmed to each of her minions that the king never had her heart, and had said to each of them apart that she loved him better than any person whatever, which was to the slander of the issue begotten between the king and her. By this strained interpretation her guilt was brought under the statute of the 25th of this reign, in which it was declared criminal 208 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. to throw any slander upon the king, queen, or their issue. Such palpable absurdities were at that time admitted, and they were regarded by the peers of England as a sufficient reason for sacrificing an innocent queen to the cruelty of their tyrant. Though unassisted by counsel, she defended herself with presence of mind, and the spectators could not bear pronouncing her entirely innocent. Judg- ment, however, was given by the court, both against the queen and Lord Rochford, and her verdict contained that she should be burned or beheaded, at the king's pleasure. When this dreadful sentence was pronounced she was not terrified, but lifting up her hands, said, " Father, •Creator, thou who art the way, the truth, and the life. Thou knowest that I have not deserved this fate ; " and then, turning to the judges, made the most pathetic declarations of her innocence. Henry, not satisfied with this cruel vengeance, was resolved entirely to annul his marriage with Anne Boleyn, and to declare her issue illegitimate. He recalled to his memory that a little after her appearance in the English oourt some attachment had been acknowledged between her and the earl of Northumberland, then Lord Percy, and he now questioned that nobleman with regard to these engagements. Northumberland took an oath before the two archbishops that no contract or promise of marriage had ever passed between them. He received the sacra- ment upon it before the duke of Norfolk and others of the privy council, and this solemn act he accompanied with the most solemn protestations of veracity. The queen, however, was shaken with menaces of executing the sentence against her in its greatest rigour, and was pre- vailed on to confess in court some lawful impediment to her marriage with the king. The afflicted primate, who sat as judge, thought himself obliged, by this confession, to pronounce the marriage null and invalid. Henry, in the transports of his fury, did not perceive that his proceedings were totally inconsistent, and that if her marriage were from the beginning invalid she could not possibly be guilty of breaking the marriage vows. The queen now prepared herself for suffering the death MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, 209 to which she was sentenced. She sent her last message to the king, and acknowledged the obligations which she owed him in his uniformly continuing his endeavours for her advancement. From a private gentlewoman, she said, he had made her first a marchioness, then a queen, and now, since he could raise her no higher in this world, he was sending her to be a saint in heaven. She then renewed the protestations of her innocence, and committed her daughter to his care. Before the lieutenant of the Tower, and all who approached her, she made the like declarations, and continued to behave herself with her usual serenity, and even with cheerfulness. " The executioner," she said to the lieutenant, "is, I hear, very expert, and my neck is very slender," upon which she grasped it in her hand and smiled. When brought, however, to the scaffold she softened her tone a little with regard to her protestations of innocence. She probably reflected that the obstinacy of Queen Catherine, and her opposition to the king's will, had much alienated him from the lady Mary. Her own natural concern, therefore, for Elizabeth prevailed in these last moments over that indignation which the unjust sentence by which she suffered naturally excited in her. She said that she was come to die, as she was sentenced by the law. She would accuse none, nor say anything of the ground upon which she was judged. She prayed heartily for the king, called him a most merciful and gentle prince,, and acknowledged that he had always been to her a good and gracious sovereign ; and if any one should think proper to canvass her cause, she desired him to judge the best. She was beheaded by the executioner of Calais, who was sent for as being more expert than any in England. Her body was negligently thrown into a common chest of elm, made to hold arrows, and was buried in the Tower. The Suppression of the Keligious Houses. [From a "History of England '," by David Hume. For biographical notice see page 64.] There was only one particular in which Henry was quite decisive, because he was there impelled by his avarice, or, o 210 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. more properly speaking, his rapacity, the consequence of his profusion. This measure was the entire destruction of the monasteries. A new visitation was accordingly ap- pointed of all the monasteries in England, and a pretence only being wanted for their suppression, it was easy for a prince possessed of such unlimited power, and seconding the humour of a great part of the nation, to find or feign one. The abbots and monks knew the danger to which they were exposed ; and having learned, by the example of the lesser monasteries, that nothing could withstand the king's will, they were most of them induced, in expectation of better treatment, to make a voluntary resignation of their houses. Where promises failed of effect, menaces, and even extreme violence were employed ; and as several of the abbots, since the breach "with Rome, had been named by the court with a view to this event, the king's intentions were the more easily effected. Some also, having secretly embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, were glad to be freed from their vows ; and, on the whole, the design was conducted with such success that in less than two years the king had got possession of all the monastic revenues. In several places, particularly in the county of Oxford, great interest was made to preserve some convents of women, who, as they lived in the most irreproachable manner, justly merited, as it was thought, that their houses should be saved from the general destruction. There appeared also great difference between the case of nuns and that of friars ; and the one institution might be laudable whilst the other was exposed to great blame. The males of all ranks, if endowed with industry, might be of service to the public, and none of them could want em- ployment suited to his station or capacity. But a woman of family, who failed of settlement in the marriage state, an accident to which such persons were more liable than women of lower station, had really no rank which she properly filled ; and a convent was a retreat both honourable and agreeable, from the inutility and often want which attended her situation. But the king was determined to abolish monasteries of every denomination, and probably MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 211 thought that these ancient establishments would be the sooner forgotten if no remains of them of any kind were suffered to subsist in the kingdom. The better to reconcile the people to this great innova- tion, stories were propagated of the detestable lives of the friars in many of the convents ; and great care was taken to defame those whom the court had determined to ruin. The relics also, and other things which had so long been the object of the people's veneration, were exposed to ridicule ; and the religious spirit, now less bent on exterior observance and objects that appealed immediately to the senses, was encouraged in this new direction. It is needless to be prolix in an enumeration of particulars. Protestant historians mention on this occasion, with great triumph, the sacred repositories of convents ; the parings of St. Edmund's nails ; some of the coals that roasted St. Lawrence ; the girdle of the Virgin shown in eleven different places ; two or three heads of St. Ursula ; the felt of St. Thomas of Lancaster, an infallible cure for the headache ; part of St. Thomas of Canterbury's shirt ; some relics that were an excellent preventive against rain, others against weeds in corn. But such superstitions, as they are to be found in all ages and nations, and even took place during the most refined periods of antiquity, form no particular or violent reproach to the Catholic religion. There were also discovered, or said to be discovered, in the monasteries, some impostures of a more artificial nature. At Hales, in the county of Gloucester, there had been shown during several ages the blood of Christ brought from Jerusalem ; and it is easy to imagine the veneration with which such a relic was regarded. A miraculous cir- cumstance also attended this remarkable relic. The sacred blood was not visible to any one in mortal sin even when set before him ; and till he had performed good works sufficient for his absolution it would not deign to discover itself to him. At the dissolution of the monastery the whole contrivance was detected. Two of the monks, who were let into the secret, had taken the blood of a duck, which they renewed every week ; they put it in a phial, one side of which consisted of thin transparent glass, the 212 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. other of thick and opaque glass. When any rich pilgrim arrived they were sure to show him the dark side of the phial till masses and offerings had expiated his offences ; and then, finding his money, or patience, or faith, nearly exhausted, they made him happy by turning the phial. A miraculous crucifix had been kept at Bexley, in Kent r and bore the appellation of the Kood of Grace. The lips,, eyes, and head of the image moved at the approach of its. votaries. Hilsey, bishop of Eochester, broke the crucifix at St. Paul's Cross, and showed to the whole people the springs and wheels by which it had been secretly moved. A great wooden idol revered in Wales, called Darvel Gatherin, was brought to London and cut in pieces ; and by a cruel refinement in vengeance it was employed as fuel to burn Friar Forrest, who was punished for denying the king's supremacy, and for some pretended heresies. A finger of St. Andrew, covered with a thin plate of silver,, had been pawned by a convent for a debt of forty pounds ; but as the king's commissioners refused to pay the debt, people made themselves merry with the poor creditor on account of the pledge. But of all the instruments of ancient superstition none was so zealously destroyed as the shrine of Thomas a. Becket, commonly called St. Thomas of Canterbury. This saint owed his canonization to the zealous defence which he had made for clerical privileges ; and for that account also the monks had extremely encouraged the devotion of pilgrimages towards his tomb, and numberless were the miracles they pretended his relics wrought in favour of his devout votaries. They raised his body once a year ; and the day on which this ceremony was performed, which was. called the day of his translation, was a general holiday. Every fiftieth year there was celebrated a jubilee in his- honour, which lasted fifteen days ; plenary indulgences were then granted to all who visited his tomb, and a hundred thousand pilgrims have been registered at a time in Canterbury. The devotion towards him had quite effaced in that place the adoration of the Deity — nay, even that of the Virgin. At God's altar, for instance, there were offered in one year £3 2s. 6d. ; at the Virgin's, £63 5s. 6d. ; MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 213 at St. Thomas's, ,£832 12s. 3d. But next year the dis- proportion was still greater. There was not a penny- offered at God's altar ; the Virgin's gained only £4 Is. 8d. ; but St. Thomas had got for his share ,£954 6s. 3d. Louis VII. of France had made a pilgrimage to this miraculous tomb, and had bestowed on the shrine a jewel, esteemed the richest in Christendom. It is evident how obnoxious to Henry a saint of this character must have appeared, and how contrary to all his projects for degrading the authority of the court of Rome. He not only pillaged the rich shrine dedicated to St. Thomas, but he made the saint himself be cited to appear in court, and be tried and con- demned as a traitor ; he ordered his name to be struck out of the calendar, the office for his festival to be expunged from all breviaries, his bones to be burned, and the ashes to be thrown into the air. On the whole the king at different times suppressed 645 monasteries, of which 28 had abbots that enjoyed a seat in Parliament ; 90 colleges were demolished in several counties, 2,374 chantries and free chapels, and 110 hospi- tals. The whole revenue of these establishments amounted to <£ 16 1,1 00. It is worthy of observation that all the lands and possessions and revenues of England had a little before this period been rated at ,£4,000,000 a year ; so that the revenues of the monks, even comprehending the lesser monasteries, did not exceed the twentieth part of the national income, a sum vastly inferior to what is com- monly apprehended. The lands belonging to the convents were usually let at a very low rent, and the farmers, who regarded themselves as a species of proprietors, always took care to renew their leases before they expired. Great murmurs were everywhere excited on account of these violences, and men much questioned whether priors and monks, who were only trustees or tenants for life, could by any deed however voluntary transfer to the king the entire property of their estates. In order to reconcile the people to such mighty innovations, they were told that the king would never thenceforth have occasion to levy taxes, but would be able from the abbey lands alone to bear, during war as well as peace, the whole charges of the 214 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, government. While such topics were employed to appease the populace, Henry took an effectual method of interesting the nobility and gentry in the success of his measures : he either made a gift of the revenues of convents to his favour- ites and courtiers, or sold them at low prices, or exchanged them for other lands on very disadvantageous terms. He was so profuse in these liberalities that he is said to have given a woman the whole revenue of a convent as a reward for making a pudding which gratified his palate. He also settled pensions on the abbots and priors proportionate to their former revenues or to their merits ; and gave each monk a yearly pension of eight marks. He erected sis new bishoprics — Westminster, Oxford, Peterborough, Bristol, Chester, and Gloucester, of which five exist to this day ; and by all these means of expense and dissipation of the profit, which the king reaped by the seizure of church lands, fell much short of vulgar opinion. As the ruin of convents had been foreseen some years before it happened^ the monks had taken care to secrete most of their stock, furniture, and plate, so that the spoils of the great monasteries bore not in these respects any proportion to those of the lesser. Besides the lands possessed by the monasteries the regular clergy enjoyed a considerable part of the benefices of England, and of the tithes annexed to them ; and these were also at this time transferred to the crown, and by that means passed into the hands of laymen; an abuse which many zealous churchmen regarded as the most criminal sacrilege. The monks were formerly much at their ease in England, and enjoyed revenues which exceeded the regular and stated expenses of the house. Thus we read of the abbey of Chertsey, in Surrey, which possessed J744 a year, though it contained only fourteen monks; That of Furness, in the county of Lincoln, was valued at .£960 a year, and contained about thirty. In order to dissipate their revenues and support their popularity, the monks lived in a hospitable manner ; and besides the poor maintained from their offal, there were many decayed gentlemen who passed their lives in travelling from convent to convent, and entirely subsisted at the tables of the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 215 friars. By this hospitality, as much as by their own inactivity, did the convents prove nurseries of idleness ; but the king, not to give offence by too sudden an innovation, bound the new proprietors of abbey lands to support the ancient hospitality. But this engagement was fulfilled in very few places, and for a very short time. Markets and Wages in the Time of Henry VIII. [From a " History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth" by James Anthony Froude, one of the most able historians of the present era. He was born in 1818. Besides the History of England just mentioned he has written " The Nemesis of Faith " and " Short Studies on Great Subjects" of which the latter ivill best repay perusal.'] Wheat, the price of which necessarily varied, averaged in the middle of the fourteenth century tenpence the bushel, barley averaging at the same time three shillings the quarter. With wheat the fluctuations were excessive. A table of its possible variations describes it as ranging from eighteenpence the quarter to twenty shillings, the average, however, being six and eightpence. When the price was above this sum the merchants might import to bring it down ; when it was below this price the farmers were allowed to export to the foreign markets, and the same average continued to hold, with no perceptible tendency to a rise, till the close of the reign of Elizabeth. Beef and pork were a halfpenny a pound, mutton was three-farthings. They were fixed at these prices by the 3rd of the 24th of Henry VIII. But this act was un- popular both with buyers and with sellers. The old prac- tice had been to sell in the gross, and under that arrange- ment the rates had been generally lower. Stowe says : " It was this year enacted that butchers should sell their beef and mutton for three farthings, which, being devised for the great commodity of the realm — as it was thought — hath proved far otherwise, for at that time fat oxen were sold for six and twenty shillings and eightpence the piece ; fat wethers for three shillings and fourpence the piece ; fat calves at a like price, and fat lambs for twelvepence. The butchers of London sold penny pieces of beef for the relief 216 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. of the poor, every piece two pounds and a half, sometimes three pounds for a penny, and thirteen and sometimes four- teen of these pieces for twelvepence ; mutton eightpence ' the quarter, and a hundredweight of beef for four shillings and eightpence." Strong beer, such as we now buy for eighteenpence a gallon, was then a penny a gallon, and table beer less than a halfpenny. French and German wines were eightpence the gallon, Spanish and Portuguese wines a shilling. This was the highest price at which the best wines might be sold, and if there was any fault in quality or quantity, the dealers forfeited four times the amount. Kent, another important consideration, cannot be fixed so accurately, for Parliament did not interfere with it. Here, however, we are not without very tolerable information. " My father," says Latimer, " was a yeoman, and had no land of his own, only he had a farm of three or four pounds by the year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able and did find the king a harness with himself and his horse. I remember that I buckled on his harness when he went to Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the king's majesty now. He married my sisters with five pounds, or twenty nobles each, having brought them up in godliness and fear of God. He kept hospitality for his poor neigh- bours, and some alms he gave to the poor : and all this he did off the said farm." If " three or four pounds at the uttermost " was the rent of a farm yielding such results, the rent of labourers' cottages is not likely to have been considerable. I am below the truth, therefore, with this scale of prices in assuming the penny in terms of a labourer's necessities to have been equal in the reign of Henry VIII. to the present shilling. For a penny at the time of which I write the labourer could buy more bread, beef, beer, and wine— he could do more towards finding lodging for himself and family — than the labourer of the nineteenth century can for a shilling. I do not see that this admits of question. Turning, then, MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 217 to the table of wages, it will be easy to ascertain his position. By the 3rd of the 6th of Henry VIIL, it was enacted that master carpenters, masons, bricklayers, tylers, plumbers, glaziers, joiners, and other employers of such skilled workmen, should give to each of their journeymen, if no meat or drink was allowed, sixpence a day for half the year, fivepence a day for the other half, or fivepence half- penny for the yearly average. The common labourers were to receive fourpence a day for half the year, for the remain- ing half threepence. In the harvest months they were allowed to work by the piece, and might earn considerably more, so that in fact — and this was the rate at which their wages were usually estimated — the day labourer received, on an average, fourpence a day for the whole year. Nor was he in danger, except by his own fault or by unusual accident, of being thrown out of employ ; for he was engaged by contract for not less than a year, and could not be dismissed before his term had expired, unless some gross misconduct could be proved against him before two magistrates. Allowing a deduction of one day in the week for a saint's day or holiday, the labourer received, therefore, steadily and regularly, if well conducted, an equivalent of twenty shillings a week : twenty shillings a week and a holiday, and this is far from being a full account of his advantages ! In most parishes (if not in all) there were large ranges of common and unenclosed forest lands which furnished his fuel to him gratis, where pigs might range and ducks and geese ; where, if he could afford a cow, he was in no danger of being unable to feed it ; and so important was this privilege considered, that when the commons began to be largely enclosed Parliament insisted that the working man should not be without some piece of ground on which he could employ his own and his family's industry. By the 7th of the 31st of Elizabeth it was ordered that no cottage should be built for residence without four acres of land at lowest being attached to it for the sole use of the occu- pants of such cottage. 218 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. III.— Edward VI., 1547—1553. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Edward VI., son of Henry VIII. and Jane Seymour, was born at Windsor, October 12, 1537, and crowned at Westminster, February 20, 1547. He died at Greenwich, July 6, 1553, in the sixteenth year of his age and the seventh of his reign, and was buried at Westminster. 2. The duke of Somerset, the young king's uncle, was ap- pointed protector. He led an army into Scotland to enforce the treaty of marriage between Edward and Mary, daughter of James V,, who was sent to France, and afterwards married to the Dauphin Francis. The Scotch were defeated in the battle of Pinkie (September 10, 1547). 3. Two years after, the Book of Common Prayer, drawn up by Cranmer and other prelates, was ordered to be read in all the churches, and the marriage of the clergy was permitted. 4. Quarrels followed among the nobility. The brother of the protector was executed for treason, and the protector himself impeached (1549) : being implicated in a second charge he was found guilty and beheaded (1552). The duke of Northumberland succeeded him as protector of the kingdom. 5. This nobleman intrigued to place on the throne Lady Jane Grey, the wife of his son, Lord Guildford Dudley, after the king's death. Lady Jane Grey was the granddaughter of Mary, a sister of Henry VIII. , who had married Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, after the death of her first husband, Louis XII. of France. 6. The king executed a will in her favour, and died about a month after, at Greenwich. He was possessed of great abilities and a clear understanding, and was sincerely attached to the reformed faith. He was merciful towards those who differed from him in religious views, signing most reluctantly the warrant for the execution of Joan Bocher, or Joan of Kent, who was tried and burnt for heresy at the instigation of Cranmer. The Boy-King's Death and Character. [From the "History of the Reformation" by Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, who ivas born in 1643 and died in 1715. This able prelate also wrote an " Account of the Life and Death of the Earl of Rochester" an " Exposition of the Thirty-nine Articles,'' 1 and the " History of my Own Times," giving an account of the. Civil War and the Commonwealth, and subsequent events, to as late a date as 1713.] MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 21$ In the beginning of January, 1553, he was seized with a deep cough, and all medicines that were used did rather increase than lessen it. He was so ill when the Parliament met that he was not able to go to Westminster, but ordered their first meeting and the sermon to be at Whitehall. In the time of his sickness Bishop Ridley preached before him, and took occasion to run out much on works of charity, and the obligation that lay on men of high con- dition to be eminent in good works. This touched the king to the quick ; so that presently after the sermon he sent for the bishop, and after he had commanded him to sit down by him, and be covered, he resumed most of the heads of the sermon, and said he looked upon himself as chiefly touched by it. He desired him, as he had already given him the exhortation in general, so to direct him to do- lus duty in that particular. The bishop, astonished at this tenderness in so young a prince, burst forth in tears, expressing how much he was overjoyed to see such inclina- tions in him ; but told him he must take time to think on it, and craved leave to consult with the lord mayor and court of aldermen. So the king writ by him to them to consult speedily how the poor should be relieved. They considered there were three sorts of poor ; such as were so- by natural infirmity or folly, as impotent persons, and madmen or idiots ; such as were so by accident, as sick or maimed persons ; and such as by their idleness did cast themselves into poverty. So the king ordered the Grey- friars' Church, near Newgate, with the revenues belonging - to it, to be a house for orphans ; St. Bartholomew, near Smithfield, to be an hospital ; and gave his own house of Bridewell to be a place of correction and work for such as were wilfully idle. He also confirmed and enlarged the grant for the hospital of St. Thomas, in South wark, which he had erected and endowed in August last (1552). And when he set his hand to these foundations, which was not done before the 5th of June, 1553, he thanked God that had prolonged his life till he had finished that design. So he was the first founder of those houses which, by many great additions, since that time have risen to be amongst the noblest in Europe. 220 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. He expressed in the whole course of his sickness great submission to the will of God, and seemed glad at the approaches of death ; only the consideration of religion and the Church touched him much, and upon that account he said he was desirous of life. His distemper rather increased than abated, so that the physicians had no hope of his recovery: upon which a confident woman came and undertook his cure if he might be put into her hands. This was done, and the physicians were put from him upon this pretence : that they having no hopes of his recovery, in a desperate case desperate remedies were to be applied. This was said to be the duke of Northumberland's advice in particular, and increased the people's jealousy of him when they saw the king grow sensibly worse every day after he came under the woman's care, which becoming so plain she was put from him, and the physicians were again sent for, and took him into their charge. But if they had small hopes before they had none at all now. Death thus hastening on him, the duke of Northumberland, who had done but half his work except he had got the king's sisters in his hands, got the council to write to them in the king's name, inviting them to come and keep him company in his sickness ; but as they were on their way on the 6th of July, his spirits and body were so sunk that he found death approaching, and so he composed himself to die in a most devout manner. His whole exercise was in short prayers and ejaculations. The last that he was heard to use was in these words : " Lord God, deliver me out of this miserable and wretched life, and take me among thy chosen ; howbeit, not my will but thine be done. Lord, I commit my spirit to thee. Lord, thou knowest how happy it were for me to be with thee ; yet, for thy chosen's sake, send me life and health that I may truly serve thee. O, my Lord God, bless my people, and save thine inheritance ; O, Lord God, save thy chosen people of England; 0, Lord God, defend this realm from papistry and maintain thy true religion, that I and my people may praise thy holy name, for Jesus Christ his sake." Seeing some about him he seemed troubled that they were so near and had heard MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 221 him ; but with a pleasant countenance he said he had been praying to God. And soon after, the pangs of death coming upon him, he said to Sir Henry Sidney, who was holding him in his arms, " I am faint ; Lord, have mercy on me and receive my spirit," and so he breathed out his innocent soul. Thus died King Edward VI., that incomparable young prince. He was then in the sixteenth year of his age, and was counted the wonder of that time. He was not only learned in the tongues, and other liberal sciences, but knew well the state of his kingdom. He kept a book in which he writ the characters that were given him of all the chief men of the nation — all the judges, lords, lieu- tenants, and justices of the peace over England ; in it he had marked down their way of living, and their zeal for religion. He had studied the matter of the mint, with the exchange and value of money, so that he understood it well, as appears by his journal. He also understood fortification and designed well. He knew all the harbours and ports both of his own dominions and of France and Scotland, and how much water they had, and what was the way of coming into them. He had acquired great know- ledge of foreign affairs, so that he talked with the ambas- sadors about them in such a manner that they filled all the world with the highest opinion of him that was possible ; which appears in most of the histories of that age. He had great quickness of apprehension ; and being mistrustful of his memory, used to take notes of almost everything he heard ; he writ these first in Greek characters, that those about him might not understand them, and afterwards writ them out in his journal. He had a copy brought him of everything that passed in council, which he put in a chest, and kept the key of that always himself. In a word, the natural and acquired perfections of his mind were wonderful ; but his virtues and true piety were yet more extraordinary. The king was tender and com- passionate in a high measure, so that he was much against taking the lives of heretics ; and, therefore, said to Cran- mer, when he persuaded him to sign the warrant for the 222 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. burning of Joan of Kent, that he was not willing to do it, because he thought that was to send her quick to hell. He expressed great tenderness to the miseries of the poor in his sickness, as hath been already shown. He took particular care of the suits of all poor persons, and gave Dr. Cox special charge to see that their petitions were speedily answered, and used oft to consult with him how to get their matters set forward. He was an exact keeper of his word, and, therefore, as appears by his journal, was most careful to pay his debts and to keep his credit, knowing that to be the chief nerve of government ; since & prince that breaks his faith and loses his credit has thrown up that which he can never recover, and made himself liable to perpetual distrusts and extreme contempt. He had above all things a great regard to religion. He took notes of such things as he heard in sermons which more especially concerned himself ; and made his measures of all men by their zeal in that matter. All men who saw and observed these qualities in him looked on him as one raised by God for most extraordinary ends, and when he died concluded that the sins of England had been great that had provoked God to take from them a, prince, under whose government they were like to have seen such blessed times. He was so affable and sweet- natured that all had free access to him at all times, by which he came to be most universally beloved ; and all the high things that could be devised were said by the people to express their esteem of him. IV.— Mary, 1553—1558. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. and Catherine of Arragon, was born at Greenwich, February 11, 1516, and crowned at "Westminster, February 20, 1553. She died at Greenwich, November 17, 1558, in the forty-third year of her life and the sixth of her reign, and was buried at Westminster. She married Philip II. of Spain, son of Charles V., emperor of Germany. 2. On Mary's accession, the proceedings of the former reign with regard to religion were reversed, and the Book of Common MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 223 Prayer was suppressed. Northumberland was arrested and beheaded for his attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne. Cranmer was imprisoned in the Tower, as also were Lady Jane Grey and her husband Lord Guilford Dudley (1553). 3. The people greatly disliked the queen's intended marriage with Philip II. of Spain ; and an insurrection, having for its aim the breaking off of this match, was headed by Sir Thomas Wyatt. Elizabeth, being suspected of complicity with the rising, was arrested and sent to the Tower, and the youthful. Lady Jane Grey and her boy-husband were beheaded (1554). 4. Mary having sought a reconciliation with the pope (1555) by the advice of Gardiner, the chancellor, and Bonner, bishop of London, cruelly persecutes the Protestants. Hooper was burned at Gloucester, Ridley and Latimer at Oxford, and Cranmer at Oxford the following year, all being prelates who were sincerely attached to the Reformed faith. 5. Philip, who had quitted England in disgust with the queen shortly after he had married her, returned to persuade her to assist him in a war against France. In this war England lost Calais, which had been an English possession more than 200 years, much to the queen's regret. 6. The loss of Calais was soon followed by the death of Mary, when the persecution of the Protestants in England ceased. Of extreme opinions in matters of religion, she considered the extirpation of heresy, as the Protestant faith was termed, her first duty, and her death was an inexpressible relief to the nation that she sought so earnestly to bring once more under the power of the pope. The Martyrdom of the Reformers. [From a " History of England " by Oliver Goldsmith, a man distinguished, perhaps, above any British author for the versatility of his talent and the readiness with which he wrote on any subject which he took up. He was born at Pallas, in the county of Long- ford, Ireland, November 10, 1728, and died in 1774, in the forty- sixth year of his age. His fame rests principally on his poems, comedies, and his inimitable novel, il The Vicar of Wakefield." Among his poems "The Traveller" and the "Deserted Village" hold the first place ; while his comedies, " The Good Natured Man" and " She Stoops to Conquer " are in the first rank among similar productions. In addition to these and a variety of miscellaneous tvorks, he wrote Histories of England, Greece, and Rome, and a- il History of Animated Nature."] 224 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. The enemies of the state being thus suppressed, the theatre was now opened for the pretended enemies of religion. The queen being freed from apprehensions of an insurrection, began by assembling a Parliament, which upon this, as upon most occasions, seemed only met to give countenance to her various severities. The nobles, whose only religion was that of the prince who governed, were easily gained over ; and the House of Commons had long been passive under all the variations of regal caprice. But a new enemy had started up against the reformers in the person of the king, who, though he took all possible care to conceal his aversion, yet secretly biassed the queen, and influenced all her proceedings. Philip had for some time been in England, and had used every endeavour tc* increase the share of power which had been allowed to him by Parliament, but without effect. The queen indeed, who loved him with a foolish fondness that sat but ill upon a person of her years and disagreeable person, endeavoured to please him by every concession she could make or procure ; and finding herself incapable of satisfying his- ambition, she was not remiss in concurring with his zeal, so that the heretics began to be persecuted with inquisi- torial severity. The old sanguinary laws were now revived • orders were given that the bishops and priests who had married should be ejected ; that the mass should be restored ; that the pope's authority should be established ; and that the church and its privileges, all but their goods and estates, should be put on the same foundation on which they were before the commencement of the Keforma- tion. As the gentry and nobles had already divided the church lands among them, it was thought inconvenient and indeed impossible to make a restoration of these. At the head of those who drove such measures forward, but not in an equal degree, were Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and Cardinal Pole, who had lately arrived in England from the continent. Pole, who was nearly allied by birth to the royal family, had always conscientiously adhered to the Catholic religion, and had incurred Henry's displeasure, not only by refusing his assent to his measures, but by writing against him. It was for this adherence MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 225 that he was cherished by the pope, and now sent over to England as legate from his holy see. Gardiner was a man of a very different character ; his chief aim was to please the reigning prince, and he had already shown many instances of his prudent conformity. He now perceived that the king and queen were for rigorous measures, and he knew that it would be the best means of paying his court to them even to outgo them in severity. Pole, who had never varied in his principles, declared in favour of toleration. Gardiner, who had often changed, was for punishing those changes in others with the utmost rigour. However, he was too prudent to appear at the head of a persecution in person ; he, therefore, consigned that odious office to Bonner, bishop of London, a cruel, brutal, and ignorant man. This bloody scene began in 1555, by the martyrdom of Hooper, bishop of Gloucester, and Rogers, prebendary of St. Paul's. They were examined by commissioners ap- pointed by the queen, with the chancellor at the head of them. It was expected that by their recantation they would bring those opinions into disrepute which they had so long inculcated ; but the persecutors were deceived — they both continued stedfast in their belief, and they were accordingly condemned to be burned, Rogers in Smithfield, and Hooper in his own diocese at Gloucester. Rogers, besides the care of his own preservation, lay under very powerful temptations to deny his principles and save hi& life, for he had a wife whom he tenderly loved, and ten children ; but nothing could move his resolution. Such was his serenity after condemnation that the jailors, we are told, waked him from a sound sleep on the hour appointed for his execution. He desired to see his wife before he died ; but Gardiner told him that, being a priest, he could have no wife. When the faggots were placed around him, he seemed no way daunted at the preparation, but cried out, " I resign my life with joy in testimony of the doctrine of Jesus !" When Hooper was tied to the stake, a stool was set before him with the queen's pardon upon it in case he should recant; but he ordered it to be removed, and prepared cheerfully to suffer his sentence, which was 226 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. executed in its full severity. The fire, either from malice or neglect, had not been sufficiently kindled ; so that his legs and thighs were first burned, and one of his hands dropped off, while with the other he continued to beat his breast. He was three-quarters of an hour in torture, which he bore with inflexible constancy. Sanders and Taylor, two other clergymen, whose zeal had been distinguished in carrying out the [Reformation, were the next that suffered. Taylor was put into a pitch barrel, and before the fire was kindled a faggot, from an unknown hand, was thrown at his head, which made it stream with blood. Still, however, he continued undaunted, singing the thirty-first psalm in English ; which one of the spectators observing, struck him a blow on the side of the head, and commanded him to pray in Latin. Taylor continued for a few minutes silent, and with his eyes stecl- fastly fixed upwards, when one of the guards, either through impatience or compassion, struck him clown with his halberd, and thus happily put an end to his torments. The death of these only served to increase the savage appetite of the popish bishops and monks for fresh slaughter. Bonner, bloated at once with rage and luxury, let loose his vengeance without restraint, and seemed to take a pleasure in the pains of the unhappy sufferers, while the queen, by her letters, exhorted him to pursue the pious work without pity or interruption. Soon after, in obedience to her commands, Ridley, bishop of London, and the venerable Latimer, bishop of Worcester, were condemned together. Ridley had been one of the ablest champions for the Reformation ; his piety, learning, and solidity of judgment were admired by his friends; and the night before his execution he invited the mayor of Oxford and his wife to see him ; and when he beheld them melted into tears he himself appeared quite unmoved, inwardly supported and comforted in that hour of agony. When he was brought to the stake to be burnt, he found his old friend Latimer there before him. Of all the prelates of that age, Latimer was the most remarkable for his unaffected piety and the simplicity of his manners. He had never learned to flatter in courts ; and his open rebuke was dreaded by all the MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 227 great, who at that time too much deserved it. His sermons, which remain to this day, show that he was possessed both of learning and wit, and there was an air of sincerity running through them not to be found elsewhere. When Ridley began to comfort his ancient friend, Latimer, on his part, was as ready to return the kind office. " Be of good cheer, brother," cried he ; " we shall this clay kindle such a torch in England, as, I trust in God, shall never be extinguished." A furious bigot ascended to preach to them and the people ; Eidley gave a most serious attention to his discourse. No way distracted by the preparations about him, he heard him to the last, and then told him that he was ready to answer all that he had preached upon, if a short indulgence should be permitted ; but this was refused him. At length fire was set to the pile. Latimer was soon out of pain ; but Eidley continued to suffer much longer, his legs being consumed before the fire reached his vitals.* One Thomas Hankes, when conducted to the stake, had agreed with his friends that if he found the torture support- able he would make them a signal for that purpose in the midst of the flames. His zeal for the cause in which he suffered was so strong that when the spectators thought him near expiring, by stretching out his arms he gave his friends the signal that the pain Was not too great to be borne. This example, with many others of the like con- stancy, encouraged multitudes not only to suffer, but even to aspire after martyrdom. Cranmer's death followed soon after, and struck the whole nation with horror. This prelate, whom we have seen acting so very conspicuous a part in the Reformation during the two preceding reigns, had been long detained a prisoner in consequence of his imputed guilt in obstructing * Full details of the sufferings of these and other martyrs for con- science' sake will be found in Foxe's "Book of Martyrs." In the present day, when all men ure free to exercise liberty of opinion in all matters, whether religious or political, it makes us wonder how men could be guilty of such horrible cruelties towards each other for difference of thought and belief in points of faith. But one party, it must be remem- bered, was not to be blamed more than the other, the spirit of persecu- tion was shown by Protestants and Catholics to an eqv.al degree, as either party obtained the ascendency. 228 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. the queen's succession to the crown. But it was now resolved to bring him to punishment ; and, to give it all its malignity, the queen ordered that he should be punished for heresy rather than for treason. He was accordingly cited by the pope to stand his trial at Home, and though he was kept a prisoner at Oxford, yet, upon his not appearing, he was condemned as contumacious. But his enemies were not satisfied with his tortures without adding to them the poignancy of self-accusation. Persons were employed to tempt him by flattery and insinuation, by giving him hopes of once more being received into favour, to sign his recanta- tion, in which he acknowledged the doctrines of the papal supremacy and the real presence. His love of life prevailed. In an unguarded moment he was induced to sign this paper, and now his enemies, as we are told of the devil, after having rendered him completely wretched, resolved to destroy Mm. But it was determined, before they led him out to execution, that they should try to induce him to make a recantation in the church before the people. The unfortu- nate prelate, either having a secret intimation of theis- designs, or having recovered the native vigour of his mind, entered the church prepared to surprise the whole audience with a contrary declaration. When he had been placed in a conspicuous part of the church, a sermon was preached by Cole, provost of Eton, in which he magnified Cranmer'a conversion as the immediate work of heaven itself. He assured the archbishop that nothing could have been so pleasing to God, the queen, or the people ; he comforted him by intimating that if he should suffer, numberless dirges and masses should be said for his soul ; and that his own confession of faith would still more secure his soul from the pains of purgatory. During the whole rhapsody Cranmer expressed the utmost agony, anxiety, and internal agitation ; he lifted up his eyes to heaven ; he shed a torrent of tears, and groaned with unutterable anguish. He uttered a prayer filled with the most pathetic expressions of horror and remorse. He then said he was well apprised of his duty to his sovereign ; but that a superior duty, the duty which he owed his Maker, obliged him to declare that he had signed a paper contrary to his conscience ; that he MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. OOQ took this opportunity of atoning for his error by a sincere and open recantation ; he was willing, he said, to seal with his blood that doctrine, which he firmly believed to be communicated from heaven, and that as his hand had erred by betraying his heart, it should undergo the first punishment. The assembly, consisting chiefly of papists, who hoped to triumph in the last words of such a convert, were equally confounded and incensed at this declaration. They called aloud to him to leave off dissembling, and led him forward amidst the insults and reproaches of his audience, to the stake at which Latimer and Ridley had suffered. He resolved to triumph over their insults by his constancy and fortitude ; and the fire beginning to be kindled around him, he stretched forth his right hand, and held it in the flames till it was consumed, while he fre- quently cried out in the midst of his sufferings, " That unworthy hand ! " at the same time exhibiting no appearance of pain or disorder. When the fire attacked his body, he seemed to be quite insensible of his tortures ; his mind was occupied wholly upon the hopes of a future reward. After his body was destroyed his heart was found entire — an emblem of the constancy with which he suffered. V.— Elizabeth, 1558—1603. HISTORICAL EPITOME. 1. Elizabeth (daughter of Henry VIII. and Anne Boleyn) was horn at Greenwich, September 7, 1533, and crowned at West- minster, January 15, 1559. She died at Richmond, March 24, 1603, in the seventieth year of her age and the forty -fifth of her reign, and was buried at Westminster. 2. Once more the Protestant faith gained the ascendant ; the acts of Henry VIII. and Edward VI. were re-established ; and Bonner and others who refused to take the oath of supremacy, acknowledging Elizabeth as head of the Church in England, were imprisoned. 3. In 1630, the Scotch threw off the papal yoke, and many of the people adopted the tenets of Protestantism. This was followed by the death of Francis II. of France, and his queen, afterwards known as Mary, queen of Scots, returned to Scotland. 4. There she married her cousin, Henry Darnley, and from this 230 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER, union James VI. of Scotland, afterwards James I. of England, was born (1566). Darnley was killed, when lying ill of the smallpox in a house near Holyrood, by an explosion of gun- powder, contrived probably by Bothwell, earl of Orkney (1567), who forcibly carried off the queen and married her the same year. 5. This unhappy marriage was followed by the resignation of the crown to her son, and shortly after this she was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle. Escaping from that stronghold, she appeared at the head of an army to recover her position in the kingdom, but her troops were routed in the battle of Langside, and (May 14, 1568) Mary was forced to take refuge in England. 6. In 1569, a serious rising of the Roman Catholics in the north of England took place, but it was soon arrested. Affairs in Scotland were now in a very unsettled state, and Murray, the regent, was murdered in open day at Linlithgow (1570). 7. The continental powers intrigued against Elizabeth, who was excommunicated by the pope. A persecution was com- menced in France against the French Protestants or Huguenots, and many were killed in the massacre of St. Bartholomew (August 23, 1572). In this year the duke of Norfolk was beheaded for treason, having, it was said, a design on the crown through an intended marriage with Mary, queen of Scots. 8. After the massacre of St. Bartholomew Elizabeth stood forth as the champion of the Protestant faith. She aided the Huguenots in France (1573), and sent assistance to the Nether- lands, struggling against the tyranny of Philip II. of Spain, and the inquisition established therein by him (1577). In 1585, she sent a large army into the Netherlands under the earl of Leicester, who suffered defeat before Zutphen. 9. Meanwhile, Elizabeth's hand had been sought in marriage by the duke of Anjou ; but Elizabeth refused him, as she had formerly refused Philip II. of Spain. • 10. In 1586, a gentleman named Anthony Babington formed a conspiracy in favour of the imprisoned queen of Scots. It was. discovered and frustrated ; and Mary was executed in 1587, at Fotheringay Castle, on a charge of treason. 11. The English navy, under Sir Francis Drake, Hawkins, and other English admirals of note, had considerably injured the commerce of Spain. For this reason, and with a view to punish Elizabeth for lending aid to his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands, Philip fitted out an expedition against England, to which was given the name of the Invincible Armada (1588). MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 231 12. Great preparations were made in England to ward off the impending danger. Storm and tempest harassed the armada on its way. It was attacked in the Channel by the English ships and dispersed. The Spanish fleet, or what remained of it, was driven round the north of Scotland ; some vessels were wrecked on the coast of Ireland ; and but few of the Spanish ships reached Spain in safety. 13. Reprisals were made by Essex on the Spanish coast, and Cadiz was taken and burnt (1597). Essex, being sent to Ireland to put down an insurrection in that country which had been stirred up by the earl of Tyrone, returned without effecting his object (1599). 14. Having tried to excite a revolt in the streets of London, Essex was tried and beheaded for treason. He was a favourite of Queen Elizabeth. She had given him a ring to send to her in token of his need of her aid when in danger : he sent it to the queen by the countess of Nottingham, who, being Essex's secret enemy, never delivered it. 15. The countess of Nottingham confessed her treachery to the queen when on her death-bed. The loss of her favourite preyed heavily on her mind. Elizabeth sank into a- state of stupor and listless despondency, and died after a few days' illness, after naming James YI. of Scotland as her successor (1603). ,16. Vain and frivolous in many things, and fond of admiration, Elizabeth was possessed of a vigorous mind, energy, and resolu- tion. She was also wise and politic in most of her acts. In her reign England rose in importance among European nations ; while Ireland was brought into a more complete state of sub- jugation to England. Great improvement was effected in the manufactures of the country by the ingress of emigrants from foreign manufacturing countries, produced by the religious persecutions abroad. The commerce of the country was also greatly increased. The Story of the Invincible Armada. [The follmving account of the greatest event in Elizabeth's eventful reign is taken from the " Plain Englishman." Another account, peculiarly attractive on account of the graphic and picturesque manner in which the story is told, will be found in the " History of the United Netherlands" by John Lothrop Motley. The destruction of the Armada is also vigorously described in Canon Kingsleifs i( Westward Ho."] 232 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. The spirit of bigotry and tyranny by which Philip II. of Spain, formerly wedded to Mary, queen of England, was actuated, with the fraudulent maxims which governed his counsels, excited the most violent agitation among his own people, engaged him in acts of the greatest cruelty, and threw all Europe into alarm. He had long harboured a secret and violent desire of revenge against Queen Elizabeth, to execute which he formed the plan of an invasion of England, by fitting out his Invincible Armada. Many circumstances contributed to his hatred of Eliza- beth. The rejection of his hand on the death of her sister ; her support of the Protestant cause ; the great and decisive part that she embraced to prevent his oppression of the Netherlands ; and her successes in Spanish America. These circumstances excited the jealousy of Philip, and induced him to believe that, by her subjection, he should acquire the renown of reuniting the whole Christian world in the Catholic communion. At this period Spain was rich and populous. Philip had lately annexed the kingdom of Portugal to his dominions. All the princes of Italy, even the pope and the court of Rome, were reduced to a kind of subjection under him, and seemed to possess their sovereignty on terms somewhat precarious. The Austrian branch in Germany, with its dependent principalities, was closely connected with him, and was ready to supply him with trooj^s for every enterprise. Three years had been spent by Philip in secretly making- great preparations for this enterprise. The project indeed was formed after the queen of Scots had been persuaded to make over to him her right to England, as being the only plan to restore there the Catholic religion. Besides this vague right, conveyed by will, he thought he might justly claim the crown of England as being the next Catholic prince descended by the female line from the duke of Lancaster, fourth son of Edward III. Pope Sixtus IV., not less ambitious than Philip, excited him to the invasion of England. He again excommunicated the queen. All the ports of Spain resounded with preparations for this alarming expedition ; and the Spaniards seemed to threaten MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 233 the English with a total annihilation. The fleet which, on account of its prodigious strength, was called the M Invincible Armada," was completed in 1588. The English fleet at this time consisted only of twenty- eight sail, most of which were very small vessels ; but the alacrity of Elizabeth's subjects sufficiently atoned for the weakness of her navy. The maritime towns and the nobility and gentry testified the greatest zeal on this occasion. The city of London fitted out thirty ships, though fifteen only had been required. The gentry and nobility levied and armed forty-three ships at their own expense. Lord Howard of Effingham, a man of great courage and capacity, was lord admiral, and took upon him the command of the navy. Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher, the most renowned seamen in Europe, served under him. The main fleet was stationed at Plymouth; while a smaller fleet, consisting of forty vessels, under the command of Lord Seymour, lay off Dunkirk, in order to intercept the forces commanded by the duke of Parma. Twenty thousand land forces were cantoned along the southern coast of England; another body of disciplined troops encamped at Tilbury, near the mouth of the Thames, under the command of the earl of Leicester, whom the queen, on this occasion, created general-in-chief of all her forces ; and Lord Hunsden commanded a third army, consisting of thirty thousand men, for the defence of her majesty's person, and to march to that part of the coast on which the enemy might make their chief landing. The chief hopes of Elizabeth were placed in the affections of her people. Party distinctions were forgotten, and every man exerted himself in the defence of his country. The magnanimity of Elizabeth was remarkable on this trying occasion. She appeared on horseback in the camp of Tilbury, harangued her army, and expressed an entire confidence in their loyalty and courage. The following was her truly noble speech on this occasion : — " My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery ; but I assure vou I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful 23 1: MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects. And, therefore, I am come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all ; to lay down, for my God and for my people, my honour and my blood, even in the dust. " I know I have but the body of a w r eak and feeble woman ; but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England too ; and I think it foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realms ; to which rather than any dishonour shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms — I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. " I know already by your forwardness that you have deserved rewards and crowns ; and we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. " In the meantime my lieutenant-general shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble and worthy subject ; not doubting by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people." The Armada was some time prevented from sailing by the death of the marquis of Santa Cruz. The duke of Medina Sidonia, a nobleman of great family, but wholly unac- quainted with maritime affairs, was appointed admiral in his room. This interval was employed by Elizabeth in making new preparations for rendering the design abortive. At length the invincible fleet sailed from Lisbon on the 29th of May ; but being overtaken with a dreadful tempest it was obliged to put into the Groyne, having received considerable damage. After a delay of two months the Armada sailed once more to prosecute the intended enterprise. The fleet con- sisted of one hundred and thirty ships, of which near one hundred were galleons, and of a greater burden than had ever before appeared on the coast of England. MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 935 The Armada advanced towards Plymouth. It was disposed in the form of a half moon, and stretched to the distance of seven leagues from the extremity of one division to the other. But this appearance dismayed not the English: they knew these huge vessels were so ill-constructed and so difficult to be managed that they would not be able to support themselves against the repeated attacks of ships at a distance. Two of the largest ships in the Spanish fleet were soon after taken by Sir Francis Drake ; and while the enemy advanced slowly up the Channel, the English followed their rear and harassed them with perpetual skirmishes. The Spaniards now began to abate in their confidence of success ; the design of attacking the English navy in Plymouth was laid aside, and they directed their course towards Calais. The Armada, after many losses, came to an anchor before Calais, in the expectation of being joined by the prince of Parma ; but before that general could embark his troops all hopes of success vanished by a stratagem of the English. admiral. He filled eight of his small ships with combus- tible materials, and setting them on fire, sent them, one after another, into the midst of the enemy's fleet. Terrified at this appearance, the Spaniards cut their cables and betook themselves to flight in a very precipitous and disorderly manner. In the midst of this confusion the English fell upon them with such fury that twelve of their largest ships were taken and several others were thoroughly damaged. The ambitious Spaniards were now convinced that their scheme was entirely frustrated, and would willingly have abandoned the enterprise and returned immediately to their ports could they have done it with safety ; but this was impossible : the wind was contrary, and the only chance of escaping was that of making a tour of the whole island and reaching at last the Spanish harbours by the ocean ; but a violent storm soon overtook them, and com- pleted the destruction of the Invincible Armada. Not hali the vessels returned to the ports of Spain. Of the Armada there were taken and destroyed in the Channel, 15 ships and 4,791 men : and on the coast of 236 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. Ireland, 17 ships and 5,394 men; in all 32 ships and 10,185 men. The End of the Last of the Tudors. [From a "History of England" hjj David Hume. For biographical notice see page 64.] The earl of Essex, after his return from the fortunate expedition against Cadiz, observing the increase of the queen's fond attachment towards him, took occasion to regret that the necessity of her service required him often to be absent from her person, and exposed him to all those ill offices which his enemies, more assiduous in their .attendance, could employ against him. She was moved with this tender jealousy ; and making him the present of a ring desired him to keep that pledge of her affection, tind assured him that into whatever disgrace he should fall, whatever prejudices she might be induced to entertain .against him, yet if he sent her that ring she would imme- diately, upon the sight of it, recall her former tenderness, would afford him a patient hearing, and would lend a favourable ear to his apology. Essex, notwithstanding all his misfortunes, reserved this precious gift to the last extremity ; but after his trial and •condemnation he resolved to try the experiment, and he committed the ring to the countess of Nottingham, whom he desired to deliver it to the queen. The countess was prevailed on by her husband, the mortal enemy of Essex, not to execute the . commission, and Elizabeth, who still expected that her favourite would make this last appeal to her tenderness, and who ascribed the neglect of it to his invincible obstinacy, was, after much delay and many internal combats, pushed by resentment and policy to sign the warrant for his execution. The countess of Nottingham, falling into sickness, and affected with the near approach of death, was seized with remorse for her conduct ; and liaving obtained a visit from the queen, she craved her j>ardon, and revealed to her the fatal secret. The queen, astonished with this incident, burst into a furious passion : she shook the dying countess in her bed ; MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 237 and crying to her that God might pardon her, but she never could, she broke from her, and thenceforth resigned herself to the deepest and most incurable melancholy. She rejected all consolation ; she refused even food and sustenance ; and throwing herself on the floor she remained sullen and immovable, feeding her thoughts on her afflic- tions, and declaring life and existence an insufferable burden to her. Few words she uttered, and they were all expressive of some inward grief which she cared not to reveal ; but sighs and groans were the chief vent which she gave to her despondency, and which, though they discovered her sorrows, were never able to ease or assuage them. Ten days and nights she lay upon the carpet, leaning on cushions, which her maids brought her, and her physicians could not persuade her to allow herself to be put to bed, much less to make trial of any remedies which they pre- scribed to her. Her anxious mind at last had so long preyed on her frail body that her end was visibly approaching ; and the council being assembled, sent the keeper, admiral, and secretary to know her will with regard to her successor. She answered with a faint voice, that as she had held a regal sceptre she desired no other than a royal successor. Cecil requesting her to explain herself, she subjoined that she would have a king to succeed her, and who should that bebut her nearest kinsman, the king of Scots. Being then advised by the archbishop of Canterbury to fix her thoughts upon God, she replied that she did so, nor did her mind in the least wander from Him. Her voice soon after left her ; her senses failed ; she fell into a lethargic slumber, which continued some hours ; and she expired gently without further struggle or convulsion (March 24, 1603), in the seventieth year of her age and forty-fifth of her reign. So dark a cloud overcast the evening of that day which had shone out with a mighty lustre in the eyes of all Europe. There are few great personages in history who have been more exposed to the calumny of enemies and the adulation of friends than Queen Elizabeth ; and jet there is scarcely any whose reputation has been more certainly determined by the unanimous consent of posterity. The unusual length of administration and the strong 238 MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. features of her character were able to overcome all pre- judices ; and obliging her detractors to abate much of their invectives, and her admirers somewhat of their panegyrics, have at last, in spite of political factions, and, what is more, of religious animosities, produced a uniform judgment with regard to her conduct. Her vigour, her constancy, her magnanimity, her penetration, vigilance, and address, are allowed to merit the highest praises, and appear not to have been surpassed by any person that ever filled a throne : a conduct less vigorous, less imperious, more-sincere, more indulgent to her people, would have been requisite to form a perfect character. By the force of her mind she controlled c 11 her more active and stronger qualities, and prevented them from running into excess. Her heroism was exempt from temerity, her frugality from avarice, her friendship from partiality, her active temper from turbulency and a vain ambition. She guarded not herself with equal care or equal success from lesser infirmities ; the rivalshij) of beanty, the desire of admiration, the jealousy of love, and the sallies of anger. Her Singular talents for government were founded equally on her temper and on her capacity. Endowed with a great command over herself she soon obtained an uncon- -t rolled ascendant over her people ; and while she merited all their esteem by her real virtues she also engaged their affections by her pretended ones. Few sovereigns of Eng- land succeeded to the throne in more difficult circumstances, and none ever conducted the government with such uniform success and felicity. Though unacquainted with the practice of toleration, the true secret for managing religious factions, she preserved her people by her superior prudence from those confusions in which theological controversy had involved all the neighbouring nations ; and though her enemies were the most powerful princes of Europe, the most active, the most enterprising, the least scrupulous, r-lie was able by her vigour to make deep impressions on their states ; her own greatness, meanwhile, remained untouched and unimpaired. The wise ministers and brave warriors who flourished under her reign share the praise of her success ; but, instead of lessening the applause due to MANCHESTER HISTORIC READER. 239 her, they make great addition. They owed all of them their advancement to her choice ; they were supported by her constancy, and with all their abilities they were never able to acquire any undue ascendant over her. In her family, in her court, in her kingdom, she remained equally mistress ; the force of the tender passions was great over her, but the force of her mind was still superior ; and the combat which her victory visibly cost her, serves only to display the firmness of her resolution and the loftiness of her ambitious, sentiments. The fame of this princess, though it has surmounted the prejudices both of faction and bigotry, yet lies still exposed to another prejudice which is still more durable because more natural, and which, according to the different views in which we survey her, is capable either of exalting beyond measure or diminishing the lustre of her character. This prejudice is founded on the consideration of her sex. When we contemplate her as a woman, we are apt to be struck with the highest admiration of her great qualities and extensive capacity ; but we are also apt to require some more softness of disposition, some greater lenity of temper — some of those amiable weaknesses by which her sex is distinguished. But the true method of estimating her merit is to lay aside all these considerations, and consider her merely as a rational being placed in authority and intrusted with the government of mankind. We may find it difficult to reconcile our fancy to her as a wife or a mistress ; but her qualities as a sovereign, though with some considerable exceptions, are the object of undisputed applause and approbation. SUMMARY OF SOVEREIGNS OF THE TUDOR 'DYNASTY. Name. Date of Acces. I Name. Date of Acces. 1. Henry VII 1485 I 4. Mary 1553 2. Henry VIII 1509 I 5. Elizabeth 1558 3. Edward VI 1547 | close of the tudor dynasty, 1603 THE END. John Hey.vood, Excelsior Printing V.\.:l; . JLu'.mc H u! 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