I PURPOSE to write
the history of England from the accession of King James the
Second down to a time which is within the memory of men still
living. I shall recount the errors which, in a few months, alienated
a loyal gentry and priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall
trace the course of that revolution which terminated the
long struggle between our sovereigns and their parliaments, and
bound up together the rights of the people and the title of the
reigning dynasty. I shall relate how the new settlement was,
during many troubled years, successfully defended against foreign
and domestic enemies; how, under that settlement, the authority of
law and the security of property were found to be compatible with
a liberty of discussion and of individual action never
before known; how, from the auspicious union of order and freedom,
sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had
furnished no example; how our country, from a state of
ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among
European powers; how her opulence and her martial glory grew
together; how, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually
established a public credit fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen
of any former age would have seemed incredible; how a gigantic
commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every
other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into
insignificance; how Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to
England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties
of interest and affection; how, in America, the British colonies
rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which
Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of Charles the Fifth;
how in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less
splendid and more durable than that of Alexander.
Nor will it be
less my duty faithfully to record disasters mingled with
triumphs, and great national crimes and follies far more humiliating
than any disaster. It will be seen that even what we justly
account our chief blessings were not without alloy. It will be
seen that the system which effectually secured our liberties
against the encroachments of kingly power gave birth to a new
class of abuses from which absolute monarchies are exempt. It will be
seen that, in consequence partly of unwise interference, and
partly of unwise neglect, the increase of wealth and the
extension of trade produced, together with immense good, some evils
from which poor and rude societies are free. It will be seen how,
in two important dependencies of the crown, wrong was followed
by just retribution; how imprudence and obstinacy broke
the ties which bound the North American colonies to the parent
state; how Ireland, cursed by the domination of race over race,
and of religion over religion, remained indeed a member of the
empire, but a withered and distorted member, adding no strength to the
body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by all who feared or
envied the greatness of England.
Yet, unless I
greatly deceive myself, the general effect of this chequered
narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all religious minds,
and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For the history of our
country during the last hundred and sixty years is eminently the
history of physical, of moral, and of intellectual improvement. Those
who compare the age on which their lot has fallen with a
golden age which exists only in their imagination may talk of
degeneracy and decay: but no man who is correctly informed as to the
past will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of
the present.
I should very
imperfectly execute the task which I have undertaken if I
were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of the rise and fall
of administrations, of intrigues in the palace, and of debates in
the parliament. It will be my endeavour to relate the history
of the people as well as the history of the government, to
trace the progress of useful and ornamental arts, to describe the
rise of religious sects and the changes of literary taste, to
portray the manners of successive generations and not to pass by
with neglect even the revolutions which have taken place in
dress, furniture, repasts, and public amusements. I shall cheerfully
bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of
history, if I can succeed in placing before the English of the
nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.
The events which I
propose to relate form only a single act of a great and eventful
drama extending through ages, and must be very imperfectly
understood unless the plot of the preceding acts be well known. I
shall therefore introduce my narrative by a slight sketch of the
history of our country from the earliest times. I shall pass very
rapidly over many centuries: but I shall dwell at some length on the
vicissitudes of that contest which the administration of
King James the Second brought to a decisive crisis.
Nothing in the
early existence of Britain indicated the greatness which she was
destined to attain. Her inhabitants when first they became known to
the Tyrian mariners, were little superior to the natives of the
Sandwich Islands. She was subjugated by the Roman arms; but she
received only a faint tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the
western provinces which obeyed the Caesars, she was the last that
was conquered, and the first that was flung away. No
magnificent remains of Latin porches and aqueducts are to be found in
Britain. No writer of British birth is reckoned among the masters
of Latin poetry and eloquence. It is not probable that the
islanders were at any time generally familiar with the tongue of
their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity of the
Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been predominant. It
drove out the Celtic; it was not driven out by the Teutonic; and
it is at this day the basis of the French, Spanish and
Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin appears never to have
superseded the old Gaelic speech, and could not stand its ground
against the German.
The scanty and
superficial civilisation which the Britons had derived from their
southern masters was effaced by the calamities of the fifth
century. In the continental kingdoms into which the Roman empire was
then dissolved, the conquerors learned much from the conquered
race. In Britain the conquered race became as barbarous as the
conquerors.
All the chiefs who
founded Teutonic dynasties in the continental provinces of the
Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric, Clovis, Alboin, were zealous
Christians. The followers of Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand,
brought to their settlements in Britain all the superstitions of
the Elbe. While the German princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo,
Arles, and Ravenna listened with reverence to the instructions
of bishops, adored the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly
in disputes touching the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex
and Mercia were still performing savage rites in the temples of
Thor and Woden.
The continental
kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of the Western Empire
kept up some intercourse with those eastern provinces where
the ancient civilisation, though slowly fading away under the
influence of misgovernment, might still astonish and instruct
barbarians, where the court still exhibited the splendour of
Diocletian and Constantine, where the public buildings were
still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus and the paintings
of Apelles, and where laborious pedants, themselves
destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read and interpret
the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes, and of Plato. From
this communion Britain was cut off. Her shores were, to the
polished race which dwelt by the Bosphorus, objects of a mysterious
horror, such as that with which the Ionians of the age of Homer
had regarded the Straits of Scylla and the city of the
Laestrygonian cannibals. There was one province of our island in which,
as Procopius had been told, the ground was covered with
serpents, and the air was such that no man could inhale it and
live. To this desolate region the spirits of the departed were
ferried over from the land of the Franks at midnight. A
strange race of fishermen performed the ghastly office. The speech
of the dead was distinctly heard by the boatmen, their
weight made the keel sink deep in the water; but their forms were
invisible to mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able
historian, the contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of
Tribonian, gravely related in the rich and polite
Constantinople, touching the country in which the founder of Constantinople
had assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all the other
provinces of the Western Empire we have continuous information. It is
only in Britain that an age of fable completely
separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and Thrasimund,
Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical men and
women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and Rowena, Arthur and
Mordred are mythical persons, whose very existence may be
questioned, and whose adventures must be classed with those of
Hercules and Romulus.
At length the
darkness begins to break; and the country which had been lost to view
as Britain reappears as England. The conversion of the Saxon
colonists to Christianity was the first of a long series of salutary
revolutions. It is true that the Church had been deeply
corrupted both by that superstition and by that philosophy against
which she had long contended, and over which she had at last
triumphed. She had given a too easy admission to doctrines borrowed
from the ancient schools, and to rites borrowed from the
ancient temples. Roman policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian
ingenuity and Syrian asceticism, had contributed to
deprave her. Yet she retained enough of the sublime theology
and benevolent morality of her earlier days to elevate many
intellects, and to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a
later period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes
were, in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among
her chief merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on
the functions of the civil magistrate would, in our time, be a
great evil. But that which in an age of good government is an
evil may, in an ago of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It
is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well
administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by
priestcraft: but it is better that men should be governed by
priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan than by
such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance, and
ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to rejoice when a
class, of which the influence is intellectual and moral, rises to
ascendancy. Such a class will doubtless abuse its power: but mental
power, even when abused, is still a nobler and better power than
that which consists merely in corporeal strength. We read
in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who, when at the height of
greatness, were smitten with remorse, who abhorred the
pleasures and dignities which they had purchased by guilt, who
abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone for their offences by
cruel penances and incessant prayers. These stories have drawn
forth bitter expressions of contempt from some writers who, while
they boasted of liberality, were in truth as narrow-minded as
any monk of the dark ages, and whose habit was to apply to all
events in the history of the world the standard received in the
Parisian society of the eighteenth century. Yet surely a system
which, however deformed by superstition, introduced strong
moral restraints into communities previously governed only by
vigour of muscle and by audacity of spirit, a system which
taught the fiercest and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest
bondman, a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a more
respectful mention from philosophers and philanthropists.
The same
observations will apply to the contempt with which, in the last century,
it was fashionable to speak of the pilgrimages, the sanctuaries,
the crusades, and the monastic institutions of the middle ages.
In times when men were scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal
curiosity, or by the pursuit of gain, it was better that the
rude inhabitant of the North should visit Italy and the East as a
pilgrim, than that he should never see anything but those squalid
cabins and uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times
when life and when female honour were exposed to daily risk from
tyrants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of a
shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe, than that there
should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and licentiousness. In
times when statesmen were incapable of forming extensive
political combinations, it was better that the Christian nations
should be roused and united for the recovery of the Holy
Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be overwhelmed by the
Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may, at a later period, have
been justly thrown on the indolence and luxury of religious
orders, it was surely good that, in an age of ignorance and
violence, there should be quiet cloisters and gardens, in which
the arts of peace could be safely cultivated, in which gentle
and contemplative natures could find an asylum, in which one
brother could employ himself in transcribing the Æneid of Virgil,
and another in meditating the Analytics of Aristotle, in
which he who had a genius for art might illuminate a martyrology or
carve a crucifix, and in which he who had a turn for natural
philosophy might make experiments on the properties of plants and
minerals. Had not such retreats been scattered here and there, among
the huts of a miserable peasantry, and the castles of a
ferocious aristocracy, European society would have consisted merely
of beasts of burden and beasts of prey. The Church has many
times been compared by divines to the ark of which we read in
the Book of Genesis: but never was the resemblance more
perfect than during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst
darkness and tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the
great works of ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing
within her that feeble germ from which a Second and more glorious
civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual
supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in the dark ages,
productive of far more good than evil. Its effect was to unite the
nations of Western Europe in one great commonwealth. What the Olympian
chariot course and the Pythian oracle were to all the Greek
cities, from Trebizond to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all
Christians of the Latin communion, from Calabria to the
Hebrides. Thus grew up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races
separated from each other by seas and mountains
acknowledged a fraternal tie and a common code of public law. Even
in war, the cruelty of the conqueror was not seldom mitigated
by the recollection that he and his vanquished enemies were all
members of one great federation.
Into this
federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted. A regular
communication was opened between our shores and that part of Europe in which
the traces of ancient power and policy were yet discernible.
Many noble monuments which have since been destroyed or
defaced still retained their pristine magnificence; and travellers, to
whom Livy and Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from
the Roman aqueducts and temples some faint notion of Roman history.
The dome of Agrippa, still glittering with bronze, the
mausoleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns and statues, the
Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a quarry, told to
the rude English pilgrims some part of the story of that great
civilised world which had passed away. The islanders
returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half opened minds, and
told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of London and York
that, near the grave of Saint Peter, a mighty race, now extinct,
had piled up buildings which would never be dissolved till the
judgment day. Learning followed in the train of Christianity.
The poetry and eloquence of the Augustan age was assiduously
studied in Mercian and Northumbrian monasteries. The names of Bede and
Alcuin were justly celebrated throughout Europe. Such was
the state of our country when, in the ninth century, began the
last great migration of the northern barbarians
During many years
Denmark and Scandinavia continued to pour forth innumerable
pirates, distinguished by strength, by valour, by merciless
ferocity, and by hatred of the Christian name. No country suffered
so much from these invaders as England. Her coast lay near to
the ports whence they sailed; nor was any shire so far distant
from the sea as to be secure from attack. The same atrocities which
had attended the victory of the Saxon over the Celt were now,
after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of the
Dane. Civilization,--just as it began to rise, was met by this
blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of adventurers from
the Baltic established themselves on the eastern shores of our
island, spread gradually westward, and, supported by constant
reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the dominion of the
whole realm. The struggle between the two fierce Teutonic breeds
lasted through six generations. Each was alternately
paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel retribution,
provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities rased to the
ground, make up the greater part of the history of those evil days.
At length the North ceased to send forth a constant stream of
fresh depredators; and from that time the mutual aversion of
the races began to subside. Intermarriage became frequent.
The Danes learned the religion of the Saxons; and thus one cause
of deadly animosity was removed. The Danish and Saxon tongues,
both dialects of one widespread language, were blended together.
But the distinction between the two nations was by no means
effaced, when an event took place which prostrated both, in common
slavery and degradation, at the feet of a third people.
The Normans were
then the foremost race of Christendom. Their valour and
ferocity had made them conspicuous among the rovers whom Scandinavia
had sent forth to ravage Western Europe. Their sails were long
the terror of both coasts of the Channel. Their arms were
repeatedly carried far into the heart of: the Carlovingian
empire, and were victorious under the walls of Maestricht and
Paris. At length one of the feeble heirs of Charlemagne ceded
to the strangers a fertile province, watered by a noble river, and
contiguous to the sea which was their favourite element.
In that province they founded a mighty state, which gradually
extended its influence over the neighbouring principalities of
Britanny and Maine. Without laying aside that dauntless valour
which had been the terror of every land from the Elbe to the
Pyrenees, the Normans rapidly acquired all, and more than all, the
knowledge and refinement which they found in the country where they
settled. Their courage secured their territory against foreign
invasion. They established internal order, such as had long been
unknown in the Frank empire. They embraced Christianity; and
with Christianity they learned a great part of what the clergy
had to teach. They abandoned their native speech, and adopted the
French tongue, in which the Latin was the predominant
element. They speedily raised their new language to a dignity and
importance which it had never before possessed. They found it a
barbarous jargon; they fixed it in writing; and they employed it in
legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that
brutal intemperance to which all the other branches of the
great German family were too much inclined. The polite luxury of
the Norman presented a striking contrast to the coarse voracity
and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish neighbours. He
loved to display his magnificence, not in huge piles of food and
hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and stately edifices,
rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons, well ordered
tournaments, banquets delicate rather than abundant, and wines
remarkable rather for their exquisite flavour than for their intoxicating
power. That chivalrous spirit, which has exercised so
powerful an influence on the politics, morals, and manners of all the
European nations, was found in the highest exaltation among
the Norman nobles. Those nobles were distinguished by
their graceful bearing and insinuating address. They were
distinguished also by their skill in negotiation, and by a natural
eloquence which they assiduously cultivated. It was the boast of one
of their historians that the Norman gentlemen were orators from
the cradle. But their chief fame was derived from their
military exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Dead
Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their discipline and
valour. One Norman knight, at the head of a handful of
warriors, scattered the Celts of Connaught. Another founded the
monarchy of the Two Sicilies, and saw the emperors both of the East
and of the West fly before his arms. A third, the Ulysses of the
first crusade, was invested by his fellow soldiers with the
sovereignty of Antioch; and a fourth, the Tancred whose name
lives in the great poem of Tasso, was celebrated through
Christendom as the bravest and most generous of the deliverers
of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so
remarkable a people early began to produce an effect on the
public mind of England. Before the Conquest, English princes
received their education in Normandy. English sees and English
estates were bestowed on Normans. The French of Normandy was
familiarly spoken in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen
seems to have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the
court of Versailles long afterwards was to the court of Charles
the Second.
The battle of
Hastings, and the events which followed it, not only placed a Duke
of Normandy on the English throne, but gave up the whole
population of England to the tyranny of the Norman race. The
subjugation of a nation by a nation has seldom, even in Asia, been more
complete. The country was portioned out among the captains of the
invaders. Strong military institutions, closely connected with the
institution of property, enabled the foreign conquerors to
oppress the children of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly
enforced, guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the
alien tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and trodden
underfoot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men, the favourite
heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves to the
woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest laws,
waged a predatory war against their oppressors. Assassination was
an event of daily occurrence. Many Normans suddenly
disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many were found bearing the
marks of violence. Death by torture was denounced against
the murderers, and strict search was made for them, but
generally in vain; for the whole nation was in a conspiracy to
screen them. It was at length thought necessary to lay a heavy fine
on every Hundred in which a person of French extraction should
be found slain; and this regulation was followed up by
another regulation, providing that every person who was found
slain should be supposed to be a Frenchman, unless he was proved to
be a Saxon.
During the century
and a half which followed the Conquest, there is, to speak
strictly, no English history. The French Kings of England rose,
indeed, to an eminence which was the wonder and dread of all
neighbouring nations. They conquered Ireland. They received the
homage of Scotland. By their valour, by their policy, by their
fortunate matrimonial alliances, they became far more popular on
the Continent than their liege lords the Kings of France. Asia, as
well as Europe, was dazzled by the power and glory of our
tyrants. Arabian chroniclers recorded with unwilling admiration the
fall of Acre, the defence of Joppa, and the victorious march
to Ascalon; and Arabian mothers long awed their infants to silence
with the name of the lionhearted Plantagenet. At one time it
seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about to end as the
Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and that a single great
monarchy would spread from the Orkneys to the Pyrenees. So
strong an association is established in most minds between the
greatness of a sovereign and the greatness of the nation which he
rules, that almost every historian of England has expatiated with a
sentiment of exultation on the power and splendour of her
foreign masters, and has lamented the decay of that power and
splendour as a calamity to our country. This is, in truth, as
absurd as it would be in a Haytian negro of our time to dwell with
national pride on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth, and to
speak of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regret and shame.
The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation were
not Englishmen: most of them were born in France: they spent the
greater part of their lives in France: their ordinary speech
was French: almost every high office in their gift was filled by
a Frenchman: every acquisition which they made on the Continent
estranged them more and more from the population of our island. One
of the ablest among them indeed attempted to win the hearts of
his English subjects by espousing an English princess. But, by
many of his barons, this marriage was regarded as a marriage
between a white planter and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in
Virginia. In history he is known by the honourable surname
of Beauclerc; but, in his own time, his own countrymen called
him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous allusion to his
Saxon connection.
Had the
Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, succeeded in uniting all France
under their government, it is probable that England would
never have had an independent existence. Her princes, her
lords, her prelates, would have been men differing in race and
language from the artisans and the tillers of the earth. The
revenues of her great proprietors would have been spent in
festivities and diversions on the banks of the Seine. The noble language
of Milton and Burke would have remained a rustic dialect,
without a literature, a fixed grammar, or a fixed orthography, and
would have been contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors. No
man of English extraction would have risen to eminence, except
by becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.
England owes her
escape from such calamities to an event which her historians
have generally represented as disastrous. Her interest was so
directly opposed to the interests of her rulers that she had no
hope but in their errors and misfortunes. The talents and even
the virtues of her first six French Kings were a curse to her. The
follies and vices of the seventh were her salvation. Had
John inherited the great qualities of his father, of Henry
Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he even possessed the
martial courage of Stephen or of Richard, and had the King of France
at the same time been as incapable as all the other successors
of Hugh Capet had been, the House of Plantagenet must have risen to
unrivalled ascendancy in Europe. But, just at this conjuncture,
France, for the first time since the death of Charlemagne, was
governed by a prince of great firmness and ability. On the
other hand England, which, since the battle of Hastings, had been
ruled generally by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers,
fell under the dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that
moment her prospects brightened. John was driven from
Normandy. The Norman nobles were compelled to make their election
between the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with the
people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they
gradually came to regard England as their country, and the English as
their countrymen. The two races, so long hostile, soon
found that they had common interests and common enemies. Both were
alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad king. Both were alike
indignant at the favour shown by the court to the natives of Poitou
and Aquitaine. The great grandsons of those who had fought under
William and the great grandsons of those who had fought under
Harold began to draw near to each other in friendship; and
the first pledge of their reconciliation was the Great Charter, won
by their united exertions, and framed for their common
benefit.
Here commences the
history of the English nation. The history of the preceding
events is the history of wrongs inflicted and sustained by
various tribes, which indeed all dwelt on English ground, but which
regarded each other with aversion such as has scarcely ever
existed between communities separated by physical barriers. For even
the mutual animosity of countries at war with each other is
languid when compared with the animosity of nations which, morally
separated, are yet locally intermingled. In no country has the
enmity of race been carried farther than in England. In no
country has that enmity been more completely effaced. The
stages of the process by which the hostile elements were melted down
into one homogeneous mass are not accurately known to us. But
it is certain that, when John became King, the distinction
between Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the
end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared. In
the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of a
Norman gentleman was "May I become an Englishman!" His
ordinary form of indignant denial was "Do you take me for an
Englishman?" The descendant of such a gentleman a hundred years
later was proud of the English name.
The sources of the
noblest rivers which spread fertility over continents, and
bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be sought in wild and
barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid down in maps, and
rarely explored by travellers. To such a tract the history of our
country during the thirteenth century may not unaptly be
compared. Sterile and obscure as is that portion of our annals, it is
there that we must seek for the origin of our freedom, our
prosperity, and our glory. Then it was that the great English
people was formed, that the national character began to exhibit
those peculiarities which it has ever since retained, and that
our fathers became emphatically islanders, islanders not
merely in geographical position, but in their politics, their
feelings, and their manners. Then first appeared with distinctness
that constitution which has ever since, through all changes,
preserved its identity; that constitution of which all the other free
constitutions in the world are copies, and which, in spite of
some defects, deserves to be regarded as the best under which
any great society has ever yet existed during many ages. Then it
was that the House of Commons, the archetype of all the
representative assemblies which now meet, either in the old or in the
new world, held its first sittings. Then it was that the common
law rose to the dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not
unworthy rival of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was that the
courage of those sailors who manned the rude barks of the
Cinque Ports first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then
it was that the most ancient colleges which still exist at
both the great national seats of learning were founded. Then was
formed that language, less musical indeed than the languages of
the south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all
the highest purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and
the orator, inferior to the tongue of Greece alone. Then too
appeared the first faint dawn of that noble literature, the
most splendid and the most durable of the many glories of
England.
Early in the
fourteenth century the amalgamation of the races was all but complete;
and it was soon made manifest, by signs not to be mistaken, that
a people inferior to none existing in the world had been formed by
the mixture of three branches of the great Teutonic family
with each other, and with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed,
scarcely anything in common between the England to which
John had been chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which
the armies of Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.
A period of more
than a hundred years followed, during which the chief object of
the English was to establish, by force of arms, a great empire on
the Continent. The claim of Edward to the inheritance
occupied by the House of Valois was a claim in which it might seem that
his subjects were little interested. But the passion for
conquest spread fast from the prince to the people. The war differed
widely from the wars which the Plantagenets of the twelfth
century had waged against the descendants of Hugh Capet. For the
success of Henry the Second, or of Richard the First, would have
made England a province of France. The effect of the successes
of Edward the Third and Henry the Fifth was to make France, for a
time, a province of England. The disdain with which, in the
twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent had regarded the
islanders, was now retorted by the islanders on the people of the
Continent. Every yeoman from Kent to Northumberland
valued himself as one of a race born for victory and dominion, and
looked down with scorn on the nation before which his
ancestors had trembled. Even those knights of Gascony and Guienne who
had fought gallantly under the Black Prince were regarded by the
English as men of an inferior breed, and were contemptuously
excluded from honourable and lucrative commands. In no long time
our ancestors altogether lost sight of the original ground of
quarrel. They began to consider the crown of France as a mere
appendage to the crown of England; and, when in violation of the
ordinary law of succession, they transferred the crown of England
to the House of Lancaster, they seem to have thought that the
right of Richard the Second to the crown of France passed, as
of course, to that house. The zeal and vigour which they
displayed present a remarkable contrast to the torpor of the French, who
were far more deeply interested in the event of the struggle.
The most splendid victories recorded in the history of the
middle ages were gained at this time, against great odds, by the
English armies. Victories indeed they were of which a nation may
justly be proud; for they are to be attributed to the moral
superiority of the victors, a superiority which was most striking in
the lowest ranks. The knights of England found worthy rivals in
the knights of France. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du
Guesclin. But France had no infantry that dared to face the
English bows and bills. A French King was brought prisoner to
London. An English King was crowned at Paris.The banner of St.
George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps. On the south
of the Ebro the English won a great battle, which for a time
decided the fate of Leon and Castile; and the English Companies
obtained a terrible preeminence among the bands of warriors who
let out their weapons for hire to the princes and commonwealths of
Italy.
Nor were the arts
of peace neglected by our fathers during that stirring period.
While France was wasted by war, till she at length found in
her own desolation a miserable defence against invaders, the
English gathered in their harvests, adorned their cities, pleaded,
traded, and studied in security. Many of our noblest
architectural monuments belong to that age. Then rose the fair chapels
of New College and of Saint George, the nave of Winchester and the
choir of York, the spire of Salisbury and the majestic towers of
Lincoln. A copious and forcible language, formed by an
infusion of French into German, was now the common property of the
aristocracy and of the people. Nor was it long before genius
began to apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes. While
English warriors, leaving behind them the devastated
provinces of France, entered Valladolid in triumph, and spread terror
to the gates of Florence, English poets depicted in vivid
tints all the wide variety of human manners and fortunes, and
English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where
bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same age which
produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos and Hawkwood,
produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John Wycliffe.
In so splendid and
imperial a manner did the English people, properly so
called, first take place among the nations of the world. Yet while
we contemplate with pleasure the high and commanding
qualities which our forefathers displayed, we cannot but admit that the
end which they pursued was an end condemned both by humanity
and by enlightened policy, and that the reverses which compelled
them, after a long and bloody struggle, to relinquish the
hope of establishing a great continental empire, were really
blessings in the guise of disasters. The spirit of the French was at
last aroused: they began to oppose a vigorous national
resistance to the foreign conquerors; and from that time the skill of the
English captains and the courage of the English soldiers were,
happily for mankind, exerted in vain. After many desperate
struggles, and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors gave up the
contest. Since that age no British government has ever seriously and
steadily pursued the design of making great conquests on the
Continent. The people, indeed, continued to cherish with pride
the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and of Agincourt. Even
after the lapse of many years it was easy to fire their blood
and to draw forth their subsidies by promising them an expedition
for the conquest of France. But happily the energies of our
country have been directed to better objects; and she now occupies
in the history of mankind a place far more glorious than if
she had, as at one time seemed not improbable, acquired by the
sword an ascendancy similar to that which formerly belonged
to the Roman republic.
Cooped up once
more within the limits of the island, the warlike people employed in
civil strife those arms which had been the terror of Europe.
The means of profuse expenditure had long been drawn by the
English barons from the oppressed provinces of France. That
source of supply was gone: but the ostentatious and luxurious habits
which prosperity had engendered still remained; and the great
lords, unable to gratify their tastes by plundering the French, were
eager to plunder each other. The realm to which they were now
confined would not, in the phrase of Comines, the most judicious
observer of that time, suffice for them all. Two aristocratical
factions, headed by two branches of the royal family, engaged in
a long and fierce struggle for supremacy. As the animosity of
those factions did not really arise from the dispute about the
succession it lasted long after all ground of dispute about the
succession was removed. The party of the Red Rose survived the
last prince who claimed the crown in right of Henry the Fourth.
The party of the White Rose survived the marriage of
Richmond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs who had any decent show of
right, the adherents of Lancaster rallied round a line of
bastards, and the adherents of York set up a succession of
impostors. When, at length, many aspiring nobles had perished on
the field of battle or by the hands of the executioner, when
many illustrious houses had disappeared forever from history, when
those great families which remained had been exhausted and
sobered by calamities, it was universally acknowledged that
the claims of all the contending Plantagenets were united in the
house of Tudor.
Meanwhile a change
was proceeding infinitely more momentous than the acquisition or
loss of any province, than the rise or fall of any dynasty.
Slavery and the evils by which slavery is everywhere accompanied were
fast disappearing.
It is remarkable
that the two greatest and most salutary social revolutions which
have taken place in England, that revolution which, in the
thirteenth century, put an end to the tyranny of nation over
nation, and that revolution which, a few generations later, put an end
to the property of man in man, were silently and imperceptibly
effected. They struck contemporary observers with no surprise,
and have received from historians a very scanty measure of
attention. They were brought about neither by legislative
regulations nor by physical force. Moral causes noiselessly
effaced first the distinction between Norman and Saxon, and then
the distinction between master and slave. None can venture to fix
the precise moment at which either distinction ceased. Some faint
traces of the old Norman feeling might perhaps have been found
late in the fourteenth century. Some faint traces of the institution
of villenage were detected by the curious so late as the days
of the Stuarts; nor has that institution ever, to this hour, been
abolished by statute.
It would be most
unjust not to acknowledge that the chief agent in these two great
deliverances was religion; and it may perhaps be doubted whether
a purer religion might not have been found a less efficient
agent. The benevolent spirit of the Christian morality is
undoubtedly adverse to distinctions of caste. But to the Church of Rome
such distinctions are peculiarly odious; for they are
incompatible with other distinctions which are essential to her system. She
ascribes to every priest a mysterious dignity which entitles him
to the reverence of every layman; and she does not consider any
man as disqualified, by reason of his nation or of his family, for
the priesthood. Her doctrines respecting the sacerdotal
character, however erroneous they may be, have repeatedly
mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society. That
superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious which, in
regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race, creates an
aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts the
relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and compels the
hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual tribunal of the
hereditary bondman. To this day, in some countries where
negro slavery exists, Popery appears in advantageous
contrast to other forms of Christianity. It is notorious that the
antipathy between the European and African races is by no
means so strong at Rio Janerio as at Washington. In our own country
this peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system produced, during
the middle ages, many salutary effects. It is true that, shortly
after the battle of Hastings, Saxon prelates and abbots were
violently deposed, and that ecclesiastical adventurers from
the Continent were intruded by hundreds into lucrative
benefices. Yet even then pious divines of Norman blood raised their
voices against such a violation of the constitution of the Church,
refused to accept mitres from the hands of William, and
charged him, on the peril of his soul, not to forget that the
vanquished islanders were his fellow Christians. The first protector
whom the English found among the dominant caste was Archbishop
Anselm. At a time when the English name was a reproach, and when
all the civil and military dignities of the kingdom were
supposed to belong exclusively to the countrymen of the Conqueror, the
despised race learned, with transports of delight, that one
of themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been elevated to the
papal throne, and had held out his foot to be kissed by
ambassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It was a national
as well as a religious feeling that drew great multitudes to the
shrine of Becket, whom they regarded as the enemy of their
enemies. Whether he was a Norman or a Saxon may be doubted: but there
is no doubt that he perished by Norman hands, and that the
Saxons cherished his memory with peculiar tenderness and veneration,
and, in their popular poetry, represented him as one of their own
race. A successor of Becket was foremost among the refractory
magnates who obtained that charter which secured the privileges
both of the Norman barons and of the Saxon yeomanry. How
great a part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics subsequently had
in the abolition of villenage we learn from the unexceptionable
testimony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest Protestant
counsellors of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder asked for the last
sacraments, his spiritual attendants regularly adjured him, as he
loved his soul, to emancipate his brethren for whom Christ had
died. So successfully had the Church used her formidable
machinery that, before the Reformation came, she had enfranchised
almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except her own, who, to do
her justice, seem to have been very tenderly treated.
There can be no
doubt that, when these two great revolutions had been effected, our
forefathers were by far the best governed people in Europe.
During three hundred years the social system had been in a
constant course of improvement. Under the first Plantagenets there
had been barons able to bid defiance to the sovereign, and
peasants degraded to the level of the swine and oxen which they
tended. The exorbitant power of the baron had been gradually
reduced. The condition of the peasant had been gradually
elevated. Between the aristocracy and the working people had sprung
up a middle class, agricultural and commercial. There was still,
it may be, more inequality than is favourable to the happiness and
virtue of our species: but no man was altogether above
the restraints of law; and no man was altogether below its
protection.
That the political
institutions of England were, at this early period, regarded
by the English with pride and affection, and by the most
enlightened men of neighbouring nations with admiration and envy, is
proved by the clearest evidence. But touching the nature of these
institutions there has been much dishonest and acrimonious
controversy.
The historical
literature of England has indeed suffered grievously from a
circumstance which has not a little contributed to her prosperity.
The change, great as it is, which her polity has undergone
during the last six centuries, has been the effect of gradual
development, not of demolition and reconstruction. The present
constitution of our country is, to the constitution under which she
flourished five hundred years ago, what the tree is to the sapling, what
the man is to the boy. The alteration has been great. Yet there
never was a moment at which the chief part of what existed was
not old. A polity thus formed must abound in anomalies. But for
the evils arising from mere anomalies we have ample
compensation. Other societies possess written constitutions more symmetrical.
But no other society has yet succeeded in uniting revolution
with prescription, progress with stability, the energy of
youth with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.
This great
blessing, however, has its drawbacks: and one of those drawbacks is that
every source of information as to our early history has been
poisoned by party spirit. As there is no country where statesmen
have been so much under the influence of the past, so there is
no country where historians have been so much under the
influence of the present. Between these two things, indeed, there is a
natural connection. Where history is regarded merely as a
picture of life and manners, or as a collection of experiments from
which general maxims of civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer
lies under no very pressing temptation to misrepresent
transactions of ancient date. But where history is regarded as a
repository of titledeeds, on which the rights of governments and
nations depend, the motive to falsification becomes almost
irresistible. A Frenchman is not now impelled by any strong
interest either to exaggerate or to underrate the power of the Kings
of the house of Valois. The privileges of the States General, of
the States of Britanny, of the States of Burgundy, are to
him matters of as little practical importance as the constitution
of the Jewish Sanhedrim or of the Amphictyonic Council. The gulph
of a great revolution completely separates the new from the old
system. No such chasm divides the existence of the English nation
into two distinct parts. Our laws and customs have never been
lost in general and irreparable ruin. With us the precedents of the
middle ages are still valid precedents, and are still cited, on
the gravest occasions, by the most eminent Statesmen. For
example, when King George the Third was attacked by the malady
which made him incapable of performing his regal functions, and
when the most distinguished lawyers and politicians
differed widely as to the course which ought, in such circumstances, to
be pursued, the Houses of Parliament would not proceed to discuss
any plan of regency till all the precedents which were to be
found in our annals, from the earliest times, had been collected
and arranged. Committees were appointed to examine the
ancient records of the realm. The first case reported was that of the
year 1217: much importance was attached to the cases of 1326, of
1377, and of 1422: but the case which was justly considered
as most in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country the
dearest interests of parties have frequently been on the results of the
researches of antiquaries. The inevitable consequence was
that our antiquaries conducted their researches in the spirit of
partisans.
It is therefore
not surprising that those who have written, concerning the
limits of prerogative and liberty in the old polity of England
should generally have shown the temper, not of judges, but of
angry and uncandid advocates. For they were discussing, not a
speculative matter, but a matter which had a direct and
practical connection with the most momentous and exciting disputes
of their own day. From the commencement of the long contest
between the Parliament and the Stuarts down to the time when the
pretensions of the Stuarts ceased to be formidable, few
questions were practically more important than the question
whether the administration of that family had or had not been in
accordance with the ancient constitution of the kingdom. This
question could be decided only by reference to the records of
preceding reigns. Bracton and Fleta, the Mirror of Justice and the
Rolls of Parliament, were ransacked to find pretexts for the
excesses of the Star Chamber on one side, and of the High Court of
Justice on the other. During a long course of years every Whig
historian was anxious to prove that the old English government
was all but republican, every Tory historian to prove that it
was all but despotic.
With such
feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles of the middle ages.
Both readily found what they sought; and both obstinately
refused to see anything but what they sought. The champions of the
Stuarts could easily point out instances of oppression
exercised on the subject. The defenders of the Roundheads could
as easily produce instances of determined and successful
resistance offered to the Crown. The Tories quoted, from ancient
writings, expressions almost as servile as were heard from the
pulpit of Mainwaring. The Whigs discovered expressions as
bold and severe as any that resounded from the judgment seat of
Bradshaw. One set of writers adduced numerous instances in which
Kings had extorted money without the authority of Parliament.
Another set cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to
itself the power of inflicting punishment on Kings. Those who
saw only one half of the evidence would have concluded that the
Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey: those
who saw only the other half would have concluded that the
Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of Venice; and both
conclusions would have been equally remote from the truth.
The old English
government was one of a class of limited monarchies which
sprang up in Western Europe during the middle ages, and which,
notwithstanding many diversities, bore to one another a strong
family likeness. That there should have been such a likeness is
not strange The countries in which those monarchies arose
had been provinces of the same great civilised empire, and had
been overrun and conquered, about the same time, by tribes of the
same rude and warlike nation. They were members of the same great
coalition against Islam. They were in communion with the same
superb and ambitious Church. Their polity naturally took the same
form. They had institutions derived partly from imperial Rome,
partly from papal Rome, partly from the old Germany. All had
Kings; and in all the kingly office became by degrees strictly
hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles which had originally
indicated military rank. The dignity of knighthood, the
rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had richly endowed
ecclesiastical establishments, municipal corporations
enjoying large franchises, and senates whose consent was necessary to
the validity of some public acts.
Of these kindred
constitutions the English was, from an early period, justly
reputed the best. The prerogatives of the sovereign were
undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion and the spirit of
chivalry concurred to exalt his dignity. The sacred oil had been
poured on his head. It was no disparagement to the bravest and
noblest knights to kneel at his feet. His person was inviolable. He
alone was entitled to convoke the Estates of the realm: he could at
his pleasure dismiss them; and his assent was necessary to all
their legislative acts. He was the chief of the executive
administration, the sole organ of communication with foreign powers,
the captain of the military and naval forces of the state, the
fountain of justice, of mercy, and of honour. He had large powers
for the regulation of trade. It was by him that money was coined,
that weights and measures were fixed, that marts and havens
were appointed. His ecclesiastical patronage was immense. His
hereditary revenues, economically administered, sufficed to meet
the ordinary charges of government. His own domains were of
vast extent. He was also feudal lord paramount of the whole soil of
his kingdom, and, in that capacity, possessed many lucrative and
many formidable rights, which enabled him to annoy and depress
those who thwarted him, and to enrich and aggrandise,
without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed his favour.
But his power,
though ample, was limited by three great constitutional
principles, so ancient that none can say when they began to exist, so
potent that their natural development, continued through
many generations, has produced the order of things under which
we now live.
First, the King
could not legislate without the consent of his Parliament.
Secondly, he could impose no tax without the consent of his Parliament.
Thirdly, he was bound to conduct the executive administration
according to the laws of the land, and, if he broke those laws,
his advisers and his agents were responsible.
No candid Tory
will deny that these principles had, five hundred years ago,
acquired the authority of fundamental rules. On the other hand, no
candid Whig will affirm that they were, till a later period,
cleared from all ambiguity, or followed out to all their
consequences. A constitution of the middle ages was not, like a
constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth century, created entire by
a single act, and fully set forth in a single document. It is
only in a refined and speculative age that a polity is
constructed on system. In rude societies the progress of government
resembles the progress of language and of versification.
Rude societies have language, and often copious and energetic
language: but they have no scientific grammar, no definitions of
nouns and verbs, no names for declensions, moods, tenses, and
voices. Rude societies have versification, and often versification of
great power and sweetness: but they have no metrical canons;
and the minstrel whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are
the delight of his audience, would himself be unable to say of
how many dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As
eloquence exists before syntax, and song before prosody, so
government may exist in a high degree of excellence long before the
limits of legislative, executive, and judicial power have been
traced with precision.
It was thus in our
country. The line which bounded the royal prerogative,
though in general sufficiently clear, had not everywhere been
drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There was, therefore, near
the border some debatable ground on which incursions and
reprisals continued to take place, till, after ages of strife,
plain and durable landmarks were at length set up. It may be
instructive to note in what way, and to what extent, our
ancient sovereigns were in the habit of violating the three great
principles by which the liberties of the nation were protected.
No English King
has ever laid claim to the general legislative power. The most
violent and imperious Plantagenet never fancied himself competent
to enact, without the consent of his great council, that a
jury should consist of ten persons instead of twelve, that a
widow's dower should be a fourth part instead of a third, that
perjury should be a felony, or that the custom of gavelkind should
be introduced into Yorkshire.2 But the King had the power of
pardoning offenders; and there is one point at which the power of
pardoning and the power of legislating seem to fade into each other,
and may easily, at least in a simple age, be confounded. A
penal statute is virtually annulled if the penalties which it
imposes are regularly remitted as often as they are incurred.
The sovereign was undoubtedly competent to remit penalties
without limit. He was therefore competent to annul virtually a
penal statute. It might seem that there could be no serious
objection to his doing formally what he might do virtually. Thus,
with the help of subtle and courtly lawyers, grew up, on the
doubtful frontier which separates executive from legislative
functions, that great anomaly known as the dispensing power.