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Title: A History of England - Eleventh Edition
Author: Oman, Charles William Chadwick
Language: English
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A HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
by
CHARLES OMAN,
Fellow of All Souls' College,
and Deputy-Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford;
Author of
"Warwick the Kingmaker;" "England in the Nineteenth Century;"
"A History of Greece;" "The Art of War in the Middle Ages;"
"The History of the Peninsular War," etc.
Eleventh Edition.
London:
Edward Arnold.
1904.
Printed by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
London and Beccles.
PREFACE
When adding one more to the numerous histories of England which have
appeared of late years, the author feels that he must justify his
conduct. Ten years of teaching in the Honour School of Modern History
in the University of Oxford have convinced him that there may still be
room for a single-volume history of moderate compass, which neither
cramps the earlier annals of our island into a few pages, nor expands
the last two centuries into unmanageable bulk. He trusts that his
book may be useful to the higher forms of schools, and for the pass
examinations of the Universities. The kindly reception which his
_History of Greece_ has met both here and in America, leads him to hope
that a volume constructed on the same scale and the same lines may be
not less fortunate.
He has to explain one or two points which may lead to criticism. In
Old-English names he has followed the correct and original forms,
save in some few cases, such as Edward and Alfred, where a close
adherence to correctness might savour of pedantry. He wishes the maps
to be taken, not as superseding the use of an atlas, but as giving
boundaries, local details, and sites in which many atlases will be
found wanting.
Finally, he has to give his best thanks to friends who were good
enough to correct certain sections of the book--especially to Sir
William Anson, Warden of All Souls' College, Mr. C. H. Turner of
Magdalen College, and Mr. F. Haverfield of Christ Church. But most of
all does he owe gratitude to the indefatigable compiler of the Index,
whose hands made a burden into a pleasure.
OXFORD,
_January 25, 1895_.
PREFACE TO THE NINTH EDITION.
The fact that this book has passed through nine editions in seven years
seems to show that it was not altogether written in vain, and has
answered the purpose for which it was written.
The first edition carried the history of Great Britain to the year
1885. I have now prolonged it to the year 1902. The termination
of the long reign of Queen Victoria, the end of the century, and
the long-delayed pacification of South Africa, appeared to provide
landmarks to which the narrative ought to be extended.
I have to thank many kind correspondents for corrections and
suggestions made during the last seven years. They will note that their
hints have not been neglected. A special word of thanks is due to the
Rev. A. Beaven of Leamington, for a very copious and useful list of
_corrigenda_, of which I have made full use.
OXFORD,
_September 15, 1902_.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. CELTIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN 1
II. THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH 14
III. THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND, AND THE RISE OF
WESSEX. 597-836 23
IV. THE DANISH INVASIONS, AND THE GREAT KINGS
OF WESSEX, 836-975 33
V. THE DAYS OF CNUT AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR 51
VI. THE NORMAN CONQUEST, 1066-1087 67
VII. WILLIAM THE RED--HENRY I.--STEPHEN. 1087-1154 81
VIII. HENRY II. 1154-1189 97
IX. RICHARD I. AND JOHN. 1189-1216 114
X. HENRY III. 1216-1272 134
XI. EDWARD I. 1272-1307 148
XII. EDWARD II. 1307-1327 171
XIII. EDWARD III. 1327-1377 180
XIV. RICHARD II. 1377-1399 202
XV. HENRY IV. 1399-1413 213
XVI. HENRY V. 1413-1422 220
XVII. THE LOSS OF FRANCE. 1422-1453 231
XVIII. THE WARS OF THE ROSES. 1454-1471 245
XIX. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK. 1471-1485 260
XX. HENRY VII. 1485-1509 272
XXI. HENRY VIII., AND THE BREACH WITH ROME. 1509-1536 282
XXII. THE ENGLISH REFORMATION. 1536-1553 296
XXIII. THE CATHOLIC REACTION. 1553-1558 314
XXIV. ELIZABETH. 1558-1603 322
XXV. JAMES I. 1603-1625 350
XXVI. THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. TO THE OUTBREAK
OF THE CIVIL WAR. 1625-1642 362
XXVII. THE GREAT CIVIL WAR. 1642-1651 380
XXVIII. CROMWELL. 1651-1660 406
XXIX. CHARLES II. 1660-1685 420
XXX. JAMES II. 1685-1688 436
XXXI. ENGLAND AFTER THE REVOLUTION. 1688-1702 445
XXXII. ANNE. 1702-1714 461
XXXIII. THE RULE OF THE WHIGS. 1714-1739 482
XXXIV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLONIAL EMPIRE
OF BRITAIN. 1739-1760 498
XXXV. GEORGE III. AND THE WHIGS--THE AMERICAN
WAR. 1760-1783 532
XXXVI. THE YOUNGER PITT, AND THE RECOVERY OF
ENGLISH PROSPERITY. 1782-1793 554
XXXVII. ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. 1789-1802 574
XXXVIII. ENGLAND AND BONAPARTE. 1802-1815 598
XXXIX. REACTION AND REFORM. 1815-1832 633
XL. CHARTISM AND THE CORN LAWS. 1832-1852 652
XLI. THE DAYS OF PALMERSTON. 1852-1865 673
XLII. DEMOCRACY AND IMPERIALISM. 1865-1885 700
XLIII. THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 1886-1901--THE
SOUTH AFRICAN WAR. 1899-1902 718
XLIV. INDIA AND THE COLONIES. 1815-1902 734
INDEX 757
MAPS AND PLANS.
PAGE
THE GAELIC AND BRITISH TRIBES IN BRITAIN 3
ROMAN BRITAIN 10
ENGLAND IN THE YEAR 570 18
ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTH CENTURY 30
ENGLAND IN THE YEAR 900 41
FRANCE IN THE REIGN OF HENRY II. 98
THE BATTLE OF LEWES 142
THE BATTLE OF EVESHAM 145
WALES IN 1282 154
THE BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN 174
THE BATTLE OF CRÉCY 188
THE BATTLE OF POICTIERS 191
FRANCE AFTER THE TREATY OF BRETIGNY 194
THE BATTLE OF AGINCOURT 223
THE BATTLE OF EDGEHILL 384
ENGLAND AT THE END OF 1643 388
THE BATTLE OF MARSTON MOOR 390
THE BATTLE OF NASEBY 394
THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS, 1702 466
THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM 467
SCOTLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 506
ENGLAND AND FRANCE IN AMERICA, 1756 521
THE BATTLE OF QUEBEC 527
INDIA IN THE TIME OF WARREN HASTINGS 570
SPAIN AND PORTUGAL, 1803-1814 616
EUROPE IN 1811-1812 620
THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO 629
SEBASTOPOL, 1854 686
THEATRE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR OF 1899-1902 730
INDIA, 1815-1890 736
GENEALOGICAL TABLES.
PAGE
THE HOUSE OF ECGBERT 66
THE HOUSE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 80
THE SCOTTISH SUCCESSION, 1292 160
THE FRENCH SUCCESSION, 1337 184
THE DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD III. 201
THE KIN OF CHARLES V. 286
THE SPANISH SUCCESSION, 1699 457
The HOUSE OF STUART 481
The HOUSE OF HANOVER 497
A HISTORY OF ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
CELTIC AND ROMAN BRITAIN.
In the dim dawn of history our island was a land of wood and marsh,
broken here and there by patches of open ground, and pierced by
occasional track-ways, which threaded the forest and circled round
the edges of the impassable fen. The inhabited districts of the
country were not the fertile river-bottoms where population grew
thick in after-days; these were in primitive times nothing but sedgy
water-meadows or matted thickets. Men dwelt rather on the thinly
wooded upland, where, if the soil was poor, it was at any rate free
from the tangled undergrowth that covered the valleys. It was on the
chalk ridges of Kent or Wilts, or the moorland hills of Yorkshire or
Cornwall, rather than on the brink of the Thames or Severn, that the
British tribes clustered thick. Down by the rivers there were but small
settlements of hunters and fishers perched on some knoll that rose
above the brake and the rushes.
The earliest explorers from the south, who described the inhabitants of
Britain, seem to have noticed little difference between one wild tribe
and another. But as a matter of fact the islanders were divided into
two or perhaps three distinct races, who had passed westward into our
island at very different dates. First had come a short dark people, who
knew not the use of metals, and wielded weapons of flint and bone. They
were in the lowest grade of savagery, had not even learnt to till the
soil, and lived by fishing and hunting. They dwelt in rude huts, or
even in the caves from which they had driven out the bear and the wolf.
[Sidenote: =The Celts, Gael, and Britons.=]
Long after these primitive settlers, the first wave of the Celts,
seven or eight centuries before Christ, came flooding all over Western
Europe, and drove the earlier races into nooks and corners of the
earth. They crossed over into Britain after overrunning the lands
on the other side of the Channel, and gradually conquered the whole
island, as well as its neighbour, Erin. The Celts came in two waves;
the first, composed of the people who were called Gael, seem to have
appeared many generations before the second, who bore the name of
Britons.
The Gael are the ancestors of the people of Ireland and the Scotch
Highlands, while the Britons occupied the greater part of England and
Wales, and are the progenitors of the Welsh of to-day. The old savage
race who held the islands before the Celts appeared, were partly
exterminated and partly absorbed by the new-comers. The Celts on the
eastern side of the island remained unmixed with their predecessors;
but into the mountainous districts of the west they penetrated in less
numbers, and there the ancient inhabitants were not slain off, but
became the serfs of their conquerors. Thus the eastern shore of Britain
became a purely Celtic land; but in the districts along the shore of
the Irish Sea, where the Gael bore rule, the blood of the earlier
race remained, and the population was largely non-Celtic. There are
to this day regions where the survival of the ancient inhabitants can
be traced by the preponderance of short stature and dark hair among
the inhabitants. Many such are to be found both in South Wales and in
the Highlands of Scotland. The Gael, therefore, were of much less pure
blood than the later-coming Britons.
The Britons and their Gaelic kinsmen, though far above the degraded
tribes whom they had supplanted, still showed many signs of savagery.
They practised horrid rites of human sacrifice, in which they burnt
captives alive to their gods, cramming them into huge images of
wicker-work. But the barbarous practice which most astonished the
ancient world was their custom of marking themselves with bright blue
patterns painted with the dye of woad, and this led the Romans to give
the northern tribes, who retained the custom longest, the name of the
_Picti_, or "painted men."
[Illustration: GAEL AND BRITON.]
The Celts were a tall, robust, fair-haired race, who had reached a
certain stage of civilization. They tilled the fields and sailed the
seas, but their chief wealth consisted in great herds of cattle, which
they pastured in the forest-clearings which then constituted inhabited
Britain. They wore armour of bronze, and used brazen weapons, to which
in a later time they added iron weapons also. They delighted to adorn
their persons with "torques" or necklaces of twisted gold. Their chiefs
went out to war in chariots drawn by small shaggy horses, but alighted,
like the ancient Greeks of the Heroic Age, when the hand-to-hand
fighting began.
Like all Celtic tribes in all ages, the Britons and the Gael showed
small capacity for union. They dwelt apart in many separate tribes,
though sometimes a great and warlike chief would compel one or two
of his neighbours to do him homage. But such kingdoms usually fell
to pieces at the death of the warrior who had built them up. After
the kings and chiefs, the most important class among the Celts was
that of the Druids, a caste of priests and soothsayers, who possessed
great influence over the people. They it was who kept up the barbarous
sacrifices which we have already mentioned. Although tribal wars were
incessant, yet the Britons had learnt some of the arts of peace, and
traded with each other and with the Celts across the Channel. For
the tin of Cornwall it would seem that they made barter with the
adventurous traders who pushed their way across Gaul from the distant
Mediterranean to buy that metal, which was very rare in the ancient
world. The Britons used money of gold and of tin, on which they stamped
a barbarous copy of the devices on the coins of Philip, the great King
of Macedonia, whose gold pieces found their way in the course of trade
even to the shores of the Channel. The fact that they had discovered
the advantages of a coinage proves sufficiently that they were no
longer mere savages.
[Sidenote: =Invasion of Julius Cæsar.=]
We have no materials for constructing a history of the ancient Celtic
inhabitants of Britain till the middle of the first century before
Christ, when the great Roman conqueror, Julius Cæsar, who had just
subdued northern Gaul, determined to cross the straits and invade
Britain. He wished to strike terror into its inhabitants, for the
tribes south of the Thames were closely connected with their kinsmen
on the other side of the Channel, and he suspected them of stirring up
trouble among the Gauls. Cæsar took over two legions and disembarked
near Romney (B.C. 55). The natives thronged down to the shore to oppose
him, but his veterans plunged into the shallows, fought their way to
land, and beat the Britons back into the interior. He found, however,
that the land would not be an easy conquest, for all the tribes of the
south turned out in arms against him. Therefore he took his legions
back to Gaul as the autumn drew on, vowing to return in the next year.
In B.C. 54 he brought over an army twice as large as his first
expedition, and boldly pushed into the interior. Cassivelaunus, the
greatest chief of eastern Britain, roused a confederacy of tribes
against him; but Cæsar forced the passage of the Thames, and burnt
the great stockaded village in the woods beyond that river, where his
enemy dwelt. Many of the neighbouring princes then did him homage; but
troubles in Gaul called him home again, and he left the island, taking
with him naught save a few hostages and a vague promise of tribute and
submission from the kings of Kent.
[Sidenote: =Commerce with Europe.=]
Nearly a hundred years passed before Britain was to see another Roman
army. The successors of Julius Cæsar left the island to itself, and
it was only by peaceful commerce with the provinces of Gaul that the
Britons learnt to know of the great empire that had come to be their
neighbour. But there grew up a considerable intercourse between Britain
and the continent: the Roman traders came over to sell the luxuries of
the South to the islanders, and British kings more than once visited
Rome to implore the aid of the emperor against their domestic enemies.
[Sidenote: =Invasion of Claudius, A.D. 43.=]
But such aid was not granted, and the island, though perceptibly
influenced by Roman civilization, was for long years not touched by the
Roman sword. At last, in A.D. 43, Claudius Cæsar resolved to subdue the
Britons. The island was in its usual state of disorder, after the death
of a great king named Cunobelinus--Shakespeare's "Cymbeline"--who had
held down south-eastern Britain in comparative quiet and prosperity
for many years. Some of the chiefs who fared ill in the civil wars
asked Claudius to restore them, and he resolved to make their petition
an excuse for conquering the island. Accordingly his general, Aulus
Plautius, crossed the Channel, and overran Kent and the neighbouring
districts in a few weeks. So easy was the conquest that the unwarlike
emperor himself ventured over to Britain, and saw his armies cross the
Thames, and occupy Camulodunum (Colchester), which had been the capital
of King Cymbeline, and now was made a Roman colony, and re-named after
Claudius himself.
[Sidenote: =South-eastern Britain subdued.=]
The emperor returned to Rome after sixteen days spent in the island,
there to build himself a memorial arch, and to celebrate a triumph in
full form for the conquest of Britain. Aulus Plautius remained behind
with four legions, and completed the subjection of the lands which
lie between the Wash and Southampton Water, and thus formed the first
Roman province in the island. There does not seem to have been very
much serious fighting required to reduce the tribes of south-eastern
Britain; the conquerors consented to accept as their vassals those
chiefs who chose to do homage, and only used their arms against such
tribes as refused to acknowledge the emperor's suzerainty.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Boadicea.=]
Under successive governors the size of the province of Britain
continued to grow, till in the reign of Nero it had advanced up to
the line of the Severn and Humber, and included all the central and
southern counties of modern England. But the wild tribes of the Welsh
mountains and the Yorkshire moors opposed a determined resistance to
the conquerors, and did not yield till a much later date. While the
governor Suetonius Paulinus was engaged in a campaign on the Menai
Straits, against the tribe of the Ordovices, there burst out behind
him the celebrated rebellion of Queen Boudicca (Boadicea). This rising
began among the Iceni, the tribe who dwelt in what is now Norfolk and
Suffolk. They had long been governed by a vassal king; but when he
died sonless, the Romans annexed his dominions and cruelly ill-treated
his widow Boudicca and her daughters. Bleeding from the Roman rods,
the indignant queen called her tribesmen to arms, and massacred all
the Romans within her reach. All the tribes of eastern Britain rose to
aid her, and the rebels cut to pieces the Ninth Legion, and sacked the
three towns of Londinium, Verulamium, and Camulodunum,[1] slaying, it
is said, as many as 70,000 persons in their wild cruelty. But presently
the governor Paulinus returned from his campaign in Wales at the head
of his army, and in a great battle defeated and destroyed the British
hordes. Boudicca, who had led them to the field in person, slew herself
when she saw the battle lost (A.D. 61).
[Sidenote: =Agricola Governor of Britain, A.D. 78-85.=]
Southern Britain never rose again, but the Romans had great trouble
in conquering the Silurians and Ordovices of Wales, and the Brigantes
beyond the Humber. They were finally subdued by the great general
Agricola, who governed the British province from 78 to 85. This good
man was the father-in-law of the historian Tacitus, who wrote his
life--a document from which great part of our knowledge of Roman
Britain is derived. After conquering North-Wales and Yorkshire,
Agricola marched northward against the Gaelic tribes of Scotland. He
overran the Lowlands, and then pushed forward into the hills of the
Highlands. At a spot called the Graupian Mountain (_Mons Graupius_)
somewhere in Perthshire, he defeated the Caledonians, the fierce race
who dwelt beyond the Forth and Clyde, with great slaughter. It was
his purpose to conquer the whole island to its northernmost cape, and
even to subdue the neighbouring Gaels of Ireland. But ere his task was
complete the cruel and suspicious emperor Domitian called him home,
because he envied and feared his military talents.
The province of Britain remained very much as Agricola had left it,
stopping short at the Forth, and leaving the Scottish Highlands outside
the Roman pale. It was held down by three Roman legions, each of
whom watched one of the three most unruly of the British tribes; one
at Eboracum (York) curbed the Brigantes; a second at Deva (Chester)
observed the Ordovices; and a third at Isca (Caerleon-on-Usk) was
responsible for the good behaviour of the Silurians.
Agricola did much to make the Roman rule more palatable to the Britons
by his wise ordinances for the government of the province. He tried to
persuade the Celtic chiefs to learn Latin, and to take to civilized
ways of life, as their kinsmen in Gaul had done. He kept the land so
safe and well guarded that thousands of settlers from the continent
came to dwell in its towns. His efforts won much success, and for the
future, southern Britain was a very quiet province.
[Sidenote: =The Wall of Hadrian.=]
But the Caledonians to the north retained their independence, and
often raided into the Lowlands, while the Brigantes of Yorkshire still
kept rising in rebellion, and once in the reign of Hadrian massacred
the whole legion that garrisoned York. It was perhaps this disaster
that drew Hadrian himself to Britain in the course of his never-ending
travels. The emperor journeyed across the isle, and resolved to fix
the Roman boundary on a line traced across the Northumbrian moors
from Carlisle to Newcastle. There was erected the celebrated "Wall
of Hadrian," a solid stone wall drawn in front of the boundary-ditch
that marked the old frontier, and furnished with forts at convenient
intervals. This enormous work, eighty miles long, reached from sea
to sea, and was garrisoned by a number of "auxiliary cohorts,"
or regiments drawn from the subject tribes of the empire--Moors,
Spaniards, Thracians, and many more--for the Romans did not trust
British troops to hold the frontier against their own untamed kinsmen.
The legion at York remained behind to support the garrison of the wall
in case of necessity.
[Sidenote: =The Wall of Antoninus.=]
A few years later the continued trouble which the northern parts
of Britain suffered from the raids of the Caledonians, caused the
governors of the province to build another wall in advance of that
of Hadrian. This outer line of defence, a less solid work than that
which ran from Newcastle to Carlisle, was composed of a trench, and an
earthern wall of sods, drawn from the mouth of the Forth to the mouth
of the Clyde, at the narrowest part of the island. It is generally
called the Wall of Antoninus, from the name of the emperor who was
reigning when it was erected.
[Sidenote: =Campaign of Severus in Caledonia.=]
Only once more did the Romans make any endeavour to complete the
subjection of Britain by adding the Gaelic tribes of the Scottish
Highlands to the list of their tributaries. In 208-9-10 the warlike
emperor Severus led the legions north of the Wall of Antoninus, and
set to work to tame the Caledonians by felling their forests, building
roads across their hills, and erecting forts among them. He overran
the land beyond the Firth of Forth, and might perchance have ended
by conquering the whole island, but he died of disease at York early
in 211. His successors drew back, abandoned his conquests, and never
attempted again to subjugate the Caledonians.
[Sidenote: =Roman civilization in Britain.=]
Altogether the Romans abode in Britain for three hundred and sixty
years (A.D. 43 to A.D. 410). Their occupation of the land was mainly
a military one, and they never succeeded in teaching the mass of the
natives to abandon their Celtic tongue, or to take up Roman customs and
habits. The towns indeed were Romanized, and great military centres
like Eboracum and Deva, or commercial centres like London, were filled
with a Latin-speaking population, and boasted of fine temples, baths,
and public buildings. But the villagers of the open country, and the
Celtic landholders who dwelt among them, were very little influenced
by the civilization of the town-dwellers, and lived on by themselves
much in the way of their ancestors, worshipping the same Celtic gods,
using the same rude tools and vessels, and dwelling in the same low
clay huts, though the townsmen were accustomed to build stone houses
after the Roman fashion, to employ all manner of foreign luxuries, and
to translate into Minerva, or Apollo, or Mars, the names of their old
Celtic deities Sul, or Mabon, or Belucatadrus.
[Illustration: ROMAN BRITAIN
=SHOWING THE
CHIEF ROMAN ROADS.=]
The Romans greatly changed the face of Britain by their great
engineering works. They drew broad roads from place to place, seldom
turning aside to avoid forest or river. Their solidly-built causeways
were carried across the marshy tracts, and pierced through the midst
of the densest woods. Where the road went, clearings on each side were
made, and population sprang up in what had hitherto been trackless
wilderness. The Romans explored the remotest corners of Wales and
Cornwall in their search after mineral wealth; they worked many tin,
lead, and copper mines in the island, and exported the ores to Gaul
and Italy. They developed the fisheries of Britain, especially the
oyster fishery; not only did they prize British pearls, but the oysters
themselves were exported as a special luxury to the distant capital of
the world. They improved the farming of the open country so much that
in years of scarcity the corn of Britain fed northern Gaul. In the
more pleasant corners of the land Roman officials or wealthy merchants
built themselves fine villas, with floors of mosaic, and elaborate
heating-apparatus to guard them against the cold of the northern
winter. Hundreds of such abodes are to be found: they clustered
especially thick along the south coast and in the vale of Gloucester.
Gauls, Italians, Greeks, and Orientals came to share in the trade
of Britain, and at the same time many of its natives must have
crossed to the continent, notably those who were sent to serve in the
auxiliary cohorts of Britons, which formed part of the Roman army,
and were quartered on the Rhine and Danube. But in spite of all this
intercourse, the Celts did not become Romanized like the Gauls or
Spaniards; the survival of their native tongue to this day sufficiently
proves it. In all the other provinces of the West, Latin completely
extinguished the old native languages. In the towns, however, the
Britons often took Roman names, and men of note in the countryside did
the same. Many of the commonest Welsh names of to-day are corrupt forms
of Latin names: Owen, for example, is a degradation from Eugenius, and
Rhys from Ambrosius, though they have lost so entirely the shape of
their ancient originals.
[Sidenote: =Britain harassed by barbarians.=]
Britain shared with the other provinces in the disasters which fell
upon the empire in the third century, in the days of the weak usurpers
who held the imperial throne after the extinction of the family of
Severus. Three races are recorded as having troubled the land: the
first was the ancient enemy, the Caledonians from beyond the wall,
whom now the Chronicles generally style _Picts_, "the painted men,"
because they alone of the inhabitants of Britain still retained the
barbarous habit of tattooing themselves. The second foe was the race
of the Saxons, the German tribes who dwelt by the mouths of the Elbe
and Weser. They were great marauders by sea, and so vexed the east of
Britain by their descents that the emperors created an officer called
"The Count of the Saxon Shore,"[2] whose duty was to guard the coast
from the Wash as far as Beachy Head by a chain of castles on the
water's edge, and a flotilla of war-galleys. The third enemy was the
Scottish race, a tribe who then occupied northern Ireland, and had not
yet moved across to the land which now bears their name. They infested
the shores of the province which lay between the Clyde and the Severn.
[Sidenote: =Carausius.=]
Attacked at once by Pict and Scot and Saxon, the province declined in
prosperity, and gained little help from the continent where emperors
were being made and remade at the rate of about one every three years.
Britain seems to have first recovered herself in the time of Carausius,
a "Count of the Saxon Shore," who proclaimed himself emperor, and
reigned as an independent sovereign on our side of the Channel (287).
His fleet drove off the Saxons, and his armies held back the Pict and
Scot as long as he lived. But after a reign of seven years the rebel
emperor was murdered, and three years later the province was reunited
to the empire.
[Sidenote: =Constantius and Constantine.=]
For the next twenty years Britain was under the rule of the emperors
Constantius and Constantine, both of whom dwelt much in the island, and
paid attention to its needs. Constantius died at York, and his son,
Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, went forth from
Britain to conquer all the Roman world. But with the extinction of
this great man's family in 362, evil days began once more. Barbarians
were thronging round every frontier of the empire, greedy for the
plunder of its great cities, while within were weak rulers, vexed
by constant military rebellions. The Pict, the Scot, and the Saxon
returned to Britain in greater force than before, and pushed their
raids into the very heart of the province. Meanwhile, the soldiery who
should have defended the island were constantly being drawn away by
ambitious generals, who wished to use them in attempts to seize Italy,
and win the imperial diadem. The ruin of Britain must be attributed to
this cause more than to any other: twice the whole of its garrison was
taken across the Channel by the rebellious governors, who had staked
their all on the cast for empire. It was after the second of these
rebels had failed, in 410, that the feeble Honorius, the legitimate
emperor of the West, refused to send back any troops to guard the
unprotected island, and bade the dismayed provincials do their best to
defend themselves, because he was unable to give them any assistance.
[Sidenote: =Britain deserted by the Romans.=]
Britain therefore ceased to belong to the Roman empire, not because it
wished to throw off the yoke, but because its masters declared that
they could no longer protect it. Its inhabitants were by no means
anxious to shift for themselves, and more than once they sent pathetic
appeals to Rome to ask for aid against the savage Picts and Saxons.
One of these appeals was written more than thirty years after Honorius
abandoned the province. It was called "The Groans of the Britons," and
ran thus: "The barbarians drive us into the sea, the sea drives us back
on to the barbarians. Our only choice is whether we shall die by the
sword or drown: for we have none to save us" (446).
In spite of these doleful complaints, Britain made a better fight
against her invaders than did any other of the provinces which
the Romans were constrained to abandon in the fifth century. But,
unfortunately for themselves, the Britons were inspired by the usual
Celtic spirit of disunion, and fell asunder into many states the moment
that the hand of the master was removed. Sometimes they combined under
a single leader, when the stress of invasion was unusually severe, but
such leagues were precarious and temporary. The list of their princes
shows that some of them were Romanized Britons, others pure Celts. By
the side of names like Ambrosius, Constantine, Aurelius, Gerontius,
Paternus, we have others like Vortigern, Cunedda, Maelgwn, and Kynan.
Arthur, the legendary chief under whom the Britons are said to have
turned back the Saxon invaders for a time, was--if he ever existed--the
bearer of a Roman name, a corruption of Artorius. But Arthur's name and
exploits are only found in romantic tales; the few historians of the
time have no mention of him.
[Sidenote: =Christianity in Britain.=]
Celtic Britain, when the Romans abandoned it, had become a Christian
country. Of the details of conversion of the land, we have only a few
stories of doubtful authenticity; but we know that British bishops
existed, and attended synods and councils on the continent, and that
there were many churches scattered over the face of the land. The
Britons were even beginning to send missionaries across the sea in
the fifth century. St. Patrick, the apostle of the Irish Gael, was a
native of the northern part of Roman Britain, who had been stolen as
a slave by Scottish pirates, and returned after his release to preach
the gospel to them, somewhere about the year 440. His name (Patricius)
clearly shows that he was a Romanized Briton. A less happy product of
the island was the heretical preacher Pelagius, whose doctrines spread
far over all Western Europe, and roused the anger of the great African
saint, Augustine of Hippo.
Here we must leave Celtic Britain, as the darkness of the fifth century
closes over it. For a hundred and fifty years our knowledge of its
history is most vague and fragmentary, and when next we see the island
clearly, the larger half of it has passed into the hands of a new
people, and is called England, and no longer Britain.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] London, St. Albans, Colchester.
[2] Comes Littoris Saxonici.
CHAPTER II.
THE COMING OF THE ENGLISH.
In the early half of the fifth century it seemed likely that Britain
would become the prey of its old enemies the Picts and Scots, rather
than of the more distant Saxons. But the wild tribes of the North came
to plunder only, while the pirates from the Elbe and Eider had larger
designs.
The conquest of Britain by the Angles and Saxons differed in every way
from that of the other Western provinces of the Roman empire by the
kindred tribes of the Goths, the Franks, and the Lombards. The Goths
and the Franks had dwelt for two hundred years on the borders of the
empire; they had traded with its merchants, served as mercenaries in
its armies, and learnt to appreciate its luxuries. Many of them had
accepted Christianity long before their conquest of the provinces which
they turned into Teutonic kingdoms. But the Saxons were plunged in the
blackest heathendom and barbarism, dwelling as they did by the Elbe
and Eider, far at the back of the tribes that had any touch with or
knowledge of the empire and its civilization. The Goth and the Frank
came to enslave, and to enjoy; the Angle and the Saxon were bent purely
on a work of destruction. Hence it came that, instead of contenting
themselves with overthrowing the provincial government, and enthralling
the inhabitants of the land, they swept away everything before them,
and replaced the old civilization of Britain by a perfectly new social
organization of their own.
[Sidenote: =Hengist and Horsa, 449.--Kingdom of Kent.=]
If the Welsh legends speak truly, the first settlement of the Saxons
on British soil was caused by the unwisdom of the native kings. We
are told that Vortigern, the monarch who ruled Kent and south-eastern
Britain, was so harried by the Picts and Scots that he sent in despair
to hire some German chiefs to fight his battles for him. The story
may be true, for in the decaying days of the Roman empire the Cæsars
themselves had often hired one barbarian to fight another, and the
British king may well have followed their example. The legend then
proceeds to tell how Vortigern's invitation was accepted by Hengist and
Horsa, two chiefs of Jutish blood, who came with their war-bands to
the aid of the Britons, and drove away the Picts and Scots. But when
the king of Kent wished to pay them their due and get them out of the
country, Hengist and Horsa refused to depart: they seized and fortified
the Isle of Thanet, which was then separated from the mainland by
a broad marshy channel, and defied the Britons to drive them away
(449). Then began a long war between the two sea-kings and their late
employer, which, after many vicissitudes, ended in the conquest of
the whole of Kent by Hengist. Horsa had been slain in the battle of
Aylesford, which gave the invaders full possession of the land between
the forest of the Weald and the estuary of the Thames. Hengist was
saluted as king by his victorious followers, and was the ancestor of a
long line of Kentish monarchs.
We cannot be sure that the details of the story of the conquest of Kent
are correct, but they are not unlikely, and it is quite probable that
this kingdom was the first state which the Germans built up on British
ground.
[Sidenote: =Aella, 477.--Kingdom of the South Saxons.=]
Hengist and Horsa's warriors were not Saxons, but members of the tribe
of the Jutes, who dwelt north of the Saxons in the Danish peninsula,
where a land of moors and lakes still bears the name of Jutland. But
the next band of invaders who seized on part of Britain were of Saxon
blood. An "alderman" or chief called Aella brought his war-band to the
southern shore of Britain in 477, and landed near the great fortress of
Anderida (Pevensey), one of the strongholds that had, in old days, been
under the care of the Roman "count of the Saxon shore." The followers
of Aella sacked this town, and slew off every living thing that was
therein. They went on to conquer the narrow slip of land between the
sea and the forest of the Weald, as far as Chichester and Selsea, and
made the chalky downs their own. Settling down thereon, they called
themselves the South Saxons, and the district got from them the name
of Sussex (Suth Seaxe). There Aella reigned as king, and many of his
obscure descendants after him.
[Sidenote: =Cerdic, 495.--Kingdom of the West Saxons.=]
Twenty years later, another band of Saxon adventurers, led by the
alderman Cerdic, landed on Southampton Water, west of the realm
of Aella (495), and, after a hard fight with the Britons, won the
valleys of the Itchen and the Test with the old Roman town of Venta
(Winchester). Many years after his first landing, Cerdic took the title
of king, like his neighbours of Kent and Sussex, and his realm became
known as the land of the West Saxons (Wessex). Gradually pushing onward
along the ridges of the downs, successive generations of the kings of
Wessex drove the Britons out of Dorsetshire and Wiltshire till the
line of conquest stopped at the forest-belt which lay east of Bath.
Here the advance stood still for a time, for the British kings of the
Damnonians, the tribes of Devon and Cornwall, made a most obstinate
defence. So gallant was it that the Celts of a later generation
believed that the legendary hero of their race, the great King Arthur,
had headed the hosts of Damnonia in person, and placed his city of
Camelot and his grave at Avilion within the compass of the western
realm.
[Sidenote: =Kingdom of the East Saxons.=]
While Cerdic was winning the downs of Hampshire for himself, another
band of Saxon warriors had landed on the northern shore of the Thames,
and subdued the low-lying country between the old Roman towns of
Camulodunum and Londinium, from the Colne as far as the Stour. This
troop of adventurers took the name of the East Saxons, and were the
last of their race to gain a footing on the British shores.
[Sidenote: =Kingdom of East Anglia, 520.=]
North of Essex it was no longer the Saxons who took up the task of
conquest, but a kindred tribe, the Angles or English, who dwelt
originally between the Saxons and the Jutes, in the district which is
now called Schleswig. They were closely allied in blood and language
to the earlier invaders of Britain, and very probably their chiefs
may have aided in the earlier raids. About the year 520 the Angles
descended in force on the eastern shore of Britain, and two of their
war-bands established themselves in the land where the Celtic tribe of
the Iceni had dwelt. These two bands called themselves the North Folk
and South Folk, and from them the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk get
their names. The kingdom formed by their union was known as that of the
East Angles.
[Sidenote: =The Northumbrian kingdoms, 547-550.=]
Still further to the north new Anglian bands seized on the lands north
of the Humber, whence they obtained the name of Northumbrians. They
built up two kingdoms in the old region of the Brigantes. One, from
Forth to Tees, was called Bernicia, from Bryneich, the old Celtic name
of the district. It comprised only a strip along the shore, reaching
no further inland than the forest of Selkirk and the head-waters of
the Tyne; its central stronghold was the sea-girt rock of Bamborough.
The second Northumbrian kingdom was called Deira, a name derived, like
that of Bernicia, from the former Celtic appellation of the land. Deira
comprised the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, and centred round
the old Roman city of Eboracum, whose name the Angles corrupted into
Eofervic. The origin of Bernicia and Deira is ascribed to the years
547-550, so that northern Britain was not subdued by the invaders till
a century after Kent had fallen into their hands.
[Sidenote: =The kingdom of Mercia.=]
Last of the English realms was established the great midland state of
Mercia--the "March" or borderland. It was formed by the combination
of three or four Anglian war-bands, who must have cut their way into
the heart of Britain up the line of the Trent. Among these bodies of
adventurers were the Lindiswaras--the troop who had won the old Roman
city of Lindum, or Lincoln,--the Mid-Angles of Leicester, and the
Mercians strictly so-called, who held the foremost line of advance
against the Celts in the modern counties of Derby and Stafford. The
Britons still maintained themselves at Deva and Uriconium (Chester and
Wroxeter), two ancient Roman strongholds, and the Mercians had not yet
reached the Severn at any point.
[Sidenote: =The Britons in the west.=]
About 570, therefore, after a hundred and twenty years of hard
fighting, the Angles and Saxons had conquered about one-half of
Britain, but they were stopped by a line of hills and forests running
down the centre of the island, and did not yet touch the western sea at
any point. Behind this barrier dwelt the unsubdued Britons, who were
styled by the English the "Welsh," or "foreigners," though they called
themselves the Kymry, or "comrades." They were, now as always, divided
into several kingdoms whose chiefs were perpetually at war, and failed
most lamentably to support each other against the English invader. The
most important of these kingdoms were Cumbria in the north, between the
Clyde and Ribble, Gwynedd in North Wales, and Damnonia in Devon and
Cornwall. Now and again prominent chiefs from one or other of these
three realms succeeded in forcing their neighbours to combine against
the Saxon enemy, and styled themselves lords of all the Britons, but
the title was precarious and illusory. The Celts could never learn
union or wisdom.
[Illustration: LIMIT OF THE
=ENGLISH=
CONQUESTS,
ABOUT A.D. 570.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Deorham, 577.=]
The line of the British defence was at last broken in two points, and
the Saxons and Angles pushed through till they touched the Irish Sea
and the Bristol Channel. The first of the conquerors of Western Britain
was Ceawlin, king of Wessex. After winning the southern midlands by
a victory at Bedford in 571 he pushed along the upper Thames, and
attacked the Welsh of the lower Severn. At a great battle fought at
Deorham, in Gloucestershire, in 577, he slew the kings of Glevum,
Corinium, and Aquae Sulis (Gloucester, Cirencester, and Bath). All
their realms fell into his hands, and so the West Saxons won their
way to the Severn and the Bristol Channel, and cut off the Celts of
Damnonia from the Celts of South Wales.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Chester, 613.=]
A generation later, in the year 613, Aethelfrith the Northumbrian, king
of Bernicia and Deira, made a similar advance westward. In a great
battle at Deva (Chester) he defeated the allied princes of Cumbria and
North Wales. This fight was long remembered because of the massacre of
a host of monks who had come to supplicate Heaven for the victory of
the Celts over the pagan English. "If they do not fight against us with
their arms, they do so with their prayers," said the Northumbrian king,
and bade his warriors cut them all down. The city of Deva was sacked,
and remained a mere ring of mouldering Roman walls for three centuries.
The district round it became English, and thus the Cumbrians were
separated from the North Welsh by a belt of hostile territory.
The battles of Chester and Deorham settled the future of Britain; the
Celts became comparatively helpless when they had been cut into three
distinct sections, in Cumbria, Wales, and Damnonia. The future of the
island now lay in the hands of the English, not in that of the ancient
inhabitants of Britain.
[Sidenote: =The invaders and the natives.=]
The states which the invaders had built up were, as might have been
inferred from their origin, small military monarchies. The basis of
each had been the war-band that followed some successful "alderman,"
for the invaders were not composed of whole tribes emigrating _en
masse_, but of the more adventurous members of the race only. The bulk
of the Saxons and Jutes remained behind on the continent in their
ancient homes, and so did many of the Angles. When the successful chief
had conquered a district of Britain and assumed the title of king, he
would portion the land out among his followers, reserving a great share
for his own royal demesne. Each of the king's sworn companions, or
_gesiths_ as the old English called them, became the centre of a small
community of dependents--his children, servants, and slaves. At first
the invaders often slew off the whole Celtic population of a valley,
but ere long they found the convenience of reducing them to slavery and
forcing them to till the land for their new masters. In eastern Britain
and during the first days of the conquest the natives were often wholly
extirpated, but in the central and still more in the western part of
the island they were allowed to survive as serfs, and thus there is
much Celtic blood in England down to this day. But this native element
was never strong enough to prevail over and absorb the conquerors, as
happened to the Goths of Spain and the Franks of Gaul, who finally lost
their language and their national identity among the preponderant mass
of their own dependents.
As the conquest of Britain went on, many families who had not been
in the war-band of the original invader came in to join the first
settlers, and to dwell among them, so that the king had many English
subjects besides his original _gesiths_. Some of the villages in his
dominions would therefore be inhabited by the servile dependents of
one of these early-coming military chiefs, others by the free bands
of kinsmen who had drifted in of their own accord to settle in the
land. When we see an English village with a name like Saxmundham, or
Edmonton, or Wolverton, we may guess that the place was originally the
homestead of a lord named Saxmund, or Eadmund, or Wulfhere, and his
dependents. But when it has a name like Buckingham, or Paddington, or
Gillingham, we know that it was the common settlement of a family, the
Buckings or the Paddings or the Gillings, for the termination _-ing_
in old English invariably implied a body of descendants from common
ancestors.
[Sidenote: =Administration--Aldermen and shire-reeves.=]
The early English states were administered under the king by aldermen,
or military chiefs, to each of whom was entrusted the government of
one of the various regions of the kingdom, and by _reeves_, who were
responsible for the royal property and dues, each in his own district.
The larger kingdoms, such as Wessex, were soon cut up into _shires_,
each with its alderman and shire-reeve (sheriff), and many of these
shires exist down to our own day.
[Sidenote: =The king and the witan.=]
The supreme council of the realm was formed by the king, the aldermen,
and a certain number of the greater _gesiths_ who served about the
king's person. The king and great men discussed subjects of national
moment, while the people sat round and shouted assent or dissent
to their speeches. The king did not take any measure of importance
without the advice of his councillors, who were known as the _Witan_,
or Wise-men. When a king died, or ruled tyrannically, or became
incompetent, it was the Witan who chose a new monarch from among the
members of the royal family, for there was as yet no definite rule of
hereditary succession, and the kingship was elective, though the Witan
never went outside the limits of the royal house in their nominations.
[Sidenote: =The shire-moot and tun-moot.=]
The smaller matters of import in an old English kingdom were settled
at the _shire-moot_, or meeting of all the freemen of a shire. There,
once a month, the aldermen and reeve of the district called up the
freeholders who dwelt in it, and by their aid settled disputes and
lawsuits. Each freeman had his vote, so the shire-court was a much more
democratic body than the Witan, where only great lords and officials
could speak and give their suffrages.
Matters too small for the _shire-moot_ were settled by the meeting of
the villagers in their own petty _tun-moot_, which every freeman would
attend. Here would be decided disputes between neighbours, as to their
fields and cattle. Such cases would be numerous because, in the early
settlements of the English, the ploughed fields and the pasture grounds
of the village were both great unenclosed tracts with no permanent
boundaries. Every man owned his house and yard, but the pasture and the
waste land and woods around belonged to the community, and not to the
individual.
[Sidenote: =Gradual growth of towns.=]
The early English were essentially dwellers in the open country. They
did not at first know how to deal with the old Roman towns, but simply
plundered and burnt them, and allowed them to crumble away. They
thought the deserted ruins were the homes of ghosts and evil spirits,
and were not easily induced to settle near them. Even great towns like
Canterbury and London and Bath seem to have lain waste for a space,
between their destruction by the first invaders and their being again
peopled. But ere long the advantages of the sites, and the abundance
of building material which the old Roman buildings supplied, tempted
the English back to the earlier centres of population. We can trace the
ancient origin of many of our towns by their names: the English added
the word -chester or -caster to the name of the places which were built
on Roman sites--a word derived, of course, from the Latin _castra_. So
Winchester and Rochester and Dorchester and Lancaster are shown to be
old Roman towns rebuilt, but not founded by the new-comers.
[Sidenote: =Religion.=]
In religion the old English were pure polytheists, worshipping the
ancient gods of their German ancestors, Woden, the wise father of
heaven, and Thunder (Thor), the god of storm and strength, and Balder,
the god of youth and spring, and many more. But they were not an
especially religious people; they had few temples and priests, and did
not allow their superstition to influence their life or their politics
to any great extent. We shall see that in a later age most of them
deserted their pagan worship without much regret and after but a short
struggle. It was more a matter of ancestral custom to them than a very
fervent belief. It is noticeable that very few places in England get
their names from the old gods; but we find a few, such as Wednesbury
(Woden's-burh) or Thundersfield, or Balderston, scattered over the face
of the country.
CHAPTER III.
THE CONVERSION OF BRITAIN AND THE RISE OF WESSEX.
597-836.
After the battles of Deorham and Chester had broken the strength of
the Britons, and all central Britain had fallen into English hands,
the victorious invaders did not persevere in completing the conquest
of the island, but turned to contend with each other. For the next two
hundred years the history of England is the history of the conflict of
the three larger kingdoms--Northumbria, Mercia, and Wessex--for the
supremacy and primacy in the island. First one, then the other obtained
a mastery over its rivals, but the authority of an English king who
claimed to be "Bretwalda," or paramount lord of Britain, was as vague
and precarious as that of the Celtic chiefs who in an earlier age had
asserted a similar domination over their tribal neighbours.
Both Ceawlin the victor of Deorham, and Aethelfrith the victor of
Chester, were great conquerors in their own day, and are said to have
claimed an over-lordship over their neighbours. But about the year 595,
when the one was dead and the other had not yet risen, the chief king
of Britain was Aethelbert of Kent, a warlike young monarch who subdued
his neighbours of Sussex and Essex, and aspired to extend his influence
all over the island.
[Sidenote: =Augustine, 597.--Conversion of Kent.=]
To the court of this King Aethelbert there came, in the year 597,
an embassy from beyond the high seas, which was destined to change
the whole course of the history of England. It was led by the monk
Augustine, and was composed of a small band of missionaries from Rome,
who had set out in the hope of converting the English to Christianity.
Twenty years before there had been a pious abbot in Rome named Gregory,
who had earnestly desired to go forth to preach the gospel to the
English. The well-known legend tells how he once saw exposed in the
market for sale some young boys of a fair countenance. "Who are these
children?" he asked of the slave-dealer. "Heathen Angles," was the
reply. "Truly they have the faces of angels," said Gregory. "And whence
have they been brought?" "From the kingdom of Deira," he was told.
"Indeed, they should be brought _de ira Dei_, out from the land of the
wrath of God," was the abbot's punning rejoinder. From that day Gregory
strove to set forth for Britain, but circumstances always stood in his
way. At last he became pope, and when he had gained this position of
authority, he determined that he would send others, if he could not go
himself, to care for the souls of the pagan English.
So in 596 he sent out the zealous monk Augustine, with a company of
priests and others, to seek out the land of England. Augustine landed
in Kent, both because King Aethelbert was the greatest chief in
Britain, and because he had taken as his queen a Christian lady from
Gaul, Bertha, the daughter of Charibert, king of Paris. So Augustine
and his fellows came to Canterbury to the court of the king, and when
Aethelbert saw them he asked his wife what manner of men they might
be. When she had pleaded for them, he looked upon them kindly, and
gave them the ruined Roman church of St. Martin outside the gates
of Canterbury, and told them that they might preach freely to all
his subjects. So Augustine dwelt in Kent, and taught the Kentishmen
the truths of Christianity till many of them accepted the gospel and
were baptized. Ere long King Aethelbert himself was converted, and
when he had declared himself a Christian most of his _gesiths_ and
nobles followed him to the font. Then Augustine was made Archbishop of
Canterbury, and his companion Mellitus Bishop of Rochester, and the
kingdom of Kent became a part of Christendom once more.
Ere very long the kings of the East Saxons and East Angles, who were
vassals to Aethelbert, declared that they also were ready to accept
the gospel. They were baptized with many of their subjects, but
Christianity was not yet very firmly rooted among them. When King
Aethelbert died, and was succeeded by his son, who was a heathen
and an evil liver, a great portion of the men who so easily accepted
Christianity fell back into paganism again. They had conformed to
please the king, not because they had appreciated the truths of the
gospel. East Anglia and Essex relapsed almost wholly from the faith,
and had to be reconverted a generation later; but in Kent Augustine's
work had been more thorough, and after a short struggle the whole
kingdom finally became Christian.
[Sidenote: =Conversion and prosperity of Eadwine of Northumbria.=]
From Kent the true faith was conveyed to the English of the North.
Eadwine, King of Northumbria, married a daughter of Aethelbert
and Bertha. She was a Christian, and brought with her to York a
Roman chaplain named Paulinus, one of the disciples of Augustine.
By the exhortations of this Paulinus, King Eadwine was led toward
Christianity. He was a great warrior, and while he was doubting as to
the faith, it chanced that he had to set forth on an expedition against
his enemy, the King of Wessex. Then he vowed that if the God of the
Christians gave him victory and he should return in peace, he would be
baptized. The campaign was successful, and Eadwine went joyfully to
the baptismal font. It was long remembered how he held council with
his Witan, urging them to leave darkness for light, and doubt for
certainty. Then, because they had found little help in their ancient
gods, and because the heathen faith gave them no good guidance for
this life, and no good hope of a better life to come, the great men of
Northumbria swore that they would follow their king. Coifi, the high
priest, was the first to cast down his own idols and destroy the great
temple of York, and with him the nobles and _gesiths_ of Eadwine went
down to the water and were all baptized (627).
For some time King Eadwine prospered greatly; he became the chief king
of Britain, and made the East Angles and East Saxons his vassals. He
destroyed the Welsh kingdom of Leeds, and added the West Riding of
Yorkshire to the Northumbrian kingdom. He also smote the Picts beyond
the Forth, and built a fleet on the Irish sea with which he reduced the
isles of Man and Anglesea.
[Sidenote: =Defeat and death of Eadwine.--Reaction against
Christianity.=]
Eadwine's conquests roused all his neighbours against him, and in their
common fear of the Northumbrian sword, English and Welsh princes were
for the first time found joining in alliance. Penda, King of Mercia,
an obstinate heathen and a great foe of the gospel, leagued himself
with Cadwallon, King of Gwynedd, the greatest of the Christian chiefs
of Wales. Together they beset the realm of Eadwine, and the great King
of Northumbria fell in battle with all his host, at Heathfield, near
Doncaster (632).
The Welsh and Mercians overran Northumbria after slaying its king,
and Cadwallon took York and burnt it. The Northumbrians thought that
Eadwine's God had been found wanting in the day of battle, and most of
them relapsed into paganism in their despair. Paulinus, who had become
the first Bishop of York, had to flee away into Kent, the only kingdom
where Christians were safe for the moment.
[Sidenote: =The Irish missionaries.--Columba.=]
But ere very long the Northumbrians were saved from their despair.
Eadwine and the ancient stock of the kings of Deira were swept away,
but there were two princes alive of the royal house of Bernicia. Their
names were Oswald and Oswiu, and during Eadwine's reign they had been
living in exile. Their abode had been among those of the Scots who
had crossed over from Ireland and settled on the coast of northern
Britain, in the land which now bears their name. There the two brethren
had fallen in with the disciples of the good Abbot Columba, the
founder of the great monastery of Iona, and from them they had learnt
the Christian faith. Columba, whose successors were to convert all
the north of England, had been a man of great mark. He was an Irish
monk who had left his own land in self-imposed exile, because he had
been the cause of a tribal war among his countrymen. Crossing to the
Argyleshire coast, he built a monastery on the lonely island of Iona,
and from thence laboured for the conversion of the Picts and Scots.
[Sidenote: =Oswald, King of Northumbria.--Christianity restored.=]
When Oswald heard of the desperate condition of Northumbria after
Eadwine's death, he resolved to go to the aid of his countrymen against
the Welsh and Mercians. So he went southward with a few companions,
and raised the Bernicians against their oppressors, setting up as his
standard the cross that he had learnt to reverence in Iona. His effort
was crowned with success, and at the Heavenfield, near the Roman wall,
he completely defeated the Welsh and slew their king Cadwallon. Penda
the Mercian was driven out of Northumbria also, and for eight years
(634-642) Oswald maintained himself as king of all the land between
Forth and Trent. He used his power most zealously for the propagation
of Christianity. He sent to Iona for two pious monks, Aidan and Finan,
who were successively bishops of York under him, and by their aid he
so drew his people toward the faith of Christ that they never swerved
from it again, as they had done after the death of Eadwine. Oswald also
encouraged missionaries to go into the other English kingdoms. It was
by his advice that Birinus went from Rome to Wessex, where he converted
King Cynegils, and founded the bishopric of Dorchester-on-Thames.
[Sidenote: =Penda, King of Mercia.--Battle of Maserfield, 642.=]
But Oswald was not strong enough to put down his heathen neighbour,
Penda, the King of Mercia, a mighty warrior who united all the English
of central Britain under his sceptre, slaying the kings of the East
Angles, and tearing away Gloucester and all the land of the Hwiccas[3]
from the kings of Wessex. Penda and Oswald were constantly at war, and
at last the Mercian slew the Northumbrian at the battle of Maserfield,
in Shropshire, near Oswestry (642).
[Sidenote: =Oswiu, King of Northumbria.--Conversion of Mercia.=]
But the good King Oswald left a worthy successor in his brother Oswiu,
as zealous a Christian and as vigorous a ruler as himself. Oswiu
defeated Penda at the battle of the Winweed, and by slaying the slayer
became the over-king of all England. He conquered the Picts between
Forth and Tay, made the Welsh and the Cumbrians pay him tribute, and
annexed northern Mercia, giving the rest of the kingdom over to Peada,
Penda's son, only when he became a Christian. It was all over with
the cause of heathenism when Penda fell, and the Mercians and their
king bowed to the conquering faith, and listened to the preaching of
Ceadda, one of the Northumbrian monks who had been taught by the Irish
missionaries Aidan and Finan.
[Sidenote: =Dissensions of Irish and Roman clergy.--Council at Whitby,
664.=]
Mercia and Northumbria, therefore, owed their conversion to the
disciples of Columba, and looked to the monastery of Iona as the source
of their Christianity, while Kent and Wessex looked to Rome, from
whence had come Augustine and Birinus. Unhappily there arose dissension
between the clergy of the two churches, for the converts of the Irish
monks thought that the South English paid too much deference to Rome,
and differed from them on many small points of practice, such as the
proper day for keeping Easter, and the way in which priests should cut
their hair. King Oswiu was grievously vexed at these quarrels, and
held a council at Whitby, or Streonshalch as it was then called, to
hear both sides state their case before him. He made his decision in
favour of the Roman observance, and many of the Irish clergy withdrew
in consequence from his kingdom, rather than conform to the ways of
their Roman brethren. This submission of the English to the Papal see
was destined to lead to many evils in later generations, but at the
time it was far the better alternative. If they had decided to adhere
to the Irish connection, they would have stood aside from the rest of
Western Christendom, and sundered themselves from the fellowship of
Christian nations, and the civilizing influences of which Rome was then
the centre (664).
[Sidenote: =Archbishop Theodore.--Unification of the Church in
Britain.=]
The English Church, being thus united in communion with Rome, received
as Archbishop of Canterbury a Greek monk named Theodore of Tarsus,
whom Pope Vitalian recommended to them. It was this Theodore who first
organized the Church of England into a united whole; down to his day
the missionaries who worked in the different kingdoms had nothing to do
with each other. But now all England was divided into bishoprics, which
all paid obedience to the metropolitan see of Canterbury; and in each
bishopric the countryside was furnished with clergy to work under the
bishop. Some have said that Theodore cut up England into parishes, each
served by a resident priest, but things had not advanced quite so far
by his day. Under Theodore and his successors the bishops and clergy of
all the kingdoms frequently met in councils and synods, so that England
was united into a spiritual whole long before she gained political
unity. It was first in these church meetings that Mercian, West Saxon,
and Northumbrian learnt to meet as friends and equals, to work for the
common good of them all.
[Sidenote: =Prosperity of the Church.--Winfrith.--Baeda-Alcuin.=]
The English Church was vigorous from the very first. Ere it had been
a hundred years in existence it had begun to produce men of such
wisdom and piety, that England was considered the most saintly land of
Western Christendom. It sent out the missionaries who rescued Germany
from heathenism--Willibrord, the apostle of Frisia; Suidbert, who
converted Hesse; above all the great Winfrith (or Boniface), the
first Archbishop of Mainz. This great man, the friend and adviser of
the Frankish ruler Charles Martel, spread the gospel all over Central
Germany, and organized a national church in the lands on the Main and
Saal, where previously Woden and his fellows alone had been worshipped.
He died a martyr among the heathen of the Frisian Marshes in 733.
Nor was the English Church less noted for its men of learning. Not only
were they well versed in Latin, which was the common language of the
clergy all over Europe, but some of them were skilled in Greek also,
for the good Archbishop Theodore of Tarsus had instructed many in his
native tongue. Among the old English scholars two deserve special
mention: one is the Northumbrian Baeda (the Venerable Bede), a monk
of Jarrow, who translated the Testament from Greek into English, and
also wrote an ecclesiastical history of England which is our chief
source for the knowledge of his times (d. 735); the second was another
Northumbrian, Alcuin of York, whose knowledge was so celebrated all
over Europe that the Emperor Charles the Great sent for him to Aachen,
the Frankish capital, and made him his friend and tutor; for Charles
ardently loved all manner of learning, and could find no one like
Alcuin among his own people.
[Sidenote: =Reign of Ecgfrith.--Decline of Northumbria.=]
As long as Oswiu and his son Ecgfrith lived, Northumbria held the
foremost place among the English kingdoms, and its rulers were
accounted the chief kings of Britain. Ecgfrith conquered Carlisle and
Cumbria from the Welsh, and even invaded Ireland, but in an attempt to
add the highlands beyond the Forth to his realm, he was slain in battle
by the Picts at Nechtansmere (685). With his death the greatness of
Northumbria passed away, for his successors were weak men, and after a
while grew so powerless that the kingdom was vexed by constant civil
wars, and became the prey of its neighbours, the Mercians on the
south, and the Picts and Scots on the north.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
in the 8{TH} CENTURY.]
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Mercia, 675-796.--Reign of Offa.=]
The supremacy that had once been in the hands of the Northumbrians
now passed away to the kings of Mercia, the largest and most central
of the English kingdoms. Three great kings of that realm, Aethelred,
Aethelbald and Offa, whose reigns occupied almost the whole of the
period from 675 to 796, were all in their day reckoned as supreme lords
of England. The rulers of East Anglia, Essex, and Kent were counted as
their vassals, and they deprived Wessex of its dominions north of the
Thames, and Northumbria of all that it had held south of the Trent and
the Ribble. Offa pushed his boundary far to the west, into the lands
of the Welsh; and, after conquering the valleys of the Wye and the
upper Severn, drew a great dyke from sea to sea, reaching from near
Chester on the north to Chepstow on the south; it marked the boundary
between the English and the Cymry for three hundred years. Offa was the
greatest king whom England had yet seen, and corresponded on equal
terms with Charles the Great, the famous King of the Franks, who was
his firm friend and ally (757-796).
[Sidenote: =Decline of Mercia.=]
Nevertheless, after Offa's day the sceptre passed away from Mercia,
and his successors saw their vassal kings rebel and disown the Mercian
allegiance. To maintain subject states in obedience was always a very
hard task for the old English kings, because they had no standing
armies, and no system of fortification. When a neighbouring realm was
overrun by the tumultuary army of a victorious king, he had to be
satisfied with the homage of its people, because he could not build
fortresses in it, or leave a standing force to hold it down. The only
way of keeping a conquest was to colonize it, as was done with the
lands taken from the Welsh; but the English kings shrank from evicting
their own kinsfolk, and seldom or never employed this device against
them. Hence it always happened that, when a great king died, his
vassals at once rebelled, and unless his successor was a man of ability
he was unable to reconquer them.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Wessex.--Ecgbert, 800-836.=]
From Mercia the primacy among the English states passed to Wessex, a
state which had hitherto kept much to itself, and had busied itself in
conquering land from the Welsh of Damnonia, rather than in striving
with its English neighbours for the supremacy in mid-Britain. Wessex,
indeed, had lost to the Mercians all its territory north of the Thames,
and was now a purely south-country state. Its borders reached to the
Tamar and the Cornish moors, since the days when Taunton in 710 and
Exeter in 705 had fallen into the hands of its kings.
The West-Saxon king who succeeded to the power of Offa was Ecgbert,
the ancestor of all the subsequent monarchs of Britain down to our
own day.[4] He was a prince who had seen many troubles in his youth,
having been driven over sea by his kinsman and forced to take refuge
with Charles the Great. He spent some years in the court and army of
the Frankish monarch, but was called to the throne of Wessex in 800, on
the death of his unfriendly cousin. In a long reign that lasted for
thirty-six years, Ecgbert not only subdued the small kingdoms of Kent
and Sussex, and made the Welsh princes of Cornwall do him homage, but
he even dared at last to attack his powerful neighbours the Mercians.
At the battle of Ellandun, in Wiltshire (823), he defeated and slew
King Beornwulf, the unworthy heir of Offa's greatness. Shortly after
Mercia did him homage, and the Northumbrians, sorely vexed by civil
wars, soon followed the example of their southern neighbours.
Thus Ecgbert became over-lord of Britain, in the same sense that
Eadwine and Offa had previously held the title. But the dominion of
the kings of Wessex was destined to be of a more enduring nature than
that of their predecessors. This was not so much due to their own
abilities as to the changed condition of the state of England. Not
only were there strong tendencies arising towards unity within the
English realms--due most especially to the influence of their common
Church--but pressure from without was now about to be applied in a way
that forced the English to combine.
Before Ecgbert had come to the throne, and even before Offa was dead,
the first signs had been seen of the coming storm that was to sweep
over England in the second half of the ninth century. The Danes had
already begun to appear off the coasts of the island.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The Hwiccas held the lands conquered by Ceawlin on the lower
Severn, the modern counties of Worcester and Gloucester.
[4] All kings, both Anglo-Saxon and Norman, since 820, descend from
Ecgbert save Cnut, the two Harolds, and William I. The Conqueror's
wife, Matilda of Flanders, had English blood in her veins, so William
is the only exception in his line.
CHAPTER IV.
THE DANISH INVASIONS, AND THE GREAT KINGS OF WESSEX.
The English chronicles have accurately fixed for us the date of the
first raid of the Northmen. In 787, three strange ships were seen off
the Dorsetshire coast. From them landed a small band of marauders,
who sacked the port of Wareham, and then hastily put to sea and
vanished from sight. This insignificant descent was only the first of
a series of dreadful ravages. A few years later, in 793, a greater
band descended on Lindisfarne, the holy island of St. Cuthbert off
the Bernician coast, the greatest and richest monastery of northern
England. Thenceforth raids came thick and fast, till at last the sword
of the invaders had turned half England into a desert.
[Sidenote: =The Vikings.=]
The people of Scandinavia were at this moment in much the same state
of development in which the English had been three centuries before,
ere yet they left the shores of Saxony and Schleswig. The Danes and
Norwegians were a hardy seafaring race, divided into many small
kingdoms, always at war with each other. They were still wild heathens,
and practised piracy as the noblest occupation for warriors and
freemen. Just as Hengist and Aella had sailed out with their war-bands
in search of plunder and land in the fifth century, so the chiefs of
the Northmen were now preparing to lead out their followers into the
western seas. For two centuries the onslaughts of the Vikings--as
these piratical hordes were called--were fated to be the curse of
Christendom. The Vikings in their early days were led, not by the
greater kings of Denmark and Norway, but by leaders chosen by the
pirate bands for their military abilities. Such chiefs were obeyed on
the battle-field alone; off it they were treated with small respect by
their comrades. There were dozens of these sea-kings on the water, each
competing with the others for the largest following that he could get
together.
[Sidenote: =Their raids grow more permanent.=]
The Northmen were at first seeking for nothing more than plunder.
Western Christendom offered them a great field, because the Franks,
English, and Irish of the ninth century almost all dwelt in open towns,
had very few forts and castles, and had built enormous numbers of rich
defenceless monasteries and churches. The Dane landed near a wealthy
port or abbey, sacked it, and hastily took to sea again, before the
countryside had time to muster in arms against him.
But after a time the continued successes of their first raids
encouraged the Northmen to take the field in much greater numbers, so
that fleets of a hundred ships, with eight or ten thousand men aboard
them, were found sailing under some noted sea-king. When they grew so
strong they took to making raids deeper into the land, boldly facing
the force of an English shire or a Frankish county if they were brought
to bay. When numbers were equal they generally had the advantage in
the fray, for they were all trained warriors, and were fighting for
their lives. Against them came only a rustic militia fresh from the
plough. If beset by the overwhelming strength of a whole kingdom,
they fortified themselves on a headland, an island, or a marsh-girt
palisade, and held out till the enemy melted homeward for lack of
provisions.
[Sidenote: =Sufferings of Northumbria and Mercia.--Reign of
Aethelwulf.=]
As long as Ecgbert lived he kept the Danes away from his kingdom
of Wessex, dealing them heavy blows whenever they dared to march
inland. The greatest of these victories was one gained at Hengistesdun
(Hingston Down), near Plymouth, over the combined forces of the Danes
and the revolted Welsh of Cornwall (835). But though he was able to
protect his own realm, Ecgbert was unable to care for his Mercian and
Northumbrian vassals; they were too far off, and his authority over
them was too weak. So northern England was already suffering fearfully
from the Viking raids even before Ecgbert died. His son Aethelwulf, who
succeeded him as king of Wessex, was a pious easy-going man, destitute
of his father's strength and ability. If the Mercians and Northumbrians
had not been so desperately afflicted at the moment by the ravages of
the Vikings, they would have undoubtedly taken the opportunity to throw
off the yoke of the Wessex kings. But their troubles made them cautious
of adding civil war to foreign invasion, and so Aethelwulf was allowed
to keep his father's nominal suzerainty over the whole of England.
More than once he led a West-Saxon army up to aid the Mercians, but he
could not be everywhere at the same time, and while he was protecting
one point, the Danes would slip round by sea and attack another. Wessex
itself was no longer secure from their incursions, and the chronicles
record several disastrous raids carried out on its coast.
All through King Aethelwulf's reign (836-858) the state of England
was growing progressively worse. Commerce was at a standstill, many
of the larger towns had been burnt by the Danes, the greatest of the
monasteries had been destroyed, and their monks slain or scattered;
with them perished the wealth and the learning which had made the
English Church the pride of Western Christendom. The land was beginning
to sink back into poverty and barbarism, and there seemed to be no hope
left to the English, for the Viking armies grew larger and bolder every
year.
[Sidenote: =The Danes threaten permanent occupation.=]
After a time the invaders began to aim at something more than
transitory raids; they took to staying over the winter in England,
instead of returning to Norway or Denmark. Fortifying themselves in
strong posts like the isles of Thanet or Sheppey, they defied King
Aethelwulf to dislodge them. In a very short time it was evident that
they would think of permanently occupying Britain, just as the Saxons
and Angles had done three centuries back.
Aethelwulf, in great distress of mind, made a pilgrimage to Rome,
and obtained the Pope's blessing for his efforts. But he fared none
the better for that. It was equally in vain that he tried to concert
measures for common defence with his neighbour across the Channel, King
Charles the Bald, whose daughter Judith he took to wife. The Frankish
king was even more vexed by the pirates than Aethelwulf himself, and no
help was got from him.
[Sidenote: =Deposition of Aethelwulf, 856.--Winchester burnt, 864.=]
The men of Wessex at last grew so discontented with Aethelwulf's weak
rule that the Witan deposed him, and elected his son Aethelbald king in
his stead (856). But they left the small kingdoms of Kent and Sussex to
the old man for the term of his natural life, to maintain him in his
royal state. Aethelwulf died two years later, and after him reigned his
three short-lived sons--Aethelbald (856-860), Aethelbert (860-866), and
Aethelred (866-871).
The fifteen years, during which they ruled, proved a time of even
greater misery and distress than the latter days of their father's
troubled reign. The Danes not only penetrated into every nook and
corner of Mercia and Northumbria, but even struck at the heart of
Wessex, and burnt its capital, the ancient city of Winchester (864).
[Sidenote: =Conquest of Northumbria by the Danes.=]
But the sorest trial came two years later, in the time of King
Aethelred. A vast confederacy of many Viking bands, which called itself
the "Great Army," leagued themselves together and fell on England, no
longer to plunder, but to subdue and occupy the whole land. Under two
chiefs, called Ingwar and Hubba, they overran Northumbria in 867. The
Northumbrians were divided by civil war, but the rival kings, Osbercht
and Aella, joined their forces to resist the oncoming storm. Yet both
of them were slain by the Danes in a great battle outside the gates
of York, and the victors stormed and sacked the Northumbrian capital
after the engagement. They then proceeded to divide up the land among
themselves, and settled up all the old kingdom of Deira, from Tees to
Trent. The English population was partly slain off, partly reduced to
serfdom. So, after being for two hundred years a Christian kingdom,
Deira became once more a community of wild heathen; the work of Oswald
and Aidan seemed undone.
[Sidenote: =Conquest of East Anglia.=]
But the whole of the Danes of the "Great Army" could not find land in
Deira. One division of them went off against the East Angles, under
Jarl Ingwar, and fought a great battle with Edmund, the brave and
pious king of that race. They took him prisoner, and when he would
not do them homage or worship their gods, they shot him to death with
arrows. His followers secretly buried his body, and raised over it a
shrine which became the great abbey of St. Edmundsbury. East Anglia
was then divided up among the victorious Danes, just as Yorkshire had
been; but they did not settle down so thickly in the eastern counties
as in the north, and the share of Danish blood in those districts is
comparatively small (869).
[Sidenote: =The Danes checked in Wessex.--Battle of Ashdown, 870.=]
King Aethelred of Wessex had not been able to afford any practical
help to his Northumbrian and East Anglian neighbours. It was now his
own turn to face the storm which had overwhelmed the two northern
realms. In 870 the "Great Army," now under two kings, Guthrum and
Bagsaeg, sailed up the Thames and threw itself upon Surrey and Berks,
the northern border of Wessex. Aethelred came out in haste against
them, and with him marched his younger brother Alfred, the youngest
of the four sons of the old Aethelwulf, a youth of eighteen, who now
entered on his first campaign. The men of Wessex made a far sterner
defence than had the armies of the other English kingdoms. The two
warrior-brothers Aethelred and Alfred fought no less than six battles
with the "Great Army" in the single year 871. The war raged all along
the line of the chalk downs of Berkshire, as the Danes strove to force
their way westward. At last the men of Wessex gave them a thorough
beating at Ashdown, where the Etheling Alfred won the chief honour of
the day. The defeated Vikings sought refuge in a stockaded camp at
Reading, between the waters of the Thames and the Kennet. Aethelred
could not dislodge them from this stronghold, and in a skirmish with
one of their foraging parties at Merton, in Surrey, he received a
mortal wound (871).
[Sidenote: =Alfred, King of Wessex, 871.=]
Wearied with six battles, the army of Wessex broke up, and the thegns
sadly bore King Aethelred home, to bury him at Wimborne. His young
brother, the Etheling Alfred, succeeded him, and took up the task of
defending Wessex in its hour of sore distress. It was fortunate that
such a great man was at hand to bear the burden, for never was it
more likely than now that the English name would be utterly swept off
the face of the earth. In spite of his youth Alfred was quite capable
of facing any difficulty or danger. From his boyhood upward he had
always shown great promise; when a young child, he had been sent by
his father, Aethelwulf, to Rome, and there had attracted the notice of
Pope Leo, who anointed him, and predicted that he should one day be a
king. He was able and brave, like most of the descendants of Ecgbert,
but he was also far above all men of his day in his desire for wisdom
and learning, and from his earliest years was known as a lover of books
and scholars. Seldom, if ever, did any king combine so much practical
ability in war and governance with such a keen taste for literature and
science.
[Sidenote: =He makes peace with, the Danes.--Conquest of Mercia.=]
Alfred had short space to mourn his dead brother. The "Great Army"
soon forced its way up from the Thames into Wiltshire, and beat the
men of Wessex at Wilton. Then Alfred gave them great store of treasure
to grant him peace, and they--since they found that the winning of
Wessex cost so many hard blows--consented to turn aside for a space.
But it was only in order to throw themselves on the neighbouring realm
of Mercia. They dealt with it as they had already done with Deira and
East Anglia. They defeated Burgred, its king, who fled away over sea
and died at Rome; and then they took eastern Mercia and parcelled it
out among themselves, while they gave its western half to an unwise
thegn called Ceolwulf, who consented to be their vassal and proffered
them a great tribute. It was not long, however, before they chased
away him also. Now it was that there arose the great Danish towns in
Mercia--Derby, Stamford, Leicester, Lincoln, and Nottingham, which,
under the name of the "Five Boroughs," played a considerable part in
English history for the next two centuries (876).
[Sidenote: =Renewed invasion of Wessex.=]
When Mercia had fallen, the Vikings turned once more against their old
foes in Wessex. If only they could break down King Alfred's defences,
they saw that the whole isle of Britain would be their own. So under
the two kings, Guthrum and Hubba, they once more pushed southward
beyond the Thames. There followed two years of desperate fighting
(877-878). At first the invaders swept all before them. They took
London, the greatest port of England, and Winchester, the capital of
Wessex. Alfred, repeatedly beaten in battle, was forced westward,
and driven to take refuge almost alone in the isle of Athelney, a
marsh-girt spot in Somersetshire, between the Tone and the Parret. This
was the scene of the celebrated legend of the burnt cakes. A curious
memorial of Alfred's stay in Athelney is to be seen at Oxford--a gold
and enamel locket bearing his name,[5] which was dug up in the island
some nine hundred years after it was dropped by the wandering king.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of the Danes.--Treaty of peace.=]
While Alfred was in hiding, the Danes ranged all over Wessex; King
Guthrum settled down at a fortified camp at Chippenham, in Wiltshire,
while King Hubba ravaged Devon. But when all seemed in their power,
they were suddenly disconcerted by a new gathering of the stubborn
West Saxons. The men of Devon slew Hubba and took his raven banner,
and then Alfred, issuing from Athelney, put himself at the head of the
levies of Devon, Somerset, and Dorset, and made a desperate assault
on Guthrum and the main body of the Danes. The king was victorious at
Ethandun (Eddington), and drove the army of Guthrum into its stockade
at Chippenham. There the Vikings were gradually forced by starvation
to yield themselves up. Alfred granted them easy terms: if they would
promise to quit Wessex for ever, and would swear homage to him as
over-lord, and become Christians, he would grant them the lands of the
East Angles and East Saxons to dwell in. Guthrum was fain to accept,
so he was baptized, and received at Alfred's hands the new name of
Aethelstan. Many of his host followed him to the font, and then they
retired to East Anglia and dwelt therein, save those roving spirits who
could not settle down anywhere. These latter went off to harry France,
but King Guthrum and the majority abode in their new settlement, and
were not such unruly or unfaithful subjects to Alfred as might have
been expected from their antecedents.
In such troublous times it was not likely that Alfred would be free
from other wars, but he came out of them all with splendid success.
When new bands of Vikings assailed him in later years, he smote them
again and again, and drove them out of the land. As a Norse poet once
sang--
"They got hard blows instead of shillings,
And the axe's weight instead of tribute;"
so they betook themselves elsewhere, to strive with less valiant kings
beyond the seas.
[Sidenote: =Division of Britain.=]
By Alfred's agreement with Guthrum, England was divided into two
halves, of which one was Danish and the other English. The old document
called _Alfred's and Guthrum's Frith_ gives the boundary of the
Danelagh, or Danish settlement, thus: "Up the Lea and then across to
Bedford, up the Ouse to Watling Street, and so along Watling Street to
Chester." That is to say, that Northumbria and East Anglia and Essex,
and the eastern half of Mercia, were left to the Danes, while Alfred
reigned directly, not only over his own heritage of Wessex, Sussex,
and Kent, but over western Mercia also. The nine counties[6] west of
Watling Street became part of Wessex, so that Alfred's own kingdom came
out of the Danish war much increased. Beyond its bounds he now had a
nominal suzerainty over three Danish states, instead of four English
ones. Guthrum reigned in the East, another Danish king at York, and
between them lay the "Five Boroughs," which were independent of both
kings, and were ruled by their own "jarls," as the Danes called their
war-lords.
[Sidenote: =Danish rule in England.=]
The Danish rule in North-Eastern England was made comparatively light
to the old inhabitants of the land when Guthrum and his men embraced
Christianity. Instead of killing the people off or reducing them to
slavery, the Danes now were content to take tribute from them, and to
occupy a certain portion of their lands. The limit and extent of the
Danish settlement can be well traced by studying the names of places in
the northern counties. Wherever the invaders established themselves we
find the Danish termination _by_ in greater or less abundance. We find
such names strewn thick about Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,
and Leicestershire, less freely in Derbyshire, Northamptonshire, and
the eastern counties. Rugby, close to the line of Watling Street, is
the Danish settlement that lies furthest into the heart of Mercia.
The Viking blood, therefore, is largely mixed with the English in the
valleys of the Trent and Ouse, and close to the eastern coast, and
grows proportionately less as Watling Street is approached. The Danes
took very easily to English manners; they had all turned Christians
within a very few years, and their language was so like Old English
that their speech soon became assimilated to that of their subjects,
and could only be told from that of South England by differences of
dialect that gradually grew less. In the end England gained rather than
suffered by their invasion, for they brought much hardy blood into the
land, and came to be good Englishmen within a very few generations.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
IN THE YEAR 900.]
[Sidenote: =Effects of the Danish wars.=]
But meanwhile, when they were but just settled down, and the land was
still black with their burnings, England appeared in a sorry state,
and Alfred the king had a hard task before him when he set to work to
reform and reorganize his wasted realm. Well-nigh every town had been
sacked and given to the flames at one time or another, during fifty
years of war: the churches lay in ruins, the monasteries were deserted.
Riches and learning had fled from the wasted land. "There was not
one priest south of Thames," writes King Alfred himself, "who could
properly understand the Latin of his own church-books, and very few in
the whole of England." Moreover, the social condition of the people was
rapidly becoming what we may style "feudalized"; that is, the smaller
freeholders all over the country, unable to defend themselves from
the Danes, were yielding themselves to be the "men" of their greater
neighbours. This phrase implied that they surrendered their complete
independence, and consented to pay the great men certain dues, and to
follow them to the wars, and seek justice at their hands instead of
from the free meeting of the village moot. The land still remained the
peasant's own, but, instead of being personally free, he was now a
dependent. It is noticeable that a similar state of things grew up from
the same cause in every part of Western Europe during the ninth century.
[Sidenote: =Reforms of Alfred.--The royal power.--The army.=]
Finding himself confronted with this new condition of affairs, Alfred
strengthened the royal power by compelling all these great lords to
become his own sworn followers--_gesiths_, as they would have been
called in an earlier age. But now the word was _thegn_, though the
status was much the same. So all the great landholders of England
became the king's "men," just as the villagers had become the men of
the great landholders. The thegns served the king in bower and hall,
and had to follow him in person whenever he took the field, as the old
gesiths had followed the leaders of the first Saxon war-bands. They
were a numerous body, and constituted a kind of standing army, since
it was their duty to serve whenever their master went out to battle.
The _fyrd_, or local militia of the villages, Alfred divided into two
parts, one of which was always left at home to till the fields when the
other half went out to war. It was at the head of his thegns and this
reorganized fyrd that Alfred smote the Danes when they dared to invade
his realm in his later years.
[Sidenote: =The laws.=]
Alfred has a great name as a law-giver, but he did more in the way of
collecting and codifying the laws of the kings who were before him than
in issuing new ordinances of his own. But since he made everything
clear and orderly, the succeeding generations used to speak of the
"laws of Alfred," when they meant the ancient statutes and customs of
the realm.
[Sidenote: =Learning and civilization.=]
The most noteworthy, however, of Alfred's doings, if we consider
the troublous times in which he lived, were his long-sustained and
successful endeavours to restore the civilization of England, at which
the Danish wars had dealt such a deadly blow. He collected scholars of
note from the Continent, from Wales and Ireland, and founded schools
to restore the lost learning for which England had been famed in the
last century. His interest in literature of all kinds was very keen.
He collected the old heroic epics of the English, all of which, save
the poem of "Beowulf," have now perished, or survive only in small
fragments. He compiled the celebrated "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," and left
it behind him as a legacy to be continued by succeeding ages--as indeed
it was for nearly three hundred years. He also translated Baeda's Latin
history of England into the vernacular tongue, as well as Orosius'
general history of the world. Nor was history the only province in
which he took interest; he also caused Pope Gregory the Great's
"Pastoral Care," and other theological works, to be done into English.
[Sidenote: =The navy.=]
Alfred may also be reckoned the father of the English navy. In order to
cope with the ships of the Vikings, he built new war-vessels of larger
size than any that had yet been seen in Western Europe, and provided
that they should be well manned. He encouraged sailors to go on long
voyages, and sent out the captain Othere, who sailed into the Arctic
seas and discovered the North Cape. He was a friend of merchants, and
it was probably to him that we may attribute the law which allowed any
trader who fared thrice over-sea in his own ship to take the rank and
privileges of a thegn.
We have no space to tell of the many other spheres of Alfred's
activity, such as his church-building, his mechanical inventions, and
his zeal in almsgiving and missionary work, which was so great that he
even sent contributions to the distant Christians of St. Thomas in
India. What heightens our surprise at the many-sided activity of the
man is, that he was of a weakly constitution, and was often prostrated
by the attacks of a periodical illness which clung to him from his
youth up.
[Sidenote: =Renewed prosperity.--Alfred's successors.=]
Alfred lived till 901 in great peace and prosperity. He had increased
the bounds of Wessex, saved England from the Dane, and brought her
back to the foremost place among the peoples of Western Europe, for
his Frankish contemporaries were sinking lower and lower amid the
attacks of the Vikings, while England, under his care, was so rapidly
recovering her strength. Even the Welsh, hostile hitherto to all who
bore the English name, had done homage to him in 885, because they saw
in him their only possible protection against the Dane.
Alfred's son and his three grandsons followed him on the throne in
succession between the years 901 and 955. They were all brave, able,
hard-working princes, the worthy offspring of such a progenitor. They
carried out to the full the work that he had begun; while Alfred had
checked the Danes and made them his vassals, his descendants completely
subdued and incorporated them with the main body of the realm, so
that they were no longer vassals, but direct subjects of the crown.
And while Alfred had been over-king of England, his successors became
over-kings of the whole isle of Britain, the suzerains of the Scots and
the Welsh of Strathclyde, as well as of all the more southern peoples
within the four seas.
[Sidenote: =Edward the Elder, 901-925.--Incorporation of central
England with Wessex.=]
Alfred's eldest son and successor was Edward, generally called Edward
the Elder to distinguish him from two later kings of his line. He was
a wise and powerful king, whose life-work was the incorporation of
central England, south of the Humber, with his realm of Wessex, by the
complete conquest of the Danes of East Anglia and the Five Boroughs.
When Alfred was dead, his Danish vassals tried to stir up trouble by
raising up against Edward his cousin Aethelwulf, son of Aethelred. This
pretender the new king drove out, and then, turning on the eastern
Danes, slew their king Euric, the son of Guthrum-Aethelstan, and made
them swear homage to him again.
But a few years later the Danes broke out again into rebellion, and
Edward then took in hand their complete subjection. His chief helper
was the great ealdorman Aethelred of western or English Mercia, his
brother-in-law. When this chief died, Edward found his widowed sister
Aethelflaed, in whose hands he left the rule of the Mercian counties,
no less zealous and able an assistant than her husband had been. It was
with her co-operation that he started on his long series of campaigns
against the Danes of central and eastern England. While Edward,
starting forward from London, worked his way into Essex and East
Anglia, Aethelflaed was at the same time urging on the Mercians against
the Danes of the Five Boroughs. They moved forward systematically,
erecting successive lines of "burghs," or moated and palisaded
strongholds, opposite the centres of Danish resistance, and holding
them with permanent garrisons.
The Danes were now much more easy to deal with than in the old days,
for they had given hostages to fortune, and were the possessors of
towns and villages which could be plundered, farmsteads that could
be burned, and cattle that could be lifted. So when they found that
they could not storm the "burghs" of Edward and Aethelflaed, or drive
off the garrisons which raided on their fields, they began one after
the other to submit. The last Danish king of East Anglia was slain
in battle at Tempsford, near Bedford, in 921, and his realm was
incorporated with Wessex. Then, while Aethelflaed compelled Derby and
Leicester to yield, her brother subdued Stamford and Lincoln. So all
England south of the Humber was won and cut up into new shires, like
those of Wessex. Having accomplished her share in this great work, the
Lady Aethelflaed died, and the great ealdormanry which she had ruled
was absorbed into her brother's kingdom.
[Sidenote: =Edward over-lord of all England.=]
In their terror at Edward's ceaseless advance and never-ending
successes, not only did the Danes of Northumbria do him homage, but
even the distant kings of the Scots and the Strathclyde Welsh "took him
to father and lord" in a great meeting held at Dore in 924.
[Sidenote: =Aethelstan, 925-941.--Subjection of Northumbria.--Battle of
Brunanburgh.=]
Having thus become the over-lord of all Britain, Edward died in 925,
leaving the throne to his son Aethelstan. This prince was his worthy
successor, and carried out still further the process of annexing
all England to the Wessex inheritance. His great achievement was the
complete subjection and annexation of Northumbria. When Sihtric the
Danish King of York died, Aethelstan seized on his kingdom, and drove
his sons over sea. The dispossessed princes stirred up enemies against
their conqueror, and formed a great league against him. Anlaf, the king
of the Danes of Ireland, brought over a great host of Vikings, while
Constantine, king of the Scots, and Owen, king of Cumbria, came down
from the north to join him. The Danes of Yorkshire at once rose in
rebellion to aid the invaders. Against this league Aethelstan marched
forth at the head of the English of Mercia and Wessex. He met them at
Brunanburgh, a spot of unknown site, somewhere in Lancashire. There
Aethelstan smote them with a great slaughter, so that Anlaf returned
to Ireland with but a handful of men, and Constantine--who lost his
son and heir in the fight--fled away hastily to his own northern
deserts. The fight of Brunanburgh, the greatest battle that the house
of Alfred had yet won, finally settled the fact that Danish England
was to be incorporated with the realm of the Wessex over-kings, and
that there was to be one nation, not two, from the borders of Scotland
to the British Channel. This great victory drew from an unknown poet
the famous "Song of Brunanburgh" which has been inserted in the
"Anglo-Saxon Chronicle." It tells of the glories of Aethelstan, and
how--
"Never was yet such slaughter
In this island, since hitherward
English and Saxons came up from the east,
Over the broad seas, and won this our land."
The fight made Aethelstan once more lord of all Britain. The Scot king
hastened to renew his submission, the Welsh and Cornish did him homage,
the turbulent Northumbrian Danes bowed before him. He was considered
so much the most powerful monarch in Western Europe, that all the
neighbouring kings sought his alliance, and asked for the hands of
ladies of his house. Of his sisters, one was married to the Emperor
Otto I., one to Charles the Simple, King of the West Franks, others to
the King of Arles and the Counts of Paris and Flanders.
[Sidenote: =Edmund. 941-946.--Strathclyde granted as a fief to the
Scotch king.=]
Aethelstan died young, and left no son. He was followed on the throne
by his two brothers Edmund and Eadred, who were equally unfortunate
in being cut off in the flower of their age. Edmund suppressed more
than one rebellion of the Northumbrian Danes, and completely conquered
the Welsh kingdom of Strathclyde. Instead of incorporating it with
England, he bestowed it as a fief on his vassal, Malcolm, King of the
Scots, "on condition that he should be his faithful fellow-worker by
sea and land." This was the first extension of Scotland to the south
of the Clyde and Forth. Up to this time the Scots and the Picts, with
whom they had become blended since the Scot Kenneth McAlpine had been
elected king of the Picts in 836, had only ruled in the Highlands.
Edmund came to a strange and bloody end. As he feasted in his hall at
Pucklechurch, in Gloucestershire, he saw to his anger and surprise
a notorious outlaw named Leofa enter the hall and seat himself at a
table. The servants tried to turn him out, but he held his place, and
Edmund grew so wrathful that he sprang from his high seat and rushed
down to drag the intruder out with his own hands. He seized Leofa by
the hair and threw him down, but the outlaw drew a knife and stabbed
him to the heart.
[Sidenote: =Eadred. 946-955.=]
Eadred, the next king, was a prince of weak health, fonder of the
church than the battle-field. Nevertheless he carried on his brother's
policy, and kept a firm hand over the whole island of Britain. He put
down the last rising of the Danes of Yorkshire, who had proclaimed
Eric-with-the-bloody-axe as their king, and made one last attempt to
assert their independence. After this he cut up Northumbria into two
earldoms, and gave them both to an Englishman named Oswulf, to be ruled
as separate provinces.
[Sidenote: =Rise of Dunstan.=]
Eadred was the patron and protector of the wise abbot Dunstan, the
first of the great clerical statesmen who made a mark on the history
of England. He was a man of great ability and learning, who had risen
to be abbot of Glastonbury under Edmund, and became one of the chief
advisers of the pious Eadred, who was attracted to him as much by
his asceticism as by his eminent mental qualities. Dunstan was a
man with a purpose. He wished to reform the English Church in the
direction of monastic asceticism, and was most especially anxious
to make compulsory the celibacy of the clergy, a practice which had
not hitherto been enforced in England. There was undoubtedly much
ignorance and a certain amount of ill-living among the secular clergy,
and Dunstan, not content with warring against this, tried also to
reform the monasteries all over the face of the land, and to enforce
the rule of St. Benedict, "poverty, chastity, and obedience," in every
place. Dunstan's method of carrying out his views was by winning
court influence, which he was very fitted to obtain, for he was the
cleverest, most versatile, and most learned man of his day.
[Sidenote: =Eadwig, 955-959.--Quarrel with Dunstan.=]
When the pious Eadred died, he was succeeded by his nephew Eadwig
(Edwy), the son of his brother Edmund. This prince had been a child
when Leofa the outlaw slew his father, and the Witan had put him
aside in favour of his uncle, because the rule of a minor was always
disliked by the English. But now he was seventeen, and a very rash and
headstrong youth.
Eadwig very soon quarrelled with Dunstan and with Oda, Archbishop of
Canterbury, because he insisted on taking to wife the Lady Aelfgyfu
(Elgiva), who was his near kinswoman, and within the "prohibited
degrees" of the mediaeval Church. The churchmen declared her to be no
true wife of the king, and treated the royal pair with such insult that
Eadwig grew furious. The tale is well known how, when Eadwig at a high
feast had retired betimes to his wife's chamber, Oda and another bishop
followed him and dragged him back by force to the board where the
thegns were feasting.
[Sidenote: =Triumph of the Church party.=]
The king, as was natural, quarrelled with the Church party, and drove
Dunstan out of England. But his clerical opponents were too much for
him: they conspired with the Anglo-Danes of Northumbria, and with many
discontented thegns, and set up against Eadwig his younger brother
Eadgar, whom Archbishop Oda crowned as King of England. There followed
civil war, in which Eadwig had the worst; his wife fell into the hands
of Oda, who cruelly branded her with hot irons and shipped her to
Ireland. Only Wessex adhered to the cause of Eadwig, and he was at last
compelled to bow before his enemies. He acknowledged his brother as
King of all England north of Thames, and died almost immediately after
(959).
[Sidenote: =Eadgar, 959-975.--Ascendency of Dunstan.=]
His death put the whole realm into the hands of Eadgar, or rather of
Eadgar's friends of the Church party, for the new king was still very
young. He recalled Dunstan from exile to make him his chief councillor;
and when Archbishop Oda died, he gave the see of Canterbury to him. For
the seventeen years of Eadgar's rule Dunstan was his prime minister,
and much of the character of the earlier years of the king's reign must
be attributed to the prelate.
Dunstan's policy had two sides: he used his secular powers to enforce
his religious views, and everywhere he and his friends began reforming
the monasteries by forcing them to adopt the Benedictine rule. They
expelled the secular canons, many of whom were married men, from the
cathedrals, and replaced them with monks. They also dealt severely
with the custom of lay persons receiving church preferment, one of the
commonest abuses of the time.
[Sidenote: =Complete conciliation of the Danes.--Power of Eadgar.=]
But Dunstan was not only an ecclesiastical reformer. His activity had
another and a more practical side. To him, in conjunction with Eadgar,
is to be attributed the complete unification of the Anglo-Danes and the
English. Instead of being treated as subjects of doubtful loyalty, the
men of the Danelagh were now made the equals of the men of Wessex, by
being promoted to ealdormanries and bishoprics, and admitted as members
of the Witan. Eadgar kept so many of them about his person that he even
provoked the thegns of Wessex to murmuring. But the policy of trust and
conciliation had the best effects, and for the future the Anglo-Danes
may be regarded as an integral part of the English nation.
When he came to years of maturity, Eadgar proved to be a capable
prince. His power was so universally acknowledged in Britain that his
neighbours never dared attack him, and he became known as the _rex
pacificus_ in whose time were known no wars. All the kings of the
island served him with exact obedience; the story is well known how he
made his six chief vassals--the kings of Scotland, Cumbria, Man, and
three Welsh chiefs--row him across the Dee, and then exclaimed that
those who followed might now in truth call themselves kings of Britain.
[Sidenote: =Legislation.--The Ordinance of the Hundred.=]
Eadgar was a firm ruler, and the author of a very considerable body
of laws. To him is attributable the first organization of local police
in England, by the issue of the "Ordinance of the Hundred," which
divided the shires into smaller districts after the Frankish model,
and made the inhabitants of each hundred responsible for the putting
down of theft, robbery, and violence in their own district. He allowed
the Danish half of England to keep a code of laws of its own, but
assimilated it, as much as he was able, to that which prevailed in the
rest of the land, making Dane and Englishman as equal in all things as
he could contrive.
To the misfortune of his realm, Eadgar died in 975, before he had
attained his fortieth year, leaving behind him two young sons, neither
of whom had yet reached his majority. When he was gone, it was soon
seen how much the prosperity of England had depended on the personal
ability of the house of Alfred. Under weak kings there began once more
to arise great troubles for the land.
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The inscription reads "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN," or "Alfred had
me made."
[6] Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford, Shropshire, Warwickshire,
Oxfordshire, Bucks, Middlesex, Hertfordshire.
CHAPTER V.
THE DAYS OF CNUT AND EDWARD THE CONFESSOR.
For a full century (871-975) England had been under the rule of
a series of kings of marked ability. Only the short reign of the
unfortunate Eadwig interrupts the succession of strong rulers. We have
seen how in that century England fought down all her troubles, and,
after appearing for a time to be on the brink of destruction, emerged
as a strong and united power. But on the death of Eadgar a new problem
had to be faced--the kingdom passed to two young boys, of whom the
second proved to be one of the most unworthy and incompetent monarchs
that England was ever to know.
[Sidenote: =Edward the Martyr. 975-978.--Insubordination of the great
ealdormen.=]
Edward the Younger, or the Martyr, as after-generations called him,
only sat for three years on his father's throne. He endeavoured to
follow in Eadgar's steps, and retained Dunstan as his chief councillor.
But he found the great ealdormen unruly subjects; they would not obey
a young boy as they had obeyed the great Eadgar. Dunstan was made
the chief mark of their envy, because he represented the policy of a
firm central government and a strong monarchical power. Probably they
would have succeeded in getting him dismissed at the Witan held at
Calne, if a supposed miracle had not intervened to save him. While his
adversaries were pleading against him, the floor of the upper chamber
where the Witan was sitting gave way, owing to the breaking of a beam,
and they were precipitated into the room below, some being killed and
others maimed. But the piece of flooring where Dunstan stood did not
fall with the rest, so that he remained unharmed amid the general
destruction, wherefore men deemed that God had intervened to bear
witness to his innocence.
But Dunstan was not to rule much longer. In 978 his young master was
cruelly murdered by his step-mother, Queen Aelfthryth, who knew that
the crown would fall to her own son if Edward died. For one day the
king chanced to ride past her manor of Corfe, and, stopping at the
door, craved a cup of wine. She brought it out to him herself, and
while he was drinking it to her health, one of her retainers stabbed
him in the back. His horse started forward, and he lost his seat and
was dragged some way by the stirrup ere he died. The queen's friends
threw the body into a ditch, and gave out that he had perished by an
accidental fall, but all the realm knew or suspected the truth.
[Sidenote: =Aethelred the Redeless, 978-1016.--Decline of the kingly
power.=]
Nevertheless, Aelfthryth's boy Aethelred got the profit of his mother's
wicked deed, for the Witan crowned him as the sole heir to King Eadgar.
His long reign was worthy of its evil commencement, for it proved one
unbroken series of disasters, and brought England at last to the feet
of a foreign conqueror. He ruled for thirty-eight years of misery and
trouble, for which he was himself largely responsible, for he was a
selfish, idle, dilatory, hard-hearted man, and let himself be guided by
unworthy flatterers and favourites, who sought nothing but their own
private advantage. Wherefore men called him Aethelred the Redeless,
that is the ill-counselled, because he would always choose the evil
counsel rather than the good. Yet the king was not wholly to blame for
the misfortunes of his reign, for the great ealdormen had their share
in the guilt. Freed from the strong hand of Dunstan, who was soon
driven away from the court, they acted as independent rulers, each in
his own ealdormanry, quarrelled with each other, and disobeyed the
king's commands. It was their divisions and jealousies and selfishness
that made the king's weakness and idleness so fatal, for, when they
refused to obey, he neither could nor would coerce them.
[Sidenote: =Viking invasions.--The Danegelt.=]
The curse of the reign of Aethelred the Redeless was the second coming
of the Danes and Northmen to England. For many years they had avoided
this island, because they knew that only hard blows awaited them there.
But they swarmed all over the rest of Europe, won Normandy from the
kings of the West Franks, and pushed their raids as far as the distant
shores of Andalusia and Italy. But the news that a weak young king,
with disobedient nobles to rule under him, sat on Eadgar's seat,
soon brought them back to England. First there came mere plundering
bands, as in the old days of the eighth century; but Aethelred did
not deal with them sharply and strongly. He bade the ealdormen drive
them off; but they were too much occupied with their own quarrels to
stir. Then the invaders came in greater numbers, and Aethelred thought
to bribe them to go away by giving them money, and raised the tax
called the _Danegelt_ to satisfy their rapacity. But it seemed that
the more that gold was given the more did Danes appear, for the news
of Aethelred's wealth and weakness flew round the North, and brought
swarm after swarm of marauders upon him. Then followed twenty miserable
years of desultory fighting and incessant paying of tribute. Sometimes
individual ealdormen fought bravely against the Danes, and held them
at bay for a space; sometimes the king himself mustered an army and
strove to do something for the realm; sometimes he tried to hire one
band of Vikings to fight against another, with the deplorable results
that might have been expected. His worst and most unwise action was the
celebrated massacre of St. Brice's Day, in 1002, when he caused all
the Danes on whom he could lay hands to be killed. In this case it was
not open enemies whom he slew, for it was a time of truce, but Danish
merchants and adventurers who had settled down in England and done him
homage. By this cruel deed Aethelred won the deadly hatred of Swegen,
King of Denmark, whose sister and her husband had been among the slain.
[Sidenote: =Ravages of Swegen of Denmark.--Eadric "the Grasper."=]
Swegen became Aethelred's bitterest foe, and repeatedly warred against
him, not with mere Viking bands, but with the whole force of Denmark
at his back, a great national army bent on serious invasion of the
land, not on transient raiding. The English were driven to despair by
Swegen's ravages, and the king did nothing to save them. He had now
fallen entirely into the hands of an unscrupulous favourite, named
Eadric Streona, or _the Grasper_, and was guided in all things by this
low-born adventurer. He even created him Ealdorman of Mercia, and
made him the second person in the land. Eadric cared only for ruining
any noble who could possibly be his rival, and for enlarging his
ealdormanry; of the defence of England he took no more thought than did
his master.
[Sidenote: =Swegen chosen king by the Witan.=]
At last, in 1013, there came a Danish invasion of exceptional severity.
The marauders dashed through the country from end to end; they took
Canterbury and slew the good Archbishop Elfheah (St. Alphege), because
he refused to pay them an exorbitant ransom. Then Eadric gathered
together the Witan, without the king's presence, and, with infamous
treachery to his benefactor, proposed to them to submit entirely to
the Danes. So when Swegen came over again in the next year, the whole
realm bowed before him, and the great men, headed by the traitor
Eadric, offered him the crown. Only London held out for King Aethelred,
and stood a long siege, till its citizens learnt that their master
had deserted them and fled over sea to the Duke of Normandy, whose
sister Emma he had married. Then they too yielded, and the Witan of
all England took Swegen as their king. But the Dane died immediately
after his election, and then the majority of the English refused to
choose his son Cnut as his successor. They sent to Normandy for their
old king, and did homage once more to Aethelred; but the traitor Eadric
resolved to adhere to Cnut, because he had lately murdered the thegns
of the Five Boroughs, and dreaded the wrath of their followers. So
Eadric's Mercian subjects and some of the men of Wessex joined the
Danes, and there was civil war once more in England, till Aethelred the
Ill-counselled died in 1016.
[Sidenote: =Edmund Ironside and Cnut, 1016.=]
Then his followers chose in his stead his brave son Edmund II., who
was called Ironside because of his prowess in war. The new king was
a worthy descendant of Alfred, and would have made no small mark in
better times, but he spent his short reign in one unceasing series of
combats with Cnut, a man as able and as warlike as himself. The two
young kings fought five pitched battles with each other, and fortune
swayed to Edmund's side; but in the sixth, at Assandun (Ashington, in
Essex), he was defeated, owing to the treachery of the wretched Eadric
the Grasper, who first joined him with a large body of Mercian troops,
and then turned against him in the heat of the battle (1016).
Then Edmund and Cnut, having learnt to respect each other's courage,
met in the Isle of Alney, outside the walls of Gloucester, and agreed
to divide the realm between them. Cnut took, as was natural, the
Anglo-Danish districts of Northumbria and the Five Boroughs, together
with Eadric's Mercian ealdormanry. Edmund kept Wessex, Kent, London,
and East Anglia. But this partition was not destined to endure. Ere
the year was out the foul traitor Eadric procured the murder of King
Edmund, and then the Witan of Wessex chose Cnut as king over the south
as well as the north. The late king's young brothers and his two little
sons fled to the Continent.
[Sidenote: =The empire of Cnut.=]
So Cnut the Dane became King of all England, and ruled it wisely and
well for nineteen years (1016-35). He proved a much better king than
people expected, for, being a very young man and easily impressed,
he grew to be more of an Englishman than a Dane in all his manners
and habits of thought. He ruled in Denmark and Norway as well as in
this island, but he made England his favourite abode, and regarded
it as the centre and heart of his empire. The moment that he was
firmly established on the throne, he took measures for restoring the
prosperity of the land, which had been reduced to an evil plight
by forty years of ill-governance and war. He swept away the great
ealdormen who had been such a curse to the land, slaying the traitor
Eadric the Grasper, and Uhtred the turbulent governor of Northumbria.
Then he divided England into four great earldoms, as these provinces
began to be called, for the Danish name _jarl_ (earl) was beginning
to supersede the Saxon name ealdorman. Of these he entrusted the two
Anglo-Danish earldoms, Northumbria and East Anglia, to men of Danish
blood, while he gave Wessex and Mercia to two Englishmen who had served
him faithfully, the earls Godwine and Leofric. The confidence in the
loyalty of his English subjects which Cnut displayed was very marked:
he sent home to Denmark the whole of his army, save a body-guard of
two thousand or three thousand _house-carles_, or personal retainers,
and did not divide up the lands of England among them. He kept many
Englishmen about his person, and even sent them as bishops or royal
officers to Denmark, a token of favour of which the Danes did not
altogether approve. He endeavoured to connect himself with the old
English royal house, by marrying Emma of Normandy, the widow of King
Aethelred, though she was somewhat older than himself, so Cnut's
younger children were the half-brothers of Aethelred's.
[Sidenote: =He gives Lothian to the King of Scotland.=]
Cnut gave England the peace which she had not known since the death
of Eadgar, for no one dared to stir up war against a king who was not
only Lord of Britain, but ruled all the lands of the Northmen, as far
as Iceland and the Faroes and the outlying Danish towns in Ireland.
The Welsh and Scots served Cnut as they had served Aethelstan and
Eadgar, and were his obedient vassels. In reward of the services of
Malcolm of Scotland Cnut gave him the district of Lothian, the northern
half of Bernicia, to hold as his vassal. This was the first piece of
English-speaking land that any Scottish king ruled, and it was from
thence that the English tongue and manners afterwards spread over the
whole of the Lowlands beyond the Tweed.
The rapid recovery of prosperity which followed on Cnut's strong and
able government is the best testimony to his wisdom. The wording of the
code of laws which he promulgated is a witness to his good heart and
excellent purposes. His subjects loved him well, and many tales survive
to show their belief in his sagacity, such as the well-known story of
his rebuke to the flattering courtiers who ascribed to him omnipotence
by the incoming waves of Southampton Water.
[Sidenote: =The sons of Cnut, 1035-1042.=]
Cnut died in 1035, before he had much passed the boundary of middle
age. He left two sons, Harold and Harthacnut, the former the child of
a concubine, the latter the offspring of Queen Emma. With his death
his empire broke up, for Norway revolted, and the Danes of Denmark
chose Harthacnut as their king, while those of England preferred the
bastard Harold. Only Godwine, the great Earl of Wessex, declared for
Harthacnut, and made England south of the Thames swear allegiance to
him. So Harold reigned for a space in Northumbria and Mercia, while
Denmark and Wessex obeyed his younger brother. The two sons of Cnut
were rough, godless, unscrupulous young men, and hated each other
bitterly, for each thought that the other had robbed him of part of his
rightful heritage. Moreover, Harold enraged Harthacnut by catching and
slaying his elder half-brother Alfred, the son of Aethelred and Emma,
whom he enticed over to England by fair words, and then murdered by
blinding him with hot irons.
After a space Harold overran Wessex, which Earl Godwine surrendered
to him because Harthacnut sent no aid from Denmark, where he tarried
over-long. But just after he had been saluted as ruler of all England,
Harold died, and his realm fell to his absent brother. Harthacnut
then came over with a large army, and took possession of the land. He
ruled ill for the short space of his life; it was with horror that men
saw him exhume his half-brother's corpse and cast it into a ditch. He
raised great taxes to support his Danish army, and dealt harshly with
those who did not pay him promptly. But just as all England was growing
panic-stricken at his tyranny, he died suddenly. He was celebrating the
marriage of one of his followers, Osgood Clapa, at the thegn's manor
of Clapham, in Surrey, when, as he raised the wine-cup to drink the
bridegroom's health, he fell back in an apoplectic fit, and never spoke
again (1042).
[Sidenote: =Edward the Confessor, 1042-1066.=]
The English Witan had now before them the task of choosing a new
king. Cnut's house was extinct, and with it died all chance of the
perpetuation of a northern empire in which England and Denmark should
be united. It was natural that the council should cast their eyes back
on the old royal house of Alfred, for its eldest member was at this
time in England. Harthacnut had called over from Normandy Edward, his
mother's second son by King Aethelred, the younger brother of that
Etheling Alfred whom Harold had murdered five years before.
It was with little hesitation, therefore, that the Witan, led by Earl
Godwine, the greatest of the rulers of the realm, elected Edward to
fill the vacant throne. The prince's virtues were already known and
esteemed, and his failings had yet to be learnt. Edward was now a man
of middle age, mild, pious, and well-meaning, but wanting in strength
and vigour, and needing some strong arm on which to lean. He had spent
his whole youth in Normandy, at the court of Duke Richard, his mother's
brother, and had almost forgotten England and the English tongue during
his long exile. Just as Cnut had become an Englishman, so Edward had
become for all intents and purposes a Norman.
[Sidenote: =Godwine, Earl of Wessex.--The king's Norman favourites.=]
During the first few years of his reign in England, the new king
was entirely in the hands of Godwine, the great Earl of Wessex. He
married the thegn's daughter Eadgyth (Edith), and entrusted him with
the greater part of the administration of the realm. But Edward and
Godwine were not likely to remain friends; there were several causes
of dispute between them. The most important was the fact that the king
secretly believed that Godwine had been a consenting party to the
murder of his brother Alfred by King Harold. But the most obvious was
Godwine's dislike for the Norman favourites of the king. For Edward
sent for all the friends of his youth from Normandy, and gave them
high preferment in England, making Robert of Jumièges Archbishop of
Canterbury, and bestowing bishoprics on other Norman priests, and an
earldom on Ralf of Mantes, his own nephew. He also showed high favour
to two more of his continental kinsmen, Eustace, Count of Boulogne, and
William the Bastard, the reigning duke of Normandy. William declared
that Edward had even promised to leave the crown of England to him at
his death; and it is possible that the king may have expressed some
such wish, but he had not the power to carry it out, for the election
of the English kings lay with the Witan, and not with the reigning
sovereign.
[Sidenote: =Exile and return of Godwine.=]
The troubles of Edward's reign began in 1050, starting from a chance
affray at Dover. Eustace of Boulogne was landing to pay a visit to the
king, when some of his followers fell into a quarrel with some of the
citizens. Men were slain on both sides, and the count was chased out of
the town with hue and cry. The king took this ill, and bade Godwine--in
whose earldom Dover lay--to punish the men who had insulted his noble
kinsman. But Godwine refused, saying--what was true enough--that the
count's followers were to blame, and the burghers in the right. Edward
was angry at the earl's disobedience, and called to him in arms those
of the English nobles who were jealous of Godwine, especially Leofric,
the Earl of Mercia, and Siward, the Earl of Northumbria. Godwine also
gathered a host of the men of Wessex, and it seemed that civil war
would begin. But the earl was unwilling to fight the king, and when
the Witan outlawed him, he fled over seas to Flanders with his sons,
Harold, Swegen, and Tostig. Edward then fell entirely into the hands
of his Norman favourites. He sent his wife, Godwine's daughter, to a
nunnery, and disgraced all who had any kinship with the exiled earl.
But the governance of the Norman courtiers was hateful to the English,
and when Godwine and his sons came back a year later, and sailed up
the Thames with a great fleet, the whole land was well pleased. No
one would fight against him, and the Norman bishops and knights about
the king's person had to fly in haste to save their lives. Then the
Witan inlawed Godwine again, and Edward was obliged to give him back
his ancient place (1052). So the great earl once more ruled England,
holding Wessex himself, while his second son Harold ruled as earl in
East Anglia, and his third son Tostig became the king's favourite
companion, though he was a reckless, cruel man, very unlike the mild
and pious Edward.
[Sidenote: =Death of Godwine.--His son Harold takes his place.=]
The house of Godwine kept a firm control over the realm during the last
fourteen years of Edward's reign. When Godwine died suddenly at a great
feast at Winchester,[7] his son Harold succeeded both to his earldom of
Wessex and to his preponderant power in England. The years of Harold's
governance were on the whole a time of prosperity, for he was a busy,
capable man, much liked by all the English of the south, though the
Mercians and Northumbrians did not love him so well.
Harold knew how to make the authority of the King of England over
his smaller neighbours respected. It was during his tenure of power
that Siward, earl of Northumbria, was sent into Scotland to put down
Macbeth, the lord of Moray, who had murdered King Duncan and seized his
crown. Siward slew Macbeth in battle at Lumphanan, and restored to the
throne of Scotland Malcolm, the eldest son of the late king (1054). A
little later Harold himself took the field to put down Gruffyd, the
King of North Wales, who had risen in rebellion. He drove the Welsh up
into the crags of Snowdon, and besieged them there till they slew their
own king and laid his head at the earl's feet.
[Sidenote: =Harold's detention in Normandy.=]
It was somewhere about this time that a misfortune fell upon Harold.
He was sailing in the Channel, when a storm arose and drove his ship
ashore on the coast of Ponthieu, near the Somme-mouth. Wido, the Count
of Ponthieu, an unscrupulous and avaricious man, threw the earl into
prison, and held him to ransom. But William, Duke of Normandy, who
was Wido's feudal superior, delivered him from bonds, and brought him
to his court at Rouen. Harold abode with the duke for some time, half
as guest, half as hostage, for William would not let him depart. He
went on an expedition against Brittany with the Normans, and received
knighthood at the duke's hands. After a time he was told that he
might return home if he would engage to use all his endeavours to get
William elected King of England at the death of Edward. The duke said
that he had gained such a promise from Edward himself, and thought he
could make sure of the prize with Harold's aid. Thus tempted, the earl
consented to swear this unwise and unjust oath, and in presence of the
whole Norman court vowed to aid William's candidature. When he had
sworn, the duke showed him that the shrine at which he had pledged his
faith was full of the bones of all the saints of Normandy, which had
been secretly collected to make the oath more solemn.
[Sidenote: =Dissensions in England.--Eadwine and Morcar.=]
So Harold returned to England, and--as it would appear--soon forgot
his oath altogether, or thought of it only as extorted by force and
fear. He had anxieties enough to distract his mind to other subjects.
First Mercia gave trouble, because Aelfgar, the son of Earl Leofric,
was jealous of Harold's predominance in the realm. He twice took arms
and was twice outlawed for treason. Nevertheless, Harold confirmed his
son Eadwine in the possession of the Mercian earldom. Next, Northumbria
broke out into armed rebellion. The king had made his favourite Tostig,
Harold's younger brother, earl of the great northern province when
the aged Siward, the conqueror of Macbeth, died. But Tostig ruled so
harshly and so unjustly, that the Anglo-Danes of Yorkshire rose in
rebellion, put Morcar, the son of Aelfgar of Mercia, at their head,
and drove Tostig away. When Harold investigated the matter, he found
that Tostig was so much in the wrong that he advised the king to
banish his brother, and to confirm Morcar in the Northumbrian earldom.
This resolve, though just and upright, weakened Harold's hold on the
land, for Mercia and Northumbria were thus put in the hands of the two
brothers, Eadwine and Morcar, who worked together in all things and
were very jealous of the great Earl of Wessex, in spite of his kindly
dealings with them (1065).
[Sidenote: =Death of King Edward.=]
Less than a year after Tostig's deposition King Edward died. The
English mourned him greatly, for, in spite of his weakness and his
tendency to favour the Normans over-much, he was an upright, kindly,
well-intentioned man, whom none could hate or despise. Moreover, his
sincere piety made the English revere him as a saint; it was said that
he had divine revelations vouchsafed to him, and that St. Peter had
once appeared to him in a vision and given him a ring. It is, at any
rate, certain that he built the Abbey of Westminster in St. Peter's
honour, and lavished on it a very rich endowment. The English looked
back to Edward's reign as a kind of golden age in the evil times that
followed, and worshipped him as a saint; but the good governance of the
realm owed far more to Godwine and Harold than to the gentle, unworldly
king.
[Sidenote: =Harold elected king by the Witan.=]
On Edward's death the Witan had to choose them a king. The next heir of
the house of Alfred was a child, Eadgar the Etheling, the great-nephew
of the deceased monarch. He was only ten years of age, and there was
no precedent for electing so young a boy to rule England. Outside the
royal line there were two persons who were known to desire the crown:
the first was the man who had for all practical purposes governed
England for the last fourteen years, Earl Harold of Wessex, the late
king's brother-in-law; the other was William the Norman. It was said
that Edward had once promised to use his influence in his Norman
cousin's favour, but it is certain that on his death-bed he recommended
Harold to the assembled thegns and bishops. The Witan did not waver
for a minute in their decision; they chose Harold, and he accepted
the crown without any show of hesitation. Yet it was certain that his
elevation would bring on him the bitter jealousy of the young Earls of
Mercia and Northumbria, who regarded themselves as his equals, in every
respect. And it was equally clear that William of Normandy, who had
counted on Harold's assistance in his candidature for the throne, would
vent his wrath and disappointment on the new king's head (Jan., 1066).
[Sidenote: =Claim of William of Normandy to the crown.=]
Harold attempted to conciliate the sons of Aelfgar by paying them every
attention in his power, and by marrying their sister Ealdgyth. But to
appease the stern Duke of Normandy he knew was impossible, and he
looked for nothing but war from that quarter. Indeed, he was hardly
mounted on the throne before William sent over ambassadors to formally
bid him fulfil his oath and resign the crown, or take the consequences.
It need hardly be added that Harold replied that the Witan's choice was
his mandate, and that his oath had been extorted by force.
[Sidenote: =He prepares to invade England.=]
The Duke of Normandy was firmly resolved to assert his baseless claim
to the throne by force of arms. He had a large treasure and many bold
vassals, but he knew that his own strength was insufficient for such
an enterprise as the invasion of England. Accordingly, he proclaimed
his purpose all over Western Europe, and offered lands and spoil in
England to every adventurer who would take arms in his cause. William's
military reputation was so great, that he was able to enlist thousands
of mercenaries from France, Brittany, Flanders, and Aquitaine. Of the
great army that he mustered at the port of St. Valery, only one-third
were native Normans. William took six months for his preparation; he
had to build a fleet, since Harold had a navy able to keep the Channel,
and to beat up every freelance that could be hired to take service with
him. Nor did he neglect to add spiritual weapons to temporal: he won
over the Pope to give his blessing on the invasion of England, because
Harold had broken the oath he swore on the bones of all the saints, and
had become a perjurer. There were other reasons for Pope Alexander's
dislike for the English. Stigand, Harold's Archbishop of Canterbury,
had acknowledged an anti-Pope, and Rome never forgave schism; moreover,
the house of Godwine had not been friendly to the monks, but had been
patrons of Dunstan's old foes, the secular canons. Alexander therefore
sent William his blessing, and a consecrated banner to be unfurled when
he should land in England.
Hearing of William's vast preparations, Harold arrayed a fleet to
guard the narrow seas, and bade the fyrd of all England to be ready to
muster on the Sussex coast. He was prepared to defend himself, and only
wondered at the delay in his adversary's sailing, a delay which was
caused by north-westerly winds, which kept the Normans storm-bound.
[Sidenote: =Harald Hardrada invades Northumbria.=]
Suddenly there came to Harold disastrous and unexpected news from the
north. His exiled brother Tostig had chosen this moment to do him an
ill turn. He had gone to the north, and persuaded Harald Hardrada, the
King of Norway, to invade England. Hardrada was the greatest Viking
that ever existed, the most celebrated adventurer by sea and land of
his age. When Tostig offered him the plunder of England, he took ship
with all his host and descended on Northumbria. Morcar, the young earl
of that region, came out to meet him, with his brother Eadwine at his
side. But Hardrada defeated them with fearful slaughter before the
gates of York, and took the city.
[Sidenote: =Harold marches northward.--Battle of Stamford Bridge.=]
When Harold of England heard this news he was constrained to leave the
south, and risk the chance of William's landing unopposed. He took with
him his house-carles, the great band of his personal retainers, and
marched in haste on York, picking up the levies of the midland shires
on the way.
So rapidly did Harold move, that he caught the Northmen quite
unprepared, and came upon them at Stamford Bridge, close to York, when
they least expected him. There he defeated the invaders in a great
battle. Its details are unfortunately lost, for the noble Norwegian
saga that gives the story of Hardrada's fall was written too long after
to be trusted as good history. It tells how the English king rode
forward to the invading army, and, calling to his brother, offered him
pardon and a great earldom. But Tostig asked what his friend Harald of
Norway should receive. "Seven feet of English earth, seeing that he is
taller than other men," answered Harold of England. Then Tostig cried
aloud that he would never desert those who had helped him in his day
of need, and the fight began. We know that both the rebel earl and the
Norse king fell, that the raven banner of the Vikings was taken, and
that the remnant only of their host escaped. It is said that they came
in three hundred ships, and fled in twenty-four.
[Sidenote: =Landing of the Normans.=]
Harold of England was celebrating his victory at York by a great feast
a few nights after the battle of Stamford Bridge, when a message was
brought him that William of Normandy had crossed the Channel and
landed in Sussex with a hundred thousand men at his back. Harold
hurried southward with his house-carles, bidding the Earls Eadwine
and Morcar bring on the levies of Mercia and Northumbria to his aid
as fast as they might. But the envious sons of Aelfgar betrayed their
brother-in-law, and followed so slowly that they never overtook
him. Harold marched rapidly on London, and gathered up the fyrd of
East Anglia, Kent, and Wessex, so that he reached the coast with
a considerable army, though it was one far inferior in numbers to
William's vast host. Not a man from Mercia or Northumbria was with him;
but the levies of the southern shires, where the house of Godwine was
so well loved, were present in full force.
[Sidenote: =The battle of Hastings.=]
William had now been on shore some ten or twelve days, and had built
himself a great intrenched camp at Hastings. But the King of England,
as befitted the commander of the smaller host, came to act on the
defensive, not on the offensive. He took post on the hill of Senlac,
where Battle Abbey now stands, and arrayed his army in a good position,
strengthened with palisades. He was resolved to accept battle, though
his brother Gyrth and many others of his council bade him wait till
Eadwine and Morcar should come up with the men of the north, and
meanwhile, to sweep the land clear of provisions and starve out
William's army. The Norman duke desired nothing more than a pitched
battle; he knew that he was superior in numbers, and believed that he
could out-general his adversary. When he heard that Harold had halted
at Senlac, he broke up his camp at Hastings, and marched inland. The
English were found all on foot, for they had not yet learnt to fight
on horseback, drawn up in one thick line on the hillside, around the
dragon-banner of Wessex and the standard of the Fighting Man, which was
Harold's private ensign. The king's house-carles, sheathed in complete
mail, and armed with the two-handed Danish axe, were formed round the
banners; on each flank were the levies of the shires, an irregular
mass where well-armed thegns and yeomen were mixed with their poorer
neighbours, who bore rude clubs and instruments of husbandry as their
sole weapons.
William's army was marshalled in a different way. The flower of the
duke's host was his cavalry, and the Norman knights were the best
horse-soldiery in Europe. His army was drawn up in three great bodies,
the two wings composed of his French, Flemish, and Breton mercenaries,
the centre of the native Normans. In each body the mounted men were
preceded by a double line of archers and troops on foot.
The two hosts joined in close combat, and for some hours the fighting
was indecisive. Neither the arrows of the Norman bowmen, nor the
charges of their knights, could break the English line of battle. The
invaders were driven back again and again, and the axes of the men of
Harold made cruel gaps in their ranks, cleaving man and horse with
their fearful blows. At last William bade his knights draw off for a
space, and bade the archers only continue the combat. He trusted that
the English, who had no bowmen on their side, would find the rain of
arrows so insupportable that they would at last break their line and
charge, to drive off their tormentors. Nor was he wrong; after standing
unmoved for some time, the English could no longer contain themselves,
and, in spite of their king's orders and entreaties, the shire-levies
on the wings rushed down the hill in wild rage and fell upon the
Normans. When they were scattered by their fiery charge, the duke let
loose his horsemen upon them, and the disorderly masses were ridden
down and slain or driven from the field. The house-carles of Harold
still stood firm around the two standards, from which they had not
moved, but the rest of the English army was annihilated. Then William
led his host against this remnant, a few thousand warriors only,
but the pick of Harold's army. Formed in an impenetrable ring, the
king's guards held out till nightfall, in spite of constant showers of
arrows, alternating with desperate cavalry charges. But Harold himself
was mortally wounded by an arrow in the eye, and one by one all his
retainers fell around him, till, as the sun was setting, the Normans
burst through the broken shield-wall, hewed down the English standards,
and pierced the dying king with many thrusts. With Harold there fell
his two brothers Gyrth and Leofwine, his uncle Aelfwig, most of the
thegnhood of Wessex, and the whole of his heroic band of house-carles.
THE ENGLISH KINGS OF THE HOUSE OF ECGBERT.
ECGBERT,
800-836.
|
AETHELWULF,
836-858.
|
+---------------+-------+-------+---------------+
| | | |
AETHELBALD, AETHELBERT, AETHELRED I., ALFRED,
855-860. 860-866. 866-871. 871-901.
|
+---------------------------+-------+
| |
EDWARD THE ELDER, Aethelflaed, = Aethelred.
901-925. Lady of Mercia.
|
+----------------+----------------+
| | |
AETHELSTAN, EDMUND I., EADRED,
925-940. 940-946. 946-955.
|
+--------+--------+
| |
EADWIG, EADGAR,
955-959. 959-975.
|
+-------------+-------------+
| |
EDWARD THE MARTYR, AETHELRED II.,
975-979. 979-1016.
|
+------------------+-----------+---------+
| | |
EDMUND II., Alfred the Etheling, EDWARD III.,
1016. slain 1036. the Confessor,
| 1042-1066.
Edward the Etheling.
|
+-------+-------+
| |
Eadgar the Margaret = Malcolm, King
Etheling. of Scots.
FOOTNOTE:
[7] The Norman historians of a later generation made a very impressive
scene of Godwine's death. The king and the earl were dining together,
it was said, when Edward spoke out his suspicion that Godwine had been
concerned in his brother Alfred's murder. "May the crust that I am
eating choke me," cried the earl, "if I had any hand in his death."
Forthwith he swallowed it, was seized with a fit, and died on the spot.
CHAPTER VI.
THE NORMAN CONQUEST.
William pitched his tents among the dead and dying where the English
standards had stood. Next day he could judge of the greatness of his
success, and see that the English army had been well-nigh annihilated.
He vowed to build a great church on the spot, in memory of his victory,
and kept his resolve, as Battle Abbey shows to this day. At first he
wished to cast out his fallen rival's body on the sea-shore, as that of
a perjurer and an enemy of the Church; but better counsels prevailed,
and he finally permitted the canons of Waltham to bury Harold's corpse
in holy ground. It is said that no one was able to identify the king
among the heaps of stripped and mutilated slain except Edith with the
Swan's Neck, a lady whom he had loved and left in earlier days.
[Sidenote: =William elected and crowned in London.=]
William expected to encounter further resistance, and marched slowly
and cautiously on London by a somewhat circuitous route, crossing the
Thames as high up as Wallingford. But he met with no enemy. Dover,
Canterbury, Winchester, and the other cities of the south yielded
themselves up to him. In fact, Wessex had been so hard hit by the
slaughter at Hastings, that scarce a thegn of note survived to organize
resistance. Every grown-up man of Godwine's house had fallen, and of
the whole race there remained but two young children of Harold's.
Meanwhile the Witan met at London to elect a new king. The two sons of
Aelfgar, whose treacherous sloth had ruined England, had hoped that
one of them might be chosen to receive the crown; but their conduct
had been observed and noted, and rather than take Eadwine or Morcar as
lord, the Witan chose the last heir of the house of Aelfred, the boy
Eadgar, great-nephew to St. Edward. This choice was hopelessly bad when
a victorious enemy was thundering at the gates. Eadwine and Morcar
disbanded their levies, and went home in wrath to their earldoms. The
south could raise no second army to replace that which had fallen at
Hastings, and when William pressed on toward London the followers
of Eadgar gave up the contest. As he lay at Berkhamstead, the chief
men of London and Ealdred, the Archbishop of York, came out to him,
and offered to take him as lord and master. So he entered the city,
and there was crowned on Christmas Day 1066, after he had been duly
elected in the old English fashion. A strange accident attended the
coronation: when the Archbishop Ealdred proposed William's name to the
assembly, and the loud shout of assent was given, the Norman soldiery
without thought that a riot was beginning, and cut down some of the
spectators and fired some houses before they discovered their mistake.
So William's reign began, as it was to continue, in blood and fire.
[Sidenote: =Confiscations in south-east England.=]
Eadwine and Morcar and the rest of the English nobles soon did homage
to William; but the realm was only half subdued, for, save in the
south-east, where the whole manhood of the land had been cut off at
Hastings, the English had submitted more for want of leaders and union
than because they regarded themselves as conquered. It remained to be
seen how the new king would deal with his realm, whether he would make
himself well loved by his subjects, as Cnut had done, or whether he
would become a tyrant and oppressor. William, though stern and cruel,
was a man politic and just according to his lights. He wished to govern
England in law and order, and not to maltreat the natives. But he was
in an unfortunate position. He knew nothing of the customs and manners
of the English, and could not understand a word of their language.
Moreover, he could not, like Cnut, send away his foreign army, and rely
on the loyalty of the people of the land. For his army was a rabble of
mercenaries drawn from many realms outside his own duchy, and he had
promised them land and sustenance in England when they enlisted beneath
his banner. Accordingly, he had to begin by declaring the estates
of all who had fought at Hastings, from Harold the king down to the
smallest freeholder, as forfeited to the crown. This put five-sixths of
the countryside in Wessex, Essex, Kent, and East Anglia into the king's
hands. These vast tracts of land were distributed among the Norman,
French, Flemish, and Breton soldiery, in greater and smaller shares, to
be held by feudal tenure of knight-service from the king's hands.
[Sidenote: =Other freeholders become tenants of the crown.=]
In the rest of England, those of the native landowners who had not
fought at Hastings were allowed to "buy back their lands." That is,
they paid William a fine, made him a formal surrender of their estates,
and then received them back from him under the new feudal obligations,
becoming _tenants-in-chief_ of the crown; agreeing to hold their manors
directly from the king as his personal dependents and vassals. So there
was no longer any land in England held by the old German freehold
tenure, where every man was the sole proprietor of his own soil.
[Sidenote: =Risings in the west and north.=]
If things had stopped here, northern England would have remained in the
hands of the old landholders, while southern England passed away to
Norman lords. But the rapacious followers of the Conqueror were soon
to get foot in the north also. William went back to Normandy in 1067,
leaving his brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, regent in his stead. The
moment that he was gone, the new settlers began to treat the English
with a contempt and cruelty which they had not dared to show in their
master's presence, and Odo rather encouraged than rebuked them. There
followed the natural result, a widespread rising in those parts of
England which had not yet felt the Norman sword. Unfortunately for
themselves, the English rose with no general plan, and with no unity
of purpose, every district fighting for its own hand. The western
counties sent for the two sons of Harold, who came to Exeter, and
were there saluted as hereditary chiefs of Wessex. But in Northumbria
the insurgents proclaimed the Etheling Eadgar as king; and in Mercia
there arose a thegn, Eadric the Wild, who was descended from the
wicked Eadric Streona, and wished to reassert hereditary claims to his
ancestor's earldom.
[Sidenote: =The rebels subdued.--Further confiscations.=]
William immediately returned to England, and attacked the rebels. They
gave each other no aid; each district was subdued without receiving
any succour from its neighbour. William first marched against Exeter,
took it after a long siege, and drove the young sons of Harold over
sea to Ireland. Then he moved into Mercia, and chased Eadric the Wild
into Wales, clearing Gloucestershire and Worcestershire of insurgents.
The North made a perfunctory submission, and a Norman earl, Robert de
Comines, was set over it. These abortive insurrections led to much
confiscation of landed property in the west and north, which was at
once portioned out among William's military retainers (1068).
[Sidenote: =Second rising in Northumbria.--Yorkshire desolated.=]
But there was hard fighting to follow. In the spring of 1069 a second
and more serious rising broke out in Northumbria. The insurgents took
Durham, slew Earl Robert, and sent to ask the aid of the Kings of
Scotland and Denmark. They were headed by Waltheof, Earl of Northampton
and Huntingdon, the son of that Siward who had vanquished Macbeth. Both
the monarchs who had been asked for aid consented to join the rebels.
Malcolm Canmore of Scotland had married Margaret, the sister of the
Etheling Eadgar, and thought himself bound to aid his brother-in-law.
Swegen of Denmark, on the other hand, had hopes of the English crown,
to which, as Cnut's successor, he thought he might lay some claim.
Waltheof and his army ere long took York, and killed or captured the
whole Norman garrison. But after this success the allies drifted apart;
Swegen did not care to make Eadgar King of England, and Eadgar's party
were angry with the Danes for ravaging and plundering on their own
account. When William came up against York with a great host, the Danes
took to their ships and left the English unaided. William was too
strong for the Northumbrians; he routed them, retook York, and then
set to work to punish the country for its twice repeated rebellion.
He harried the whole of the fertile Yorkshire plain, from the Humber
to the Tees, with fire and sword. The entire population was slain,
starved, or driven away. Many fled to Scotland and settled there;
others took to the woods and lived like savages. Several years passed
before any one ventured forth again to till the wasted lands, and when
the great _Domesday Book_ was compiled--nearly twenty years after--it
recorded that Yorkshire was still an almost unpeopled wilderness. While
William was venting his wrath on the unfortunate Northumbrians, the
Danish king, instead of aiding the insurgents, sailed up the Nen to
Peterborough, and sacked its great abbey, the pride of the Fenland;
this act completely ruined the already failing cause of the English,
who would not trust the Danes any longer.
[Sidenote: =Final subjugation of the west--Hereward the Wake.=]
Meanwhile William marched at mid-winter through the snow-covered
heights of the Peakland, from York to Chester, to crush out the last
smouldering fires of the insurrection on the North-Welsh border.
Cheshire and Shropshire bowed before him, and there was then nothing
left of the English hosts, save a few scattered bands of fugitives.
Waltheof, the leader of the rebellion, submitted to the king, and, to
the surprise of all men, was pardoned and restored to his earldom.
The Danes returned to Denmark, bribed by William to depart (1070).
But the last remnants of the English gathered themselves together in
the Fenland under Hereward the Wake, a Lincolnshire man, the most
active and undaunted warrior of his day, Hereward fortified himself
in an entrenched camp on the Isle of Ely, in the heart of the Fens,
and defied the king to reduce him. For more than a year he held his
own, and beat off every attack, though William brought up thousands of
men and built vast causeways across the marshes in order to approach
Hereward's camp of refuge.
[Sidenote: =End of Eadwine and Morcar.--Hereward pardoned.=]
It was at this moment, when the Isle of Ely was the only spot in
England that was not in William's hands, that the foolish and selfish
earls Eadwine and Morcar thought proper to rebel and take arms against
the Normans. They had long lost all influence, even among their own
followers, and were crushed with ease. Eadwine fell in a skirmish;
Morcar escaped almost alone to Hereward's camp. Soon afterwards that
stronghold fell, betrayed to William by the monks of Ely (1071).
Hereward escaped, but most of his followers were captured. The king
blinded or mutilated many of them, and put Morcar in close prison for
the rest of his life. But he offered pardon to Hereward, as he had to
Waltheof, for he loved an open foe. The "Last of the English" accepted
his terms, was given some estates in Warwickshire, and is found serving
with William's army in France a year later.
The English never rose again; their spirit was crushed; ruined by their
own disunion and by the selfishness of their leaders, they felt unable
to cope any longer with the stern King William. Any trouble that he
met in his later years was not due to native rebellions, but to the
turbulence and disloyalty of his own Norman followers. Those of the
English who could not bear the yoke patiently, fled to foreign lands,
many to the court of Scotland, where Queen Margaret, the sister of the
Etheling Eadgar, made them welcome; some even as far as Constantinople,
to enlist in the "Varangian guard" of the Eastern emperor.
[Sidenote: =The monarchy feudalized.--Villeinage.=]
In the fifteen years that followed, William recast the whole fabric
of the English society and constitution, changing the realm into a
feudal monarchy of the continental type. Even before the Conquest the
tendency of the day had been towards feudalism, as is shown by the
excessive predominance of the great earls in the days of Aethelred
the Ill-counselled and Edward the Confessor, and by the decreasing
importance of the smaller freeholders. As early as Eadgar's time a law
bade all men below the rank of thegn to "find themselves a lord, who
should be responsible for them;" that is, to commend themselves to
one of their greater neighbours by a tie of personal homage. But the
old-English tie of vassalage, though it placed the small freeholders in
personal dependence on the thegns, left them their land as their own,
and allowed a man to transfer his allegiance from one lord to another.
When, however, the English thegnhood had fallen on Senlac Hill, or had
lost their manors for joining in the rebellion of 1069, the condition
of their former dependents was much changed for the worse. The Norman
knights, who replaced the thegns, knew only the continental form of
feudal tenure, where the land, as well as the personal obedience of
the vassal, was deemed to belong to the lord. So the English _ceorls_,
who had been the owners of their own land, though they did homage to
some thegn for their persons, were reduced to the lower condition of
_villeinage_--that is, they were regarded as tilling the lord's land as
tenants, and receiving it from him, in return for a rent in service or
in money due to him. And instead of the land being considered to belong
to the farmer, the farmer was now considered to belong to the land;
that is, he was bound to remain on it and till it, unless his lord gave
him permission to depart, being _glebae ascriptus_, bound to the soil,
though he could not, on the other hand, be dispossessed of his farm,
or sold away like a slave. The condition of the _villein_ was at its
very worst in William's reign, because the burden was newly imposed,
and because the Norman masters, who had just taken possession of the
English manors, were foreigners who did not comprehend a word of their
tenants' speech, or understand their customs and habits. They felt
nothing but contempt for the conquered race, whom they regarded as mere
barbarians; and hard as was the letter of the feudal law, they made it
worse by adding insult to mere oppression. They crushed their vassals
by incessant _tallages_, or demands for money over and above the rent
in money or service that was due, and allowed their Norman stewards and
underlings to maltreat the peasantry as much as they chose. It should
be remembered also that, evil though the plight of the villein might
be, there were others even more unhappy than he, since there were many
among the peasantry who were actually slaves, and could be bought and
sold like cattle. These were the class who represented the original
_theows_ or slaves of the old English social system.
[Sidenote: =Predominance of the crown.=]
Feudalism, then, so far as it meant the complete subjection of the
peasant, both in body and in land, to the lord of his manor, was
perfected in England by the Norman conquest. But there was another
aspect of the feudal system, as it existed on the continent, which
England was fortunate enough to escape. The crowning misery of the
other lands of Western Europe was that the king's power in them had
grown so weak, that he could not protect his subjects against the earls
and barons who were their immediate lords. In France, for example, the
king could not exercise the simplest royal rights in the land of his
greater vassals, such as the Duke of Normandy or the Count of Anjou.
All regal functions, from the coining of money to the holding of
courts of justice, had passed to the great vassals. Even when a count
or duke rebelled and declared war against the king, his liegemen were
considered bound to follow their master and take part in his treason.
Now William was determined that this abuse should never take root in
England. He was careful not to allow any of his subjects to grow too
strong; in distributing the lands of England he invariably scattered
the possessions of each of his followers, so that no one man had any
great district entirely in his hands. He gave his favourites land in
eight or ten different counties, but in each they only possessed a
fraction of the whole. There were only three exceptions to this rule.
He created "palatine earls" in Cheshire, Shropshire, and Durham, who
had the whole shire in their hands, and were allowed to hold their own
courts of justice and raise the taxation of the district, like the
counts of the continent. These exceptional grants were made because
they were frontier shires, and the earls were intended to be bulwarks
against the king's enemies--Chester and Shropshire against the Welsh,
and Durham against the Scots.
[Sidenote: =The sheriffs.=]
In the rest of England the king kept the local government entirely
in his own hands, using the sheriffs (shire-reeves), who had existed
since the early days of the kings of Wessex, as his deputies. It was
the sheriff who raised the taxes, led the military levy of the shire
to war, and presided in the law courts of the district. The sheriffs,
whom the king nominated as men whom he could completely trust, were the
chief check on the earls and barons. Their office was not hereditary;
they were purely dependent on the king, and he displaced them at his
pleasure. By their means, William kept the government of England
entirely in his own hands, and never allowed his greater vassals to
trench upon his royal rights.
[Sidenote: =Doctrine of direct allegiance to the crown.=]
William also enunciated a most important doctrine, which clashed with
the continental theory of feudalism. He insisted that every man's duty
to the king outweighed that to his immediate feudal suzerain. If any
lord opposed the king and bade his vassals follow him, the vassals
would be committing high treason if they consented to do so. Their
allegiance to the crown was more binding than that which they owed to
their local baron or earl.
Although, then, the Norman conquest turned England into a feudal
hierarchy, where the villein did homage to the knight, the knight to
the earl, the earl to the king, yet the strength of the royal power
gained rather than lost by the change. William was far more the master
of his barons than was St. Edward of his great earls like Godwine or
Siward. And this was not merely owing to the fact that William was
a strong and Edward a weak man, but much more to the new political
arrangements of the realm. William never allowed an earl to rule more
than one shire, while Godwine or Leofric had ruled six or seven.
William's sheriffs were a firm check on the local magnates, while
Edward's had been no more than the king's local bailiffs. Moreover,
there were many counties where William made no earl at all, and where
his sheriff was therefore the sole representative of authority.
[Sidenote: =The Great Council.=]
The kingly power, too, was as much strengthened in the central as in
the local government. The Saxon Witan had represented the nation as
opposed to the king: it had an existence independent of him, and we
have even seen it depose kings. The Norman "Great Council," on the
other hand, which superseded the Witan,[8] was simply the assembly of
the king's vassals called up by him to give him advice. Though the
class of persons who were summoned to it was much the same as those
who had appeared at the Witan--bishops, earls, and so forth--yet they
now came, not as "the wise men of England," but as the king's personal
vassals, his "tenants-in-chief." All who held land directly from the
crown might appear if they chose, but as a matter of fact it was only
the greater men who came; the knights and other small freeholders would
not as a rule visit an assembly where their importance was small and
their advice was not asked.
[Sidenote: =William and the Church.--Ecclesiastical Courts.=]
William's hand was felt almost as much by the Church as by the State.
He began by clearing away, one after another, all the English bishops;
Wulfstan of Worcester, a simple old man of very holy life, was ere
long the sole survivor of the old hierarchy. Their places were filled
by Normans and other foreigners, the primatial seat of Canterbury
being placed in the hands of Lanfranc of Pavia, a learned Italian
monk who had long been a royal chaplain, and had afterwards been
made Abbot of Bec; he was always the best and most merciful of the
king's counsellors. William and Lanfranc brought England into closer
touch with the continental Church than had been known in earlier
days. This was but natural when we remember that it was with the
Pope's blessing and under his consecrated banner that the land had
been conquered. The new Norman bishops continued Dunstan's old policy
of favouring the monks at the expense of the secular clergy, and of
establishing everywhere strict rules of clerical discipline. Their
stern asceticism was not without its use, for the English clergy had
of late grown somewhat lax in life, and unspiritual and worldly in
their aims. It was with Lanfranc's aid that William took a step in the
organization of the Church that was destined to be a sore trouble to
his successors in later days. Hitherto offences against the law of the
Church had been tried in the secular courts, and this was not felt
to be a grievance by the clergy, because the bishops and abbots both
sat in the Witan and attended the meetings of the local shire courts,
where such offences--bigamy, for example, or perjury, or witchcraft,
or heresy--were tried. But William and Lanfranc now gave the bishops
separate Church courts of their own, and withdrew the inquiry into
all ecclesiastical cases from the king's court. Though William did
not grasp the fact, he was thus erecting an institution which might
easily turn against the royal power, as the ecclesiastical judges in
their new courts were not under the control of the crown, and had no
reason to consult the king's interests. But in William's own time the
Church-courts gave no trouble, for they had not yet learnt their power,
and the bishops dreaded the king's arm too much to offend him. For
William was no slave of the Church; when Pope Gregory VII. bade him do
homage to the papacy for his English crown, because he had won England
under the papal blessing, he sturdily refused. He announced also that
he would outlaw any cleric who carried appeals or complaints to Rome
without his permission, and he forbade the clergy to excommunicate any
one of his knights for any ecclesiastical offence, unless the royal
permission were first obtained.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Earls of Norfolk and Hereford.--Execution of
Waltheof.=]
We have already mentioned the fact that in the last fifteen years of
his reign William had little or no trouble with his English subjects.
But his life was far from being an easy one; he had both foreign
enemies to meet and a turbulent baronage to keep down. Many of the
new earls and barons were not born subjects of William, but Flemings,
French, or Bretons, who looked upon him as merely the chief partner
in their common enterprise of the conquest of England; even among
the Normans themselves many were turbulent and disloyal. Within ten
years of the Conquest, the king had to take arms against a rebellion
of some of his own followers. Ralf, Earl of Norfolk, and Roger, Earl
of Hereford, took counsel against him, and tried to enlist in their
plot Waltheof, the last surviving English Earl. "Let one of us be
king, and the two others great dukes, and so rule all England," was
their suggestion to him, when they had gathered all their friends
together under the pretence of Earl Ralf's marriage feast. Waltheof
refused to join the rebellion, but thought himself in honour bound not
to disclose the conspiracy to the king. When the two earls took arms
they soon found that William was too strong for them. Ralf fled over
sea; Roger was taken and imprisoned for life. Of their followers, some
were blinded and some banished. But the hardest measure was dealt out
to Earl Waltheof, whose only crime had been his silence. William was
anxious to get rid of the last great English territorial magnate; he
tried Waltheof for treason before the Great Council, and, when he was
condemned, had him at once executed at Winchester (1076). His earldoms
of Northampton and Huntingdon were, however, allowed to pass to his
daughter, who married a Norman, Simon of St. Liz.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of William's son Robert.=]
Some few years after the abortive rising of Ralf and Roger, the king
found worse enemies in his own household. His eldest son and heir,
Robert, began to importune him to grant him some of his lands to rule,
and begged for the duchy of Normandy. But William was wroth, and drove
him away with words of sarcastic reproof. The headstrong young man
fled from his father's court and took refuge with Philip, the French
king, William's nominal suzerain. Supported by money and men from
France, Robert made war upon his father, and defeated him at the fight
of Gerberoi (1079). Both father and son rode in the forefront of the
battle. They met without knowing each other, and William was unhorsed
and wounded by his son's lance. Only the courage of an English thegn,
Tokig of Wallingford, who gave his horse to his fallen master, and
received a mortal wound while helping him to make off, saved William
from death. It must be added that Robert was deeply moved when he
learnt how near he had been to slaying his own father, and then he
immediately after sought pardon, and received it. But he had lost the
first place in the king's heart, which was given to his second son
William, whose fidelity was always unshaken. Robert was not the only
kinsman of the Conqueror who justly incurred his wrath. His brother
Bishop Odo angered him sorely by his cruel and oppressive treatment
of Northumbria, and still more by raising a private army to make war
over-seas; William seized him and kept him shut up in prison as long as
he lived.
[Sidenote: =Threatened Danish invasion.=]
Disputes with foreign powers also arose to vex William's later years.
In 1084, Cnut, King of Denmark, threatened to invade the island, and
such a heavy _Danegelt_ was raised to pay the mercenary army which the
king levied against him, that it is said that no such grievous tax had
ever before been raised in England. Yet Cnut never came, being slain by
his own people ere he sailed. Less threatening, but more perpetually
troublesome than the danger of a Danish invasion, were William's
broils with Philip of France, who even in time of peace was always
stirring up strife. But Philip, though nominally ruler of all France,
was practically too weak to cope with William, since his authority was
quietly disregarded by most of the counts and dukes who owned him as
liege lord.
[Sidenote: =Domesday Book.=]
It was probably the difficulty that had been found in raising men and
money to resist the expected Danish invasion of 1084, that led William
to order the compilation of the celebrated _Domesday Book_ in 1085.
This great statistical account of the condition of England was drawn up
by commissioners sent down into every shire to make inquiry into its
resources, population, and ownership. Therein was set down the name
of every landholder, with the valuation of his manors, and an account
of the service and money due from him to the king. It did not give
merely a rent-roll of the estates, but a complete enumeration of the
population, divided up by status into tenants-in-chief of the crown,
sub-tenants who held under these greater landowners, burgesses of
towns, free "_sokmen_," villeins, and serfs of lower degrees. Under
each manor was given not only the name of its present holder and its
actual value, but also a notice of its proprietor in the time of King
Edward the Confessor, and of its value at Edward's death. This enables
us to form an exact estimate of the change in the ownership of the
lands of England brought about by the Conquest. We see that of the
great English earls and magnates not a single one survived; all their
lands had been confiscated and given away at one time or another. Of
the thegns of lower degree some still retained their land, and had
become the king's tenants-in-chief; many had sunk into sub-tenants of a
Norman baron, instead of holding their estate directly from the crown;
but still more had lost their heritage altogether. In some counties,
especially in the south-east, where the whole thegnhood had fallen at
Hastings, hardly a single English proprietor survived. In others, such
for example as Wiltshire or Nottingham, a large proportion of the old
owners remained; but, on the whole, we gather that three-quarters of
the acreage of England must have changed masters between 1066 and 1085.
We discover also that while some parts of England had suffered little
in material prosperity from the troublous times of the Conquest, others
had been completely ruined. Yorkshire shows the worst record, a result
of William's cruel harrying of the land in 1070; manor after manor is
recorded as "waste," and the whole county shows a population less by
far than that of the small shire of Berks.
[Sidenote: =The great Moot of Salisbury.=]
Having ascertained by the completion of Domesday Book the exact names,
status, and obligations of all the landholders of England, William
used his knowledge to bid them all come to the Great Moot of Salisbury
in 1086, where every landed proprietor, whether tenant-in-chief or
sub-tenant, did personal homage to the king, and swore to follow him in
all wars, even against his own feudal superior if need should so arise.
[Sidenote: =Death of William.=]
Two years after the compilation of the Domesday survey, and one year
after the Great Oath of Salisbury, the troubled and busy reign of
William came to an end. The king died, as he had lived, amid the alarms
of war. He was always at odds with his suzerain, the King of France,
since Philip had done him the evil turn of encouraging the rebellion
of his son Robert. In 1087, William was lying ill at Rouen, when
the report of a coarse jest that Philip had made on his increasing
corpulence raised him in wrath from his sick-bed. He headed in person a
raid into France, and sacked the town of Mantes, but while he watched
his men burn the place, the king came to deadly harm. His horse,
singed by a blazing beam, reared and plunged so that William received
severe internal injuries from being thrown against the high pommel of
his saddle. He was borne back to Rouen, and died there, deserted by
well-nigh all his knights and attendants, who had rushed off in haste
when they saw his death draw near. Even his burial was unseemly: when
his corpse was borne to the abbey at Caen, which he had founded, a
certain knight withstood the funeral procession, crying that the ground
where the abbey stood had been forcibly taken from him by the king. Nor
would he depart till the estimated value of the land had been paid over
to him.
Thus ended King William, a man prudent, untiring, and brave, and one
who was pious and just according to his own lights, for he governed
Church and State as one who deemed that he had an account to render
for his deeds. But he was so unscrupulous in his ambition, so ruthless
in sweeping away all who stood in his path, so much a stranger to pity
and mercy, that he was feared rather than loved by his subjects, Norman
as well as English. No man could pardon such acts as his harrying of
Yorkshire, or forget his cruel forest laws, which inflicted death or
mutilation on all who interfered with his royal pleasure of the chase.
"He loved the tall deer as if he was their father," it was said, and
ill did it fare with the unhappy subject who came between him and the
favoured beasts. England has had many kings who were worse men than
William the Bastard, but never one who brought her more sorrow, from
the moment that he set foot on the shore of Sussex down to the day of
his death.
THE HOUSE OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR.
WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR,
1066-1087.
|
+------------+-----------+--+--------------------+
| | | |
Robert, WILLIAM II., HENRY I., = Matilda of Adela = Stephen of
Duke of 1087-1100. 1100-1135. | Scotland. | Blois.
Normandy. | |
| | |
William | |
Clito. | |
+--------+------------------+ +---+-----+
| | | |
William. Matilda = (1) Henry V., Emperor. STEPHEN, Henry,
| (2) Geoffrey of Anjou. 1135-1154. Bishop of
| | Winchester.
| +-----+----+
Eleanor of = HENRY II., | |
Aquitaine. | 1154-1189. Eustace. William.
|
+-------------+-----------+-------------------------+
| | | |
Henry the RICHARD I., Geoffrey = Constance of JOHN,
Younger. 1189-1199. | Brittany. 1199-1216.
| |
Arthur of Brittany. |
|
+--------------------+-------+
| |
HENRY III., Richard of Cornwall,
1216-1272. King of the Romans.
| |
EDWARD I. Henry of Cornwall.
FOOTNOTE:
[8] The native English writers, for some time after the Conquest,
continued to call it the Witan, merely because they had as yet found no
other name for it.
CHAPTER VII.
WILLIAM THE RED--HENRY I.--STEPHEN.
1087-1154.
The eighty years which followed the death of William the Conqueror
were spent in the solution of the problem which he had left behind
him. William had brought over to England two principles of conflicting
tendency--the one that of strong monarchical government, where
everything depends on the king; the other that of feudal anarchy.
He himself had been able to control the turbulent horde of military
adventurers among whom he had distributed the lands of England, but
would his sons be equally successful? We have now to see how two
strong-handed kings kept down the monster of feudal rebellion; how one
weak king's reign sufficed to put the monarchy in the gravest danger;
and how, finally, William's great-grandson quelled the unruly baronage
so that it was never again a serious danger for the rest of England's
national life.
[Sidenote: =William's sons.=]
William had left behind him three sons. To Robert the eldest, the rebel
of 1079, he had bequeathed, not the English crown, but his own ancient
heritage of Normandy. William the Red, the second son, who had always
been his father's loyal helper, was to be King of England. Henry, the
youngest son, was left only a legacy of £5000; the Conqueror would not
parcel out his dominions any further, but said that his latest-born was
too capable a man not to make his own way in the world.
[Sidenote: =Risings of the barons.--Loyalty of the English.=]
William the Red hurried over to England the moment that the breath
was out of his father's body, and was duly crowned by Lanfranc
the archbishop. But it was no easy heritage that he took up; the
Conqueror's death was the instant signal for the outbreak of feudal
anarchy. All the more turbulent of the Norman barons and bishops,
headed by Odo of Bayeux, who had just been released from prison, took
arms, garrisoned their castles, and began to harass their neighbours.
They made it their pretext that Duke Robert, as the eldest son, ought
to succeed his father in all his dominions; but their true reason
for espousing his cause was that Robert was known to be a weak and
shiftless personage, under whose rule every great man would be able to
do whatever he might please. In order to defeat this rising William
the Red took the bold step of throwing himself upon the loyalty of the
native English. He summoned out the militia of the shires, proclaiming
that every man who did not follow his king to the field should be held
_nithing_, a worthless coward, and promising that he would lighten his
father's heavy yoke and rule with a gentle and merciful hand. The fyrd
turned out in unexpected strength and loyalty, and with its aid William
put down all the Norman rebels, and drove them out of the realm. Duke
Robert, who had prepared to come to their aid, was too late, and had to
return to his duchy foiled and shamed.
[Sidenote: =Character and policy of William II.=]
William's promise that he would be a good and easy lord to his subjects
was not kept for long. The new king was in all things an evil copy
of his father: he had William's courage and ability, but none of
his better moral qualities; he had no sense of justice, and was not
restrained by any religious scruples. He was, indeed, an open atheist,
and scoffed at all forms of religion, scornfully observing that he
would become a Jew if it was made worth his while. Moreover, his
private life was infamous, and no man who cared for honour or purity
could abide at his court.
Nevertheless, his government was far more tolerable than the anarchy
of baronial rule would have been. If he sheared his subjects close
himself, he took care that no one else should molest them, and one bad
master is always better than many. Under him England was cruelly taxed,
and many isolated acts of oppression were committed, but he put down
civil war, overcame his foreign enemies, and ruled victoriously for all
his days.
[Sidenote: =War with Scotland.--Cumberland finally becomes English.=]
Of William's exploits, those which were the most profitable for the
peace of England were his enterprises against the Scots and the Welsh.
Malcolm Canmore, though he had done homage to William I., repeatedly
led armies into England against William's son. In this first Scottish
war the Red King, though his fleet was destroyed by a storm, compelled
Malcolm to submit, and took from him the city of Carlisle and the
district of Cumberland. This land, the southern half of the old Welsh
principality of Strathclyde, had been tributary to the Scots ever since
King Edmund granted it to Malcolm I. in 945. It now became an English
county and bishopric, and the border of England was fixed at the
Solway, and no longer at the hills of the Lake District (1092). Only a
year later the Scottish king again invaded England, but was slain at
Alnwick. He ran into an ambush which the Earl of Northumberland laid
for him, and fell; with him died his son Edward and the best of his
knights. The Scottish crown passed, after much fighting and contention,
to Eadgar, Malcolm's second son by his English wife Margaret, the
sister of Eadgar the Etheling. This prince, trained up by his pious
and able mother, and aided and counselled by his uncle the Etheling,
was the first King of Scotland who spoke English as his native tongue,
and made the Lowlands his favourite abode. He surrounded himself
with English followers, and ceased to be a mere Celtic lord of the
Highlands, as his fathers had been.
[Sidenote: =South Wales partly occupied by the Normans.=]
William the Red's arms were as successful against Wales as against
Scotland. During his reign the southern half of the land of the Cymry
was overrun by Norman barons, who won for themselves new lordships
beyond the Wye and Severn, and did homage for them to the king. Many of
these adventurers married into the families of the South Welsh princes,
and became the inheritors of their local power. In North Wales the
Normans pushed across the Dee, and built great castles at Rhuddlan and
Flint and Montgomery, but they could not win the mountainous districts
about Snowdon, where the native chiefs still maintained a precarious
independence.
[Sidenote: =William obtains possession of Normandy.=]
Beyond the British seas William waged constant war with his brother
Robert, and always had the better of his elder, for the duke, though a
brave soldier, was a very incapable ruler, and lost by his shiftless
negligence all that he gained by his sword. He was forced in 1091
to cede several of his towns to William, and to promise to make him
his heir if he should die without male issue. But in 1096 the king
gained possession of the whole, and not a mere fraction, of the Norman
duchy. For Robert, seized with a sudden access of piety and a spirit
of wandering and unrest, vowed to go off to the First Crusade, which
was then being preached. In order to get the money to fit out a large
army, he unwisely mortgaged the whole of his lands to his grasping
brother for the very moderate sum of £6666. So William ruled Normandy
for a space, and Robert went off with half the baronage of Western
Christendom, to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the Turks, and to
set up a Christian kingdom in Palestine. Among his companions were
the Etheling Eadgar, and many Englishmen more. The duke fought so
gallantly against the infidel that the Crusaders offered him the crown
of Jerusalem; but he would have none of it, and set his face homeward
after four years of absence (1099).
[Sidenote: =William's extortions.--Quarrel with the Church.--Anselm.=]
King William meanwhile had been ruling both England and Normandy with
a high hand. He and his favourite minister, Ralf Flambard, had been
devising all manner of new ways for raising money. When a tenant of
the crown died, they would not let his son or heir succeed to his
estate till he had paid an extortionate fine to the king. When a
bishop or an abbot died, they kept his place empty for months--or
even for years--and confiscated all the revenues of the see or abbey
during the vacancy. It was on this question that there broke out the
celebrated quarrel between William the Red and Archbishop Anselm. When
Lanfranc, his father's wise counsellor, died in 1089, the king left the
see of Canterbury unfilled for nearly four years, and embezzled its
revenues. But, being stricken with illness in 1093, he had a moment
of compunction, and filled up the archbishopric by appointing Anselm,
Abbot of Bec. Anselm, like his predecessor Lanfranc, was a learned
and pious Italian monk, who had governed his Norman abbey so well
that he won the respect of all his neighbours. He was only persuaded
with difficulty to accept the position of head of the English Church.
"Will you couple me, a poor weak old sheep, to that fierce young
bull the King of England?" he asked, when the bishops came to offer
him the primacy. But they forced the pastoral staff into his hands,
and hurried him off to be installed. When William recovered from his
sickness he began to ask large sums of money from Anselm, in return
for the piece of preferment that he had received. The king called
this exacting his feudal dues, but the archbishop called it _simony_,
the ancient crime of Simon Magus, who offered gold to the apostles
to buy spiritual privileges. He sent £500, but when the king asked
for more, utterly refused to comply. From this time forth there was
constant strife between William and Anselm, the first beginning of that
intermittent war between the crown and the Church which was to last
for more than two centuries. The archbishop was always withstanding
the king. When two popes disputed the tiara at Rome, William refused
to acknowledge either; but Anselm would not allow that there was
any doubt, did homage to Urban, and thus forced the king's hand by
committing England to one side in the dispute. When Urban sent over to
Anselm the _pall_,[9] the sign of his metropolitan jurisdiction over
the island, the king wished to deliver it to the archbishop with his
own hands. But Anselm vowed that this was receiving spiritual things
from a secular master, and would not take it save with his own hands
and from the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral. Nor did he cease
denouncing the ill living of the king and his courtiers, till William
grew so wrath that he would have slain him, had not all England revered
the fearless archbishop as a saint. At last he found a way of molesting
Anselm under form of law: he declared that the lands of the see of
Canterbury had not sent an adequate feudal contingent to his Welsh
wars, and imposed enormous fines on the archbishop for a breach of his
duties as a tenant-in-chief of the crown. Soon afterwards Anselm left
the realm, abandoning the king to his own devices as incorrigible, and
took his way to Pope Urban at Rome; nor did he return till William was
dead.
[Sidenote: =Death of William II.=]
The end of the Red King was sudden and tragic. He was hunting in the
New Forest--the great tract in Hampshire which his father had cleared
of its inhabitants and turned into one vast deer-park--and he had
chanced to draw apart from all his followers save Walter Tyrrel, one
of his chief favourites. A great hart came bounding between them. The
king loosed an arrow at it, and missed; "Shoot, Walter, shoot in the
devil's name!" he cried. Tyrrel shot in haste, but missed the stag and
pierced his master to the heart. Leaving William dead on the ground, he
galloped off to the shore and took ship for the continent. William's
corpse lay lost in the wood till a charcoal-burner came upon it next
day, and bore it in his cart to Winchester. Such was the strange
funeral procession of the lord of England and Normandy. William's death
grieved none save his favourites and boon companions, for his manner of
living was hateful to all good men, and his taxes and extortions had
turned from him the hearts of all his subjects (August 2, 1100).
[Sidenote: =Election of Henry I.--His charter.=]
When the throne of England was thus suddenly left vacant, it remained
to be seen who would become William's successor. His elder brother
Robert, whom the baronage would have preferred, because of his
slackness and easy ways, was still far away, on his return journey
from the Crusade. But Henry, his younger brother, was on the spot, and
knew how to take advantage of the opportunity. Hastily assembling the
few members of the Great Council who were near at hand, he prevailed
upon them by bribes or promises to elect him king, and was proclaimed
at Winchester only three days after William's death, and long before
the news that the throne was vacant had reached the turbulent barons
of the North and West. After his proclamation at Winchester, Henry
moved to London, and there was crowned. He did his best to win the good
opinion of all his subjects by issuing a charter of promises to the
nation, wherein he bound himself to abide by "the laws of Edward the
Confessor," that is, the ancient customs of England, and not to ask of
any man more than his due share of taxation--agreeing to abandon the
arbitrary and illegal fines on succession to heritages which William
II. had always exacted. He then proceeded to fill up all the abbeys and
bishoprics which William had kept vacant for his own profit, to recall
Anselm from his exile, and to cast into prison Ralf Flambard,[10] the
chief instrument of his brother's oppression and extortions.
[Sidenote: =War with the baronage.=]
Henry's conciliatory measures were not taken a moment too soon. He had
but just time to announce his good intentions, and to give some earnest
of his desire to carry them out, when he found himself involved in a
desperate civil war. The barons had broken loose, headed by Robert
of Belesme, the turbulent Earl of Shrewsbury, and they were set on
making Duke Robert King of England. Robert, indeed, had just returned
from Palestine, and had retaken possession of his duchy shortly after
his brother's death. He planned an invasion of England to assist his
partisans, and began to collect an army.
But the new king was too much for his shiftless brother. When Robert
landed at Portsmouth, he bought him off for a moment by offering him a
tribute of £3000, an irresistible bribe to the impecunious duke, and
then used his opportunity to crush the rebellious barons. The fate
of the rising was settled by the next summer. Gathering together the
English shire levies and those of the baronage who were faithful to
him, the king marched against Robert of Belesme and his associates.
The successful sieges of Arundel and Bridgenorth decided the war:
Robert was forced to surrender, and granted his life on condition of
forfeiting his estates and leaving the realm. "Rejoice, King Henry, for
now may you truly say that you are lord of England," cried the English
levies to their monarch, "since you have put down Robert of Belesme,
and driven him out of the bounds of your kingdom" (1101).
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Henry to Matilda of Scotland.=]
So Henry retained the crown that he had seized, and set to work to
strengthen his position in the land. He did his best to conciliate
the native English by marrying, five months after his accession, a
princess of the old royal house of King Alfred. The lady was Eadgyth,
or Matilda as the Normans re-named her, the daughter of Malcolm, the
King of Scotland and of Margaret, the sister of Eadgar the Etheling.
So the issue of King Henry, and all his descendants who sat on the
English throne, had the blood of the ancient kings of Wessex in their
veins. Some of the Normans mocked at this marriage, and at the anxiety
which Henry showed to please his native-born subjects, and nicknamed
him "Godric," an English name which sounded uncouth to their own ears.
But the king heeded not, when he got so much solid advantage from his
conduct, and the prosperity of his reign justified his wisdom.
[Sidenote: =Fusion of English and Norman races.=]
Henry showed himself his father's true son, reproducing the good as
well as the evil qualities of the Conqueror. He had the advantage
over his father of having been born in England, and of living in
a generation when the first bitterness of the strife of races was
beginning to be assuaged. If he was selfish and hard-hearted and often
cruel, yet he dispensed even-handed justice, curbed all oppressors,
and kept to the letter of the law. He made so little difference
between Norman and Englishman that the two races soon began to melt
together: intermarriage between them became common in all classes save
the highest nobility; the English thegns and yeomen began to christen
their children by Norman names, while the Anglo-Normans began to learn
English, and to draw apart from their kindred beyond the sea in the
old duchy. Thirty years after Henry's death, it was remarked by a
contemporary writer that no man could say that he was either Norman
or English, so much had the two races become intermingled. Much of
the benefit of this happy union must be laid to the credit of Henry
himself, who both set the example of wedding a wife of English blood,
and treated all his men of either race as equal before his eyes. Nor
was he averse to granting a larger measure of liberty to his subjects:
his charter to the city of London, issued in 1100, was a very liberal
grant of self-government to the burghers of his capital, and served
as a model ever after to his successors when they gave privileges to
their town-dwelling liegemen. He allowed the Londoners to raise their
own taxes, to choose their own sheriffs, and to make bye-laws for their
municipal government.
[Sidenote: =Character of Henry.=]
But Henry's character had a bad side: he was at times as ruthlessly
cruel as his father; he punished not only rebellion, but theft and
offences against the forest laws, by death, or blinding, or mutilation.
Once, when he found that the workmen of his mints had conspired
together to issue base coins, he struck off the right hand of every
moneyer in England. We shall see that he was capable of holding his
own brother in close prison for thirty years. He was as grasping
and avaricious as his predecessor William, though he was much less
arbitrary and harsh in his exactions. His private life, though not a
patent scandal like that of the Red King, was open to grave reproach.
Above all things he was selfish; his own advantage was his aim, and
if he governed the land wisely and justly, it was mainly because he
thought that wisdom and justice were the best policy for himself.
[Sidenote: =Strength of the monarchy.--=]
Henry's long reign (1100-1135) was more noteworthy for the tendencies
which were at work in it, than for the particular events which mark
its individual years. It is mainly important as the time of the silent
growth together of Norman and English, and the stereotyping of the
constitution on a strong monarchical basis. In his day the king was
everything, and the Great Council of tenants-in-chief was no check on
him, and did little more than register his decrees. If his successors
had all been like himself, England might have become a pure despotism,
though one well ordered and--considering the lights of the times--not
oppressively administered.
[Sidenote: =Fresh disputes with the Church.=]
The strife between the monarchy and the Church, which had first taken
shape in the quarrel of William Rufus and Anselm, continued in Henry's
time, but raged on a new point of issue. When the archbishop returned
from exile, he refused to take the usual oath of homage, and to be
reinvested in his see by the new king, alleging that, as a spiritual
person, he owed fealty to God alone, and received all his power and
authority from God, and not from the king. This new and strange
doctrine he had picked up in Rome during his exile: the papacy was at
this time putting forth those monstrous claims to dominion over kings
and princes with which it had been inspired a few years before by the
imperious Hildebrand (Pope Gregory VII.). Henry could only reply that,
though the archbishop was a spiritual person, he was also a great
tenant-in-chief, holding vast estates, and that for them he must do
homage to the crown, like all other feudal landowners. Anselm refused,
and there the matter stood still, for neither would yield, though they
treated each other courteously enough, and did not indulge in the
angry recrimination which had been wont to take place when Rufus was
in Henry's place. Anselm even went into exile again for a space. But
at last he and the king met at Bec, in Normandy, in 1106, and hit on a
wise compromise, which they agreed to apply both to Anselm's case and
to all future investitures of bishops. The newly elected prelate was to
do homage, as a feudal tenant, for the estates of his see; but he was
not to receive the symbols of his spiritual authority from the king,
but was to take up his ring and crozier from the high altar of his
cathedral, as direct gifts from God. This decision served as a model
for the agreement between the Pope and the empire, when fourteen years
later the "Contest about Investiture," as this widespread dispute was
called, was brought to an end on the continent.
[Sidenote: =Wars with Duke Robert.--Partial conquest of Normandy.=]
The chief incidents in the foreign relations of Henry's reign are
his long wars with his shiftless brother Robert, and afterwards with
Robert's son, William Clito. He had never forgiven the duke for his
attempt to dethrone him by the aid of rebels in 1099; nor did the duke
ever forgive him for having so promptly seized England at the moment
of the death of William II. The peace which they had made in 1100 did
not endure, and a long series of hostilities at last culminated in the
battle of Tinchebrai (1106). Here Henry, who had invaded Normandy,
completely defeated his brother and took him prisoner. He sent the
unfortunate Robert to strict confinement in Cardiff Castle, and kept
him there all the days of his life. For the rest of his reign Henry
ruled Normandy as well as England, but his dominion in the duchy was
very precarious. The baronage hated his strong hand and his strict
enforcement of the law. They often rebelled against him, but he never
failed to subdue them. When William, surnamed Clito, the son of the
imprisoned duke, grew towards man's estate, he had no difficulty in
finding partisans in Normandy who would do their best to win him
back his father's heritage. Aided by the King of France, who was one
of Henry's most consistent enemies, William Clito made several bold
attempts to deprive his uncle of Normandy. He did not succeed, but
presently he became Count of Flanders, to which he had a claim through
his grandmother Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror. Possessed
of this rich country, he grew to be a more serious danger to the
English king, but he fell in battle in 1128, while striving with some
Flemish rebels, and by his death Henry's position became unassailable.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Matilda to Geoffrey of Anjou.=]
The King of England was troubled with many other enemies beside William
Clito. Lewis VI. of France, and Fulk, Count of Anjou, were always
molesting him. But he gained or lost little by his long and dreary
border wars with them. The one noteworthy consequence of this strife
was that, to confirm a peace with Count Fulk, the king married his two
children to the son and daughter of the lord of Anjou. First, his son
William was wedded to the count's daughter (1119), and some years later
the Lady Matilda was married to Geoffrey, the count's son and heir
(1127).
[Sidenote: =Death of Henry's son.--Matilda heiress to the throne.=]
The importance of this latter marriage lay in the fact that Prince
William had died in the intervening space, and that Matilda--a widowed
princess whose first husband had been the Emperor Henry V.--was now the
King of England's sole heiress. The end of her brother had been strange
and tragic: he was following his father from Normandy to England, when
a drunken skipper ran his vessel upon the reef of Catteville, only five
miles from the Norman shore. The prince was hurried by his followers
into the only boat that the ship possessed, and might have escaped, had
he not seen that his half-sister, the Countess of Perche,[11] had been
left behind. He bade the oarsmen put back, but when they reached the
ship, a crowd of panic-stricken passengers sprang down into the boat
and swamped it. The prince was drowned, and with him his half-brother
Richard, his half-sister the Countess of Perche, the Earl of Chester,
and many of the chief persons of the realm. Only one sailor-lad
survived to tell the sad tale of the White Ship. When the news of the
death of his only legitimate son reached the king, he was prostrated
by it for many days, and it was said that he was never seen to smile
again, though he lived for fifteen years after the disaster. But, if
the chronicles speak true, the death of William was more of a loss to
his father than to the realm, for they report him to have been a proud
and cruel youth, who bid fair to reproduce some of the evil qualities
of his uncle William Rufus.
Henry was determined that his realm should pass at his death to his
daughter Matilda, and not to any of his nephews, the sons of William
the Conqueror's daughters. But he knew that it would be a hard matter
to secure her succession, for England had never been ruled by a
queen-regnant, and it was very doubtful if the Great Council would
elect a woman. Moreover, the barons grudged that she should have been
married to a foreign count, for they had hoped that the king would have
given her hand to one of his own earls. Henry endeavoured to support
Matilda's cause by constraining all the chief men of the realm, and
his own kinsfolk, to take an oath to choose her as queen after his
death. But he well knew that oaths sworn under compulsion are lightly
esteemed, and must have foreseen that on his death his daughter would
have great difficulty in asserting her claims.
[Sidenote: =Complete conquest of South Wales.--Scotland.=]
But, trusting his daughter's fate to the future, Henry persevered
in his life's work, and left his kingdom behind him at his death in
1135 with a full treasury, an obedient baronage, and largely extended
borders. Not only had he won Normandy, but he had completed the
conquest of South Wales, and established large colonies of English and
Flemings about Pembroke and in the peninsula of Gower. With his three
brothers-in-law, who reigned in Scotland one after another, he dwelt
on friendly terms; they did him homage, and he left them unmolested.
They were wise princes who knew the value of peace, and under them the
Scotch kingdom advanced in civilization and wealth, and grew more and
more assimilated to its great southern neighbour.
On the 1st of December, 1135, King Henry died. Though a selfish and
unscrupulous man, he had been a good king, and the troubles which
followed his death soon taught the English how much they had owed to
his strong and ruthless hand.
[Sidenote: =Stephen elected king.=]
Immediately on the arrival of the news of his death, the Great Council
met at London. It was soon evident that many of its members thought
little of the oath that they had sworn ten years before. One after
another they declared that the reign of a queen would be unprecedented
and intolerable, and that a man must be chosen to rule over England.
Of the male members of the royal house the one who was best known in
England was Stephen of Blois, one of the late king's nephews, and the
son of Adela, a daughter of William I., who had wedded the Count of
Blois and Champagne. He had been the late king's favourite kinsman,
and had taken the oath to uphold Matilda's rights before any of the
lay members of the council. Now he lightly forgot his vow, and stood
forward as a candidate for the crown. Matilda was absent abroad, and
her husband Geoffrey of Anjou was much disliked, so that it was not
difficult for Henry, Bishop of Winchester, Stephen's younger brother,
to prevail on the majority of the magnates of the realm to reject her
claim. In spite of the murmurings of a large minority, Stephen was
chosen as king, and duly crowned at London, whose citizens liked him
well, and hailed his accession with shouts of joy.
[Sidenote: =Aims of the baronage.--Civil war begins.=]
They were soon to change their tone, for ere long Stephen began to
show that he was too weak for the task that he had undertaken. He was
a good-natured, impulsive, volatile man, who could never refuse a
friend's request, or keep an unspent penny in his purse. Save personal
courage, he had not one of the qualities of a successful king. The
baronage soon took the measure of Stephen's abilities, and saw that the
time had come for them to make a bold strike for that anarchical feudal
independence which was their dream. The name and cause of Matilda gave
them an excellent excuse for throwing up their allegiance, and doing
every man that which was right in his own eyes. The king put down a few
spasmodic rebellions, but more kept breaking out, till in the third
year of his reign a general explosion took place (1138). The cause of
the Lady Matilda was taken up by two honest partisans, her uncle David,
King of Scotland, and her half-brother Robert, Earl of Gloucester;[12]
but these two were aided by a host of turbulent self-seeking barons,
who craved nothing save an excuse for defying the king and plundering
their neighbours.
[Sidenote: =The Scottish invasion.--Battle of the Standard.=]
The Scot was the first to move; he crossed the Tweed with a great
army, giving out that he came to make King Stephen grant him justice
in the matter of the counties of Huntingdon and Northampton, which he
claimed as the heir of the long-dead Earl Waltheof.[13] But the wild
Highland clans that followed David ravaged Northumbria so cruelly that
the barons and yeomen of Yorkshire turned out in great wrath to strike
a blow for King Stephen. At Northallerton they barred the way of the
invaders, mustering under Thurstan, Archbishop of York, and the two
sheriffs of the county. They placed in their midst a car bearing the
consecrated standards of the three Yorkshire saints--St. Peter of York,
St. Wilfred of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley. Around it they stood
in serried ranks, and beat off again and again the wild charges of the
Highlanders and Galloway men who formed the bulk of King David's army.
More than 10,000 Scots fell, and Yorkshire was saved; but the war was
only just beginning (1138).
A few months after the Battle of the Standard the English partisans
of Matilda took arms, headed by her brother, Earl Robert. Gloucester,
Bristol, Hereford, Exeter, and most of the south-west of England at
once fell into their hands. Stephen did his best to make head against
them, by the aid of such of the baronage as adhered to him, and of
great bodies of plundering mercenaries raised in Flanders and France.
He bought off the opposition of the Scots by ceding Northumberland and
Cumberland to Henry, the son of King David, who was to hold them as his
vassal, and for the rest of Stephen's reign the two northern counties
were in Scottish hands.
[Sidenote: =Victory of Matilda at Lincoln.=]
But at this critical moment the king ruined his own cause by a quarrel
with the Church. He threw into prison the Bishops of Salisbury
and Lincoln, because they refused to surrender their castles into
his keeping, and treated them so roughly that every ecclesiastic
in the realm--even including his own brother, Henry, Bishop of
Winchester--took part against him (1139). Soon afterward Matilda landed
in Sussex, and all the southern counties fell away to her. After
much irregular fighting, the two parties came to a pitched battle
at Lincoln. In spite of the feats of personal bravery which Stephen
displayed, he was utterly defeated, and fell into the hands of his
enemies (1141).
The cause of Matilda now seemed triumphant. She had captured her enemy,
and most of the realm fell into her hands. She was saluted as "Lady of
England" at Winchester, and there received the homage of the Archbishop
of Canterbury, and most of the barons and bishops of the land. She
then moved to London, to be crowned; but in the short space since her
triumph she had shown herself so haughty, impracticable, and vindictive
that men's minds were already turning against her. Most especially did
she provoke Stephen's old partisans, by refusing to release him on
his undertaking to quit the kingdom and formally resign his claims to
the crown. This refusal led to the continuation of the war: Maud of
Boulogne, Stephen's wife, rallied the wrecks of his party and continued
to make resistance, and on the news of her approach the Londoners
commenced to stir. Their new mistress had celebrated her advent by
imposing a crushing _tallage_, or money-fine, on the city, and in wrath
at her extortion the citizens rose in arms and chased her out of the
place, before she had even been crowned.
[Sidenote: =Reverses of Matilda.--Feudal anarchy.=]
The unhappy civil war--which for a moment had seemed at an end--now
commenced again. Matilda steadily lost ground, and had to release
Stephen in exchange for her brother, Robert of Gloucester, who had
fallen into the hands of the king's party. She was besieged first at
Winchester, then at Oxford, and on each occasion escaped with great
difficulty from her adversaries. At Oxford she had to be let down by
a rope at night from the castle keep, to thread her way through the
hostile outposts, and then to walk on foot many miles over the snow.
The baronage were so well content with the practical independence
which they enjoyed during the civil war, that they had no desire to
see it end. They changed from side to side with the most indecent
shamelessness, only taking care that at each change they got a full
price for their treachery. Geoffrey de Mandeville, the wicked Earl of
Essex, was perhaps the worst of them; he sold each party in turn, and
finally fought for his own hand, taking no heed of king or queen, and
only seeking to plunder his neighbours and annex their lands. He had
many imitators; the last pages of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which
finally comes to an end in Stephen's reign, are filled with a picture
of the hopeless misery of the land. Every shire, it laments, was full
of castles, and every castle was filled with devils and evil men. The
lords took any weaker neighbours who were thought to have money, and
put them in dungeons, and tortured them with unutterable devices.
"The ancient martyrs were not so ill treated, for they hanged men by
the thumbs, or by the head, and smoked them with foul smoke; they
put knotted strings about their heads, and twisted them till they bit
into the brain. They put them in dungeons with adders and toads, or
shut them into close boxes filled with sharp stones, and pressed them
there till their bones were broken. Many thousands they killed with
hunger and torment, and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen
was king. In those days, if three or four men came riding towards a
township, all the township fled hastily before them, believing them to
be robbers."
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Wallingford.--Death of Stephen.=]
So fared England for many years, till in 1153 a peace was patched up at
Wallingford. Matilda had quitted England long before, and her party was
now led by her young son, Henry of Anjou, who had come over in 1152 to
take her place. Stephen was now old and broken by constant campaigning;
he had lately lost his son Eustace, whom he had destined to succeed
him; and when it was proposed to him that he should hold the crown for
his own life, but make Count Henry his heir, he closed with the offer.
Less than a year later he died, leaving England in the worst plight
that ever she knew since the days of Aethelred the Ill-counselled. For
the king's mandate no longer ran over the land, and every baron was
ruling for himself. Northumberland and Cumberland were in the hands of
the Scots, the Welsh were harrying the border counties, and Yorkshire
had been ravaged in 1153 by the last Viking raid recorded in English
history. It was time that a strong man should pick up the broken
sceptre of William the Conqueror.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] A narrow tippet of white wool, fastened by four black cross-headed
pins, such as we see in the shield of arms of the see of Canterbury.
[10] William had made Ralf Bishop of Durham in reward for his evil
doing--a typical instance of his cynical disregard for public and
private morality.
[11] This lady was a natural daughter of the king, and not his
legitimate issue by Queen Matilda.
[12] One of the late king's illegitimate sons, to whom he had given the
earldom of Gloucester.
[13] See p. 77.
CHAPTER VIII.
HENRY II.
1154-1189.
When Henry of Anjou, now a young man of twenty-one years, succeeded to
Stephen's crown, he found the country in a most deplorable condition.
The regular administration of justice had ceased, many of the counties
had no sheriffs or other royal officers, the revenue had fallen off
by a half, and the barons were exercising all the prerogatives of the
king, even to the extent of coining money in their own names. A weak
man would have found the position hopeless; a strong man, like Henry,
saw that it required instant and unflinching energy, but that it was
not beyond repair.
[Sidenote: =Undisputed accession of Henry.--His continental dominions.=]
Henry started with the advantage of an undisputed title; his mother,
Matilda, had ceded all her rights to him, and Stephen's surviving son,
William of Boulogne, never attempted to lay any claim to the crown.
Moreover, the king had enormous resources from abroad to aid him.
His father was long dead, so that he was himself Count of Anjou and
Touraine. He had his mother's lands of Normandy and Maine already in
his hands. But he had become the ruler of a still larger realm by his
marriage. He had taken to wife Eleanor, the Duchess of Aquitaine, whose
enormous inheritance stretched from the Loire to the Pyrenees. This was
a marriage of pure policy; Eleanor was an ill-conditioned, unprincipled
woman, the divorced wife of King Lewis VII. of France, and she gave her
second husband almost as much trouble as she had given her first. But
by aid of her possessions Henry dominated the whole of France; indeed,
he held much more French territory under him than did King Lewis VII.
himself, and for the political gain he was prepared to endure the
domestic trouble.
[Illustration: FRANCE,
SHOWING HENRY II'{S}.
CONTINENTAL DOMINIONS.]
The continental dominions of Henry were, indeed, so large that they
quite outweighed England in his estimation. He was himself Angevin born
and bred, and looked upon his position more as that of a French prince
who owned a great dependency beyond sea, than as that of an English
king who had possessions in France. He spent the greater part of his
time on the continent, so that England was generally governed by the
successive _Justiciars_, or prime ministers, who acted as regents while
he was abroad. Henry's absence and his absorption in foreign politics
were perhaps not a very grave misfortune for England; he was such a
strong and able ruler, that when he had once put the realm to rights
in the early part of his reign, the danger to be feared was no longer
feudal anarchy, but royal despotism.
[Sidenote: =Feudal anarchy put down.--Northumberland and Cumberland
recovered.=]
Henry's first measures, on succeeding to the throne, were very drastic.
He began by ordering the barons to dismantle all the castles which
had been built in the troublous times of Stephen, and enforced his
command by appearing at the head of a large army. It is said that he
levelled to the ground as many as 375 of these "adulterine castles,"
as they were called, because they had been erected without the king's
leave. Very few of the barons ventured to resist; those who did were
crushed without difficulty. Henry also resumed all the royal estates
and revenues which Stephen and Matilda had lavished on their partisans
during the civil war, annulling all his mother's unwise grants as
well as those of her enemy. He filled up the vacant sheriffdoms, and
commenced the despatch of itinerant justices round the country, to
sit and decide cases in the shire courts; this custom, which became
permanent, was the origin of our modern Assizes. After he had set
England in order, Henry demanded the restoration of Northumberland and
Cumberland from Malcolm of Scotland, the heir of King David. They were
given back, after being seventeen years in Scottish hands. At the same
time, Malcolm did homage to Henry for his remaining earldom in England,
that of Huntingdon, which had descended to him from Waltheof. Owen,
Prince of North Wales, submitted himself to the king in the same year,
but not without some fighting, in which Henry met with checks at first.
Thus England was pacified, brought under firm and regular rule, and
restored to her ancient frontiers. Henry even thought at this time
of invading Ireland, and got a Bull from Pope Adrian IV., the only
Englishman who ever sat upon the papal throne, to authorize him to
subdue that country. The pretexts alleged were, that the Irish church
was schismatic, inasmuch as it refused to acknowledge the papal
authority, and also that Ireland was infamous for its slave-trading
in Christian men. But no attempt was made to enforce the Bull
_Laudabiliter_ for many years to come.
[Sidenote: =The War of Toulouse.--Scutage.=]
Ireland might rest secure, because the king had turned aside into
schemes for the augmentation of his continental dominions. Long and
fruitless bickerings and negotiations with Lewis VII., the shifty King
of France, ended in 1159 in the _War of Toulouse_. Henry laid claim
to the great south-French county of Toulouse, as owing fealty to his
wife's duchy of Aquitaine. He led against it the greatest army that
had been seen for many years, in which the King of Scotland and the
Prince of Wales served as his chief vassals. But when Lewis of France
threw himself into Toulouse, Henry turned aside, moved, it is said,
by the curious feudal scruple that it did not befit him as Duke of
Normandy and Count of Anjou to make a personal attack on his suzerain,
the King of France. He ravaged the county, but did not proceed with
the siege of Toulouse itself. Next year he patched up a peace with
his feudal superior, which was to be confirmed by the marriage of his
five-year-old son and heir, Prince Henry, with Margaret, the French
king's daughter (1160). The chief interest of the very fruitless war of
Toulouse was that Henry employed in it a new scheme of taxation, which
was an indirect blow at the feudal system. As Toulouse was so very far
from England, he allowed those of the English knighthood who preferred
to stay at home, to pay him instead of personal service a composition
called _scutage_ (shield-money). The money thus received was used to
hire a great body of mercenary men-at-arms, whom the king knew to be
both more obedient and more efficient soldiers than the unruly feudal
levies.
[Sidenote: =Quarrel with the Church.--Thomas Becket.=]
The interest of Henry's reign now shifts round to another point--the
question of the relations between State and Church, which we have
already seen cropping up in the reigns of Rufus and Henry I. In 1162
he appointed Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, and rued the
choice ever after, for now his troubles began. Thomas, the son of a
wealthy merchant of London, had been the king's chief secretary or
_Chancellor_ for the last eight years. He was a clever, versatile, not
very scrupulous man, with a devouring ambition: hitherto he had been
a devoted servant, and a genial companion to the king, and had lived
much more like a layman than a cleric. In spite of his priesthood, he
had borne arms in the war of Toulouse, and even distinguished himself
in a single combat with a French champion. Henry thought that Thomas
would be no less obliging and useful as archbishop than he had been as
Chancellor. He was woefully deceived. No sooner was Thomas consecrated,
than his whole conduct and manner of life suddenly changed. His
ambition--now that he had become a great prelate--was to win the
reputation of a saint. Casting away all his old habits, he began to
practise the most rigid austerity, wearing a hair shirt next his skin,
stinting himself in food and drink, and washing the feet of lepers and
mendicants; from a supple courtier he had become the most angular and
impracticable of saints. But it was not merely to mortify his own body
that Becket had accepted the archbishopric; his real object was to
claim for the head of the Church in England what the Popes of his day
were claiming for themselves in Western Christendom--complete freedom
from the control of the State. His dream was to make the English Church
_imperium in imperio_, and to rule it himself as an absolute master.
Without the reputation of a saint, he could not dare to compass this
monstrous end, so a saint he had to become. The moment that he was
consecrated, he opened his campaign against the king; he threw up the
Chancellorship, which Henry had asked him to retain, and commenced
at once to "vindicate the rights of the see of Canterbury," that is,
to lay claim to a number of estates now in the hands of various lay
owners, as being Church land. When his demands were withstood, he
in some cases went to law with the owners, but in others used the
arbitrary clerical punishment of excommunicating his adversaries. But
this was only the beginning of troubles; in 1163 he began to oppose
the king in the Great Council, taking up the ever-popular cry that the
taxes were over-heavy. Henry, surprised at meeting opposition from such
an unexpected quarter, withdrew his proposals, which seem indeed to
have been intended rather to limit the profits of the sheriffs than to
raise more money.
[Sidenote: =Claims of the Ecclesiastical Courts.=]
But the growing estrangement between the king and the archbishop did
not come to a full head till the end of 1163, when they engaged in
a desperate quarrel on the question of the rights and immunities of
the clergy. We have mentioned in an earlier chapter how William the
Conqueror had established separate courts for the trial of clerical
offences, and had put them under the control of the bishops. Since his
day, these courts had been steadily growing in importance, and putting
forth wider and wider claims of jurisdiction. The anarchical reign
of Stephen, when all lay courts of justice came to a standstill, had
been especially favourable to their growth. The last development of
their demands had been the extraordinary assertion that they ought to
try, not only all ecclesiastical offences, but all offences in which
ecclesiastics were concerned. That is, not only were such crimes as
bigamy or heresy or perjury to come before them, but if a member of the
clerical body committed theft or assault or murder, or, again, if a
layman robbed or assaulted or murdered a cleric, the cases were to be
taken out of the king's court, and to be brought before the bishop's.
The most monstrous absurdity of this claim was that the ecclesiastical
tribunal had no power to impose any but ecclesiastical punishments,
that is to say, penance, excommunication, or deprivation of orders.
So if a clergyman committed the most grievous crimes, he could not
receive any greater penalty than suspension from his clerical duties,
or penances which he might or might not perform. It had come to be a
regular trick with habitual criminals to claim that they were in holy
orders--which included not only the priesthood, but sacristans and
sub-deacons and other minor church officers--and so to exchange death
or blinding for the milder ecclesiastical punishments.
[Sidenote: =The Constitutions of Clarendon.=]
A very bad case of murder by a priest, which Becket punished merely
by ordering the murderer to abstain from celebrating the Sacraments
for two years, called King Henry's attention to the usurpation of the
Church courts. When he found that their claims were quite modern, and
had been unknown to the old English law, he resolved at once to take
in hand the settlement of the whole question of the ecclesiastical
courts. At a Great Council held at Westminster, he proposed to appoint
a committee to investigate the matter, and to draw up a statement of
the true law of the land with regard, not only to "criminous clerks,"
but to all the disputes between lay and clerical personages which could
arise. Becket opposed the proposal as an invasion of the rights of the
Church, and by his advice the other bishops, when asked if they would
undertake to abide by the decision of the committee, replied that they
would do so in so far as it did not impugn their rights--which meant
not at all.
The statement of the laws of England was prepared by the committee,
drawn up by the Justiciar, Richard de Lucy, and laid before the Great
Council at Clarendon[14] early in the next year (1164), whence the
document is known as the _Constitutions of Clarendon_. The king in
it proposed a compromise--that the Church court should try whether a
"criminous clerk" was guilty or innocent, and, if it pronounced him
guilty, should hand him over to the king's officers to suffer the same
punishment that a layman who had committed a similar offence would
suffer. In other matters, where a layman and a cleric went to law on
secular matters, the case was to be tried in the king's court. No
layman was to be punished for spiritual offences, or excommunicated,
without the king's leave, and the clergy were strictly prohibited from
making appeals to Rome, or going thither, unless they had the royal
authorization.
[Sidenote: =Opposition of Becket.=]
Becket declared that the Constitutions of Clarendon violated the
immunities of the Church, but for a moment he yielded and consented to
sign them. Next day, however, to the surprise of all men, he asserted
that his consent had been a deadly sin, that he withdrew it, and that
nothing should induce him to sign the constitutions. Henry vehemently
urged him to do so, and pointed out that the Archbishop of York and the
rest of the bishops were ready to accept the arrangement as just and
fair. But Thomas took the attitude of a martyr, refused to move, and
even sent to the Pope to get absolution for his so-called sin in giving
a momentary consent to the king's proposals.
[Sidenote: =He leaves England.=]
Seriously angry at the archbishop for binding up his cause with that
of the criminous clerks and the usurpation of the Church courts, Henry
took the rather unworthy step of endeavouring to bend Thomas to his
will by allowing several of his courtiers to bring lawsuits against
him, and by threatening to rake up and go through the accounts of all
the public monies that had passed through his hands during the eight
years that he had been Chancellor. But Becket was not a man to be
bullied; he made himself yet more stiff-necked, and assumed the pose
of a martyr for the rights of the Church. It was in vain that the
other bishops urged him to yield; he attended the Great Council at
Northampton in October, 1164, faced the king, refused to submit, and
then, pretending that his life was in danger, fled by night and sailed
over to Flanders. For the next six years Becket was on the continent,
generally under the protection of Henry's suzerain and enemy, the King
of France. He was regarded by the continental clergy as the champion
of the rights of their order, and treated with the highest respect
wherever he went. He did his best to stir up the King of France and
his vassals against Henry II., and to induce the Pope Alexander III.
to excommunicate him. But Alexander, deep in a quarrel with the great
emperor Frederic Barbarossa, did not wish to make an enemy of the
strongest king in Western Europe, and refused to do Becket's behest. On
his own account, however, the exiled archbishop laid the sentence of
excommunication on most of Henry's chief counsellors. As the great body
of the bishops sided with the king, Becket's fulminations from over sea
had little effect. In England he was treated as non-existent.
[Sidenote: =An interdict threatened.--Return of Becket.=]
But in 1170 a new complication brought about a change in affairs. King
Henry's eldest son and namesake, Henry the younger, was now a lad of
fifteen, and his father wished to crown him and take him as colleague
in his kingdom. The right to crown an English king was undoubtedly
one of the prerogatives of the Archbishop of Canterbury. But Henry
left Becket out of account, and caused the ceremony to be performed by
Roger of York. This invasion of his privileges wrought Thomas to such
fury that he sought out the Pope, and won him over by his vehemence
to threaten to lay all England under interdict--to cut it off from
Christendom, and forbid the celebration of the Sacraments within its
bounds.
King Henry, who was engaged in a troublesome war with the French king,
was afraid of the consequences of the papal interdict; its enforcement,
he thought, would make him too unpopular. So he humbled himself to
patching up a truce with Becket, though they could not even yet come to
any agreement on the question of the Constitutions of Clarendon. In the
autumn of 1170 the king allowed him to return to England, on a tacit
agreement that bygones were to be bygones.
But Becket had hidden his true purpose from the king. He returned
to England bent, not on peace, but on war. Either because his anger
carried him away, or because he was deliberately aiming at martyrdom
and wished to provoke his enemies to violence, he proceeded to the most
unheard-of measures. He first excommunicated the Archbishop of York and
the Bishops of London and Lincoln, who had taken part in the crowning
of the younger Henry. Then he laid a similar sentence on those of the
king's courtiers whom he accused of encroaching on the estates of the
see of Canterbury.
[Sidenote: =Murder of Becket.=]
The king was still over-sea in Normandy when the news of Becket's
declaration of war was brought him. Henry was a man of violent
passions, and the tale moved him to a sudden outbreak of fury. "Of all
the idle servants that I maintain," he cried, "is there not one that
will avenge me on this pestilent priest?" The words were wrung from
him by the excitement of the moment, and soon forgotten, but they had
a disastrous result. Among those who heard them were four reckless
knights, some of whom had personal grudges against Becket, and all of
whom were ready to win the king's favour by any means, fair or foul.
Their names were Reginald Fitzurse, Hugh de Morville, William de Tracy,
and Richard the Breton. These four took counsel with each other,
secretly stole away from the court, and crossed the stormy December
seas to England. They rode straight to Canterbury, sought audience
with the archbishop, and bade him remove the excommunication of Roger
of York and the rest, or face the king's wrath. Thomas met their words
with a fierce refusal; thereupon they withdrew after defying him and
warning him that his blood was on his own head. While they were girding
on their coats of mail in the cathedral close, the monks of Canterbury
besought the archbishop to fly. He had plenty of time to do so, but
flight was not his purpose. Far from hiding himself, he called for his
robes and his attendants, and went to join in the Vesper service at the
cathedral. The knights were soon heard thundering at the door; Becket
threw it open with his own hands, and asked their purpose. "Absolve the
bishops or die," cried Fitzurse. "Never till they have done penance for
their sin," was the reply. Tracy cast his arms about the archbishop
and tried to drag him outside the cathedral; but Thomas cast him down.
Then Fitzurse drew his sword and cut at Becket's head, and the others
felled him with repeated strokes, while he kept crying that he died for
the cause of God and the Church. So ended the great archbishop, slain
by lawless violence on the consecrated stones of his own cathedral.
The splendid courage with which he met his death, and the brutality
of his assailants, persuaded most men that he must have been in the
right. The clergy looked upon him as their knight and champion, and
were only too ready to make capital out of his troubles and heroic end.
The poor remembered his indiscriminate almsgiving, his austerities, his
opposition to the Danegelt. Every class of men felt some respect for
one who had suffered exile and death for loyal adhesion to a cause, and
few, except the king, thoroughly realized that the cause had really
been that of ill government and clerical tyranny. Hence it came that
a man whose main characteristics were his ambition and his obstinacy,
and whose saintliness was artificial and deliberately assumed, took his
place in the English calendar as the favourite hero of the Church. The
Pope made him a saint in 1174, a magnificent shrine was erected over
his remains, and for 350 years pilgrims thronged in thousands to do
homage to his bones. To relate how many hysterical persons or impostors
gave out that they had been healed of their diseases by a visit to his
sanctuary would be tedious. The thing which would have given Becket
most pleasure, could he have lived again to view it, was the sight of
Henry II. doing penance at his tomb in 1174, and baring his back to be
scourged by the monks of Canterbury, as a slight reparation for the
hasty words that had brought about his servants' deed of murder.
There is no doubt that Henry was sincerely shocked and horrified by the
news of the archbishop's death. He sent instant messages to the Pope
to clear himself of the accusation of having been privy to the crime,
and offered any satisfaction that Alexander might demand. Meanwhile he
undertook what might be considered a kind of crusade to Ireland, with
the avowed purpose of reducing it to obedience to the papacy as well as
to subjection to himself.
[Sidenote: =Henry in possession of Brittany.=]
For during the times of Becket's exile (1164-70) two important series
of events had been occurring, one of which put Henry in possession of
Brittany, while the other had led to his interference in Ireland. The
Dukes of Normandy had always claimed a feudal supremacy over Brittany.
This claim Henry found an opportunity for asserting and turning to
account, by forcing Conan, the Breton duke, to marry his infant heiress
Constance to his own third son Geoffrey, a boy of seven years old
(1166). When Conan died five years later, Henry ruled the whole duchy
as guardian of his young son and daughter-in-law. Thus his power was
extended over the whole western shore of France from the Somme to the
Pyrenees.
[Sidenote: =Ireland.--Expedition of Strongbow.=]
Henry's interference in Ireland sprang from more complicated causes.
Ireland in the twelfth century was--as it had been since the first dawn
of history--a group of Celtic principalities, always engaged in weary
tribal wars with each other. Sometimes one king gained a momentary
superiority over the rest, but his power ceased with his life. In the
ninth century the island had been overrun by the Danes; they had not
succeeded in occupying a broad _Danelagh_ such as they won in England,
but had built up a number of small kingdoms on the coast, round their
fortified strongholds of Dublin, Wexford, Waterford, and Limerick.
These principalities still existed in Henry's time, while the interior
was held by the five kings of Ulster, Munster, Connaught, Meath, and
Leinster. At this moment Roderic O'Connor of Connaught claimed and
occasionally exercised authority as suzerain over the other kings. But
he had no real power over the land, which lay half desolate, had become
altogether barbarous, and teemed with cruel and squalid tribal wars.
The introduction of this distressful country into English politics
may be laid at the door of Dermot McMorrough, King of Leinster. This
prince had been driven out of his realm by his suzerain, Roderic,
King of Connaught, because he had carried off the wife of Roderic's
vassal, O'Rourke, Lord of Breffny. Dermot came to England, and asked
aid of Henry II., who, as we have already seen, had long possessed a
papal Bull, authorizing the conquest of Ireland.[15] Henry would not
stir himself, being in the midst of troubles with the King of France,
but gave the exiled king leave to obtain what help he could from the
English barons. Dermot placed himself in the hands of Richard de Clare,
nicknamed Strongbow, Earl of Pembroke, a warlike but impecunious peer
who had great influence in South Wales. Richard raised a small army
of Anglo-Norman knights and Welsh archers--less than 2000 men in
all--and landed in Ireland to restore Dermot to his throne. He met with
quite unexpected success, sweeping Dermot's enemies out of Leinster,
and conquering the Danish princes of Wexford and Dublin. He married
Dermot's heiress Eva, and on the king's death in 1171 succeeded him
as ruler in his kingdom. Other barons and knights from South Wales
came over to join him, and they obtained a complete mastery over the
native Irish, whose light-armed bands could not resist the charge of
the mail-clad knights or stand before the archers, even when they were
in overwhelming numerical superiority. In a battle before the gates of
Dublin, a few hundred followers of Strongbow routed the whole host of
Roderic of Connaught, though he was supported by a considerable body of
Danish Vikings.
[Sidenote: =Henry invades Ireland in person.=]
Now, Henry did not wish to see one of his vassals building up a great
kingdom in Ireland, independent of his authority. So, taking advantage
of the papal authorization that he had so long kept by him, he crossed
himself in 1171 with a great army and fleet, landed at Waterford,
and marched to Dublin. He had no trouble in getting his authority
recognized. Not only did Strongbow do him homage for the kingdom of
Leinster, but, one after another, most of the native Irish kings came
to his court and paid allegiance to him. From henceforth the Kings of
England might call themselves "Lords of Ireland," but their power in
the island was not very easy to exercise, nor did it extend to the
remoter corners of the land. About half the soil of Ireland was seized
by English and Norman adventurers, who built themselves castles and
held down the Celts around them. The other half, mostly consisting of
the more rugged and barren districts, remained in the hands of the
native chiefs. But the settlers in the course of time intermarried
with the Irish, and adopted many of their customs, so that they
became tribal chiefs themselves. A century later the grudge between
the settlers and the natives was still bitter, but they had become so
closely assimilated that it was hard for a stranger to distinguish
them. The one were as turbulent, clannish, fierce, and barbarous as the
other. Only on the east coast round Dublin, in the district that was
afterwards known as the English 'Pale,' did the Anglo-Irish dwell in a
settled and civilized manner of life, and obey the King of England's
mandates. The larger part of the island had to be reconquered four
centuries after.
Perhaps the only permanent and immediate result of Henry's visit to
Ireland was the submission of the Irish Church to the Pope. In a synod
held at Cashel in 1172, all the bishops of the land acknowledged
the papal supremacy, and abandoned the old customs of their Church.
Thus the papal yoke was the first and most unhappy gift of England to
Ireland.
[Sidenote: =Reconciliation with the Pope.=]
It was on his return from Dublin that King Henry met the legates of
Alexander III. at Avranches, in Normandy, and, on swearing that he had
neither planned nor consented to the murder of Becket, was taken into
the Pope's favour, and received complete absolution. In return, he
promised to go on a crusade, and swore that he would support Alexander
against his enemy the Emperor Frederic I. He also consented to annul
the Constitutions of Clarendon, but did not make any formal surrender
of the principles on which they rested--the right of the State to deal
with ecclesiastical persons guilty of secular offences. Thus ended the
tragedy of Becket's strife with the king; the archbishop had obtained
by his death what he could never win in his life, and the question
between Church and State was left open, instead of being settled, as
had at first seemed likely, in favour of the king.
[Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Princes Henry and Richard.=]
In less than a year after the penance at Avranches, Henry was plunged
into a new sea of troubles, in which the Church party saw the vengeance
of Heaven for the fate of Becket. All these troubles sprang from the
undutiful conduct of Henry's sons, four graceless youths who had been
brought up in the worst of schools by their able but unprincipled
mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry, the eldest son, was now in his
nineteenth year; Richard, the second son, in his seventeenth. But, in
spite of their youth, the two boys, encouraged and supported by their
mother, conspired against their father and king. In 1173 Henry fled to
the court of Lewis of France, alleging as his grievance the fact that
the king would not grant him a great appanage--England or Normandy--to
rule in his own right. With the aid of Louis VII, the young Henry
stirred up all the discontented elements in his father's dominions.
He arranged for a simultaneous rising of the discontented barons of
Brittany, Anjou, and Poitou, for a rebellion in England to be headed
by the earls of Leicester, Derby, and Norfolk, and for an invasion of
Northumbria by William, the King of the Scots.
[Sidenote: =Suppression of the rebels.--Moderation of Henry.=]
This widespread conspiracy actually came to a head; but its outbreak
only served to show King Henry's strength and activity. He was
himself in France when the storm burst: taking in hand the work that
lay nearest to him, he put down the Bretons and Angevins, and forced
the King of France to conclude a truce. Then in the winter of 1173-4
he turned upon his son Richard's partisans in Poitou, and, after much
fighting, pacified the land. Meanwhile the king's representative in
England, the Justiciar Richard de Lucy, had called out the levies of
the shires against the revolted barons. The campaign was settled by a
battle at Fornham, in Suffolk, where the rebels were scattered and the
Earl of Leicester taken prisoner. One after another the castles of the
disloyal barons fell, and when England was pacified, Ralf de Glanville
led a force against the Scots, surprised them at Alnwick, and took
their king William the Lion prisoner (1174).
Thus Henry had triumphed over all his foes. In the moment of victory he
showed extraordinary moderation. He neither executed any of the rebels
nor confiscated their lands, but only insisted that all their castles
should be demolished. He gave his sons a full pardon, and restored them
to his favour; with their mother he was far more wroth, and never would
live with her again. The King of the Scots was only released on doing
homage to the English crown, not merely for his earldoms of Huntingdon
and Lothian, which had always been reckoned English fiefs, but for his
whole kingdom of Scotland (1175).
This was Henry's greatest triumph: the danger of feudal anarchy had
once more assailed him, and he had beaten it down with such a firm
hand that England was never troubled again with a purely selfish and
anarchic baronial rising for more than two centuries. But this victory
did not win the king a quiet and glorious end to his reign. His wicked
and ungrateful sons were to be the bane of his elder years.
[Sidenote: =Prosperity and Legislation.--Itinerant justices.--The
fyrd.=]
The effect of the blow that he had dealt his disloyal subjects lasted
about eight years, a period of quiet and prosperity on both sides
of the Channel, during which Henry passed many excellent laws, and
more especially dealt with the administration of justice, arranging
permanent circuits for the itinerant justices who sat in the county
courts to hold the assizes. He also issued regulations for the uniform
arming and mustering of the shire-levies, the old English fyrd which
had served him so well against the rebels in 1173. Abroad he was
universally recognized as the greatest king of the West. He was chosen
as the fairest arbitrator in several disputes between contemporary
princes--even by the distant Kings of Spain. He married his daughters
to the Kings of Castile and Sicily and the great Duke of Saxony, the
chief vassal of the German crown. To each of his sons he promised a
great inheritance: Henry was to have England, Normandy, and Anjou;
Richard was to take his mother's portion in Aquitaine; Geoffrey was
already provided for with his wife's duchy of Brittany: John, the
youngest son, was to be King of Ireland, and the Irish chiefs were made
to do homage to him.
[Sidenote: =Second rebellion of Henry and Geoffrey.=]
All this prosperity lasted till 1183, when Henry was fifty-two, and
his four sons respectively twenty-eight, twenty-six, twenty-four, and
sixteen. Tired of waiting any longer for his inheritance, and forgetful
of the warning that he had received in 1174, Henry the younger once
more took arms against his father: his aider and abettor was the new
King of France, Philip Augustus, the son of Lewis VII., as bitter an
enemy of the Angevin house as his predecessor had been. Henry also
persuaded his brother Geoffrey to bring in the Bretons to his aid.
Richard and John, the king's second and fourth sons, were for the time
being faithful to their father; indeed, the actual _casus belli_, which
Henry the younger published as his justification, was that the king had
unfairly favoured Richard against him. This time the fighting was all
on the continent; the English baronage were too much cowed to stir.
Henry the younger had only been a few months in rebellion when he
died, stricken down by a fever (1183). But the civil war in Aquitaine
did not end with his death; it dragged on its path till Geoffrey, his
accomplice in the rebellion, was accidentally killed at a tournament
three years later (1186). Henry had no issue, but Geoffrey left an
infant heir, the unfortunate Arthur of Brittany, whose sad end was to
shock the succeeding generation.
[Sidenote: =The Third Crusade.--The Saladin tithe.=]
Henry's two rebellious sons being dead, peace was for a time restored
in his continental dominions. Men's minds were turned away for a time
from civil strife by dire news from the East. The Saracens had just
routed the Christian King of Palestine, and recaptured Jerusalem. The
work of the First Crusade was undone, and the Holy Sepulchre and
the True Cross had fallen back into the hands of the infidels. The
nations of the West were profoundly shocked; King Henry, his eldest
surviving son Richard, and his great enemy Philip of France, all swore
to take the cross and go forth to save the wrecks of the kingdom of
Jerusalem from Saladin, the victorious lord of Syria and Egypt. All
their baronage vowed to follow them, and the Great Council of England
voted for the support of the new crusade a heavy tax, the "Saladin
tithe," as it was called, which was to be a tenth of every man's goods
and chattels. This was the first impost levied on personal property,
that is, property other than land, which was ever raised in England.
Previously, the Danegelt and the other taxes that had been raised, were
calculated on landed property alone.
[Sidenote: =Third rebellion of Richard and John.--Death of Henry II.=]
It would have been well for the King of England if his son and his
French neighbour had sailed for the Holy Land in the year that they
made their vow. For another and crowning grief was about to fall upon
Henry. Richard, now his heir, revolted against him, even as Henry
the younger and Geoffrey had done four years before. Like his elder
brother, Richard alleged that his father would not give him enough;
he complained that the king did not allow him to be crowned as his
colleague, and that he made too much of John, the youngest and best
loved of his four sons. The ungrateful conduct of Richard broke Henry's
heart; though only fifty-six years of age, he began visibly to fail
in health and mind. He made little endeavour to resist his son, and
allowed him to overrun Anjou and Maine unopposed. Instead of calling
out all his energies and appealing to the loyalty of his English and
Norman subjects, he cast himself upon his couch and gave himself up to
passionate grief. Rather than take arms against Richard, he determined
to give him all that he asked. So, rising from, his bed, he dragged
himself to Colombières, where he met Richard and the King of France,
and swore to grant all they claimed. It was noticed that his bodily
weakness was so great that his servants had to hold him on his horse
while the interview was taking place. Two days later he expired; the
final death-blow that prostrated him was the discovery of the fact that
his youngest son, John, whom he had believed to the last to be faithful
to him, had secretly aided Richard and joined in the rebellion. For
when he swore to pardon all Richard's accomplices, and was given the
list of their names, he found that of John set at the head of the
catalogue of traitors. "Let things go as they will; I have nothing to
care for in the world now," he said; and, turning his face to the wall,
gave up his spirit (July 7, 1189).
[Sidenote: =Character of Henry II.=]
So died Henry of Anjou, whom after-ages styled Plantagenet.[16] He was
an Englishman neither by birth nor by breeding, and the greater part
of his reign was spent abroad--two years was the longest continuous
stay that he ever made on this side of the Channel. But, foreigner as
he was, he was the best king that England had known since Eadgar, or
that she was to know till Edward I. That he ended the awful anarchy
which had prevailed since the accession of Stephen, was a merit that
should never be forgotten. When the feudal danger was at its greatest,
he boldly faced it, ended private wars, pulled down illegal castles,
and reduced the baronage to its due obedience. And when the land was
subdued beneath his hand he ruled it justly, not as a grasping tyrant,
but as a wise and merciful master. Among the kings of his day he was
conspicuous for two rare virtues, a willingness to pardon and forget,
and a determination to stand firm by the letter of his promise. He
had his faults--a hasty temper, a far-reaching ambition, a tendency
to deal with men as if they were merely counters in the great game of
politics; nor was his private life entirely free from blame. But he
loved order and justice so well, and gave them in such good measure to
his subjects, that his virtues must always outweigh in English minds
his occasional lapses from the right path.
FOOTNOTES:
[14] A royal manor near Salisbury.
[15] See p. 99.
[16] From the sprig of broom (_planta genista_) that his father,
Geoffrey of Anjou, is said to have worn as a badge.
CHAPTER IX.
RICHARD I. AND JOHN.
1189-1216.
When Henry of Anjou died broken-hearted at Chinon, his eldest surviving
son Richard succeeded him in all his vast dominions, save in the duchy
of Brittany, which fell to the child Arthur, the son of Richard's
brother Geoffrey. John, the late king's youngest-born, received a fit
reward for his treachery to his father in losing the appanage that had
been destined for him. He did not obtain any independent principality
of his own, but Richard made him Earl of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and
Somerset.
From the moment of his accession the new king began to busy himself
with preparations for going to the Crusade. He had taken the Cross
in 1187, and his penitence for lingering in Europe and troubling his
father, when he should have been over-seas fulfilling his vow, seems to
have had a real influence upon him. But the mere love of adventure must
be allowed to have had a far larger share in turning his steps to the
East. Richard had the habits and instincts of a turbulent feudal baron,
not those of a king. He had spent his life up to this time in petty
wars with his father, his brothers, and his vassals in Aquitaine; such
an existence pleased him well, and he dreamed of more exciting warfare
on a larger stage in the lands of the Infidel, as the highest ambition
that he could conceive.
[Sidenote: =Preparations for the Crusade.--Sale of lands and offices.=]
The moment that he had been crowned, Richard set to work to scrape
together every penny that he could procure, in order to provide against
the expenses of the forthcoming Crusade. He began by selling every
office and dignity that was vacant, with a gross disregard for the
interests of the crown and the welfare of his subjects. He took £3000
from William Longchamp, the haughty and quarrelsome Bishop of Ely, and
appointed him both Chancellor and Justiciar; that is, he made regent in
his absence the most unsuitable man that could have been found. He sold
the earldom of Northumberland to Hugh, Bishop of Durham, for £1000. A
still greater bargain was obtained by William, King of Scotland, who
for the sum of 10,000 marks (£6666) was let off the homage to the crown
of England, which Henry II. had imposed upon him after the battle of
Alnwick. Richard jestingly said that "he would have sold London itself
if he could have found a rich enough buyer." But every town that wanted
a charter, every baron who coveted a slice of crown land, every knight
who wished to be made a sheriff, obtained the desired object at a cheap
rate.
[Sidenote: =The Jews in England.--Outbreak of persecution.=]
Richard's reign began with an outburst of turbulence which illustrated
his careless governance well enough. Among the many classes of subjects
to whom his father had given peace and protection was the Jewish colony
in England, a body which had been rapidly growing in numbers as England
recovered from its ills under Henry's firm hand. The Jews were much
hated by their neighbours, partly as rivals in trade of the native
merchant, and as usurers who lent money at exorbitant interest, but
most of all because of their race and religion. But they had settled
under the king's protection, and in return for the heavy tribute which
they paid him, obtained security for their life and goods. They were
often called the "king's property," because he kept the right of taxing
and managing them entirely in his own hands.
At Richard's coronation a deputation of Jewish elders came to bear him
a gift. They were set upon by the king's foreign servants and cruelly
beaten, in mere fanatical spite. The news spread, and on a false rumour
that the king had approved the deed, the London mob rose and sacked
the Jews' quarter. Nor was this all; the excitement spread over all
England, and at Norwich, Stamford, Lincoln, York, and other places,
there were riots in which many Jews were slain. At the last-named city
a fearful tragedy occurred; all the Jews of York took refuge in the
castle, and when they were beset by a howling mob who cried for their
blood, they by common consent slew their wives and children, and then
set fire to the castle and burnt themselves, rather than fall into the
hands of their enemies. No adequate punishment was ever inflicted for
these disgraceful riots; even at York only a fine was imposed on the
town.
[Sidenote: =The third Crusade.--Quarrel of Richard and Philip of
France.=]
Richard left England in December, 1189, and, after raising additional
forces and stores of money in his continental dominions, sailed from
Marseilles for the East. Richard was one of three sovereign princes
who engaged in the third Crusade; the other two were the Emperor
Frederic Barbarossa and Philip Augustus, King of France. The emperor
led the troops of Germany by the land route through Constantinople and
Asia Minor, but Richard and Philip had wisely resolved to go by sea.
Frederic lost three-fourths of his army in forcing his way through the
Turkish sultanate in Asia Minor, and was accidentally drowned himself
ere he crossed the borders of Syria. Only a small remnant of the German
host ever reached the Holy Land. Richard and Philip fared much better,
and gained the Levant in safety, after halting in Sicily for the winter
of 1190-91. It was during their stay at Messina that the two kings
became bitter personal enemies; in his father's time Richard had been
the friend of the French, and he did not realize for some time the
fact that in succeeding to Henry's dominions he had also succeeded to
the jealous hatred which Philip nourished for his over-great vassal,
the Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy. But in Sicily Richard detected the
French king plotting and intriguing against him, and for the future
regarded him as a secret enemy, and viewed all his acts with suspicion.
[Sidenote: =Richard conquers Cyprus.=]
If we were relating the personal acts of Richard rather than the
history of England, there would be much to tell of his feats in
the East. He began by subduing the isle of Cyprus, whose ruler,
Isaac Comnenus--a rebel against the Emperor of Constantinople--had
ill-treated the shipwrecked crews of some English vessels. After
conquering the whole island, he took formal possession of it, and with
great pomp married there his affianced bride, Berengaria of Navarre,
who had come out from Europe to join him. He then sailed for the Holy
Land, and landed near Acre, in the centre of the seat of war.
[Sidenote: =Capture of Acre, 1191.=]
Acre was at this moment beset by those of the Crusaders who had arrived
before Richard. But their camp was itself being besieged by a great
Saracen host under Sultan Saladin, who had raised all the levies of
Syria, Mesopotamia, and Egypt, to relieve the beleaguered city. The
landing of the hosts of England and France soon turned the tide of war,
and ere long Acre fell. Richard earned and obtained the whole credit
of the success by his energy and courage, while his rival Philip, by
his jealous bickering with the English, merited a name for disloyalty
and lukewarm zeal. It must be confessed that Richard won himself many
enemies by his haughtiness and hasty temper; not only did he quarrel
with Philip, but he mortally offended Leopold of Babenberg, the Duke of
Austria. The German had planted his banner upon the walls of Acre as if
he had taken the town himself, and Richard had it hewn down and cast
into the ditch.
[Sidenote: =Return of Philip.--Richard fails to reach Jerusalem.=]
Less than three weeks after Acre fell, the King of France suddenly
announced his intention of returning home, though nothing had yet been
done to defeat Saladin or recapture Jerusalem. He left part of his army
behind him under the Duke of Burgundy, and sailed off, after making a
vain promise that he would not molest Richard's dominions so long as he
was at the Crusade.
Thus left to himself, Richard led the crusading host southward along
the coast, and defeated Saladin at a pitched battle at Arsouf. He
forced his way to within a few miles of Jerusalem, but, before
attacking it, turned back to secure himself a base on the sea, through
which he could get stores and provisions from his ships. He took
Ascalon, therefore, and garrisoned it, and afterwards captured many
neighbouring forts, and intercepted a great caravan which was bringing
arms and stores for Saladin across the desert from Egypt. But when
he wished to start again for Jerusalem, dissensions broke out in the
crusading camp. The subject of dispute was the succession to the throne
of Jerusalem. Richard supported Guy of Lusignan, one of his Poitevin
vassals, while the French and the bulk of the other Crusaders wished
to elect an Italian prince, Conrad of Montferrat. The quarrel kept
the army idle till the hot season of 1092 arrived, and endured till
Conrad was slain by a Saracen fanatic; then Richard moved forward, but
when he had arrived within four hours' march of Jerusalem, the French
portion of the army, worn out by thirst and exhaustion, refused to
advance any further. Richard was forced to fall back when at the very
goal, and refused even to look upon the Holy City. "My eyes shall never
behold it, if my arm may not reconquer it," he cried, and, muffling his
face in his cloak, he turned back towards the coast.
[Sidenote: =Richard leaves Palestine.=]
After defeating the Saracens in another fight near Jaffa, Richard
patched up a truce for three years with Saladin, and resolved to return
home. It was obvious that with thinned ranks and disloyal allies he
could not retake Jerusalem, and he had received such news from England
as to the doings of his brother John and his neighbour King Philip,
that he was anxious to get home as soon as possible. So he made terms
with the sultan, by which Acre and the other places that he had
conquered were left to the Christians, and permission was given them to
make pilgrimages to Jerusalem without let or hindrance. Then, without
waiting for his fleet or his army, he started off in wild haste on a
private ship, intending to land at Venice and make his way overland
through Germany, for he could not trust himself in France after the
news that he had just received (1193).
[Sidenote: =Richard imprisoned in Germany.=]
But more haste proved less speed, in this as in so many other cases.
Richard's ship was wrecked in the Adriatic, and he had to land at
Ragusa. His path took him through the duchy of Leopold of Austria,
whom he had so grievously offended at the siege of Acre. Although he
was travelling in disguise, he was recognized at Vienna, and promptly
cast into prison by the revengeful duke. After keeping him awhile in
chains, Leopold sold him to his suzerain, the Emperor Henry VI. That
monarch, being thus placed by chance in possession of the person of
a sovereign with whom he was not at war, had the meanness to trump
up charges against Richard in order to have some excuse for making
him pay a ransom. So he accused his captive of having murdered Conrad
of Montferrat, of having unjustly deprived the rebel Isaac of Cyprus
of his realm, and of having insulted Leopold the Austrian. He was in
prison more than a year, and no one in England knew what had become of
him, since he had been travelling disguised and almost alone when he
was taken.
[Sidenote: =Discontent and intrigues in England.=]
Meanwhile, during the three years of Richard's absence England had
been much disturbed. William Longchamp, the haughty and tactless
bishop whom he had left behind him as Justiciar, made himself so much
disliked by his pride, his despotism, and his violence that there
was a general rising against him. The king's brother John, the Earl
of Cornwall, put himself at the head of the malcontents, and began
seizing all the royal castles on which he could lay hands. Longchamp
was at last forced to resign his place and fled over-sea, hardly
escaping the fury of the people at Dover, where he was caught in the
disguise of a huckster-woman and nearly pulled to pieces. His place as
Justiciar was taken by Archbishop Walter of Rouen, whom Richard sent
home from the Crusade for the purpose. Walter was a prudent and able
man, but found a hard task before him, for Earl John was set on making
himself a party in England, and aimed at the crown. When the news of
Richard's captivity reached London, John openly avowed his intention,
and allied himself with Philip of France. That prince had begun to
intrigue against the King of England the moment that he got back from
the Crusade. He had a claim on the Vexin, a district on the Norman
border, which he had once ceded to Henry II. on the understanding that
it should be the dowry of a French princess whom Richard was to marry.
As the marriage had never taken place, and the English king had chosen
another bride, Philip had much show of reason on his side. But he aimed
not only at recovering the Vexin, but at winning as much of his absent
neighbour's land as he could seize. With this object he offered to
support Earl John in his attempt to seize the English throne, in return
for some territorial gains. John was ready enough to agree, did homage
to him, and gave him up the Vexin and the city of Tours. Meanwhile they
both sent secret messages to the Emperor Henry, to beg him to detain
Richard in prison as long as possible.
[Sidenote: =Richard's ransom.=]
But Henry thought more of screwing money out of his prisoner than of
keeping him for ever in his grasp. He offered to release Richard on
receiving the enormous ransom of 150,000 marks (£100,000). It was a
huge sum for England to raise, but so anxious was the nation to get
back its king, that no hesitation was made in accepting the bargain.
Meanwhile John and Philip, knowing that their enemy would soon be
loose, were stirred up to hasty action. Philip raised his host and
attacked Normandy, but was beaten off with loss from Rouen. John hired
mercenary soldiers, gathered his friends, and seized a number of the
royal castles in England. But only a small number of discontented
barons backed him, and he was held in check by the loyal majority, led
by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter, who put himself at the
head of the king's party. Even while this civil war was in progress,
the money for Richard's ransom was being raised, by the imposition of a
crushing tax of "one-fourth on all movable goods, and twenty shillings
on every knight's fee."
[Sidenote: =Return of Richard.=]
In the spring of 1194 the emperor gave Richard his liberty, after
receiving the stipulated sum and making his prisoner swear an oath of
homage to him for his kingdom of England. But this preposterous vow
of allegiance was not taken seriously by Richard or by England, being
wrung by force from a helpless captive. On reaching England, the king
put himself at the head of the army which was operating against the
rebels, and took Nottingham and Tickhill, the two last strongholds
which held out. John himself fled over-sea; some months later he was
pardoned by his long-suffering brother.
Thus Richard was once more a free man, and in full possession of
his realm. There was much in the state of England that required the
master's eye, but the king was far more set on punishing his neighbour,
King Philip, than on attending to the wants of his subjects. After
appointing new officials to take charge of the kingdom, and raising
great sums of money, he hurried over to Normandy to plunge into
hostilities with the French.
[Sidenote: =War with France.--Taxation and discontent.=]
England never saw Richard again; indeed, in the whole course of his
ten years' reign, he only spent seven months on this side of the
channel. His heart was always in France, where he had been bred up, and
not in England, though he had been born in the palace of Beaumont, in
Oxford, not fifty yards from the spot where these lines are written.
The remaining six years of Richard's reign were entirely occupied in
fruitless and weary border wars with the French king. It was a war of
sieges and skirmishes, not of great battles. Richard held his own,
in spite of the rebellions stirred up by Philip among his vassals
in Aquitaine; but he did not succeed in crushing his adversary, as
might have been expected from his superior military skill. In England
the struggle was only felt through the heavy taxation which the king
imposed on the land, to keep up his large mercenary army over-sea.
Archbishop Hubert Walter ruled as Justiciar with considerable wisdom
and success, and as long as Richard was sent the money that he craved,
he left the realm to itself. Hubert's rule was not altogether a quiet
one, but the very troubles that arose against him show the growing
strength of national feeling and liberty in England. In 1198, the
Great Council, headed by Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, refused the king's
newest and most exorbitant schemes of taxation, and Hubert could not
force them to pay. London in the same year was disturbed by a great
democratic rising of the poorer citizens, headed by one William
Fitz-Osbert, called Longbeard, who rose in riot to compel the aldermen
to readjust the taxes of the city, and the Justiciar had to take arms
to put it down. Fitz-Osbert fortified himself in Bow Church, but was
wounded, taken, and hung.
[Sidenote: =Death of Richard.=]
An obscure and unworthy end was reserved for the restless and reckless
son of the great Henry. He heard that Widomar, Viscount of Limoges, one
of his vassals in Aquitaine, had found a great treasure-trove of gold,
and bade him give it up. The viscount would not surrender all his find,
so Richard laid siege to his castle of Chaluz. The place was taken, but
while directing the attack the king received a wound from a crossbow
bolt in his shoulder. His unskilful surgeons could not cure him, the
wound gangrened, and Richard saw that his days were numbered. When the
castle fell, Bertrand de Gourdon, the archer who had discharged the
fatal bolt, was sought out and brought to his bedside. "What had I done
that you should deal thus with me?" asked the king. "You slew my father
and my two brothers with your own hands," replied the soldier, "and now
I am ready to bear any torture since I know that you have to die." The
fierce answer touched a chord to which Richard could respond. He bade
his officers send the man away unharmed, but Mercadet, the chief among
his mercenary captains, kept Gourdon in bonds till the king breathed
his last, and then flayed him alive (April 6, 1199).
[Sidenote: =Rule of the Justiciar.--Coroners.=]
Of all the kings who ever ruled in this land Richard cared least for
England, and paid least attention to its needs. But his reign was not
therefore one that was harmful to his realm. The yoke of an absent
king, even if he be a spendthrift, is not so hard as that of a tyrant
who dwells at home, and England has known much worse days than those
of the later years of Richard Coeur de Lion. His ministers kept up the
traditions of the administration of Henry II., and ruled the land with
law and order, duly summoning the Great Council, assessing taxation
with its aid, and levying it with as little oppression as they could,
through agents selected by the nation. One considerable advance in
the direction of liberty was granted by Richard, when he allowed the
shire-moots to choose for themselves "_coroners_," officials who were
to take charge of the royal prerogatives in the counties in place of
the sheriff; they were to investigate such matters as murder, riot, or
injury to the king's lands or revenues, and the other offences which
were called "the pleas of the crown." Thus an officer chosen by the
people was substituted for one chosen by the crown, a great advantage
to those who were to come under his hand. The "coroner" still survives
in England, but all his duties save that of inquiring into cases of
suspicious death have long been stripped from him.
[Sidenote: =John and Arthur of Brittany.--War in France.=]
Richard the Lion-hearted left two male kinsmen to dispute about his
vast dominions. These were Arthur of Brittany, the son of his next
brother Geoffrey, and John of Cornwall, his false and turbulent
youngest brother. The English Great Council chose John as king without
any hesitation; they would not take Arthur, a mere boy of twelve, who
had never been seen in England; they preferred John in spite of his
great and obvious faults. But in the continental dominions of Richard
there was no such unanimity: the unruly barons of Anjou and Aquitaine
thought they would gain through having a powerless boy to reign over
them, rather than the unscrupulous and grasping Earl John. If it
had not been for the old queen dowager, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who
came forward to defend her best-loved son's claims, and to persuade
her Gascon vassals to adhere to his cause, John would never have
obtained any hold on the continent. By Eleanor's aid he triumphed for
a moment, but baron after baron rose against him, using Arthur's name
as his pretence, and civil war never ceased from the moment of John's
accession. Philip of France, who now, as always, had his own ends to
serve, feigned to espouse the cause of Arthur, and acknowledged him as
his uncle's heir alike in Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine. Thus the war
between France and England, which had dragged on through the reign of
Richard, continued in a new form all through the time of John. There
was a partial pacification in 1200, when Philip was bought off from
Arthur's cause by the cession of the county of Evreux; but he took arms
again in 1202, on the flimsy pretext that John, as Duke of Normandy,
refused to plead in French law courts against his own vassals.
[Sidenote: =Character and policy of John.=]
Philip was induced to resume the struggle mainly because of his rival's
growing unpopularity in all parts of his dominion. As king, John
displayed on a larger scale all the faults that he had shown before his
accession. All the vices of the Angevin house reached their highest
development in him; he was as hot-tempered as his father, as false as
his mother, as ungrateful as his brother Henry, as cruel, extravagant,
and reckless as his brother Richard. His own special characteristic
was a crooked and short-sighted cunning, which brought him through
the troubles of one moment only to involve him in deeper vexations in
the next. His reign in England had begun with heavy taxation for the
French war. He had irritated the baronage by divorcing his wife Hawise,
the heiress of the great earldom of Gloucester, without any cause or
reason. Then he had carried off by violence Isabella of Angoulême from
her affianced husband, the Count of La Marche, one of his greatest
vassals in Aquitaine, and married her in spite of the threats of the
Church.
[Sidenote: =Murder of Arthur of Brittany.=]
It was Count Hugh of La Marche who in revenge led the next rising of
the unruly French vassals of John. He sent for Arthur of Brittany,
who came to his aid with a great band of King Philip's knights, and
together they invaded Aquitaine and laid siege to Mirebeau, where lay
the old Queen Eleanor, John's one trusty supporter in the south. Roused
by the news of his mother's danger, the King of England made a hasty
dash on Mirebeau, surprised the rebel camp, and captured Arthur of
Brittany with all his chief supporters. This success was fated to be
his ruin, for when he found his nephew in his hands, John could not
resist the temptation to murder him. After keeping him in prison for
some months, he had him secretly slain in the castle of Rouen (April,
1203). The poor lad had only just reached the age of sixteen when he
was thus cut off.
[Sidenote: =Loss of John's continental dominions.=]
Arthur's murder profoundly shocked John's subjects on both sides of the
sea, but it was absolutely fatal to his cause in France. His rebellious
subjects, unable to use Arthur's name against their master any longer,
threw themselves into the hands of the King of France, and took him
as their direct lord and sovereign. Philip went through a solemn form
of summoning John, as Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, to present
himself at Paris, and there be tried for slaying his nephew. When John
failed--as was natural--to appear, he was condemned in his absence, and
adjudged to have forfeited all the fiefs that he held from the French
crown.
To give effect to his sentence, Philip invaded Normandy and began to
lay siege to its fortresses. John crossed to Normandy, but did not
take the field; his conduct was so strange that men thought that some
infatuation from heaven had fallen upon him as a judgment for having
slain his nephew. He lay at Rouen for many months, giving great feasts,
and boasting that when he chose he would drive King Philip out of the
duchy. But, instead of sallying out to make his vaunts good, he quietly
looked on, while Philip took town after town with little resistance.
The Normans did not love John, and fought feebly or not at all. Only
Château Gaillard, a great castle which Richard I. had built to guard
the valley of the lower Seine, made any serious defence. Instead of
opposing the enemy, John fled from Normandy and took refuge in England.
After his departure, Rouen and the remaining cities of the duchy
threw open their gates to the French. In the following year Philip
pursued his victorious career, and completed the conquest of Anjou and
Touraine. In 1206 he fell upon Aquitaine, and conquered Poitou and
Northern Guienne. Only the great ports of Bordeaux and La Rochelle,
with the southern half of Guienne, remained true to John.
Thus passed away, not only the great but ephemeral continental empire
which Henry II. had built up, but also the Norman duchy itself, whose
fortunes had been united to those of England for nearly a century and
a half. For the future the Plantagenet kings owned only a corner of
southern France, and were no longer great continental sovereigns. The
monarch's loss was the nation's gain. England's kings were no longer
foreigners; they did not spend half their time abroad, or devote their
whole energy to schemes of aggrandisement in France. The Anglo-Norman
barons, too, were compelled to become wholly English, since their
estates over-sea fell into the hands of the enemy and passed away
from them. In this way John's cruelty and shiftlessness did more for
England's good than the wisdom and strength of his father.
But in the mean while John, being deprived of his continental
dominions, was constrained to reside in England, and proved a most
undesirable neighbour to his unhappy subjects. After an unsuccessful
attempt to reconquer Poitou in 1206, he made peace with King Philip,
on such terms as he could obtain. Bordeaux and the duchy of Guienne
remained with him, but he was compelled to acquiesce in the loss of all
his other provinces.
[Sidenote: =Quarrel with Innocent III.--Stephen Langton.=]
John was barely quit of his disastrous French war when he became
involved in a quarrel with the papacy, of which the issue was even
more disgraceful than that of his strife with King Philip. In 1205
died Archbishop Hubert Walter, who had served King Richard so well
as Justiciar. In ordinary times his successor would have been duly
nominated by the king and elected by the monks of Canterbury, who
formed the cathedral chapter of that see. But John was in evil plight
at the time; he was universally disliked, and the clergy all over
Europe were being spurred on by the example of the bold and arrogant
Pope Innocent III. to assert new and unheard-of claims and privileges.
When the news of Hubert's death was brought, a majority of the monks
of Canterbury met in secret conclave and elected Reginald, their
sub-prior, as archbishop, without asking the king's leave. Reginald
at once started off for Rome to get his appointment confirmed by Pope
Innocent. When John heard what had been done, he came to Canterbury in
great wrath, and by threats and menaces compelled the monks to proceed
to a second election, and to chose his favourite, John de Grey, Bishop
of Norwich, to fill Hubert Walter's place. He then sent an embassy to
Rome to submit this election to the Pope. But Innocent III. would have
neither Reginald nor John for archbishop; he said that the first had
been secretly and illegally chosen, while the second had been imposed
on the chapter by force and threats. Then he took the unprecedented
step of appointing to the see himself; he made the representatives
of both John and Reginald come before him, and frightened or cajoled
them into accepting his nominee, Stephen Langton, a worthy and learned
English cardinal who resided with him at Rome. Langton was personally
all that could be desired, but it was a flagrantly illegal usurpation
that the Pope should impose him on the English king and nation without
their consent.
[Sidenote: =The interdict.=]
John was driven to fury by this arrogant claim of the Pope. He refused
to accept the nomination, or to allow Langton to enter England. In
return Innocent laid an interdict on the realm, suspending on his own
authority the celebration of divine service, closing the churches, and
even prohibiting the dead from being buried in consecrated ground. If
the English Church had stood by the king and refused to take notice
of this harsh decree, it would have been of little effect. But the
clergy always followed the Pope; they looked upon themselves as a
great international guild depending on the Roman see, and disregarded
all their rights and sympathies as Englishmen. The majority of the
bishops published the interdict, and bade their flocks observe it. Many
of them, fearing John's inevitable wrath, fled over-sea the moment
that they had promulgated the sentence (1208). They were wise to do
so, for the king raged furiously against the whole body of clergy; he
exiled the monks of Canterbury, seized the estates and revenues of the
absconding bishops, and declared that, till the interdict was removed,
all ecclesiastical persons should be outside the pale of the law. They
should not be allowed to appear in the courts, and no one who molested
them should be punished. John set the example of seizing clerical
property himself, and many of his courtiers and officers followed his
lead.
[Sidenote: =The Pope deposes John.=]
Thus began a long struggle between the power of the Pope and that
of the king. For five years it continued, to the great misery of
England, for the nation was deeply religious, and felt most keenly the
deprivation of all its spiritual privileges. Yet for a long time the
people stood by the king, for it was generally felt that the Pope's
arbitrary conduct was indefensible. John himself cared nought for
papal censures, as long as nothing more than spiritual pressure was
brought to bear on him. He filled his coffers with Church money, and
laughed at the interdict. But presently Innocent found a more effective
way of bending the king's will. He proclaimed that he would depose John
for contumacy, and give his kingdom to another. The mandate to drive
him out was entrusted to John's old and active foe, Philip of France,
who at once began to prepare a great fleet and army in Normandy (1213).
[Sidenote: =John's surrender.=]
The English barons and people were more angered than frightened, and
a great army mustered on Barham Down, in Kent, to oppose the French
landing. But the king himself was much cowed by the Pope's threat. He
knew that he was disliked and despised by his subjects, and he did not
trust them in the hour of danger. Instead of fighting the quarrel out,
he made secret proffers of submission. So the Pope's envoy, Pandulf,
came to Dover, and received John's abject surrender. Not only did he
agree to acknowledge Langton as archbishop, and to restore all the
lands and revenues of which he had robbed the Church, but he stooped to
win Innocent's favour by doing homage to him, and declaring the kingdom
of England a fief of the Holy See. He gave his crown into Pandulf's
hands, and then took it back from him as a gift from the Pope. In
return the papal mandate to Philip was withdrawn, and Pandulf bade the
French king dismiss his fleet and army, and cease to make war on the
vassal of the Church (May, 1213).
John's gift of the English crown to the Pope had been done secretly and
privately, without any summoning or consulting of the Great Council;
it had been accomplished behind the back of the nation. When it became
known, the baronage and the people were alike disgusted at the king's
grovelling submission. He had induced them to suffer untold miseries in
his cause, and had then left them in the lurch and surrendered all that
they had been fighting for.
[Sidenote: =Destruction of the French fleet.=]
For the moment, however, John's intrigue had its success. The papal
approval was withdrawn from the King of France, and--what was of more
importance--an English fleet under William Longsword, the Earl of
Salisbury fell upon the French invasion-flotilla as it lay in the
Port of Damme, and took or sunk well-nigh every vessel. The king was
free from danger again, and talked of taking the offensive against the
French and crushing his enemy Philip.
[Sidenote: =The baronage and Archbishop Langton.=]
The last act of John's troubled reign was now beginning. While the king
was dreaming of nothing but war in France, the nation was preparing
to put a stop to his erratic and tyrannical rule by armed force. When
Archbishop Langton was received in England, he proved himself no mere
creature of the Pope, but a good Englishman. One of his first acts
was to propose to the baronage, at a great assembly in St. Paul's
Cathedral, that the king should be asked to ratify and reissue the
charter that his great-grandfather Henry I. had granted to the English
people, binding himself to abstain from all vexatious and oppressive
customs, and abide by the ancient customs of the realm. This proposal
was accepted at once by the great majority of the barons as the wisest
and most constitutional means of bringing pressure on the king.
[Sidenote: =Invasion of France.--Defeat and return of John.=]
John meanwhile had called out the whole military force of the nation
for an invasion of France. But all the barons of the North refused to
follow him, and so great was the discontent of the English that he had
mainly to depend on foreign mercenaries. He staked all his fortunes on
the ensuing campaign, believing that if he could reconquer his lost
continental dominions, he would afterwards win his way to complete
control in England. His schemes were very far-reaching: Philip was to
be attacked from north and south at once; while John was to land in
Poitou and march on the Loire, a great confederacy of John's allies
were to assail France from the north. This league was headed by John's
nephew, Otho of Saxony, who claimed the title of emperor, but had
been withstood in Germany by competitors whom Philip of France had
supported. In revenge Otho gathered a North-German army, supported
by the Dukes of Brabant and Holland, and the Counts of Boulogne and
Flanders. John sent a mercenary force under the Earl of Salisbury to
join him, and the combined host entered France and met King Philip at
Bouvines, near Lille. John had trusted that his own attack on southern
France would have distracted the French king's attention, but Philip
left him almost unopposed, and gathered the whole force of France to
oppose the Germans and Flemings. While John was overrunning Poitou and
storming Angers, Philip was crushing his confederates. At the battle
of Bouvines the combined army was scattered to the winds; the emperor
was put to flight, and the Earl of Salisbury and the Count of Boulogne
captured (July 27, 1214). Otho of Saxony was ruined by the fight, and
never raised his head again; nor did any German host invade France for
the next three hundred years. John, though he had not been present at
the fight, was as effectually crushed as Otho. Free from danger from
the north, the French king turned upon him, and drove him out of his
ephemeral conquests in Poitou, so that he had to return to England
completely foiled and beaten.
[Sidenote: =The barons take up arms.=]
But in England John had now to face his angry baronage. When he came
home in wrath, and began to threaten to punish every man who had not
followed him to the invasion of France, the barons drew together
and prepared for armed resistance. In earlier days we have seen the
English nobility withstanding the king in the cause of feudal anarchy.
In the time of Stephen or of Henry II., the crown had represented
the interests of the nation, and the barons those of their own class
alone. It was then for England's good that the king should succeed in
establishing a strong central government by putting down his turbulent
vassals. But now things were changed. Henry II. had made the crown so
strong that the nation was in far greater danger of misgovernment by
a tyrannical king than of anarchy under a mob of feudal chiefs. The
barons did not any longer represent themselves alone; they were closely
allied both with the Church and with the people for the defence of the
common rights of all three against a grasping and unscrupulous monarch.
In the present struggle the baronage were headed by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, their wisest counsellor, and they were everywhere supported
both by the towns and by the smaller freemen of the whole realm.
We shall see that in the oncoming struggle they demanded, not new
privileges for themselves, but law and liberty for every subject of the
English crown.
The first meeting of the barons was held at Bury St. Edmunds, in
November, 1214: it was attended mainly by the lords of the North; the
majority of the nobility had not yet moved. They formulated their
demand that the king should give England a charter of liberties, drew
up a list of the points which were to be insisted on, and determined
to go in arms to the king at Christmas to lay their requests before
him. John was seriously frightened; he asked the Pope's aid, took the
vows of a crusader in order to get the sympathy of the Church on his
side, and collected an army of mercenaries. But when he sounded the
intentions of those of his vassals who had not yet taken arms, he found
that one and all approved of the demands of the insurgent barons, and
refused to aid him against them.
[Sidenote: =Meeting at Runnymede.=]
John was always lacking in moral courage; instead of taking the field
at the head of his mercenaries, he began to treat with the rebels,
resolved to grant all they asked, and then to bide his time and
repudiate his promises at the earliest possible opportunity. So befell
the famous meeting at Runnymede, where the king solemnly swore to grant
all the provisions of the "Great Charter," which had been drawn up for
his signature by Archbishop Langton and a committee composed of an
equal number of the insurgent barons and of those who had not taken up
arms.
[Sidenote: =The Great Charter.=]
The Great Charter was signed on the 15th of June, 1215, in the presence
of the archbishop, the whole of the baronage, and a vast assembly of
all ranks. It is a document of sixty-three clauses, of which many were
quite trivial and related to purely personal or local grievances. But
the important part of its provisions may be summed up under six heads.
Firstly, the king promises that "the English Church shall be
free"--free, that is, from violent interference in the election of its
prelates, and from illegal taxation.
Secondly, the feudal rights of the king over his tenants-in-chief are
defined. He is only to raise the customary "aids" and dues, and their
amount is laid down. His rights of wardship over widows and orphans are
stated and limited. In a similar way the tenants-in-chief promise to
exercise only these same rights over their own vassals.
Thirdly, there is to be no taxation without the consent of the Great
Council--the first indication of the control of Parliament over the
national revenues.
Fourthly, the administration of justice is to be strengthened and
purified. No one is to be tried or punished more than once for the same
offence. No one is to be imprisoned on the king's private fiat, but if
arrested he must be at once put on trial, and that before a jury of
his peers. Fines for every sort of offence are to be fixed and made
proportionate to the crime, not to the king's idea of the amount he
could extract from the criminal.
Fifthly, the king is not to put foreigners, ignorant of the laws of
England, in any judicial or administrative post, and he is at once to
dismiss all his foreign mercenary troops.
Sixthly, the city of London, and all other cities which enjoy rights
and privileges under earlier royal charters, are to be fully confirmed
in them.
The Great Charter then plunges into a mass of smaller grievances, where
we need not follow it. But it ends with a most peculiar and important
clause, which shows how little the baronage trusted the king. A body of
twenty-five guardians of the Charter is appointed, who undertake to see
that the king carries it out, and they are authorized to constrain him
to observe it by force of arms if he swerves from his plighted word.
These guardians include seven earls, fourteen barons, three sons of
great lords whose fathers still survived, and the Mayor of London.
The character of _Magna Carta_ is very noticeable; it is rather
unsystematic in shape, being mainly composed of a list of grievances
which are to be remedied. It does not purport to be a full statement of
the English constitution, but only a recapitulation of the points on
which the king had violated it. But it is not merely a check on John's
evil doings, but a solemn engagement between the king, the barons,
the Church, and the people that each shall respect the rights of the
other. Wherever it is stated that the king is to abstain from using
any particular malpractice against his vassals, it is also added that
his vassals will on their part never use that same form of oppression
against their own tenants. Thus it guarantees the rights of the small
man against the great, no less than those of the great man against the
king. It is in this respect that the Charter differs from many grants
of privileges exacted by foreign nobles from foreign kings. Abroad the
barons often curbed the royal power, but they did it for their own
selfish ends alone, not for the common good of the nation.
[Sidenote: =John's faithlessness.--Attitude of the Pope.=]
John had signed the Charter in a moment of fear and depression of
spirits. He did not intend to observe it a moment longer than he could
help, and called its provisions "mere foolishness." When the barons
dispersed, he violated his engagements by gathering another great horde
of mercenaries, and sent to Rome to his suzerain Innocent III., to get
absolution from the oath he had sworn. As he had once utilized the
nation against the Pope, so he would now utilize the Pope against the
nation.
[Sidenote: =Civil war.=]
Innocent, who cared nothing for the rights or wrongs of England,
resolved to support his obedient vassal. He censured Archbishop Langton
for siding with the barons, and summoned him to Rome to answer for his
conduct. He freed the king from his oath, and he swore that he would
excommunicate any man who took arms against him. But John had taught
his barons to despise ecclesiastical thunders. They flew to arms, and
war broke out. The king at first had the advantage; his mercenaries
were all at hand, and the barons were scattered and unorganized. The
king took Rochester, and hung the garrison who held out against him,
and then started northward, harrying the land with fire and sword as
far as Berwick.
[Sidenote: =Lewis of France elected king by the barons.=]
Provoked beyond endurance, the majority of the barons swore that they
would cast away John and all his house. They declared him deposed,
and resolved to choose a new king. But they made a great mistake in
their choice, for they offered the crown to Lewis, the Prince-royal
of France, who had married Blanche, one of John's nieces. Any other
candidate would have been better, for Lewis was the son of King Philip,
the great enemy of England, and by calling him in, the barons seemed to
be allying themselves with the national foe. Many who would have gladly
served against John in another cause, refused to take arms in that of
the Frenchman (1216).
[Sidenote: =Lewis in England.--Death of John.=]
Meanwhile Prince Lewis landed in Kent, was received into London, and
became master of all eastern England. But he soon found that he was the
king of a faction, not of the whole nation. Many of the barons joined
John rather than serve a foreigner; many more remained neutral. The
whole realm was divided; here and there castles and towns held out
against the new king, and in especial the seamen and merchants of the
Cinque Ports refused to open their gates to a Frenchman. John resolved
to try the ordeal of battle; he took Lincoln, and marched southward.
But while his army was crossing the sea-marshes of the Wash it was
overtaken by a high tide, and all his baggage and treasure, with many
of his men, were swept away. John himself escaped with difficulty,
and fell ill next day, of rage and grief and overexertion, as is most
probable, though contemporary writers thought he had been poisoned. To
the great benefit of England, he died within a week of his seizure, at
Newark Castle (October 19, 1216). No man had a good word to say for
him; cruel, perjured, rash and cowardly by turns, an evil-liver, a
treacherous son and brother, he was loathed by every one who knew him.
CHAPTER X.
HENRY III.
1216-1272.
The moment that John was dead, the insurgent barons began to be
conscious of the huge mistake that they had made in calling over Lewis
of France to their aid. John's successor was his eldest son Henry,
a young boy of nine, against whom no one could feel any personal
objection. But the rebels had committed themselves to the cause of
Lewis, and could not go back. The civil war therefore continued, but
the supporters of Lewis were without heart or enthusiasm in his cause.
[Sidenote: =William, Earl of Pembroke.--Henry crowned.=]
The young Henry was in the hands of William the Marshal, Earl of
Pembroke, one of the great barons who had refused to join Lewis.
Pembroke at once crowned the young king at Gloucester, and made him
declare his adherence to the Great Charter, and solemnly republish it.
This act cut away the ground from under the feet of Lewis's party, as
they could not any longer pretend that they were fighting merely to
recover their constitutional rights. One after another they began to
drop away, and go over to Henry's side.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of Lewis.--English naval victory.=]
The fortune of the civil war soon began to turn in favour of the young
king. It was decided by two great battles. Lincoln castle was being
besieged by the followers of Lewis, French and English. To relieve it
William the Marshal set out with a small army, and, surprising the
enemy in the streets of the town, while they were busied in the siege,
he inflicted a great defeat upon them. Most of the great English barons
of Lewis's party were taken prisoners in the fray. Shortly after a
second decisive engagement completely shattered Lewis's hopes. He was
expecting great reinforcements from France, which were to be brought
to him by a fleet commanded by Eustace the Monk, a cruel pirate captain
whom he had hired to serve him because of his naval skill. But Hubert
de Burgh, the Justiciar of King Henry, put to sea from Dover with a
small squadron of ships raised from the Cinque Ports, and met the
French in mid-channel off Sandwich. The English had the better, most
of the hostile vessels were captured, and Eustace the Monk was taken
and hung for his former piracies. This was the first great naval battle
which an English fleet ever won.
Deprived of hope of succour from France, and seeing most of his
English supporters captives in Pembroke's hands, Prince Lewis resolved
to abandon his enterprise and leave England. He proffered terms to
Pembroke and de Burgh, who eagerly accepted them. So by the treaty of
Lambeth he undertook to depart and give up his claim to the crown,
while the Earl Marshal and Justiciar on their part consented to grant
an amnesty to all Lewis's partisans, and to restore them to possession
of their estates. To facilitate Lewis's quick retreat he was given a
sum of 10,000 marks (September 17, 1217).
[Sidenote: =Hubert de Burgh Justiciar.=]
Thus the civil war came to an end, but its evil effects long endured,
William of Pembroke, who acted till his death in 1219 as regent of the
realm, did all that he could to quiet matters down; but there was much
trouble left to his successor, Hubert de Burgh, the great Justiciar,
who bore sway in England for all the remaining years of King Henry's
minority. Hubert conferred many and signal benefits on the realm.
He discomfited an attempt of the Pope to govern England through his
legates, under the plea that John's homage of 1213 made the kingdom the
property of the Holy See. He put down the turbulence of many of John's
old courtiers and mercenaries, who, presuming on their fidelity in the
civil war, refused obedience to the law of the land. The leaders of
these persons were Peter des Roches, an intriguing Poitevin whom John
had made Bishop of Winchester, and Fawkes de Bréauté, who had been the
chief captain of the late king's Gascon soldiers. Peter was compelled
to go on a Crusade, and Fawkes was crushed by force of arms when he
presumed to refuse to give up the king's castle of Bedford, and had
the impudence to seize and imprison a justice of assize who had given
a legal decision against him. Fawkes himself escaped over-seas, but
de Burgh took Bedford Castle, and hung William de Bréauté, the rebel's
brother, because he had dared to hold out against the king's name
(1224).
[Sidenote: =Character of Henry.--His foreign favourites.=]
Hubert's wise and salutary rule endured till the king came of age
(1227), and for some years after he was still retained as Justiciar.
But Henry, on coming to maturity, soon showed himself jealous of the
great man who had protected his helpless boyhood. The new king was
a strange mixture of good and evil. He was a handsome, courteous
youth, blameless in his private life, and kind and liberal to his
friends. He proved a good father and husband, and a great friend to
the Church. He loved the fine arts, and built many stately edifices,
of which the famous abbey of Westminster is the best known. But he
had many serious faults: he was an incorrigible spendthrift; he was
quite incapable of keeping any promise for more than a few days. He
was of a busy volatile disposition, always vaulting from project to
project, and never carrying to its end any one single plan. Being full
of self-confidence he much disliked any one who gave him unpalatable
counsel, or strove to keep him from any of his wild ephemeral schemes.
This was the secret of his ingratitude to Hubert de Burgh, who never
shrank from opposing his young master when the occasion demanded it.
Moreover, Henry had the great fault of loving foreigners over-much; he
surrounded himself with a horde of his relatives from the continent.
His wife Eleanor of Provence brought a host of brothers and uncles
from Savoy and southern France, and his mother sent over to England
her children by her second marriage with her old lover, the Count of
La Marche.[17] On these kinsmen Henry lavished not only great gifts of
money, but earldoms, baronies, and bishoprics, to the great vexation
of the English. His strangest act was to confer the archbishopric of
Canterbury on his wife's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, a flighty young man
of most unclerical habits. Henry was not cruel or malicious, like his
father, and personally he was not disliked by his subjects, a fact
which explains the patience with which they bore his vagaries for many
years. But his actions were nearly always unwise, and his undertakings
were invariably unsuccessful, so that his long-suffering vassals were
at last constrained to take the reins of government out of his hands.
[Sidenote: =Dismissal of Hubert de Burgh.--Personal government.=]
For thirty years, however, Henry worked his will on England (1228-58)
before drawing down the storm on his head. For the first five of them
he was still somewhat restrained by the influence of Hubert de Burgh.
But in 1232 the old Justiciar was not only dismissed, but thrown into
prison, because Henry was wroth with him for frustrating an unwise and
unnecessary war with France. But the king's ingratitude provoked such
angry opposition that Hubert was ultimately released, and suffered to
dwell in peace on his own lands.
After dismissing Hubert, Henry threw himself into the hands of Peter
des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, one of John's old courtiers.
Peter knew or cared nothing about English laws and customs, and led the
king into so many illegal and unconstitutional acts, that the whole
nation called for his banishment. At last the Great Council, led by
Edmund of Abingdon, the saintly Archbishop of Canterbury, frightened
the king into dismissing him (1234).
But England did not profit very much by Peter's fall. Henry resolved
to become his own prime minister; he did not appoint any one to the
office of Justiciar, and a little later he abolished that of Chancellor
also. He thought that he would act as his own chief justice and private
secretary, but, as he was no less volatile than busy, he only succeeded
in getting all public business into hopeless arrears.
[Sidenote: =War with France.=]
Henry's personal government endured for the weary time of twenty-four
years. The events of the period were very insignificant, and only call
for very brief mention. The sole foreign war was a brief struggle with
Lewis IX. of France. One of Henry's many ephemeral schemes was the idea
of winning back the continental dominions that his father had lost.
So in 1241 he picked a quarrel with the good King Lewis, and invaded
Poitou. He was disgracefully beaten at the battle of Taillebourg
(1242), and was forced to make peace. The mild and pious King of France
contented himself with leaving things as they had been before the
war, though if he had chosen he might have forced Henry to surrender
Bordeaux and Guienne, the last possessions of the English crown beyond
the seas.
[Sidenote: =Henry's servility to the pope.--Exasperation of the
baronage.=]
Far worse for England than Henry's abortive invasion of France were his
dealings with the papacy. Henry was a devoted servant of the Church,
and whenever the Popes tried to lay any burden on England, Henry did
his best to make the nation submit. Rome was at this time deep in a
struggle with the brave and brilliant Emperor Frederic II., and the
Popes were always wanting money to keep up the war against him. In
1238 Gregory IX. sent over to England his legate, Cardinal Otho, who
pretended to come to reform the clergy, but really did little more
than extort great sums of money from them, on all possible excuses.
When he left the realm it was said that he took more English Church
treasure with him than he left behind, and he had thrust 300 Italian
priests into English benefices by the aid of the king's patronage. A
few years later Henry allowed himself to be made the Pope's tool in
an even more disgraceful way. Alexander IV. was trying to wrest the
kingdom of Sicily from the heirs of the Emperor Frederic II., and,
as he could not succeed by his own strength, determined to make the
docile King of England do the work for him. So he offered to make
Henry's younger son Edmund, a boy of ten, King of Sicily, if Henry
would undertake the expense of conquering that country. The scheme was
just one of the wild adventurous plans that took the flighty monarch's
fancy, so he eagerly accepted the Sicilian crown for his son, and
promised the Pope that he would find the money to raise a great army.
But as he had never any gold in his own treasury--since he spent it all
on his buildings and his wife's relatives--he had to raise the great
sums required for the invasion of Sicily out of the nation. In 1257,
therefore, he summoned the Great Council, and told them that he must at
once have liberal grants from them, because he had pledged England's
credit to the Pope, and had made the realm responsible to Alexander
IV. for 140,000 marks. The baronage were full of rage and disgust, for
the conquest of Sicily was no concern of England's, but a matter of
private spite on the part of the papacy. And, moreover, the king had
not the least right to pledge the revenues of England to Alexander
without having consulted the Great Council. Instead, therefore, of a
grant of 140,000 marks, Henry received the outpourings of thirty years
of suppressed indignation and discontent. He was told that he could
no longer be allowed to rule the realm without the aid and counsel of
his barons; that his interference in distant wars was foolish; that his
foreign relations were a flight of locusts eating up the land; that
his ministers and favourites were unjust, greedy, and extortionate.
The king was seriously frightened, and consented to call another Great
Council together at Oxford, to provide for the better governance of the
realm, and not merely for the payment of his own debts.
[Sidenote: =Simon de Montfort.=]
The sudden outburst of wrath on the part of the baronage in 1258 is
explained not only by the fact that all men had lost patience with King
Henry, for that had been the case for many years, but much more by the
fact that the baronage had at last found a champion and mouthpiece in
Simon de Montfort, the great Earl of Leicester. Simon was not one who
might have been expected to prove a wise and patriotic statesman and a
good Englishman, for he had originally come into notice as one of the
king's foreign favourites. His grandmother had been the heiress of the
earldom of Leicester, but she had married a Frenchman, the Count of
Montfort. Their child was Simon the elder, a great crusading chief and
a cruel persecutor of heretics. He was a bitter enemy of King John,
and had never been permitted to get hold of the Leicester estates. In
1232 his son Simon the younger came across to England, to beg King
Henry to make over to him the confiscated lands of his grandmother's
earldom. Henry could never resist a petitioner, especially when he was
a foreigner; he not only took Simon into favour and granted him the
earldom of Leicester, but he married him to his sister, the Princess
Eleanor, and for a time made him his confidant. But the king's sudden
friendship did not endure, and ere very long he tired of Simon, and
sent him over to govern Guienne, which was always in a state of chronic
insurrection. Simon put down rebellion with a strong hand, and made
himself unpopular with the Gascons, who sent many complaints of him
to the king. But the fatal cause of estrangement between him and the
earl was a money matter: Simon had expended large sums in the king's
service, using his own money and borrowing more. When he sent in his
accounts to Henry, the latter could not or would not pay, and very
meanly allowed the loss to fall on Simon (1250).
Simon then settled down into opposition to the king, though he was
ready enough to serve the realm in all times of danger. He had now been
living for many years in England, and his neighbours found him a just
and sincere man, and one who had done his best to accustom himself to
English ways of life and thought. He was especially beloved by the
clergy, who admired his fervent piety and pure life. So it came to pass
that the man who had once been known only as the king's favourite, was
called Earl Simon the Righteous, and looked upon as the most patriotic
and trustworthy of the nobles of the realm.
Great men had been singularly wanting among the ranks of the English
baronage, since William of Pembroke died and Hubert de Burgh was
disgraced. It was not till Simon came to the front as the king's
opponent that the nation's discontent with Henry was adequately
expressed.
[Sidenote: =The Provisions of Oxford.=]
The Great Council--or Parliament as we may now call it, since that
word was just coming into use--met at Oxford in June, 1258, to take
counsel for the better administration of England. Some called it the
"Mad Parliament," because of the anger of the barons, and their desire
to make hasty and sweeping changes. Henry, when he met it, found that
he had no supporters save his foreign kinsmen and a few personal
dependents, so that he was forced to submit to all the conditions which
the barons imposed upon him.
So were ratified the "Provisions of Oxford," which provided for the
government of England, not by the king, but by a group of committees.
Henry was to do nothing without the consent of a privy council of
fifteen members, which was now imposed upon him. Another committee
of twenty-four was to investigate and right all the grievances of
the realm; and a third, also of twenty-four, was to take charge of
the financial side of the government, pay off the king's debts, and
administer his revenues. Henry was forced to make a solemn oath to
abide by the rules stated in Magna Carta, which he had often before
promised to keep, but had always evaded or disregarded after a time.
By the Provisions of Oxford the governance of the realm was taken
altogether out of the hands of the king, and handed over to those of
the three committees. But the new scheme was far too cumbersome, for
neither of the three bodies had any authority over the others, and it
was difficult to keep them together. There were many who were jealous
of Simon de Montfort, who sat in each of the three, and was the ruling
spirit of the whole government. It was said that he took too much upon
himself, and that the nation had not muzzled the king merely in order
to hand itself over to be governed by the earl.
[Sidenote: =Counter-efforts of Henry.--The Mise of Amiens.=]
In spite of these murmurings, and in spite of the king's attempts to
shake off the control which had been imposed on him, the Provisions of
Oxford were observed for four years. But Henry was preparing to tear
himself free as soon as possible. He sent privately to Rome and got
absolved from his oath by the Pope. He courted those who were jealous
of Earl Simon, and he encouraged many of his foreign relatives and
dependents to creep back to England. In 1261 he felt strong enough to
break loose, seized the Tower of London, and raised an army. But he
found himself too weak, dared not come to blows with the adherents of
the Provisions of Oxford, and again consented to place himself in the
hands of the guarantors. But as disputes about his conduct continued to
arise, he offered to submit his rights, and those of the barons, to the
arbitration of his neighbour, St. Lewis of France, whose probity was
recognized by all the world. Simon and his friends consented--an unwise
act, for they might have remembered that the French king was not well
acquainted with the constitution or the needs of England. By a decision
called the _Mise of Amiens_, from the city at which it was proclaimed,
St. Lewis announced that Henry ought to abide by the customs stated in
Magna Carta, but that he need not keep the Provisions of Oxford, which
were dishonourable to his crown and kingly dignity (1263).
[Sidenote: =Civil war breaks out.=]
The Mise of Amiens precipitated the outbreak of civil war, for Simon
and his party refused to accept the decision which had been given
against them, though they had promised to abide by it. This flinching
from their word alienated from them many who would otherwise have taken
the side of reform, and it was felt that a grave responsibility lay
on Simon for striking the first blow. Hence it came to pass that the
king was supported by a larger party than might have been expected. His
own brother and son, Richard of Cornwall and Prince Edward, who had
hitherto usually leaned to the party of reform and striven to guide
him towards moderation, now supported him with all their power. The
Earls of Norfolk and Hereford and many other great barons also took
arms in his favour. Earl Simon, on the other hand, was helped by the
Earls of Gloucester and Derby, and enthusiastically supported by the
citizens of London, who had been maddened by the king's arbitrary taxes.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF LEWES.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Lewes.--The Mise of Lewes.=]
When, after much preliminary fighting, the armies of Henry and Simon
faced each other in Sussex for a decisive battle, it was found that the
king had much the larger army. He drew up his host outside the walls
of Lewes, while Simon, who had marched from London, lay on the downs
beyond it. When the shock came, the fiery Prince Edward, who led the
right wing of the royalists, fell furiously on Simon's left wing, which
was mainly composed of the levies of London, and drove them far off the
field. But, carried away by his pursuit, he never thought of returning
to help his father, and meanwhile Earl Simon had beaten the king's
division, and rolled the royalist army back against the town wall of
Lewes, where those of them who could not enter the gate at once were
taken prisoners. Among the captives were the king himself, his brother
Richard of Cornwall, and most of the chiefs of the royalist party.
Prince Edward, rather than continue the civil war, gave himself up to
the insurgents on the following day, to share his father's fate (May,
1264).
The immediate result of the battle was the issue of a document called
the _Mise of Lewes_, by which King Henry promised to keep the charter,
to dismiss all his foreign relatives and dependents, and to place
himself under the control of a privy council, whom Parliament should
choose to act as his ministers and guardians.
[Sidenote: =Rule of Simon de Montfort.--Captivity of the king and
Prince Edward.=]
A Parliament was hastily summoned and delegated three electors
to nominate this privy council, namely, Earl Simon, the Earl of
Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester. The electors, naturally but
unwisely, appointed none but their own trusted supporters. Thus England
came under the rule of a party, and a party whose violent action had
been disliked by a great portion of the nation. The king was but a
puppet in their hands; he was practically their prisoner, for three
of the council always attended his steps and kept him in sight. Now,
Henry, irritating and faithless as his conduct had always been, was
not personally disliked, and the sight of their monarch led about
like a captive and forced to obey every behest of his captors, was
very displeasing to many who had formerly felt no sympathy for him.
It was felt, too, that his son Edward was being very hardly treated
by being kept in honourable captivity and deprived of all share in
the government; for the prince had taken the side of reform till the
outbreak of the civil war, had only joined his father when Simon took
arms, and had behaved with great patriotism and self-denial in refusing
to continue the struggle after Lewes.
For two years Earl Simon governed England, and the king was kept under
close guard. This period was not one of peace or prosperity; the land
was still troubled by the echoes of the civil war, and in his anxiety
to maintain his dominant position the earl incurred many accusations of
harshness and rapacity. He was especially blamed for depriving Prince
Edward of his earldom of Chester, for favouring Llewellyn Prince of
North Wales in his quarrel with Roger Mortimer, a great lord of the
Welsh marches who had been on the king's side at Lewes, but most of
all for giving too much trust and power to his own sons. The young
Montforts were rash and arrogant men, who harmed the people's cause
more by their turbulence than they aided it by their courage and
fidelity. In short, they were as Samuel's sons of old, and wrought
their father no small damage and discredit.
[Sidenote: =The Parliament of 1265.--Representation of Shires and
Boroughs.=]
The chief event for which Earl Simon's tenure of power is remembered
is his summons of the celebrated Parliament of 1265. This incident is
noteworthy, not so much for anything that the Parliament did, as for
the new system on which it was constructed. Hitherto the Great Council
had usually been composed only of the barons and bishops, though on
two or three occasions in the thirteenth century the smaller vassals
of the crown had been represented by the summons of two knights from
each shire, chosen in the county court by all the freeholders of
the district. But de Montfort not only called these "knights of the
shire" to his Parliament of 1265, but also summoned two citizens
or two burgesses from each of the chief cities and boroughs of the
realm. Thus he was the first to give the towns representation, and to
put together the three elements, lords, borough members, and county
members, which form the Parliament of to-day. It must be confessed that
Simon's immediate object was probably to strengthen his own side in the
assembly, rather than to initiate a scheme for the reform of the Great
Council in a democratic direction. Many barons were against him, and
them he did not summon at all. Many more were jealous or distrustful
of him, and it was mainly in order to swamp their opposition that he
called up the great body of knights of the shire and members for the
towns,--for London and the rest of the chartered cities were strongly
in favour of his cause.
This Parliament confirmed all Simon's acts; outlawed those of the
king's party who had fled over-seas, and refused to accept the terms
of the Mise of Lewes; imposed a three-years exile in Ireland on some
of those who had made only a tardy submission, and put all the royal
castles into the hands of trusty partisans of the earl. It made few
regulations for the better governance of the realm, but left everything
in Simon's hands and at his discretion.
[Sidenote: =Prince Edward escapes.=]
It was impossible that the regency of the great earl should last
for long. There were too many men in England who felt that it was
unseemly that the king and his son should live in close restraint,
while one who, in spite of all his merits, was still a foreigner and
an adventurer, ruled the realm. The beginning of Simon's troubles
came from a quarrel with his own chief supporter, the young Earl of
Gloucester. Gilbert de Clare thought that he was not admitted to a
sufficient share in the government of the kingdom, and soon fell into
a bitter feud with Simon's sons. His anger led him into conspiring
against the great earl. By his counsel Prince Edward escaped from his
keepers, by an easy stratagem and a swift horse. Once free, the prince
called his party to arms, and was joined by Gloucester, Mortimer, and
many of the barons of the Welsh marches.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF EVESHAM.]
On hearing of this rising in the west, Montfort hurried to the Welsh
border with a small army, taking the king in his train. He bade Simon,
the second of his sons, to collect a larger army and follow him.
But Edward and Gloucester seized the line of the Severn, and threw
themselves between father and son. The earl retraced his steps, slipped
back across the Severn, and reached Evesham, while his son had marched
as far as Kenilworth, so that a few miles only separated them. But
Edward lay between, and was eager for the fight.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Evesham.--Death of Simon de Montfort.=]
By a sudden and unexpected attack the prince surprised and scattered
young Montfort's army under the walls of Kenilworth; he then hurried
off to attack Simon. The earl lay in Evesham town, which is girt round
by a deep loop of the river Avon. Edward and Gloucester seized the
narrow neck of this loop, while another royalist force, under Mortimer,
crossed the river and watched the only bridge which leads southward out
of the town. Simon awoke to find himself surrounded. "God have mercy
on our souls," he cried, "for our bodies are our enemy's." Gathering
his little army in a compact mass, he dashed at the prince's superior
force, and tried to cut his way through. But the odds were against
him, and after a short sharp fight he was slain, with his eldest son
Henry, Hugh Despencer the Justiciar of England, and many of the best
knights of the baronial party. King Henry almost shared their fate: he
had been compelled to put on his armour and ride in the earl's host,
and was wounded and almost slain before he was recognized by his son's
victorious soldiery.
Thus died Earl Simon the Righteous, a man much loved by those who knew
him well, courteous and kindly, pious and honest, wise and liberal. But
it cannot be denied that he was touched by an overweening ambition, and
that when England fell beneath his hand, he ruled her more as a king
than a regent, and forgot that he was but the deputy and representative
of the nation. His rise and success freed England from the thriftless
rule of Henry, and set a boundary to the use of the royal prerogative.
His short tenure of power gave the realm the valuable gift of the full
and representative Parliament. His fall was sad but not disastrous to
the English, for his work was done, and he was fast drifting into the
position of the autocratic leader of a party, and ceasing to be the
true exponent of the will of the whole nation.
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of Prince Edward.=]
The best testimony to the benefits that Simon had conferred on England
was the fact that Henry III. never fell back into his old ways. He
was now an elderly man, and in his captivity had lost much of his
self-confidence and restless activity. He had been freed, not by his
own power, but by his son and the Earl of Gloucester, both of whom had
been friends of reform, though enemies of Simon. Edward had now won an
ascendency over his father which he never let slip, and his voice had
for the future a preponderant share in the royal council. It is to his
influence that we may ascribe the wise moderation with which the relics
of Simon's party were treated.
[Sidenote: =End of the civil war.=]
Evesham fight did not end the war, for the three surviving sons of
Simon, with the Earl of Derby and some other resolute friends, still
held out. It took two years more to crush out the last sparks of civil
strife, for the vanquished party fortified themselves in the castle
of Kenilworth and the marshy isles of Ely and Axholme. But Edward
gradually beat down all opposition, and the end of the war is marked by
the _Dictum of Kenilworth_ (October, 1266), in which the king solemnly
confirms the Great Charter, and pardons all his opponents, on condition
of their paying him a fine. Only the heirs of the Earls of Leicester
and Derby were disinherited. The younger Montforts went into exile in
Italy, where a little later they revenged themselves on the king by
cruelly murdering his nephew Henry of Cornwall, as he was praying in
Viterbo cathedral.
There is little to tell about the last five years of the reign of Henry
III. The land gradually settled down into tranquillity, and we hear
little more of the misgovernment which had rendered his early years so
unbearable. Prince Edward went on a Crusade, when he saw that the realm
was pacified. He greatly distinguished himself in the Holy Land, and
took Nazareth from the infidels. He was still beating back the Saracen,
when he was called home by the news of his father's decease. After a
stormy life the old king had a peaceful ending, dying quietly in his
bed on the 16th of November, 1272.
FOOTNOTE:
[17] See p. 123.
CHAPTER XI.
EDWARD I.
1272-1307.
[Sidenote: =Immediate accession of Edward.=]
The confidence and admiration which the English nation felt for
Prince Edward were well shown by the fact that he was proclaimed
king on the day of his father's death without any form of election
by the Parliament. This was the first time that the English crown
was transferred by strict hereditary succession, and that the old
traditions of the solemn choice by the Great Council were neglected.
Edward was still absent in Palestine, but the government was carried on
in his name without trouble or friction till he landed in England on
August 2, 1274. It was nineteen months since his father had died, yet
nothing had gone amiss in the interval, so great was the belief of the
English in the wisdom and justice of the coming king.
[Sidenote: =His character.=]
Edward was probably the best and greatest ruler, save Alfred, that
England has ever known. He was a most extraordinary contrast to his
shifty father, and his cruel, treacherous grandsire. His private life
was a model to all men; nothing could have shown a better conception
of the respective claims of patriotism and of filial duty than his
conduct during the civil war. His court was grave and virtuous, and his
faithful wife, Eleanor of Castile, was the object of his chivalrous
devotion. Edward was religious without superstition, liberal without
unthriftiness, resolute without obstinacy. But the most striking
feature of his character was his love of good faith and justice. His
favourite device was _Pactum serva_, "Keep your promise," and in all
his doings he strove to carry it out. It was this that made him such
an admirable king for a country where constitutional liberty was just
beginning to develop itself. If he promised his Parliament to abandon
any custom or introduce any reform, he might be trusted honestly to do
his best to adhere to his engagement. It must not be supposed that he
never fell out with his subjects; his conceptions of the rights and
duties of a king were so high that it was impossible for him to avoid
collisions with Parliament. But when such collisions occurred, though
he fought them out with firmness, yet, if beaten, he accepted his
defeat without rancour. His justice was perhaps too severe: he could
pardon on occasion, but he had a stern way of dealing with those whom
he regarded as traitors or oath-breakers; the chief blots on his reign
are instances of merciless severity to conquered rebels. Edward has
been accused of having some times adhered too closely to the letter of
the law, when it told in his own favour, but there seems little reason
to doubt that he was honestly following his own lights. Compared with
any contemporary sovereign, he was a very mirror of justice and equity.
[Sidenote: =Edward as a general.=]
In addition to showing great merits as administrator, Edward was
notable both as a good soldier and a wise general. His tall and robust
frame and dauntless courage made him one of the best knights of his
day. Yet he was no mere fighting man, but a skilled tactician. He had
long forgotten the reckless impulsiveness that lost the day at Lewes,
and had become one of the best captains of his age. He deserves a
prominent place in the history of the art of war for being the first
who discovered the military value of the English long-bowmen, and
turned them to good account in his battles. Hitherto English generals,
like continental, had been trusting entirely to the charge of their
mailed cavalry. Edward, as we shall see at Falkirk, had learnt that the
bowman was no less effective than the knight in the deciding of battles.
The years of Edward's long and eventful reign are full of interest and
importance both within and without the bounds of England. The history
of his legislation and of the development of the power of Parliament
under him deserve close observation no less than his successful
dealings with Wales, and his almost successful scheme for the conquest
of Scotland. Nor can his relations with France be left without remark.
[Sidenote: =Edward and the Church.--Statute of Mortmain.=]
His legislation, most of which falls into the earlier years of his
reign, requires the first notice. Throughout the whole of it we trace
a consistent purpose of strengthening the crown by restricting the
rights both of the Church and the baronage. His first collision with
the Church dates from 1279, when Archbishop Peckham made an attempt to
reassert some of Becket's old doctrines as to the complete independence
and wide scope of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. When Peckham summoned
a national council of clergy at Reading in 1279, and issued certain
"canons" in support of the independence of the Church courts, Edward
replied not merely by compelling him to withdraw the objectionable
document, but by passing the celebrated _Statute of Mortmain_, or _De
Religiosis_, as it is sometimes called. This was a measure destined to
prevent the further accumulation of estates in the "dead hand" (_in
mortua manu_) of the Church. It was estimated that a fourth of the
surface of England was already in the possession of the clerical body,
and this land no longer paid its fair proportion of the taxes of the
realm. For a large share of the king's revenue came from _reliefs_, or
death-duties, and _escheats_, or resumption of lands to which there
was no heir, and as a monastery or bishopric never died, the king got
neither reliefs nor escheats from them. The statute prevented any man
from alienating his land to the monasteries, and specially forbade
the fraudulent practice of making ostensible gifts to the Church and
receiving them back. For landholders had sometimes pretended to make
over their estates to a monastery, in order to escape the taxation due
on feudal fiefs, while really, by a corrupt agreement with the monks,
they kept the property in their own power, and so enjoyed it tax-free.
For the future land rarely fell into the "dead hand," since it could
not be given away without the king's consent. Very few new monasteries
were built or endowed after the passing of this statute, but the crown
not unfrequently relaxed the rule in favour of the colleges in the
universities, which were just now beginning to spring up.
[Sidenote: =Edward and the baronage.--Writ of Quo Warranto.=]
Edward's dealings with the baronage are even more important in the
history of the English constitution than his contest with the clerical
body. He showed a consistent purpose of defending the rights of the
crown against the great feudal lords, and of bringing all holders of
land into close dependence on himself. His first attempt of the kind
was the issue of the writ _Quo Warranto_ in 1278. This writ was a royal
mandate ordering an inquiry "by what warrant" many of the old royal
estates had come into private hands, for the king thought that much
state property had passed illegally out of the possession of the crown,
by the thriftlessness of his father and the disorder of the civil wars
of 1262-65. This project for an inquiry into old rights and documents
both vexed and frightened the baronage. They murmured loudly. The
tale is well known how John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, when asked to
produce the evidence of his right to certain lands, dashed down an old
rusty sword before the commissioners, crying, "This is my title-deed.
My ancestors came over with King William, and won their lands by the
sword, and with this same sword I will maintain them against any one
who tries to take them from me." The whole baronage showed such a
hostile feeling against Edward's proposal that he finally contented
himself with making a complete list of the still remaining crown lands,
but did not raise the question of the resumption of long-alienated
estates.
Another device of the king's for binding the landholders of the realm
more closely to himself, was his scheme for making knights of all
persons who held estates worth more than £20 a year. His object was not
so much to gain the fees due from those who received knighthood, as to
bring all the middle class of landholders, who held under the great
feudal lords, into closer relation with himself through the homage and
oath which they made to him after receiving the honour (1278).
[Sidenote: =The statute "De Donis."=]
In subsequent legislation Edward took care to conciliate the baronage
by strengthening not only his rights over them, but their rights over
their vassals. The most important of these was "_escheat_," the right
of resuming possession of land when its holder died without an heir.
This right was always liable to be defeated by the tenant selling his
land; and its value was yet more diminished if he could dispose of part
of the land, in such a way that the buyer became his own sub-tenant.
A clause in Magna Charta had restricted this process, but the barons
wished to limit even more their tenants' power of parting with land. On
the other hand, as society became more industrial, and less warlike,
it became more desirable that land should pass freely from man to
man These conflicting interests resulted in two enactments, which
are landmarks in English History. The first, the _Second Statute of
Westminster_, contains the famous clauses '_De Donis Conditionalibus_.'
It forbade the alienation of land granted to a person and his actual
lineal descendants, or to use a modern phrase, it made possible the
creation of perpetual entails. The barons soon saw that it enabled
them to settle their lands on their own families, and it was regularly
employed for this purpose for about 200 years, till at last a legal
fiction was invented which greatly cut down the power of tying up land.
[Sidenote: =The statute "Quia Emptores."=]
On the other hand, the statute _Quia Emptores_ (1290), far from
restricting the power of alienation, expressly allowed it in all cases
not coming within the statute _De Donis_: but at the same time it
enacted that the purchaser, whether of the whole or part of an estate,
should become the tenant, not of the seller, but of the seller's lord;
in other words, it put an end to subinfeudation. This led, in the end,
to the enormous multiplication of the lesser vassals of the crown, and
tended to the ultimate extinction of all subtenancies, so that the
king was the gainer in the long run, since whenever a great estate was
broken up, he became the immediate lord of all those among whom it was
dispersed.
[Sidenote: =The Statute of Winchester.=]
Besides the great statutes we have already named, several other items
of King Edward's legislation demand a word of notice. _The Statute of
Winchester_ (1285) reorganized the national militia, the descendant
of the old fyrd, ordaining what arms each man, according to his rank
and wealth, should furnish for himself. It also provided for the
establishment of a _watch_ or local police for the suppression of
robbers and outlaws.
[Sidenote: =Expulsion of the Jews.=]
But all the king's doings were not so wise; to his discredit must be
named his intolerant edict for the expulsion of the Jews from England
in 1290. Edward seems to have picked up in his crusading days a blind
horror of infidels of all sorts. He disliked the Jews, somewhat for
being inveterate clippers and debasers of the coinage, more for being
usurers at extortionate rates in days when usury was held to be a
deadly sin, but most of all for the mere reason that they were not
Christians. To his own great loss--for the taxes of the Jews were a
considerable item in his revenues--he banished them all from the land,
giving them three months to sell their houses and realize their debts.
It was 360 years before they were again allowed to return to the realm.
[Sidenote: =Parliamentary representation.=]
The same years that are notable for the passing of the statutes of
Mortmain and Quia Emptores, and for the expulsion of the Jews, were
those in which the English Parliament was gradually growing into
its permanent shape. We have already told how Simon de Montfort
summoned in 1265 the first assembly which corresponds to our modern
idea of a Parliament, by containing representatives from shires and
boroughs, as well as a muster of the great barons and bishops who
were tenants-in-chief of the crown. As it chanced Edward did not
call a Great Council in exactly that same form till 1295, but in the
intervening years he generally summoned knights of the shire to attend
the deliberation of his lords, and consent to the granting of money.
On two occasions in 1283 the cities and boroughs were also bidden to
send their representatives, but these were not full Parliaments, for at
the first, held at Northampton, no barons were present, while at the
second, which sat at Acton-Burnell, the clergy had not been summoned.
It was not till 1295 that Edward, then in the thick of his Scotch
and French wars, summoned barons, clergy, knights of the shire, and
citizens, all to meet him, "because that which touches all should be
approved by all." But the complete form of Parliament was found to work
so well that it was always summoned in that shape for the future.
[Sidenote: =Condition of Wales.=]
We may now turn to Edward's political doings. The affairs of Wales
require the first notice. We have already mentioned in earlier chapters
how the southern districts of that country had long ago passed, partly
by conquest, partly by intermarriage with the families of native
chiefs, into the hands of various Anglo-Norman barons. These nobles
of the Welsh Marchland, or _Lords Marchers_ as they were called, had
as their main duty the task of overawing and restraining the princes
of North Wales, where Celtic anarchy still reigned supreme. Anglesea,
the mountain lands of Snowdon, Merioneth, and the valley of the Dee
were the last home of the native Welsh. In this land of Gwynedd native
princes still ruled, and proved most unruly vassals to the English
crown. Whenever England was vexed by civil war, the Welsh descended
from their hills, attacked the Lords Marchers, and pushed their
incursions into Cheshire and Shropshire. Sometimes they pushed even
further afield; in 1257 they ravaged as far as Cardiff and Hereford. If
it had not been that the princes of North Wales were even more given to
murderous family feuds than to raids on the English border, they would
have been an intolerable pest; but their interminable petty strife with
each other generally kept them quiet.
[Illustration: WALES IN 1282.]
[Sidenote: =Invasion of Wales.=]
In 1272, the ruler of North Wales was Llewellyn-ap-Gruffyd, a bold
and stirring prince, who had put down all his rebellious brothers and
cousins, and united the whole of Gwynedd under his sword. Following
the example of his ancestors, Llewellyn had plunged with alacrity
into the English civil wars of the time of Henry III. He had allied
himself with Simon de Montfort, and under cover of this alliance had
made cruel ravages on the lands of the Lords Marchers in South Wales.
He held out long after Simon fell at Evesham, and only made peace
in 1267, when he was admitted to very favourable terms and confirmed
in the full possession of his principality. When Edward ascended his
father's throne, he bade Llewellyn come to his court and do him homage,
such as the ancient princes of Wales had been accustomed to offer. But
he was met with repeated refusals; six times he summoned the Welshman
to appear, and six times he was denied, for Llewellyn said that he
would not leave his hills unless he was given as hostages the king's
brother, Edmund of Lancaster, and the Justiciar Ralph of Hengham.
He feared for his life, he said, and would not trust himself in his
suzerain's hands. Edward was not accustomed to have his word doubted,
and, being conscious of his own honest intentions, was bitterly angered
at his vassal's distrust and contumacious answers. But the king's wrath
reached its highest pitch in 1275, when he found that Llewellyn had
put himself in communication with France, and sent to the French court
for Eleanor de Montfort, Earl Simon's daughter, to take her to wife.
The ship that carried the bride was captured off the Scilly Isles by a
Bristol privateer, and she with her brother, Amaury of Montfort, fell
into Edward's hands. After Llewellyn had made one further refusal to do
homage, Edward raised a great army and invaded Wales. The prince and
his wild tribesmen took refuge in the fastnesses of Snowdon, but Edward
blockaded all the outlets from the hills, and in a few months the
Welsh were starved into submission. Llewellyn was forced to surrender
himself into his suzerain's hands, but received better terms than
might have been expected. He was made to do homage, and to give up the
land between Conway and the Dee, the modern shire of Denbigh, but was
allowed to retain the rest of his dominions, and received his bride
from Edward's hands. He was also reconciled to his brothers, whom he
had long before driven away from Wales, and David--the eldest of these
exiles--was given a great barony cut out of the ceded lands on the Dee
(1277).
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Llewellyn and David of Wales.=]
Though he had felt the weight of Edward's hand, the Prince of Wales was
unwise enough to provoke his suzerain the second time. Finding that
there was much discontent in the ceded districts of Wales, because the
king was systematically substituting English laws and customs for the
old Celtic usages, Llewellyn resolved to make a sudden attempt to free
them and to throw off his allegiance. His brother David joined in the
plot, though he had always been protected by Edward, and owed all that
he possessed to English aid. On Palm Sunday, 1282, the two brothers
secretly took arms without any declaration of war. David surprised
Hawarden Castle, captured the chief justice of Wales, and slew the
garrison, while Llewellyn swept the whole coast-land as far as the
gates of Chester with fire and sword.
This treacherous and unprovoked rebellion deeply angered the king; he
swore that he would make an end of the troublesome principality, and
raised an army and a fleet greater than any that had ever been sent
against the Welsh. After some slight engagements, the English once more
drove Llewellyn and his host into the crags of Snowdon. Convinced of
his folly, the prince sent to ask for peace; but Edward would not again
grant the easy terms that he had given in 1277. Llewellyn should become
an English earl, he said, and be granted lands worth £1000 a year; but
the independent principality of North Wales had been tried and found
wanting--it should be abolished and annexed to England.
[Sidenote: =Death of Llewellyn.--Execution of David.=]
Llewellyn, though in the sorest straits, refused these terms. By a
dangerous night march he slipped through the English lines with a few
chosen followers, and hastened into mid-Wales, to stir up rebellion in
Brecknock. But near Builth he fell in with a small party of English,
and was slain in the skirmish which followed by an esquire named
Adam of Frankton, who knew not with whom he was fighting. David, his
brother, now proclaimed himself Prince of Wales, and held out in
Snowdon for some months longer. But he was ultimately betrayed to the
king by his own starving followers. He was taken over the border to be
tried before the English Parliament, which met at Acton Burnell, just
outside the walls of Shrewsbury. There was far more dislike felt for
him than for his brother. Llewellyn had always been an open enemy, but
David had long served at the English court, and had been granted his
barony by Edward's special favour. Hence it came that the Parliament
passed the death-sentence for treason on the last Prince of Wales, and
he was executed at Shrewsbury, with all the horrid details of hanging,
drawing, and quartering, which were the traitor's lot in those days.
The harshness of his punishment almost makes us forget the provocation
that he had given the king; mercy for traitors was not characteristic
of Edward's temper (1283).
[Sidenote: =Settlement of Wales.=]
Edward stayed for nearly two years in Wales after the fighting had
ended; he devoted himself to reorganizing the principality, on the
English model. Llewellyn's dominions were cut up into the new counties
of Anglesea, Merioneth, and Carnarvon. Strong castles were built at
Conway, Beaumaris, Carnarvon, and Harlech, to hold them down, and
colonies of English were tempted by liberal grants and charters to
settle in the towns which grew up at points suitable for centres of
commerce. For the future governance of the land Edward drew up the
"Statute of Wales," issued at Rhuddlan in 1284; he allowed a certain
amount of the old Celtic customary law to survive, but introduced
English legal usages to a much larger extent. The Welsh murmured
bitterly against the new customs, but found them in the end a great
improvement. Edward endeavoured to solace their discontent by placing
many of the administrative posts in Welsh hands, and their national
pride by reviving the ancient name of the principality. For in 1301
he gave his heir Edward, who had been born at Carnarvon, the title
of Prince of Wales, solemnly invested him with the rule of the
principality at a great meeting of all the Welsh chiefs, and set him
to govern the land. Later kings of England have followed the custom,
and the title of Prince of Wales has become stereotyped as that of the
heir to the English crown. It must not be supposed that Wales settled
down easily and without friction beneath Edward's sceptre. There were
three or four risings against his authority, headed by chiefs who
thought that they had some claim to inherit the old principality. One
of these insurrections was a really formidable affair; in 1294, Madoc,
the son of Llewellyn, raised half North Wales to follow him, beat the
Earl of Lincoln in open battle, and ravaged the English border. The
king himself, though sorely vexed at the moment by wars in Gascony and
Scotland, marched against him at mid-winter, but had to retire, foiled
by the snows and torrents of the Welsh mountains. But next spring Madoc
was pursued and captured, and sent to spend the rest of his life as a
captive in the Tower of London (1295).
[Sidenote: =Foreign affairs.=]
For a few years after the annexation of Wales, the annals of England
are comparatively uneventful. Some of Edward's legislation, with which
we have already dealt, falls into this period, but the king's attention
was mainly taken up with foreign politics, into which he was drawn
by his position as Duke of Aquitaine. He spent some time in Guienne,
succeeded by careful diplomacy in keeping out of the wars between
France and Aragon, which were raging near him, and introduced a measure
of good government among his Gascon subjects. But more important events
nearer home were soon to attract his attention.
[Sidenote: =Scotland.--Accession of Margaret of Norway.=]
In 1286 perished Alexander III., King of Scotland, cast over the cliffs
of Kinghorn by the leap of an unruly horse. He was the last male of the
old royal house that descended from Malcolm Canmore and the sainted
Queen Margaret. Three children, two sons and a daughter, had been born
to him, but they had all died young, and his only living descendant was
his daughter's daughter, a child of four years. Her mother had wedded
Eric, King of Norway, and it was at the Norwegian court that the little
heiress was living when her grandfather died. Though Scotland had
never before obeyed a queen-regnant, her nobles made no difficulty in
accepting the child Margaret, the "maid of Norway" as they called her,
for their sovereign. A regency was appointed in her name, and the whole
nation accepted her sway.
[Sidenote: =Scheme for uniting the two crowns.=]
Now Edward of England saw, in the accession of a young girl to the
Scottish throne, a unique opportunity for bringing about a closer
union of England and Scotland. There was no rational objection to the
scheme: a century had elapsed since the two countries had been at
war, their baronages had become united by constant intermarriage; the
Lowlands--the more important half of the Scotch realm--were English in
speech and manners. Most important of all, there were as yet few or no
national grudges between the races on either bank of the Tweed. Of the
rancorous hostility which was to divide them in the next century no man
had any presage.
When the little Queen of Scotland had reached her seventh year, the
king proposed to the Scots' regents that she should be married to his
own son and heir, Edward of Carnarvon. He pledged himself that the
kingdoms should not be forcibly united; Scotland should keep all
its laws and liberties and be administered by Scots alone, without
any interference from England. The regents did not mislike the
scheme; they summoned the Parliament of the northern realm to meet at
Brigham-on-Tweed, and there Edward's offers were accepted and ratified
with the consent of the whole realm (July, 1290).
[Sidenote: =Death of Margaret.=]
The next step was to send to Norway for the young queen, for she had
been living at her father's court till now, and had never visited her
own kingdom. She set sail for Scotland in the autumn of the year 1290,
but adverse winds kept her vessel tossed for weeks in the wild North
Sea. The strain was too much for the frail child; when at last she came
ashore at Kirkwall in the Orkneys, it was only to die. With her life
ended the fairest opportunity of uniting the two realms on equal terms
that had ever been known.
[Sidenote: =Extinction of the royal line.--Rival claimants.=]
Edward's scheme had fallen through, and his grief was great; but much
greater was the dismay in Scotland, where the regents found themselves
face to face with the calamity of the extinction of the whole royal
house. There was no longer any king or queen in whose name the law
of the realm could run, or the simplest duties of government be
discharged. Gradually claimants for the crown began to step forward,
basing their demands on ancient alliances with the old kingly line,
but the nearest of these connections went back more than a hundred
years, to female descendants of King David, who had died in 1153. In
this strait the Scots determined to appeal to King Edward as arbitrator
between the pretenders, whose rivalry seemed likely to split the
kingdom up into a group of disorderly feudal principalities. Edward
readily consented, seeing that in the capacity of arbitrator he could
find an opportunity of making more real the old English right of
suzerainty over the kingdom of Scotland. It will be remembered that
as far back as the tenth century, the kings of the Scots had done
homage to Edward the elder, and that they held the more important
half of their realm, Lothian and Strathclyde, which together form the
Lowlands, as grants under feudal obligations from the English crown.
But the exact degree of dependence of Scotland on England had never
been accurately fixed, though Scottish kings had often sat in English
Parliaments, and sometimes served in the English armies. It might
be pleaded by a patriotic Scot that, as Earl of Lothian, his king
had certain obligations to the English sovereign, but that for his
lands north of the Forth and Clyde he was liable to no such duties.
This depended on the nature of the discharge given by Richard I. to
William the Lion in 1190, when he sold the Scottish king a release
of certain duties of homage in return for the sum of 10,000 marks.
But the agreement of Richard and William had been drawn up in such an
unbusiness-like manner that no one could say exactly what it covered.
[Sidenote: =Edward's arbitration.--Balliol and Bruce.=]
King Edward was determined to put an end to this uncertainty, and,
as a preliminary to accepting the post of arbitrator in the Scottish
succession dispute, required that the regents and all the nobles of
the northern realm should acknowledge his complete suzerainty over the
whole kingdom. After some hesitation they consented. Edward made a tour
through Edinburgh, Stirling, and St. Andrews, and there received the
homage of the whole nobility of Scotland. He then appointed a court
of arbitration to sit at Berwick, and adjudicate on the rights of the
thirteen claimants to the crown; it consisted of eighty Scots and
twenty-four Englishmen.
The court found that of serious claims to the crown there were only
two--those of John Balliol and Robert Bruce, each of whom descended
in the female line from the old King David I., who had died in 1153.
The positions of Balliol and Bruce were closely similar: they were
descended from two Anglo-Norman barons of the north country, who had
married two sisters, Margaret and Isabella, the great-granddaughters
of David I. Both of them were as much English as Scotch in blood and
breeding. Balliol was Lord of Barnard Castle, in Durham; Bruce had been
Sheriff of Cumberland, and had long served King Edward as chief justice
of the King's Bench. Like so many of the Scottish barons, they were
equally at home on either side of the border. The point of difficulty
to decide between them was that, while Balliol descended from the elder
of the two co-heiresses, Bruce was a generation nearer to the parent
stem, and claimed to have a preference on this account by Scottish
usage.
THE SCOTTISH SUCCESSION IN 1292.
DAVID I., = Matilda,
1124-1153. | daughter of Waltheof,
| Earl of Huntingdon.
|
Henry,
Earl of Northumberland and Huntingdon,
died 1152.
|
+----------------+------+----------------+
| | |
MALCOLM IV., WILLIAM THE LION, David,
1153-1165. 1165-1214. Earl of Huntingdon.
| |
+-------------+ +-----+-----+
| | |
ALEXANDER II., Alan, = Margaret. Isabella = Robert
1214-1249. Lord of | | Bruce,
| Galloway. | | Lord of
ALEXANDER III., | | Annandale.
1249-1286. | |
| | +----+
| | |
| Devorguilla, = John Robert
| heiress of | Balliol, Bruce,
+-----+------------+ Galloway. | Lord of [Claimant
| | | Barnard in 1292]
Eric of = Margaret, Alexander, | Castle. died 1295.
Norway | died 1283. died 1283. | |
| | |
| +----------+--------+ +--------+
| | | |
MARGARET, JOHN Margaret = John Robert = Margaret,
the Maid BALLIOL, Balliol. | Comyn. Bruce | Countess
of Norway, king | died | of
1286-1290. 1292-1296. | 1305. | Carrick.
| | |
EDWARD John, ROBERT BRUCE,
BALLIOL, "The Red Comyn," king 1306-1329.
king slain 1306. |
1332-1334. DAVID II.,
1329-1370.
[Sidenote: =Edward's decision.--His claims of suzerainty.=]
The court of arbitration decided that this plea of Bruce's was unsound,
and that his rival's right was undoubted. Edward therefore decided
in favour of Balliol, who straightway did him homage as King of all
Scotland, and was duly crowned at Scone (1292). So far the King of
England's conduct had been unexceptionable; he had acted as an honest
umpire, and had handed over the disputed realms to the rightful heir.
But Edward's legal mind saw further consequences in the acknowledgment
of allegiance which Balliol had made. This soon became evident when
he began to allow persons who had been defeated in the Scottish law
courts to appeal for a further decision to those of England, in virtue
of the suzerainty of the latter country. Such a claim was valid in
feudal law, and Edward as Duke of Aquitaine had often seen his Gascon
subjects make an appeal from the courts of Bordeaux to those of Paris.
But to the Scots the idea was new, for no such custom had prevailed
between England and Scotland, and they complained that Edward was
breaking the promise which he had made at the time of the arbitration,
to respect all the old privileges of the Scotch crown. In this they
were practically right, for ancient usage was on their side. Balliol
was a weak man, and might have yielded to Edward's demand; but his
barons refused to hear of it, and bound him to do nothing save with
the consent of a council of twelve advisers, who were to determine his
course of action. The discontent of the Scots was soon to have most
deplorable consequences for both realms.
[Sidenote: =War with Philip of France.=]
At this time Edward was just becoming involved in a bitter quarrel with
Philip the Fair, the young King of France. Philip coveted Aquitaine,
and was determined to have it. He picked a quarrel with the King of
England about the piratical doings of certain English seamen in the
Channel. The mariners of the Cinque Ports and of Normandy had long
been sworn foes; they fought whenever they met, without any concern
as to whether England and France were at war or not. In 1293 there
was a regular pitched battle between them, off St. Mahé, in Brittany;
the Normans had the worse, and many of them were slain. This affray
seemed to King Philip an admirable excuse for attacking his neighbour.
He summoned Edward to Paris, as Duke of Aquitaine, to answer before
his feudal lord for the misdoings of the English seamen. The King of
England was not averse to giving satisfaction, and sent to offer to
submit to an arbitration, in which the damages done by his subjects
should be assessed. But Philip was not seeking damages, but an excuse
for war; he at once declared Edward contumacious for not appearing in
person, and proclaimed the forfeiture of the whole duchy of Aquitaine.
Hardly realizing the French king's intentions, Edward despatched his
brother Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, to endeavour to satisfy his offended
suzerain. Philip then declared that he would consider himself satisfied
if Edward surrendered into his hand, as a token of submission, the
chief fortresses of Gascony: they should be restored the moment that
compensation had been made for the doings at St. Mahé. Earl Edmund
accepted the offer, and the castles were duly placed in Philip's hands.
Then, with a barefaced effrontery that disgusted even his own nobles,
the French king repudiated the agreement, and declared that he should
retain Guienne permanently. Edward was thus committed to an unexpected
war, while all his strongholds in Aquitaine were already in the enemy's
hands. He began to arm in great wrath, and sent ambassadors abroad
to gather allies among Philip's continental foes, chief of whom were
the Emperor Adolf of Nassau and the Counts of Brabant, Holland, and
Flanders.
[Sidenote: =Alliance of Philip with the Welsh and Scots.=]
But Philip also had looked about him for allies. At this moment
Madoc-ap-Llewellyn rose in rebellion in North Wales, relying on French
aid, and, what was of far greater importance, the discontent of the
Scots took the form of open war with England. John Balliol embraced the
French alliance, promised to wed his son to Philip's daughter, and sent
raiding bands across the border to harry Cumberland and Northumberland.
[Sidenote: =Edward invades Scotland.--Balliol gives up his crown.=]
Edward resolved at once to ward off the nearer dangers before taking
in hand the reconquest of Guienne. How he put down the dangerous
rebellion of Madoc the Welshman, we have related in an earlier page.
That campaign had taken up the best part of the year 1295; in the next
spring the turn of Balliol came. He was summoned to appear before his
suzerain at Newcastle, and when he did not obey, Edward crossed the
Tweed with a great host. Berwick, the frontier fortress and chief port
of Scotland, was stormed after a very short siege, and three weeks
later the Scottish king was completely routed at the battle of Dunbar
(April 27, 1296). So unskilfully did the Scots fight, that they were
beaten by Edward's vanguard under John de Warenne--the hero of the
rusty sword at the _Quo Warranto_ inquest--before the king and the
main body of the English army came upon the field. One after another,
Edinburgh, Perth, Stirling, and all the chief towns of Scotland
yielded themselves, and ere long the craven-spirited king of the north
surrendered himself, and gave up his crown into Edward's hands, asking
pardon as one who had been misled and coerced by evil counsellors.
Edward then held a Parliament of all the Scottish barons, and received
their homage, being resolved to reign himself as king north as well as
south of the Tweed. He told the assembled nobles that none of the old
laws of Scotland should be changed, and issued an amnesty to Balliol's
late partisans. It seemed that all resistance was at an end, and that
the union of the crowns was to take place with no further trouble
or bloodshed. John de Warenne--the victor of Dunbar--was appointed
guardian of the realm, and Edward turned southward in triumph, taking
with him the Scottish regalia, and the Holy Stone of Scone, on which
the Kings of Scotland were wont to be crowned. That famous relic still
remains at Westminster, where Edward placed it, and serves as the
pedestal of the coronation chair of the Kings of England to this day.
[Sidenote: =The expedition to Guienne.=]
The king thought that Scotland was tamed even as Wales had been,
forgetting that the Scots had hardly tried their strength against him,
and had yielded so easily mainly because their craven king had deserted
them. Dismissing northern affairs from his mind, he now turned to the
long-deferred expedition to Guienne. The greater part of that duchy
was still in King Philip's greedy hands, and only Bayonne and a few
other towns were holding out against him. Edward determined to land
in Flanders himself, and there to stir up his German allies against
France, but to send the great bulk of the English levies to Gascony,
under the Marshal, Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk.
[Sidenote: =Illegal taxation.--Conflict with the Church.=]
But the expedition was not to take place without much preliminary
trouble and difficulty. Edward was in grave need of money to furnish
forth his great army, and tried to levy new taxes without any formal
grants from Parliament. This at once brought him into conflict
with the clergy and the baronage. The arrogant Pope Boniface VIII.
had just published a bull named _Clericis Laicos_, from its opening
words. It forbade the clergy to pay any taxes to the crown from their
ecclesiastical revenues. Archbishop Winchelsey thought himself bound
to carry out the Pope's command, and refused, in the name of all his
order, to assent to any portion of the national taxation falling
on Church land. The king, who was in no mood to stand objections,
was moved to great wrath at this unreasonable claim. He copied the
behaviour of his grandfather, King John, in a similar crisis, and by
his behest the judges proclaimed that no cleric should have law in
the king's courts till the refusal to pay taxes was rescinded. Edward
himself sequestrated the lands of the see of Canterbury, and intimated
to all tenants on the estates of the clergy that nothing should be done
against them if they refused to pay their rents. Many ecclesiastics
thereupon withdrew their refusal to contribute to the national
expenses; but the archbishop held out, and the quarrel ran on for some
time. At last Boniface VIII. was induced to so far modify his bull as
to admit that the Church might make voluntary grants for the purpose
of national defence. Winchelsey therefore promised the king that he
would endeavour to induce the clergy to make large contributions of
their own free will, if Edward on his side would confirm the Great
Charter, and swear to take no further measures against Church property.
To this offer Edward could not refuse his consent; he was in urgent
need of money, and, although it was a bad precedent to allow the clergy
to assess their own taxation outside Parliament, and on a different
scale from the contributions of the rest of the realm, he accepted
Winchelsey's compromise.
[Sidenote: =Conflict with Parliament.--Confirmatio Cartarum.=]
But this struggle of the king and the Church was but one important
episode of a contention between the king and the whole nation, which
filled the years 1296-7. Edward had provoked the barons and the
merchants of England no less than the clergy--the former by bidding
them sail for Gascony in the winter, and pay him a heavy tax; the
latter by seizing all their wool--England's greatest export--as it lay
in harbour, and forcing them to pay a heavy fine, the _mal-tolt_, or
evil tax, as it was called, before he would let it be sent over-sea.
All this had been done without the consent of Parliament. The barons,
headed by Roger Bigod, who had been told off to head the expedition
to Guienne, refused to go abroad unless the king himself should lead
them, urging that their feudal duty was only to defend the kingdom, and
not to wage wars beyond it. Bigod flatly refused to set out unless the
king went with him. "By God, Sir Earl, thou shalt either go or hang!"
exclaimed Edward, irritated at the contumacy of one who, as Marshal of
England, was bound to hold the most responsible post in the army that
he was striving to raise. "And by God, Sir King, I will neither go nor
hang!" shouted the equally enraged Earl Marshal. He flung himself out
of the king's presence, and with the aid of his friend Bohun, the Earl
of Hereford, gathered a great host, and prepared to withstand the king,
if he should persist in endeavouring to carry out his design. Edward,
however, sailed himself for the continent without forcing the barons to
follow him. When he was gone, a Parliament met. Archbishop Winchelsey
and the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford took the lead in protesting
against the king's late arbitrary action, and by their council a
recapitulation of the Great Charter was drawn up, with certain articles
added at the end which expressly stipulated that the king should never
raise any tax or impost without the consent of lords and commons in
Parliament assembled--so that such an exaction as the late _mal-tolt_
would be in future illegal. The document, which is generally known as
the _Confirmatio Cartarum_, was sent over-sea to the king. He received
it at Ghent, and after much doubting signed it, for he always wished to
have the good-will of the nation, and knew that a persistence in the
exercise of his royal prerogative would bring on a rebellion such as
that which had overturned his father in 1263. From this moment dates
the first practical control of the Parliament over the royal revenue,
for the clause in Magna Carta which stipulates for such a right had
been so often violated both by Henry III. and his son, that it required
to be fully vindicated by the _Confirmatio Cartarum_ before it was
recognized as binding both by king and people.
Meanwhile Edward got little aid in Flanders from his German allies,
and found that he had small chance of punishing King Philip by their
arms. He saw Bruges and Lille taken by the French, and finally returned
foiled to England, called thither by evil news from the north.
[Sidenote: =Rising of the Scots.--William Wallace.=]
Scotland was once more up in arms. Though the Anglo-Norman lords who
formed the bulk of the baronage had readily done homage to the English
monarch, the mass of the nation were far less satisfied with the new
condition of affairs. They felt that their king and nobles had betrayed
them to the foreigner--for to many of them, notably the Highlanders,
the Galloway men, and the Welsh of Strathclyde, the Englishman still
seemed foreign. Edward had not made a very wise choice in the ministers
whom he left behind in Scotland; Ormesby, the chief justice, and
Cressingham, the treasurer, both made themselves hated by their harsh
and unbending persistence in endeavouring to introduce English laws
and English taxes. In the spring of 1297 an insurrection broke out
in the West Lowlands, headed by a Strathclyde knight, named William
Wallace (or le Walleys, _i.e._ the Welshman). He had been wronged by
the Sheriff of Lanark, took to the hills, and was outlawed. His small
band of followers soon swelled to a multitude, and the regent, John
de Warenne, was obliged to march against him in person. Despising
the tumultuary array of the rebels, who got no real help from the
self-seeking barons of Scotland, the earl marched carelessly out of
Stirling to attack Wallace, who lay on the hill across the river,
beyond Cambuskenneth bridge. Instead of waiting to be attacked, Wallace
charged when a third of the English host had crossed the stream. This
vanguard was overwhelmed and driven into the Forth, while de Warenne
could not bring up his reserves across the crowded bridge. He withdrew
into Stirling, leaving several thousand dead on the field, among them
the hated treasurer Cressingham, out of whose skin the victorious Scots
are said to have cut straps and belts.
This unexpected victory caused a general rising: some of the barons
and many of the gentry joined the insurgents. Wallace, Andrew Murray,
and the Seneschal of Scotland, were proclaimed wardens of the realm in
behalf of the absent John Balliol, and their authority was generally
acknowledged. Warenne could do nothing against them, and prayed his
master to come over-sea to his help. Meanwhile, Wallace crossed
the Tweed at the head of a great band of marauders, and harried
Northumberland with a wanton cruelty which was to lead to bitter
reprisals later on.
[Sidenote: =Edward in Scotland.--Battle of Falkirk.=]
It was not till 1298 that Edward returned to England, and took in hand
the suppression of the rebellion. He crossed the border with the whole
feudal levy of England, twenty thousand bowmen, and a great horde of
Welsh light infantry; soon he was joined by many Scots of the English
faction. Wallace burnt the Lothians behind him, and retired northward
for some time without fighting. Edward's great host was almost forced
to retire for want of provisions, but when the news was brought him
that Wallace had pitched his camp at Falkirk, he pressed on to bring
the Scots to action. He found them drawn up behind a morass, formed
in four great clumps of pikemen, with archers in the intervals, and a
few cavalry in the reserve. The first charge of the English horse was
checked by the bog; the second was beaten back by the steady infantry
of the Scots. Then Edward brought forward his archers, and bade them
riddle the heavy masses of the enemy with ceaseless arrow-flights, till
a gap was made. Then the English horse charged again; the Scottish
knights in reserve fled without attempting to save the day, and the
greater part of the squares of pikemen were ridden down and cut to
pieces. Wallace fled to the hills, and the English cruelly ravaged all
the Lowlands. But the Scots did not yet submit; the barons deposed
Wallace, of whom they had always been jealous, and named a regency to
supersede him, under John Comyn, the nephew of their exiled king. The
struggle lingered on for several years more, for Edward was hindered
from completing his work by the continual pressure of the French war.
It was not till 1301-2 that he resumed and finished the conquest of
the Lowlands. But in 1303 he was at length able to make a definitive
peace with Philip IV., who restored to him all the lost fortresses
of Guienne. Free at last from his continental troubles, Edward swept
over Scotland from end to end, carrying his arms into the north as
far as Elgin and Banff. The regent Comyn and all the barons of the
land submitted to him, and by the capture of Stirling in 1304 the last
embers of resistance were quenched.
[Sidenote: =Subjection of Scotland.--Wallace executed.=]
Scotland was apparently crushed: the king reorganized the whole
country, cutting it up into counties and sheriffdoms like England,
providing for its representation in the English Parliament, and setting
up new judges and governors throughout the land. The administration
was, for the most part, left in the hands of Scots, though the king's
nephew, John of Brittany, was appointed regent and warden of the land.
The last hope of the survival of Scottish independence seemed to vanish
in 1305, when Wallace, who had maintained himself as an outlaw in the
hills long after the rest of his countrymen had submitted, fell into
the hands of the English. He was betrayed by some of his own men to Sir
John Menteith, one of Edward's Scottish officials. Menteith sent him
to London, where he was executed as a traitor, with all the cruelties
that were prescribed for men guilty of high treason. It would have been
better for the king's good name if he--like so many other Scots--had
been pardoned; but Edward could not forgive the prime mover of the
insurrection, and the cruel waster of the English border.
[Sidenote: =Robert Bruce.--Murder of John Comyn.=]
For some two years Scotland was governed as part of Edward's realm,
but the nation submitted from sheer necessity, not from any good
will. In 1306 the troubles broke out again, owing to the ambition of
a single man. Robert Bruce, the grandson of the Bruce who had striven
with Balliol in 1292, was the leader in the new rising. Like his
grandfather, he was more of an English baron than a pure Scot. He had
taken Edward's side in the civil wars, and seems to have hoped that
his fidelity might be rewarded by the gift of the Scottish crown when
the Balliols were finally dismissed. Receiving no such guerdon, he
conspired with some of his kinsfolk and a few of the Scottish earls,
and endeavoured to get John Comyn, the late regent of Scotland, to join
him. But when Comyn refused--at an interview in the Greyfriars Kirk at
Dumfries--to break his newly sworn faith to King Edward, Bruce slew
him with his own hand before the altar, and fled to the north. There
was method in this murder, for, after the Balliols, Comyn had the best
hereditary claim to the Scottish throne.[18]
[Sidenote: =Severity of Edward.=]
Gathering his followers at Scone, Bruce had himself crowned King of
Scotland. But his royalty was of the most ephemeral nature; few of the
Scots would join one whose past record was so unsatisfactory, and his
army was beaten and dispersed by de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, whom
King Edward sent against him. Bruce had to take to the hills almost
alone, and for many months was chased about the woods and lochs of
Perthshire and Argyleshire by Highland chiefs eager to earn the price
that Edward had set upon his head. His kinsmen, Nigel, Alexander, and
Thomas, with most of his chief followers, were captured, tried and
executed, for Edward was driven to wild anger by the unprovoked rising
of one who had hitherto been his hot partisan. Even the ladies of
Bruce's house were cast into dungeons, and the Countess of Buchan, who
had crowned him at Scone, was shut up in an iron cage. The king's hand
fell far more heavily on Scotland than before: the lands of Bruce's
partisans were confiscated and given to Englishmen, and all who had
favoured him were slain or outlawed.
[Sidenote: =Death of Edward.=]
Unhappily for the king, these harsh measures had a very different
result from that which he had expected. The hangings and confiscations
gave Bruce many new partisans, and his misfortunes made him the
nation's favourite. When he left his island refuge in Argyleshire
in the spring of 1307 and landed in Carrick, he was joined by a
considerable force. Edward, though now an old man, and stricken down by
disease, swore that he would make an end of the traitor. He mounted his
horse for the last time at Carlisle, and rode as far as Burgh-on-Sands,
where bodily weakness forced him to stop. Feeling the hand of death
upon him, he made his son Edward of Carnarvon swear to persevere in the
expedition against Bruce. He even bade him bear his coffin forward into
Scotland, for his very bones, he said, would make the Scots quake. Four
days of illness ended his laborious life (July 17, 1307). His unworthy
son at once broke up the army, leaving Bruce to make head unopposed,
and used his father's funeral as an excuse for returning home. Edward
was buried under a plain marble slab at Westminster, with the short
inscription--
"EDWARDVS PRIMVS MALLEVS SCOTORVM HIC EST.
PACTVM SERVA."
FOOTNOTE:
[18] See table on p. 160.
CHAPTER XII.
EDWARD II.
1307-1327.
[Sidenote: =Character of Edward II.=]
Seldom did a son contrast so strangely with his father as did Edward
of Carnarvon with Edward the Hammer of the Scots. The mighty warrior
and statesman begot a shiftless, thriftless craven, who did his best
to bring to wrack and ruin all that his sire had built up. The younger
Edward's character had been the cause of much misgiving to the old
king during the last years of his life. He had already shown himself
incorrigibly idle and apathetic, refusing to bear his share of the
burdens of royalty, and wasting his time with worthless favourites. The
chief of his friends was one Piers de Gaveston, a young Gascon knight,
whom his father--much to his own sorrow--had made one of his household.
Piers was a young man of many accomplishments, clever, brilliant,
and showy, who kept a bitter tongue for all save his master, and had
an unrivalled talent for making enemies. He kept the listless prince
amused, and in return Edward gave him all he asked, which was no small
grant, for Piers was both greedy and extravagant.
The new king was neither cruel nor vicious, but he was inconceivably
obstinate, idle, and thriftless. It has been happily said of him that
he was "the first King of England since the Conquest who was not a
man of business." Hitherto the descendants of William the Norman had
retained a share of their ancestor's energy; even the weak Henry III.
had been a busy, bustling man, ready to meddle and muddle with all
affairs of state, great or small. But Edward II. took no interest in
anything; the best thing that his apologists find to say of him is that
he showed some liking for farming.
[Sidenote: =The Scottish expedition abandoned.=]
The moment that his father was dead, Edward broke up the
great army that had been mustered at Carlisle, and returned home. If
the campaign had been pursued, there was every chance of crushing
Bruce, whose position was still most precarious, for all the fortresses
of the land were held by the English, and most of the Scottish nobles
still refused to join the pretender. But Edward only sent north a small
force under the Earl of Pembroke, which made no head against the forces
of Bruce.
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of Piers Gaveston.=]
When Edward settled down in his kingship, the English nation found
itself confronted by a new problem--how to deal with a king who
altogether refused to trouble himself about the governance of the
realm. He referred all men who came to him to his "good brother Piers,"
and went about his pleasures without further concern. When, a few
months after his accession, he was to wed Isabel, the daughter of the
King of France, he went over-sea, leaving the regency in the hands of
the Gascon upstart, whom he created Earl of Cornwall, granting him the
old royal earldom that had been held by the descendants of Richard,
the brother of Henry III. He also gave him in marriage his niece, the
daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, and lavished upon him a number of
royal estates.
Baronage and people alike were moved to wrath by seeing the king hand
over the governance of the realm to his favourite. The proud nobles who
had been content to bend before Edward's father, would not for a moment
yield to a king who was but the creature of Gaveston. Troubles began
almost immediately on the young king's accession; he was besought,
in and out of Parliament, to dismiss the Gascon. He bowed before the
storm, and sent him out of England for the moment--but only to give
him higher honours by making him Lord Deputy of Ireland. When the king
recovered from his fright, Gaveston was recalled, and returned more
powerful and more arrogant than before (1309).
[Sidenote: =The Scottish war.=]
Meanwhile the war in Scotland was going very badly. Many of the nobles,
after long doubting, joined Bruce, because they saw that they were
likely to get little protection from the feeble king whom they had
hitherto served. Several important places fell into the insurgents'
hands, and it was universally felt that only a great expedition headed
by the king himself could stay Bruce's progress.
Edward, however, was enduring too much trouble at home to think of
reconquering Scotland. The barons were moving again, headed by three
personal enemies of Gaveston's, whom he is said to have mortally
offended by the nicknames he had bestowed on them. The first was the
king's cousin,[19] Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, a turbulent, ambitious
man, who covered a scheming love of power by an affectation of
patriotism and disinterestedness. The other two were Aymer de Valence,
Earl of Pembroke,[20] and Guy Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Gaveston's
name for Lancaster was "The Actor," which, indeed, well hit off his
pretence of unreal virtue. Pembroke he called "Joseph the Jew," and
Warwick "The Black Dog of Arden."
[Sidenote: =The Lords Ordainers.=]
It was these three lords who in 1310 led an attack in Parliament on
the king and his favourite, and drew up a scheme for taking the direct
rule of the realm out of their hands. Following the precedent of the
Provisions of Oxford,[21] the Parliament named a committee of regency,
or body of ministers, composed of twenty-one members, who were called
the Lords Ordainers, and were to draw up a scheme for the reform of all
the abuses of the kingdom. The twenty-one comprised the Archbishop of
Canterbury and all the leading men of England, but Thomas of Lancaster
and his friends had the ascendency among them. The king complained that
he was treated like a lunatic, and deprived of the right that every
man owns, of being allowed to manage his own household. He resolved
by way of protest, to show that he could do something useful, and,
taking Gaveston with him, made an incursion into Scotland. Bruce was
cautious, and retired northward, burning the country behind him. The
king struggled on as far as the Forth, and then turned back without
having accomplished anything. On his return he was forced to sign a
promise to redress many administrative grievances which the Lords
Ordainers laid before him--to consent to banish Gaveston, choose all
his ministers with the counsel and consent of his baronage, disallow
all customs and taxes save such as Parliament should grant, and reform
the administration of justice. Edward signed everything readily, but
immediately departed into the north, bade Gaveston return to England
and join him, and published a repudiation of the new ordinances, as
forced on him by threats and violence (1311).
[Sidenote: =Murder of Gaveston.=]
This contumacy brought matters to a head. Lancaster and his friends
took arms and laid siege to Scarborough, where the favourite lay.
Gaveston surrendered on a promise that he should have a fair trial in
Parliament. But while he was being taken southward, the Earl of Warwick
came upon his keepers, drove them away, and took Piers out of their
hands. Without trial or form of justice, "The Black Dog of Arden" bade
his retainers behead the favourite by the wayside on Blacklow Hill
(May, 1312). Thomas of Lancaster approved by his presence this gross
and faithless violation of the terms on which Gaveston had surrendered
at Scarborough.
[Sidenote: =Progress of Bruce.=]
This outburst of lawless baronial vengeance removed Edward's favourite,
but did the realm no other good. The king was compelled to pardon
Gaveston's murderers, but he could not be forced to forget what they
had done, and even his slow and craven heart conceived projects of
revenge. But these had to be postponed for a time to the pressing
needs of the Scotch war. Bruce had taken Perth in 1312, Edinburgh
and Roxburgh fell to him in the following year, and he was besieging
Stirling, the last important stronghold still in English hands. Even
Edward was stirred: he bade all England arm, and vowed to march to the
relief of Stirling in the next spring. A great host mustered under the
royal banner, but Thomas of Lancaster factiously refused to appear, on
the plea that the ordinances of 1311 forbade the king to go out to war
without the consent of Parliament. This act alone is a sufficient proof
that Thomas was a mere self-seeking politician, and not the patriot
that he would fain have appeared.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF BANNOCKBURN
June 24{TH} 1314.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Bannockburn.=]
King Edward, with an army that is rated at nearly 100,000 men by the
chronicler, pushed on to relieve Stirling, and met no opposition till
he reached the burn of Bannock, two miles south of that town. There he
found Bruce and his host of 40,000 men posted on a rising ground, with
the brook and a broad bog in his front. On their flanks the Scots had
protected themselves by digging many pits lightly covered with earth
and brushwood, so as to break the charge of the English horse. Edward
displayed all the marks of a bad general: instead of endeavouring to
use his superior numbers to turn or surround the enemy, he flung them
recklessly on the Scottish front. When his archers, who by themselves
might have settled the battle, had been driven away by the Scots horse,
he pushed his great array of mailed knights against the solid masses of
Bruce's infantry. After struggling through brook and bog, the English
came to a standstill before the steady line of spears. Charge after
charge was made, but the knights could not break through the sturdy
pikemen, and at last recoiled in disorder. At this moment a mass of
Scottish camp-followers came rushing over the hill on the left, and
were taken by the exhausted English for a new army. Edward's great
host broke up and fled, the king himself outstripping his followers,
and never halting till he reached Dunbar. The Earl of Gloucester, six
other barons, two hundred knights, and many thousand men of lower rank
were left upon the field. The Earls of Hereford and Angus, and seventy
knights were taken prisoners.
The fight of Bannockburn completely did away with the last chance of
the union of England and Scotland. The English garrisons surrendered,
and the Scots of the English party yielded themselves to Bruce, save
a few who, with the Earls of Athole and Buchan, took refuge south of
the border. For the future Bruce was undisputed king beyond the Tweed,
and, instead of acting upon the defensive, was able to push forward
and attack England. His ambition was completely satisfied, and his
long toils and wanderings ended in splendid success. His whole career,
however, was that of a hardy adventurer rather than that of a patriotic
king, and his triumph estranged two nations which had hitherto been
able to dwell together in amity, and plunged them for nearly three
centuries into bloody border wars. It was from the atrocities committed
by Englishman on Scot and Scot on Englishman during the fatal years
1306-14 that the long national quarrel drew its bitterness, and for all
this Bruce, who commenced his reign by treason, murder, and usurpation,
is largely responsible, Edward I. must take his full share of blame
for his hard hand and heart, but Bruce's ambition masquerading as
patriotism must bear as great a load of guilt.
[Sidenote: =Rule of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster.=]
The shame which King Edward brought home from the ignominious day
of Bannockburn, lowered him yet further in his subjects' eyes. The
Earl of Lancaster, who had avoided participating in the defeat by his
unpatriotic refusal to go forth with the king, was now able to take the
administration of affairs into his hands. He dismissed all Edward's
old servants, put him on an allowance of £10 a day for his household
expenses, and for some years was practically ruler of the realm.
[Sidenote: =War in Ireland.=]
Lancaster might have passed for an able man if he had not laid his
hand on the helm of the state; but he guided matters so badly that he
soon wrecked his own reputation both for ability and for patriotism
(1314-18). The generals of the Scottish king crossed the border and
ravaged the country as far as York and Preston, and at the same time
Edward Bruce, the brother of Robert, sailed over to Ireland with an
army and began to raise the native Irish against their rulers. The
great tribes of the O'Neils and the O'Connors joined him, in the hope
of completely expelling the English, and by their aid Edward Bruce was
crowned King of Ireland, and swept over the whole country from Antrim
to Kerry, burning the towns and castles of the English settlers. It is
from these unhappy years (1315-17) that we may date the weakening of
the royal authority in Ireland, and the restriction of English rule
to the eastern coast--"the Pale" about Dublin, Dundalk, and Wicklow.
When the war seemed over, and the victory of Edward Bruce certain,
the dissensions of the Irish ruined his cause. Lord Mortimer routed
Edward's allies the O'Connors at Athenree in 1317, and the King of
Ireland himself and his Scottish followers were cut to pieces at
Dundalk, a year later, by the Chief Justice, John de Birmingham. Dublin
and the Pale were thus saved, but little or no progress was made in
restoring the King of England's authority in the rest of the land.
[Sidenote: =Bruce invades England.--Edward recovers power.=]
Though victorious in Ireland, the English under Lancaster's rule were
unable to keep their own borders safe. Bruce took Berwick, ravaged
Durham, and cut the whole shire-levy of Yorkshire to pieces at Mytton
bridge. In despair, Lancaster asked for a truce, and obtained it
(1320). But the temporary cessation of the Scottish war only gave the
opportunity for the English to come to blows in civil strife. Thomas
of Lancaster had by this time made so many enemies, that the king was
able to gather together a party against him: though slow and idle,
Edward was unforgiving, and well remembered that he had Gaveston's
blood to avenge. He found his chief supporters in the two Despensers,
West-country barons, the son and grandson of that Despenser who had
been Simon de Montfort's Justiciar, and had fallen at Evesham. Taking
advantage of the times, Edward assembled an army under the plea that he
must chastise a baron named Baddlesmere, who had rudely excluded Queen
Isabella from Leeds Castle, in Kent, when she wished to enter. Having
taken Leeds and hung its garrison, the king with a most unexpected
show of energy suddenly turned on Lancaster. Earl Thomas called out
his friends, and the Earl of Hereford, Lord Mortimer, and many of the
barons of the Welsh Marches rose in his favour. He was forced, however,
to fly north when the king pursued him, and had made his way as far as
Boroughbridge, in Yorkshire, when he found himself intercepted by the
shire-levies of the north, headed by Harclay, the Governor of Carlisle.
A battle followed, in which Hereford was slain and Lancaster taken
prisoner.
[Sidenote: =Vengeance of Edward. 1322.=]
The king was now able to wreak his long-delayed vengeance for
Gaveston's murder. He sent Earl Thomas to the block, and hung or
beheaded eight barons and thirty knights of his party. Lord Mortimer
and the rest were stripped of their lands and banished. These wholesale
executions and confiscations not only provoked the baronage, but caused
the nation to look on Earl Thomas as a martyr, though he was in fact
nothing better than a selfish and turbulent adventurer.
[Sidenote: =Rule of the Despensers, 1322-26.=]
Edward, having taken his revenge, subsided into his former listlessness
and sloth, handing over the whole conduct of affairs to his new
ministers, the two Despensers. Father and son alike were unwise,
greedy, and arrogant; they used the king's name for their own ends,
and soon made themselves as well hated as Gaveston had been ten years
before. Yet for four years they maintained themselves in power, even
after they had advised the king to take the necessary but unpopular
step of acknowledging Bruce as King of Scotland, and concluding a truce
for thirteen years with him.
[Sidenote: =Queen Isabella and Mortimer.--Fall of the Despensers.=]
The slothful Edward and the arrogant Despensers soon tired out the
patience of England, and they fell before the first blow levelled
against them. The blow came from an unexpected quarter. Edward's
wife, Isabella of France, was visiting the court of her brother,
Charles IV., on a diplomatic mission concerning some frontier feuds
in Guienne. At Paris she met and became desperately enamoured of the
exiled Marcher-baron, Roger Mortimer. He drew her into a conspiracy
against her husband; by his advice she induced her young son Edward,
the heir of England, to cross over and join her. When the boy was
safely in her hands, she sent to King Edward to bid him dismiss the
Despensers, because they had wronged and insulted her. When he refused,
she and Mortimer gathered a force of Flemish mercenaries and crossed
to England. They had already enlisted the support of the kinsmen and
friends of Lancaster, Hereford, Baddlesmere, and the other barons who
had been slain in 1322. On landing in Suffolk, Isabella was at once
joined by them, and found herself at the head of a large army. Edward
and his unpopular ministers fled towards Wales; but the elder Despenser
was caught at Bristol and promptly hanged. His son Hugh and the king
were captured three weeks later; the former was executed, while his
master was taken under guard to London (November, 1326).
[Sidenote: =Edward deposed.--His son proclaimed king.=]
The queen then summoned a Parliament in the name of her son, Prince
Edward. Articles were placed before it, accusing the king of breaking
his coronation oath, of wilfully neglecting the right governance of the
land, of promoting unworthy favourites, of losing Scotland and Ireland,
and of slaying his enemies without just cause or a fair trial. The
Parliament pronounced him unfit to reign, deposed him, and elected his
young son to fill his throne in his stead.
[Sidenote: =Death of Edward.=]
Edward was constrained by force to resign his crown, and at once
thrown into prison. He was first consigned to the charge of Henry of
Lancaster, the brother of Earl Thomas; but Henry kept him safely, and
there were those who did not desire his safety. Presently the queen and
Mortimer took him from Lancaster's hands and removed him to Berkeley
Castle. There he was treated with gross neglect and cruelty, in the
deliberate design of ending his life; but when his constitution proved
strong enough to resist all privations, his keepers secretly put him to
death (September 21, 1327).
Thus ended the unhappy son of Edward I., the victim of an unfaithful
wife, and a knot of barons bent on revenging an old blood-feud. That he
deserved his fate it would be hard to say, but that he owed it entirely
to his own unwise choice of favourites it is impossible to deny.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Son of Edward I.'s brother Edmund, Earl of Lancaster.
[20] A grandson of one of Henry III.'s foreign relatives.
[21] See p. 140.
CHAPTER XIII.
EDWARD III.
1327-1377.
Shameful as the state of the realm had been under the rule of Edward of
Carnarvon and his favourites, a yet more disgraceful depth was reached
in the years of minority of his son. The young king was only fourteen,
and the government fell into the hands of those who had set him on the
throne, his mother and her paramour, Roger Mortimer. A council, headed
by Henry Earl of Lancaster, was supposed to guide the king's steps,
but as a matter of fact he was in Queen Isabella's power, while she
was entirely ruled by Mortimer. They were surrounded by a guard of 180
knights, and acted as they pleased in all things. It was only gradually
that the nation realized the state of affairs, for the murder of
Edward II. was long kept concealed, and the relations of the queen and
Mortimer were not at first generally known.
[Sidenote: =Second Scottish invasion.--"The Shameful Peace."=]
The first blow to the new government was the renewal of the Scottish
war. In 1328, Robert Bruce broke the truce that he had made six years
before. He was now growing advanced in age, and was stricken by
leprosy, but he sent out, under James "the Black Douglas," a great
host, 4000 knights and squires, and 20,000 moss-troopers, all horsed
on shaggy Galloway ponies. They harried England as far as the Tees,
and successfully eluded Mortimer, who went out against them, taking
the young king with him. Outmarching the English day by day, Douglas
retired before them across the Northumbrian fells, occasionally
harassing his pursuers by night-attacks; he returned home with much
plunder, leaving not a cow unlifted nor a house unburnt in all
Tynedale. The English host came back foiled and half starved, and
Mortimer, not daring to face another campaign, advised the queen to
make terms with the Scots. Accordingly "the Shameful Peace" was signed
at Northampton, by which England resigned all claims of suzerainty over
the Scotch realm, sent back the crown and royal jewels, which Edward I.
had carried off to London, and gave the king's sister Joanna to be wed
to Bruce's eldest son (1328).
[Sidenote: =Risings against Mortimer.=]
Mortimer's failure led to insurrections against him; but they were mere
baronial risings, not efforts of the whole people. Henry of Lancaster,
who headed the first, was put down and heavily fined for his pains.
Edmund, Earl of Kent, then took up the same plan, announcing that he
would free his half-brother Edward II., who, as he was persuaded, still
survived. But he fell into Mortimer's hands, and was beheaded.
[Sidenote: =The king asserts himself--Mortimer executed.=]
It was the young king himself who was destined to put an end to the
misrule of his mother and her minion. When he reached the age of
eighteen, and realized the shameful tutelage in which he was being
held, he resolved to free himself from it by force. While the court
lay at Nottingham Castle in October, 1330, he gathered a small band of
trustworthy adherents, and at midnight entered the queen's lodgings by
a secret stair and seized Mortimer, in spite of his mother's tears and
curses. The favourite was sent before his peers, tried, and executed;
Isabella was relegated to honourable confinement at Castle-Rising,
where she lived for many years after.
[Sidenote: =Character of Edward III.=]
King Edward now himself assumed the reins of government; he was still
very young, but in the middle ages men ripened quick if they died
early, and Edward at nineteen was thought both by others and himself
old enough to take charge of the policy of the realm. He was in his
youth a very well-served and well-loved sovereign, for he had all
the qualities that attract popularity--a handsome person, pleasant
and affable manners, a fluent tongue, and an energy that contrasted
most happily with the listless indolence of his miserable father.
It was many years before the world discovered that he was selfish,
thriftless, reckless of his country's needs, and set on gratifying his
personal ambition and love of warlike feats to the sacrifice of every
other consideration. He was a knight-errant of the type of Richard
Coeur-de-Lion, not a statesman and warrior like his grandfather Edward
I. In his later years his faculties showed a premature decay, and he
fell into the hands of favourites, male and female, who were almost as
offensive as the Gavestons and Despensers of the previous generation.
Edward's reign falls into three well-marked periods: the first,
1330-39, is that of his Scottish wars; the second, 1339-60, is that
in which he began the famous and unhappy "Hundred Years' War" with
France, and himself conducted it up to the brilliant but unwise Peace
of Bretigny; the third, 1360-77, that of his declining years, is a time
of trouble and misgovernment gradually increasing till Edward sank
unregretted into his grave.
[Sidenote: =War with Scotland.--Battle of Halidon Hill.=]
Robert Bruce, the terror of the English, had died in 1329, leaving his
throne to his son David II., a child of five years. The government
fell into the hands of regents, who ill supplied the place of the dead
king, and their weakness tempted the survivors of the English party in
Scotland to strike a blow. Edward Balliol, the son of the long-dead
John Balliol, accordingly made secret offers to Edward III., that
he would do homage to him for the Scottish crown, and reign as his
vassal, if he were helped to win the land. With Edward's connivance the
young Balliol gathered together the Earls of Buchan and Athole, and
many other Scottish refugees in England, and took ship to Scotland.
He landed in Fife, was joined by his secret friends, beat the regent,
the Earl of Mar, and seized the greater part of Scotland. He was
crowned at Scone, and forced the young David Bruce to flee over-sea
to France to save his life. But soon the national party rose against
Balliol, expelled him, and chased him back to England. Edward then
took the field in his favour, and met the Scots at Halidon Hill, near
Berwick. Here he inflicted on them a crushing defeat, which the English
celebrated as a fair revenge for the blow of Bannockburn, for the
regent Archibald Douglas, four earls, and many thousand men were left
on the field. They fell mainly by the arrows of the English archery,
for, having drawn themselves out on a hillside behind a marsh, they
stood as a broad target for the bowmen, whom they were unable to reach.
The intervening marshy ground prevented their heavy columns of pikemen
from advancing, and they were routed without even the chance of coming
to handstrokes (July, 1333). This victory made Edward Balliol King of
Scotland for a second time; he did homage to his champion, and ceded to
him Tweeddale and half Lothian. But the crown won by English help sat
uneasily on Balliol's brow. After several years of spasmodic fighting,
he was finally driven out of his realm, and took refuge again in
England. This time he found less help, for Edward III. was now plunged
deep in schemes of another kind.
Nine years of comparative quiet had done much to recover England from
the misery it had known in the last reign. The baronage and people were
serving the young king loyally, taxation had not yet been heavy, and
the success of Halidon Hill had restored the nation's self-respect.
Edward himself was flushed by victory and burning for fresh adventures.
Hence it came that, neglecting the nearer but less showy task of
restoring the English suzerainty over Scotland, he turned to wars
over-sea.
[Sidenote: =Quarrel with France.--The Hundred Years' War begins.=]
One of the usual frontier-quarrels between French and Gascons had
broken out in 1337 on the borders of Aquitaine. In consequence, Philip
VI. of France had, like so many of his predecessors, taken measures
to support Edward's Scottish enemies, and given shelter to the exiled
boy-king, David Bruce. War between England and France was probably
inevitable, but Edward chose to make it a life and death struggle,
by laying claim to the throne of France and branding Philip VI. as a
usurper.
[Sidenote: =The French succession.--The Salic Law.=]
The question of the French succession dated from some years back. In
1328 died Edward's uncle, King Charles IV., the last of the direct male
descendants of Philip IV. The problem then cropped up for the first
time whether the French crown could descend to females, or whether the
next male heir must be chosen, although he was but the cousin of the
late king. The peers of France adjudged that by the _Salic Law_, an old
custom ascribed to the ancient Franks, only male descent counted in
tracing claims to the throne. Accordingly they adjudged the kingdom to
Philip of Valois, who was crowned as Philip VI. Edward, as own nephew
through his mother to Charles IV., had protested at the time; but he
had practically withdrawn his protest by doing homage to Philip for the
Duchy of Aquitaine, and thereby acknowledging the justice of the award.
THE FRENCH SUCCESSION, 1337.
PHILIP III.,
1270-1285.
|
+----------+----------------+
| |
PHILIP IV., Charles,
1285-1314. Count of Valois.
| |
+-----------+----+------+------------+ +-----------+
| | | | |
LOUIS X., PHILIP V., CHARLES IV., Isabella. PHILIP of Valois,
1314-1316. 1316-1322. 1322-1328. | king 1328-1350.
| | |
+--+ | |
| | |
Jane, Edward III. JOHN,
Queen of Navarre. 1350-1364.
|
Charles,
King of Navarre.
Now, in 1337 Edward began to think of reviving his dormant pretensions
to the French crown, though they had two fatal defects. The first was
that there had never been any precedent in France for a claim through
the female line. The second was that, even if such descents could be
counted, one of his mother's brothers had left a daughter, the Queen of
Navarre, and the son of that princess had a better female claim than
Edward himself. The only way in which this defect could be ignored was
by pleading, like Bruce in 1292, that Edward was a generation nearer to
the old royal stock than his cousin, Charles, King of Navarre.
[Sidenote: =Edward claims the French crown.=]
On this rather futile plea Edward laid solemn claim to the French
crown, and declared Philip of Valois a usurper. Perhaps there may be
truth in the story which tells that he did not do so from any strong
belief in his own theory, but because the Flemings, vassals to the
French crown, had declared that they could not aid him, though willing
to do so, on account of oaths of fealty sworn to the King of France. If
Edward claimed to be king himself, they said, their allegiance and help
would be due to him. Whether the tale be true or not, he at any rate
made the claim.
In reliance on the assistance of the Flemings, and of their neighbours
the Dukes of Brabant and Holland, and with the countenance of the
Emperor, Lewis of Bavaria, King Edward determined to land in the
Low Countries and attack France from the north. He called out great
bodies of soldiery, and took advantage of the devotion that the nation
felt for him to raise illegal taxes for their pay. Violating his
grandfather's engagements, he took a "tallage" from the towns, and
levied a "_mal-tolt_" or extra customs-duty on the export of wool.
In the excitement of the moment, little opposition was made to these
high-handed measures.
[Sidenote: =First campaign.--Naval victory off Sluys.=]
But Edward's campaign against France proved utterly unsuccessful; his
Netherland allies were of little use to him, King Philip refused to
risk a battle in the field, and an attack on Cambray was defeated.
Edward had to return to England to raise more money; while at home, he
heard that a great French fleet had been collected for the conquest of
Flanders and a subsequent attack on England. Hastily raising all the
ships he could gather from London and the Cinque Ports, the king set
sail to seek the enemy. He found them in harbour at the Flemish port of
Sluys, and there brought them to action. They had chained their ships
in three lines and built up barricades upon them; but, by pretending
to fly, Edward induced them to cast loose and follow him, and, when
they had got out to sea, turned and attacked. The English archery swept
the enemy's decks, and then the king and his knights clambered up, and
boarded vessel after vessel till well-nigh the whole French fleet was
taken (1340). No such glorious day had been seen since Hubert de Burgh
won the battle off Dover 120 years before.
[Sidenote: =Contest with Parliament.=]
The victory of Sluys freed England from the danger of invasion, but did
nothing more. For when the king landed in Flanders, and pushed forward
against France, he again failed to break through the line of strong
towns that guarded Philip's frontier, and had to return home foiled. On
coming to England he fell into a bitter strife with his Parliament, who
were far from contented with the repeated checks in Flanders. Edward
began by charging his failure on his ministers and dismissed them
all, from the Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury downwards,
accusing them of having misappropriated the taxes. He announced that he
would bring them to trial, and appointed a special commission for the
purpose. This led to a vindication of the ancient right of trial by a
man's equals, for John de Stratford, the archbishop, insisted on being
tried in Parliament by the barons his peers, and carried his point
against the king's strenuous opposition. He was of course acquitted,
as nothing could be found against him. The Parliament only consented
to grant the king fresh supplies when he swore (1) to let them appoint
a committee to audit the accounts of the money; (2) to take no further
_maltolts_ or tallages, but confine himself to the duly voted supplies;
(3) to choose his ministers only with Parliament's consent, and make
them answerable to Parliament for malfeasance in their office (1341).
If these conditions had been kept, the crown would have been completely
under control of the national council, but Edward shamelessly broke
them when fortune turned in his favour.
[Sidenote: =Edward invades Normandy.--Battle of Crécy.=]
England had now been five years at war with France, and had gained
nothing thereby save the destruction of the French navy at Sluys.
France had fared equally badly, and in a lucid moment the kings signed
a truce. But both Edward and Philip and their subjects had come to
dislike each other so bitterly, that no end could be put to the war
till one or other had gained a decisive victory. The struggle was
soon renewed on fresh ground--the duchy of Brittany, where a disputed
succession had occurred. With strange want of logic, Philip VI. backed
the claimant whose pretensions were based on a female descent, and
Edward the one who claimed as next male heir under the Salic Law. Thus
each supported in Brittany the theory of descent which he repudiated
in France. After much indecisive fighting, both in Brittany and on
the Gascon border, Edward determined on a new invasion of France in
1345. Giving out that he would sail to Bordeaux, he really landed
near Cherbourg, in Normandy, where the enemy was not expecting him.
He had determined to fight the campaign with English forces alone,
and no longer to rely on untrustworthy continental friends. With 4000
men-at-arms, 10,000 bowmen, and 5000 light Welsh and Irish infantry,
he pushed boldly through the land, sacking St. Lo and Caen, and
driving the local levies of Normandy before him. But he had cut himself
loose from the sea, and as his course drew him into the interior, the
French began to muster on all sides of him in great numbers and in high
wrath. It was evident that he ran great danger of being surrounded,
and would certainly have to fight for his life. When he reached the
Seine, King Philip broke down all the bridges to prevent his escape,
and it was more by chance than good generalship that the English army
succeeded in forcing a passage. Hearing of the vast numbers that were
coming against him, Edward now turned north, but he was again checked
by the river Somme, and only got across by fighting his way over the
dangerous sea-swept ford of Blanchetaque, near the river's mouth, in
face of the levies of Picardy. Three days later he was overtaken by the
French at Crécy, in the county of Ponthieu, and had to turn and fight.
King Philip had brought up a vast army, some 12,000 men-at-arms and
60,000 foot-soldiers, including several thousand Genoese cross-bowmen,
who were reckoned the best mercenary troops in Europe. Edward drew up
his host on a hillside, north of Crécy, placing his archers in front,
with bodies of dismounted men-at-arms to support them; two-thirds of
the army were arrayed in the front line, under the nominal command of
Edward, Prince of Wales, the fifteen-year-old son and heir of the king.
Edward kept the rest in reserve higher up the hill, under his own hand.
[Sidenote: =The English archers.=]
Crécy was the first fight which taught the rulers of the continent
the worth of the English bowman. When the vast French army came up
against them, they easily repelled every attack. First, they riddled
with arrows the Genoese cross-bowmen, who could make no stand against
them, for the archer could shoot six times before the Genoese could
wind up their clumsy arbalests for a second discharge. Then when the
French chivalry advanced, they shot down men and horses so fast that
it was only at a few points that the enemy ever succeeded in reaching
their line, and coming to handstrokes with the Prince of Wales and his
dismounted knights. At evening the French fled, routed by less than a
third of their numbers, before King Edward and his reserve had occasion
to strike a single blow. Edward knighted his son on the field--the
first victory of the celebrated "Black Prince," who was to prove as
good a soldier as his father. When the French dead were counted, it
was discovered that the English archery had slain 11 dukes and counts,
83 barons, 1200 knights, and more than 20,000 of the French soldiery.
John, King of Bohemia, who had come to help Philip VI., though he was
old and weak of sight, was also among the slain. On the other hand, the
English had lost less than a thousand men (August 26, 1346).
[Illustration: BATTLE OF CRÉCY, 1346.]
After this splendid victory, King Edward was able to march unmolested
through the land. He resolved to end the campaign by taking Calais, the
nearest French seaport to the English coast, and one which, if held
permanently, would give him an ever-open door into France.
[Sidenote: =Capture of Calais.=]
Accordingly, he sat down before Calais, and beleaguered it for
many months, till it fell by famine in the next year. The King of
France could do nothing to relieve it, and the town had to yield at
discretion. The men of Calais had made many piratical descents on
England, and Edward was known to bear them a grudge for this. Therefore
seven chief burgesses of the place gallantly came forward to bear the
brunt of his wrath, and offered themselves to him with halters round
their necks, begging him to hang them, but spare the rest of their
townsmen. Edward was at first inclined to take these patriotic citizens
at their word, but his wife Queen Philippa urged him to gentler
counsels, and he let them go. But he drove out of Calais every man who
would not own him as king and swear him fealty, and filled their places
with English colonists. Thus Calais became an English town, and so
remained for more than 200 years, a thorn in the side of France, and an
open gate for the invader from beyond the Channel.
[Sidenote: =Scottish invasion.--Battle of Neville's Cross.=]
While the siege of Calais had been in progress, the Scots had made a
bold attempt to invade the north of England. The young king, David
Bruce, grateful for the shelter which Philip VI. had given him in the
days of his exile, had crossed the Tweed, in the hope of drawing Edward
home, and so robbing him of the results of his campaign in France. But
Queen Philippa summoned to her aid all the nobles who had not gone
over-sea, and mustered them at Durham. David Bruce pushed forward to
meet them, but at Neville's Cross he met with a crushing defeat. Once
more it was found that the Scottish pikemen could not stand against
the English archery. They were beaten with terrible loss, and the king
himself and many of his nobles were taken prisoners and sent to London
(October, 1346).
[Sidenote: =The Black Death.=]
Edward came back from Calais to England laden with glory and spoil, but
all his plunder could not pay for the exhaustion which his heavy taxes
and levies of men had brought upon his realm. The nation, however, was
blinded to its loss by the glory of Crécy, and the war would probably
have been continued with increased energy but for a fearful disaster
which befell the land in the year after the fall of Calais. A great
plague which men called "the Black Death" came sweeping over Europe
from the East, and in the awful havoc which it caused wars were for a
time forgotten. England did not suffer worse than France or Italy, yet
it is calculated that a full half of her population was stricken down
by this unexampled pestilence. Manor-rolls and bishops' registers bear
out by their lists in detail the statements which the contemporary
chroniclers make at large. We note that in this unhappy year, 1348-9,
many parishes had three, and some four successive vicars appointed
to them in nine months. We see how, in small villages of 300 or 400
inhabitants, thirty or forty families, from their oldest to their
youngest member, were swept away, so that their farms reverted to the
lord of the land for want of heirs. We find monasteries in which every
soul, from the prior to the youngest novice, died, so that the house
was left entirely desolate. And thus we realize that the chroniclers
are but telling us sober, unexaggerated facts, when they speak of
this as a pestilence such as none had ever seen before, and none is
ever like to see again. It seems to have been an eruptive form of
that oriental plague which still lingers in Syria and the valley of
the Euphrates. It began with great boils breaking out on the groin or
under the armpits, culminated in sharp fever and violent retching, and
generally carried off its victims within two days.
[Sidenote: RISE IN WAGES.--THE STATUTE OF LABOURERS.]
It is probable that England did not recover the loss of population
which it now sustained for a couple of centuries. But if the nation
was dreadfully thinned, the results of the plague were not all in
the direction of evil. It certainly raised the position of the lower
classes by making labour more scarce, and therefore more valuable.
The surviving agricultural labourers were able to demand much higher
wages than before, and it was in vain that Parliament, by the foolish
_Statute of Labourers_ (1349), tried to prescribe a maximum rate of
wages for them, and to prevent employers giving more. Legislation
is unable to prevent the necessary working of the laws of political
economy, and in spite of the statute the peasant got his advantage.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the French war.--The Black Prince.=]
About the time of the outbreak of the Black Death, the kings of England
and France had signed a truce, being moved to turn their thoughts far
from war by the terrible havoc that was going on around them. It was
six years before they and their peoples could find heart to forget the
plague, and once more resumed their reckless struggle. In 1355 Edward
made proposals for a definitive peace to King John--Philip VI. had died
in 1350--on the terms that he should give up his claims to the French
crown, but receive Aquitaine free from all burden of homage to the
King of France as suzerain. John refused this reasonable offer, and
Edward recommenced his attacks on France. He himself landed at Calais
and invaded Picardy, but was ere long recalled home by the news that
the Scots also had renewed the war, and were over the Tweed. Edward
spent the summer in beating them back and cruelly ravaging the whole
of Lothian. Meanwhile, his son, the Black Prince, now a young man of
twenty-five, started from Bordeaux and plundered the French province of
Languedoc.
In the following year, the Black Prince made a similar incursion into
Central France, and swept through the whole country from Limoges to
Tours with a small army of 4000 mounted men and 3000 archers. When
he turned his face homeward, however, he found that King John with a
host of 40,000 men had blocked his road, by getting between him and
Bordeaux. Thus intercepted, Prince Edward posted himself on the hill
of Maupertuis, near Poictiers, and took up a defensive position. It is
probable that the French, with their vastly superior numbers, could
have completely surrounded him and starved him into surrender without
any need of fighting. But King John, a fierce and reckless prince with
none of a general's ability, preferred to take the English by force of
arms, and, when they refused to surrender to him, prepared to storm
their position.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF POICTIERS, SEP. 1356.]
[Sidenote: =The Battle of Poictiers.=]
Edward's small army was drawn up behind a tall hedgerow and a ditch on
the slope of a ridge, with the archers in front lining the hedgerow,
and the men-at-arms behind them. All the latter save 300 were
dismounted, as at Crécy. The Earls of Salisbury and Warwick had command
of the two divisions which formed the front line, while the prince
himself stayed behind with the reserve. John of France, remembering the
disaster of Crécy, where the English arrows had slain so many horses,
dismounted all his knights save a few hundred, and led them on foot
up the hill in three divisions. Only a picked body of horsemen, under
the two marshals, D'Audrehem and Clermont, pushed forward in front, to
endeavour to ride down the English archers, as the Scottish cavalry had
done so successfully at Bannockburn.
[Sidenote: =Rout of the French.--King John a prisoner.=]
But, whether on foot or on horse, the French made little way with their
attack. The cavalry in advance were all shot down as they tried to push
through gaps in the hedge. The first division of the dismounted knights
then climbed the slope, but, after severe fighting with the front line
of the English, recoiled, unable to force their way over the ditch.
They fell back on to the second line behind them, and put it into
disorder before it could come near the English. Seeing two-thirds of
the French army in this plight, the Prince of Wales resolved to strike
a bold blow: he brought up his reserve to the front, and bade his whole
army charge downhill on to the huddled mass below them. His quick eye
had caught the right moment, for the whole of the French van and second
division fled right and left without fighting. Only King John, with the
rear line of his army, stood firm. With this body, one more numerous
than the whole of his own host, Prince Edward had a fierce fight in
the valley. But the French were broken in spirit by the sight of the
rout of their van, and gave way when they were charged in the flank by
a small body of troops whom Edward had detached to his right for that
purpose. They all fled save the king and his young son Philip, who
stood their ground for a long time with a small company of faithful
vassals, and maintained the fight when all the rest had vanished.
John's courageous obstinacy had the natural result: he, his son, and
the faithful few about him were all surrounded and taken prisoners.
When the English came to reckon up the results of the battle, they
found that they had slain 2 dukes, 17 barons, and 2800 knights and
men-at-arms, and taken captive a king, a prince, 13 counts, 15 barons,
and 2000 knights and men-at-arms. Their own loss did not reach 300 men
(September 19, 1356).
Edward returned in triumph to Bordeaux, and afterwards crossed to
England, to present his all-important prisoner to the king his father.
The prince treated John with great gentleness and courtesy, and did
all that he could to avoid wounding his feelings. Nevertheless, he saw
that in the pressure that could be brought to bear upon his captive,
lay the best hope of winning an honourable and profitable peace from
the French. John chafed bitterly at his detention in custody, and got
little consolation from finding himself in the company of his ally
David, King of Scotland, who had been a prisoner in England for ten
years, ever since the battle of Neville's Cross.
[Sidenote: =Misery and anarchy in France.--The Jacquerie.=]
The difficulty in negociating a peace did not come from King John, but
from the regency which replaced him at Paris. The French did not see
why they should sign a humiliating treaty merely in order to deliver
a harsh and not very popular king from confinement. But a series of
disasters at last forced them to submit. The three years 1357-60 were
almost the most miserable that France ever knew. The young Dauphin
Charles, a mere lad, proved quite unable to keep order in the land;
the barons did what they pleased; hordes of disbanded mercenary
soldiers, whom the government could not pay, roamed plundering over the
countryside side. The people of Paris broke out into sedition, under
a bold citizen named Etienne Marcel, and put the Dauphin himself in
durance for a time. Last and worst of all, the peasantry of Central
France, driven to despair by the general misery of the times, rose in
rebellion against all constituted authority, slew every man of gentle
blood that they could lay hands on, and roamed about in huge bands,
burning castles and manors, and plundering towns and villages. The
horrors of the Jacquerie,[22] as this anarchic revolt was called,
bid fair to destroy all government in France, and it was only by a
desperate rally that those who had anything to lose succeeded in
banding themselves together and crushing the insurgents.
[Sidenote: =Edward again invades France.--Treaty of Bretigny.=]
When France had suffered so bitterly from its foes within, Edward of
England took a great army across the Channel, and in 1359-60 wasted
the whole land as far as Paris and Rheims. But as the French refused
to meet him in the field, he won no battles, took few towns, and got
little profit from his destructive raid. It was at this juncture that
he and the Dauphin at last came to terms. To end the war the French
were ready to grant whatever conditions Edward chose to exact. He asked
for a ransom of 3,000,000 gold crowns for the person of King John, and
for the whole of the duchy of Aquitaine, as Duchess Eleanor had held it
in 1154. In return, he would give up his claim on the crown of France,
and be content to be independent Duke of Aquitaine only. So all the
lands in Southern France which John and Henry III. had lost--Poitou,
Saintonge, Perigord, Limoges, Quercy, and the rest,--were restored to
the Plantagenets, after being 150 years in French hands. Calais and
Ponthieu in the north were also formally ceded to King Edward by this
celebrated treaty of Bretigny (May, 1360).
[Illustration: FRANCE 1380.
SHOWING THE ENGLISH BOUNDARIES
AFTER THE
TREATY OF BRETIGNY.]
It appeared for a moment as if a permanent peace between England and
France had been established. King Edward, in return for giving up a
claim on the whole of France, which no one had taken very seriously,
had won the long-lost lands which his ancestors had never hoped to
retake. He had also made an advantageous peace with Scotland, releasing
King David for a ransom of 90,000 marks, and the fortresses of Berwick
and Roxburgh.
[Sidenote: =Development of trade.--The Flemish weavers.=]
Edward's fortune was now at its highest, and his reign promised to have
a prosperous and peaceful end. He had reached the age of fifty, and was
surrounded by a band of sons who should have been the strength of his
old age. Edward the Black Prince he made Duke of Aquitaine; Lionel
of Clarence, his second son, was married to the heiress of the great
Irish family of de Burgh; John of Gaunt, the third son, was wedded
to the heiress of Lancaster; Thomas of Woodstock, his fifth son, to
one of the co-heiresses of the earldom of Hereford. Thus he trusted
to identify by intermarriage the interests of the royal house and the
greater baronage, not seeing that there was as much probability of his
younger sons becoming leaders of baronial factions as of the barons
forgetting their old jealousy of the royal house. Meanwhile, however,
things went fairly well for some years after the peace of Bretigny. In
spite of the vast expenditure of money on the war, and in spite of the
ravages of the Black Death, the country was in many ways prosperous.
England had enjoyed internal quiet for thirty years; her commerce
with Flanders and Gascony was developing; her fleet, in spite of much
piracy, was dominant in all the Western seas. The increase of wealth is
shown by the fact that Edward III. first of all English monarchs issued
a large currency of gold money (1349), and that his "nobles," as the
broad thin pieces were called, became the favourite medium of exchange
in all North-Western Europe, and formed the model for the gold coins of
the Netherlands, part of Germany, and Scotland. Manufactures as well
as foreign trade were beginning to grow important; the reign of Edward
is always remembered for the development of the weaving industry in
Eastern England. He induced many Flemish weavers to settle in Norwich
and elsewhere, moved, it is said, by the advice of his Netherlandish
queen, Philippa of Hainault. But the main exports of England were
still raw material--especially wool and metals--and not manufactured
goods. The English trader did not usually sail beyond Norway on the
one hand, and North Spain on the other; intercourse with more distant
countries was carried on mainly by companies of foreign merchants, of
whom the men of the Hanse Towns were the most important. These Germans
had a factory in London called the Steelyard, where they dwelt in a
body, under strict rules and regulations. It was by them that English
goods were taken to the more distant markets on the Baltic or the
Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: =Desultory fighting in Brittany.--Spanish war.=]
The reasons why the treaty of Bretigny failed to give a permanent
settlement of the quarrel between England and France were many. The
English pleaded that the French never fulfilled their obligations,
for King John found his people very unwilling to raise his huge
ransom, and never paid half of it. He returned to England in 1364 to
surrender himself in default of payment--for he had a keen sense of
honour in such things--and then died. His son, Charles V., at once
refused--as was natural--to pay the arrears. But a more fruitful source
of quarrelling was the civil war in Brittany, which still lingered
on after twenty years of fighting; English and French succours came
to help the two rival dukes, and fought each other on Breton soil,
though peace reigned elsewhere. The same thing was soon after seen in
Spain: Pedro the Cruel, the wicked King of Castile, was attacked by
his bastard brother, Henry of Trastamara, who enlisted a great host of
French mercenaries, under Bertrand du Guesclin, the best professional
soldier in France. Driven out of Castile by the usurper and his
allies, Pedro fled to Bordeaux, where the Black Prince was reigning
as Duke of Aquitaine. He enlisted the help of the English, who were
jealous of French influence in Spain, and bought the aid of Edward's
younger brothers, John of Gaunt, who was now a widower, and Edmund of
Cambridge, by marrying his two daughters to them. Edward raised a great
army of English and Gascons, and crossed the Pyrenees to restore King
Pedro. At Najara[23] he routed the French and Castilians, took Bertrand
du Guesclin prisoner, and drove Henry of Trastamara out of the land
(1367). But the ungrateful Pedro then refused to repay the large sums
which Edward had spent in raising his army, and the prince withdrew in
wrath to Aquitaine. He took back with him an intermittent fever which
he had caught in Spain, and never recovered his health. Left to his
own resources, Pedro was soon beset for a second time by his brother
and the French; he was captured by treachery, and slain by Henry of
Trastamara's own hand.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion in Aquitaine.--Massacre at Limoges.=]
Edward had raised vast sums of money from Aquitaine for his Spanish
expedition by heavy taxation which sorely vexed his new subjects. For
the Poitevins and other French, who had become the unwilling vassals
of an English lord by the treaty of Bretigny, were entirely without
any sympathy for Edward and his plans. When the prince returned,
broken in health and penniless, from Spain, they plotted rebellion
against him, with the secret approval of the young King of France. It
soon appeared that Edward III. had been unwise in annexing so many
districts of purely French feeling and blood to the Gascon duchy. For
in 1369-70 Poitou, Limoges, and all the northern half of Aquitaine
broke out into rebellion, and Charles V. openly sent out his armies to
aid them. The Black Prince took the field in a litter, for he was too
weak to ride, and stormed Limoges, where he ordered a horrid massacre
of the rebellious citizens, a deed that deeply stained his hitherto
untarnished fame. But his strength could carry him no further; he
returned helpless to Bordeaux, and presently resigned the duchy of
Aquitaine and returned to England, thereto languish for some years, and
die at last of his lingering disorder.
[Sidenote: =Premature decay of the king.=]
The king himself, though not yet sixty years of age, had fallen into a
premature decay both of mind and body, so that his son's early decease
was doubly unfortunate. After losing his excellent wife Queen Philippa
in 1369, he had sunk into a deep depression, from which he only
recovered to fall into the hands of unscrupulous favourites. In private
he was governed by his chamberlain, Lord Latimer, and by a lady named
Alice Perrers, who had become his mistress; both abused their influence
to plunder his coffers and make market of his favour. The higher
governance of the realm was mainly in the hands of John of Gaunt, the
king's eldest surviving son, a selfish and headstrong prince, who made
himself the head of the war-party, and hoped to gather laurels that
might vie with those of his elder brother, the Black Prince.
[Sidenote: =Loss of possessions in France.=]
The last seven years of Edward's reign (1370-77) were full of disasters
abroad and discontent at home. In France the successors of the Black
Prince proved utterly unable to maintain their grasp on Aquitaine. Town
by town and castle by castle, all the districts that had been won by
the treaty of Bretigny passed into the hands of King Charles V. His
skilful general Bertrand du Guesclin won his way to success without
risking a single pitched battle with the invincible English archery.
When John of Gaunt took a great host over to Calais in 1373, the French
retired before him by their king's order, and shut themselves up behind
stone walls, after sweeping the country bare of provisions. The Duke
of Lancaster marched up to the gates of Paris, and then all through
Central France down to Bordeaux; but, though he did much damage to the
open country, he could not halt to besiege any great town for want
of food, and finally reached Guienne with an army half-starved and
woefully reduced in numbers. Before King Edward was in his grave his
dominions in France had shrunk to a district far smaller than he had
held before the "Hundred Years' War" had commenced. Nothing was left
save the ports of Bordeaux and Bayonne, with the strip of Gascon coast
between them; in the north, however, the all-important fortress of
Calais was firmly and successfully maintained.
[Sidenote: =Discontent and intrigue in England.--The Lollards.=]
Meanwhile there was bitter strife in Parliament at home, for ill
success without always brings on discontent within. John of Gaunt,
since he was known to sway his father's councils, was forced to bear
the brunt of the popular displeasure. It was he who was considered
responsible for the misconduct of the French war, the peculations of
the king's favourites, and the demands of the crown for increased
taxation. The party opposed to him in Parliament counted as its head
the good bishop William of Wykeham, who had been Chancellor from 1367
to 1371, and had been driven from office by Lancaster's command. He was
supported by the clergy, and by most of the "knights of the shires,"
who formed the more important half of the House of Commons. It was
probably the fact that the clergy were unanimously set against him that
led John of Gaunt to seek allies for himself by giving countenance to
an attack on the Church, which was just then beginning to develop.
This was the anti-papal movement of the _Lollards_, or Wicliffites,
as they were called after their leader John Wicliffe--the "Morning
Star of the Reformation." The state of the Papacy and of the Church
at large was at this moment very scandalous. The Pope was living no
more at Rome, but at Avignon, under the shadow of the French king,
and the power of the Papacy was being shamelessly misused for French
objects. England had never loved the papal influence, and had still
less reason to love it when it was employed for the benefit of her
political enemies. The tale of the simony, corruption, and evil living
of the papal court had gone forth all over Europe, and provoked even
more wrath in England than elsewhere. The English Church itself was
far from blameless: there were bishops who were mere statesmen and
warriors, and neglected their diocesan work; there were secular clergy
who never saw their parishes, and monasteries where religion and
sound learning were less regarded than wealth and high living. It was
especially the great wealth of the monasteries, and the small profit
that it brought the nation, which provoked popular comment. Since the
days of the Statute of Mortmain the spirit of the times was changed,
and benefactors who desired to leave a good work behind them founded
and endowed schools and colleges, and not abbeys as of old. It was John
Wicliffe, an Oxford Doctor of Divinity, and sometime master of Balliol
College, who gave voice to the popular discontent with the state of
the Papacy and the national Church. He taught that the Pope's claim to
be God's vicegerent on earth and to guide the consciences of all men
was a blasphemous usurpation, because each individual was responsible
to Heaven for his own acts and thoughts. "All men," he said in feudal
phraseology, "are tenants-in-chief under God, and hold from him all
that they are and possess: the Pope claims to be our mesne-lord, and to
interfere between us and our divine suzerain, and therein he grievously
errs." Wicliffe also held that the Church was far too rich; he thought
that her virtue was oppressed by the load of wealth, and advocated a
return to apostolic poverty, in which the clergy should surrender the
greater part of their enormous endowments. At a later date he developed
doubts on the Real Presence and other leading doctrines of the mediaeval
Church, but it was mainly as a denouncer of the power of the Papacy
and the riches and luxury of the clergy that he became known.
[Sidenote: =Policy of John of Gaunt.--The Good Parliament.=]
John of Gaunt's object in favouring Wicliffe was purely political; with
the reformer's religious views he can have had little sympathy. But he
wished to turn the seething discontent of England into the channel of
an attack on the Church, and to keep it from his own doors. For the
last twenty years legislation against ecclesiastical grievances had
been not infrequent. In 1351 the _Statute of Provisors_ had prohibited
the Pope from giving away English benefices to his favourites. In 1353
the _First Statute of Praemunire_ had forbidden English litigants
to transfer their disputes to the Church courts abroad. Duke John's
attempt to distract the attention of the nation to the reform of
matters ecclesiastic was partly successful; we find many proposals in
Parliament to strip the Church of part of her overgrown endowments,
and utilize them for the service of the state. On this point clerk and
layman had many a bitter wrangle. But Lancaster could not altogether
keep the storm from beating on himself and his father; in 1376 the
"Good Parliament" impeached Latimer and Neville, Edward's favourites
and ministers, and removed and fined them. Alice Perrers, the old
king's mistress, was at the same time banished. In the following year
Lancaster reasserted himself, packed a Parliament with his supporters,
and cancelled the condemnation of Latimer, Neville, and Alice Perrers.
The Bishop of London in revenge arrested Lancaster's _protégé_
Wicliffe, and began to try him for heresy; but the duke appeared in the
court, and so threatened and browbeat the bishop that he was fain to
release his prisoner.
But new complications were now at hand; the aspect of affairs was
suddenly changed by the death of the old king on January 2, 1377, and
political affairs took a new complexion on the accession of his young
grandson, Richard II., the only surviving child of the Black Prince.
DESCENDANTS OF EDWARD III.
EDWARD III. = Philippa of Hainault. (1)
|
+-----------+--------------+-------------------------+
| | |
Edward John of = (1)Blanche of Thomas,
the Black Gaunt | Lancaster. Duke of
Prince. | (2) Constance Gloucester.
| | of Castile. |
RICHARD II., | (3) Catherine Edmund Earl = Anne of
1377-1399. | Swinford. of Stafford. | Gloucester.
| |
| Humphrey, Duke
(1) | (3) (3) of Buckingham,
+--------+--+-------------+ killed at
| | | Northampton, 1460.
HENRY IV., Henry John |
1399-1413. Beaufort, Beaufort, Humphrey, Earl
| Cardinal, Earl of of Stafford.
| died 1447. Somerset. |
| | Henry, Duke of
+----+-----+---------+---------+ +----+ Buckingham,
| | | | | executed 1483.
| | | | | |
HENRY V., Thomas John of Humphrey | Edward, Duke of
1413-1422. of Bedford. of | Buckingham,
| Clarence. Gloucester. | executed 1521.
| |
HENRY VI., |
1422-1461. |
|
+----------------------------------+--+
| |
John of Edmund of
Somerset, Somerset,
died 1444. killed at
| St. Albans.
| |
+----------+ +------+------+
| | | |
Edmund Tudor, = Margaret Henry, Edmund, John
Earl of | Beaufort. killed in the Wars
Richmond. | of the Roses.
|
+-------+
|
HENRY VII. = Elizabeth,
1485-1509. Daughter of
Edward IV.
EDWARD III. = Philippa of Hainault. (2)
|
+-----------------------+----------------+
| |
Lionel of = Elizabeth Edmund,
Clarence | De Burgh. Duke of York.
| |
+------+ +--------+
| | |
Edmund = Philippa Edmund Richard = Anne
Mortimer, | of Clarence. of York, of | Mortimer.
Earl of March. | killed at Cambridge.|
| Agincourt. |
| |
| +---+
| |
Roger of March, Cicely Neville. = Richard, Duke of
killed in Ireland, 1398. | York, killed at
| | Wakefield, 1460.
| |
+----------+ +-----------+-----------+
| | | | |
Edmund Anne = Richard, EDWARD IV., George of RICHARD
of March, Mortimer. | Earl of 1461-1483. Clarence. III.,
died 1425. | Cambridge. | | 1483-1485.
| | |
_See opposite, among | +-----------+
descendants of Edmund, | | |
Duke of York_. | Edward of Margaret of
| Warwick, Salisbury,
| executed executed
| 1499. 1541.
|
+------------+---------------+
| | |
EDWARD V., Richard Elizabeth = HENRY VII.
1483. of York.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] So called from Jacques Bonhomme, the nickname of the typical
French peasant.
[23] Sometimes also called Navarette; it lies beyond the Ebro, near
Logroño.
CHAPTER XIV.
RICHARD II.
1377-1399.
The little King Richard II. was a boy ten years old, born in the year
when his father went on his ill-fated expedition to Spain to help Don
Pedro. Richard's mother was Joan, Countess of Kent, the heiress of that
unfortunate Earl Edmund, whom Mortimer beheaded in 1330. She had been a
widow when the Black Prince wedded her, and had two sons by her first
husband, Sir Thomas Holland. These two half-brothers of King Richard
were ten years his seniors, and were destined to be not unimportant
figures in the history of his reign; their names were Thomas Holland,
Earl of Kent, and John Holland, Earl of Huntingdon.
[Sidenote: =The regency.--Disasters abroad.=]
The helplessness of the young king, the son of the deeply mourned Black
Prince, at first touched the hearts of all men, and the parties which
were represented by John of Gaunt and William of Wykeham reconciled
themselves, and agreed to join in serving the king faithfully. A
council of regency was appointed, in which both were represented, and
it was agreed that Parliament alone should choose and dismiss the
king's ministers. This happy concord, however, was not to last for
long. The conduct of the foreign affairs of the nation was left in John
of Lancaster's hands, and the continued misfortunes in the French war
were laid to his charge. The troops of Charles V. were still carrying
everything before them; they conquered all Aquitaine save Bordeaux and
Bayonne, and overran the duchy of Brittany, the sole ally of England
on the continent. Moreover, fleets of Norman privateers had begun to
appear in the Channel. They landed boldly on the English coast, and
burnt Winchelsea, Portsmouth, and Gravesend.
[Sidenote: =Heavy taxation.=]
To restore the fortune of war, money was urgently needed, and Duke John
kept asking for more and more, to the discontent both of the Parliament
and the nation. He was granted in 1379 a poll-tax, wherein every man
was assessed according to his estate, from dukes and archbishops who
paid £6 13_s._ 4_d._ to agricultural labourers who paid 4_d._ In 1380
followed another tax graduated from £1 to 1_s._ on every grown man or
woman.
[Sidenote: =Discontent of labouring classes.=]
It was the collection of this very unpopular tax that precipitated
the violent outbreak of a discontent that had been smouldering among
the lower classes for the last thirty years. Ever since the Black
Death a silent but bitter contention had been in progress between the
landholding classes and their tenants, more especially those who were
still villeins, and bound to the soil. The main stress of the struggle
had come from the fact that the dearth of labourers, and the rise in
wages which resulted from the Black Death, had caused the lords of
the manors to press more hardly on their tenants. They tried to get
all the labour they could out of the villeins, and refused to take
money payments for their farms instead of days of labour on the lord's
fields. It seems, too, that they strove to claim as villeins many who
were, or wished to be, free rent-paying copyhold or leasehold tenants.
Moreover, when forced to hire free labour, they tried to under-pay it,
relying on the scale of wages fixed by the Statute of Labourers in
1350, instead of abiding by the laws of supply and demand. The pressure
on the part of the lords led to combinations in secret clubs and
societies among the tenants, who agreed to refuse the statutory wages,
and determined to agitate for the removal of all the old labour-rents.
Their idea was to commute all such service due on their little holdings
into money-rents, at the rate of 4_d._ for every acre.
[Sidenote: =Communist doctrines of the Lollards.=]
But the rising of 1380 was due to many other causes beside the
grievance of the villeins. Much discontent can be traced to the
mismanagement of the French war, which was all laid on John of Gaunt's
shoulders. Much more was due to the filtering down of the teaching of
the Lollards to the lower strata of the nation. Wicliffe had always
preached that unjust and sinful rulers, whether clerks or laymen, were
cut off from the right to use their authority by their own manifest
unworthiness, and had no just dominion over their fellow-men. He had
especially protested against the wealth and pomp of the clergy, and
urged that they ought to return to apostolic poverty. The wilder and
more headstrong of his followers had pressed his teaching to the
advocacy of pure communism, saying that riches were in themselves evil,
and that all men should be equal in all things. John Ball, the best
known of these fanatical preachers, was wont to perambulate the country
delivering sermons on his favourite text--
"When Adam delved and Eve span,
Who was then the gentleman?"
Wherever men were oppressed and discontented, they listened eagerly to
these discourses, and began to talk of putting an end to all difference
between man and man, and dividing all things equally between them. But
it was only the wilder spirits who were imbued with these doctrines;
the majority--like most discontented Englishmen in all ages--were
only set on the practical task of endeavouring to redress their own
particular grievances and to better their condition.
[Sidenote: ="Wat Tyler's rebellion."--March upon London.=]
It was in June, 1381, that the rising broke out simultaneously in
almost the whole of Eastern England, from Yorkshire to Hants. It has
gained its name of "Wat Tyler's Rebellion" from Walter the Tyler of
Maidstone, who was chief of the insurgents of Kent. Curiously enough,
four other men bearing or assuming the name of "the Tyler" were
prominent in the troubles. The main incidents of the rising took place
round London, towards which the insurgents flocked from all quarters.
Simultaneously the men of Essex, under a chief who called himself Jack
Straw, marched to Hampstead, those of Hertfordshire to Highbury, and
those of Kent to Blackheath. On their way they had done much damage;
the Essex rioters had caught and murdered the Chief Justice of England,
and the Kentishmen had slain several knights and lawyers who fell into
their hands. Everywhere they pillaged the houses of the gentry, and
sought out and burnt the manor-rolls which preserved the records of the
duties and obligations of the villeins to the lord of the manor.
[Sidenote: =Demands of the rioters.=]
The king's council at London was quite helpless, for the sudden rising
had taken them by surprise, and they had no troops ready. Seeing the
city surrounded by the rioters, they shut its gates and sent to ask
what were the grievances and demands of the mob. The claims that were
formulated by the leaders of the rising were more moderate than might
have been expected, for the wilder spirits were still kept in order by
the cooler ones. They asked that villeinage should be abolished, and
all lands held on villein-tenure be made into leasehold farms rated
at 4_d._ an acre, that the tolls and market dues which heightened the
price of provisions should be abolished, and that all who had been
engaged in the rising should receive a full pardon for the murders and
pillage that had taken place.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of the King.--Progress of the riot.=]
These demands were not too violent to be taken into consideration.
While the regency hesitated, the young king, who displayed a spirit
and resource most unusual in a boy of fourteen, announced that he
would himself go to meet the rioters and try to quiet them, for as yet
they had not said or done anything implying disrespect for the royal
name. But meanwhile the Kentish insurgents had crossed the Thames and
burnt John of Gaunt's great palace, the Savoy, which lay in the Strand
outside the walls of London. Presently the mob in the city rose and
opened the gates, so that Wat Tyler and his host were able to enter.
They slew some foreign merchants and some lawyers, the two classes
whom they seem most to have hated, but wrought no general pillage or
massacre.
On the 13th of June, Richard, persisting in his resolve of bringing
the insurgents to reason, rode out of Aldgate, and met the Essex men
at Mile End. After hearing their petitions, he declared that they
contained nothing impossible, and that he would undertake that they
should be granted. But while the king was parleying with the eastern
insurgents, the Kentishmen burst into the Tower, where the regency
had been sitting, and committed a hideous outrage. They caught Simon
of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury--he was also Chancellor--Sir
Robert Hales, the High Treasurer, and Legge, who had farmed the
obnoxious poll-tax, dragged them forth to Tower Hill, and there slew
them.
[Sidenote: =The king meets the rioters.--Tyler slain.=]
Notwithstanding these murders, the young king persisted in his
design of treating with the insurgents. He bade Tyler and his host
meet him next day in Smithfield, outside the city gates. They came,
but Tyler, who had throughout shown himself the most violent of the
insurgents, began wrangling with the king's suite instead of keeping
to the business in hand. This so enraged William Walworth, the Mayor
of London, that he drew a short sword and hewed the rebel down from
his horse. Then one of the king's squires leapt down and stabbed him
as he lay. Walworth's act was likely to have cost the king and his
whole party their lives, for the insurgents bent their bows and shouted
that they would avenge their captain there and then. But Richard,
with extraordinary presence of mind in one so young, pushed his horse
forward and bade them stand still, for they should have their demands
granted, and he himself would be their captain since Tyler was dead. So
there in Smithfield he had a charter drawn up, conceding all that the
insurgents asked, and pardoning them for their treason. Satisfied with
this, the Kentishmen dispersed to their homes.
[Sidenote: =Punishment of the leaders.--Richard's concessions
annulled.=]
Richard returned to London in triumph, as he well deserved, vowing that
he had that day won back the realm of England, which had been as good
as lost. Soon the nobles and their armed retainers began to gather to
London, and when they found themselves in force, they began to discuss
the legality of the king's concessions to the peasants. He had not, it
was urged, the right to give away other men's property--namely, their
feudal rights over their vassals--without the consent of Parliament. It
was shocking, too, that the murderers of the archbishop, the lord chief
justice, and the treasurer, should go unpunished. So Richard's charter
was annulled and his general pardon cancelled; all the leaders of the
revolt were caught one after another and hanged; even John Ball's
priest's robe did not save him from the gallows, though clergymen were
so seldom executed in the Middle Ages.
[Sidenote: =Decay of villeinage.=]
When Parliament met, the king proposed to them that his promise to the
insurgents should stand firm so far as the abolition of villeinage
was concerned, since this had been the main cause of the rising.
But the barons and knights of the shire were loth to give up their
feudal rights, and refused to confirm the king's grant; they replied
that the trouble had really had its origin in the evil governance of
the ministers, and turned them all out of office. Nevertheless, the
rising had not failed in its object, for in future the lords of the
manors were afraid to enforce the full letter of their claims over the
peasants, and villeinage gradually sank into desuetude.
[Sidenote: =Richard assumes the government.=]
King Richard had shown his high spirit in the days of the rising,
and four years later, when he had attained the age of eighteen, he
endeavoured to take the reins of power into his own hands. His uncle of
Lancaster did not gainsay him, for he felt himself to be unpopular with
the nation, so he departed over-sea on a vain errand. In right of his
wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro the Cruel, he had a claim to the
crown of Castile, and trusted to get aid from the Portuguese, to set
him on the throne which Henry of Trastamara had usurped. So he gathered
his retainers and many hired soldiers, and sailed away to Spain; nor
was his face seen in England for more than four years.
[Sidenote: =His ministers.=]
Meanwhile the young king had placed his friends in office, and strove
to rule for himself. His chief minister was Michael de la Pole, son of
a rich merchant at Hull, whom he made Earl of Suffolk, to the disgust
of many of the barons. He also favoured greatly Robert de Vere, whom
he made Lord-Deputy of Ireland, and created Marquis of Dublin. In them
and in his two half-brothers, Thomas and John Holland, he placed his
confidence.
Richard was now twenty; he had been married some years back to Anne
of Bohemia, the daughter of the Emperor Charles IV., and might have
expected that all the world would have counted him old enough to
administer the kingdom.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester.=]
But he had reckoned without one man's ambition and jealousy. His
youngest uncle, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, was an unscrupulous and
domineering prince, who had hoped to succeed to John of Gaunt's
position, and to have the chief part in ruling his nephew's realm.
Richard knew him well, and had no intention of employing him. Seeing
this, Duke Thomas began to gather a party among the greater nobles,
persuading them that the king was putting the rule of England into
the hands of mere upstarts and favourites, and that de la Pole and
de Vere were no better than Gaveston or the Despensers. Gloucester
drew into his designs many of the most important barons; the Earls
of Warwick, Arundel, and Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the
son and heir of John of Gaunt, were the chief plotters. They stirred
up the people and Parliament by complaints of the maladministration
of the ministers, and used a threatened invasion of the French as a
lever against those entrusted with the conduct of the long unhappy war
with France. When they had excited public opinion, they had Suffolk
impeached in Parliament for maladministration of the revenue. Though
almost certainly guiltless, he was condemned and imprisoned. But when
Parliament had dispersed, the king took him out of confinement, and
restored him to favour, declaring that he had a full right to choose
his own ministers.
[Sidenote: =The "Lords Appellant."=]
There followed, shortly after, the armed rising of Thomas of Gloucester
and his accomplices. Proclaiming that they wished only to free the
king from evil councillors, Gloucester, Warwick, Arundel, Nottingham,
and the young Henry of Bolingbroke marched on London with a great body
of retainers. They called themselves the "_Lords Appellant_," because
they _appealed_ or accused of treason the king's ministers. Richard
was taken by surprise at this very unjustifiable raising of civil war.
He bade his friends arm, but de Vere, who had raised some levies in
Oxfordshire, was beaten by the rebels at Radcot Bridge, and no one else
tried to resist. De Vere and de la Pole succeeded in flying to France,
where they both died shortly after in exile. But the king and the rest
of his friends and ministers fell into the hands of the Lords Appellant.
[Sidenote: =The Merciless Parliament.=]
Under the eyes of Gloucester and his accomplices the _Merciless
Parliament_ was summoned to London. Awed by the armed men around them,
the members declared Suffolk and de Vere outlaws, and condemned to
death seven of the king's minor ministers. So Tresilian the Chief
Justice, Sir Simon Burley who had been the king's tutor, and five more
were hanged (February, 1388). This disgraceful Parliament ended by
voting £20,000 as a gift to the Lords Appellant for their services, and
then dispersed.
Gloucester and his friends were in office for something more than a
year, a period long enough to show the world that they were grasping
self-seekers, and not patriots. The only service they did the country
was to negociate truces with Scotland and France, which stopped for a
time the lingering "Hundred Years' War."
[Sidenote: =Dismissal of Gloucester.=]
By 1389 Richard had passed his majority. In a session of the royal
council, he suddenly asked his uncle Gloucester how old he was. The
duke replied that he was now in his twenty-second year. "Then," said
the king, "I am certainly old enough to manage my own affairs." So,
formally thanking Gloucester and the rest for their past services,
he dismissed them from office. If he had replaced them by his own
favourites the civil war would have broken out again, but Richard
wisely called in the good bishop William of Wykeham, and other ancient
councillors of his grandfather's, against whom no one had a word to
say. He made no attempt to punish the Lords Appellant, and acted with
such self-restraint and moderation that all the realm was soon full of
his praises. Yet all the time he was dissembling, and biding his time
for revenge on the men who had murdered his friends in 1388.
[Sidenote: =Moderation of Richard.--Growth of Lollardry.=]
Richard's wise and moderate rule lasted for eight years, 1389-97.
They were a prosperous time: the French war was suspended, and the
king seemed to have put a permanent end to it, by marrying a French
princess, Isabella, the daughter of Charles VI., after his first wife
Anne of Bohemia had died. Perhaps the most important feature of the
time was the growth of the Wicliffite movement. John Wicliffe himself
had died, at a good old age, in 1384, but his disciples the Lollards
continued to increase and multiply. We find them so powerful that
in the Parliament of 1394 their representatives in the Commons had
begun to agitate for a national declaration against some of the most
prominent doctrines of the Roman Church--such as image-worship, the
efficacy of pilgrimages, the celibacy of the clergy, and even the
Real Presence in the Lord's Supper. They were only stopped by Richard
himself, who hurried home from Ireland to rebuke them. He told them
that he would hear nothing of such changes, but he did not molest
or persecute them, and let the movement take its course. The "Great
Schism" was at this time at its height, and the Church presented
the disgraceful spectacle of two rival popes, at Rome and Avignon,
anathematizing each other, and preaching a crusade against each other's
adherents. When such was the state of affairs, and no one knew who
was orthodox and who heretical, it was natural enough that the new
doctrines should flourish.
[Sidenote: =Richard's revenge on the Lords Appellant.=]
In 1397 Richard thought himself so firmly seated on his throne that
he could venture to execute his long-cherished vengeance on the Lords
Appellant. He had won over two of them to himself, Mowbray, Earl of
Nottingham, and Henry of Bolingbroke, the heir of the old Duke of
Lancaster. On the others his vengeance suddenly fell; he accused
Gloucester, Arundel, and Warwick, of plotting a new rebellion. They
were seized and thrown into prison: Arundel was tried and executed;
Gloucester was secretly murdered at Calais; Warwick was banished
for life to the Isle of Man. Nor was this all: for a time Richard
professed the greatest affection for Nottingham and Bolingbroke, the
two survivors of the plotters of 1388. He even made them Dukes of
Norfolk and Hereford. But in 1398 his vengeance fell on them also. He
induced Hereford to accuse Norfolk of treasonable conversation, and
when Mowbray denied it, proposed that they should meet in judicial
combat in the lists at Coventry. They consented, but when the champions
came ready armed before him, Richard suddenly stopped the duel, and
announced to the astonished dukes that he had determined to banish them
both from the realm--Norfolk for life, Hereford for ten years.
[Sidenote: =Tyranny of Richard.=]
Having thus wreaked his vengeance on the last of the Lords Appellant,
Richard proceeded to rule in a far more arbitrary manner than before,
and decidedly outstepped his constitutional rights. He thought that
there was no one left in the realm who would dare to oppose him,
and that he could do all that he chose. His most flagrantly illegal
step was to increase his revenue by raising forced loans from men of
wealth, an ingenious means of getting money without having to apply
to Parliament for it. But he kept up a considerable standing army of
archers, to overawe discontent, and thought himself quite secure.
When John of Gaunt died in 1399, he seized upon all the great estates
of the duchy of Lancaster, and refused to allow the exiled Henry of
Bolingbroke to claim his father's title and heritage. This roused much
sympathy for Henry, since he had been promised that his banishment
should make no difference to his rights of inheritance.
[Sidenote: =Condition of Ireland.--Richard's Irish expedition.=]
Richard's nearest kinsman and heir at this time was his cousin Roger,
Earl of March, the grandson of Lionel of Clarence, the Black Prince's
next brother. The king had sent him over to Ireland and entrusted
him with the government of that country, for he paid more attention
to Irish affairs than any of his ancestors, and had already made
one expedition across St. George's Channel in 1394. Ireland had
been in a state of complete anarchy ever since Edward Bruce broke
up the foundations of English rule eighty years before, and both
the Anglo-Norman lords of the Pale and the Irish chiefs of the west
showed an utter disregard for the royal authority. Roger of March was
killed by rebels in a skirmish at Kenlys-in-Ossory in 1398, and this
so provoked Richard that he resolved to go over himself, with all his
personal retainers and hired guards, and put an end to the anarchy.
[Sidenote: =Return of Bolingbroke.=]
Accordingly, early in 1399 the king sailed for Dublin, leaving England
in charge of his one surviving uncle, Edmund, Duke of York, a weak
old man who had always shown himself very loyal, but very incapable.
When Richard was lost to sight in the Irish bogs, all his enemies
began to take counsel against him. The barons began to murmur at his
arbitrary rule, the citizens of London at his forced loans, the clergy
at his tolerance for the Lollards. At the critical moment Henry of
Bolingbroke landed unexpectedly at Ravenspur, in Yorkshire, proclaiming
that he had only come to claim his father's duchy, which had been so
wrongfully withheld from him. He was immediately joined by Percy, Earl
of Northumberland, and many other northern lords. The regent Edmund of
York gathered an army to withstand him, but when Bolingbroke explained
to him that he came with no treasonable purpose, but only to plead for
his forfeited estates, the simple old man dismissed his troops and went
home. Thus unexpectedly freed from opposition, Bolingbroke soon showed
his real mind by catching and hanging Richard's ministers, Scrope, Earl
of Wiltshire, Bushey, and Greene.
[Sidenote: =Richard returns from Ireland--is overpowered.=]
The news of Duke Henry's landing had soon got to Ireland, and the
king at once prepared to return and resist him. But for four weeks
persistent easterly winds kept him storm-bound at Dublin. At last the
wind turned, and Richard could cross, but he came too late. York's
army had dispersed, and some Welsh levies, whom the Earl of Salisbury
had raised, had also gone home, after waiting in vain for the king's
landing. When Richard reached Flint Castle with the small following
that he had brought with him, he was surrounded by troops under the
Earl of Northumberland, who had been awaiting his arrival. Nothing but
surrender was possible, so Richard yielded himself up, trusting that
his cousin aimed merely at seizing the governance of the realm, and not
at his master's life or crown.
[Sidenote: =Richard abdicates.--Election of Henry.=]
Henry, however, had other views: he put Richard in strict custody,
and took him to London. There the Parliament assembled, overawed
by the armed retainers of the duke and his partisans. Richard was
forced by threats to abdicate, and thought that he had thus secured
his life. Then Henry caused the Parliament to accept his cousin's
resignation, and claimed the crown for himself. This was in manifest
disregard of the rights of Edmund of March, the young son of that Roger
who had fallen in Ireland a year before. The Parliament, however,
formally elected the duke to fill his cousin's throne, and saluted
him as king by the name of Henry IV. Constitutionally, no doubt, they
were acting within their rights; but it is only fair to say that
Richard--headstrong and arbitrary though he had been--had scarcely
deserved his fate. Nor was there any adequate reason for setting aside
the clear hereditary claim of Edmund of March (1399).
[Sidenote: =Murder of Richard.=]
Henry had grasped the crown, but he knew that his position was
insecure. He had only a Parliamentary title, and what one Parliament
had done another could undo. The late king had many faithful partisans,
and was not misliked by the nation at large. Therefore the unscrupulous
usurper determined to make away with him. Richard was sent to
Pontefract Castle, and never seen again; undoubtedly he was murdered,
but no one save Henry and his confidants knew how the deed was done.
The details of the dark act have never come to light.
CHAPTER XV.
HENRY IV.
1399-1413.
[Sidenote: =Position and title of Henry.=]
Henry of Bolingbroke had small comfort all his days on the throne which
he had usurped. He was only the king of a faction, the nominee of the
party which had once supported the Lords Appellant; if one half of
the baronage was friendly to him for that reason, the other half was
always estranged from him. It might almost be said that the "Wars of
the Roses," the strife of the two great factions who adhered the one to
the house of Lancaster and the other to the house of March, began on
Henry's accession.
Richard's deposition had been the work, not of the whole nation, but
of Henry's friends, the Percies of Northumberland, the Nevilles of
Westmoreland, the Arundels--son and brother to the Arundel whom Richard
had beheaded in 1397--and the Staffords[24] who represented the line of
Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. The Parliament had acquiesced in Henry's
usurpation rather because it had been discontented with Richard's
arbitrary rule, than because it had any very great liking for his
cousin. Perhaps the more far-sighted of its members had concluded that
the accession of a king whose only title rested on election would be
favourable to the development of constitutional liberties, since Henry
would--at least for a time--be very much dependent on the good-will of
the body which had chosen him, and which might some day choose another
ruler if he proved unpliable.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of the Hollands.=]
Before Henry had been two months on the throne, civil war had
broken out. The insurgents were Richard's kinsmen and favourites.
The two Hollands--Earls of Kent and Huntingdon, who were Richard's
half-brothers--conspired with Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, and Lord
Despenser, who had been his trusted friends. They plotted to seize King
Henry, as he lay at Windsor keeping the festivities of Christmas, to
slay or imprison him, and to release their old master from Pontefract
Castle. Unfortunately for themselves, they took into their counsels
Edward Earl of Rutland, the son of the old Duke of York. The cowardly
prince, finding that he was suspected, informed the king of the plot
before the conspirators were ready. Henry escaped from Windsor, and
called his friends together at London. The rebel earls set out in
various directions to endeavour to raise their retainers, but they were
all overtaken. Kent and Salisbury fell into their enemies' hands at
Cirencester, Huntingdon was caught in Essex, Despenser at Bristol. All
were beheaded without any delay or form of trial. Henry's grim reply to
this insurrection was the production of the dead body of King Richard,
which was brought from Pontefract to London, and publicly displayed to
prove his death. Nevertheless, many men refused to credit his decease,
and for years after there were some who maintained that the body
exposed in St. Paul's was not that of the late king, but that of his
chaplain, who bore an extraordinary personal resemblance to him. They
believed, or tried to believe, that Richard had escaped and was alive
in Scotland. Trading on this notion, an impostor presented himself at
the Scotch court, and was long entertained there as the true King of
England by the simple Robert III.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion in Wales.--Owen Glendower.=]
Hardly was the rebellion of the Hollands put down before a second
civil war arose. The Welsh had always been devoted to King Richard,
and had taken his deposition very ill. In 1400, a gentleman named
Owen-ap-Griffith, of Glendower, who had been one of Richard's squires,
put himself at the head of a rising in North Wales. Owen was of the
old princely blood of the house of Llewellyn, and proclaimed himself
Prince of North Wales under the suzerainty of his master Richard, whom
he declared to be still alive in Scotland. He was a guerilla captain
of marked ability, and completely baffled the efforts that King Henry
made to put him down. He swept all over North Wales, captured many
of its castles, and extended his sway over the whole countryside. To
the day of his death Owen maintained himself in independence, ravaging
the English border when he was left alone, and retiring into the
recesses of Snowdon when a great force took the field against him. His
incursions penetrated as far as Worcester and Shrewsbury, and no man
west of the Severn was safe from his plundering bands.
[Sidenote: =England harassed by Scotland and France.=]
As if the Welsh trouble was not enough to keep King Henry employed,
other wars broke out around him. The Scots under the Earl of Douglas
crossed the border to harry Northumberland, and Lewis of Orleans, the
uncle of Richard's queen Isabella, began to stir up the French court to
attack England, and encouraged many descents of Norman privateers on
the coasts of the Channel.
[Sidenote: =Henry and the Parliament.--Persecution of the Lollards.=]
Henry's only resource was to keep the nation in good temper by a
rigorous and punctual obedience to all the petitions and requests of
his Parliament. Accordingly, he showed himself the most constitutional
of sovereigns, and both now and for many years to come made himself
the dutiful servant of the Commons. He also did his best to enlist
the favour of Churchmen on his side by a cruel persecution of the
Lollards. The disciples of Wicliffe had always favoured King Richard,
who had shown them complete tolerance, and Henry felt that he was not
estranging any of his own partisans when he handed over the Lollards
to the mercy of the harsh and fanatical Archbishop Arundel.[25] It was
under this prelate's guidance that the king assented to the infamous
statute _De Heretico Comburendo_ (1401), which condemned all convicted
schismatics to the stake and fire. The first victim burnt was William
Sawtree, a London clergyman, and others followed him at intervals all
through Henry's reign.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Homildon Hill.=]
The Scotch war came to a head in 1402, at the battle of Homildon Hill.
There Murdoch of Albany, the son of the Scotch regent, was completely
defeated by Percy of Northumberland and his son Harry Percy, whom the
Borderers nicknamed Hotspur for his speed and energy. But the victory
of Homildon was fated to do England more harm than any defeat, since
it was to cause a renewal of the civil war. The Percies had taken
many prisoners, including Murdoch himself, and three other Scots
Earls, Douglas, Moray, and Orkney. From the ransoms of these peers
they trusted to get great profit; but King Henry, who was at his
wits' end to scrape money together without troubling Parliament, took
the prisoners out of the Percies' hands and claimed the ransoms for
himself. This mortally offended Northumberland, a proud and greedy
chief, who had been Henry's main support at the time of his usurpation,
and thought that in return the king ought to refuse nothing to him.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of the Percies.=]
In sheer lawless wrath at the king's refusal to hear him,
Northumberland resolved to dethrone Henry. He secretly concerted
measures with Owen Glendower for a joint attack on the king, and
released his captive, the Earl of Douglas, who in return brought him a
band of Scottish auxiliaries. By Owen's counsel, aid was sought from
France also, and it was settled that the young Earl of March should be
proclaimed king, if Richard II. proved to be really dead.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Shrewsbury.--Death of Hotspur.=]
In July, 1403, the Percies rose, and were joined by their kinsman the
Earl of Worcester, and many more. Hotspur rapidly led his army towards
Shrewsbury, where Glendower had promised to join him with a Welsh
host. But King Henry was too quick for his foes; he threw himself
between them, and caught the young Percy before the Welsh came up. The
desperately fought battle of Shrewsbury (July 23, 1403) ended in the
victory of the royal host. Hotspur was slain by an arrow, while Douglas
and Worcester were taken, and the latter executed for treason. It was
at this field that the king's eldest son, Henry of Monmouth, destined
in later years to be the conqueror of France, first looked upon the
face of war.
[Sidenote: =Second Rebellion.--Execution of Scrope.=]
The Earl of Northumberland, who had not been present at Shrewsbury, but
had kept at home in the north, was allowed to make his peace with the
king on the payment of a great fine. But Henry was wrong in thinking
that the crafty and resentful old earl was no longer dangerous. Though
his brave son was dead, Percy stirred up a second rebellion two years
later, by the aid of Mowbray, Earl of Nottingham, son of Henry's old
opponent in the lists of Coventry,[26] and of Scrope, Archbishop of
York, brother of that Scrope, Earl of Wilts, whom the Lancastrians had
hung in 1399. But Neville, Earl of Westmoreland, who commanded for
the king in the North, induced Scrope and Mowbray to lay down their
arms and come to a conference, and there he seized them as traitors.
They were at once put on trial, not before their peers as they claimed,
but before two of the king's justices, who condemned them to death.
Scrope's execution sent a thrill of horror throughout England, for no
archbishop had ever before been slain by a king, save Thomas Becket,
and many men counted him a martyr even as Becket. So Henry lost as much
love of the clergy by this act as he had gained by his assent to the
statute _De Heretico Comburendo_.
Northumberland escaped to Scotland in 1405, and lurked there for two
years; but in 1407 he crossed the Tweed, raised his vassals, and made a
dash for York. But he was intercepted at Bramham Moor, and there slain,
fighting hard in spite of his seventy years.
After this King Henry was no more vexed with civil war in England, but
his Welsh troubles showed no sign of ending. Owen Glendower eluded
Henry, Prince of Wales, and all the other leaders who came against him,
with complete success, and the English armies suffered so severely from
storms among the Welsh hills that they swore that Owen was a magician
and had conjured the elements against them.
[Sidenote: =Henry's submission to Parliament .--The Beauforts.=]
It was the constant drain of money for this interminable war that
kept the king in strict submission to his Parliament, so that he was
obliged to allow them to audit all his accounts, and even to dismiss
his servants when they thought that he kept too large and wasteful a
household. Henry much disliked this control, but he always bowed before
it. His health was failing, though he was still in middle age, and
bodily weakness seems to have bent his will. From 1409 to 1412 he was
so feeble that the government was really carried on by his son, the
Prince of Wales, and his half-brothers, the Beauforts, Henry, Bishop of
Winchester, and Thomas, the Chancellor. Of the Beaufort clan we shall
hear much in the future; they were the sons of John of Gaunt's old
age. After the death of his wife, Constance of Castile, a lady named
Katharine Swinford became his mistress and bore him several sons. He
afterwards married her, and the children were legitimatized by Act of
Parliament. Of these the eldest was now Earl of Somerset, and the
youngest Bishop of Winchester.
[Sidenote: =Detention of Prince James of Scotland.=]
It was fortunate for England in these years, when the realm was
ruled by a bedridden king and a very young Prince of Wales, that her
neighbours to north and south had fallen on evil days. Neither Scot nor
Frenchman was dangerous at this time. The Scots were bridled by the
fact that the heir of the kingdom was in Henry's hands. For it chanced
that King Robert III. was sending his son James to France, and that
the ship was taken by an English privateer. "Why did they not send him
straight to me?" said King Henry; "I could have taught him French as
well as any man at Paris." So Prince James was kept at Windsor as a
hostage for the good behaviour of Scotland. His jealous uncle Albany,
the regent of that kingdom, did not want him released, and was quite
content to leave him in Henry's power and keep the peace.
[Sidenote: =Civil War in France.--Armagnacs and Burgundians.=]
The cause of the quiescence of France was very different. King Charles
VI. had become insane, and no longer ruled. A desperate civil war had
been raging there ever since the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans,
had been murdered by his cousin, the Duke of Burgundy, in 1407. The
partisans of the murdered duke, who were called the Armagnacs from
their leader, Bernard, Count of Armagnac, were always endeavouring
to revenge his death on Burgundy. They mustered most of the feudal
nobility of France in their ranks, while their opponent was supported
by the burghers of Paris and many of the towns of the north. John of
Burgundy was lord of Flanders as well as of his own duchy, and was well
able to hold his own even though his French partisans were outnumbered
by the Armagnacs. Both factions sought the help of England, and King
Henry was able to play a double game, and to negociate with each
of them on the terms that he should be given back some of the lost
districts of Aquitaine in return for his aid. In the end he closed with
the offers of the Armagnacs, and sent over a small army to Normandy
under his second son, Thomas, Duke of Clarence. Clarence accomplished
little, but the fact that his troops were able to march across France
to Bordeaux with little hindrance taught the English that the French
were too helpless and divided to be formidable (1412). The lesson was
taken to heart, as we shall see in the next reign.
[Sidenote: =Prince Henry of Monmouth.=]
While King Henry lay slowly dying of leprosy, his son, the Prince of
Wales, was gaining the experience which was to serve him so well a
few years later. Henry of Monmouth was a warrior from his youth up;
at the age of fifteen he had been present at Shrewsbury field, and in
the succeeding years he toiled in the hard school of the Welsh wars,
leading expedition after expedition against Glyndower. The legendary
tales which speak of him as a debauched and idle youth, who consorted
with disreputable favourites, such as Shakespeare's famous "Sir John
Falstaff," are entirely worthless. Of all these fables the only one
that seems to have any foundation is that which tells how Henry was
suspected by his father of over-great ambition and of aiming at the
crown. It appears that the prince's supporters, the two Beauforts,
suggested to King Henry that he should abdicate, and pass on the
sceptre to his son. The king was much angered at the proposal, turned
the Beauforts out of office, and was for a time estranged from the
Prince of Wales. This was the reason why he sent Clarence rather than
his elder brother to conduct the war in France. He even removed Prince
Henry from his position as head of the royal council. But this outburst
of anger was the king's last flash of energy. He died of his lingering
disease on March 20, 1413.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Thomas of Gloucester's only daughter had married Edmund, Earl of
Stafford.
[25] Brother of the Arundel whom Richard II. beheaded.
[26] See p. 210.
CHAPTER XVI.
HENRY V.
1413-1422.
Henry of Monmouth had a far easier task before him, when he ascended
the throne, than his father had been forced to take in hand. He had
the enormous advantage of succeeding to an established heritage, and
was no mere usurper legalized by parliamentary election. So firm did
he feel himself upon his seat, that he began his reign by releasing
the young Earl of March, the legitimate heir of Richard II., whom
Henry IV. had always kept in close custody. For he knew that none of
the odium of his father's usurpation rested upon himself, and that he
was well liked by the nation. Nor was his popularity ill deserved;
though only twenty-five years of age, he was already a tried warrior
and an able statesman. His life was sober and orderly, inclining
rather toward Spartan rigour than display and luxury. He was grave
and earnest in speech, courteous in all his dealings, and an enemy of
flatterers and favourites. His sincere piety bordered on asceticism. If
he had a fault, it was that he was somewhat overstern with those who
withstood him, like his great ancestor Edward I. His enemies called him
hard-hearted and sanctimonious.
[Sidenote: =Persecution of the Lollards.=]
Henry's piety and his love of order and orthodoxy were a source of
much trouble to the unhappy Lollards. From the moment of his accession
he bore very hardly upon them, and redoubled the severity of the
persecution which his father had begun. He did not spare even his own
friends, but arrested for heresy Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham, who
had been one of his most trusted servants. When accused of holding the
doctrines of Wicliffe, Oldcastle boldly avowed his sympathy for them,
spoke scornfully of the Papacy and its claims, and taunted his judge,
Archbishop Arundel, with all the sins and failings of the clergy. He
was condemned to be burnt, but escaped from the Tower and hid himself
in the Marches of Wales. Long afterwards he was retaken, and suffered
bravely for his opinions.
Henry's ill-treatment of the Lollards drove the unfortunate sectaries
to despair. Some of the more reckless of them planned to put an end to
their sufferings, by seizing the king's person, and compelling him to
relax the persecution. They tried to stir up a popular rising, like
that of Wat Tyler, but Henry got timely notice of their plot. When they
began to assemble by night in St. Martin's fields, outside the gates
of London, he came suddenly upon them with a great body of horse, and
scattered them all. Forty were hung next day as traitors, and for the
future they were treated as guilty of treason as well as of heresy.
[Sidenote: =Henry and the French crown.=]
Fortunately for England, Henry had other things in his mind besides the
suppression of the Wicliffites. He knew that nothing serves so well
to quiet down internal troubles as a successful and glorious foreign
war. He believed himself, and rightly, to be capable of leading the
national forces to victory, and he knew that England's old neighbour
and enemy across the Channel was weak and divided. Accordingly, from
the moment of his accession Henry began to prepare for an assault on
France. He was determined to claim not merely the restoration of the
lost provinces of Guienne, but the crown of France itself, as Edward
III. had done in the days before the treaty of Bretigny. It is hard
to discover how a sincerely religious and right-minded man, for such
Henry of Monmouth undoubtedly was, could persuade his conscience that
it was permissible to vamp up once more these antiquated claims. It
would seem that he regarded himself as a divinely appointed guardian
of law, order, morality, and religion, and had come to look upon the
French factions with their open wickedness, their treason, treachery,
murder, and rapine, as emissaries of Satan handed over to him for
punishment. Moreover, Henry was, as we have said, a very zealous
servant of the Church, and the Church did its best to egg him on to
the war. Chicheley, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was one of the chief
supporters of it, partly because he wished to distract attention from
the persecution of the Lollards, and partly because Parliament had
been talking of a proposal to confiscate some Church land, and the
archbishop thought that he had better give them some other and more
exciting subject of discussion. In his old age, Chicheley bitterly
regretted his advice to King Henry, and built his college of All Souls
at Oxford, to pray for the repose of those who had fallen in the great
war which he had set going.
[Sidenote: =Preparations for war.=]
Before he had been a year upon the throne, Henry had broken with
France. It was in vain that the Dauphin and the Armagnac faction,
who were at this time predominant, endeavoured to turn him from his
purpose. They offered him the hand of the Princess Catherine, the
daughter of their mad king Charles VI., and with her the lost provinces
of Aquitaine and a dowry of 600,000 gold crowns. But Henry only replied
by asking for all that his ancestors had ever held in France, the
ancient realm of Henry II., extending from Normandy to the Pyrenees.
When this preposterous demand was refused, he summoned Parliament and
laid before it his scheme for an invasion of France. The proposal was
received with enthusiasm, partly from old national jealousy, partly
because the English resented the doings of the French in the time of
Henry IV., when Norman privateers had vexed the Channel ports, and
French succour had been lent to Owen Glyndower and the Scots. The
Commons and the clergy gave the king very liberal grants of money,
which he increased by seizing the estates of the "alien priories," that
is, the religious houses that were mere branches and dependencies of
continental abbeys.
[Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Cambridge and Scrope.=]
By spending every shilling that he could raise, and even pawning the
crown jewels, the king collected and equipped a considerable army.
He assembled at Southampton some 2500 men-at-arms and 7000 archers
for the invasion. Just before he embarked, however, he found himself
exposed to a deadly peril, which showed him how precarious was the hold
of the Lancastrian dynasty on the throne. A plot had been formed by
his cousin, Richard of Cambridge, the younger brother of that Edmund
of Rutland who betrayed the rebels of 1399. It had as its object the
murder of Henry and the coronation of Edmund, Earl of March, whose
sister Richard had married. In the plot were implicated Lord Scrope,
a kinsman of the archbishop whom Henry IV. had executed and several
others who had grievances against the house of Lancaster. The king sent
them all to the block, and would not delay his sailing for a moment.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Harfleur.=]
He landed in Normandy late in the summer of 1415, and laid siege to
Harfleur, which then occupied the position that Havre enjoys to-day,
and was the chief commercial port at the mouth of the Seine. On the
news of Henry's approach, the French factions for once suspended their
hostilities, and many of the Burgundians, though not Duke John himself,
agreed to assist the Armagnacs in repelling the invaders. But they were
so long in gathering that Harfleur fell, after five weeks of siege. The
capture, however, had cost the English dear; not only had they lost
many men in the trenches, but a pestilence had broken out among them,
and a third of the army were down with camp-fever. After shipping off
his sick to Southampton, and providing a strong garrison for Harfleur,
King Henry found that he had no more than 6000 men left, with whom to
take the field against the oncoming French. But he would not withdraw
ingloriously by sea, and resolved to march home to Calais across
Northern France. This enterprise savoured of rashness, for the whole
countryside was swarming with the levies of the enemy. They had placed
the Constable of France, John d'Albret, in command: with him were
the young Duke of Orleans and all the rest of the Armagnac leaders.
Anthony of Brabant, brother to the Duke of Burgundy, was hurrying to
their aid from the north. By rapid movements--his whole army, archers
as well as men-at-arms, had been provided with horses taken from the
countryside--Henry reached the Somme. But he lost time in trying to
force a passage, and when at last he crossed the river high up, near
Peronne, the Constable and his host had outmarched him and thrown
themselves across the road to Calais. They were at least 30,000
strong, five times the force that Henry could put in line, and were
in excellent condition, while the English were worn out by their long
travel, amid violent October rains, and over bad country crossroads.
[Illustration: BATTLE OF AGINCOURT. 1415.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Agincourt.=]
When King Henry reached Agincourt, he found the French army drawn up
across his path, and was forced to halt. The Constable, like King John
at Poictiers, was confident that he had the English in a trap, for
they had exhausted all their provisions, and had the flooded Somme in
their rear. Henry, however, was determined to fight, and put his hope
in the bad management which always characterized the disorderly armies
of feudal France. He was not disappointed: the Constable dismounted
all his knights and bade them fight on foot, for fear of the effect of
the archery on their horses. Only a few hundred mounted men formed a
forlorn hope in front. He arranged his army in three heavy columns, one
behind another, and formed the front entirely of mailed men-at-arms;
the cross-bowmen and light troops were placed in the rear, where they
could be of no possible use. The week had been rainy, and the space in
front of the French was a newly ploughed field sodden with water, and
hemmed in with woods and villages on either hand. At its further end
the English were waiting. Henry had drawn them up in a single four-deep
line, in order to make a front equal to that of the enemy. So arranged
they just filled the space between the woods. The archers were on the
wings, protected by _chevaux-de-frise_ of pointed stakes which they had
planted in front. The king with his men-at-arms formed the centre; a
small flanking force of archers had also been sent into the woods on
the right.
The Constable led his men straight on the English front, but they had
a mile to go across the greasy mud of the fields. To men arrayed in
the full knightly panoply, which had vastly increased in weight since
the days of Edward III., the ploughland was almost impassable. After a
space they began to sink as far as their ankles, and presently as far
as their knees, in the mud. The mounted men struggled on, and gradually
drew near the English, but they were shot down one after another as
they slowly forced themselves up to the stakes of the archery. The
main body of the first column never won its way so far; it literally
stuck fast in the tenacious clay and stood a few score yards from the
English line, as a target into which the archers emptied whole sheaves
of arrows. The crowded mass was soon full of dead and dying, for at
such short range armour could not protect its wearers. The whole column
reeled and wavered. Then King Henry, seeing the moment was come, bade
his whole line charge. The lightly equipped archers could cross with
ease the ploughland where the men-at-arms had found themselves unable
to move. They flung themselves upon the French knights, and by the
force and fury of their assault completely rolled them over. Though
unprotected by mail, they obtained a complete ascendency over the
enemy, dashing them down with their axes and maces till they lay in
heaps two or three deep. Henry and the band of men-at-arms around him
seem to have met with the only stubborn resistance: the king had to
fight hard for his life, and was nearly slain by the Duke of Alençon,
who had already struck down his younger brother Humphrey, Duke of
Gloucester. Alençon, however, was slain, and after his fall the whole
of his column was destroyed or captured.
Without a moment's hesitation, the English pushed on to attack the
second column, which was slowly advancing through the mud to aid the
van. Incredible as it may appear, their second charge was as successful
as the first, though the victors were exhausted and thinned in numbers
by the previous fighting, and did not muster half their adversaries'
force. Just after he had routed this second column, Henry received an
alarm that a detached body of the French had assailed his camp in the
rear, and were coming up to surround him. He at once bade his men slay
the prisoners they had taken, a harsh and, as it proved, an unnecessary
order, for the French in the rear only plundered the camp, and then
dispersed with their booty. Although the king had completely scattered
or destroyed the second French column, the third still remained in
order before him; but, cowed by the fate of their comrades, they turned
and retired hastily from the field, though they should by themselves
have been more than enough to overwhelm the exhausted band of English.
In this astonishing victory, Henry's small army had slain a much larger
number of men than they mustered in their own ranks. The Constable of
France, Anthony, Duke of Brabant--brother of John of Burgundy--the
Dukes of Bar and Alençon, and a whole crowd of counts and barons, had
fallen; it is said that no less than 10,000 French were slain, of whom
more than 8000 were men of gentle blood. In spite of the massacre of
captives in the midst of the fighting, there were still some prisoners
surviving. They included the young Duke of Orleans--the titular head
of the Armagnac faction--the Duke of Bourbon, the Counts of Eu and
Vendôme, and 1500 knights and nobles more. The English in this terrible
fight had lost less than 200 men, but among them were two great peers,
the Duke of York--the Edward of Rutland of whom we read in 1399--and
the Earl of Suffolk.
[Sidenote: =Henry returns to England.=]
Henry retraced his way to Calais, and crossed to England with his
prisoners and his booty, there to be received with splendid festivities
by his people, who regarded the glory of Agincourt as a sufficient
compensation for the losses of a costly campaign which had added
nothing save the single town of Harfleur to the possessions of the
English crown. The ransoms of a host of noble captives were relied upon
to replenish the exchequer, and the fearful losses of the Armagnac
party, who saw half their leaders slain at Agincourt, would evidently
weaken the strength of France in the remainder of the war.
[Sidenote: =End of the Great Schism.--Council of Constance.=]
Henry did not cross the Channel again in the year 1416, which he spent
partly in negotiations with the Duke of Burgundy, whose help he wished
to secure against the Armagnacs, partly in treating with the Emperor
Sigismund about the common welfare of Christendom. Sigismund was
hard at work endeavouring to put an end to the "Great Schism," the
scandalous breach in the unity of the Church caused by the misconduct
of the rival Popes at Rome and Avignon. He visited England, and
won Henry's aid for his plans, which brought about the reunion of
Christendom at the Council of Constance--a reunion under evil auspices,
since it was marked by the burning of the great Bohemian teacher
John Huss, who had made the doctrines of Wicliffe popular among his
Slavonic countrymen in the far East. Moreover, it restored the unity
of Christendom, but did not reform either the papacy or the national
Churches. As this was not done, the general outbreak of religious
ferment was made inevitable in a later generation; after the failure
at Constance to reform the Church from within, it became necessary to
reform her from without.
[Sidenote: =Second invasion of France.--Conquest of Normandy.=]
Having come to an agreement with the Duke of Burgundy, and obtained
from him a promise of neutrality, Henry invaded France for the second
time in the summer of 1417. He took with him an army of somewhat over
16,000 men, landed in Normandy, and began to reduce one after another
all the fortresses of that province. Utterly humbled by the memory of
Agincourt, the Armagnacs made no attempt to meet him in the open field.
Some of the Norman towns held out gallantly enough, but they got no aid
from without. At the end of a year the whole duchy, save its capital,
the city of Rouen, was in English hands. Henry then assumed the state
of Duke of Normandy, and put the whole land under orderly government, a
boon it had not enjoyed for twenty years. He gave Norman baronies and
earldoms to many of his English followers, and handed over the control
of the cities to burghers of the Burgundian faction, who served the
English readily enough, out of their hatred for the Armagnacs. For
thirty years Normandy was to remain English. Rouen was added to the
rest of the duchy after a long siege of six months, in which half the
population perished by hunger. Irritated by this long resistance, Henry
imposed on it the harsh terms of a ransom of 300,000 crowns, and hung
Alain Blanchart, the citizen who had been the soul of the obstinate
defence (January, 1419).
While the conquest of Normandy was in progress, the French factions had
been more bitterly at strife than ever. In 1418 the Burgundian party in
Paris rose against their rivals, and massacred every man on whom they
could lay hands, including Bernard of Armagnac himself. The control
of the party of the feudal noblesse then passed into the hands of the
young dauphin Charles, the heir of France.
[Sidenote: =Murder of the Duke of Burgundy.=]
The fall of Rouen, however, frightened John of Burgundy, and unwilling
that France should fall wholly into the power of his ally King Henry,
he made proposals for a reconciliation with the Dauphin and his
Armagnac followers. The treacherous young prince accepted the overtures
with apparent cordiality, and invited Duke John to meet him on the
bridge of Montereau to settle terms of peace. But when Burgundy came to
the conference, he was deliberately slain by the Armagnac captains, in
the presence and with the consent of the Dauphin (August, 1419).
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Troyes.=]
The murder of Montereau was destined to make Henry master of France.
When Philip of Burgundy, the son of Duke John, heard of his father's
death, he vowed unending war against the Dauphin and his faction,
and took the field to help the English to complete the conquest of
France. Nor was Philip of Burgundy the only helper that Henry secured:
the Queen of France, Isabella of Bavaria, bitterly hated her son
the Dauphin, and was glad to do him an evil turn. She proposed that
Charles should be disinherited, and that the crown should pass with
her favourite daughter Catherine to the hands of the English king.
So at Troyes, in Champagne, Henry, Philip of Burgundy, and Queen
Isabella concluded a formal treaty by which Henry received Catherine
to wife, and was to succeed to the French throne on the death of his
father-in-law, the old King Charles VI., who still lingered on in
complete imbecility (June 2, 1420).
[Sidenote: =Henry master of Northern France.=]
The treaty of Troyes put Paris and the greater part of Northern France
into Henry's hands. Casting national feeling aside in their bitter
partisan spirit, the Burgundian faction everywhere accepted the King
of England as the lawful regent and governor of France. South of the
Loire the Dauphin and his Armagnac friends still held their own, but
north of it they only possessed scattered fortresses dotted about in
Picardy, the Isle-de-France, and Champagne, from Boulogne in the north
to Orleans in the south.
After taking formal possession of Paris and holding a great meeting of
the Estates of the French realm at Rouen, Henry returned in triumph
to England with his young wife. He had reached a pitch of success in
war such as no English king had ever attained before, and the nation,
blinded by the personal merits of its king and gorged with the plunder
of France, forgave him all his faults. The waste of life and money,
the never-ending persecution of the Lollards, the precarious tenure of
the conquests in France--due, in sober truth, merely to the aid of the
Burgundian faction--were all forgotten.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of the English at Beaugé.=]
Henry had not long been in England, when bad news crossed the Channel
after him. He had left his brother Thomas, Duke of Clarence, with a
small army, to hold Maine against the Dauphin's adherents. But the
Armagnac bands had lately been strengthened by succours from Scotland,
under the Earl of Buchan, the son of the regent Albany. For, although
the King of Scots had been a prisoner in English hands for ten years
and more, his subjects and his uncle the regent were not thereby
constrained to keep the peace with England. Pushing forward rashly
to attack the Scots and Armagnacs, Clarence was routed and slain at
Beaugé (1421). The enemy at once overran Maine, and began to infest the
borders of Normandy.
[Sidenote: =Henry's third expedition.=]
This compelled the king to cross once more over the sea in order to
repair his brother's disastrous defeat. In a campaign extending from
the summer of 1421 to that of the following year, he cleared the
Dauphin's army out of their foothold north of the Loire, and then
proceeded to starve out one by one their isolated strongholds in the
north of France, the chief of which were Dreux and Meaux.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Meaux.--Death of Henry.=]
It was during the siege of Meaux, which continued all the winter of
1421 and spring of 1422, that Henry's health began to give dangerous
signs of breaking up. He had been campaigning from his boyhood, and
had never hitherto shown any weakness of constitution. But the winter
colds of 1421-2, or the camp-fever bred in the trenches during the
long siege of Meaux, had brought him very low. He was carried back
toward Paris in a desperate state of weakness from ague and dysentery.
Soon after, to the horror and dismay of the English and their French
partisans, he died at the castle of Vincennes on August 31, 1422,
before he had attained his thirty-fifth year.
CHAPTER XVII.
THE LOSS OF FRANCE.
1422-1453.
England had never yet had a sovereign of such tender age as the infant
king who succeeded to the heritage of Henry V. It was under the rule
of a child of less than twelve months old that the long and wearisome
French war had to be continued. Yet at first the prospects of the reign
did not look very dark. The struggle in France was not going ill, and
seldom has any orphan had so zealous and capable a guardian by his
cradle as John of Bedford, the little king's eldest uncle. He had,
moreover, no domestic intrigues to fear; Edmund, Earl of March, the
legitimate heir of Richard II., was the most unenterprising and loyal
of men, and never gave any trouble.
[Sidenote: =The Regency.=]
On his death-bed Henry V. had not appointed his eldest and most capable
brother, John of Bedford, to be the regent in England, as might have
been expected. His ruling passion was strong in death, and he thought
above all things of the maintenance of the English ascendency in
France. Therefore he named Duke John to take charge of the government
of that country. As Regent of England he designated his younger brother
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, a man of far less worth and weight.
The Parliament, however, held that the king could not dispose of the
regency by will; and though they named Gloucester Protector, placed
many limitations on his power. Unfortunately, they could not remedy his
reckless and flighty disposition.
[Sidenote: =James I. of Scotland released.=]
During the whole of the long minority of Henry VI. the varying fortunes
of the French war were almost the only topic that stirred the interest
of the nation. The internal history of England is well-nigh a blank;
no period since the Conquest is left so bare by the chroniclers, who
seem to have no eyes or ears for anything save the fate of our armies
across the Channel. The quarrels of Duke Humphrey with his colleagues
in the regency are the only other topic on which they touch. The
council carried out the policy of the late king, so far as any body
of statesmen of average ability can continue the work of a single
man of high military and political genius. They strained every nerve
to keep up the war in France, and subordinated every other end to
that purpose. Their wisest act was the release of the young King of
Scots, after seventeen years of captivity. Seeing that his kinsman
Albany was helping the French, they set James I. free, and sent him
home. He married, ere he departed, Joan Beaufort, daughter of the
Earl of Somerset, and granddaughter of John of Gaunt, a lady for whom
he had formed a romantic attachment in the days of his captivity. By
her influence it was hoped that he would be kept firm in the English
alliance. In some degree this hope was fulfilled: James promptly slew
his cousins of Albany, and devoted himself to pacifying and bringing
back into order the country from which he had been so long exiled.
[Sidenote: =Death of Charles VI.--Henry proclaimed King of France.=]
We must now turn to the aspect of affairs beyond the Channel, the
subject which seemed all-important to the English nation at this
time. The old mad King of France had died only two months after his
son-in-law, Henry V. (October, 1422). Bedford had, therefore, to
proclaim his little nephew as king at Paris, and to rule in his name,
no longer in that of the unhappy Charles VI. The Dauphin also assumed
the title of King of France, and was acknowledged as monarch in all
the lands south of the Loire. But he was an indolent and apathetic
young man, governed entirely by his favourites, and wholly unskilled in
and averse to military enterprises. He did so little for himself, and
seemed so contented with his unsatisfactory position, that men called
him in scorn "the King of Bourges"--his residence for the time--rather
than the King of France.
There still appeared to be some chance that the English might maintain
themselves in possession of Northern France. But this hope rested
entirely on the firm and continued fidelity of the Burgundian party
to their English allies. It was only by their help that success could
be won, for ten or fifteen thousand English scattered from Calais to
Bordeaux could not hold down a hostile France. For some time the Duke
of Burgundy aided Bedford, and the Burgundian citizens in each town
maintained their loyalty to King Henry.
[Sidenote: =Victories of Bedford.=]
Bedford's regency commenced with two victories, at Cravant (July, 1423)
and Verneuil (August, 1424), which so tamed the Dauphin's partisans
that the English were able to work slowly west and south, subduing the
land. More would have been done, but for a sudden risk of a breach with
Burgundy, caused by the reckless selfishness of the Duke of Gloucester.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester's expedition to Hainault.=]
Tired of long bickerings with his uncle, Bishop Beaufort of Winchester,
and the other members of the council of regency, Humphrey had resolved
to go off on an enterprise of his own. There was at this moment a
distressed princess in the Netherlands, Jacquelaine, Duchess of Holland
and Countess of Hainault. She had married Philip of Burgundy's cousin,
the Duke of Brabant, a stupid debauchee who treated her very ill.
Escaping from his court, she fled to London, and offered herself and
her lands to Duke Humphrey, if he would take her under his protection.
Of course, a divorce from her husband had first to be procured; but
the pope refused to grant it. In spite of this trifling difficulty,
Gloucester performed a ceremony of marriage with Jacquelaine, though
both of them were well aware that it was a rank case of bigamy. They
then crossed to the continent to take possession of her dominions,
which were held by her husband, John of Brabant. This, of course,
meant war; and not only war with Brabant, but with Burgundy also, for
Duke Philip was the close ally of Duke John, and had no wish to see
Gloucester established in his neighbourhood as ruler of Hainault and
Holland.
[Sidenote: =Threatened breach with Burgundy.=]
Both Bedford and the English council of regency completely disavowed
Gloucester's doings, but it was hard to persuade Burgundy that
England had not determined to break with him. If Gloucester had been
successful, there is no doubt that Burgundy would have joined the
French and driven the English out of France. But fortunately for
Bedford, his brother proved singularly unlucky in Hainault. Seeing
himself outnumbered and surrounded by the Brabanters and Burgundians,
Humphrey left his quasi-wife in the lurch, and fled back to England.
The bigamous duchess fell into the hands of her enemies, and was placed
in confinement. Gloucester took the news with equanimity, and consoled
himself by marrying Eleanor Cobham, a lady of damaged reputation, whom
he had known long before.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Orleans.=]
Owing to Gloucester's failure in Hainault, the breach between England
and Burgundy did not widen into open disruption, but Duke Philip never
again supported his allies with such vigour as in the earlier days of
the war. It was not till 1428 that the English felt strong enough to
make a fresh advance against the lands beyond the Loire. In that year
the regent Bedford succeeded in equipping a small field army of five
or six thousand men--half English, half French partisans of England.
Placing them under Thomas Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, one of the best
captains who had served Henry V., he sent them southward. Salisbury at
first aimed at taking Angers, but turned aside to besiege Orleans, the
key of the central valley of the Loire, and the one place of importance
beyond that river which the French still held. On the 7th of October,
1428, he took post in front of it, and built strong redoubts facing
each of its gates, for he had not a large enough army to surround so
great a city. Thus Orleans was blockaded rather than besieged, since it
was always possible for the French to get in or out in small parties
between the fortified positions of the English.
[Sidenote: =Jeanne d'Arc.=]
Orleans held out long and stubbornly, and while its siege still
dragged on, a new factor was suddenly introduced into the struggle.
The widespread misery and devastation caused by thirteen years of
uninterrupted war had moved the hearts of the French to despair; the
people lay inert and passive, hating the English, but caring little for
the despicable Charles and his Armagnac court at Bourges. It was left
for a simple peasant girl to turn this apathy into energy, and to send
forth the whole people of France on a wild crusade against the invader.
Jeanne d'Arc was the daughter of a villager of Domrémy, on the borders
of Champagne. She was from her youth a girl of a mystic, visionary
piety, who believed herself to be visited by dreams and visions from
on high, which guided her in all the actions of her life. At the age
of eighteen her "voices," as she called them, began to give her the
strange command to go forth and deliver France from the English, whose
arrogance and cruelty had moved the wrath of Heaven. Jeanne doubted
the meaning of these hard sayings, but in repeated visions she thought
that she saw St. Michael and St. Catherine appear to her, and bid her
go to the Dauphin Charles and cause him to place her at the head of
his armies. She resolved to obey their behests, and betook herself
to Chinon, where she presented herself before the prince. Charles at
first treated her slightingly, and his courtiers and captains laughed
her to scorn. But she vehemently insisted on the importance of her
mission, and at last made some impression on the Dauphin's weak and
wavering mind. Apparently she revealed to him a secret known to himself
alone, by some sort of clairvoyance. Charles resolved to give her
mission a trial, and his captains agreed that perchance the company of
an inspired prophetess might put heart into their dispirited troops.
Jeanne's "voices" bade her clothe herself in knightly armour, display
a white banner before her, and ride at the head of the Dauphin's men
to the relief of Orleans. They promised her complete success in the
enterprise, and prophesied that she should lead the prince in triumph
to Rheims, and there crown him King of France.
[Sidenote: =Jeanne enters Orleans.--The siege raised.=]
In April, 1429, Jeanne entered Orleans with a convoy of food and a
small troop of men-at-arms. The townsmen needed her encouragement,
but their English foes outside were also in evil case. The task was
too great for the little army of the besiegers, who had already lost
many men, and had seen their leader, Thomas of Salisbury, slain by a
cannon-shot as he was reconnoitering the walls. The Earl of Suffolk,
who succeeded him, still held his ring of fortified posts round the
city, on both sides of the Loire, but was quite unable to prevent
food and reinforcements from entering it. Nevertheless the men of
Orleans sorely needed the aid that Jeanne brought; for the Dauphin
seemed to have abandoned them, and they had begun to despair. The
success of Jeanne's mission was settled from the moment when the
burghers of Orleans hailed her as a deliverer, and placed themselves
at her disposal. If they had doubted and sneered, like the Dauphin's
courtiers at Chinon, she could have done nothing. But the moment that
she was within the walls, she bade the garrison arm and sally forth
to attack the English redoubts that ringed them in. Her first effort
was crowned with success; a sudden assault carried the nearest fort
before succour could reach it from Suffolk's camp. The men of Orleans
cried that Jeanne was indeed a prophetess and a deliverer sent by God,
and henceforth followed her with a blind devotion which nothing could
turn back or repel. It was in vain that the mercenary captains of the
Dauphin's host endeavoured to moderate the reckless vigour of Jeanne's
movements. After her first success she bade the garrison go on and
conquer, and on four continuous days of fighting led them against the
entrenchments of the English. One after another they fell, for the
French were now fighting with a force and fury which nothing could
resist. "Before that day," says the chronicler, "two hundred English
would drive five hundred French before them. But now two hundred French
would beat and chase four hundred English." The invaders came to dread
the approach of Jeanne's white standard with a superstitious fear;
they declared that she was a witch, and that the powers of hell fought
behind her. At last Suffolk was fain to burn his camp, and to withdraw
northwards with the remnant of his host.
But the disasters of the English were not yet ended. Jeanne had no
intention of allowing them to remain unmolested; the troops who had
already fought under her were ready to follow her anywhere, and the
peasants and burghers all over France were beginning to take up arms,
"now that the Lord had shown himself on the side of the Dauphin." With
a host largely increased by fresh levies, Jeanne went to seek the
English, and caught them up at Patay. There she charged them suddenly,
"before the archers had even time to fix their stakes," and destroyed
almost the whole force, taking captive Lord Talbot, its commander.
[Sidenote: =The Dauphin crowned at Rheims.=]
Jeanne now bade the Dauphin come forth from his seclusion and follow
her to Rheims, the old crowning-place of the French kings. He obeyed,
and brought a great host with him. At the approach of "the Maid
of Orleans," as Jeanne was now styled, fortress after fortress in
Champagne yielded. The regent Bedford was too weak in men to quit
Paris, and so Jeanne was able to fulfil her promise by leading Charles
to Rheims and there witnessing his coronation (July 17, 1429).
She then declared that her mission was ended, and asked to be allowed
to return home to her father's house. But Charles would not suffer it,
because of the enormous advantage that her presence gave to the French
arms. She then bade him strike at Paris, the heart of the English
possessions in France. For the first time in her career she failed;
the Burgundian citizens manned their walls too well, and served their
faction rather than their country. Jeanne was wounded in a fruitless
assault on the city, and had to withdraw. But her campaign was not
fruitless; Soissons, Laon, Beauvais, Senlis, Compiègne, Troyes, and
well-nigh the whole of Isle-de-France and Champagne, were recovered
from the English. The land which Bedford ruled as regent was now
reduced to a triangular patch, with the sea as its base and Paris as
its apex, and included little more than Normandy, Picardy, and Maine.
[Sidenote: =Successes and capture of Jeanne.=]
In spite of her failure at Paris, the prestige of the Maid of Orleans
was still unbroken; she went on winning place after place for King
Charles, though he supported her very grudgingly, and left her to
depend on the enthusiasm of the people rather than the royal arm. But
her career came suddenly to an end; while endeavouring to relieve
Compiègne, then besieged by a Burgundian army, she was unhorsed in a
skirmish, and fell into the hands of the enemy. Philip of Burgundy
would not slay the maid himself, but he meanly sold her for ten
thousand crowns to the English, though he knew that Bedford regarded
her as a witch, and was resolved to punish her as such.
[Sidenote: =Jeanne burnt.=]
The cruel tragedy which followed will always leave a deep stain on the
character of the regent, who in all other matters showed himself a just
and righteous man. Jeanne was kept for many months in prison, subjected
to cruel and ribald treatment, and examined again and again by bigoted
ecclesiastics who were determined to prove her a witch. She constantly
withstood them with a firm piety which moved their wrath, maintaining
that her visions and voices were from God, and that all her acts had
been done with His aid. After much quibbling, cross-examination, and
persecution, a tribunal of French clergy, headed by the Bishop of
Beauvais, pronounced her a sorceress and heretic, and handed her over
to the secular arm for execution; the English, therefore, burnt her
alive in the market-place of Rouen (May, 1431). Her callous master,
Charles VII., made no attempt to save her, and seems to have viewed her
fate with complete indifference.
[Sidenote: =Weakness of the English.=]
Though Jeanne had met a martyr's death, her cause continued to prosper.
The spell of the invincibility of the English had been broken, and with
their inferior numbers they could no longer resist the French assaults,
in which nobles, burghers, and peasants now all united with a single
heart. It was in vain that Bedford brought over the little ten-year-old
Henry VI. from England, and crowned him at Paris (1431). The ceremony
was attended by hardly a single Frenchman; even the Burgundian faction
in the capital were beginning to doubt and draw apart from their old
allies.
[Sidenote: =Dissensions in the Regency.=]
Meanwhile in England the continued ill-success of the war was leading
to the growth of a peace party, at whose head was Henry Beaufort, the
Bishop of Winchester, who had lately become a cardinal. That Beaufort
supported any scheme was a sufficient reason for Gloucester to oppose
it, and Humphrey made himself the mouthpiece of those who pleaded for
perpetual war. The cardinal and the duke quarrelled in and out of
Parliament, their followers were always brawling, and the action of the
council of regency grew weak and divided.
[Sidenote: =Peace proposals.--Burgundy joins the French.=]
At last Beaufort prevailed on the council to submit proposals for
peace to the French court. At Arras the ambassadors of Henry VI.,
Charles VII., and Philip of Burgundy met, and strove to come to terms
(1435). But the English still insisted on claiming the pompous style
of King of France for their young master, and on retaining Paris and
all the North for him. The French were only ready to grant Normandy
and Guienne, and insisted on the renunciation of Henry's French title.
It cannot be doubted that these terms were quite reasonable, but they
were rejected, with the most disastrous results. Philip of Burgundy
was now tired of the struggle, and thought that he had sufficiently
revenged his father's murder by fifteen years of war with the murderer.
On the ground that the English had rejected fair conditions of peace,
he broke off his alliance with them, and made terms with Charles of
France. He got Picardy and the counties of Macon and Auxerre as the
price of his change of alliance.
[Sidenote: =Death of Bedford.--Fall of Paris.=]
Just as the Congress of Arras was breaking up, John of Bedford died,
worn out before his time by his fourteen years of toilsome government
in France. The breach with the Duke of Burgundy and the death of
Bedford had the results that might have been expected. With one common
accord the last French partisans of England threw off their allegiance
to Henry VI. Paris itself opened its gates to the troops of Charles
VII., and the English had soon to stand on the defensive in Normandy
and Maine, their last foothold in Northern France (1437).
[Sidenote: =Struggle for Normandy.--Richard, Duke of York.=]
Nothing is more astonishing than the obstinate way in which the English
government clung to the last remnants of the conquests of Henry V. By
desperate and unremitting exertions the war was kept up in Normandy
for no less than twelve years after Paris fell (1437-49). The heroes
of this struggle were the veteran Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, and the
young Richard, Duke of York, who had just begun to come to the front.
This prince was the son of that Richard Earl of Cambridge, who had
paid with his life for his attempt to overturn Henry V. He was Duke of
York as successor to his uncle Edmund, who fell at Agincourt, and Earl
of March in right of his mother, the sister of the childless Edmund
Mortimer, the last male of his house. York was governor in Normandy
during the most important years of the struggle for the retention of
the duchy, and gained much credit for repeatedly driving back the
invasions which the French launched against it. He grew intoxicated
with success, and made himself a prominent supporter of the unwise
war-policy which Humphrey of Gloucester continued to advocate.
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Tours.--Marriage of Henry.=]
Meanwhile Cardinal Beaufort and the party which opposed Duke
Humphrey--its chief members were Beaufort's nephews John and Edmund,
successively Earls of Somerset, and William de la Pole, Earl of
Suffolk--were always watching for an opportunity of concluding a
peace with France. Whenever they took negotiations in hand they were
denounced by Gloucester as the hirelings of Charles VII., but they
persisted in their purpose. In 1444 they thought that they had
achieved it, for the French king, wearied by constant repulses in
Normandy, consented to make a truce for two years, and to treat for
a definite peace. He signed the compact at Tours, and ratified it
by giving the hand of his kinswoman Margaret of Anjou to the young
king Henry VI.; in consideration of the treaty, the English were to
surrender Maine and its fortresses, while retaining Normandy entire.
[Sidenote: =Indignation in England.=]
Gloucester and Richard of York saluted this wise marriage and treaty
with loud cries of wrath. They said that the Earl of Suffolk, who
negotiated it, must have been sold to France, and spoke of the
surrender of the fortresses of Maine as treason to the English crown.
The greater part of the nation believed them to be right, for Humphrey
and Richard were both popular with the masses, and it soon became a
matter of faith that the Beauforts and Suffolk had betrayed their young
master.
[Sidenote: =Feebleness of Henry.=]
A strong king might have crushed this unwise opposition to peace. But
Henry VI., who had now reached his majority, was anything but a strong
king. He was frail and feeble both in body and mind, a simple soul much
given to exercises of piety and to quiet study. He always sought some
stronger arm on which to lean, and when he had chosen his friends,
wisely or unwisely, he clung to them with the obstinacy that so often
accompanies weakness. Worst of all, he had inherited a taint of madness
from his grandfather, the insane Charles VI. of France, and from time
to time his brain was clouded by fits of apathetic melancholy. Henry
had learnt to trust his great-uncle Cardinal Beaufort and his minister
Suffolk; he would never listen to any accusation against them. His
views were shared by the fiery young queen, who soon began to rule him
by dint of her stronger will.
[Sidenote: =Death of the Duke of Gloucester and Cardinal Beaufort.=]
The truce of Tours lasted for some three years. During this space the
factions in England grew fiercer than ever, and in 1447 came to a head.
At a Parliament at Bury St. Edmunds, Gloucester was suddenly arrested
by order of Suffolk and the queen, and charged with treason. He died
within a few days, probably from an apoplectic seizure, and not from
any foul play. But it was natural that the rumour should get abroad
that Suffolk had secretly murdered him.
Gloucester was only outlived for a few weeks by his lifelong rival,
the old Cardinal Beaufort. Their deaths cleared the way for the rise
of new men: the Cardinal's place at the head of the peace party was
taken by Suffolk and Edmund Beaufort, Duke of Somerset, men of far
lower stamp than the old churchman, who, though proud and worldly,
had always done his best to serve England. Suffolk and Somerset were
busy, self-important, self-seeking men, and coveted power and office
for their own private ends. The Duke of York, who succeeded to Duke
Humphrey's position, was a far more capable man, but he was committed
to the hopelessly unpractical programme of perpetual war with France.
His position, too, was rendered difficult by the fact that Duke
Humphrey's death had made him next heir to the throne after the feeble
young king, for there was now no other male of the house of Lancaster
surviving. The queen, Suffolk, and Somerset began to look on him with
suspicion, and he had to walk warily lest charges of treason should be
brought against him, as they had been against his cousin of Gloucester.
Meanwhile he was fain to accept the position of Lord Deputy of Ireland,
which kept him out of harm's way.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.=]
In 1449 the truce with France which had accompanied the king's marriage
was broken, by the gross fault of his minister Suffolk. Some of the
Norman garrisons were left so long unpaid that they broke into mutiny,
crossed the border, and sacked the rich Breton town of Fougéres.
Failing to get satisfaction from Suffolk for this outrage, Charles VII.
declared war. Normandy was now in the charge of Somerset, a man of very
different calibre from Richard of York, who had held it against such
odds in the days before the truce of Tours. The French, on invading
the duchy, swept the English before them with an ease that astonished
even themselves. The peasants and townsfolk rose against their masters
on every side, and gave the invaders their best help. Town after town
fell; Rouen, the capital of the duchy, was betrayed by traitors within
the gates; and the unhappy Somerset had to fall back on Caen. That
town, with Cherbourg and Harfleur, was soon all that remained to the
English on Norman soil.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Formigny.=]
This terrible news stirred up great wrath and indignation in England
against Suffolk and Somerset. An army was hastily got ready at
Portsmouth, and sent over to Cherbourg, with orders to join Somerset
at Caen. But the French threw themselves between, and forced the army
of succour to give them battle at Formigny. At this disastrous fight
well-nigh the whole English force was destroyed, overwhelmed by an
attack from the rear at a moment when it was already engaged with a
superior French army in front. Only its general, Sir Thomas Kyriel,
and 400 men were granted quarter, while no less than 3000 were slain
(April, 1450).
[Sidenote: =Loss of Normandy.=]
This disaster settled the fate of Normandy. Somerset was compelled to
surrender Caen, and returned, covered with ignominy, to England. The
other garrisons yielded one after another, and nothing remained of all
the mighty conquests of Henry V. in Northern France.
[Sidenote: =The Commons attack the Earl of Suffolk.--His death.=]
Even before Formigny had been fought, or Caen had fallen, grave
troubles had broken out in England. Suffolk had always been unpopular
ever since he gave up Maine and signed the truce of Tours. The news
of the loss of Rouen, and the other Norman towns, sufficed to ruin
him. In spite of the king's continued assurance of his confidence in
his minister, the House of Commons began to send up petitions against
Suffolk, accusing him not only of losing Maine and Normandy, but of
having sold himself for bribes to the King of France. Seditious riots
in Kent and London gave point to the Commons' accusation. Cowed by
such signs of danger, the feeble king removed Suffolk from office.
The Commons then formally passed a bill of attainder against him for
treasonable misconduct of the king's affairs during the last five
years. But Henry would not allow his trusted servant to be harmed,
gave him a formal pardon, and bade him go beyond seas till the trouble
should blow over. Suffolk sailed for Calais, but in the Dover Straits
his vessel was beset and captured by some London ships, which had been
lying in wait for him. He was caught and beheaded after a mock trial,
and his body was cast ashore on Dover Sands. The guilty parties in this
extraordinary crime were never traced or convicted.
[Sidenote: =Cade's rebellion.=]
But the death of Suffolk did not imply the removal of Suffolk's
friends from office. The king kept his ministry unchanged, a piece
of obstinacy which provoked a fresh burst of popular indignation. In
June, 1450, occurred the great political insurrection known as "Jack
Cade's Rebellion." John Aylmer or Cade was a soldier of fortune, who
had served under the Duke of York in France and Ireland. He gave out
that he was akin to the house of Mortimer, and that he was acting by
the consent of his cousin, Duke Richard. His programme was the removal
and punishment of the king's ministers, and the restoration of strong
government and even-handed justice. His rising, in short, was political
in its objects, and did not aim at redressing social evils only, like
that of Wat Tyler. Possibly, Richard of York may have had some hand in
the business, but we have no actual proof that he had egged Cade on.
All Kent and Sussex rose to join Cade, who advanced to Blackheath, and
boldly sent in his demands to the king. Many of the Londoners favoured
him, and the gates of the city opened at his approach. For a moment
he was in possession of the capital. Smiting London Stone with his
drawn sword, he cried, "Now is Mortimer Lord of London." He exercised
his lordship by seizing and beheading Lord Say, the treasurer, and
Crowmere, Sheriff of Kent, two friends of Suffolk. He would have done
the same with others of the king's servants if he could have caught
them. But this violence and the plundering of houses and shops by his
disorderly followers provoked the citizens, who closed the gates and
came to blows with the rebels. The king brought up armed retainers
to help the Londoners, and after a space Cade's men dispersed on the
promise of a royal pardon. Their leader, however, refused to take
advantage of the amnesty, fled to the woods, and was tracked down and
slain a few weeks later. His rising had failed mainly because he was a
mere adventurer, and could not keep his followers in order.
[Sidenote: =The Dukes of York and Somerset.=]
But hardly had Cade fallen, when the Duke of York, whose name he had
been using so freely, suddenly came over in person from Ireland to put
himself at the head of the opposition. His first demand was a change
of ministry, and especially the dismissal of Somerset, who had now
returned from Normandy, and had been placed at the head of the king's
council, as if he had come back covered with glory instead of with
dishonour. But Henry and his queen were set on keeping their cousin
of Beaufort in power, and York had for the time to hold back, lest he
should be accused of open treason.
[Sidenote: =Loss of Guienne.--The Duke of York takes up arms.=]
His opportunity of speaking with effect was not long in coming. In
1451 the French attached Guienne, the last province over-sea where the
English banner was still displayed. The loyal Gascons made a stout
defence, but the king and Somerset sent them no aid, and Bordeaux was
finally compelled to surrender. The loss of Guienne added the last
straw to the burden of Somerset's misdeeds. York, aided by several
other peers, took up arms to compel the king to send away his shiftless
minister. Henry called out an army, and faced York in Kent; but both
were unwilling to strike the first blow, and on receiving a promise
that Somerset should be dismissed, and tried before his peers, the duke
sent his men home.
[Sidenote: =Last expedition against France.=]
The king, however, with a want of faith that he rarely displayed,
refused to put Somerset on trial, and retained him as his minister.
He endeavoured to distract the attention of the nation from his
favourite's misdoings, by proposing that a vigorous attempt should
be made to recover Guienne. The Gascons hated the French conqueror,
and had sent secret messages to London offering to rise if assured of
English aid. No one could refuse their appeal, and with the consent
of all parties a new army was enrolled for the recovery of Bordeaux.
It was given to the charge of Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, the last
survivor of the old captains of Henry V. The gallant veteran landed
near Bordeaux with 5000 men, retook the city by the aid of its
citizens, and overran the neighbouring districts. But fortune had
definitely turned against England: in the next year he was slain and
his army cut to pieces at the bloody battle of Castillon (July, 1453).
Bordeaux held out for three months more, but was forced to yield to
starvation before the year was out.
Thus was lost the last remnant of the great inheritance of Eleanor
of Aquitaine, after it had remained just 300 years in the hands of
the Plantagenets (1154-1453). England now retained none of her old
possessions beyond sea save Calais and the Channel Islands, a strange
surviving fragment of the duchy of Normandy.
The house of Lancaster and the English nation had sinned in company
when they embarked so eagerly in 1415 on the wanton invasion of France.
They had already paid for their crime by lavish expenditure of life and
treasure on foreign battle-fields: they were now to incur the worse
penalty of a savage and murderous civil war.
CHAPTER XVIII.
THE WARS OF THE ROSES.
1454-1471.
In mediaeval England there was but one way of getting rid of political
grievances which the king refused to redress--the old method of armed
force, the means which we have seen used in the cases of Gaveston, the
Despensers, and the favourites of Richard II. Henry VI. was not idle
and vicious like Edward the Second, nor did he yearn for autocratic
power like the second Richard. He was merely a simple, feeble,
well-intentioned young man, who always required some prop to lean upon,
who chose his servants unwisely, and adhered to them obstinately.
A wise king would have dismissed Somerset after the disasters in
Normandy and Guienne, and taken a more profitable helper in the hard
task of governing England. York was the obvious man to choose; he
was an able general, and the first prince of the blood. But Henry
distrusted York, and Henry's young queen viewed him with keen and
unconcealed dislike. The thought that, if any harm should come to her
husband, Duke Richard must succeed him, filled Margaret of Anjou with
wrath and bitterness.
[Sidenote: =Policy of the Duke of York.=]
There are no signs that York yet entertained any disloyal designs on
the throne, but he undoubtedly knew that, as the heir of the house of
Mortimer, he owned a better hereditary claim to the throne than any
member of the line of Lancaster. He was contented, however, to bide his
time and wait for the succession of the childless king.
Meanwhile he took care to keep his party together, and steadfastly
persevered in his very justifiable desire to evict the incapable
Somerset from office. But it was the misfortune of England that
Somerset was not friendless and unsupported, as Gaveston or the
Despensers had been. He was the chief of a considerable family
combination among the nobility, who were ready to aid him in keeping
his place. There were, too, many others who disapproved of him
personally, but were prepared to support him, some out of sheer loyalty
to King Henry, some because they had old personal or family grudges
against York or York's chief friends and supporters.
[Sidenote: =Power of the nobility.=]
The chief misfortunes of the unhappy time that was now to set in, had
their source in the swollen importance of the great noble houses, and
the bitterness of their feuds with each other. For the last hundred
years the landed wealth of England had been concentrating into fewer
and fewer hands. The House of Lords contained less than a third of the
numbers that it had shown in the days of Edward I. The greater peers
had piled up such vast masses of estates that they were growing to be
each a little king in his own district. The weak government of Henry
VI. had allowed their insolence to come to a head, and for the last
twenty years private wars between them had been growing more and more
frequent. They found the tools of their turbulence in the hordes of
disbanded soldiers sent home from France, who knew no other trade but
fighting, and would sell themselves to be the household bullies of the
highest bidder.
[Sidenote: =The rival factions.--The Yorkists.=]
England was already honeycombed with family feuds, now ready to burst
out into open violence. If we examine the lists of the supporters of
York and of Somerset, we find that to a very large extent the politics
of the English magnates were personal, and not national. With York
were linked a great group of peers who were allied to him by blood.
The chief of them were the younger branch of the Nevilles, represented
by the two Earls of Salisbury and Warwick, a father and son who had
each made his fortune by marrying the heiress of a great earldom. The
Nevilles of the elder line, represented by the head of the house,
the Earl of Westmoreland, had always been at feud with their cousins
of the younger stock, and, since they were strong Lancastrians, the
younger branch would probably have favoured York in any case. But their
adhesion to him was rendered certain by the fact that Duke Richard had
married Salisbury's sister. Another sister of the earl's was wedded to
the next greatest supporter of York, John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk. He
was a nephew of that Mowbray whom Henry IV. had beheaded in 1405, in
company with Archbishop Scrope, and so had his private grudge against
the house of Lancaster. Among the other chiefs of the Yorkist party we
can trace in almost every instance an old feud or a family alliance
which seems to have determined their policy.
[Sidenote: =The Lancastrians.=]
It was the same with the party that stood by the king and Somerset. It
comprised, first of all, the houses which were allied in blood to the
Lancastrian line--the king's cousins the Beauforts, the legitimized
descendants of John of Gaunt, and his half-brothers Edmund and Jasper
Tudor, Earls of Richmond and Pembroke.[27] After them came the Percies
of Northumberland, the Westmoreland Nevilles, and the Staffords of
Buckingham--the three houses which had been prominent in aiding the
usurpation of Henry IV. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland
were certainly confirmed in their loyalty to the king by their bitter
quarrel with their kinsmen, the younger Nevilles, the strongest
supporters of York.
[Sidenote: =Character of the Wars of the Roses.=]
But the "Wars of the Roses,"--as historians have chosen to name them,
from the white rose which was the badge of York, and the red rose which
was assumed long after as the emblem of Lancaster--were much more than
a faction fight between two rival coteries of peers. At the first
they were the attempt of the majority of the English nation to oust
an unpopular minister from power by force of arms. There is no doubt
that the greater part of England sided with York in this endeavour. The
citizens and freeholders of London, Kent, the South, and the Midlands,
where lay all the wealth and political energy of the nation, were
strongly Yorkist. Henry, on the other hand, got his support from a
group of great nobles who controlled the wild West and North, and the
still wilder Wales.
Unfortunately for the nation, the constitutional aspect of the struggle
was gradually obscured by the increasing bitterness of family
blood-feuds. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," was the
cry of the Lancastrian noble to the enemy who asked for quarter,[28]
and it expresses well enough the whole aspect of the later years of
the struggle. The war commenced with an attempt to set right by force
the government of the realm, but it ended as a mere series of bloody
reprisals for slain kinsfolk. It left England in a far worse state,
from the political and constitutional point of view, than it had
known since the days of John. It began with the comparatively small
affliction of a weak, well-intentioned king, who persisted in retaining
an unpopular minister in power; it ended by leaving the realm in the
hands of an arbitrary self-willed king, who ruled autocratically for
himself, with no desire or intention of consulting the nation's wishes
as to how it should be governed.
We might place the beginning of the Wars of the Roses at the moment
of Cade's insurrection, but it was not till five years later that the
struggle broke out in its bitterer form.
[Sidenote: =Madness of the king.--Birth of his son.=]
Strangely enough, the commencement of the strife was preceded by a
time in which it seemed almost certain that the troubles of the realm
would blow over. In 1453 the king went mad; the peers and commons
unanimously called upon York, as the first prince of the blood, to
take up the place of Protector of the realm. He did so to the general
satisfaction of the nation, cast Somerset into the Tower, and replaced
the old ministers by more capable men. But just as all seemed settled,
and York's ultimate succession to the crown appeared inevitable, the
whole aspect of affairs was altered by the queen giving birth to a son,
after nine years of unfruitful wedlock. This completely cut away York's
prospect of succession; but he accepted the situation with loyalty,
and swore allegiance to the infant Prince of Wales. But after eighteen
months, Henry VI. suddenly and unexpectedly recovered his sanity. At
once, at Queen Margaret's behest, he dismissed York and his friends
from office, and drew Somerset out of the Tower to make him minister
once more.
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of war.--First battle of St. Albans.=]
This action drove Duke Richard to sudden violence. He hastily gathered
his retainers from the Welsh Marches, called his kinsmen the two
Neville earls to his aid, and marched on London. Somerset and the
king had only the time to collect a few of their friends, when York
came upon them at St. Albans. He laid before the king his ultimatum,
requiring that Somerset should be given up to be tried, and, when
it was rejected, attacked the town, in which the royal troops had
barricaded themselves. After a short skirmish, the young Earl of
Warwick, Richard Neville, burst his way into the streets and won the
day for his uncle Duke Richard. The king was taken prisoner, while
Somerset, the cause of all the trouble, was slain in the fray with
several other lords of his party (May, 1455).
The first battle of St. Albans put the control of the king's person
into the hands of York, who again assumed the management of the realm.
But he only kept it for less than a year; in 1456 the king asserted
his constitutional power of changing his ministers, and turned Duke
Richard's friends out of office. As his foe Somerset was now dead,
York was fairly contented to leave matters in the king's own control.
But after the blood shed at St. Albans, there could be no true
reconciliation between the friends of the king and the friends of York.
The fierce and active young Queen Margaret put herself at the head of
the party which Suffolk and Somerset had formerly led. She feared for
her infant son's right of succession to the throne, and was determined
to crush York to make his path clear. Throughout the years 1457-8,
while a precarious peace was still preserved, Margaret was journeying
up and down the land, enlisting partisans in her cause, and giving
them her son's badge of the white swan to wear, in token of promised
fidelity.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.--Rout of Ludford.=]
The inevitable renewal of the war came in 1459. Its immediate cause was
an attempt by some of the Queen's retainers to slay the young Earl of
Warwick, York's ablest and most energetic supporter. Then Salisbury,
Warwick's father, raised his Yorkshire tenants in arms; the queen
sent against them a force under Lord Audley, whom the elder Neville
defeated and slew at Bloreheath. After this skirmish, all England flew
to arms to aid one party or the other. York, Salisbury, and Warwick met
at Ludlow, on the Welsh border, while the king gathered a great army
at Worcester, taking the field himself, with a vigour which he never
before or afterwards displayed. It seems that York's adherents were
moved by the vehement appeals which King Henry made to their loyalty,
and cowed by the superior forces that he mustered. At the Rout of
Ludford they broke up without fighting, leaving their leaders to escape
as best they might. York fled to Ireland, Salisbury and Warwick to
Calais, of which the younger Neville was governor.
[Sidenote: =Harsh measures of the queen.=]
But surprising and sudden vicissitudes of fortune were the order of the
day all through the Wars of the Roses. The queen and her friends ruled
harshly and unwisely after they had driven York out of the land. They
assembled a Parliament at Coventry, which dealt out hard measures of
attainder and confiscation against all who had favoured Duke Richard.
They sacked the open town of Newbury because it was supposed to favour
York, and hung seven citizens of London of the duke's party. These
cruel actions turned the heart of the nation from the king and the
ruthless Queen Margaret.
Hearing of this state of affairs, Warwick and Salisbury suddenly made a
descent from Calais, landed at Sandwich, and pushed boldly inland. The
whole of Kent rose to join them, and they were able to march on London.
The Yorkist partisans within the city were so strong that they threw
open the gates, and the Nevilles seized the capital. The Londoners
armed in their favour, and the Yorkist lords of the South flocked in
to aid them; soon they were strong enough to strike at their enemies,
whose forces were not yet concentrated. The queen had gathered at
Northampton the loyalists of the Midland counties, but her friends of
the North and West were not yet arrived.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Northampton.=]
Warwick, on July 10, 1460, stormed the entrenched camp of the
Lancastrians in front of Northampton, and took the king prisoner. The
queen escaped to Wales, but the greater part of the chiefs of her army
were left dead on the field, for Warwick had bidden his men to spare
the common folk, and slay none save knights and nobles. There fell the
Duke of Buckingham, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and many other leading men
of the king's party.
The Duke of York had crossed from Ireland too late to take any share
in the fight of Northampton, but in time to reap the fruits of
his nephew's victory. He advanced to London, and there summoned a
Parliament. It then appeared that the vicissitudes of the last year
had so embittered him that he was no longer content to act as regent
for Henry VI. He fell back on his undisputed hereditary claim as the
eldest heir of Richard II., and began to talk of deposing his cousin
and assuming the crown. But his own partisans set their faces against
this plan, for Henry was still personally popular, and all the blame
of his misgovernment was laid on the queen and her friends. The Earl
of Warwick openly told his uncle that he must be content to be regent,
and York had to accept a compromise, by which Henry VI. was to retain
the crown as long as he lived, but to leave it to Duke Richard on his
death. The rights of the little Prince of Wales were ignored, and many
of the Yorkists swore that he was a supposititious child, and no true
son of King Henry.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Wakefield.--Slaughter of Yorkist leaders.=]
But in making this arrangement the duke's party had reckoned without
Queen Margaret, who was still free and busy. She had fled to the North,
and there had gathered to her the Percies, the elder Nevilles, and the
barons of the Border, all staunch Lancastrians. Hearing of this muster,
Duke Richard marched northward, with his second son Edmund, Earl of
Rutland, and his brother-in-law, the Earl of Salisbury. He underrated
the queen's forces, and rashly engaged with them under the walls of
Sandal Castle, close to Wakefield. There, overwhelmed by numbers, he
and his whole army were destroyed. Burning to avenge the slaughter of
Northampton, the Lancastrians refused all quarter. The Earl of Rutland,
a lad of seventeen, fell at the knees of Lord Clifford and asked for
his life. "Thy father slew mine, and now will I slay thee," answered
the rough Borderer, and stabbed him as he knelt. The Earl of Salisbury
was captured and beheaded next day. Queen Margaret set the heads of the
slain lords above the gate of York, Duke Richard's in the midst crowned
in derision with a diadem of paper.
Thus perished Richard of York, a man who had always displayed great
abilities, and down to the last year of his life had shown much
self-control and moderation. His death was a great loss to England,
as the headship of his house and his party now passed to his son, a
selfish and hard-hearted--though very able--young man of eighteen.
[Sidenote: =Second Battle of St. Albans.=]
The event of the battle of Wakefield came as a thunderclap to the
Yorkists, who had hitherto despised the queen and her northern
followers. Edward, Earl of March, Duke Richard's heir, was absent in
the west, where he was striving with the Lancastrians of Wales. Only
Richard of Warwick was in time to reach London before the northern
army approached its walls. He rallied the Yorkists of the South, and
led them to St. Albans, where Queen Margaret attacked him. Again the
Northerners were victorious; they rescued King Henry from his captors,
and scattered Warwick's army to the winds. The rancorous queen made her
little seven-year old son sit in judgment on the prisoners, and bade
him choose the form of death by which they each should die.
[Sidenote: =London saved by Edward of York.=]
If Margaret had pushed on next day, the capital would have fallen into
her hands; but her gentle and kindly spouse feared that the northern
moss-troopers would sack and burn the city, and persuaded her to wait,
in order that London might surrender in due form, and not be taken by
assault. The short delay was fatal to him and his cause. While London
was negotiating the terms on which it should yield, a new Yorkist army
suddenly appeared on the scene.
Not many days before the second battle of St. Albans, the young
Edward of York had routed the Lancastrians of Wales at the battle of
Mortimer's Cross, in Herefordshire. He had then set out to march on
London; on the way he was met by Warwick, who brought the news of his
own defeat, and of the queen's approach to the capital. But, learning
that she had not yet entered its walls, they marched night and day,
and threw themselves into the city just as its gates were opening for
surrender.
[Sidenote: =Retreat of the queen.=]
The arrival of the heir of York and his victorious troops turned the
fortune of the war. Margaret's army had in great part dispersed to
plunder the Midlands, for the Northerners had vowed to treat every man
south of the Trent as an enemy. When Duke Edward advanced they gave way
before him, and retreated towards York, wasting the country behind them
on all sides.
[Sidenote: =Edward proclaims himself king.=]
The slaughter of Wakefield and St. Albans, and more especially the
ruthless execution of prisoners which had followed each battle, had
driven the Yorkists to a pitch of anger which they had not felt
before. There was no longer any talk of making terms with Henry VI.,
and leaving him the crown. Warwick and the other nobles of his party
besought the young duke to claim the crown, as the true heir of Richard
II., and to stigmatize the three Lancastrian kings as usurpers. Edward
readily consented, and proclaimed himself king at Westminster on
his hereditary title, and without any form of election or assent of
Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Towton.=]
But the new king had to fight for his crown before he could wear it. He
and Warwick pursued the queen's army over the Trent, and caught it up
at Towton, near Tadcaster, in Yorkshire. Here was fought the greatest
and fiercest of the battles of the Wars of the Roses. Both parties
were present in full force; the South and Midlands had rallied round
Edward IV. in their wrath at the plundering of the Northumbrians. The
Lancastrians of Wales and the Midlands had joined the queen during her
retreat. The chroniclers assert that the two armies together mustered
nearly a hundred thousand men--an impossible figure, but one which
vouches for the fact that Towton saw the largest hosts set against each
other that ever met on an English battle-field.
[Sidenote: =Slaughter of Lancastrian leaders.=]
This desperate and bloody fight was waged on a bleak hillside during
a blinding snow-storm, which half hid the combatants from each other.
It lasted for a whole March day from dawn to dusk, and ended in the
complete rout of the queen's army. Thousands of the Lancastrians were
crushed to death or drowned at the passing of the little river Cock,
which lay behind their line of battle. There fell on the field the Earl
of Northumberland, the Lords Clifford, Neville, Dacre, Welles, and
Mauley--all the chiefs of the Lancastrian party in the north. Courtney,
Earl of Devon, and Butler, Earl of Wilts, were captured, and beheaded
some time after the fight. No less than forty-two men of knightly rank
shared their fate, so savage were King Edward and Warwick in avenging
their fathers and brothers who had died at Wakefield.
Henry VI., with his wife and son, and the young Duke of Somerset,
escaped from the field and fled into Scotland, where they were kindly
received by the regents who ruled that land for the little King James
III.
[Sidenote: =Rule of Edward.--Warwick the King-maker.=]
The carnage in and after Towton assured the crown to the house of
York. Edward IV. was able to return to London and summon a Parliament,
which formally acknowledged him as king, recognizing his hereditary
right, and not going through any form of election. At his command they
attainted the whole of the leaders of the Lancastrian party, both
those who had fallen at Towton, and those who yet lived. Thinking his
position sure, the young king then gave himself over to feasting and
idleness, entrusting the completion of the war and the pacification of
England to his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, whom men from this time
forward called "the King-maker," because he had twice settled the fate
of England, by winning the rule of the land for the house of York, at
Northampton in 1460, and at Towton in 1461.
Edward IV. showed a strange mixture of qualities. On the battle-field
he was a great commander, and in times of danger he was alert and
dexterous. But when no perils were at hand, he became a reckless,
heartless voluptuary, given to all manner of evil living and idle
luxury, and letting affairs shift for themselves. For the first four
years of his reign he handed over all cares of state to his cousin of
Warwick, a busy capable man, who loved work and power, and strove not
unsuccessfully to make himself the most popular man in England. Warwick
called himself the friend of the commons, and used the vast wealth
which he enjoyed as heir of all the broad lands of the Beauchamps,
Nevilles, and Montacutes, to make himself partisans all over the
country. He was self-confident and ambitious in the highest degree,
and thoroughly enjoyed his position of chief minister to an idle and
careless master. When he was at last deprived of it, we shall see that
wounded pride could lead him to intrigue and treason.
[Sidenote: =Last efforts of the Lancastrians.=]
The four years 1461-64 were occupied by the final crushing out of the
civil war by the strong hand of the King-maker. The task proved longer
than might have been expected, owing to the desperate efforts which
Queen Margaret made to maintain her son's cause. After Towton nothing
remained to her but some castles in Northumberland and Wales, but she
bought the aid of the Scots by ceding Berwick, and obtained men and
money from Lewis XI., the young King of France. That astute prince
thought that a weak and divided England was the best security for
the safety of France, and doled out occasional help to the queen in
consideration of a promise to surrender Calais.
Warwick captured all the Northumbrian strongholds of the house of
Percy,--Bamborough, Alnwick, and Dunstanborough--in 1462. But the
North was thoroughly disaffected to the new king, and they were twice
retaken by treachery when the queen, with her French and Scottish
friends, appeared before them. In her third campaign she was aided by
a rising of all the Lancastrians who had submitted to King Edward and
been pardoned by him, headed by the Duke of Somerset, the son of him
who fell at St. Albans. But the two battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham
(April-May, 1464) crushed the last desperate effort of the northern
Lancastrians: at the former fell Sir Ralph Percy, the last chief of
the Percy clan who clung to the lost cause; at the second the Duke of
Somerset was taken and executed. Both fights were won by Lord Montagu,
the younger brother and lieutenant of the great Earl of Warwick. By
June, 1464, Warwick himself stamped out the last embers of resistance
by the second capture of Bamborough, the sole surviving Lancastrian
stronghold in England.
The King-maker returned in triumph to London, and could report to his
master that he had completely pacified England, and had also concluded
an advantageous treaty with the Scots. He proposed to finish his work
by making terms with the King of France, the last supporter of the
Lancastrian cause, with whom Margaret and her young son had sought
refuge. For this purpose he advised King Edward to endeavour to ally
himself with some princess among the kinswomen of Lewis XI.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Edward.=]
It was from this point that the breach between Edward and his great
minister began. When pressed to marry, the king announced--to the great
surprise and annoyance of Warwick and the rest of his council--that he
was married already. He had secretly espoused Elizabeth, daughter of
Richard Woodville, Lord Rivers, a staunch Lancastrian, and widow of Sir
John Grey, another Lancastrian, who had fallen at St. Albans. She was
some years older than Edward, and had a family by her first husband.
But her beauty had captivated the susceptible young king, and he had
married her in secret, in order to avoid the opposition of his family
and his councillors.
[Sidenote: =Breach between Warwick and Edward.=]
When compelled to acknowledge this unwise match, Edward made the best
of the matter, brought his wife to court, conferred an earldom on her
father, and showered patronage upon her brothers and sisters. When
Warwick ventured to remonstrate, he showed that he had no mind to be
ruled any more by his too-powerful cousin, and redoubled his favours to
the Woodvilles. He gave his wife's sisters as brides to the greatest
peers of the realm, and made her father his Lord Treasurer. This was
not pique, but policy, for Edward had come to the conclusion that the
Neville clan was too strong, and had resolved to surround himself by
another family connection which should owe everything to his protection
(1465).
For a time an open breach between the king and the King-maker was
delayed, and Edward's throne seemed firmly set. His position was
made surer by the capture of the old King Henry VI., who was caught
in Lancashire, where he had been lurking obscurely for some time.
When Edward had placed him in the Tower of London, he thought that
all his troubles were over. He forgot the unhealthy condition of the
realm, the blood-feuds that reigned in every county, and the general
disorganization of society that had resulted from six years of civil
war and from the wholesale transference of lands and property that had
accompanied it. Above all, he overlooked the vast power that had fallen
into the hands of the great military peers, and especially of his
ambitious cousin Warwick.
In 1467 Edward put his strength to the trial by dismissing all the
King-maker's friends from office, and by ignominiously disavowing an
embassy to France on which he had sent his cousin. From sheer desire
to humiliate the great earl, he concluded an alliance with Charles the
Rash, Duke of Burgundy, the deadly enemy of France, because he knew
that Warwick was opposed to such a tie. He gave his sister Margaret to
be the duke's wife, and made Warwick escort her on her embarkation for
Flanders.
[Sidenote: =Conspiracy of Warwick.=]
The earl replied by setting treasonable intrigues on foot. He leagued
himself with the king's younger brother George, Duke of Clarence,
Shakespeare's "false, fleeting, perjured Clarence," a discontented
young man of a very unamiable character. Warwick agreed to give his
eldest daughter, the heiress of his vast estates, to the duke, and they
swore to compel Edward to drive away the Woodvilles, and rule only
under their guidance.
[Sidenote: =Defeat and capture of Edward.=]
Warwick and Clarence were completely successful in their plot. They
secretly suborned a rebellion in Yorkshire, under Sir John Conyers,
one of Warwick's relatives, who was aided by the Neville retainers, as
well as by the discontented Lancastrians of the North. Conyers called
himself "Robin of Redesdale," and gave himself out as the champion of
the poor and the redresser of grievances--much as Cade had done fifteen
years before. He beat the king's army at Edgecote Field, near Banbury,
and then Warwick and Clarence appeared upon the scene and apprehended
Edward at Olney. They beheaded Earl Rivers, the father of all the
Woodvilles, and Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the king's chief confidant.
After keeping Edward some months in durance, they released him, on his
undertaking to govern according to their desires (1469).
[Sidenote: =Warwick driven from England.=]
But the spirit of Edward always rose in times of trouble; he cast
off his sloth, and plotted against the plotters. Taking advantage of
an ill-planned Lancastrian rising in Lincolnshire, he raised a great
army, and suddenly turned it against his disloyal brother and cousin.
Warwick and Clarence were chased all across England, from Manchester to
Dartmouth, and barely escaped with their lives by taking ship to France.
[Sidenote: =He joins the Lancastrians.=]
Furious at his failure, the King-maker resolved to sacrifice all his
prejudices and predispositions to revenge. He met the exiled Queen
Margaret at Angers, and proposed to her to restore Henry VI. to the
throne, and make an end of the ungrateful Edward. After long doubting,
Margaret resolved to take his offer, though she hated him bitterly,
and never trusted him. To bind the alliance, Edward, Prince of Wales,
the queen's young son, was married to Anne Neville, the earl's second
daughter.
[Sidenote: =Henry again king.=]
Then Warwick and Margaret joined to foment a rising in England. The
numerous clan of the Nevilles were prepared to follow their chief, and
the surviving Lancastrians were still ready to risk themselves in a
new plan of insurrection. In the autumn of 1470, Warwick and Clarence
landed in Devonshire and raised the standard of the imprisoned Henry
VI. Their success showed the deep roots of the earl's popularity, and
the precarious nature of King Edward's power. Simultaneous risings
broke out all over England, and Edward, betrayed by most of his
supporters, had to take ship and fly to Flanders. Henry VI. was drawn
from his dungeon, and was for a few months again King of England.
[Sidenote: =Return of Edward.--Battle of Barnet.=]
But one more change of fortune was yet to come. Edward IV. borrowed
men and money from his brother-in-law, Charles of Burgundy, and boldly
returned to England in the spring of 1471. He landed in Yorkshire,
called his partisans about him, and marched on London. Edward, when
his mettle was up, was a captain of no mean ability. He completely
out-generalled his enemy, and got between him and the capital. The Duke
of Clarence, who had been entrusted with Warwick's western forces,
betrayed his father-in-law, and joined his brother with the men whom
he should have led to the earl's aid. London and the person of Henry
VI. fell into King Edward's hands. Warwick came up too late, and had
to fight the Yorkists at Barnet, a few miles north of the city. There
he was completely defeated and slain, losing the battle mainly by the
accident of a fog, which caused two divisions of his troops to attack
one another. With Warwick fell his brother Lord Montagu, and most of
the personal adherents on whom his power rested.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Tewkesbury.--End of the war.=]
But Edward was not yet secure. On the very day of Barnet, Queen
Margaret landed at Portsmouth to raise the Lancastrians of the South
in Warwick's aid. Hearing of his fall, she turned westward, gathering
up a considerable force of adherents as she fled. But Edward rapidly
pursued her, and by dint of superior pace in marching, caught her up
at Tewkesbury. The queen's army was intercepted, and penned up with
its back to the Severn, then destitute of a bridge. Unable to fly,
the Lancastrians had to turn, and fought a desperate battle outside
Tewkesbury. But King Edward never suffered a defeat in all his days;
his courage and skill carried all before it, and the queen's army
was annihilated. Her young son Edward, Prince of Wales, was slain in
the pursuit, though he cried for quarter to "his brother Clarence."
The last Duke of Somerset, the Earl of Devon, and all the surviving
Lancastrian magnates fell on the field, or were beheaded next day
by the victor. Queen Margaret was taken prisoner and thrown into
confinement.
[Sidenote: =Murder of Henry.=]
On the death of Prince Edward, the old king Henry VI. was left the only
survivor of the house of Lancaster. The ruthless heir of York resolved
that he too should die, and on his return to London had the feeble and
saintly prince murdered, by the hands of his young brother Richard,
Duke of Gloucester (1471).
Thus ended the wars of the Roses, in the complete victory of York, and
the extinction of the line of John of Gaunt, after it had sat for three
generations on the English throne.
FOOTNOTES:
[27] The sons of Catherine of France, the widow of Henry V., by her
second marriage with a Welsh knight named Owen Tudor.
[28] See p. 251.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF YORK.
1471-1485.
[Sidenote: =The Lancastrian line.--Henry, Earl of Richmond.=]
All the males of the house of Lancaster had now fallen by the sword
or the dagger, not only the last representatives of the elder and
legitimate branch which had occupied the throne, but also the whole
family of the Beauforts, the descendants of the natural sons of John
of Gaunt, who had been legitimized by the grant of Richard II. Even in
the female line there remained no one who showed any signs of disputing
the claim of Edward IV. to the throne. The only descendants of John of
Gaunt's first family who survived were the Kings of Spain and Portugal,
who traced themselves back to John's eldest daughter; while the
Beauforts were represented by Lady Margaret Beaufort, daughter of that
Duke of Somerset who had died in 1444, the elder brother of the man who
lost Normandy and fell at St. Albans. The Lady Margaret had married
Edmund Tudor, Earl of Richmond, the half-brother of Henry VI., and by
him had a single child, Henry, now Earl of Richmond by his father's
decease. In Henry the Beaufort line had its last representative, but he
was but a boy of fourteen, and was over-sea in Brittany, whither his
mother had sent him for safety, while she herself had wedded as her
second spouse Lord Stanley, a peer of strong Yorkist proclivities.
[Sidenote: =Secure rule of Edward IV.=]
Neither the distant Spaniards nor the boy Henry of Richmond were
seriously thought of--even by themselves--as claimants to the English
crown, and King Edward might for the rest of his life repose on the
laurels of Tewkesbury and Barnet, and take his ease without troubling
himself about further dynastic troubles.
He reigned for twelve years after his restoration in 1471, and did
little that was noteworthy in that time. His love of ease gradually
sapped all his energy; his life grew more and more extravagant and
irregular, as he sank into all the grosser forms of self-indulgence. He
completely ruined a handsome person and a robust constitution, and by
the age of forty-two had declined into an unwieldy and bloated invalid.
[Sidenote: =Parliament rarely summoned.--Benevolences.=]
Edward's rule was not so bad for England as might have been expected
from his very unamiable character. His second reign was comparatively
free from bloodshed--if we except one dreadful crime committed on the
person of his own brother. Perhaps he deserves little praise on this
score, for both the Lancastrians and the partisans of Warwick had been
practically exterminated by the slaughters of 1471. It is more to his
credit that he bore lightly on the nation in the matter of taxation.
His pockets were full of the plunder of the house of Neville and the
old Lancastrian families, and, though self-indulgent, he was not a
spendthrift. Indeed, he lived within his means, and seldom asked for a
subsidy from Parliament. This moderation, however, does not imply that
he was a constitutional sovereign. He ruled through a small clique of
ministers and personal dependents, mostly members of his wife's family.
He disliked parliamentary control so much that he seldom summoned a
Parliament at all. For one whole period of five years (1478-82), he was
rich enough to be able to refrain from calling one together. When he
did want money, however, he did not shrink from raising it in the most
objectionable manner, by compelling rich men to pay him forced loans,
called "benevolences." It is fair to add that he generally paid his
debts, and only owed £13,000 when he died. On the whole it may be said
that his rule, though selfish and autocratic, was not oppressive. He
gave the land peace in his later years, and any kind of quiet was an
intense relief after the anarchy of the Wars of the Roses.
[Sidenote: =Revival of industry.=]
Commerce and industry began slowly to rally, and the wealth of the
land seems to have suffered less than might have been expected. The
bloodshed and confiscations of the unhappy years between 1455 and 1471
had fallen almost entirely on the nobles and their military retainers,
and the cities and the yeomen had fared comparatively well. England
had never been left desolate like France at the end of the Hundred
Years' War.
[Sidenote: =Treaty of Picquigny.=]
Edward's foreign policy was feeble and uncertain. At first, after
his restoration, he intended to attack France in alliance with his
brother-in-law, Charles the Rash of Burgundy, who had given him shelter
and succour during his day of exile. He raised an army and crossed the
Channel, talking of recovering Normandy, and of asserting his right to
the French crown. But Lewis XI., the wily King of France, offered to
buy him off, proffering him a great sum down and an annual subsidy,
if he would abandon the cause of Duke Charles. Edward was selfish and
ungrateful enough to accept the offer with delight. He met King Lewis
in a formal interview at Picquigny, in Picardy, and bargained to retire
and remain neutral for 75,000 gold crowns paid down, and an annuity
of 50,000 more so long as he lived. He also wrung a second 50,000 out
of Lewis as a ransom for the unfortunate Queen Margaret of Anjou, a
prisoner since the day of Tewkesbury, and stipulated that the Dauphin
was to be married to his eldest daughter, the Princess Elizabeth (1475).
Edward came home with money in his purse, and found that the French
annuity, which was punctually paid him, was most useful in enabling
him to avoid having to call Parliaments. His betrayal of Charles of
Burgundy was deeply resented by that prince, but Edward took no heed,
and the duke was slain not long after, while waging war on the Swiss
and the Duke of Lorraine.
[Sidenote: =Death of the Duke of Clarence.=]
Two years after the treaty of Picquigny occurred a tragedy which
showed that Edward could still on occasion burst out into his old fits
of cruelty. His brother George, Duke of Clarence, had been received
back into his favour after betraying Warwick in 1471, and had been
granted half the King-maker's estates as the portion of his wife,
Isabel Neville. But Clarence presumed on his pardon, and seems to have
thought that all his treachery to his brother in 1468-70 had been
forgotten as well as forgiven. He was always a turbulent, unwise, and
reckless young man, and provoked the king by his insolent sayings and
open disobedience. Edward had twice to interfere with him, once for
illegally seizing, and causing to be executed, a lady whom he accused
of bewitching his wife Isabel, who died in childbirth; a second
time for trying to wed without his brother's leave Mary of Burgundy,
the heiress of Charles the Rash. When Clarence was again detected in
intrigues with a foreign power--this time with Scotland--the king
resolved to make an end of him. Suddenly summoning a Parliament, he
appeared before it, and accused his brother of treason, though he gave
no clear or definite account of Clarence's misdeeds. Awed by Edward's
wrath and vehemence, the two houses passed a bill declaring the duke
convicted of high treason. The king then condemned him, cast him into
the Tower, and there had him secretly slain (1478).
[Sidenote: =Richard, Duke of Gloucester.=]
Edward for the future placed all his confidence in his youngest
brother, Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who had served him faithfully
all his life, had fled with him to Flanders in 1470, and had fought
gallantly at Barnet and Tewkesbury. Gloucester had always been at odds
with Clarence. He had married Anne Neville, the King-maker's younger
daughter, widow of Edward Prince of Wales, who fell at Tewkesbury.
In her right he claimed half the Neville lands, but Clarence had
endeavoured to keep them from him, and had only been compelled to
disgorge them under the king's stringent pressure. After 1478,
Gloucester acted as his brother's chief councillor and representative,
and showed himself a very capable and zealous servant.
[Sidenote: =Scottish war.--Recovery of Berwick.=]
It was Gloucester who was entrusted with the conduct of a campaign
against Scotland, which was undertaken in 1482, and was the last
important event of Edward's reign. This was a war not at all creditable
to Edward, who intrigued with the rebellious brothers of James III.,
and picked a quarrel with the Scots on frivolous grounds. His real
object was the recovery of Berwick, which had been in Scottish hands
since Queen Margaret surrendered it in the year of Towton. Gloucester
took Berwick, which after being lost for twenty years again became
an English town. He also harried the Merse and Lothian, the Scots
retiring before him without a battle. Soon after they made peace,
ceding Berwick, and promising that their king's eldest son should marry
Edward's daughter Cecily.
[Sidenote: =Death of Edward IV.=]
In the year following this treaty the king died, worn out in early
middle age by his evil living and intemperance. He left a large
family--two sons, Edward aged twelve and Richard aged nine, and five
daughters, of whom Elizabeth, the eldest, had reached her eighteenth
year.
The decease of Edward, though he was little regretted for himself,
threw the nation into great fear and perplexity, for it was confronted
with the dangerous problem of a minority, and no one knew who would
succeed in grasping power as regent for the little king Edward V. It
was almost inevitable that there should be a struggle for the post,
for the late king's court had contained elements which were jealous of
each other, and had only been kept from collision by Edward's personal
influence.
[Sidenote: =Claimants for the Regency.=]
There were two persons to whom the regency might have fallen--the
queen-dowager, Elizabeth Woodville, and the late king's brother,
Richard of Gloucester. Elizabeth's ascendency implied that England
would be ruled by her brothers and the sons of her first marriage--the
lords Rivers and Dorset, Sir John Grey, and Sir Edward Woodville,
all uncles or half-brothers to the little Edward V. Their rule would
mean the banishment or suppression of Gloucester, with whom they were
already at secret feud. In the same way, the rise of Gloucester to
power would certainly mean a like fall for the Woodville clan.
[Sidenote: =Seizure of Earl Rivers.=]
At the moment of his accession the young king was in Shropshire, in
charge of his uncle, Earl Rivers, a fact which put the queen's party at
a great advantage. Rivers at once proceeded to bring his little nephew
toward London, for his coronation, guarding him with a considerable
armed force. On their way Edward and his cavalcade were encountered at
Stony Stratford by Richard of Gloucester, who had also brought with him
a considerable body of retainers from his Yorkshire estates.
The two parties met with profuse protestations of mutual friendship and
esteem, but when Rivers' suspicions were lulled to sleep, Gloucester
suddenly seized him, flung him into fetters, and sent him a prisoner
to the north. Rivers' fate was shared by Sir Richard Grey, the little
king's half-brother, and several more of their party.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester takes charge of the young king.=]
Gloucester then took charge of his nephew's person, and brought him up
to London, where he summoned a Parliament to meet. The queen-dowager,
on hearing that her brother Rivers and her son Richard Grey were cast
into prison, knew that her chance of power was gone, and hastily took
sanctuary at Westminster, with her youngest son, the little Duke of
York, and her five daughters.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Gloucester.=]
The nation was not displeased to learn that the regency would fall into
the hands of Duke Richard, who was known as a good soldier, and had
served his brother very faithfully; it much preferred him to the Queen
and her relatives, who had a bad reputation for greed and arrogance.
But it soon became evident that there was something more in the air
than a mere transference of the regency. Gloucester not only filled
all the places about the king with his own friends, but commenced to
pack London with great bodies of armed men raised on his own estates, a
precaution quite unnecessary when all his enemies were crushed. He also
made the council of regency confer gifts of money, land, and offices,
on a most unprecedented scale, upon his two chief confidants, Henry,
Duke of Buckingham, and John, Lord Howard. They were evidently being
bought for some secret purpose.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Lord Hastings.=]
Gloucester and his nephew the king had been in London more than a
month, and the day of the young king's coronation was at hand, when
suddenly Duke Richard showed his real intentions by a sharp and bloody
stroke. On the 13th of June the Privy Council was meeting in the Tower
of London on business of no great importance, and the duke showed
himself smooth and affable as was his wont. After a space he withdrew,
but ere long returned with a changed countenance and an aspect of gloom
and anger. "What shall be done," he suddenly asked, "to them that
compass the destruction of me, being so near of blood to the king,
and Protector of this realm?" He was answered by Lord Hastings, the
late king's best friend, a man of great courage and experience, who
had shared in the victories of Barnet and Tewkesbury, and had held
the highest offices ever since. "They are worthy of death," said the
unsuspicious baron, "whoever they may be." Then Gloucester burst out,
"It is my brother's wife," and baring his left arm--which all men knew
to be somewhat deformed since his earliest years--he cried, "Look
what yonder sorceress and Shore's wife and those who are of their
council have done unto me with their witchcrafts." Hastings started
at the mention of Shore's wife, for Jane Shore was his own mistress,
and an accusation of witchcraft against her touched him nearly. "If
they have so done, my lord," he faltered, "they are worthy of heinous
punishment." "Answeredst thou me with _ifs?_" replied Duke Richard. "I
tell thee they _have_ done it, and that I will prove upon thy body,
thou traitor." Then he smote upon the table, and armed men, whom he
had posted without, rushed into the council chamber. Richard bade them
seize Hastings, Lord Stanley, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of
Ely, all firm and loyal friends of Edward IV.
Hastings was borne out to the court of the Tower and beheaded then and
there; the others were placed in bonds. This sudden blow at the young
king's most faithful adherents dismayed the whole city; but Gloucester
hastened to give out that he had detected Hastings and his friends in a
plot against his life, and, as he had hitherto been always esteemed a
loyal and upright prince, his words were half believed.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester gets possession of the Duke of York.=]
Richard's real object was to free himself from men whom he knew to
be faithful to the young king, and unlikely to join in the dark plot
which he was hatching. He next went with a great armed following to
Westminster, where lay the queen-dowager and her children. Surrounding
the sanctuary with guards, and then threatening to break in if he
was resisted, he sent Cardinal Bourchier, the aged Archbishop of
Canterbury, to persuade Elizabeth to give up her young son, Richard of
York. Half in terror, half persuaded by the smooth prelate, who pledged
his word that no harm should befall the boy, the Queen placed him in
Bourchier's hands. Richard at once sent him to join his brother in the
Tower (June 16).
Having both his brother's sons in his power, and having crushed his
brother's faithful friends, Richard now proceeded to show his real
intent. He was aiming at the crown, and had been preparing to seize
it from the moment that his brother died. This was the meaning of the
gifts that he had been showering around, and of the masses of armed men
that he had gathered.
[Sidenote: =Doctor Shaw's sermon.=]
On the 22nd of June he laid his purpose open. His chaplain, Doctor
Shaw, was set up to preach to the people at St. Paul's Cross a
marvellous sermon, in which he argued that Richard was the rightful
king, though both Edward IV. and Clarence, his two elder brothers, had
left sons behind them. The Londoners were told to their great surprise
that the late king's marriage with Elizabeth Woodville had been
invalid. Not only had they been secretly and unlawfully married in an
unconsecrated place, but Edward had been betrothed long before to Lady
Eleanor Talbot, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury. He had never
been given any clerical dispensation from this bond, and therefore he
was not free to wed, and his sons were bastards. As to Clarence, he had
been attainted, and the blood of his heir was corrupted by his father's
attainder.
[Sidenote: =Gloucester declared king.=]
The Londoners were astonished at this strange argument; they kept
silence and so disappointed Gloucester, who had come to the sermon
in hopes to meet an enthusiastic reception. But two days later, a
stranger scene was enacted at the Guildhall: the Duke of Buckingham,
Gloucester's chief confederate, summoned together the mayor and council
of London, and, repeating all the arguments that Doctor Shaw had
urged, bade them salute Richard as king. A few timid voices shouted
approval, and then Buckingham declared that he recognized the assent
and good-will of the people. Next day there met the Parliament which
should have witnessed the coronation of Edward V. They were summoned
to St. Paul's, where Buckingham presented to them a long document,
setting forth the evil government of Edward IV., denouncing his sons
as bastards, and ending with a petition to Richard of Gloucester to
take upon him as his right the title and estate of king. The Lords
and Commons yielded their silent assent, apparently without a word of
discussion or argument, and Buckingham then led a deputation to Duke
Richard, who, with much feigned reluctance, assented to the petition
and declared himself king. The only excuse for this lamentable weakness
shown by the Houses is that they were quite unprepared for the _coup
d'état_, and were overawed by the thousands of men-at-arms in the
livery of Gloucester and Buckingham, who packed every street.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Rivers and Grey.=]
So Richard was crowned with great pomp if with little rejoicing,
and thought that he had attained the summit of his desires. But his
position was from the first radically unsound. He had seized the throne
so easily because his antecedents had not prepared men for such sudden
and unscrupulous action, so that there had been no time to organize any
opposition to him. But the pious and modest duke had suddenly blossomed
forth into a bloodthirsty tyrant. On the very day of his accession he
had the unfortunate Rivers and Grey beheaded at Pontefract, and six
weeks later he wrought a much darker deed.
[Sidenote: =Murder of the young princes.=]
After starting on a festal progress through the midlands, he sent
back a secret mandate to London, authorizing the murder of his little
nephews, Edward and Richard. They were smothered at dead of night
in their prison in the Tower, and secretly buried by the assassins.
Their graves were never discovered till 1674, when masons repairing
the building came upon the bones of two young boys thrust away under a
staircase. The murder took place between the 7th and 14th of August,
1483, but its manner and details were never certainly known.
[Sidenote: =Buckingham heads a rebellion.=]
The horror which the disappearance of the harmless, unoffending, young
princes caused all over England, was far more dangerous to Richard than
their survival could possibly have been. It turned away from him the
hearts of all save the most callous and ruffianly of his supporters.
Within two months of their death a dangerous rebellion had broken out.
It was headed by Buckingham, the very man who had appeared with such
shameful prominence at the time of Richard's usurpation. No one can
say whether he was shocked by the murder, or whether he was merely
discontented with the vast bribes that the new king had given him, and
craved yet more. But we find him conspiring with the queen's surviving
kindred, the wrecks of the Lancastrian party, and some faithful
adherents of Edward IV., to overturn the usurper. They proposed to call
over the Earl of Richmond, and to marry him to the princess Elizabeth,
the eldest sister of the murdered princes, so blending the claims of
Lancaster and York (October, 1483).
[Sidenote: =Defeat and death of Buckingham.=]
The insurrection broke out in a dozen different districts all over
England, but it was foiled by King Richard's untiring energy and great
military talent. He smote down his enemies before they were able to
unite, and caught Buckingham, who had been separated from the bulk of
his fellow-conspirators by a sudden rising of the Severn. The duke was
executed at Salisbury, with such of his party as were taken, but the
majority escaped over-sea and joined the Earl of Richmond.
This was destined to be the last gleam of success that Richard was to
see. The rest of his short reign (1483-85) was a period of unrelieved
gloom. No protestations of his good-will to England, and no attempts,
however honest, to introduce just and even-handed government, availed
him aught. He summoned a Parliament in 1484, and caused it to pass
several laws of excellent intention, but he was not able to observe
them himself, much less to enforce them on others. After having with
great solemnity abolished the custom of raising benevolences, or forced
loans, such as his brother Edward IV. had loved, Richard was compelled
by the emptiness of his treasury to have recourse to them again, in
less than a twelvemonth after he had disavowed the practice.
[Sidenote: =Death of the king's wife and son.=]
Personal misfortunes came upon the king in a way which seemed to
mark the judgment of Heaven. Less than a year after he had slain his
nephews, his only son Edward, Prince of Wales, died suddenly in the
flower of his boyhood (1484). Eleven months later his wife, Queen
Anne, the daughter of the King-maker, followed his son to the grave.
His enemies accused him of having poisoned her, for all charges were
possible against one who had proved himself so cruel and treacherous.
It is said that Richard thought for a moment, after his wife's death,
of compelling his niece Elizabeth, Edward IV.'s eldest daughter, to
marry him, in order to merge her claim to the crown in his own. But
the mere rumour of the intention so shocked the people that all his
own partisans urged him to disavow it, which he accordingly did. Being
wifeless and childless, he nominated as his heir his nephew, John de la
Pole, Earl of Lincoln, the son of his eldest sister.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the rebellion.=]
Meanwhile the conspiracy which had failed to overthrow Richard in the
autumn of 1483, was again gathering head. The Earl of Richmond had
obtained loans of men and money from France, and was only waiting
for the news that his friends were ready, to make a second attempt
on England. With him were all the enemies of King Richard who had
escaped death--Dorset, the son of Queen Elizabeth, Edward Woodville,
Morton Bishop of Ely, and the few surviving Lancastrian exiles headed
by the Earls of Pembroke and Oxford. They relied, not on their French
soldiery, but on the secret allies who were to join them in England,
and especially on Lord Stanley, the Earl of Richmond's father-in-law.
That noble, though he had been arrested in company with the unfortunate
Hastings, had been pardoned by King Richard, and entrusted by him with
much power in Lancashire and Cheshire. Richard's court was honeycombed
with treason: his own Attorney-General, Morgan of Kidwelly, kept
Richmond informed of his plans and actions. Of all those about the king
only a very few were really faithful to him.
Richard knew that treason was abroad, though he could not identify the
traitors. He struck cruelly and harshly at all that he could reach; his
ferocity may be gauged from the fact that he actually hung a Wiltshire
gentleman named Collingbourn for no more than a copy of verses. The
unfortunate rhymester had scoffed at Richard's three favourites, Lord
Lovel, Sir William Catesby, and Sir Richard Ratcliffe, in the lines--
"The Cat, the Rat, and Lovel our Dog
Rule all England under a Hog."
The Hog was Richard himself, whose favourite badge was a white boar.
[Sidenote: =Richmond lands in Wales.=]
In August, 1485, Henry of Richmond landed at Milford Haven, and was
joined by many of the Welsh, among whom he was popular because of his
own Welsh blood, that came from his father, Edmund Tudor. Advancing
into England, he met with aid from the Talbots of Shrewsbury and many
other midland gentry. Lord Stanley gathered a considerable army in
Lancashire and Cheshire, but did not openly join the earl, because his
son, Lord Strange, was in the king's hands, and would have been slain
if Richard had been certain of his father's treachery.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Bosworth Field.=]
Advancing still further into the midlands, Henry met the king at
Bosworth Field, near Leicester. Richard's army was twice the size of
that of the earl. He must have conquered if his men had fought honestly
for him. But when the battle was joined, the Earl of Northumberland,
who led one wing of Richard's host, drew aside and would not fight, and
presently Lord Stanley appeared with his contingent and charged the
king in flank. The Yorkists began to disperse and fly, for they fought
with little heart for their cruel master. But Richard himself would not
turn back, though his attendants brought him his horse and besought him
to save himself. He plunged into the thick of the fray, cut his way to
Richmond's banner, and was there slain, fighting desperately to the
last. With him fell his most faithful adherent, John Lord Howard, whom
he had made Duke of Norfolk, and a few more of his chief captains. His
favourite, Sir William Catesby, was taken prisoner and executed when
the battle was over.
Richard's crown, beaten off his helmet by hard blows, was found in
a hawthorn bush, and placed on Richmond's head by Lord Stanley, who
then saluted him as king by the name of Henry VII. The dead monarch's
body was taken to Leicester, and exposed naked before the people, but
ultimately given honourable burial in the church of the Grey Friars.
[Sidenote: =Character of Richard III.=]
Thus ended the prince who had wrought so much evil, and won his
way to power by such unscrupulous cunning and cruelty. He was only
thirty-three when he was cut off. There have been worse kings in
history, and had his title been good and his hands clean of the blood
of his kinsmen, he might have filled the English throne not unworthily.
But the consequences of his first fatal crime drove him deeper and
deeper into wickedness, and he left a worse name behind him than any
of his predecessors. The historians of the next generation drew his
portrait even darker than he deserved, making him a hideous hunchback
with a malignant distorted countenance. As a matter of fact, his
deformity was only that his left arm was somewhat withered, and his
left shoulder consequently lower than his right. His portraits show a
face not unlike that of his brother Edward, but thinner and set in a
nervous and joyless look of suspicion.
CHAPTER XX.
HENRY VII.
1485-1509.
Henry Tudor had the good fortune to appear upon the scene as the
avenger of all wrongs, those of the injured heirs of York no less than
those of the long-exiled partisans of Lancaster. His victory had been
won by the aid of Yorkists like Stanley, Dorset, and Edward Woodville,
no less than by that of Oxford, Pembroke, the Courtenays, the Talbots,
and other old Lancastrian names. It had been settled, long before he
started, that he should blend the claims of the two rival houses by
marrying the Princess Elizabeth, the eldest child of Edward IV. Thus he
was able to pose as the reconciler of parties, and the bringer-in of
peace and quiet. He proved his moderation by abstaining from bloodshed;
he spared all the prisoners of Bosworth save three alone, and though
he caused a bill of attainder to be passed against King Richard's
chief partisans, no more executions followed. Henry's wise view of the
situation was set forth by a law which he caused one of his Parliaments
to approve at a subsequent date, to the effect that no man should ever
be accused of treason for supporting the king _de facto_ against the
king _de jure_.
[Sidenote: =Title of Henry VII. to the throne.=]
It required all Henry's moderation and ability, however, to make
firm his seat upon the throne. His title to it was very weak--only
that of conquest in fact--for the legitimacy of the Beaufort line as
representatives of John of Gaunt was more than doubtful. Henry refused
to rest his claim to the crown merely on his marriage to Elizabeth of
York; he would be no mere king-consort, and he deliberately put off the
wedding until he had been crowned at Westminster, and had been saluted
by Parliament as king in his own right. Having thus made his position
clear, he married Elizabeth, six months after the day of Bosworth Field.
[Sidenote: =Character of Henry.=]
Henry Tudor was precisely the sovereign that England required to put an
end to the general unrest and unruliness that were the legacy of the
Wars of the Roses. He had not an amiable character; he was reserved
and suspicious, a master of plot and intrigue, selfish in act and
thought, prone to hoard money in and out of season, and ready to strike
unmercifully when a stroke seemed necessary. But his brain ruled his
passions, and from policy, if not from natural inclination, he was
clement and slow to anger. He had some turn for art and letters, and
was religious in his own self-centred way. His ministers were wisely
chosen; the two chief of them, Bishops Morton and Foxe, were prudent
and blameless men. If Empson and Dudley, his two financial advisers,
were much hated by the people for their extortions, it was because
their master bade them fill his coffers, and was content that they
should bear the unpopularity which must otherwise have fallen on
himself. He deliberately chose to have scapegoats, lest he should have
to take the responsibility for the harsher side of his policy.
[Sidenote: =Lovel's rising.=]
[Sidenote: =Lambert Simnel.=]
The earlier years of Henry's reign were much disturbed by petty
rebellions, the last ground-swell of discontent and lawlessness which
lingered on after the great tempest of the Wars of the Roses had
abated. Richard III. had left behind him a few devoted partisans who
had resolved never to submit; the chief were John de la Pole, Earl of
Lincoln, who had been declared heir to the throne by the late king,
and Lord Lovel, the sole survivor of the three favourites who had
"ruled all England under the Hog." They were bold reckless men, ready
to risk all for ambition and revenge. Before Henry had been a year on
the throne, Lovel secretly collected a band of desperate friends, and
tried to kidnap him while he was visiting York. Foiled in this scheme,
Lovel fled to Flanders, where he was sheltered by Margaret, Duchess
of Burgundy, the widowed sister of King Edward IV. With her and with
Lincoln he concerted a second plan of rebellion. They resolved to try
to rouse the wrecks of the Yorkist party in the name of Edward, Earl
of Warwick, the son of Clarence, who had been put to death in 1478,
and the only male heir of the house of York. This prince was in King
Henry's hands, safely kept in custody in the Tower of London. Till they
could liberate him they resolved to make an impostor assume his name
and title. So they instructed a clever boy named Lambert Simnel, the
son of an organ-maker at Oxford, to act the part of the young Clarence,
reasoning that Henry would not dare to put the real prince to death,
but would keep him alive in order to make the imposture clear, and so
they could free the real Clarence if they succeeded, and dismiss the
false one when he was no longer needed.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Stoke.=]
Ireland had always been friendly to the house of York, and there was no
one there who knew the young prince or could detect his counterfeit.
So Lambert Simnel was first sent thither, to try the temper of the
Irish, giving out that he had just escaped from the Tower. The Earl of
Kildare and other prominent Anglo-Irish barons were wholly cozened by
the young impostor, and saluted him as king. Four thousand men under
Lord Thomas Fitzgerald were raised to aid him; Lincoln and Lovel joined
him with 2000 veteran German mercenaries under a captain named Martin
Schwartz. They crossed to England and landed in Lancashire, where a few
desperate Yorkists joined them. Then advancing inland, they met King
Henry at Stoke, near Newark. But their ill-compacted army was routed,
the Germans and Irish were cut to pieces, and Lincoln, Schwartz, and
Fitzgerald all slain. Lovel escaped to his manor of Minster Lovel,
in Oxfordshire, and lurked in a secret chamber, where he was starved
to death in hiding. Lambert Simnel fell into the hands of the king,
who treated him with contempt instead of slaying him. He lived many
years after as a cook in the royal kitchen. The rebels in Ireland were
pardoned on submission, for Henry was loth to stir up further troubles
in that distressful country (1488).
[Sidenote: =French war.--Brittany united to France.=]
Thinking perhaps to turn the attention of the nation from domestic
troubles by the old expedient of a war with France, the king in the
next year joined in a struggle which was raging in Brittany. Charles
VIII., the son of Lewis XI., was trying to annex the duchy, whose
heiress was a young girl, the Duchess Anne. Henry agreed to aid this
ancient ally of England, and sent over troops both to Brittany and to
Calais. The war went not unprosperously at first, and the garrison of
Calais won a considerable victory at Dixmuide, in Flanders. But after
a time the Bretons grew weary of the struggle, and the Duchess Anne
surrendered herself to King Charles, and became his wife (1491). Thus
the last of the great French feudal states was united to the crown.
For the future the English could get no support from them, and as a
consequence all English invasions of France in the ensuing age met with
little good fortune. There was never again any chance of dismembering
a divided France, such as that with which Edward III. and Henry V.
had to deal. The king recognized his powerlessness, and gladly made
peace with Charles VIII. on receiving a subsidy of 745,000 crowns, a
better bargain than Edward IV. had made under similar circumstances at
Picquigny (1492).
[Sidenote: =Perkin Warbeck.=]
Henry was wise to make an early and profitable peace, for new troubles
were brewing for him at home. News came from Ireland that a young man
was secretly harboured at Cork, who gave himself out to be Richard
of York, the younger of the two princes smothered in the Tower nine
years before. When Henry ordered his arrest, he fled to Flanders and
took refuge with Duchess Margaret, who at once recognized him as her
true nephew, and gave him a royal reception and a safe refuge for two
years. There is no doubt, however, that he was really Perkin Warbeck,
the son of a citizen of Tournay, who had plunged very young into a life
of adventure, and hoped to gain something by fishing in the troubled
waters of English politics. By Margaret's help Perkin engaged in secret
intrigues with the few Yorkists who yet survived in England. But King
Henry traced out all his plots, and beheaded Lord Fitzwalter and Sir
William Stanley, who had listened to his tempting. Stanley's case was
a bad one: he had betrayed Richard III. at Bosworth--like his brother
Lord Stanley--and had been lavishly rewarded by Henry VII., yet would
not keep faithful to his new master because he was refused an earldom
(1495).
Though his friends had been detected, the pretender persisted in
venturing an attack on England. With 2000 men raised with money lent
him by Duchess Margaret, he tried to land in Kent; but the Kentishmen
rose and drove him off. He then sailed to Ireland, where--like his
predecessor Lambert Simnel--he met with some support. But hearing that
James IV. of Scotland was on the brink of war with the English, he soon
passed over to the Scottish court, where he was received with royal
state. James IV. married him to his cousin, Lady Catherine Gordon, and
placed him at the head of an expedition with which he was to try and
raise rebellion in Yorkshire, where the supporters of the house of
York were still supposed to be numerous. But when Perkin crossed the
Border, not an Englishman would join him, and he was obliged to return
ignominiously to Scotland. From thence the restless adventurer soon set
out on a new quest.
[Sidenote: =Cornish rising.=]
The heavy taxation which King Henry raised from his subjects to pay for
an army to resist the Scots had provoked much murmuring in some parts
of England. Most of all had it been resented in the remote shire of
Cornwall, where the local discontent took the form of armed gatherings
to resist the taxes. Flammock, a lawyer, and Michael Joseph, a farrier
of Bodmin, two turbulent demagogues, put themselves at the head of the
rioters, and persuaded them to march on London, there to expostulate
with the king. Lord Audley, an unwise south-country baron, joined their
company, and led them as far as Blackheath, close to the gates of
London. From thence they sent the king messages, bidding him to dismiss
his extortionate ministers, and remove his taxes. Henry was taken by
surprise, as he had just sent off his army against the Scots, but he
promptly recalled the expedition and gave battle to the Cornishmen.
The fight of Blackheath ended in their complete discomfiture: Audley,
Flammock, and Joseph were taken and executed, but the king let the rest
go away unharmed, as mere deluded tools of their leaders (June, 1497).
[Sidenote: =Failure of Warbeck.=]
Warbeck had heard of the rising of the Cornishmen, and thought that
he discerned in it his best opportunity of making head against King
Henry. He landed at Whitesand Bay, but found that he was too late, as
the insurgents had already been defeated and scattered. But he rallied
around him the wrecks of their bands, and made an attack on Exeter.
Being foiled by the stout resistance of the citizens, and hearing
that the king was coming against him with a great host, the pretender
suddenly lost heart, left his men in the lurch, and fled away to take
sanctuary in the abbey of Beaulieu (August, 1497).
[Sidenote: =Warbeck and the Earl of Warwick executed.=]
King Henry showed extraordinary moderation in dealing with the
insurgents: he fined Cornwall heavily, but ordered no executions. He
promised Warbeck his life if he would leave his sanctuary, and when the
impostor gave himself up, he was merely placed in honourable custody in
the Tower. He was only made to publish the confession of his fraud, and
to give a full account of his real life and adventures. Perkin might
have lived to old age, like Lambert Simnel, if he had been content to
keep quiet. But he made two attempts to escape from England, which
roused the king's wrath. On the second occasion he persuaded another
State prisoner, Edward of Clarence, the true heir of York, to fly with
him; but they were detected, and the king, provoked at last, executed
Warbeck, and made the unfortunate Prince Edward share his fate (1499).
Perkin had merited his end, but it is impossible to pardon Henry's
dealings with the unlucky heir of Clarence, who had been a prisoner
ever since Richard III. sent him to the Tower sixteen years before.
There is no doubt that Henry was glad of the excuse to lop off another
branch from the stem of York. Noting this fact, the next heir of that
line, Edmund de la Pole, brother of the Earl of Lincoln who fell at
Stoke, wisely fled from England, lest his royal blood should be his
ruin.
[Sidenote: =Suppression of livery and maintenance.=]
After Warbeck's failure, King Henry was for the future free from the
danger of dynastic risings against the house of Tudor. He was able to
develop his policy both at home and abroad without any further danger
of insurrections. In domestic matters he strove very successfully to
put an end to the turbulence which had been left behind from the times
of the civil war. His chief weapon was legislation against "livery and
maintenance," the evil custom by which a great lord gave his badge to
his neighbours, and undertook to support them in their quarrels and
lawsuits. This abuse of local influence was sternly suppressed, and no
man, however great, was permitted to keep about him more than a limited
number of liveried retainers. It is on record that Henry punished his
oldest friend and supporter, the Earl of Oxford, for breaking this
rule. On the occasion of a royal visit to his castle of Hedingham,
Oxford received the king at the head of many hundreds of his followers,
all clad in the de Vere livery, and was promptly made to pay a heavy
fine for his ostentation.
[Sidenote: =The Star Chamber founded.=]
Henry established a special tribunal for dealing with the offences
of men, whose power and influence might foil and divert the ordinary
course of justice. This was the new and unconstitutional "Court of Star
Chamber," a committee of trusted members of the Privy Council, which
met in a room at Westminster whose roof was decorated with a pattern
of stars. The court was useful at the time, but grew to be a serious
grievance in later days, because it stood over and above the ordinary
law of the land, and was used to carry out any illegal punishment that
the king might devise.
[Sidenote: =Reduction of the surviving barons.=]
By these arbitrary means, Henry Tudor succeeded in taming the survivors
of the baronage, and in reducing them to such a state of subjection to
the crown as England had never before seen. Their spirit had already
been broken by the endless slaughters and confiscations of the Wars of
the Roses, and the majority of them were well content to surrender the
anarchical independence which they had enjoyed of late, in return for a
quiet and undisturbed security for life and land. It is to be noticed
that many of the oldest and most powerful houses had now disappeared.
By the year 1500 there only survived of the older and greater peerages
those of Northumberland, Westmoreland, Arundel, Buckingham, Devon, and
Oxford, to which may be added the duchy of Norfolk, afterwards restored
to the Howards by Henry VIII. If we find other ancient titles borne
by men of the Tudor time, we must remember that the holders were not
the heirs of the lines whose names they bore, and did not possess the
vast estates that had made those titles all-important. The Warwicks or
Somersets, the Suffolks or Herefords of the sixteenth century are the
mere creatures of Tudor caprice.
[Sidenote: =Foreign policy of Henry.=]
A few words are necessary to explain the tiresome and difficult subject
of the foreign policy of Henry VII. We have seen that his venture of
war with France in 1491 proved unfortunate, and he never repeated
it. For the future he preferred to hoard money at home, rather than
to lavish it on continental wars. But if he never fought again, he
was always threatening to fight, winning what advantage he could by
the menace of joining one or other of the parties which then divided
Europe. The main troubles of continental politics in his period were
caused by the restless ambition of the Kings of France. Freed from the
lingering wars with England which had previously been their bane, the
French monarchs had turned southward, and were striving to conquer
Italy. Charles VIII. and Lewis XII., the two contemporaries of King
Henry, spent all their energy in the attempt to annex the kingdom of
Naples and the duchy of Milan, to which they had some shadowy claim
of succession. Their schemes called into the field the sovereigns
whose position would have been imperilled by the French conquest of
Italy--the Emperor, Maximilian of Austria, and Ferdinand and Isabella,
the sovereigns of Aragon and Castile, whose marriage had created the
united kingdom of Spain.
[Sidenote: =The Netherlands.=]
If the struggle had raged in Italy alone, Henry VII. might have
viewed it with a philosophic indifference. But it also involved the
Netherlands, the near neighbour of England, and the chief market for
English trade. The Netherlands were at this moment in the hands of
Philip of Austria, the son of the emperor, for Maximilian had married
Mary of Burgundy, the heiress of the great dukes who had ruled in the
Low Countries, and Philip was their only son.[29] Henry wished to keep
on good terms with his neighbours in Flanders, more especially because
it was there that the Yorkist refugees found shelter. Not only had the
dowager Duchess Margaret aided them from thence, but Maximilian, while
acting as regent in the Netherlands for his young son Philip, had given
Perkin Warbeck much assistance.
[Sidenote: =The "Great Intercourse."=]
Henry's policy was rendered difficult by the incurable perverseness of
the emperor and his son, the Duke Philip, but he managed to keep out
of war with them, and even obtained from them the "Great Intercourse,"
a commercial treaty with the Low Countries which was of much use to
England, as it provided for the free entry of English goods into
Flanders, and of Flemish goods into England, and stipulated that the
king and the duke should join together to put down piracy in the
Narrow Seas. Some years later Henry was enabled to wring some further
advantages out of Duke Philip, in a not very honourable way. The duke
was sailing to Spain, when his ship was driven into Weymouth by a
storm. The king made him welcome and entertained him royally, but would
not suffer him to depart till he had promised to surrender the Yorkist
refugee, Edmund de la Pole,[30] who was then staying in Flanders, and
to still further extend the terms of the "Great Intercourse" to the
benefit of English merchants (1506).
[Sidenote: =Marriage of the Prince of Wales to Catherine of Aragon.=]
With Ferdinand of Aragon, the astute and unscrupulous King of Spain,
Henry was able to get on better terms than with his capricious
neighbour in Flanders, since both were guided purely by self-interest.
The two wily kings understood and respected each other, and resolved
to ally themselves by a marriage. Accordingly Arthur, Prince of Wales,
Henry's eldest son, was wedded to Catherine, the younger daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella. They were both mere children, and the prince
died before he had reached the age of seventeen. But Ferdinand resolved
that the alliance should not drop through, and the Princess Catherine
was passed on to Henry, Arthur's younger brother and successor in the
title of Prince of Wales. He was some years younger than his bride, and
the marriage, as we shall presently see, was a most unhappy one. With
his son's wife the English king received a large but unpunctually paid
dowry.
[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]
King Henry's long diplomatic intrigues with Spain and the Emperor
brought him no very great profit in the end. But it was otherwise with
his dealings with his neighbours in the British Isles. After the defeat
of Perkin Warbeck, he made an advantageous peace with James IV. of
Scotland, who married his daughter Margaret, and became his firm ally.
For the last ten years of his reign Scotland gave no trouble. The still
more difficult task of pacifying Ireland was also carried out with
considerable success. Henry dealt very gently with the Irish chiefs,
in spite of the treasonable support that they had given both to Simnel
and to Warbeck. His plan of ruling the country was to enlist in his
favour the Earl of Kildare, the most powerful of the Irish barons, by
making him Lord Deputy, and entrusting him with very full control over
the rest. "All Ireland cannot rule the Earl of Kildare," it had been
said; but the king answered, "Then the Earl of Kildare shall rule all
Ireland."
[Sidenote: =Poynings' Act.=]
This policy was attended by a fair measure of success; if turbulent
himself, the earl at least put down all other riotous chiefs. Henry's
reign was also notable in Ireland for the passing of _Poynings' Act_ at
the Parliament of Drogheda. This put the Irish legislature in strict
subordination to England, by providing that all laws brought before it
must previously receive the assent of the king and his English Privy
Council (1495).
Henry Tudor died before his time in 1509, having not yet reached the
age of fifty-four. He left behind him a land peaceful and orderly, a
nobility tamed and reduced to obedience, and a treasury filled with
£1,800,000 in hard cash--the best possible witness to his wisdom and
ability, for no king of England had ever built up such a hoard before.
If his aims had been selfish and his hand hard, he had at any rate
given England "strong governance," and saved her from sinking into
anarchy.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] See table on p. 287.
[30] Seven years later, Henry VIII. executed this unhappy prisoner in
cold blood, and for no new offence.
CHAPTER XXI.
HENRY VIII., AND THE BREACH WITH ROME.
1509-1536.
The young king who succeeded to the cautious and politic Henry VII. was
perhaps the most remarkable man who ever sat upon the English throne.
He guided England through the epoch of change and unrest which lay
between the middle ages and modern history, and his guidance was of
such a peculiar and personal stamp that he left an indelible mark on
the land for many succeeding generations. All Europe was transformed
during his time, and that the transformation in England differed from
that on the continent in almost every respect, was due to his own
strange combination of qualities.
[Sidenote: =Character of Henry VIII.=]
Henry's character was a very complex one, mingling qualities good and
bad in strange confusion. In many things he showed the traits of his
grandfather Edward IV., his selfishness, his love of display, his
sensuality, his outbursts of ruthless cruelty. But Edward had been
nothing more than a soldier and a man of pleasure; he had no love of
work, no power to read the character of others. Henry VIII. was a
student, a statesman, a deep plotter, a keen observer of other men. He
chose his servants--or rather his tools--with a clear-headed sagacity
which no king ever surpassed, and he could break them or fling them
away when they became useless, with a coolness that was all his own.
Love of power, love of work, love of pleasure, love of show and pomp,
did not distract him the one from the other, but blended closely
together into one complex impulse--the determination to have his own
will in all things. Such a state of mind bespeaks the tyrant, and a
tyrant Henry became; but a tyrant whose brain was as strong as his
will--who knew the possible from the impossible, who could discern
how far it was safe to go, and could check himself on the edge of any
dangerous precipice of foreign or internal politics. He kept, as it
were, a finger on the nation's pulse, and could restrain himself for
a space if ever it began to beat too excitably. He did his best to
court popularity with the English by an affable bearing and a regard
for their prejudices. He strove to make them look on him as the
nation's representative, and to flatter them into believing that his
resolves were really in accordance with their own will and interests.
He represented to them not only law and order, but national feeling
and national pride. It was this clever acting that made it possible
for him to manipulate England according to his wishes. He appeared to
take the people into his confidence, and they replied by believing
his statements even when they were most unfounded and misleading.
Thus it was that Henry was able to rule despotically for forty years
without having a serious quarrel with his Parliament, and without being
compelled to raise a standing army--the tool which all contemporary
despots were forced to employ.
[Sidenote: =His popular qualities.=]
Henry VIII. was very young when he came to the throne--he had only
reached the age of eighteen. His character was still undeveloped,
though he was known to be both clever and active. All that the nation
knew of him was that he was a bright, handsome youth, fond of horse
and hound, but equally fond of his books and his lute. He had from the
first an eye for popularity, and did all that he could to please the
people by shows and pageants that forced him to dip deeply into his
father's hoarded money.
[Sidenote: =Executions of Empson and Dudley.=]
Yet the first act of Henry's reign was ominous of future cruelty and
ruthlessness. Knowing the unpopularity of his father's harsh and
extortionate but faithful servants, Empson and Dudley, he cast them
into prison, and had them attainted by Parliament on a preposterous
charge of treason. They were well hated, and the people saw their
heads fall with joy, not reflecting on the character of a king who
could deliberately slay his father's councillors merely to win popular
applause.
[Sidenote: =Foreign policy.--The Holy League.=]
Henry retained most of his father's old ministers in office, but he
instantly reversed his father's policy of non-intervention in the wars
of the continent. He had not long been seated on the throne when he
joined the "Holy League," a confederacy formed against France by Pope
Julius II., in which both those old intriguers, the Emperor Maximilian
and King Ferdinand of Aragon, were already enlisted (1511). Henry might
have left them to fight their own battles for the mastery of Italy and
Flanders, but he was burning to assert his power in Europe and to win
military distinction. His arms were fairly fortunate. A first attack
on the south of France failed, but he met with considerable success
in 1513, when he landed at Calais with 25,000 men, took the towns of
Tournay and Térouanne, and routed the French army of the North at an
engagement called "the Battle of the Spurs," from the haste with which
the French knights urged their horses out of the fray. Finding his
armies losing ground both in Italy and in Flanders, King Lewis XII.
sought peace from Henry, and obtained it at the cheap price of paying
100,000 crowns, and marrying the Princess Mary, the young English
monarch's favourite sister (1514). These easy terms were granted
because Henry found that his two wily allies, Ferdinand and Maximilian,
had no intention of helping him, and were bent purely on their own
aggrandisement. The alliance with Lewis was not to have much duration,
for within a year he was dead--killed, as the chroniclers assert,
by the late hours and high living which his gay young English queen
persuaded him to adopt. His widow soon dried her tears, and married Sir
Charles Brandon, one of her brother's favourite companions, whom Henry,
to grace the match, decorated with the ill-omened title of Duke of
Suffolk, the spoil of the unhappy de la Poles. From this union sprang
one who was to sit for a brief moment on the English throne.[31]
[Sidenote: =Scottish war.=]
Ere the French treaty had been made, a short stirring episode of war
had taken place on England's northern frontier. King James IV. of
Scotland had certain border feuds to settle with the English, and
thought he might best take his revenge while Henry and his army were
over-seas in Flanders. So he suddenly declared war, and crossed the
Tweed into Northumberland.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Flodden.=]
Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, son of John of Norfolk, who fell at
Bosworth, was in charge of the Border at the time. He raised the levies
of the northern counties, and marched to meet the Scots. By throwing
himself between King James and his retreat on Scotland, he forced the
enemy to fight. On Flodden Field, between the Till and the Tweed, the
armies met and fought a fierce and doubtful battle which lasted far
into the night. Though victorious on one wing, the Scots were beaten in
the centre, and their king and most of his nobles fell in a desperate
struggle around the royal banner. In the darkness the survivors of the
struggle dispersed and fled home. The death of their warlike sovereign,
and the slaughter which had thinned their fighting men, kept the Scots
quiet for many a day. During the long and troublous minority of James
V. King Henry need fear no danger from the north. As a reward for his
victory, Surrey was restored to his father's dukedom of Norfolk (1513).
[Sidenote: =Wolsey.=]
In these early years of his reign, King Henry had already taken as his
chief minister the able statesman who was for twenty years to be the
second personage in England. Thomas Wolsey, Dean of Lincoln, was the
son of a butcher of Ipswich, who had sought advancement in the Church,
the easiest career for an able man of low birth. He had served Foxe,
Bishop of Winchester, one of Henry VII.'s chief advisers, and from his
service passed into that of the king. He was an active, untiring man,
with a great talent for work and organization of all sorts. Henry made
him Bishop of Tournay, then Archbishop of York, and finally Chancellor.
In this capacity he served for no less than fourteen years, and was
the chosen instrument of all his master's schemes. His dignity was
increased when, in 1515, the Pope made him a cardinal, and afterwards
appointed him his legate in England--an office which seemed to trench
over-much on the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury as head and
primate of the English Church.
It suited King Henry to have a minister who could relieve him of
much of the toil and drudgery of government, who did not fear
responsibility, and who was entirely dependent on his master. As
long as he was well served, and granted plenty of spare time for his
pleasures and enjoyments, he allowed Wolsey a very free hand. The
cardinal's head was somewhat turned by his elevation, and he indulged
in a pomp and state such as almost befitted a king, never moving about
without a sumptuous train of attendants. This arrogance made him much
disliked, especially by the old nobility; but the king tolerated it
with all the more ease because he preferred that his minister should be
less popular than himself. It was always convenient to have some one
on whom the blame of royal failures might be laid, and Wolsey, with
his ostentation of power and pride, made an admirable shield for his
master. Henry allowed him, therefore, the prominence in which his soul
delighted, gave him his way in things indifferent, but was ready to
check him sharply when he began to develop any tendency to act contrary
to his own royal will.
[Sidenote: =Charles V. and Francis I.=]
In the earlier days of Wolsey's ministry, the face of Europe was
profoundly changed by the deaths of the three old monarchs who had
been the contemporaries of Henry VII. Lewis XII. of France died in
1515, Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516, the Emperor Maximilian in 1519.
The successors of these old diplomatists were two young men, each
slightly junior to the young King of England. In France the reckless
and warlike Francis I. succeeded his cousin Lewis XII. In Spain and in
the dominions of the house of Hapsburg, Ferdinand and Maximilian were
followed by their grandson, Charles V., the child of the emperor's son
and the king's daughter. Charles, being already King of Spain, Duke of
Burgundy, and Archduke of Austria, was elected Emperor by the Germans
in succession to his grandfather Maximilian.
[Sidenote: =Policy of Henry.=]
Now Francis of France and Charles of Austria were rivals from their
youth, and their rivalry was the main source of trouble in European
politics for a whole generation. England had to choose between them
when she sought an ally, but Henry found it by no means easy to make
up his mind. France was his hereditary enemy, but, on the other hand,
Charles, by uniting Spain, the Netherlands, and Austria, and acquiring
in addition the position of Emperor, had built up such a vast power
that he overshadowed Europe, and seemed dangerous by reason of his
over-great dominions and wealth.
THE KIN OF CHARLES V.
Charles the Rash, = (1) Isabel of Portugal.
Duke of Burgundy, | (2) Margaret of York.
Holland, and Brabant, |
Count of Flanders, |
Luxemburg, and Namur, |
slain 1477. |
|
+------------------+
|
(1)
Mary of = Maximilian of Ferdinand, = Isabella,
Burgundy | Hapsburg, Archduke King of | Queen of Castile,
| of Austria, and Aragon, | 1474-1504.
| Emperor, 1493-1519. 1479-1516. |
| |
| +--------------------+--+
| | |
Philip, = Joanna. Catherine = (1) Arthur,
Archduke | | Prince of
of Austria, | | Wales.
died 1506. | | (2) Henry VIII.
| |
+------------+-------------+ Mary,
| | Queen of England,
Charles, Ferdinand I., 1553-1558.
King of Spain, Emperor,
1516; Emperor, 1556-1564.
1519-1556.
|
Philip II., = Mary,
King of Spain, Queen of England.
1556-1598.
[Sidenote: =The balance of power.=]
Henry and Wolsey, therefore, fell back on the idea that a balance
of power in Europe was the best thing for England. It would be a
misfortune if either Francis I. or Charles V. should grow so powerful
as to dominate the whole continent. England accordingly would do well
to see that neither obtained complete success, and to make a rule of
helping the weaker party from time to time. For the next ten years,
therefore, Henry was always trimming the scales, and transferring his
weight from one side to the other. Such a policy made him much courted
by both parties, and won him much flattery, and an occasional subsidy
or treaty of commerce. But, on the other hand, it prevented either
Francis or Charles from looking upon him as a trustworthy ally, or
dealing fairly with him in the hours of their success. For they argued
that there was no object in serving a friend who might turn into an
enemy at the shortest notice. Thus Henry and Wolsey, with all their
astuteness, got no profit for England or for themselves, for they
were never trusted, and promises made to them in the hour when their
help was needed were never fulfilled when their aid was no longer
necessary. There was something false, insincere, and degrading in
this trimming policy. It is disgusting to read how Henry greeted his
neighbour Francis in 1520 at the celebrated "Field of the Cloth of
Gold" near Calais, with all manner of pomp and pageantry, and profuse
protestations of brotherly love, and then within a month had met
Charles at Gravelines, and concluded a secret treaty of alliance with
him against the friend whose kiss was yet upon his cheek.
[Sidenote: =Heavy taxation.--Benevolences.=]
From all the negotiations and fighting which accompanied the changes
of English policy, only one definite result was reached--England was
beginning to grow poorer and more discontented. The hoarded treasure
of Henry VII. had long been exhausted, and the taxation which his
son was compelled to levy was growing more and more heavy. Henry had
fallen into the evil habit of dispensing with parliamentary grants;
from 1515 to 1523, and again in 1527 and 1528, he never summoned the
two Houses to assemble. The money which he ought to have asked from
them, he raised by the illegal devices of "benevolences" and forced
loans. Wolsey got the credit of advising this tyrannous extortion, and
gained no small hatred thereby, but his master was in truth far more
responsible for it than he.
[Sidenote: =Wolsey aims at becoming Pope.=]
The cardinal, however, bore the blame, and it was said that all the
chaotic changes in England's policy were inspired by Wolsey's desire to
attain the position of Pope, by the aid of whichever of the two powers
of France and Austria had the advantage for the moment. There is no
doubt that there was some truth in the charge; the cardinal's ambition
was overweening, and he would gladly have become Pope, because he had
conceived great schemes of Church reform which the possession of the
papacy alone would have enabled him to carry out. It is certain that
Charles V. twice deluded Wolsey into aiding him, by the tempting bait
of the papal tiara. But on each occasion the Emperor used his influence
at Rome to get some surer partisan elected.
[Sidenote: =Condition of the Church.=]
[Sidenote: =Depravity of the Popes and Clergy.=]
Wolsey's scheme of reforming the Church was no doubt suggested to him
by the discontent against the clergy which was at this moment beginning
to break out all over Europe. Since the days of Wicliffe, religious
matters had not been taking any very prominent place in English
politics, but a storm was now at hand far more terrible than that which
had swept over the land in the days of the Lollards. The condition of
the church of Western Christendom had become more and more deplorable
of late. The worst example was set at head-quarters: bad as the Popes
of the fourteenth century had been, those who were contemporary
with the Tudors were far worse. Rome had seen in succession three
scandalous Popes, the first of whom--Alexander VI., the celebrated
Rodrigo Borgia--was a monster of depravity, a murderer given up to
the practice of the foulest vices; the second--Julius II.--was a mere
secular statesman with no piety, but a decided talent both for intrigue
and for hard fighting; the third--Leo X.--was a cultured atheist, of
artistic tastes, who used to tell his friends that "Christianity was a
profitable superstition for Popes." Under such pontiffs all the abuses
of the mediaeval Church came to a head. Ill living, corruption, open
impiety, reckless interference in secular politics, non-residence,
neglect of all spiritual duties, greed for money, were more openly
practised by the clergy than in any previous age. Even the better sort
of ecclesiastics could see no harm in obvious abuses;--Foxe, Bishop of
Winchester, a man of great virtue, absented himself for twenty years
from his see. Wolsey held three sees at once, and never went near any
of them.
[Sidenote: =The Renaissance.--Printing.=]
The lamentable state of the Church would have provoked murmuring in
any age, but in the sixteenth century it led to open rebellion in
all those countries of Europe which still retained some regard for
religion and morals. The revival of arts and letters, which men call
the Renaissance, was now at its height, and Europe was for the first
time full of educated laymen who could criticize the Church from
outside, and compare its teaching with its practice. The multiplication
of books, owing to the discovery of printing, had placed the means of
knowledge in every man's hands, and the revived study of Hebrew and
Greek was setting the learned to read the Scriptures in their original
tongues. All the elements of a violent outbreak against the papacy, its
superstitions and its enormities, were ready to combine.
[Sidenote:=Martin Luther.=]
In 1517 a German friar, Martin Luther, had first given voice to the
universal discontent, by opposing the immoral practice of selling
"indulgences," or papal letters remitting penances for sins, in return
for money. He had followed this up by preaching against many other
papal abuses, and, when Leo X. replied by excommunicating him, he began
to attack the whole system of the mediaeval Church--inveighing against
the Pope's spiritual supremacy, the invocation of saints, the celibacy
of the clergy, the adoption of the monastic life, and many other
matters. He was supported by his prince, Frederick, Elector of Saxony,
and a great part of Germany at once declared in his favour (1517-21).
[Sidenote: =The Church in England.=]
England was not at first very much affected by the revolt of Germany
against the papacy. The English Church was far less corrupt than those
of France or Italy, and though full of abuses, was not really unpopular
with the nation. It still retained much of the old national spirit,
and was not the mere slave of the Pope. Neither king nor people showed
any signs of following the lead of the Germans. Henry wrote a book to
prove Luther's views heretical, and received in return from Leo X.
the title of Defender of the Faith, which English sovereigns still
display on their coinage. Wolsey devoted himself to practical reforms,
leaving doctrine alone. His first measure was to suppress many small
and decayed monasteries, and to build with their plunder his great
foundation of Cardinal's College, afterwards known as Christ Church, in
the University of Oxford.
[Sidenote: =Henry and Queen Catherine.=]
It was not till about 1527 that England began to be drawn into the
struggle which was convulsing all continental Europe, and then the
cause of quarrel came from the king's private affairs, and not from any
doctrinal dispute. It will be remembered that Henry had been affianced
by his father to Catherine of Aragon, the widow of his brother,
Arthur Prince of Wales. Marriage with a deceased brother's wife being
illegal, a papal dispensation had been procured to remove the bar,
and Henry had married Catherine on his accession, so that he could
not plead compulsion on the part of his father. The marriage was not
a wise one, for the queen, though a very gentle and virtuous woman,
was six years older than her husband, had no personal attractions,
and was delicate in health. All the children whom she bore to Henry
died in infancy--except one, the Princess Mary. By 1527 Catherine was
a confirmed invalid, and showed all the signs of premature old age,
though she was only forty-two.
[Sidenote: =Henry desires a divorce.=]
Now Henry VIII. was morbidly anxious for a son to succeed him; he was
the only surviving male of the house of Tudor, and could not bear the
thought of leaving the throne to a sickly girl. It was obvious that
Catherine would bear him no more children, and, regardless of the duty
and respect that he owed to her, he began to think of obtaining a
divorce, and marrying a younger wife. His project took a definite shape
when his eye was caught by the beautiful Anne Boleyn, a niece of the
Duke of Norfolk, and one of the maids of honour. Becoming desperately
enamoured of her, he resolved to press for a divorce at once. Wolsey,
who saw that the kingdom needed a male heir, undertook to procure the
Pope's consent to the repudiation of Catherine.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of the Pope.=]
But this task proved more difficult than he had expected. Popes were
generally indulgent enough to kings who would pay handsomely for their
heart's desire. But the reigning pontiff, Clement VII., was in an
unhappy position: he was completely at the mercy of the Emperor Charles
V., whose troops had lately taken and sacked Rome. Charles was resolved
that his aunt Catherine should not be divorced, and Pope Clement was
mortally afraid of offending him. Instead, therefore, of granting the
demand of Henry VIII., he temporized, and appointed two cardinals,
Wolsey himself and Campeggio, the Italian bishop of Salisbury, to
investigate the question. Henry and Wolsey hoped to force on a prompt
decision: but Campeggio deliberately hung back, and the Pope finally
recalled him, and summoned the king to send his case to be tried at
Rome (1528). Henry wrongly thought that this check was due to some
bungling or reluctance on the part of Wolsey, not seeing that the
Pope's fears of the Emperor were the real cause.
[Sidenote: =Unpopularity of Wolsey.=]
He at once withdrew his support from the great minister, though Wolsey
needed it more at this moment than ever before, for he was in great
disfavour with the nation, both for his arrogance and for the heavy
taxation which he had imposed on the land. He had actually demanded
from Parliament the unprecedented tax of 4_s._ in the pound on all
men's lands and incomes, and, though the House plucked up courage to
resist this extortionate claim, had obtained as much as 2_s._ In 1529
the cardinal, fearing to meet another Parliament, had recourse to the
old device of benevolences, on a larger scale than ever. This led to
rioting and open resistance. Then the king, to the surprise of all men,
suddenly declared that Wolsey's action was taken without his knowledge
and consent, and dismissed him from the office of Chancellor, which he
had held since 1515.
[Sidenote: =His disgrace and death.=]
His place as the king's chief counsellor fell to the Duke of Norfolk,
the uncle of Anne Boleyn. The king immediately proceeded to treat the
cardinal with great ingratitude. Wolsey's harsh deeds had always been
wrought for his master's benefit rather than his own, but Henry chose
to ignore this fact, and to win a cheap popularity by persecuting his
old and faithful servant. Probably Anne Boleyn and her uncle Norfolk,
exasperated by the delay in the king's divorce, stirred up Henry to the
attack. The cardinal was impeached for having accepted the title of
legate from Rome, without the king's formal leave, many years before.
Henry had made no objection at the time, and it was pure hypocrisy
to pretend indignation now. But Wolsey was declared to have incurred
penalties under the Statute of Praemunire, which forbad dealings with
Rome conducted without royal leave. He was condemned, deprived of all
his enormous personal property, and sent away from court, to live in
his archbishopric of York. A year later Henry again commenced to molest
him, and he was on his way to London, to answer a preposterous charge
of treason, when he died at Leicester, as much of a broken heart as of
any disease. He had been arrogant and harsh in his day of power, but
had served his master so faithfully that nothing can excuse Henry's
ingratitude. Unfortunately for England, he had taught the king the
dangerous lesson that he could go very far in the direction of absolute
and tyrannical government, and escape from the consequent unpopularity
by throwing over his ministers. Henry used this knowledge to the full
during the rest of his reign.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell and Cranmer.=]
Meanwhile Wolsey's disgrace, and the complete failure of the attempt to
win a divorce from the Pope, had been leading the king into new paths.
He had taken to himself two new councillors. In secular matters he gave
his confidence to Thomas Cromwell, a clever, low-born adventurer, whom
Wolsey had discovered and brought to court. In matters religious he
was beginning to listen to his chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, a man with a
curious mixture of piety and weakness, one of the few Englishmen who
had as yet been touched by the doctrines of the Continental Reformers.
It was not, however, as a Reformer that Cranmer commended himself
to his master; indeed, he kept his Lutheran opinions very secret.
But he had suggested to the king a new method of dealing with the
divorce question, which Henry considered not unpromising. It might be
urged that marriage with a deceased brother's wife was so strictly
and definitely forbidden in the Scriptures, that the Pope had no
authority to sanction it, and so the permissory bull of Julius II.
might be scouted as so much waste paper. Henry eagerly swallowed the
idea, and sent round the question, stated as a moot point, to all the
universities of Europe. About half of them answered, as he wished, that
the marriage was illegal from the first. Armed with this authority, he
resolved to go further.
[Sidenote: =Attack on the clergy.=]
But first Henry was resolved to show the English clergy that he was
determined to stand no opposition from them on this point. He opened
a campaign against all manner of Church abuses, with the object of
winning for himself popularity with the nation, by the cheap expedient
of a pretended zeal for purity and piety. He told the Convocation of
the clergy that they had all made themselves liable to the penalties of
Praemunire, for recognizing Wolsey as legate without the royal leave.
They only got pardon by voting the king the large fine of £118,000.
He also caused Convocation to address him as "Supreme Head, as far as
the law of Christ will allow, of the English Church and clergy," thus
casting a slur on the Pope's universal authority. Convocation was also
forced to submit to an Act of Parliament which swept away two ancient
abuses, the right to claim "benefit of clergy" when accused of felony,
and so to escape the king's justice, and the power of evading the
Statute of Mortmain, by receiving legacies under trust instead of in
full proprietorship. The Pope still proving recalcitrant in the matter
of the divorce, Henry took the further step of threatening to cut off
the main contribution which England sent to Rome--the _annates_ or
first-fruits, paid by all benefices when they changed hands.
[Sidenote: =Henry divorces Catherine.=]
This menace did not bring Clement VII. to reason, and Henry at last
took the step which involved a fatal breach with Rome. He appointed the
pliant Cranmer Archbishop of Canterbury, and bade him try the question
of the divorce in an English ecclesiastical court, without any further
application to Rome. Queen Catherine refused to appear before such a
tribunal, and formally appealed to the Pope's justice. But Cranmer
proceeded with the trial, declared the marriage contrary to the law
of God, and pronounced the king free from all his ties and able to
wed again. Even before the decision was announced, Henry had secretly
married Anne Boleyn (January, 1533), and the moment that the court had
given judgment he presented her to the nation as Queen of England. The
unhappy Catherine retired into privacy at Kimbolton, where she survived
nearly three years.
[Sidenote: =Final rupture with the Pope.=]
The Pope at once declared the new marriage illegal, and threatened
Henry with an excommunication. Many good men were scandalized to see
the king repudiate a wife who had lived as his faithful spouse for
twenty years. Murmurings and prophecies of ill filled the air, and
Henry felt that trouble was brewing. But he only hardened his heart,
and caused Parliament to pass a bill for cutting short the Pope's
spiritual authority over England, unless he should acknowledge the
validity of the new marriage within three months. Clement refused to be
bullied into compliance, and the rupture came (1533).
[Sidenote: =Act of Supremacy.--More and Fisher executed.=]
Queen Anne soon bore the king a daughter, the famous Queen Elizabeth,
and Henry then ordered all his subjects to take an oath repudiating
all obedience to papal orders, and acknowledging the child as rightful
heiress of the realm, to the prejudice of his elder daughter Mary.
This oath many persons refused to take, since it openly disavowed
the Pope's authority over the English Church. The chief of them were
Sir Thomas More, a learned and virtuous statesman who had succeeded
Wolsey as Chancellor, and Fisher, Bishop of Rochester. Henry cast them
into prison, and soon after caused Parliament to pass the "Act of
Supremacy," which declared him "Supreme Head of the Church of England,"
and pronounced any one who denied him this title guilty of high
treason. Under this ferocious edict More and Fisher were beheaded, and
many other minor personages suffered with them.
[Sidenote: =Henry excommunicated and deposed.=]
Pope Paul III., who had just succeeded to Pope Clement's tiara, now
caused a Bull to be drawn up against his enemy (Dec. 15, 1535). He not
only pronounced King Henry an excommunicated person, but declared him
to be deposed from his throne. It was now war to the knife between the
king and the papacy, and the rest of Henry's reign was to be taken up
with the struggle. During the twelve years that he had still to live,
he spent all his energies in severing every link that still bound
England to Rome.
FOOTNOTE:
[31] Lady Jane Grey, granddaughter and heiress of Charles and Mary.
CHAPTER XXII.
THE ENGLISH REFORMATION.
1536-1553.
The breach between England and Rome had become irreparable when
Henry executed More and Fisher, and when Pope Paul had declared the
king deposed. The Church of England had now seceded from the Roman
obedience, and organized herself as an independent body with the
sovereign as her Supreme Head. The secession had been carried out
entirely on the king's initiative, but the nation had acquiesced in
it because of the old and long-felt abuses of which the papacy had
always been the maintainer. King and people alike wished to make an end
of the customs by which the Pope had profited,--his vast gains from
the _annates_ of English sees and benefices; his habit of appointing
non-resident Italians to the richest English preferments; his power
of summoning litigants on ecclesiastical matters before the distant,
costly, and corrupt Church courts at Rome. It was generally thought
that when England freed herself from the Roman obedience, she would be
able to reform in peace all the faults and abuses which disfigured her
ecclesiastical system. Further than this the majority of the nation did
not at first wish to go; they had not ceased to be Catholics, though
they were no longer Roman Catholics. Only a comparatively small section
of the English people had yet been affected by the later developments
of Continental Protestantism.
[Sidenote: =German Protestantism.=]
But the conditions of the English and the Germans at the moment when
both threw off the yoke of Rome, were sufficiently similar to make
it inevitable that the theories of the Continental Reformers would
ere long begin to act upon English minds. The German protest against
the papacy had taken shape in the declaration that the Bible alone
was the rule by which Christian men should order their lives--that
the tradition of the mediaeval Church, which supplemented the teaching
of the Gospels, was dangerous, full of errors and superstitions, and
often directly opposed to scriptural precept. Mediaeval traditions
were the bulwark of the Roman see, and ere long we find King Henry and
his bishops following the Germans into this position, and basing the
reform of the English Church on the Bible, and the Bible alone. But
when tradition was rejected and the Scriptures taken as the sole test
of all doctrines, further development became inevitable. There soon
arose Reformers in England, as on the Continent, who could not find
in their Bibles any justification for some of the doctrines to which
King Henry clung most obstinately, and most of all for the dogma of
Transubstantiation, round which the Roman Church had built up its main
claim to rule the souls of men.
[Sidenote: =Doctrine of transubstantiation.=]
This doctrine concerning "the Sacrifice of the Mass," as commonly held
at this time in the Western Church, taught that, at the celebration of
the Holy Communion, when the priest had consecrated the sacramental
bread and wine, the very flesh and blood of Christ became carnally
and corporeally present in the chalice and patten--that the bread and
wine were no longer bread and wine, but had been transubstantiated
into Christ's own body, which was day by day offered up in sacrifice
for the sins of the world. The Pope and the priesthood, by their
power of granting or refusing the sacrament to the laity, stood as
the sole mediators between God and man. The Continental Protestants,
cut off from the main body of the Western Church by the Pope's ban,
had formulated theories which struck at the roots of the power of the
clergy. Many of them treated the sacrament of the Lord's Supper as no
more than a solemn ceremony, denying any sacramental character to the
rite. The majority of the early English Protestants fell into this
extreme view.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of the king.=]
Now Henry VIII. to the end of his days stood firm to the mediaeval
doctrine of the sacrament, and fully accepted Transubstantiation,
though he denied the deduction which the Roman Church had drawn from
it--that by it the Pope and clergy are the despotic masters of the
souls of men. He merely desired to place himself in the position
which the Pope had hitherto held, as head of the spiritual hierarchy
of England. With the pliant Cranmer and other bishops of his own to
serve him, he wished to become as despotic a sovereign over the souls
of Englishmen as he already was over their bodies. To a great extent
he succeeded, and for the last twelve years of his reign he exercised
a hateful spiritual tyranny over his subjects, drawing a hard-and-fast
line of submission to his own views, which no man was allowed to
overstep in either direction. Roman Catholics who denied his power to
supersede the Pope's authority were hung as traitors. Protestants who
refused to accept his theory of the Sacraments were burnt as heretics.
[Sidenote: =The monasteries.=]
The turning-point of Henry's reign was the turbulent and boisterous
year 1536-7. In pursuance of his plan of a campaign against the papacy,
disguised under the shape of a reform of abuses, Henry had resolved to
attack the monasteries. The monks had long been an unpopular class: the
impulse towards monasticism, which had been so vigorous in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, had long died away, and ever since the time
of Wicliffe men had been asking each other what was the use of the
monasteries? There were no less than 619 of them in England. They were
enormously wealthy, and they did little to justify their existence;
they had long ceased to be centres of learning or of teaching. Beyond
going through their daily round of mechanical Church services, their
inmates did absolutely nothing. Their wealth had led to much luxury,
both of splendid building and of high living. To this day the traveller
who measures the ruins of enormous and sumptuous abbeys planted in the
wilderness--like Tintern or Fountains--and learns that they served
no public or spiritual end save the sheltering of a few dozen monks,
wonders at the magnificence of the husk which contained so small and
withered a kernel. But the monasteries were worse than useless--they
were absolutely harmful; their worst habit was to acquire rich country
livings, draw all the tithes from them, and work them with a vicar
on starvation wages. If we see a poor living in modern England, we
generally find that the monks sucked the marrow out of it in the Middle
Ages, to rear their colossal chapels and their magnificent refectories.
It was the monasteries, too, which by their indiscriminate doles and
charities, reared and fostered the horde of itinerant beggars who,
under the name of pilgrims, tramped from abbey to abbey all the year
round. Worse than this, there is no doubt that a considerable amount
of evil living prevailed in some of the monasteries. Before the
Reformation had been heard of, we find Archbishop Warham and Cardinal
Wolsey storming at the immorality of certain religious houses. It was
but natural that idleness, luxury, and high living should breed such
results among the grosser souls in the monastic corporations. In public
esteem the better houses suffered for the sins of the worse.
[Sidenote: =Inquiry into their condition.=]
The monks had always been the faithful allies of the Popes, and
Henry determined to suppress this "papal militia," as they have been
called, and at the same time to fill his pockets from their plunder.
Accordingly, he sent commissioners round England, to report on the
state of the religious houses. These officials--as the king had
wished--drew up a very gloomy report. They declared that they found
nothing but idleness and corruption among the smaller monasteries, and
that many of the greater were no better. There can be no doubt that
they grossly exaggerated the blackness of the picture, knowing that the
king would welcome all possible justification for the action which he
was meditating. But it is equally certain that in most parts of England
the monks were deservedly unpopular, and that the commissioners' report
only reflected the nation's belief.
[Sidenote: =The lesser monasteries suppressed.=]
Henry laid the report before his Parliament, and at his suggestion an
act was passed suppressing the lesser monasteries--all such as had an
income of less than £200 per annum. Their goods were confiscated to the
Crown, but an allowance was made to such of the monks as did not find
places in the surviving monasteries of the larger sort (1536).
[Sidenote: =Henry and Anne Boleyn.=]
The year of the dissolution of small monasteries was notable for a
tragedy in the palace, which shows Henry's unlovely character at its
worst. He had been growing cold to the fair and ambitious queen who had
brought on him his quarrel with Rome. She had disappointed his hope of
a male heir--only the Princess Elizabeth had sprung from the marriage.
Henry had tired of her voluptuous airs and graces, and was beginning
to feel vexed at the want of dignity and decorum which she displayed
among his courtiers. Anne's light words and unseemly familiarity with
many of the gentlemen of his household roused his anger. But what was
most fatal to the unfortunate queen was that his eye had caught another
face about the court, which now seemed to him more attractive than his
wife's.
[Sidenote: =Anne's execution.--Marriage with Jane Seymour.=]
Suddenly and unexpectedly the storm burst. On May 2, 1536, the king
sent Anne to the Tower, and charged her with misconduct with several
members of his household. Protesting her innocence and amazement to
the last, the unhappy young wife was tried, condemned, and executed,
within a space of less than three weeks from her arrest. Her own father
and uncle sat on the bench of peers which declared her an adulteress;
but the fact witnesses to their shame and cowardice rather than to her
criminality. In all probability she was guilty of nothing more than
unwise levity; her real crime was not adultery, but standing in the
way of Henry's lawless desires. With the most unseemly haste, the king
wedded Jane Seymour, the lady who had already attracted his notice, the
moment that his wretched second wife had breathed her last.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion in Ireland and the North.=]
But he had small leisure to spend on his wedding, for the year 1536
was one of great peril to him. A rebellion in Ireland, led by the
Fitzgeralds, the greatest of the Anglo-Irish nobles, was already in
progress. A still more dangerous phenomenon was the stir which was
arising in the North of England. The Northern counties were always a
generation behind the rest of England in their politics. There the
monks were more powerful and less disliked than in any other part
of the land, and the nobles still retained much of their old feudal
power over their vassals, and some of their old turbulence. The North
had beheld the breach with Rome with dismay and dislike, and remained
strongly Papist in its sympathies. The dissolution of the monasteries
moved it to an active protest against the king's religious action.
[Sidenote: =The Pilgrimage of Grace.=]
Rioting suddenly broke out in Lincolnshire, and then in Yorkshire. The
insurgents gathered in great bands, and at last no less than 30,000
men mustered at Doncaster, under Robert Aske, a lawyer, and Lord
Darcy. They called themselves the army of the Church, raised a banner
displaying the five wounds of Christ as their standard, and demanded a
reconciliation with the Pope, the restoration of the religious houses,
and the dismissal of the king's impious minister Cromwell, and the
"heretic bishops" who had favoured the breach with Rome. The gentry of
the North and the priors and abbots of the great abbeys of Yorkshire
joined the rising, which men called "the Pilgrimage of Grace," because
the rebels wished to go to meet the king, and to submit their demands
to his personal judgment. Henry was caught unprepared, but he managed
to extricate himself from the peril by his unscrupulous double-dealing.
He sent the Duke of Norfolk, whose dislike of Protestantism was well
known, to treat with the rebels. Norfolk pledged his word that the king
would pardon the insurgents, and take all their demands into favourable
consideration. The simple Northerners dispersed, trusting to Henry's
good faith; but the king employed the time he had gained in raising an
army, and getting together a great train of artillery. He then marched
into Yorkshire as an invader, and made no further pretence of listening
to the claims of the insurgents. In consequence, the more vehement
of the partisans of the old faith again took arms. This was as Henry
desired, for he wanted an excuse to terrorize the North. He easily put
down the second rising, and hung all the leaders of the Pilgrimage
of Grace: Aske, Lord Darcy, Lord Hussey, and the abbots of all the
greatest monastic establishments of the North--Whalley, Fountains,
Jervaulx, Barlings, and Sawley (March-May, 1537).
[Sidenote: =Execution of the Marquis of Exeter and Henry Pole.=]
This fearful blow cowed most of the partisans of the papacy, and no
more open revolts followed. But a little later the last representatives
of the house of York were detected in paths which the king suspected
to be treasonable. They thought, it seems, that the indignation
of the Catholics against the king's doings might be turned into a
dynastic revolution in favour of the old royal line. Edward Courtenay,
Marquis of Exeter, a grandson of Edward IV., and Henry Pole, Lord
Montagu, a grandson of George of Clarence, were the persons implicated
in this intrigue, which never got beyond the stage of treasonable
talk. Nevertheless, the king beheaded them both, though the evidence
against them was most imperfect; but Henry never stayed his hand
for want of legal proof, and slew all whom he suspected. He even
imprisoned, and some years afterwards executed, the aged mother of Lord
Montagu--Margaret of Clarence, Countess of Salisbury, sister of the
unfortunate Edward of Clarence, whom his father had slain forty-one
years back.
[Sidenote: =The Irish rebellion crushed.=]
The insurrection in Ireland, which had been raging at the same time
as the Pilgrimage of Grace, ended in a way no less profitable to the
king. Not only did he capture and hang well-nigh the whole family of
the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, the heads of the rising, but his armies,
under Lord-Deputy Grey, pushed out from the English Pale, and compelled
most of the chiefs of Munster and Connaught to do homage to the
Crown, though the king's writ had not run in those provinces for two
centuries. This was the first step towards the conquest of Ireland
afterwards carried out by Queen Elizabeth.
[Sidenote: =Growth of Protestantism. Tyndale's Bible.=]
Meanwhile Henry's determination to strike at all the roots of papal
power in England, had been carrying him further than he himself
realized on the road towards Protestantism. The "Articles of 1536,"
drawn up by his own hand, declared that all doctrines and ceremonies
for which authority could not be found in the Bible, were superstitious
and erroneous. As a logical consequence of this declaration, the
Bible itself, translated into English, was issued to the people by
royal order in 1538, and ordered to be placed in every church. The
translation used was that made by a zealous Protestant, William
Tyndale, who had printed it in Antwerp some years before; the
unfortunate translator had been caught and burnt by the Emperor Charles
V., only a short time before his book became the rule of life for
Englishmen.
[Sidenote: =The greater monasteries suppressed.=]
When the Bible had once been placed in the hands of the people,
Protestantism in England began to advance by leaps and bounds. It was
secretly favoured both by Archbishop Cranmer and by the king's great
minister Cromwell. The latter, more logical than his master, wished to
see all traces of Roman Catholicism removed from England, and tried to
guide the king towards a frank recognition of Protestantism, and an
alliance with the Lutheran princes of Germany. But it was dangerous
work to endeavour to govern or persuade Henry, as Cromwell was to
find to his cost. One more step at least he did induce his master to
take--the final destruction of all the remaining monasteries. The
plunder of the lesser houses had been so profitable, that Henry was
easily induced to doom the greater to the same fate. In the course of
1538-9-40 all were swept away; in many cases, the abbots and monks were
induced to surrender their estates peaceably into the king's hands,
in return for pensions or promotion. But where persuasion failed,
force was used; an Act of Parliament was passed by Henry's submissive
Commons, bestowing on him the lands of all monastic foundations. Then
they were suppressed--the harmless and well-ordered ones no less
than the worst and most corrupt. When the monks offered obstinate
resistance, the king dealt very cruelly with them--the wealthy abbots
of Glastonbury, Reading, and Colchester, were all hung, really for
reluctance to surrender their houses, nominally for treason in refusing
to acknowledge the king's complete spiritual supremacy as head of the
Church. The enormous plunder of the monasteries brought the king little
permanent good; he had promised to use it for ecclesiastical purposes,
and had broached a scheme for founding many new churches and schools,
and creating twenty fresh bishoprics. But in the end he lavished most
of the lands of the religious houses upon those of the nobles and
gentry whom he thought worth bribing. The Church only benefited by the
endowing of the six new bishoprics--Oxford, Chester, Peterborough,
Bristol, Gloucester, and the short-lived see of Westminster.
[Sidenote: =The Six Articles.=]
But Henry was resolved to show the Protestants that they must not
expect his countenance, in spite of the blows which he was dealing at
the Roman Catholics. In the very year in which the majority of the
greater monasteries fell, he forced his Parliament to pass the cruel
"Bill of the Six Articles." This odious measure condemned to forfeiture
on the first offence, and to death on the second, all who should write
or speak against certain of the ancient doctrines of the mediaeval
Church, of which Transubstantiation in the Sacrament, the celibacy of
the clergy, and auricular confession were the chief (1539).
[Sidenote: =Birth of a son. Death of Jane Seymour.=]
Meanwhile the king had at last obtained the male heir for whom he had
so much longed. His third wife, Jane Seymour, bore him a son, Prince
Edward, in 1537, though she died at the child's birth. On this boy
all Henry's fondness was lavished: he was to be the sole heir to the
throne, and his sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, were both stigmatized as
illegitimate.
[Sidenote: =Marriage with Anne of Cleves.=]
After he had mourned Queen Jane for two years, Henry wished to marry
again. By Cromwell's persuasion he sought a wife among the Protestant
princes of Germany, thinking so to strengthen himself against the
Emperor Charles, who never to his death forgave him the matter of
Catherine of Aragon's divorce. To his own ruin, Cromwell persuaded the
king to choose Anne, sister of Duke William of Cleves, as his fourth
spouse. The lady was plain and stupid--facts which Cromwell carefully
concealed from his master till she had been solemnly betrothed to him
and brought over to England. Henry was bitterly provoked when he was
confronted with his new queen, and could not behave with ordinary
civility to her. When he learnt that the German alliances which he
was to buy with his marriage had fallen through, he repudiated the
unfortunate Anne. She was fortunately of a philosophic mood, and
readily consented to be bought off for a large annual pension and a
handsome residence at Chelsea.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Cromwell.=]
Henry at once wreaked his vengeance on Cromwell for deceiving him as
to Anne and for failing in his negotiations with the German princes.
He had him arrested, and accused him of receiving bribes and of having
favoured the Protestants by "dispersing heretical books and secretly
releasing heretics from prison." Both charges were probably true,
but they form no excuse for Henry's cruel treatment of the faithful
and intrepid minister who had helped him through all the troubles of
1536-40. Cromwell was attainted and beheaded, to the great joy of the
Roman Catholics, who thought that he had been the king's tempter and
evil genius, whereas in truth he had been no more than his tool.
[Sidenote: =Marriages with Catherine Howard and Catherine Parr.=]
Cromwell's end greatly encouraged the Roman Catholic party, and they
were still more elated when the king married a lady known to incline
towards the old faith. This was Catherine Howard, a cousin of Anne
Boleyn and, like her, a niece of the Duke of Norfolk (1540). Henry
had been caught by her beauty, and had not discovered that she was a
person of abandoned manners, whose amours were known to many persons
about the court. Within eighteen months of her marriage, she was
detected in misconduct with one of her old lovers, and sent to the
block. In her case Henry had much more excuse for his ruthless cruelty
than in that of Anne Boleyn; but what kind of wives could a monarch
of such manners expect to find? He was undeservedly fortunate in his
sixth marriage, with Catherine Parr, the dowager Lady Latimer, whom
he wedded a year after Catherine Howard's execution. She was a young
widow of twenty-six, a person of piety and discretion, who gave no
opportunity of offence to the king, and nursed him faithfully through
the infirmities of his later years. For Henry, who had now reached
the age of fifty-two, was growing grossly corpulent and developing a
complication of diseases which racked him fearfully during the last
five years of his life, and partly explain the frantic exhibitions of
cruelty to which he often gave way.
[Sidenote: =Scottish war.--Battle of Solway Moss.=]
The time was a very evil one for England. Not only was the king
persecuting Romanist and Protestant indifferently, but he had added
external to internal troubles. A war with Scotland had broken out in
1540, and was always keeping the northern frontier unquiet, though the
English had the better in the fighting. James V. allied himself to
France, and Henry had to keep guard against attacks on the south as
well as the north. The victory of Solway Moss (November, 1542) put an
end to any danger from Scotland; the news of it killed King James, who
left his throne to his infant daughter Mary, the celebrated "Queen of
Scots." Her minority gave rise to factious struggles among the Scottish
nobles, and Henry, by buying over one party, was able to keep the rest
in check. In 1544 a great English army, under the Earl of Hertford,
Jane Seymour's brother, laid waste the whole of the Lowlands and burnt
Edinburgh, but did not succeed in driving the enemy to sue for peace.
[Sidenote: =War with France.=]
The French war was far more dangerous. King Francis collected a great
fleet in Normandy, and threatened an invasion of England. Henry
was forced to arm and pay a vast array of shire levies to meet the
attack, but when it came (1545) the French were only able to land and
make a raid in the Isle of Wight. They drew back after fruitlessly
demonstrating against Portsmouth and burning a few English ships.
The balance of gain in the war was actually in favour of Henry, who
had taken Boulogne (1544), and proved able to retain it against all
attempts, till it was ceded to him by France at the peace of 1546.
[Sidenote: =Debasement of the currency.=]
But the struggles with France and Scotland had the most disastrous
effects on the finances of the realm. Henry had wasted all the wealth
that he had wrested from the monasteries, and now, to fill his pockets,
tried the unrighteous expedient of debasing the currency. English
money, which had been hitherto the best and purest in Europe, was
horribly misused by him. He put one-sixth of copper into the gold
sovereign, and one-half and afterwards two-thirds of copper into the
silver shilling, to the lamentable defrauding of his subjects, who
found that English money would no longer be accepted by Continental
traders, though previously it had been more esteemed than that of any
other country.
[Sidenote: =Growth of pauperism.=]
The debasement of the coinage was only one of the many symptoms of
misgovernment which embittered the end of Henry's reign. The general
upheaval of society caused by the overthrow of the monasteries, and
the sudden transfer of their enormous estates to new holders, had
given rise to much distress. Not only were the paupers who had lived
on the monks' doles, and the pilgrims who had been wont to wander
from abbey to abbey, thrown on the world to beg, but many of the old
tenant farmers were displaced. For the new owners often preferred
sheep-breeding to agriculture, and drove out the cottiers who had
been wont to hold a few acres under the old-fashioned management
of the monastic bodies. Contemporary writers speak bitterly of the
plague of "sturdy and valiant beggars" who flooded the land--unfrocked
monks, pilgrims whose trade was over, disbanded soldiers, and evicted
peasantry. The king and his Parliament issued the most ferocious laws
against these vagrants--when apprehended they were to be branded, and
given as serfs for two years to any one who chose to ask for their
services. If caught a second time, they were liable to be hung as
incorrigible.
[Sidenote: =Execution of the Earl of Surrey.=]
To complete this gloomy picture, there only remains to be added the
story of the king's last outburst of suspicion and cruelty. Conceiving
that the Duke of Norfolk and his son, the Earl of Surrey, were counting
on his approaching death to make an attempt to seize the regency, he
had them both apprehended, though nothing definite could be alleged
against them, save that of late they had taken to quartering the royal
arms in their family shield--a distinction to which they were entitled
as descended from Edward III. Surrey, a soldier of great promise and
a poet of considerable power, was beheaded; his father was doomed to
follow him, had not the king's death intervened. It is even said that
Henry, in one of his more irritable moods, was threatening to try his
blameless wife, Queen Catherine, for concealed Protestantism.
[Sidenote: =Death of Henry.--Condition of England.=]
But to the general relief of England, Henry died before this last
crime could be consummated (January 28, 1547). He left his realm in a
condition of great misery, and for all its troubles he was personally
responsible. His breach with the papacy had been the result of
private pique, not of conscience or principle. When committed to the
anti-Roman cause, he had refused to move forward with the one half
of his subjects, or to remain behind with the other. He had anchored
the English Church for a time in a middle position, intolerable
alike to Protestant Reformers and to the Partisans of the Papacy and
subjection to Rome. If the nation owed him a certain debt of gratitude
for not committing England to some of the excesses of Continental
Protestantism, yet it owed him no thanks for officering the Church
with a hierarchy of bishops, some of whom, like Cranmer, were meanly
timid and pliant, while others were men of low ideals and unworthy
lives, the mere creatures of court favour. Nor is it possible to view
with equanimity the way in which Henry wasted on pageants, foreign
intrigues, and fawning courtiers, the vast sums which the State had
acquired by the very proper and necessary abolition of the monasteries.
Of Henry's unbounded selfishness, of his ingratitude to those who had
served him best, of his ruthless cruelty to all who stood in his way,
we need not further speak. The story of his reign develops each of
these traits in its own particular blackness.
[Sidenote: =Henry's foreign policy.=]
Some historians have endeavoured to justify Henry's wavering foreign
policy, and all his forcible-feeble wars with Continental powers, by
the plea that, if he got no gain in land or gold thereby, yet he raised
England to a higher place among European nations than she had held in
his father's day. But this statement seems unwise. Henry, though much
flattered and courted at times, was in fact the mere dupe of Francis I.
and Charles V., each of whom cheated him again and again, and left him
hopelessly in the lurch. England's growing wealth and power would have
won her back her proper place in Europe far better than Henry's chaotic
intrigues. His whole foreign policy was a mistake and a tangle from
first to last.
[Sidenote: =The regency.--The Duke of Somerset Protector.=]
It remained to be seen who would now sway the sword and sceptre that
the dead tyrant had gripped so firmly. In his last years Henry had
surrounded himself by ministers less notable and less capable than
Wolsey or Cromwell. The chief place was held by his brother-in-law,
Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the brother of the unfortunate Queen
Jane, and the uncle of Prince Edward, the heir to the crown. It was
natural that the charge of the young king--a bright and promising, but
delicate lad, now in his tenth year--should fall to his uncle; but the
late king, distrusting Hertford's wisdom, had left the regency, not
to him individually, but to a council of sixteen members, of which he
was but the president. Seymour, however, succeeded in getting a more
complete control over his colleagues than had been intended, mainly
by bribing them to consent with titles and large gifts of money. They
allowed him to make himself "Protector of the realm and of the king's
person," and to create himself Duke of Somerset. In return he made
the two chief members of the council earls; Wriothsley, head of the
Anglo-Catholic party, became Earl of Southampton; Dudley--son of that
Dudley who had paid with his head for serving Henry VII. too well--was
created Earl of Warwick.
[Sidenote: =Protestantism of Somerset.--First English Prayer-book.=]
Having seized the reins of power, the Duke of Somerset soon showed
himself a man of a character very different from the late king's
expectation. Instead of pursuing the middle course of Anglo-Catholic
policy which Henry had always marked out, he threw himself at once into
the hands of the Protestants. His first actions were directed towards
the completion of the Reformation, by sweeping away all those remnants
of the old faith which the late king had retained himself and imposed
upon his subjects. Henry VIII. had issued the Bible in English, and
caused the Litany and certain other parts of the Church service to be
said in the national tongue. But Somerset abolished the use of the
Latin language altogether, and caused the Communion Service and all the
rest of the rites of the Church to be celebrated in English. By the
end of 1548 he had authorized the issue of the "First Book of Common
Prayer," the earliest form of our own Anglican Prayer-book. Cranmer had
the chief part in its compilation, and his great gifts of expression
are borne witness to by many of the most spiritual and beautiful
prayers of our splendid and sonorous liturgy. When the fear of Henry
had been removed from his mind, Cranmer showed himself an undoubted
Protestant; but he was a moderate man, and spared many old rites and
customs, harmless in themselves, from a love of conservatism. The
Prayer-book was well received by all save the extreme Romanists, and
the few partisans of Continental Protestantism who complained that it
did not go far enough.
If the introduction of the English Prayer-book was both popular and
necessary, it was far otherwise with the measures which accompanied it.
Somerset's first year of rule was the time of the demolition of all the
old church ornaments and furniture, which the Protestants condemned as
mere idols and lumber. Not only were the images and pictures removed,
but much beautiful carved work and stained glass was ruthlessly broken
up. This was done with an irreverence and violence which deeply shocked
the majority of the nation, and Somerset's agents made no distinction
between monuments of superstition and harmless works of religious art.
Two of the bishops, Bonner of London and Gardiner of Winchester, who
ventured to oppose the Protector's doings, were placed in honourable
confinement.
[Sidenote: =Invasion of Scotland.--Battle of Pinkie.=]
While England was disturbed with these changes, many of them rational
and necessary, but all of them hasty and rash, Somerset had succeeded
in plunging the realm into two foreign wars. The English party north
of the Tweed had promised the hand of their little five-year-old Queen
Mary to King Edward, but when they proved unable to fulfil their
promise, owing to the hatred of the majority of the Scots for England,
the Protector resolved to use coercive measures. He declared war, and
invaded the Lowlands in the autumn of 1547, wasting the country before
him till he was met by the whole levy of Scotland on the hillside
of Pinkie, near Musselborough. There he inflicted on them a bloody
defeat, but gained no advantage thereby; for the Scots sent their
child-queen over to France, to keep her safe from English hands, and
when she reached the court of Henry II. she was wedded to his son,
the Dauphin Francis. Thus Somerset entirely lost the object of his
campaign, and only earned the desperate hate of the Scots for the
carnage of Pinkie.
[Sidenote: =Plots and Rebellions in England.=]
The war with Scotland brought about a war with France, in which the
Protector wasted much money. The struggle went against the English,
and ultimately led to the loss of Boulogne, the sole conquest of
Henry VIII. While this war was in progress, Somerset was involved in
serious troubles within the bounds of England itself. He detected his
own brother, Lord Seymour of Sudely, plotting to marry the Princess
Elizabeth, and oust him from the regency. Seymour was pardoned once,
but, on renewing his conspiracy, was apprehended and beheaded. But
domestic plots were less to be feared than popular risings. In 1548-49
two dangerous rebellions broke out in West and East. In Devonshire the
old Catholic party rose in arms, clamouring for the restoration of the
Mass and the suppression of Protestantism. In the Eastern Counties an
insurrection of another sort was seen; the peasantry banded themselves
together under the tanner Robert Ket, who called himself the "King of
Norfolk and Suffolk." They dreamed of a social revolution such as that
which Wat Tyler had demanded in an earlier age, though their grievances
were not the same as those of the fourteenth century. They complained
of the rapacity of the new landholders who had superseded the old
monastic bodies, and who were evicting the old peasantry right and
left, and turning farms into sheep-runs, because wool paid better than
corn. The enclosure of common lands, the debasement of the coinage, and
the slowness and inefficacy of the law when used by the poor man, were
also denounced. Ket and his fellows began seizing and trying unpopular
landholders, and spoke of making a clean sweep of the upper classes.
[Sidenote: =Ket's rebellion put down.=]
Now, the Protector had no scruple in putting down the rising of the
Devonshire Papists with great severity, but he felt that the Norfolk
men had great excuses for their anger, and did not deal promptly and
sternly with them. Ket's rising became very dangerous, and it seemed
as if anarchy would set in all over the Eastern Counties. The rebels
defeated the Marquis of Northampton, and stormed Norwich; they were
only dispersed at last by Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, who marched
against them with a mercenary force which had been collected for the
Scottish war, and routed them on Mousehold Heath. Ket was then hung,
and the rebellion subsided.
[Sidenote: =Deposition of Somerset.=]
Somerset's mismanagement and weakness had so disgusted his colleagues
in the regency that, after the eastern rebellion, they resolved to
depose him from the Protectorship. Finding that he could count on small
support, and that the council would be able to turn against him the
armies which had pacified Norfolk and Devon, he wisely laid down his
power. He was sent for a short time to the Tower, but soon the council
released him, and gave him a place among them (1550).
[Sidenote: =Earl of Warwick Protector.=]
Somerset's place was taken by John Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, son
of the extortionate minister of Henry VII. The new Protector was far
more unscrupulous and corrupt than his predecessor. Somerset had been
a well-meaning if an incapable ruler. Warwick was purely self-seeking,
and cared nothing for national ends. He showed himself not much more
competent as a ruler than the man he had overthrown, but he kept his
power more firmly than Somerset, because he never hesitated to strike
down all who opposed him, without any regard for justice or mercy.
[Sidenote: =His religious policy.--Second Book of Common Prayer.=]
Warwick, finding the Protestant party in the ascendant, used them
for his own ends, though in reality he was perfectly indifferent to
religion. His tendencies were shown by the appointment of several
bishops of ultra-Protestant views, and by the issuing of the "Second
Book of Common Prayer," to supersede the first. In this volume strong
signs of the influence of Continental Protestantism are found, and the
many traces of the pre-Reformation ritual were swept away.
Warwick's administration (1550-53) was no happier than Somerset's. He
was forced to make a humiliating peace with France, and to surrender
Boulogne. Though he began to reform the coinage by issuing good silver
money, yet he made the change harmful to the people by refusing to take
back the old base money at the rate at which it had been issued,[32]
and by actually uttering a considerable amount of debased money himself.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of his son and Lady Jane Grey.=]
But reckless self-seeking was the main key-note of Warwick's rule.
He employed his power unscrupulously to enrich both himself and his
family. He took for himself the title of Duke of Northumberland, and
ere long allied himself to the royal house by marrying his younger
son, Guildford Dudley, to the king's cousin, Lady Jane Grey, the
granddaughter of the Princess Mary, the favourite sister of Henry VIII.
This alliance led him into schemes which were to prove his ruin. The
young king was a bright and precocious boy, showing signs of capacity
and strength of will beyond his years. If he had lived, he would have
been a man of mark, for already in his sixteenth year he was showing
a keen interest in politics and religion, and a tendency to think for
himself. But he was incurably delicate, and by 1553 was obviously
falling into consumption.
[Sidenote: =The succession to the crown.--Will of Henry VIII.=]
Dudley saw that his power was bound to vanish on the king's death, if
the law of succession was maintained, and the king's eldest sister
Mary, the child of Catherine of Aragon, allowed to succeed. The late
king had drawn up a will, in which he indicated that, if Edward died,
he should be followed first by Mary, and then by her younger sister
Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn. Henry had then added that,
if all his children died heirless, he left the crown to the issue of
his favourite sister Mary, the Duchess of Suffolk, and not to the
descendants of his elder sister, Margaret of Scotland.
[Sidenote: =Edward VI. bequeaths the crown to Lady Jane Grey.=]
Now, Lady Jane Grey, the heiress of Mary of Suffolk, was in
Northumberland's hands, through her marriage with his son. Accordingly,
the duke resolved to persuade the young king to cut his sisters out of
the succession, and leave the crown by will to his cousin. The pretext
used was that both Mary and Elizabeth were illegitimate, the marriages
of Catherine and of Anne to Henry VIII. having both been declared void
at different times by the obsequious Parliaments of the last reign. It
was, of course, utterly absurd that a boy of sixteen should have the
power to make a will transferring the crown, for by English usage the
king's title depended on hereditary right and Parliamentary sanction,
not on the arbitrary decision of his predecessor. It was entirely
unconstitutional to think of disinheriting the two princesses by a mere
private document drawn up by their brother. But the young king was
persuaded to grant his guardian's request, mainly because he feared
the Romanist reaction which he knew would follow on the accession of
his elder sister, who had always remained an obstinate adherent of the
papacy.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Somerset.=]
Long before the king's death, Northumberland had taken all the measures
which he thought necessary for carrying out this arbitrary change in
the succession. He had packed the council with his hired partisans,
and swept away the only man that he feared, his predecessor Somerset.
For noting that the late Protector was regaining popularity, and might
prove a check upon him, he suddenly laid against him charges of treason
and felony, alleging that he was plotting to regain the regency by
force of arms. The unfortunate Somerset was condemned and executed,
to the great indignation of the people, who esteemed his good heart,
though they had doubted his judgment (1552).
All through the following year King Edward's health was failing, and
Dudley was perfecting his plans. In the summer of 1553 the young king
wasted away, and slowly sank into his grave. His cousin, Lady Jane, was
at once proclaimed queen by the unscrupulous Protector.
FOOTNOTE:
[32] He would only take back as sixpences the base testoons (or
shillings) which Somerset had paid out from the treasury at full value,
alleging truly enough that they had but 4-1/2_d._ of good silver in
them.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE CATHOLIC REACTION.
1553-1558.
[Sidenote: =England loyal to Princess Mary.=]
The death of Edward VI. gave the signal for the outbreak of trouble all
over England. The nation had acquiesced in the selfish and unscrupulous
government of Northumberland solely because of its loyalty to the
young king. When Edward passed away, it became at once evident that
the Protector's power had no firm base, and that his attempt to change
the succession would be fruitless. For every man, the Protestant no
less than the Catholic, was fully persuaded that the Princess Mary was
the true heir to the crown, and there was no party in the state--save
the personal adherents of Dudley--who were prepared to strike a blow
against her.
[Sidenote: =Lady Jane Grey proclaimed queen.=]
Meanwhile, however, the Protector proclaimed his daughter-in-law queen
in London, though citizens and courtiers alike maintained an attitude
of cold disapproval. The Lady Jane was personally well liked; she was
an innocent girl of seventeen, who loved her husband and her books, and
had no knowledge or skill in affairs of state. But every one knew that
she was a usurper--a fact which no personal merits could gloze over.
[Sidenote: =Collapse and execution of Northumberland.=]
Northumberland directed his first efforts to seize the person of the
Princess Mary. He sent his son, the Earl of Warwick, to lay hands
on her, but she escaped and fled into the Eastern Counties, where
the gentry of Norfolk and Suffolk, the most Protestant shires in the
kingdom, hailed her as queen, and armed to defend her. Warwick's troops
dispersed when he strove to induce them to attack the followers of
the rightful heiress. This alarming symptom startled the Protector
out of his security; he raised a larger force and set out at once to
suppress the rising. But the moment that he had left London there was
an outbreak in the capital itself. The majority of the royal council,
when Northumberland's eye was off them, threw in their lot with the
rioters, and London fell into the hands of Mary's partisans. Nor was
this all. The whole of the shires from north to south rose in Mary's
favour, and the Protector, who had marched as far as Cambridge, saw his
army melt away from him. When the Earl of Arundel came against him in
the name of the rightful queen, he was constrained to give up his sword
and yield himself a prisoner. He was brought back to London, tried,
and condemned for high treason. His last days showed the meanness
of his character; for, in the hope of propitiating the queen, he
declared himself a Catholic, heard Mass, and made fulsome and degrading
protestations of contrition and humility. They did not save his life,
for he was beheaded, to the great joy of all England, only six weeks
after the death of Edward VI. (August 22, 1553). Mary cast into prison
all Northumberland's tools: the unfortunate Lady Jane--queen for just
thirteen days--her husband Lord Guildford Dudley, her father the Duke
of Suffolk, and most of the Dudley kin. For the present they suffered
no further harm.
[Sidenote: =The fanaticism of Mary.=]
The rightful heiress was now set upon the throne, and England
had leisure to look on her and learn her moods. Mary was in her
thirty-ninth year. Ever since her unfortunate mother's divorce she
had been living in neglect and seclusion; her father had stigmatized
her as a bastard, and her brother had kept her from court. For twenty
years she had been nursing her own and her mother's wrongs in lonely
country manors, denied all the state and deference that were her due,
and closely supervised by the underlings of the Crown. It was small
wonder that she had grown up discontented, suspicious, and morose. One
help had sustained her through all her troubles--her intense faith
in the old creed, which she believed to be true, and therefore bound
to triumph in the end. _Veritas temporis filia_ was her favourite
motto.[33] Mary's Catholicism was something more than earnest; it was
a devouring flame, ready to consume all that stood in its way. She was
set on avenging all the blood that had been shed by her father, all
the insults to the old faith that had been inflicted by the ministers
of her brother. She thought that she had come with a mission not merely
to reconcile England to the papacy, but to scourge her for her past
backsliding.
The nation did not yet know of the habits of mind which its mistress
harboured. The Protestants were ready to acquiesce in her rule; the
majority, who were neither Protestants nor Papists, trusted that she
was about to take up the middle course that her father had chosen; the
Romanist minority hardly expected more than this from her at the first.
But Mary's actions soon showed that she was set on a more violent
reaction; not only did she release from bonds the imprisoned bishops,
Bonner and Gardiner, the old Duke of Norfolk--a captive since 1547--and
all others who had suffered under her father and brother, but she
began to molest those who had taken a prominent part in the religious
doings of the late reign. Proceedings were begun against ten Protestant
bishops, including Cranmer, the Primate of England, before she had been
two months on the throne. Some of them fled over seas; the others were
caught and put into confinement. The restoration of the Latin Mass was
everywhere commanded. All married clergy were threatened with removal
from their benefices. Mary began to speak openly of placing her realm
under the supremacy of the Pope, and even of restoring to the Church
all the monastic estates that her father had appropriated, an idea
which filled every landowner with dismay.
[Sidenote: =Projected marriage with Philip of Spain.=]
Meanwhile, another project was filling Mary's brain. She was determined
to marry, and to rear up a Catholic heir to the throne; for she hated
her half-sister, the Princess Elizabeth--Anne Boleyn's child--and
utterly refused to acknowledge her legitimacy, or to own her as her
next of kin. Mary had conceived a romantic affection on hearsay
evidence for her cousin, Philip of Spain, the son and heir of the
Emperor Charles V., a young prince twelve years her junior, whose
charms and merits had been grossly overpraised to her by interested
persons. The prospect of winning England for his son allured the
Emperor, and he warmly pressed the marriage, though Philip did not view
with satisfaction the pursuit of such an elderly bride.
[Sidenote: =Unpopularity of the Spanish match.=]
When the queen's intention of wedding Philip of Spain began to be
known, it led to great discontent, for such a match implied not only a
close union with the papal party on the Continent, but the resumption
of the war with France, which had brought so much loss and so little
gain under Henry VIII. and Edward VI.; for Spain and France were still
involved in their standing struggle for domination on the Continent,
and alliance with the one meant war with the other.
[Sidenote: =Wyatt's rebellion.=]
When the queen's betrothal to Philip was announced, trouble at once
followed. The Protestant party had viewed with dismay the restoration
of the Mass, and foresaw persecution close at hand; many who were
not Protestants were anxious to stop the Spanish marriage and the
renewal of the foreign war. Hence came the breaking out of a dangerous
rebellion, aiming at Mary's deposition, and the substitution for her of
her sister Elizabeth, who was, however, kept in ignorance of the plot.
The conspirators intended her to marry Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon,
son of the Courtenay, Marquis of Exeter, whom Henry VIII. had beheaded
in 1539, and last heir of the house of York. Courtenay himself, a vain
and incapable young man, was not the real head of the conspiracy, which
was mainly guided by the Duke of Suffolk--the father of Lady Jane
Grey--and by Sir Thomas Wyatt, a young knight of Kent. Courtenay's
babbling folly betrayed the plot too soon, and the conspirators had to
rise before they were ready. Their armed bands were easily crushed in
all parts of England save in Kent; Wyatt raised 10,000 men in that very
Protestant county, and boldly marched on London. The Government had no
sufficient force ready to hold him back, and he nearly succeeded in
seizing the capital and the queen's person, for many of the Londoners
were ready to throw open the gates to him. But the queen induced him
to halt for a day by sending offers for an accommodation, and when he
reached London Bridge he found it so strongly held that after some
heavy fighting he gave up the passage as impossible, and started
westward to cross the Thames at Kingston. This delay saved Mary. She
displayed great courage and activity, hurried up to London all the
trustworthy gentry within her reach, persuaded many of the citizens to
arm in her favour, and was able to offer a firm resistance when Wyatt
at last appeared in Middlesex and pressed on into the western suburbs
of the city. The queen's troops and the insurgents fought a running
fight from Knightsbridge to Charing Cross; Wyatt, with the head of his
column, cut his way down the Strand as far as Ludgate Hill, but his
main body was broken up and dispersed, and he himself, after a gallant
struggle, was taken prisoner at Temple Bar.
[Sidenote: =Harsh measures of Mary.=]
Mary had much excuse for severity against the conquered rebels, but
her vengeance went far beyond the bounds of wisdom. Wyatt was cruelly
tortured to make him implicate the Princess Elizabeth in the plot,
but died protesting that he had acted without her knowledge. Suffolk
and his brother, Sir Thomas Grey, were beheaded; eighty of the more
important rebels were hung; but in addition the unpardonable crime of
slaying Lady Jane Grey was committed. She and her husband had been
prisoners all the time of the rising, but Mary thought the opportunity
of getting rid of her too good to be lost, and beheaded both her
and Lord Guildford Dudley, on the vain pretence that they had been
concerned in the conspiracy. The young ex-queen suffered with a dignity
and constancy that moved all hearts, affirming to the last her firm
adherence to the Protestant faith, and her innocence of all treasonable
intent against her cousin (February 12, 1554). There seems little
doubt that the queen's own sister, the Princess Elizabeth, would have
shared Lady Jane's fate, if only sufficient evidence against her could
have been procured. The incapable Earl of Devon owed his life to his
insignificance, and was banished after a long sojourn in the Tower.
[Sidenote: =Marriage with Philip.--Submission to Rome.=]
Victorious over her enemies, Queen Mary was now able to carry out
her unwise plans without hindrance. In July, 1554, Philip of Spain
came over from Flanders, and wedded her at Winchester. In the same
autumn a Parliament, elected under strong royal pressure, voted in
favour of reconciliation with Rome, and a complete acknowledgment
of the papal supremacy. In the capacity of Legate to England, there
appeared Reginald Pole, a long-exiled English cardinal of Yorkist
blood, brother of that Lord Montagu whom Henry VIII. had slain in
1539. He solemnly absolved the two Houses of Parliament from the
papal excommunication which so long had lain upon the land. Shortly
afterwards the submission of the realm to the papacy was celebrated
in the most typical way by the solemn re-enacting of the cruel statute
of Henry IV., _De Heretico Comburendo_, which made the stake once more
the doom of all who refused to obey the Pope. Mary herself, a fanatical
party among her bishops, of whom Bonner of London was the worst, and
the Legate must all take their share of the responsibility for this
crime. The queen had her wrongs to revenge; the bishops had suffered
long in prison under King Edward; Pole had been accused by his enemies
of Lutheranism, and was anxious to vindicate his orthodoxy by showing a
readiness to put Protestants to death.
[Sidenote: =Persecution of the Protestants--Latimer and Ridley.=]
From the moment of the enacting of the laws against heresy (January,
1555), the history of Mary's reign became a catalogue of horrors. Even
the callous Philip of Spain, moved by policy if not by pity, besought
his wife to hold her hand. But Mary was inflexible. The burnings began
with those of Hooper, Bishop of Gloucester, and Rogers, Prebendary of
St. Paul's, in February, 1555. They went steadily on at the rate of
about ten persons a month, till the queen's death. The persecution
raged worst in London, the see of the rough and harsh Bishop Bonner; in
Canterbury, where Pole succeeded Cranmer; and in the Eastern Counties;
there were comparatively few victims in the West and North. As cautious
men fled over-sea, and weak men conformed to the queen's faith, it was
precisely the most fervent and pious of the Protestants who suffered.
The sight of so many men of godly life and blameless conversation
going to the stake for their faith, achieved the end that neither the
sternness of Henry VIII. nor the violence of Northumberland had been
able to secure--it practically converted England to Protestantism. The
bigoted queen was always remembered by the English as "Bloody Mary;"
her victims as "the Martyrs." A few of them deserve special mention:
Latimer, Bishop of Worcester, and Ridley, Bishop of London, were burnt
together under the walls of Oxford, on September 7, 1555, after being
kept in prison for two years. They had been well known as the best
of the Protestant bishops, and Latimer's fearless sermons had often
protested, in the presence of the late king and the Protectors, against
the self-seeking and corruption of the court. "Play the man, Master
Ridley," said Latimer, when he and his companion stood at the stake;
"for we shall this day light such a candle in England, as by the grace
of God shall never be put out."
[Sidenote: =Cranmer burnt.=]
Six months later there suffered a man of weaker and more vacillating
faith, Archbishop Cranmer, against whom the queen was especially
bitter, because he had pronounced her mother's divorce. Cranmer was a
man of real piety, but wholly destitute of moral courage. His jailors
forced him to witness the burning of Ridley and Latimer, in order to
shake his courage, and subjected him to many harassing trials and
cross-examinations, under which his spirit at last broke down. Yielding
to a moment of weakness, and lured by a false hint that he might save
his life by recantation, he consented to be received back into the
Roman Communion. But when he found that his enemies were set upon his
death, he refused to conform, bade the multitude assembled in St.
Mary's Church at Oxford "beware of the Pope, Christ's enemy, a very
Antichrist with all his false doctrine," and went with firmness to the
stake, thrusting first into the flames the right hand with which he had
written his promise to recant (March, 1556).
Altogether there suffered in the Marian persecution five bishops and
about 300 others, among whom were included several women and even
children. Mary looked upon her wicked doings not merely as righteous
in themselves, but as a means of moving Heaven in her favour for the
great end that she had in view--the raising up of a Catholic heir. Her
heart was set on bearing a son, and when this was denied her, she fell
into a state of gloomy depression. Her morbid and hysterical temper
rendered her insufferable to her husband Philip, who betook himself
to the Continent, where his father, Charles V., was about to abdicate
in his favour. After he became King of Spain (1556) he only paid one
short visit to his English realm and his jealous wife, and escaped as
quickly as he might. Mary remained a prey to melancholy and disease,
and obstinately persisted in "working out her salvation" by faggot and
stake. The country grew more and more discontented; conspiracy was
rife, fostered by the exiled Protestants, who had gathered in Paris,
and tried to excite rebellion by the aid of the King of France. Their
efforts nearly cost the life of the Princess Elizabeth, whom the queen
kept in confinement, and would have slain if her cautious sister had
not been wise enough to avoid all suspicion of offence.
[Sidenote: =War with France.--Loss of Calais.=]
The war with France, which was the necessary consequence of the Spanish
match, proved very disastrous for England. Mary's ministers gave Philip
no very useful help, while, on the other hand, they contrived to
lose the last Continental possession of the Crown. Calais, which had
remained in English hands ever since Edward III. captured it in 1346,
was suddenly invested by the Duke of Guise, who commanded the French
army of the North. The garrison was caught unprepared, and was very
weak in numbers. After a few days' siege it was forced to yield, before
any help could come either from England or Spain (January, 1558). This
disgrace told heavily on the queen's health; she cried that when she
died "Calais" would be found written on her heart, and fell into a
deeper melancholy than before.
Yet her miserable life was protracted ten months longer, and she
survived till November, 1558, racked by disease, and calling in vain
for her absent husband, yet persecuting vigorously to the last. Her
cousin and adviser, Cardinal Pole, died within three days of her.
So ended Mary Tudor, who in five years had rendered Romanism more
hateful in the eyes of Englishmen than five centuries of papal
aggression had availed to make it, and who had by her persecutions
caused the adoption of Protestantism under her successor to become
inevitable.
FOOTNOTE:
[33] For example, she chose it for her coinage.
CHAPTER XXIV.
ELIZABETH.
1558-1603.
When Mary Tudor had passed away unwept and unregretted, all England
heaved a sigh of relief, and turned to do homage to her sister
Elizabeth. The daughter of Anne Boleyn was now a young woman of
twenty-five. She had been living for the last five years in almost
continual peril of her life, and had required all her caution to
keep herself from the two snares which lay about her--the dangers of
being accused of treason on the one hand and of heresy on the other.
Fortunately for herself, Elizabeth was politic and cautious even to
excess--all through her reign her most trusted ministers were often
unable to discern her real thoughts and wishes--so that she came
unharmed through her sister's reign of terror.
[Sidenote: =The religious crisis.=]
But when the lords of the council came flocking to Hatfield--the place
of her honourable confinement--to salute her as queen, Elizabeth knew
that her feet were still set in slippery places. The ultra-Catholic
party was still in power, and the large majority of the nation were
professing Romanists; on the other hand, she knew that her sister had
made the name of Rome hateful, and there was a powerful and active band
of Protestants, some in exile and some at home, who were ready to rush
in and violently reverse all that Mary had done, if the new sovereign
would give them any encouragement. Moreover, there was grave danger
abroad: England was in the midst of war with France, yet Philip of
Spain, the late queen's husband, was likely to be more dangerous than
even the King of France, for it was obvious that he would be loth to
let England out of his grasp, after he had profited by her alliance for
four years.
[Sidenote: =The queen's attitude.=]
Elizabeth's personal predilections, like those of her father, were in
favour neither of Romanism nor of Protestantism. She did not wish to be
the slave of the Pope, nor did she intend to be the tool of the zealots
who had picked up in their Continental exile the newest doctrines of
the Swiss and German Reformers. At the same time, she wished to offend
neither the Catholic nor the Protestant, but to lead them both into
the _via media_ of an English National Church, which should be both
orthodox and independent. She was not a woman of much spiritual piety
or fervent zeal, and, judging from her own feelings, argued that it
would be possible to make others conform, without much difficulty, to
the Church which offered the happy mean.
[Sidenote: =The extreme Romanists.=]
Her position, however, was settled for her by the obstinacy of the
extreme Romanists. The bishops whom Mary had appointed behaved in the
most arrogant and insulting manner to her. When she had been duly
saluted as queen by the nation and the Parliament, they tacitly denied
her right to the throne; for with one accord they refused to be present
at her coronation, much more to place the crown upon her head. In the
view of the strict Papist, she was a bastard and a usurper. It was with
great difficulty that a single bishop--Oglethorpe, of Carlisle--was at
last persuaded to officiate at the ceremony. This senseless obstinacy
on the part of the prelates drove Elizabeth further in the direction
of Protestantism than she had intended to go. She was constrained
to send for the exiled Protestant bishops of King Edward's making,
and to replace them in their sees. The disloyal Romanist prelates
were deposed, and in their places new men were consecrated by the
restored Protestant bishops. Elizabeth took care that they should be
moderate personages, who might be trusted not to give trouble; the most
important of them was the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker,
a wise and pious man, who guided the Church of England through the
crisis with singular discretion.
[Sidenote: =Protestant reforms.--Adhesion of the moderate Catholics.=]
As it was impossible to conciliate the extreme Romanists, the queen
resolved to take up her father's position, with some modifications in
the direction of Protestantism. Unlike Henry VIII., she did not call
herself Supreme Head of the Church, but all her subjects were summoned
to take the oath of spiritual obedience to her. Only a few hundred
persons refused it, though among them were all the old bishops. But
the moderate Catholics accepted her, though they did not sacrifice
their faith to their loyalty. Elizabeth then issued a new Liturgy to
be the standard of the Creed of the English Church: it was a revision
of the Second Prayer-book of Edward VI., amended in such a way as to
make it less expressive of the views of the extreme Protestants. The
Latin Mass was forbidden, and all the old ceremonies, which Mary had
restored, were again swept away. There was, however, no attempt at
enforcing obedience by persecution. Elizabeth had taken warning by
the fate of her brother's and her sister's measures, and trusted to
loyalty and national feeling, not to prison or stake. She was wise in
her generation, for in ten years well-nigh all the moderate Catholics
had conformed to the Anglican formularies, rallying to the national
church when they saw that it was not to become ultra-Protestant. Their
adhesion was the more easily effected because the Pope, on purely
political grounds, did not excommunicate Elizabeth, or declare her
deposed, so that to hold to the old faith was not yet inconsistent with
loyalty to the Crown.
[Sidenote: =Philip of Spain.=]
Ere Elizabeth's religious bent had been clearly ascertained, her
widowed brother-in-law, Philip of Spain, had proposed that she should
marry him, for he was much set on maintaining his hold on England.
Elizabeth detested him, and steadfastly refused the offer, but with a
show of politeness, lest she might bring war on herself. Fearing that
when foiled Philip might become dangerous, she made peace and alliance
with his enemy, the King of France, and left Calais in his hands,
receiving instead a sum of 500,000 crowns.
[Sidenote: =Character of the queen.=]
Thus Elizabeth had tided over the first difficulties of her reign, and
felt her throne growing firmer beneath her, though there were still
dangers on every side. But her character was well suited to cope with
the situation. Though marred by many failings peculiarly feminine, she
had a man's brain and decision. She was vain of her handsome person,
and loved to be flattered and worshipped; but her vanity was not great
enough to induce her to put herself under the hand of a husband. She
listened to suitor after suitor, but said them nay in the end. Only one
of them ever seems to have touched her heart--this was Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, the son of Protector Northumberland. Though much
taken with his comely face, the queen had strength of mind to deny him
her hand, seeing that marriage with a subject would bring too many
feuds and jealousies in its train. She consoled herself with pageants
and pleasures, for which she retained a curious zest even far into her
old age. Every one has heard of her elaborate toilette and her thousand
gowns, and of how she danced before foreign ambassadors after she had
passed the age of sixty.
But the vanity and love of pleasure which she inherited from her
mother, Anne Boleyn, were of comparatively little moment in the
ordering of the queen's life, because her clear and cold brain
dominated her desires. Elizabeth was as cautious, as suspicious, and
as secretive, as her grandfather Henry VII. She was very unscrupulous
in her diplomacy, and did not stick at a lie when an evasion would no
longer serve. Though she had plenty of courage for moments of danger,
yet she always put off the struggle as long as possible, holding
that every day of respite that she gained might chance to give some
unexpected end to the crisis. It is undoubted that she missed many
opportunities owing to this cautious slowness, but she also saved
herself from many traps into which a more hasty politician would have
fallen. We shall have to notice, again and again, her reluctance
to interfere in the wars of the Continent, even when it had become
inevitable that she must ultimately choose her side. This same caution
made her a very economical ruler. She grudged every penny that was
spent--except, indeed, the outgoings of her own privy purse--and often
pushed parsimony to the most unwise extreme. The very fleet that
defeated the Spanish Armada ran short both of powder and provisions
before the fighting was quite over.
[Sidenote: =Her popularity.=]
The English much admired their politic, unscrupulous, and parsimonious
queen. They saw only that she gave them good and cheap governance,
kept the kingdom out of unnecessary wars, and was, on the whole, both
tolerant and merciful. As they watched her pick her way successfully
through so many snares and perils, they came to look upon her as a
sort of second Providence, and credited her with an almost superhuman
sagacity and omniscience, which she was far from possessing. But they
were not altogether wrong in their confidence; she was, in spite of her
faults and foibles, a patriotic, clear-headed, hard-working sovereign,
who did her best for her people as well as for herself. Above all, she
had the invaluable gift of choosing her servants well; her two great
ministers, Cecil and Walsingham, were the most capable men in England
for their work, and she seldom failed to appreciate merit when once she
cast her eye upon it.
[Sidenote: =Renewed peace and prosperity.=]
For the first twelve years of Elizabeth's rule, England was occupied
in slowly settling down after the storms of the last two reigns. The
English Church was gradually absorbing the moderate men from both the
Protestant and the Romanist ranks. Quiet times were repairing the
wealth of the land, and the restoration of the purity of the coinage,
which was the queen's earliest care, had put trade once more on a
healthy basis. Foreign war was easily avoided; in France Henry II. died
ere Elizabeth had reigned a year, and his weak sons had occupation
enough in their civil wars with the Huguenots. Philip of Spain was ere
long to find a similar distraction, from the stirring of discontent
among his much-persecuted Protestant subjects in the Netherlands.
[Sidenote: =Mary Queen of Scots.=]
The chief troubles of the period 1558-68 came from another quarter--the
turbulent kingdom of Scotland. Elizabeth's natural heir was her cousin,
Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scots, who represented the line of Henry
VII.'s eldest daughter. Unless Elizabeth should marry and have issue,
Mary stood next her in the line of succession. The Queen of Scots,
however, was a most undesirable heiress. She had been brought up in
France, had married the eldest son of Henry II. and hated England. She
was a zealous Romanist, and ready to work hard for her faith. Moreover,
she was greatly desirous of being recognized as Elizabeth's next of
kin, and openly laid claim to the position. Though very young, she was
clever and active, and possessed charms of person and manner which bent
many men to her will.
[Sidenote: =The Scottish Reformation.=]
Mary returned from France in 1561, having lost her husband, the
young French king, after he had reigned but a single year. She found
Scotland, as usual, in a state of turmoil and violence. The Parliament
had, in her absence, followed the example of England, by casting off
the Roman yoke, and declaring Protestantism the religion of the land.
But a strong party of Romanist lords refused obedience, and with them
the queen allied herself on her arrival.
[Sidenote: =Darnley and Bothwell.=]
For the seven turbulent years of Mary's stay in Scotland, she was a
grievous thorn in the side of Elizabeth. She was always laying claim
to be acknowledged as heiress to the English crown, and her demand
was secretly approved by the surviving Romanists to the south of the
Tweed. Elizabeth replied by intriguing with the Protestant nobles
of Scotland, and stirred up as much trouble as she could for her
cousin, while outwardly professing the greatest love and esteem for
her. The results of their machinations against each other were still
uncertain, when Mary spoilt her own game by twice allowing her passion
to overrule her judgment. She was fascinated by the handsome person of
her first-cousin, Henry Lord Darnley,[34] and most unwisely married
him, and made him king-consort. Darnley was a vicious, ill-conditioned
young man, and soon made himself unbearable to his wife, by striving
to get the royal power into his hands, and at the same time treating
her with gross cruelty and neglect. His crowning offence was causing
the assassination of Mary's private secretary, Rizzio, in her actual
presence, under circumstances of the greatest brutality. After this,
Mary completely lost her head. She lent her sanction to a plot for
her husband's murder, framed by the Earl of Bothwell, a great lord of
the Border. Bothwell slew the young king and blew up his residence
with gunpowder, but disavowed the deed, and induced the queen to
have him declared guiltless after a mock trial. Mary was well rid of
her husband, and, her complicity in the plot not having been proved,
she might have escaped the consequences of her crime but for a
second fit of infatuation. She had become violently enamoured of the
murderer Bothwell, and suffered him to carry her off to the castle of
Dunbar, and there to marry her. No one now doubted her complicity in
Darnley's murder, and the whole kingdom rose against her in righteous
indignation. The army which Bothwell raised in her defence refused
to strike a blow, and melted away when faced by the levies of the
Protestant lords. The queen herself fell into their hands, was forced
to abdicate, and was condemned to lifelong prison in Lochleven Castle.
In Mary's place, her young son by Darnley, James VI., was proclaimed
as king, the regency being given by the Parliament to James, Earl of
Murray, an illegitimate son of James V. (June, 1567).
Queen Mary being thus imprisoned and discredited, Elizabeth thought
that her troubles on the side of Scotland were over, and closely allied
herself with the Regent Murray. But the struggle was not yet ended. The
Romanist party in Scotland saw that the new Protestant rulers of the
country would crush their faith, and determined on a desperate rising
in favour of their old religion and their old sovereign.
[Sidenote: =Mary flees to England.=]
Mary escaped by night from Lochleven, and joined the insurgents.
The Regent gave chase, and caught her army up at Langside, near
Glasgow. The queen's friends were routed in the fight that followed,
and she herself, riding hard out of the fray, fled for the English
border. After a moment's hesitation, she resolved to throw herself on
Elizabeth's mercy, rather than to face the almost certain death which
awaited her at the hands of her son's adherents. There was no time to
wait for any promise of safe conduct or shelter, and she arrived at
Carlisle, unprotected by any engagement on the part of the Queen of
England (May, 1568).
[Sidenote: =Mary confined In England.--The Casket Letters.=]
Elizabeth's most dangerous enemy had thus fallen into her hands, but
the position was not much simplified by the fact. It had to be decided
whether the royal refugee should be allowed to proceed to France, as
she herself wished; or handed over to the Scots, as the Regent Murray
demanded; or kept in custody in England, as Elizabeth's self-interest
seemed to require. To let her go to France would be generous, but
dangerous; once arrived there, she would conspire with her cousins,
the powerful family of Guise, against the peace of England. To send
her back to Scotland would have some savour of legality about it, but
would be equivalent to pronouncing her death-sentence; and from this
Elizabeth shrank. To keep her captive in England seemed harsh, and even
treacherous; for what right had one sovereign princess to imprison
another? The politic Elizabeth resolved to take a cautious middle
course. She protested to the Queen of Scots that she was willing to
restore her to her throne, if she found that the accusations which her
subjects made against her were untrue. This was practically putting her
guest upon her trial for the murder of Darnley; for when the Regent and
the Scots lords were informed of the decision, they came forward to
accuse their exiled mistress. They laid before Elizabeth's commission
of inquiry the famous "Casket Letters," a series of documents which
had passed between Mary and Bothwell. If genuine--and it seems almost
certain that they were--they proved the guilt and infatuation of the
Queen of Scots up to the hilt. Mary protested that they were forgeries,
and her followers down to this day have believed her. But she refused
to stand any trial; declared that she, a crowned queen and no subject
of England, would never plead before English judges, and demanded leave
to quit the realm. Satisfied with the effect on English and Scottish
public opinion which the "Casket Letters" had produced, Elizabeth
now took the decisive step of consigning Mary to close custody; thus
practically treating her as a criminal, though no decision had been
given against her (January, 1569).
[Sidenote: =Romanist intrigues in Mary's favour.=]
For nearly twenty years the unfortunate Queen of Scots was doomed to
spend a weary life, moved about from one manor or castle to another,
under the care of guardians who were little better than gaolers.
But she soon began to revenge herself. As long as she lived she was
undoubtedly Elizabeth's heiress, if hereditary right counted for
anything. Using this fact as her weapon, she began to intrigue with
English malcontents. She offered her hand to the Duke of Norfolk, an
ambitious young man, who was dazzled by the prospect of succeeding to
Elizabeth's throne. She stirred up the Catholic lords of the North, by
promising to restore the old faith if they would overthrow her cousin.
But Elizabeth's ministers were wary and suspicious; Norfolk's designs
were discovered, and he was cast into the Tower. The news of his
imprisonment led to the immediate outbreak of the Northern Romanists;
Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland, and Charles Neville, Earl of
Westmoreland, raised their retainers, and made a dash on Tutbury, where
Mary was confined, intending to rescue her and proclaim her as queen.
[Sidenote: =The "Rising in the North."=]
But the days of the Wars of the Roses were past; the retainers of the
northern lords could do nothing against the royal power, and the
"Rising in the North," as the plot was called, came to an ignominious
end. The two earls failed to seize the person of the Queen of Scots,
and were easily driven away. They fled--the one to Scotland, the other
to Spain,--and gave Elizabeth little further trouble. This was the last
insurrection of the old feudal type in the pages of English history
(October and November, 1569). Elizabeth showed herself more merciful
than might have been expected to the plotters. Norfolk was released
after a short captivity; the Queen of Scots suffered no further
aggravation of her imprisonment. For this she gave her cousin small
thanks, and without delay recommenced plotting to secure her liberty.
[Sidenote: =Religious wars in Europe.=]
Meanwhile the aspect of affairs on the Continent was beginning to
engage more and more of Elizabeth's attention. By this time civil
wars were alight both in France and in the Netherlands. The French
Protestants, or Huguenots, as they were called, had taken arms to
secure themselves toleration as early as 1562. The Protestants of the
Netherlands, after long suffering under the grinding tyranny of Philip
of Spain and the Inquisition, had been driven to revolt in 1568. In
both countries the insurgents appealed for help to Elizabeth; they
implored the queen to save them from the triumph of popery, and pointed
out that if they themselves failed, the victorious Romanists would
inevitably turn against England, the only power in Western Europe which
denied the Pope's supremacy. They might have added that the Queen of
Scots was closely allied with the Guises, the heads of the Catholic
party in France, and that she was also intriguing for the aid of Philip
of Spain.
[Sidenote: =Elizabeth's foreign policy.=]
In her dealings with the Continental Protestants Elizabeth showed
herself at her worst. Vacillation and selfishness marked her actions
from first to last. She felt that the civil wars kept France and Spain
from being dangerous to her. She knew also that if they ended in the
suppression of the rebels, England would be in grave danger. But she
hated rebellion, she could not understand religious enthusiasm, and
she detested the violent Calvinism which both the Huguenots and the
Netherlanders professed. All wars too, she knew, were expensive, and
their issues doubtful. Hence it came that she displayed a reluctance to
commit herself to one side or the other, which involved her in much
double-dealing and even treachery. She refused to declare war either on
Philip of Spain or on Charles of France, and allowed their ministers
to remain at her court. But she several times sent the Huguenots help,
both secretly and openly, and she allowed the Netherland Protestants to
take shelter in England, and recruit themselves in her ports. She made
no effort to prevent hundreds of English volunteers passing the Channel
to aid the insurgents. For if the queen had doubts as to taking her
side, the people had none; they sympathized heartily with the Huguenots
and the Netherlanders, and did all that private persons could to bring
them succour.
[Sidenote: =The Bull of Deposition.=]
Yet Elizabeth refused to assume the position of the champion of
Protestantism, even when the inducement to do so became more pressing.
In 1570 Pope Pius V. formally excommunicated her, and declared
her deposed, and her kingdom transferred to her cousin Mary. This
declaration turned all the more violent and fanatical Romanists into
potential traitors; if they believed in their Pope's decision, they
were bound to regard Elizabeth as a bastard and a usurper, and to look
upon Mary as the true queen. Most of the English Catholics steadily
refused to take up this position, and remained loyal in spite of the
many vexations to which their religion exposed them. But a violent
minority accepted the papal decree, and spent their time in scheming
to depose or even to murder their sovereign. The knowledge of their
designs made Elizabeth doubly cautious and wary, but did not drive her
into a crusade against Catholicism. Her Parliament, however, passed
bills, making the introduction of papal bulls into the realm, as also
the perversion of members of the Church of England to Romanism, high
treason. But no attempt was made to save the Continental Protestants
from their oppressors, or to put England at the head of a league
against the Pope.
[Sidenote: =The Ridolfi Plot.=]
Meanwhile, the Bull of Deposition bore its first-fruits in a new
conspiracy of the English Romanists, generally known as the "Ridolfi
Plot," from the name of an Italian banker, who served as the go-between
of the English malcontents and the King of Spain. The Duke of Norfolk,
ungrateful for his pardon two years before, took the lead in the
conspiracy, undertaking to seize or even to murder Elizabeth, and
then to marry the Queen of Scots. Philip of Spain promised Norfolk's
agent, Ridolfi, that the duke should have the aid of Spanish troops the
moment that he took arms. But the plan came to Cecil's ears, some of
Norfolk's papers fell into the minister's power, and he was able to lay
his hands on all concerned in the plot. Norfolk lost his head, as he
well deserved, and it was expected that the Queen of Scots would share
his fate. But though the nation and the Parliament clamoured for Mary's
blood, Elizabeth refused to touch her; she was left unharmed in her
captivity. Nor did the queen declare war on Spain, though there was the
clearest proof that Philip had been implicated in the plot. Her only
wish seems to have been to put off the crisis as long as possible.
[Sidenote: =Progress of the struggle abroad.=]
If her own danger could not tempt Elizabeth to interfere in Continental
affairs, it was not likely that anything else would make her take up
the sword. Not even the fearful Massacre of St. Bartholomew provoked
her to take up arms against the Catholics--though on that one night the
weak King of France, egged on by his wicked mother and brother, ordered
the slaughter of 20,000 Protestants who had come up to Paris, relying
on his good will and promised patronage (1572). Elizabeth stormed at
the treacherous French court, but made no attempt to aid the surviving
Huguenots in their gallant struggle against their persecutors. So
great was her determination to keep the peace, that she even offered
to mediate between Philip of Spain and the revolted provinces of
the Low Countries, though it is fair to add that she--perhaps
designedly--proposed conditions to them which it was unlikely that
either would accept.
It was fortunate for England that both the Huguenots in France and the
Dutch in the North displayed a far greater power of resistance than
might have been expected. The former held their own, and even forced
King Charles to come to terms and grant them toleration. The latter,
though reduced to great straits, persevered to the end under their wise
leader, William, Prince of Orange, and beat back the terrible Duke of
Alva, King Philip's best general, from the walls of Alkmaar, when their
fortunes seemed at the lowest (1573). Next year they forced Alva's
successor, Requesens, to retire from Holland, after the gallant defence
and relief of Leyden (October, 1574).
[Sidenote: =Commercial and maritime gains of England.=]
Elizabeth, therefore, escaped the danger that the triumph of the King
of Spain and the Catholic party in France would have brought upon
her, though her safety came from no merit of her own. It was not
till ten years more had passed that she was finally forced to draw
the sword and fight for her life and crown. Meanwhile, it cannot be
denied that her cautious and selfish policy did much for the material
prosperity of England. In twenty years of peace the one country of
Western Europe which enjoyed quiet and good government was bound to
profit at the expense of its unfortunate neighbours. England became a
land of refuge to all the Continental Protestants: to her shores the
artisans of France transferred their industries, and the merchants of
Antwerp their hoarded wealth. The new settlers were kindly received, as
men persecuted in behalf of the true faith, and became good citizens
of their adopted country. But most of all did the maritime trade of
England prosper. Her seamen got the advantage that comes to the neutral
flag in time of war, and began to take into their hands the commerce
that had once been the staple of the Hanseatic Towns, the French ocean
ports, and the cities of the much-vexed Low Countries. English ships
had seldom been seen in earlier days beyond Hamburg or Lisbon, but now
they began to push into the Baltic, to follow the Mediterranean as far
as Turkey, and even to navigate the wild Arctic Ocean, as far as the
ports of Northern Russia.
[Sidenote: =Exploration in the West.--Hawkins--Drake--Frobisher.=]
But the attention of the English seamen was directed most of all to
the West, whither the reports of the vast wealth of America drew
adventurous spirits as with a magnet. The gold which the Spaniards had
plundered from the ancient empires of Mexico and Peru dazzled the eyes
of all men, and the English seamen hoped to find some similar hoard on
every barren shore from Newfoundland to Patagonia. But the Spaniards
arrogated to themselves the sole right to America and its trade, basing
their claim on a preposterous grant made them by Alexander VI., the
notorious Borgia Pope. They treated all adventurers who pushed into
the Western waters not only as intruders, but as pirates. Sir John
Hawkins, the pioneer of English trade to America, was always coming
into collision with them (1562-64). That more famous sea-captain,
Sir Francis Drake, a cousin of Hawkins, spent most of his time in
bickering in a somewhat piratical way with the Spanish authorities
beyond the ocean. His second voyage to the West was a great landmark
in English naval history. Starting in 1577 with the secret connivance
of Elizabeth, he sailed round Cape Horn and up the coasts of Chili and
Peru, capturing numberless Spanish ships, and often sacking a wealthy
port. His greatest achievement was the seizing of the great Lima
galleon, which was taking home to King Philip the annual instalment
of American treasure--a sum of no less than £500,000. After taking
this splendid booty, Drake reached England by crossing the Pacific
and Indian Oceans, and rounding the Cape of Good Hope, thus making
the first circumnavigation of the globe which an Englishman had
accomplished. While Drake was gathering treasure in South America,
other seamen pushed northward, endeavouring to find the "North-West
Passage"--a navigable route which was supposed to exist round the
northern shore of North America. There Frobisher discovered Labrador
and Hudson's Bay, but brought back little profit from his adventures in
the frozen Arctic seas.
[Sidenote: =Jesuit intrigues.=]
While the emissaries of England were invading the Spanish waters,
England herself was suffering from another kind of invasion at the
hands of the friends of the King of Spain. Since the bull of 1570,
Elizabeth was considered fair game by every fanatical Romanist on
the Continent. Accordingly, there began to land in England many
secret missionaries of the old faith, generally exiled Englishmen
trained abroad in the "English colleges" at Rheims and Douay, where
the banished Catholics mustered strongest. It was their aim not only
to keep wavering Romanists in their faith, but to organize them in
a secret conspiracy against the queen. They taught that all was
permissible in dealing with heretics; their disciples were to feign
loyalty, and even conformity with the English Church, but were to be
ready to take up arms whenever the signal was given from the Continent.
These Jesuits and seminary priests constituted a very serious
danger, but they did not escape the eyes of Walsingham and Burleigh,
Elizabeth's watchful ministers. Their plans were discovered, and
several were caught and hung; yet the conspiracy went on, and was soon
to take shape in overt action.
[Sidenote: =Throckmorton's Plot.--War with Spain declared.=]
Its first working was seen in "Throckmorton's Plot," a widely spread
scheme for an attack on England by all the Catholic powers combined
(1583). The Duke of Guise prepared an army in France, the King of
Spain another in the Netherlands, which were to unite for an invasion.
Meanwhile, the English Romanists were to rise in favour of the Queen
of Scots, and welcome the foreign armies. Throckmorton and a few more
fanatics undertook to make the whole plan easier by assassinating the
queen. But Walsingham's spies got scent of the matter, Throckmorton was
caught and executed, and Elizabeth, convinced at last that dallying
with Spain was no longer possible, dismissed King Philip's ambassador,
and prepared for open war (1584).
[Sidenote: =Leicester's expedition to Holland.=]
The struggle which had so long been fought out by intrigue and
unauthorized buccaneering, was now to be settled by honest hard
fighting. It proved perilous enough, but far less formidable than
the cautious queen had feared. Elizabeth was at last forced to lend
open aid to the Protestants of the Continent, and 7000 men, under her
favourite, the Earl of Leicester, sailed for Holland to aid the Dutch
against King Philip. They won no great battles, but their presence was
invaluable to the Netherlanders, who had begun to despair when their
great leader, William of Orange, had been assassinated by a fanatic
hired by Spanish gold. Leicester was an incapable general, but his men
fought well, and learnt to despise the Spaniards. Even a defeat which
they suffered at Zutphen encouraged them, for 500 English there made
head against the whole Spanish army, and retired without great harm,
though they lost Sir Philip Sidney, the most popular and accomplished
young gentleman in England, well known as the author of a curious
pastoral romance called "The Arcadia" (1586).
[Sidenote: =English successes at sea.=]
Far more important than the fighting in the Netherlands were the
maritime exploits of the English seamen. The moment that they were
let loose upon the Spaniards they asserted a clear supremacy at sea.
Drake took and sacked Vigo, a great port of Northern Spain, and then,
crossing the Atlantic, captured the chief cities of the West Indies and
the Spanish main--St. Iago, Cartagena, and St. Domingo (1586).
[Sidenote: =Last plot of Mary Queen of Scots.=]
Meanwhile, Mary Queen of Scots was playing her last stake. From
her prison she made over to King Philip her rights to the throne of
England, and besought him to despatch his armies to rescue her. But she
also gave her approval to one more assassination-plot hatched by the
English Catholics. Instigated by a Jesuit priest named Ballard, Anthony
Babington, a gentleman of Derbyshire, and a handful of his friends
agreed to murder Elizabeth in her own palace. But there were spies of
the lynx-eyed Walsingham among the conspirators, and when the Queen of
Scots and the would-be murderers were just prepared to strike, hands
were laid upon them. Babington and his friends were executed, but this
was not enough to appease the cry for blood which arose from the whole
nation when the conspiracy was divulged. Urged on by her ministers,
Elizabeth at last allowed the Queen of Scots to be put on her trial for
this, the fourth attempt to strike down her cousin. Mary was tried by
a commission of peers, and clearly convicted, not only of encouraging
a Catholic rising and a Spanish invasion, but of having approved
Babington's murderous plan. She was found guilty (October 25, 1586),
and the Parliament, which met soon after, besought the queen to have
her beheaded without delay.
[Sidenote: =Mary executed.=]
But Elizabeth still hesitated. She hated Mary, but her high ideas of
royal prerogative made her shrink from slaying a sovereign princess,
and she still dreaded the explosion of wrath which she knew must follow
all over Catholic Europe. The young King of Scotland might resent
his mother's execution, and the Guises in France would never pardon
their cousin's death. She lingered for more than three months before
she would issue Mary's death-warrant; but at last she gave the fatal
signature. Her ministers at once caused the warrant to be carried
out, without allowing their mistress time to repent. The Queen of
Scots was executed in her prison at Fotheringay Castle. She died with
great dignity and courage, asserting on the scaffold that she was a
martyr for her religion, not a criminal. Many both in her own day and
since have believed her words, but it is impossible to read her story
through from first to last, and then to conclude that she was only the
victim of circumstances and the prey of unscrupulous enemies. Though
much sinned against, she was far more the worker of her own undoing
(February 8, 1587).
Elizabeth expressed great wrath against her ministers for hurrying
on the execution. She fined and imprisoned Davison, the Secretary of
State, who had sent off Mary's death-warrant, and pretended that she
had wished to pardon her. Perhaps her anger was real, but no one save
the unfortunate Davison took it very seriously. The people felt nothing
but satisfaction and relief, and rejoiced that there was no longer a
Catholic heiress to trouble the realm. The King of Scots contented
himself with a formal protest, and the Guises in France were too busy
in their civil wars with King Henry III. and the Huguenots to think of
assailing England.
[Sidenote: =The Spanish Armada.=]
Only Philip of Spain, who accepted in sober earnest the legacy of her
rights which Mary had left him, took up the task of revenge, and he had
already so many causes to hate Elizabeth, that he did not need this
additional provocation to spur him on to attack her. He had already
begun to prepare for a great naval expedition against England. All
through the spring and summer of 1587 the ports of Spain, Portugal,
Naples, and Sicily, were busy in manning and equipping every war-ship
that the king could get together. The Duke of Parma, the Spanish
viceroy in the Netherlands, was also directed to draw off every man
that could be spared from the Dutch War, and to be ready to lead them
across the Channel the moment that the king's fleet should have secured
the Straits of Dover.
But the great flotilla, the _Invincible Armada_, as the Spaniards
called it, was long in sailing. Ere it was ready, Drake made a bold
descent on Cadiz, and burnt no less than 10,000 tons of shipping which
lay in its harbour. He called this exploit "singeing the King of
Spain's beard." This disaster caused so much delay that the expedition
had to be put off till the next year.
In the spring of 1588, however, the Armada was at last ready to start.
It comprised 130 vessels, half of which were great "galleons" of the
largest size that were known to the sixteenth century, and carried
8000 seamen and nearly 20,000 soldiers. But the crews were raw, the
ships were ill-found and ill-provisioned, and, what was most fatal of
all, the admiral, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, was a mere fair-weather
sailor, who hardly knew a mast from an anchor. It may be added that the
vessels were overcrowded with the 20,000 soldiers whom they bore, and
for the most part were armed with fewer and smaller cannons than their
great bulk would have been able to carry.
[Sidenote: =Comparison of Spanish and English fleets.=]
Nevertheless, the Armada was an imposing force, and in strong hands
ought to have achieved success. For Elizabeth had a very small
permanent royal navy, and had to rely for the defence of her realm
mainly on privateers and merchantmen hastily equipped for war service.
Moreover, her parsimony had depleted the royal arsenals to such an
extent, that in provisioning and arming their fleet the English were at
much the same disadvantage as their enemies. But, unlike the Spaniards,
they had excellent crews, and were led by old captains who had learnt
their trade in long years of exploring and buccaneering across the
Atlantic--men like Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, and others whose names
we have no space to mention. The command of the whole was given to
Lord Howard of Effingham, a capable and cautious officer, who showed
himself worthy of the queen's confidence--confidence that appeared
all the more striking because he was suspected by many to be a Roman
Catholic. In the mere number of ships the English fleet which mustered
at Plymouth somewhat exceeded the Armada, but in size the individual
vessels were far smaller than the Spanish galleons. But they were much
more seaworthy, and were armed so heavily with artillery that it was
found that an English ship could throw a broadside of the same weight
of metal as a Spaniard of almost double its size.
[Sidenote: =Defeat and dispersion of the Armada.=]
The Armada left Corunna, the northernmost port of Spain, on July 22,
and appeared off the Lizard on July 28. On the news of its approach,
the English fleet put out of Plymouth, and the beacons summoned the
militia to arms all over the land from Berwick to Penzance. The Duke of
Medina Sidonia had resolved not to fight the English at once, but to
pass up the Channel to the Dover Straits, and get into communication
with his colleague Parma in Flanders, before engaging in a decisive
battle. This unwise resolve gave the English a splendid opportunity.
As the Armada slowly rolled eastward, it was beset on all sides by
Lord Howard's lighter fleet, and for a whole week was battered and
hustled along without being able to induce the enemy to close. The
great galleons were so slow and unwieldy, that they could not come
up with the English, who sailed around and about them, plying them
with distant but effective artillery fire, and cutting off every
vessel which was disabled or fell behind. By the time that the
Spaniards reached Calais, they were thoroughly demoralized; they had
lost comparatively few ships, but every one of the fleet was more or
less shattered by shot, and the crews had suffered terribly from the
cannonade. At Calais Medina Sidonia received the unwelcome news that
Parma could not join him. A Dutch fleet was blockading the Flemish
ports, and the viceroy was unable to get his transports out to sea.
Thus brought to a check, the duke moored his fleet off Calais, to
pause a moment and recruit (August 6). But that night the English sent
fire-ships among his crowded vessels, and to escape them the Spaniards
had to put off hastily in the darkness. This manoeuvre proved fatal.
Some vessels ran ashore on the French coast, others were burnt, others
cut off by the enemy. A final engagement, on August 8-9, so shattered
the fleet that Medina Sidonia lost heart, and fled away into the German
Ocean, before a strong gale from the south which had sprung up. His
vessels were dispersed, and each made its way out of the fight as best
it could. Some were taken, many driven on to the Dutch coast, the rest
passed out of sight of England, steering northward before the gale.
Lord Howard's fleet was therefore able to sail victorious into the
Thames, and report the rout of the enemy. It was none too soon,
for the English ammunition was well-nigh exhausted after ten days'
continuous fighting. They were welcomed by the queen, who had gathered
a great force of militia at Tilbury, in Essex, to fight Parma, if he
should succeed in crossing. Elizabeth had behaved splendidly during
the crisis; she had organized a strong army, and put herself at its
head, inspiring every man by the cheerful and resolute spirit which
she displayed. Even had the Armada swept away the English fleet, it is
unlikely that Parma would have been successful against the numerous and
enthusiastic levies which were ready to fight him.
But the Armada was now a thing of naught. Forced to return round the
north of Scotland, it was utterly shattered in the unknown seas of the
West. The cliffs of the Orkneys, the Hebrides, Connaught, and Kerry,
were strewn with the wrecks of Spanish galleons, and only 53 ships out
of the 130 that had started straggled back to the ports of northern
Spain.
The great crisis of the century was now past; queen and nation had
been true to themselves and to each other, and the days of plots and
invasions were over. For the future, Elizabeth could not only sleep
secure of life and crown, but could feel that she might pose as the
arbitress of Western Europe, since the domination of Spain was at an
end.
[Sidenote: =Half-hearted foreign policy of Elizabeth.=]
But she was now too far gone in years--she had attained the age of
fifty-six--to be able to start on a new and vigorous line of policy.
Her old passion for caution and intrigue could not be shaken off,
though they were no longer necessary. Hence it came to pass that,
though England was strong, healthy, wealthy, and vigorous, she did not
take up the dominant position that might have been expected. The queen
persisted in her old policy of helping the Continental Protestants
only by meagre doles of money, and small detachments of troops. By a
vigorous effort she might have thrust the Spaniards completely out of
the Low Countries, or enabled the Huguenots to make themselves supreme
in France. But she refused to fit out any great expeditions; the
expense appalled her parsimonious soul, and she dreaded the chances
of war. Hence it came that in the Low Countries the Dutch established
their independence in the "Seven United Provinces," but Spain continued
to hold Belgium. Hence, too, French parties were condemned to six
years more of civil war, which only ended when Henry of Navarre, the
Protestant heir to the throne of France, abjured his religion in order
to get accepted by the Catholics. "Paris is well worth a Mass," he
cynically observed, and swore all that was required of him (1593).
But he granted the Huguenots complete peace and toleration by the
celebrated _Edict of Nantes_, and put an end to the civil war which had
devastated his unhappy land for thirty years.
[Sidenote: =Naval war with Spain continued.=]
The chief efforts of Elizabeth's foreign policy during the last fifteen
years of her reign were naval expeditions against the Spaniards. They
caused King Philip much loss and much vexation of spirit, but they did
not inflict any very crushing blow on him. The queen would never spend
enough money on them, and generally allowed her subjects to carry on
the war with squadrons of privateers. But the English adventurers very
naturally sought plunder rather than solid political advantages--a fact
which accounts for their failure to do anything great. A considerable
expedition sent out in 1589 sacked Corunna and Vigo, but failed in
an attempt to set upon the Portuguese throne a pretender hostile to
King Philip. This was followed by a series of smaller expeditions
to South America and the West Indies, in which Drake, and a younger
adventurer, Sir Walter Raleigh, Elizabeth's favourite courtier, did
Spain considerable harm, but England no great good. A larger armament
sailed in 1596 against Cadiz, under the Earl of Essex and Lord Howard
of Effingham. This force took the town, and destroyed Spain's largest
naval arsenal and a great part of her fleet: a mere naval expedition
could do no more.
[Sidenote: =Colonial enterprise.--Raleigh in Virginia.=]
These successive blows at Spain gave England the complete command
of the seas. Hence it is not strange that we find the beginnings of
colonial enterprise appearing. An attempt to found a settlement on
the bleak shore of Newfoundland was a failure. But Sir Walter Raleigh
planted a promising colony in the more clement district about the
river Roanoke, which he named _Virginia_, after his mistress, the
"Virgin-Queen," as she loved to be called. The first Virginian scheme
came to naught--the Indians were hostile, and the improvident settlers
planted tobacco instead of corn, and so starved themselves (1590). It
was not till seventeen years later that the colony was founded for the
second time, and began to flourish. It was from thence that Raleigh
brought to England the two products that are always connected with his
name, tobacco and potatoes.
[Sidenote: =Growth of foreign trade.--Chartered companies.=]
Colonial enterprise was accompanied by increased trade with distant
lands. The English ships began to appear as far afield as India,
China, and even Japan. The merchants who worked the more difficult
and dangerous routes, banded themselves into chartered companies, of
which the Turkey Company, founded in 1581, the Russian Company, dating
from 1566, and the far more famous East India Company (1600) were the
most important. By the end of the queen's reign, English commerce had
doubled and tripled, and the steady stream of wealth which it poured
into the land had done much to end the social troubles and dangers
which had marked the middle years of the century.
[Sidenote: =Rural distress.=]
But nearly all the profit went to the town populations. Ports and
markets flourished, merchants and skilled artisans grew rich, and a
certain proportion of the wretched vagrant hordes, which had been
the terror of the middle years of the century, were absorbed into
the new employments which were springing up in the towns. But in the
countryside, neither the landholder nor the peasant had nearly such a
good position as in the days before the Reformation. The prices both
of food and of manufactured goods had gone up about threefold, but
rents had not risen perceptibly, and the wages of agricultural labour
had only increased about 50 percent. The country gentleman, therefore,
was no longer so opulent in comparison to the town-dwelling merchant,
and the peasant stood far worse compared with the artisan than in the
previous century. We may place in the time of Elizabeth the beginning
of that rise of the importance of the urban as compared with the rural
population, which has been going on ever since, till, in our own day,
England is entirely dominated by her towns. It will be noticed that in
the great political struggle of the next century, under the Stuarts,
the party which represented the wealth and activity of the cities
completely beat that which drew its strength from the peerage and
gentry of the purely agricultural districts.
[Sidenote: =The Poor Law.=]
It would be wrong to leave the field of social change without
mentioning the celebrated Poor Law of Queen Elizabeth (1601). All
attempts to cope with pauperism by voluntary charity having failed, it
was finally resolved to make the maintenance of the aged and invalid
poor a statutory burden on the parishes. The new law provided that
the able-bodied vagrant should be forced to work, and, if he refused,
should be imprisoned, but that the impotent and deserving should be
fed and housed by overseers, who were authorized to levy rates on the
parish for their support. The system seems to have worked well, and we
hear no complaints on the subject for three or four generations.
[Sidenote: =Growth of poetry and philosophy.=]
It is most noteworthy to mark the way in which the expansion of England
in the spheres of political and commercial greatness was accompanied by
a corresponding growth in the realms of intellect. The second half of
Elizabeth's reign, a mere period of twenty years, was more fertile in
great literary names than the two whole centuries which had preceded
it. The excitement of the long religious wars, the sudden opening up of
the dark places of the world by the great explorers, the free spirit
of individual inquiry which accompanied the growth of Protestantism,
all conspired to stir and develop men's minds. The greatest English
dramatist, William Shakespeare, born in 1564, and the greatest English
philosopher, Francis Bacon, born in 1561, were both children of the
days of the long struggle with Spain, and had watched the final crisis
of the Armada in their early manhood. Edmund Spenser, a few years older
than his mightier contemporaries, shows even more clearly the spirit
of the times. All through his lengthy epic of the _Faërie Queene_ he
is inspired by the enthusiasm of the struggles of England, and tells
in allegory the glories of the great Elizabeth. We have but space to
allude to Sir Philip Sydney and his pastoral romances, to Hooker's
works on political philosophy, to Marlowe and other dramatists whose
fame is half eclipsed by Shakespeare's genius. Never before or since
has England produced in a few short years such a crop of great literary
names.
The two main subjects of domestic importance in the last years of
Elizabeth were the development of fresh forms of division in the
English Church, and the troubles caused by the new conquest of Ireland.
Both of these movements had begun in the earlier years of the reign,
but did not fully expand till its end.
[Sidenote: =Dangers from the Romanists at an end.=]
Elizabeth's chief problem in matters religious had for thirty years
been that of dealing with the Roman Catholics. But after the death of
Mary of Scotland and the defeat of the Armada this question retired
somewhat into the background. The vast majority of the Romanists had
conformed to the Anglican Church; of the remainder many were loyal,
and were therefore tacitly left unharmed by the Government, save when
they came into conflict with the Recusancy Laws, as the acts directed
against them were called. The small but violent minority who listened
to the Jesuits, and were still plotting against the queen, were, on the
other hand, treated with the most vehement harshness. At one time and
another, a very considerable number of them came to the gallows, though
always, as Elizabeth was careful to explain, not as Papists, but as
traitors. They were so hated by the nation, who identified them with
nothing but assassination plots and intrigues with Spain, that they no
longer constituted any danger.
[Sidenote: =Rise of Puritanism.=]
But a new religious problem was growing up. Many of the Protestants who
had conformed to the English Church system in Elizabeth's earlier years
were growing out of touch with the National Establishment. Constant
intercourse with the Huguenots and the Dutch, both of whom professed
violent forms of Calvinism, had made them discontented with the ritual
and organization of the English Church. Like their Continental friends,
they came to hate bishops and canons, vestments and ritual, even things
that seem to us parts of the common decencies of church service, such
as the surplice in the reading-desk, the usage of kneeling at Holy
Communion, the employment of the ring in marriage, and the sign of the
cross at baptism. All these remnants of common Christian practice they
considered to be "rags of Popery," vain survivals of the old Romanist
days. And since they wished to sweep everything away, they were called
in derision "Puritans," in allusion to their constant citation of "the
pure Gospel."
[Sidenote: =Harsh treatment of the Puritans.=]
Elizabeth detested the Puritan habit of mind. She loved decency
and order, and she liked the pomp and splendour of the old church
services; indeed, she would have gladly kept much that the Anglican
Establishment has rejected. She was proud of her position as head and
defender of the national Church, and looked upon the bishops as high
and important state officials under her. The Puritan desire to abolish
the episcopate, to do away with all ritual, to whitewash the churches
and break down all their ornaments, seemed to her to savour of anarchic
republicanism and rank disloyalty. She was determined that the Puritan,
no less than the Romanist, should suffer if he refused to conform to
the usages of the national Church. Hence it came that she dealt very
hardly with the Puritans, suppressing their religious meetings for
"prophesying"--as they called extempore preaching--and treating their
pamphlets as seditious. One very scurrilous set of tracts, issued
under the name of _Martin Mar-prelate_, provoked her wrath so much
that John Penry, who was responsible for them, was actually hung for
treasonable libel. Puritans who kept quiet did not suffer, any more
than the Romanists who kept quiet, but those who resisted the queen
were treated with a rigour that showed that the day of freedom of
conscience was still far away. The discontented admirers of Calvinism
still kept within the Church of England,--it was their ambition to
change its doctrine, not to quit it; but already in Elizabeth's reign
it was obvious that schism between the moderate and the violent parties
was inevitable.
[Sidenote: =Irish policy of Elizabeth.=]
The most miserable and melancholy page of the history of Elizabeth's
reign is that which is covered by the records of Ireland. We have
already mentioned how Henry VIII. had extended the English influence
beyond the borders of "the Pale," and done something towards subduing
the whole island to obedience. But the most important share of the work
was reserved for Elizabeth. Her intent was shown by her Act of 1569,
for dividing the whole land into shires, to be ruled by sheriffs on
the English plan--a device for destroying the patriarchal authority of
the tribal chiefs, who from time immemorial had governed their clans
according to old Celtic law. It was not to be expected that any such
scheme could be carried out without causing friction with the natives.
They were wholly unaccustomed to obey or respect the royal mandate, and
acknowledged no authority higher than that of their own chief: English
laws and English manners were alike hateful to them. In many districts
they were little better than savages; the "wild Irish," as the more
uncivilized tribes were called, dwelt in low huts of mud, wore no shoes
or head-gear, and were clothed only in a rough kilt and mantle of
frieze. They wore their hair long over neck and eyes, went everywhere
armed to the teeth, and looked on tribal war and plundering as the sole
serious business of life.
[Sidenote: =Resistance of the Irish clans.=]
To teach such a race to live under the strict English law was an
almost impossible task, requiring the utmost patience, and Elizabeth's
ministers and officials were not patient. When the chiefs withstood
their orders, they declared them traitors, confiscated the lands of
whole tribes, and attempted to settle up the annexed districts with
English colonists. This, of course, drove the Irish to desperation, and
the incomers were soon slain or driven away. In return, the Lord-Deputy
of Ireland or one of the "Presidents" of its four provinces would
march against the rebels, slay every male person they met, armed or
unarmed, and leave the women and children to starve. In this ruthless,
devastating war, whole counties were depopulated and left waste, a
few survivors only escaping into woods, bogs, or mountains. The worst
feature of the struggle was the cruel double-dealing employed against
the Irish chiefs; they were often induced to surrender by false
promises of pardon, they were caught and slain by treachery, sometimes
they were even poisoned. The intractable nature of the rebels explains,
but does not excuse, the conduct of the English rulers. The Irish would
never keep an oath or observe a peace; they plundered and murdered
whenever the Lord-Deputy's eye was not on them, and they were always
trying to get aid from Spain.
[Sidenote: =The conflict partly a religious one.=]
At first the struggle between English and Irish was purely a matter
of race, but the religious element was soon introduced. Protestantism
made no head in the country, and in 1579 a Papal Legate, Nicholas
Sanders, came over to organize the tribes to unite in defence of the
old religion. No man could ever persuade Irish parties to join for
long, and Sanders's mission was in that respect a failure. But for the
future the war was embittered by religious as well as racial hatred. In
1580 the Pope sent over a body of Italian and Spanish mercenaries to
aid the rebels; but this force was blockaded by Lord Grey in its camp
at Smerwick, a harbour in Kerry, and every man was put to the sword. At
a later date Philip of Spain sent similar and equally ineffective help.
[Sidenote: =Desmond's Rebellion.=]
The two chief struggles of the Irish against the establishment of the
English rule were that of the tribes of Munster in 1578-83, and that
of the tribes of Ulster in 1595-1601. The former was led by Garrett
Fitzgerald, Earl of Desmond, the greatest lord of the South, the
descendant of one of those Anglo-Norman families which had become
more Irish than the Irish themselves. In his desperate struggle with
Lord-Deputy Grey and the English colonists in Munster, he saw all the
land from Galway to Waterford harried into a wilderness, and was killed
at last as a fugitive in the hills.
[Sidenote: =Tyrone's Rebellion.--Expedition of Essex.=]
The Ulster rebellion of Hugh O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, the head of the
greatest of the native Irish septs, was far more formidable than that
of the Fitzgeralds. The English could for a long time do nothing
against him. In 1598 he defeated an army of 5000 men on the Blackwater
and slew its leader, Sir Henry Bagenal, and most of his followers.
Tyrone sent for aid to Spain, and so moved Queen Elizabeth's fears that
she despatched against him the largest English force that ever went
over-sea in her reign. An army of 20,000 men was placed under Robert
Devereux, the young Earl of Essex, whom the queen loved most of all men
in her later years, and sent over to Dublin. Essex, though he had won
much credit for courage in Holland, and at the capture of Cadiz, was
not a great general. He pacified Central and Southern Ireland, but did
not succeed in crushing Tyrone. It would seem that he was disgusted
at the cruelty and treachery of his predecessors in the government of
Ireland, and wished to admit the rebels to submission on easy terms. At
any rate, he made a truce with Tyrone in 1600, promising that the queen
should grant him toleration in matters of religion, and leave him his
earldom. Essex returned to England to get these terms ratified, but was
received very coldly by his mistress and her council, who had sent him
to Ireland to suppress, not to condone, the rebellion. His treaty was
not confirmed, and the war with Tyrone went on. The earl got 7000 men
from Spain, and ravaged all Central Ireland, till he was defeated by
Lord Montjoy in an attempt to raise the siege of Kinsale (1601). In the
next year he made complete submission to the queen, and was pardoned
and given back most of his Ulster lands. But the eight years of war had
made Northern Ireland a desert, and the power of the O'Neils was almost
broken.
[Sidenote: =Intrigues and execution of Essex.=]
Meanwhile the short stay of Essex in Ireland had led to a strange
tragedy in London. The young earl had been so much favoured by the
queen in earlier years, that he could not brook the rebuke that fell
upon him for his dealings with Tyrone. Presuming on the almost doting
fondness which his sovereign had shown for him, the headstrong young
man plunged into seditious courses. He swore that his enemies in the
council had calumniated him to the queen, and that he would be revenged
on them and drive them out of office. With this object he gathered many
of the Puritan party about him--for he was a strong Protestant--and
resolved to overturn the ministry by force. He caught the Lord
Chancellor, and locked him up, and then sallied out armed into the
streets of London with a band of his friends, calling on the people to
rise and deliver the queen from false councillors. But he had counted
too much on his popularity; no one joined him, and he was apprehended
and put in prison.
Elizabeth was much enraged with her former favourite, and allowed his
enemies to persuade her into permitting him to be tried and executed
for treason. When he was dead she bitterly regretted him (February,
1601).
[Sidenote: =Last years of Elizabeth.=]
The great queen was now near her end. All her contemporaries, both
friends and foes, had passed away already. Philip of Spain had died,
a prey to religious melancholy, and racked by a loathsome disease, in
1598. That same year saw the end of the great minister, William Cecil,
Lord Burleigh. His colleague Walsingham had sunk into the grave some
years earlier, in 1590. Leicester, whom the queen had loved till his
death-day, had perished of a fever in 1588, the year of the Armada.
A younger generation had arisen, which only knew Elizabeth as an old
woman, and forgot her brilliant youth. To them the vivacity and love of
pleasure which she displayed on the verge of her seventieth year seemed
abnormal and even unseemly.
[Sidenote: ="Monopolies" declared illegal.=]
To the last she kept her talent for dealing with men. There was no
greater instance of her cleverness shown in all her life than her
management of her Parliament in 1601. The Commons had been growing
more resolute and strong-willed as the queen grew older, and though
Elizabeth often chid them, and sometimes even imprisoned members who
displeased her, yet she knew when to yield with a good grace. The
Parliament of 1601 was raging against "monopolies"--grants under the
royal seal to individuals, permitting them to be the sole vendors or
manufacturers of certain articles of trade. Seeing their resolution,
Elizabeth came down in person to the House, and addressed the members
at length, so cleverly that she persuaded them that she was as much
opposed to the abuse as they themselves, and won enormous applause when
she announced that all monopolies were at once to be withdrawn and made
illegal.
[Sidenote: =Death of Elizabeth.=]
Eighteen months after this strange scene Elizabeth died, in her
seventy-first year. On her death-bed she assented to the designation
of James of Scotland as her successor--a thing she would never suffer
before, for she held that "an expectant heir is like a coffin always in
sight."
[Sidenote: =The Elizabethan age.=]
In spite of the many unamiable points in her character, Elizabeth was
always liked by her subjects, and well deserved their liking. She had
guided England through forty-five most troublous years, and left her
subjects wealthy, prosperous, and contented. Her failures had always
been upon the side of caution, and such mistakes are the easiest to
repair and the soonest forgotten. Both in her own day and in ages to
come, she received the credit for all the progress and prosperity of
her reign. The nation, groaning under the unwisdom of the Stuarts,
cried in vain for a renewal of "the days of good Queen Bess." The
modern historian, when he recounts the great deeds of the Englishmen
of the latter half of the sixteenth century, invariably speaks of the
"Elizabethan age." Nor is this wrong. When we reflect on the evils
which a less capable sovereign might have brought upon the realm in
that time of storm and stress, we may well give her due meed of thanks
to the cautious, politic, unscrupulous queen, who left such peace and
prosperity behind her.
FOOTNOTE:
[34]
James IV. = Margaret of England = Earl of Angus.
| |
James V. Margaret Countess of Lennox.
| |
Mary Queen of Scots. Henry Lord Darnley.
CHAPTER XXV.
JAMES I.
1603-1625.
With the death of Elizabeth the greatness of England departed. From
1603 to 1688 she counted for little in the Councils of Europe, save
indeed during the ten years of Cromwell's rule. She became the tool
of foreign powers, sometimes because her rulers were duped, sometimes
because they deliberately sold themselves to the stranger.
[Sidenote: =Character of James I.=]
James of Scotland, the old queen's legitimate heir, was a man of
thirty-seven when the throne fell to him. He had lived an unhappy
life in his northern realm, buffeted to and fro by unruly nobles and
domineering ministers of the Scottish Kirk. But most of his troubles
had been the results of his own failings. Of all the kings who ever
ruled these realms, he is almost the only one of whom it can be said
that he was a coward. From this vice sprang his other defects. Like all
cowards, he was suspicious, capable of any cruelty against those whom
he dreaded, prone always to lean on some stronger man, who would bear
his responsibility for him. He chose these favourites with the rankest
folly: Arran and Lennox, who were the minions of his youth while yet
he reigned in Scotland alone, and Rochester and Buckingham, who ruled
his riper age, were--all four--arrogant, vicious, scheming adventurers.
They had nothing to recommend them save a handsome person and a fluent
and flattering tongue. Each in his turn domineered over his doting
master, and made himself a byword for insolence and self-seeking.
James was unfortunate in his outer man. He was ill-made, corpulent,
and weak-kneed; though his face was not unpleasing, his speech was
marred by a tongue too large for his mouth. But he was grossly and
ridiculously vain and conceited. He possessed a certain cleverness
of a limited kind, and he was well versed in book-learning. But he
imagined that learning was wisdom, and loved to pose as the wisest of
mankind--the British Solomon, as his favourites were wont to call him.
This stuttering, shambling pedant now mounted the throne of the politic
Elizabeth, and in a reign of twenty-two years contrived to wreck the
strong position which the royal power held in England, and to make a
revolution inevitable. The crash would have come in his own day, but
for one thing--James, as we have said before, was a coward, and had not
the courage to fight when affairs came to a crisis.
[Sidenote: =Doctrine of the dispensing power.=]
James based his preposterous claims to override the nation's will and
the rights of Parliament on two theories, which represented to him the
true foundations of all royal power. The first was his "prerogative,"
or power to dispense with ordinary laws and customs at his good
pleasure. He saw that the Tudors had often gone beyond the letter of
the mediaeval constitution, and thought that their action gave him a
full precedent for similar encroachment. He forgot two things: first,
that Henry VIII. and Elizabeth had lived in times of storm and stress,
when firm governance was all-important, and much would be forgiven to
a strong ruler; and secondly, that the two great Tudors had always
taken the people into their confidence, and been careful to get popular
support for their doings. He himself tried to impose an unpopular
policy on an unwilling people, and never condescended to explain his
motives.
[Sidenote: =The "Divine Right" of kings.=]
The second pillar of the king's policy was the theory of "divine
hereditary kingship"--a notion entirely opposed to the old English idea
that the crown was elective. James chose to ignore such precedents
as the elections of Henry IV. or Henry VII., where the natural heir
had been passed over, and wished his subjects to believe that strict
hereditary succession was the only title to the throne, and that
nothing could justify or legalize any divergence from it. He claimed
that kings derived their right to rule from Heaven, not from any
choice by their subjects; hence it was impious as well as disloyal
to criticize or disobey the king's commands. James found many of the
clergy who were ready to accept this theory, partly because they
thought they could justify it from the Scriptures, partly because
they felt that the orderly governance of the Anglican Church was bound
up with the royal supremacy. In Elizabeth's time it had been the
queen's guiding and restraining hand which had prevented the nation
from lapsing into the anarchical misgovernment which characterized
Continental Protestantism.
[Sidenote: =Hopes of the three religious parties.=]
When the new king crossed the Tweed in April, 1603, he was well
received in England, where his weaknesses were as yet little known.
Every one was glad to see the succession question settled without a
war, and every party hoped to gain his favour. The Puritans trusted
that a prince reared in the Calvinism of the Scotch Kirk would do
much for them. The Romanists dreamed that the son of Mary of Scotland
would tolerate his mother's faith. The supporters of the Anglican
establishment thought that the king must needs become a good Churchman
when he realized the position that awaited him as Defender of the
Faith and Supreme Governor of the spiritual hierarchy that embraced
nine-tenths of the nation.
[Sidenote: =James supports the Established Church.=]
James himself had no doubt as to his future behaviour. There was
nothing that pleased him better than the idea of becoming the head of
the English Church. In Scotland he had learnt to hate the dictatorial
manners of the presbyters of the Kirk, and their constant interference
in politics. The well-ordered and obedient organization which he found
south of the Tweed, where every cleric, from the archbishop to the
curate, looked for guidance to the sovereign, filled him with joy and
admiration. He soon became the zealous patron of the Establishment; he
looked upon it as the bulwark of the throne, the best defence against
disloyalty and anarchy. "No bishop, no king," was his answer to the
Puritans, who strove to persuade him into abolishing episcopacy, and
establishing a Presbyterian form of Church government.
[Sidenote: =The Hampton Court Conference.= ]
Before James had been for a year on the English throne, he had shown
his intentions in the matter of Church government. On his first arrival
the Puritan party, both the Dissenters and the Conformists within the
National Church, presented him with the "Millenary Petition,"[35] in
which they complained that they were "overburdened with human rites
and ceremonies" prescribed in the Prayer-book, and besought him to
abolish episcopacy and purify the land from the remnants of Popish
superstition. James invited representative Puritan ministers to meet
him at the Hampton Court Conference (January, 1604), where they were
to dispute with some of his bishops. But the Conference was a mere
farce; the king browbeat and hectored the ministers, and declared
himself wholly convinced by the arguments of the Anglican clergy. He
announced his full approval of the existing Church system, and that he
would have "one doctrine, one discipline, one religion in substance
and ceremony." The Puritans went away in sore displeasure, and from
that moment the large number of them who had hitherto continued in the
body of the National Church, began to desert it and to form various
schismatic sects. We find it hard to-day to realize the fanatical
scruples which made them see snares in a ring or a surplice, or deem
that Episcopacy was a Romish invention; but we can understand that the
real bent of their minds was directed against dictation in matters of
conscience, and the denial of the right of private judgment. With their
theory we may sympathize, but the actual points on which they chose to
secede from the ancient Church of the land were miserably inadequate
to justify schism. It is fair to add, however, that there was much to
repel men of conscience and piety in the condition of the National
Church. The bishops showed an unworthy subservience to the throne,
which seemed peculiarly disgusting when the crown was worn by such a
self-satisfied pedant as King James. A glance at the fulsome praises
heaped upon him in the preface to the Authorized Version of the Bible
will sufficiently serve to make this plain.
[Sidenote: =Administration of the younger Cecil.=]
Almost the only sign of sagacity which the new king showed was that
he kept in office, as his chief minister, Robert, the younger Cecil,
son of the great Lord Burleigh. James made him Earl of Salisbury, and,
first as Secretary of State and afterwards as Lord Treasurer, Cecil
kept a firm hand on the reins of power, and restrained many of his
master's follies. It was not till he died, in 1612, that the king was
able to display his own unwisdom in its full development.
[Sidenote: =Cobham's Plot.=]
Hence it comes that the nine years 1602-1611 are comparatively
uneventful, and show little of the king's worst foibles. A few
incidents only deserve mention in this period. _Cobham's Plot_, which
followed almost immediately on the king's accession, was a most
mysterious business. It was said that Lord Cobham, Lord Grey, Sir
Walter Raleigh the explorer, and certain others, all enemies of Robert
Cecil, had formed a plot to kidnap the king, and force him to dismiss
his minister--perhaps, even to depose him in favour of his cousin,
Arabella Stuart, the child of his father's brother.[36] The whole
matter is so dark that it is hard to make out what the conspirators
desired, or even whether they conspired at all. Both extreme Puritans
and fanatical Roman Catholics are said to have been engaged in the
plot, and the wildest aims were ascribed to them. It is only certain
that James and Cecil used the affair as a means for crushing those whom
they feared. The unfortunate Arabella Stuart was put in confinement for
the rest of her life; Raleigh languished twelve years in the Tower; and
Grey and Cobham also suffered long imprisonment.
[Sidenote: =The Gunpowder Plot.=]
A clearer but not less strange matter was the famous _Gunpowder
Treason_ of 1605. A band of fanatical Catholics, disgusted that the
king refused to grant the toleration they had expected, or to repeal
the Recusancy laws, formed a diabolical scheme for murdering, not only
James himself, but his sons and all the chief men of the realm. Their
chiefs were Thomas Percy, a relative of the Earl of Northumberland,
Catesby, Guy Fawkes, and Sir Everard Digby. Their plan was to hire a
cellar which lay under the Houses of Parliament, fill it with barrels
of gunpowder, and fire the train when the king was opening Parliament
on the 5th of November. Lords, Commons, princes, and king would thus
perish in a common disaster, while a Catholic rising and a Spanish
invasion were to follow. Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits, was
informed of the scheme by the conspirators, and kept it secret.
A mere chance saved king and Parliament. When all was ready, and the
cellar was charged with its murderous contents, one of the conspirators
wrote an anonymous letter to his cousin, Lord Monteagle, a Catholic
peer, imploring him not to attend on the 5th of November, on account
of a great blow that was impending. Monteagle sent the letter to the
king, whose suspicious mind--it will be remembered that his own father
had perished by gunpowder--soon read the secret. The cellars were
searched on the night of November 4, and Guy Fawkes, who was to fire
the train, was discovered lurking there with his great hoard of powder.
On the news of his arrest the other conspirators took arms, but their
preparations had been ridiculously inadequate for their end, and they
were easily hunted down and slain. Fawkes and Garnet the Jesuit were
tortured, and then hung, drawn, and quartered. The only result of the
Gunpowder Treason was to make the lot of the English Romanists much
harder than before, for the nation thought that most of them had been
implicated in the plot, and Parliament greatly increased the harshness
of the Recusancy laws.
[Sidenote: =Strife between king and Parliament.=]
The persecuting of Romanists, however, was about the only point on
which the king and Parliament could agree. From the very first, James
and the House of Commons were at odds on almost every matter which
they had to discuss. When peace was made with Spain in 1604, the House
was ill pleased; for a whole generation of Englishmen had grown up who
looked upon war with King Philip as one of the natural conditions of
life, and thought that the Spanish colonies in America existed solely
for the purpose of being plundered by English buccaneers. James, on
the other hand, hated all wars with a coward's hatred, and had a great
respect for the ancient greatness and autocratic sovereignty of the
Spanish kings. Taxation furnished another fertile source of dispute:
the court was numerous, profligate, and wasteful, and, in spite of
Cecil's economy, the king piled up a mountain of debts, and exceeded
his revenue year by year. To fill his purse, he raised the scale of
the customs-duties without the consent of Parliament (1608), and then
refrained from calling the Houses together for two years. But in 1610
his increasing necessities forced him to summon them, and a sharp
dispute about the legality of the increased customs at once began. It
grew so bitter that the king dismissed the Parliament without having
obtained the money that he wanted, and was constrained to go on
accumulating unpaid debts (1611).
[Sidenote: =Death of Cecil.--Rise of Rochester.=]
Next year the great minister, Robert Cecil, died, and James was
left to govern for himself as best he might. A great change was at
once apparent. Its chief symptom was the beginning of the system of
government by royal favourites. Hitherto James had heaped wealth
and favour on his minions, but had not dared to entrust them with
affairs of state, so great was his fear of his able Lord Treasurer.
When Salisbury was gone, the king fell entirely into the hands of the
favourite of the hour, a young Scot named Robert Ker, who had been
his page. James made him Viscount Rochester, put him in the Privy
Council, and entrusted him with all his confidential business. Ker was
a worthless adventurer, whose good looks and ready tongue were his only
stock-in-trade. He used his influence purely for personal ends--to fill
his pocket and indulge his taste for ostentation. When he meddled in
politics, it was to encourage the king in courses which were hateful
to the nation--in forming an alliance with Spain, and in persisting in
illegal taxation.
[Sidenote: =Murder of Sir T. Overbury.--Fall of Rochester.=]
Ker's domination in the king's council lasted about three years, and
was ended by a shocking crime, which did more to lower the court and
the king in the eyes of the people than anything which had yet occurred
since James's accession. Ker had become enamoured of Frances Howard,
the wife of the young Earl of Essex, son of Elizabeth's unfortunate
favourite. The countess returned his passion, became his paramour, and
agreed to procure her divorce from her husband by bringing scandalous
and indelicate accusations against Essex. But a certain Sir Thomas
Overbury, an unscrupulous courtier, who was in the secret of this
wicked plot, set himself to hinder the marriage, and threatened to make
public what he knew. Rochester got him thrown into the Tower, and there
he was poisoned by the revengeful countess, with or without the guilty
knowledge of the favourite. Lady Essex brought her suit against her
husband, and as the king interfered with the course of justice in her
favour, the divorce was accomplished. The guilty pair were married with
great state, and James raised Rochester to the earldom of Somerset to
celebrate the occasion. But murder will out. Two years later the tale
of Overbury's assassination got abroad, and the king learnt the story
of his favourite's dishonour. James was not quite dead to all feelings
of right and wrong, the revelation greatly shocked him, and, moreover,
he was growing tired of Somerset's arrogance and dictatorial ways.
Hence it came about that he suffered the law to take its course. The
earl and countess were tried and convicted of having poisoned Overbury;
their lives were spared, but they suffered long imprisonment, and
disappeared into obscurity. It is said that Somerset saved his neck by
threatening to reveal some disgraceful secret of the king's, of which
he was possessed (1616).
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of Buckingham.=]
It might have been supposed that Ker's scandalous end would have
weaned King James from his propensity for favourites. But this was
not so. He replaced the Earl of Somerset by another minion, George
Villiers, the son of a Leicestershire squire. Villiers was as handsome
and insinuating as Ker, and possessed far greater ability. He not
only acquired an entire ascendency over James himself, but mastered
as completely the heir to the throne, Prince Charles. The king's
elder son, Henry, Prince of Wales, had died four years before, during
Somerset's day of power. He had been a very promising youth, and hated
his father's ways; hence some suspected that Somerset had poisoned him,
though there seems to have been no foundation for the charge.
For the nine years which James had yet to live, he was completely in
the hands of Villiers. The young favourite was vain, arrogant, and
ambitious; but worse men than he have lived; he had the saving vice
of pride, which kept him from many of the meaner sins. He was not
cruel, avaricious, or revengeful, as his predecessor Somerset had been.
But his influence on the realm was all in the direction of evil; in
his headstrong self-confidence, he thought that he was a Heaven-sent
statesman, and led his weak and doting master into many follies.
[Sidenote: =James's subservience to Spain.=]
The days of his domination are filled with the miserable story of the
"Spanish Marriage." King James, as we have already had to remark,
was filled with a great respect for the ancient power and wealth of
Spain, and never realized how much the foundations of its strength had
been sapped by the long and ruinous Dutch and English wars of Philip
II. Spain was at this moment represented by a very able ambassador,
Sarmiento, Count of Gondomar, who systematically misled the king as
to the views and intentions of his master, Philip III. His influence
induced James to look to Spanish aid for a solution of all his
financial troubles, for he thought that, in return for his alliance,
Spain would lend or give him money to cover his annual deficits.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Raleigh.=]
This beginning of subservience to Spain is marked by one of the
blackest spots in the reign of James--the execution of Sir Walter
Raleigh. The old explorer had now lingered for twelve years in the
Tower, but got a temporary release by persuading James that he knew
of rich gold-mines in Guiana, on the banks of the Orinoco, from which
he could bring back a great ransom. He was permitted to sail, but the
king informed Gondomar of the matter. Now, the Spaniards still looked
on any interference in America as a trespass on their monopoly of the
trade of the West. The ambassador sent news of Raleigh's approach to
the governors of the West Indies, and preparations were made to give
him a hot reception. When he reached South America, Sir Walter was
easily drawn into hostilities with the Spaniards, and had to return,
after failing to force his way up the Orinoco. When he reached England
he was arrested, at Gondomar's request, for having engaged in fighting
with a friendly power. But instead of trying him for this misdemeanour,
the dastardly king beheaded him without giving him a hearing or an
opportunity of defence, on the old charge of having been engaged in
Cobham's Plot[37] fifteen years before. He fell a victim to Spanish
resentment, not to any crime committed against his own king (1618).
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Elizabeth.--The Thirty Years' War.=]
The year of Raleigh's death saw the opening of a new set of troubles
for King James. He had married his daughter Elizabeth to Frederic of
the Palatinate, the most rash and venturesome of the Protestant princes
of Germany. When the great religious struggle known as the Thirty
Years' War broke out, Frederic took the lead among the Protestants, and
seized the kingdom of Bohemia, one of the possessions of the Emperor
Ferdinand, the bigoted and fanatical head of the Romanist party (1619).
Frederic, however, was beaten, and lost not only Bohemia, but his own
dominions in the Palatinate (1620). Concerned to see his favourite
daughter lose her crown and lands, King James conceived a hope that
he might induce his Spanish friends to restore his son-in-law to his
Rhenish electorate. He forgot that Philip III., as a devout Catholic,
was much pleased to see the headstrong Frederic stripped of house and
home. But while intriguing with Spain, James, with great duplicity,
tried to persuade his subjects that he was ready to make war on the
Emperor, in order to restore the elector by force of arms.
[Sidenote: =Impeachment of Bacon.=]
A Parliament was again summoned. It gave the king a liberal grant for
the proposed war in Germany, but it then proceeded to investigate
abuses. The most notable scandal which it discovered was that the Lord
Chancellor--the great philosopher, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam--had
been accepting gifts from corrupt suitors in his court--a misdemeanour
so flagrant that it struck at the roots of all justice. Bacon pleaded
guilty, and was removed from office (1621). The Parliament then began
to discuss internal politics, praying for a more rigorous suppression
of the Jesuits, and petitioning the king to marry his heir to a
Protestant princess; for it was already rumoured that a Spanish match
was being proposed for Prince Charles. After much angry debating on
what he considered an invasion of his prerogative, James had to dismiss
the two Houses (1622).
[Sidenote: =The Spanish Marriage.=]
The reports which had reached the ears of the Commons about the
marriage of the Prince of Wales were quite correct. The king and
Villiers, who had lately been created Earl of Buckingham, had formed a
chimerical plan for persuading the King of Spain to restore the elector
to the Palatinate, by means of a marriage treaty. If Prince Charles
were to offer to wed one of the Infantas, the sisters of Philip IV.,
they thought that the Spaniard would interfere in Germany in order to
oblige his brother-in-law. Moreover, the rich dowry of the princess
would serve to pay some of James's debts. They forgot that the King
of Spain had no interest or inducement to attack the Emperor, his own
cousin and co-religionist, and that the only thing which Philip really
wanted to secure by a treaty with England, was toleration for the
English Catholics.
[Sidenote: =Buckingham and Prince Charles in Spain.=]
From this foolish plan sprang the rash expedition of Buckingham
and Prince Charles to Madrid. Thinking to win the consent of the
Spanish king by appearing in person, and using the weight of his own
attractions, Buckingham persuaded the prince to accompany him, and
crossed the Channel. Charles seems to have formed a romantic affection,
on hearsay evidence, for the Infanta, and followed his mentor with
enthusiasm. They travelled rapidly and in disguise, and were able to
present themselves at Madrid before the Spanish court had any idea
of their having started. Their presence put Philip IV. in no small
perplexity, for he had not really intended to complete the match.
His sister, the Infanta Maria, was dismayed at the prince's arrival,
and threatened to retire into a nunnery rather than marry him. There
followed an interminable series of negotiations, in which the Spaniards
attempted to scare off the unwelcome suitor, by proposing hard
conditions to him. But Charles at once accepted every proposal made,
even offering to grant complete toleration to Catholics in England,
which he knew that the nation and Parliament would never permit.
Buckingham, meanwhile, made himself much hated by the haughty Spanish
court, owing to his absurd arrogance and self-complacency. At last,
discovering that the Spaniards did not mean business, he persuaded
the prince to take a ceremonious leave of King Philip, and brought
him back to England. When they were well out of Spain, they sent back
an intimation that nothing more could be done till the king promised
to recover the Palatinate for the Elector Frederic--a polite way of
breaking off the match.
[Sidenote: =Alliance with France.=]
Highly indignant with the Spanish court for its blindness to his own
charms and attractions, the headstrong Buckingham resolved to revenge
himself on them. This was most easily done by forming an alliance
with France, the eternal enemy of Spain. Accordingly, the favourite,
on his return to England, began to urge the king and the prince to
declare war on Philip IV., and to take up the cause of Lewis XIII. For
once Buckingham had public opinion on his side, for war with Spain
was always popular in England. The Parliament voted liberal subsidies
for an army to be sent to Germany, and a French alliance was easily
concluded. Prince Charles, quite cured of his infatuation for the
Infanta, offered his hand to Henrietta Maria, the sister of Lewis XIII.
She was at once betrothed to him, and the preliminaries for marriage
were in progress when the old king suddenly died--worn out by slothful
living and hard drinking, to which he had grown much addicted of late
years (February, 1625).
[Sidenote: =Commercial and colonial expansion.=]
In two spheres only was the inglorious reign of James I. redeemed by
some measure of success. The first was the realm of trade and colonial
expansion. All through the early years of the century, English commerce
was steadily growing, especially with the remote regions of Africa,
China, India, and the Spice Islands. At the same time, the first
successful English colonies were planted. The second plantation of
Virginia was completed in 1607, the Bermudas were settled in 1616,
Barbados in 1605. The far more important New England colonies date from
1620-28; they were founded by groups of nonconformist Puritans, who
left their native country to escape the harassing laws against schism
to which they found themselves subject. It is only fair to add that,
when they had settled down in North America, they established a church
system quite as intolerant and oppressive as that from which they had
fled.
[Sidenote: =Ireland.--Ulster colonized.=]
The other sphere in which the reign of James showed a certain success
was Ireland. When O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, the old adversary of Queen
Elizabeth, rebelled for a second time in 1607, his dominions in Ulster
were confiscated, and carefully portioned out among English and Scotch
settlers, who undertook never to resell them to natives. Many thousands
of colonists crossed St. George's Channel, and by 1625 Ulster had a
large and firmly rooted Protestant population, though its prosperity
was founded on the systematic oppression of the native Irish.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] So called because it was supposed to be signed by 1000 ministers.
As a matter of fact, it bore less than 800 names.
[36]
Margaret, Countess of Lennox.
____________________|___________________________
| |
Henry, Lord Darnley = Mary Queen of Scots. Charles, Earl of Lennox.
| |
James VI. and I. Arabella Stuart.
[37] See p. 354.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES I. TO THE OUTBREAK OF THE CIVIL WAR.
1625-1642.
The accession of Charles I. made a profound change in the destinies
of England, for though the new king had the same policy and the
same notions of government in Church and State as his father, yet
his personal character was wholly different. James had been before
all things a coward: he seldom dared to translate his theories into
action, and hence it came that he died peacefully in his bed. His son,
on the other hand, was not lacking in courage, and he was recklessly
obstinate; nothing could bend his will or teach him submission;
therefore he died on the scaffold.
[Sidenote: =Character of Charles I.=]
Yet Charles was in every way superior to his father. He was a man of
handsome face and stately carriage; though reared in a profligate
and vicious court, he had grown up with all the private virtues; as
a father and husband, he was admirable. He was sincerely religious,
and ardently loved the Church of England. He was a wise and judicious
patron of art and letters, but his tastes never led him into personal
extravagance. If he had been born a peer instead of a prince, he
would have been one of the best men of his day. But, unfortunately
for England and for himself, he inherited a crown and not a coronet.
He came to the helm of State fully persuaded of the truth of the two
maxims that his father had taught him--that the royal prerogative
overrode all the ancient national rights, and that the king ought to
judge for himself in all things, and follow his own ideas, not the
advice of his Parliament.
The accession of Charles was saluted with joy on all sides. The nation
thought that the young, chivalrous, and enterprising prince would
reverse all his father's policy--he would cast away the hated Spanish
alliance, and place England at the head of the Protestant powers of
Europe, the position that she had held in Elizabeth's day. It was hoped
that he would relegate the upstart Buckingham to the background, and
rule for himself, but in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of
the nation.
[Sidenote: =Continued ascendency of Buckingham.=]
The first jarring note was struck when it became evident that the king
was still under the control of his father's favourite. Villiers had
somehow contrived to master the mind of the staid and firm Charles
no less than that of the timid and irresolute James. When the first
Parliament of the new reign was summoned, it found him in full
possession of the king's ear, and dictating all his enterprises.
[Sidenote: =Demands for money refused by the Commons.=]
The enormous demands for money which Charles laid before the Commons
were enough to dash their spirits. The late king had left some
£800,000 of debts, and in addition to the sum required to discharge
them, £1,000,000 more was asked for purposes of war with Spain and
the Emperor. To the disgust of Charles and Buckingham, Parliament
voted only two subsidies, about £150,000, and granted "Tunnage and
Poundage"--the customs revenue of the kingdom--for one year only,
though it had been usual, in late reigns, to give it for the whole term
of the king's life.
[Sidenote: =Expedition against Cadiz.=]
The want of confidence which the Commons showed in Buckingham's
administrative capacity was thoroughly justified. His first military
adventure was a great expedition against the Spanish arsenal of Cadiz.
A large fleet was sent out, but the generals were incapable, and the
armament returned in a few months, without having accomplished anything
save the capture of a single Spanish fort (1625).
[Sidenote: =Loan of ships for the siege of La Rochelle.=]
Meanwhile a new trouble was brewing. Charles had carried out
Buckingham's scheme for an alliance with France, and had taken to wife
the Princess Henrietta Maria, sister of Lewis XIII., the moment that
the mourning for his father was over. Shortly after, his brother-in-law
asked him for the loan of eight men-of-war, for the French navy was
small and weak. The request was granted, and the French government
then proceeded to use the ships against the rebellious Huguenots of La
Rochelle, who were in arms against the king.
Now, the English nation had always felt much sympathy with the French
Protestants, their old companions-in-arms in the days of Elizabeth, and
the news that the royal navy was being used to coerce the Huguenots
caused a great outcry throughout the country. All the blame was laid on
Buckingham, as was but natural. He had also to face another accusation.
Unable to get enough money from Parliament to fit out the unhappy
expedition to Cadiz, the king had raised large sums by "benevolences"
and forced loans--the old expedient of Edward IV.
[Sidenote: =Parliament attacks Buckingham.=]
When, therefore, the second Parliament of the reign assembled in 1626,
it proceeded, not to grant subsidies for the war, but to petition
against Buckingham. The king took the matter in the most haughty and
high-handed manner. "I must let you know," he exclaimed, "that I will
not let any of my servants be questioned by you--much less those
that are of eminent place, and near to me." He denied, in short, the
ancient right of the House to petition against unpopular ministers--a
right which it had used fifty times in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries. But the Commons hardened their hearts, and proceeded to
impeach the duke for having raised illegal taxes, sold public offices
to unworthy persons, and lent the ships to France contrary to the
interests of the realm and the Protestant faith. The king's reply was
to dissolve them (June, 1626).
[Sidenote: =The French alliance broken off.=]
But the king and the duke had been seriously moved by the outcry
against the loan of the ships to King Lewis. In a vain attempt to
conciliate public opinion, and put themselves right with the nation,
they suddenly reversed their policy of the last two years, and resolved
to break with France, even though the Spanish war was still on their
hands. With inconceivable frivolity and thoughtlessness, Buckingham
proceeded to pick a quarrel with the French government, and to announce
his intention of aiding the Huguenot rebels in La Rochelle against
their sovereign.
[Sidenote: =Expedition in aid of La Rochelle.=]
War was declared against France, and Buckingham undertook to lead in
person a great armament which was to raise the siege of La Rochelle,
now closely beleaguered by the royal armies. This expedition came to a
bad end, like everything else which the headstrong and incapable duke
took in hand. He landed on the Isle of Rhé, opposite La Rochelle, to
drive off the French troops which shut the city in on the side of the
sea. But there he suffered a fearful disaster: part of his army was cut
to pieces, part compelled to surrender, and, after losing 4000 men, the
duke hastily re-embarked for England (October, 1627).
[Sidenote: =Buckingham assassinated.=]
But Buckingham was as obstinate as he was incompetent. He swore that
he would still save La Rochelle, and began to gather a second army at
Portsmouth to renew his attempt to raise the siege. While employed in
organizing his new troops, he was stabbed and mortally wounded by John
Felton, a discontented officer who had served under him in Rhé, and
wished to avenge his private wrongs and free the country of a tyrant by
this single blow (August, 1628).
By the death of his arrogant minister, the king obtained a splendid
opportunity of setting himself right with the nation and turning over
a new leaf. For men had agreed to consider Buckingham personally
answerable for the disasters and illegalities of the two last years,
and to hold the king guilty of nothing more than a misplaced confidence
in his favourite.
[Sidenote: =The Parliament of 1628.=]
Charles soon showed that he was not wiser nor more teachable than the
duke. He took no new favourite into his confidence, and proceeded
to act as his own prime minister, so that he made himself clearly
responsible for all that followed. He had summoned his third Parliament
early in 1628, hoping to extract from it the sums necessary to defray
Buckingham's projected second expedition to La Rochelle. The Commons
met in no pleasant mood, and were far more set on protesting against
the doings of Buckingham than on granting money. The new House
contained many men who were to be notable in after-years as the chief
opponents of the king's misrule: Oliver Cromwell appeared for the
first time to represent Huntingdon; Hampden, Pym, and Eliot were also
numbered among the members--all three considerable personages, who had
already protested against the methods of the king's administration.
[Sidenote: =The Petition of Right.=]
Instead of waiting to be attacked, the Parliament of 1628 took
the initiative, by presenting to the king the celebrated Petition
of Right--a document which demanded that certain ancient rights of
Englishmen should be formally conceded by the king, namely, that no
benevolences or forced loans should be demanded, no soldiers billeted
on citizens without payment, no man imprisoned except on a specified
and definite charge, and no martial law proclaimed in time of peace.
Unless this petition was granted, they intimated that no supplies
of money should be forthcoming (May 28). After some quibbling and
hesitation, Charles gave his assent; money was absolutely necessary to
him, and he was determined to have it. The subsidies were granted, and
then in a few months he proceeded to break his plighted word.
[Sidenote: =Parliament dissolved.=]
When the Parliament met after its adjournment in January, 1629, it
found that the king had already begun raising Tunnage and Poundage,
which had not yet been legally granted him, and was imprisoning those
who refused to pay. Their indignation was thoroughly roused, and they
displayed such a combative spirit, that Charles determined to dissolve
them at once. While his messenger was knocking at the door of the
House, the Commons passed a hasty resolution, "that any one who should
countenance Popery, or advise the levying of subsidies not granted
by Parliament, should be reputed a capital enemy to the kingdom and
commonwealth." This declaration had hardly been carried, when the
notice of dissolution was proclaimed (March 10, 1629).
[Sidenote: =Personal government.=]
After waging such bitter war with three successive Parliaments,
Charles resolved to try the unprecedented experiment of governing
without Parliaments at all. For eleven years he refused to summon the
two Houses, and ruled autocratically without any check on his will
(1629-1640). He marked his sense of the late Parliament's conduct by
apprehending several of its members, and sending three of them to the
Tower. Sir John Eliot, the most prominent of these captives, and one
of the best men of his day, languished to death in his prison, after a
confinement of no less than three years.
After this cruel and unconstitutional beginning, Charles persevered in
his evil ways. He chose a body of ministers who would obey his every
command, displaced such judges and officials as showed any regard for
the old customs of the realm, and governed like a Continental tyrant.
He was not a vicious or a malevolent man, but he was fully convinced
that his prerogative covered every illegal act that he might commit,
and he was persuaded that all who opposed him must be not only foolish
but evil-disposed persons. As to the Petition of Right, he managed to
forget that he had ever signed it.
[Sidenote: =Archbishop Laud.=]
The two chief councillors of the king in this unhappy period were
William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Wentworth, Lord
Strafford. The former was an honest but narrow-minded man, who had
made a great reputation at Oxford as President of St. John's College,
and had grown to note as the head of the High Church party in the
University. He was a good scholar and an excellent organizer, but a
martinet to the backbone. He accepted the archbishopric with the fixed
idea of suppressing and crushing the Puritan party in and out of the
Church of England. He hated the Puritan ideal of Church government on
republican lines without king or bishop, and he equally detested the
Calvinistic doctrine of predestination,[38] which was the shibboleth
of Puritan theology. The king was a good Churchman, and gave Laud
his full confidence; Laud, in return, became the zealous servant of
Charles in secular no less than in religious matters. Not only did
he teach consistently that it was a subject's duty to submit without
question to a divinely ordained king, not only did he devote himself
to molesting and harassing Puritans in the Church Courts, but he made
himself the most prominent personage among the king's ministers.
His name is signed at the top of every unwise ordinance that the
Privy Council ever produced. He sat regularly in the two ancient
but unconstitutional courts, the Star Chamber and the Court of High
Commission, which punished those who had offended King Charles in
matters secular or spiritual. Hence it came that he was hated, not only
as an ecclesiastical tyrant, but as a temporal oppressor. Yet at bottom
he was an honest and well-meaning man, who did but follow the dictates
of his somewhat pedantic conscience.
[Sidenote: =The Earl of Strafford.--"Thorough."=]
It is difficult to give even this moderate praise to the other great
minister who served King Charles. Sir Thomas Wentworth had been a
great enemy of Buckingham in Parliament, but after the duke's death
he suddenly went over to the king, and enlisted in his service.
Wentworth loved power above all things, and sold himself to Charles
for high promotion. It was this desertion of his old party that made
him so well hated by the friends of liberty. The king gave him the
title of Strafford, and entrusted him first with the "Presidency of
the North"--the government of the counties beyond the Humber; and
afterwards with the Lord-Deputyship of Ireland. Strafford was a very
capable man, with a hard hand and a great talent for organization.
He called his system the policy of "_Thorough_," by which he meant a
resolute persistence in ignoring all checks of custom or constitutional
usage which might restrain the king's action, and a determination to
crush all who dared to stand in his way.
[Sidenote: =Strafford's Irish policy.=]
The tale of Strafford's government in Ireland best illustrates what
"Thorough" implied. He reduced the island to a more perfect obedience
than it had ever known before, made its revenue and expenditure
balance, kept up a large and efficient army, and encouraged trade and
manufactures. But this was done at the cost of a ruthless disregard
alike for law and morality. Strafford bullied and cheated the Irish
Parliament; he set up illegal courts of justice; he dragooned the
Scottish settlers in Ulster into accepting episcopacy. His worst
measures, however, were reserved for the native Irish. On the
preposterous plea that the landlords of Connaught could show no valid
title-deeds for their estates, he proposed to confiscate the whole of
that province, and settle it up with English. As a matter of fact,
Connaught was mostly in the hands of ancient Celtic houses, who could
show a tenure of many centuries, but had never consigned their claims
to parchment. Strafford proposed to take heavy fines from a few of
the unfortunate landholders, and to wholly evict the rest from their
ancestral estates. And he would have done it, if troubles in England
had not called him away from his task.
[Sidenote: =Tyrannous measures of the king.=]
To enumerate all the unconstitutional acts of Charles I. in his
eleven years of tyranny would be tedious. He had resolved to raise a
sufficient revenue without Parliamentary grants, and to secure it he
discovered the most monstrous devices. He established monopolies in
the commonest products of trade, such as soap, linen, and leather. He
declared whole districts of England to be under forest law, though the
forests had disappeared centuries before, and took heavy fines from the
inhabitants. He revived the old law of Edward I., which compelled all
owners of £40 a year in land to receive knighthood, and made them pay
exorbitant fees for the honour. The arbitrary Star Chamber was set to
inflict heavy fines on rich men for offences which did not come under
the letter of any law, it strained angry words into libel or treason,
and made family broils or personal quarrels a fruitful source of
revenue. The fines ran up as high as £20,000.
[Sidenote: =Ship-Money.=]
Another invention of the king was the celebrated Ship-Money. In ancient
times sea-coast districts had been wont to pay a special contribution
in time of war, to provide vessels for the royal navy. Charles, in full
time of peace, proposed to raise this tax from every county in England,
as an annual imposition. John Hampden, the member for Buckinghamshire
in the last Parliament, refused to pay the twenty shillings at which he
was assessed, and took the case before the courts. But the subservient
judges decided in the king's favour, and Hampden was rigorously fined
(1637).
[Sidenote: =The Repression of Puritans.--Bastwick's case.=]
Beside financial extortion, the king countenanced much oppression
of other sorts. Laud and his spiritual courts were always at work
against the Puritans. The net result of their work was that the whole
Calvinistic party in the Church of England went over to Nonconformity,
and became for the most part Presbyterians. Few but the "Arminian"[39]
High Churchmen remained in the Establishment. It is probable that these
eleven years tripled the number of schismatics in the country. To
illustrate the dealings of the Government with clamorous Puritans, the
case of Dr. John Bastwick may be taken as an example. He accused the
bishops of a tendency to Popery in a tract called "The New Litany." For
this he was sentenced to lose both his ears, to stand in the pillory,
to be fined £5000, and to be imprisoned till his death (1637).
[Sidenote: =The Star Chamber.--Prynne's case.=]
Such sentences, however, were not uncommon in the Court of Star
Chamber; nor were they reserved for offenders against spiritual peers
only. A case may be quoted even more astonishing than that of Bastwick.
A lawyer named William Prynne wrote a book called "Histriomastix,"
protesting against the growing immorality of the stage. It contained
words supposed to reflect on Queen Henrietta Maria, who was very fond
of plays, and had sometimes acted in masques herself. For this Prynne
was condemned to the same penalty as Bastwick--the pillory, the loss of
his ears, and a fine of £5000.
It is not unnatural that England grew more and more disloyal as the
years went by. The whole country was seething with discontent. Yet it
was not south but north of the Tweed that the first blow was to be
struck; it seemed that English wrath needed a Parliament to make its
voice articulate. The Scots, on the other hand, found their centre of
resistance in the strong local organization of their Kirk.
[Sidenote: =Attempt to force Episcopacy on Scotland.=]
The cause of the Scottish outbreak was the king's attempt to force
Episcopal government and High Church doctrine on the Kirk of Scotland,
which was deeply attached to its Presbyterian constitution, and wholly
committed to Calvinistic theology. Both James I. and Charles in his
earlier years had made spasmodic attempts to bring the northern Church
up to the same level of faith and ritual as that which prevailed in the
south. They had been sturdily resisted, but the struggle had not grown
quite desperate till 1637, when Charles and Laud seriously took in hand
the conversion of Scotland. The first grievance was the issue, by royal
authority alone, of a set of "canons"--or Church rules--drawn up by
Laud (1636). They were universally disregarded, but in the following
year matters came to a head when the king ordered a new Book of Common
Prayer, drawn up on an Anglican model, to be taken into use in all the
churches of Scotland. The attempt to introduce it led to the celebrated
riot in St. Giles's, Edinburgh, where (as the story goes) the turmoil
was started by an old woman hurling her stool at the dean's head, with
the war-cry, "Will you say the Mass in my lug?" (ear). All the clergy
who attempted to use the new Service-book were hustled and driven away
(July, 1637).
[Sidenote: =The National Covenant.=]
It was evident that Charles would bitterly resent this national
outburst, and in self-defence the Scots--nobles, ministers, and
burgesses alike--entered into the "National Covenant," a solemn sworn
agreement to stand by each other to resist tyranny and Popery. Soon
after, the General Assembly of the Kirk met at Glasgow, declared the
Scottish bishops tainted with Romanism, condemned the king's new canons
and Book of Prayer, and proclaimed that Episcopacy was altogether
opposed to the rules of faith.
[Sidenote: =The Scots take up arms.=]
This was open rebellion in the king's eyes, and he immediately began
to make preparations for a military expedition against Scotland. The
whole country was in the hands of the Covenanters, save some of the
wild Highland districts, and it was evident that a national war was
impending. At the first news of the king's movements, the Scots raised
an army of more than 20,000 men, led by veteran officers who had served
on the Protestant side in the wars of Germany. This formidable force
advanced to Dunse Law, in Berwickshire, and prepared to defend the
line of the Tweed. The king had no standing army, save the troops whom
Strafford had organized in Ireland: he was therefore compelled to call
out the gentry and militia of the northern counties. It soon became
apparent that he would not be able to rely on any willing service from
these levies. Half England thought the Scots in the right; the men
came in unwillingly and in inadequate numbers; and Charles found at
York only a raw discontented force, quite unready to take the field.
Dismayed at his weakness, he began to negotiate with the insurgents
(June, 1639), but they would take no compromise, and as neither men nor
money were forthcoming, the king was forced to take the desperate step
of summoning a Parliament to grant him supplies.
[Sidenote: =The Short Parliament.=]
The two Houses met in the spring of 1640, in no placable frame of
mind. Eleven years of tyranny had maddened the nation, and now that
England had found her voice again, it spoke with no uncertain sound.
Her mood was quickly shown. Led by John Pym, the member for Tavistock,
the Commons at once announced that they were come together to discuss
grievances before thinking of grants of supply. Charles immediately
dissolved the Parliament ere it had sat three weeks. Hence it is known
as the "Short Parliament" (April-May, 1640).
[Sidenote: =The Rout of Newburn.=]
Hardening his heart, Charles raised a few thousand pounds by
ship-money and other illegal devices, and launched his disaffected and
undisciplined army against the Scots. But the men disbanded themselves
at the first shot, and, after the disgraceful rout of Newburn, the
Covenanters were able to occupy Northumberland and Durham, and
established their head-quarters at Newcastle (August, 1640). The king
had already summoned Strafford from Ireland, and the great Lord-Deputy
had come over, but without his army. He was now given command of the
wrecks of the levies in the north; but even he could not compel that
discontented host to stand or fight. In despair, the king saw that
he must make concessions to the nation, and called a new Parliament
(November 3, 1640).
[Sidenote: =The Long Parliament.=]
For the fifth time Charles found himself confronted with the angry
representatives of the nation that he had wronged. But this time the
engagement was to be no short skirmish, but a long and desperate
battle, destined to endure for eight years, and to end only with his
overthrow and death. The "Long Parliament," unlike its predecessors,
was to exist for many years. With it the king was to fight out the
great dispute for the "sovereignty" of England--to settle whether, for
the future, the royal prerogative or the will of the Commons was to be
the stronger factor in the governance of the realm. In the existing
crisis Charles felt that he was, for the moment, entirely at the mercy
of the two Houses. The exchequer was empty, the army disloyal, an
active enemy was in possession of the Northern counties. He shrank from
playing his last stake by bringing over Strafford's troops from Ireland
to resist the Scots, though the stern Lord-Deputy strongly urged him to
take that measure.
[Sidenote: ="King Pym."=]
When Parliament met, the same men who had been seen as members in
1628, and in the "Short Parliament" of the last spring, stood forward
to confront the king. Pym at once marshalled all the forces of
discontent into a compact host; so great was the power over them which
he displayed, that he soon was nicknamed "King Pym" by the friends of
Charles. He and his confidants were already in secret communication
with the Scots, and spoke all the more boldly, because they knew that
they could call down the Covenanting host on London, if the king should
dare to withstand them.
[Sidenote: =Arrest of Strafford and Laud.=]
The "Long Parliament" met on November 3. It at once proceeded to
business. Eight days later, Pym moved that Strafford should be
impeached for treason, and, in the following month, Laud was also
arraigned on the same charge. Both were arrested, and sent to the
Tower. The king made no attempt to defend them. Apparently, he was so
conscious of his helplessness, and so dismayed by the riotous mob of
London, and the fierce words of the Commons, that he had completely
lost his head. It is certain that, if he had resisted, none but a few
courtiers would have backed him. He sank in the most extraordinary way,
in six months, from an autocrat into a nerveless, hunted creature,
amazed at the wrath he had roused, and quite unable to defend himself.
[Sidenote: =Trial and execution of Strafford.=]
The dealings of the Parliament with the two great ministers, the
archbishop and the Lord-Deputy, were summary and harsh, even to
injustice. It is true that both Laud and Strafford had been cruel
enemies of the liberties of England, but it would have been well, in
punishing them, to proceed on the best constitutional precedents, and
to let the course of justice be clear and calm. Strafford was impeached
before the peers, and there was brought against him a vast weight of
evidence to prove that, both as President of the North and as Governor
of Ireland, he had committed scores of illegal, arbitrary, and cruel
acts. But that the acts amounted to treason was not evident, and Pym
and his friends were determined to find Strafford guilty of nothing
less. After fourteen days' sittings, the accusers suddenly determined
to change their procedure. Dropping the method of impeachment,
they determined to crush Strafford by a simple declaratory bill of
attainder, which stated that he had committed treason, and was worthy
of death. This bill was brought into the House of Commons on April
10, and all its three readings were carried in eleven days. The main
point on which the charge of treason was founded, was Strafford's
advice to the king to bring over the Irish army, and the only proof of
that advice was a paper of notes made in the Privy Council, which had
surreptitiously come into Pym's hands.[40] Strafford had said, "Your
Majesty has an army in Ireland, that you may employ to reduce this
kingdom to obedience." It was not even certain that "this kingdom"
meant England, and not Scotland, but on that evidence Strafford was
convicted of plotting to levy war against the State. The vast majority
of the Commons were determined to have his blood; 204 members voted for
the bill, only 59 against it, and the names of the minority were soon
placarded all over London as traitors to the commonwealth. The House
of Lords approved the bill of attainder, and it was sent to the king.
Charles had secretly given Strafford a pardon for all his acts, and
promised to save his life. But in a moment of alarm, with the angry
shouts of the Londoners ringing in his ears, he gave his assent to the
bill. It was an inexcusably selfish and cowardly act, the one deed in
all his life which we must stamp as mean and perfidious, as well as
unwise. Strafford suffered on Tower Hill, with the stern courage that
had marked all his acts, muttering, "Put not your trust in princes"
with his last breath (May 12, 1641).
[Sidenote: =Impeachment of Laud and others.=]
It was now the turn of the old archbishop. He was impeached on the 15th
of December, both for illegal acts in the Star Chamber and the Court
of High Commission, of which he was undoubtedly guilty, and for secret
encouragement of Popery, of which he was as undoubtedly innocent. The
articles drawn up against him were approved by the vote of both Houses,
but he was not at once tried, but allowed to linger in the Tower, where
he was to spend more than two years. Several minor ministers of the
Crown were also impeached--Windebank, the secretary of state; Finch,
the lord keeper; and the judges who had given the unrighteous decision
in the ship-money case. The more prominent of these tools of the king
saved themselves by flying over-sea.
[Sidenote: =Measures of reform.=]
But while bent on vengeance for the past, the Long Parliament was also
desirous of securing good governance for the future. The spring and
summer of 1641 saw the abolition of most of the machinery which Charles
had used to carry out his tyranny. The two great unconstitutional
courts, the Star Chamber and the Court of High Commission, were
abolished by a law passed in July. By another, carried in February, it
was provided that Parliaments should be triennial, and that, if the
king refrained for three years from calling the two Houses together,
they should have the right to meet without his summons. In June a
bill was drawn up, declaring illegal the exaction of ship-money,
benevolences, and the rest of the king's favourite forms of extortion.
An excellent device for keeping the law-courts free from royal
interference was found by making the judges hold their office, not
during the king's pleasure, but "_dum se bene gesserint_"--as long as
they faithfully discharged their office. This swept away the power
which the Stuarts had habitually used, of displacing every judge who
gave decisions against the prerogative.
[Sidenote: =The "Root-and-Branch" Bill.=]
If the Long Parliament had halted here, we should owe it nothing but
thanks and praise. Unfortunately, however, it soon began to press on
from redressing national grievances to pandering to party animosities.
Most of its leading members were Puritans, and of them a majority was
formed by those who had left the Church and taken to Presbyterianism.
These Nonconformists were burning to revenge themselves on the Church
of England for the tyranny which Laud and the Court of High Commission
had exercised over them. The first symptom of their wrath was a bill
for excluding the bishops from the House of Lords; this was afterwards
enlarged into a scheme for abolishing the bishops altogether, and
reorganizing the Church on a Presbyterian basis. In this form it was
popularly known as the "Root-and-Branch" Bill, from a term used in a
great London petition in its favour.
[Sidenote: =Split in the Parliamentary party.=]
This sweeping party measure at once threw all the moderate men in
the House, who remained loyal Churchmen, though they were also
constitutional reformers, into a violent opposition to the majority.
After much fierce debating, Pym and his friends passed the second
reading by a small majority (138 to 105) in May, 1641. The third
reading was bitterly debated all through the summer, but never carried
through; in face of the danger of splitting the party of reform, the
promoters of the bill wisely dropped it (August, 1641). But they
never succeeded in reuniting the Churchmen to themselves in the firm
alliance that had existed before. Men like Lord Falkland, Edward Hyde,
John Colepepper, and others of equally liberal views, began to doubt
the wisdom of continuing to act with a party which was tending to
appear more like a synod of fanatics than a committee of constitutional
reformers.
[Sidenote: =Position of the king.=]
It was the appearance of this split in the Parliament that first
brought some comfort to the disconsolate Charles. After giving a weak
and insincere assent to every bill that was sent up to him in the
summer, he began to pluck up his heart in the autumn of 1641. It was
now his cue to assume the position of a constitutional king, and to
accept the present position of affairs. But in his heart he was, no
doubt, beginning to dream of ridding himself of his oppressors by the
aid of the Church party and the moderate men. He spent the autumn in a
visit to Scotland, where he endeavoured to conciliate the Covenanters
by granting every request that they laid before him. But, at the same
time, he was in secret negotiation with those of the Scottish nobles
who disliked the domination of the Kirk, and was endeavouring to build
up a Royalist party in the land.
[Sidenote: =The Irish Rebellion.=]
It was while Charles lay in the north that there burst out troubles
in Ireland, which were fated to do him no small harm. The iron hand
of Strafford had kept the Irish down for a space, in spite of all the
wrongs and injustice which he had committed. When Strafford, however,
was gone, the wrath of the oppressed natives boiled over, with all the
more vigour because of this cruel repression. In October, 1641, there
broke out a great national and religious rebellion, such as had not
been seen since the days of Elizabeth. The old Irish clans rose to
cast out and slay the English colonists. The Anglo-Irish Catholics of
the Pale took arms at the same time, not to make Ireland independent,
but to compel the king to take off all laws against Romanism, and turn
the island into a Catholic country. In the North of Ireland, where the
plantation of Ulster had worked the cruelest wrongs, the rising was
attended with horrible atrocities. The natives, headed by Sir Phelim
O'Neil, a distant kinsman of the old Earls of Tyrone, slew some 5000 of
the unarmed colonists in cold blood. Many thousands more died from cold
and starvation, being cast out of their dwellings and hunted away naked
in the cold autumn weather. Unhappily for the king, the rebels thought
it wise to give out that they acted by his permission in taking arms,
and that they only struck at the English Parliament and the Protestant
religion. Phelim O'Neil even showed a letter purporting to come from
Charles, and bearing the royal seal of Scotland, where the king at that
moment was staying. It was a forgery, and the seal was taken from an
old deed; but the English Puritans would believe anything of Charles,
and jumped to the conclusion that he was guilty of fostering the
rising, and therefore of authorizing the massacre.
[Sidenote: =The Grand Remonstrance.=]
Under the stress of the news from Ireland, the Long Parliament
reassembled in the winter of 1641-42, in no amiable frame of mind. They
signalized their reassembly by putting forth the "Grand Remonstrance,"
a kind of historical summary of all the illegalities which Charles had
committed since his accession, followed by a list of their own reforms
already carried out, and a scheme for further reforms to come. These
last were to include a bill to make the king choose no ministers or
officials save such as Parliament should recommend to him, another for
the complete suppression of Romanism, and a third for the "reformation"
of the Church of England in the direction of pure Protestantism,
that is, of extreme Puritanism. The first half of the "Remonstrance"
passed the Commons with little opposition, but the last clauses,
which practically bound the House to abolish Episcopacy and turn the
Established Church into a Presbyterian Kirk, were hotly opposed by
all the moderate party. In the end they passed by a narrow majority
of eleven. But the victory of the Puritans involved a complete schism
in the House. All the Church party now resolved that they would go no
further; they would rather trust the king, in spite of all his faults,
than the fanatical Presbyterians. For the first time in his life,
Charles found himself allied to a powerful party in the Lower House.
[Sidenote: =Attempted arrest of the five members.=]
He might have regained much of his authority if he had now played his
cards wisely. But unwisdom was always his characteristic. Taking heart
at the divisions among the Commons, he resolved to attempt a _coup
d'état_. On January 4, 1642, he suddenly came down to the House, with a
great armed retinue of three or four hundred men, intending to arrest
the five chiefs of the Puritan party--Pym, Hampden, Holles, Hazelrig,
and Strode. They had received warning of his approach, and fled to the
City, where the London militia armed in thousands to protect them.
The king looked round the House, and noted that the five members were
not present. "I see the birds are flown," he exclaimed, and, after an
awkward speech of apology, left the House.
[Sidenote: =Charles leaves London.=]
The plan had completely failed. The Puritans were warned that the king
was ready to resume his old illegal habits, and had not learnt his new
position as a constitutional ruler. Charles himself was so mortified
at the frustration of his scheme, that he hastily decamped, abandoning
his capital to the Parliament and its enthusiastic supporters, the
merchants and burgesses of the City.
[Sidenote: =Preparations for war.--The Royalist party.=]
The die was now cast. The next six months were occupied by both sides
in preparations for war, which was evidently at hand. Every man had
now to choose his side and make up his mind. The king went round the
Midlands, holding conferences with all whom he thought might be induced
to support him. He found more encouragement than he had expected. A
large majority of the peerage were on his side. They objected to being
ruled by a House of Commons which had grown violent and fanatical.
Almost the whole body of Churchmen all over the kingdom were also ready
to join him. When forced to choose between a king who had been guilty
of oppression and unwisdom, but who was undoubtedly a good Churchman
like themselves, and a Parliament ruled by schismatics who wished to
wreck the old Church, they reluctantly but firmly threw in their lot
with Charles. There were whole shires where the Puritans were few and
the Church was strong, and in these the king found promise of steady
support. There were thousands who were moved by the old instinct
of loyalty, and thousands more who hoped--unwisely perhaps, but
whole-heartedly--that their master had learnt moderation, and would, if
triumphant, never return to his old courses. Meanwhile Charles took a
step which showed that he was preparing for the worst. He sent his wife
over-sea, with all the money he could collect, and his crown jewels,
bidding her spend the whole in buying munitions of war in France and
Holland.
[Sidenote: =The Commons claim control of the militia.=]
The Parliamentarians also were making their preparations. They were
determined to get possession of the armed force of the nation--the
militia, or "train-bands" of the shires and boroughs. With this object
they sent the king proposals, which they could hardly expect him to
accept, that for the future the right to call out and officer the
militia should be vested in the two Houses, and not in the Crown. The
negative answer was promptly sent them back from Newmarket. They then
proceeded to pass an ordinance, arrogating to themselves the right to
nominate the lord-lieutenants, the official commanders of the militia,
and ordering military authorities to look for their orders to the
Houses, and not to the king. This ordinance never received the royal
sanction, and was, of course, illegal in form; nevertheless, it was
acted upon.
[Sidenote: =Charles at Hull.=]
The crisis began when, in April, the king called on Sir John Hotham,
governor of Hull, to admit him within the walls of that town, and make
over to him a store of arms and munitions which lay there. Hotham shut
the gates, and answered that he took orders from the Parliament alone.
The next two months were spent by both parties in gathering armies.
In June the king sent "commissions of array" to trustworthy persons
in every county, bidding them muster men in his name. The Parliament
replied, not only by putting the militia under arms, but by raising new
levies for permanent service in the field, under officers whom they
could trust. They gave the supreme command to the Earl of Essex, the
man who thirty years before had been so cruelly wronged by James I. and
his favourite Somerset.
On August 22 the king set up his standard at Nottingham, and bade all
his friends come to meet him. At the same time, Essex marched north
from London. The war had begun.
FOOTNOTES:
[38] The theory that all men are born to salvation or perdition,
according to God's will, and have no share or responsibility in their
own fate.
[39] Arminius was a Dutch divine who violently opposed the doctrine of
predestination; hence those who denied it were often called Arminians.
[40] The notes were made by Sir H. Vane, one of the council, and a
strong Royalist. But they came into the hands of his son, a bitter
opponent of the king, who gave them to Pym.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GREAT CIVIL WAR.
1642-1651.
Nine years of almost continuous war, broken by only one short interval
in 1647-48, followed the raising of the royal standard at Nottingham,
on the 22nd of August, 1642. The first half of the contest (1642-46)
may be defined as the struggle against the person of Charles, the
second as the struggle against the principle of kingly government after
Charles himself had fallen.
[Sidenote: =Principles of the two parties.--The king.=]
When the war began there was hardly a man on either side who did not
believe that he was fighting in behalf of constitutional monarchy. The
king and his party disavowed all intention of restoring autocratic
government. On the royal standard and the royal coinage Charles bade
the motto be placed, "I will defend the laws of England, the liberties
of Parliament, and the Protestant religion." He declared that he was
in arms to protect the old constitution against the encroachments of a
Parliamentary faction who wished to degrade the crown and to destroy
the Church.
[Sidenote: =The Parliamentarians.=]
The followers of Pym and Hampden, on the other hand, were equally
loud in protesting that they were in arms only to protect the ancient
liberties of the realm, not to set up a new polity. They professed the
greatest respect for the Crown, used the king's name in all their acts
and documents, and stated that they were only anxious to come to terms
with him on conditions which should give sufficient guarantees for the
future welfare of the realm.
[Sidenote: =Mutual mistrust.=]
But there was a fatal weakness in the programme, both of the royal
and the Parliamentary party. The king's friends could never trust the
Parliament's professions, because they believed it to be led by a
band of fanatical schismatics. The Parliamentarians could never bring
themselves to confide in the ruler against whom there stood the evil
record of the years 1629-1640, and the even more discreditable incident
of the attempt to seize the five members. When two enemies cannot trust
each other's plighted word, they can do nothing but fight out their
quarrel to the bitter end.
[Sidenote: =Local distribution of the parties.=]
At the moment when Charles marched from Nottingham, and Lord Essex
from London, in August, 1642, neither party had yet any correct notion
as to its own or its enemy's strength. In every county and borough
of England each side had a following; as to which following was the
stronger in each case, it was hard to make a guess. One thing only was
clear--rural England was, on the whole, likely to cleave to the king;
urban England to oppose him. Wherever the towns lay thick, Puritanism
was strong; London, the populous Eastern Counties, Kent, the cluster of
growing places on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, from Leeds
to Liverpool, were all Parliamentarian strongholds. On the other hand,
in the West and the North, and among the Welsh hills, the Church was
still omnipotent, and Nonconformity was weak. These districts were led
by the local peers, and still more by the county gentry, and of both
those classes a large majority held to the king.
But no general rule could be drawn. There were towns like Worcester,
York, Oxford, Exeter, where for various local reasons the king's party
was the stronger. Similarly, there were many peers--about a third
of the House of Lords--who adhered to the Parliamentary interest,
and where they dominated the countryside it stood by the cause of
the Commons. We need only mention the local influence of the Earl of
Warwick in his own district of the Midlands, of the Earl of Manchester
in Huntingdonshire, of Lord Fairfax in Mid-Yorkshire, as examples of
the fact that the Parliamentary cause could draw much assistance from
the magnates of the land. Still more was this the case among the lesser
landholders. In the east of England a very large proportion of the
gentry and all the yeomanry were zealous Puritans; even in the west
there was a sprinkling of "Roundheads"[41] among the Royalist majority.
[Sidenote: =Humane character of the war.=]
It was the saddest feature of the war, therefore, that every man had to
draw the sword against his nearest neighbour, and that the opponents
differed from each other, not so much on principle as on a point of
judgment--the doubt whether the king or the Parliamentary majority
could best be trusted to defend the old constitution. On each side
there were many who armed with a doubting heart, not fully convinced
that they had chosen their side wisely. This, at any rate, had one
good effect--the war was, on the whole, mercifully waged; there were
few executions, no massacres, very little plundering. If we compare
it with the civil wars of France or Germany, we are astonished at the
moderation and self-restraint of our ancestors.
[Sidenote: =The king's forces.=]
It was in August, 1642, as we have already mentioned, that King Charles
bade his followers meet him at Nottingham. The Royalists of the
Northern Midlands came to him in numbers far less than he had expected,
wherefore he moved west to Shrewsbury, to rally his partisans from
Lancashire, Cheshire, and Wales, where he knew that they were many and
loyal. They came forward in great strength, and Charles was able to
begin to organize his army into regiments and brigades. The cavalry was
very numerous, if wholly untrained; the nobles and gentry turned out
in vast throngs, and brought every tenant and servant that could sit a
horse. The infantry were the weaker arm; the squires preferred to serve
among the cavalry; the townsfolk and peasantry, who should have swelled
the foot-levies, were often apathetic where they were not disloyal.
It was only in certain limited districts--Wales, Cornwall, and the
North were the most noted--that the king could raise a trustworthy
foot-soldiery. In the army that mustered at Shrewsbury he had 6000
cavalry to 8000 infantry--far too large a proportion of the former. Nor
was it easy to arm the foot; pikes and muskets were hard to procure,
as compared with the trooper's sword. The king gave the command of the
army to Lord Lindsey, but made his nephew, Rupert of the Palatinate,
general of the horse.
[Sidenote: =The Parliamentary forces.=]
Among the troops which Essex was enrolling and drilling at Northampton,
the exact reverse was the case. The infantry were numerous and willing;
the artisans of London and the men of the Eastern Counties had
volunteered in thousands. But the cavalry was weak; the admixture of
gentry and yeomen in its ranks did not suffice to leaven the mass; many
were city-bred men, unaccustomed to riding, many more were wastrels who
had enlisted to get the better pay of the horse-soldier. Cromwell, who
served in one of these regiments, denounced them to Hampden as "mostly
old decayed tapsters and serving-men," and asked, "How shall such base
and mean fellows be able to encounter gentlemen of honour and courage
and resolution?"
[Sidenote: =Charles moves towards London.=]
In September the two raw armies were both moving westward, but
when Charles had filled his ranks and got his men into some order,
he determined to advance on London. Marching by Bridgenorth and
Birmingham, he reached the slopes of Edgehill, on the borders of
Warwickshire and Oxfordshire, on October 23. He had slipped round the
flank of Lord Essex, who was waiting for him at Worcester, and the
Parliamentary army only overtook him by hard marching. When he saw the
enemy approaching, Charles ranged his order of battle on the hillside,
and charged down on Essex, who was getting into array on the plain
below.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Edgehill.=]
The incidents of Edgehill were typical of the whole struggle. On each
flank the king's gallant horsemen swept off the Parliamentarian cavalry
like chaff before the wind; and a third of the infantry of Essex was
also carried away in the disaster. But the reckless Cavaliers, headed
by Prince Rupert, were so maddened by the joy of victory, that they
rode on for miles, driving the fugitives before them, and gave no
thought to the main battle. Meanwhile, in the centre, Lord Essex, at
the head of the two-thirds of his infantry which had stood firm, had
encountered the king's foot with very different results. After a short
struggle, he burst through the Royalist centre, and captured the king's
standard and the whole of his artillery. A few hundred Parliamentary
horse--Oliver Cromwell was among them--had escaped from the general
flight of their comrades, and by their aid Essex cut several regiments
of the Royalists to pieces, and thrust the rest in disorder up the
slopes of Edgehill.
[Illustration: EDGEHILL
Sept. 1642.]
[Sidenote: =Charles at Brentford.=]
When Rupert and his horse returned at eventide, they found to their
surprise that they had taken part in a drawn battle, not in a victory.
Both sides were left in the same position as before the fight, but
the king had one advantage--he was the nearer to London, and was able
to march off in the direction of the capital. Essex, with his cavalry
gone and his infantry much mauled, could not detain him, and was
constrained to make for London by the long route of Warwick, Towcester,
and St. Albans, while the king moved by a shorter line through Oxford
and Reading. But Charles lingered on the way, and the travel-worn
troops of the earl reached the goal first. Even now, if Charles had
struck desperately at London, he might perhaps have taken it. But his
irresolute mind was cowed by a strong line of earthworks at Turnham
Green, behind which lay not only Essex, but the whole train-bands of
the capital, 20,000 strong. Instead of assaulting the lines, he drew
back to Reading, and sent proposals of peace to the Parliament, hoping
that their confidence was sufficiently shaken to make them listen to
his offers (November 11).
[Sidenote: =Charles retires to Oxford.=]
This retrograde movement was his ruin. The City had trembled while
the host of the Cavaliers lay at Brentford and Kingston; but when it
withdrew without daring an assault, the spirits of leaders and people
rose again, and there was no talk of surrender or compromise. For
the rest of the winter, however, the operations languished in front
of London. The king retired to Oxford, which he made his arsenal and
base of operations; the Parliamentarians remained quiet, guarding the
capital.
[Sidenote: =Local contests throughout England.=]
While the campaign of Edgehill and Brentford was in progress, there
was fighting going on all over England. In each district the local
partisans of king and Commons were striving for the mastery. In the
East the Roundheads carried the day everywhere; the whole coast from
Portsmouth to Hull, with all the seaboard counties, fell into their
hands. In the West and North the result was very different; Sir Ralph
Hopton beat the king's enemies out of Cornwall and the greater part
of Devon. The whole of Wales, except the single port of Pembroke, was
won for Charles. In Yorkshire there was fierce fighting between two
local magnates, the Marquis of Newcastle on the royal, Lord Fairfax
on the Parliamentary side. By the end of the winter Newcastle had
got possession of the whole county except Hull, and the cluster of
manufacturing towns in the West Riding and on the Lancashire border. He
had raised an army of 10,000 men, and controlled the whole countryside
from the borders of the Scots as far as Newark-on-Trent. But in the
Midlands the first campaign settled nothing; districts that held for
the king and districts that held for the Parliament were intermixed
in hopeless confusion. It would obviously need much further fighting
before any definite result could be secured.
[Sidenote: =Charles in want of money.=]
After futile negotiations had filled the winter months, the spring
of 1643 saw the renewal of operations all over the face of the land.
The negotiations, indeed, were but a foolish waste of time. It was
not likely that the king would accept the two conditions which the
Parliament made a _sine quâ non_--the grant to them of the power of
the sword by the Militia Bill, and of the right to "reform" the Church
by turning it into a Presbyterian Kirk. The struggle had to proceed,
though both parties found it extremely hard to maintain. The king more
especially had the greatest difficulty in finding the "sinews of war."
The sale of the crown jewels was but a temporary expedient; the loyal
offerings of the Oxford Colleges, who sent all their gold and silver
plate to be melted down at the mint which the king had set up in their
midst, could not last for long. The Royalist gentry soon stripped
their sideboards and strong boxes bare. The want of a regular supply of
money was always checking the king's movements. He called together a
Parliament at Oxford, to which came a majority of the House of Lords,
and nearly a third of the House of Commons, and this body granted him
the right to raise forced loans under his privy seal, and to take
excise duties all over the realm; but as the richest part of England
was not in his hands, this financial scheme was not very successful.
Charles was always on the verge of seeing his army disband for want
of pay. The Parliamentarians were somewhat better off, owing to their
control of London and the other chief ports of the kingdom, but even
they were often in dire straits for money, and heard unpaid regiments
clamouring in vain for food and raiment.
[Sidenote: =1643. Royalist successes--(1) in the West.=]
The events of the campaign of 1643 were no more decisive than those
of the previous autumn. In the centre the king and Essex watched each
other all through the summer without coming to a pitched battle. The
only event of note in these months was the death of Hampden, the
second man in importance among the Parliamentary leaders, in a cavalry
skirmish at Chalgrove Field. But on the two flanks the Royalists gained
important successes. Hopton, with the army of the West, swept over
Somerset and Wilts, routing Sir William Waller--an enterprising but
very unlucky general--at Lansdown (July 5), and afterwards at Roundway
Down near Devizes (July 13). In consequence of these victories,
Bristol, the second town in the kingdom, fell into Royalist hands
(July 26). A further advance put the army of the West in possession
of Hampshire and Dorsetshire, so the Roundheads retained nothing in
the South, except the ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth, with a few
scattered garrisons more.
[Sidenote: =(2) in the North.--The "Associated Counties."=]
At the same time, the Marquis of Newcastle beat Lord Fairfax and
his son Sir Thomas, the mainstays of the Parliamentary cause in
the North--at Adwalton Moor (June 30)--a victory which enabled him
to conquer the Puritan stronghold in the West Riding, and to drive
the last wrecks of the enemy into Hull. Newcastle would have won
Lincolnshire also, but for the resistance made by a new force, the levy
of the "Associated Counties." The shires of Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex,
Cambridge, and Huntingdon, had banded themselves together to raise a
local army. It was a zealous and well-disciplined force, commanded by
Lord Manchester, under whom Oliver Cromwell served as general of horse.
It was Cromwell's ability as a cavalry leader which saved Lincolnshire
to the Parliament, by the winning of the hard-fought engagements of
Gainsborough (July 28) and Winceby (October 11).
[Sidenote: =Siege of Gloucester.--First Battle of Newbury.=]
Charles should now have called in Hopton and Newcastle to his aid,
and marched straight on London. But both the West-country and the
Yorkshire Royalists disliked leaving their own districts. Hopton's and
Newcastle's men protested against being called up to Oxford before
they had made a complete end of their own local enemies. Charles was
weak enough to yield to their wish, and meanwhile resolved to take
Gloucester, the one great Roundhead stronghold left in the West. He
laid siege to it on August 10; but on the news of his march westward,
the Parliament gave Lord Essex peremptory orders to attempt its relief
at all costs. Reinforced by six strong regiments of London train-bands,
zealous but new to war, he marched with 15,000 men into the West. When
he approached the besiegers, Charles resolved not to fight in his
siege-lines, but to attack Essex in the open. He therefore raised the
siege, allowed the earl to revictual Gloucester, but placed himself
across the line of retreat to London. At Newbury, in Berkshire, Essex
found the king's army arrayed on both sides of the London road, and
ready to receive him (September 19). There followed a fierce fight
among lanes and hedges, as Essex strove to pierce or outflank the royal
line. Prince Rupert threw away the best of his horsemen in attempts
to break the solid masses of the London train-bands, who showed a
steady power of resistance very admirable in such young soldiers. In
one of these desperate charges fell Lord Falkland, the wisest and most
moderate of the king's councillors, who is said to have deliberately
thrown away his life because of his sorrow at the long continuance
of the war. After a hard day's work, the earl had partly cut his way
through; and in the night the king, alarmed at the fact that his
infantry and artillery had exhausted all their powder, ordered his army
to retreat on Oxford. Then the Parliamentarians were able to force
their way to Reading without further molestation.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
AT THE END OF 1643.]
[Sidenote: =The Solemn League and Covenant.=]
Thus the end of the campaign of 1643 left matters in the centre much
as they had been nine months before. But on the flanks, in Yorkshire
and the south-west, the Royalists had won much ground, and were in
full communication with the king through their strong posts in Bristol
and Newark. While arms had proved unable to settle the struggle, both
sides had been trying to gain help from without--the Parliament in
Scotland, the king in Ireland. The zealous Covenanters of the North,
before consenting to give armed support to the Roundheads, insisted
on receiving pledges from their allies. Accordingly, the Parliament
swore a Solemn League and Covenant, "to preserve the Kirk of Scotland
in doctrine, worship, and governance, and to reform religion in the
Church of England according to God's Holy Word." The second clause
implied the destruction of Episcopacy, and the introduction of
Presbyterianism into the southern kingdom (September 25). In return for
this pledge the Scots promised to send an army of 10,000 or 15,000 men
over the Tweed in the following spring. The conclusion of this treaty
was the last work of Pym, the king of the Commons, who died six weeks
later. No civilian came forward among the ranks of the Parliamentarians
to take up his mantle.
[Sidenote: =Charles seeks aid from Ireland.=]
Meanwhile the king had sought aid from Ireland. Ever since the massacre
of 1641, the Irish rebels had been fighting with the Marquis of
Ormonde, Strafford's successor in the governance of that unruly realm.
They had occupied six-sevenths of the country, and held Ormonde's men
pinned up in Dublin, Cork, and a few other strongholds. Charles now
conceived a scheme for patching up a peace with the rebels, and thus
making it possible to bring over Ormonde's army, Strafford's veteran
regiments, to join in the English war. With this end he negotiated a
truce called "the Cessation" with the Irish (September 15), leaving the
"Catholic Confederates" to govern all the districts that were in their
hands, and promising to devise a scheme of toleration for Romanists.
This truce enabled Ormonde to begin sending over his troops to England;
it was also arranged that native Irish levies should be lent to the
king by the "Catholic Confederates," and Lord Taaffe, one of the
leading rebels, promised to make a beginning by bringing over 2000 men.
This alliance with the fanatical Romanists of Ireland, the perpetrators
of the Ulster Massacre of 1641, did Charles much harm. The Puritans
began to dream of England dragooned by wild Irish Papists, and thought
that the fires of Smithfield would ere long be relighted. They grew
fiercer than ever against the king.
[Sidenote: =1644. Rout of the Irish levies.--The Scots in England.=]
In December, 1643, Ormonde's first regiments began to pass the Channel
and arrive at Chester. In January, 1644, the Scots crossed the Tweed
under the Earl of Leven. Before winter was over the strife had begun,
and the new forces on each side were engaged. In January Sir Thomas
Fairfax, with the Yorkshire Parliamentarians, had slipped out of Hull,
whose siege had been raised by the Marquis of Newcastle, and fell
suddenly upon the Irish army at Nantwich, near Chester. He completely
routed it, and dispersed or took almost the whole. Meanwhile the Scots
were slowly pushing southward, driving the marquis before them through
Durham and the North Riding. In April they joined Fairfax at Selby,
near York, and the united forces so much outnumbered Newcastle's
force, that he sent in haste to the king at Oxford, to say that all
the North would be lost if he were not promptly aided by troops
from the Midlands. Charles, though he could ill spare men, gave his
nephew Rupert a large force of cavalry, and bade him march rapidly
on York, picking up on his way all the reinforcements he could raise
in Shropshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. In June the prince reached
York with nearly 10,000 men, and joined Newcastle's army. Even before
his arrival the enemy received a corresponding reinforcement: Lord
Manchester and Oliver Cromwell, with the army of the "Associated
Counties," had crossed the Trent and entered Yorkshire to join Fairfax
and the Scots. A great battle was imminent, and one that would be
fought by forces far larger than had yet met in line during the war,
for each side mustered more than 20,000 men.
[Illustration: MARSTON MOOR
July 2, 1644.]
[Sidenote: =Battle of Marston Moor.--The North lost to Charles.=]
The fate of the Northern Counties was settled by the meeting of
the two armies at Marston Moor, near York, on the 2nd of July. The
Parliamentarians and their Scottish allies had drawn themselves up on
a hillside overlooking the moor, Fairfax and his Yorkshiremen on the
right, the Scots in the centre, Manchester and the men of the Eastern
Counties on the left. Rupert marched out from York to meet them, and
ranged his men on the moor below--he himself taking the right wing,
while Newcastle's northern levies had the left. Before the prince's
host was fully arrayed, the enemy charged down the hill, and the two
armies clashed all along the line. On the Royalist left, Lord Goring
with the northern horse completely routed the troops of Fairfax, and
then turned against the Scots, and broke their flank regiments to
pieces. Then, thinking the day their own, the Cavaliers rushed on in
pursuit, and swept off the field. But on the Royalist right the matter
had gone very differently. Cromwell, with the eastern horse, had there
met the fiery Rupert in person; the struggle was long and fierce, but
at last Cromwell's men, godly yeomen of Norfolk and Cambridgeshire,
whom their general had picked and trained with long care, showed that
religious fervour was even better in battle than the reckless courage
of the Cavaliers. Rupert's regiments were driven off the field, and
then the cool-headed Cromwell, instead of flying in pursuit, led his
troopers to aid the much-tried Scots in the centre. By his charge
the Royalist foot was broken, and Goring's horse dispersed when it
straggled back to the battle. The day, which had begun so doubtfully,
ended in a complete victory for the Parliament. Rupert rallied 6000
horse, and took them back to Oxford, but the rest of the Royalist army
was lost. Four thousand had fallen, many dispersed, the rest fell back
into York, and there surrendered a few days later. Lord Newcastle,
angry at Rupert's rashness before the fight and his mismanagement in
it, took ship to Holland, and never struck another blow for the king.
Meanwhile Manchester and the Scots overran all the North, and the land
beyond Humber was wholly lost to the king. The northern Royalists had
been utterly destroyed.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Lostwithiel.--Essex's army destroyed.=]
This disaster would have been completely ruinous to the king, if he
had not partly preserved the balance of strength by winning a great
victory in the south. The Parliament had hoped to do great things
with their home army, and had started the campaign successfully, for
Sir William Waller had beaten the west-country troops of Lord Hopton
at Cheriton in March, and driven the Royalists out of Hampshire. But
calamity followed this good fortune; in the summer the Earl of Essex
led a great host into Wilts and Somerset, to complete Waller's success
by recovering the whole of the South-Western Counties. But the king
dropped down from Oxford with his main army, and placed himself between
Essex and London. The position was much the same as it had been a
year before at Newbury Field. But this time the earl displayed great
indecision, and grossly mishandled his men. Instead of forcing his
way home, at any cost, he retreated westward before Charles, and was
gradually driven into Cornwall, where the country was bitterly hostile.
After some ill-fought skirmishes, he was surrounded at Lostwithiel.
His cavalry cut their way out, and got back to Hampshire; he himself
escaped in a boat to Plymouth. But the whole of his infantry, guns, and
stores were taken by the king. The Parliamentarian army of the South
was as completely wiped out in September as the Royalist army of the
North had been in July. But there was one important difference in the
cases--Marston Moor stripped Charles not only of an army, but of six
fair counties; Lostwithiel saw the troops of Essex annihilated, but did
not give the king an inch of new ground. On the whole, the balance of
the campaign of 1644 was against him.
[Sidenote: =Second battle of Newbury.=]
To cover London from the king, the Parliament hastily summoned down
Manchester's victorious army from Yorkshire, and added to it Sir
William Waller's force. Their united hosts fought the indecisive second
battle of Newbury with the royal troops on the 22nd of October. Here
Manchester, by his sloth and indecision, left Waller to do all the
fighting, and almost lost the day. But in the end Charles withdrew to
Oxford, leaving the field to his enemies.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Laud.=]
The winter of 1644-5 was fraught with events of deep importance. The
Parliament made one final attempt to negotiate with the king, only
to receive the answer, "I will not part with these three things--the
Church, my crown, and my friends, and you will yet have much ado
to get them from me." Irritated at the king's unbending attitude,
they took a step which they knew must render all further attempts
at peace impossible. Drawing out of prison the old Archbishop of
Canterbury, they proceeded to pass a bill of attainder against him,
and condemned him to death. Laud went piously and resolutely to the
scaffold, asserting, and truly, that he died the martyr of the Church
of England, not the victim of his political doings. This execution was
an unpardonable act of cruelty and spite. The old man had lingered
three years in prison, was perfectly harmless, and was slain partly
to vex the king, partly to satiate the religious bigotry of the
Presbyterians--a sect quite as intolerant as Laud himself.
[Sidenote: =The "Self-denying Ordinance."=]
But while Laud's attainder was passing, another important matter
was in hand. The campaign of the previous year had been fatal to
the reputation of the two chief Parliamentary generals, Essex and
Manchester--the one for losing his army at Lostwithiel, the other for
his perverse malingering at Newbury. Waller and several more were in
little better odour. Cromwell, who had long served as Manchester's
second in command, led a crusade against his chief, and accused him of
deliberately protracting the war. It was generally felt that the armies
of the Parliament would fare much better if they were entrusted to
professional soldiers, and not to great peers or prominent politicians.
Hence came the celebrated "Self-denying Ordinance," by which the
members of the two Houses pledged themselves to give up their military
posts, and confine their activity to legislative and administrative
work. One exception was made--Oliver Cromwell, whom all acknowledged to
be the best cavalry officer in the Parliamentary army, was permitted
to keep his military post. But Essex, Manchester, and the rest retired
into civil life.
[Sidenote: =The "New-Model Army."=]
At the same time, the Parliament resolved to remodel its army. Much
inconvenience had arisen from the miscellaneous nature of the forces
which took the field. County militia, London train-bands, voluntary
levies, "pressed men" forced to the front, local organizations like
the army of the "Associated Counties," had served side by side in some
confusion. The conscripts were wont to desert, the militia protested
against crossing their county boundary, the train-bands melted back
to their shops if they were kept too long under arms. To do away with
these troubles, the Parliament now created the "New-Model Army," a
standing force of some 20,000 picked men, to be led by Sir Thomas
Fairfax, with Cromwell as his second in command. This proved a very
formidable host. The troops were mainly veterans, all were zealous
and willing, and the officers were most carefully selected. The
horsemen more especially were vastly superior to the old Parliamentary
troopers. Cromwell modelled them on his own East-country regiment,
filled the ranks with "men of religion," who looked upon the war as a
crusade against Popery and tyranny, and drilled his cuirassiers--the
"Ironsides," as they were called--into the highest state of efficiency.
[Illustration: NASEBY
1645.]
[Sidenote: =1645. Battle of Naseby.--The Midlands lost to Charles.=]
Next spring the "New-Model" was sent out to try its fortune against the
Cavaliers. The king had led his army northward to restore the fortunes
of his party in the valley of the Trent, where Newark was now his most
advanced post. On his way he stormed the important Parliamentary town
of Leicester, but his progress was then stayed by the news of the
approach of Fairfax. Despising the "New-Model," the Cavaliers turned
fiercely to attack it, though the royal host was the smaller by several
thousands. They seem to have put only 9000 men into the field against
13,000. Charles and Fairfax met at Naseby, in Northamptonshire, and
there fought out the decisive battle of the first civil war. Once more
it was Rupert who lost the day, and Cromwell who won it. The prince,
with the right wing of the royal horse, routed his immediate opponents,
and rode off the field in reckless pursuit of them. But on the king's
left Cromwell and his Ironsides broke to pieces the Cavaliers of the
North, and then steadied their ranks and rode against the flank of the
Royalist infantry. Charles sent in his reserve to aid his flagging
centre, and prepared to charge himself at the head of his body-guard.
"Will you go to your death?" cried the Earl of Carnwath, who seized the
royal rein, and turned his master out of the press. Charles yielded,
and rode back. Far better would it have been for him and for England
if he had gone on to make his end among the pikes. Cromwell's charge
settled the day; the Royalist foot were ridden down or captured; the
wrecks of the horse joined the late-returning Rupert, and escorted
their master back to Oxford (June 14, 1645).
[Sidenote: =Charles a fugitive.--Career of Montrose.=]
Naseby decided the fate of the war. The king could never raise another
army in the Midlands. His whole infantry force was gone, and for the
next eight months he rode helplessly about the shires with 2000 or
3000 horse, vainly trying to elude his pursuers and scrape together
a new body of foot. His only hope was in an ally who had arisen in
Scotland. James Graham, Marquis of Montrose, a Scottish peer who had
grown discontented with the Covenant, had raised the royal standard
in the Highlands in the preceding year. He was a born leader of men,
and, though at first followed by a mere handful of wild clansmen, soon
made his power felt in the war. After routing two small armies in the
north-east, he turned upon Argyleshire, and almost extirpated the
whole Covenanting clan of the Campbells at Inverlochy (January, 1645).
Then, descending upon the Lowlands, he cut to pieces a large army at
Kilsyth (August 15), seized Glasgow, and mastered the greater part of
Scotland. Charles resolved on joining him, and trusted to turn the fate
of the war by his aid. But Montrose's Highland levies melted home to
stow away their plunder, and he was left at the head of a comparatively
small force for the moment. Then Leslie led back across the Tweed the
Scottish army which had been serving in England, and surprised and
routed Montrose at Philiphaugh (September, 1645).
[Sidenote: =1645-6. End of the war in the West.=]
There was no further hope for Charles from Scotland, and his sole
remaining army, the force in the West, under Hopton and Goring,
was also doomed. After Naseby, Fairfax led the "New-Model" into
Somersetshire, beat Goring at Langport, and captured Bristol
(September, 1645). The Royalists were driven westward towards the
Land's End. In the next spring Fairfax followed them, took Exeter, beat
Hopton at Torrington, and steadily drove the wrecks of the enemy onward
till their back was to the Cornish sea. Escape was impossible, and the
king's army of the West laid down its arms (March, 1646).
[Sidenote: =Charles gives himself up to the Scots.=]
The king had now lost all hope, and when the Roundhead armies began
to muster for the siege of Oxford, his last stronghold, he took a
desperate measure. He thought that the Scottish Covenanters were
less bitterly hostile to him than the English Parliamentary party,
and resolved to give himself up to them rather than to his English
subjects. Slipping out of Oxford in disguise, he rode to the Scottish
camp at Newark, and there surrendered himself (April, 1646). He was
not without hope that he might yet save his crown by coming to terms
with his subjects; for he had an overweening belief in his own power
of diplomacy, and did not understand how deeply his old evasions and
intrigues had shaken men's confidence in his plighted word. Yet he had
his better side; he sincerely believed in his own good intentions and
his hereditary rights, and there were two things which he would never
give up under any pressure--his crown and his adherence to the Church
of England.
[Sidenote: =The Scots deliver him to the Parliament.=]
The Scots were delighted to have Charles in their hands, and proposed
to restore him to his throne if he would promise to take the Covenant
and impose Presbyterianism on England. This demand hit the king on a
point where his conscience was fixed and firm; he would never sell
the Church to its foes, so he temporized and dallied with the Scots'
proposals, but would not accept them. Disgusted at his refusal, the
Covenanters resolved to surrender him to the English Parliament. After
stipulating for the payment of all the arrears of the subsidies which
were owed them for their services in England, they gave up the king to
his enemies--a proceeding which contemporary opinion called "selling
their master for £400,000" (January, 1647).
[Sidenote: =Presbyterians and Independents.=]
Even yet Charles had not abandoned all hope; he knew that his
victorious enemies were much divided among themselves, and thought
that by embroiling them with one another he might yet secure good
terms for himself. The two parties which split the Parliament were
the Presbyterians and the Independents. The former, of whom we have
heard so much already, were desirous of organizing all England into
a Calvinistic Church on the model of the Scottish Kirk; they were as
intolerant as Laud himself in the matter of conformity, and intended
to force the whole nation into their new organization. Papists,
Episcopalians, and Nonconformists of every kind were all to be driven
into the fold. This plan did not please the "Independents"--a party
who consisted of men of all sorts and conditions, who only agreed
in disliking a State Church and a compulsory uniformity. Some of
the Independents were wild sectaries--Anabaptists, Levellers, and
Fifth-Monarchy-men, who held the strangest doctrines of an immediate
Millennium. Others were men who merely insisted on the responsibility
of the individual for his own conscience, and thought that the State
Church, with its compulsory powers, was a mistake, coming between God
and man where no mediator was required. Hence the watchword of the
Independents was the toleration of all sects, and they steadfastly
resisted the Presbyterian doctrine of forced conformity. The
Independents were very strong in the army, and Cromwell, the coming
man, was a pillar of their cause. On the other hand, the Presbyterians
had a decided majority among the members of the Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Parliament offers terms to Charles.=]
As representing the party of toleration, the Independents were quite
prepared to leave Episcopalians alone, and it was therefore with them,
rather than with the rigid and bigoted Presbyterians, that the king
hoped to be able to ally himself. But it was the Presbyterians who
swayed the House, and had possession of Charles's person; with them,
therefore, he had to treat. The Parliamentary majority did not yet
dream of abolishing the monarchy; they were bent on two things--on
tying the present king's hands so tightly that he should never again
be a danger to the common weal, and on forcing him to consent to the
establishment of Presbyterianism as the State religion. The former
was a rational end enough, for Charles could never be trusted; the
latter was a piece of insane bigotry, for the Presbyterians were a mere
minority in the nation, far outnumbered by the Episcopalians and the
Independents. The "Propositions" of the Parliament took the form of a
demand that Charles should surrender all claim to control the militia,
the fleet, and taxation, for twenty years; that he should take the
Covenant himself, assent to its being forced on all his subjects, and
order the persecution of all Romanists.[42] He was also to assent to
the outlawing of his own chief supporters in the civil war.
Now Charles had declared long ago that he would never sacrifice his
crown, his Church, or his friends, and in captivity he did his best
to keep his vow. But his method was not to give a steady refusal, and
bid his enemies do their worst. He answered their demands by long
counter-propositions, flagrant evasions, and endless hair-splitting on
every disputed point. Where he might have appeared a martyr, he chose
to stand as a quibbling casuist. The Parliament kept him in easy and
honourable confinement at Holmby House, in Northamptonshire, while
the negotiations were in progress, and he was so carelessly guarded
that he was able to keep up secret correspondence with all kinds of
possible allies--the King of France, the Scots, and the chiefs of the
Independent party.
[Sidenote: =Parliament and the army.=]
But while king and Commons were haggling for terms, a new difficulty
arose. The Presbyterian majority in Parliament were anxious to
disband the army, both because of the expense of its maintenance, and
still more because they knew it to be a stronghold of their enemies,
the Independents. In March, 1647, they issued an ordinance for the
dismissal of the whole force save a few regiments destined to suppress
the Irish rebellion. But the "New-Model" refused to be dismissed; it
hated Presbyterians, and it had learnt to look upon itself as a truer
representative of the Puritan party than an out-of-date House which
had been sitting more than seven years. Instead of disbanding, the
army began to organize itself for resistance, and each regiment named
two deputies, or "agitators," as they were called, to form a central
military committee. This was done with the approval of Fairfax and
Cromwell, the leaders of the host. The movement was natural, but quite
unconstitutional; still more so was the next step of the soldiery. An
officer named Joyce, with the secret sanction of the agitators and of
Cromwell also, rode to Holmby with 500 men, seized the king's person,
and took him to Newmarket, where the head-quarters of the army lay.
[Sidenote: =The Independents offer terms to Charles.=]
Next the army marched on London, and encamped before its gates (June
16, 1647). Many Presbyterian members fled in dismay from the House
of Commons, and the Independents got for a moment a majority in
Parliament. The victorious party then proceeded to treat with the king,
offering him liberal terms--the complete toleration of all sects, the
restriction of the royal power over the armed force of the realm for
ten years only, and a pardon for all exiled Royalists except five.
[Sidenote: =Charles's intrigues.=]
In a moment of evil inspiration the king refused this moderate offer.
Encouraged by the quarrel of the Presbyterians and the army, he had
formed a secret plot for freeing himself from both. His old partisans
all over England had agreed on a simultaneous rising, and they had
obtained a promise of aid from the Scots; for those stern Presbyterians
so hated the Independents and the English army, that they were prepared
to join the king against them. On the 11th of November, 1647, Charles
slipped away from his military captors, and succeeded in escaping to
the Isle of Wight. Hammond, the governor of the island, kept him in
security at Carisbrooke, but did not send him back to the army. From
Carisbrooke, the king sent new offers of terms of accommodation both to
the army and the Parliament, but he was merely trying to gain time for
his friends to take arms.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.=]
On the 28th of April, 1648, he saw his plot begin to work. A body of
north-country Royalists seized Berwick, and raised the royal standard.
A few days later the Scots took arms and raised a large force, which
was placed under the Duke of Hamilton, and ordered to cross the
Border. At the same time a committee of Scots lords sent to France
for the young Prince of Wales, and invited him to come among them
and put himself at the head of his father's friends. The movement in
Scotland was a signal for the general rising of the English Royalists.
Insurrections broke out in May and June all over the land--in Wales,
Kent, Essex, Cornwall, and even among the Eastern Counties of the
"Association," where Puritanism was so strong.
[Sidenote: =English Royalists suppressed.=]
For a moment it looked as if the king would win. It seemed that the
army would be unable to cope with so many simultaneous risings.
But Charles had not calculated on the military skill which Fairfax
and Cromwell could display in the hour of danger. In less than
three months' hard fighting the two generals had put down the whole
insurrection. Fairfax routed the Kentishmen--the most dangerous body
of insurgents in the South--by storming their stronghold of Maidstone.
Then, crossing the Thames, he pacified the Eastern Counties, and drove
all the insurgents of those parts into Colchester. In Colchester he
met a vigorous resistance; the town held out for two months, and only
yielded to starvation (August 27, 1648).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston.--The Scottish army dispersed.=]
Meanwhile Cromwell had first struck down the Welsh Royalists, and then
ridden north to oppose the Scots. The Duke of Hamilton had already
crossed the Tweed, and had been joined by 4000 or 5000 Yorkshiremen. He
moved southward, intending to reach Wales, but in Lancashire Cromwell
caught him on the march, with his army spread out over many miles of
road. Falling on the scattered host, Cromwell beat its rear at Preston
(August 17); then, pressing on, he scattered or captured the whole army
in three days of fierce fighting, though his force was far inferior
in numbers to that of the enemy. But the imbecile Hamilton had so
dispersed his men that he never could concentrate them for a battle. On
August 25 the duke, with the last wrecks of his army, surrendered at
Uttoxeter.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Royalist leaders.=]
The second civil war thus ended in utter disaster to the king's
friends. Moreover, it had sealed the fate of Charles himself. There
arose a large party among the victors who were determined that he
should be punished for the reckless intrigue by which he had stirred
up the dying embers of strife, and set the land once more aflame. The
temper of the army was so fierce that, for the first time since the war
began, numerous executions followed the surrender of the vanquished
Royalists. The Duke of Hamilton, who had led the Scots; Lucas and
Lisle, who had defended Colchester; Lord Holland, who had been
designated to command the Royalists of the south, all suffered death.
Hundreds of prisoners of inferior rank were sent to serve as bondmen in
the plantations of Barbados.
[Sidenote: =Pride's Purge.--The Rump.=]
Charles himself was removed from Carisbrooke--he had made two
unsuccessful attempts to escape from its walls--and put under strict
guard at Hurst Castle. The Parliament still continued to negotiate with
him, only making its terms more rigorous. But the army did not intend
that any such agreement should be concluded. While the House of Commons
was still treating, it was subjected to a sudden military outrage.
Colonel Pride, a leading Independent officer, marched his regiment to
Westminster on the 6th of December, 1648, and, as the members began to
muster, seized one by one all the chiefs of the Presbyterian party.
Forty-one were placed in confinement, ninety-six were turned back and
warned never to come near the House again. Only sixty Independent
members were allowed to enter, a body which was for the future known by
the insulting name of "the Rump," as being the "sitting part" of the
House.
Thus ended the famous Long Parliament, destroyed by the military
monster which it had itself created. The "Rump," a ridiculous remnant,
the slave of the soldiery, was alone left to represent the civil power
in England.
[Sidenote: =Trial of the king.=]
The king's fate was now settled. The army had resolved to punish him,
and the Parliament was to be the army's tool. On December 23, the
members of the Rump passed a bill for trying the king. On January 1,
1649, they voted that "to levy war against the Parliament and realm of
England was treason," and appointed a High Court of Justice to try the
king for that offence. When it was seen that the king's life as well as
his crown was aimed at, many of the leaders of the Independents, both
military men and civilians, began to draw back. Fairfax, the chief of
the whole army, refused to sit in the High Court, and of 135 persons
designated to serve in it, only some seventy or eighty appeared. But
the majority of the army, and Cromwell, the guiding spirit of the
whole, were determined to go through with the business. The High
Court met, with an obscure lawyer named Bradshaw as its president;
its ranks were packed with military men, who were blind to all legal
considerations, and had come merely to condemn the king. Charles was
brought before the court, but refused to plead. Such a body, he said,
had no right to try a King of England--it was a mere illegal meeting,
deriving its sole authority from a factious remnant of a mutilated
House of Commons. This was undoubtedly true, and, considering the
temper of his judges, the king knew that all defence was useless.
The course that he took was the only one that suited his dignity and
conscience. While he stood dumb before his judges, they passed sentence
of death upon him (January 26, 1649).
[Sidenote: =His execution.=]
Four days later he was led to execution on a scaffold placed before
the windows of Whitehall Palace. He died with a calm dignity that
amazed the beholders. He was suffered to make a short speech, in which
he bade the multitude remember that he died a victim to the "power of
the sword," that the nation was now a slave to the army, and that it
would never be free again till it remembered its duty to its God and
its king. He must suffer, he said, because he would not assent to the
handing Church and State over to "an arbitrary sway;" it was this that
his captors had required of him. Finally, he said, he died a Christian
according to the profession of the Church of England, which he had
always striven to maintain. Then he laid his head upon the block and
met the axe with unflinching courage, amid the groans of the people.
[Sidenote: =Was his fate deserved?=]
The hateful illegality of the king's trial, the violence of his
enemies, and the dignity of his end have half redeemed his memory.
In our dislike for those who slew him we almost forget his offences.
But when we condemn his slayers we must not forget their provocation.
Charles had ground the nation under his heel for eleven years of
tyranny. He had involved it in a bitter civil war that lasted four
years more. Then, when he fell into the victors' hands, he wasted two
years in shifty and evasive negotiations, which he never intended to
bring to an end. Finally, from his prison he had stirred up a second
and wholly unnecessary civil war. Contemplating these acts, we must
allow that he brought his evil end upon himself; violent and illegal as
it was, we cannot say that it was undeserved.
[Sidenote: =The Commonwealth.=]
The king's execution was immediately followed by the proclamation
of a republic. The Independents and the army wished to be rid of
the monarchy, no less than of the person of Charles. Accordingly a
sweeping series of bills, passed in February, 1649, declared England a
"Commonwealth," and vested its government in a single House of Commons
and a Council of State. The House of Lords was abolished; of late it
had been little more than a farce, for not a dozen peers had been wont
to attend. But the "Rump," which now assumed to be the representative
of the Commonwealth of England, was itself hardly more than a mockery.
It never permitted the victims of "Pride's purge" to return to its
benches, so that it was nothing better than a factious minority,
depending on the swords of the army.
[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]
The Rump and the army were masters of England, but in Scotland and
Ireland they were as yet powerless. Ireland was entirely in the
hands of the Catholic confederates, save the two towns of Dublin and
Londonderry. Scotland had never laid down its arms after Preston; there
was no republican party north of the Tweed, and when the news of the
king's execution arrived, it only led the Scots to proclaim his son the
Prince of Wales, under the name of Charles II.
[Sidenote: =Preparations for war.--Mutiny of the Levellers.=]
Unless England, Scotland, and Ireland were to part company, and relapse
into separate kingdoms, it was obvious that the new government must try
its sword upon the lesser realms. This it was fully prepared to do.
In the spring of 1649 an expedition for the conquest of Ireland was
ordered, and the command of it was given to the formidable Cromwell,
who since the king's death had become more and more the recognized
chief of the army, Fairfax having stepped into the background. Before
the expedition sailed, however, Cromwell had no small trouble with
his soldiery. The bad example which the generals and colonels had set
in driving out the Long Parliament and overturning the monarchy, had
turned the rank and file to similar thoughts. There had grown up among
them a body of extreme democratic republicans, called the Levellers,
from their wish to make all men equal; they were mostly members of
obscure and fanatical sects, who looked for the triumph of the saints
and the coming of the millennium. While the army was preparing for the
Irish war, the Levellers broke out into open insurrection, demanding
the dismissal of the "Rump," the introduction of annual Parliaments,
the abolition of the Council of State, and the grant of "true and
perfect freedom in all things spiritual and temporal." The zealots,
however, were weaker than they imagined, and their mutiny was easily
put down. Cromwell shot three or four of their leaders, and pardoned
the rest of the band.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell subdues Ireland.=]
In August, 1649, Cromwell took over a powerful army to Ireland,
where the civil war had never ceased since the rebellion eight years
before. The remnant of the Anglo-Irish Royalists, under the Marquis of
Ormonde, joined with the Romanists to oppose him, but their combined
efforts were useless. So strong a man had never before laid his hand
on Ireland. Starting from Dublin, the only large town in Parliamentary
hands, he began by the conquest of Leinster. From the first he had
determined to strike terror into the enemy. His stern veterans were
capable of any extreme of cruelty against Romanists and rebels. But
Cromwell is personally responsible for the two horrible blows that
broke the Irish resistance. The enemy had made himself strong in the
two towns of Drogheda and Wexford. Cromwell stormed them both, and
forbade the giving of quarter, so that the whole garrison was in each
case slaughtered to a man. Eight or nine thousand Irish perished, and
such terror was struck into the rebels by these massacres that they
made little more resistance. Cromwell had overrun half the island, when
pressing need recalled him to England. He left part of his army under
his son-in-law Ireton to complete the conquest, and hastily returned
with the remainder (May, 1650).
[Sidenote: =Prince Charles in Scotland.=]
The new danger was the Scottish war. Charles, Prince of Wales, had
crossed to Scotland and put himself at the head of the national forces
of the country. The unscrupulous young man had taken the "Covenant,"
and professed himself a Presbyterian to bind the Scots more closely
to him. He suffered the execution of the gallant Marquis of Montrose,
who had tried to raise a purely Royalist revolt in the Highlands,
to pass without rebuke, and allied himself with the slayers of his
friend. Charles was resolved to rouse the English royalists in his
aid, and it was the news that he was proposing to cross the Tweed that
called Cromwell home, for Fairfax had refused to lead an army against
the Scots. Since the tragedy of January, 1649, he had lost his old
confidence in the justice of the Puritan cause.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Dunbar and Worcester.=]
Cromwell entered Scotland in July, 1650, and beat a very superior
army at Dunbar, owing to the bad generalship of his opponents Leven
and Leslie (September 3). He then took Edinburgh, slowly and steadily
conquered the whole of the Lowlands, and pushed on into the interior of
Scotland. But next year, when he had won his way to Perth, he learnt
that Prince Charles and the Scots army had slipped past him and entered
England, trusting to rouse Lancashire and Wales to their aid. Cromwell
followed with fiery speed, and caught the invaders at Worcester
(September 3, 1651). His iron veterans once more carried the day; the
Scots were beaten and dispersed. Prince Charles barely escaped, and
wandered for many days in peril of his life, till faithful friends
enabled him to cross England and take ship at Brighton. From thence he
came safely to France.
[Sidenote: =End of the civil war.=]
The battle of Worcester, which Cromwell called "the crowning mercy,"
put a final end to the civil war. Scotland submitted, Ireland was
thoroughly conquered by Ireton, and the Rump and the army stood
victorious over the last of their foes. It now remained to be seen
whether the three kingdoms could settle down into a united Commonwealth
under their new conditions.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The term "Roundhead," alluding to the close-cropped hair of the
Puritans, which contrasted so strongly with the long locks which were
then the fashion, is first found in use in the end of 1641.
[42] The children of the Romanists were to be taken forcibly from them,
and educated as Presbyterians.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
CROMWELL.
1651-1660.
[Sidenote: =Power of Cromwell.=]
After the "crowning mercy" of Worcester fight, the rule of England
lay nominally in the hands of its mutilated and discredited House of
Commons, the representative of a mere fraction of the nation. But
really the power to move the realm was in the hands of the army, which
had made, and could as easily unmake, the mockery of representative
government which sat at Westminster. And in the army Cromwell was
growing more and more supreme; his old colleague Fairfax had sunk back
into civil life; his mutinous subordinates the Levellers had been
crushed; the colonels and generals who held power under him were for
the most part his humble servants.
Cromwell had as yet no official post corresponding to his real
omnipotence. He was commander of the army, and a member of the Council
of State, but nothing more. His will, nevertheless, was the main factor
in the governance of England.
[Sidenote: =His character and aims.=]
It is time to say a few words of the character of this extraordinary
man, whom we have hitherto seen merely as the heaven-sent leader of the
Parliamentary armies, and the guiding spirit of the Independent party.
Oliver was a county gentleman of Huntingdonshire, a man of religion
from his youth up, and a prominent member of the Parliaments of 1628
and 1640. He was more than forty years old before he ever drew sword
or put a squadron in battle array. No general save Julius Cæsar ever
started on a great military career so late in life. Cromwell himself
aimed at being a reformer of the life and faith of the nation much more
than a soldier. He had taken to war because the times required it, but
military power and military glory was not his end in life. He wished to
see England orderly, prosperous, and free, according to his ideas of
freedom in things spiritual and temporal. In religion his ideal was the
Independent system, in which the state tolerated most forms of worship,
and was itself committed to none. In things temporal he wished to see
the realm ruled by a truly representative House of Commons, where every
district should be represented according to its population. He had no
patience for the existing House, in which a haphazard arrangement,
dating back from the middle ages, gave no fair representation to
England--where the vanished boroughs of Dunwich or Sarum had as many
members as Yorkshire or Norfolk. If Cromwell had found a House of
Commons that agreed with his views, he would have worked smoothly with
them, and lived and died no more than their first servant.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell driven into illegality.=]
Unfortunately, however, Cromwell's views did not happen to be shared
by any large proportion of the nation. Half England was secretly
Episcopalian; a large proportion of the rest was Presbyterian; among
his own Independent party there were numberless sects and factions.
In the constitution of England, then as now, there was no place for
an over-great personality backed by a strong military force. But such
a personage existed in Cromwell. The question now arose whether he
would consent to see the land governed by men whom he despised, in ways
of which he disapproved, or whether he would proceed to interfere.
Interference would be unconstitutional; but everything had been
unconstitutional in England for ten years, and the temptation to use
force was irresistible to a man who had strong political theories, a
self-reliant temper, and 20,000 formidable veterans at his back. He
could never forget that the "Rump" was the army's creature, and that
it had been created to carry out the army's views. His very energy
and conscientiousness were certain to drive him into illegalities. It
is customary to reproach Cromwell with dissimulation and ambition, to
make his whole career turn on a settled desire to make himself despot
of England. This view entirely misconceives the man. It is far more
correct to look upon him as a man of strong principles and prejudices,
who was carried away by his desire to work out his programme, and who
struck down--often with great violence and illegality--all that stood
in his way. If he finally seized autocratic power, it was because he
found that in no other way could he put his plans in practice. Power,
in short, was for him the means, not the end. Unfortunately for his
reputation, England has always objected to being dragooned into the
acceptance of any programme or set of views, and if she would not
accept the theories of a Stuart, the child of a hundred kings, it was
hardly likely that she would acquiesce tamely in those of a simple
country gentleman of Huntingdonshire; the fact that he was the finest
general of the seventeenth century did not make him an infallible
law-giver.
[Sidenote: =Pretensions of the "Rump."=]
When Cromwell came back victorious from Worcester field, the small
and one-sided House of Commons which had ruled England since Pride's
purge was still supreme in the state. Before he had been three weeks
in London, Oliver hinted to the members that it was time that they
should dissolve themselves, and give place to a freely elected house,
where every shire and borough should be represented. Such a house had
not been seen since 1642, when the Royalist third of the Commons had
seceded at the king's command. But the "Rump" had enjoyed its two years
of power, and had no wish to disperse. It was gradually growing to
believe itself to be an irresponsible oligarchy with no duties to the
nation, and to forget that it purported to represent England. When the
question of dissolution was mooted, it proceeded to fix a date three
years off as a suitable time for its own suppression, making the excuse
that it must recast the constitution of the realm before it dispersed.
This gravely vexed Cromwell and all the friends of reform; still more
was their anger raised when the members proceeded to waste month after
month in fruitless legal discussions, without succeeding in passing any
bill of importance.
[Sidenote: =Foreign relations.--Rivalry with the Dutch.=]
Meanwhile the country had become involved in a foreign war. All the
powers of Europe looked unkindly upon the regicide Commonwealth of
England, and its envoys were maltreated at more than one court. Two
were actually murdered--Anthony Ascham at Madrid, Isaac Dorislaus, at
the Hague; in each case the slayers were exiled English Royalists,
and the foreign government gave little or no satisfaction for the
crime. While English relations with Spain remained strained, those
with Holland gradually grew to an open rupture. The Dutch had been
interested in the Royalist cause because their stadtholder, William
II., Prince of Orange, had married Mary, the eldest daughter of Charles
I., and had sheltered the Prince of Wales at his court for many months.
It was from Holland, too, that the Royalists had received their
supplies of arms during the war. But there was more than this recent
grudge in the ill-feeling between English and Dutch. They had grown of
late to be rivals in the trade of East and West. Their merchants in
the Spice Islands had come to blows as early as 1623, and in America
the Dutch had planted the colony of "New Amsterdam," so as to cut the
connection between Virginia and New England, as far back as 1625. At
present they were competing for the carrying trade both of the Baltic
and the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: =The Navigation Act.=]
Hence it was that when the indignation of the Parliament against the
Dutch came to a head, it found vent in the celebrated Navigation Act
(1651). This bill provided that goods brought to England from abroad
must be carried either in English ships, or in the ships of the actual
country that grew or manufactured them. Thus the Dutch carrying trade
would be severely maimed. It was not a wise bill, or one in accordance
with the laws of political economy, but it suited the spirit of the
times, and even the usually clear-headed Cromwell gave it his support.
This obvious blow at Dutch interests led, as was intended, to war
(July, 1652).
[Sidenote: =Dutch War.--Blake and Van Tromp.=]
In the struggle which followed, the English fleets were generally
successful. Led by Robert Blake, a colonel of horse who became for the
nonce an admiral, and showed no mean capacity in his new employment,
they obtained several victories. The conflict was not without its
vicissitudes, and on one occasion the Dutch Admiral Van Tromp won a
battle, and sailed down the Channel with a broom at his masthead, to
show that he had swept the seas clean. But his triumph was not for
long; next spring Blake beat him in a fight off the North Foreland
(June 3, 1653), and a final victory off the coast of Holland, in which
the gallant Dutchman was slain, completed the success of the English
fleet. A treaty followed in which the vanquished enemy accepted
the bitter yoke of the Navigation Act, and promised to banish the
Stuarts from Holland. This they did with the better grace because the
republican party among them had just succeeded in excluding the House
of Orange from the stadtholdership. The Orange interest, therefore,
could no longer be exerted in favour of the exiled royal family of
England (1654).
[Sidenote: =Discontent with Parliament.=]
But ere the Dutch war had come to an end, there had occurred a sweeping
political change in England. The "Rump" Parliament had persevered
in its unwise courses; it had carried no reforms, either in Church
or State, but spent all its time in profitless debating. Nor had it
improved its popularity in the country by raising taxes by a new system
which recalled the "tallages" of John or Henry III. Making lists of
all who had taken the Royalist side in the old civil war, it imposed
heavy fines on them, for offences of six or seven years ago. The army
began to grow desperately impatient with the Parliament that it had
made. In August, 1653, a great body of officers petitioned Cromwell, as
their chief, to insist on the Commons dissolving themselves. Somewhat
frightened, the House passed a bill for a dissolution, but with the
extraordinary and preposterous claim that all sitting members should
appear again in the next Parliament without having to seek re-election
by their constituents.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell dissolves Parliament by force.=]
This strange attempt to perpetuate themselves for ever provoked
Cromwell's wrath to boiling-point. He resolved to take a step even
more drastic than Pride's purge. On April 20, 1653, he went down to
Westminster with a guard of musketeers, whom he left outside the door.
Taking his seat as a private member, he presently arose and addressed
his colleagues in a fiery harangue, in which he told them that they
were a set of worthless talkers with no zeal for religion or reform.
When shouted down by the angry Commons, he bade his soldiers enter,
and thrust the dismayed politicians out of the door. The Speaker was
hustled from his chair and Cromwell bade his men "take away that
bauble," the great mace, which lay on the table and represented the
dignity of the Commons of England.
Thus perished the last remnant of the mighty "Long Parliament,"
dissolved by the mere fiat of the great general. Nor did its fall
cause much murmuring, for the nation had long ceased to regard it as
anything more than a body of garrulous and self-seeking oligarchs.
[Sidenote: =The "Barebones'" Parliament.=]
For the moment there was no legal government in England, for Cromwell's
position was quite unconstitutional. He felt this himself, and was
anxious to create a new House, which should work with him and carry
out his ideas of reform; as yet he had no intention of becoming an
autocrat. Accordingly, he summoned in June an assembly which differed
from all that had been before it, since the members were not elected
by the shires and boroughs, but named by a committee of selection, at
which Cromwell presided. This illegally created body was called the
"Nominee Parliament," or more frequently "Barebones' Parliament," from
a London merchant with the extraordinary name of Praise-God Barebones,
who was one of its prominent members.
But Cromwell was to find by repeated experiments that it was impossible
for him to discover any body of men who could work with him on exactly
the lines that he chose. For his own opinions were not those of the
majority of the nation, and hence any assembly that he called was
bound, sooner or later, to quarrel with him. And since he possessed in
his army a weapon able to dissolve any number of parliaments, he was
tempted to bring every quarrel to an end by abruptly dismissing the
recalcitrant House. A less self-confident man, or one who did not think
that he possessed a mandate from above to reform England, might have
learnt to co-operate with a Parliament. But Cromwell was so sure of his
own good intentions, and so convinced that those who questioned them
must be wrong-headed and factious, that he drove away three parliaments
in succession with words of rebuke and of righteous anger.
Barebones' Parliament, a body full of stiff-backed and fanatical
Independents, soon proved too restive for its creator. Cromwell
smiled on their first efforts, when they began to codify the laws
and abolished the Court of Chancery. But he began to frown when this
conclave of "the Saints," as they called themselves, commenced to speak
of confiscating Church-tithes--the maintenance of the clergy--and the
rights both of state and of private patronage to livings. It is even
said that they wished to substitute the Mosaic law from the Book of
Deuteronomy for the ancient law of England. This drew down a rebuke
from Cromwell, whereupon the House very honestly gave their power back
into the hands from whence they had taken it, and dissolved themselves
(December, 1653).
[Sidenote: =The "Instrument of Government."=]
The dispersion of this unconstitutional assembly was followed
by another experiment in illegality. Cromwell published a
paper-constitution drawn up by himself, called the "Instrument of
Government." This provided that England should be governed by a "Lord
Protector" and a House of Commons. Cromwell himself, of course, took
the post of Protector, which was to be held for life, and had a
quasi-royal character, for it was he who was to summon and dissolve
Parliaments, and his assent was required to all bills; but it was
stipulated that "the Protector should have no power to reject such
laws as were themselves in accordance with the constitution of the
commonwealth"--a vague check, since he himself would have to decide
on the legality of each enactment. The new House of Commons was a
fairly constituted body, for it included members from Scotland and
Ireland, and among the English seats all the "rotten boroughs" were
disfranchised, while their members were distributed among the rising
towns, such as Leeds, Liverpool, and Halifax, and the more populous
counties. The Protector was to have no power of dissolving the Commons
till they had sat five months at least (December 16, 1653).
[Sidenote: =Cromwell Lord Protector.--His reforms.=]
For nine months Cromwell ruled as "Lord Protector" without any check
on his power, for the Parliament was not to assemble till September,
1654. Pending its arrival, the Protector began to introduce many
reforms; he recast the Courts of Justice, and introduced his favourite
scheme for the government of the Church. This was the toleration of
all Protestant sects, and the distribution of Church patronage among
them by a committee of selection called "Triers." This body was only to
inquire whether the candidate for a living was of a good life, and held
the essential doctrines of Christianity. It was not to inquire whether
he was Presbyterian, Independent, or Episcopalian; only Romanists were
formally excluded. But, unfortunately for the content of the land,
Cromwell's ordinance that the old Church of England Prayer-book was not
to be used, effectually prevented any conscientious Episcopalian from
applying to the "Triers." The Churchmen could only meet by stealth to
celebrate their sacraments, and they formed at least half the nation.
Cromwell's well-meant arrangements were gall and bitterness to them,
and discontent was always rife.
[Sidenote: =The New-Model Parliament.=]
Cromwell's New-Model Parliament met on September 3, 1654, the third
anniversary of Worcester fight. It was a body that well expressed the
wishes of the Puritan half of the nation, but the Royalists were, of
course, excluded. The sense that it was a strong and representative
body made it confident and haughty; it at once began to discuss
the legality of the "Instrument of Government," and to pass bills
restricting the Protector's power. Cromwell with some difficulty
kept his temper for the statutory five months, and then dissolved it
(January 22, 1655).
[Sidenote: =Autocracy of Cromwell.--Attempted assassination.=]
Once more the Lord Protector was left alone as autocrat of Great
Britain. He was not happy in the position; the dissolution of the
New-Model Parliament had angered Independents and Presbyterians alike.
They murmured that a despotic Protector was no better than a despotic
King. Conspiracies began to be formed against Cromwell, both by
Royalists and extreme republicans. Some were for open rebellion, some
for secret murder, for autocrats are easy to make away with. No one
save Guy Fawkes ever tried to slay a whole Parliament, but the power
of the individual despot is often tempered by assassination. Cromwell
promptly got the better of a few wild spirits who tried to raise open
war, for the army was still devotedly loyal to him. But his spirit was
sorely tried by the assassination plots; the pamphlet which Colonel
Sexby, the Leveller, published, under the title of _Killing no Murder_,
especially incensed him. For the future he went on his way resolute,
but nervously expecting a pistol-shot from every dark corner.
[Sidenote: =Military despotism established.=]
For eighteen months after the dissolution of the New-Model Parliament
Cromwell ruled as autocrat without any House of Commons to check
him (January, 1655, to September, 1656). This time he tried another
unconstitutional experiment for the governance of the realm. He
divided England into twelve districts, and set over them twelve
major-generals picked from the army, whose despotic power replaced
that of lords-lieutenant and sheriffs. This expedient made even
more evident than before the fact that the army was holding down the
nation by force, and provoked much adverse comment. As a matter of
fact, Cromwell's rule, though utterly illegal, was very efficient.
He gathered around him many capable men: the poet Milton--though a
convinced republican--served as his foreign secretary; Thurlow, a very
able man, was his Secretary of State. Both Monk, who governed Scotland,
and Henry Cromwell, the Lord-Deputy of Ireland, the Protector's
youngest son, were skilled administrators; and Blake, who had charge
of the fleet, was the greatest admiral that England had yet seen. But
no amount of good governance suffices to content a nation held down
by armed force against its will, and Cromwell's rule could never be
popular.
[Sidenote: =Scotland and Ireland.=]
It was, however, successful and glorious, both in neighbouring lands
and far abroad, if it was hated at home. Scotland was orderly and
prosperous; Cromwell had much in common with the Covenanters, though
he had suppressed them so sternly, and after 1651 there was not
much opposition to him. In Ireland the matter was very different;
Cromwell loathed Romanists with the hatred of the old Protestants of
the Elizabethan age. His scheme of government for that realm was the
drastic and cruel expedient of thrusting all the native Irish into
the single province of Connaught, and of dividing up the rest of the
land among English and Scots settlers, just as Ulster had been treated
in the time of James I. The expulsion was carried out with merciless
rigour, and thousands of Cromwell's discharged veterans and other
colonists were planted in Munster and Leinster. But the settlement was
only to be a very partial success; the old soldiers did not make good
farmers in a pastoral country, and the native Irish gradually crept
back to act as the servants and labourers of the conquerors, so that a
homogeneous English and Protestant colony was never established. When
the Protector died a few years later, many of the colonists departed,
others were merged in the Irish masses, and only in limited districts
did traces of his cruel work survive. But the "curse of Cromwell"
remained the bitterest oath in the Irish peasant's mouth.
[Sidenote: =Cromwell's foreign policy.=]
Master of Great Britain, the Lord Protector resolved that this country
should resume the great place in the counsels of Europe which it had
held in the time of Elizabeth. His foreign policy was the same as
that of the great queen--resolute opposition to Spain as the foe of
Protestantism and the monopolist of the trade of the Indies. In 1655
Cromwell declared war on Philip IV., and sent forth his fleets under
Blake to prey on the Spaniards. The great admiral stormed the strongly
fortified harbour of Teneriffe, in the Canary Islands, and sent home
several silver-laden galleons from America which were lying therein
(April, 1656). After several other successes he died at sea, just as he
was returning to England. Another expedition under Venables captured
the fertile island of Jamaica, in the West Indies, though it failed to
get possession of the larger and stronger island of San Domingo. On the
European continent Cromwell allied himself with France, the eternal
enemy of Spain, and sent a strong brigade of his formidable regulars to
aid the troops of the young Lewis XIV. This force much distinguished
itself in the war, and won the ports of Dunkirk and Mardyke in Flanders
(1657-58), which by agreement with the French were kept as English
possessions. At this time Cromwell's arm reached so far that he was
even able to interfere to prevent the Duke of Savoy from persecuting
his Protestant subjects the Waldenses (1655), an event which called
forth Milton's celebrated sonnet, commencing--
"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered o'er the Alpine valleys cold."
[Sidenote: =Constitutional experiments.--A House of Lords.=]
But though victorious abroad, the Lord Protector was still vexed
that he could not build up a stable constitution at home. In the
midst of his successes he summoned his third and last Parliament in
September, 1656. He had now resolved to experiment in the direction
of restoring many of the time-honoured arrangements of the monarchy.
He had determined to create a second chamber, like the old House of
Lords, and to assimilate his own position as Protector to that of the
old kings. By excluding from election about a hundred persons who had
been active in the Parliaments of 1653 and 1654, he obtained a House of
Commons somewhat more docile than either of his earlier assemblies. In
an address called "the humble Petition and Advice," they besought him
to assume all the old prerogatives of royalty, and even the name of
king. The last he refused, knowing the discontent it would arouse among
his sternly republican followers in the army. But he accepted a status
which gave him all that the regal name would have implied. At the same
time he endeavoured to make his position less unconstitutional, by
abolishing the major-generals, and giving the Commons complete control
over taxation. But even with this loyal and obedient house the Lord
Protector could not long agree. They fell out upon the question of
the setting up of his new House of Lords, a body whose authority they
utterly refused to acknowledge. On this point the Commons proved so
recalcitrant that Oliver dissolved them after they had sat sixteen
months (January, 1658).
[Sidenote: =Death of Cromwell.=]
This would not have been the last of his constitutional experiments if
his life had been spared. But in the summer of the same year, while
designs for a new Parliament were already being mooted, he was taken
ill. His health had been broken by the constant nervous strain of
facing perpetual assassination plots, and wrangling with refractory
Parliaments. He died on September 3, 1658, the seventh anniversary of
the "crowning mercy" of Worcester.
He left England great and prosperous, but discontented and unhappy.
An autocrat, however well meaning, is never pardoned if he fails to
understand and obey the feeling of the nation. Oliver was so much out
of sympathy with the majority that he could not escape bitter hatred.
Therefore all his work was built on the sand, and all that he had
accomplished vanished with his death, save the mere material gains
of commerce and colonies that he had won for England. His name, very
unjustly, became a byword for ambition and religious cant. A whole
generation had to pass before men dared speak well of him.
[Sidenote: =Richard Cromwell Protector.=]
The moment that Cromwell died, his system began to break up; in six
months it had disappeared; in eighteen months England once more was
ruled by a Stuart king. The Lord Protector had named no successor, but
the Council of State took the step of nominating his son Richard to his
place, as being the man who would divide parties the least. Richard
Cromwell was an easy-going country gentleman, without any of his
father's characteristics. He was neither self-confident, nor a soldier,
nor a man of fervent religion. When saluted as Protector, he observed
that he would never make anything more than a fair chief-constable.
He bore himself modestly and discreetly, and proceeded at once to
endeavour to put himself right with the nation by calling a Parliament.
It met in January, 1659, and was found to contain many concealed
Royalists, and many more stiff republicans of the old Presbyterian
type, who objected on principle to the protectorship. Such a body was
bound to fall into internal quarrels; all parties in it concurred in
treating the unfortunate Richard with disregard.
[Sidenote: =Richard and the army.--He resigns.=]
But it was not the Parliament which was to upset the new Lord
Protector. The army saw that with Oliver's death their old power was
gone, for neither Richard nor the two Houses had any sympathy with
them. A council of officers met, and resolved to seize control of
affairs. They petitioned for the appointment of a general-in-chief who
should represent them and act as their leader. When this was refused, a
deputation of colonels called on the weak Richard, and hectored him, by
threats of violence, into dissolving Parliament (April, 1659). Equally
unwilling and unable to become a military autocrat, the Lord Protector
immediately after resigned his office, and went off in joy to his quiet
country seat of Hursley. He lived there as an obscure squire for more
than forty years, and survived till the reign of Queen Anne.
[Sidenote: =Revival of the "Rump."=]
England was now without a Protector and without a Parliament, left in
the hands of a ring of ambitious and fanatical military men. Looking
round for the fittest tool to serve their purposes, the committee of
officers resolved on restoring the old "Rump Parliament" which had
disappeared so ignominiously six years before. Accordingly, they sought
out the Independent members who had once sat in that body, and restored
them to Westminster Hall. Forty survivors under Speaker Lenthall took
their old places, and claimed to be the governing power of England (May
9).
[Sidenote: =Quarrels of the military leaders.=]
Of all the bodies which had ever ruled England, the "Rump" had been the
most incapable and the most despised. The whole nation was indignant at
seeing its miserable remnant replaced in power. Meanwhile the officers
began to fall out with each other: Lambert, Fleetwood, Desborough, had
each his party among the soldiery, and aspired to fill Oliver's vacant
place. Eight months of anarchy followed; the various generals bullied
the Parliament and intrigued against each other. Royalist risings took
place in Cheshire and the West. Finally Lambert, the most vigorous of
the military men, entered London with his regiments and drove out the
Parliament, just as Oliver had done six years before. But Lambert was
no Cromwell; he only ruled a fraction of the soldiery, and had no party
among the people (October, 1659).
[Sidenote: =Popular wish for a Restoration.=]
The divisions of the army had at last broken the formidable military
power which had so long repressed the wishes of the nation.
Commonwealths and Protectors had been tried in the balance and found
wanting. There was a general feeling that the only way out of anarchy
was the restoration of the old constitution of England, with King,
Lords, and Commons. The majority even of the original Parliamentarians
of 1642 were ready to acknowledge that they had done unwisely, in
breaking up the foundations of law and order by abolishing the
monarchy. Calvinistic fervour had worked itself out; the majority of
the old Puritans of the days of Charles I. had come to realize that
Levellers, Fifth-monarchy men, and military saints were even more
objectionable and impracticable than the Episcopalians whom they had
once hated so sorely.
[Sidenote: =Monk marches to London.=]
Meanwhile there was a man who saw clearly the one way to restore a
stable government and to content the nation. George Monk, a calm,
self-reliant soldier who commanded the army in Scotland, had resolved
to use his regiments, on whose obedience he could implicitly count, to
restore legal and constitutional rule. His own private ambition lay in
the direction of a quiet and assured competence, not of an unsteady
grasp on supreme power. He put himself secretly in communication with
the exiled Prince of Wales and the chiefs of the English Royalists.
No one else knew his design. Crossing the Tweed with 7000 men, he
scattered the troops of Lambert and seized London. Then he summoned
all the surviving members of the old "Long Parliament," as it had sat
in 1642, to meet at Westminster, on the ground that it had been the
last undoubtedly legal and constitutional government that England had
possessed. The members met, now for the most part elderly men, cured
of their old fanaticisms by ten years of military despotism, and ready
for any reasonable compromise. By Monk's direction they issued writs
for a new Parliament, and then formally dissolved themselves.
[Sidenote: =The Convention Parliament.--Declaration of Breda.=]
The new or Convention Parliament met on April 26, 1660; it was full
of Royalists, who for the first time since the civil war dared show
themselves and avow their opinions. Monk now openly began to negotiate
with Prince Charles for a restoration of the monarchy, on the basis of
oblivion of the past, and toleration and constitutional government for
the future. The exiled Stuart promised these things in his "Declaration
of Breda," though there were in his promises certain reservations,
which cautious men regarded with distrust.
[Sidenote: =Return of Charles II.=]
But the realm was yearning for repose and peace, and the Parliament
accepted Charles's offer with haste and effusion. Lambert and a few
fanatical regiments vainly attempted to struggle against the popular
will, but Monk crushed them with ease. In May 1660, the Prince of Wales
was formally invited to return and resume his hereditary rights. On the
29th of the month he landed at Dover, and was saluted as Charles II. by
the unanimous voice of a rejoicing nation.
CHAPTER XXIX.
CHARLES II.
1660-1685.
[Sidenote: =Character of Charles.=]
Charles Stuart, who now returned to fill the English throne, was a
young man of thirty. He had spent the last fourteen years of his life
in exile, the penniless guest of many unwilling hosts in Holland,
France, and Germany. Save eighteen uncomfortable months passed in the
camp of the Scottish Covenanters, none of the days of his manhood
had been spent on this side of the sea. He was continental in his
manners, thoughts, and life. He had picked up his personal morals at
the French court, and his political morals from the group of intriguing
exiles who had formed his wandering and impecunious court. He laughed
at purity in women and honesty in men. He was grossly selfish and
ungrateful. Knowing by long experience how bitter is the bread doled
out by the exile's host, "how steep to climb another's stair," he had
one fixed idea--"he would never," as he phrased it, "go on his travels
again." He had resolved to stay in England at all costs, to enjoy
the Promised Land, now, contrary to all expectation, fallen into his
hands. Accordingly, he wished to get as much out of his kingdom as was
compatible with the necessity of never offending the majority of the
nation. His personal leanings lay in the direction of absolute power
and Right Divine, but he was perfectly ready to sacrifice them to his
prudence. If he had any religious bias, it led him in the direction of
Romanism--a comfortable creed for kings--but he was quite prepared to
pose as a zealous Anglican, just as during his stay in Scotland he had
become a conforming Presbyterian.
Charles, though destitute of personal beauty--his features were thin
and harsh--had an affable address, a lively wit, and perfect manners.
Supple and suave, he could make himself agreeable among any company. He
had the careless good-humour that so often accompanies selfishness, and
his character was too light and easy to make him a good hater. He was
quite prepared to take to himself any allies who might appear, and to
sell himself to any bidder whose terms were high enough.
[Sidenote: =Charles and the Convention Parliament.=]
Charles appeared in England as the representative of legality and
constitutional rule, as the saviour of society who was to lay once
more the foundations of peace and order, after ten years of military
despotism. He was ready to accept just so much power as might be
offered him, with the full intention of ultimately gaining as much more
as he could safely assume. The "Convention Parliament," with which he
had at first to deal, was a cautious body, containing many elderly men,
who had fought against Charles I. and only accepted his son because
of the dismal experience of ten years of rule by military "saints."
The new king was therefore bound to be careful at first. Any unwise
movement of opposition might upset his still unsteady throne.
The Parliament, however, was prepared to deal very liberally with
Charles. They disbanded the old Cromwellian standing army. They
granted him an annual revenue of £1,200,000 for life, to be raised
from customs and excise. In return, the old vexatious feudal dues of
the crown from reliefs, wardships, alienations, etc., were abolished.
An amnesty was voted to all who had fought against the king in the
old wars, with the single exception of those who had sat in the "High
Court of Justice" of 1649, and been concerned in the execution of
Charles I. Eighty-seven persons, of whom twenty-four were dead, came
under this category. Of the survivors some score fled over-seas; the
remainder were tried before a court of High Commission. Thirteen were
executed,[43] twenty-five imprisoned for life, the rest punished
with less rigour; at the same time the Earl of Argyle, the chief of
the Scottish Covenanters, was executed at Edinburgh. The bodies of
Cromwell, Bradshaw, and Ireton were ordered to be disinterred and
gibbeted--an unworthy and uncomely act for which the spirit of the time
is no sufficient excuse.
An "Act of Oblivion and Indemnity" was passed to cover acts of the
governments of the last twelve years. It stipulated that Crown and
Church lands which the Commonwealth had granted away should be restored
by their present holders, who were not, however, to suffer any other
penalty. Private lands were to be restored if they had been actually
confiscated by the government, but not if they had been sold by the
Cavalier owners under pressure of war or debt. Thus many who had served
Charles I. to the best of their ability got no compensation from his
son. Gratitude was not the new king's strong point.
[Sidenote: =The Church question.=]
There was a third problem on which the Convention Parliament found
the gravest difficulty in arriving at an agreement--the settlement of
the Church. The benefices of England were at the moment in the hands
of Presbyterian and Independent ministers of various shades of creed.
Many of them had replaced incumbents of the Church of England thrust
out by the Long Parliament. Others had succeeded in more peaceful wise.
On the other hand, the extruded clergy of the old Church were claiming
restoration to the cures from which they had been so ruthlessly
ejected. What was to be done between the old holders and the new? Was
the Church of England to be restored in all its ancient organization,
and to become Anglican and Episcopal once more, or was it to be a lax
organization including all manner of beliefs within its fold? The
Parliament included many who were for "comprehension," and many who
were pledged to a rigid restoration of the old order. It had been
unable to come to any conclusion when it was dissolved in December,
1660. The king, however, had issued a declaration that a conference
should be held between an equal number of Presbyterian and Episcopal
divines, with the object of arriving at a compromise.
[Sidenote: =The Cavalier Parliament.=]
The new House of Commons which met in the spring of 1661 was a very
different body from the "Convention." Elected in the full flush of
Royalist enthusiasm at the restoration of law and order, it contained
a very small proportion of the old Roundhead party. Its members, young
and old, were for the most part such zealous adorers of Church and
King, that they received the name of the "Cavalier Parliament." Charles
was ready to take all they cared to give him, while his prime minister
Clarendon was a High Churchman, and an advocate of hereditary divine
right; but even they found it necessary to restrain from time to time
the exuberant loyalty of the Commons.
The "Cavalier Parliament" showed the blindest confidence in the king,
whose real character his subjects had not yet discovered. They passed
bills asserting the incompetency of the two Houses to legislate without
the sovereign's consent, declaring that under no circumstances was
it lawful to levy war against the king, and placing all the military
and naval forces of the realm in his hands. The "Solemn League and
Covenant," which had been the shibboleth of the old Roundheads, they
ordered to be burnt by the common hangman.
[Sidenote: =The Act of Uniformity.=]
These comparatively harmless beginnings were followed by a series
of bills prompted by a spirit of unwise rancour against the men who
had ruled England from 1648 to 1660. The Cavaliers had twelve years
of spiritual and temporal oppression to revenge, and were determined
to do as they had been done by. The Church settlement, which had
been left pending by the Convention, they carried out in the most
summary way. The king had promised that a meeting between divines of
the old Church and Presbyterian ministers should be held, in order
to endeavour to bring about a union. But the scheme came to nothing;
at the "Savoy Conference" of 1661, each side refused to move an inch
from its position. The Parliament then proceeded to pass the "Act
of Uniformity," to force the Puritans either to conform or to leave
the Church. The Book of Common Prayer, slightly revised, and the
Thirty-nine Articles were to be the rule of faith, and every minister
was ordered to use and abide by them. Every incumbent was to declare
his assent to them by August 24, 1662, or to vacate his benefice;
such was also to be the fate of all who refused to accept Episcopal
ordination. This left the Puritan ministers three months to choose
between conformity and expulsion--a longer shrift than they had allowed
the Anglican clergy in the days of the triumph of Presbyterianism.
The large majority of them conformed, and accepted Episcopacy and
the Book of Common Prayer; these men became the parents of the "Low
Church" party of the succeeding age. The more stubborn souls refused
obedience; about 2000 of them were expelled from their livings on St.
Bartholomew's Day, 1662. They and their followers are the original
progenitors of the dissenting sects of modern England. The extrusion of
the Puritans was most thoroughly carried out, not only in the case of
beneficed clergy, but in the Universities and schools. No University
professor and no schoolmaster was to be allowed to teach, unless he got
a certificate of orthodoxy from his bishop.
[Sidenote: =The Corporation Act.=]
Not content with thrusting out the Puritan ministers from the livings
they had held, the Parliament went on to legislate against the Puritan
laity. The "Corporation Act" of 1661 enacted that all mayors, aldermen,
and other office-holders in the cities and boroughs of England should,
on assuming their functions, abjure the Covenant, take the oath of
supremacy and allegiance to the king, and receive the Holy Communion
according to the rites of the Anglican Church. Thus the Sacrament was
made into a political test, a scandalous perversion of the Holy Table.
This bill excluded all sectarians of the more conscientious and honest
sort from municipal authority, but it also produced the unsatisfactory
class of "occasional conformists," dissenters who took the oaths and
the Communion according to law, but remained outside the Church.
[Sidenote: =The Conventicle Act and the Five-Mile Act.=]
Before passing on to matters outside the sphere of things
ecclesiastical, we must mention two other persecuting bills passed, at
a somewhat later date, by the "Cavalier Parliament." The "Conventicle
Act" of 1664 forbade religious meetings of dissenters. Family worship
was to be allowed, but if any number of persons more than five were
present, beyond the members of the family, such a gathering was to
be held a "conventicle," and the hearers to be punished. Lastly, the
"Five-Mile Act" of 1665 forbade any minister who had refused to sign
the "Act of Uniformity" to dwell within five miles of any city or
corporate borough. It also prohibited such men from acting as tutors or
schoolmasters, unless they took an oath "to attempt no alteration of
the constitution in Church or State." These acts were purely vexatious
and spiteful, as the Nonconformists were now completely crushed and
harmless. Their numbers were already rapidly dwindling, and by the end
of the century they did not number a fifth of the population of the
realm. The vast majority of them had gone to swell the Low Church party
within the Anglican establishment.
[Sidenote: =Clarendon.=]
For the first seven years of the reign of Charles II., the days of
the "Cavalier Parliament," the chief minister of the realm was Edward
Hyde, Lord Clarendon. He was a survivor from the days of the Long
Parliament, being one of the original reforming members of that body
who had gone over to the royal side when the Puritan majority commenced
to attack the Church. He had been one of the wiser and more moderate
councillors of Charles I., and had followed Charles II. all through the
days of his exile. His daughter, Anne Hyde, had married James, Duke of
York, the king's brother. Fourteen years of exile had put him somewhat
out of touch of English politics, and his political ideals were more
like those of the Elizabethan monarchy than those of his own day. He
was an honest and capable, but not a very strong man. All through his
life he preserved the theories which had guided him in the early days
of the Long Parliament, wishing to keep a balance between the royal
Prerogative and the power of the two Houses. Of course he failed to
satisfy either king or Parliament, Charles thought that he was not
so zealous a servant as he might have been; while the advocates of
stringent checks on the monarchy thought him too subservient to his
master. Clarendon was a strong Churchman, and must bear his share of
the responsibility for the iniquitous "Conventicle" and "Five-Mile"
acts. In secular matters he was more judicious; he always opposed the
attempts of the king or Parliament to slur over the "Act of Oblivion
and Indemnity" and hunt down the adherents of the Commonwealth. In
foreign affairs he was a strong advocate of the old Elizabethan policy
of war with Spain and friendship with France, a system which was
rapidly becoming very dangerous, owing to the growing preponderance
of France under the vigorous and ambitious young king, Lewis XIV.
The first sign of his views was the sale of Dunkirk, Cromwell's old
conquest, to the French for 5,000,000 francs.
[Sidenote: =Profligacy of the court.=]
Clarendon's great fault was that he had no influence over his master,
the king. He allowed Charles to develop his unworthy personal habits
without remonstrance. The king filled both his palace and the public
service with disreputable favourites. He neglected his amiable but
unattractive wife, Catherine of Portugal,[44] and filled his court with
a perfect harem of mistresses, whose sons he made dukes and earls.
England had never seen shameless immorality in high places so rampant
in any previous age. The king's companions and servants were, as might
have been expected, men of scandalous life, and quite unfit for the
offices into which he thrust them. The tone of the court had a profound
and unhappy influence on the manners of the day. Never were the private
vices displayed so unblushingly; as if in protest against the formal
piety and bleak austerity of the days of the Puritans, England--or at
least its governing classes--plunged into extravagance and evil living
of all sorts. Drunkenness, profanity, thriftless luxury, gambling,
duelling, shameless lust, were accounted no discredit. The literature,
and more especially the drama, of the Restoration is coarse and foul
beyond belief. Even great poets like Dryden felt constrained to be
scurrilous when they wished to please. The days of the great civil war
had brought out the sterner virtues of Englishmen; the Restoration and
the reign of domestic peace were marked by the outburst of all the
folly and lewd frivolity which had so long been dormant beneath the
surface.
[Sidenote: =The Dutch war.--1665-67.=]
The chief political event of Clarendon's administration was the second
Dutch war, a struggle into which the minister was forced somewhat
against his will. It was an unwise war, for, in spite of the fact that
their commercial interests often clashed, England and Holland needed
each other's aid against the dangerous and restless power of France.
Narrow trade jealousy, however, sufficed to bring on a conflict which
ended with little credit to England. The fleet was very unsuccessful at
sea, not so much owing to its own fault, as to the unskilful hands of
its admirals. Charles gave the command to two old military men--General
Monk, the author of the Restoration, and Prince Rupert. These gallant
cavalry officers were wholly unable to handle a fleet; they led their
ships into battle, whatever the odds against them, and then left the
day to be decided by hard fighting. At a great three-days' engagement
in the Downs (January 1-2-3, 1666) Monk was totally defeated by the
Dutch admiral, De Ruyter, and his ill-success was very insufficiently
revenged by some predatory descents on the coast of Holland in the next
autumn.
[Sidenote: =The Plague--1665.=]
The days of the Dutch war were some of the most unhappy that England
has ever known. In the summer and autumn of 1665, the land was smitten
with the worst outbreak of pestilence that it has ever suffered. The
"Great Plague" raged in London with awful severity. The crowded and
ill-built city, utterly destitute of any sanitary appliances, and
foul with the accumulated filth of centuries, became a very hotbed
of contagion. Whole streets and parishes were swept clear of their
inhabitants by death or desertion; the clergy fled from their cures,
the physicians from their patients. All who could escape removed into
the country, and London in the late autumn looked like a city of the
dead, the grass growing high in its streets. The great plague-pits
by St. Martin's-in-the-Fields and Mile-end had been filled one after
another, as fast as they could be opened, with huddled bodies gathered
in the dreaded death-cart. At least a hundred thousand persons
perished; contemporary rumour named an even greater figure.
[Sidenote: =The Fire in London.--1666.=]
London had hardly recovered from the Plague, when in the next year it
suffered a fresh calamity, the Great Fire. A chance conflagration,
bursting out in the heart of the city, was carried west and north by
a strong wind, and swept away two-thirds of the inhabited houses of
the capital. All the great buildings of mediaeval London perished in
the flames, the old Gothic Cathedral of St. Paul's, eighty-eight other
churches, the Guildhall, the historic mansions of the nobility, the
halls of the rich City Companies, hospitals, old monastic remains,
all were swept away. Hence it comes that central London is poorer in
ancient architectural monuments than many a country town. The popular
dismay at such an unexampled catastrophe was so great that a rumour
went abroad that the conflagration was no accident, but had been
planned and spread by the Papists, who were believed capable of any
enormity since the wild attempt of Guy Fawkes. The Great Fire was
not without its benefits; it swept away for ever a thousand mediaeval
fever-dens, and allowed of the rebuilding of the city with wider
streets and more direct communications. Perhaps we may add that it
gave a unique opportunity to the great architect Christopher Wren, to
display his talents in the new St. Paul's and the many other churches
which he was commissioned to rebuild.
[Sidenote: =The Peace of Breda.=]
London was hardly beginning to rise again from its ashes, when the
Dutch war ended, in some disgrace, but no loss to England. The English
fleet had not recovered from the disaster in the Downs, for Charles
II. had squandered on his palace and harem the liberal grants which
Parliament made him to repair his navy. While the seas were unguarded,
a Dutch squadron slipped up the Thames, burnt the English dockyard
and ships at Chatham, and held the port of London blockaded for some
days. But negotiations were already on foot before this disaster was
suffered, and the Peace of Breda (1667) put an end to the war. The
terms were less unfavourable than might have been expected; England
modified the Navigation Act of Cromwell's day in favour of Holland, but
kept the valuable conquest of New Amsterdam, a Dutch colony in North
America, which lay between New England and Virginia. The settlement
changed its name, and was called in the future New York, after the
king's brother, James, Duke of York.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Clarendon.=]
Just after the Peace of Breda, Clarendon lost his place as the king's
chief minister. The disasters and mismanagement of the war were,
very unjustly, imputed to him rather than to his master. The Commons
impeached him for permitting corruption among the public servants,
and for wilfully misconducting the war. Bowing to the storm, he left
England and dwelt in exile till his death.
[Sidenote: =The Cabal.=]
No one was more glad than the king at Clarendon's departure. He filled
the place of his well-intentioned, if narrow-minded, minister with a
clique of his disreputable friends. This administration was called
the "Cabal" (from _Cabala_, the Hebrew word for strange and occult
knowledge), as being the depository of the king's secrets. The name
became popular because it chanced that the initials of the names of
the five men who formed it spelt the word "Cabal." They were Clifford,
Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale. Lord Clifford and the
Earl of Arlington were Romanists, a fact which brought much odium and
suspicion on their doings. George, Duke of Buckingham, the son of the
favourite of Charles I., a volatile, insincere man--
"Stiff in opinion, always in the wrong,
Was everything by starts, and nothing long,"
as Dryden wrote. He was the most profligate and unscrupulous man
in England. Lauderdale, an ambitious Scottish peer, was a renegade
Covenanter who had sold himself to the king for power. Anthony Ashley,
Lord Shaftesbury, was also an old Roundhead, whose love of office and
preferment had overcome his principles. He was an active, unscrupulous
man, whose ready talents were only prevented from achieving greatness
by his want of honesty and clear judgment.
[Sidenote: =Policy of Charles.=]
In replacing Clarendon by the "Cabal," Charles had two objects. So
far as he cared for anything beyond his own pleasures, he was set on
attaining two ends which he knew to be hateful to the nation: one was
to render himself independent of Parliamentary control; the other
to secure toleration, and if possible predominance, in England for
Romanism. He thought that his new ministers were sufficiently free from
scruples to aid him in his projects.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Lewis XIV.=]
His main helper in the scheme was to be his cousin Lewis XIV., the
zealous champion of Roman Catholicism on the continent, and the
most busy and ambitious monarch that France had ever known. Lewis
had already started on his long career of aggression against Spain,
Holland, and Austria. He was set on seizing for himself the frontier
of the Rhine, the dream of all French statesmen since his day. To
achieve this, he wished to conquer the Spanish Netherlands--the modern
Belgium--and the petty principalities of the middle and lower Rhine.
At the same time he was set on striking a blow against Protestantism,
whenever he had the chance, and most especially against the Protestant
power of Holland--for the "United Provinces" were both republican and
Calvinist, the two things that he hated most in the world.
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Dover.=]
After diverting suspicions from his object for a moment, by concluding
a treaty of alliance with Holland and Sweden, which met with universal
approval, the king began to broach his scheme. It was worked out in the
iniquitous "Treaty of Dover" (May, 1670). By this Charles undertook
to join Lewis in destroying Holland and dividing up the Spanish
Netherlands. In return for this service he was to receive a subsidy
of £200,000 a year from France, and to have the aid of 6000 French
troops to crush any rebellion that might arise in England when he took
in hand the great project of restoring Catholic predominance in the
realm. This last clause was only known to the king, and to Arlington
and Clifford, the Romanist members of the Cabal. It was concealed from
Lauderdale, Buckingham, and Shaftesbury, who only knew of the plan for
the partition of Holland and the Spanish dominions.
[Sidenote: =Second Dutch war.=]
Having concluded this iniquitous agreement with his cousin, Charles
prorogued Parliament--he kept it from meeting for two years--and
declared war on the Dutch, without any ostensible cause or reason. At
the same time the French king launched a great army over his northern
frontier, overran the Spanish Netherlands, and penetrated far into
Holland. The Dutch were only saved from destruction by their desperate
resistance. Their fleet fought a drawn battle with the English at
Southwold, and staved off a naval invasion. Meanwhile the young William
of Orange, the heir of the old stadtholders, saved Amsterdam from the
French by breaking down the dykes and inundating South Holland. Driven
back by the floods, the French had to evacuate their Dutch conquests
(1672).
[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Indulgence.=]
Meanwhile Charles began to carry out his agreement with Lewis for
restoring Romanism, by issuing his "Declaration of Indulgence,"
suspending all the penal laws which imposed penalties on Roman
Catholics. To cloak his design, he made the proclamations cover
Protestant Nonconformists, as well as dissidents belonging to the older
creed.
[Sidenote: =Popular indignation.--The Test Act.=]
But the king had miscalculated the feeling of England. The "Declaration
of Indulgence" raised a storm about his ears which he dared not face.
So wrathful were the Churchmen, Low Church and High Church alike,
that he felt in serious danger of deposition. The Parliament met in
February, 1673, and passed an address requiring the king to withdraw
the "Declaration." Charles felt his nerve give way; instead of standing
his ground, and calling in his French auxiliaries, he yielded, and
withdrew his edict of toleration. The Parliament then passed the "Test
Act," which excluded all Nonconformists, Protestant and Romanist alike,
from all official positions. This made it impossible for Charles to
retain his Catholic ministers, Arlington and Clifford, and caused the
downfall of the Cabal, which went out of office in the end of 1673.
The Test Act also drove from his place as Lord High Admiral the king's
brother James, who had become an avowed Romanist.
[Sidenote: =Peace with Holland.--Danby chief minister.=]
The failure of the king's schemes was still further marked by the
conclusion of peace with Holland in February, 1674, and the appointment
as chief minister of Thomas Osborne, Lord Danby, a good Churchman
and an enemy of France. Determined "not to go on his travels again,"
Charles gave way on all points, to the deep disgust of his cousin of
France, who despised him greatly for his craven desertion of the cause
of Romanism.
[Sidenote: =Marriage of Princess Mary and William of Orange.=]
But the king had not really given up his design. He was quite ready
to renew his alliance with France when the times should be more
favourable. Meanwhile he was compelled to profess an attachment to
Holland, and married his heiress, the Princess Mary, his brother
James's daughter, to the young Prince of Orange, the sworn foe of
France (1677). By such means he was able to keep himself safe, and to
laugh at the efforts of the Low Church party in Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury and the "country party."=]
This faction, the "country party," as it called itself, was now
headed by the unscrupulous adventurer Shaftesbury, who from being a
minister had become the king's deadly enemy, and was trying to stir up
trouble by warning the nation to beware of the Romanist and absolutist
tendencies of his old master--of whose reality none had a better
knowledge than himself.
[Sidenote: Fall of Danby.]
Danby was driven from office in 1678, owing to the discovery of
some of the king's secret negotiations with France, to which he had
been weak enough to give his assent for the moment, though his own
views were opposed to the alliance with Lewis XIV. The French king
knew this fact, and treacherously made the negotiations known, in
order that Danby might be discredited, and replaced by a minister
more suited to his tastes. His wily scheme was successful; Danby was
hounded from office, impeached, and condemned to imprisonment in the
Tower, though he produced the king's warrant for all he had done.
But the Parliament voted that the king could do no wrong, and that a
minister was responsible for all his acts, even when he acted under the
strongest pressure from his master. Thus the theory of "ministerial
responsibility" was fixedly and unequivocally proclaimed as part of the
Constitution.
[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury's schemes.=]
The fact that secret treaties with France were again in the air, gave
Shaftesbury and his friends, the ultra-Protestants, a fine opportunity
for a demonstration. Soon after Danby's fall, they raised a cry that
the kingdom was in danger from a plot to restore Romanism by the aid of
armed force from France. This was true enough, and the criminal was the
King of England. But Shaftesbury did not strike at the king; he feared
the loyalty of the Churchmen to the heir of Charles I., and thought
that his sovereign was so supple and weak that he might be terrorized
into becoming his instrument. The king was to be reduced to nullity,
not removed.
[Sidenote: =The Popish Plot.=]
When the cry against the Romanists was growing strong, there came
forward a certain depraved clergyman named Titus Oates, who had been
for a time perverted to Romanism, and had dwelt much with the Jesuits.
He made himself Shaftesbury's tool, by declaring that he had gained
knowledge of a great conspiracy against the peace of the realm. This
"Popish Plot" was, he said, an agreement by a number of English
Catholics to slay the king and introduce a French army into the realm
in order to place James of York, the king's Romanist brother, on the
throne. Now, it is probable enough that some of the accused were in
correspondence with France, and letters were discovered from Coleman,
secretary to the Duchess of York, written to friends abroad, which
spoke of an approaching blow to the Protestant cause. But the blow was
really to be dealt by Charles, not against him. It was he who was in
truth conspiring to bring over the French and conquer his own realm by
their aid.
[Sidenote: =Popular panic.=]
Oates, however, perjured himself up to the hilt, bringing forward
accusations against all the leading English Romanists, and hinting that
even Queen Catherine herself was privy to a plot to murder her husband.
Many minor informers also sprang up to corroborate the venomous tale of
Oates. The nation was seriously alarmed. A perfect outburst of frenzy
followed, and every Romanist in England was denounced as a disciple
of Guy Fawkes. Charles, to his shame, pretended to take the story
seriously, though none knew better than he its folly.
[Sidenote: =The Exclusion Bill.--The Habeas Corpus Act.=]
A new Parliament met in March, 1679; it was elected in the full flood
of indignation against the "Plot," and Shaftesbury found that he could
command a clear majority of its votes. He used his power to bring in
a bill excluding the Duke of York, as an avowed Romanist, from the
throne. To save his brother's rights, Charles dissolved the Commons
before they could pass it. The only work that this Parliament had
succeeded in carrying through was the _Habeas Corpus Act_, a very
important enactment prohibiting arbitrary imprisonment without a trial.
No man was to be kept in gaol untried, and penalties were imposed on
the gaoler who should detain him, and the judge who should refuse to
hear him plead. This principle required to be explicitly reasserted
under the later Stuarts, though it is found formulated in Magna Carta
itself.
[Sidenote: =Pretensions of the Duke of Monmouth.=]
The second Parliament of 1679 was, to the king's disgust, almost as
much under the influence of Shaftesbury and the alarmists as the
first. The nation was still in a ferment; month after month prominent
Catholics were imprisoned on the evidence of Oates and his gang, tried,
and condemned to death. So great was the fear felt of the Romanist Duke
of York, that a preposterous plan was formed by Shaftesbury and his
friends to replace him as heir to the throne by the Duke of Monmouth,
the eldest of the natural sons of King Charles. This was a manifest
injustice to the Princess Mary, the Protestant daughter of Duke James.
Her father's religion could not vitiate her rights. But Monmouth was a
popular youth, of fair parts and abilities. He had won some military
reputation by putting down a dangerous rebellion of the Scottish
Covenanters, who had murdered the Archbishop of St. Andrews, risen in
arms, and got possession of the Western Lowlands. After routing them at
Bothwell Brig (June, 1679), Monmouth was saluted as a conquering hero,
and rumours were put about that his mother, Lucy Walters, had been
secretly married to the king. Charles himself hastened to deny this
lie, but it had its effect, and a serious effort was made to substitute
Monmouth for his uncle.
[Sidenote: =Shaftesbury loses ground.=]
All through 1680 the struggle was at its height, though Shaftesbury
was gradually losing ground, owing to the unwise violence of his
conduct, and the growing disrepute of his tool, Titus Oates, whose
reckless falsehoods were beginning to be detected by sober men. The
contest turned on the fate of the Exclusion Bill, which declared James
incapable of reigning, and transferred his rights to his daughter Mary,
the Princess of Orange, though many suspected that Shaftesbury intended
to substitute Monmouth for the princess.
[Sidenote: ="Petitioners and Abhorrers."--Whigs and Tories.=]
It is at this moment that the famous political names which were to rule
England for the next century and a half come into sight. At first the
opponents of the Exclusion Bill, the supporters of the divine right
of hereditary succession, and the defenders of the Duke of York, were
called "Abhorrers," from the numerous addresses which they sent to the
king declaring their abhorrence of the Exclusion Bill. On the other
hand, the supporters of Shaftesbury, and the believers in the Popish
Plot, were called "Petitioners," from the petitions which they kept
signing in favour of the bill. But soon two less cumbrous, if stranger,
names were found for the two parties. The "Abhorrers" were nicknamed
"Tories" by their enemies, from the appellation of a horde of banditti,
who lurked in the bogs of Ireland. The Petitioners, on the other hand,
were christened "Whigs" by their rivals, after the name of a fanatical
sect of Scottish Covenanters. These titles, bestowed in ridicule
at first, were finally accepted in earnest, and became the usual
denomination of the two great parties.
The Exclusion Bill was passed by Shaftesbury and his majority of Whigs
in the Commons, once in 1679, and once in 1680. But the House of Lords
threw it out, and Charles dissolved the Parliament once and again,
till in 1681 the fear of the Popish Plot began to blow over, and the
violence of Shaftesbury to disgust the moderate members of his own
party. The cruel execution, in December, 1680, of Lord Stafford, an old
Romanist peer of blameless life, whose innocence was known to all, was
the last and most damaging triumph of the Whigs. Its injustice caused
many of Shaftesbury's supporters to fall away. His intrigues in favour
of Monmouth, and the open support which he gave to the lying Oates, had
ruined him.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Shaftesbury.--The Rye-House Plot.=]
In 1681 the king accused him of high treason for collecting armed
followers to overawe Parliament. A London jury refused to convict him,
and he plunged into still more desperate courses. Conspiring with Lord
William Russell and Algernon Sydney to raise rebellion, he was detected
and fled over-sea to escape punishment. Some of his more desperate
followers went on with his plot, which they developed into a plan for
assassinating Charles as he passed the Rye House in Hertfordshire, on
his way to Newmarket. The disclosure of this reckless conspiracy ruined
the Whigs; the whole party was believed to have been privy to it,
though it was in truth the work of a very small clique, headed by one
Colonel Rumbold, an old Cromwellian officer (1682).
[Sidenote: =Execution of Russell and Sydney.=]
The king, finding that public opinion was veering round to his side,
was emboldened to strike a blow at the whole Whig faction. Mixing up
the Rye-House Plot with Shaftesbury's abortive plans, he seized all
their chief leaders, and had them tried for high treason. Subservient
judges and a packed jury made their fall easy. Lord William Russell and
Algernon Sydney were beheaded; Lord Essex committed suicide in prison.
The evidence connecting Russell and Sydney with the assassination plot
was trivial, and their execution little else than a judicial murder
(1683).
[Sidenote: =Death of Charles.=]
Charles was now in a better position to carry out his long-concealed
plan for the restoration of arbitrary government and the furthering of
Romanism than at any previous time in his reign. He left Parliament
unsummoned for more than two years, prepared to renew his alliance with
France, endeavoured to collect a body of ministers who would second
his views, and largely increased his standing army. He made several
unconstitutional encroachments on the liberty of his subjects--such as
forfeiting the charters of many cities, including London itself--and
was cautiously feeling his way towards more decisive measures. But
on February 6, 1685, his plans were suddenly interrupted by a fatal
apoplectic stroke, which carried him off before he had attained the age
of fifty-five. On his death-bed he had himself openly received into the
Roman Catholic faith, of which he had so long been the secret partisan.
It was fortunate that his schemes were brought to such an untimely end,
for if a cautious foe to the liberties of England, he was a very clever
and insidious one. Of the stubborn folly which ruined his successor, he
would never have been guilty.
FOOTNOTES:
[43] General Harrison and nine other members of the court, Colonels
Axtell and Hacker, who had superintended the execution, and Sir Henry
Vane, though he was not an actual regicide.
[44] Only notable in British history because she brought the isle of
Bombay as her dowry.
CHAPTER XXX.
JAMES II.
1685-1688.
No greater testimony to the caution and cleverness of Charles II. can
be given than the fact that, after a reign of twenty-five stormy years,
he died in possession of a very considerable measure of absolute power,
having lived down his troubles, secured the devotion of the larger half
of the nation, strengthened himself with a standing army, and dispensed
for three years with any summons of Parliament.
His successor was to prove that a man without tact and pliability,
pursuing the same schemes for the restoration of arbitrary government
and Romanism, might wreck himself in three years and die an exile.
[Sidenote: =Character of James.=]
Yet James of York was in many ways a stronger and a better man than
Charles II. He possessed conscience and courage in a far greater
measure than his brother. His life was not an open scandal; his
word could be relied upon; his attachment to his faith was devoted
and sincere. But he had three ruinous faults: he was obstinate
to blindness; long after a fact had become patent to all men, he
would refuse to recognize its existence. He was full of a bigoted
self-sufficiency that arose from an overweening belief in his own
good intentions and wisdom. Lastly, he was a man unable to forgive
or forget; there was no drop of mercy in his composition; he could
understand nothing but the letter of the law. Blind, conceited,
pitiless, he was bound to win the hatred of all who differed from him,
and it was soon to be discovered that nine-tenths of the English nation
were numbered in that class.
James was a man of business and method, as well as a man of action.
He had commanded a fleet with credit in the Dutch war; he had presided
with success at the Admiralty till he was compelled to resign that
office by the Test Act. He had ruled Scotland for a time with a very
firm, if a rigid, hand. But no amount of mere administrative ability
could make up for his entire want of judgment, foresight, and geniality.
[Sidenote: =The Tory party.=]
Yet on his accession, the new king had everything in his favour. The
Tory party was still in the ascendency which it had enjoyed ever since
the Whigs had been discredited by the Rye-House Plot. It was resolved
to trust and support James as long as he behaved in a constitutional
manner, and had a strong confidence in his honesty. Accordingly, the
king's first Parliament granted him the liberal income of £1,900,000
a year, and protested its complete reliance on his wisdom and good
intentions. Nor was any objection made when James sought out and
punished the informers who had fabricated the Popish Plot, though their
chastisement was very barbarous. Oates, their chief, received 1700
lashes twice within forty-eight hours, yet survived, in spite of a
sentence which had obviously been intended to kill him.
[Sidenote: =Rebellion of Monmouth and Argyle.=]
The first real shock to the confidence of the nation in the king was
caused by the cruelty with which he put down an insurrection which
broke out against him in the summer that followed his accession.
The late king's bastard son, James, Duke of Monmouth, the tool of
Shaftesbury in 1680, was living in exile in Holland, along with many
violent Whigs, who were charged, truly or falsely, with participation
in the Rye-House Plot. Monmouth, a vain and presumptuous young man,
could not read the signs of the times, and thought that all England
would rise to overturn a Romanist king, if only a Protestant leader
presented himself to lead the people. Without securing any tangible
promises of support from the chiefs of the Whig party in England, he
resolved to attempt an invasion. He was to be aided by Archibald, Earl
of Argyle, the exiled chief of the Scottish Covenanters, who undertook
to stir up a rising among his clansmen in the Highlands.
[Sidenote: =Argyle taken and executed.=]
Argyle landed in Scotland in May, 1685; Monmouth came ashore at Lyme,
in Dorsetshire, in June. Each had brought a very small force with him,
and relied wholly on the support he hoped to find at home. Argyle
raised the Campbells, but found none else to join him; after a few days
his men dispersed, and he was taken and beheaded.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Sedgemoor.--Monmouth executed.=]
Monmouth was at first more fortunate. He was well known and popular in
Dorset and Somerset, and some thousands of countrymen came flocking to
his banner, though none of the gentry would adhere to such a reckless
adventurer. The duke appealed to all Protestants to aid him against
a Papist king, declared that his mother had been the lawful wife of
Charles II., and claimed the crown of England. But his proclamation
did him no good, and his army of ploughmen and miners was but a
half-armed rabble. Nevertheless, they fought bravely enough against
James's regulars at Sedgemoor (July 5, 1685), and only dispersed when
their leader fled in craven fear from the field. Monmouth was caught
in disguise, and taken to London. He grovelled at the feet of James,
and offered to submit to any indignity if his life might be spared. But
the pitiless king, after chiding him for half an hour, sent him to the
scaffold.
[Sidenote: =Kirke and Jeffreys.--"The Bloody Assize."=]
His fate provoked little sympathy, for he had clearly brought his
trouble on his own head. But the cruel punishment that was dealt out
to the poor ignorant peasants who had followed him shocked the whole
nation. Hundreds of rebels taken in arms were hung, or shot after a
summary court-martial by the brutal Colonel Kirke, a veteran who had
learnt ferocity by serving against the Moors in Africa. After the
summary executions were over, Judge Jeffreys, a clever but worthless
lawyer, whom the king made the chief instrument of his cruelties,
descended on the south-western counties. In the "Bloody Assize," as his
circuit was called, he put to death more than 300 persons, after the
barest mockery of a trial, and sent 1000 more to work as slaves on the
plantations of Jamaica and Barbados. Of all Jeffreys' judicial murders,
the worst was that of the aged Lady Lisle. For having sheltered a
fugitive from Sedgemoor, she was sentenced by this barbarian to be
burnt, and he thought it an act of clemency when he commuted the
penalty to beheading (September, 1685).
[Sidenote: =The king's Romanist schemes.=]
The ease with which he had crushed the rising of Monmouth and Argyle
emboldened James to take seriously in hand the great project of his
life, the restoration of Romanism. His plan was to fill all offices
in Church and State with open or secret Papists, and to overawe
discontent by the muskets of a large standing army. That such a plan
was dangerous, and even impossible, when nine-tenths of the nation was
devotedly attached to Protestantism, he does not seem to have realized.
He relied on his observations of the men about his own person, for many
of the demoralized courtiers of Charles II. were quite ready to become
Romanists if only it brought them preferment. They would probably have
become Jews or Moslems if it had been made worth their while. The
basest of these degraded opportunists was James's chief minister, Lord
Sunderland, the tool of all his worst acts of tyranny and folly. With
such a man as his chief adviser, and the infamous Jeffreys--now made
Lord Chancellor--as his chief executioner, the king was likely to go to
any lengths. Of his other councillors the chief were Richard Talbot,
Earl of Tyrconnel, a bigoted Irish Romanist of very depraved manners,
and Father Petre, a Jesuit priest.
[Sidenote: =The Test Act and the dispensing power.=]
James commenced his campaign against Protestantism in 1686. The chief
bar to the admission of Papists to office in the public service and
the army was the Test Act of 1673, which excluded all save English
Churchmen from any post in the state. Knowing that no Parliament would
repeal this act, James resolved to annul it on his own authority. One
of the oldest weapons of the Stuarts was the claim to a "dispensing
power," a right of the king to grant immunity on his own authority for
offences against the law of the land. This was the tool which he had
now resolved to employ against the Test Act. He appointed a Romanist
named Sir Edward Hales colonel of one of the new regiments which he
was busily employed in raising. Hales was prosecuted for illegally
accepting the commission, and pleaded in defence that the king had
dispensed him from taking the test. The case was brought before a bench
of judges carefully packed by the orders of James, and they gave the
wholly unconstitutional decision that the king's dispensation covered
Hales from all penalties. Armed with this opinion of the judges, James
began to give place and office to Romanists right and left; they were
made judges, officers, sheriffs, lord-lieutenants, mayors, all by
virtue of the king's dispensing power. None but Catholics could for the
future hope for any preferment.
[Sidenote: =Attack on the Church and Oxford University.=]
The king next proceeded to attack the Church of England; once more
pleading his dispensing power, he began to give Papists office in the
Church. Not only did he make over crown livings to them, but he filled
two vacant headships of Oxford colleges with notorious Romanists,
showing thereby his intention to put the control of education into
the hands of his own co-religionists. Somewhat later, he expelled the
whole body of Fellows and Scholars of Magdalen College, for refusing
to receive the President whom he had chosen for them [1687], herein
following the example of Charles, who had deprived the philosopher John
Locke of his studentship at Christ Church, for holding Whig opinions.
To deal with things religious, James revived the Court of High
Commission, one of the old despotic courts which the Long Parliament
had abolished forty years before; he placed Jeffreys at its head, and
used it for the oppression of all clergy who showed signs of opposing
him. Meanwhile a large army, including several Irish regiments, was
concentrated at Hounslow to overawe London.
The nation, though sorely tried by these exhibitions of James's
high-handed bigotry, required still further provocation before it rose
against him. The Tory party were so deeply committed to the doctrine
of divine right and passive obedience, that it required an even more
desperate attack on the Church of England to set them in arms against
the king. The Whigs were so crushed and depressed, that they had not
the heart to rebel. It may be added that the fact that the king was an
elderly man, while his heiress Mary, Princess of Orange, was a firm
Protestant, kept many men quiet. They held that the king must die ere
long, and that his wild schemes would die with him.
[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Indulgence.=]
James began to embark on his last fatal measures of arbitrary power
in the spring of 1688. Without calling or consulting a Parliament, he
determined to issue on his own authority a "Declaration of Indulgence,"
which was to suspend all laws that were directed against Romanists. To
partly cloak his plan, he added that the Declaration was also to free
the Protestant Dissenters from the penal code of 1664-5. Toleration in
itself is good, but toleration imposed by an autocratic and illegal
mandate is a suspicious boon. The Dissenters themselves repudiated
the gift, when given from such doubtful hands. To show his complete
mastery over the Church of England, James ordered that the Declaration
should be publicly read from the pulpit by every beneficed minister in
the land.
[Sidenote: =The trial of the seven bishops.=]
This command provoked even the loyal Tories to resistance. When the
appointed day came round, the clergy, almost without exception, refused
to read the Declaration. The archbishop, William Sancroft, and six
of his suffragans,[45] addressed a petition to the king begging that
they might be excused from having to issue such a document. James was
furious, and in his rage declared his intention of putting the bishops
on trial for publishing a seditious libel--a most absurd description of
their modestly worded plea. The seven prelates were arrested and sent
as prisoners to the Tower. A month later they were brought before the
Court of King's Bench. The whole nation was in agony as to their fate,
but the preposterous nature of the prosecution abashed even the king's
subservient judges. The charge was pressed in a half-hearted way, and
the jury returned a verdict of "Not guilty." James's vexation at this
acquittal was only surpassed by his outburst of wrath when he saw the
universal demonstration of joy with which the news was received. Even
his own soldiery in the camp at Hounslow lighted bonfires to celebrate
the event.
[Sidenote: =Birth of "the Old Pretender."=]
In the very month of the acquittal of the seven bishops, an event
happened which profoundly affected the king's prospects. His young
second wife, Mary of Modena, bore him a son, the prince afterwards
known as "the Old Pretender" (June 10, 1688). The birth of this child
gave the king a Romanist heir, and cut the Princess of Orange out of
the succession to the throne. This unexpected news filled England
with dismay; it was evident that the king's schemes were no longer
to be terminated with his own life; a dynasty of Romanists loomed
on the horizon. In their wrath many men asserted that the child was
supposititious, a changeling foisted on the nation by the king's
malice. This groundless tale received much credit, for anything was
believed possible in such a bigot as James.
[Sidenote: =Invitation to William of Orange.=]
The birth of the Prince of Wales was immediately followed by the
formation of a serious conspiracy to overthrow the king. The Tories
forgot their loyalty and joined the Whigs. The first sketch of the
plot was drawn up by the old Tory minister, Danby, in conjunction with
the Earl of Devonshire, the chief of the Whigs, and Henry Sydney and
Edward Russell, the kinsmen of the two Whig leaders of those names who
had been beheaded by Charles II. in 1683. Their plan was to call over
to England the Princess Mary and her husband the Prince of Orange,
and set them up against the king. William of Orange, the champion of
Protestantism on the continent, and the deadly foe of James's ally,
the King of France, was known to be ready to strike any blow that
would bring England over to his side. He had long been in secret
communication with many leading men among the Whigs, and welcomed the
appearance of a definite invitation with joy. On receiving satisfactory
assurances of support, he consented to raise every man that he could
put into the field, and to cross to England.
James at first received the news of suspicious warlike preparations
in Holland with indifference. He relied on the fact that William was
at war with France, and reasoned that while the Low Countries were
threatened by French troops, his son-in-law would never dare to leave
his own country unprotected and invade England. But the French king was
more set on an invasion of Germany than on the conquest of Holland,
and when Lewis sent his armies across the Upper Rhine, William was
left unwatched, and was able to make his preparations at leisure. Many
Englishmen of mark, Tories as well as Whigs, slipped over to join him,
and bade him strike as quickly as possible. Though the storms of autumn
were already raging, the Prince set sail from Helvoetsluys on the 2nd
of November, and steered down the Channel, with fifty men-of-war, and
transports carrying some 13,000 men.
James had a much larger force garrisoning the south of England.
Combining his regular army with a number of newly raised regiments
of Irish Romanists, he had quite 40,000 men under arms. But he soon
discovered that the temper of the greater part of them was very bad;
except the numerous Catholic officers to whom he had given commissions,
there was hardly a man who could be trusted.
[Sidenote: =James reverses his policy.=]
When the news of William's final preparations reached England,
James was suddenly struck by a panic as irrational as his previous
over-confidence. He fell from blind arrogance into extreme depression,
when he at last realized the universal discontent which his acts had
created. With a craven and useless haste he suddenly began to endeavour
to undo his policy of the last three years. He abolished the Court of
High Commission, cancelled the appointments of many Romanist officials,
recalled the Fellows whom he had banished from Oxford, and made the
most profuse promises to respect all the rights and privileges of the
Church of England for the future. But such conduct could not restore
confidence; he could not make men forget the cruelties of the Bloody
Assize, or the indignities which he had heaped on the seven bishops.
Such a repentance at the eleventh hour deceived nobody.
[Sidenote: =Landing of William of Orange.--James deserted.=]
On the 5th of November, 1688, William of Orange landed at Torbay,
and three days later he seized Exeter. James, who had looked for an
invasion on the Eastern coast, at once began to march his numerous
army towards Devonshire. There was a moment's pause ere the opponents
met. For some days no one of note joined the Prince of Orange, and it
seemed doubtful if those who had pledged themselves to his cause were
about to keep their promise. But the hesitation was not for long. Ere
a shot had been fired in the west, insurrections began to break out in
all the parts of England where the king had no armed force in garrison.
Lord Danby seized York and the Earl of Devonshire Nottingham. But this
was not the worst; as James advanced westward, first single officers,
then whole companies and regiments, began to slink away from his host
and join the enemy. Even those whom he most trusted left him; his
own son-in-law, Prince George of Denmark, the husband of his younger
daughter Anne, was one of those who absconded. Another was one of his
most trusted officers, John Churchill, afterwards the famous Duke of
Marlborough. With abominable treachery, Churchill tried to kidnap his
master before deserting, and almost succeeded in the attempt.
[Sidenote: =James flies to France.=]
Seeing his whole army melting away, James hastily returned to London,
strove in vain to gain time by negotiating with the Prince of Orange,
and then sent off his wife and son to France, and endeavoured to follow
them himself. He was stopped by a mob at Faversham, in Kent, and forced
back to the capital. But no one wished to keep him a prisoner, and,
with the secret connivance of William of Orange, he was allowed to
escape a second time, and to get clear away to France (December 18,
1688).
Thus ended in ignominious flight the preposterous attempt of a blind
and arrogant king to coerce England into surrendering its constitution
and its religion. The edifice which James had so laboriously reared,
crumbled to pieces at the first touch of force from without.
FOOTNOTE:
[45] Their names were Ken of Bath and Wells, White of Peterborough,
Lloyd of St. Asaph, Trelawney of Bristol, Lake of Chichester, and
Turner of Ely.
CHAPTER XXXI.
WILLIAM AND MARY.
1688-1702.
James II. had believed that by absconding to France he would plunge
England into anarchy, and leave no constituted power behind him. With a
childish worship of forms, he flung the Great Seal into the Thames as
he fled, that no state document might be issued in due shape. His slow
and pedantic mind conceived that the nation would be nonplussed by the
loss of king and seal at once!
[Sidenote: =The Convention.=]
But Englishmen can always show a wise disregard for formulae when it
is necessary. Though there was no king to summon a Parliament, yet
a "Convention" at once met on the invitation of William of Orange.
It consisted of the peers, and a lower House formed of all surviving
members of the Commons who had sat under Charles II., together with the
Aldermen and Common Councillors of London.
[Sidenote: =William and Mary to be joint sovereigns.=]
This body, though not a regularly constituted meeting of the two
Houses, proceeded to deal at once with the question of the succession.
There were three alternatives open--to make the Princess Mary queen
in her father's room, or to crown both her and her husband William,
or to declare them merely regents in the absence of the exiled king.
The last alternative commended itself to many of the Tories, who still
held strong theories about the divine right of kings, and were loath to
surrender them by consenting to a deposition. But when the proposal was
broached to William of Orange, he answered that he would never consent
to be the mere _locum tenens_ of his father-in-law. He would leave
England if nothing more than the power of regent were granted him. It
was then proposed that the Princess Mary should be queen regnant; but
this too the prince refused--he would not become his wife's servant and
minister. When the Tories showed signs of insisting on this project,
William began to make preparations for returning to Holland. This
brought the Convention to reason; they knew that they could not get
on for a moment without the prince's guiding hand. Accordingly they
were constrained to take the third course, and to offer the crown to
William and Mary, as joint sovereigns with equal rights. No one spoke
a word for Mary's infant brother, the Prince of Wales: not only was he
over-seas in France, but most men believed him to be no true son of
James II.
[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Rights.=]
Before the throne was formally offered to William and Mary, the
Convention proceeded to draw up the famous Declaration of Rights. This
document contained a list of the main principles of the constitution
which had been violated by James II., with a statement that they were
ancient and undoubted rights of the English people. It stigmatised
the powers claimed by the late king to dispense with or suspend laws
as illegal usurpations. It stated that every subject had a right to
petition the king, and should not be molested for so doing--an allusion
to the case of the seven bishops. It stipulated for the frequent
summoning of Parliaments, and for free speech and debate within the
two Houses. The raising and maintenance of a standing army without the
permission of Parliament was declared illegal. In a clause recalling
the most famous paragraph of Magna Carta, it was stated that all
levying of taxes or loans without the consent of the representatives of
the nation was illegal. The Declaration then proceeded to provide for
the succession: William and Mary, or the survivor of them, were first
to rule; then any children who might be born to them. If Mary died
childless, the Princess Anne and her issue were to inherit her sister's
rights. Finally, any member of the royal house professing Romanism, or
even marrying a Romanist, was to forfeit all claim to the crown. The
Declaration was afterwards confirmed and made permanent as the "Bill of
Rights."
William and Mary swore to observe the Declaration, and were proclaimed
on February 13, 1689, after an interregnum which had lasted two months
since the flight of James II. to France.
[Sidenote: =Character of William.=]
The new king and queen were not a well-matched pair, though, owing
to Mary's amiable and tactful temper, they agreed better than might
have been expected. The queen was lively, kind-hearted, and genial,
well loved by all who knew her. William was a morose and unsociable
invalid, who only recovered his spirits when he left the court for
the camp. In spite of his wretched health, he was a keen soldier, and
had the reputation of being one of the best, if also one of the most
unlucky, generals of his time. His talent chiefly showed itself in
repairing the consequences of his defeats, which he did so cleverly
that his conquerors seldom drew any advantage from their success. In
private life William was cold, suspicious, and reticent. He reserved
his confidence for his Dutch friends, openly saying that the English,
who had betrayed their natural king, could not be expected to be true
to a foreigner. He knew that he was a political necessity for them, and
nothing more. Hence he neither loved them nor expected them to love him.
[Sidenote: =William and Lewis XIV.=]
William had expelled his father-in-law, not from a disinterested wish
to put down his tyranny, nor merely from zeal against Romanism, but
because he wished to see England drawn into the great European alliance
against France, which it was his life's work to build up. He had spent
all the days of his youth in opposing the ambition of the bigoted Lewis
XIV., and all his thoughts were directed towards the construction of
a league of states strong enough to keep the French from the Rhine.
For Lewis was set on annexing the Spanish Netherlands, the Palatinate,
and the duchy of Lorraine, so as to bring his frontier up to the great
river. He had already made several steps towards securing his end, by
seizing Alsace, the Franche Comté, and part of Flanders. If William had
not hindered him, he would probably have accomplished his whole desire.
But the Prince of Orange had induced the old enemies Spain and Holland
to combine, and had enlisted the Emperor Leopold of Austria in his
league. With the aid of England he thought that Lewis could be crushed
beyond a doubt.
[Sidenote: =War with France declared.=]
On the 13th of May, 1689, William had his wish, for England declared
war on Lewis. It was already made inevitable by the conduct of the
French monarch, who had not only received the fugitive James, but had
lent him men and money to aid him in recovering his lost realms.
But William was not to be able to divert the strength of England into
the continental war quite so soon as he had expected. He was forced to
fight for his new crown for nearly two years, before he was able to
turn off again to lead the armies of the coalition against Lewis.
[Sidenote: =English opposition.--The Non-jurors.=]
The proclamation of William and Mary proved the beginning of new
troubles both in England, Scotland, and Ireland. In England things
were not serious: a certain portion of the Tory party declined to
accept William as king, though they had been ready to take him
as regent. For refusing to take the oath of allegiance to him,
Archbishop Sancroft--the hero of the trial of the seven bishops--four
other prelates, and four hundred clergy had been removed from their
preferments. Some Tory laymen of scrupulous conscience gave up their
offices. But these "Non-jurors," as they were called, made no open
resistance, though many of them began to correspond secretly with the
exiled king.
[Sidenote: =Scotland.--Career of Claverhouse.=]
In Scotland, the crisis was far more serious. Both Charles II. and
James II. had governed that realm with an iron hand. They had placed
the rule of the land in the hands of the Scottish Episcopalians, who
formed a very small minority of the nation. The Covenanters had been
sternly repressed, and their ineffective rising, ending in the fight of
Bothwell Brig, had been put down with the most rigorous harshness.[46]
When James was overturned, the persecuted Presbyterians rose in high
wrath, and swept all his friends out of office. They followed the
example of the English in offering the crown to William and Mary,
and began to revenge their late oppression by very harsh treatment
of their former rulers, the Scottish Episcopalians. But James II.
had a following in Scotland; though not a very large one, it had an
exceedingly able man at its head--John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount
Dundee, who had commanded the royal forces in the realm for the last
ten years. Dundee succeeded in rousing a number of the Highland chiefs
to take arms for James II., not so much because they loved the king as
because they hated the great clan of the Campbells, now, as always, the
mainstay of the Covenanting interest north of Clyde and Forth. The new
government collected an army under General Mackay, and sent it against
Dundee. But the Jacobite leader retired before it till Mackay's men had
pushed up the long and narrow pass of Killiecrankie. When the Lowland
troops were just emerging from the northern end of the pass, Dundee
fell on from an ambush. The wild rush of his Highlanders swept away the
leading battalions,[47] and Mackay's entire force fled in disgraceful
rout back to Dunkeld. The Jacobite general, however, fell in the
moment of victory, and when his strong and able hand was removed, the
rebel clans dropped asunder, and ceased to endanger the stability of
William's throne (June 17, 1689). The insurrection, however, continued
to linger on in the remoter recesses of the Highlands for two years
more.
[Sidenote: =Ireland.--Tyrconnel and the Catholic army.=]
In Ireland the struggle was far longer and more bitter than in
Scotland. In that country the old quarrel between the natives and the
English settlers broke out under the new form of loyalty to James or
William. In the time of Charles II., the old Irish or Anglo-Irish
proprietors had been restored to about one-third of the lands from
which they had been evicted by the Cromwellian settlement of 1652.
They hoped, now that they had a king of their own faith, to recover
the remaining two-thirds from the English planters. From the moment
of his accession, James had done his best for the Irish Romanists. He
had decreed the revocation of Cromwell's settlement, he had filled all
places of trust and emolument with natives, and had raised an Irish
army in which no Protestant was admitted to serve either as soldier or
officer. His Lord-Deputy was Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel, a violent and
unscrupulous man, who was prepared to go even further than his master
in the direction of suppressing Protestantism.
When the news of the landing of William of Orange at Torbay reached
Ireland, the Lord-Deputy kept faith with James, and began arming the
whole nation in his cause, till he is said to have had nearly 100,000
undisciplined levies under his orders. At the same time he summoned
all Protestants in Ireland to give up their arms. The English settlers
saw that the predominance of Tyrconnel and his hordes meant danger to
themselves, and promptly fled by sea, or took refuge in the few towns
where the Protestants had a majority, leaving their houses and property
to be plundered by the Lord-Deputy's "rapparees." In Ulster, where they
mustered most strongly, they shut themselves up in the towns of Derry
and Enniskillen, proclaimed William and Mary as king and queen, and
sent to implore instant aid from England.
[Sidenote: =James II. in Dublin.=]
In March, 1689, James II. landed in Ireland, convoyed by a French
fleet, and bringing a body of French officers, 10,000 stand of arms,
and a treasure of £112,000 pounds, all given him by Lewis XIV. He found
himself master of the whole country except Derry and Enniskillen, and
promptly ordered the siege of these places to begin. He summoned a
Parliament to meet in Dublin, and there undid, so far as words and
acts could do, all the doings of the English in Ireland for the last
two centuries. The Irish peers and commons voted the resumption by the
old native houses of all the lands confiscated by Elizabeth, James I.,
and Cromwell. They made Romanism the established religion of the land,
and declared Ireland completely independent of the English Parliament.
All this was natural and excusable enough; but a bloodthirsty act of
attainder followed, condemning to death as traitors no less than 2500
Protestant peers, gentry, and clergy, who had either declared for
William, or at least refused to join James.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Derry and Enniskillen.=]
This made the civil war an affair of life and death, since the
Protestants of Derry and Enniskillen dared not surrender when they knew
they would be treated as convicted traitors. Hence it came that both
places held out with desperate resolution, though help was long in
coming from England. Derry held out unsuccoured for 105 days (April to
August, 1689) till it was relieved by a small fleet, which burst the
boom that the Irish had thrown across Loch Foyle, and brought food to
the starving garrison. The Protestants of Enniskillen saved themselves
by an even more desperate exhibition of courage. Sallying out of their
town, they beat the force that blockaded them at the battle of Newtown
Butler (August 2, 1689), and drove them completely away.
In spite of these successes, the Ulstermen must have been crushed if
the long-expected English army had not begun to cross the channel.
But in October a force at last appeared in Down, under the Duke
of Schomberg, a veteran French officer in the service of William.
Schomberg had been expelled from the French army for refusing to become
a Romanist, and devoted the last years of his life to a crusade against
the bigoted Lewis XIV., who had driven him from home and office for
religion's sake.
[Sidenote: =William lands in Ireland.=]
Through the winter of 1689, the Irish and English faced each other in
Ulster without coming to a decisive engagement. But in the spring of
1690, William arrived in person with large reinforcements, and began to
advance on Dublin with an army of 35,000 men.
James had done but little to strengthen his position during the
eighteen months that Ireland had been in his hands. His army was still
half trained and unpaid. He had caused untold distress to all classes
by issuing a forced currency of copper crowns and shillings, which his
creditors were compelled to accept or incur the charge of treason. His
councillors, English and Irish, were quarrelling fiercely. His troops
were unwisely dispersed, so that on the news of William's approach he
found himself unable to concentrate them in time.
[Sidenote: =The Battle of the Boyne.=]
He gathered, however, some 30,000 men, of whom 6000 were French, and
took up a strong position behind the river Boyne, to cover Dublin.
In this position he was attacked by William, whose troops forded the
river and charged up the opposite slope. The Irish cavalry fought well
enough, but many regiments of their undisciplined infantry broke and
fled after a few discharges. The wreck of the Jacobite army was only
saved by the French auxiliaries, who stubbornly defended the pass of
Duleek till the fugitives had got away (July 1, 1690).
[Sidenote: =Ireland subdued.--"The Pacification of Limerick."=]
James seemed panic-stricken by the result of the battle of the
Boyne. Abandoning Dublin without firing a shot, he fled in craven
haste and took ship for France. His deserted followers, however,
made a long and gallant resistance in the West. William returned to
England, leaving his army under the Dutch general Ginckel to subdue
Connaught and Munster (September, 1690). The task proved harder than
had been expected; Ginckel was unable to move till the next spring
for want of food and transport. He forced the line of the Shannon by
storming Athlone in June, 1691, but did not break the back of the
Irish resistance till he had won the well-fought battle of Aughrim,
scattered the army of Connaught, and slain its commander, the French
marshal St. Ruth. Even after this decisive fight, Limerick held out for
nearly three months. It surrendered on October 3, 1691, on terms which
permitted the Irish army to take ship for France, and 11,000 men passed
over-seas to serve Lewis XIV. At the same time, the representatives of
William signed the "Pacification of Limerick," which granted an amnesty
to all Irish who did not emigrate, and stipulated that they should be
left unmolested in possession of the very limited civil and religious
rights that they had enjoyed under Charles II.
[Sidenote: =The Protestant ascendency.=]
These terms were broken in a most faithless manner by the Irish
Parliament, now entirely in the hands of the victorious Protestant
minority, only a few years after they had been signed (1697). By a new
penal code that body prohibited Romanists from practising as lawyers,
physicians, or schoolmasters, took away from them the right of sitting
in Parliament, made marriages of Protestants and Romanists illegal,
banished all monks and all clergy except registered parish priests
from the realm, and prohibited any Romanist from possessing arms. But
their worst device was a cruel scheme for promoting conversions, by
a law which gave any son of a Romanist who abjured his religion, the
right to succeed to all his father's property, to the exclusion of
his unconverted brothers and sisters. Under this harsh code the Irish
groaned for a whole century, but they had been so crushed by William's
blows that they never rose in rebellion again till 1798.
The whole of Ireland was subdued ere the spring of 1692 began. A
month later occurred the cruel deed which marked the final end of the
revolt in the Scottish Highlands. The wrecks of Dundee's followers
had been scattered at the skirmish of Cromdale in 1690. But a few
chiefs still refused their submission. William proclaimed that there
should be an amnesty for all who surrendered before January 1, 1692.
This opportunity was taken by all the Highlanders, save Macdonald of
Glencoe, a petty chief of 200 families in Argyleshire. He made his
submission a few days later than the appointed time. Lord Stair, the
Secretary of State for Scotland, prevailed upon William to give him
leave to make an example of Macdonald and his tribe. A regiment was
sent to Glencoe, and courteously received by the chief, who thought his
tardy submission had brought him impunity. But, obeying their orders,
the soldiery fell at midnight upon their unsuspecting hosts, shot
Macdonald and all the men they could catch, and drove the survivors out
of their valley. This cold-blooded outrage was sanctioned by William,
but only because he had been carefully kept in ignorance of the fact
that Macdonald had submitted a few days after the appointed date.
[Sidenote: =The French war.--Tory disaffection.=]
While the Irish war had been in progress, important events had
been taking place nearer home. The war on the continent had proved
indecisive, though if either party had a slight advantage, it was the
French. Even at sea the fleets of Lewis at first gained some successes,
mainly owing to the culpable slackness of the English admiral, Lord
Torrington. His negligence--treachery would perhaps be the more
appropriate word--was only a symptom of a very widespread spirit of
disloyalty among the Tory party. Many persons had not got out of the
Revolution the private advantages for which they had hoped. William
III. had endeavoured to hold an equal balance between the English
parties, but could not wholly conceal his suspicions of the Tories and
his private preference for the Whigs. In consequence, some of those
who had been foremost in expelling James II., now began to intrigue
with him, and expressed a more or less real sympathy with his plans for
recovering his crown. Among these traitors were the best sailor and
the best soldier that England owned, Admiral Russell, who succeeded
Torrington in command of the Channel fleet, and John Churchill--the
Marlborough of later days--who had been appointed commander of the
English troops whom William had taken to the continent. It is some
palliation to their guilt that they neither of them actually did
desert William in the moment of trial, but both were undoubtedly guilty
of habitual correspondence with the enemy. Churchill even descended
so far into the depths of baseness as to send secret intelligence of
William's plans to the French--though, with characteristic duplicity,
he sent them too late to be of any use.
[Sidenote: =The battle of La Hogue.=]
How much these secret protestations of loyalty to James meant, was
shown in 1692 by the event of the battle of La Hogue. The French king
had collected an army in Normandy to invade England, and ordered up
his ships from Brest to convoy it, relying on the promise of Russell
that he would bring over the Channel fleet. But when the squadron of De
Tourville came in sight, the admiral promptly attacked it. Either the
spirit of fighting had overcome him, or compunction for his treachery
smote him at the last moment. At any rate, he fell briskly upon the
French--whose squadron was much inferior in numbers--destroyed twelve
ships, and completely scattered the rest. This victory gained Russell a
very undeserved peerage, and saved England from all danger of a French
invasion or a Jacobite rising (May 19, 1692).
[Sidenote: =The war in the Netherlands, 1692-1695.=]
Meanwhile the armies of Lewis XIV. and William were contending
obstinately in the Netherlands, without any marked success on either
side. William was opposed by a general as able as himself in Marshal
Luxembourg, and met his usual ill luck in the field. He was defeated at
two great pitched battles, Steenkerke (August, 1692), and Landen (July,
1693), yet after each engagement he made such a formidable front, that
the enemy gained nothing by his victory, and hardly won a foot of
ground in the Spanish Netherlands. At each of these fights the English
troops were in the thick of the fray, and justified by their conduct
the anxiety that William had always shown to have England on his side.
Yet Churchill, their best general, was not leading them; he had been
deservedly disgraced in 1692, when his intrigues with James II. were
discovered. When at last the fortune of war began to turn in favour
of the allies (mainly owing to the death of William's great opponent,
Marshal Luxembourg), it was again the English troops who got the chief
credit in the one great success of the king's military life--the storm
of Namur. When that great fortress, whose lofty citadel, overhanging
the Meuse, was the strongest place in Belgium, was taken by assault
in the very face of a French army of 80,000 men, it was the English
infantry, under Lord Cutts, who forced their way into the breaches and
compelled Marshal Boufflers to surrender (August, 1695).
[Sidenote: =The treaty of Ryswick.=]
After the fall of Namur the war languished: the King of France saw
his resources wasting away, and, in spite of all his efforts, had
utterly failed to conquer the Netherlands, though his armies had been
somewhat more successful in Italy and Spain. He finally consented to
treat for peace, which, after long negotiations, was at last secured
by the treaty of Ryswick (1697). This was the first occasion on which
the ambitious and grasping king had to own defeat. Making terms with
England, Holland, Spain, and Austria, he surrendered all that he had
gained since 1678, with the single exception of the town of Strasburg.
He was also compelled to recognize William as the lawful King of
England, though he refused to expel James II. and his family from their
asylum at St. Germains, where they had been dwelling since 1691.
[Sidenote: =English factions.=]
English domestic politics during the time of the struggle with Lewis
XIV. had presented a shameful spectacle. It is difficult to say
whether the Whigs or the Tories disgraced themselves the more, by
their factious violence and treacherous intrigues. In all her history
Britain has never known such a sordid gang of self-seeking, greedy,
and demoralized statesmen, as the generation who had been reared in
the evil times of Charles II. Danby, the corrupt old Tory minister of
1674; Sunderland, the renegade tool of James II.; the traitors Russell
and Churchill, were typical men of the day. The party warfare of Whig
and Tory was prosecuted by disgraceful personalities--impeachments for
corruption, embezzlement, or treacherous correspondence with France;
and, to the shame of England, the accusations were generally true.
Even the unamiable William III. appears a comparatively dignified and
sympathetic figure among these squalid intriguers. We cannot wonder
that he disliked and distrusted Englishmen, when those with whom he
had most to do were such a crew of sharpers and hypocrites. For eight
years he contrived to combine Tories and Whigs in his ministry, an
extraordinary testimony to his powers of management, and to his
subjects' blind love of office. His own troubles were constant and
galling; not only was he abused by both political parties for his
moderation, but he was openly accused of favouritism and even of
corruption. His very life was not safe: a conspiracy formed by some
extreme Tories and Jacobites, headed by a member of Parliament named
Sir John Fenwick, came to light in 1696, which was found to involve a
plot to shoot the king as he was on his way to hunt in Richmond Park.
When the conspirators were arrested and examined, evidence came to hand
which proved that half the statesmen in England had been corresponding
with James II., though it is true that no one of importance had been
implicated in the actual assassination plot. It is no wonder that
William grew yet more sour and cold as the years passed over his head.
He had lost his bright and able wife, Queen Mary, on December 28,
1694, and after her death he felt himself more than ever a stranger in
England. If only the political exigencies of his situation would have
allowed it, he would have preferred to return to Holland for good.
[Sidenote: =Reform of the coinage--The Bank of England founded.=]
Only two successful political experiments emerged from the
faction-ridden times of William III. The first was the reform of the
coinage in 1695, when the clipped and worn money of the Tudors and
Stuarts was honestly redeemed by the government for new and good
pieces--in earlier days the state had always cheated the public on the
occasion of a recoinage. The other was the establishment of the Bank of
England in 1694. This excellent device was intended to give the nation
a solid and solvent bank, provided with a government guarantee, that
should be above the dangers of fraud and ill luck which render private
banks dangerous to the investor. At the same time, in return for the
grant of the government guarantee, the new Bank of England contracted
to lend the state money, and took over the management of the National
Debt, then a small matter of a very few millions.
[Sidenote: =The Spanish Succession.=]
The peace which followed the treaty of Ryswick lasted for four uneasy
years only. The old war had hardly ceased before a new trouble
began to appear on the horizon. This was the vexed question of the
Spanish Succession. The reigning king of Spain, Charles II. was a
hypochondriacal invalid. His next of kin was his eldest sister, Maria
Theresa, who had wedded Lewis XIV.; her son, the Dauphin, would have
been the natural heir to Spain, if his mother had not executed on her
marriage a deed of renunciation of her rights of succession. After
the Dauphin, the nearest relative of Charles II. was his younger
sister Margaret, the wife of the Emperor Leopold I.; but the rights
of this princess and her daughter, Maria Antonia, were also barred by
a renunciation, made when she married the Emperor. Next in the family
came Leopold himself, as the son of an aunt of Charles II., who had
made no such engagement at her espousals. The question turned on the
validity of the renunciations made by the two infantas. Lewis XIV.
said that his wife's agreement was worthless, because no one can sign
away the rights of their heirs. Yet the document had been solemnly
sanctioned by the Cortes, the Spanish Parliament. The Emperor stood
out for the validity of the document, and urged, not the claims of
his Bavarian daughter, who had also been the victim of her mother's
renunciation, but his own right as grandson of Philip III.
PHILIP III.,
1598-1621.
|
+----------------------+--------------+
| |
PHILIP IV., Maria = FERDINAND
1621-1665. | III.,
| | Emperor.
+--+---------+-------------------------+ |
| | | +---+
| | | |
CHARLES II., Maria = Lewis XIV. Margaret = Leopold, = Eleanor
1665-1700. Theresa. | of France. | Emperor. | of
| | | Neuburg.
Lewis, Maximilian = Maria |
the of | Antonia. |
Dauphin. Bavaria. | |
| | +-----+----+
+-------------+---+ | | |
| | Joseph of Joseph I, Charles,
Lewis, Philip, Bavaria, Emperor. Archduke.
Duke of Burgundy. Duke of Anjou. died 1699.
The real difficulty of the situation lay in the fact that all Europe
viewed with dismay the union of Spain and France, and was very little
better pleased at the idea of the union of Spain and the Empire. The
Spanish dominions were still so broad and so wealthy, that they would
throw out the balance of power in Europe, if they were united to any
other large state. For Charles II. reigned not only over Spain, but
in Belgium, in Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, and over the rich
Spanish colonies in Mexico, the West Indies, South America, and the
Malay Archipelago.
[Sidenote: =The first Partition Treaty.=]
While Charles II. was slowly sinking into his grave, all his heirs were
busily engaged in discussing the changes that must follow his decease.
Both Lewis and the Emperor saw that it would be unwise to claim Spain
for themselves, therefore the French king named his youngest grandson,
Philip, Duke of Anjou, as his representative, while the Austrian passed
on his personal claims to his younger son, the Archduke Charles. They
then arrived at an agreement that neither Philip nor Charles should
have Spain itself, but that each should have compensation for resigning
his full claim--the archduke was to take Milan, Duke Philip Naples and
Sicily. Meanwhile Spain, Belgium, and the Indies were to go to the
young Prince of Bavaria, the one claimant who was unobjectionable to
all Europe; a secret treaty to this effect was signed, and carefully
kept from the knowledge of the Spaniards, to whom it would have been
very offensive, as taking away their obvious right to choose their own
king. England and Holland, however, were both made consenting parties
to the treaty, of which William III. fully approved.
[Sidenote: =The second Partition Treaty.=]
But in 1699 the young Prince of Bavaria died, leaving no brother or
sister to succeed to his claim. The whole matter of the succession was
again thrown into confusion. But after long negotiation, Lewis XIV.
agreed to permit the Archduke Charles to become King of Spain, if he
were himself bought off with Naples, Sicily, and Milan.
[Sidenote: =Last will and death of Charles II.=]
But this compromise was never to come into operation. The news of it
got abroad and reached Spain. Both Charles II. and his people were much
enraged at seeing their empire parcelled out by foreigners without
their own consent. Rousing himself on his very death-bed, the king
solemnly declared Philip of Anjou his heir in the whole of the Spanish
possessions, and expired immediately after (1700).
[Sidenote: =Philip of Anjou King of Spain.=]
The temptation to accept the legacy of King Charles, and to claim Spain
and the Indies for his grandson, was too much for Lewis XIV. In spite
of the elaborate engagements with the Emperor Leopold to which he had
plighted his faith, he resolved to snatch at the prize. If Spain,
Belgium, and half Italy fell into his grandson's hands, he thought
that the house of Bourbon must give the law to the whole of Europe.
Accordingly, the Duke of Anjou was allowed to accept the Spanish throne
when the Cortes offered it to him, and was proclaimed king as Philip V.
[Sidenote: =William's war policy opposed by the Tories.=]
This was bound to lead to war. Austria could not brook the breach of
faith, Holland and the minor German states could not tolerate the idea
of seeing the Spanish Netherlands falling into the hands of a French
prince. But if unaided by England, it was doubtful if the powers of
Central Europe could face the united force of France and Spain. It was
now all-important to know whether England would join them. William
III. was eager to renew his old crusade against French aggression,
but the English Parliament and people were far less certain of their
purpose. The Tories, who were now dominant in Parliament, had of late
been carping at every act of the king; they had cut down his revenue,
forced him to reduce the standing army to 7000 men, and confiscated
many estates in Ireland, which had been granted to his friends, Dutch
and English. While William was dreaming of nothing but war, the Tory
majority in the Lower House were solely intent on the impeachment
of the Whig ministers who had been in office in 1696-1700, and on
regulating the succession to the crown after William's death.
[Sidenote: =The Act of Settlement.=]
The important act which settled this question had become necessary
on the death of William's nephew, the little Duke of Gloucester,
the only surviving son of the Princess Anne. He was the sole near
relative of the king who was not a Romanist, and, lest the crown should
lapse back to James II. and his heirs, some new measures had to be
taken. Accordingly the Parliament, Tory though it was, voted that the
next Protestant heir should succeed on the death of William and his
sister-in-law, the Princess Anne. This heir was a granddaughter of
James I., the aged Electress Sophia of Hanover, the child of Frederic
of the Palatinate and his wife Elizabeth of England, whose fortunes
had moved the world so deeply some eighty years back. Her brother's
children were all Romanists, and she was therefore preferred to them
in the Act of Settlement. The crown was ensured to her and her heirs,
to the prejudice of some dozen persons who stood before her in the line
of succession.[48]
The act also laid down two important constitutional doctrines. In
future the judges were to hold office _quamdiu se bene gesserint_,
not at the king's pleasure, and only to be removable for misconduct
upon an address of both Houses of Parliament. No pardon granted by the
sovereign was to stand in the way of an impeachment by the Commons;
ministers, therefore, would not be able to plead that they were
irresponsible because the king had pardoned them.
[Sidenote: =Lewis acknowledges the Old Pretender.=]
It is very doubtful if the English Parliament would have consented
to join in an alliance against France, if Lewis XIV. had not at this
moment indulged in an ill-timed act of bravado which seemed especially
designed to cast contempt on the "Act of Settlement." In 1701, the
exiled James II. died at St. Germains. Lewis at once saluted his heir,
the prince born in 1688, as rightful King of England, and hailed him by
the title of James III.
[Sidenote: =England declares for war with France.=]
The whole English nation was deeply excited and angered at this
breach of the agreement in the treaty of Ryswick, by which Lewis had
recognized William III. as legitimate ruler of Britain. Thus it became
easy for the king to urge them into the breach with France and alliance
with the Emperor, which it was his aim to bring about. The Whigs got a
majority in the new Parliament, which met in the winter of 1701-2, and
showed themselves enthusiastically ready for a war with France.
[Sidenote: =Death of William.=]
Just as his schemes were on the point of success, King William was
suddenly removed from the scene. He broke his collar-bone while out
hunting at Hampton Court, his enfeebled constitution could not stand
the shock, and he expired in a few days (March 8, 1702). But he could
die in peace. His work had not been wasted; England was committed to
the new war, and the ambition of Lewis XIV. was to be effectually
bridled by the great alliance which William left behind him. The
lonely and morose invalid regretted but little his own release from an
existence of pain and toil, when he saw that the great aim of his life
had been achieved.
FOOTNOTES:
[46] See p. 433.
[47] Killiecrankie was interesting, from the military point of view,
for the complete victory of men armed with sword and target over
regular troops carrying the musket. In close fight, the latter, for
want of an easily fixed bayonet, proved inferior.
[48] See genealogical table of the Stuarts on p. 481.
CHAPTER XXXII.
ANNE.
1702-1714.
[Sidenote: =Queen Anne and Prince George of Denmark.=]
According to the provisions of the "Act of Settlement," the English
crown passed, on the death of William III., to his sister-in-law, the
Princess Anne, the second daughter of James II. The new sovereign was
a worthy, pious woman, of simple domestic tastes, without a spark
of intelligence or ambition. She was by far the most insignificant
personage who had ever yet sat upon the throne of England. Her husband,
Prince George of Denmark, was a fit match for her; he was reckoned the
most harmless and the most stupid man within the four seas. "I have
tried him drunk," said the shrewd Charles II., "and I have tried him
sober, and there is nothing in him." He was the best of husbands, and
always acted as his wife's humble attendant and admirer. He and his
good-natured, placid, lymphatic spouse might possibly have managed
a farm; it seemed almost ludicrous to see them set to manage three
kingdoms.
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of Lady Churchill.=]
The worthy Anne was inevitably doomed to fall under the dominion of
some mind stronger than her own. It was notorious to every one that for
the last twenty years she had been managed and governed by her chief
lady-in-waiting, Sarah, Lady Churchill, the wife of the intriguing
general who had betrayed James II. in 1688, and William III. in 1692.
They had been friends and companions from their girlhood, and the
imperious Sarah had always had the mastery over the yielding Anne. The
princess saw with her favourite's eyes, and spoke with her favourite's
words. Any faint symptoms of independence on her part were promptly
crushed by the hectoring tongue of Lady Churchill, who had acquired
such an ascendency over her mistress that she permitted herself the
strangest licence, and cowed and deafened her by her angry and voluble
reproaches. It is only fair to say that she exercised almost as great a
tyranny over her own husband. The suave and shifty general looked upon
his wife with doting admiration, and yielded a respectful obedience to
her caprices.
[Sidenote: =Ministerial changes.=]
It is a curious testimony to the survival of the personal power of the
sovereign in England, that Anne's predilection for the two Churchills
changed the face of domestic politics on her accession. During
William's life, they had been eyed with distrust; now they became
the most important personages in the realm. The queen dismissed most
of the Whig ministers who had been in power when her brother-in-law
died, and filled their places with Tories, or rather with friends and
adherents of Churchill, who, though he called himself a Tory, was in
reality a pure self-seeker who cared nothing for either party. The
chief minister was Lord Godolphin, whose son had married Churchill's
daughter, as shifty a politician as any of his contemporaries. He had
long maintained a fruitless intrigue with the exiled Stuarts, but, when
he came into power, dropped his correspondence with St. Germains, and
ultimately became a Whig.
[Sidenote: =Policy of Churchill and Godolphin.=]
It was fortunate for England that Churchill and Godolphin were as
clever as they were selfish. Though personally they were mere greedy
adventurers, yet their policy was the best that could have been found.
Churchill's military ambition made him anxious to proceed with the
war which William III. had begun. The complete mastery over the queen
which his wife possessed, made him firmly resolved to keep Anne on the
throne at all costs. Hence there was no change either in the foreign
or domestic policy of England: the new ministry were as much committed
to maintaining the Protestant succession and the French war as their
predecessors, though almost every individual among them had at one time
or another held treasonable communications with James II.
[Sidenote: =Completion of the alliance against France.=]
The great alliance, therefore, which William III. had done his best
to organize, was completed by the Godolphin cabinet, England,
Holland, Austria, and most of the smaller states of the Empire bound
themselves to frustrate the union of France and Spain, and to secure
the inheritance of Charles II. for his namesake, the Austrian archduke.
Portugal and Savoy joined the alliance ere the year was out.
[Sidenote: =Position and resources of Lewis XIV.=]
On the other side, Lewis XIV. had the support of Spain: for the first
time for two centuries the Spaniards and French were found fighting
side by side. Only a small minority of the people of the Peninsula
refused to accept Philip of Anjou as their rightful sovereign, and
adhered to the archduke; this minority consisted of the Catalans, the
inhabitants of the sea-coast of North-Eastern Spain, who had an old
grievance against their kings for depriving them of certain local
rights and privileges. By reason of the Spanish alliance, Lewis started
on the war in complete military possession of two most important
frontier regions, the Milanese in Italy, and the whole of the Spanish
Netherlands (Belgium) in the North. He had also a strong position in
Germany, owing to the fact that he had secured the alliance of those
powerful princes, the Elector of Bavaria and the Prince-archbishop of
Cologne, two brothers of the house of Wittelsbach who had an old family
grudge against the Emperor.
War had been declared by England and her allies in 1702, but it
was not till 1703 that important operations began. They were waged
simultaneously on four separate theatres--the Spanish Netherlands,
South Germany, North Italy, and Spain. It appeared at first as if Lewis
XIV. was to be the aggressor; from his points of vantage in Alsace,
Milan, Bavaria, and the Spanish Netherlands, he seemed about to push
forward against Holland and Austria. But he had now to cope with two
generals such as no French army had ever faced--the Emperor's great
captain, Prince Eugéne of Savoy; and the wary Churchill, now, by Queen
Anne's favour, commander-in-chief of the English and the Dutch armies.
[Sidenote: =The campaign of 1703.=]
The first campaign was indecisive, the only considerable advantage
secured by either side being that Churchill rendered a French invasion
of Holland impossible, by capturing the north-eastern fortresses of
the Spanish Netherlands, Venloo and Ruremonde, and by overrunning the
electorate of Cologne and the bishopric of Liège. On his return to
England, he was given the title by which he is best known, that of Duke
of Marlborough.
[Sidenote: =Military genius of Marlborough.=]
Hitherto Churchill had shown himself an able general, but no one had
taken the true measure of his abilities, or recognized the fact that
he was by far the greatest military man that England had ever known.
But now the ignominious political antecedents of Queen Anne's favourite
were about to be hidden from view by the laurels that he was to win.
John Churchill, when once he had intrigued his way to power, showed
that he was well fitted to hold it. As a soldier he was the founder
of a new school of scientific strategy: on the battle-field he was
alert and vigorous, but he was greater in the operations that precede
a battle. He had an unrivalled talent for careful and scientific
combinations, by which he would deceive and circumvent an enemy, so
as to attack him when least expected and at the greatest advantage.
Where generals of an older school would run headlong into a fight and
win with heavy loss, he would outflank or outmarch his enemy, and
hustle him out of his positions with little or no bloodshed. On one
occasion--as we shall see--he drove an army of 60,000 French before
him and seized half the duchy of Brabant, without losing more than 80
men. Yet when hard blows were necessary he never shrank from the most
formidable problems, and would lead his troops into the hottest fire
with a cool-headed courage that won every man's admiration.
[Sidenote: =Marlborough as a diplomatist.=]
Great as were Marlborough's talents as a general, he was almost as
notable as a diplomatist and administrator. He had all the gifts of
a statesman: suave, affable, patient, and plausible, he was the one
personage who could keep together the ill-assorted allies who had
combined to attack Lewis XIV. The Dutch, the Austrians, and the small
princes of the Empire had such divergent interests that it was a hard
task to get them to work together. That they were kept from quarrelling
and induced to combine their efforts was entirely Churchill's work.
The organization of the allied army was in itself no mean problem; the
English troops in it formed only a quarter or a third of the whole, and
to manage the great body of Dutch, Prussians, Hanoverians, and Danes,
who formed the bulk of the host, required infinite tact and discretion.
Yet under Marlborough this motley array never marched save to
victory, and never failed from lukewarmness or disunion.
[Sidenote: =His avarice.=]
When we recollect all Churchill's intellectual greatness, we are more
than ever shocked with his moral failings. Not only was he an intriguer
to the backbone, but he was grossly and indecently fond of money: he
levied contributions on all the public funds that passed through his
hands, was open to presents from every quarter, and did not shrink from
gross favouritism where his interests moved him.
[Illustration: THE
SPANISH
NETHERLANDS
1702.]
[Sidenote: =1704--Marlborough moves to Bavaria.=]
The first great campaign in which Marlborough showed his full powers
was that of 1704. When it opened, his army lay on the Meuse and Lower
Rhine, holding back the French from Holland. But meanwhile Lewis
XIV. had pushed forward another army into South Germany to join the
Bavarians, and their united forces held the valley of the Upper Danube,
and seriously threatened Austria. Seeing that the sphere of decisive
action lay in Bavaria, and not on the Meuse, Marlborough resolved
to transfer himself to the point of danger by a rapid march across
Germany. After with great difficulty persuading the Dutch to allow him
to move their army eastward, he executed a series of skilful feints
which led the French to imagine that he was about to invade Alsace.
But having thoroughly misled them as to his intentions, he struck
across Wurtemburg by forced marches, and appeared in the valley of the
Danube. By storming the great fortified camp of the Bavarians on the
Schellenberg, he placed himself between the enemy and Austria, and
rendered any further advance towards Vienna impossible to them. When
joined by a small Austrian army under Eugéne of Savoy, he found himself
strong enough to fight the whole force of the French and Bavarians.
[Sidenote: =The Battle of Blenheim.=]
Accordingly he marched to attack them, and found them 56,000 strong,
arrayed in a good position behind a marshy stream called the Nebel,
which falls into the Danube near the village of Blenheim. Formidable
though their line appeared, Marlborough thought that it might be
broken. He sent Prince Eugéne with 20,000 men to keep employed the
enemy's left wing, where the Bavarians lay. He himself with 32,000
assailed the French marshals Marsin and Tallard, who formed the hostile
centre and right. On the two flanks the Anglo-Austrian army was brought
to a standstill opposite the fortified villages of Blenheim and
Oberglau, and could advance no further. But between them Marlborough
himself found a weak point, just where the French and Bavarian armies
joined. He made his men wade through the marshy stream, and then
directed a series of furious cavalry charges against the hostile
centre. After a stout resistance it broke, and the French and Bavarians
were thrust apart. The Elector and his men got off without much hurt,
for Prince Eugéne's force had been too much cut up early in the day
to be able to pursue them. But the enemy's right wing fared very
differently: Marlborough's victorious cavalry rolled it up and drove
it southward into the Danube. The French had no choice but to drown or
to surrender. Tallard was captured on the river-bank. Eleven thousand
men laid down their arms in Blenheim village when they saw that their
retreat was cut off; 15,000 more were drowned, slain, or wounded, and
not half the Franco-Bavarian army succeeded in escaping (August 13,
1704).
[Illustration: BLENHEIM
AUG. 13, 1704.]
This crushing blow saved Austria. The whole of Bavaria fell into
Marlborough's hands, the French retired behind the Rhine, and for the
future Germany was quite safe from the assaults of King Lewis. The
duke then transferred himself back to the Dutch frontier so rapidly
that the French had no time to do any mischief before his return.
Next spring he was again on the Meuse, and threatening the Spanish
Netherlands on their eastern flank.
[Sidenote: =Gibraltar taken by the English.=]
It was not in Bavaria alone that the English arms fared well in the
year 1704. A fleet under Admiral Rooke and a small army had been sent
to Spain, to help the Catalan malcontents, who were ready to rise in
the name of the Archduke Charles. They were foiled before Barcelona,
but on their return took by surprise the almost impregnable fortress
of Gibraltar, a stronghold which has remained in English hands ever
since. The possession of this place, "the Key of the Mediterranean,"
has proved invaluable in every subsequent war, enabling England to
watch, and often to hinder, every attempt to bring into co-operation
the eastern and the western fleets of France and Spain. Cadiz cannot
communicate with Cartagena, or Toulon with Brest, without being
observed from Gibraltar, and a strong English fleet based on that port
can practically close the entrance of the Mediterranean.
[Sidenote: =The campaign of 1705.=]
In 1705 Marlborough had intended to attack France by the valley of the
Moselle, but owing to the feeble help given by the Austrians--Prince
Eugéne had been sent off to Italy--he was compelled to try a less
adventurous scheme in the Spanish Netherlands. The armies of King
Lewis, now under Marshal Villeroi, had ranged themselves in a long line
from Antwerp to Namur, covering every assailable point with elaborate
fortified lines. By a system of skilful feints and countermarches,
Marlborough broke through the lines with the loss of only 80 men, and
got possession of the plain of Brabant. He would have fought a pitched
battle on the field of Waterloo, but for the reluctance of the Dutch
Government, who wished to withdraw their troops at the critical moment,
and prevented the campaign from being decisive.
[Sidenote: =1706.--Battle of Ramillies.=]
The next spring, however, brought Marlborough his reward. When he
threatened the great fortress of Namur, Marshal Villeroi concentrated
all the French troops in the Netherlands, and posted himself on the
heights of Ramillies to cover the city. Marlborough's generalship was
never better displayed than in the battle which ensued. Threatening the
French left wing, he induced Villeroi to concentrate the stronger half
of his army on that point. Then suddenly changing his order of attack,
he flung himself on the extreme French right, and had taken Ramillies
and stormed the heights behind it before Villeroi could hurry back his
troops to the point of real danger. Each French brigade as it arrived
was swept away by the advancing allies, and Villeroi lost his baggage
and guns and half his army. The consequences of the fight were even
more striking: Brussels, Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and all Flanders and
Hainault fell into Marlborough's hands. In the whole of the Spanish
Netherlands, Lewis XIV. now held nothing but the two fortresses of Mons
and Namur. The French frontier was laid open on a front of more than
200 miles.
[Sidenote: =French reverses in Italy and Spain.--Lewis XIV. sues for
peace.=]
While the arms of France were faring so badly in the North, they were
equally unsuccessful in the South. On September 6th of the same year,
Prince Eugéne and the Duke of Savoy routed the French army of Italy in
front of Turin; in consequence of this battle the generals of Lewis
were obliged to evacuate the Milanese and Piedmont, and to retire
behind the Alps. At the same time a second assault of the allies on
Spain met with signal good fortune. The Catalans had risen in favour
of the Archduke Charles, Barcelona had been stormed in 1705 by an
Anglo-Austrian force under the Prince of Hesse,[49] and all Eastern
Spain submitted. In 1706 an English force, reinforced by Portuguese,
marched up to Madrid and seized it. It seemed that Philip V. would ere
long be forced to leave Spain, and retire beyond the Pyrenees. The
spirits of Lewis XIV. were so much dashed by this series of reverses
that he, for the first time in his life, humbled himself to sue for
peace from the allies--offering to waive his grandson's rights to
Spain, Belgium, and the Indies, if he were allowed to keep the Spanish
dominions in Italy--Milan, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia.
[Sidenote: =1707.--Battle of Almanza.--Reverses of the allies.=]
The allies were unwise enough to reject these terms; Holland
and the German states would have accepted them, but the Emperor was
set on gaining the Milanese, and Marlborough, who loved the war for
the wealth and glory that it brought him, persuaded the English
Government to refuse to treat. This obstinate determination to push
matters to extremity met with a well-deserved retribution. The fortune
of war in 1707 commenced to turn against the allies. In Spain their
army lost Madrid, and was almost annihilated at the battle of Almanza
by the French and Spaniards. In consequence they lost all their
foothold in the peninsula except Catalonia and Gibraltar. About the
same time Eugéne of Savoy and the Austrians crossed the Alps and
invaded Provence, but were beaten out of France after a disastrous
failure before Toulon. Marlborough himself won no new successes in the
Netherlands; the Austrians gave him little help, and his attention was
distracted from Flanders by the enterprises of Charles XII. of Sweden.
That brilliant and headstrong monarch, an old ally of France, had just
invaded Germany from the rear, pursuing a quarrel with the Elector of
Saxony. In great fear lest he might interfere in the war and join the
French, Marlborough hastened to the far east, visited Charles at his
camp in Saxony, and flattered and cajoled him into retiring. The Swede
marched off into Poland, and Marlborough was able to return to Flanders
with a quiet mind; but he had lost the best months of the campaigning
season in his excursion to meet Charles.
[Sidenote: =1708.--Battle of Oudenarde.--Capture of Lille.=]
In the next year his old fortune returned to him. Lewis XIV.,
encouraged by the events of 1707, had raised a great army for the
invasion of Flanders. It was headed by his eldest grandson and heir,
Lewis, Duke of Burgundy, who was to be advised by Marshal Vendôme,
the best officer in the French service. They crossed the Lys into
Flanders and captured Ghent, but Marlborough soon concentrated his
forces and fell upon them at Oudenarde. The French army was mismanaged.
Burgundy was obstinate, and Vendôme brutal and overbearing; they gave
contradictory orders to the troops, and were caught in disorder by
Marlborough's sudden advance. In a long running fight on the heights
above Oudenarde, the French right wing was surrounded and cut to
pieces; the remainder of the host fled back into France (July 11,
1708). They were soon pursued; the Austrian army came up under Prince
Eugéne to help the English, and the allies crossed the frontier and
laid siege to the great fortress of Lille, the northern bulwark of
France. It fell, after a long siege, on December 9, 1708, when Marshal
Boufflers and 15,000 men laid down their arms before the allied
generals.
[Sidenote: =Lewis again asks for peace.=]
Lewis was now brought very low, lower even than in 1706. Once more he
asked the allies for terms of peace. This time they were even harsher
in their reply than at the previous negotiations. They demanded not
only that he should surrender his grandson's claims to any part of the
Spanish inheritance, but that he should guarantee to send an army into
Spain to evict King Philip, if the latter refused to evacuate the realm
which he had been ruling for the last six years. Lewis was also bidden
to surrender Strasburg and some of the fortresses of French Flanders.
[Sidenote: =Lewis rejects the terms of the allies.=]
Though his armies were starving, and his exchequer drained dry, the
King of France could not stoop to the humiliation of declaring war on
his grandson. "If I must needs fight," he is reported to have said, "I
would rather fight my enemies than my own children." So, protesting
that the continuance of the war was no fault of his, he sent his
plate to the mint, sold his costly furniture and pictures, and made a
desperate appeal to the French nation to maintain the integrity of its
frontiers and its national pride. By a supreme effort nearly 100,000
men, under Marshal Villars, were collected and ranged along the borders
of Flanders.
[Sidenote: =1709.--Battle of Malplaquet.=]
With this army Marlborough had to deal in the next year. He was
proceeding with the siege of the fortress of Mons, when Villars came
up to hinder him, and took post on the heath of Malplaquet. The French
position was very strong, covered on both flanks with thick woods,
and defended with entrenchments and heavy batteries. Nevertheless
Marlborough attacked, and met with his usual success, though on this
occasion his victory was very dearly bought. His left wing, headed
by the headstrong young Prince of Orange, made a rash and desperate
assault on the French lines before the rest of the army had begun to
advance, and was beaten back with fearful loss. But the duke broke
through the centre of Villars' entrenchments by bringing up his
reserves, and won the field, though he lost more men than the French,
who had fought under cover all day. In consequence of this victory
Mons fell, and the allies advanced into France, and began to besiege
the fortresses of French Flanders and Artois. Their progress seemed to
slacken among these thickly set strongholds, and the once rapid advance
of Marlborough grew slow. This was more in consequence of the internal
politics of England than of any falling off in the great general's
capacity. The duke had ceased to command the obedience of the English
ministry, and his friends had just been turned out of office.
[Sidenote: =Godolphin's ministry.=]
From 1702 to 1710 Marlborough's connection, Godolphin, remained
the chief minister. He had kept himself in power by utilizing the
jealousies of Whig and Tory, and allying himself alternately to either
party. Till 1706 Godolphin had posed as a Tory himself, but finding
that the majority of the Tory party were lukewarm in supporting the
war, and pressed for an early peace with France, he resolved to break
with them. Accordingly he dismissed most of his old colleagues, and
took into partnership Marlborough's son-in-law, the Earl of Sunderland,
who, though the heir of the time-serving favourite of James II., was a
violent Whig. It was the Godolphin-Sunderland ministry which rejected
the French proposals for peace in 1708, when the most favourable terms
might have been secured. But to subserve Marlborough's ambition and the
fanatical hatred of the Whigs for Lewis XIV., the war was continued.
[Sidenote: =The Union with Scotland.=]
The only important event of domestic politics which occurred in
this part of Anne's reign was the work of the Godolphin-Sunderland
ministry. This was the celebrated "Union with Scotland" in 1707, which
permanently united the crowns and parliaments of the two halves of
Britain. The separation of the two kingdoms had many disadvantages,
both commercial and political, and William III. had wished to unify
them. But old local patriotism had frustrated the scheme hitherto,
and the unfortunate Darien Scheme[50] had caused much bitter feeling
in William's later years. Early in Anne's reign this took the ominous
shape of an attempt to change the law of succession to the throne in
Scotland, so that there appeared a grave danger of the separation
of the two crowns at the queen's death. Fearing this, Godolphin's
ministry made a resolute attempt to bring about a permanent union of
the two crowns. An act to that effect was ultimately carried through
the Scottish Parliament, but with the greatest difficulty. National
pride, the fear lest England might endeavour to Anglicize the Kirk, the
dislike of the citizens of Edinburgh to see their city lose its status
as a capital, the secret hopes of the Jacobites to win the Scottish
crown for James the Pretender, worked on one side. On the other the
arguments used were the political and commercial convenience of the
change, and the absolute necessity for making sure of the Protestant
succession. When the English Government gave pledges for the security
of the Kirk, and for the perpetuation of the Scottish law courts and
universities, the majority yielded, and the bill passed (1707). For
the future Scotland was represented in the United Parliament of Great
Britain by 45 members of the Commons and 16 representative peers. The
arms of England and Scotland were blended in the royal shield, and in
the new British flag, the "Union Jack," the white saltire of St. Andrew
and the red cross of St. George were combined.
It was many years, however, before the Scots came to acquiesce
cordially in the Union, and the Jacobite party did their best to keep
up the old national grudge, and to persuade Scotland that she had
suffered by the change. But the allegation was proved so false by the
course of events, that the outcry against the Union gradually died
away. Scotland has since supplied a much larger proportion of the
leaders of Britain alike in politics, war, literature, and philosophy,
than her scanty population seemed to promise.
[Sidenote: =Growing unpopularity of the Whigs.=]
The domination of the Whigs was not to last much longer. They fell into
disfavour for two reasons: the first was that the people had begun to
realize the fact that the costly and bloody struggle with France ought
to end, now that Lewis was humbled and ready to surrender all claims to
domination in Europe. The second was that the Whigs had contrived to
offend the religious sentiments of that great majority of the nation
which clung to the Church of England and resented any action that
seemed to put a slight upon her.
[Sidenote: =The Tories denounce the war.=]
The Tories set to work to preach to the people that the war only
continued because Marlborough profited by it, and because the Emperor
and the Dutch wished to impose over-heavy terms on the French. This was
on the whole quite true, and it was dinned into the ears of the nation
by countless Tory speeches and pamphlets, of which the best-known is
Dean Swift's cogent and caustic "Conduct of the Allies" (1711).
[Sidenote: =The trial of Sacheverell.=]
But a more active part in the fall of the Whig ministry was played by
the Church question. High Churchmen had always suspected the Whigs
of lukewarm orthodoxy, because of the attempts which were made by
them from time to time to secure toleration for Dissenters. This, the
best and wisest part of the Whig programme, brought them much enmity.
They were already looked upon askance by many Churchmen, when they
contrived to bring a storm about their ears by an attempt to suppress
the liberty of the pulpit. Dr. Sacheverell, a Tory divine, had preached
two violent political sermons, "On the Peril of False Brethren in
Church and State." They were stupid and bombastic utterances, in which
he compared Godolphin to Jeroboam, and called him "Volpone, the Old
Fox." The minister was foolish enough to take this stuff seriously: he
arrested Sacheverell, and announced his intention of impeaching him for
sedition before the House of Lords. He carried out his purpose; the
doctor was tried, and condemned by the Whig majority among the peers
to suspension from his clerical function for three years, while his
sermons were burnt by the common hangman. This decision produced riots
and demonstrations over the whole country; the Whigs were denounced
as violators of the freedom of the Church and as the secret allies
of schism. The windy Sacheverell became the party hero of the day,
and made a triumphal progress through the midlands. The agitation was
still in full blast, when it was suddenly announced that the queen had
dismissed her ministers, and charged Harley, the chief of the Tory
party, to form a new cabinet.
[Sidenote: =The Duchess of Marlborough disgraced.=]
Queen Anne's decisive and unexpected action was mainly due to personal
causes. The domestic tyranny which the Duchess of Marlborough had
exercised over her for so many years, had at last reached the point at
which it became unbearable. The duchess had grown harsher and ruder
with advancing years, and treated her royal friend with such gross
impertinence that even the placid Anne became resentful. She gradually
transferred her friendship to a new favourite, Mrs. Masham, one of her
ladies in waiting, and a cousin of the Tory leader Harley. Provoked by
some final explosions of the jealous wrath of the duchess, the queen
sought the secret advice of Harley, and suddenly dismissed her from her
offices, and bade her leave the court. After a scene of undignified
recrimination with her mistress, the disgraced favourite was forced to
retire: on her departure she completely wrecked, in a fit of anger, the
rooms which she had so long occupied in St. James's Palace (1710).
[Sidenote: =Godolphin and Sunderland dismissed.--A Tory ministry.=]
Godolphin and Sunderland were dismissed from power immediately after
the disgrace of the duchess, and Harley and the Tories were at
once installed in office. They left Marlborough in command in the
Netherlands for a time, but began at once to open negotiations for
peace with France. This was an honest attempt to carry out the Tory
programme, but it was made in an underhand way, for the Dutch and
Austrians were kept entirely in the dark, and received no news of the
step that England was taking.
[Sidenote: =Marlborough superseded.=]
Meanwhile Marlborough fought his last campaign in France; Marshal
Villars had endeavoured to stop him by a long system of entrenchments
and redoubts stretching from Hesdin to Bouchain. But Marlborough always
laughed at such fortifications: he deceived Villars by his skilful
feints, and easily burst through the vaunted lines, which the Frenchman
had called his _ne plus ultra_. He took Bouchain, and was preparing to
advance into Picardy, when he suddenly received the information that he
was dismissed from his post and recalled to England. Harley had found
the French ready to treat, and was resolved to stop the war. He gave
the Duke of Ormonde, a Tory peer, the command of the English army,
with the secret instructions that he was not to advance, or help the
Austrians in any way (1711).
[Sidenote: =His peculations exposed.--He leaves England.=]
Marlborough returned to England to protest, but found himself involved
in serious troubles when he landed. The Tories had laid a trap for him,
which his own avarice had prepared. He was accused of gross peculations
committed while in command in Flanders. It was proved that he had taken
presents to the amount of more than £60,000 from the contractors who
supplied his army with food and stores. He had also received from the
Emperor Joseph a douceur of 2-1/2 per cent. on all the subsidies which
the English ministry had paid to Austria. More than £150,000 had gone
into his pocket on this account alone. The discovery of these instances
of greed blasted the duke's character; it was to no purpose that he
pleaded that the money was a free gift, and that such transactions were
customary in foreign services. He found himself looked upon askance
by all parties, even by his old friends the Whigs, and retired to the
continent.
[Sidenote: =The treaty of Utrecht.=]
In 1712, Harley, who had now been created Earl of Oxford, brought his
negotiations with France to a close. They resulted in the celebrated
treaty of Utrecht. By this agreement England recognized Philip V. as
King of Spain and the Indies, stipulating that Austria and Holland
were to be compensated out of the Spanish dominions in Italy and the
Netherlands. France ceded to England Newfoundland, Acadia--since known
as Nova Scotia--and the waste lands round Hudson's Bay. Spain also
gave up Gibraltar and the important island of Minorca. Both France
and Spain signed commercial treaties giving favourable conditions for
English merchants. Even the long-closed monopoly of Spanish trade in
South America was surrendered by the _Asiento_, an agreement which
gave England certain rights of trade with those parts, especially the
disgraceful but profitable privilege of supplying the Spanish colonies
with negro slaves. Spain and France also recognized the Protestant
succession in England, and agreed not to aid "the Pretender," as the
young son of James II. was now called.
The minor allies of England also obtained advantages by the treaty
of Utrecht. Holland was given a favourable commercial treaty and a
line of strong towns in the Spanish Netherlands known as the "Barrier
fortresses," because they lay along the frontier of France. They
included Namur, Tournay, Ypres, and six or seven other places. The
Duke of Savoy received Sicily and the title of king; the Elector of
Brandenburg took Spanish Guelders--a district on the Meuse--and was
recognized as King of Prussia. But Austria, our most powerful ally,
does not appear in the agreement. The Emperor wished to continue the
war, and refused to come into the general pacification.
[Sidenote: =Austria deserted by the allies.=]
The treaty of Utrecht was on the whole profitable to England, though
it is certain that better terms could have been extorted from Lewis
XIV. and Philip V., both of whom were in the last stage of exhaustion
and despair. But in signing it England committed a grave breach of
faith with Austria, who wished to continue the war. The English army,
under Ormonde, was actually withdrawn in the middle of the campaign of
1712, so that the Austrian troops were left unsupported in France, and
severely handled by the enemy. Harley's reason for refusing to stand by
his allies was that Joseph I. had lately died, and had been succeeded
by his brother, the Archduke Charles, who had so long claimed the
Spanish throne. It seemed to the Tory ministry just as unwise to allow
the house of Hapsburg to appropriate the bulk of the Spanish dominions
as to allow them to fall into the hands of Lewis XIV. Accordingly,
they refused to listen to the Emperor's plans for bringing further
pressure on the enemy and for demanding harder terms. Left to himself,
Charles VI. fared ill in the war, and was forced to sign the treaty of
Rastadt in 1714. This agreement--a kind of supplement to the treaty
of Utrecht--gave to the Austrians Naples, Sardinia, the Milanese, and
most of the Spanish Netherlands; but a small part of the last-named
country fell to Holland and Prussia, who, as we have already mentioned,
acquired respectively the "Barrier fortresses" and the duchy of
Guelders.
[Sidenote: =The question of the succession.=]
The peace of Utrecht had been signed early in 1713, and the Tory party
could now settle down to administer England after their own ideas,
undisturbed by alarms of war from without; but all other subjects
of political importance were now thrown into the background by the
question of the succession to the crown. The queen's health was
manifestly beginning to fail, and it was evident that ere many years
the Act of Settlement, passed in 1701, would come into operation,
and Sophia of Hanover be called to the English throne. But there
were many persons within the Tory party who viewed the approaching
accession of this aged German lady with dislike, and wished, if it
were but possible, to put the son of James II. on the throne. The
exiled prince was now a young man of twenty-five, slow, apathetic, and
deeply religious in his own narrow way. He was not the stuff of which
successful pretenders are made, and played his cards very ill.
[Sidenote: =Position of the Pretender.=]
Nevertheless, there was for a time a considerable possibility that
James III. might sit on the throne of England. It was generally felt
that to exclude Anne's brother from the succession, in favour of her
distant cousin, was hard. The large section of the Tory party who
still clung to the old belief in the divine right of kings, were not
comfortable in their consciences when they thought of the exclusion of
the rightful heir. Another section, who had no principles, but a strong
regard for their own interests, looked with dismay on the prospect of a
Hanoverian succession, because they knew that the Electress Sophia and
her son, the Elector George Lewis, were closely allied with the Whigs,
and would certainly put them in office when the queen died.
If James Stuart had been willing to change his religion, or even to
make a pretence of doing so, the Tory party would have accepted him
as king, and his sister would have presented him to the people as her
legitimate heir; but the Pretender was rigidly pious with the narrowest
Romanist orthodoxy. He would not make the least concession on the
religious point to his secret friends on this side of the water, when
they besought him to hold out some prospect of his conversion. This
honesty cost him his chance of recovering England.
[Sidenote: =The Tory split.--Schemes of Bolingbroke.--The Schism Act.=]
When the Tories ascertained that James would never become a member of
the Church of England, the party became divided. Harley, the prime
minister, and the bulk of his followers would not lend themselves to
a scheme for delivering England over to a Romanist. They continued to
correspond with the Pretender, but refused to take any active steps in
his cause, and let matters stand still. But there was another section
of the party which was not so scrupulous, and was prepared to plunge
into any treasonable plot, if only it could make sure of keeping the
Whigs out of office. These men were led by Henry St. John Viscount
Bolingbroke, one of the two Secretaries of State. St. John was a
clever, plausible man, a ready writer and a brilliant speaker, but
utterly unscrupulous, and filled with a devouring ambition. Though in
secret a free-thinker, he pretended to be the most extreme of High
Churchmen, and led the more bigoted and violent wing of the Tory party.
St. John was set on becoming the ruler of England, and saw his way
to the post if he could place James III. on the throne. His cautious
colleague Harley stood in his way, so he set himself to expel him from
office, by playing on the foibles of the queen and the High Churchmen.
With this end he brought in the "Schism Act," a persecuting measure
recalling the old legislation of Charles II. It proposed to prohibit
Dissenters from keeping or teaching in schools, so as to force all
Nonconformists under the instruction of the Church. Harley would not
give this bigoted measure his support, and so lost the confidence of
half his own party, and, moreover, the favour of the queen, who was
persuaded by St. John to give her patronage to the bill.
[Sidenote: =Bolingbroke chief minister.=]
In consequence Harley was dismissed from office, the Schism Act was
passed, and Bolingbroke became the queen's chief minister. He set to
work to prepare for a Jacobite restoration, filling all posts in the
state with partisans of the exiled prince. So able and determined was
he, that the Whigs took alarm, and began to make preparation to defend
the Protestant succession. They put themselves into communication with
George of Hanover, whose aged mother the electress was just dead, and
swore to secure him the throne, even at the cost of civil war.
[Sidenote: =Illness of the queen.=]
But the new ministry had only been in power a few days, when Queen
Anne was stricken with a mortal sickness. Bolingbroke had not reckoned
on this chance, and was caught but half prepared. He saw that unless
he acted, and acted promptly, the law of the land must take its
course, and the Elector George become King of England. But action was
difficult; the army was Whig at heart, and even the majority of the
Tories were not prepared to draw the sword to place a Romanist on the
throne. While Bolingbroke hesitated, his enemies struck their blow.
[Sidenote: =Action of the Hanoverian dukes.--Death of Anne.=]
As the English Constitution then stood, the Cabinet system was but
half developed. The modern idea that the queen's advisers should be a
small homogeneous body of men of the same party, meeting together under
the presidency of the prime minister, was only just coming into being.
It was still a moot point whether, during the sovereign's illness or
at his or her death, the executive power lay in the hands of the whole
Privy Council or of the members of it alone who were actually ministers
and members of the Cabinet. The supporters of the Protestant succession
took advantage of this doubt. While the queen lay speechless and dying,
three dukes, Shrewsbury, a "Hanoverian Tory," and Argyle and Somerset,
two Whigs, presented themselves at the meeting of the Cabinet and
claimed a seat in the assembly as privy councillors. Bolingbroke did
not dare to exclude them, and thereby lost his chance of carrying out a
_coup d'état_. For the dukes called in all the other privy councillors,
a majority of whom were Whigs or moderate Tories, and took the conduct
of affairs out of the prime minister's hands. The queen died that night
(August 1, 1714), and the Privy Council at once proclaimed the elector
under the name of George I. Bolingbroke retired in wrath, muttering
that if he had been granted six weeks for preparation, he would have
given England a different king.
THE STUARTS.
JAMES IV. = Margaret = Archibald Douglas,
of Scotland, | of England. | Earl of Angus.
1488-1513. | |
| |
Mary of Guise = JAMES V., Margaret = Matthew,
| 1513-1542. Douglas. | Earl of
| | Lennox.
| +----+-------+
| | |
(1) Francis II. = MARY, = (2) Henry Lord Charles,
of France. 1542-1567.| Darnley. Earl of Lennox.
(3) James Earl | |
Bothwell. | Arabella Stuart.
|
JAMES VI. of Scotland, 1567-1625. = Anne of
I. of England, 1603-1625. | Denmark.
|
+-----------+-----------------------------+-------+
| | |
Henry CHARLES I., = Henrietta Elizabeth = Frederick,
died 1612. 1625-1649. | of France. | Elector
| | Palatine.
| |
| +--------+-------+-------+
| | | | |
| Charles Rupert. Maurice. Sophia = Ernest,
| Lewis, | Elector
| Elector | of
| Palatine. | Hanover.
| | |
| Elizabeth = Philip. GEORGE I.,
| | Duke of Orleans. 1714-1727.
| |
| Dukes of Orleans.
|
+-----------+---------+-------------------+-----------------------+
| | | |
CHARLES II., JAMES II., = (1) Anne Hyde. Mary = William II. |
1660-1685. 1685-1688. | (2) Mary of | of |
| Modena. | Orange. |
| | |
| WILLIAM III., = MARY II., |
| 1689-1702. his |
| cousin. |
+--------------------+-+--------------------+ |
| | | |
(1) (1) (2) |
MARY II., = William ANNE, = George JAMES, +----+
1689-1694. of 1702-1714. | of the old |
Orange. | Denmark. Pretender, |
| died 1765. |
| | |
William, | |
Duke of Gloucester, | |
died 1701. | |
| |
+--------------------+--------------+ |
| | |
Charles Edward, Henry Cardinal, Philip = Henrietta.
the young Pretender, Duke of York, of |
died 1788. died 1807. Orleans.|
|
|
|
Victor = Anne
of |
Savoy. |
|
Dukes of Savoy.
FOOTNOTES:
[49] For this success the volatile and unscrupulous Earl of
Peterborough claimed all the credit. But his account of his doings in
Spain is a mere romance, and he was in truth a hindrance rather than an
aid to the allies.
[50] A Scottish Colonial Company had been formed to seize and colonize
the pestilential region about the Isthmus of Panama--then known as
Darien--so as to obtain access to the Pacific (1698). The Scottish
Parliament gave it great privileges, but William III. refused to
confirm them, and would not commit England to the scheme. The colonists
all perished of disease and tropical heat; but the Scots ascribed the
failure to English jealousy.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
THE RULE OF THE WHIGS.
1714-1739.
[Sidenote: =Character of George I.=]
George Lewis, Elector of Hanover, who in virtue of the Act of
Settlement now mounted the English throne, was a selfish, hard-hearted,
unamiable, and uninteresting man of fifty-four. He was intensely German
in all his ideas and prejudices; he could not speak a word of English,
nor had he the slightest knowledge of the political and social state of
the kingdom that he was called upon to govern. Being a very cautious
man, he had never thought himself secure of the English crown, and now
that he had obtained it, he always looked upon it as a precarious piece
of property, that might some day be taken from him. He was convinced
that he might at any moment be forced to return to his native Hanover,
so he did not attempt to make himself at home on this side of the North
Sea. During his thirteen years of rule he never ceased to feel himself
a stranger in his palaces at London or Windsor. He wished to make what
profit he could out of England, but he was so ignorant of English
politics that he felt himself constrained to rely entirely on his
ministers, and let them manage his affairs for him. His sole fixed idea
was that the Tory party were irretrievably committed to Jacobitism, and
that, if he wished to keep his throne, he must throw himself entirely
into the hands of his friends the Whigs. With his accession, therefore,
began the political ascendency of that party, which was to last more
than half a century [1714-1770].
[Sidenote: =The king and the Whigs.=]
There was no romantic loyalty or mutual respect in the bargain which
was thus struck between the Whig party and the new dynasty. The king
knew that his ministers looked upon him as a mere political necessity.
They could have no liking for their stolid, selfish master. George
was indeed most unlovable to those who knew him best. He had placed
his wife, Sophia of Celle, in lifelong captivity on a charge of
unfaithfulness. But he himself lived in open sin with two mistresses,
whom he made Duchess of Kendal and Countess of Darlington when he came
to the English throne. He was at bitter enmity with his son George,
Prince of Wales; they never met if they could avoid a meeting. George
was, in short, the very last person to command either love or respect
from any man.
[Sidenote: =The beginning of Cabinet government.=]
With the accession of George I. began the substitution of the prime
minister and the Cabinet for the king as the actual ruler of England.
Down to Anne's time the sovereign had habitually attended the meetings
of the Privy Council, and was in constant contact with all the members
of the ministry. They were still regarded as his personal servants, and
he would often dismiss one minister without turning the whole ministry
out of office. The notion that the Cabinet were jointly responsible for
each other's actions, and that the king must accept any combination of
ministers that a parliamentary majority chose to impose upon him, had
not yet come into being. Even the mild and apathetic Queen Anne had
been wont to remove her great officers of state at her own pleasure,
without consulting the rest of the Cabinet, much less the Parliament.
But George I. was so absolutely ignorant of English politics, and
placed at such a disadvantage by his inability to speak the English
language, that he never attempted to interfere with his ministers.
He seldom came to their meetings, and usually communicated with them
through the prime minister of the day. A single fact gives a fair
example of the difficulty which George found in dealing with his new
subjects. He knew no English, while Walpole--his chief minister for
more than half his reign--knew neither German nor French; they had
therefore to discuss all affairs of state in Latin, which both of
them spoke extremely ill. It can easily be understood that George was
constrained to let all things remain in the hands of the Whig statesmen
who had placed him on the throne. He fingered much English money, and
he was occasionally able to use the influence of England for the profit
of Hanover in continental politics. In other respects he was a perfect
nonentity.
The Whig party which now obtained possession of office, and clung to
it for two full generations, was no longer led by its old chiefs.
Godolphin had died in 1712; Marlborough, though he had returned
to England, was not restored to power. His character had been
irretrievably injured by the revelations of 1711, and he was suspected
(not without foundation) of having renewed his old intrigues with the
exiled Stuarts during Harley's tenure of office. The Whigs now gave him
the honourable and lucrative post of commander-in-chief, but would not
serve under him. Only a year after George's accession he was attacked
by paralysis and softening of the brain, and retired to his great
palace of Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, where he lingered till 1722, broken
in mind and body.
[Sidenote: =The new Whig leaders.=]
The Whigs were now led by the Earl of Sunderland, the son-in-law of
Marlborough, by Earl Stanhope--a general who had won some military
reputation in Spain during the late war--by Lord Townshend, and Sir
Robert Walpole, the youngest and ablest of the party chiefs. They were
all four men of considerable ability, too much so for any one of them
to be content to act as the subordinate and lieutenant of another.
Hence it came that, though they had combined to put George I. on the
throne, they soon fell to intriguing against each other, and split the
Whig party into factions. These cliques did not differ from each other
in principles, but were divided merely by personal grudges that their
leaders bore against each other. They were always making ephemeral
combinations with each other, and then breaking loose again. But on one
thing they were agreed--the Tories should never come into power again,
and to keep their enemies out of office they could always rally and
present a united front.
[Sidenote: =The supporters of the Whig government.=]
The Whig party drew its main strength from three sources. The first was
the strong Protestant feeling in England, which made most men resolve
that the Pretender must be kept over-seas at any cost, even at that of
submitting to the selfish and stolid George I. The second was the fact
that the Whigs had enlisted the support of the mercantile classes all
over the country by their care for trade and commerce. While in power
in Anne's reign, they had done their best to make the war profitable
by concluding commercial treaties with the allies, and by furthering
the colonial expansion of England. This was never forgotten by the
merchants. The third mainstay of the Whig party was their parliamentary
influence. A majority of the House of Lords was on their side, and they
contrived to manage the Commons by a judicious mixture of corruption
and coercion.
[Sidenote: =Pocket boroughs and crown boroughs.=]
The great peers had many "pocket boroughs" in their power--that is,
they possessed such local influence in their own shires that they
could rely on returning their own dependents or relatives for the
seats that lay in their neighbourhood. Many of these "pocket boroughs"
were also "rotten boroughs"--places, that is, which had been important
in the middle ages, but had now decayed into mere hamlets with a few
score of inhabitants. Over such constituencies the influence of the
local landlord was so complete, that he could even sell or barter away
the right to represent them in Parliament. The most extraordinary of
these rotten boroughs were Old Sarum and Gatton, each of which owned
only _two_ voters, men paid to live on the deserted sites by their
landlords. Yet they had as many representatives in the House of Commons
as Yorkshire or Devon! Besides these nomination boroughs, the Whigs had
now control over a number of crown boroughs, places where of late the
members had been wont to be chosen by the sovereign; there were many
such in Cornwall, where the king, as duke of that county, was supreme
landlord. The Tudors had made many Cornish villages into parliamentary
constituencies in order to pack the House of Commons with obedient
members.
[Sidenote: =Parliamentary influence of the Whigs.=]
Hitherto the crown and the great peers had seldom acted together, and
no one had realized how large a portion of the House of Commons could
be influenced by their combination. But when, in the days of the two
first Georges, the Whig oligarchy wielded the power of the crown as
well as their own, they obtained a complete control over the Lower
House. Often the Tory opposition shrank to a minority of sixty or
eighty votes, and the only semblance of party government that remained
was caused by the quarrels and intrigues of the leaders of the Whigs,
who fought each other on personal grounds as bitterly as if they had
been divided by some important principle.
[Sidenote: =The Jacobites.--Death of Lewis XIV.=]
In the first year of King George, however, the Whigs were still kept
together by their fear of the enemy. The Jacobites, who had seemed
so near to triumph in Bolingbroke's short tenure of power, did not
yield without an appeal to arms. The late prime minister and his
chief military adviser, the Duke of Ormonde, both fled to France and
joined the Pretender. When safe over-seas they began to organize an
insurrection, counting on the active assistance of Lewis XIV., who
was always ready to aid his old dependents the Stuarts. But the plot
was not yet ready to burst, when the old king died, and his successor
in power, the regent Philip of Orleans, refused to risk any step that
might lead to a war with England.
[Sidenote: =Bolingbroke and the Tory party.=]
Nevertheless, Bolingbroke and his master persevered. They had so many
friends both in England and in Scotland, that they thought that they
could hardly fail. They had not realized that most of these friends
were lukewarm, and unprepared to take arms in order to give the crown
to a Romanist. Two-thirds of the Tory party hated the Pope even more
than they hated the Whigs and the Hanoverian king, and would not move
unless James Stuart showed some signs of wishing to conform to the
Church of England. Their loyalty to the national Church was stronger
than their loyalty to the divine right of kings.
[Sidenote: =Disaffection in Scotland.=]
But the wilder and more excitable spirits in the party were ready to
follow Bolingbroke. They saw all their hopes of political advancement
cut away by George's alliance with the Whigs, and determined to make a
bold stroke for power. In Scotland more especially did the emissaries
of the Pretender meet with encouragement. The Scots were still
very sore over the passing of the Act of Union in 1707, and nursed
their ancient grudge against England. But the most active source of
discontent was the hatred which the minor clans of the Highlands felt
for the powerful tribe of the Campbells.
[Sidenote: =Ascendency of the Campbells.=]
The rule of George I. in England implied the domination of that great
Whig clan, and its chief the Duke of Argyle, over the lands north
of Forth and Clyde. For now, as in 1645 and 1685, the chief of the
Campbells, the MacCallain Mor, as his clansmen called him, was at the
head of the Presbyterian or Whig party in Scotland. The chiefs of the
other Highland tribes were as bitterly hostile to the present Duke of
Argyle as their ancestors had been to his father and grandfather.
[Sidenote: =The Earl of Mar in the Highlands.=]
[Sidenote: =The Lowland Jacobites.=]
[Sidenote: =The English Jacobites.=]
The head of the Jacobite plotters in the north was John Erskine, Earl
of Mar, who had been Bolingbroke's Secretary of State for Scotland in
the Cabinet of 1714. He was a busy and ambitious man, who was bitterly
vexed at seeing his prospects of political advancement at an end.
Under the pretence of gathering a great hunting-party, he assembled a
number of the leading chiefs of the Highlands at Braemar Castle. On
his persuasion they resolved to take arms for King James. Among the
clans which joined in the rising were the Gordons, Murrays, Stuarts,
Mackintoshes, Macphersons, Macdonalds, Farquharsons, and many more. In
the Lowlands a simultaneous rising was arranged by some of the lords of
the Border, headed by the Earls of Nithsdale, Carnwath and Wintoun, and
Lord Kenmure. Meanwhile England was also to be stirred up. The Duke of
Ormonde was to land in Devonshire with some refugees from France. Lord
Derwentwater and Mr. Forster, a rich Northumbrian squire, undertook to
raise and organize the northern counties. A third rising was to take
place in Wales.
[Sidenote: =The Highlanders as a military force.=]
In the autumn of 1715 the Jacobites struck their blow. On September
6th Mar raised the royal standard of Scotland at the Castletown of
Braemar. Immediately a score of chiefs joined him, and an army of
5000 or 6000 men was at his disposal. Nor were the Highlanders to be
despised as a military force. The ancient Celtic turbulence and tribal
feuds yet survived in the lands beyond the Tay, and the clansmen were
still reared to arms from their youth up. Their fathers had fought
under Dundee, and their grandfathers had served Montrose in the old
civil wars of Charles I. The Scottish Government had never succeeded
in pacifying the Highlands, and the clans were still wont to lift each
other's cattle, and to engage in bloody affrays. They were blindly
devoted to their chiefs, and would follow them into any quarrel; the
cause in which they armed was indifferent to them--it was enough for
them to know their master's will, and to carry it out. When called to
arms, they came out with gun, broadsword, and shield. The force and
fury of their charge were tremendous, and none but the best of regular
troops could stand against them. But they were utterly undisciplined;
it was difficult to keep them to their standards, since they were prone
to melt home after a battle, to stow away their plunder. Moreover,
their tribal pride was so great, and their ancient tribal feuds so
many, that it was very hard to induce any two clans to serve side by
side, or to help each other loyally.
Mar was a mere politician; he was destitute of force of character, and
had earned the dishonourable name of "Bobbing John" by his fickle and
shifty conduct. No worse leader could have been found to command the
horde of high-spirited, jealous, and quarrelsome mountaineers whom he
had called to arms.
[Sidenote: =Failures of the insurrection in the West of England.=]
When the news of Mar's rising was noised abroad, the Jacobites in the
Scottish Lowlands and in Northumberland gathered themselves together
according to their promise. But the insurrections in Devonshire and
Wales, on which the Pretender had been counting, did not take place.
The Whig Government had sent most of its available troops to the West
of England, and had arrested the chief Jacobites of those parts, so
that the Duke of Ormonde, on landing near Plymouth, found no support,
and hastily returned to France. But Scotland and Northumberland were
all ablaze, and it seemed that the throne of George I. was in great
danger, for the army available against the insurgents was less than
10,000 strong, owing to the reductions which the Tories had carried out
after the peace of Utrecht.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston.=]
But the mistakes and feebleness of the Jacobite leaders sufficed to
wreck their enterprise. The insurgents on the English and Scottish
Border united, and advanced into Lancashire, where Roman Catholics were
many and Toryism strong. But their imbecile and cowardly leader, Thomas
Forster, allowed himself to be surrounded at Preston by a force of 1000
cavalry under General Carpenter, and tamely laid down his arms after
a slight skirmish, though his men outnumbered the regulars by three
to one. He and all his chief supporters, the Earls of Derwentwater,
Nithsdale, Nairn, Carnwath and Wintoun, and Lord Kenmure, were sent
prisoners to London (November 12, 1715).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Sheriffmuir.=]
Meanwhile Mar had gathered an army of 10,000 men, and had seized
Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and the whole of the north of Scotland; but,
with an unaccountable sluggishness, he lingered north of the Tay, and
made no attempt to capture Edinburgh or to overrun the Lowlands. He
allowed the Duke of Argyle, who had taken post at Stirling with 3000
men, to maintain the line of the Forth, and to keep separate the two
areas of insurrection. It was only on the very day of the surrender
of Preston that Mar at last consented to move southward from Perth.
Argyle advanced to meet him, and then ensued the indecisive battle of
Sheriffmuir. In this fight each army routed the left wing of the other,
and then retired towards its base. Mar's bad generalship and the petty
quarrels of the clans had neutralized the vast advantage of numbers
which the Jacobites possessed (November 13, 1715).
[Sidenote: =Mar's army disperses.=]
Mar brought his army back to Perth in a mutinous and discontented
condition; each chief laid on another the loss of the expected victory,
and the Highlanders began to melt away to their homes. It was to no
purpose that James Stuart himself at last appeared, to endeavour to
rally his dispirited followers. The Pretender was a slow and ungenial
young man, with a melancholy face and a hesitating manner. He failed
to inspire his followers with the enthusiasm which he did not himself
possess, and his cause continued to lose ground. When Argyle, largely
reinforced from England, began to move northward, James deserted his
army and took ship for France. The remnants of Mar's once formidable
host then disbanded themselves; the chiefs fled over-sea or submitted
to Argyle, while the clansmen dispersed to their valleys.
Thus ended in ignominious failure the great rising of 1715. The Whigs
took no very cruel revenge on the insurgents. Two peers, the Lords
Derwentwater and Kenmure,[51] were beheaded, and about 30 persons of
meaner rank hanged. As the years went by, most of the Jacobite chiefs
were pardoned and returned to England. Even Bolingbroke was allowed to
come back from exile in 1722.
[Sidenote: =Second attempt of the Pretender.=]
Even after his lamentable failure in 1715-16, the Pretender still
nourished some hopes of exciting another rebellion. When France refused
to help him, he turned to Spain, and got some small assistance from
Philip V., who, as we shall see, had the best reasons for disliking the
Whigs. A few hundred Spanish troops landed in Rosshire in 1719, and
were joined by the clans of the neighbourhood; but no general rising
took place, and the whole Jacobite force was dispersed or captured by
Carpenter--the victor of Preston--at the battle of Glenshiel.
[Sidenote: =War with Spain.--Schemes of Alberoni.=]
The tale of "the Fifteen" is the one stirring incident in the
inglorious annals of George I. The domestic interest of the remainder
of his reign centred in the quarrels and intrigues of the various Whig
parties with each other. The only important constitutional change which
dates from this time is the "Septennial Act" of 1716, which fixed the
duration of Parliament at seven years. Since 1694 three years had been
their legal term, but, on account of the inconvenience of general
elections at such short intervals, the longer term was substituted and
still prevails. In foreign politics the only notable event was a short
war with Spain in 1718-20. This was caused by an attempt of Philip V.
and his able minister, Cardinal Alberoni, to reconquer the old Spanish
dominions in Sicily and Naples. England, as one of the guarantors of
the treaty of Utrecht, interfered to aid the Austrians and the Duke of
Savoy, the two powers whom Spain had attacked, and an English fleet
under Admiral Byng destroyed off Cape Passaro the Spanish squadron
which had accompanied the army that invaded Sicily.
In revenge Cardinal Alberoni gave the Jacobites what help he could, and
endeavoured to concert an alliance with Charles XII., the warlike King
of Sweden. But he and his helpers were too weak to cope with Austria,
France, and England, who were all leagued against him. Alberoni was
forced from office, and his master Philip V. signed an ignominious
peace, and gave up his ephemeral conquests in Sicily (1720).
The ministry which had carried on the war with Spain had been composed
of that section of the Whigs who followed Stanhope and Sunderland. But
in the same year in which peace was signed, that cabinet was replaced
by another, and England saw the advent to power of the prime minister
who was to rule the three kingdoms for the next twenty-two years
(1721-42), Sir Robert Walpole.
[Sidenote: =The South Sea Bubble.=]
The Stanhope cabinet was overthrown, not by the strength of its
enemies, but by its own misfortune in becoming involved in the great
financial panic known as the "South Sea Bubble." The South Sea Company
was a trading venture which had been started in 1711 for developing
commerce with Spanish America and the countries of the Pacific. The
undertaking had been very successful, and the shares of the company
were much sought after, and commanded a very heavy premium. But the
directors who managed it were venturesome and reckless men, who wished
to extend their operations outside the sphere of trade into that of
finance and stock-jobbing. They formed a great scheme for offering
the Government the huge sum of £7,000,000 for the privilege of taking
over the management of the National Debt, which had hitherto been in
the hands of the Bank of England. They intended to recoup themselves
by inducing the creditors who held the state loans to exchange them
for new stock of the South Sea Company, which would thus accumulate
a capital sufficient to develop its trade all over the world, and
distance all rivals.
Stanhope and Sunderland accepted this wild offer; they were glad to
get the burden of the National Debt off their shoulders, and did
not stop to think if they were treating the public creditors fairly
in handing them over to the mercies of a greedy trading company.
Accordingly, the management of the debt was duly transferred to the
South Sea Company, and the directors did their best to put off their
shares on the late holders of Government stock. For a time they were
successful; the exchange was in many cases effected, and on terms
very favourable to the Company, whose prospects were so well thought
of that a share nominally worth £100 was actually sold for £1000. But
this prosperity was purely fictitious; the actual bulk and profit of
the Company's trade with the Pacific was not able to bear a quarter of
the financial mountain that had been built up upon it. The first shock
to credit that occurred was sufficient to expose the fraud that had
been perpetrated on the public. The success of the South Sea Company
had led to the starting of many other companies, some of them genuine
but hazardous ventures, some mere swindling devices for robbing the
investor. A general madness seemed to have fallen upon the nation,
and in the haste to make money quickly and without exertion, all
classes rushed into the whirl of speculation and stock-jobbing. It is
said that subscribers were found for schemes "to discover perpetual
motion, and utilize it for machinery," "to make salt water fresh," "to
render quicksilver malleable," "to fatten hogs by a new process," and
even "to engage in a secret undertaking which shall hereafter be made
public." Of course, all these bubble companies began to burst before
they were many months old, and to ruin those who had engaged in them.
The financial crisis which was brought about by these failures, led
to a general panic, which affected all speculative enterprises, great
and small. None suffered more than the South Sea Company itself, whose
shares gradually sank from 1000 down to 135. This ruined thousands of
investors, and finally broke the company itself, which proved unable to
pay the Government the £7,000,000 that it had covenanted to give for
the privilege of managing the National Debt.
[Sidenote: =Fall of the Stanhope cabinet.=]
On the suspension of the South Sea Company, a cry of wrath arose all
over the country against the Stanhope cabinet, which had taken the
venture under its patronage and entrusted it with such important
public duties. It was whispered that some of the ministers had been
induced to lend their aid to the scheme by corrupt influences, and
that others had made money by using their official information to
aid them in speculation. These suspicions were mooted in Parliament,
and, when investigated, proved to be not without foundation. When an
inquiry was pressed for, Craggs, the Postmaster-General, committed
suicide; Aislabie, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was expelled from
the House as "guilty of notorious and infamous corruption;" Stanhope,
the prime minister, was being attacked in the Lords for the doings of
his subordinates, when he fell down dead in an apoplectic fit. His
colleague Sunderland resigned his post of First Lord of the Treasury,
though he was personally acquitted of all blame in the matter of the
South Sea Company.
[Sidenote: =Walpole and Townshend in office.=]
Thus the Stanhope-Sunderland cabinet had disappeared, and the other
section of the Whigs, headed by Walpole and Townshend, came into
office. The former became Chancellor of the Exchequer and took charge
of home affairs, while Townshend was entrusted with the foreign
relations of the country. Entering into power under pledges to stay
the financial crisis and save all that could be rescued from the wreck
of the South Sea Company, they executed their task with success. The
company was let off the payment of £7,000,000 which it had promised
to the state, but deprived of the charge of the National Debt. By
confiscating the estates of its fraudulent directors, enough money
was obtained to pay all its debtors, and thus the crisis proved less
disastrous than had at first been expected.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Walpole.=]
Sir Robert Walpole was the ruling spirit of the new cabinet; he
showed his masterful mind by keeping his brother-in-law Townshend
in the second place, and ultimately turned him out of the ministry.
"The firm," he said, "must be Walpole and Townshend, not Townshend
and Walpole." He soon got the king into complete subjection, for
George asked for nothing more than a liberal civil list and frequent
opportunities of visiting his beloved Hanover. Nor was he less
masterful with the two Houses, where the Tory opposition and the Whigs
of the rival faction were equally unable to make any head against him.
[Sidenote: Walpole as a statesman.]
Walpole was a strange example of the height to which the practical
power of dealing with other men may raise one who is neither
intellectually nor morally the superior of his fellows. He was a
wealthy county gentleman from Norfolk, who had entered parliament
early, and had already made himself a place in politics before the
death of Queen Anne. The one subject of which he had a competent
knowledge was finance; in most of the other spheres of politics he
was grossly ignorant, and most of all was he deficient in a grasp
of European politics. He did not understand a word of French or any
other modern tongue, a fact which is enough by itself to account for
his inadequate foreign policy. His morals and his language were alike
coarse; he affected a shameless cynicism, which is well reflected in
the saying that "every man has his price" which was put into his mouth
by his enemies.
[Sidenote: =Government by corruption.=]
This phrase, indeed, well expresses his political methods; his one
end was to maintain himself in office, and for that purpose he kept
his party in a state of complete subjection. Good service he rewarded
by good pay, whether in the form of office and preferment, or in the
grosser shape of hard cash. He was always prepared to buy any member
or group of members by open bribery, and the taint of corruption
dating from the times of Charles II. was still so strong in English
politics that he seldom failed to secure his prize. He was impatient of
opposition, and gradually turned out of office any colleague who would
not obey his slightest nod; even his own brother-in-law Townshend and
Lord Carteret, the ablest diplomatist of the day, were forced to leave
his cabinet by his unreasoning jealousy. He preferred to work with
nonentities, because they feared and obeyed him.
Walpole was a thoroughly bad influence in English politics; he lowered
the moral tone of a whole generation by his constant sneers at
probity and patriotism. He promoted a host of unworthy men to power.
Most especially did he injure the national Church by his practice of
bestowing bishoprics and other high preferments on mere political
partisans, without any thought as to their spiritual fitness.
Though the Whigs professed to be the party of liberty, enlightenment,
and toleration, Walpole did not pass one important bill to improve the
constitution or the social state of the nation in his twenty-two years
of power. He only took thought for the material prosperity of England,
and cared nothing for her moral welfare. Hence it comes that his whole
term of office is almost a blank in our political history.
[Sidenote: =Death of George I.=]
So firm a grasp had Walpole on the helm of power, that his position was
not in the least shaken by the death of his master George I. [1727].
The king died suddenly while absent on one of his periodical visits to
Hanover, and was succeeded by his son and bitter enemy, George, Prince
of Wales. The new sovereign disliked Walpole on principle, because he
had been his father's confidant, but found himself quite unable to turn
him out of power. Immediately on hearing of his predecessor's death,
George II. bade Walpole give up his seals of office, but a few days
later he had to ask him to resume them, after finding that no one else
would undertake to construct a cabinet. For fifteen years more he was
constrained to keep his father's old minister (1727-1742).
[Sidenote: =Character of George II.=]
George II. was a man of much greater force of character than George
I. He was a busy, consequential, irascible little man, who would have
liked to play a considerable part in English politics if the Whigs had
only allowed him. He was a keen if not an able soldier, and had served
with some distinction under Marlborough in the Low Countries. He took
a great interest in foreign affairs, and chafed bitterly at the way in
which Walpole persisted in keeping out of all European complications.
He spoke English fluently with a vile German accent: every one has
heard of his famous dictum, "I don't like Boetry, and I don't like
Bainting." His tastes were coarse, and his private life indifferent.
But he was wise enough to let himself be guided in many things by his
clever wife, Caroline of Anspach, who possessed the very qualities
in which he was most wanting, was a judicious patroness of arts and
letters, and knew how to win popularity both for her husband and
herself. It was mainly by her advice that King George was induced to
keep Walpole in power, instead of rushing into the turmoil that would
have followed his dismissal.
[Sidenote: =The Excise Bill.=]
Walpole went on, for the first twelve years of the reign of George
II., ruling the country in the same unostentatious way as before. He
only made one attempt to introduce a measure of importance in the
whole time; this was his Excise Bill of 1733, a financial scheme for
suppressing smuggling, and encouraging the use of England as a central
depôt by other nations, by means of a system of free trade. Tobacco,
wine, and spirits were to be imported without paying any customs duty
at the port of entry, and were to be permitted to be re-exported
without any charge. But the retailers of these commodities were to pay
the duty on each quantity as they sold it, so that the tax should be
paid inland if not at the seaport. When a great cry was raised against
the bill, as inquisitorial and tyrannous, Walpole tamely dropped it
rather than risk his hold on power.
[Sidenote: =The War of the Polish Succession.=]
Meanwhile the continent was much disturbed by the "War of the Polish
Succession" (1733-1735), in which Austria fought unsuccessfully against
Spain, France, and Turkey. But Walpole would not interfere to aid our
old ally, and saw her lose Naples and Sicily without stirring a hand.
Much was to be said in favour of keeping England out of foreign wars in
which she had no direct interest; but the new union of France and Spain
boded ill for England. Already these two powers had secretly formed a
union, afterwards known as the "Family Compact," by which the uncle and
nephew, Philip V. and Lewis XV., bound themselves to do their best to
put an end to England's naval supremacy, and to crush her commercial
greatness (1733).
[Sidenote: =Commercial hostility of Spain.=]
This treaty was carefully kept dark, but the spirit which had inspired
it could not be concealed. The Spanish government began to redouble
its vexatious pretensions to a monopoly of the trade of South America,
and to interfere with the commercial rights which England possessed
under the treaty of Utrecht. The governors of the Spanish colonies and
their custom-house officials waxed more and more tyrannous and insolent
to the English merchants who endeavoured to carry on a trade with
America. The state of public feeling in England grew very bitter over
this matter--all the more so because Walpole refused to listen to any
complaints, or to remonstrate with the Spaniards.
[Sidenote: =The case of Captain Jenkins.=]
At last the case of a merchant captain named Jenkins brought the
national anger to boiling-point. His vessel had been boarded, and he
himself maltreated by a Spanish _guarda-costa_. He asserted that the
officer who searched his ship had cut off his ear, and told him to
take it back and show it to his masters. And he certainly produced the
severed ear in a box, and exhibited it freely. His story may have been
exaggerated, but it was universally believed, and Walpole was attacked
on all sides for his tame submission to Spanish insults.
[Sidenote: =War with Spain declared.=]
Determined to keep himself in power at all costs, the prime minister
demanded reparation from Spain, and, on failing to obtain it,
reluctantly declared war. The public joy on the news of the rupture was
unbounded. Only Walpole was sad at the end of twenty years of peace and
prosperity that his inglorious rule had given to the land. "Ring your
bells now," he is reported to have said when he heard the rejoicings
of London, "but you will soon be wringing your hands."
Thus England embarked on the first of four great continental wars,
which were to cover the greater part of the eighteenth century.
THE HOUSE OF HANOVER.
GEORGE I. = Sophia of Celle.
1714-1727. |
|
GEORGE II. = Caroline of Anspach.
1727-1760. |
|
|
+------------------+-------------------------+
| |
Frederick, Prince of Wales = Augusta of William, Duke
| Saxe Gotha. of Cumberland.
|
|
GEORGE III. = Charlotte of
1760-1820. | Mecklenburg Strelitz.
|
+----------------------+---------------+--+-----------+
| | | |
GEORGE IV. = Caroline Frederick, WILLIAM IV. |
1820-1830. | of Duke of York 1830-1837. |
| Brunswick. and Albany. |
| |
| |
| |
Princess Charlotte = Leopold of |
died 1816. Saxe Coburg-Gotha. |
|
+--------------------------+
|
|
+--------------+---------------+
| |
Edward, Ernest, Duke
Duke of Kent = Victoria of Cumberland;
| of Saxe King
| Coburg. of Hanover
| 1830-1851.
VICTORIA = Albert
1837. of Saxe
Coburg-
Gotha.
FOOTNOTE:
[51] Mr. Forster and Lord Nithsdale would have shared the fate of
Derwentwater and Kenmure, but for the fact that they escaped from
prison. How the latter got away by the ingenuity and devotion of his
wife is a well-known story.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COLONIAL EMPIRE OF BRITAIN.
1739-1760.
When the unwilling Walpole was driven into war with Spain in 1739 by
the clamours of the nation, he believed that he was about to become
responsible for a very dangerous struggle, for he had private knowledge
of the existence of the "Family Compact," and knew that France was
ready to back up Spain. England, on the other hand, was entirely
without allies, having gone to war in defence of her maritime commerce,
a subject in which no other power felt any interest. As a matter of
fact, however, the war was necessary and wise, for we were bound to
come into collision with France and Spain sooner or later on the matter
of trade. They could not endure to look upon the rapid expansion of
England's commercial and colonial power, which had been increasing
at a prodigious rate since the peace of Utrecht. Our merchants were
beginning to seize an ever-growing share of the trade of the world,
and to oust the French, Dutch, Spanish, and Portuguese from all the
more distant markets, especially those of Africa, India, and the
remoter East. In India the East India Company was making advances which
exasperated its French rivals. In South America the Spaniards felt that
their ancient monopoly was gradually slipping from their hands. In
North America the prodigious growth in strength and population of our
seaboard colonies threatened a speedy end to the French settlement in
Canada. Since the acquisition of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland by the
treaty of Utrecht, the English dominions seemed to shut out from the
sea the vast but sparsely peopled tracts along the St. Lawrence which
still belonged to King Lewis. In the West Indies, Jamaica and Barbados
were gradually drawing away the wealth of the Spanish colonies of
Cuba, Porto Rico, and Hispaniola, the old centres of the sugar and
tobacco trade.
[Sidenote: =Feeble conduct of the war.--Fall of Walpole.=]
The French and Spaniards, therefore, had good reason to fear and
hate England, and if we wished to keep our control of the commerce
of the world, we were bound to fight for it. It was a misfortune,
however, that we were committed to the struggle while Walpole was
still minister. Disliking the war, he would not throw himself heartily
into it, grudged spending money, and refused to undertake any serious
operations. A few expeditions to Spanish America were all that he
sent out. The first under Admiral Vernon, though composed of no more
than six ships of war, took Porto Bello, one of the chief harbours of
the Spanish Main (1739). But a second and much larger armament under
the same leader failed disastrously before Cartagena, partly owing to
mismanagement, partly to the marsh fever, which struck down the English
in their trenches (1741). Walpole bore the discredit of his sluggish
action and his failures; he was bitterly attacked in Parliament by all
the Whigs whom he had been excluding from office for the last twenty
years, and gradually saw the reins of power slipping from his hands. In
time of war all his bribery and jobbing could not avail to save him;
his bought majority dwindled away, and early in 1742 he was defeated
in the House of Commons, and forced to resign. He retired into private
life, and died three years later, making no further show in politics.
[Sidenote: =The Carteret-Pelham ministry.=]
He was succeeded by a coalition of all the Whig factions, under the
nominal premiership of Lord Wilmington, the greatest nonentity in the
whole cabinet. The real chiefs of the new ministry were Lord Carteret,
an able diplomatist with a vast knowledge of European politics, and the
two Pelhams--Thomas, Duke of Newcastle, and Henry, his younger brother.
These two kinsmen were a pair of busy and ambitious mediocrities, who
stuck like limpets to office. They had been reared in Walpole's school,
understood all his arts of management and corruption, and had served
under him to the last, though for a year or more they had been quietly
intriguing for his fall, in order that they might succeed to his power.
[Sidenote: =The "War of the Austrian Succession."=]
The Carteret-Pelham ministry had to face a much larger problem in
European politics than the mere struggle with Spain. During the
last year the whole continent had been set ablaze by the "War of
the Austrian Succession." In 1740 died the Emperor Charles VI., the
Archduke Charles who had been a claimant for the Spanish throne in the
days before the peace of Utrecht. He was the last male of the house
of Hapsburg, and his death opened a question somewhat resembling that
of the Spanish succession in 1702. Charles had determined that his
broad dominions--the Austrian archduchies, the kingdoms of Hungary
and Bohemia, the Austrian Netherlands, and the duchies of Milan and
Parma in Italy--should pass in a body to his daughter Maria Theresa.
He chose to ignore the fact that his own elder brother, Joseph I.,
had left two daughters, who on any principle of hereditary succession
had a better claim to the Hapsburg inheritance than their younger
cousin. The elder princess Maria Amelia was the wife of Charles, the
reigning Elector of Bavaria. Charles VI. spent the last twenty years
of his life in arranging for his daughter's quiet succession. He
drew up an instrument called the "Pragmatic Sanction," by which she
was recognized as his heiress, and got it ratified by the estates of
the various principalities of his realm. He also induced most of the
powers of Europe at one time and another to guarantee this settlement;
England, France, Spain, Prussia, and Russia had all been brought to
assent to it by concessions of some sort. Only the Elector of Bavaria,
the prince whose rights were infringed by the "Pragmatic Sanction,"
had consistently refused to accept any compensation for abandoning his
wife's claims.
[Sidenote: =Frederic II. seizes Silesia.=]
But when Charles died in 1740, it was seen how little the promises
of most of the European powers were worth. The accession to the
Hapsburg heritage of a young princess with a doubtful title was too
great an opportunity to be lost by the greedy neighbours of Austria.
When Charles of Bavaria laid claim to his uncle's dominions, and
presented himself as a candidate for the imperial throne, he got prompt
assistance from many quarters. The first to stir was Frederic II., the
able and unscrupulous King of Prussia. Frederic had some ancient claims
to certain parts of the duchy of Silesia. He had also a devouring
ambition and the best-disciplined army in Europe, an army which
his eccentric father Frederic William had spent a whole lifetime in
organizing. Without any formal declaration of war, Frederic II. threw
himself on Silesia and swept out of it the armies which Maria Theresa
hastily sent against him (1741).
[Sidenote: =France and Spain join the Elector of Bavaria.=]
Then France and Spain threw in their lot with the Elector of Bavaria.
Lewis XV. had his eye on the conquest of the Austrian Netherlands,
while the old Philip V. wanted the duchies of Parma and Milan for
his younger son. Thus beset by France, Spain, Prussia, and Bavaria,
it seemed certain that Maria Theresa must succumb. Her rival Charles
was chosen Emperor by a majority of the electors, and it seemed as if
the imperial sceptre was about to pass from the house of Hapsburg.
The Austrian Netherlands, Silesia, Bohemia, and the Milanese were all
invaded at once, and the armies of Maria Theresa could not make head
at so many points against the numerical superiority of their foes. The
only ally to whom she could look for aid was England, who was already
the open enemy of Spain, and who could not tolerate the conquest of the
Netherlands by France.
[Sidenote: =Policy of Carteret.--England joins Maria Theresa.=]
An appeal for aid to this quarter met with a ready response. George II.
was anxious to help the Queen of Hungary because he disliked his nephew
Frederic II., and did not wish to see a Bavarian Emperor. Carteret,
the leading spirit in the ministry, was even more eager for the fight.
He was a far-sighted man who had realized the fact that England must
inevitably come into collision with France from their rivalry in trade
and colonization, and he therefore held that France's enemies were our
friends. It was his wish to see England embark boldly in the strife,
and send a large army to Germany to aid the Austrians. If France were
involved in an exhausting continental war, he held that she would be
unable at the same time to keep up a maritime struggle with England.
Accordingly, the ministry promised the Austrians a large subsidy, took
16,000 Hanoverian troops into British pay, and sent all the available
strength of the national army to Germany. George II., who was burning
for the fray, placed himself at the head of the Anglo-Hanoverian forces
and moved rapidly down to the Main, to attack the flank of the French
army which was invading Austria.
The fortunes of Maria Theresa now began to look more prosperous.
Carteret got her to buy off the ablest of her assailants, the King of
Prussia, by ceding him Silesia. When Frederic had withdrawn from the
struggle, the French and Bavarians were driven back from Austria, and
retreated up the Danube. It was against their flank that George was
operating in 1743, when his rather rash advance into the midst of foes
very superior in numbers brought on the battle of Dettingen (July 27,
1743).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Dettingen.=]
Finding that he was beset by forces nearly double the strength of his
own 30,000 men, the king faced about, to retire up the banks of the
Main. But the van of the French army of the Duc de Noailles outmarched
him, and threw itself across his path at the village of Dettingen,
while the main body of the enemy was rapidly coming up on his flank.
George hastily formed up his troops as they arrived, and dashed forward
to cut his way through, leading the advance in person. He was entirely
successful, drove the French into the Main with great loss, and
completely extricated himself from his difficulties. This was the last
occasion on which a king of England has ever been under fire.
[Sidenote: =The Congress at Worms.=]
Further successes followed the victory of Dettingen. The Austrians
overran Bavaria, and the Emperor Charles was obliged to lay down his
arms and ask for peace. Carteret, who had followed the king to Germany,
called together a congress at Worms, at which the representatives
of England, Holland, Sardinia, and Saxony, guaranteed the Pragmatic
Sanction, and the integrity of the dominions of the house of Hapsburg.
Next spring the allies pledged themselves to invade France, and
Carteret, in his moment of triumph, drank to the restoration of Alsace
to Germany--a wish not to be fulfilled for another 127 years.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the war.=]
But England and Austria were still far from their goal. The attack
on France had to be postponed, because the unscrupulous Frederic of
Prussia renewed the war in the North, and fell upon the rear of the
Austrians. They withdrew great bodies of troops to face him, and were
left comparatively weak on their western front.
[Sidenote: =Carteret driven from office.=]
Not long afterwards Carteret, the soul of the continental war, lost
his place at the head of the ministry. His jealous colleagues, the
two Pelhams, were anxious to get rid of him, and took a mean advantage
of his long absences in Germany. They allowed him to be attacked as
favouring a Hanoverian, not an English policy, and as consulting the
wishes of the king rather than those of the Parliament. Carteret was
violently assailed by a young politician named William Pitt, whose cry
was always that France should be assailed at sea and in her colonies,
not on her continental frontiers. The Pelhams would not defend him,
and suffered him to be loaded with many ungrounded accusations. The
opposition called his ministry "the drunken administration," because he
was somewhat flighty in his demeanour, and was known to love his bottle
of port over-well. They accused him of lavishing on German allies money
that should have gone to our own fleet, and raised such a storm of
words against him that the Pelhams had their excuse for throwing him
over--a feat which they accomplished in the end of 1744, to the great
detriment of England. William Pitt, when a minister himself in later
years, confessed that he had discovered in the course of time that
Carteret's plans were excellent, and that he had himself put them into
practice with success, after having so often denounced them as ruinous
and reckless.
[Sidenote: =Ministry of Henry Pelham and the Duke of Newcastle.=]
The Pelhams thus became supreme in the conduct of affairs, and stuck
to office as closely as their master Walpole. Henry, the younger
of the two--"a fretful, suspicious, industrious mediocrity"--was
prime minister till he died in 1754. His elder brother the duke then
succeeded him, and kept his feeble hand on the helm of state till he
lost office in 1756. English policy under these two narrow and shifty
borough-mongers soon lost the vigour that the guidance of Carteret had
imparted to it.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Fontenoy.=]
The war with France continued, but no longer with the same success as
before. In the spring of 1745 the armies of Lewis XV., under the able
Maurice of Saxony, the _Maréchal de Saxe_ as the French called him,
fell upon the Austrian Netherlands. Maria Theresa had so few troops in
this quarter that the defence of the Belgian provinces fell entirely
upon the English and Dutch. The allied armies did not act together with
much success, and the Dutch general, the Count of Waldeck, quarrelled
with his colleague, George Duke of Cumberland, the younger son of
George II. It was this want of co-operation which led to the loss
of the bloody battle of Fontenoy (May 11, 1745). The French army was
besieging Tournay, when Waldeck and Cumberland came up to relieve it,
and found the enemy drawn up along a line of woods strengthened with
redoubts on their flanks--a position much like the neighbouring field
of Malplaquet, where Marlborough had won his last fight thirty-six
years before.
While Waldeck skirmished feebly with the French wings, the stubborn and
reckless young duke pushed into the centre of the hostile army with a
solid column of English and Hanoverian infantry. He broke through two
lines of the French, and cut their host in twain, but failed for want
of support on the flanks. He was encompassed by the French reserves,
and forced back with fearful loss to his old position, but the enemy
were too maltreated to molest him further.
[Sidenote: =The rebellion of '45.=]
The campaign of 1745 was still undecided, when the greater part of the
English army was suddenly called home to face a new and unexpected
danger. The ministers of Lewis XV. had determined to try the effect of
stirring up a Jacobite rebellion, hoping to distract the strength of
England even if the house of Hanover could not be overthrown. James
Stuart, the "Old Pretender," was now elderly and had always been
apathetic, but his son Charles Edward Stuart was a young prince of a
very different character. Reckless, adventurous, and light-hearted, he
was the very man to lead a desperate venture. The French gathered an
army of 15,000 men at Dunkirk, and promised to put it at his disposal
if he would invade Scotland. But a storm scattered the transports, and
the troops were ultimately drawn off to the war in Flanders.
[Sidenote: =The Young Pretender lands in Scotland.=]
Nevertheless, Charles Edward resolved to persevere, and, on hearing
of the fight of Fontenoy, slipped off on a small privateer and landed
in Invernesshire with no more than seven companions, "the Seven Men
of Moidart," as the Jacobites called them. His arrival was quite
unexpected, and he had nothing more to rely upon than the traditional
attachment of the Highlanders to the house of Stuart. The chiefs of the
West were dismayed at the recklessness of the venture, and it was with
difficulty that the enthusiasm and personal charm of the young prince
induced them to take arms. At first only a few hundreds of the Camerons
and Macdonalds joined him, but the absolute imbecility displayed
by the English Government encouraged him more and more to make the
venture. The Marquis of Tullibardine, an exile since 1715, roused the
Perthshire clans, and the insurrection spread to South and East.
[Sidenote: =Sir John Cope marches northward.=]
The Pelham cabinet only got news of the prince's coming three weeks
after his landing in Moidart. They were in no small degree alarmed,
for well-nigh the whole army was over-sea in Flanders, and no one knew
how far disaffection might have extended in England and the Scottish
Lowlands. The only troops in the North were four battalions of foot and
two newly raised regiments of dragoons. This small army of 3000 men was
entrusted to Sir John Cope, one of the incompetent men whom the Pelhams
loved to employ, because they were pliant and docile. Cope hurried
north, hoping to relieve the two isolated military posts of Fort
William and Fort Augustus, the sole garrisons of the West Highlands.
But finding the insurgents in possession of the pass of Corry-Arrack,
over which his road ran, he swerved eastward to execute a long circular
march by way of Inverness. Thus he was no longer placed between the
enemy and the Lowlands, and left the way to Edinburgh open.
[Sidenote: =Charles Edward in Edinburgh.=]
The prince's generalship was always bold even to recklessness;
the moment that Cope had passed north of him, he dashed down into
Perthshire and struck at the capital of Scotland. He met with no
resistance till he was quite close to Edinburgh, when 600 dragoons, the
only force left in the Lowlands, fled before him at the skirmish of
Colt-Brig. The Scots of the South, Whigs and Presbyterians though they
were, showed an extraordinary apathy. They did not join the prince, but
they refused to take arms for King George. The militia of Edinburgh,
whom the half-hearted magistrates had called to arms, dispersed when
the Highlanders appeared at their gates. Thus Prince Charles was able
to seize the city, to proclaim his father king at the market cross, and
to hold his court at Holyrood.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Preston Pans.=]
Soon, however, he had to fight to preserve his conquest. Cope, on
hearing that the Highland army had passed southward, had hurried to the
coast and taken ship with his men, hoping to reach Edinburgh before the
prince. But on landing at Dunbar he found that he was three days late,
and that he must fight if he wished to recapture the city. Advancing to
Preston Pans, he camped there in a strong position covered by a marsh.
But the Highland army crossed the difficult ground in the dusk of dawn,
and fell upon him in the early morning. Cope threw his men into line,
and waited to be attacked. The result was a disgraceful rout; the
wild rush of the clansmen carried all before it. The bayonets of the
regulars proved no match for target and claymore, and the dragoons on
the flanks fled in wild panic. Cope left the field among the first, and
brought the news of his own defeat to Dunbar (September 21, 1745).
[Illustration: SCOTLAND
IN THE 18{TH} CENTURY.]
[Sidenote: =Panic in England.=]
The news of the fall of Edinburgh and the battle of Preston Pans
came like a thunderclap to the English Government. There was hardly
a soldier in the land save the royal guards in London; the militia
had not been called out, and the temper of the people was unknown.
The imbecile Pelhams were at their wits' end, and it is said that
Newcastle even made secret overtures to the Pretender. If Charles
Edward could have marched forward the morning after his victory, there
is no knowing where his success would have ended.
[Sidenote: =Inactivity of the prince.=]
But the prince halted for five weeks, to allow the Highlanders to stow
away their plunder, and to raise and arm new levies. This delay was
fatal to him; it gave the ministry time to summon over the English
troops from Flanders, and to call out the militia--a numerous if not a
very serviceable body.
[Sidenote: =Return of English troops from Flanders.=]
When Charles Edward moved forward again on November 3, his chance was
already gone. Marshal Wade lay at Newcastle with 10,000 veterans; the
Duke of Cumberland with the rest of the army of Flanders was ten days
behind him. The guards and the militia of the southern counties lay on
Finchley Common to protect London.
[Sidenote: =The advance to Derby.=]
The prince, ignorant of the fact that Jacobitism had almost disappeared
in England during Walpole's peaceful rule, imagined that Wales and
the North would rise in his favour, if only he were to show himself
beyond the Tweed with an army at his back. Leaving 4000 men to
garrison Scotland, he crossed the border with 6000 picked clansmen,
routed the Cumbrian militia at Carlisle, and pushed rapidly southward
into Lancashire. Before he had been ten days in England, he saw that
he had been deceived as to the temper of the country. Hardly a man
joined him--not 200 recruits were found for him in the Tory county of
Lancaster, which had put 2000 men in the field in the old days of "the
Fifteen." Hoping against hope, the prince pushed on still further,
skilfully eluding the armies of Wade and Cumberland, who tried in vain
to enclose him between them. But the Highlanders began to melt away
from him, to drive home the cattle they had lifted, and the Jacobite
chiefs were dismayed at the utter apathy of the English Tories. By
the time that Derby was reached the rebel army had dwindled down to
3000 men, and it seemed likely that if Charles Edward persisted in
advancing, he would arrive at London alone. Overborne by the arguments
of his followers, he gave the order to retreat (December 6, 1745).
He was ignorant of the effect that his advance had caused in the
South. Panic prevailed in London, and on the "Black Friday" when the
news of his arrival at Derby arrived, the timid ministers had been
preparing for the worst. The king's plate had been sent on shipboard,
the Bank of England had paid away every guinea in its reserve, and the
militia at Finchley were fully persuaded that they were to be attacked
on the next day by 10,000 wild clansmen.
[Sidenote: =The prince retreats to Scotland.--Battle of Falkirk.=]
The Highland army slipped back to Scotland with little difficulty,
evading both Wade and Cumberland, whose heavy regiments could make
no speed over the snowy December roads. On recrossing the Border
Charles called up his reserves, and was soon at the head of 10,000
men. He trusted to maintain his hold on Scotland, even if England was
unassailable. When the royal troops advanced, he inflicted a smart
check on their vanguard at the battle of Falkirk (January 17, 1746).
But the English came pouring northward in numbers which he could not
hope to resist; the fiery Duke of Cumberland had more than 30,000 men
on the march by the spring of the New Year, and fresh levies were
forming behind him. The Jacobite leaders saw that the day was lost,
though hitherto all the fighting had been in their favour. Their
undisciplined bands began to disperse once more, and the prince must
have known that, unless the French came to his aid, the ruin of his
cause was at hand. He was constrained to retire northward, first to
Perth, then to Inverness, with an ever-dwindling host. Cumberland
pushed on in his rear with 8000 picked men, resolved to revenge the
disgraceful days of Preston Pans and Falkirk; the rest of the English
army followed at leisure.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Culloden.=]
Charles Edward would not yield without one final blow. With the 5000
men who still followed his standard, he marched out from Inverness,
and attacked the Duke on Culloden Moor (April 16, 1746). Cumberland
was ready for the fight; he had warned his troops to receive the
Highland rush as if it were a cavalry charge, doubling the files and
presenting a triple line of bayonets by making the front ranks kneel,
while cannon were placed in the intervals between the regiments. The
clansmen charged with their usual fury, but were staggered by the
artillery fire, and almost blown to pieces by the triple volley of
three ranks of infantry delivered at a distance of only fifty paces.
The survivors straggled up only to perish on the bayonets. The prince's
left wing, where the Macdonald clan had held back on a foolish point
of tribal jealousy, was still intact; but when the English cavalry
advanced, Charles saw that the day was lost, and bade his followers
disperse. Cumberland tarnished the glory of his victory by the savage
cruelty which he displayed. He gave no quarter, shot 200 prisoners in
cold blood, and burnt every dwelling in the glens of the rebel clans.
A price of £30,000 was put upon the head of Charles Edward, who lurked
for five months in the West Highlands before he could find a ship to
take him to France. He passed through countless perils in safety, and
found no man among his unfortunate followers mean enough to betray him
in the day of adversity. The story of his romantic escape to Skye in
the disguise of the maidservant of Flora Macdonald is well known to all.
After this gallant if reckless expedition, Charles Edward never
appeared again in English politics. He did not at first despair of
striking another blow, and in 1750 paid a secret visit to Britain
to see if a second insurrection were possible. But in England the
Jacobites were almost extinct, while in Scotland they had been so
sorely crushed that they had no power to stir again. The prince had
to return, having accomplished nothing. Hope long deferred makes the
heart sick, and in middle life Charles Edward grew apathetic, took to
drinking, and became only the wreck of his old self. When his father
died in 1765, he proclaimed himself king as Charles III., but never
made another attempt to disturb the peace of England down to his death
in 1788. With his brother Henry, a cardinal of the Roman Church, the
male line of the Stuarts expired in 1807.
[Sidenote: =Suppression of Scottish Jacobitism.=]
The English Government dealt very hardly with the insurgents of 1745-6.
Three Scottish peers, the Lords Kilmarnock, Balmerino, and Lovat, were
beheaded, as was Colonel Townley, the only Englishman of rank who had
joined the prince. Many scores of men of less note were hanged or shot.
A series of bills was passed in Parliament for weakening the clans
and sapping their loyalty to their chiefs. One forbade the wearing
of the Highland dress with its tribal tartans. Another abolished the
feudal jurisdiction, which gave the chiefs power over their followers.
Another made the possession of arms a penal offence. Good roads were
pushed up into the remoter valleys, and an attempt was made to get
rid of the Gaelic language by making English compulsory in schools.
A few years later William Pitt took the wise step of endeavouring to
turn the restless military energy of the Highlanders into patriotic
channels, and raised several of the kilted regiments which have since
distinguished themselves on so many British battle-fields. By the end
of the century the Highlands were as quiet as any English shire, and
Jacobitism had faded away into a romantic sentiment.
[Sidenote: =Progress of the war in Europe.--1745-1747.=]
The war with France and Spain dragged on for three years more, under
very indifferent management on both sides. The withdrawal of the
English army from Flanders in 1745 had given the French an advantage
in the Netherlands, from which they had greatly profited. They had
overrun the whole of the Austrian provinces, and in 1746 threatened
the frontier of Holland. Cumberland and his army were recalled, after
the suppression of the Scottish rising, to check the advance of the
Maréchal de Saxe. But the duke suffered at Lawfeldt, in front of
Maestricht, a defeat of much the same character as that of Fontenoy
(July 2, 1747). Nevertheless, the French in the following winter
consented to treat for peace; they had fared badly along their frontier
on the Rhine and in Italy, and looked upon their successes in Belgium
as only sufficient to entitle them to ask for a mutual restitution
of all conquests. Moreover, their maritime trade had been completely
ruined by the war, and several of their colonies had fallen into
English hands.
[Sidenote: =The treaty of Aachen.=]
Hence came the treaty of Aachen (Aix la Chapelle), signed in the spring
of 1748, to which all the powers who had been engaged in the War of
the Austrian Succession gave their assent. Maria Theresa had finally
to acquiesce in the loss of Silesia to the King of Prussia, and to
make smaller territorial concessions in Italy to Spain and Sardinia,
giving Parma to one, and a long slip of the duchy of Milan to the
other. The remainder of her vast dominions she maintained intact, while
her husband, Francis of Lorraine, was acknowledged by all parties as
Emperor, in succession to the unfortunate Charles of Bavaria, who had
died in 1745.
[Sidenote: =The maritime contest.--Anson's voyage.=]
England, France, and Spain restored to each other all that each had
taken--no very considerable amount--and left the great question of
their colonial and commercial rivalry quite unsettled. Another and a
greater war was required to decide it. The results of the fighting
beyond the seas between 1739 and 1748 had not been very important.
We have already mentioned how the English had failed at Cartagena in
1741. On the other hand, they had captured the French island of Cape
Breton, off the mouth of the St. Lawrence, in 1744, and had maintained
with success a desultory struggle with the enemy along the inland
frontier of Canada. One hazardous expedition against the Pacific ports
of Spanish America had been carried to a brilliant end by Commodore
Anson, who followed in the steps of Drake by capturing the great
Acapulco galleon, with the yearly hoard of the mines of Mexico on board
(1743). Like Drake, too, Anson returned to Europe by the Cape route,
and brought his ship, the _Centurion_, back to Spithead in 1744, thus
completing the circumnavigation of the world in three years.
[Sidenote: =India.--Breakup of the Mogul Empire.=]
While these comparatively unimportant events had been happening on
the American side of the globe, the first war waged between England
and France in India had been giving promise of more serious results.
Down to the commencement of the eighteenth century the great empire
of the Moguls had dominated Hindostan, and the traders of the English
and French East India Companies had been no more than visitors to the
coast, allowed to build factories at convenient ports by the bounty of
the Great Mogul. But in 1707 had died Aurungzebe, the last powerful
monarch of that house, and since his death the vast Mohammedan empire
which his ancestors had built up was falling rapidly to pieces.
Everywhere the Mogul viceroys, or "nawabs," were making themselves
independent of their imperial master at Delhi. The native tribes of
India also, more especially the brave Mahrattas of the Western Deccan,
had been throwing off the Mussulman yoke and starting on a career
of conquest. The European settlers in the ports of Southern India
profited immensely by this relaxation of the central control which the
Mogul government had been wont to exercise, and assumed a much less
deferential tone when dealing with the revolted nawabs who now ruled
in the Carnatic, Bengal, and the Deccan.
[Sidenote: =Collision between the English and French settlers.=]
It was first during the War of the Austrian Succession that the English
and French ventured to engage in hostilities with each other, without
paying attention to the native powers, whose sovereign rights they were
thereby impugning. The factories of the two powers were scattered along
the Coromandel coast in curious alternation, and it was here that the
struggle took place. The English were based on their chief settlement
at Madras, the French on their stronghold of Pondicherry.
[Sidenote: =Successes of Dupleix.=]
Four years of fighting gave a decided superiority to the French, who
were headed by Dupleix, a man of great energy and far-reaching views.
He was the first to discover the part that might be played in Indian
politics by native troops officered and drilled by Europeans. These
Sepoys (_Sipahis_ is the more correct form) had originally been small
armed guards employed by the governors of the factories. Dupleix
discovered, from a chance encounter at St. Thomé (1746), that a small
body of these disciplined mercenaries could defeat whole hordes of
native cavalry, and used his discovery with skill and promptitude.
Raising large numbers of Sepoys, he built up the first regular army
that had been seen in India. In his struggle with the English he was
very successful. Madras and almost all the other English factories
fell into his hands, and it looked as if the French were to be the
sole power in Southern Hindostan. The complete triumph of Dupleix was
only prevented by his quarrels with his colleague Labourdonnais, the
governor of the Mauritius, who had come to his aid at the head of a
fleet. They were both energetic and arbitrary, refused to fall in with
each other's plans, and so failed to completely expel the English
from the Coromandel coast. The other settlements of the East India
Company--the island port of Bombay, the old dowry of Catherine of
Portugal, and the factory of Fort William at Calcutta in Bengal--were
not molested.
To the intense disgust of Dupleix, the treaty of Aachen stipulated the
mutual restoration of conquests, and the English settlements were all
given back in 1748. In India, as in America, all was left unsettled,
and the struggle for supremacy had to be deferred for a space.
[Sidenote: =The "Broad-Bottomed Administration."=]
Eight years of uneasy peace followed the indecisive and vague treaty of
Aachen (1748-1756). England, under the feeble rule of the two Pelhams,
seemed to have sunk back into the same condition of prosperous lethargy
which had been her lot in the uneventful days of Walpole. In her
political history there is nothing of moment to relate; the Pelhams had
almost silenced opposition by the simple expedient of finding places
in the cabinet or the public service for any one who might have made
himself dangerous to them. Even the eloquent and energetic William
Pitt, the consistent denouncer of all ministers, had been quieted for a
time by the gift of the lucrative post of Paymaster of the Forces. Room
was found for so many and diverse persons in the Pelham cabinet, that
it was known as the "Broad-Bottom Administration."
[Sidenote: =Conversion of the National Debt.--"Consols."=]
The Pelhams, though using the old Whig catchwords about liberty and
reform, were, like Walpole, only anxious to keep things quiet and
to preserve themselves in office. Hence there is little or nothing
to record of their doings. We may mention, however, the creation of
our celebrated 3 per cents. by Henry Pelham, who was somewhat of a
financier, his sole accomplishment. The National Debt, then a sum
of £78,000,000, was paying 4 per cent. at the time of the treaty of
Aachen. The premier, seeing that the public credit was good, and money
cheap, resolved to reduce the rate of interest. This he accomplished by
borrowing money at 3 per cent. to pay off all those national creditors
who would not accept the new scale. The conversion was accomplished
with ease, and relieved the revenue of some £500,000 a year of
expenses. The debt, thus reduced and simplified, received its new name
of "Consols," all the old loans having been consolidated into one
(1750).
[Sidenote: =The reform of the Calendar.=]
A word may be also given to the reform of the Calendar in 1752. England
up to this time had used the "Old Style," or Julian Calendar, invented
by Julius Cæsar eighteen centuries before. A slight error in the
calculation of the great Roman had made the year too short, and in the
lapse of the ages this error had grown by accumulation into as much as
eleven days. England, later than most nations, adopted the reformed or
Gregorian Calendar--named after Pope Gregory XIII.--during the Pelham
administration. Thus, the change being made on September 2, 1752, the
day that followed became the 14th instead of the 3rd. This bewildered
the multitude, and was made a serious charge against the minister by
many ignorant folks, who complained that they had been defrauded of
eleven days of their lives!
In such comparatively trifling events the middle years of the
eighteenth century passed away. The stagnant times of the old Whig
oligarchy were drawing towards their close, and the movements which
were to stir England so deeply in the next generation were beginning to
develop.
[Sidenote: =Beginning of the industrial revolution.=]
We have already spoken of the increasing commercial supremacy of
England in the period. This growth in foreign trade was now beginning
to be supplemented by an increased activity in manufacturing industry,
which was to be the distinguishing mark of the second half of the
century. But the first signs of it were already apparent before 1750.
The earliest attempt for the improvement of the inland communications
of the kingdom may be traced to 1720, when the Irwell canal was opened
to Manchester. As important a landmark is the discovery of the process
of smelting iron by means of coal in 1740. Up to this time iron had
always been worked with charcoal, and the manufacture of it had been
almost confined to the wooded districts of southern England, most
especially to the Sussex Weald. But the new process opened up the
Yorkshire iron mines, which were to completely supersede those of
the South, for in the North iron and coal are found together in most
convenient proximity. All this development, however, belongs to the
times of George III. rather than those of George II.
[Sidenote: =The Church under the Whig rule.=]
Even more important in the history of the social life of England than
the expansion of her commercial resources, was another change which
began about the middle of the eighteenth century, in the sphere of
spiritual things. The Whig supremacy in the State, which had begun
in 1714, had the most deplorable results on the Church. Walpole and
his disciples were men quite out of sympathy with any religious
impulse; their lives and morals would not bear looking into, and they
openly scoffed at religion. To them the Church was simply a field of
patronage for friends and dependents, and a machine for supplementing
the working of the State. Down to the time of Anne's death the Tory
party had been supreme within the bounds of the establishment, and the
Whigs therefore viewed the whole body of the clergy with suspicion.
They stopped in 1717 the meetings of Convocation, which had existed
from time immemorial, wishing to prevent the clerical body from
finding a mouthpiece. They systematically officered the Church with
Whig bishops, of whom nothing was asked but political orthodoxy. As
was likely, men chosen on this principle were often most unfit pastors
of the Church. A Walpole or a Pelham was not likely to select men
whose characteristics were fervour or enthusiasm. The Whig bishops
were generally of two classes--either they were prominent political
clergy, court chaplains and the like, who laid themselves out to win
preferment by their sermons, or they were "Greek-play bishops"--to use
an expressive phrase--mere scholars, whose title to promotion was to
have edited a classic author or ruled a public school. Both classes
were, as a rule, very inefficient; many were scandalous non-residents,
and seldom went near their dioceses, dwelling in London all the year
round and haunting the court. Remote sees like Bangor or Carlisle
hardly knew the face of their bishops. Some of these prelates were more
notable for their political than their religious orthodoxy; of these
"Latitudinarian" bishops perhaps the best known is Hoadley, whom the
Whigs promoted to four sees one after another, in spite of the fact
that his views on the Trinity were hardly consistent with his position
as a member of the Church.
[Sidenote: =Decline of religious feeling.=]
It was not to be expected that such prelates would be in touch with
their subordinates the country clergy, who still for the most part
remained Tory in their views, looked on the least measure for the
political emancipation of Dissenters or Romanists with horror, and
nourished a strong personal dislike for the two first Georges and their
ministers. Hence came such a breach in the unity and organization
of the Church as had never been seen before. The upper clergy were
careless and unspiritual, the lower clergy grew lethargic and apathetic
under the neglect of their superiors. There was a general tendency to
praise common sense and morality, and to sneer at theological learning
or evangelical fervour.
[Sidenote: =The Methodist movement.--John Wesley.=]
This general deadness in the Church could not long continue without
causing a reaction. The great feature in the second quarter of the
eighteenth century was the appearance of the "Methodist" movement, of
which John Wesley was the originator. Shocked by the want of energy
and enthusiasm among the clergy, Wesley, a Fellow of Lincoln College,
Oxford, devoted himself to active evangelical work, and especially to
public preaching. He is first heard of as preaching to the poor of
neglected Oxford parishes, and to the prisoners in the jail (1729). A
few years later he went out as a missionary to America, and laboured
in the backwoods of Georgia. Returning in 1738, he resumed his
work in England, passing from place to place, and addressing large
congregations of all sorts and conditions of men. His fervent eloquence
and enthusiasm came as a revelation to the neglected masses of the
cities, or to congregations condemned to many years of sermons on dry
morality. He spoke of sin and conversion with an earnestness which had
not been seen since the days of early Puritan enthusiasm. Wesley and
the numerous followers who sprang up to join him might have inspired
the Church with a new spirit of fervour, if they had but been permitted
to do so. But, unfortunately, the Latitudinarian bishops disliked his
emotional harangues and his clear-cut dogma, and the parish clergy
often treated him as an intruder when he appeared inside their cures.
Hence, though a strong Churchman at first, he was gradually driven into
schism, and became the founder of a new Nonconformist sect, instead of
the restorer of the spirituality of the Church from within. Towards the
end of his sixty years of labour (1729-91), he took the final step of
ordaining preachers and allowing them to celebrate the sacraments, thus
committing his followers to abandoning the national Church. His work,
however, was not without its effect inside the Church of England; many
who sympathized with him remained Churchmen, and from them came the
Evangelical, or newer Low-Church party, within the establishment.
[Sidenote: =Growth of a higher morality.=]
From Wesley and his contemporaries began a decided improvement in the
moral life of England. After remaining at its lowest ebb in the eighty
years that followed the Restoration, it began to mend about the middle
of the century. The change is marked in all the most characteristic
spheres of action, by an increased humanity to prisoners, paupers, and
slaves, an improved tone in literature and the drama, and a growing
demand for the observation of a higher standard of morals by public
men. Political corruption and ostentatious ill living, which had been
the rule in the beginning of the eighteenth century, had become the
exception at its end.
But if England was more serious and more moral by the end of the
century, no small share in that result must be attributed to the
sobering effect of three long and desperate wars, which more than once
seemed about to be the ruin of the realm. Between 1756 and 1815 there
were to be thirty-six years of war to twenty-three of peace, and two
whole generations were bred up in times of stress and trouble, which
developed the sterner virtues, and taught men no longer to sneer at
fervour, whether displayed in patriotism or in religion.
[Sidenote: =The Seven Years' War.=]
The "Seven Years' War" into which England was plunged in 1756, while
still under the imbecile guidance of the elder Pelham, was the most
important struggle in which she had engaged since the days of the
Spanish Armada. It definitely settled all the points which had been
left undetermined by the peace of Aachen, and gave her the empire of
the seas and the lion's share of the commerce of the world. Her hold on
these gains was to be shaken in later wars, but never lost.
The Seven Years' War, like the War of the Austrian Succession, had two
sides--the Colonial and the European. In 1756, as in 1742, England,
while contending for her own objects beyond seas, was also subsidizing
a powerful continental ally, who had his own interests to serve,
in order to distract the attention of France from the more distant
struggle. The new war resembled the old in another respect. In each
case it was the colonial quarrel which first came to the front; the
European strife was a later development. The causes which provoked the
Seven Years' War were to be found both in America and in India. In both
of these quarters the representatives of England and of France came
to blows before the mother countries had resolved on war. The quarrel
was the result of natural causes which made it inevitable, and not the
deliberate work of the timid Newcastle or the selfish Lewis XV.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Dupleix in Southern India.=]
It was in India that the first hostilities broke out, not very long
after the peace of Aachen had been signed. We have already mentioned
how the French governor Dupleix had raised an army of Sepoys, and
resolved to employ it for the furtherance of French interests in
Southern India. He was enabled to do this by the fact that a war of
succession had broken out in each of the two great native states which
were neighbours to the European settlements on the Coromandel coast. In
the Deccan two princes of the Nizam family, an uncle and a nephew, were
disputing for the throne of Hyderabad. In the Carnatic a rebellious
minister was trying to usurp his master's throne. Dupleix resolved to
sell the aid of his army to one pretender for use against the other.
The appearance of his disciplined battalions in the field settled
the fortune of war at once. He gained for his ally Mozuffer Jung the
whole of the Hyderabad dominions. Then he turned against the Carnatic,
slew the old nawab in battle, and drove his son, Mohammed Ali, into
Trichinopoly, his last stronghold. The rebel minister, Chunda Sahib,
was then saluted as ruler of the land. The two new nawabs soon became
the mere creatures of Dupleix, whose military strength completely
overawed their motley armies. They lavished millions of rupees upon
him, and Mozuffer Jung gave him the title of Supreme Vizier of all
India south of the river Kistnah, and appointed him permanent chief of
his army.
[Sidenote: =Clive seizes and holds Arcot.=]
Dupleix was in truth master of Southern India, a fact viewed with
dismay by the English settlers along the Coromandel coast. They had,
in rivalry with him, espoused the cause of the two nawabs whom he
had crushed. One of these princes was now dead, the other besieged
in his last stronghold. The rulers of Madras despaired, but a single
bold spirit persuaded them to venture a blow against the power of the
Frenchman. Robert Clive, the scapegrace son of a Shropshire squire, had
been sent out to Madras as a clerk in the East India Company's service
to keep him out of mischief. But he changed his pen for the sword,
and became a captain in the Company's army. Now he persuaded Governor
Saunders to entrust him with a few hundred men, to make a diversion in
favour of the besieged nawab, Mohammed Ali. To draw away the army which
was beleaguering Trichinopoly, Clive resolved to strike at the capital
of the Carnatic, the town of Arcot. Marching by night and with great
speed, he seized the place and fortified himself in its citadel. He was
at once attacked by the forces of the Chunda Sahib, aided by a division
of the army of Dupleix. But he contrived to inspire his 500 men with
such obstinate courage, that they repulsed all the assaults of 10,000
enemies, and finally compelled the nawab's army to withdraw foiled
(1751).
[Sidenote: =Further successes of Clive.--Dupleix recalled.=]
After thus winning Arcot, Clive was entrusted by the Madras Council
with all their disposable troops--200 Europeans and 700 English Sepoys.
With these reinforcements he took the field against Dupleix and Chunda
Sahib, routed a number of French detachments, and finally recovered the
whole of the Carnatic for Mohammed Ali, the _protégé_ of the English.
Chunda Sahib surrendered to his enemy, who had him murdered. Dupleix
played a losing game against his greater rival for two more years,
and was finally recalled in disgrace by the French Government (1754).
Thus the English carried out the lesson which the great Frenchman had
taught them, that India might be conquered with Indian arms, and that
its princes might be made the vassals of the mere traders who had paid
them humble tribute a few years before. With the establishment of the
English suzerainty over the nawab Mohammed Ali and his realm of the
Carnatic begins the English empire in Hindostan.
[Sidenote: =The struggle for the Mississippi valley.=]
Clive and Dupleix had posed as the mere auxiliaries of the nawabs,
and their struggle was not supposed to commit the mother country to
war. But a less disguised form of hostilities between England and
France commenced somewhat later in America. Its cause was the want
of any definite boundary between the settlements of the two nations.
It was the ambition of the English colonists to push westward from
Pennsylvania and Virginia, and gradually to colonize all the waste
lands, sparsely inhabited by savage Indian tribes, which lay between
them and the Mississippi. But the French had another and a no less
ambitious scheme. Besides their dominions in Canada, they possessed
another colony at the mouth of the Mississippi, round the town of New
Orleans. They claimed that this territory of Louisiana stretched up to
the head-waters of the great river, and it was their object to connect
it with Canada by a string of forts placed along the Mississippi and
its tributary the Ohio. If they could have carried out this gigantic
and wide-stretching plan, they would have shut in the English colonies
between the Alleghany mountains and the sea, and prevented them from
extending into the interior of the continent. The weak point of the
plan was that the French were far too few in numbers to execute any
such project. Though they counted among them many hardy backwoodsmen
and fur-traders, who had explored all the waterways of the West, they
could not back these pioneers up with solid masses of population. There
were not more than 180,000 French emigrants in America, while the
English colonies boasted at this time nearly 2,000,000 sturdy settlers.
[Illustration: ENGLAND
AND FRANCE IN AMERICA.
1706.]
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of hostilities.--Braddock's defeat.=]
In spite of this disparity of numbers, the French governors were set
on executing their venturous scheme. It was their active advance into
the wilderness that lay between Canada and the English colonies,
that brought about the first collisions with the English outposts.
The three northern links of the chain that was to join Canada with
Louisiana were Fort Ticonderoga, at the south end of Lake Champlain,
Fort Niagara, near the Great Falls between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario,
and Fort Duquesne, at the head-waters of the Ohio. The first and last
of these were a very few miles from the English back-settlements, and
their establishment in 1754-55 was looked upon as a direct challenge
by the inhabitants of Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1754 a party of
Virginian militia, headed by Major George Washington, of whom we
shall hear much later on, made a dash on Fort Duquesne. But they were
beaten and forced to surrender after a fight at Great Meadows. This
provoked the colonies, and at their request General Braddock repeated
the attack in the next year with a force of 2200 men, part of whom
were British regulars. But he was drawn into an ambuscade by a very
inferior force of French and Indians, his force was disgracefully
routed, and he himself was slain. The fighting at once began to spread,
and both England and France sent out reinforcements to America. Yet the
two nations were still nominally at peace, and the French, who were
just about to engage in a great war in Germany, were not anxious to
commence hostilities with England at this particular moment. Newcastle,
however, precipitated the outbreak of the struggle by a characteristic
half-measure. He sent out Admiral Boscawen with orders not to attack
all French ships, but to intercept a particular squadron carrying
troops to Canada. Boscawen met it, and took two vessels after a fight;
this made war inevitable. It broke out in the spring of 1756, and
opened with a series of disasters for England, a fact which causes no
surprise when we remember that her forces were under the direction of
the imbecile Newcastle.
[Sidenote: =European coalition against Prussia.=]
Just at the same moment another struggle was commencing on the
Continent. The Empress Maria Theresa had never forgiven the King of
Prussia for robbing her of Silesia in the hour of her distress,
fourteen years before. She had devoted much time and trouble to forming
a great coalition for the purpose of punishing the plunderer, and had
secretly enlisted in her alliance France, Russia, Sweden, Saxony, and
most of the smaller German states. For the unscrupulous and rapacious
Frederic was not viewed with love by his neighbours, and it was easy
to combine them against him. His venomous pen had made enemies of two
vindictive women, Elizabeth Empress of Russia, and Madame de Pompadour,
the all-powerful mistress of Lewis XV., and though political expediency
did not prescribe war with Prussia to either Russia or France, yet
personal resentment brought it about.
[Sidenote: =Frederic II. overruns Saxony.=]
The open war between England and France had broken out in the spring of
1756. In the autumn of the same year the continental struggle began.
Getting secret intelligence of the plot that was maturing against him,
Frederic resolved to strike before his numerous adversaries were ready,
and invaded Saxony. He overran the whole electorate and annihilated
the Saxon army in a fortnight. But Austria, Russia, Sweden, and France
immediately fell upon him, and he had much ado to avoid being crushed
by brute force of numbers; for Prussia was but a small state of
5,000,000 souls, while the confederacy ranged against her counted half
Europe in its ranks.
[Sidenote: =Alliance between England and Prussia.=]
Alone among a host of foes, Frederic was desperately in need of an
ally. And only one ally was possible--England. For both England and
Prussia were now at war with France, and it was obvious that they ought
to aid each other against their common foe.
[Sidenote: =The loss of Minorca.=]
Moreover, the English Government was itself sadly in need of
assistance, for the war had opened with a series of disasters in
more than one quarter of the world. The most serious loss had been
suffered in the Mediterranean: a French fleet and army under the Duc de
Richelieu had slipped out of Toulon and fallen on Minorca, the Spanish
island which had formed part of England's plunder at the peace of
Utrecht. The English garrison was weak, for it had always been supposed
that we were strong enough at sea to prevent the enemy from approaching
this important possession, which was to us then what Malta is now.
But when the Mediterranean fleet under Admiral Byng came up to relieve
the troops beleaguered in the citadel of Port Mahon, a disgraceful
sight was seen. The English admiral, finding that the French squadron
was slightly superior to his own, refused to fight, and fled away
to Gibraltar, though his second in command urged him hotly to risk
everything in order to save the island. The deserted garrison held out
a month longer, and then was forced to surrender (June, 1756).
[Sidenote: =Successes of Montcalm in Canada.=]
Nor was this the only disaster with which the Seven Years' War opened.
Montcalm, the French commander in Canada, made a dash against the
frontier garrisons of the British colonists in America, and took Forts
Oswego and William Henry, our outposts on the North-West.
[Sidenote: =The Black Hole of Calcutta.=]
Still more shocking news was on its way home from India. The Nawab
of Bengal, a cruel and debauched tyrant named Suraj-ud-Dowlah, had
picked a quarrel with the governor of Calcutta, the English factory
near the mouth of the Ganges. Suddenly declaring war in June, 1756,
the same month that Minorca was lost, he captured Calcutta with ease.
In his hour of triumph, he bade his guards thrust all his captives
into the "Black Hole," a small dungeon not much more than twenty feet
square, which had been wont to serve as the prison of the factory.
No less than 146 persons--merchants, officials, soldiers, and
women--were driven into this confined space, and locked in for the
night. They were tightly wedged together, had no air save from two
narrow barred windows, and could not move. In the stifling heat of a
Bengal June, nearly the whole of them perished of suffocation. Only
twenty-three--one of whom was a woman--were found alive next morning.
The horrors of the Black Hole were soon to be revenged, but long ere
the news of the punishment which Clive wreaked on the nawab came home,
the Newcastle ministry had been driven from office.
[Sidenote: =Trial of Admiral Byng.--Fall of Newcastle.=]
The popular outcry at the mismanagement of the war, and above all at
the loss of Minorca, had been too great for the feeble Newcastle to
withstand. It was in vain that he arrested Byng and promised to try him
for cowardice. For Byng could not be made the scapegoat for disasters
in America or India, and the universal indignation against Newcastle's
administration of the war forced him to resign in November, 1756.
Shortly after the admiral was tried by court-martial, condemned, and
shot, for disobedience to orders and for criminal feebleness, though
he was acquitted of any treasonable intent or personal cowardice. His
death served, as Voltaire remarked at the time, "_pour encourager
les autres_," and English admirals since then have never shirked an
engagement with an enemy of only slightly superior force.
[Sidenote: =Pitt and Devonshire take office.=]
The king summoned the opposition Whigs to form a cabinet, and William
Pitt and the Duke of Devonshire took office. Pitt, as we have already
had occasion to remark, was the fighting man of the Whig party, and
the advocate of a vigorous colonial and commercial policy. He was the
one statesman of the day who commanded the confidence of the nation,
because he was the only one whose reputation was entirely free from
the stain of political corruption. He was an able, eloquent man,
whose scathing denunciations of the errors and feebleness of the late
ministry were convincing to all who heard them. It remained to be
seen if his own administration would prove more successful. At first,
however, it seemed likely that Pitt would have small opportunity of
trying his hand at the helm. Though he was trusted by the nation, he
was not trusted by the House of Commons. Newcastle set himself to
overthrow his successor, by bidding his hirelings in the Lower House
to vote consistently against the new ministers. Moreover, King George
disliked Pitt for his vehemence and his pompous language.
[Sidenote: =Pitt dismissed.--His compact with Newcastle.=]
Hence came a vexatious crisis in April, 1757, when Pitt found himself
in a minority in the House of Commons, and was dismissed from office
by the king. But the public outcry against the proposed resumption
of office by Newcastle was so loud, that a curious and not very
satisfactory compromise was arranged. The duke offered to take Pitt as
his colleague, and to give him a free hand in the management of the
war and all foreign policy, if he himself were permitted to retain the
direction of domestic affairs. Pitt believed himself to be necessary
to his country; he thought that he could bring the war to a successful
conclusion, and that no one else could do so. Hence, though he was
thoroughly acquainted with the mean and intriguing spirit of the duke,
he took his offer. Newcastle wanted no more than the power of managing
Parliament and dispensing patronage--his ideas of government went no
further. In return he placed his subservient parliamentary majority
at Pitt's disposal. The result was, as a shrewd contemporary observer
remarked, that "Mr. Pitt _does_ everything, and the Duke of Newcastle
_gives_ everything."
[Sidenote: =The Convention of Closter-Seven.=]
The Pitt-Newcastle ministry lasted nearly six years, and its excellent
results almost justified the ignominious compact on which it was
founded. Soon after Pitt got the control of affairs, the fortune of
war began to mend. His first attempts at launching expeditions against
France were, it is true, unsuccessful. The Duke of Cumberland was sent
to Hanover to defend the electorate against the French. But he suffered
the same misfortune as at Fontenoy and Lawfeldt, once more showing
himself a brave soldier, but a bad strategist. At Hastenbeck he was
defeated, and, retiring northward, was pressed back against the North
Sea near Stade, and forced to sign the Convention of Closter-Seven, by
which the Hanoverian army laid down its arms (June, 1757).
[Sidenote: _Battles of Rossbach and Leuthen._]
This disaster exposed the western frontier of Prussia to the French,
and might have proved the ruin of King Frederic. But that marvellous
general saved himself by the rapid blows which he dealt to West and
East. Flying into central Germany, he routed the French at Rossbach
(November 5); and then, returning to Silesia before the Austrians had
missed him, he defeated the troops of the Empress at Leuthen (December
5). Thus he won himself six months' respite, and during that time
Pitt raised another army for service in Germany, which was placed
under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick, a distant cousin of the royal
family, but a general of very different order from the unlucky George
of Cumberland. This force effectually protected the western borders
of Prussia and the electorate of Hanover from the French during the
remainder of the war.
[Sidenote: =War-policy of Pitt.=]
With the opening of the year 1758 began a succession of victories
all over the world, which effectually justified the claims of Pitt
to be the restorer of the greatness of Britain. He had everywhere
put new vigour into the struggle, by placing young generals, chosen
by himself, at the head of his expeditions, and by raising loans for
war expenses with a profusion which appalled more timid financiers.
Part of this wealth was lavished on the King of Prussia, whose aid
was invaluable in distracting the forces of France. "I am conquering
Canada on the plains of Germany," observed Pitt to those who reproached
him for the vast subsidies which he sent to Frederic. And the epigram
was true, for the reinforcements which were absolutely necessary if
France was to retain her American possessions, were being sent across
the Rhine to join in the great European struggle. Pitt, in fact, was
working out to a glorious end the policy which Carteret had sketched
nearly twenty years before.
[Sidenote: =The struggle for Canada.=]
While Ferdinand of Brunswick with his Anglo-Hanoverian army beat the
French at Crefeldt, and kept them back on the Rhine (June, 1758),
still more important things were being effected in America. A general
advance was made along the whole front of the French possessions in
America. In the north Admiral Boscawen and the young General Wolfe
captured Louisbourg, the strongly fortified capital of the island
of Cape Breton. In the south Fort Duquesne was occupied by a force
consisting mainly of colonial militia, and thus the line of French
communications between Canada and Louisiana was effectually cut. The
jubilant colonists changed the name of the place to Pittsburg in honour
of the great minister. Only in the centre of the advance was a reverse
sustained; there the French commander, the gallant Montcalm, had
collected the bulk of his forces behind the ramparts of Ticonderoga, to
bar the line of advance up the Hudson. General Abercrombie was repulsed
with fearful loss when he attempted to take the place by assault,
though his men did all that could be done, and Pitt's new Highland
regiments absolutely filled the ditch with their bodies ere they could
be forced to retire. But the fall of Canada was only delayed a few
months by this check to the British arms.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Lagos and Quiberon.=]
The next year, 1759, was even more fertile in successes. The naval
strength of France received its final blow in two decisive battles. The
French Mediterranean fleet ran out of Toulon and tried to escape into
the Atlantic, but Admiral Boscawen met them off Lagos in Portugal,
and took or destroyed most of the vessels. Some months later Admiral
Hawke attacked the French Atlantic fleet, which had come out of Brest
and was lying in Quiberon Bay. Though a fierce storm was raging, he ran
into the bay and forced the enemy to engage. In the heat of the fight
many of their ships were driven ashore and lost, while Hawke carried
off two prizes, and only a few out of the hostile fleet escaped into
the mouth of the river Vilaine. After the battles of Lagos and Quiberon
Bay, the enemy never attempted to appear at sea in any force during the
remaining four years of the war. Indeed, the French marine was almost
entirely destroyed, for sixty-four line-of-battle ships had been sunk
or taken in 1758-1759.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Minden.=]
In the same year a great victory had been gained in Germany. When the
French reinforced their army of the Rhine and again pushed forward
toward Hanover, Prince Ferdinand gave them battle at Minden, and
inflicted on them a defeat which sent them back in haste towards their
own borders. The chief honour of the fight fell to seven regiments of
English infantry, which received and repelled the fierce charges of
the whole of the cavalry of the French army; but a slur was cast on
the victory by the misconduct of Lord George Sackville, the general of
the English horse, who refused--out of temper or cowardice--to charge
the broken enemy and complete their rout. Nevertheless the fight did
its work, and proved the salvation of our ally, Frederic II., who was
just at this moment in the depths of despair. He had suffered a fearful
defeat at the hands of the Russians at Künersdorf, on the Oder, and was
only saved from complete destruction by being able to draw aid from the
victorious army of Prince Ferdinand.
[Illustration: QUEBEC 1759.]
[Sidenote: =Montcalm and Wolfe.--Battle of Quebec.=]
But events of far greater import had happened in America during this
summer. Pitt had sketched out a concentric attack on Canada from three
sides. General Amherst had taken Ticonderoga, the fort that had baffled
Abercrombie in the previous year, while another expedition captured
Fort Niagara and the other western strongholds of the French. But the
main blow was struck in the North. An English fleet appeared in the
St. Lawrence and put ashore General Wolfe, Pitt's favourite officer,
with an army of 8000 men. Montcalm hurried to the spot with all the
French regulars in the province, and a horde of Canadian militia, and
hastened to the defence of Quebec, the capital of the land. The place
was very strongly placed, being protected on two sides by the rivers
St. Lawrence and St. Charles, and watched by Montcalm's entrenched camp
at Beauport. After failing to break the French lines, Wolfe ventured on
a hazardous flank attack. The cliffs overhanging the St. Lawrence were
believed to be inaccessible, as there was only a single precipitous
goat-track which mounted them, and this was protected by a guard. But
Wolfe resolved to risk the danger of assaulting them. His men dropped
down the river in boats under cover of the night, reached the foot of
the crags, and crept up one after another on hands and knees, pulling
themselves up by the aid of trees and shrubs. The French picket at
the top was surprised and fled. Thus Wolfe had 4000 men in line on
the ground above the cliffs, "the Heights of Abraham," before the day
dawned. When they became visible to Montcalm, he was forced to come out
of his impregnable lines and fight in the open, under pain of losing
Quebec. There followed a short sharp conflict, in which the English had
from the first the advantage. The Canadian militia fled in panic, the
French regulars were cut to pieces, and Montcalm himself was mortally
wounded. But Wolfe had also been struck down in the moment of victory;
he lived just long enough to hear that the battle was won, and died
on the field (September 13, 1759). He was only thirty-three, and, had
he survived, would have had a long career of glory before him. But to
have conquered America for England was in itself a sufficient title
to immortality. For the battle of Quebec was the decisive day in the
history of the continent.
[Sidenote: =Canada surrenders to the English.=]
The wrecks of the French army evacuated the capital, and fell back on
Montreal. Thither they were followed in the next spring both by the
forces under Amherst, which had ascended the Hudson, and by Wolfe's
army from Quebec. Surrounded by vastly superior numbers, de Vaudreuil,
the viceroy of Canada, was forced to lay down his arms, and surrender
the remnant of the French possessions in the north. Thus ended in
ignominious failure the great scheme which Montcalm had formed for
securing inland America for his king, and penning the English colonists
between the ocean and the Alleghanies. The British flag now waved
without a rival from the North Pole to the boundary of Spanish America.
[Sidenote: =Clive retakes Calcutta.=]
Meanwhile events of importance had been happening in the far East.
While England was laying her hand on the Western Continent, she was
also winning her first territorial dominions in India. We have already
told the tale of the Black Hole and the fall of Calcutta. Its sequel
has yet to be related. Just when the news of Suraj-ud-Dowlah's wicked
doings reached Madras, Clive chanced to return from England, where
he had been for two years on leave. The task of chastising the nawab
was at once made over to him. He was entrusted with one regiment of
British troops, the 39th, which bears on its colours the honourable
legend _Primus in Indis_, and with 2000 Madras sepoys. With this small
force he did not hesitate to invade the vast but unwarlike province of
Bengal. He forced his way up the Hoogly and recovered Calcutta with
ease. But he hesitated some time before advancing into the interior, to
strike at the nawab's capital of Moorshedabad.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Plassey.--The English masters of Bengal.=]
Soon, however, he learnt that Suraj-ud-Dowlah was hated by his
subjects, and that his own ministers were ready to betray him. Armed
with this knowledge, Clive advanced from Calcutta as far as the village
of Plassey, where he found himself in face of the nawab's hordes,
50,000 irregular horse and foot of the worst quality. The English were
attacked but feebly and half-heartedly, for the enemy had no confidence
in their prince. Moreover, Mir Jaffar, who commanded one wing of his
army, had sold himself to Clive for the promise of his master's throne,
and held aloof all day, like Northumberland at Bosworth Field. At the
hour of noon Clive bade his men charge, and the contemptible soldiery
of Suraj-ud-Dowlah fled before the assault, though they outnumbered
the English by eighteen to one. Only the nawab's French artillerymen
stood firm, and were bayoneted at their guns. This battle, which gave
England the rich realm of Bengal, was won with a loss of only 72 men to
the victors. Clive soon seized Moorshedabad and installed Mir Jaffar
as nawab in his master's room. The deposed tyrant was caught by his
successor and promptly strangled. Mir Jaffar ruled for the future as
the dependent of England, paid the East India Company a tribute, and
acted as their vassal. Thus Bengal, though not annexed, was for all
practical purposes made a part of the British empire.
Clive sullied his laurels by two acts which show the unscrupulous
character that was allied with his great talents. Before Plassey, a
Bengali named Omichund discovered the intrigue with Mir Jaffar, and
threatened to reveal it to the nawab. Clive bought him off by a forged
promise of money signed with the name of Admiral Watson. When the
danger was over, he avowed his forgery to the traitor, who thereupon
went mad with rage and disappointed greed. After Plassey Clive
committed his second fault, by accepting for his private use huge sums
of gold which Mir Jaffar offered him. When taunted with this, he only
replied that "he was astonished at his own moderation, considering the
enormously larger amount that he might have asked and received" (1757).
After settling Bengal and defeating an attempt to reconquer it made by
Shah Alum, the heir of the Great Moguls, Clive returned to England in
1759, to be saluted as the conqueror of the East.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Wandewash. Capture of Pondicherry.=]
While Clive was overrunning Bengal, the English armies in the Carnatic
were making an end of the small remnants of the French power in India.
The operations were protracted, till in January, 1760, Sir Eyre Coote
routed the last French army at Wandewash, and, ere another year was
out, Pondicherry and all the other strongholds of the enemy were in his
hands.
[Sidenote: =Death of George II.=]
While England was thus triumphant alike in Europe, India, and America,
and Pitt was at the height of his glory, the old king, George II., died
suddenly in his seventy-eighth year (October 25, 1760). His death made
an instant change in the national politics both at home and abroad,
for his successor was not one of those sovereigns who were contented
to obey their ministers and meekly bear the yoke of the great Whig
oligarchy.
CHAPTER XXXV.
GEORGE III. AND THE WHIGS--THE AMERICAN WAR.
1760-1783.
In the last two centuries of English history the accession of a new
king has not often caused a complete revolution in politics. The
change of sovereigns often gives us an unfortunate and misleading
cross-division, cutting periods in two that are really one, or making
us dream that there is a unity in periods which are really divided in
their interest and meaning.
This was not the case, however, when George III. succeeded his
grandfather George II. For the last time in English history, the change
of kings implied a real break in the continuity of the politics of
the time. The new monarch was only twenty-two years of age, and was
totally unversed in affairs of state. George II. had lived in bitter
enmity with his feeble and factious son, Frederic Prince of Wales, the
nonentity of whom the contemporary satirist wrote--
"Since it's only Fred who was alive and is dead,
There's no more to be said."
[Sidenote: =Education and political aims or George III.=]
After the prince's death, the old king had transferred his dislike
to his son's widow and his grandson. George III. had therefore been
brought up almost in seclusion. The most notable point in his education
was that his mother, Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, had taught him to despise
his grandfather and his grandfather's position in the State. He had
been told from his earliest years that the position of a sovereign who
allowed himself to be led and governed by his ministers was degrading.
"When you come to the throne," we are told that his mother said,
"George, _be king_." The idea had taken root, and the young prince had
made up his mind that he should rule his ministers, not his ministers
him. That the cabinet should be responsible to the king as well as to
Parliament, was the keystone of his theory. He would have the choice
of his ministers lie in his own hands, not in those of the great Whig
houses. George did not wish to rule unconstitutionally, to fly in the
face of Parliament, or to govern without it, as the Stuarts had tried
to do. He had, indeed, such a belief in his own good intentions, that
he thought that they must coincide with the nation's will, and there
were circumstances which for some time bore him out in his view.
[Sidenote: =His character.=]
George's main bent was to assert his individuality, and take the chief
share in the governance of the country. The other features of his
character are easy to describe. His tastes were frugal, and his private
life strictly virtuous, a thing which had not been known in an English
king for more than a century. He was sincerely pious, though, as some
critics observed, he was better at scenting out other persons' sins
than his own. He had an enormous capacity for hard work, though no
very great brain-power to guide him through it. He had a great share
of self-restraint and reticence, so that it was not easy to guess what
plans he had in hand when he did not wish them to be known. Above all,
he was terribly obstinate, with the obstinacy of a good-hearted man,
who feels he is in the right, and believes that he will be doing wrong
if he gives up his own opinion. Lastly, though he had no power of
appreciating greatness of any kind (he called Shakespeare "sad stuff,
only one must not say so," and thought Pitt a bombastic old actor), yet
he had great penetration in measuring littleness in others. This made
him exceedingly fitted to cope with the average Whig statesmen of his
day.
[Sidenote: =His popularity.=]
When George came to the throne he was greeted with the usual popularity
which attends a new and untried sovereign. He showed himself affable
and good-tempered, a model of decorum and respectability, and won
all hearts by his English habits and prejudices. His grandfather and
great-grandfather had been Germans in mind and language. George III.
took the first opportunity of declaring that he was English born and
bred, and that "he gloried in the name of Briton." By so doing he
won all men's hearts. Thus in the beginning of his struggle with the
Whigs he had the inestimable advantage of personal popularity with the
nation.
[Sidenote: =The "King's Friends."=]
The king had, as we have already said, passed his youth in seclusion,
with few friends and no organized band of retainers. He had to build up
his own party, if he wished to carry out his schemes. This he at once
began to do. Descending into the arena of politics, he set to work to
make himself a following, much as Newcastle or Walpole had done in a
previous generation. But George, unlike those statesmen, had not to
rely on bribery or borough-mongering alone. He could count on all the
prestige and attraction which surrounds the crown, to draw men into his
net. Some of the "King's Friends" (as his followers grew to be called)
were politicians bought by pensions or titles, but many were honest
supporters, who found their pleasure in displaying their loyalty to the
crown.
[Sidenote: =The king and the Tories.=]
In especial George won to himself from the first the very considerable
remnants of the old Tory party. Jacobitism had now become such a thing
of the past, that the vast majority of the Tories were ready to accept
with enthusiasm a king whose views exactly coincided with their own old
doctrines. For George was a stout defender of the Church of England,
in which his godless old grandfather had never professed any interest.
He held the ancient Tory doctrine that the royal prerogative should be
actively exercised in the affairs of the nation. Most important of all,
he hated the Whig oligarchy, a fact which could not fail to recommend
him to their long-oppressed rivals. Hence it came that the most
prominent element among the "King's Friends" was drawn from the Tory
party. One condition was demanded of all who joined that body--implicit
obedience to George's will, the will of a man of limited abilities
and narrow mind. This fact sufficiently accounts for the result that
the "King's Friends" never included any men of marked talent; to obey
George in all things would have been too trying for any one of real
genius or breadth of spirit.
[Sidenote: =The rise of Lord Bute.=]
The king's first and most injudicious way of attempting to interfere in
politics was worked out through the medium of Lord Bute. That nobleman
was a Scottish peer of respectable character, moderate abilities, and
a rather pedantic disposition. He had aided the Princess of Wales in
giving George such instruction in statecraft as he had received.
Bute was almost absolutely unacquainted with Parliament or practical
politics. Yet a few months after his accession, the king insisted that
the Pitt-Newcastle cabinet should take his old tutor into partnership.
Bute was made one of the Secretaries of State, and at once began to
show a great independence of the nominal prime minister. He rebuked
Newcastle for keeping the details of his political jobbing from the
king, and for filling posts without consulting royalty. At the same
time he spoke strongly against the continuance of the war with France,
and most particularly against the lavish subsidies with which the great
war-minister was maintaining our much-tried ally, the King of Prussia.
The fact was that George had observed that the Whig ministry depended
for its strength on the combination of Newcastle's corrupt influence
over Parliament with Pitt's hold on the nation, secured by successful
war. To end it he wished to deprive the duke of his patronage, and to
close the war, so as to make Pitt no longer indispensable.
[Sidenote: =Pitt's war-policy thwarted.--He resigns.=]
In this matter the king's private designs clashed most unhappily with
the interests of England, for Pitt's vigorous policy was still bearing
the best of fruits. Ere King George had been a year upon the throne,
Pitt could announce to him that Pondicherry, the last French fortress
in India; Belleisle, a large island off the coast of Brittany; and
Dominica, a rich West-Indian island, had fallen into his hands. After
these last disasters the ministers of Lewis XV. began to make overtures
for peace, which Bute wished to accept; but Pitt withstood him, partly
because he thought that England had yet more to gain, partly because he
had secret knowledge that France was trying to create a diversion by
stirring up Spain against us. Charles III., the king of that country,
was an old enemy of England, and had offered to renew with his cousin,
Lewis XV., the "Family Compact" of 1733--the old pact of the Bourbon
princes for the checking of English maritime supremacy. Having news of
this transaction, Pitt advised instant war with Spain. But Bute opposed
him, and when the king openly gave his support to his old tutor, Pitt
was forced to resign the office which he had held for five years with
such credit and distinction (October 5, 1761).
[Sidenote: =Newcastle forced to resign.=]
The king received the great minister's resignation with joy, and next
set himself to get rid of Pitt's unworthy colleague, Newcastle. That
old jobber clung to his place till May, 1762: but, finding that the
king was determined to strip him of his crown patronage, and thwart him
in his management of the House of Commons, he was finally forced to
follow Pitt into retirement. Thus Bute became the chief minister of the
realm.
[Sidenote: =Spain joins France.--English maritime successes.=]
The king's favourite was to hold power for less than two years, but
into that short space many important events were compressed. The war
with Spain, which Pitt had declared to be imminent, broke out in 1762,
and the French hoped for a moment that they might be saved by their
new ally. But Spain's power proved to have declined so low, that her
interference made no difference to the fate of the war. The able
generals and admirals whom Pitt had discovered and promoted, made short
work of the Spanish fleets and armies. Ere he had been a year at war
with England, Charles III. saw two of his greatest colonies fall into
the hands of his enemy. Havanna, the richest city of the West Indies,
and Manilla, the capital of the Philippine Islands in the far East,
were both in English hands by the end of 1762. In the same space of
time Admiral Rodney captured Martinique, St. Lucia, and all the rest
of the French West Indies. Meanwhile Ferdinand of Brunswick, with the
Anglo-Hanoverian army in Germany, had maintained his old superiority
over the French army of the Rhine.
Stripped of her colonies, with her fleet entirely destroyed, her armies
on the continent beaten back, and her exchequer completely drained dry,
France was now compelled to sue for any terms that Bute and King George
would grant her. Her ally Spain, equally disheartened by the turn which
the war had taken, followed her example.
[Sidenote: =The Peace of Paris.=]
Nothing could please the English king better than the conclusion
of peace. He gave Bute a free hand, and readily consented to the
conclusion of the treaty of Paris (February, 1763). By this agreement
France ceded to England the vast province of Canada, and all her
American claims east of the Mississippi, retaining only some fishing
rights on the coast of Newfoundland, which have proved very troublesome
in our own day. At the same time, the West Indian Islands of St.
Vincent, Tobago, Grenada, and Dominica were surrendered, as well as
the African settlement of Senegal. France also undertook to keep no
garrisons in her factories in Hindostan, when they should be restored
to her. She gave back Minorca, which she had held since Byng's
disaster, and withdrew her armies from Germany. But she received back
much that she had lost, and had no power of recovering--Belleisle in
Europe, Martinique, St. Lucia, and Guadaloupe in the West Indies, Goree
in Africa, and all her Indian establishments. In a similar way Spain
ceded to us the swampy and uninhabited peninsula of Florida, which
rounded off the line of our North American colonies; but she received
back the two wealthy settlements of Havanna and Manilla, which she
could never have regained by force of arms.
The peace of Paris was not received with enthusiasm in England. It was
said, and truly, that Pitt would have asked and obtained much better
terms, and that it was weak and futile to restore to France and Spain
their lost colonies. Yet, looking at our enormous gains, it seems
absurd to complain. The treaty made England supreme in America and
in Hindostan, and ratified her permanent ascendency at sea. When so
much was secured, it appeared greedy to ask for yet more, for never
by any previous treaty had England won so much or brought a war so
triumphantly to a close.
[Sidenote: =The treaty of Hubertsburg.=]
But one blot on Bute's reputation can not be passed over. He deserted,
most shamelessly, our useful if unscrupulous ally, King Frederic of
Prussia. Having gained what England required, he left Frederic to shift
for himself, withdrawing our armies from Germany, and stopping the
liberal subsidies which had maintained the king's famishing exchequer.
If fortune had not favoured him, Frederic might have been ruined by
the loss of his only ally. He was saved, however, by the unexpected
withdrawal of Russia from the hostile ranks. He proved able to hold
his own against Austria, his one remaining foe, and brought the Seven
Years' War to an end by the treaty of Hubertsburg ere the year 1763 had
expired. But he never forgave England for the mean trick which Bute had
played him, and would never again make an alliance with her.
[Sidenote: =Resignation of Bute.=]
When the war was over, Bute found his position as prime minister quite
unbearable. He was clamoured at by Pitt's numerous admirers for making
peace on too easy terms. At the same time the Whig borough-mongers,
who followed Newcastle, took their revenge on him in Parliament by
rejecting all his bills. He was decried as an upstart Scot, a mere
court favourite, "the Gaveston of the eighteenth century," and the
enemy of the greatness of England. Though he lavished the public money
and the crown patronage on all sides, even more shamelessly than
Newcastle had done, he could not hold his own. Bute was a sensitive
man, and apparently could not bear up against the odium which his
position as a court-minister, disliked both by the nation and the
Houses of Parliament, brought upon him. In April, 1763, he laid down
the seals of office, much to the regret of his royal master.
[Sidenote: =Divisions of the Whig party.=]
Thus King George had been defeated in his first contest with the
Whigs. He was compelled to draw back for a moment and to rearrange
his plans. His next scheme was to try the effect of playing off the
various clans and factions of the Whigs one against another. For the
fall of the great Pitt-Newcastle cabinet had split the Whig party
into a complicated series of family groups and alliances--divided by
no difference in principle, but only by matters of personal interest.
The king thought that he could make and unmake ministries by the
unscrupulous use of the votes of his "friends" in Parliament, and so
hold the balance between the various sections of his enemies, till he
could reduce them all to powerlessness.
[Sidenote: =The Grenville-Bedford ministry.=]
To succeed the Earl of Bute, George made choice of the Whig leader whom
he thought least objectionable, a narrow-minded statesman named George
Grenville, who had hitherto shown himself fairly amenable to the royal
influence. But the king had made a mistake; Grenville was as obstinate
as himself, and when he found his master interfering in his patronage
and intriguing with his followers, he allied himself with one of the
great Whig clans, that headed by the Duke of Bedford--a faction which
was jocosely called the "Bloomsbury Gang," because it centred at the
duke's residence, Bedford House, Bloomsbury.
[Sidenote: =The "North Briton."--General warrants declared illegal.=]
The Grenville-Bedford ministry only lasted two years (1763-1765), and
was overthrown by another Whig alliance, whose principal leaders were
the Duke of Grafton and the Marquis of Rockingham. But short though its
tenure of office was, it left its mark on history. In England itself
the act of this cabinet which made most noise was the prosecution of
Wilkes. John Wilkes was a member of Parliament, a party journalist
of gross scurrility and a man of scandalous private life, but he had
the good fortune to be made twice in his life a martyr to oppressive
government. He had grossly libelled Lord Bute in his newspaper, the
_North Briton_, but his chief offence in the eyes of Grenville was
that he had, in No. 45 of that publication, made abusive comments
on the royal speech at the end of the session of 1763. For this he
was illegally seized and imprisoned, under a "general warrant," a
document issued by Grenville, not against him by name, but against "the
authors, printers, and publishers of No. 45 of the _North Briton_." He
was acquitted when put on his trial, under the plea that he had been
illegally arrested. "A general warrant is no warrant, because it names
no one," was the decision of Lord Mansfield, the Chief Justice; and
so this dangerous and tyrannical form of arrest was declared illegal.
Wilkes posed as a victim of arbitrary government, and obtained great
popularity in spite of his infamous character. But Grenville then
prosecuted him for publishing a blasphemous and obscene poem. Feeling
sure that he would be condemned, Wilkes absconded to France, and lived
there four years; he was accounted by many a victim of malicious
political persecution, and never lost his favour with the mob of London.
But while raising this storm in a teacup about the worthless Wilkes,
George Grenville was committing another and a very different mistake
in a matter of the highest importance. It is to him that we must
attribute the first beginnings of the quarrel between England and her
North-American colonies.
[Sidenote: =The Stamp Act.=]
The Seven Years' War had left behind it a heavy burden of debt and
taxation, and George Grenville, while searching around for new sources
of revenue, was struck with the bright idea that he might tax the
colonies. Accordingly, he brought forward in 1764, and passed in 1765,
a bill which asserted the right of Parliament to lay imposts on our
possessions over-seas, and proceeded to prescribe that certain stamp
duties on legal documents were in future to be paid by our American
colonies. The proceeds were to go to maintain the British troops
quartered among them.
[Sidenote: =The North American colonies.=]
The Stamp Act was bitterly resented by the inhabitants of America. It
was the first circumstance that really taught the thirteen colonies,
which lay scattered along the coast from Massachusetts to Georgia,
to combine in a common movement. Hitherto they had been without any
formal bond of union between themselves. Legally, New York had no more
to do with Virginia than in our own day Jamaica has with Tasmania.
Each was administered as a separate unity depending immediately on the
English crown. Their origins and the character of their population were
very different. The Puritan farmers and seamen of Massachusetts, the
slave-owning planters of Virginia, the Anglo-Dutch of New York, and the
Quakers of Pennsylvania had few sympathies in common. Hitherto they had
been jealous of each other; colony quarrelled fiercely with colony, and
the chief tie that had kept them together was the common dread which
all felt, of the aggression of the enterprising French governors at
Quebec. It was this fear of the French which had enabled William Pitt
to induce them to join loyally in his great scheme for the conquest of
Canada.
[Sidenote: =They unite to resist the Stamp Act.=]
Now that the restraining influence of their dread of France was
removed, the colonies were no longer compelled to lean so closely on
England. They were rapidly growing in population, wealth, and national
spirit. It only required some common provocation to make them forget
their petty local jealousies and turn fiercely to defend what they
believed to be their rights. This provocation the pedantic George
Grenville now proceeded to supply.
[Sidenote: =The case for the Stamp Act.=]
Grenville had much to say on his side. It was quite fair that the
colonies should pay something towards the expenses of the Seven Years'
War, which had largely been incurred for their benefit. It was rational
that they should be asked to maintain the troops still quartered in
America for their protection. And the Stamp Act imposed on them a very
small tax, only some few thousands a year. Moreover, Grenville had
studied the old precedents, and could show clear instances of imperial
taxation levied in the past from various possessions over-sea. But,
above the letter of the law, statesmen are responsible to the nation
for the wisdom as well as for the legality of their actions. It is no
excuse for the unwise minister to plead that he has the statute-book on
his side, if it can be proved that he has common sense against him. It
is for this reason that Grenville and his two successors, Grafton and
North, are held to have incurred a graver load of responsibility than
any other British statesman has ever borne.
[Sidenote: =Grounds of the colonial opposition.=]
The main line of protest which the colonists adopted was grounded on
a favourite maxim of William Pitt, that "there should be no taxation
without representation"; that is, that any persons taxed ought to be
represented in Parliament, and allowed a share in voting their own
contributions. It was, of course, impossible in those days to ask that
American representatives should appear in the House of Commons, an idea
which the remoteness of their country and the slowness of communication
with it rendered absurd. What the colonists therefore meant was that,
being unrepresented, they ought not to be taxed. They were growing
so strong that they would no longer endure to be treated as mere
dependencies, and governed solely for the benefit of England.
[Sidenote: =The Rockingham ministry.--Repeal of the Stamp Act.=]
Serious trouble would have ensued if George Grenville had been able
to persist in his schemes. But he was overthrown in 1765 by the
machinations of George III., who bade the eighty or ninety "King's
Friends" in the Commons to vote against him, and combine with the
Opposition Whigs to turn him out of office. Grenville was evicted and
dismissed. He was replaced by a new combination of Whig clans. The new
cabinet was formed by the junction of the Marquis of Rockingham and
the Duke of Grafton, to whom the old Duke of Newcastle was for the
moment allied. Lord Rockingham was a more moderate man than Grenville,
though a less able one. He disliked trouble, and, to silence American
complaints, took the very wise step of repealing the Stamp Act. But the
Rockingham administration lasted only a year, for in 1766 the "King's
Friends" once more received orders from their master to overthrow the
cabinet of the day. Rockingham was left in a minority, and forced to
lay down his seals, and a second Whig faction had felt the weight of
King George's hand.
[Sidenote: =The Pitt-Grafton ministry.=]
The next ministry marked a new shifting of the political kaleidoscope.
Pitt, who had been out of place since 1761, was now invited by the king
to take office. He consented, believing (as he always did) that he
was the one man able to administer the British empire. To fill up his
cabinet he chose some of the younger Whig leaders, who were ready to
serve under him from their admiration for his personality. The chief of
them were the Duke of Grafton and Lord Shelburne. But the Pitt-Grafton
ministry lasted for a few months only. Pitt was growing old, and his
powers were weakening. He felt the hard work of the House of Commons
too much for him, and on taking office retired to the House of Lords
as Earl of Chatham (July, 1766). But even there the strain over-taxed
his strength. Less than a twelvemonth after he had taken office he was
stricken down by illness, which took the form of brain-trouble. He grew
incompetent to transact any business, and the cabinet which he had
formed passed entirely under the control of his colleague, the Duke of
Grafton.
[Sidenote: =Renewed attempt to tax the colonies.=]
The ministry of the Duke of Grafton proved the most disastrous that
England has ever known, with the single exception of that of Grafton's
immediate successor, Lord North. It was this Whig administration that
finally renewed the struggle with America, which had been suspended
since the repeal of the Stamp Act. With the duke's assent, Charles
Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, brought in a bill for
raising in America duties on tea, glass, paper, and painter's colours.
The whole was to bring in about £40,000 a year. Like the Stamp Act,
this measure distinctly affirmed the right of England to tax her
colonies without their consent. The Americans remembered that their
previous resistance had been crowned with success, and commenced an
agitation against the new act. A brisk fire of petitions was kept
up by the houses of representatives of the various colonies, who
besought the king--both publicly and privately--the House of Commons,
and the ministers to remove the tax, restating their old theory of
"No taxation without representation." Moreover, the colonies began
formally to correspond with each other, and to find that the same
spirit of discontent prevailed in all, a fact very ominous for the home
government.
[Sidenote: =Rioting in Boston.=]
At the head of the thirteen colonies was Massachusetts, whose capital
Boston was the largest town in America, and a very thriving port. Its
seafaring population had the greatest objection to the new customs
duties. Mobs were continually filling the streets to demonstrate
against England, and as early as 1768 the rioting grew serious. In 1770
Boston saw the first bloodshed in the American quarrel. A party of
soldiers, stoned by a mob till they could no longer keep their temper,
fired and shot four or five rioters. This "massacre," as the colonists
called it, brought the bitter feeling against England to a head.
The Grafton cabinet at home could not at all understand the feelings
of the Americans. They supposed that it was the mere amount of the tax
that was causing discontent, and contented themselves with pointing
out that it was insignificant, not seeing that it was the principle of
taxation, not the small sum actually levied, that was exasperating the
colonists.
But the duke and his followers were not to see the end of the matter.
In 1770 their day of reckoning with their master, the king, had
arrived. George III. had been perpetually increasing his band of
followers in the Commons, and the new Tory party was grown large
enough, not only to hold the balance between two Whig cliques, but to
make a bid for power on its own account.
[Sidenote: =Wilkes and the Middlesex election.=]
The Grafton ministry fell before a double assault. Pitt, whose health
had now recovered so far that he was able to appear in his seat in the
House of Lords, was thundering at them for their misconduct of American
affairs. But another difficulty was far more actively operative in
their overthrow. The irrepressible John Wilkes had returned from
France, had stood for the county of Middlesex, and had been elected.
The cabinet declared him ineligible, on account of his old outlawry,
and made the House of Commons expel him. Nothing daunted, Wilkes
appeared as a candidate again, and was re-elected. Then Grafton and his
majority enacted that the defeated opponent of Wilkes, who had received
only three hundred votes, was the legitimate member for Middlesex. This
iniquitous step roused public feeling; it was said that liberty was at
an end if the ministry could appoint members of Parliament in defiance
of the votes of the electors. Even Charles I. in his worst days had not
falsified the results of elections, as the Whigs of Grafton's party
were doing.
[Sidenote: =Fall of the Grafton ministry.=]
Stormed at by Pitt, scurrilously libelled by the able but malignant
political writer who signed himself _Junius_, hooted down by the mob
of London, and abandoned by the "King's Friends" in his moment of
distress, Grafton resigned. It was generally thought that another Whig
ministry would appear on the scene, probably an alliance between Pitt
and Lord Rockingham. This, however, was not to be so. The king had
been counting up his forces. Having upset in succession four different
Whig ministries, he now thought himself strong enough to renew the
experiment which he had tried in Bute's day.
[Sidenote: =Lord North Prime Minister.=]
Accordingly, the nation was surprised by the news that George had
made Lord North prime minister. North was a parliamentary jobber of
the same type as Newcastle. He was a good-natured, indolent man, of
limited intelligence, but shrewd and business-like. He made his bargain
with the king, and undertook to carry out his policy. He was the tool,
George the hand that guided it.
[Sidenote: =Impotence of the Whigs in Parliament.=]
For the next twelve years (1770-82) George ruled the nation according
to his own ideas, and led it into the most slippery paths. His compact
body of "King's Friends," aided by mercenary helpers from among the
Whigs, preserved a constant majority in Parliament under the astute
management of North. The old Whig clans raged in impotent wrath, but
could not shake the ministry. Their expulsion from power had one good
effect--it taught them to put some reality into their old assertion
that they were the people's friends and the guardians of constitutional
liberty. In their day of adversity they began to advocate real reforms,
though in fifty years of power they had executed none. The younger
men among them, such as the eloquent Edmund Burke, began to stir the
questions of constitutional reform which were to be brought into play
later on, as the new principles of the Whig party. They denounced
parliamentary corruption, ministerial jobbing, and attacks on the
liberty of the press, or the rights of the constituencies. Hints were
dropped that the old rotten boroughs might be abolished, and more
members given to the populous counties and cities.
[Sidenote: =The tea duties.--Further riots in Boston.=]
But while the Whigs were talking of reforms, North and his master were
actually engaged in bringing a much more exciting topic to the front.
In four years they succeeded in plunging England into a desperate war
with her Transatlantic colonies. The new ministry was determined to
persevere with the old scheme of the Grenville and Grafton cabinets for
taxing America. North, under his master's orders, remitted the taxes on
paper and glass, but insisted on retaining that on tea. His persistence
led to open violence in America. In 1773, a mob disguised as Mohawk
Indians boarded the tea-ships in Boston harbour, and cast the chests
into the sea. The local authorities pretended that they could not
discover the rioters. In high wrath, the Government resolved to punish
the whole city of Boston. North produced a bill for closing its harbour
to all commerce, and compelling the ships that had been wont to trade
with it to go to the neighbouring port of Salem.
[Sidenote: =The Massachusetts Government Act.=]
This unwise and arbitrary bill was followed by another yet more
high-handed, which annulled the charter of the State of Massachusetts,
depriving it of its house of representatives, and making it a crown
colony, to be administered by government officials and judges sent out
from England. This punishment far exceeded anything that the people of
Boston had earned by their rioting, and made all the other colonies
tremble for their own liberties.
[Sidenote: =The Congress at Philadelphia.=]
The Massachusetts Government Act was the last straw which broke down
the patience of the Americans. The representative bodies of all the
colonies passed votes of sympathy with the people of Boston, and
ordered a general fast. Soon after, they all resolved to send deputies
to a "General Congress" at Philadelphia, in order to concert common
measures for their defence against arbitrary government. This body,
which had no legal status in the eye of the law, proceeded to act
as if it were the central authority in North America. It issued a
"Declaration of Rights," which set forth the points in which the
liberties of the colonies were supposed to have been infringed. But
it also took the strong step of declaring a kind of blockade against
English commerce, by forbidding Americans to purchase any goods
imported from the mother-country.
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of war.=]
In view of this threatening aspect of affairs, Lord North began to
send over troops to America, foreseeing that a collision might occur at
any moment. He was not wrong; while fruitless attempts were being made
to pacify the offended colonists without giving in to their demands,
actual war broke out.
[Sidenote: =The skirmish of Lexington.=]
The House of Representatives of Massachusetts, when abolished by royal
mandate, had migrated to Concord, and resumed its sittings there.
Seeing that this act of contumacy must lead to an attempt to dissolve
it by force, it called out the local militia, and began to collect
munitions of war. General Gage, the governor of Boston, on hearing of
this, sent out 800 men to seize and destroy these stores. This force
was fired on by a small body of Massachusetts militia at Lexington,
where the first blood shed in the war was spilt. After burning the
stores, the British troops started to march back, but were set upon by
the levies of the district, who kept up a running fight for several
hours, and drove the regulars into Boston with a loss of 200 men (April
19, 1775).
[Sidenote: =George Washington.=]
This skirmish proved the beginning of a general war. When the news
spread, all the colonies sent their militia into the field, and the
Congress at Philadelphia formally assumed supreme authority, and named
a commander-in-chief. This was George Washington, a Virginian planter,
who had seen much service in the last French war, and was almost the
only colonist who possessed a good military reputation. No choice could
have been better; Washington was a staid, upright, energetic man, very
different from the windy demagogues who led the rebellion in most of
the colonies. His integrity and honesty of purpose made him respected
by all, and his readiness of resource and unfailing cheerfulness and
perseverance made him the idol of the willing but undisciplined bands
who followed him to the field.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Bunker's Hill.=]
Ere Washington reached the seat of war in Massachusetts, a battle
had been fought. The colonists were defeated, but not discouraged,
for at the fight of Bunker's Hill (June 17, 1775), they maintained
their entrenchments for some time against the regulars, and were only
beaten out of them after a very stiff combat. General Gage, a very
unenterprising man, was so disheartened by the losses of his troops
that he did not follow up his victory, and allowed Washington to
reorganize the beaten colonists and blockade Boston.
[Sidenote: =The "Olive Branch Petition."=]
The struggle was now bound to be fought out to the end. When the
Congress sent to London the "Olive Branch Petition," a last attempt at
a peaceful settlement, the king bade Lord North return it unanswered,
as coming from a body which had no legal existence. The small regular
army of England--some 40,000 men scattered all over the world--was
obviously unable to cope with so great a rebellion, so the government
had to begin raising new regiments, and enlisting Hessian and
Hanoverian auxiliaries in Germany.
[Sidenote: =The Declaration of Independence.=]
While these new forces were being got ready--a whole year was consumed
in preparation--the Americans had all their own way. In March, 1776,
the royal troops were forced to evacuate Boston, the only stronghold
that they held in the colonies. Three months later the Congress took
the decisive step of throwing off all allegiance to England, by
publishing the "Declaration of Independence," and forming the thirteen
colonies into a federal republic (July 4, 1776).
[Sidenote: =English victory at Brooklyn.=]
Very shortly after, the English reinforcements began to appear, and
General Howe with 20,000 men landed on Long Island, in the State of
New York. For a moment it appeared as if the rebellion would collapse
before this formidable army. Howe beat Washington at the battle of
Brooklyn (August, 1776). He retook New York, and then landed on the
mainland and overran New Jersey. The colonial army disbanded in
utter dismay, and only four or five thousand men kept together under
Washington.
[Sidenote: =Difficulties of the English.=]
But in the moment of victory the English began to realize the
difficulty of their task. The land was everywhere hostile, and could
only be held down by garrisons scattered broadcast. But America was
so vast that enough men could not be found to garrison every port and
city. When Howe began to distribute his men in small bodies, Washington
swept down upon these isolated regiments and destroyed them. The
English general was forced to halt, and to send home for yet further
reinforcements.
[Sidenote: =Burgoyne's expedition.=]
He was not denied them, for George III. had set his heart on teaching
the rebellious colonists that he could not be defied with impunity.
While Howe was sent fresh regiments, and ordered to take Philadelphia,
a new army of 8000 men was despatched to Canada under General Burgoyne,
and bidden to march by Lake Champlain and the Hudson river, to attack
the colonies in the rear. Meanwhile a third force from New York was to
ascend the Hudson and lend a helping hand to Burgoyne.
[Sidenote: =Burgoyne surrenders at Saratoga.=]
Half of this plan only was executed. Howe won the battle of Brandywine
over Washington and took Philadelphia, but Burgoyne failed lamentably.
The distance he had to cover was too great; after struggling with
difficulty across the wilderness that divided Canada from the States,
he found himself with a half-starved army at Saratoga. Here he was
beset by all the militia of the New England States under General Gates.
They outnumbered him by two to one, and held strong positions in woods
and hills which he could not force. The troops from New York failed
to come to his aid, his retreat on Canada was cut off, and after hard
fighting he laid down his arms, with 5000 starving men, the remnant of
his much-tried army (October 17, 1777).
[Sidenote: =France and Spain declare war on England.=]
The news of the surrender at Saratoga flew all round the world, and
had the most disastrous consequences. Judging that England had at last
involved herself in a fatal struggle, her old enemy France resolved to
take her revenge for all that she had suffered in the Seven Years' War.
The ministers of the young king, Lewis XVI., thought that they might
now win back Canada and India, and shatter the commercial and colonial
supremacy that Britain had gained by the treaty of Paris. In December,
1777, France recognized the independence of America. In February, 1778,
she declared war on England. Spain, bound as of old by the "Family
Compact" of the Bourbons, and eager to win back Minorca and Gibraltar,
followed suit in the next year. Holland was added to our enemies in
1780.
The interference of France profoundly modified the face of the war.
Instead of a mere local struggle between England and her colonists,
it became a general contention all over the world for the same prize
that had been disputed in the Seven Years' War--the empire of the sea.
But this time England had not only to fight her old foes, but her own
children. Moreover, she was deprived of the aid of Frederic of Prussia,
the most useful of allies in the old contest; for, disgusted by the
conduct of Bute and George III. in 1762, he refused to hear of any
renewed alliance with England.
[Sidenote: =Critical position of England.=]
Nothing could have been more difficult than the problem which England
had now to face. With all her disposable army over-sea in America,
she found herself threatened by an invasion at home, and saw her
possessions all over the world beset by France and Spain. Gibraltar and
Minorca, the West Indies, and all our other outlying posts, were held
by garrisons of wholly inadequate strength. The fleet, which, owing to
the continental character of the American struggle, had been hitherto
neglected, was suddenly called upon to act as our main line of defence,
and proved too small for its task.
[Sidenote: =Last speech and death of Pitt.=]
King George was as obstinate and courageous as he was narrow-minded.
With a firm resolution that was admirable but unwise, he stood forth
to face the whole world in arms, without yielding an inch. It was in
vain that the aged William Pitt, whom the news of foreign war called
out from his retirement, came down to the House of Lords to speak for
reconciliation with America at all costs. He urged that we must not
fight our own kith and kin, but seek peace with them, and turn all
our forces against the foreign foe. After an impassioned harangue he
fainted in his seat in the House, and was carried home to die (May 11,
1778).
[Sidenote: =France sends aid to the colonists.=]
The French commenced the war by sending supplies and money to America.
Soon after, they despatched a fleet and an army to the same quarter.
This had a marked effect on the face of the war. The English lost, in
1778, all their strongholds in the colonies except the island city of
New York. But this reverse only led the king to try a new attack on the
Americans. The southern states of Georgia and Carolina were known to
be less zealous for the cause of American independence than the other
colonies, and to contain many loyalists. It was resolved to transfer
the English army to this quarter (1779).
[Sidenote: =Expedition of Cornwallis.=]
Accordingly Lord Cornwallis, an able and active officer, was charged
with the invasion of the South. For a time the English carried all
before them. They took Savannah and Charleston, and overran all Georgia
and South Carolina. Many of the loyal colonists took arms in their
favour, and it seemed that England would save at least a part of her
ancient inheritance. The American Government was much alarmed, and
sent southward all its disposable troops, headed by Gates, the victor
of Saratoga. But Cornwallis beat this large army at Camden (August,
1780), and added North Carolina to his previous conquests. But with a
mere 10,000 men scattered all over three vast States, he was unable to
maintain any very firm hold on the country, and his flanks and rear
were harassed by predatory bands of partisans, who slipped round to
raise trouble behind him. He treated these guerillas as brigands, and
shot some of them when captured, a proceeding which served no end but
to exasperate the Americans.
[Sidenote: =Cornwallis at Yorktown.=]
Persevering in his ideas of conquest, Cornwallis in 1781 collected his
army, and, leaving a very scanty garrison behind him, set out to invade
Virginia. He beat the Americans at Guildford Court House (March 15),
and chased La Fayette, a young French officer who was commanding the
colonists in this quarter, into the interior of Virginia. But finding
his army worn out with long marches and incessant fighting, he dropped
down on to Yorktown, a seaport on the peninsula of the same name, to
recruit himself with food and reinforcements from the English fleet,
which had been ordered to meet him there.
[Sidenote: =De Grasse drives off the English fleet.=]
This march to Yorktown ended in a fearful disaster. Cornwallis found no
ships to welcome him. A French squadron had intercepted Admiral Graves
when he set out from New York. Outnumbered by three to two, Graves
retired after a slight engagement, and it was the Frenchman De Grasse
who now appeared off Yorktown, to blockade instead of to succour the
harassed English troops. At the same time Washington, with a powerful
American army, reinforced by 6000 French, appeared on the land side,
and seized the neck which joins the York peninsula to the Virginian
mainland.
[Sidenote: =Cornwallis capitulates.=]
Thus Cornwallis was caught in a trap, between Washington's army and
the fleet of De Grasse. He made a desperate attempt to escape by
breaking through the American lines, but, when it failed, was forced to
surrender for want of food and ammunition, with 4500 men, the remnants
of the victorious army of the South. With him fell all hopes of the
retention of Georgia and Carolina by the British. The feeble garrisons
which he had left behind him were swept away, and the fortress of
Charleston alone remained of all the conquests which he had made
(October, 1781). New York, in a similar way, was now left as the only
British post in the North.
[Sidenote: =Reverses in the Mediterranean and the West and East
Indies.=]
Under this disaster it seemed as if England must succumb, more
especially as it was but one of a simultaneous batch of defeats
suffered in all corners of the empire. Minorca was captured by the
French in the same autumn, after a vigorous defence. All the West India
islands, save Jamaica and Barbados, suffered the same fate. In India
a French fleet under De Suffren was hovering off the coast of Madras,
while at the same time Haider Ali, a famous military adventurer who had
made himself ruler of Mysore, invaded the Carnatic from the inland, cut
an English army to pieces, and ravaged the country up to the gates of
Madras.
[Sidenote: =The Gordon Riots.=]
At home too matters were looking very dark. The dull and reactionary
government of North had been suffering a stormy trial. In 1780 the
strange and fantastic Gordon Riots had seemed for a moment to shake the
foundations of society in London. Lord George Gordon, a fanatical and
half-crazed member of Parliament, had stirred up an agitation against
some bills for the relief of Romanists which had come before the Lower
House. He raised a mob which burnt many Catholic chapels, destroyed the
houses of unpopular persons, and then turned to indiscriminate plunder.
The ministry and the magistrates showed a strange weakness before this
outburst of anarchy, and it was left to King George himself to order
the troops to act against the mob, and get the streets cleared by the
prompt shooting of plunderers.
[Sidenote: =The Irish volunteers.=]
In Ireland things were far more dangerous. In the absence of the
regular army, the ministry had permitted the Protestants of Ireland
to form volunteer corps for the protection of the island from French
invasion. But the volunteers, finding themselves the only force in the
land, proceeded to follow the example of America, by agitating for the
complete parliamentary freedom of Ireland, and the repeal of Poynings'
Act, which subjected the Irish to the British legislature. It was
only their fear of their own Catholic countrymen which kept them from
demanding separation, and all through 1781-82 an open rebellion seemed
possible at any moment; nor had England a single soldier to spare to
repress such a rising. Indeed, the trouble only ended by the complete
surrender of the English Government. North's successors in May, 1782,
granted the Irish the Home Rule they demanded, and for eighteen years
(1782-1800) the Irish legislature was completely independent of that of
Great Britain.
[Sidenote: =Rodney's victory.--Relief of Gibraltar.=]
The general break-up of the British empire seemed possible and even
probable in 1782. But two great victories saved it. Admiral Rodney
on April 12 met the French fleet in the West Indies, and inflicted a
crushing defeat on it off St. Lucia, capturing his opponent, De Grasse.
This restored English maritime supremacy in America, and led to the
recovery of most of the lost West India Islands. A similar triumph in
waters nearer home followed in the autumn of the same year. A great
French and Spanish army and fleet had been besieging Gibraltar since
1779. It made its final attack in September, 1782, bringing up vast
floating batteries to compete with the artillery of the Rock. But
General Eliott, the indefatigable governor of the place, destroyed all
these cumbrous structures with red-hot shot; and a few days later an
English fleet under Lord Howe arrived and relieved the long-beleaguered
garrison.
[Sidenote: =Lord North resigns.--The Whigs make peace with the
colonies.=]
Six months before the relief of Gibraltar, Lord North, seeing all
things round him in disaster, and sensible that the king's policy was
no longer possible, laid down office. To his grief and humiliation,
George III. was forced to call his enemies the Whigs into power, and to
surrender the administration of affairs to them. A Whig cabinet under
Lord Rockingham was formed, which immediately made overtures of peace
to the United Colonies, conceding complete independence. The Americans
were half bankrupt and wholly tired of the war; they accepted the terms
with alacrity, and, to the disgust of their French allies, made peace
in April, 1783.
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Versailles.=]
This left France and Spain committed to a war which was no longer going
in their favour. England had reasserted her old maritime supremacy,
and seemed very far from crushed. But she was so disheartened that
it was well known that she would make vast concessions to end the
war. The allies consented to treat, and granted the new Whig ministry
comparatively easy terms. England ceded Minorca and Florida to Spain,
and St. Lucia and Tobago, Senegal, and Goree to France, besides
restoring the Indian factories of the French. So by the treaty of
Versailles (September, 1783) ended the disastrous "War of American
Independence."
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE YOUNGER PITT, AND THE RECOVERY OF ENGLISH PROSPERITY.
1782-1793.
[Sidenote: =Results of the war.=]
When England bowed before the force of circumstances, and concluded
peace with America, France, Spain, and Holland in 1783, she had
touched the lowest point of weakness which had been her lot since
the fifteenth century. Peace had been imposed by victorious enemies,
after a fruitless struggle of eight years. English armies had grown
accustomed to defeat; English fleets could barely hold their own upon
the seas. Money had been spent with a lavish hand, and the National
Debt was doubled. As a result of all her efforts, England had not only
to surrender smaller possessions all over the world, but to witness
the loss of her great Western empire, the thirteen colonies which
had been the pride of her statesmen, and one of the main outlets of
her commerce. A blow such as the loss of America seemed likely to
be fatal to England. Not only was her prestige gone, and her pride
humbled, but she was left with her finances in an apparently hopeless
condition of exhaustion, and her internal politics in a state of
complete disintegration. King George's great experiment in autocratic
government had completely failed; he had led the nation into disaster
and bankruptcy. His ministry had been struck down by the course of
events, the irrefutable logic of the American war. Lord North had
retired; his master had been forced to own himself beaten, and to make
over the conduct of the realm to a Whig ministry. But the Rockingham
cabinet was evidently a mere stop-gap. George's skilful policy of the
last twenty years had so divided and broken up the Whig party, that it
was difficult to reconstitute a strong cabinet from its remnants. When
peace with America and France had been secured--that peace being the
one great mandate which the nation had given to the Whigs--it seemed
likely that the perennial jealousies of their cliques and clans would
once more wreck the party, and that the king, with his steady power of
intrigue, his pension list, and his power of patronage, would succeed
in placing some second North in office.
[Sidenote: =Changed character of the Whigs.=]
The Whigs, however, were no longer their old selves. The great effect
of their twelve years' exile from power had been to teach the better
men of the party to detest the old methods of parliamentary corruption
and family jobbery which they had learnt from Walpole and Newcastle.
The Whigs had failed to realize the hatefulness of these practices
when employed by themselves, but when their own engine was turned
against them by the king, they began to see its shame. That the party
which professed to represent the people and to forward the immortal
principles of the Revolution, should ground its power on official
bribery and corruption, was humiliating to the better men in the Whig
camp. Hence it came that the nobler spirits among them resolved to
protest against the old methods, and to claim that the victory of their
party over the king in 1782 should result in something more than a
distribution of the loaves and fishes of office among their partisans.
Unhappily, however, much of the old leaven of corruption still hung
about the Whigs, and the section which represented it was just about to
perpetrate the worst piece of jobbery which their party ever committed.
[Sidenote: =Death of Lord Rockingham.--The Shelburne ministry.=]
The one thing in which all sections of the Whigs could agree, was
dislike of the royal influence, as employed by George III. The first
end, therefore, which the Rockingham cabinet set before itself, was
to cut down the means of corruption which the king possessed. The
pension list was diminished, no single person was to be allowed to
draw more than £300, the "secret service" funds in the royal hands
were cut down, and a certain number of the useless and expensive
offices about the court abolished. This was all very well so far as
it went, but much more was needed, and it was very uncertain how much
time would be granted to the new Whig ministers to carry out further
reforms. Their leader, Lord Rockingham, died suddenly in July, 1782,
long ere the formal treaties of peace with France and Spain had been
signed. He was a man of slender abilities, but honest and popular, and
able to keep his party together. On his death the old clan rivalries
of his followers burst once more into life. The king sent for Lord
Shelburne, the leader of the liberal and reforming party among the
Whigs, and offered him the premiership. But Shelburne was viewed with
bitter dislike by many of the Whig chiefs; his sharp tongue and his
love of intrigue made him many foes, and when he took office they
refused to serve under him. On the mere ground of personal jealousy
and resentment, the larger half of the party went into opposition and
joined the Tories. Not only the old family cliques that represented
the corrupt and selfish Whigs of an earlier day, but many of the
younger men, who called themselves the friends of liberty and reform,
took this suicidal step. Among them was Charles James Fox, the most
able and open-minded man in the party, but irregular in his private
life, a gambler and a lover of the bottle, somewhat tainted with the
failings of a political adventurer, and too factious to be altogether
honest in his actions. Fox had been a Tory in his earlier years, but
had quarrelled with Lord North in 1772, and after that date had joined
the opposition, become one of its chiefs, and been the first to favour
peace with America.
[Sidenote: =William Pitt the younger.=]
Shelburne took office, therefore, with a comparatively weak following.
So many of the old leaders had refused to aid him, that he was
constrained to give the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader
of the House of Commons to a young man of twenty-three, William
Pitt, the second son of the great Earl of Chatham. This appointment,
startling though it appeared, was a very wise one. The younger Pitt was
the most remarkable man of his age. He had inherited from his father
high principles, an enthusiastic belief in the future of England, and
a sympathy for the cause of reform. He had been reared as a Whig, but
had no sympathies for the old parliamentary jobbing and corruption of
the party. His personal integrity was as great as that of his father,
and his hatred of intrigue and bribery even greater. Though quite new
to the House of Commons, he made a sensation on his first appearance
in it, which showed that men saw that the mantle of his father had
fallen upon his shoulders. His self-confidence and belief in his own
powers were as great as those of Chatham had been, but he was devoid
of the theatrical pomposity which had sometimes marred the effect of
his parent's eloquence. As Chatham had believed himself the destined
saviour of England from the dangers of foreign war, so it was his son's
aim and end to deliver England from internal faction, and to build up
a great constitutional party which should combine loyalty to the crown
with liberal and progressive legislation. This party, as Pitt imagined,
would consist of the more enlightened Whigs, the section of the party
which had once followed his father, and now obeyed Shelburne. That it
would ever grow to be known as the "Tory party," would at this moment
have been beyond his comprehension.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Shelburne.=]
The Shelburne ministry only held office for nine months (July, 1782, to
April, 1783). From the first it was doomed to fall before the hostility
of the Whig opposition. It survived long enough to ratify the final
conclusion of the peace negotiations which the Rockingham cabinet
had begun. But it fell before a factious motion of Fox, who moved a
vote of censure on the very reasonable and moderate terms on which
peace had been bought from France. This motion was supported by the
ominous combination of the old Tory supporters of Lord North with the
discontented sections of the Whig party. It drove Shelburne to instant
resignation.
[Sidenote: =Fox and North combine.=]
But no one could have foreseen the strange sequel to this vote. To the
surprise of all save those who were in the secret, it was suddenly
announced that Fox and North were about to unite their forces, not for
a single division, but for a permanent alliance. Lord North seems to
have imbibed in his long tenure of power--from 1770 to 1782--a craving
for office at any price. Seeing that the king was too weak for the
moment to replace him in his old seat, he plotted an unnatural union
with his foes the Whig clans. He could command the allegiance of that
section of the Tories who cared more for place and power than for their
loyalty towards the crown, of the men who had aided King George from
purely personal and corrupt motives. Now he offered Fox and the Duke of
Portland, the Whig leaders, the invaluable aid of this solid phalanx
of votes, if they would admit him into their alliance. Having no
political aims or principles of his own save a desire to possess power
and patronage, he could undertake to fall in with any schemes that they
might desire. To their great discredit the Whigs closed eagerly with
this immoral proposal, and took North into partnership, though they had
been spending the last ten years in vehement abuse of his methods of
government and his mean subservience to the king.
[Sidenote: =The Coalition Ministry.=]
Hence came into existence the "Coalition Ministry" of April, 1783, in
which the followers of North and Fox sat together under the nominal
control of the Duke of Portland, one of the chiefs of the old Whig
families. The cynical immorality of the combination displeased every
one. The king was enraged with his old hireling North for leading
away half the Tories to join the hated Whig oligarchs. The nation was
puzzled and disgusted to see men who had so often abused each other,
combining from no better motive than mere lust for power and office.
But unpopular though the new cabinet was, it was for the moment supreme
in Parliament by means of its overwhelming majority of votes.
[Sidenote: =Pitt's Reform Bill rejected.=]
The continued existence of the Coalition Government would probably
have led to a return to the ancient corruption of Walpole and
Newcastle. What the principles of the new Whig administration were,
was sufficiently shown by the fate of a Reform Bill, to abolish rotten
boroughs and increase the representation of populous districts, which
William Pitt brought forward in the summer of 1783. The ministry
frowned on a measure which would diminish their power to buy votes, and
the bill was rejected by a majority of 144.
But, fortunately for England, the Coalition was not to last for long.
It fell partly because of its unpopularity with the nation, and partly
because the king tried against it the last of his autocratic methods of
interfering with politics.
[Sidenote: =Fox's India Bill.=]
In November, 1783, Fox brought in a bill for rearranging the government
of our Indian possessions, a measure which had become necessary in
consequence of changes in that country which we shall have to narrate
a few pages later on. The manifest failure of the East India Company
to provide for the good administration of the growing empire which
was falling into its hands, rendered the interference of the Home
Government imperative. Fox produced a bill for taking the rule of our
Indian possessions entirely out of the power of the Company, which
was in the future to confine its activity to commerce alone. All the
English officials in India, from the governors of presidencies down to
ensigns in the army and clerks, were to be selected by a council of
seven commissioners in London, nominated by Parliament. The names of
the seven were given, and they were all violent partisans of Fox and
North. The bill, good in many ways, was liable to censure in the one
point that it gave the ministry a fund of patronage which was certain
to be abused. The Fox-North cabinet was nothing if not unscrupulous,
and when it got control of the £300,000 of annual patronage which the
East India Company possessed, there is no doubt that it would have
employed it to forward Whig family jobs and political corruption. An
opponent of the bill complained that "it took the diadem off the king's
head to place it on that of Mr. Fox." Much was also said as to the
injustice of stripping the Company of its chartered rights.
[Sidenote: =The King and Fox's bill.=]
The India Bill, however, passed the Commons, and then came before the
Lords. To throw it out, the king now took the unprecedented step of
sending down to the House a paper written with his own hand, which
Lord Temple was to show to such of the peers as he thought fit. It was
to the effect that "whoever voted for the bill was not only not his
Majesty's friend, but would be considered as his enemy." This notice
was given to all who wavered, or who did not wish to incur the king's
personal enmity. It led so many of the weaker Whig peers to abstain
from voting, that the bill was thrown out by a majority of nineteen.
George's conduct was quite unconstitutional; if it were possible for
the king to engage in such an underhand intrigue against his own
cabinet, the system of government by responsible ministers became
impossible.
[Sidenote: =The Coalition resigns.=]
The Whigs revenged themselves by passing a vote through the Commons
stigmatizing Lord Temple's conduct in showing the paper as a high crime
and misdemeanour. Nevertheless they had to quit office, though they
boasted that they would soon be back again, since George could not
find any other ministry to put in their place (December, 1783).
[Sidenote: =Pitt takes office.=]
They were mistaken, however. The king, ready to dare any expedient that
would keep the hated Coalition out of power, had offered the position
of prime minister to William Pitt. The ambitious young statesman
accepted the charge, and took office, though he could only rely on the
support of the Shelburne Whigs, the reforming section of the party,
aided by the "King's Friends," as those of the Tory party who had not
followed North were once again styled.
[Sidenote: =The General Election.=]
The sight of a prime minister of twenty-four, backed by a weak
minority, moved the derision of the partisans of Fox and North. They
said that they would drive him to resign in three weeks, and at once
threw out all the bills which he brought before the House. But, instead
of resigning, Pitt was resolved to dissolve Parliament and to face a
general election. He knew that his own name was great with the nation,
and that the Coalition was universally detested and condemned. His
policy was crowned with enormous success. Almost every borough and
county where the election was free and the voters numerous, declared
against the candidates whom Fox and North recommended. No less than 160
supporters of the Coalition lost their seats, and Pitt came back to
Parliament with a clear working majority in his favour (March, 1784).
[Sidenote: =Pitt and the king.=]
Thus began the long and eventful ministry which was to last for the
next seventeen years. With the triumph of Pitt English politics are
lifted to a higher level, and lose the mean and petty aspect which they
had displayed ever since the days of Walpole. For the first time since
the century began, England was in the hands of a minister of a spotless
personal integrity, who possessed broad views and a definite political
programme. His power was enormous, for, in return for having delivered
the king from his hated enemies the Whigs, Pitt was granted the royal
support even for measures which his narrow-minded sovereign hardly
understood and could not love. George tolerated in him a policy which
would have maddened him if it had been pursued by the Whigs. In return
the minister treated the king with a loyalty and a personal regard
which were perhaps hardly deserved by his master.
[Sidenote: =The new Tory party.=]
Pitt took from the elder Tories the loyalty which they had degraded
into subservience, and from the Whigs the liberal and reforming
principles and hatred of corruption which they had preached but not
practised. On the basis of the two combined, he strove to build up
a party, new in fact if not in name, from the scattered knots and
sections of politicians who had united to oppose the iniquitous
coalition of Fox and North. The wonderful success of the earlier years
of his administration fixed him firmly in his seat, and enabled him to
carry out his policy.
[Sidenote: =The financial situation.=]
He found the country still in the depths of the depression caused by
the American war, with a deficit of £12,000,000, and a National Debt
which had just mounted up to what was then considered the crushing
sum of £200,000,000. So low was public credit that Consols only stood
at 60. Yet in five years Pitt could show a prosperous balance-sheet,
a revenue rapidly increasing without any additional taxation, a
scheme--if a faulty one--for extinguishing the National Debt, and the 3
per cents. at par.
The fact was that in 1784 the state of England was not so bad as it
appeared. Financially, the American war failed to ruin the country,
because new sources of wealth were developed exactly at the moment when
they were wanted. To replace the comparatively small commercial profit
which we had been wont to draw from our lost Western colonies, a sudden
increase of wealth came flooding in from our new Eastern empire in
India. Nor was this all. Even more important were the new channels of
profit opened by the development of our home manufactures.
[Sidenote: =Improved communications.=]
We have already spoken of the symptoms of an approaching development
in our domestic industries which were beginning to be felt toward the
end of the reign of George II. This movement came to maturity in the
earlier years of George III. While the king was wrangling with the
Whigs, and sowing the seeds of the American war, a revolution was
quietly transforming the character of English trade. Between 1760 and
1780 a network of canals had been constructed to connect the centres of
manufacturing life. The muddy lanes, which England had hitherto called
roads, began at last to disappear, and a multitude of turnpike Acts
created new highways along which traffic could readily make its way.
The fast-travelling coach superseded the lumbering stage-waggons, which
had crept from town to town.
[Sidenote: =Development of the North.=]
Along the new roads and canals rolled a vastly increased volume of
trade. The great discovery of the last reign, that iron might be
smelted with coal, made Northern England, where coal and iron lie side
by side, a great manufacturing district instead of a thinly peopled
range of moors, and before the century was out Yorkshire and Lancashire
had become the most important industrial centres in the realm.
[Sidenote: =Mechanical inventions.=]
A few years after the expansion of the iron industry came the growth
of textile manufactures, fostered by the new discoveries made by
Watt and Arkwright. The former, a Glasgow instrument-maker, began
the application of steam to the setting of machinery in motion. The
latter, a barber at Bolton, perfected the details of that machinery,
and showed that it was possible to do quickly and accurately with
iron what had hitherto been done slowly and more clumsily with human
fingers. Where previously the spinner and weaver co-operated with the
precarious motive-power of running water, the new mills, working by
steam and able to establish themselves wherever coal was to be found,
made their appearance. Thus the price of production was enormously
lessened, and English woven goods became able to underbid any others
in the markets of the world. For as yet no other nation had learnt
the use of steam and machinery, and England had a monopoly of the new
inventions. Our linen, woollen, and cotton manufactures were increasing
with an astounding rapidity, and wealth and population mounted up by
leaps and bounds. It is true that the new factory system was to lead
to many social troubles and miseries. In the haste to grow rich, the
mill-owners took little thought of the bodily or moral welfare of
their workmen. In the new centres of population the lower classes were
crowded together in narrow and unhealthy streets, forced to work too
many hours a day, and grievously stinted in their wages as competition
grew fierce. But these evils were only beginning to develop, while the
rush of wealth produced in the new industries was apparent at once.
[Sidenote: =Improved agriculture.=]
Moreover, the growth of manufactures had stimulated other sources of
prosperity. The increased population called for a larger food-supply,
and therefore forced agriculture to develop. Waste and moor were
everywhere being ploughed up, to raise corn for the new thousands who
annually swelled our ranks. It is said that more new ground was taken
into cultivation in the years between 1760 and 1780 than in the whole
century which preceded them. Thus the landholding classes shared in the
prosperity of the manufacturers. Nor was it only in the quantity of new
corn-bearing land that progress was seen; the older acres also were
cultivated with improved methods, and brought forth double their former
produce.
[Sidenote: =Growth of wealth.=]
The growth of manufactures and the development of agriculture were
enough in themselves to account for the marvellous ease with which
England bore the burdens imposed upon her by the American war. So
greatly was the national wealth increased, that losses which had seemed
ruinous at the time were forgotten in ten years. The £120,000,000 of
debt incurred in the struggle were no longer a nightmare to Chancellors
of the Exchequer; it became evident that the country had suffered no
incurable wound in the disastrous struggle with America, France, and
Spain.
[Sidenote: =Pitt's financial and commercial policy.=]
Pitt, then, fell upon a fortunate time when he took office in December,
1783. But we must not deprive him of the full credit of restoring the
prosperity of English finance. It is a great title to praise that he
saw the bright side of things when other men were hopeless. And it
must be remembered that his own enlightened conduct of affairs had
much to do with the improved condition of the country. For he was far
ahead of his contemporaries in his knowledge of finance and political
economy. First of all English statesmen, he had studied the laws of
wealth and the workings of international commerce. He had found an
inspiration in Adam Smith's celebrated book, the "Wealth of Nations,"
published in 1776, and from it had convinced himself that Free Trade
was the true policy of England, and that the old and narrow commercial
policy of restriction and Protection was radically unsound. In all his
legislation he bore this principle in mind, and the realm profited
thereby to no small extent.
[Sidenote: =Peace abroad.=]
The first ten years of Pitt's rule (1783-1792) were a time of profound
peace both at home and abroad. Though his foreign policy was not weak
or vacillating, the young premier avoided all collisions with our
neighbours. A slight difficulty with Spain in 1789 about our colony on
Vancouver's Island, in the North Pacific, is hardly worth mention.
[Sidenote: =The Whigs powerless.=]
Meanwhile Pitt's ascendency at home was complete. The disgrace of the
Coalition still hung over the Parliamentary opposition. There seemed to
be hardly any reason for the longer existence of the old Whig party,
which followed Fox, Burke, and Sheridan. The popular principles on
which they had always pretended to rest had now been adopted by the
opponent whom they styled a Tory. The opposition in the years 1783-1793
was factious rather than honest. The Whigs had to see measures, which
they could not but approve, carried by their political enemy, or else
to withstand them on the inadequate ground of pure party spite. The
spectacle of a conscientious and enlightened minister opposed by men
who could find no real fault with his principles or measures, disgusted
the nation, and the Whig party sunk into a disrepute which proceeded
from a general belief that it was insincere. Not least among the
causes of its ill odour with the country was the close connection of
its leaders, Fox and Sheridan--neither of them men of a high moral
reputation--with the Prince of Wales. For the young prince's dissolute
habits, wanton thriftlessness, and unfilial conduct towards his father
rendered him a byword among right-minded men. Yet the only hope of the
Whigs returning to office lay in the help of the younger George. He had
promised to dismiss Pitt and call Fox to office if ever he were able,
and when in 1788 his father was stricken down with a temporary fit of
insanity, it seemed that he might be able to carry out his design. But
the king recovered before his son had been formally named regent, and
the Whigs lost their opportunity.
[Sidenote: =Pitt and foreign trade.=]
The early years of Pitt's domination were a period of active
legislation. He took in hand many schemes, and brought most of them to
a successful end. His enlightened views on Free Trade were shown by a
commercial treaty with France which took off many prohibitive duties,
and much increased the commerce between the two countries (1786).
He also attempted to remove all trade restrictions between England
and Ireland, but was foiled by the factious Irish parliament, which
refused to ratify the terms which he offered. Smuggling he succeeded in
reducing to a low ebb, by lessening the exorbitant duties on tea and
spirits; so that the excess of profit on smuggled goods was no longer
large enough to tempt men to incur the risk of capture.
[Sidenote: =Domestic reforms.=]
We find Pitt abolishing the shocking scandals of public executions
at Tyburn, supporting measures for the abolition of the Slave Trade,
repealing most of the ancient legislation against Romanists, and
opening the bar and the army to them. He turned the ancient punishment
of being sold into slavery on a tropical plantation, which had
hitherto been the lot of convicts, into the comparatively mild form
of transportation to Botany Bay, the penal settlement in Australia
established in 1788 as our first possession in that continent.
[Sidenote: =The Canada Bill.=]
Of wise and liberal dealing with the colonies Pitt set an example,
which has ever since been followed, in his Canada Bill of 1790. This
measure gave a liberal grant of responsible government to that great
colony, where so many of the exiled loyalists from the United States
had settled down after the war. But perhaps the most important of all
the measures of the years 1783-1793 were those dealing with India. Pitt
had to face, not only the problems which had called forth Fox's India
Bill, but some further difficulties of a personal kind.
A word as to the history of our Indian Empire is required to carry it
on from the point where we left it, after Clive's conquest of Bengal
and the final rout of the French at Wandewash (1760).
[Sidenote: =Indian politics.=]
It was impossible for the English to halt in the position which they
had then reached. Most especially was it unlikely that they would
long bear with the unsatisfactory state of affairs in Bengal and the
Carnatic, where the East India Company had taken the nawabs under
their protection and made vassals of them, but had not thought out
any scheme for making those princes govern in accordance with English
interests and ideas. It was intolerable that we should be responsible
for the misrule of effete oriental despots, while keeping no real
control over them; for, except in the suburbs of Madras and Calcutta,
we made no pretence to territorial sovereignty.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Buxar.=]
The feeble Mohammed Ali in the Carnatic did no worse than pile up
mountains of debt, and quibble with the Governor of Madras. But Mir
Kasim, the Nawab of Bengal, was made of sterner stuff. Resenting all
interference of his suzerains in the governance of his realm, he
rebelled against the Company, and sealed his own fate by massacring 150
English merchants of the factory of Patna. This brought down prompt
chastisement. He was driven out of Bengal, and forced to take refuge
with his neighbour Suraj-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Oude, who consented to
espouse his cause. But at Buxar, Major Munro, with a handful of sepoys,
defeated the united armies of the two Mohammedan princes (1763). This
important victory gave England the control of all North-Eastern India:
she enthroned a new nawab in Bengal, but made him a mere puppet and
tool, with no real authority. For the future the Company administered
Bengal and Bahar in its own name, under the authority of a grant from
Shah Alum, the powerless Grand Mogul of the day. At the same time Oude
came within the sphere of British influence, for Suraj-ud-Dowlah was
forced to become our ally and to pay us a subsidy.
[Sidenote: =Clive's reforms.=]
Shortly after this pacification, Lord Clive came out again to India,
to act as Governor of Bengal. His second tenure of power lasted two
years (1765-1767), and was notable for great improvements which he
introduced into the governance of the land. Hitherto the English
officials and military commanders had received very low pay, while
placed in positions where money-making was easy. Many succumbed to
the temptation, and accumulated fortunes by blackmailing the natives,
by selling their patronage, or by engaging in private trade. Clive
wisely stopped these sources of corruption, by raising the salaries of
his subordinates, but forbidding them to trade with the country or to
receive gifts from natives. His reforms were much resented, and almost
led to sedition among the military; but he carried them through with
a strong hand, and left the army and civil service much improved and
purified. Ill-health forced him to return to England in 1767, where
some years after he put an end to himself in a fit of depression.
[Sidenote: =Warren Hastings, Governor-General.=]
For the next six years our Indian possessions were ruled by men of
lesser fame, and were unvexed by foreign wars. But in 1773 a new
era began. In that year a Governor-General was for the first time
appointed, and entrusted with the command of all the three presidencies
of Bengal, Madras, and Bombay. The first man placed in this office
was the greatest who has ever held it--the able and undaunted Warren
Hastings. For twelve years this stern ruler maintained the prestige of
the English name in India, though he had to face the fearful storm of
the American war, which shook the foundations of the British empire in
every part of the world. Not the least of his achievements was that he
asserted his own will in every crisis against the strenuous opposition
of his factious council, who, headed by Philip Francis--the virulent
writer of the "Letters of Junius"--did their best to thwart every
scheme that he took in hand.
[Sidenote: =Execution of Nandukumar.=]
Hastings began his rule by placing in English hands all the posts in
the administration of justice and the collection of the taxes, which
had hitherto been in the charge of natives. This led to increased
revenue and pure law. But the Bengalis did not at first understand the
methods of the new courts, which in some ways worked harshly enough.
When Sir Elijah Impey, the first Chief Justice, hung for forgery the
great Calcutta banker, Nandukumar (Nuncomar), they could only believe
that he suffered because he had offended the Governor-General by
intriguing with Francis and the other discontented members of council.
Hence came a most unjust accusation against Hastings and Impey, of
having committed a judicial murder.
[Sidenote: =The Rohilla war.=]
The worst trouble which Hastings experienced was the continual cry
for increased dividends with which the directors of the East India
Company kept plaguing him. They were not particular as to the way in
which money was to be earned, and the Governor-General sometimes tried
strange expedients to satisfy them. The worst was the hiring out to
Asaf-ud-Dowlah, the Nawab of Oude, of English troops for use in wars
with his neighbours. By such aid that prince subdued the Rohillas, an
Afghan tribe on his northern frontier. The only excuse that Hastings
could plead for this undignified traffic was that the Rohillas were a
race of plunderers and a public nuisance to Northern India (1774).
[Sidenote: =The Mahratta war, 1778.=]
A little later an attempt to extend the English influence in Western
India involved Hastings in a dangerous war. The Bombay government
wished to acquire over its neighbours the Mahrattas the same sort of
suzerainty which Madras exercised over the Nawab of the Carnatic, and
Bengal over the Nawab of Oude. With this object a treaty was concluded
with a prince named Raghonath Rao, who claimed to be Peishwa, or head
of the Mahratta confederacy, by which he was to be lent troops, and to
pay in return a large subsidy to the Company. But the other Mahratta
chiefs, headed by Scindiah, the most powerful of their race, refused to
acknowledge Raghonath, and attacked the Company. They utterly defeated
the Bombay army, and the credit of the British arms was only saved by
a daring experiment of Hastings, who made an English army march from
Bengal right across Northern India. This force took Gwalior, Scindiah's
capital, and overran the province of Gujarat. The Mahrattas made peace,
ceding to Hastings the island of Salsette; but the attempt to make them
into vassals had distinctly failed, and had to be postponed for twenty
years.
[Sidenote: =Haider Ali.=]
But the greatest danger which Hastings had to face came from the
outbreak of the war with France in 1778. It is true that his troops
easily captured Pondicherry and the other French settlements, but
they could not prevent their enemies from stirring up against them
a very dangerous enemy. This was Haider Ali, a Mohammedan military
adventurer who had built up an empire for himself in Southern India.
He had usurped the throne of his master, the Rajah of Mysore, and had
conquered all his neighbours by the aid of a great mercenary army
of fanatical Mussulmans. While Hastings was still engaged in the
dangerous Mahratta war, the French easily induced the ruler of Mysore
to interfere in the struggle, for he coveted the rich dominions of our
vassal, the Nawab of the Carnatic.
[Sidenote: =Hastings' extortions.=]
Haider Ali poured his hordes of predatory horse down from the plateau
of Mysore into the Carnatic. They swept over the whole country, and
burnt the villages at the very gates of Madras. Hastings, already
involved in one war, and vexed by a French fleet under De Suffren which
was hovering about, felt himself at his wits' end for troops and money
to resist the 100,000 men whom Haider had sent against the southern
presidency. To raise new resources he harshly fined Cheyte Singh,
Rajah of Benares, a vassal prince who was slack in contributing to the
war. For failing to give £50,000, the unfaithful rajah was mulcted in
the sum of £500,000. When this was unpaid, Cheyte Singh was deposed
from his throne. More funds were procured from our ally, the Nawab of
Oude, in a not very reputable way. When Hastings asked him for aid,
Asaf-ud-Dowlah answered that he was penniless at the moment, because
his late father had illegally left the state-treasure to the Begums,
his widow and mother. He asked permission from Hastings to extract
the hoard from the old ladies, and did so by the cruel imprisonment
and torture of their servants. Of course the Governor-General was not
responsible for the Nawab's methods. But he profited by them: more than
£1,000,000 was torn from the Begums, and served to pay the expenses of
the Mysore war.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Porto Novo.=]
That struggle, which had begun under such unfavourable circumstances,
was finally carried to a glorious end. The veteran Sir Eyre Coote, who
had won the Carnatic at Wandewash twenty years before, now saved it
by the victory of Porto Novo (July, 1781). Haider's multitudes were
routed, and he was driven back into the hills. Next year he died,
and the throne of Mysore fell to his son, Tippoo Sultan, a cruel and
fanatical prince of talents very inferior to those of his father. After
two years of war, Tippoo was constrained to make peace, and to cease
from molesting the Carnatic (1784).
Hastings' work was now done; he had saved our Indian empire by his hard
fighting with the Mahrattas and the rulers of Mysore, at a time when
England, oppressed by war in Europe and America, could give him no aid.
He had organized the administration, increased the revenue, and set
justice on a firm basis. If some of his acts had been harsh, yet all
should have been pardoned him when his difficulties were taken into
consideration.
[Illustration: INDIA
IN THE TIME OF
WARREN HASTINGS.]
[Sidenote: =Trial of Hastings.=]
But when Hastings came home in 1785, hoping to receive the thanks
of the nation and to be rewarded with a peerage, he was woefully
undeceived. His enemy Francis had returned from India before him, and
had laid before Fox and Burke, the leaders of the Whig opposition, all
the doings of the last ten years painted in the darkest colours. He
persuaded them that Hastings was a tyrant and a monster, and moreover
that a damaging blow could be dealt to Pitt by impeaching the great
governor. For if the prime minister defended him, as was likely,
he might be accused of protecting guilt and malfeasance. The Whigs
therefore demanded with loud cries the impeachment of Hastings; but
Pitt--rather to their surprise--granted it. Then began the famous trial
of the Governor-General before the House of Lords, which lasted fully
six years. Accused of having judicially murdered Nandukumar, of having
illegally sold British troops to the Nawab Asaf-ud-Dowlah, and of
having cruelly oppressed Cheyte Singh and the Begums of Oude, Hastings
was acquitted on every point. But the law expenses had ruined him, and
the nation's indifference had soured him, so that he died an unhappy
and disappointed man.
[Sidenote: =Pitt's India Bill.=]
Hastings was succeeded as Governor-General by Lord Cornwallis, the
victor of Camden and the vanquished of Yorktown. This honest and brave
man was set the task of governing India under a new constitution. In
1784 Pitt had passed an "India Bill" not very unlike that of Fox.
It gave the Crown the supreme power over the Company, making the
Governor-General and the Board of Control in London nominees of the
Crown. But the Company was still left its patronage, its monopoly of
trade, and a certain undefined power over the Governor-General which
led to much trouble in the future.
[Sidenote: =Cornwallis' Indian policy.=]
Cornwallis ruled British India for seven years (1786-1793), and, though
he had gone out with no intention of engaging in wars or aggrandizing
the Company's dominions, was driven by the force of circumstances into
a policy which was practically identical with that of Warren Hastings.
[Sidenote: =War with Tippoo of Mysore.=]
The Sultan Tippoo of Mysore, always restless and quarrelsome, made war
on all his neighbours, till at last, in 1789, he attacked the Rajah
of Travancore, a vassal of the Company. Resolved to crush the Sultan,
Cornwallis built up a great alliance with the Nizam, the Mohammedan
ruler of the Hyderabad state, and with the chiefs of the Mahrattas.
Standing at the head of this confederacy, the English appeared for
the first time as asserting a predominance over the whole peninsula.
Neither the Mahrattas nor the Nizam gave any very material aid towards
the suppression of Tippoo, but Cornwallis proved able to accomplish
it without their assistance. His first advance into Mysore was foiled
by lack of provisions, but in the next year (1791) he forced his way
into the heart of Tippoo's realm, beat him at the battle of Arikera,
and then stormed the lines of Seringapatam, which covered the Sultan's
capital. A few more days' fighting would have put it in the hands of
Cornwallis; but when Tippoo humbled himself and asked for peace, he
was spared. Nearly half his dominions were taken from him--part to be
added to the Madras Presidency, part to be given to the Nizam and the
Mahrattas. It was fortunate that Tippoo did not delay his attack on the
allies for a few years; if he had waited a little longer, he would have
found England deep in her struggle with the French Revolution. As it
was, he was so crushed that he gave no trouble for eight years more.
[Sidenote: =The "Perpetual Settlement."=]
Hardly less important than the Mysore war was Cornwallis's
well-intentioned but ill-judged measure, the "Perpetual Settlement" of
Bengal. This was a scheme for permanently fixing the land revenue of
that province, by assessing a fair rent to be paid to the Company--as
supreme lord of the soil--which should not vary from year to year, but
remain for ever at the moderate figure at which it was now settled. But
unfortunately Cornwallis did not make the bargain with the _ryots_,
or peasants, the real owners of the land, but with the _zemindars_, a
class of hereditary tax-collectors who were one of the legacies left
to us by the old Mogul rulers of India. As the Government made its
contract with the zemindar for the rent of each group of villages,
and undertook never to ask more from him than a certain fixed amount,
it became the interest of this tax-collecting class to screw up the
contributions of the villagers to the highest point, as the whole
profit went into their own pockets. The rack-renting led to a general
strike among the peasantry, who agreed to withhold their rents, and to
go to law with the zemindars _en masse_, knowing that they could choke
the law-courts for years by sending in thousands of appeals at the same
moment. The result of this conspiracy--much like one that was seen
in Ireland only a few years ago--was to ruin most of the zemindars,
who became liable for the land-tax to the Government, and could not
raise it while the ryots were fighting them in the courts. In any
other country than Bengal this crisis must have led to agrarian civil
war, but the Bengalis preferred litigation to outrages, and affairs
ultimately settled down. Later legislation has wisely taken note of the
rights of the ryot as well as those of the zemindar, but the pledge of
the "Perpetual Settlement" has never been broken, and to this day the
lands of Bengal pay no more to the crown than the moderate assessment
of 1793--a standing proof that the British Government keeps its word.
Cornwallis came home in 1794, to find England plunged in the greatest
war that she has ever known--that with the French Revolution.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
1789-1802.
[Sidenote: =The meeting of the States General.=]
In the year 1789, when Pitt was in the zenith of his power, strong in
the confidence of the nation and the king, signs of trouble began to
appear across the British Channel, which attracted the attention of all
intelligent men. The great French Revolution was commencing:--in May,
1789, King Lewis XVI. summoned the States General of France to meet
at Versailles, in order to consult with him on measures for averting
the impending bankruptcy of the realm. It was nearly two centuries
since the last States General had assembled, and nothing but dire
necessity drove the king to call into being the assembly which his
despotic ancestors had so carefully prevented from meeting. But France
was in a desperate condition: the greedy and autolatrous Lewis XIV.
and the vicious spendthrift Lewis XV. had piled up a mountain of debts
which the nation could no longer support. The existing king, though
personally he was mild and unenterprising, had been drawn into the war
of American independence, and wasted on it many millions more. The only
way out of the difficulty was to persuade the nation to submit to new
imposts, and most especially to induce the nobles to surrender their
old feudal privilege of exemption from taxation.
[Sidenote: =France under the Ancien Régime.=]
The king and his ministers were only thinking of the financial trouble;
but by summoning the States General they gave the power of speech to
discontented France, and found themselves confronted by a much larger
problem. The realm had been grossly misgoverned for the last century
by a close ring of royal ministers, who constituted a bureaucracy
of the most narrow-minded sort. Lewis XIV. had crushed out all local
institutions and liberties, in order to impose his royal will on every
man. The lesser kings who followed had allowed the power to slip from
their own hands into those of the close oligarchy of bureaucrats whom
the _Grand Monarque_ had organized. France under the _Ancien Régime_
was suffering all the evils that result from over-centralization and
"red tape." The smallest provincial affairs had to be referred to the
ministers at Paris, who tried to settle everything, but only succeeded
in meddling, and delaying all local improvements. The most hopeless
feature of the time was that the nobility and gentry were excluded
from all political power by the Parisian bureaucrats, though suffered
to retain all their old feudal privileges and exemptions. Thus they
were objects of jealousy to the other classes, yet had no share in
the governance of the realm, or opportunity to temper the despotism
of the royal ministers. Two old mediaeval abuses survived, to make the
situation of the country yet more unbearable: offices of all kinds were
openly bought and sold, while taxation was not raised directly by the
state, but leased out to greedy tax-farmers, who mulcted the public of
far more than they paid into the national treasury.
[Sidenote: =Growth of discontent.--Voltaire and Rousseau.=]
While the government was in this deplorable condition, public opinion
had of late been growing more and more restive. All the educated
classes of France were permeated with deep discontent. Ideals of
constitutional government, borrowed originally from English political
writers, were in the air. The recent alliance with America had
familiarized many Frenchmen with republican institutions and notions
of self-government. The opposition was headed by the chief literary
men of the age. The stinging sarcasms of Voltaire were aimed against
all ancient shams and delusions. Nothing was safe from his criticism,
and most of all did he ridicule the corrupt Gallican Church, with
its hierarchy of luxurious and worldly prelates and its bigoted
and superstitious lower clergy. While Voltaire was decrying old
institutions and teaching men to be sceptical of all ancient beliefs,
his younger contemporary, the sentimental and visionary Rousseau, was
advocating a return to the "state of nature." He taught that man was
originally virtuous and happy, and that all evil was the result of
over-government, the work of priests and kings. He dreamed of a renewal
of the Golden Age, and the abolition of laws and states. All men were
to be brothers, and to live free and equal without lord or master.
Smarting under the narrow and stupid rule of the _Ancien Régime_, many
Frenchmen took these Utopian ideas seriously, and talked of setting up
the reign of reason and humanity. Hence it came that all the claims
and aspirations of the French Revolution were inspired by vague and
visionary ideas of the rights of man, and demanded the destruction of
old institutions, unlike our English agitations for reform, which from
Magna Carta downwards have always claimed a restoration of ancient
liberties, not the setting up of a new constitution.
[Sidenote: =The National Assembly.=]
When the dull but well-intentioned Lewis XVI. had once summoned the
States General of 1789, he soon found that he had given himself a
master. For the deputies of the _Tiers Etat_, or Commons, instead of
proceeding to vote new taxes, began to clamour for the redress of
grievances of all kinds. When the king, like Charles I., threatened
to dissolve them, their spokesman answered, "We are here by the will
of the people of France, and nothing but the force of bayonets shall
disperse us." King Lewis was too weak and slow to send the bayonets. He
drew back, and allowed the States General to organize themselves into a
National Assembly, and to claim to represent the French nation.
[Sidenote: =Storming of the Bastille.=]
The obvious weakness of the king encouraged the friends of revolution
all over France to assert themselves. On July 14, 1789, the mob of
Paris stormed the Bastille--the old state prison of the capital--and
massacred the garrison. The king made no attempt to resent this riot
and murder. Then followed a rapid series of constitutional decrees, by
which the Assembly, backed by the pikes of the Parisian mob, abolished
all the ancient despotic and feudal customs of the realm. It seemed for
a moment as if a solid constitutional monarchy might be established.
But the king was too feeble, and the reformers too rash and wild. The
taint of riot and murder hung about all their doings, and they were
constantly calling in the mob to their aid. Foreseeing a catastrophe,
the greater part of the French royal family and noblesse fled the
realm. Ere long the king became little better than a prisoner in his
own palace.
[Sidenote: =English sympathy with the Revolution.=]
These doings across the Channel keenly interested England. At first
they met with general approval. It looked as if France was about to
become a limited monarchy; and as the personal and dynastic ambition of
the Bourbons had always been the cause of our wars with them, English
public opinion looked with favour on the substitution of the power of
the National Assembly for that of the king. It was thought that France,
under a constitutional government founded on English models, could not
fail to become the friend of England. Pitt expressed in a guarded way
his approbation of the earlier stages of the Revolution. Fox became
its vehement admirer and panegyrist; he exclaimed that the storming
of the Bastille was the greatest and best event in modern history,
conveniently ignoring the cold-blooded massacre of its garrison which
had followed. The greater part of the Whig party followed their
chief, and expressed unqualified praise for the doings of the French.
Some of the more enthusiastic members of the party visited France
and corresponded with the leaders of the Revolution; others formed
political clubs to encourage and support the reformers across the
Channel.
[Sidenote: =The reaction.--Criticisms of Burke.=]
But the mood of generous admiration and universal approval could
not last for long. As the Revolution went on developing, while the
outbursts of mob violence in France grew more frequent, and the
National Assembly plunged into all manner of violence and arbitrary
legislation, there began to be a schism in English public opinion. Fox
and the more vehement Whigs still persisted in finding nothing to blame
across the Channel, explaining the violent deeds of the Parisians as
mere effervescence of the mercurial French temperament. But, curiously
enough, it was a Whig, and one who never tired of singing the praises
of our own Revolution of 1688, who was the first prophet of evil for
the French movement. Edmund Burke, Fox's old colleague and ally, was an
exponent of that view of constitutional liberty which looked on mob-law
as even worse than the despotism of kings. He fixed his eyes on the
murderous riots in Paris and the spectacle of the humiliation of Lewis
XVI., not on the fair promises of a golden age made by the milder
French reformers. The prospect of anarchy shocked him, and he used his
unrivalled eloquence to warn the English nation to have nothing to
do with a people of assassins and atheists. "When a separation once
appears between liberty and law, neither is safe" was his cry. And,
unlikely as it appeared at first, Burke was entirely in the right.
Nothing which he predicted of the French Revolution could exceed the
realities which ere long came to pass.
[Sidenote: =Attempted flight of Lewis XVI.=]
The consciousness of their own uncontrolled power was turning the brain
of the French Assembly, and maddening the Parisian populace. They were
irritated, but not checked, by the weak resistance and futile evasions
of Lewis XVI. At last they persuaded themselves that the king and
the nobility were conspiring to take away their newly won liberties,
while in reality Lewis and his nobles alike were paralyzed with dread,
and only thinking of saving themselves. In the summer of 1791 the
unfortunate king took the fatal step of trying to escape by stealth
from Paris. He stole away in disguise with his wife and children,
and had got half-way to the eastern frontier before his absence was
discovered. A chance caused his stoppage and discovery at Varennes; he
was seized and sent back to Paris, where he was for the future treated
as a prisoner, not as a king.
[Sidenote: =Intervention of Austria and Prussia.=]
From this moment it was the fixed belief in France that Lewis had been
about to fly to Germany, in order to incite the despotic monarchs of
Austria and Prussia against his country. In the Assembly the wilder
party began to come to the front, preaching republicanism, and crying
that France could not be saved by constitutional reforms, but required
blood-letting. Ere long the symptoms of violence and anarchy, which
had frightened Burke in England, exercised a still stronger effect on
the rulers of the continent. Francis of Austria and Frederic William
II. of Prussia, alarmed as to the republican propaganda in France,
and warned by the fate of their fellow-king, began to concentrate
their armies on the Rhine, and to concert measures for putting down
the Revolution. On learning their plans, the French Assembly declared
war on them in April, 1792. But at first their raw levies fared ill
against the Germans; defeat--as always in France--was followed by the
cry of treason, and on the 10th of August the Parisian mob stormed the
Tuileries, slew the king's guards, and called for his deposition.
[Sidenote: =A Republic proclaimed.--The September massacres.=]
The democratic National Convention, which now superseded the Assembly,
proclaimed a Republic, after the populace had massacred many hundreds
of persons who were rightly or wrongly supposed to be the king's
friends (September 2, 1792). The Convention gave its tacit sanction
to these atrocities, in which some of its more violent members were
personally implicated.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of Pitt.=]
The news of the September massacres and the proclamation of the
Republic cleared up for ever the doubts of the English people as to the
character of the French Revolution. Pitt's judicial attitude towards
the movement had at last changed. In 1790 he had doubted whether it
were good or bad; by 1792 he was convinced that it was dangerous,
anarchic, and detestable, but still hoped to avoid coming into actual
conflict with it. He was in his heart a peace-minister, and it was
circumstances, not his own will, which were to make him the fomenter of
leagues and confederacies against France for nine long years of war.
When Austria and Prussia invited him to join them in their attack,
he had at first refused. But he was much disturbed by the bombastic
"Edict of Fraternity," which the Convention published, appealing to
all the nations of Europe. "All governments are our enemies, all
peoples our friends," said this document, and the multitude in every
land were invited to overthrow kings and ministers, and receive the
aid which France would give. Pitt looked upon this as an appeal to
anarchy addressed to the discontented classes in England, and was much
disturbed when he found that it was welcomed by some of the Whigs of
the more popular and democratic section. A small but compact body of
these extreme politicians were doing their best to frighten England
into a frenzy of reaction by their unwise and unpatriotic conduct. Two
clubs called the Corresponding Society and the Constitutional Society
were founded in London for the propagation of revolutionary doctrines.
They were composed of men of no weight or importance, visionary
politicians with a craze for republicanism, men of disappointed
ambitions who longed for a political crisis to bring them into notice,
mob-orators, and such like. These bodies deserved contempt rather than
notice, but in view of the doings over seas, they attracted attention,
and their noisy declamations in favour of the wilder doctrines of the
French Revolution frightened the public. Especially was an outcry
raised by the books and pamphlets of the celebrated free-thinker
and republican writer, Tom Paine, the most blatant apologist of the
atrocities in Paris.
[Sidenote: =Panic in England.--Repressive legislation.=]
The average Englishman was sufficiently disgusted by the language of
these home-grown revolutionaries from the first, but when more and more
blood was shed in France, a measure of alarm was mixed with his dislike
of the noisy clubs. Men began to remember the permanent existence in
London of a large body of the dangerous classes; it was easy to assume
a connection between the French government, the English revolutionary
societies, and the dregs of the London streets. And indeed a few wild
spirits do seem to have talked to French agents of foolish plans for
starting riots, setting fire to the capital, and seizing the Tower
arsenal, in order to arm the mobs who, as they thought, would follow
them. But the thousands of rioters and anarchists had no existence save
in the brains of the French government and the alarmed and indignant
English Tories. Their supposed designs, however, led to an unhappy
panic in English legislation; the _Habeas Corpus_ Act was suspended,
the right of free meeting restricted, even free speech in a measure
fettered, by a wholly unnecessary series of Government measures,
which were in reality directed against a few hundred silly but noisy
fanatics. It was like using a sledge-hammer to crush a wasp.
[Sidenote: =The moderate Whigs join Pitt.=]
Unfortunately, the ultimate effects of this scare were destined to
endure throughout the twenty-two years of the coming war, and even
after its end. The atrocities committed by the French revolutionists,
and the foolish talk of their English admirers, were the cause of
the cessation of liberal legislation in England for a quarter of a
century. Pitt himself, who had hitherto led the party of reform, felt
the revulsion. His long series of wise and enlightened bills ceases
in 1791, and his name becomes, unhappily, connected with stern and
repressive laws of unnecessary severity. But it was not to be wondered
at that he should act so, when we find that the larger half of the
Whigs, the professors of an exaggerated zeal for liberty and popular
government, now joined the Tories. After a continuous existence of a
century, the Whig party suffered complete shipwreck. The majority of
its members followed Burke in concluding an alliance with Pitt. Only a
minority remained in opposition with Fox. In a party division, taken
before the actual commencement of the French war, Fox was followed by
only 50 of his own party when he attempted to oppose a warlike address
to the Crown. It may be worth noting that this wave of revulsion
against the French revolution is reflected in the English literature
of the times. The younger authors of the day, such as Wordsworth and
Southey, are liberal, and even republican, when they begin to write;
but after the worse side of the French movement developed, they rapidly
slide into enthusiastic patriotism, and denunciations of French anarchy
and wickedness.
[Sidenote: =Lewis XVI. executed.--France declares war on England.=]
When this was the state of English public feeling, two events conspired
to urge the nation into the war for which men had gradually been
preparing themselves. The first was the trial and execution of the
unfortunate king of France. The "Jacobin" party, the followers of
the bloodthirsty Marat, the blatant Danton, and the coldly ferocious
Robespierre, were now swaying the Convention. They impeached Lewis,
not so much for any definite acts of his, as to show that they were
determined to be rid of monarchy. "The coalized kings of Europe
threaten us," said Danton; "let us hurl at their feet as a gage the
head of a king." Lewis was sent to the guillotine on the most empty and
frivolous charges (January 21, 1793). His unfortunate wife, Queen Marie
Antoinette, followed him thither a few months after. Pitt immediately
withdrew the English ambassador from Paris, and began to prepare for
war. But the actual _casus belli_ was the determination of the French,
who had now overrun Belgium, to open the Scheldt, and make Antwerp a
great naval arsenal. When Pitt protested, the Convention declared war
on George III., under the vain belief that the English people would
take their side, and overturn Pitt and his master. "The king and his
Parliament mean to make war on us," wrote a French minister, "but the
Republicans of England will not permit it. Already these freemen show
their discontent, and refuse to bear arms against their brethren. We
will fly to their succour. We will lodge 50,000 caps of liberty in
England; and when we stretch out our arm to these Republicans, the
tyranny of their monarchy will be overthrown."
So, on February 8, 1793, began the great war, which was to last, with
two short intervals, till July 7, 1815. If England and France alone had
been engaged in the struggle, the famous saying about the impossibility
of a duel between the whale and the elephant might have been
applicable. France, with her new levies just rushing into the field,
had an army of something like 500,000 men. The English regular troops,
available for war over-seas, were, in 1792, about 30,000 strong. On the
other hand, the English fleet had 153 line-of-battle ships, the French
only 86. The one nation was almost as superior by sea as the other by
land. It was evident that we could only attack the French by land if
we had continental allies, while France could not harm us by sea until
she had secured assistance from other powers to increase her navy.
But if with our limited army we could not hope to equal in the field
the legions of France, we had one means of attacking her on land--the
use of our power as the richest nation in Europe. Austria, Prussia,
and the German states had large armies, but little money; England had
much money, if few men. Accordingly, it was by liberal subsidies to
the military powers of the continent that we from first to last fought
France on land. History records nine separate coalitions which Pitt and
his successors drew together and cemented with English gold, in order
to stay the progress, first of the French Republic, then of the great
man who inherited its position.
[Sidenote: =English naval supremacy.--Lord Howe's victory.=]
The moment that the war began, the naval supremacy of England enabled
her to seize most of the outlying French colonies. At the same time
our fleets moved down to blockade the great naval arsenals of Brest,
Toulon, and Rochefort, where the French navy was cooped up. So
thoroughly were the hostile fleets held in restraint, that there was
only one important sea-fight in the first three years of the war. In
the summer of 1794 the Brest squadron came out to convoy a merchant
fleet, and was caught and completely beaten by Lord Howe on "the
glorious First of June."
[Sidenote: =Vigorous government of the Convention.--The Reign of
Terror.=]
The years 1793-1794 were the hardest part of the war for the French.
The coalition against them now comprised England, Austria, Prussia,
Spain, Holland, and Sardinia. Assailed on every frontier by foreign
enemies, they had also to face a formidable royalist rising in La
Vendée and Brittany. Yet the Convention made head against all its
foes. The Jacobin faction, headed by the ruthless Robespierre, put a
fearful energy into its generals, by the summary method of sending
every officer who failed to the guillotine. The sanguinary despotism
which they exercised was a thing of which the most tyrannical monarch
would never have dreamed. They had impeached and slain the Girondists,
or moderate Republicans, in the summer of 1793. Six months later,
Robespierre, determined to be supreme, had seized and executed his
colleague and rival Danton, and all his faction. The "Reign of Terror"
made Paris a perfect shambles: 1400 prisoners were guillotined in six
weeks, and Robespierre called for yet more blood.
[Sidenote: =Military success of the French.=]
But these horrors within were accompanied by vigour without. Quickened
by the axe hanging over their necks, the generals did their best, and
finally succeeded in beating back the allies, whose motley armies
failed to co-operate with each other, and had no one commander who
could direct the whole course of the war to a single end.
[Sidenote: =English reverses in Flanders and at Toulon.=]
England's part in these early years of the war was neither important
nor glorious. The Duke of York, the second son of George III., was sent
with 20,000 men to aid the Austrians in Flanders. But he was a very
incapable commander, got beaten by the French at Hondeschoote near
Dunkirk, and was forced back into Holland, and at last chased as far
as Hanover (1793-94). Another failure was seen at Toulon in the same
year. The royalist inhabitants of that town called in the English to
their aid, and surrendered its arsenal and fleet. But the place was
indifferently defended by General O'Hara, and fell back into the hands
of the Republicans after a short siege, mainly owing to the ability
displayed by a young artillery officer named Napoleon Bonaparte. The
only compensating advantage was that, before evacuating the place, the
English were able to burn the French fleet and arsenal.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Robespierre.--The Directory.=]
Pitt had said that when all Europe united against a nation of wild
beasts and madmen, two campaigns would settle the business. But at the
end of 1794 things seemed further from a settlement than ever. For
the coalition against France, after faring ill in the field, both in
Flanders and on the Rhine, began to show signs of breaking up. That
this was possible came from the fact that the "Reign of Terror" and the
domination of the implacable Robespierre were at last ended. The time
had come when he and his associates, having guillotined all available
Royalists and Moderates, were reduced to preying upon their own party,
in their insane desire to find imaginary conspirators against the
Republic. Robespierre fell at the hands of the rank and file of the
Jacobins, who found the rule of the dictator intolerable, when it
began to imperil their own necks. Having long shared in his misdoings,
they sent him to the guillotine, when he began to terrify them (July,
1794). Tallien, Barrère, Barras, and the other leaders in Robespierre's
overthrow were, if less ferocious than their master, full of vices of
which he could never be accused, profligate, venal, and corrupt. But,
however bad they were, they yet reversed Robespierre's policy. The
executions and massacres ceased, and the reign of the guillotine came
to an end. The Convention dissolved itself in 1795, and gave place to
the government of the "Directory," a committee of five ministers, of
whom Barras was chief.
[Sidenote: =Prussia and Spain acknowledge the Republic.=]
This "Directory," though venal and greedy, was a settled government,
with which foreign powers could treat, not a gang of bloodthirsty
madmen like Robespierre and his crew. When the Jacobin propaganda of
murder and massacre was ended, several of the powers of the coalition
determined to make peace with France. Prussia and Spain had drawn no
profit from the war, and had lost men and money in it. Accordingly
they withdrew their armies and acknowledged the Republic. Holland had
been overrun by the French in 1794, after the Duke of York's defeat,
and forced to become the ally of her conqueror. Hence the strong and
well-equipped Dutch fleet is found for the rest of the war on the side
of France.
[Sidenote: =Policy of the Directory.--Alliance with Spain.=]
Thus England, Austria, and Sardinia alone remained of the original
confederates, and the war began to grow more like the old struggles
in the early years of the century. It ceased to be a war of opinion
between England as representing constitutional monarchy, and France
as representing rampant and militant democracy. We find the Directory
taking up the old policy of the Bourbons, claiming the frontier of the
Rhine on land, and aiming at breaking the strength of England at sea,
in order to seize our colonies and ruin our commerce. For the future,
the French government was not set on stirring up the London mob, and
deposing George III., but on fomenting war in India, and rebellion in
Ireland, so as to break our national strength. The likeness of the
struggle to the old times of the "Family Compact" became still more
notable when, in 1796, Spain, from reasons of old commercial jealousy,
was induced to declare war on England, and join France. We had now
to face the united fleets of France, Holland, and Spain, a much more
formidable task than had hitherto been our lot.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte in Italy.--Treaty of Campo Formio.=]
Things seemed almost desperate for England in 1797, when we lost our
last continental allies. The Directory had made Napoleon Bonaparte
commander of the army of Italy in 1796. In two campaigns that
marvellous general overran the Austrian and Sardinian dominions in the
valley of the Po, and then pushing on, crossed the Alps and invaded
Austria from the south. When he was less than a hundred miles from
Vienna, the emperor asked for peace, and obtained it from Bonaparte by
the Treaty of Campo Formio, at the price of surrendering Belgium and
Lombardy (October, 1797).
[Sidenote: =England threatened with invasion.=]
Thus England was left alone to face France, Holland, and Spain, whose
fleets, if united, outnumbered our own. For the next three years
the safety of England hung on the power of our admirals to keep the
junction from taking place. Six English fleets were always at sea,
facing the six great naval ports of the allies, the Texel, Brest,
Ferrol, Cadiz, Cartagena, and Toulon. It was clear that if one or
more of the blockaded fleets got away and joined another, the English
would be outnumbered at the critical point and if once beaten could
not prevent an invasion of England. If only the command of the Channel
were lost, there was nothing to prevent the victorious armies that had
overrun Germany, Holland, and Italy, from coming ashore in Kent or
Sussex.
[Sidenote: =Financial panic in England.=]
In return, Pitt called on England for a great effort; the war
expenditure was increased to £42,000,000 a year, and every nerve was
strained to keep up the fleet. This enormous outpouring of money
drained the exchequer to such a degree that public confidence began
to fail, and in February, 1797, there almost occurred the national
disaster of the bankruptcy of the Bank of England. A long and steady
demand for hard cash, by creditors who feared the worst, drained the
bank reserve till there was no more gold left. A crash was only staved
off by Pitt passing in a single night a bill for suspending payments
in gold, and for making bank-notes legal tender to any amount, so that
no one could demand as a right from the bank five guineas for his
five-guinea note. This state of things lasted till 1819, when cash
payments were renewed.
[Sidenote: =The Mutiny at the Nore.=]
But this trouble was nothing, compared to the awful danger three months
later, when the Channel and North Sea fleets burst out into mutiny
in April, 1797. These mutinies were early examples of the phenomena
which we know so well in our own days under the name of "strikes."
The sailors had suffered greatly from the long blockading service,
which kept them perpetually at sea, off the French and Dutch ports.
Their pay was low, their food bad, and their commanders in many cases
harsh and cruel. They had, therefore, much excuse for themselves,
when they demanded a better diet, higher pay, a fairer distribution
of prize-money, and the dismissal of certain tyrannous officers. But
the time they chose for their strike was inexcusable, for, while they
lay idle at the Nore and Spithead, the French and Dutch might have
sailed out, joined, and mastered the Channel. At first it was feared
that the navy had been corrupted by French principles, and was about
to declare for a republic, and join the enemy. But it was soon found
that with a few exceptions the men were loyal, and only wanted redress
of grievances. Pitt wisely granted their demands, and they returned
to duty, refusing to follow a few wild spirits who wished to begin
a political insurrection. Few or none protested when Parker, the
sailor-demagogue, was hanged, and the fleet, which had been in mutiny
in the summer, went out in the autumn to victory.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Camperdown and Cape St. Vincent.=]
Some weeks after their opportunity was passed, the Dutch fleet came
out of the Texel, hoping to find the North Sea still unguarded. But
Admiral Duncan absolutely annihilated his enemies at the hard-fought
battle of Camperdown (October, 1797). Some time earlier another
decisive victory had crushed the Spanish fleet. The Cadiz squadron of
twenty-seven line-of-battle ships had slipped out to sea. But Admiral
Jervis, well seconded by his great lieutenant Nelson, followed them,
and beat them off Cape St. Vincent, though he had only fourteen ships
with him. This was the most extraordinary victory in the whole war,
when the disparity of numbers is taken into consideration.
The victories of St. Vincent and Camperdown were the salvation of
England, for the naval crisis was tided over, and the union of the
hostile fleets prevented. During the remainder of the war the French
often threatened invasion, but were never able to get that command of
the Channel which they might have seized without trouble during the
mutiny at the Nore. The restored dominion of England at sea was all
the more important because of the danger in Ireland, which was now
impending.
[Sidenote: =Ireland under the Parliament of 1782.=]
Though Ireland had obtained her Home Rule Parliament in 1782, her
troubles were as far from an end as ever. The government of the island
was still in the hands of the Protestants of the Church of Ireland
alone, and the Romanists and Protestant dissenters were still excluded
from many political rights. Thus six-sevenths of the people had no
part in governing themselves, and the five-sevenths who were Romanists
were even yet subject to many of the repressive laws against their
religion, passed in the reign of William III.[52] Though in 1792 they
were at last granted freedom of public worship, and allowed to vote
for members of Parliament, they could not sit therein. The rule of the
Irish Tories was harsh and arbitrary. From the outbreak of the French
Revolution onward, they had suspected--and with justice--that the
French would endeavour to raise trouble in Ireland. For there alone
in the British Isles was to be found a discontented population, held
down by a minority which governed entirely in its own interests, and
took no heed of the desires of its subjects. There had always been
close communication between France and Ireland since the old Jacobite
days, and many Irish exiles were living beyond the seas. Hence it was
not strange that first the discontented Protestant dissenters and
afterwards the Roman Catholics put themselves into communication with
the French--the latter more reluctantly than the former, for they
were the most bigoted of Papists, and much disliked the atheists and
free-thinkers who guided the Revolution. From 1793 to 1798 Ireland was
being undermined with secret societies, much like the Fenians of our
own days, whose intrigues the Tory government strove in vain to detect
and frustrate.
[Sidenote: =The "United Irishmen."=]
The chief of these associations was called the "United Irishmen,"
because it worked for the combination of the Dissenters of the north
and the Romanists of the south in the common end of rebellion. The
original leaders in the conspiracy were all hot-headed Radical
politicians, who had been fired with the enthusiasm of the French
Revolution. Their chiefs were Lord Edward Fitzgerald, a young nobleman
of republican proclivities, Wolfe Tone, a violent party pamphleteer,
who had hitherto called himself a Whig, and Bond, a Dublin tradesman.
[Sidenote: =Hoche's attempt to invade Ireland.=]
These conspirators did not at first intend to rise without getting
aid from France, and till 1796 there was never much chance of their
friends over-sea being able to send them help. But when the fleets of
France, Spain, and Holland were united, it seemed possible to send
an expedition to Ireland. In December, 1796, the Brest squadron took
on board 16,000 men, under the young and vigorous General Hoche, and
made a dash for the coast of Munster. Slipping out while the English
blockading squadron was blown off by a storm, Hoche's fleet got safely
to sea. But the ships met with a hurricane, and were so beaten about
and dispersed that only half of them reached their rendezvous at Bantry
Bay in County Kerry. Hoche, their leader, never appeared, and Grouchy,
his lieutenant--the man who in later years was Napoleon's unlucky
marshal--shrank from landing with 7000 men in an unknown country where
he could detect no signs of the promised insurrection. He lost heart
and returned to Brest, without having been met or molested by the
English. If he had landed, there is no doubt that the whole south of
Ireland would have risen to join him. In the next year there was an
even greater peril of invasion while the English fleet was in mutiny.
The Dutch squadron, which was beaten at Camperdown, had been given
Ireland as its goal, and might have got there unopposed if it had
started six weeks earlier.
[Sidenote: =Harsh measures of the Irish Government.=]
Conscious of the danger which it was incurring, the Irish government
was stirred up to vigorous measures. All the loyalists of Ireland--the
Orangemen, as they were now called[53]--had already been embodied in
regiments of yeomanry, and were ready to move at the first alarm of
rebellion. Lord Lake, the commander-in-chief in Ireland, was directed
to disarm the whole Catholic population, and to search everywhere
for concealed arms. The order was carried out with more vigilance
than mercy, as the task of finding the weapons was entrusted to the
Orangemen of the yeomanry corps, who were determined to crush their
rebellious countrymen at any cost. They employed the roughest measures
to elicit information, flogging the suspected peasants and torturing
them with pitch-caps and pointed stakes, till they revealed the
hiding-place of their weapons. But, if cruel, Lake's measures were
completely successful. In Ulster, where the search began, no less than
50,000 muskets and 70,000 pikes were seized, and if the same energy
had been displayed in other parts of Ireland, the rebellion of 1798
would have been impossible. But the outcry caused in the Irish and
English Parliaments by the rough doings of the yeomanry prevented the
full execution of the disarmament, and the United Irishmen of the south
retained their concealed weapons, and waited for the signal of revolt.
[Sidenote: =Outbreak of the Rebellion.=]
The crisis came in the spring of 1798, when the government were at
last put by an informer on the track of the central committee of the
United Irishmen. The leaders and organizers who had so long eluded
them were at last caught and lodged in Dublin Castle, save Lord Edward
Fitzgerald, who fought with the police who came to arrest him, slew
two, and was himself killed in the struggle. The seizure of the chiefs,
instead of wrecking the conspiracy, caused it to burst out with sudden
violence, for the Irish thought that all was discovered, and that
rebellion was the only way to save their necks. An abortive rising in
Ulster was easily put down, but in the south-east of Ireland the whole
countryside rose in arms, and great bodies of insurgents attacked not
only the loyal yeomanry but every Protestant family in the district.
The rebels were under no central control, and were headed only by
village ruffians and ignorant and bigoted priests. Acts worthy of the
Parisian mob were perpetrated by the peasantry of Wexford, where the
rebellion was strongest. They shot the Bishop of Ferns, and many other
noncombatants, including women and children. On Wexford bridge they
put several scores of persons to death by tossing them in the air and
catching them on pikes. At Scullabogue they burnt alive a whole barnful
of prisoners.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Vinegar Hill.=]
For a fortnight there was sharp fighting in the south, for the rebels
showed as much courage as ferocity. But the Orange yeomanry were
stirred to frantic wrath by the atrocities of their enemies, and put
down the insurrection with little aid from the regular troops. The
decisive fight was at the fortified camp of Vinegar Hill, the chief
stronghold of the rebels. When it was stormed, and when Father Murphy,
the leader of the Wexford men, had fallen, the peasants dispersed. The
atrocities which they had committed were promptly avenged, and the
triumphant Orangemen hanged or shot hundreds of prisoners, with small
attentions to the forms of justice.
[Sidenote: =General Humbert's expedition.=]
Two months after the battle of Vinegar Hill, a small French expedition
succeeded in slipping out of Rochefort and landed in Connaught. But
the back of the rebellion was broken, and though General Humbert
routed some militia at Castlebar, he was soon surrounded and captured
by Lord Cornwallis, the Lord-Lieutenant, who beset him with a tenfold
superiority of numbers.
[Sidenote: =Pitt's scheme for uniting England and Ireland.=]
The Great Rebellion of 1798 led to the legislative union of England and
Ireland. Pitt and his lieutenant, Cornwallis, thought, rightly enough,
that the rising had come from the fact that the large majority of the
Irish were handed over, without representation or political rights, to
be governed by the minority. They devised two schemes for bettering the
state of the land--the Romanists were to receive "Emancipation," that
is, the same rights as their neighbours of the Church of Ireland--and
at the same time an end was to be put to the Dublin Parliament, and
the Irish members incorporated in the Parliament of Great Britain. For
Emancipation without union would have given the Romanists a majority
in the Dublin Parliament and led to a bitter struggle between them and
their old masters, which must have ended in a second civil war.
[Sidenote: =The Act of Union passed.=]
The process of persuading or bribing the Anglo-Irish Protestant
aristocracy to give up their national Parliament took two years. They
bitterly disliked the idea, and were only induced to yield by a liberal
shower of titles and pensions, and a goodly compensation in cash
distributed among the chief borough owners and peers. It was not till
February 18, 1800, twenty months after the rebellion had been crushed,
that the Irish Houses voted their own destruction. For the future
Ireland was represented by thirty-two peers and one hundred commoners
in the Parliament of the "United Kingdom."
After completing the Union, Pitt began to take in hand his scheme of
Catholic Emancipation. But he was not destined to carry it through--a
fact which was in a short time to have a widely felt influence on
English politics.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte in Egypt.=]
Meanwhile the French war was still raging. Having failed to win
command of the seas, and having been equally disappointed in their
plans for causing rebellion in Ireland, the French Directory tried
another scheme for injuring England. Napoleon Bonaparte, the young
general who had conquered Italy in 1796-7, was now the first man in
France. He had lately formed a grandiose scheme for erecting a great
empire in the Levant. From thence he intended to strike a blow at the
English dominions in India, which he regarded as the chief source of
our wealth. The venal and incapable members of the Directory feared
Bonaparte, and were glad to get him out of France. They at once fell
in with his plan, and gave him the Toulon fleet and an army of 30,000
men. Keeping his destination a profound secret, Bonaparte sailed from
Toulon in May, 1798. He piratically seized Malta from the Knights of
St. John as he passed, to make it a half-way house to his intended
goal. Then, pushing on eastwards, he landed at Alexandria, and in a few
weeks overran the whole of Egypt, though France had never declared war
on the Sultan of Turkey, the ruler of that land. Once seated there, he
began to develop a gigantic scheme for the conquest of the whole East,
vowing that he would build up an Oriental empire and "attack Europe
from the rear." His first care was to send emissaries to Tippoo Sultan,
the son of our old Indian enemy Haider Ali, bidding him to attack the
English in India with the assurance of French support.
[Sidenote: =Battle of the Nile.=]
Soon after Bonaparte had taken Cairo, he heard that the ships which had
brought him to Egypt had been destroyed. Admiral Nelson, the commander
of the English Mediterranean fleet, had arrived too late to prevent
the French army from disembarking. But, finding their squadron lying
in Aboukir Bay, he determined to destroy it. The enemy lay moored in
shallow water, close to the land, but Nelson resolved to follow them
into their anchorage. Sending half his ships to slip in between the
enemy and the shore, he led the other half to attack them on the side
of the open sea. This difficult manoeuvre was carried out with perfect
success; first the van, then the centre, then the rear of the French
fleet was beset on two sides. The squadrons were exactly equal in
numbers, each counting thirteen line-of-battle ships. But so great was
the superiority of the English seamanship and gunnery, that eleven out
of the thirteen French vessels were sunk or taken in a few hours. This
brilliant feat of naval tactics had the important result of cutting off
Bonaparte's power to return to France. He was penned up in Egypt as in
an island, with no way of egress save by the desert route to Syria.
Nor could any further reinforcements reach him from France, since the
victory of the Nile gave Nelson complete command of the Mediterranean.
But Bonaparte did not at first show any dismay; he was firmly
established in Egypt, and had resolved to persevere in his attempt to
conquer the whole East with his own army.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Acre.=]
In the winter of 1798-99 he crossed the desert and flung himself upon
Syria. He turned the Turks out of the southern part of the land, and
won a great victory over them at Mount Tabor. But before the walls of
the seaport of Acre he was brought to a standstill, not so much by
the gallantry of the Turkish garrison, as by the activity of a small
English squadron under Sir Sidney Smith, which harassed the besiegers,
threw supplies into the town, and landed men to assist the pasha when
the French tried to take the place by storm. Bonaparte used to say in
later days that but for Sidney Smith he might have died as Emperor of
the East. At last he was forced to raise the siege and to retreat on
Egypt, where he found startling news awaiting him [May, 1799].
[Sidenote: =Renewed coalition against France.=]
While he was absent in the East, Pitt had found means to start a
new coalition against France, in which both Russia and Austria were
engaged. The imbecile Directory was quite unable to keep these foes at
bay. An Austro-Russian army drove the French completely out of Italy,
and at the same time another Austrian army defeated them in Germany and
thrust them back to the Rhine, while an English force, under the Duke
of York, landed in Holland, to threaten the northern frontiers of the
Republic.
[Sidenote: =Return of Bonaparte.=]
Bonaparte had expected something of the kind, knowing the imbecility of
the Directory, and he was now ready to pose as the saviour of France,
and to make a bid for supreme power, for his ambition ran far beyond
that of being merely the chief of French generals. Leaving his army in
Egypt, he ran the gauntlet of the English fleet, and safely reached
France.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte "First Consul."=]
The accusations of mismanagement which he brought against the Directory
were supported by French public opinion, especially by that of the
army. With small difficulty Bonaparte dethroned the Directory, and
dispersed by force of arms the "Council of Five Hundred" which
represented parliamentary government. He then instituted a new form of
constitution, which was in reality, though not in shape, a military
despotism. Under the title of "First Consul" he became the supreme
ruler of France (November, 1799).
[Sidenote: =Battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden.--Peace of Luneville.=]
The nation acquiesced in this change because Bonaparte had pledged
himself to save France from the coalition, if he was entrusted with a
dictatorship. He kept his word. Crossing the Alps by the pass of the
Great St. Bernard, where no large army had crossed before, he got into
the rear of the Austrians in Italy, and then beat them at the battle of
Marengo (June, 1800). Cut off from their retreat, the Austrians had to
surrender, and all Italy fell back into the hands of Bonaparte. Later
in the same year the French won an equally crushing victory in South
Germany, at Hohenlinden, where General Moreau annihilated the Austrian
army of the north. Russia had already withdrawn from the coalition,
for the eccentric Czar Paul had conceived a great admiration for
Bonaparte, and did not object to a despot though he hated a republic.
The Duke of York had been driven out of Holland long before, and France
was triumphant all along the line. Austria, threatened with invasion at
once on the west and the south, was forced to ask for peace, and by the
peace of Luneville recognized Napoleon as ruler of France (1801).
[Sidenote: =Lord Wellesley and Tippoo Sultan.--Southern India subdued.=]
Thus England was once more left alone, to fight out her old duel with
France, or rather with the vigorous and able despot who had made France
his own. But the struggle was no longer so dangerous as in 1797-98.
In every quarter of the globe the English held their own in the years
1799-1801. In India the intrigues of Bonaparte had caused Sultan Tippoo
of Mysore to attack the Madras Presidency. But he was opposed by a man
of great ability, Lord Wellesley, the new Governor-General of India,
the first statesman who boldly proposed to make the whole peninsula of
Hindustan subject or vassal to England. Wellesley dealt promptly and
sternly with the Sultan of Mysore. He was beaten in battle, chased back
to his capital of Seringapatam, and slain at the gate of his palace as
he strove to resist the English stormers. It was in this siege that
Wellesley's brother, Arthur Wellesley, the great Duke of Wellington
of a later day, first distinguished himself. On Tippoo's death, half
Mysore was annexed, the other half given back to the old Hindu rajahs
whom Tippoo's father had deposed (May, 1799). The complete subjection
of Southern India was shortly afterwards carried out by the annexation
of the Carnatic, where the descendants of our old ally Mohammed Ali
had fallen into utter effeteness; they had, moreover, been detected in
intrigues with Tippoo during the late war.
[Sidenote: =Capture of Malta.--The French expelled from Egypt.=]
The conquest of Mysore was not the only English success that resulted
from Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt. In 1800 we took Malta from the
garrison which he had left there. In 1801 the more important task
of reconquering Egypt itself was undertaken. Sir Ralph Abercrombie
landed at Aboukir with 20,000 men. He twice defeated the French in
front of Alexandria, but fell just as he had won the second battle.
He had, however, done his work so thoroughly that the hostile army
was compelled to capitulate, and to evacuate Egypt, which England then
restored to the Turks (March-August, 1801).
[Sidenote: =The "Armed Neutrality."--Battle of Copenhagen.=]
Bonaparte had still one card to play. He used the personal influence
which he had acquired over the eccentric autocrat of Russia, to
endeavour to stir up trouble for England in the north. At his
prompting, Czar Paul induced his smaller neighbours Denmark and Sweden
to form the "Armed Neutrality," with the object of excluding English
trade from the Baltic. England at once sent a great fleet to the north.
It moored before Copenhagen, the Danish capital, which commands the
main entrance to the Baltic, and summoned the Danes to abandon the
Armed Neutrality, and permit the English to pass. The Prince Regent
of Denmark refused, and the battle of Copenhagen followed. The slow
and pedantic admiral, Sir Hyde Parker, was proceeding to dilatory
tactics, but his hand was forced by his second in command, Nelson,
the victor of the Nile. Disregarding his superior's orders to hold
back, Nelson forced his way up the Strait to Copenhagen, sunk or took
nearly the whole Danish fleet, and silenced the shore-batteries. When
he threatened to bombard the city, the Prince Regent asked for an
armistice, and abandoned the Armed Neutrality (April, 1801).
[Sidenote: =Death of the Czar Paul.=]
Nelson now entered the Baltic, and would have attacked Russia, but
the death of Czar Paul saved him the trouble. The tyrant had so
maddened his nobles by his caprices and cruelty, that he was slain by
conspirators in his own bed-chamber. His son, Alexander I., promptly
came to terms with England, and abandoned his French alliance.
[Sidenote: =Pitt and Catholic Emancipation.=]
Just before the battle of Copenhagen had been fought, England lost the
minister who had guided her in peace and war for the last seventeen
years--"the pilot who weathered the storm," as a popular song of the
day called him. Pitt resigned his place on a point of honour. In the
spring of 1801 there met the first United Parliament of Great Britain
and Ireland, and before this new assembly the premier intended to
lay his promised bill for the relief of Roman Catholics from their
political disabilities. This measure was destined to cause the great
statesman's fall. The bigoted and stubborn old king whom he had served
so faithfully, had a stronger prejudice against justice for Catholics
than against any other reform that could be mooted. He imagined that
any measure giving them Emancipation would be against the terms of his
coronation oath, and openly said that he would never make himself a
perjurer by giving his royal assent to Pitt's bill. The prime minister
had an exaggerated view of the duty of loyalty, and a great personal
regard for his old master. On the other hand, he had solemnly pledged
himself to the Irish Romanists to back their cause as long as he was in
power. Under the circumstances he thought himself bound to resign his
office, and retired in March, 1801.
[Sidenote: =Addington succeeds Pitt.--Madness of the king.=]
George replaced his old servant by a man infinitely beneath him, Henry
Addington, a commonplace Tory, one of Pitt's least able lieutenants.
This vapid nonentity had the single merit of want of originality--he
went on with Pitt's policy because he could devise no other. But his
weakness and subservience to the crown might have induced George III.
to revert to some of his former unconstitutional habits, if the old
king had not gone mad soon after. He recovered his senses after some
months, but was never the same man again, and was liable to recurring
fits of insanity, which at last became permanent.
It was the feeble Addington who was fated to bring to an end the first
epoch of the great war with France, though he had not been concerned
in the labour of bearing its brunt. Bonaparte had failed in all his
schemes against England, alike in Egypt, India, and the Baltic. The
French navy was crushed; most of the French colonies were in English
hands. He was accordingly glad to make peace, partly in order to take
breath and build up a new naval power before assaulting England again,
partly in order to find leisure to carry out his plans for making
himself the permanent ruler of France; for he was set on becoming
something more than First Consul, and needed time to perfect his plan.
[Sidenote: =The Peace of Amiens.=]
England was not less desirous of peace. The long stress of the war
had wearied the nation, and the load of debt which had been piled up
since 1793 appalled the ministers. When Bonaparte offered to treat, his
proposals were eagerly accepted. Negotiations were begun in October,
1801, and peace was signed at Amiens on March 25, 1802, with France,
Spain, and Holland. It was not unprofitable. Bonaparte undertook to
withdraw the French armies from Naples, Rome, and Portugal, and to give
up any claims to Egypt. He made his allies, the Dutch and Spaniards,
surrender to us the rich islands of Ceylon and Trinidad. Malta, now in
English hands, was to be restored to the Knights of St. John. On the
other hand, England recognized Bonaparte as First Consul, and restored
to him all the French colonies which we had conquered, from Martinique
in the west to Pondicherry in the east. Considering the imminent danger
which we had passed through in the last nine years, the nation was glad
to obtain peace on these respectable if not brilliant terms. It was
hoped that our struggle with France was at last ended.
FOOTNOTES:
[52] See p. 452.
[53] From their having enrolled themselves in clubs named after their
hero, William of Orange.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
ENGLAND AND BONAPARTE.
1802-1815.
When the treaty of Amiens had been signed, the English people firmly
believed that the great war was ended, that the period of stress and
anxiety, of heavy taxation and huge armaments, of threatened invasions
and domestic strife, was finally closed. Bonaparte, who needed an
interval of peace for the working out of his domestic policy, had
affected a frank, liberal, and conciliatory spirit in dealing with our
diplomatists, and had produced on them the impression that a reasonable
as well as strong man was now at the helm at Paris. The France with
which we had come to terms was no longer the wild and militant republic
of the old Jacobin days, but a well-ordered and strongly centralized
monarchy, though its ruler did not yet bear the title of king. If
Bonaparte had really intended to accept the situation, and dwell in
peace beside us as a loyal neighbour, the treaty of Amiens would have
needed no defence. But Addington and his fellows had not gauged the
First Consul's true character or the peculiarities of his position.
He had risen to power by war; his power depended on his military
prestige, and a permanent peace would have ruined his control over his
army, which he had gorged with plunder and glory, and turned into a
greedy and arrogant military caste. But it was hard to expect English
statesmen to see through the character and designs of a man whom the
French themselves had not yet learnt to know. And when an honourable
peace was proffered, it would have been wrong to refuse it: the
internal condition of England called for rest and retrenchment.
[Sidenote: =Schemes of Bonaparte.=]
But the First Consul's real objects in concluding the peace of Amiens
were purely personal and selfish. He wished to recover the lost French
colonies, and to rebuild the ruined French navy. He needed peace to
reorganize the control of France over her vassal states in Holland,
Italy, and Switzerland, which she had bound to her chariot-wheels
during the late wars. Most of all he required a space of leisure to
prepare for that assumption of monarchical power which he had been
plotting ever since his return from Egypt.
[Sidenote: =His conduct towards England.=]
While England was thinking only of peace, and while thousands of
English were embarking on the continental travel which had been denied
them for nine years, Bonaparte was already beginning to show the cloven
hoof. In the autumn of 1802 he annexed to France the continental half
of the dominions of our old ally the King of Sardinia, and the Duchy
of Parma. He sent 30,000 men into Switzerland to occupy the chief
passes of the Alps. He ordered the vassal republics in Holland and
North Italy to place prohibitive duties on English merchandise. These
actions, though irritating, were not actual breaches of the peace, but
things grew more serious when he made the impudent request that we
should expel from our shores the exiled princes of the old royal house
of France, and that our government should suppress certain newspapers
which criticized his rule in France too sharply. These demands were of
course refused; the First Consul then began to harp on the question of
the evacuation of Malta. That island was still garrisoned by English
troops, as its old masters, the Knights of St. John, were not yet
in a position to resume their dominion there. When England refused
to evacuate Malta at once, and ventured to remonstrate about the
annexation of Piedmont and Parma, Bonaparte assumed a most offensive
attitude. He summoned Lord Whitworth, our ambassador at Paris, into
his presence, and in the midst of a large assembly at the Tuileries
delivered an angry harangue to him, declaring that the English cabinet
had no respect for honour or treaties, and was wishing to drive him to
a new war. He did not wish to fight, he said, but if he once drew the
sword, it should never be sheathed till England was crushed.
[Sidenote: =War declared.--Seizure of English subjects in France.=]
This insulting message roused even the feeble Addington to anger. With
extreme reluctance and dismay, the cabinet began to contemplate the
possibility of a renewed war with France. A royal message was laid
before Parliament asking for increased votes for the army and navy,
which had just been cut down on account of the peace. Bonaparte, on
the other hand, began to move masses of troops towards the shores of
the English Channel, and to order the building of many ships of war.
Addington attempted further negotiations for staving off a collision,
but met no response from the First Consul, who refused to listen to
any offers till we should have evacuated Malta, and recognized the
legality of his annexations in Italy and Switzerland. Nothing could be
done to bring him to reason, and on May 12, 1803, our ambassador left
Paris, and war was declared, only thirteen months after the signing of
the peace of Amiens. Bonaparte had, perhaps, been intent on bullying
the English cabinet, and had fancied that they would yield to his
hectoring. He showed intense irritation when war was declared, and
committed a flagrant breach of international law by seizing all the
English tourists and travellers who were passing through France on
business or pleasure, and imprisoning them as if they were prisoners of
war. They were about 10,000 in number, and Bonaparte had the cruelty
to keep them confined during the whole of the war. Another sign of his
malice was that he kept accusing the English government of instigating
assassins to murder him--there was, indeed, hardly a crime which he did
not lay to the account of his enemies.
The second act of the great drama of the French war had now begun: the
first had lasted nine years, this was to endure for eleven--from May,
1803, to March, 1814. The whole war is indeed one, if we regard it as
the last struggle for commercial and maritime supremacy between England
and her old rival, and compare it with the Seven Years' War and the war
of American Independence.
[Sidenote: =Nature of the contest between England and France.=]
But, on the other hand, the aspect of the strife was greatly changed by
the fact that England had no longer the principles of the Revolution
to fight, but was engaged in a struggle against an ambitious despot, a
world-conqueror who had no parallel save Cæsar or Alexander the Great.
The France of Bonaparte only resembled the France of Robespierre in the
unscrupulous vigour of her assaults on her enemies. She was no longer
professing to fight for a principle--the deliverance of oppressed
peoples from the yoke of monarchy and the proclamation of Liberty,
Equality, and Fraternity for all men. Though Bonaparte still made a
parade of being a beneficent liberator, yet France was now fighting to
make herself the tyrant-state of Europe, to win power and plunder, not
to carry out the principles of the Revolution. In the long struggles
that followed the declaration of war in 1803, Bonaparte at one time
and another struck down every government in Europe that dared to
stand against him, but England he could never subdue. From the moment
when Sidney Smith turned him back from the walls of Acre, down to the
moment when Wellington drove him a broken and defeated adventurer from
the hillside of Waterloo, it was always England that stood between
him and complete success. Hence it came that he honoured her with a
venomous hatred such as he never bestowed on any other foe. It may be
said with much truth that his whole career after 1803 was a crusade
against England, and that all his actions were directed to secure her
ruin, whether that ruin was to be brought about in the open strife of
contending fleets, or in the slow but deadly working of laws aimed
against English commerce and industries. When Bonaparte was meeting
and beating the Austrian, the Prussian, or the Russian, he felt that
he was fighting the hired soldiers of England; for every confederacy
against him was cemented with English gold. The final object of all his
continental wars was to crush us; his victories were all means to that
end.
In a contest between a single despot and a free state, the former has
in many ways the advantage. He has no Parliament to criticize his
actions, no public opinion before which he is bound to justify his
every deed. He can work out his schemes in his own brain, and give
them the unity that a single master-mind inspires. He can secure the
implicit obedience of his lieutenants, because he alone can make or
mar their career. On the other hand, the policy dictated by an English
cabinet of a dozen men was prone to lack consistency and singleness
of aim, and their plans and projects were divulged to Parliament,
criticized by opponents, and trumpeted out to all Europe by the Press,
before they were well set in hand. It was no light responsibility that
the Addington ministry took upon themselves when they declared war on
the unscrupulous First Consul.
The long struggle which followed may be divided into four epochs.
In the first--1803-1805--Bonaparte strove to settle the national
duel by an actual invasion of England, and lamentably failed. In the
second--1805-1808--England fought by subsidizing foreign allies, while
Bonaparte struck at his enemy by the "Continental System," a plan for
starving English trade. In the third period--1808-1814--a new aspect
was given to the struggle by the interference of England on land.
Instead of relying on subsidies, we poured troops into Spain, and met
the French face to face. At the same time the intolerable oppression
which Bonaparte exercised over all the states of the continent, led
to national risings against him, which finally, in 1814, wrought his
downfall. The fourth period comprises only the "Hundred Days" of
March-June, 1815, in which the tyrant tried to seize once more his old
place and power, and suffered his final defeat at Waterloo.
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte resolves to invade England.=]
In the first opening months of the war, Bonaparte set his mind on
bringing the struggle to a rapid conclusion, by crossing the Channel
and invading England. He despatched 120,000 veteran troops to the coast
between Dunkirk and St. Valery, and fixed his own head-quarters at
Boulogne, where the cliffs of Folkestone and Dover were actually in
sight. "The Channel is but a ditch," he said, "and any one can cross it
who has but the courage to try." A fog might enable his whole army to
slip across unseen, or a fortunate gale might drive away the English
fleet for the short twenty-four hours that he required. Hundreds, and
afterwards thousands, of flat-bottomed boats were collected at Boulogne
and the neighbouring ports, and fitted up, some as armed gunboats, some
as transports. The troops were trained to embark with extraordinary
speed, so that they might not lose a minute when the signal for
sailing should be given. But from June, 1803, to September, 1805, they
waited--and yet the signal was never given.
[Sidenote: =Defensive measures.--The Volunteer Movement.--Recall of
Pitt.=]
England faced the trial with wonderful courage. The nation was so
wrathful at the wanton renewal of the war by Bonaparte, and at his
arrogant threat of invasion, that it made efforts such as had never
been dreamed of before. While the Addington ministry were doubting
how best to meet the projected attack, the nation itself solved the
problem by the great _Volunteer Movement_. Almost every able-bodied man
in England and Scotland offered himself for service. By the autumn of
1803 there were 347,000 volunteers under arms, besides 120,000 regular
troops and 78,000 militia. This was a marvellous effort for a kingdom
which then only counted 15,000,000 souls.[54] The volunteers, it is
true, were imperfectly trained, often insufficiently officered, and
unprovided with a proper proportion of cavalry and artillery. But when
we consider their numbers and enthusiasm, it is only fair to conclude
that even if Bonaparte had thrown across his 120,000 or 150,000 men
into Kent or Sussex, he would have been able to do little against such
a vast superiority of numbers. Not contented with enrolling men for
land service, the government displayed great energy in strengthening
our first line of defence, the fleet. The dockyards were worked with
such zeal and speed that 166 new vessels were added to the navy before
the year was over. Blockading squadrons were hastily sent out to face
all the French and Dutch naval ports, as they had done in the old
war. Not the least of the signs of national enthusiasm was that, in
obedience to the public voice, Pitt--whose name was now bound up with a
vigorous war-policy--was recalled to the helm of state with the king's
consent, while the weak Addington retired into the background.
[Sidenote: =Attempted Irish rebellion.--English success in India.=]
While Bonaparte was drilling his army for rapid embarkation, and
multiplying his gunboats, he utilized the time to stir up trouble for
England in all parts of the world. He gave his approval to a wild
scheme for an Irish rebellion, headed by the rash young revolutionary,
Robert Emmet, whose only achievement was to cause a riot in Dublin,
murder Lord Kilwarden, the Chief Justice of Ireland, and get himself
promptly hung. A more dangerous blow was aimed at our empire in India.
French military adventurers had been many and prosperous in the native
courts of that country ever since the days of Dupleix, and the First
Consul hoped by their aid to stir up the Nizam and the Mahratta powers
against England. But he had to deal with the able and vigorous Lord
Wellesley, the greatest Governor-General that India has known since
Warren Hastings. Wellesley forced the Nizam to dismiss his French
officers, and allied himself with the Peishwah, the nominal head of the
Mahratta confederacy, against the other chiefs of that nation. In 1803
Lord Lake conquered Delhi and the Doab from the French mercenaries of
Scindiah, the most powerful of these rulers, while Arthur Wellesley,
the Governor-General's brother, was fighting further to the south
against Scindiah himself and the Rajah of Berar. In the brilliant
battles of Assaye and Argaum this young general beat the Mahratta
hosts, though they were nine to one against him. The two hostile
princes were forced to make peace, and cede to the East India Company
their outlying dominions, Scindiah's fortresses in the north, which
became the nucleus of our "North-Western Provinces," and the Rajah of
Berar's province of Orissa, which was added to Bengal (1804).
[Sidenote: =Bonaparte assumes the title of Emperor.=]
In the winter of 1803-4, Bonaparte began to doubt the wisdom of
attacking England with his flotilla of gunboats and transports only,
and resolved to wait till he could concentrate in the Straits a fleet
of line-of-battle ships, capable of beating off the English Channel
squadron. While this plan was being worked out, he brought the internal
affairs of France to a crisis. In the spring of 1804, an abortive
royalist conspiracy against him was detected, and he took advantage
of it to assume a higher and firmer position in the state than that
of First Consul. Accordingly, his servile senate requested him to
accept the title of Emperor. In May, 1804, he forced the Pope, who
stood in mortal dread of annexation, to come up to Paris and preside
at his coronation, a great and costly pageant, which marked the end of
even the shadow of liberty in France. Bonaparte assumed the title of
Napoleon I., thus making his own strange Christian name notable for the
first time since history begins.
[Sidenote: =He determines to employ the Spanish fleet.=]
When his coronation festivities were over, Napoleon set his mind
seriously to the task of concentrating a great fleet in the Channel,
to cover the crossing of his army. In the autumn of 1804, the days of
the old naval leagues against England in 1782 and 1797 were renewed,
when the Emperor forced Spain to join him, demanding either a money
contribution or an auxiliary fleet. The feeble Charles IV. chose to
give the money, but the vessels which bore the treasure were seized
by an English squadron, and Pitt promptly declared war on Spain. By
utilizing the large Spanish fleet, Napoleon thought that he could
gather together an armament strong enough to keep the Channel open for
the crossing of the legions which lay at Boulogne. But, meanwhile,
English blockading vessels were already watching Cartagena, Cadiz, and
Ferrol, as well as Toulon and Brest, and a hard task lay before the
Emperor, when he determined to concentrate the scattered naval forces
of France and Spain.
While Napoleon was busy with this scheme, Pitt had been returning to
his old policy of finding continental allies for England, and stirring
them up against France. Austria and Russia had been greatly displeased
by the same reckless annexations in 1803 which had driven England
into war; but their grudges might not have grown into an anti-French
coalition, if it had not been for the energy of Pitt's diplomacy and
the large subsidies which he offered.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon's naval scheme.=]
In the spring of 1805, things came to a head. On the one hand, the
French Emperor's scheme for the invasion of England was ready; on the
other, Pitt's continental allies were secretly arming. Napoleon's plan
was complicated but ingenious; its strength lay in the fact that it was
not easy for the English to judge what exactly would be his method,
or to provide against it. He ordered the French Mediterranean fleet
at Toulon to take advantage of the first rough weather, and to escape
from its harbour, whenever the English blockading squadron, now headed
by the ever-active and vigilant Nelson, should be blown out to sea.
Then his chief admiral, Villeneuve, was to slip past Gibraltar, and to
join the Spanish fleet at Cadiz, driving off the English ships which
were watching that port. The united Franco-Spanish armament was then to
sail right across the Atlantic, to the West Indies, as if to attack our
colonies there. But the real object of this demonstration was to entice
Nelson, who was certain to chase them when he found their route, far
away from Europe. For when they had reached the West Indies, the allied
fleet were to turn sharply back again, and steer across the Atlantic
for Brest, where they would find another large French fleet, blockaded
by Admiral Cornwallis and the English Channel squadron. Villeneuve, as
the Emperor calculated, would be able to deliver the Brest fleet some
weeks before Nelson could appear in Europe. He would then have seventy
ships to oppose the thirty-five with which England guarded the Channel,
and with such overwhelming superiority would be able to clear the Dover
Straits, and convoy across the army which had been waiting so long at
Boulogne.
[Sidenote: =Villeneuve escapes to the West Indies.=]
In the first part of this great naval campaign, the Emperor's elaborate
scheme worked well. Villeneuve slipped out of Toulon while Nelson's
fleet was blown away by rough weather. He hurried away to Cadiz,
liberated the Spaniards there, and was off to the West Indies before
Nelson could find out what had become of him. Very tardily the great
English admiral discovered his route, and hurried across the Atlantic
in pursuit. In due pursuance of the scheme of Napoleon, Villeneuve
turned back and steered for Brest, while his pursuer was seeking him
off Barbados.
[Sidenote: =Battle off Cape Finisterre.=]
But here the good fortune of the French ended, and a combination of
chance and skill saved England. So slow was the Franco-Spanish fleet,
and so bad its seamanship, that Nelson gained many days upon them.
He luckily chanced upon a ship that had seen them turn back, hastily
shifted his own course to follow, and sent to England to warn the Lords
of the Admiralty that Villeneuve might be expected off Brest. With most
commendable haste, a squadron under Admiral Calder was organized, to
encounter Villeneuve before he could reach Europe. It sailed out just
in time to meet him as he got into the Bay of Biscay, and fought him
off Cape Finisterre. Villeneuve was not a man of nerve, and though
Calder's squadron was far inferior to his own, he turned aside after an
indecisive battle. So Napoleon heard in August, 1805, to his disgust
and wild anger, that the fleet which was to enable him to cross the
Channel, had not appeared off Brest, but had dropped into Ferrol to
refit after the fight with Calder.
[Sidenote: =Villeneuve retires to Cadiz.--Return of Nelson.=]
Then to make things yet worse, Villeneuve sailed from Ferrol not
for Brest, but for Cadiz, to strengthen himself yet further, with
Spanish reinforcements. This delay enabled the eager Nelson to
arrive in European waters, and at the critical moment he and Calder,
with twenty-eight ships, lay outside Cadiz, while the thirty-five
Franco-Spanish vessels were within its harbour. The Emperor's plan
was therefore wrecked, and no chance remained of the longed-for fleet
sailing up the Channel to meet the 150,000 men who sat idly waiting for
it at Boulogne.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon abandons the plan of invasion.=]
Seeing his scheme shattered, while at the same time rumours of the
Austro-Russian coalition had reached him, Napoleon dropped his
long-cherished invasion scheme. He suddenly turned his back on the sea,
and, declaring war on his continental enemies before they were ready
for him, came rushing across France toward Germany with incredible
speed. But before he started he sent his unfortunate admiral at Cadiz a
bitter letter, in which he taunted him with cowardice for having turned
away from Brest, and ruined the plan for invading England. Stung to
the heart by the imputation of want of courage, Villeneuve came out of
Cadiz to fight Nelson, in order to show that he was not afraid, not in
order to secure any useful end, for the time for that was over.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Trafalgar.=]
Off Cape Trafalgar twenty-seven English ships met the thirty-three
allied vessels, and at the great battle of that name completely
destroyed Villeneuve's fleet. Nelson's splendid naval tactics easily
compensated for the disparity of numbers. Seeing the enemy lying before
him in a long line, he formed his own ships into two columns and
swooped down on the centre of the Franco-Spanish Armada. He cut the
enemy in two, and destroyed their midmost ships ere the wings could
come up. Of the thirty-three hostile vessels nineteen were taken and
one burnt, but in the moment of success, the great admiral fell; he had
led the attacking column in his own ship, the _Victory_, and, pushing
into the thickest of the enemy, was laid low by a musket-ball ere the
fight was half over. But he lived long enough to hear that the day was
won, and died contented (October 21, 1805). In her grief for Nelson,
England half forgot her joy at the most decisive naval triumph that
we had ever gained, for Napoleon was driven to own himself impotent
at sea, and the spirits of the French seamen were so broken that they
never dared again to put out to sea, save in small numbers for secret
and hurried cruises. For the future the Emperor determined to strike at
English commerce by decrees and embargos, not to attack England herself
by armed force.
[Sidenote: =Ulm and Austerlitz.--End of the "Holy Roman Empire."=]
But, for the moment, to put down Austria and Russia was his task.
Already, before Trafalgar had been fought, he had crushed the vanguard
of the Austrians at Ulm, where the imbecile General Mack laid down his
arms with nearly 40,000 men, while the Russians were still miles away,
toiling up from Poland. Vienna fell into his hands before the allies
were able to join their forces. A month later they met the French on
the snow-covered hillside of Austerlitz, a village some eighty miles
north-east of the Austrian capital. Here Napoleon beat them with awful
slaughter. Left with only the wreck of an army, the Emperor Francis
II. asked for peace, and got it on humiliating terms. He had to cede
his Italian dominions, as well as the Tyrol, the very cradle of the
Hapsburg dynasty. Moreover, he gave up his old title of head of the
"Holy Roman Empire"--the imperial style which had lasted since the
days of Charlemagne, and had remained in the Austrian line for 350
years--and was constrained to take the new and humbler name of Emperor
of Austria.
[Sidenote: =Death of Pitt.--The Ministry of "All the Talents."=]
The news of this disaster to the coalition which had cost him so much
trouble to knit together, and from which he had expected so much, broke
Pitt's heart. He had been in ill-health ever since he took office in
1804, the constant stress of responsibility, while the invasion was
impending, having shattered his nerves. He died on January 23, 1806,
aged no more than forty-six. He had been prime minister for nearly half
this short span of life, and had certainly done more for England in his
tenure of office than any man who has ever occupied that position. The
death of Pitt, and the public dismay at the break up of the coalition
of 1805, led to a demand for a strong and united ministry that should
combine all parties for the national defence. There was no man among
the Tories great enough to take up Pitt's mantle, and Addington, the
late prime minister, Lord Grenville and several other leaders of that
party were ready to admit the long-exiled Whigs to a share in the
administration. The king was discontented at having to receive his old
foe, Charles James Fox, as a minister, but bowed to the force of public
opinion. Thus came into being the short Fox-Grenville cabinet, which
contemporary wits called the ministry of "All the Talents," on account
of its broad and comprehensive character, for it included all shades
of opinion, from Addington at the one end to Fox at the other.
[Sidenote: =Failure of negotiations with Napoleon.--Death of Fox.=]
Fox had always opposed war with France, and had maintained that if the
late ministry had met Napoleon in an open and liberal spirit they might
have secured an honourable peace. But when he himself was given the
opportunity of testing the Corsican's real temper, he met with a bitter
disappointment. Napoleon was too angry with England to think of any
accommodation. He offered Fox terms which were absolutely insulting,
considering that England had held her own and successfully kept off
invasion. Fox died soon after, worn out by the hard work of office, to
which he had been a stranger for twenty years (September, 1806).
[Sidenote: =End of the Grenville Ministry.--Abolition of the Slave
Trade.=]
After his decease and the failure of the peace negotiations, the
Grenville Ministry had no great reason for existence; it was forced to
continue the war-policy of Pitt, but met with no success in several
small expeditions that it sent out to vex the French and Spaniards. In
March, 1807, the ministers resigned, after a quarrel with the king on
the same point which had wrecked Pitt in 1802--the question of Catholic
Emancipation. The only good work which this short administration had
done in its thirteen months of office was to abolish the slave-trade.
On the resignation of the Whigs the Tories came back into power. Their
nominal chief was now William Bentinck, Duke of Portland, an aged man,
one of the Whigs who had been made Tories by the French Revolution. But
the shrewd and ambitious Spencer Perceval, the new Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was the real leader of the Tories. He was a narrow-minded
man of moderate ability, whose only merit was that he clung to the
policy of Pitt, and continued to hammer away at the French in spite of
all checks and failures.
[Sidenote: =The Confederation of the Rhine.=]
After Austerlitz, Napoleon assumed the position of tyrant of all
Central Europe. He created his younger brother Lewis king of Holland,
and drove out the Spanish Bourbons from Naples, in order to make his
eldest brother Joseph king of the Two Sicilies. He formed the smaller
German states into the "Confederation of the Rhine," of which he
declared himself protector.
[Sidenote: =Prussia declares war on France.=]
These high-handed doings were certain to provoke further fighting, for
Russia, though defeated at Austerlitz, did not consider herself beaten,
and the strong military state of Prussia was bound to resent the
ascendency of the French in Germany. Frederic William III., the rather
irresolute monarch who swayed that country, had been half inclined to
help Austria in 1805. But he delayed till the campaign of Austerlitz
was over, and then found that he must fight Napoleon alone. Relying on
the strength of his army and the old traditions of Frederic the Great,
he declared war on France in 1806, hastily patching up treaties of
alliance with Russia and England.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Jena.=]
Of all the disasters which befell the powers of the continent at
Napoleon's hands, none was so sudden and crushing as that which Prussia
suffered in 1806. Only a few weeks after the declaration of war, the
Prussian monarchy was ruined. The Emperor's swiftness and power of
concentration were never shown more brilliantly. After defeating the
Prussians at Jena (October, 1806), he pursued them so furiously that
he captured their whole army--more than 100,000 men--at Magdeburg,
Lubeck, and Prenzlow. Nearly all the Prussian fortresses surrendered,
and Frederic William escaped beyond the Vistula, with only 12,000 men,
to join his Russian allies. After entering Berlin, Napoleon pushed on
into Poland to meet the advancing forces of Czar Alexander. In the
bitter cold of a Polish February, he fought the battle of Eylau with
the Russians, and, for the first time in his life, failed to gain
a decisive victory over these stubborn foes. But, in the following
May, he finally settled the campaign by winning the bloody fight of
Friedland, after which the Czar asked for peace.
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Tilsit.--Dismemberment of Prussia.=]
At the treaty of Tilsit Napoleon dictated his terms to Russia and
Prussia. Alexander was left comparatively unmolested; he was not
stripped of territory, but only compelled to promise aid to Napoleon's
schemes against England. But Prussia was absolutely crushed; half
her territory was taken from her--the eastern districts to form a
new Polish state called the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the western to
make, along with Hanover and Hesse, a new "kingdom of Westphalia" for
Napoleon's youngest brother Jerome. In addition, all the Prussian
fortresses received French garrisons, and a fine of £26,000,000 was
imposed on the mutilated kingdom (June, 1807).
[Sidenote: =The Berlin Decrees.=]
Since Trafalgar the Emperor had been pondering over new schemes for
ruining England. In a leisure moment during the Prussian campaign he
devised the celebrated "Berlin Decrees." The English, as he thought,
mainly lived upon the revenues that they earned by being the middlemen
between Europe and the distant lands of Asia and America. Their
carrying trade was the staple of their prosperity, and if he could
destroy it England must go bankrupt. Accordingly, the Berlin Decrees
declared a blockade against goods made or brought over by the English,
in every country that France could influence. Now the idea of a naval
blockade is familiar enough, but Napoleon's scheme contemplated its
exact converse. He had resolved to station soldiers and custom-house
officers round every mile of coast in Europe, to prevent English
vessels from approaching the shore, and to see that not a pound's
worth of English manufactures or colonial produce should be imported.
The decrees declared the British Isles under blockade as regards the
rest of Europe; no subject of France or of any vassal power was to
trade with them. All Napoleon's unfortunate subject-allies, Prussia,
Holland, Spain, and the powers of Italy were forced to assent to this
strange edict, and the Czar of Russia was cajoled into accepting it.
Napoleon thought that he had thereby struck a deadly blow at England,
for every European state, save Sweden, Turkey, and Portugal, and the
islands of Sicily and Sardinia, was at his beck and call. But he had
not calculated on the greatness of the sacrifice which he was asking
his allies to make. They were to give up, in order to please him, many
of the comforts, even the necessities of life--West Indian sugar and
coffee, the tea, pepper, and spices of the East, the cloth and linen of
England, the muslin of Hindustan.
[Sidenote: =The "Orders in Council" of 1807.=]
The English government boldly accepted the Emperor's challenge, and
replied that if there was to be no English trade with the continent,
there should not be any trade at all. By the "Orders in Council" of
November, 1807, the whole coast-line of France and her allies was
declared in a state of blockade, and the war-vessels of England were
directed to seize as prizes all ships entering them, whether neutral
or not, unless before sailing for the continent such vessels should
have touched at an English port. Napoleon replied by the Milan Decrees
(Dec. 17, 1807), which declared that any vessel belonging to a neutral
power which had touched at any British port should be considered
a lawful prize, and ordered all British merchandise found on the
continent to be confiscated and burnt. Thus, between the Berlin Decrees
and the Orders in Council, all the ports of Europe were formally
closed. The one great neutral power, the United States of America, felt
this blow bitterly, and bore a deep grudge against both parties in the
strife.
[Sidenote: =Results of the "Continental System."=]
From the very first the result of the "Continental System," as the
Emperor's plan was named, was very different from what he had expected.
The English manufactures and colonial wares, which he intended to
exclude, contrived to creep, nevertheless, within the bounds of his
empire. All along the coasts of Germany, France, Italy, and Spain,
there sprang up an extraordinary development of smuggling. From
Heligoland, the Channel Isles, Gibraltar, and Sicily, hundreds of
vessels sailed by night to land their cargoes in secret. But if the
merchandize arrived, it came by such hazardous and circuitous ways that
its price was vastly increased. Napoleon did not succeed in ruining the
commerce of England, but he succeeded in making Germans and Russians
and Italians pay monstrous prices for their coffee or their sugar, and
got their well-earned curses for it.
[Sidenote: =The French invade Portugal.=]
Napoleon's restless energy in carrying out his scheme for the isolation
and financial ruin of England, led him into new troubles in another
part of Europe, less than three months after he had ended his Polish
campaign by the peace of Tilsit. The little kingdom of Portugal was,
with Turkey, almost the last state in Europe which had not accepted the
Continental System. Loth to lose their valuable commerce with England,
the Portuguese tried evasion, and returned shifty answers when Napoleon
bade their prince-regent accept the Berlin Decrees. Without waiting
for further provocation the tyrant, who had now grown impatient of the
slightest remonstrance against his fiat, declared that "the house of
Braganza had ceased to reign," and sent an army under General Junot
across Spain to occupy Lisbon. The prince-regent was forced to fly by
sea, and the French overran the whole of his kingdom.
[Sidenote: =Joseph Bonaparte proclaimed King of Spain.=]
But from the first moment of his interference in the Peninsula, it is
probable that Napoleon had wider schemes than the mere conquest of
Portugal. The crown of Spain was now worn by the imbecile and worthless
old king Charles IV., who lived in constant strife with his cowardly
and intriguing son and heir, the Infant Ferdinand. There was nothing
to choose between them in the way of incompetence and effeteness. In
1807 this wretched pair were at the height of their domestic quarrels,
and each was trying to curry favour with Napoleon. They were always
carrying complaints about each other to him, and asking for his
support. Then Napoleon, as if he were the recognized arbiter of kings,
summoned the quarrelsome father and son to meet him at Bayonne on the
French frontier, that he might settle their disputes. They came, each
full of charges against his relative; but Napoleon, when he had them
both safely under his hand, suddenly adopted a new tone, pronounced
them both unfit to rule a great nation, and then declared that his own
brother, Joseph Bonaparte (whom he had made ruler of Naples two years
before), would be the best king for Spain. Accordingly, he forced
the two Bourbons, half by threats, half by cajolery, to abdicate,
and sent them into the interior of France. A few Spanish nobles who
had accompanied them to Bayonne were induced to accept Joseph, and
then Napoleon pretended that his brother was legally constituted King
of Spain. There were many French troops in the Peninsula, who had
been sent there under the pretence that they were to help Junot in
conquering Portugal. At the concerted signal these regiments seized the
neighbouring Spanish fortresses, and proclaimed Joseph king. After a
rising of the populace of Madrid had been put down with much bloodshed
by the French troops in the capital, it seemed as if Napoleon's piracy
and kidnapping were to be crowned with success (June 15, 1808).
[Sidenote: =Resistance of the Spaniards.=]
This, however, was in reality far from being the case. As a matter of
fact he had now succeeded in involving himself in the most protracted
and exhausting war in which he was ever engaged. He had roused by his
treachery the most revengeful and fanatical people in Europe, and had
now to conquer a barren and arid country, "where large armies starve
and small armies get beaten." Spain sprang to arms on the news of the
crime of Bayonne. The great towns everywhere proclaimed Ferdinand VII.
king, and though the central government was destroyed, "juntas" or
revolutionary committees were formed in every province and began to
raise troops to resist King Joseph.
[Sidenote: =England determines to aid the Spaniards.=]
The news of the Spanish insurrection was received with joy in England,
more especially because it was the first really national rising
against the Emperor that had yet been seen. Even the Whigs were
enthusiastic for aiding Spain. "Hitherto," said Sheridan, "Bonaparte
has contended with princes without dignity, numbers without ardour,
and peoples without patriotism; he has yet to learn what it is to
combat a nation animated by one spirit against him." Misled by their
sympathy into over-estimating the strength of Spain and the valour of
her raw provincial levies, the English government, influenced mainly
by Canning, a disciple of Pitt, who was now the most prominent among
the younger Tory statesmen, determined to strike a bold blow by land
against Napoleon. For the last three years the very considerable body
of regular troops in England, set free from the task of watching the
Boulogne army, had been frittered away on small expeditions against
outlying parts of the French and Spanish dominions, and had suffered
nothing but checks. Now the cabinet determined to send a really
formidable army to the Peninsula. It was resolved to throw 20,000 men
ashore in Portugal to assail Junot, who was cut off from the rest of
the French armies by the revolt in Spain. To the Spaniards were sent
subsidies of arms and money, but no troops.
[Sidenote: =The Capitulation at Baylen.=]
Bonaparte's notion that Spain could be annexed by a proclamation, and
held down by 80,000 men, was destined to receive a rude shock. Almost
simultaneously, two disasters fell upon his armies. A corps had been
sent southwards to conquer Andalusia, where the insurrection was at its
strongest. Its leader, General Dupont, allowed himself to be surrounded
by superior numbers of Spanish levies at Baylen, and after some grossly
mismanaged fighting, laid down his arms with his whole force of 15,000
men (July 20, 1808).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Vimiero.--The Convention of Cintra.=]
Junot, in Portugal, suffered almost the same fate. The English began
to land in Portugal a few days after the capitulation of Baylen. When
their leading divisions were ashore, headed by Sir Arthur Wellesley,
the victor of Assaye and Argaum, Junot marched against them to drive
them into the sea. Finding Wellesley on the hillside of Vimiero, he
attacked him recklessly (Aug. 21), for the French had not yet learnt to
appreciate the worth of the British infantry. He received a crushing
defeat, and his army would have been destroyed if Wellesley had been
allowed to pursue him. But on the night of the battle, more troops
arrived from England, and with them Sir Hew Dalrymple, who was in
command of the whole expedition. The cautious veteran refused Wellesley
permission to follow up the flying enemy, and Junot escaped to Lisbon.
But the Frenchman had been so badly beaten, that by an agreement called
the "Convention of Cintra" he gave up Lisbon and all Portugal in
return for being granted a safe passage back to France. English public
opinion was disappointed that Junot's whole army had not been captured,
and Dalrymple and Wellesley were put on trial for not taking Lisbon
by force. The former, the responsible person, was deprived of his
command; the latter was acquitted and sent back to Portugal to repeat
his triumph of Vimiero on larger fields of battle. Meanwhile, while he
was being tried in England, Sir John Moore, an able and experienced
general, received the command of the English army in the Peninsula.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon in Spain.--Sir John Moore's campaign.=]
The news of Baylen and Vimiero had roused Napoleon to fury, which grew
still greater when he heard that his brother Joseph had evacuated
Madrid and fallen back behind the Ebro. He determined to march in
person against Spain with the "Grande Armée," nearly 250,000 veterans,
the victors of Austerlitz and Jena. Proclaiming that he was "about to
carry his victorious eagles to the Pillars of Hercules, and drive the
British leopard into the sea," he hurried over the Pyrenees, and fell
upon the raw Spanish levies who had now advanced to the line of the
Ebro. With a few crushing blows, he scattered them to right and left,
and entered Madrid (Dec. 4, 1808). All northern and central Spain
were overrun, and Napoleon might have accomplished his boast, and
advanced to Cadiz and Lisbon, but for the daring diversion made by Sir
John Moore and his 25,000 English. When that able officer heard that
the Emperor had passed southward and taken Madrid, he fell upon his
line of communication, and threatened to cut off his connection with
France. He knew that this act would bring overwhelming numbers against
him, but he also knew that it would save Southern Spain for a space.
When Napoleon learnt that Moore was in his rear, he hurriedly left
Madrid and directed 100,000 men to chase the much-daring general. But
Moore, satisfied to have drawn off the French, continually retreated
before them in the most skilful manner, always offering battle to the
French van, and retreating when their main body appeared. He thus drew
Napoleon up into the extreme north-western corner of Spain, among the
rugged hills of Galicia. While engaged in this pursuit the Emperor
received unwelcome news which drew him hastily back to Paris.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon leaves Spain.--Battle of Corunna.=]
The English government had not been idle during the autumn of 1808,
and had formed a new coalition with Austria, who in three years had
begun to recover the disaster of Austerlitz, and to chafe against
Napoleon's dictatorial ways and the inconveniences of the Continental
System. Seeing the Emperor entangled in the Spanish war, Austria
thought the opportunity of attacking him too good to be missed, and
was preparing to send her armies into South Germany while Napoleon
was chasing Moore into Galicia. The Emperor was forced to leave the
greater part of his army in Spain, and to hurry off to the Danube with
his guards and picked troops. Marshal Soult, whom he sent in pursuit
of Moore, followed him as far as the sea, where an English fleet was
waiting at Corunna to pick up the way-worn and jaded troops. To secure
a safe embarkation, Moore turned sharply on the head of Soult's army,
and drove it back at the battle of Corunna (Jan. 16, 1809). He fell
in the moment of victory, but his efforts had not been in vain: his
troops sailed away in safety, and the French invasion of Spain had been
checked for four months by his bold stroke.
[Illustration: SPAIN & PORTUGAL
1803-1814.]
The English cabinet had resolved not to abandon Spain and Portugal;
when Moore's regiments returned to England many of them were sent back
to Lisbon, and placed under Wellesley, the victor of Vimiero, whose
trial had ended in a triumphant acquittal. In April, 1809, began that
wonderful series of campaigns which was to last till March, 1814, and
to bear the English standard in triumph from the Tagus to the Garonne.
Fettered by timid instructions from the home government, linked to
rash and jealous allies, and starting with no more than 20,000 British
troops, Wellesley was bidden to hold his own in the Peninsula, where
more than 200,000 French troops were still encamped. He showed the
rarest combination of prudence and daring, and brought his almost
impossible task to a successful end, in spite of the tiresome stupidity
of his Spanish confederates, and the inefficient support which the home
government gave him. At any moment, during the first three years of
his command, a single defeat would have caused the cabinet to recall
him and withdraw his army from the Peninsula, but the defeat never
came, and Wellesley at last won the confidence he merited, and was
given adequate means to carry out his mighty schemes. The story of the
war is the best proof of his abilities. A calm, stern, silent man,
with an aquiline nose, clear grey eyes, and a slight, erect figure, he
inspired implicit confidence, if his taciturnity and hatred of display
or emotion prevented him from winning the love and enthusiasm of his
troops as many lesser generals have done. "The sight of his long nose
among us on a battle morning," wrote one of his veterans, "was worth
10,000 men of reinforcements any day."
[Sidenote: =Soult driven from Portugal.--Battle of Talavera.=]
While Napoleon was engaged in his Austrian war of 1809, Wellesley
easily held his own in the Peninsula. He defeated Marshal Soult
at Oporto, and drove him out of Portugal with the loss of all his
artillery and baggage. Then, turning southward, he marched against
Madrid in the company of the Spanish general Cuesta. But he found
his allies almost useless. Cuesta was perverse and imbecile to an
incredible degree, and his wretched provincial levies fled at the
mere sound of the cannon, unless they were ensconced behind walls and
trenches. At Talavera the allied armies beat Marshal Victor and King
Joseph, but all the fighting fell on the English. Cuesta's troops,
sheltered in the town of Talavera, refused to come out of their
defences and left Wellesley's 20,000 men to repel the assaults of
40,000 French. After this experience of Spanish co-operation the victor
vowed that he would never again share a campaign with a Spanish army
(July 28, 1809).
[Sidenote: =Wellington retires to Portugal.--The Walcheren expedition.=]
The news of Talavera brought the French armies from all sides to aid
the defeated marshal, and, beset by 100,000 men, Wellesley was obliged
to retreat on Portugal. He got back in perfect safety, but his imbecile
colleague Cuesta was caught and crushed by the pursuers. The result of
the fighting at Talavera had given the English troops confidence, and
the king conferred on the victor the title of Viscount Wellington. He
would have preferred to receive reinforcements rather than honorary
distinctions, but the cabinet had decreed otherwise. They had sent all
the available troops in England, some 40,000 men, on an ill-judged
expedition against Antwerp, which was too strongly fortified and lay
too far inland to be readily taken by an army of such a size. The
general placed in command was Lord Chatham, Pitt's elder brother, a
dilatory commander who moved slowly and allowed himself to be detained
in the siege of the minor fortresses which guarded the way to Antwerp.
The army landed on the swampy isle of Walcheren and beleaguered
Flushing for three weeks, but in the trenches the troops were smitten
with marsh fever, and succumbed so rapidly that the expedition had to
be given up, when 11,000 men were simultaneously in hospital. Flushing
was destroyed, but the troops had to return to England, and had
exercised no influence whatever on the fate of the war (July to August,
1809). If sent to Wellesley, they would have enabled him to crush King
Joseph and take Madrid.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Wagram.--Marriage of Napoleon.=]
Meanwhile the Austrian war had ended in the triumph of Napoleon at the
battle of Wagram (August, 1809), though the gallant efforts of the
Archduke Charles, and the insurrection of the patriots of the Tyrol
and Northern Germany, had seemed at first to shake his power. The
Emperor of Austria was forced to cede all his Illyrian coast-line, that
Napoleon might make his blockade of English goods the stricter, to
surrender half his share of Poland, and to give--the bitterest drop in
his cup--the hand of his daughter Maria Louisa to the conqueror. This
unhallowed union was only made possible by the divorce of Josephine
Beauharnais, the wife with whom Napoleon had lived for the last
fourteen years (October, 1809).
[Sidenote: =The "Lines of Torres Vedras."--Masséna's retreat.=]
Freed from the Austrian war, and with his "Grande Armée" once
more unoccupied, Napoleon resolved to make an end of the Spanish
insurrection. He gave 70,000 fresh troops to Masséna, the ablest of
his marshals, and bade him drive Wellington into the sea and conquer
all Spain and Portugal. The English general had foreseen some such
assault from the moment that he heard the news of the defeat of
Austria. He spent the winter of 1809-1810 in constructing a triple
series of fortifications across the peninsula on which Lisbon stands,
the famous "Lines of Torres Vedras." When Masséna advanced against
Portugal Wellington retired slowly before him, wasting the country
and compelling all the people to take refuge in Lisbon. He turned at
Busaco (September 29, 1810) to inflict a sharp check on the heads of
Masséna's columns, but finally withdrew into his formidable lines. The
French were brought to a stand before the unexpected obstacle, for
they had no knowledge that Wellington had so strengthened his place of
refuge. The position, armed with 600 pieces of artillery, and defended
by 30,000 English, and the whole of the militia of Portugal, seemed too
strong to be meddled with. Masséna lay in front of the lines for four
months, sending in vain for reinforcements to Spain. But his colleague
Soult, occupied in the conquest of Andalusia, and the sieges of Cadiz
and Badajos, would not come to his aid. Masséna's army suffered
bitter privations in the wasted and depopulated country, and at last,
in March, 1811, he was fain to draw back and retreat from Portugal,
after having lost more than 20,000 men by sword and famine. Wellington
followed him, perpetually harassing his retreat, and took post again
on the borders of Spain, from which he had been forced back six months
before.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Fuentes d'Onoro and Albuera.=]
The triumphant defence of the lines of Torres Vedras was the turning
point of the whole Peninsular War. The French were never again able
to invade Portugal, and Wellington, strongly reinforced from England
after his success was known, was for the future able to undertake
bolder strokes and no longer forced to keep to the defensive. The last
offensive movements of the French were stopped by two bloody actions
fought in May, 1811, within a few days of each other. In the north
Masséna attacked Wellington in order to try to save the beleaguered
fortress of Almeida; but he was repulsed at Fuentes d'Onoro (May 5),
and was shortly afterwards recalled in disgrace by his master. In
the south Marshal Soult marched to relieve Badajos, which was being
besieged by Lord Beresford, Wellington's second-in-command, aided by
the Spanish general Blake. Beresford met the French at Albuera, and
almost lost the battle, partly by his own unskilful generalship, partly
by the sudden flight of his Spanish auxiliaries. But the day was saved
by the celebrated charge of the "Fusilier Brigade," in which the 7th
and 23rd Fusiliers, only 1500 strong, stormed a precipitous hill held
by 7000 French, and forced Soult to retreat. This was the bloodiest
fight which an English army ever gained. Beresford lost 4300 men out of
7500, yet his indomitable troops won the day for him (May 16).
[Illustration: EUROPE
IN 1811-12.]
[Sidenote: =Further Annexations by Napoleon.=]
The years 1810-1811 were the last years of Napoleon's ascendency in
Europe. They are marked by his final attempt to make the Continental
System effective, by the annexation of almost the whole coast-line of
Central Europe. He had already taken Rome and Central Italy from the
Pope in 1809. Now he expelled his own brother Lewis from Holland, and
appropriated that country. He next added to his dominions the whole
north coast of Germany as far as the Baltic, including the Hanseatic
towns and the realms of four or five of his vassals, the princes of the
Confederation of the Rhine. These wild and arbitrary seizures, which
made the coast of France extend from Rome to Lubeck, were to Napoleon
mere episodes in the struggle with England. The Dutch and Germans would
not enforce the blockade against English goods as stringently as he
wished, and so he annexed them to make their secret trade with England
impossible. The Continental System was now in full swing; it was
working in all Napoleon's own dominions, in France, Italy, and Illyria,
in the lands of all his vassals--the German states, Poland, Denmark,
Naples, Prussia--in Sweden, where one of his marshals, Bernadotte, had
lately been made heir to the throne, and even in the territories of his
reluctant allies the emperors of Austria and Russia. Yet, in spite of
Napoleon's many assertions to the contrary, England was neither ruined
nor likely to sue for peace.
[Sidenote: =Perceval and Lord Liverpool.--War policy of the Tories.=]
There had of late been many changes in the persons who ruled England,
but the policy of Pitt was still maintained by his successors. The
old king, George III., had gone mad in 1810, and the nominal control
of the country was now in the hands of his worthless, vicious son
George, Prince of Wales, the old ally of the Whigs. But the regency
was given him guarded with so many checks and limitations, that he was
completely in the hands of the ministry, and could not do much harm.
First Perceval, and after he had been shot by a lunatic in 1812, Robert
Jenkinson, Earl of Liverpool, swayed the policy of England as prime
minister. Both were men of moderate abilities and narrow minds, but
they had the saving virtue of obstinacy, and stuck to the old policy
of war with France through thick and thin. Their task was no easy one:
debt was accumulating in appalling loads from the expenses of the war;
the taxes were increased year by year; trade was much hampered by the
Continental System; a series of bad harvests raised the cost of corn
to famine-price, and led to endless discontent and rioting both in
town and country; our allies were beaten one by one on the continent.
There was no compensating gain save Wellington's successes in Spain,
and the fact that we had now full control of the seas and had absorbed
the colonial trade of the whole world. Yet the Tories hardened their
hearts, and hammered away at "the Corsican Ogre" with untiring zeal.
Nor can it be doubted for a moment that they were right; Napoleon had
to be put down, or England must perish. All honour therefore to the
men, narrow-minded and prejudiced though they were, who carried out the
struggle to the bitter end.
[Sidenote: =Russia and the Continental System.=]
They were at last about to be rewarded for their perseverance. Towards
the end of 1811 Napoleon became involved in a third struggle with
Russia, more deadly than those of 1805 and 1806-7. The cause of the
quarrel was the inevitable Continental System. Hitherto England had
been the largest buyer of Russian goods, and Russia had been wont
to get her luxuries and colonial wares from England. The enforced
prohibition of trade with her best customer did Russia untold harm,
and the Czar Alexander found that every class of his subjects was
groaning under the yoke of the Berlin Decrees. Discontent was rife,
and Alexander knew well enough that Russia is "a despotism tempered by
assassination," and remembered the fate of his own father. He saw at
last that his empire was losing more from alliance with Napoleon than
she could lose by open war against him. Finally the Russian government
began to provoke the Emperor by an almost overt neglect of his wishes,
and practically abandoned the Continental System.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon's Russian campaign.=]
Napoleon was at the height of his arrogance and autocratic insolence.
Instead of making an end to the war in Spain--"the running sore" as he
called it, from the drain which it caused on his resources--he resolved
to impose his will on Russia by force, and declared war upon the Czar.
A vast army of 600,000 men was concentrated in eastern Germany, and
crossed the Niemen in June, 1812. But the Russians had taken example by
the policy by which Wellington had foiled Masséna in 1810: instead of
fighting on their frontier, they withdrew into the heart of their vast
plains, wasting the country behind them, and leaving no food for the
invader. The French army had lost half its horses and a third of its
men, before it approached Moscow or fought a serious engagement. The
Russians turned to bay at Borodino, in front of their ancient capital;
but Napoleon stormed their entrenchments at the cost of 25,000 men,
and entered Moscow. But he found it deserted by its inhabitants, and
a few days after his arrival the whole city was burnt, whether by the
deliberate resolve of the Russians, or by the carelessness of the
French soldiery. Winter was now at hand, and for want of food and
shelter the Emperor resolved to retire on Poland. But the season was
too late, and he was surprised on his way by the snow. His harassed and
half-starved soldiers died by thousands on the roadside: the Russians
cut off every straggler, and less than a tenth of the magnificent army
that had crossed the Niemen struggled back to Germany (Nov. 1812-Jan.
1813).
[Sidenote: =Storming of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos.=]
The fortune of war had at last turned, and Napoleon's first disaster
was soon to be followed by his fall. Prussia and all his other
unwilling subjects in northern Germany took arms when the fate of the
"Grande Armée" became known, and to meet them the Emperor had to call
up his last reserves of men, and especially to draw on the large force
in the Spanish peninsula. But he found that little help could come from
Spain, for 1812 had been as fatal to his marshals in the south as to
himself in the far north. Early in the year Wellington had swooped down
on Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajos, the two fortresses in French hands which
covered the Spanish frontier. He stormed each of them after a siege of
a few days, making the desperate courage of his soldiery serve instead
of a long bombardment, and paying for his rapid success by a heavy
loss of men. Badajos was actually escaladed with ladders, the breaches
having proved inaccessible. The French marshals came hurrying up to
save their strongholds, but found them already fallen into English
hands.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Salamanca.=]
There followed the decisive battle of Salamanca, in which Wellington
defeated Marshal Marmont, and crushed the main army of the enemy.
This fight was a splendid exhibition of his skill: his able adversary
had for a moment put his left wing in a hazardous position. Before
half an hour had elapsed, Wellington had pounced upon the isolated
divisions, routed them, and attacked and scattered the main body. Thus,
as was happily said, he "beat forty thousand men in forty minutes." In
consequence of this victory Wellington was able to retake Madrid, after
it had been four years in hostile hands. To check his further success
the French marshals had to evacuate all southern and central Spain,
and mass their forces against the victor. When they beset him with
100,000 men he was forced to retreat towards the Portuguese frontier
for a space. But the net result of the campaign had been to deliver
Andalusia and most of Castile from the enemy, and more was to follow.
Napoleon had to withdraw so many of his veterans from Spain, to replace
his losses in the Russian war, that in the next spring Wellington was
no longer in his wonted inferiority of numbers. He used his opportunity
with his usual skill and promptness.
[Sidenote: =Battle of Vittoria.--Last efforts of the French in Spain.=]
Attacking the French before they had concentrated from their scattered
winter-quarters, he chased them before him in disorder all across
northern Spain. It was only at Vittoria, close under the Pyrenees, that
they could collect in numbers strong enough to face him. But there he
fell upon them, routed Marshal Jourdan, cut off his retreat on France,
and drove him into the mountains with the loss of every single cannon
and waggon that the French army possessed (June 21, 1813). The autumn
of the year was occupied in subduing St. Sebastian and Pampeluna, the
two fortresses that guarded the French frontier, and in repulsing, at
the "Battles of the Pyrenees," two gallant attempts made by Marshal
Soult to relieve the beleaguered fortresses. At last they fell, and
Wellington prepared to invade France in the next spring.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Napoleon.--Restoration of Louis XVIII.=]
Meanwhile, Napoleon, with a horde of conscripts and the few veteran
troops that he could collect, had been fighting hard in Germany.
Against the Russians and Prussians he held his ground for some time,
but when his own father-in-law, Francis of Austria, joined the enemy,
he was overwhelmed by numbers. The three-days' strife at Leipzig, which
the Germans call the "battle of nations," sealed his fate. It was only
with the wrecks of an army that he escaped across the Rhine in the
autumn of 1813. The allies followed him without giving him a moment's
respite, a wise strategy that they had learnt from his own earlier
doings. The Emperor made a desperate fight in France, but the odds were
too many against him. After some ephemeral successes he was defeated at
Laon by one body of the allies, and their main army slipped past him
and took Paris (April 4, 1814). On the news of the fall of the capital
the French marshals compelled Napoleon to abdicate, and laid down their
arms. The humbled despot vainly attempted to commit suicide, fearing
death at the victors' hands. But they spared his life, gave him the
little Tuscan island of Elba as an appanage, and bade the man who had
been the ruler of all Europe to spend the rest of his life in governing
a rock and 10,000 Italian peasants. The crown of France was given--with
questionable wisdom--to the representative of the Bourbons, the eldest
surviving grandson of Lewis XV. This shrewd and selfish old invalid,
who was known as the Count of Provence, now took the title of Lewis
XVIII. and mounted his martyred brother's long-lost throne.
[Sidenote: =Wellington in France.--Battle of Toulouse.=]
While the Austrians, Russians, and Prussians had been conquering
Napoleon and capturing Paris, Wellington had not been idle. He had
invaded France from the south, taken the great city of Bordeaux, and
beaten Marshal Soult at the battle of Toulouse, when the news of
Napoleon's abdication brought his brilliant campaign to a conclusion
(April 14, 1814).
[Sidenote: =The American War.--Naval successes of the United States.=]
All Europe now began to disarm, dreaming that the deadly struggles of
the last twenty-two years were over at last. Diplomatists from all
nations were summoned to meet at Vienna, to rearrange the map of Europe
and parcel out Napoleon's ill-gotten spoils. England alone was unable
to disband her armies, for she had still got a war on hand. In 1812
Napoleon had succeeded in stirring up against us the United States
of America. Their grievance was the Orders in Council, by which we
had prohibited neutral ships from trading with France, in retaliation
for the Emperor's Berlin Decrees against our own commerce. After five
years of bickering and recrimination the Americans declared war on
us--though they might with equally good logic have attacked Napoleon,
whose conduct to them had been even more harsh and provoking than
that of the Perceval cabinet. With all her attention concentrated on
the Peninsula in 1812-13, England had little attention to spare for
this minor war, and Canada was left much undermanned. But the small
garrison and the Canadian militia fought splendidly, and three separate
attempts to overrun the colony were beaten back, and two American
armies forced to capitulate. But while so successful on land, the
English were much vexed and surprised to suffer several small defeats
at sea in duels between single vessels. The few frigates which the
United States owned were very fine vessels, heavily armed and well
manned; on three successive occasions an American frigate captured an
English one of slightly inferior force in single combat, a feat which
no French ship had ever been able to accomplish in the whole war.[55]
In course of time the American vessels were hunted down and destroyed
by our squadrons, but it was a great blow to English naval pride that
the enemy had to be crushed by superiority of numbers instead of being
beaten in equal fight. But the fact was that individually the American
ships were larger and carried heavier guns than our own, so that the
first defeats were no matter of shame to our navy.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Bladensburg and New Orleans.--End of the war.=]
When Napoleon had been crushed, England was able to turn serious
attention to America, and to send many of the old Peninsular veterans
over the Atlantic. But their arrival did not crush the enemy so easily
as had been expected. One expedition under General Ross, landing in
Maryland, beat the Americans at Bladensburg, and burnt Washington,
the capital of the United States (1814). But two others failed: the
imbecile Sir George Prevost invaded the State of New York, but turned
back without having done any serious fighting. On the other hand,
the overbold Sir Edward Pakenham, one of the bravest of Wellington's
officers, was slain at New Orleans with 2000 of his followers because
he endeavoured to storm from the front impregnable earthworks held
by a steady foe (January 8, 1815). The war, however, had ceased just
before Pakenham fell. Napoleon having abdicated, and the English having
withdrawn the Orders in Council, the causes of our strife with America
had been removed, and the two powers had signed the peace of Ghent
on December 24, 1814. This agreement restored the old condition of
affairs, each party surrendering its conquests, and agreeing to let
bygones be bygones. But the struggle had bred much ill blood, not to be
forgotten for many a year.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon escapes from Elba.=]
By the new year of 1815, when the treaty of Ghent had been signed,
England was at peace with all men, and the Liverpool ministry began to
take in hand the reduction of our army and navy, the restoration of
finance, and the protection of English interests in the resettlement of
Europe at the congress at Vienna, which had met in the previous autumn.
All the diplomatists of the great powers were hard at work settling
the new boundaries of their states, when suddenly the alarming news
was heard that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and landed in France.
The rule of the selfish old Lewis XVIII. and the elderly companions
who had returned with him from a twenty years' exile, had irritated
and disgusted the French, and most of all the army. When, therefore,
Napoleon landed in Provence with seven hundred men, and called on
his countrymen to rise in behalf of liberty and expel the imbecile
Bourbons, his appeal met with a success such as he himself had hardly
hoped for. Not a shot was fired against him; regiment after regiment
went over to his side, and Lewis XVIII. had at last to fly from Paris
and take refuge in Flanders (March, 1815). Napoleon proclaimed himself
Emperor once more, but promised the French a liberal constitution
in place of his old autocratic rule. He also made overtures to the
allied powers, saying that he was tired of war, and would accept any
honourable terms. But they knew his lying tongue of old, and wisely
refused to listen to his smooth speeches. One after another, all the
monarchs of Europe declared war on him.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon enters Belgium.--Battles of Ligny and Quatre
Bras.=]
Napoleon's second tenure of power was only to last from March 13 till
June 22, 1815, the "Hundred Days," as they are generally called.
Forced to fight, he displayed his old energy, and resolved to strike
at the allies before they could concentrate their scattered forces
from the remotest ends of Europe. He called his old veterans to arms,
and hastily organized an army of 130,000 men for an immediate attack
on the nearest foe. By waiting longer he could have collected an army
thrice as great, but, on the other hand, his enemies would have been
able to mass their whole force against him. The only troops ready to
oppose him by June, 1815, were two armies in Belgium, one of Prussians
under the old Marshal Blücher, which lay about Namur, Liège, and
Charleroi, the other a combined force of British, Germans, and Dutch
under Wellington, now a duke, stationed round Brussels and Ghent. The
Prussians were 120,000 strong, and Wellington had 30,000 English and
65,000 Hanoverians, Germans, and Dutch. Napoleon was therefore bound to
be outnumbered, but he thought that he could crush one army before the
other came to its aid, if he could only strike hard and fast enough.
His advance into Belgium was rapid and skilful. He made for the point
where the English left touched the Prussian right, near Charleroi, and
thrust himself between them. On June 16 he engaged and beat Blücher's
Prussians at Ligny, while his lieutenant, Marshal Ney, held back at
Quatre Bras the front divisions of Wellington's army as they came
marching up to try to join the Prussians.
The Prussians were severely beaten, but the indomitable old Blücher
gathered together his defeated forces, and marched north to rejoin the
English, while Napoleon vainly dreamed that he was flying eastward
towards Germany. Thus it came to pass that the Emperor sent Marshal
Grouchy and 33,000 men to pursue the Prussians on the wrong road, a
mistake which allowed Blücher to execute an undisturbed retreat on
Wavre, where he was again in touch with the duke.
Meanwhile, Napoleon, on the 17th, marched to join his lieutenant Ney,
who had been forced back from Quatre Bras by the English, and needed
his aid. The Emperor, believing that the Prussians were disposed of,
thought he could now deal a crushing blow at Wellington's motley army,
and was overjoyed when he found the duke offering him battle on the
hillside of Mont St. Jean, twelve miles north of Quatre Bras, in a
good position which covered the road to Brussels. On this hillside was
fought next day (June 18, 1815) the decisive battle which the English
call Waterloo, from the name of the village where Wellington wrote his
despatch that same night.
[Illustration: WATERLOO
June 18, 1815.]
[Sidenote: =The Battle of Waterloo.=]
The armies were not very different in numbers. Napoleon's 72,000 French
were opposed to 67,000 troops in the allied army. But Wellington
could only count on his 23,000 English and 22,000 Hanoverians and
Brunswickers, for good and zealous service. He was hindered rather than
helped by the presence of 20,000 raw Dutch and Belgian conscripts, who
had no heart in the war, and would as soon have fought for Napoleon.
His army was stretched along the gentle slope which is crossed by the
Brussels road, with the infantry in the front line, and the cavalry
partly in reserve, partly on the wings. In front of his position were
the two farms of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, the former held by
the English guards, the latter by a picked battalion of Hanoverians.
Napoleon ranged his men on the opposite ridge, and launched them
against the English in successive attacks. His first attempt to storm
the farm of Hougoumont was manfully beaten back. He then sent four
heavy columns against the English left, but they were utterly routed by
the charge of Picton's infantry and Ponsonby's famous "Union Brigade"
of dragoons, the Royals, Scots Greys and Inniskillens. His third effort
was to break the English centre by the furious charges of 15,000
gallant horsemen, supported by a tremendous fire of artillery. But the
English squares held fast, though assailed for five hours by constant
onsets of cavalry and pounded in the intervals by an overwhelming force
of cannon. Most of the Dutch and Belgians and some of the Germans
retired from the field, and many fled to Brussels: but the indomitable
squares held their own, even after the farm of La Haye Sainte had been
stormed, and a gap opened in the English centre. In the thick of the
fighting, Napoleon was surprised to see new troops coming up on his
right: these were Blücher's Prussians, marching from Wavre to aid the
English, according to a promise which the old marshal had made to the
Duke on the previous day. To hold them back, Napoleon had to detach
nearly all his reserves; but for a final stroke against Wellington he
sent out 5000 men of the "Old Guard" to break through the long-tried
English line. But this last effort was foiled by the steady fire of
Maitland's English guards, and when the attacking columns were seen
recoiling down the hillside and Wellington's last cavalry reserves came
charging after them, the whole French army broke and fled.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon confined at St. Helena.=]
Never was a more complete rout seen. The defeated army disbanded
itself: Napoleon could not rally a man, and fled to Paris, where he
abdicated for a second time. Wellington and Blücher rapidly followed
him and entered Paris (July 6). The ex-Emperor, fearing death at the
hands of the infuriated Prussians, fled across France to Rochefort,
and surrendered himself to the English man-of-war which blockaded that
port. After much discussion the ministers resolved to send him as a
prisoner to the desolate island of St. Helena, where he lived for six
years, spending his time in dictating mendacious accounts of his life
and campaigns, and in petty quarrels with the governor of the island.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of the English mercantile marine.=]
Napoleon was now really disposed of, and the pacification of Europe
was complete. The congress of Vienna had completed its work, and all
the territorial changes which it dictated were carried out at leisure.
England's share of the plunder in Europe was the islands of Malta and
Heligoland and the Ionian Isles; beyond seas she got the French isle of
Mauritius in the Indian Ocean and the valuable Dutch colony of the Cape
of Good Hope. But her real gain was the fact that she had absorbed,
during the course of the war, nearly the whole of the carrying trade
of the world. Twenty years of her ascendency at sea had destroyed the
mercantile marines of France, Holland, Spain, and Italy, and it was
many years before those countries could recover from their losses. The
naval and commercial supremacy which we enjoy to-day is the direct
result of the great wars of 1793-1815.
[Sidenote: =The resettlement of Europe.=]
This being so, the changes on the continent were of comparatively
little moment to us. France was confined within her old boundaries
of 1789. Russia took the greater part of Poland, Austria was given
Lombardy and Venetia, Prussia annexed half Saxony and most of the small
states along the Rhine. Belgium and Holland were joined in an unnatural
union as the "Kingdom of the Netherlands," while the old despots of
Central and Southern Italy returned to their long-lost thrones. These
boundaries were to last, with little alteration, for half a century.
FOOTNOTES:
[54] And this including Ireland, where only the Protestants could be
trusted with arms.
[55] In sixty-seven duels of single English frigates with French,
Dutch, or Spanish vessels of the same rating, the adversary succumbed;
in no single case was an English vessel taken by an enemy of equal
force.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
REACTION AND REFORM.
1815-1832.
The great struggle was now over, and a new period had commenced, in
which European wars were to be as rare as they had of late been common,
for between 1815 and 1848 there was no serious strife between any of
the powers of Western and Central Europe, and the general peace was
only interrupted by comparatively unimportant broils in the Balkan
peninsula and in Spain.
England, whose troops were not destined to fire another shot in Europe
for forty years, had full leisure to look around her and count up the
cost of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. The table of profit and
loss was not at first sight a very cheerful one. The weight of debt and
taxation was obvious to every man, while the compensating advantages,
resulting from the firm establishment of our naval and commercial
supremacy in all the seas of the world, were only just beginning to
make themselves felt. The country and its governors were at the same
time beginning to feel very uneasy at a silent change in the social
life of England.
[Sidenote: =The industrial revolution.=]
For, noticeable as were the years 1793-1815 for the display of
England's vigour abroad, they were even more remarkable for the social
change which was taking place within. In those twenty-three years
was consummated the transformation of England from an agricultural
to a manufacturing community, a transformation the stranger because
agriculture was being all the time artificially stimulated, by laws for
the protection of the English farmer against foreign competition. So
the change in the general character of the English state was due not
to a decay in agriculture, but solely to an increase in manufactures.
The war which, as Napoleon had trusted, would crush our industries,
had only fostered them, by putting us beyond the reach of foreign
competition, and throwing open to us alone every market and line of
trade outside Europe. For instead of our prosperity being checked by
the loss of our continental trade, continental prosperity had been
checked by the loss of all maritime traffic with Asia and America,
which passed entirely into our hands.
[Sidenote: =English manufacturing supremacy.=]
England, therefore, had become the manufacturer of the goods of the
whole world, not merely owing to her monopoly of trade, but owing to
the improved machinery, and methods of transit which she adopted long
before the rest of Europe. She obtained such a start in the use of
the means of industrial production, that no state has yet been able
to catch her up in the race of commerce. Hence England was at the end
of the war able to bear a weight of taxation and debt which must have
ruined her in its earlier years. Nine hundred millions of National
Debt, though a tremendous burden, turned out not to be, as many had
feared, a ruinously heavy infliction. The forced paper currency, whose
introduction in 1797 had appeared to mark a step on the downward
road to national bankruptcy, was successfully taken off a few years
after the war ended. The great army and navy which had been draining
our exchequer were disbanded, when they had finished their duty of
protecting us against the threatened invasions of the Revolution and
the Empire, and had afterwards played the decisive part in exhausting
Napoleon's resources, by that long struggle in the Spanish peninsula,
which encouraged the rest of Europe to throw off the French yoke.
[Sidenote: =Poverty and discontent of the labouring classes.=]
But there were other aspects in which the results of the war had been
less happy for England. If the increase of wealth had been enormous,
the method of that wealth's distribution was not satisfactory. The
new masses of population, which had been called into existence by the
development of manufactures, were poor with a poverty which had been
unknown in the days when England was still mainly an agricultural
country. The introduction of improved machinery, great as was its
ultimate benefit, caused during the years of transition much misery
to the classes whose industry was superseded by it. While English
manufactures were driving out foreign competition all over the
world, English mobs were often wrecking the machinery which made
these manufactures possible, in their rage at the ruin of the old
handicrafts. Actual famine seemed several times during the war to
be staring the lower classes in the face, for the largely increased
population could no longer be supported on the food supply of England.
Nevertheless, in their zeal to encourage English agriculture, the Tory
governments of the early years of the century refused to allow the
free introduction of the foreign corn which was really necessary for
the increased consumption of the population. And while wheat was dear,
because limited in quantity, owing to Protection, the agricultural
classes were not being enriched in the manner which might have been
expected. The enhanced profit passed entirely to the farmer and the
landlord, not to the labouring population; and at the same moment at
which the artisan was breaking machinery, the agricultural labourer
was burning his employer's ricks. This unfortunate state of things,
however, was due rather to misguided legislation than to any actual
danger in the economic conditions of England, and could therefore be
relieved by methods which cannot come into play when a real and not a
fictitious crisis in the internal state of a country is at hand.
[Sidenote: =Poor Law administration.=]
The main cause of the degradation of the agricultural labourer in the
early years of the nineteenth century was a series of unwise Poor-Laws,
which had been passed at intervals since 1795. There had been much
local distress in the early years of the revolutionary war, and to
alleviate it many parishes had commenced a system of indiscriminate
doles of money to poor residents, without much inquiry whether the
recipients were deserving or idle, able-bodied or impotent. The
old test of compelling paupers to enter the workhouse was entirely
forgotten, and money was given to every one who chose to ask for it.
Moreover, the rule was laid down that the larger the family, the more
was it to draw from the rates in its weekly subsidy. This unwise scheme
at once led to the evil of reckless marriages and enormous families,
for the labourers saw that the more their children increased, the
larger would be their dole from the parish.
[Sidenote: =The farmers and the Poor Law.=]
But not the labourer only was to draw profit from the new Poor Laws.
The farmers began to see that if they kept down the wages of their
men, the parish could be trusted to make up the deficiency. It thus
became easy for them to pay starvation-wages to the labourers, and then
force the local rates to support them with a subsidy just sufficient to
keep each family out of the workhouse. Thus the agricultural classes
began to live, not on their natural wages, but on a pittance from
their employer, supplemented by a weekly-grant from the parish. This
suited the farmers well enough, but was ruinous to every one else, for
well-nigh every labourer was forced to ask for local aid, and thereby
to become a pauper. At the same time the rapid growth of population
caused the burden on the parish to advance by leaps and bounds. At last
the poor-rate became an intolerable drain on the resources of the less
wealthy districts. A well-known case is quoted in Buckinghamshire,
where the annual dole to the paupers grew till it actually exceeded
the annual rating of the parish. And as long as every one who chose
was able to demand outdoor relief, it was impossible to see where the
trouble would end. In the years after the great war had ended actual
bankruptcy seemed to be threatening scores of parishes, yet corn was
high in price, and the profits of farming, if fairly distributed,
ought to have sufficed to keep both landowner, farmer, and labourer in
comfort.
In considering the political history of England in the years after
1815, this abject distress of the working class, both in town and in
countryside, must be continually borne in mind. It was the discontent
of the ignorant multitude, feeling its poverty but not understanding
its cause, and ready to seek any scheme of redress, wise or unwise,
that was at the bottom of the political trouble of the time. The
discontent was really social, the result of unwise laws, and wrong
conceptions of political economy. But it often took shape in political
forms, and the government of the day thought that it heralded the
approach of a catastrophe like the French Revolution.
[Sidenote: =Reactionary policy of the Tories.=]
Unfortunately for the prosperity of England, its rulers were at this
moment committed to a stern and reactionary policy, and would listen
to no proposals for change or reform of any kind. The generation of
Tories who had grown up during the great French war, had forgotten the
old liberal doctrines of their great leader Pitt. Of all the ministers,
George Canning was almost the only one who remembered his old master's
teaching, and was ready to think of introducing reforms, now that peace
had once more been obtained. The majority of his colleagues, especially
the premier, the narrow-minded Earl of Liverpool, and the harsh and
unbending Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, set their faces against
any change in the constitution, however small.
[Sidenote: =Renewed popularity of the Whigs.=]
Now the Tories had merited well of their country by carrying the war
to a successful close, but when the war was over, it was time to be
thinking of some way of alleviating the social ills which had been
accumulating during its course. This they refused to do, quoting the
fate of Lewis XVI. as the sample of what happens to rulers who yield
one inch to the pressure of mob violence. They were still firm in
office, for the Whig party had not yet recovered from the discredit
which they had won from the hopeless failure of the Fox-Grenville
cabinet of 1806-1807. But now that their ideas on foreign policy could
do no harm, they began to be viewed with more favourable eyes. The ten
years which followed the battle of Waterloo were marked by the gradual
passing over of the great middle class to the Whig party. It was felt
that the only hope for the introduction of any scheme of social and
political reform lay with the Whigs, and that from them alone could
England obtain the liberal measures which Pitt would have granted years
ago, if the French Revolution had not intervened.
But the Whigs were still in a hopeless minority in Parliament, though
they were gradually growing stronger in the ranks of the nation. It was
not till fifteen years had elapsed since the end of the great war, that
a Whig ministry once more received the seals of office.
[Sidenote: =Projects of reform.--Attitude of the Tories.=]
The general discontent of the lower classes in the years 1815-20
found vent in two very different ways. The wilder spirits talked of
general insurrection, and an assault not only on the government but
on all forms of property and all established institutions. A few
mischievous demagogues set themselves to fan these rash and ignorant
aspirations into a flame, and to bring about anarchy in order thereby
to rid the nation of the existing social evils. The cooler and wiser
heads were not influenced by these wild notions, but pinned their
faith to the modification of the constitution in the direction of
popular government. It was their belief that matters would improve the
moment that England was governed _by_ the people and _for_ the people.
And this end could only be secured by reform of the real governing
body--the House of Commons. The idea of making the House truly
representative of the nation had been one of Pitt's cherished plans;
in 1785 he had actually brought forward a bill for doing away with the
worst of the rotten boroughs, but had failed, owing to the factious
opposition of the Whigs. But Pitt's successors at the head of the Tory
party had contrived to forget his teaching; they owed much of their
strength to the support of the great borough-mongers, and they now
refused to take any measures tending to Parliamentary Reform. At the
bottom of their hearts they did not trust the masses, and feared that a
House of Commons really representing the nation would proceed to wild
measures of radical reform, and sweep away all the institutions that
they held dear.
[Sidenote: =The Whigs and reform.--Lord Grey.=]
Hence it came to pass that the Whigs alone supported the idea of
Parliamentary Reform in the early years of the nineteenth century,
and the multitudes who saw in that measure the panacea of all ills
were bound to follow them. All the old chiefs of the Whigs were now
gone: Fox had died in 1806; Sheridan in 1816; Grenville had retired
from public life, and the party was now led by Charles Lord Grey,
a very capable and moderate man, who fully shared the notion that
Parliamentary Reform was the one pressing question of the day, but was
careful not to go beyond the bounds of wisdom and law in pressing for
it.
[Sidenote: =The royal family and the succession.=]
The Whigs got no help from their old friend the Prince of Wales; since
he had obtained the regency in 1811 owing to his father's insanity,
George had thrown himself into the hands of the Tories. Personally
he disliked all reforms--for the person in England who most needed
reforming was himself. He was now a man of fifty-five, but age had not
improved him; to the last he was as false, vicious, and selfish as in
his youth. For many years his quarrels with his foolish and flighty
wife, Caroline of Brunswick, had been a public scandal. She was an
intolerably vain and silly woman, but the provocation which he gave her
would have driven a wiser head into rebellion. But George's health was
weak, owing to his evil life, and it was hoped by many that he would
not survive his aged father. At his death the crown would fall to his
only daughter, the Princess Charlotte, an amiable and high-spirited
young woman of whom all spoke well. But the princess, having married
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg in 1816, died in childbirth before the next
year was out, to the general grief of the nation. The next heir was
Frederick, Duke of York, but as he--though married--had no children and
was no stronger in health than his elder brother, it was clear that
the crown would not stay long with him. Therefore all the younger sons
of George III. hurried into wedlock in 1818, that their father's line
might not be extinguished. William, Duke of Clarence, who afterwards
reigned as William IV., married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen; Edward,
Duke of Kent, was wedded to Victoria of Saxe-Coburg, and became by her
the father of our present queen; Adolphus of Cambridge and Ernest of
Cumberland also took wives and had issue, who are still among us.
[Sidenote: =The Government and the agitation.=]
The last days of the reign of George III. were full of trouble and
disorder, provoked rather than repressed by the obstinate rigour
with which Lord Liverpool's government put down all agitations, both
harmless and dangerous. Some of the riots and risings of the years
1816-20 were remarkable for the violence and for the wild aims of those
who led them. In December, 1816, a body of revolutionary enthusiasts,
who called themselves "Spencean Philanthropists," raised a tumult in
Spa fields, and tried to seize the Tower, to distribute arms from
its arsenals among the mob. But they were as weak as they were wild,
for though they shot one man dead, Lord Mayor Wood and a handful
of constables turned them back in front of the Royal Exchange and
dispersed them. In June, 1817, there was another rising near Derby, but
five hundred armed rioters allowed themselves to be stopped and routed
by eighteen hussars.
[Sidenote: =The Manchester massacre.=]
But the most celebrated riot of the time was that at Manchester in
August, 1819; a great mob of 30,000 persons had assembled in St.
Peter's Field to listen to addresses by a demagogue named Hunt. The
magistrates attempted to arrest him, but being prevented from reaching
him by the enormous crowd, rashly and cruelly ordered a regiment
of cavalry to charge the unarmed multitude. There was no resistance
made, but some four or five persons were crushed to death, and sixty
or seventy injured, as they trod each other down in escaping from
the horsemen. This event was called the "Manchester massacre" by the
enemies of the government, who were made responsible for it because
they commended the violent action of the magistrates.
[Sidenote: =The Cato Street conspiracy.=]
It was with the object of revenging the Manchester massacre that a
bloodthirsty demagogue, named Arthur Thistlewood, one of the "Spencean
Philanthropists" of 1816, formed a plot for murdering the whole
cabinet. Hearing that the ministers were about to dine together on
February 23, 1820, he collected a band of twenty-five desperadoes
who vowed to slay them all. But one of the gang betrayed the scheme,
and Thistlewood and his men were seized by the police, as they were
arming at their trysting-place in Cato Street, Edgware Road. They
resisted fiercely, and blood was shed on both sides, ere they were
overpowered. Thistlewood and four of his associates were hung and then
beheaded--being the last persons who suffered by the axe in England,
for the horrid sight of their decapitation moved public opinion to
demand the abolition of this ancient punishment of criminals guilty of
treason.
Even after the mad Cato Street conspiracy had shocked all the wiser
friends of reform, there were isolated outbreaks of rioting all over
the north of England and the Scottish Lowlands, the last being a
skirmish at Bonnymuir, near Glasgow, between some Lanarkshire mill
hands and the local yeomanry (April, 1820).
[Sidenote: =The Six Acts.=]
The government dealt very harshly with all who gave it trouble, not
merely with dangerous rioters, but with writers or speakers who did no
more than protest against reactionary legislation or advocate radical
reform. Their chief weapons against their enemies were the celebrated
"Six Acts" of 1819, which Addington[56] and Castlereagh, the sternest
members of the cabinet, had elaborated with much care. They imposed the
heaviest penalties not only on persons caught drilling, or using arms,
or engaging in riots, but on all who wrote what the government chose to
consider seditious libels--a term that covered any newspaper article
or pamphlet which abused themselves.
[Sidenote: =George IV. and Queen Caroline.=]
Repression was in full swing when the old king died, in the tenth year
since he had gone mad (January 29, 1820). The prince-regent now began
to rule as George IV., but his accession made no practical difference
in politics. His conduct, however, soon gave his subjects one more
additional reason for despising him. He brought his long quarrel with
his foolish and reckless wife to a head, by refusing to acknowledge
her as queen or allow her to be crowned. He accused her of adultery,
and made Lord Liverpool bring in a "Bill of Pains and Penalties"
to enable him to divorce her. George's life had been such that his
attack on Queen Caroline, for conduct much less blameworthy than his
own, provoked universal contempt and dislike. Lord Liverpool withdrew
his bill in a panic, when all London was in an uproar in the queen's
favour. More trouble would undoubtedly have followed if the unhappy
Caroline had not died in August, 1821. Her funeral was the occasion of
a bloody riot.
[Sidenote: =Addington resigns.--Suicide of Castlereagh.=]
The abortive bill against the queen had added the last straw to the
unpopularity of the ministry--the best-hated cabinet that England has
ever known. They felt the fact themselves: Addington resigned in 1821,
and Castlereagh, the most harsh and unbending of them all, was so worn
out by the stress of his responsibilities and the knowledge of the
detestation in which he was held, that he cut his own throat in a fit
of temporary insanity in September, 1822.
[Sidenote: =The Liverpool-Canning Ministry.=]
Lord Liverpool was helpless when deprived of the two men who had
been the chief instigators of his reactionary measures. Abandoning
his old policy, he took into partnership George Canning, the chief
of the moderate Tories and the wisest disciple of Pitt. Canning took
Castlereagh's place as Foreign Secretary, while Addington's place as
Home Secretary was given to Robert Peel, a rising young politician
with a turn for political economy and an open mind--a very different
person from his case-hardened predecessor in the post. Shortly after,
Huskisson, the first Free-Trader who had presided over our commercial
policy since the younger Pitt, was made President of the Board of
Trade.
[Sidenote: =Social tranquillity restored.=]
Thus the character of the Liverpool cabinet was completely changed, and
for the last four years of its existence it dropped its old repressive
measures, and became quite liberal in its legislation. The country
at once began to grow quiet, and the old riots and risings ceased.
The gradual growth of prosperity in the land, now that the effects
of the great war were passing away, alleviated the violence of the
social discontent. But there was a sense of impending change; the
immediate domestic question was the removal of religious disabilities,
but beyond this lay the questions of parliamentary and municipal
reform, of freedom of trade, of simplifying law and legal procedure,
and especially of humanizing the criminal law. Strange to say, the
treatment of the Catholic claims to be represented in Parliament was
regarded as an open question in Lord Liverpool's cabinet. Canning was
in favour of the admission of the Catholics. Peel was their strenuous
opponent.
[Sidenote: =Reform of the criminal law.=]
The rule of the Liverpool-Canning ministry was distinguished by the
abolition of many old and oppressive laws, and the introduction of
several reforms of great value. In 1823 Peel began the reform of the
criminal law, and the reduction of that tangled mass, with its ghastly
list of capital offences, to a shape more consistent with scientific
order and common humanity. The old system, a monstrous survival
from the Middle Ages, had worked very badly--for juries refused to
convict persons who were clearly guilty, because they thought the
offence did not deserve the fearful penalty of death. The abolition
of capital punishment for so many minor offences put an end to this
state of things, and in future the proportion of criminals escaping was
marvellously reduced.
[Sidenote: =Huskisson's Free Trade policy.=]
In the province of trade and finance several valuable improvements
were introduced by the influence of Huskisson. The old "Navigation
Laws," dating from the time of Cromwell,[57] which impeded free trade
with foreign countries, were abolished. The wise policy of reducing
import duties on the raw materials needed for English manufactures was
adopted, so that the cost of goods was perceptibly lowered, without
any harm to the makers of them. Commercial treaties were concluded
with several foreign powers, to the great benefit of both parties
concerned. A considerable relief was given to the Exchequer by reducing
the interest of the many loans raised during the great war from 5 or 4
per cent. to 3-1/2. Huskisson had also in hand measures for reducing
the duty on the importation of foreign corn, and for the abolition of
slavery in the British colonies, but before they could be carried out
the unhappy death of Canning in 1827 broke up the ministry.
[Sidenote: =The Holy Alliance.--Canning's foreign policy.=]
A word is needed as to the foreign policy of England. The main
characteristic of European history from 1815 to 1830 was the renewed
despotism of the continental monarchs, when the fear of Bonaparte had
vanished from their minds. The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the
King of Prussia had formed a league called the "Holy Alliance," for the
putting down of liberal opinions and demands for popular government
in their own and their neighbours' dominions. The restored Bourbon
monarchy in France was equally narrow and reactionary. Not content with
crushing liberty in their own realms, the Austrians invaded Naples
and the French Spain, when the kings of those countries had been
forced to grant constitutional government to their subjects. In each
case the constitution was abolished and despotic rule restored. While
Castlereagh was guiding the Foreign Office, the English ministry had
refused to interfere with these continental troubles, and had allowed
the members of the Holy Alliance to do what they pleased with their
smaller neighbours. Canning's advent to power changed this policy. He
protected Portugal from an invasion by the French and Spaniards, allied
in the cause of despotism, and recognized the independence of the
revolted Spanish colonies in America, "calling," as he said, "the New
World into existence to redress the balance of the Old."
[Sidenote: =The Greek insurrection.--Battle of Navarino.=]
But the sympathy of Canning, and of all men of generous mind in
England, was most deeply stirred by the Greek insurrection against
the grinding tyranny of the Turks, which had commenced in 1821, and
had been struggling on, accompanied by all manner of atrocities and
massacres, for six years. The resurrection of the ancient people of
Hellas stirred all the memories of the past, and called forth much
enthusiasm in England. Many English volunteers hastened to the East
to aid the insurgents: Lord Cochrane took command of their fleet, and
General Church headed some of their land forces. Even Lord Byron, the
poet, roused himself from his mis-spent life of luxury in Italy, and
went out to offer his sword and fortune to a people rightly struggling
to be free. His death from marsh-fever at Missolonghi caused him to
be looked on as the martyr of liberty, and gave England yet a further
interest in the cause that he had championed. When the Turks failed
to put down the rising, in spite of all their massacres, the Sultan
called in the aid of his vassal Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, who
landed his well-trained army in the Peloponnesus and overran half the
peninsula. Canning then induced the Russian and French governments,
who had their own private ends to serve, to join him in interfering,
and an English fleet was sent out to the coast of Greece. When the
Egyptian troops refused to quit the Peloponnesus, and the atrocities
continued, Sir Edward Codrington, the English admiral, aided by a few
French and Russian ships, sailed into the bay of Navarino--the ancient
Pylos--where the Turkish and Egyptian fleets lay, and destroyed them
all save a few vessels. In this he had exceeded his instructions,
but he saved the independence of Greece, and English public opinion
ratified his action (Oct. 20, 1827).
[Sidenote: =Death of Canning.=]
But ere Navarino had been fought, a new ministry was in power in
England. Lord Liverpool had been stricken by paralysis in February,
1827, and Canning, as was natural, became prime minister. But the
weakness of his position was soon apparent. Many Tories who opposed the
Catholic claims deserted him; the Whigs would not join him; the strain
of responsibility told fatally on his health, and he died on August 8,
after less than five months' tenure of the premiership. The ministry
which he had formed continued for a few months, under the leadership of
the weak and fussy Lord Goderich, who found himself unable to manage
Canning's motley following, and was forced to resign before the meeting
of Parliament.
[Sidenote: =Wellington and the Greek insurgents.=]
The king then proposed that a strong head should be found for the
ministry, in the person of a man universally respected and owning a
splendid reputation for loyalty and stern sense of duty--the Duke of
Wellington, the hero of the Peninsular War. The suggestion was an
unhappy one, for Wellington had little political knowledge, had never
managed Parliament, and was full of honest but obstinate prejudices. He
was, however, made prime minister, and troubles soon began to follow.
Almost the first utterance of the duke was to stigmatise the victory
of Navarino as "an untoward event"--which gave great offence, for most
men looked upon it as a righteous blow against tyranny and oppression.
He refused to continue Canning's efforts in favour of Greece, and that
country ultimately obtained her freedom from the not very disinterested
hands of Russia. For in 1828 Czar Nicholas attacked the Turks, sent his
armies across the Balkans, and imposed peace on Sultan Mahmoud, helping
himself to a large slice of Ottoman territory in Asia at the same time
that he stipulated for the recognition of Greek independence.
[Sidenote: =Wellington as prime minister.=]
Though the most upright and conscientious of men, Wellington proved
a very unsatisfactory prime minister. His main fault was precisely
the one that would least have been expected from an old soldier--a
tendency to flinch from his resolves and engagements when he found
that public opinion was set against him. Personally he was a Tory of
the old school: for popular cries and magnificent programmes he had a
rooted distrust, which he had picked up in the Peninsula, while dealing
with the bombastic and incapable statesmen who led the liberal party
in the Spanish Cortes. But, on the other hand, he had seen so much of
the horrors of civil war, that he had imbibed a great dread of making
himself responsible for any measure that might split the nation into
hostile camps and cause domestic strife. These two conflicting impulses
acted on his mind in strange and often abrupt alternations. He was
always making reactionary declarations, and then receding from them
when he found they were unpopular.
At first it seemed likely that he was about to make himself the
mouthpiece of the stern and unbending Tories of the school of
Castlereagh. Before he had been three months in office he had dismissed
Huskisson, and the other disciples of Canning followed Huskisson into
retirement.
[Sidenote: =Catholic Emancipation.--Daniel O'Connell.=]
But very soon he disappointed his more fanatical followers. In the
summer of 1828 he was confronted with a great national agitation in
Ireland. Since the Union, that country had been in its normal condition
of unrest, but the main grievance which Irish agitators mooted was the
non-fulfilment of the promise of Catholic Emancipation which Pitt had
made in 1800, when he united the two Parliaments. The demand that the
majority of the nation should be granted equality of political rights
with the minority was obviously just, yet not only Irish Orangemen
but English Tories had a violent prejudice against Romanism. It was
evident that Emancipation would not be conceded without a struggle. But
the Irish at this moment were headed by the adroit and capable Daniel
O'Connell, a wealthy squire of old family, a platform orator of great
power and pathos, and a skilful party leader, but vain, scurrilous, and
noisy. He founded an "Association," the prototype of the Land Leagues
and National Leagues of our own day, to forward the Catholic claims.
He filled the land with monster public meetings, and frightened the
champions of Protestant ascendency by vague threats of civil war. To
his great credit he kept his followers from crime, a feat which his
successors have not always accomplished. His power was shown by his
triumphant return to Parliament, in defiance of the law, for County
Clare. Under the influence of their priests, the Irish farmers had
broken away from their old subservience to the great landlords, and
placed themselves at O'Connell's disposal.
[Sidenote: =Wellington concedes Emancipation to the Catholics.=]
Wellington was by birth an Anglo-Irish Protestant, and he detested
Romanism, but he detested civil war still more. When O'Connell's
agitation grew formidable, and the old Tories urged him to repress
it by force, he refused. At last his mind was made up to grant
Emancipation. His own words explain his mental attitude, "I have passed
a longer period of my life in war than most men, and principally in
civil war, and I must say this, that if I could avert by any sacrifice
even one month's civil war in the country to which I am attached,
I would give my life to do it." In the spring of 1829 Wellington
announced his intention of granting complete equality of civil rights
to all Romanists. Many of his followers called him a weathercock and
a turncoat, while the vicious old king pretended--in imitation of his
father's action in 1801--that his conscience forbade him to violate his
coronation oath. But Wellington carried his Emancipation bill with the
aid of Whig support, and against the votes of all the narrower Tories.
The king swallowed his scruples with cowardly haste, and the Act was
made law (April 14, 1829). O'Connell and some scores of his followers,
his "Tail" as the English called them, entered Parliament and allied
themselves to the Whigs.
[Sidenote: =The Reform agitation renewed.=]
The Emancipation question being moved out of the way, the topic
of Parliamentary Reform came once more to the front as the great
difficulty of the day. When the Whigs began to moot it again, they
found the time favourable, for the Wellington ministry was grown very
weak. The duke had expelled the moderate Tories from his cabinet in
1828, he had angered the old Tories by his concession to the Romanists
in 1829, and could no longer command the loyalty of either section of
his party.
[Sidenote: =Europe in 1830.=]
The agitation for the reform of the Commons began to become formidable
in the stormy year 1830. Unrest was in the air, and all over the world
popular risings were rife. In July the French rose in arms, dethroned
their dull and despotic king, Charles X., and replaced him by his
popular cousin Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans. The Poles raised an
insurrection against the tyranny of Czar Nicholas. There were troubles
in Italy and Germany, and open war in Belgium and Portugal; everywhere
the partisans of the Holy Alliance and the old régime were being
assailed by riot and insurrection. It was natural that England should
feel the influence of this wave of discontent.
[Sidenote: =Accession of William IV.=]
In the midst of the year King George died, worn out by his evil living
(June 26, 1830). He was succeeded by his third brother, William Duke
of Clarence, for Frederick of York, the second son of George III.,
had died in 1827. The new king was an eccentric but good-natured old
sailor. He was simple, patriotic, and kindly, and carried into all his
doings something of the breezy geniality of his old profession. But his
elevation almost turned his brain, and in the first months of his reign
he was guilty of a dozen absurd actions and speeches which made men
fear for his sanity. "It is a good sovereign," punned a contemporary
wit, "but it is a little cracked." The best feature in William was
that he was not a party man; he acted all through his reign as a
constitutional monarch should, and his personal popularity did much to
make the crisis of the reform agitation of 1830-1832 pass off without
harm.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Wellington's ministry.=]
The fall of Wellington's ministry followed very closely on the
accession of the new king. A general election in the autumn of 1830 was
fatal to the duke's majority in the Commons. The old Tories refused to
interest themselves in his fate, and would not work for him, while the
Whigs made a great effort and swept off almost all the seats in which
election was really free and open. No less than sixty out of eighty-two
county seats in England were captured by them. Parliament reassembled
on November 2, and on November 15 Wellington was beaten by a majority
of twenty-nine in the Lower House and promptly resigned.
[Sidenote: =The Whigs return to office.=]
William IV. immediately took the proper constitutional step of
sending for the leader of the opposition, Lord Grey. After an
absence of twenty-three years from power the Whigs once more crossed
to the treasury bench and took over the management of the realm.
Their long exile from office had made them better at criticism
than administration, and they found it hard to settle down into
harness--more especially as some of the new ministry were wanting in
restraint and gravity, notably the Lord Chancellor Brougham, one of
the most versatile and able, but also one of the most eccentric and
volatile men who has ever sat on the woolsack. But the cabinet was much
strengthened by the adhesion of two of the Canningite Tories, Lord
Melbourne and Lord Palmerston, who became respectively Secretary for
Ireland and Secretary for Foreign Affairs.
The Whigs at once took in hand the chief item of their programme,
Parliamentary Reform, though O'Connell was doing his best to bring
another topic to the front by agitating for Home Rule, or "Repeal" as
it was then called, and was enlisting all Catholic Ireland in a league
for that end.
[Sidenote: =The Peers throw out the Reform Bill.=]
In March, 1831, Lord John Russell, a young member of one of the
greatest Whig houses, and the great-grandson of the Bedford who was
minister in 1763, brought forward his famous Reform Bill, which
disfranchised most of the rotten boroughs, and distributed their
seats among the large towns and the more populous counties. Owing to
differences of opinion among the Whigs themselves as to the exact
shape it should assume, the bill never reached its third reading in
the Commons. The ministry then dissolved Parliament, in order to get
a clear verdict from the constituencies on the Reform question. They
came back to Westminster with a magnificent majority of 136. Lord John
Russell again introduced his bill, which passed all its readings with
ease, but was rejected by the Tory majority in the House of Lords on
October 8, 1831.
[Sidenote: =Violent demonstrations against the Peers.=]
This rash action of the peers brought about such a quarrel between
the two Houses as has never been seen before or since, and nearly
wrecked the old order of the English constitution. For the peers had
never before dared to cross such a crushing majority as the Whigs then
possessed in the Commons, backed by the public opinion of the nation.
Riotous demonstrations in favour of Reform burst out all over the
country, often accompanied by violence. At Bristol there was a wild
rising, ending in the burning and pillaging of many buildings, public
and private. In London a "National Union" of reformers was formed to
bring pressure to bear on the Lords. At Birmingham a local Radical
named Attwood formed an association of 200,000 members, who swore to
march on London and use force if their cry of "The Bill, the whole
Bill, and nothing but the Bill," was denied.
Strengthened by these demonstrations of popular sympathy, the ministers
brought in their bill for the third time, and again sent it up to the
Lords. The Upper House was seriously frightened by the turmoil in the
country, and allowed the bill to pass its second reading. But the more
fanatical Tories made a final rally and mutilated the bill in committee
by postponing the clauses which disfranchised the rotten boroughs (May
7, 1832).
[Sidenote: =Wellington refuses to take office.=]
This brought England within a measurable distance of civil war.
The ministry resigned, throwing on the king and the Lords the
responsibility for anything that might occur. King William, in strict
constitutional form, asked the Duke of Wellington to form a Tory
cabinet. The duke unwillingly essayed the task; but the feeling of the
majority of the Tories was so strongly in favour of leaving to the
Whigs the responsibility of facing the crisis, that the duke threw up
the cards, and acknowledged his inability to form a ministry. This was
fortunate, for the Radicals had been organizing armed multitudes, and
threatened open insurrection. But the eventful ten days during which
war was in the air passed over, and the Grey cabinet came back to power.
[Sidenote: =The Reform Bill carried.=]
In the end of May the bill was sent up to the Lords for the third time.
The king promised Lord Grey that if the bill was again rejected, he
would create enough new Whig peers to carry it against any opposition.
The House of Lords was made aware of this promise, and, to avoid
forcing the king to this extremity, Wellington and one hundred Tory
peers solemnly left their seats, and allowed the Act to pass by a
considerable majority (June 4, 1832).
[Sidenote: =The redistribution of seats.=]
The details of the measure in its final shape deserve a word of notice.
It disfranchised all the absolutely rotten boroughs, _i.e._ all places
with less than 2000 inhabitants--which were no less than 56 in number.
It took away one member each from 30 boroughs more, which had more than
2000 but less than 4000 residents. This gave 143 seats for distribution
among the unrepresented or under-represented districts. Of these 65
were given to the counties and 78 to new boroughs. In the former case
the county was broken up into two or more divisions, each returning two
members. In the latter, five London boroughs[58] and twenty-two large
places (such as Birmingham and Manchester) received two members each,
while twenty-one considerable towns of the second rank got one member
each.
[Sidenote: =The new borough and county franchise.=]
At the same time the franchise was made regular all over England.
Previously it had varied in the most arbitrary fashion; some towns had
practically manhood suffrage; in others the corporation had been the
only electors. Now, in the boroughs, the power to vote was given to all
resident occupiers of premises of £10 yearly value--so that all the
shopkeeping class and the wealthier artisans got the franchise, but
not the poorer inhabitants. In the counties freeholders, copyholders,
and holders of leases for 60 years to the annual value of £10, with
occupiers paying a yearly rent of £50, were enfranchised. Thus the
farmers and yeomen ruled the poll, and the agricultural labourers had
no voice in the matter. The franchise in Ireland was assimilated to
that in England, thus depriving of their power the £2 householders who
had hitherto been allowed to vote in that country. In Scotland, on
the other hand, the rule was slightly more liberal than in England, as
occupiers of £10 farms were given the franchise, instead of £50 being
left as the limit.
Thus the United Kingdom acquired its first representative Parliament.
But the new body was as yet representative of the middle classes alone;
it was thought, wisely enough, that the agricultural labourers and the
town poor were as yet unfit to be electors. For thirty years no serious
attempt to extend the limits of the franchise was made, and fifty
were to elapse before simple household suffrage in town and county
alike was to be made the rule. Meanwhile, the first Reform Bill amply
justified itself, and gave England two generations of quiet and orderly
government.
FOOTNOTES:
[56] Addington had been created Lord Sidmouth long before this, but to
avoid confusion his better-known name is still used.
[57] See page 409.
[58] Lambeth, Greenwich, Marylebone, Finsbury, Tower Hamlets.
CHAPTER XL.
CHARTISM AND THE CORN LAWS.
1832-52.
[Sidenote: =Fears excited by the Reform Bill.=]
The struggle over the Reform Bill had been so fierce, and the change
in the House of Commons caused by it had been so sweeping, that it was
generally supposed at the time that the immediate consequences of the
triumph of the Whigs would be very marked and startling. The Tories
prophesied the introduction, at no very distant date, of legislation
on behalf of all the Radical cries which the more extreme followers of
Lord Grey had adopted--such as manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, the
abolition of the standing army, the disestablishment of the Church of
England. Some even whispered that Great Britain would have ceased to be
a monarchy within ten years.
[Sidenote: =Its actual results.=]
All these suspicions were unfounded. By the action of the Reform Bill,
the power to make and unmake cabinets had passed, not into the hands
of the masses, but into those of the middle classes--the shopkeepers
of the towns and the farmers of the countryside. These were a very
different body from the excited mobs who had rioted in the streets and
threatened civil war in the years 1830-32. As a matter of fact, the
bill had done comparatively little for those who supported it most
violently, and caused grave disappointment to the wilder spirits among
the followers of Lord Grey. It had put an end to borough-mongering;
no ministry could henceforth hope to keep in office unless it had
the support of the majority of the constituencies. It had placed the
individual member much more under the control of the electors than had
been the case in earlier years, so that the power of public opinion
was greatly increased. It had modified the composition of the House of
Commons, by bringing in a large number of new members of a different
type from the old; for the great industrial centres in the North and
Midlands, which now obtained representatives for the first time, had
mostly returned wealthy local manufacturers and merchants to speak in
their behalf.
But neither the newly enfranchised classes nor their members in
Parliament were likely to be in favour of sudden and violent changes
in the constitution or the social condition of the realm, such as had
sometimes appeared imminent in the turbulent years between 1816 and
1832. The Whigs were no Radicals; it was more than thirty years before
they began seriously to think of enfranchising the labouring classes,
and facing all the problems of democracy. A sufficient indication of
the character of Lord Grey's ministry is to be found in the fact that
some of its most important members were recruited from the ranks of
the moderate Tories; Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, and Lord
Melbourne, the Home Secretary, had both been followers of Canning, and
had joined the ranks of the Whigs only when they saw the Tories under
Wellington finally committed to reactionary views. Perhaps Huskisson,
Canning's minister of commerce, would have gone with them, but he had
been killed--just before Lord Grey came into office--in the first
railway accident that ever occurred in England.
[Sidenote: =The new Poor Law.=]
The Grey ministry held office for four years only, but did much for the
country in that time. Its best piece of work was the new Poor Law of
1834, which put an end to the ruinous and degrading system of outdoor
relief,[59] which had been crushing the agricultural labourer and
loading the parishes with debt ever since the unwise legislation of
1795. The new law reimposed the old test of the workhouse on applicants
for charity. Only aged and impotent persons were to receive doles
of money and food at their own homes; able-bodied men were forced
to enter the workhouse--which they naturally detested on account of
its restraint--or to give up their weekly allowance. The result was
to force the farmers to pay the whole of their labourers' wages,
and to cease to expect the parish to find half of the amount. This
was perfectly just and rational; the parish finances were at once
lightened of their crushing burden, while the labourers ceased to be
pauperized, and did not lose anything by the change of the method
of payment. But if they lost nothing, they gained nothing, and the
condition of the rural classes of England still remained much inferior
to what it had been in the old days, before enclosure acts and high
rents came into vogue in the second half of the eighteenth century.
The new Poor Law compelled small neighbouring parishes to combine into
"unions" to keep a common workhouse, and it was found that one large
institution was worked both more efficiently and less expensively than
several small ones. In seven years the total cost of the poor relief of
England fell from nearly £8,000,000 to £4,700,000, an immense relief to
the country.
[Sidenote: =Abolition of slavery.=]
Another splendid piece of work done by the ministry of Lord Grey
was the final abolition of slavery in the English colonies. Though
the slave-trade had long been prohibited, yet slavery itself still
subsisted, and the West Indian planters were a body strong and wealthy
enough to offer a vigorous opposition to the enfranchisement of their
negroes. Many of the old Tories were narrow and misguided enough to
lend them aid in Parliament, but the bill was carried. Twenty million
pounds were set aside to compensate the owners, and on August 1,
1834, all the slaves became free, though they were bound to work as
apprentices to their late masters for seven years--a period afterwards
shortened to three.
[Sidenote: =The Municipal Corporations Act.=]
A third useful measure was the reform of the municipal corporations
of England, of which many had hitherto been wholly unrepresentative
bodies, not chosen by the people, but co-opting each other, and
often worked by small and corrupt party or family rings. For this
absurd arrangement the Act of 1835 substituted a popular and
elective constitution, to the enormous improvement of the purity and
respectability of the municipal bodies.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston's foreign policy,--France.=]
The European policy of the Whigs was in the hands of the brisk and
self-reliant Lord Palmerston, who directed the foreign relations of
England for nearly thirty years, with a few intervals of retirement
from office. He had left the Tories because he disliked their policy of
non-intervention in continental affairs, and because he nourished an
active dislike for the despotic monarchies of the Holy Alliance. His
end was to raise up a league in Western Europe which should support
national liberties and constitutional government in each country,
against the autocratic and reactionary powers of Central and Eastern
Europe. He therefore allied himself with Louis Philippe of Orleans, the
new King of France, who had been set up by the Liberal party in that
country as a constitutional king after the expulsion of Charles X.
[Sidenote: =Spain and Portugal.=]
He actively assisted the parties in Spain and Portugal who were
fighting for limited monarchy and the nation's right to choose its
own sovereign. In each of those countries there was a civil war in
progress between the Liberal party, backing a young queen with a
parliamentary title to the crown, and the reactionary party, supported
by the priesthood, and upholding a prince who claimed the throne under
the Salic law, and appealed to the divine hereditary right of kings.
Palmerston supported both Donna Maria in Portugal and Donna Isabella in
Spain against their uncles Don Miguel and Don Carlos, by every means
short of the actual sending of British troops to the Peninsula. But
many officers were allowed to volunteer into the Portuguese and Spanish
service, and the struggle was largely settled by their aid. The designs
of Don Miguel in Portugal were finally frustrated by the defeat of his
fleet by Admiral Napier, who commanded the young queen's ships (1831).
In Spain the fighting lasted much longer, and the efforts of Sir De
Lacy Evans' "British Legion" against the Carlists were not altogether
successful (1835-38), but the war ultimately came to an end in the
favour of Queen Isabella in 1840.
[Sidenote: =Holland and Belgium.=]
Palmerston also lent his support to the national party in a struggle
nearer home. Holland and Belgium had been united into a single kingdom
by the treaty of Vienna, and placed under the House of Orange, the old
Stadtholders of the United Provinces. But the Belgians much disliked
the arrangement; they were divided by religion from their northern
kinsfolk, and had no national sympathy with them, or loyalty to their
Dutch king. In 1830 they rose in arms and declared their independence;
William I. of Holland endeavoured to subdue them, and perhaps might
have succeeded but for the interference of England and of Louis
Philippe, the new King of France. When the Dutch refused to come to
terms, a French army entered Belgium and expelled the garrison of
Antwerp, while an English fleet blockaded the Scheldt. On this pressure
being applied, the Dutch yielded, and the kingdom of Belgium was
established, its first sovereign being a prince well known in England,
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, the widower of the much-lamented Princess
Charlotte.[60]
Thus when France, Spain, Portugal, and Belgium were in the hands of
governments professing liberal principles and opposed to despotism,
the reactionary monarchs of the Holy Alliance ceased to appear such a
danger to the existence of constitutional monarchy in Europe.
[Sidenote: =Peel and the "Conservative" party.=]
While fairly successful alike in its foreign policy and its English
legislation, the Grey cabinet was never so strong as might have been
expected from its triumphant commencement of office. The Tory party,
which had seemed shattered for ever by the Reform Bill, and had
remained for some years in a broken and helpless condition, began
gradually to reorganize itself under the wise and cautious leadership
of Sir Robert Peel. Though Palmerston Melbourne, and the other
Canningites who had quitted it in 1828, did not return to its ranks,
and remained moderate Whigs, yet there were many others who gradually
rallied themselves to the old "Church and State" party. The new voters
whom the Reform Bill had created did not prove so universally devoted
to Radical principles as had been expected. There was always much
attachment to the old ideals in the middle classes. When Peel appeared
as leader, in place of narrow old Tories of the type of Castlereagh
and Addington, he was gradually enabled to collect a large body of
followers, and to form an opposition commanding a respectable number of
votes. About this time he wisely dropped the name of Tory, and called
himself and his followers "Conservatives," in order to get rid of the
unfortunate associations of the older party appellation.
[Sidenote: =The Tithe War.--Lord Grey resigns.=]
But the time was still far off when the Conservatives were to obtain
a preponderance in the House of Commons. Lord Grey resigned in 1834,
but only to give place to another Whig prime minister, who continued
the policy and work of his predecessor with the aid of most of his
cabinet. The change of premiers was due to a division among the Whigs
caused by Irish affairs. The grant of Catholic Emancipation in 1829
had completely failed to quiet Ireland. It only caused the Irish to
substitute new demands for the old ones. O'Connell, flushed with his
victory on the Emancipation question, had started two new agitations,
combined with each other much as Home Rule and the Land Question
are combined by modern Irish politicians. The first of them was the
demand for "Repeal," that is, the abolition of the Union of 1800,
and the establishment of a local Parliament in Dublin--the cry that
is called Home Rule in our own day. The second was the Tithe War, a
crusade against the payment by the Romanist peasantry of tithes for
the support of the Established Church of Ireland, a body which they
naturally detested. The Tithe War lasted for six or seven years, and
was accompanied by much rioting and outrage; the peasantry withheld the
tithe, and the Protestant clergy were in many cases absolutely ruined
and reduced to starvation by being deprived of their sustenance. A
coercion bill for the suppression of riots and violence was passed in
1833, and had some effect in restoring order.
But the ministry was divided on the question of the justice of
continuing to extract money from the Romanist peasantry to support an
alien Church. The premier proposed that the government should take over
the collection of the tithe, but use it for such purposes, secular or
otherwise, as might be deemed fit. But many of his colleagues objected
to diverting Church money from its original uses, and the cabinet fell
to pieces after a stormy scene in the House over a renewal of the
Coercion Act. Grey retired, and the king sent for Sir Robert Peel,
who at once dissolved Parliament, but the Whigs had a majority in the
new House, and Peel fell, after holding office for four months only.
Grey's colleague, Lord Melbourne, took over the conduct of affairs and
rearranged the cabinet, excluding only the late premier, and his clever
but eccentric Chancellor, Lord Brougham.
[Sidenote: =The Melbourne ministry.--=]
This ministry struggled on for six years, confronted always by the
strong Conservative following and the master mind of Peel, and
dependent on the uncertain support of O'Connell and his "Tail." Its
chief achievement was the final passing of the Irish Tithe Act, which
relieved the peasantry of the duty of paying that contribution to the
Established Church, and transferred it to their landlords, so that the
tithe was for the future a charge on rent. O'Connell accepted this
compromise, and the Tithe War ended, but the Repeal agitation went on
vigorously, and monster meetings all over Ireland were continually
demanding Home Rule. O'Connell had the priests on his side to a man,
and, using them as his instruments, could dictate orders to the
countryside, and return all the members for the Catholic districts of
Ireland. To his great credit, he kept the agitation clear of outrages,
as he had already done in the case of Emancipation ten years before.
Without having recourse to any such expedients, he was able to keep
the government in continual hot water, and more than once to wrest
concessions of importance from it.
[Sidenote: =Death of William IV.=]
The Melbourne cabinet was still wandering on its feeble way when on
June 20, 1837, the worthy old king, William IV., died. His decease had
no great effect on the politics of the realm, for when the election
for a new Parliament took place--as was necessary on the sovereign's
death--the ministry was found to have in the new House a small
majority, of much the same numbers as that which they had enjoyed in
the old.
[Sidenote: =Accession of Queen Victoria.--Hanover separated from
England.=]
The successor of King William was his niece Victoria, daughter of
Edward Duke of Kent, the fourth son of George III. She was a young girl
of eighteen, who had been brought up very quietly at Kensington Palace
by her widowed mother, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg. Little was known of her
by the nation at large, and some of the baser spirits among the Tories
whispered at first that she would prove a party-sovereign and a mere
tool of the Whigs. But it was not long before the world discovered that
the young queen was likely to be a model for constitutional monarchs.
She was simple, straightforward, filled with a deep consciousness of
the responsibility of her position, and anxious to discharge her duties
with all possible regard for the well-being of her subjects. The more
she was known, the more was she liked and respected, and there was
accordingly a general feeling of relief that the throne had not gone to
the next heir, the queen's unpopular uncle, Ernest Duke of Cumberland.
That prince, moreover, now became ruler of Hanover, where the Salic
law prevailed, and the kingdom was finally separated from England after
a hundred and twenty-three years of union. Thus England was freed from
all necessity for interfering in the internal politics of Germany.
[Sidenote: =The Queen and Lord Melbourne.=]
Lord Melbourne, behind an air of studied levity, possessed a strong
will and a conscientious desire to do well by his country. He
determined to place his experience at the disposal of the young queen,
and to teach her the ways of constitutional monarchy. Until her
marriage he acted as her private secretary, using his position for no
party purpose. In the language of the Duke of Wellington, he "taught
her to preside over the destinies of this great country."
[Sidenote: =The Government and the Radicals.=]
The Melbourne cabinet lasted till September, 1841, much vexed in its
later years by social troubles in England, the result of the growing
discontent among the working classes at the failure of the Reform Bill
to bring about a golden age. They had thought that the creation of a
representative House of Commons would be followed by all manner of
Radical reforms, and were now complaining that the new government was
little better than the old. "The Tories scourged us with whips, but
the Whigs use scorpions," complained Cobbett, the Radical pamphleteer,
while Lord Grey was still in power. There was this amount of truth
in the complaint, that the Tories were always trying to interfere in
social matters, and believed in "paternal government" and the duty of
the State to care for the individual citizen; but the Whigs, under the
influence of the rules of strict political economy, held that the State
must not meddle with private men, that the rule of _laissez faire_,
or non-intervention, was right, and that free competition between
man and man was the true order of life. Now, Tory interference with
social matters had generally been wrong-headed and disastrous, but Whig
indifference and abstention was quite as exasperating to the masses.
[Sidenote: =The People's Charter.=]
The old delusion that men can be made happy by legislation and
grants of political rights, was still universally prevalent, and the
discontent of the labouring classes took shape--now, as in the last
generation--in a demand for Parliamentary Reform. The new agitation
got its name from the document called "the People's Charter," which
was put forward as the programme of the movement. It contained five
claims--(1) for manhood suffrage, (2) for the vote by ballot at
elections, (3) for annual Parliaments, (4) for the payment of members,
(5) for the throwing open of seats in the House of Commons to all
men by the abolition of the property qualification, which was still
required, in theory, to be possessed by members. It is curious to
reflect how entirely useless all these five demands would have been to
cure the social discontents of the day. The second and fifth clauses of
the charter have long been granted, the first is practically conceded,
and the fourth may be so ere long, yet the ills against which the
Chartists were protesting are still with us. For the real end of the
agitation was in truth purely social; it was much the same as the
cry for the so-called "living wage" that is heard among us to-day.
"The principle of the People's Charter," said one of its advocates in
1838, "is the right of every man to have his home, his hearth, and his
happiness. It means that every working man in the land has a right
to a good coat, a good hat, a good dinner, no more work than will
keep him in health, and as much wages as will keep him in plenty."
The demagogues--honest or dishonest--who led the Chartist movement
insisted that the golden age would follow the introduction of universal
suffrage and their other demands, though it is difficult to see how
they can have been so simple as to hold such a view. But they were,
for the most part, mere windy orators, with no grasp of the means or
ends that they needed; the most prominent man of the whole band being
Feargus O'Connor, an Irishman with an enormous flow of words and an
ill-balanced brain, who ended his days in a lunatic asylum. Riotous
public meetings, where threats of physical force were freely used,
were rife all through the years 1838-42, and gave the Whig ministry
no small trouble. But the movement was never so dangerous to law and
order as the troubles of the years 1816-32 had been, for the Chartists
were backed by neither of the great political parties, had no competent
leaders, and were detested for their noisy turbulence by the whole of
the middle classes, Whig and Tory alike. Parliament refused to take
them seriously, even when they kept sending up monster petitions to
the House of Commons, purporting to contain a million and a half or
even three million signatures. One of these documents, as large in
circumference as a cart-wheel, had to be carried by sixteen men, and
stuck in the door of the House, so that it had to be cut up in order
to allow it to enter. But petitions, riots, and wild talk had none of
them any practical effect.
[Sidenote: =The Opium War.=]
There was little that was eventful in the foreign policy of the later
years of the Melbourne cabinet. The only events of importance were our
first war with China, and our interference in the Levant to prevent the
break-up of the Turkish empire. The Chinese quarrel--the Opium War,
as it was often called--arose from the destruction of a quantity of
that drug belonging to English merchants by the mandarins of Canton,
who had resolved not to allow it to be imported into their country.
In consequence, an army was sent out to the far East, which, after
some desultory fighting, compelled the Chinese to sue for peace, pay
an indemnity of 21,000,000 dollars, and cede the island of Hong-Kong,
which, in British hands, has since become one of the greatest ports of
the world (1839-41).
[Sidenote: =England and Mehemet Ali.=]
The war in Syria was caused by the attempt of Mehemet Ali, the Pasha
of Egypt, to assert his independence, and to tear Syria and Asia Minor
from his suzerain the Sultan. Thinking that the maintenance of Turkey
was essential to British interests in the East, Lord Palmerston bade
the rebel pasha retire within his own borders, and, on his refusal,
bombarded and took Acre and Sidon. This brought Mehemet Ali to reason,
and he acquiesced in an agreement which left him the position of a
quasi-independent ruler in Egypt, but stripped him of his conquests
beyond the Syrian desert (January, 1841).
[Sidenote: =The Prince Consort.=]
In the year which preceded this last war, England had been rejoiced to
see her queen happily married. The young sovereign's choice had been
her own first cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coburg, whom the country knew so
well first as "Prince Albert," then as the "Prince Consort." He was
very young at the time of the marriage, being only in his twenty-first
year, but from his earliest days in England showed a remarkable wisdom
and power of adapting himself to his new surroundings. While carefully
refraining from taking any ostensible part in politics, he was able
in many ways to act as a useful counsellor both for his wife and his
wife's ministers, for he had a large knowledge of foreign politics, and
a sound and cautious judgment. His blameless private life and many
amiable qualities endeared him to all who came into personal contact
with him; but for many years he was not properly appreciated by the
English people, who were vaguely suspicious of a foreign prince placed
in such a difficult position as that of husband to a constitutional
queen. All their suspicions of him and his influence were ungrounded,
but it was not till after his death in 1861 that most men realized what
a thoroughly wise and unselfish friend of England he had been.
[Sidenote: =The Conservatives in office.=]
The Melbourne ministry went out of power a few months after the queen's
marriage. A general election took place in June-July, 1841, and a
Conservative majority was returned to the House of Commons, whereupon
Sir Robert Peel was called upon to take office in the due course of
constitutional etiquette.
[Sidenote: =Peel as premier.=]
The Tories, now again in power after an interval of twelve years, were
a very different party from what they had been in the old days before
1830. The whole body of them had moved slowly forward, but there were
still, as always, a more and a less progressive section among them,
as in the days of Canning and Castlereagh. Peel himself had generally
been considered to belong to the former body, though he had been one of
those who opposed Parliamentary Reform to the last. His own breeding
and character account for his position; he was not a member of one of
the old aristocratic Tory families, but the son of a wealthy Lancashire
millowner, a representative of the Conservatism of the middle classes,
not of the old landed interest. He was a firm, able, conscientious
man, rather too masterful in dealing with his followers, and prone
to command rather than to persuade. But in 1841 his authority over
them seemed so firmly established, that men prophesied that he would
rule for as many years as the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, his
ministry was only to last from September, 1841, to July, 1846, and,
instead of establishing the Conservative party firmly in power, he was
fated to break it up, and to condemn it to almost continuous exile from
office for nearly thirty years.[61]
[Sidenote: =Peel's finance.--The income tax.=]
But Peel's early years of power promised well. His first achievement
was to restore the national finances, which had been left in a most
unsatisfactory condition by the Melbourne ministry. His budget of 1842
was long remembered as being the first important step in the direction
of Free Trade that had been taken for many years. He reduced the
import duties on nearly 750 articles of consumption, reasoning that
the advantage to the consumer far outweighed the loss to the English
manufacturer, whose interests were served by the protective duties
which he removed. To make up the deficit in the revenue caused by
these remissions of import duties, he imposed the income tax, under a
pledge that it was to be an exceptional impost; five years, he said,
would suffice to restore the revenue to its old amount, and it should
then be dropped. Unfortunately for all persons with fixed incomes,
Peel was out of office long before the five years were over, and none
of his successors has ever redeemed his pledge. The income tax still
remains with us, the easy and obvious method by which any impecunious
Chancellor of the Exchequer can wring more money from the middle
classes, by adding an extra "penny in the pound." It must, however, be
granted that at its first imposition it tided England very successfully
over a dangerous financial crisis.
[Sidenote: =The Chartist agitation.=]
The Melbourne cabinet had left the task of dealing with two troublesome
agitations as a legacy to their successors. The Chartists were still
thundering away at monster meetings, and bombarding Parliament with
gigantic petitions. One sent to the House of Commons in 1842 purported
to be signed by 3,000,000 persons, and was actually signed by, perhaps,
a third of that number. It was couched in such seditious terms that
the government refused to receive it, and were supported by a majority
of 238, when certain Radical members pressed them to a division. But
Peel's hand was known to be firm, and it was obvious that there was
no chance of intimidating him; so the Chartist agitation, though it
continued to simmer all through his time, never boiled up into any
dangerous effervescence.
[Sidenote: =The "Young Ireland Party."=]
In Ireland matters seemed for a time more serious. Daniel O'Connell
was still pressing on his campaign for Repeal. He was the master of
the greater part of the Irish people, and had his well-disciplined
"Tail" to follow him in the Commons. But as long as both Conservatives
and Whigs refused to buy his aid at the price of granting his demands
for Home Rule, he could do no more than bluster and declaim at public
meetings. But O'Connell was joined, in the year 1842, by a body of
recruits who refused to be fettered by his command to refrain from
the use of physical force. A band of ardent young politicians, the
political heirs of Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Robert Emmet, bound
themselves together to strive for Repeal by the old method of armed
rebellion--when "England's extremity should be Ireland's opportunity."
They called themselves the "Young Ireland Party," revived the old
watchwords of the United Irishmen, and gloried in the principles of
'98. The chiefs of this faction were Smith O'Brien, Meagher, and Gavan
Duffy. O'Connell was afraid of their rashness, and the priesthood,
who acted as O'Connell's agents all over Ireland, viewed them with
suspicion as possible republicans and atheists; but they gained
considerable influence in the land.
[Sidenote: =O'Connell's influence declines.=]
The Repeal agitation came to a head in 1843, when O'Connell gathered
several hundred thousand people together at a meeting at Tara, the old
seat of the Kings of Ireland, and addressed them in an excited strain,
promising them "a Parliament of their own on College Green within
the year." But Peel had him and his chief lieutenants arrested, and
tried for sedition. The whole agitation seemed to collapse when the
government made a show of force, and, though O'Connell was ultimately
acquitted, his hold on the Irish people was much shaken by the obvious
uselessness for any practical end of all his meetings and harangues.
The majority of his followers fell back into apathy, the minority
resolved to join the "Young Irelanders," and to plot armed treason at
some convenient date in the future. Meanwhile Repeal was dead, and
O'Connell died a few years later, just before the miserable years
1846-7 revived the troubles of Ireland.
[Sidenote: =England and the United States.=]
English foreign policy in Peel's day continued on the good lines on
which Palmerston had placed it, for the new Conservative party were
vigilant to defend our interests abroad, and to resent the aggression
of our neighbours. A very threatening dispute with the United States
about the south-western boundaries of British America was settled in
1842, by a satisfactory treaty which gave England Vancouver's Island
and all the coast north of the Straits of Juan da Fuca, taking the
forty-ninth degree of latitude as the dividing-line from the Pacific
to the end of Lake Superior. The Americans had claimed, but had to
give up, the whole western shore of North America, up to the Russian
province of Alaska.
[Sidenote: =England and France.=]
Twice England appeared likely to engage in war with France--in 1844
and 1846--while Peel was in power. The first quarrel was about the
annexation of the island of Tahiti, in the Pacific, where a French
admiral arrested the English consul, and seized the island in the most
arbitrary way from its queen. But Louis Philippe did not wish for war
with the only power in Europe that looked kindly on a constitutional
monarchy in France, and forced his ministers to apologize to England
and abandon Tahiti. In the second quarrel, the crafty and intriguing
old king was himself to blame. He had formed a design for securing
Spain for his younger son Anthony, Duke of Montpensier, by means of a
marriage. The crown of that country was now worn by the young Queen
Isabella, whose heiress was her still younger sister Louisa. Louis
Philippe secured the marriage of the younger princess with his own
son. At the same time, by disreputable intrigues with the Spanish
queen-mother, Christina of Naples, and the factious parties in the
Cortes, he got the unfortunate queen married to her cousin, Don
Francisco, Duke of Cadiz, a wretched weakling, who--as he thought--was
certain to die without heirs, so that the crown must ultimately fall to
the Montpensiers (1846). This scheme reproduced the old danger that had
brought about the war of the Spanish succession in the days of William
III. and Anne,--the chance that the crowns of Spain and France might be
united. The English government and people were bitterly provoked, high
words passed between London and Paris, and there appeared for some time
a danger that a rupture might ensue. But external events intervened to
prevent such a misfortune. Peel's government lost office in 1846, and
Louis Philippe was dethroned in 1848, after which the Spanish marriages
ceased to have any importance.
[Sidenote: =Peel and the Free Trade movement.=]
While that question was at its height, England had been going through
an unexpected political crisis, caused by Peel's sudden conversion
to complete Free Trade. His budget of 1842 had shown that all his
tendencies lay in that direction; but he had not yet touched the one
point which was certain to bring him into collision with the majority
of his own party--the question of Free Trade in corn. Since England had
become a great manufacturing country, with a population that advanced
by leaps and bounds, it was daily growing more impossible to feed the
new mouths with English corn alone. But the heavy duties on imported
grain, which survived from the last century, only allowed the foreign
wheat to come in at an exorbitant price. Hence the poor man's loaf
was always dear. Farmers and landlords profited by this protection of
English agriculture, but, since the landed interest had ceased to be
the most important element in the state, the Corn Laws injured many
more persons than they benefited. For the last five or six years a
vigorous agitation in favour of their abolition had been in progress,
whose guiding spirit was Richard Cobden, "the prophet of Free Trade."
It seemed more likely that the Whigs would be converted by him than
the Conservatives, for the backbone of Peel's majority in the House of
Commons was composed of the county members, who represented the farmers
and landlords of England.
[Sidenote: =The Protectionists.--Disraeli and Lord G. Bentinck.=]
But in 1845, a famine in Ireland, caused by the failure of the
potato-crop, called for a large importation of corn to feed the
starving Irish cottiers. Peel proposed to suspend the Corn Laws as a
temporary measure, to allow of the introduction of the needed supply
of food at the cheapest possible rate. His colleagues in the ministry
resolved to support the proposal, but they proved unable to persuade
the whole of their party to follow them. About a hundred members of the
House of Commons--the representatives of the corn-growing shires and
the old Tory families--refused to be convinced by Peel's arguments.
They were headed by two men of mark, neither of whom had as yet been
taken very seriously by the House. The first was Lord George Bentinck,
a younger son of the great ducal house of Portland, who had hitherto
been seen more frequently on the racecourse than at St. Stephen's, but
who showed an unexpected ability when he proceeded to attack his chief.
The second was Benjamin Disraeli, the son of a Jewish man of letters,
then known as a young and volatile member of the House, who combined
high Tory notions on Church and State with extreme Radical views on
certain social questions. But he had been hitherto more notorious
for his eccentric and gorgeous dress, and his curious high-flown and
bombastic novels, than for any serious political doings.
[Sidenote: =The Corn Laws repealed.=]
When Peel brought forward his bill for abolishing the Corn Laws, he
found himself bitterly opposed by Bentinck and Disraeli and their
protectionist followers, who scouted him as a turncoat and a traitor
to the Tory cause. He carried the abolition of the obnoxious duties by
the aid of the votes of his enemies, the Whigs (May 15, 1846). A month
later the angry Protectionists took their revenge; on the question of
an Irish coercion bill, Bentinck and Disraeli led some scores of Tory
members into the opposition lobby, and left the prime minister in a
minority of seventy-three (June 25, 1846).
[Sidenote: =Break up of the Conservative party.=]
Peel immediately resigned. He had carried his bill, but broken up his
party, and the Whigs were now to have a fresh lease of office that
lasted thirty years, for the two sections into which the Conservatives
had broken up--the Peelites and the Protectionists--would never join
again, so bitterly did they dislike each other. In the course of time
most of the Peelites drifted over to the Whig camp, among them two who
were destined to be prime ministers of England--Lord Aberdeen, who had
been Peel's Foreign Secretary, and William Ewart Gladstone, then a
rising young member, who had held the Presidency of the Board of Trade
from 1843 to 1846.
[Sidenote: =Lord John Russell's ministry.=]
The Whigs, or the Liberal party, as they were now beginning to call
themselves, came back to power with every advantage, as the opposition
was divided into two irreconcilable sections, who would never join
on account of their old grudge. Yet the new cabinet was never a very
strong one, because the Whigs refused to put Lord Palmerston, their
strongest and ablest man, at the head of affairs. Some of the party
could never forget that he had once been a Canningite, and thought that
he was not Liberal enough for them; others were afraid of his firm
and incisive way of dealing with foreign powers, and prophesied that
he would some day land England, unexpectedly, in the midst of a great
war. Instead of Palmerston, Lord John Russell, the promoter of the
great Reform Bill of 1832, was made premier. He was a much less notable
personage than Palmerston, and not strong enough for his place, being
nothing more than an adroit party tactician with no touch of genius
about him. Yet he held power for six years, and made no great mistakes
if he performed no great achievements at home; while, as the foreign
policy of England was handed over to Palmerston, there was no lack of
strong guidance in things abroad.
[Sidenote: =The famine in Ireland.=]
The chief problem which the Liberal cabinet found to trouble them when
they took office was an Irish one. In 1845 there had been a partial
failure of the potato-crop, the staple food of the Irish peasantry;
this was followed in 1846, just after Lord John Russell came into
power, by a far more dreadful disaster of the same kind. In August the
whole potato harvest of Southern and Western Ireland was struck down
by a sudden blight, such as had never been seen before or since, and
4,000,000 persons were suddenly brought to the verge of starvation.
The disaster was aggravated by the hopeless state of the rural
population. For the last half-century the population of Ireland had
been advancing with disastrous rapidity; it had swelled from 5,000,000
to 8,000,000, yet there had been no corresponding increase either of
improved cultivation, or of land taken under tillage. The improvident
landlords had allowed the still more improvident tenantry to divide
their farms into smaller and smaller fractions, till the land only
fed its population in years of exceptional fertility. The greater
part of Ireland was cut up into miserable slips of a few acres, where
the cottier paid intermittently as much as he could of a rent which
was rated at a higher amount than the wretched little farm could ever
produce. The unexampled disaster of two successive years of blight
brought the whole of the miserable peasantry to the edge of the grave.
The workhouses were soon crammed, all local funds used up, and yet the
people were dying by thousands from famine, or from the fevers which
were bred by insufficient nourishment. The government paltered with the
evil by establishing relief works, and refused for some time to face
the fact that nothing but wholesale distribution of food would keep
the wretched peasantry alive. It was not till 1847 that they faced the
full horror of the problem, and established soup-kitchens and depôts
for free food all over the land. By this time scores of thousands had
died, and the bitterest feelings of wrath had been bred in the Irish
mind at the neglect or incompetence of the cabinet.
[Sidenote: =Evictions and emigration.=]
When the famine was over, it was generally recognized that the
worst of the disaster had been owing to the congested state of the
population, who were trying to live on smaller farms than could really
support them. This led to wholesale evictions by the landlords, who,
half ruined by the famine themselves, wished to avoid another such
experience by thinning off the pauperized cottiers, and throwing
several farms into one. In many cases these evictions were carried out
with ruthless haste and cruelty, for the proprietors--often absentees
who did not know their tenants by sight--had no sympathy for the
wretched peasants, and only wanted to be rid of them. The unwilling
emigrants were driven out of Ireland by the hundred thousand, and
retired for the most part to America, carrying away a fanatical hatred
for the Anglo-Irish landholding classes who had evicted them, and for
the English government which had sanctioned their expulsion.
[Sidenote: =Smith O'Brien's insurrection.=]
With such class rancour in the air, it was no wonder that troubles
broke out in Ireland in 1848, the year after the famine was over. The
chiefs of the "Young Ireland" party[62] thought that the times were
ripe for open insurrection, and, seeing revolutions rife all over
Europe, and the Chartist riots stirring again in England, resolved to
strike at once. Their leader, Smith O'Brien, after using threatening
language in the House of Commons, went over to Ireland and called
the discontented to arms. But he proved a very incapable chief when
he essayed the part of Catiline. Gathering together some hundreds of
armed followers, he attacked fifty constables on Bonlagh common, in
Tipperary. His men scattered after a few volleys, and he and his chief
adherents fled to the hills, where they were soon caught (July, 1848).
They were tried for treason and condemned, but the government commuted
their punishment to exile, and a few years later they were given a free
pardon.
[Sidenote: =Revolutionary agitation abroad.=]
This abortive revolt in Ireland was one of the least noteworthy events
of 1848, the most turbulent year of the nineteenth century. The whole
continent was ablaze with insurrections in favour of liberal ideas
and national rights. The French drove out Louis Philippe, because he
had grown reactionary in his old age, and refused to grant universal
suffrage; on his expulsion they established a republic. Another great
insurrection arose in Hungary, when the people tried to wrest a
constitution by force of arms from their king Ferdinand, the Austrian
Emperor. In the same year a great rising in Italy strove to win
national unity by expelling the Austrians from Lombardy and Venetia,
and making an end of the petty dukes and kings of Central and Southern
Italy. Germany was at the same time convulsed by popular agitation,
which demanded constitutional liberty from its many rulers, while
the diet at Frankfort declared in favour of unifying the land on a
republican basis.
[Sidenote: =End of the Chartist agitation.=]
All these troubles could not pass unnoticed in England, and the
Chartists, whose movements had been small and unimportant for the last
five years, once more began to stir up trouble. The last of their
"monster petitions" was sent in to the House of Commons, and the "Five
points" demanded more noisily than ever. Things came to a head when
their chief, Feargus O'Connor, summoned a great meeting on Kennington
Common, and threatened to march on Westminster with 500,000 men at his
back. But the government refused to be cowed, and the middle classes,
in fierce anger at the noisy agitation, took arms against the rioters.
Two hundred thousand "special constables" were enrolled to face the
rioters, the bridges leading to Westminster were manned with troops,
and the great meeting was awaited with resolution. These preparations
overawed the rioters; only a few thousand Chartists assembled, and
Feargus O'Connor, frightened at the display of military force and the
steady attitude of the special constables, bade his followers go home,
and disappeared. This was the last outbreak of the Chartists, who
proved to be a mere bugbear when they were once met and faced (April,
1848).
[Sidenote: =The continental insurrection.--Louis Napoleon.=]
For the future England was undisturbed, and, secure at home herself,
could watch all the turmoil on the continent with composure. Palmerston
did his best to favour the liberal and national parties abroad by all
peaceful means, but would not commit England to war on their behalf.
To his regret, Italy and Hungary were at last reconquered by their
old masters, and the German liberals were also put down, so that the
unification of their land was delayed for twenty years (1849). The
French Republic proved weak and ill-governed; after several anarchist
risings in Paris had frightened the French _bourgeoisie_, they took
refuge under a military dictatorship, electing as president Louis
Napoleon, the nephew of Napoleon I., and the son of his younger brother
Louis Bonaparte, King of Holland. The new president's record was not
encouraging; twice during the reign of Louis Philippe he had made
hairbrained attempts to raise military revolts in France, trading on
the great name of his uncle. On each occasion he had failed lamentably,
his preparations having been entirely inadequate to carry out his
purpose. He had acquired the reputation of a rash and wild adventurer,
ready to embark in any scheme, yet the French, dazzled by the name of
Bonaparte, and over-persuaded by his promises to give them peace and
prosperity, were unwise enough to elect him as president.
[Sidenote:=The Second Empire.=]
Louis Napoleon soon strengthened himself by placing in office, both in
the army and the ministry, a band of unscrupulous men whom he could
trust to follow him in any dark scheme, if only they were well enough
paid. When he had made his preparations, he seized and imprisoned most
of the members of the Chamber of Deputies, shot down all who took
arms to defend the Republic, and assumed despotic power (December 2,
1851). Soon afterwards he assumed the title of Emperor and the name of
Napoleon III.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston's dismissal.=]
The French president's treacherous usurpation brought about
Palmerston's dismissal from office, and ultimately the fall of the
Russell cabinet. Immediately after Louis Bonaparte had perpetrated
his _coup d'état_, the great foreign minister expressed to the French
ambassador his acquiescence in the revolution. He had so much disliked
the turbulent and anarchic Republic which the usurper had destroyed,
that he was quite ready to acknowledge the new government, which was
at any rate settled and strong for the moment. Palmerston took this
action before he had consulted with his colleagues in the ministry, or
obtained the formal permission of the queen to recognize the legality
of Bonaparte's position. Both the sovereign and the cabinet were vexed
at his acting without any consultation, and Lord John Russell dismissed
him from office (January, 1852).
[Sidenote: =Fall of Lord John Russell's ministry.=]
But Palmerston had many friends and admirers, and was soon able to
revenge himself. Less than a month after his dismissal, he led a
section of the Whigs into the opposition lobby on a division concerning
a bill to strengthen the militia, and put Russell in a minority. The
ministry was therefore obliged to resign (February, 1852).
FOOTNOTES:
[59] See p. 635-6.
[60] See p. 639.
[61] Between 1846 and 1874 the Conservatives were only in power for
four years in all.
[62] See p. 664.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE DAYS OF PALMERSTON.
1852-65.
[Sidenote: =Expectations of peace.--The Exhibition of 1851.=]
The time which followed the quieting down of England and Europe after
the turbulent years 1848 and 1849, was perhaps the most peaceful which
the century had known. The English people, overjoyed to find that
Chartism was but a bugbear and Irish rebellion a farce, had settled
down to enjoy what they trusted would prove a long spell of tranquil
prosperity. There was no great political question pending at home,
since the Corn Laws were gone, and the Whigs had refused to take up
any Radical programme. The continent was quiet, though its stillness
only resulted from the dying down for a space of the flames of
rebellion in Italy, Germany, and Hungary, where embers still smouldered
beneath the apparent deadness of the surface, and only needed a fresh
stirring to make them break out again into a blaze. This fact was not
appreciated in England, and the year 1851 saw the high-water mark of
a vague and optimistic belief that the troubles of the world were
over, and a reign of good-fellowship and brotherly affection among
nations about to begin. When the Prince Consort opened the first great
International Exhibition in Hyde Park in the May of that year, much
wild and visionary talk was heard about the end of war, and the advent
of an era when all disputes should be settled by arbitration. No
expectation was ever more ill-founded. After forty years of comparative
peace, since the fall of Napoleon, the continent was just about to see
the commencement of a series of four great wars, and England--whose
soldiers had not fired a shot in Europe since Waterloo--was not to be
without her share in them.
[Sidenote: =Steam navigation.=]
The English people were far from guessing this. Nearly all their
attention had been given to matters of domestic policy for the last
forty years, and no one thought that other topics were now to engross
them. But before passing on to the Crimean war and the struggles that
followed it, a few words are needed to show how the England of 1852
differed from the England of the days before the Reform Bill. The
first and most striking change visible was the enormous development
of the means of internal communication in the land. In 1832 the
application of steam to locomotive engines alike on water and on land
was just beginning to grow common. The first steam-tug had been seen
on the Clyde as far back as 1802, but no serious attempt to utilize
the discovery on a large scale, and for long voyages, was made for
many years. It was only after 1830 that the steamer began steadily to
supersede the sailing-ship for ordinary commercial purposes. But within
a few years after that date all passenger traffic was carried on the
new paddle-steamer, and a large share of the goods traffic also. It
was a sign of the indifference of the nation to things military during
the years of the great peace, that ships of war remained unaltered
long after the advantages of steam had been discovered. A few small
vessels were fitted with paddle-wheels about 1840, and took part in the
bombardment of Acre. But even in 1854 most of the line-of-battle ships
of Great Britain were still of the old type that Nelson had loved, and
depended on their sail power alone.
[Sidenote: =Growth of railways.=]
The utilization of steam for locomotion by land had started in the
humble shape of the employment of small engines to drag trucks of coal
and stone on local tramways at the slowest of paces. After lingering
for some thirty years in this embryo stage, it was suddenly and rapidly
developed by George Stephenson, a clever north-country engineer. The
first railway on which passengers were conveyed, and merchandise of all
kinds carried, was a short line between the two towns of Stockton and
Darlington, built by Stephenson's advice in 1825. It was not till five
years later that the success of the Stockton and Darlington railway
led to the construction of a second and greater venture of the same
kind, the Liverpool and Manchester railway, opened in 1830. This line
achieved an unhappy notoriety owing to the fact that Huskisson, the
Tory Free-Trade minister, was killed by the first train that ran upon
it. Though the early railways were slow and inconvenient--their average
pace was eight miles an hour, and their carriages were converted
stage-coaches, strapped on to trucks--they soon conquered the public
confidence, though old-fashioned persons refused for many years to
trust themselves to the new-fangled and dangerous mode of locomotion.
Between 1830 and 1840 the companies began to multiply rapidly, and
in 1844-45 there was a perfect mania for railway construction, and
schemes were formed to run lines through every corner of England,
whether they were likely to pay or not. Many of these plans were never
carried out, others were executed and ruined those who invested in
them. But the temporary depression which followed this over-speculation
had no long continuance, and the competition of the companies with
each other was always increasing the rapidity and comfort of railway
travelling. By 1852 it had taken its place among the commonplaces of
life, and had profoundly modified the condition of England in several
ways. The habit of travelling for pleasure which it begot and fostered,
the safe, cheap, and quick transportation of goods which it rendered
possible, and the easy transfer of labour from market to market which
it favoured, have all had their share in the making of modern England.
[Sidenote: =The Penny Post and the Telegraph.=]
A part only second to that of the railway in modifying the character
and habits of the English people was played by two other inventions
of the forties. The Penny Post, introduced by the efforts of Rowland
Hill in 1840 into every corner of the kingdom, and superseding the
old rates which ranged up to many shillings, had a marvellous effect
in facilitating communication. To supplement it by a yet more rapid
process, the first public Telegraph offices were opened in 1843; but,
for many years after, this invention was in the hands of private
companies, and was too dear to suit the pocket of the ordinary citizen,
who preferred to trust to his letter sent by the Penny Post.
[Sidenote: =The Factory Acts.=]
Meanwhile many other characteristic features of modern English social
life were rapidly developing themselves. We have mentioned the misery
of the operative classes in the great towns in an earlier chapter. The
first efforts to amend their condition date from the years 1832-52.
Philanthropists, of whom Lord Shaftesbury was the best known, strove
unceasingly to put an end to the worst horrors of the new industrial
system. In 1833 acts were passed to prevent mill-owners from working
children in their factories for more than half-time. In 1844 Sir
Robert Peel put women under the same protection, prohibited lads under
eighteen from being given more than twelve hours' labour, and appointed
inspectors to go round the factories and see that the law was carried
out. The Mines Act of 1842 prohibited women and children from working
underground, and a second Mines Act of 1850 put all subterranean labour
under government inspection. This benevolent legislation was mainly
due to the Tories, for the Liberals, wedded to the principles of
strict political economy, were loth to interfere between employer and
workman, and generally urged that matters ought to be allowed to right
themselves by the laws of supply and demand.
[Sidenote: =Trades Unions.=]
A not less effective means of protection for the operative classes
was devised by the workmen themselves. Trades Unions became possible
after the laws prohibiting combination of labourers had been repealed
in 1824, though governments, both Whig and Tory, still looked upon
them with much suspicion and disapproval, and occasionally suppressed
them under the plea that they were secret societies for coercing free
labour. Strikes, then as now, were often accompanied with violence and
rioting, and it had not yet been realized that they might often be
justified. But in spite of the frowns of those in authority, the Unions
were continually growing in number and in power all through the middle
of the century, though they had not yet assumed the inquisitorial and
dictatorial tone which they have adopted in our own day, and were still
defensive rather than offensive in their character.
[Sidenote: =The state of the Church.=]
While social England was thus assuming its modern shape, the chief
factors of the spiritual and intellectual life of the present day
were also coming into being. To the period 1832-52 belongs the rise
of both of the movements which have stirred the minds of men during
the last fifty years. In the early years of the century the condition
of the Church of England was very unsatisfactory. The only body
within its pale who displayed any zeal or true spiritual life were
the Evangelicals, the heirs of the men who had been stirred by the
preaching of the contemporaries of Wesley.[63] But they were not a very
numerous body, for their general acceptance of the harshest doctrines
of Calvinism repelled the majority; moreover, they were destitute of
organization, for they worked to increase the religious fervour of
the individual soul, not to reform the Church. Yet the Church needed
reforming; its higher ranks were still filled by "Greek-play bishops"
and promoted royal chaplains; the bulk of the parish clergy, though
genial honest men, were neither learned, zealous, nor spiritual-minded,
differing often only by the colour of their coats from the squires with
whom they associated. The worst part of the situation was that the
new masses of the population in the great towns were slipping out of
religious habits altogether, owing to the want of missionary zeal among
their pastors, and the deplorable dearth of religious endowment in the
new centres of life.
[Sidenote: =The "Broad-Church" movement.=]
The reaction against the deadness of the national Church took shape in
two new forms. The first was the "Broad-Church" movement, started by
men who wished to broaden and popularize the Church by bringing its
teaching into accordance with the latest discoveries in science and in
history, and by giving it a basis on philosophy rather than on dogma.
The first great name in this school was Archbishop Whately (1787-1863);
he and his contemporaries laid more stress on logic and philosophy than
did the younger generation of Broad Churchmen, who devoted themselves
more to reconciling science and religion, and to bringing to bear on
the history of Christianity new historical and scientific lights. They
only agreed in setting dogma aside, advocating the widest freedom of
opinion, and preaching the application of the spirit of Christianity to
the everyday acts and duties of life.
[Sidenote: =The Tractarian movement.=]
Very different were the views and aims of the other party in the Church
which arose in the years between 1830 and 1840. The new High-Church
school thought that the deadness of spiritual life in their day came
from a neglect of dogma and a want of appreciation of the unity and
historical continuity of the Church of England. Most men then held
that the national Church only dated from the Reformation, and that the
Bible was the only basis of its doctrines. Against these views the
leaders of the new school--the Oxford movement, as it was called,
because its three leaders, John Henry Newman, John Keble, and Edward
Pusey, were all resident Fellows of Oxford colleges--entered an
emphatic protest. They said that the Church of 1835 was the Church
of Anselm and Augustine, and that those who wished to make it the
Church of Henry VIII. and to cut it off from its place in the unity
of Christendom, were guilty of national apostacy. They taught that
it was still bound to hold all the dogmas and usages which could be
traced back to the days of the early Fathers. Most especially they laid
stress on two doctrines of which little had been heard since the days
of the Stuarts--the Real Presence in the Sacrament, and the sacrificial
priesthood of the clergy. Newman started a series of "Tracts for the
Times," to which his friends and followers contributed; they urged
that submission to authority in matters doctrinal, and a return to
the ritual and practice of the early Church could alone revivify
English spiritual life. Unfortunately, it was impossible to find any
universally received authority to which to appeal, since Low Churchmen
and Broad Churchmen alike denied the first postulates of the Tractarian
creed, and fell back on the Thirty-nine Articles and the practice of
the last two centuries as the only standard of faith and ceremony that
they would recognize. They added that those who yearned after mediaeval
doctrine and ritual were mere disguised Romanists, and would find what
they wanted in Popery alone.
[Sidenote: =Newman's secession.=]
A storm of wrath was directed against the new High-Churchmen, who were
denounced as Jesuits and false brethren. Most of all was the outcry
loud when Newman in 1841 wrote a pamphlet to prove that by certain
ingenious interpretations of loosely worded portions of the Thirty-nine
Articles, a man might hold all the leading doctrines of Rome and yet
stay inside the English Church. This curious production was a _tour
de force_ which, as he afterwards confessed, did not satisfy his own
conscience. He retired from teaching for awhile, and then seceded to
the Romanist communion, where alone he felt that he could realize his
desire to belong to a Church undoubtedly orthodox and enjoying a right
to speak with authority [1845]. Many of his more zealous adherents
followed him, at intervals, in the next ten years.
[Sidenote: =The High-Church party.=]
But the bulk of the Tractarians felt sure that the Church of England
was a true branch of the Catholic Church and remained within it,
gradually conquering the tolerance of their contemporaries by their
undoubted zeal and purity of motive. Ere long they acquired a strong
position, as their doctrines were very acceptable to the clergy, while
the admirable life and work of men like Keble gradually won over many
of the laity to their views. To the new High-Church party we owe
much good work in neglected parishes, and a restoration of decency
and order in public worship, which was a great improvement on the
careless and slovenly practice of the eighteenth century. Their efforts
led to a revival of interest in Church history and ecclesiastical
antiquities. Their influence made the clergy as a body more spiritual
and more hard-working. But for a time the Tractarian controversy
split England into two hostile camps, and the eccentric mediaevalism
of the "Ritualists"--those of the party who strove to restore the
forgotten minutiae of pre-Reformation ceremonies--drove Low and Broad
Churchmen into extreme wrath. Even yet the breach is not healed, and
the Church is divided, though the old bitterness has been forgotten
to a great extent in the last ten years. But the net result of the
movement has been to substitute zeal--if sometimes the zeal was without
discretion--for deadness, and the Church of to-day is far stronger and
more powerful than the Church of 1830.
[Sidenote: =The Nonconformists.=]
The most unhappy result of the movement has been to drive the
Nonconformists, to whom High-Church doctrine was particularly
repulsive, into a deeper antagonism to the Church than they ever
felt before. Hence Dissent has become political, putting the
disestablishment of the Church of England before it as one of the ends
of its work, side by side with its spiritual aims.
[Sidenote: =The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.=]
The fear that the Tractarian movement would lead to widespread
conversions to Romanism turned out to be unjustified. Though a
considerable number followed Newman in the forties, the stream soon
slackened. Yet for some years the nation was nervously anxious
about "Papal aggression," and in 1850, when the Pope issued a Bull
which appointed a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops to preside
over English sees, the government of Lord John Russell passed
an "Ecclesiastical Titles Bill," imposing penalties on all who
acknowledged the validity of the Bull. But the excitement died down,
and nothing was done to enforce the act.
[Sidenote: =State of the political parties.=]
Meanwhile, if the social and intellectual history of England was
interesting, its purely political history was for some years both dull
and perplexing. On the fall of the Russell cabinet in the spring of
1852, owing to the quarrel between the prime minister and his masterful
Foreign Secretary, Palmerston, English politics were left in a confused
and unsatisfactory condition, for there was no party strong enough to
command a majority in the country. The Tories were still split into two
sections. Sir Robert Peel was dead, killed by a fall from his horse
in St. James's Park on July 2, 1850, but his followers still clung
together under Lord Aberdeen and Mr. Gladstone, and refused to hold any
communication with that larger half of the Conservative party which
since Lord George Bentinck's death was led by Disraeli and Lord Derby.
The question of Protection still lay between them; but a far more real
bar to union was their personal dislike for each other, dating back to
the hard words used in 1846 over the Corn Laws. Now that the Liberal
party had been for a moment broken up by the quarrel of Russell and
Palmerston, there were four factions in the House, each of which was
largely outnumbered by the junction of the other three.
[Sidenote: =Lord Derby's ministry.=]
It was difficult to see who should be Lord John Russell's successor,
but after some doubting the Queen sent for Lord Derby, one of the
chiefs of the Protectionist Tories, and asked him to form a cabinet.
He complied, knowing that he could not hold office for long, unless a
general election should change the balance of parties in Parliament.
Hence followed the short Conservative ministry of March-December,
1852, whose tenure of office was marked by only two events of
importance,--the death of the Duke of Wellington on September 14,
which removed the last great figure that reminded men of the days of
the old wars of George III., and the proclamation of Louis Napoleon as
Emperor of the French on December 1. The policy of the Derby-Disraeli
ministry was only notable as showing that even the Tory section of
the Conservative party had learned something from the events of the
last six years. They did not make any open attempt to reintroduce
Protection, and Disraeli's budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer
was only remarkable for an effort to substitute direct for indirect
taxation, in opposition to the strict rules of Political Economy.
The general election, which presented the only chance of salvation
for this weak Tory cabinet, disappointed them deeply. They gained a
few seats, but not nearly enough to enable them to secure a majority
in the new House of Commons, and had to resign shortly after meeting
Parliament.
[Sidenote: =The Peelites and the Whigs.=]
To secure any permanent cabinet a coalition was obviously necessary,
and on Lord Derby's resignation the natural result followed. The
Peelite Conservatives consented to join the Whigs, and thereby a party
with a clear majority was formed. There was nothing strange or at all
unworthy in this coalition; the more advanced Conservatives were not
separated by any great gulf from men like Palmerston, and those other
Whigs who thought that reform and change had now gone far enough, and
that the constitution needed no further alteration. Both alike believed
in Free Trade; both were zealous for the safe-guarding of English
interests abroad; both were opposed to the radical reforms which the
more advanced wing of the Liberal party were advocating. The Peelites
and the moderate Whigs were indeed more at home with each other
than with the more extreme men of their own parties. Ere long they
coalesced, and--as is always the case--the larger body absorbed the
smaller, so that Aberdeen, Gladstone, and their followers became ranked
as Liberals.
[Sidenote: =Lord Aberdeen's ministry.=]
In the new ministry Lord Aberdeen was chosen as prime minister;
Gladstone, the great financier of the Peelite party, was made
Chancellor of the Exchequer; Russell and Palmerston patched up
their old quarrel for a space, and took office as Home and Foreign
Secretaries; the other posts were equally divided between the two
sections of the coalition. This cabinet, created by a compromise, and
not viewed with any great enthusiasm by the nation, was destined to
chance upon the gravest foreign complication that England had known for
forty years.
[Sidenote: =Louis Napoleon.--Designs of the Czar Nicholas.=]
The disturbing elements in Europe at this moment were two in number.
The first was the new Emperor of the French, who felt his throne
unsteady, and thought that it could be best made firm by a war; for,
as a Bonaparte, he felt that great deeds of arms were expected from
him. He was at first undecided in his choice of a foe, but events in
the East of Europe soon settled his resolve. Czar Nicholas of Russia
had long been eyeing the decrepit Turkish empire with greed. He was
not satisfied with his gains in the war of 1828, and thought that his
vast army could overrun Turkey with ease, if he could be sure that no
other European power would interfere. He knew that an attack on Turkey
might be resented by England, France, and Austria; but he was prepared
to buy them off with a share in the spoil. His point of view was well
expressed in the phrases which he used to an English ambassador in
1853: "We have on our hands a sick man--a very sick man; it would be
a great misfortune if, one of these days, he should slip away from us
before the necessary arrangements have been made." Adding that Turkey
must break up ere long, he offered England, as her share in the spoil,
Crete and Egypt. Of course the offer was refused, and the indications
of the Czar's state of mind on the subject were viewed with some dismay.
[Sidenote: =The Greek and Latin Churches.--Russia prepares for war.=]
The nominal _casus belli_ in the East was a trivial quarrel between
Greek and Latin monks in Palestine. There were some disputed rights
in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, and the Church
of the Nativity at Bethlehem, to which both Roman Catholics and
Greek Churchmen have access. "All the bloodshed came from a key and
a star," as was said at the time, the former being the key of the
Holy Sepulchre, of which the Greek and Latin patriarchs both claimed
the custody, the latter a large emblem that hung over the altar at
Bethlehem. When Russia used her power in favour of the Greeks, Louis
Napoleon, eager to assert the influence of France in the East, replied
by supporting the Latins. Both threatened the unfortunate Sultan with
their displeasure, and when he decided in favour of the Romanists, the
Czar proceeded to strong measures of coercion. He demanded that the
Sultan should recognize him as the legal protector and guardian of all
the Greek Christians within the Turkish empire, a preposterous request,
for to grant it would have been equivalent to giving Russia control
over the whole of European Turkey. Prince Mentchikoff, a stern and
blustering old general, was sent to Constantinople to bring pressure to
bear on the Sultan, and soon after, Czar Nicholas sent his armies over
the Pruth and occupied Moldavia and Wallachia, two vassal states of
Turkey (July, 1853).
[Sidenote: =Palmerston and Sir Stratford Canning.=]
Now, England had no interest in the foolish quarrel about the key and
the star, but she was deeply concerned at the occupation of Turkish
territory by Russian troops, which foreboded a dash at Constantinople,
and an attempt to make an end of the Sultan's rule in Europe. The
Aberdeen cabinet had no intention to go to war with Russia, but they
could not suffer the Czar's aggression to pass unnoticed, and sent
off Sir Stratford Canning, an able diplomatist, who knew the East
better than any other living Englishman, to counteract the doings of
Prince Mentchikoff on the Bosphorus. Stratford Canning was an old
enemy of Russia, and much trusted by the Sultan, who put himself under
his advice, and rejected all the demands of Russia. France at the
same time bade the Sultan stand his ground, for the Emperor was set
on gaining prestige by checking Russia, and quite ready to make war
if the Czar would not yield. Palmerston strongly advised Stratford
Canning to act vigorously on the same lines as the French ambassador
at Constantinople, and thus England was gradually drawn into a hostile
attitude towards Russia, before Lord Aberdeen and the rest of the
ministry had realized the drift of the action of their energetic
colleague at the Foreign Office.
[Sidenote: =Russia declares war on Turkey.=]
The Czar was obstinate, and determined not to yield an inch to the
threats of Palmerston or Louis Napoleon; he thought England would not
fight, and he despised the brand-new Emperor at Paris. On November
1, 1853, he declared war on Turkey, and a few days later his troops
crossed the Danube, while his fleet destroyed a Turkish squadron at
Sinope, and got complete control of the Black Sea.
[Sidenote: =England and France join the Turks.=]
This violent action put the Aberdeen cabinet in great perturbation of
spirit; they did not want to declare war on Russia; yet they had gone
so far in opposing the Czar, that they could not retire from their
position without deep humiliation. Even yet they might have drawn back,
if Lord Palmerston had not threatened to resign unless strong measures
were taken. Yielding to him, the ministers consented to join the
French Emperor in sending an ultimatum to St. Petersburg, menacing war
unless the Russian troops were withdrawn from Turkish soil. Nicholas I.
proved recalcitrant, and only ordered his armies to press the sieges of
the fortresses of Bulgaria which they were beleaguering. Accordingly
England and France declared war on him on March 27, 1854.
[Sidenote: =Want of military preparations in England.=]
Thus England had been drawn into a dangerous struggle with the most
powerful monarch in Europe, before her ministers well realized what
they were doing. She was utterly unprepared for war. The army was weak
in numbers, and had been woefully neglected for the last forty years.
It had seen no fighting with a European foe since Waterloo, and had
quite lost the habit of taking the field. Accustomed to barrack life
in England, the men found themselves entirely at a loss when landed
on the shores of the Black Sea, and showed little power to shift for
themselves. A great proportion of the officers were ignorant of all
their duties, save that of facing the enemy with the old English
courage. The commissariat service and the other branches of supply
proved hopelessly incompetent to keep the army well fed or well
clothed. To add to the other misfortunes of England, the leaders of
the army were unwisely chosen. The command was given to Lord Raglan,
an amiable but worn-out veteran of sixty-six, who had served as
Wellington's aide-de-camp in Spain; many of the divisional commanders
owed their place to influence or interest, rather than to proved
competence in war. Sir Colin Campbell, who had won a great reputation
in India, was one of the few among them who thoroughly deserved his
place.
[Sidenote: =Sebastopol to be attacked.=]
With some difficulty, an expeditionary force of 28,000 men was
collected and sent to the East; they landed at Varna, on the Black Sea,
and joined a French army of about the same strength. But it was found
that they were not needed on the Danube. The Turks had already thrust
the Russians out of Bulgaria, and the Czar's forces were in retreat
towards the Pruth. It thus became necessary to settle on some plan
of offensive operations against Russia, which the English and French
governments had not hitherto contemplated. Russia is only open to
attack from the water on two points, the Baltic and the Black Sea, and
the allies were almost committed to making their main attack on the
latter field, as they had already sent their armies in that direction.
It was resolved, therefore, to despatch a powerful fleet to the Baltic
to threaten St. Petersburg, but to confine serious operations to the
Black Sea. There the easiest point of attack was the great naval
fortress of Sebastopol, in the Crimea, the stronghold and arsenal of
the Russian fleet. Its destruction would inflict a great blow on the
Czar, and its capture seemed easy owing to its remoteness from the
centres of Russian strength.
Accordingly the allied armies, somewhat more than 50,000 strong, sailed
from Varna on September 7, 1854, and landed on the western shore
of the Crimea, thirty miles north of Sebastopol, a few days later.
The expedition was very late in starting; it should have sailed in
July, and would then have found the Russians unprepared. As it was,
Prince Mentchikoff, now commanding in the Crimea, had got wind of the
intention of the allies, and hastily taken measures to strengthen his
position.
[Sidenote: =Battle of the Alma.=]
Advancing very slowly towards Sebastopol, the English and French armies
found Mentchikoff with 40,000 men drawn up behind the river Alma, in
a lofty position strengthened with entrenchments. The allied generals
won the battle that ensued, but their victory was not the reward of
their own good generalship. Raglan and the French general St. Arnaud
did not get on well together, and the latter showed from the first a
tendency to throw the heavier work of the campaign on the English. Half
of the French army executed a long flank march by the sea-shore, and
never fired a shot in the action. The remaining half allowed themselves
to be checked for some time by the Russian left wing, a force of very
inferior strength. Meanwhile the English advanced against the hostile
centre and right; their front line outran its supports, crossed the
river with a rush, and captured the chief redoubt on the opposite
bank. But, assailed by the main body of the enemy, it was compelled to
fall back, and the heights had to be stormed for a second time by the
belated English reserves, which came up at last and swept all before
them. Thus the fight was won, without any co-operation from the two
commanders-in-chief: for St. Arnaud was too ill to follow the fortunes
of the day; while Lord Raglan had blindly ridden forward, lost touch
with his men, and blundered by mistake into the rear of the Russian
position, where he might easily have been taken prisoner (September 20,
1854).
As the French, who had done hardly any fighting, refused to pursue,
while the English were worn out, the Russian army got away without
being completely destroyed, though the deadly musketry of the English
infantry had fearfully thinned its ranks. The allies followed at a very
slow pace; if they had hurried on they might have captured Sebastopol
at once. But St. Arnaud was dying, and Lord Raglan could not goad
the French into action. Even when they approached the fortress, an
extraordinary caution and lack of enterprise was displayed. Mentchikoff
had retired into the interior with his army, and left the town to an
improvised garrison of sailors and militia, so that it could probably
have been stormed offhand.
[Illustration: SEBASTOPOL.
1854.]
[Sidenote: =The siege of Sebastopol.=]
But the allies sat down before the place to besiege it in full form,
and allowed the great engineer Todleben to cover its weak defences with
a screen of improvised earthworks which daily grew more formidable.
Mentchikoff came back with his army when he saw that Sebastopol could
resist, and as Russian reinforcements kept pouring in, the defenders
soon outnumbered the beleaguering force.
The position of the English and French grew daily more unsatisfactory.
They were only blockading the southern half of the town, for they were
not numerous enough to encircle the two sides of Sebastopol harbour.
They had chosen to occupy the bleak peninsula of the Chersonese, where
neither food nor fodder could be got, and had no power to make raids
into the interior for supplies. The English had to bring their stores
up from the small harbour of Balaclava, six miles from the trenches,
and much exposed to the danger of an attack from the east.
[Sidenote: =Balaclava.--The Charge of the Six Hundred.=]
Finding that the bombardment by land and sea was doing no harm,
and seeing that they were gradually beginning to outnumber the
besiegers, the Russians resolved to make an attack against the English
communications. The battle of Balaclava resulted from an attempt made
by a large hostile force to seize Balaclava, which was only protected
by two weak brigades of English cavalry, 1500 sabres in all, a single
regiment of Highland infantry, and 3000 Turks. General Liprandi,
with 20,000 men, came down towards the harbour, drove the Turkish
auxiliaries from some weak redoubts, and pushed onward. His advance
was stopped by the gallant charge of General Scarlett's brigade of
dragoons, led by the Scots Greys and Inniskillens, who rode down a
force of three times their own numbers, and gave the English commander
time to hurry up reinforcements from his siege-lines. The Russians,
staggered by the desperate attack of the "Heavy Brigade," halted, and
began to draw back. Then occurred a dismal blunder: Lord Raglan sent
orders for the remainder of the English cavalry, the "Light Brigade,"
to "advance and prevent the enemy from carrying off the guns," meaning
the guns in the redoubts which the Turks had lost in the morning.
Lord Lucan, the chief of the English cavalry, stupidly or wilfully
misunderstood the order, and sent the Light Brigade to charge a battery
in position which formed the centre of the Russian host. Accordingly
the five weak regiments of light cavalry--only 670 sabres in all--which
formed Lord Cardigan's brigade, deliberately and without supports
attacked a whole army. They rode for a mile and a half through a
tempest of shells and bullets, captured the Russian battery, routed the
troops in support of it, and then--for want of help from the rear--were
forced to retreat by the same way they had come, through a second hail
of fire. Out of the famous "Six Hundred," 113 had been killed, and 134
wounded. The charge was absolutely useless, for Lord Raglan did not
proceed to follow it up by an infantry attack, though the Russians had
been greatly cowed by the frantic courage of the Light Brigade, and
would certainly have made off if they had been threatened with more
fighting. So the battle ended unsatisfactorily for both parties; for
though Balaclava was saved, yet the Russians remained in a position
which constantly threatened it with a new attack (October 25).
[Sidenote: =Battle of Inkerman.=]
Prince Mentchikoff was far from being discouraged by the result of
the fight, and, when fresh reinforcements joined him, resolved to try
another assault on the right flank of the English. This time it was
their siege-lines which were to be attacked under cover of the night.
Two great columns, mustering more than 40,000 men, secretly assembled
opposite the extreme right of the English lines, one coming from
Sebastopol, the other from the open country. A thick fog completely hid
them from the English, and they were attacking the camp of the second
division almost before their arrival was suspected. There followed the
fight of Inkerman, "the soldiers' battle," as it was called, for the
men, surprised in their tents, turned out without orders and almost
without guidance, and flung themselves recklessly on the advancing
enemy. Arriving in scattered companies and wings, each regiment
attacked the first foe it met, and for six hours a desperate fight went
on all over Mount Inkerman. In the fog no one knew where or with what
numbers he was fighting, but the general result of the battle was all
that could have been desired. Every time that the dark masses of the
enemy surged up against the crest of the English position, they were
dashed down the hillside by the desperate valour of the thin line of
defenders. When towards midday some French reinforcements came up, the
Russians withdrew, leaving the ground covered with their dead. It
was only when the fight was over that the victors realized that 8000
English, aided late in the day by 6000 French, had defeated an army of
more than 40,000 men, and slain or wounded more than 10,000 of them.
The heavy English loss of 2300 men was not too great a price to pay for
the self-confidence and feeling of superiority over their enemies which
the victory of Inkerman gave to the conquerors (November 5, 1854).
[Sidenote: =Sufferings of the troops.=]
Sebastopol might perhaps have fallen if vigorously attacked the day
after Inkerman, but the English and French commanders did not call
on their wearied troops for another effort, and the siege dragged on
into the winter with the most disastrous results. The army had only
been equipped for a short campaign, and no account had been made of
the bitter cold of the Crimea. All the commissariat horses and mules
died, and the supplies had to be brought up from Balaclava for six
miles on the backs of the wearied soldiery. Food ran short, the flimsy
tents gave no shelter against the storms and snow, and the men were
stricken down in hundreds by cold and disease. An unlucky storm sank
the ships which were bringing warm clothing, and in January, 1855,
Lord Raglan had to report to London that the army comprised 11,000 men
under arms and 13,000 in hospital. The French suffered hardly less,
but the Emperor continued sending out reinforcements, which kept up
their numbers, while the English army had no reserves, and could not be
quickly recruited.
[Sidenote: =Resignation of Lord Aberdeen.=]
When the miserable state of the army in the Crimea became known in
England, owing mainly to the reports of newspaper correspondents, a
howl of wrath was raised against the men who were responsible for the
want and starvation which our troops were enduring. Part of the misery,
it is true, was due merely to the inexperience of the English in war;
but much more was owing to the inconsiderate slackness and folly of the
home authorities, who were responsible for feeding and clothing the
army. Almost incredible tales are told of the combination of parsimony
and extravagance, red-tape and ignorance, which ruined our army. The
nation called for scapegoats, and, in deference to its clamour, the
prime minister, Lord Aberdeen, and the war minister, the Duke of
Newcastle, resigned their offices. They were only guilty of being
unable to control their inefficient and ignorant subordinates.
[Sidenote: =Lord Palmerston premier.=]
When Lord Aberdeen retired, he was succeeded by the brisk and vigorous
Palmerston, the soul of the war-party, who managed to infuse a share
of his own energy into the struggle. Supplies and recruits were poured
into the Crimea; a railway was built from Balaclava to the front; and
the hospitals, where the sick and wounded were dying by thousands, were
reformed, and entrusted with success to Florence Nightingale and her
volunteer nurses, who came out to supplement the inadequate staff that
the government had provided.
[Sidenote: =Victor Emmanuel joins the allies.=]
Soon the English had nearly 40,000 men in the Crimea, while the French
Emperor had raised his troops to 100,000. Further aid was given to
the allies by Sardinia, whose king Victor Emmanuel, following the old
tradition of the house of Savoy, was eager to take part on the stronger
side in a great war. His object was partly to gain the gratitude of
France, partly to display the strength of his warlike little kingdom in
the councils of Europe.
[Sidenote: =Death of the Czar Nicholas.=]
The Russians were now feeling the war bear hardly upon them. Their
supplies and reinforcements had to be brought from vast distances, and
there were as yet no railways--or even good roads--over the steppes
of Southern Russia. So toilsome was the winter march to the Crimea,
that a quarter of the troops sent thither are said to have fallen by
the way. The Czar Nicholas died on March 2, heart-broken by the utter
failure of his armies; but his successor, Alexander II., was too proud
to ask for peace on such terms as the allies offered--negotiations at
Vienna for this purpose completely failed. The young Czar was induced
to persevere only by the obstinate courage with which the garrison of
Sebastopol held out, guided by the great engineer Todleben, who had so
strengthened the defences of the place that nothing but a few outlying
redoubts had yet fallen into the allies' hands.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Sebastopol.=]
On June 18, 1855, the allies tried a general assault on the fortress,
which failed with heavy loss. Soon after Lord Raglan died, worn out
by responsibility and by the knowledge that he was much criticized
at home. He was replaced by General Simpson: the French commander
Canrobert was at the same time superseded by Marshal Pélissier, a
rough soldier who did not err from over-caution like his predecessor.
On September 8, the new leaders ordered a general assault on the
eastern front of Sebastopol, the French taking as their goal the
Malakoff, and the English the Redan, two forts which formed the keys
of the line of defence. The English assault was beaten off; though
the stormers actually got inside the Redan, they were too few to hold
their ground. But Pélissier launched more than 20,000 men against the
Malakoff, and carried it by a bold rush. The loss of this all-important
fort broke the Russians' line; in the following night they set fire to
Sebastopol and retired across the harbour, abandoning the town to the
allies.
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of Paris.=]
After this disaster the Czar was forced to bow to circumstances, and
sued for peace. This the Emperor of the French was ready to grant on
easy terms, for he was satisfied with the prestige that he had acquired
by his victory, and did not wish to make Russia his enemy for ever.
England was desirous of going on with the war, to make a thorough end
of the aggressive and despotic empire of the Czars. But when her ally
refused to continue the struggle, she was forced to join in the general
pacification, though Palmerston declared that Russia was only scotched,
and would be as powerful as ever in ten years--a true prophecy. By
the treaty of Paris (March, 1856) the Czar engaged to cede to Turkey
a small strip of territory at the mouth of the Danube, to keep no
war-fleet in the Black Sea, and to leave Sebastopol dismantled. The
Sultan undertook to grant new rights and liberties to his Christian
subjects--a promise most inadequately fulfilled. The opportunity was
taken, at the same time, to settle an old and long-disputed question of
maritime law. England and the other powers agreed for the future that
privateering in time of war should be abolished, and that the neutral
flag should cover all goods from seizure, except military stores and
other munitions of war.
The peace of Paris settled nothing. The late war had disabled Russia
for ten or fifteen years, and the Eastern question did not begin to
grow dangerous again till after 1870. But Turkey was no stronger for
all the support that she had received; the Sultan's government was
hopelessly effete, and when next Russia began to move, the doom of the
Turkish power in Europe was near at hand.
[Sidenote: =Supremacy of Palmerston.=]
But few men in England understood that the Eastern question had only
been shelved for a few years. Proud of the valour which the army had
displayed, and fondly hoping that the weak points of our military
system had now been discovered and remedied, the nation gave all
its confidence to the minister who had brought the war to what was
considered a successful conclusion. Palmerston stayed in power for
the remaining ten years of his life, save for one short interval in
1858-59. He was, as we have already had occasion to remark, less fond
of constitutional changes than any other man in the Whig party. He
thought that little more remained to be done in matters of internal
reform, and used his influence to check the more progressive members
of his cabinet. As long as he held office, questions of domestic
importance were entirely subordinated to matters of foreign policy.
Palmerston was right in thinking that our external relations were
likely to be difficult and dangerous during the next few years. The
selfish and unscrupulous designs of Louis Napoleon were a disturbing
element in Europe so long as the Second Empire lasted, and a watchful
eye was always needed to look after England's interests.
[Sidenote: =War with Persia.=]
Meanwhile there were other complications further afield which required
attention. The Crimean war was hardly over before England found herself
involved in two little wars in the East. One of them was a direct
consequence of the great struggle with the Czar in 1854-55. While
it was still in progress, the Shah of Persia had behaved with scant
courtesy to the British minister at his court, thinking that England
was too much engrossed in the strife in Europe to resent his conduct.
Finally, he had invaded Afghanistan and taken Herat, though warned that
such action meant war, for, as Persia was now under Russian influence,
this advance toward India could not be tolerated. In the autumn of 1856
Lord Palmerston thought that England was at leisure to chastise the
Persians. An army from India was landed at Bushire; it beat the Shah's
troops at the battle of Kooshaub, and occupied most of the ports of
Southern Persia. Thus brought to reason, Nasr-ud-din asked for peace,
and obtained it on evacuating Herat (March, 1857). That he chose to sue
for terms at this moment chanced to be most fortunate for England, for
the army which returned from Persia was sorely needed in India, to
take part in subduing the great mutiny in that country, which we shall
have to notice in another chapter.
[Sidenote: =War with China.=]
The second little war in which the English were engaged in 1857 was
with China. The mandarins of Canton had seized a small trading vessel,
the _Arrow_, flying the British flag, and imprisoned the crew. Lord
Palmerston never endured for a moment high-handed acts committed by
a barbarous power. He declared war, sent an army and fleet against
China, and seized first the forts which command Canton, and afterwards
the more important Taku forts, which guard the way to Pekin up the
Pei-Ho river. In the end the British troops, aided by a French force,
compelled the Emperor of China to pay an indemnity of £4,000,000, and
to open several ports to English commerce (1860). The length of the
second Chinese war resulted from the distraction of the English arms to
the great mutiny in India. If that struggle had not been raging, the
forces of the effete Eastern power would have been crushed much sooner.
[Sidenote: =Attempted murder of Napoleon by Orsini.=]
Long before the end of this weary little war, the attention of the
English government was called back to affairs in Europe. The disturbing
element was Louis Napoleon, who was once more striving to win personal
profit by fostering the old quarrels of other nations. He had half
promised to do something to deliver the Italians from the bitter
bondage to Austria which they had endured since 1848. But he was weak
and vacillating, and dallied so long that some Italian exiles, headed
by one Orsini, tried in revenge to murder him by throwing a bomb into
his carriage.
[Sidenote: =The "Conspiracy to murder Bill."--Palmerston resigns.=]
This attempted assassination led, strange as it may appear, to the
temporary displacement of Palmerston from power. Orsini had formed his
plot and made his bombs in London, and the French government hotly
pressed for the seizure and extradition of his accomplices, as would-be
murderers. The prime minister, who wished to keep on good terms with
the Emperor, replied by proposing to the English Parliament the
"Conspiracy to Murder Bill," which placed political assassination-plots
among the offences punishable by penal servitude for life, whether
the crime took place in or out of England. But, unfortunately for
Palmerston, the French press, and more especially the French army, were
using at the time very threatening language, which was deeply resented
on this side of the Channel. Special offence was given by an address to
the Emperor by certain French colonels, which asked him to permit his
army to "destroy the infamous haunt in which machinations so infernal
are hatched." The opposition charged Palmerston with cringing to the
angry clamour of France, though the Conspiracy Bill in itself was a
rational measure enough. The unfounded charge shook for a moment the
confidence which the nation and the House of Commons felt in the old
minister. His bill was thrown out, and he resigned (February, 1858).
[Sidenote: =Lord Derby in office.--Disraeli's Reform Bill.=]
No Liberal ministry could be formed without Palmerston's aid; so the
Queen sent for the Conservatives. Lord Derby and Mr. Disraeli took
office, as they had done in 1852, though they had not a majority in
Parliament to back them. As on the previous occasion, their ministry
was merely a stop-gap, doomed from the first to a speedy end. They
clung to office till 1858 had passed by, and well into the following
year. Disraeli, who was, as he said, trying hard to "educate his
party," strove to win popular favour by showing that the Conservatives
could be friends of domestic reform and progress as much as the
Liberals. He brought in a Reform Bill, extending the household
franchise both in town and country, but giving extra votes to persons
of education and property. This very rational measure was greeted with
derision by the Liberals, who called the new qualifications for voters
which Disraeli wished to introduce "fancy franchises," and insisted
on keeping to the old idea, which made householding alone the test of
citizenship.
[Sidenote: =The Volunteer Movement.=]
The Reform Bill dropped, but the Conservatives, in their short term
of power, conferred one great boon on the nation by encouraging and
organizing the "Volunteer Movement." The angry language of the French
army at the time of the Orsini plot had provoked both resentment and
alarm in England. To guard against the peril of sudden invasion, it
was felt that the small regular army and the militia were not numerous
enough. Accordingly men of all classes came forward and formed
themselves into volunteer corps, like the old levies of 1803. They
undertook to arm and train themselves at their own expense, and to
take the field for the defence of the realm, whenever peril of invasion
should arise. The Derby government encouraged this patriotic scheme:
170,000 men were enrolled in the year 1859, and the Volunteer force,
though at first it was hampered by the red tape of the War Office, and
somewhat derided by the regulars, has taken a fixed and valuable place
in the national line of defence.
[Sidenote: =Napoleon and the Italians.=]
Fortunately, the French scare had soon blown over. Louis Napoleon was
scheming against Austria, not against England. The great Sardinian
statesman Cavour had induced him to pledge himself to deliver Italy
from its oppressors, and after much vacillation the Emperor declared
war on Francis Joseph II., and sent his armies over the Alps. He
beat the Austrians at Magenta and Solferino, and the Italians vainly
hoped that he would aid them to set up a kingdom of United Italy.
But he suddenly stopped short after rescuing Lombardy alone, and
made peace with the Austrian enemy. Lombardy was united to Sardinia,
but the selfish and greedy Emperor took Nice and Savoy from his own
ally in return for his aid, and refused to free Central or Southern
Italy. Abandoned by him, the Italians delivered themselves. Sudden
insurrections drove out the foreign rulers of Tuscany, Parma, and
Modena, and the hero Garibaldi expelled the Bourbons from Naples and
Sicily. Thus a kingdom of Italy was created in spite of the French
Emperor (1860-1). But he sent troops to Rome to guard the Pope, and
would not permit Cavour and Garibaldi to complete their work by adding
the ancient capital to the dominions of Victor Emmanuel.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston returns to power.=]
Long ere the Italian war was over, Lord Derby's Conservative government
had been defeated, and had retired from office. Palmerston's doings
of 1858 had quickly been forgiven and forgotten by the nation, and he
returned to office, which he held till his death six years later.
[Sidenote: =The American civil war.=]
It was well that his strong and practised hand should be at the helm,
for the years 1860-65 were full of delicate problems of foreign policy,
which more than once brought England within measurable distance of
war. A most formidable difficulty cropped up when the great civil war
across the Atlantic broke out in 1861. The Southern States seceded from
the Union, and proclaimed themselves independent under the name of
the Confederate States of America. Their avowed reason for separating
themselves from the North was that the Federal government, under
Northern control, was infringing the rights of the individual States
to self-government. But old sectional jealousies, and especially the
fear of the Southern planters that the Northerners would interfere with
their "great domestic institution," negro slavery, were really at the
bottom of the quarrel.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of England.--Seizure of the "Trent."=]
English opinion was much divided on the subject of the American civil
war. It was urged, on the one hand, that the North were fighting for
the cause of liberty against slavery; and this idea affected many
earnest-minded men to the exclusion of any other consideration. On
the other side, it was urged that the Southern States were exercising
an undoubted constitutional right in severing themselves from the
Union, and this was true enough in itself. It was certain that the
Southerners, who wished for Free Trade, were likely to be better
friends of England than the protectionist North, which had always
shown a bitter jealousy of English commerce. Many men were moved by
the rather unworthy consideration that America was growing so strong
and populous that she might one day become "the bully of the world,"
and welcomed a convulsion that threatened to split the Union into two
hostile halves. Others illogically sympathized with the South merely
because it was the weaker side, or because they thought the Southern
planters better men than the hard and astute traders of the North.
The Palmerston cabinet, with great wisdom, tried to steer a middle
course and to avoid all interference. But when eleven powerful States
joined in seceding, they thought themselves bound to recognize them as
a belligerent power, and to treat them as a nation. This gave bitter
offence to the North, and war nearly followed, for a United States
cruiser in 1862 stopped the British steamer _Trent_, and took from
her by force two envoys whom the Confederates were sending to Europe.
This flagrant violation of the law of nations roused Lord Palmerston
to vigorous action: he began sending troops to Canada, and demanded
the restoration of the envoys Mason and Slidell under pain of war.
President Lincoln and his advisers hesitated for a moment, but gave
up their prisoners with a bad grace just as war seemed inevitable.
Naturally this incident did not make the English people love the North
any better.
[Sidenote: =The Alabama.=]
Another cause of friction was destined to give trouble long after
the civil war had ended. The United States ambassador in London
summoned the English government to prevent the sailing from Liverpool
of a vessel called the _Alabama_, which, as he declared, had been
bought by the Confederates, and was destined to be used by them as a
war-ship. The cabinet were somewhat slow in ordering the detention of
the _Alabama_, which hurriedly put to sea, and justified the fears of
the American minister by seizing and burning many scores of Northern
vessels. This damage to commerce was charged to the account of England
by the government of President Lincoln, and probably they had some
ground for accusing the English officials of slackness. The grudge was
carefully nursed in America, and put to good use when the war was over.
[Sidenote: =The cotton famine.=]
But the most painful form in which the American quarrel affected
England was the dreadful cotton famine in Lancashire, which set in as
the year 1862 wore on. The English mills had always subsisted on the
cotton of the Southern States, and when the strict blockade instituted
by the Northerners sealed up New Orleans, Charleston, and the other
cotton ports, England suffered terribly for the want of raw material to
keep her mills going. The mill-hands bore the stoppage of their work
and wages with great courage and resignation, but they lived for months
on the verge of starvation. A disaster as great as the Irish potato
famine of 1846 was only prevented by lavish private charity, which sent
£2,000,000 to the distressed districts of Lancashire, supplemented by
the wise measures of the Government, who worked so well that hardly a
life was lost in spite of the pinching poverty of the times. Cotton was
at last brought from Egypt and India in quantities sufficient to set
the mills going again, and by 1863 the worst of the trouble was over.
In 1865 the Southern States were conquered, and the American cotton
once more came in.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston and the Danish duchies.=]
Wars nearer home were meanwhile beginning to distract the attention of
the English from America. A quarrel between the King of Denmark and
his German subjects in the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein led to the
interference of Austria and Prussia. The inhabitants of the two duchies
wished to cut themselves loose, and to join Germany. Bismarck, the
iron-handed prime minister of Prussia, saw his way to make profit for
his country out of the war, and induced the unwise Austrian government
to join him in bringing force to bear against the Danes. The English
looked upon the struggle as a mere case of bullying by the two German
powers, and Palmerston used somewhat threatening language against them;
but when he found that his usual ally, the Emperor of the French, was
not prepared to help him, he drew back, and allowed the Austrians and
Prussians to overrun the duchies. Beaten in the field, the Danish king
had to consent to their cession.
[Sidenote: =Palmerston and the Polish insurrection.=]
To protest, and then to make no attempt to back up words with deeds,
is somewhat humiliating. But this course was forced on Palmerston not
only in the case of the Schleswig-Holstein war, but also in the case
of Poland in the same year (1863). Treating the unfortunate Poles with
even more than its usual rigour, the Russian government forced them to
a fierce but hopeless insurrection. Palmerston sent a note to the Czar
in favour of better treatment of Poland, but met with a rebuff, and was
practically told to mind his own business. Not being ready to engage in
a second Crimean war without Louis Napoleon's aid, he had to endure the
affront. He was much censured for his useless interference, but it is
hard to blame him either for his protest, or for his refusal to follow
it up by plunging England into a dangerous war.
[Sidenote: =Prosperity at home.--Rise of Gladstone.=]
While these foreign affairs were engrossing most of the nation's
attention, domestic matters caused little stir. After the cotton famine
ended, the country entered into a cycle of very considerable growth and
prosperity. Gladstone, once a Peelite, but now one of the most advanced
of the progressive wing of the Liberal party, was now Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Year after year he was able to announce a surplus, and
to grant the remission of old taxes. His measures were judicious, but
the constant growth of the revenue from increased prosperity, and the
conclusion of a fortunate commercial treaty with France, were the real
causes of his being able to produce his favourable budgets, and won him
a financial reputation at a comparatively cheap expense of labour. But
his name was rapidly growing greater, and it was beginning to be clear
that he would be Palmerston's successor as leader of the Liberal party.
The old premier did not view this prospect with much satisfaction.
"Whenever he gets my place," he observed, "we shall have strange
doings."
[Sidenote: =Death of Palmerston.=]
The succession was not long delayed. Lord Palmerston died on October
18, 1865, and, on the removal of his restraining hand, the Liberal
party began to show new and rapid signs of change. For the first
time it was about, under the guidance of its new leader, to frankly
accept the principles of democracy, and to throw up its old alliance
with the middle classes. Palmerston had been for so many years the
leading figure in English politics, that his death, at the ripe age of
eighty-one, seemed to end an epoch in domestic history. He was by far
the most striking personage in the middle years of the century. Faults
he had: somewhat over-hasty in action, somewhat flippant in language on
occasion, too self-confident and too prone to self-laudation, he was
yet so resourceful and so full of courage and patriotism that he won
and merited the confidence of the nation more than any minister since
the younger Pitt.
FOOTNOTE:
[63] See p. 516.
CHAPTER XLII.
DEMOCRACY AND IMPERIALISM.
1865-1885.
The death of Lord Palmerston forms a convenient point at which to
draw the line between the earlier and the later history of the two
great English political parties. Down to 1865, the Liberals and the
Conservatives alike retained in a great measure the characteristics
of their forefathers the Whigs and Tories. The Liberal host was still
largely officered from the old aristocratic Whig houses; many of its
members disliked and distrusted democracy, and thought that in all
essential things the constitution had reached a point at which it
needed no further reform. As long as Palmerston lived, there was no
chance that the more militant and progressive wing of the Liberals
would draw the whole party into the paths of Radicalism. In a similar
way, the Conservative party still kept somewhat of the old Tory
intolerance and inflexibility, though for the last twenty years the
younger of its two chiefs, Benjamin Disraeli, had been striving hard to
guide it into new lines of thought.
[Sidenote: =The New Liberalism.=]
After 1865 the new Liberalism and the new Conservatism came into direct
opposition, personified in the two men who were soon to take up the
leadership of the two parties--Gladstone and Disraeli. Liberalism
when divested of its Whiggery was practically Radicalism. Its younger
exponents took up as their official programme the ideas that had been
afloat for the last forty years in the brains of the more extreme
section of their party. Their main aim was the transference of
political power from the middle classes to the masses, by means of a
wide extension of the franchise; the new voters were to be made worthy
of the trust by compulsory national education, while to guard them
against influences from without, the secret ballot--one of the old
Chartist panaceas--was to be introduced.
[Sidenote: =State interference and "laissez faire."=]
The party which proclaimed itself the friend of democracy was bound
to promise tangible benefits to the working classes. But the Liberals
were still divided on the question of the advisability of State
interference in the private life of the citizen. The younger men were
already dreaming of "paternal legislation" for the amelioration by
law of the conditions of life among the poorer classes, hoping to
secure them cheap food, healthy dwellings, shorter hours of labour,
and opportunities of recreation and culture by means of State aid
and public money. But in the sixties the "Manchester School," as the
adherents of _laissez faire_ and strict political economy were called,
was still predominant, and social legislation and extensive State
interference were not yet enrolled among the official doctrines of the
Liberal party. Its war-cry at election time was "Peace, retrenchment,
and reform." The first cry was one that had not been so much heard in
Palmerston's day, but on his death his successors showed themselves
very cautious in dealing with all foreign powers. Moreover, they wished
to win popularity by cheap government, a thing incompatible with a
spirited foreign policy. Their opponents accused them of allowing the
army and navy to grow too weak, and of being compelled in consequence
to assume a meek tone in dealing with the powers whom Palmerston
had been wont to beard and threaten. Wrapped up in their schemes of
domestic reform, they gave comparatively little attention to external
affairs.
[Sidenote: =The New Conservatism.=]
The new Conservatism of which Disraeli was the exponent was a creed
of a very different kind. It was the aim of that statesman to lay the
foundations of his party on a combination of social reform and national
patriotism. Since his first appearance in Parliament, he had striven
to persuade the people that the Conservatives were truer friends of
the masses than the Liberals. The latter, he maintained, offered
them barren political privileges; the former were ready to aid them
by benevolent legislation to secure a practical amelioration of the
conditions of their life. They would govern _for_ the people, if not
_by_ the people.
[Sidenote: =Disraeli and Reform.=]
Even in the direction of enlarging the franchise, Disraeli was prepared
to go far, though at first he shrank from granting so much as his
rivals, and wished to give an extra voting power to education and
wealth.
[Sidenote: =Disraeli and Imperialism.=]
But the feature of the new Conservatism which was most attractive to
the public was one of which Palmerston would have thoroughly approved.
Disraeli had a great confidence in the imperial destiny of Great
Britain, and a firm belief that she ought to take a bold and decided
part in the councils of Europe. With this end in view, he was anxious
to keep our armed strength high, and his expenditure on military and
naval objects was one of the things most frequently thrown in his
teeth by his opponents. The Liberals accused him of a tendency towards
"Imperialism," meaning, apparently, to ascribe some discredit to him
thereby. He himself never denied the charge, but made his boast of it,
though in his mouth it had another shade of meaning. To the Liberals it
meant presumption, a love of show and of sounding titles, a readiness
to annex to the right hand and the left, a proneness to intervene in
foreign quarrels, "a policy of bluster," in short. But in the mouth of
its exponents Imperialism meant a desire to knit more closely together
Great Britain and her colonies; to treat the empire as a whole, and to
govern it without any slavish subservience to the "parochial politics"
of England; to make the British name respected by civilized and feared
by barbarous neighbours.
At the opening of the new period, therefore, the nation was about to
be confronted by two rivals, one of whom offered it internal political
reform, the other imperial greatness. But at first the issues were not
clear; the two parties were still, to a certain extent, draped in the
remnants of the old wardrobe of Whiggery and Toryism. Till these were
torn away, the meaning of the new movements could not be distinctly
seen.
[Sidenote: =Lord John Russell Premier.--The Reform Bill of 1866.=]
On Palmerston's death, the leadership of his cabinet fell to the aged
Lord John--now Earl--Russell. His accession to power was followed by
the bringing forward of the first of the Reform Bills which were to
occupy the forefront of English politics for the next three years.
It was proposed to reduce the qualification for the franchise to the
possession of a £14 holding in the counties, and a £7 house in the
boroughs. Lord Derby and his Conservative followers opposed it, though
Disraeli had long ago pointed out that a Reform Bill of some sort was
inevitable. But the Tories were strengthened by seceders from the
ministerial camp, followers of the old Palmerstonian policy, who hated
the idea of unrestrained democracy. By their aid the bill was thrown
out, and Lord John Russell immediately resigned (June, 1866).
[Sidenote: =Ministry of Lord Derby.=]
For the third time, Lord Derby and Disraeli were charged with
the thankless task of forming a ministry, though they had only a
minority in the House of Commons to back them. On this occasion
they were destined to stay in office for more than two years (June,
1866-December, 1868), a far longer period of power than they had
enjoyed in 1852 and 1858-9. Apparently Disraeli, into whose hands the
age and failing health of Lord Derby were throwing more and more of
the real guidance of the party, had resolved to imitate the action of
William Pitt in 1784--to display to the nation his readiness to take in
hand all rational and moderate measures of reform, and then to appeal
to the country at a general election.
[Sidenote: =Disraeli's Reform Bill.=]
Accordingly, in the spring of 1867 he introduced a series of
resolutions, pledging his party to pass a Reform Bill, but announcing
that he should stipulate for the "fancy franchises" on which the
Conservatives had laid such stress during previous discussions of
the question. Persons (1) owning £30 in the savings bank, or (2) £50
invested in Government funds, or (3) paying £1 year and over in direct
taxes, or (4) possessed of a superior education, were to have a second
vote. In spite of these safeguards, the more unbending Conservatives
refused to follow Disraeli, and their chiefs, Lord Carnarvon and Lord
Cranborne (the present Marquis of Salisbury) seceded from the cabinet.
The bill was introduced, but the Liberal majority cut it about by
all manner of amendments, and utterly refused to accept the "fancy
franchises." Forced to choose between dropping the bill altogether and
resigning, or passing the bill shorn of all its safeguards against the
introduction of pure democracy, Disraeli chose the latter alternative,
and "took the leap in the dark," as was said at the time. The bill so
passed reduced the franchise in town to a rating of £5, thus granting
what was practically household suffrage, and added to the householders
all lodgers paying £10 a year. In the counties the franchise was
lowered to £12. This still left the agricultural labourer without a
vote, but made electors of well-nigh every other class in the kingdom.
At the same time thirty-five seats were taken away, partly from corrupt
boroughs, partly from places which had too many members in proportion
to their size, and were distributed among London and the great northern
shires, which had been still left much under-represented in the
redistribution of 1832 (August 15, 1867).
[Sidenote: =The Fenian outbreaks.=]
While the Reform Bill was engrossing the attention of politicians, the
United Kingdom had been passing through a dangerous crisis. Ireland, of
which little had been heard since the Potato Famine and Smith O'Brien's
rebellion, was once more giving trouble. The end of the American Civil
War in 1865 had thrown on the world large numbers of exiled Irish and
Irish-Americans, who had learnt the trade of war, and were anxious
to let off their energies by an attack on England. It was they who
organized the "Fenian Brotherhood," a secret association for promoting
rebellion in Ireland. They planned simultaneous risings all over the
country, which were to be aided by thousands of trained soldiers from
America. To distract the attention of the government, an invasion of
Canada was projected, and a number of outrages planned in England
itself. The Fenians failed, partly from want of organization, partly
from shirking at the moment of danger, partly from secret traitors in
their own ranks. The horde which invaded Canada ran away from a few
hundred militia. The national rising in Ireland was a fiasco: a few
police-barracks were attacked, but the assailants fled when they heard
of the approach of regular troops (February, 1867). A hare-brained
scheme to surprise the store of arms in Chester castle failed, because
the 1500 men who had secretly assembled in that quiet town saw that
they were watched by special constables. In fact, the only notable
achievements of the Fenians were two acts of murder. A band of
desperadoes in Manchester stopped a police-van and rescued two of their
comrades who were in custody, by killing one and wounding three of the
four unarmed policemen who were in charge. A still more reckless party
in London tried to release some friends confined in Clerkenwell prison
by exploding a powder-barrel under its wall. This did not injure the
prison, but killed or wounded more than a hundred peaceable dwellers in
the neighbouring streets (December, 1867). For these murders several
Fenians were executed.
[Sidenote: =Irish policy of the Liberals.=]
The abortive revolt of 1867 called English attention once more to
Ireland. The Liberal party insisted that the Fenian disturbance was due
not so much to national grudges as to certain practical grievances,
such as the existence of the Protestant Established Church of Ireland,
supported on the tithes of the country, and the unsatisfactory
condition of the peasantry, still tenants-at-will at rack rents, and
often in the hands of absentee landlords.
[Sidenote: =Defeat of the Government.=]
The experience of the last twenty years has shown that Irish discontent
is far more deeply seated than the Liberals supposed. But in 1868
they seriously thought that it could be pacified by legislation on
these two points. Mr. Gladstone selected the Church question as the
first battle-ground, and carried against the ministry a resolution in
the Commons, demanding the abolition of the establishment. Disraeli,
now prime minister in name as well as in fact (for Lord Derby had
retired from ill health in February, 1868), appealed to the country by
dissolving Parliament. But the Conservatives suffered a decisive defeat
at the polls, and were forced to resign (December, 1868).
[Sidenote: =The war between Prussia and Austria.=]
Abroad the Derby-Disraeli ministry had witnessed one very stirring
episode of European history, but had not intervened in it. In 1866,
Count Bismarck guided Prussia into war with Austria, crushed the great
empire at the battle of Königgrätz, annexed Hanover and Hesse, and
united all the lands north of the Main, under Prussian headship, into
the "North German Confederation." The struggle did not directly affect
England, and the Conservative ministry made no attempt to interfere,
and watched with equanimity Prussia supplant Austria as the chief power
in Central Europe.
[Sidenote: =The Abyssinian expedition.=]
The only warlike enterprise of the years 1866-8 was the costly but
almost bloodless Abyssinian expedition, Disraeli's first attempt to
vindicate British prestige in remote corners of the earth. Theodore,
King of Abyssinia, a savage despot, had imprisoned some British
subjects. To deliver them, Sir Robert Napier led an Indian army to
Magdala, the Abyssinian capital; he stormed the place, and released
the captives. Theodore blew out his brains when he saw his stronghold
taken, and on his death the victors retired unmolested.
[Sidenote: =Gladstone Prime Minister.--The Irish Church
disestablished.=]
Mr. Gladstone came into office in December, 1868, with a majority of
120 votes in the Commons, and at once proceeded to carry out his Irish
policy. The position of the Irish Church was very open to attack, for a
Protestant establishment in a country where seventy-five per cent. of
the population were Romanists was too anomalous to be easily defended.
This was felt by the Conservatives themselves, and, in spite of the
protests of the Irish Protestants, a bill for disestablishing the
Church passed both Houses (June, 1869). Its endowments were taken away
at the same time, but the churches and buildings were retained by their
old owners, and compensation was granted to all incumbents and curates.
So far from being ruined by the blow, the Irish Church has remained a
vigorous and increasing body.
[Sidenote: =The Land Act of 1870.=]
Having dealt with the Irish Church, Mr. Gladstone then turned to the
second grievance, whose removal, as he then hoped, would do away with
Ireland's grudge against England. By his Irish Land Act of 1870, he
gave the tenants a right to be compensated for any improvements they
might have made on their holdings, when they resigned them or were
evicted from them. He also permitted the outgoing tenant to sell his
good-will to his successor. To facilitate the creation of a peasant
proprietary, the government undertook to lend money to any tenant who
wished to buy his farm from his landlord, if the latter was willing to
sell it.
[Sidenote: =Agrarian troubles continue.=]
But the Land Bill was far from contenting the Irish peasantry, who
were seeking not merely a reasonable rent and a fair compensation for
improvements, but complete possession of their holdings. Agrarian
outrages, which had been widespread ever since the Fenian rising of
1867, remained as numerous as ever. So far was Ireland from being
quieted, that the government had to pass a stringent Peace-Preservation
Act, and to send additional troops across the Channel. The policy of
conciliation had thus far proved a complete failure.
[Sidenote: =The Education Act.=]
Mr. Gladstone's tenure of office was signalised by a long series of
domestic reforms, the most momentous of which was the Education Act,
introduced in 1870 by Forster, the Vice-President of the Council of
Education, for providing sufficient school-accommodation for the whole
infant population of the country, and making the attendance of all
children at school compulsory.
[Sidenote: =The Ballot.=]
Another important measure was the introduction of the secret ballot
at parliamentary elections. This act tended to diminish bribery, by
depriving the buyer of votes of the power of ascertaining whether the
elector with whom he had trafficked had kept his word or no; but it was
far from destroying it altogether, and actually enabled many corrupt
voters to sell their promise to both sides. It was not till stringent
penalties were imposed, both on the briber and the bribed, by laws
passed ten years later, that English parliamentary elections attained
their present high standard of purity.
[Sidenote: =The Franco-German war.=]
The leading event of this period in the sphere of foreign affairs was
the great Franco-German war of 1870-71, in which England preserved a
strict neutrality. The French Emperor had provoked the contest in the
most wanton way, in the hope of making firm his tottering throne. His
defeat and capture at Sedan (September 1, 1870) swept away a power
which had, since its first creation in 1852, formed a public danger
to Europe from its purely selfish and personal policy. When Bismarck
substituted united Germany for imperial France as the chief state of
the continent, the world was the gainer.
[Sidenote: =Russia and the Treaty of Paris.=]
But the fall of Napoleon III. affected English interests in the East
in a less satisfactory fashion. The united power of France and Great
Britain had hitherto compelled Russia to abide by the stipulations of
the treaty of Paris,[64] but the moment that the fall of the Emperor
was known, the Czar issued a declaration that he should no longer
consider himself bound by its terms. He began to rebuild his Black Sea
fleet, and to refortify Sebastopol, and the English government could
not resent the affront.
[Sidenote: =The "Alabama" arbitration.=]
About the same time, England was involved in an awkward dispute
with the United States, who, ever since the American civil war, had
been clamouring for compensation for the ravages committed by the
_Alabama_ on Northern shipping.[65] Lord Derby's cabinet had staved
off the question, but in 1870 the language of the Americans grew so
threatening, that the Liberals had to choose between submission or
the chance of a war. They took refuge in a middle course, preferring
to refer the liability of England for the doings of the _Alabama_
to a court of arbitration, composed of foreign lawyers. But in the
principles laid down, on which the arbitrators were to give their
decision, so much was conceded to the Americans, that the result, if
not the amount, of the award was a foregone conclusion. The referees
met at Geneva, and compelled England to pay £3,000,000, which sufficed
not only to pay all the claims made against the _Alabama_, but to leave
a handsome surplus in the American treasury (1872).
[Sidenote: =Cardwell's military reforms.=]
The knowledge that the people were growing alarmed and impatient at
the military weakness of England, especially after the sudden collapse
of France in 1870-71, induced the government to bring in a scheme
for improving the national defences. Cardwell, the minister of war,
introduced in 1872 a bill to reorganize the army on the short-service
system, which had been found to work so well in Germany. For the
future, instead of enlisting for the "long service" of twenty years,
the soldier was to engage for seven years with the colours and five in
the Reserve. The Reserve was only to be called out in time of danger;
but when war was at hand it was to join the ranks. Thus the strength
of the army could be raised by 60,000 trained and seasoned men on the
outbreak of hostilities. It must be allowed that in peace-time the
battalions are prone to be filled with very young men, all under seven
years' service. But as the reserves, when they have been called out,
have always appeared promptly and in full numbers, the change was
undoubtedly wise and beneficial. An attempt made at the same time to
localize all the regiments in particular districts, whence they were to
draw all their recruits, has not been so successful, owing to the fact
that some counties supply men in much greater proportion than others.
One more military reform, the "Abolition of Purchase," formed part
of Cardwell's scheme. It put an end to the system by which retiring
officers sold their commissions to their successors--a practice that
had often kept poor men of merit for many years unpromoted. The
measure was obviously right, but Mr. Gladstone provoked much criticism
by putting it forth in a Royal Warrant, instead of passing it through
the two Houses in the usual form.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Gladstone's ministry.=]
After the rush of legislation in the period 1869-72, the last years of
the Gladstone ministry seemed tame and uneventful. In the spring of
1873 they were beaten, on the comparatively small question of a bill to
establish a secular university in Ireland. Next winter Mr. Gladstone
dissolved Parliament, and, on appealing to the constituencies, suffered
a crushing defeat (January, 1874).
[Sidenote: =Disraeli's ministry.--The Home Rule party.=]
For the first time since 1846, Parliament was in the hands of a solid
Conservative majority in both Houses, and Disraeli, seated firmly in
power, was able to display the characteristics of the "New Toryism."
He announced that he took office to secure a space of rest from
harassing legislation at home, and to defend the honour and interests
of England abroad. His first two years of power (1875-76) were among
the quietest which the century has known. They were only marked by some
excellent measures of social and economic reform, such as the Artisans'
Dwellings Act, which permitted corporations to build model houses for
workmen; and the Agricultural Holdings Act, which granted to farmers
compensation for unexhausted improvements on their land, when they gave
up their farms to their landlord. But signs of coming trouble were
soon apparent both at home and abroad. In the Commons the ministry was
beginning to be harassed by the Irish members, who had latterly banded
themselves together, under the leadership of Isaac Butt, to demand Home
Rule.
[Sidenote: =Egypt and Ismail.=]
This trouble, however, was as yet but in its infancy. A more pressing
cause of disquietude was arising in the East, on which England had
always kept a watchful eye since the Crimean War. Two separate
difficulties were beginning to arise in that quarter. The first was in
Egypt, a land which had grown very important to England since the use
of the overland route to India by Alexandria and the Red Sea had been
discovered, and still more so since de Lesseps had constructed the Suez
Canal in 1868. The thriftless and ostentatious Khedive Ismail, by his
extravagance and oppression at home and his unwise conquests in the
Soudan, had reduced Egypt to a state of misery, and seemed not far from
bankruptcy. To get ready money, he proposed to sell his holding--nearly
one-half--of the shares of the Suez Canal Company. Disraeli at once
bought them by telegram for £4,000,000. The investment was wise and
profitable; the shares are now worth five times the sum expended, and
their possession gives England the authority that is her due in the
conduct of this great international venture.
[Sidenote: =The Russo-Turkish war.=]
But a far more ominous storm-cloud was rising in the Balkan Peninsula.
England had been very jealous of the action of the Czar in the East
since the abrogation of the treaty of Paris in 1870. She had been
greatly stirred by the activity of the Russians in Central Asia, where,
by overrunning Turkestan and reducing Khiva and Bokhara to vassalage,
they had made a long step forward in the direction of India. But now a
new trouble arose nearer home, in the shape of sporadic insurrections,
which broke out all over European Turkey. The misgovernment of the
Porte was enough to account for them; but it was suspected, and with
good cause, that they were being deliberately fomented by Russian
intriguers with the tacit approval of the imperial government. The
rising began in Bosnia in 1875; in the summer of 1876 the princes of
Servia and Montenegro took arms to aid the Bosnians, and thousands of
Russian volunteers flocked across the Danube to join the Servian army.
Next, while the Turks were sending all their disposable troops against
the two princes, a rising broke out in Bulgaria. This insurrection was
put down by bands of Circassians and armed Mussulman villagers, with
a ruthless cruelty which had a most marked effect on English public
opinion. Hitherto the government had been showing some intention of
resenting Russian interference in the Balkans. But the news of the
Bulgarian atrocities so shocked the country that any such design had
to be abandoned. Mr. Gladstone, who had given up the leadership of the
opposition for the last two years, emerged from his retirement and made
a series of speeches against the Turks which had a profound effect, and
when in 1877 the Czar openly declared war on Turkey and sent his armies
across the Danube, the English government stood aside in complete
neutrality. The Turks held out with unexpected firmness; but in the
early winter of 1877-78 their resistance broke down, and the Russians
came pouring on towards Constantinople.
[Sidenote: =Attitude of England.=]
The English government, though prevented from interfering in behalf
of the Sultan by public opinion, had been watching the advance of the
Russians with much anxiety. When the victorious armies of Alexander II.
approached the Bosphorus, Disraeli--who had now taken the title of Earl
of Beaconsfield and retired to the Upper House--began to take measures
which seemed to forebode war. He asked for a grant of £6,000,000 for
military purposes, and ordered up the Mediterranean squadron into the
Sea of Marmora, placing it within a few miles of Constantinople. If
the Czar's troops had struck at the Turkish capital a collision must
have occurred, and a general European war might have followed. But the
Russian ranks were sorely thinned by the late winter campaign, and
their generals shrank from provoking a new enemy. Instead of attacking
Constantinople they offered the Sultan terms, which he accepted (March
3, 1878).
[Sidenote: =The Treaty of St. Stefano.=]
The treaty of St. Stefano gave Russia a large tract in Asia round
Kars and Batoum, and advanced her frontier at the Danube-mouth to its
old position in the days before the Crimean war. Servia, Roumania,
and Montenegro received large slices of Turkish territory; but the
great feature of the treaty was the creation of a new principality of
Bulgaria, reaching from the Danube to the Aegean, and cutting European
Turkey in two.
[Sidenote: =The Berlin Conference.=]
Persuaded that the treaty of San Stefano made all the states of the
Balkan Peninsula vassals and dependents of Russia, Lord Beaconsfield
refused to acquiesce in the arrangement. He called out the army
reserves, hurried off more ships to the Mediterranean, and began to
bring over Indian troops to Malta by way of the Suez Canal. In view of
his menacing attitude, the Czar consented to a complete revision of
the treaty of San Stefano. At the Berlin Conference (June-July, 1878)
its terms were modified: the new Bulgaria was cut up into two states,
and its frontier pushed back from the Aegean. The Sultan undertook
to introduce reforms into his provinces, and England guaranteed the
integrity of his remaining Asiatic dominions. In return for this,
Abdul Hamid placed the island of Cyprus in British hands, though
retaining his nominal suzerainty over it.
Lord Beaconsfield returned triumphant from Berlin in July, 1878,
claiming that he had obtained "Peace with Honour" for England, and had
added a valuable naval station to our possessions in the Mediterranean.
But the advantages which he had secured were in some ways more apparent
than real. He had checked and irritated Russia without setting up any
sufficient barrier against her. He had pledged England to introduce
reforms in Turkey, a promise which she was never able to induce
the Sultan to perform. Cyprus turned out harbourless and barren--a
source of expense rather than profit. Later events showed that the
partition of Bulgaria was a mistake, and that the creation of a strong
principality on both sides of the Balkans would have been the most
effective bar to a Russian advance towards Constantinople.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Lord Beaconsfield's ministry.=]
The scarcely averted war between England and the Czar had a tiresome
and costly sequel in the East, the Afghan war of 1878-80, which we
describe in Chapter XLIV.--a struggle which was not without its
disasters, and formed one of the chief reasons for the gradual loss
of popularity by the Beaconsfield cabinet in the years that followed
the treaty of Berlin. A similar result was produced by the mismanaged
Zulu war and the disaster at Isandula (1879),[66] while at home the
ministry was kept in perpetual difficulties by the obstructive tactics
of the Irish party, who were now headed by the astute and unscrupulous
Charles Stewart Parnell. They wasted time and provoked perpetual
scenes. In June, 1880, Lord Beaconsfield dissolved Parliament, and
a Liberal majority of 100 was returned to the House of Commons from
Great Britain, while in Ireland the Home Rulers swept almost every
constituency except those of Ulster.
[Sidenote: =Gladstone's second ministry.--The Boer war.=]
Mr. Gladstone now took office for the second time, pledged to pacify
Ireland, and to carry out a policy of peace abroad, and of reform and
Liberal measures at home. But the years 1880-84 were full of costly and
unsatisfactory wars. Scarcely was the new cabinet installed when the
Boers, the inhabitants of the recently annexed Transvaal, revolted.
The small English force in South Africa suffered a crushing defeat at
Majuba Hill, whereupon the government, ere reinforcements could arrive,
made peace with the rebels, and granted them independence (1880-81).
[Sidenote: =Arabi's rebellion.=]
Soon after the Transvaal war had reached its disastrous conclusion,
fresh troubles broke out in Egypt. Since Lord Beaconsfield first
interfered in that country by buying for England the Suez Canal shares
of the Khedive Ismail, Egyptian affairs had been going from bad to
worse. After driving the country to the verge of bankruptcy, the old
Khedive abdicated in 1879, in favour of his son Tewfik; but England and
France joined to establish the "Dual Control" over the young sovereign,
and appointed ministers to take charge of the finances of Egypt. Tewfik
himself made little or no objection to this assertion of foreign
domination, but some of his officers and ministers resented it, and
in 1882, Arabi Pasha, an ambitious soldier, executed a _coup d'êtat_,
drove away the foreign ministers, and raised the cry of "Egypt for the
Egyptians." It was expected that the two powers who had established the
Dual Control would unite to put down Arabi. But the French ministry,
jealous of England, and hoping to draw its private profit out of the
complication, refused to join in any action against him. It is probable
that the Gladstone cabinet had no intention at first of provoking a
war. But the English Mediterranean squadron was ordered to Alexandria,
which Arabi was busily engaged in fortifying. On June 11, a great
riot broke out in that city, and the mob massacred many hundreds of
European residents. This made hostilities inevitable; when the Egyptian
authorities refused to dismantle their new forts, Admiral Seymour
bombarded the place (July 11), and drove out the garrison. Shortly
after, English troops landed and seized the ruined city.
[Sidenote: =The Egyptian war.=]
The struggle which followed was brought to a prompt end by the quick
and decisive action of Sir Garnet Wolseley, who seized the Suez Canal,
and marched across the desert on Cairo, while the Egyptians were
expecting him on the side of Alexandria. By a daring night-surprise, he
carried the lines of Tel-el-Kebir (September 13), and routed Arabi's
host. A day later, his cavalry seized Cairo by a wonderful march of
fifty miles in twelve hours, and the rebellion was at an end. Arabi
was exiled to Ceylon, and the Khedive was restored to his palace in
Cairo; but for all intents and purposes the war left England supreme in
Egypt--a very anomalous position, which Mr. Gladstone soon proceeded
to make yet more so, by promising France and Turkey that the English
troops should be withdrawn so soon as order and good government should
be restored.
[Sidenote: =The war in the Soudan.--Gordon at Khartoum.=]
He might, perchance, have carried out his engagement but for the
outbreak of the disastrous Soudan war of 1883. During Arabi's rebellion
troubles had broken out in the Egyptian provinces on the Upper Nile,
where the pashas had been subjecting the wild Arab tribes to cruel
oppression. A fanatic named Mohamed Ahmed, of Dongola, put himself
at the head of the rising, proclaiming that he was the _Mahdi_, the
prophet whom Mussulmans expect to appear in the last days before
the end of the world. When the English had put down Arabi, they
found themselves forced to cope with the insurrection in the Soudan.
Accordingly General Hicks was despatched with a raw native army to
attack the Mahdi; but he and all his troops were cut to pieces (October
3, 1883). The government then resolved to send to the Soudan Charles
Gordon, a brave and pious engineer officer, who had won much credit
for his wise administration of the land in the days of the old Khedive
Ismail. But he was given no troops to aid him, and was merely told to
withdraw the Egyptian garrisons from the Upper Nile, as the cabinet
did not wish to reconquer the lost provinces, and thought that the
insurgents had been justified in their rebellion by the atrocious
misgovernment of their Egyptian masters. Gordon reached Khartoum, the
capital of the Soudan, but, immediately on his arrival there, was
beleaguered by the hordes of the Mahdi (February, 1884). With two
or three Europeans only to aid him, and no troops but the cowed and
dispirited Egyptians, who had been driven into Khartoum from their
other posts in the lost provinces, Gordon made a heroic defence. But
as he could not withdraw his garrison without help from outside,
he besought the cabinet for English troops, pointing out that the
Soudanese enemy were not patriots struggling to be free, but ferocious
fanatics, who massacred all who refused to acknowledge the Mahdi, and
believed themselves destined to conquer the whole world.
[Sidenote: =The fall of Khartoum.=]
The English ministry ultimately sent a small force, under Lord
Wolseley, the victor of Tel-el-Kebir, with orders to rescue Gordon and
his garrison, and then to retire. But the expedition was despatched too
late. After forcing their way in small boats up the Nile, and marching
180 miles across the waterless Bayuda desert, the main column of the
relieving army beat the Mahdi's hordes at the hard-fought fight of
Abu-Klea (January 22, 1885), and forced their way to within 100 miles
of Khartoum, but there learnt that the place had been stormed, and
Gordon, with the 11,000 men of his garrison, cut to pieces, four days
after the battle of Abu-Klea (January 26, 1885).
[Sidenote: =Progress of the Mahdi.=]
The English then retired and abandoned the whole Soudan to the Mahdi's
wild followers, who soon threatened Egypt itself. Two successive
expeditions were sent to Suakim, on the Red Sea, to endeavour to attack
the Mahdists from that side. Both had to withdraw after advancing a
few miles inland, foiled by the waterless desert and the incessant
harassing of the rebels. Somewhat later the fanatics twice endeavoured
to force their way up the Nile from the south, and were only cast back
after heavy fighting at Wady Halfa, on the very frontier of Egypt.
[Sidenote: =The Land Act of 1881.=]
The war in the Soudan dealt a heavy blow to the reputation of the
Gladstone cabinet. In the mean time, it was beset by even greater
difficulties arising out of the Irish question. In 1880 the government
brought in a bill forbidding any landlord to evict a tenant without
paying him "compensation for disturbance;" the bill was rejected by the
House of Lords. In 1881 they brought forward and carried the second
Irish Land Bill, appointing a commission or Land Court to fix all rents
for fifteen years.
[Sidenote: =The Land League.--The Phoenix Park murders.=]
But the peasantry were far from being satisfied, and aimed at making
an end of "landlordism" altogether. Their leaders had founded the
celebrated "Land League," which organized a system of terrorism all
over the country. Outrage grew more and more rampant, and at last
the government, abandoning the idea of pacification, seized and
imprisoned Parnell and forty other prominent chiefs of the Land League.
In revenge for this, the "No-Rent Manifesto" was published by the
surviving leaders of the League, and largely acted upon in the south
and west of the country. Chaos seemed to have set in, and matters
were made no better by the release of Parnell and his friends, under
the so-called "Kilmainham Treaty," in which the premier consented to
negociate with his prisoners for a cessation of hostilities. Forster,
the Irish Secretary, and Lord Spencer, the Viceroy, resigned, to show
their disapproval of the cabinet's policy. To replace Forster, Lord
Frederic Cavendish was made Secretary for Ireland; but six days after
his appointment he and his under-secretary, Mr. Burke, were murdered in
broad day in Phoenix Park by some members of a Dublin secret society
known as the "Invincibles" (June, 1882).
Universal horror was excited by this murder, but the country did not
quiet down, and a stringent Crimes Bill passed in the same autumn did
not suffice to stop the agrarian outrages which reigned throughout
Ireland. All through the days of the Gladstone cabinet the island
remained in the most deplorable condition, and the Irish parliamentary
party continued to be a thorn in the side of the government.
[Sidenote: =The Reform Bill of 1884.=]
Unhappy both at home and abroad, and fearing the results of a general
election, the prime minister reverted to the old Liberal cry of
Parliamentary reform, and produced the Reform Bill of 1884, which
conferred the franchise on the agricultural labourers, the last
considerable class in the country who still lacked the vote. It was
urged by the Conservative opposition that "redistribution"--the
adjustment of seats to population in due proportion--ought to accompany
this change. The House of Lords threw out the Reform Bill on this
plea. Mr. Gladstone then consented to combine redistribution with
enfranchisement, and the bill was passed in its new shape. The small
boroughs with less than 15,000 inhabitants, which had escaped the bill
of 1832, were deprived of their members, and the seats thus obtained
were divided among the more populous districts and towns.
[Sidenote: =The Home Rulers and the balance of parties.=]
In June, 1885, a chance combination of Conservatives and Home Rulers
beat the government on the budget. Mr. Gladstone resigned, and the
opposition took office, though, like Lord Derby in 1852 and 1866, they
had only a minority in the House. Beaconsfield had died in 1882, and
the Conservatives were now led by Lord Salisbury, the foreign minister
of the years 1878-80. When the session was over, Lord Salisbury
dissolved Parliament, and a general election followed. The Liberals
gained many of the new county seats, but the Conservatives did so
well in the boroughs that the numbers of the two parties in the new
Parliament were not far from equal. This put the balance of power into
the hands of the Home Rulers, who could give the majority to the party
with whom they choose to vote. The first use of their strength was to
turn out the Conservative ministry (January, 1886).
[Sidenote: =The Home Rule Bill.=]
Mr. Gladstone then took office, though he too had a majority in the
Commons only so long as it pleased the Irish members to vote with him.
But soon it appeared that he was prepared to secure their allegiance
by promising them Home Rule. Several members of his cabinet thereupon
resigned. In April a bill for conceding practical legislative
independence to Ireland was brought in. It was thrown out by the action
of 97 English and Scotch Liberals, who voted against their party. The
Gladstone cabinet at once resigned; a general election followed, and a
large majority of "Unionists" was returned.
FOOTNOTES:
[64] See p. 691.
[65] See p. 697.
[66] See pp. 754, 755.
CHAPTER XLIII.
THE LAST YEARS OF QUEEN VICTORIA, 1886-1901--THE SOUTH AFRICAN WAR,
1899-1902.
In August, 1886, Lord Salisbury took office, with the most powerful
majority at his back that any minister had enjoyed since the days of
Lord Grey and the Reform Bill. He was supported by 316 Conservatives
and aided by 78 Liberal Unionists, while the Gladstonian Liberals had
shrunk to 191, so that the Parnellites with their 85 votes no longer
had the balance of power in their hands.
Some political prophets had expected that the return of a majority
pledged to resist Home Rule to the death would render the situation
in Ireland more hopeless than ever, and lead to a general outburst
of riot and assassination. The reverse was the case. A distinct
improvement was perceptible after the fall of the Gladstone ministry,
and in 1887-8 matters began to quiet down. The Parnellites indeed tried
to embitter matters by a scheme called the "Plan of Campaign," by
which the peasantry were to refuse to pay more rent than they thought
proper. But it failed, and a stringent Coercion Bill, passed in July,
1887, did much to repress disorder. A Land Bill which accompanied the
Coercion Act was less successful; it pleased neither landlords nor
tenants, and had no appreciable result, good or bad. But on the whole,
Mr. Arthur Balfour, the new Secretary for Ireland, had a far more
prosperous career than any of his predecessors. He was one of the very
few politicians who gained rather than lost credit while holding the
unenviable post now assigned to him.
In 1887 the Irish question began at last to recede into the background,
and ceased to monopolize public attention. In that year occurred the
Queen's first Jubilee (June 21); the celebration of the fiftieth
anniversary of her accession was taken as the opportunity for a great
imperial pageant, in which representatives drawn not only from the
United Kingdom, but from India and all the colonies, did homage to
their admirable sovereign. The display of respect and love for the
Queen, reported from every corner of her dominions, showed that the
crown, when placed on a worthy head, might be not the least of the
links which bind the empire together.
Foreign politics during the first Salisbury administration sometimes
looked threatening, but never reached any dangerous crisis. There was
occasional friction with France concerning the question of Egypt; Mr.
Gladstone had unwisely promised to evacuate that country when peace was
restored, and the French Government repeatedly hinted that the time had
arrived. Fortunately, the continued existence of the Mahdi's savage
hordes on the Upper Nile, and their frequent attempts to penetrate
down stream, supplied a sufficient reason for the continuation of the
British protectorate, and the retention of the British garrison. But
with Germany our relations were also sometimes very delicate. This was
due to that wholesale annexation of unoccupied corners of the earth,
which was the main feature of German colonial policy between 1885
and 1891. The regions (generally most uninviting in character) which
Germany annexed were in close proximity to old British settlements both
in Africa and Australasia, and lay in some cases in quarters where
British influence had hitherto been paramount. Much friction ensued,
and ultimately (as we shall see in our colonial chapter) complicated
exchanges and delimitations of territory had to be carried out. This
was the period in which we first discovered that Germany, no less than
France, was for the future to be a rival in colonial expansion.
Meanwhile continental politics were suffering radical changes, which
had to be carefully watched. With the death of the aged Emperor
William of Germany in 1888, and the dismissal of Prince Bismarck from
office in 1890, the old conditions of the balance of power in Europe
were altered. The Czar Alexander III. was no friend to Germany, and
the young Kaiser William II. did not share his grandfather's regard
for Russia. For the "league of the three emperors" (Russia, Germany,
Austria), which had been the predominant fact in the seventies and
early eighties, there was substituted a new system of alliances.
Germany and Austria took Italy into partnership, while Russia drew
nearer to France, when it was seen that there was some stability in
the republic--a fact that was not certain until the ridiculous fiasco
of the theatrical adventurer General Boulanger in 1888. By 1891, in
the later days of the first Salisbury ministry, this new arrangement
of the powers of Europe was definitely established. It had for Great
Britain the advantage that the two leagues balanced each other, and
that it was unlikely that both at once would take a hostile attitude
towards us. The wisdom of that policy of neutrality and of abstention
from interference in purely continental affairs, which had long been
our practice, became under the circumstances more obvious than ever.
The danger for the future lay in colonial questions rather than in the
internal politics of Europe.
The domestic policy of the Salisbury cabinet followed the lines that
Lord Beaconsfield had laid down in 1874-80, the aim of the ministers
being to show that the Conservative party could be as fruitful in
measures of practical reform as their predecessors. To this period
belong the Local Government Bill of 1888, creating the "County
Councils," which have worked so well ever since, the Free Education Act
of 1891, and the great conversion of the National Debt. By this latter
measure Mr. Goschen, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, reduced the 3 per
cent. interest on the National Debt to 2-3/4 per cent., paying off in
ready money the few creditors of the nation who refused to accept the
reduction. Thus £1,400,000 a year was saved, and the new stock, till
the financial disturbance caused by the late South African war, was
generally worth in the market more than the old 3 per cents.
[Sidenote: =Fall of Parnell.=]
The chief event in home politics during the later years of the
Salisbury ministry, was the disappearance of Parnell, the dominating
spirit of the Irish party for the last ten years. In 1889 he had
triumphantly vindicated himself from a charge of having approved
the Phoenix Park murders, and had obtained £5000 damages from the
_Times_ newspaper for having circulated the charge, on the authority
of a forger named Piggott. But less than a year later he appeared as
defendant, and not as plaintiff, in the law courts, in the unenviable
capacity of co-respondent in a discreditable divorce case. The time
has long gone by when a notorious evil liver can be accepted as the
leader of a great party. Mr. Gladstone announced to the Irish members
that they must depose their chief; the majority consented, but Parnell,
supported by a few of his followers, refused to accept "British
dictation," or to bow before the "Nonconformist conscience." The Irish
party split up into the fiercely opposed factions of "Parnellites" and
"Anti-Parnellites," whose abuse of each other did much to disgust their
Liberal allies. Parnell himself died in 1891, but the schism continued
and lasted for nearly ten years, destroying much of the power of the
Home Rule movement and the Irish party.
Nine months after Parnell's death, Lord Salisbury dissolved Parliament
(July, 1892). At the General Election which followed there was visible
that "swing of the pendulum" which has usually been a feature of such
times during the nineteenth century. An outgoing government has always
offended some interests, and disappointed others. There are always a
certain number of voters who think it fair "to give the other side
a chance," and vote for the opposition, whoever may be the "ins" or
the "outs." Though the Salisbury ministry had not been conspicuously
unsuccessful at home or abroad, it found itself left in a minority when
the elections were over.
The Queen therefore sent for Mr. Gladstone and bade him form a
Liberal ministry. He had to face a difficult situation, for his
majority was small, and composed entirely of the Irish, very exacting,
untrustworthy, and reckless supporters. The new parliament showed 274
Gladstonians and 81 Irish Home Rulers, 269 Conservatives and 46 Liberal
Unionists. Being compelled to rely on the Irish for his majority,
Gladstone had to make Home Rule the main plank of his party platform.
This was not at all to the taste of many of his British followers,
who would have liked to give precedence to their own particular
schemes--for the abolition of the House of Lords, the disestablishment
of the Welsh and Scottish Churches, the introduction of Temperance
Legislation, of Universal Suffrage, and of numberless other local and
sectional projects.
[Sidenote: =The second Home Rule Bill.=]
In February, 1893, Mr. Gladstone produced his second Home Rule Bill,
which differed from the first mainly in providing Ireland with two,
instead of one, Houses of Parliament, and in leaving at Westminster
eighty Irish members, who were to vote on imperial, but not on purely
British, concerns. Essentially it was the same as its predecessor of
1885. The measure was debated with great fierceness, and at enormous
length; it occupied the House of Commons from February to September,
and was only carried finally when the discussion of many clauses had
been stifled by the use of the "closure." The third reading passed on
September 1 by a majority of 34--301 to 267 votes. The Bill then went
up to the House of Lords, who made short work of it, casting it out on
September 8 by a majority of ten to one (419 to 41).
The Conservative leaders had taken this bold step because they
believed that the country at large was profoundly uninterested in the
bill, and would view its rejection with equanimity. If it had been
really a popular measure, the House of Lords would not have dared to
deal with it in such a drastic fashion. By their abrupt action they
challenged Mr. Gladstone to a second appeal to the nation; if he chose
to dissolve parliament, held another general election, and was once
more triumphant, the peers would have to bow to the general wish of
the country. But Gladstone and his colleagues had no desire to try
the experiment: while professing much righteous indignation, they
proclaimed their determination to put Home Rule aside for the moment,
and to proceed to the introduction of other measures of radical reform.
This resolve incensed the Irish, on whom the Government's majority
depended, while the English Radicals were so much split up into cliques
with different ideals, that it was hard to keep them together. The
Gladstone Government passed nothing but a "Parish Councils Bill," which
extended to small communities that same power of governing themselves
by elective boards which the late Conservative ministry had granted to
the counties.
[Sidenote: =Lord Rosebery Premier.=]
In March, 1894, the premier announced that he was compelled to retire
from office by his increasing physical infirmities. Even his splendid
constitution was at last giving way, and with no immediate prospect
of carrying out any great measure before him, he had resolved to
retire from public life. He was succeeded by Lord Rosebery, his
Foreign Secretary, who was rather a type of the Whig than of the
Radical. He had ably managed the external relations of Great Britain,
and had shown himself an exponent of colonial expansion rather than
an "anti-imperialist." Like many a Whig statesman of the eighteenth
century, he was a keen lover of sport, and alone among British premiers
has run winners for the Derby. He had never professed any great belief
in, or love for, Home Rule. His character and his views seemed little
adapted to make him an appropriate leader for the Gladstonian party:
but as its ablest man he was charged with the formation of the new
ministry.
His tenure of power lasted for sixteen months (March, 1894-June,
1895). It was mainly filled by a record of Bills introduced, but never
carried: a Welsh Disestablishment Act, an Irish Land Act, and a "Local
Option" Act to please the Temperance party, were all brought forward,
but none reached fruition. The votaries of each measure hindered
the progress of the others, in disgust that their own was not given
priority. The party was rent by feuds and intrigues, and in disgust
at the situation Lord Rosebery took the opportunity of a casual vote
on a small military matter, which had gone against the ministry, and
dissolved parliament.
[Sidenote: =Lord Salisbury's Second Ministry.=]
The ensuing General Election resulted in the complete rout of the
Liberal party; they had been in power for three years, but had
accomplished nothing, owing to their internal divisions and the
necessary dependence on the Irish vote, which hampered all their
enterprises. Tired of their futile proceedings, the electors made a
clean sweep of them, and gave Lord Salisbury a majority even larger
than he had possessed in 1886. The new House of Commons of August,
1895, showed 340 Conservatives and 71 Liberal Unionists, but only
177 Liberals, with 70 Anti-Parnellite and 12 Parnellite Home Rulers.
Lord Salisbury's second ministry was differentiated from his first
by the fact that it opened its ranks to the Liberal Unionists.
Mr. Chamberlain, representing the Radicals, and Lord Hartington,
representing the Whig wings of that party, received cabinet office, and
minor posts went to their followers.
This ministry was destined to see the century out, to survive the
venerable Queen Victoria, and to face with success the ordeal of a
general election, which no cabinet had done since Lord Palmerston's
day. Its record has been a stormy one, mainly because it has carried
out the mandate given to it in 1895, by taking in hand a strong
imperial and colonial policy. In its first year it became involved
in a noisy quarrel with the President of the United States, who had
interfered with language of an unnecessarily brusque and provocative
kind in a frontier dispute concerning boundaries in Guiana, which had
been forced upon Britain by the republic of Venezuela. Fortunately the
cabinet kept cool, American feeling calmed down, and the dispute ended
in a satisfactory arbitration, which gave us practically all that we
had ever claimed.
[Sidenote: =Jameson's Raid.=]
This dispute was in full career when a much more dangerous question
was opened, by the mad and piratical "Jameson raid." Ever since Mr.
Gladstone had granted independence to the Transvaal Boers, after the
defeat of Majuba Hill,[67] the condition of affairs in South Africa
had grown progressively worse. The two races of white settlers in
that region nourished incompatible ambitions. To the British colonist
it seemed natural and proper that all the southern end of the "Dark
Continent" should some day federate itself under the Union Jack. The
Dutch had another ideal, that of a Republican South Africa, in which
their own nationality should be dominant. It was shared not only by
the burghers of the Transvaal and the Orange River Free State, but by
the larger part of the Dutch-born inhabitants of Cape Colony. These
rival ideals were inevitably bound to lead to a collision. The Boers
were much incensed at our annexations to the north of their homes,
which in 1889 made Matabeleland and Mashonaland British, and cut off
from them the power of expanding towards the interior. The main agent
in this advance had been Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the founder of the "British
South African Company" which first seized and exploited the coveted
territories: this brought upon him much indignation from the Boers,
and he was soon to merit more. Meanwhile the British section in South
Africa also had its grievances. The discovery of rich gold-reefs in
the Transvaal brought to that land a large mining population, mainly
of British extraction, and led to the founding of the "golden city"
of Johannesburg. Willing to profit from the discovery of the mines,
but frightened and angered by the influx of aliens, the Transvaal
Government refused the settlers any of the duties and privileges of
citizenship. Their autocratic ruler, President Kruger, a clever but
narrow-minded and unscrupulous old man, made it the keystone of his
policy to keep down the miners and refuse them all political rights.
His corrupt and retrograde government irritated the "Uitlanders,"
and in 1895 they formed a conspiracy to rise at Johannesburg and win
their desire by armed rebellion. When the plot had come to a head,
Dr. Jameson, a trusted lieutenant of Mr. Rhodes, crossed the British
frontier with five hundred mounted police, and dashed for Johannesburg.
He was surrounded, beaten, and captured with all his followers,
whereupon the "Uitlander" malcontents also laid down their arms. On
inquiry, it was found that Mr. Rhodes himself had a guilty knowledge
of the plan, a thing utterly incompatible with his position as British
premier of Cape Colony. President Kruger imprisoned his captives for
some time, and then fined them and let them go. The British Government
cashiered the officers concerned in the plot, but did nothing to
Rhodes, though he soon lost his premiership at the Cape. An unwisely
worded telegram of congratulation sent by the German Emperor to Mr.
Kruger caused considerable indignation in England, and led to a
temporary coolness between Berlin and London. But this was the smallest
of the evil results of the "Jameson Raid," which embittered to an
intolerable degree the already existing feud between the British and
the Dutch inhabitants of South Africa. Yet it was to be nearly four
years more before this deep-lying hatred led to open war.
Meanwhile there was a delusive interval of quiet, during which there
took place the second "Jubilee" of Queen Victoria, who had now reached
the sixtieth year of her reign and the seventy-eighth of her life.
It was celebrated (June 20, 1897) with the deepest personal devotion
to the aged sovereign, and with an even greater display of imperial
sentiment all round the British world than had been seen in 1887. Ere
three years had elapsed, it was to be proved that this display of
loyalty to the crown and the empire from the British colonies was no
vain show, but the manifestation of a very real solidarity of sentiment
and interests.
[Sidenote: =Death of Mr. Gladstone.=]
Domestic politics meanwhile remained barren and uninteresting; the
Government carried through nothing more than a few small measures of
social reform, and an Irish Local Government Act (1898) of doubtful
expediency. But their opponents showed no rallying power. Mr. Gladstone
died on May 19, 1898, at the great age of eighty-eight: after his
decease his late followers were more divided than ever, and seemed
unable to formulate any common political programme, or to discover any
means of appealing to popular sentiment. The Radical party changed its
leader twice in three years, and could never make up its mind whether
"Home Rule was dead," or whether it had to be resuscitated as a war-cry
with which Irish allies might be lured back to the fold.
[Sidenote: =Reconquest of the Soudan.=]
[Sidenote: =The Fashoda incident.=]
Meanwhile foreign affairs once more grew threatening, and in 1898 we
were to be upon the brink of a struggle with our nearest European
neighbour. Ever since the Gladstone ministry in 1885 abandoned the
Soudan to the fanatical followers of the Mahdi[68] the southern
frontier of Egypt had been exposed to the raids of the wild Soudanese.
To end this nuisance the Salisbury Government resolved to undertake
the reconquest of Khartoum and the destruction of the Mahdist power.
In 1896 the first step was taken, when Sir Herbert Kitchener subdued
Dongola and the northern provinces which obeyed the "Khalifa" Abdullah,
the successor of the Mahdi. In 1898 an Egyptian army, strengthened by a
large British contingent, marched under the same commander to complete
the work. In a great battle outside Omdurman the hordes of the Khalifa
were routed, and he himself forced to fly into the desert, where he
perished a year later in a small skirmish. But when Kitchener took over
the administration of the reconquered lands, he was surprised to find
a French force on the Upper Nile, at Fashoda, above Khartoum. A small
expedition under a Major Marchand had pushed across from the Congo, and
established itself in the middle of one of the old Egyptian provinces,
where the tricolour had been hoisted, apparently with the intention
of setting up a claim to territorial acquisitions in the Soudan. The
French Government had been warned long before that an invasion of this
region would be regarded as an unfriendly act. It was now summoned to
withdraw Marchand or face the consequences. For a moment war seemed
probable, but fortunately the ministers of the republic faltered and
withdrew their claim. This was a happy chance, as Great Britain a year
later was to be engaged in another struggle, which would have taken a
very different turn if we had already been engaged in hostilities with
a great European power.
In 1899 the South African problem, which had been growing more and
more dangerous since the "Jameson Raid," came to a head. President
Kruger had spent the time in accumulating enormous stores of arms
and munitions of war from Europe, in concluding an offensive and
defensive alliance with his neighbours of the Orange Free State,
and in establishing relations with the discontented Dutch colonists
of the Cape. This last was the most disquieting feature of the
situation: an association called the "Africander Bond" organized the
Colonial burghers into almost openly avowed hostility to the British
connection, and manifested effusive sympathy with Kruger's policy. The
old president's rule over the Uitlanders had become more oppressive
than ever since the "Raid:" he very naturally regarded these aliens
as enemies, refused them any concessions, and maddened them with
monopolies, corrupt legislation, and insulting speeches. In April,
1899, a great petition signed by 21,000 British subjects in the
Transvaal was sent to the Queen, setting forth their unhappy condition,
and begging that an inquiry might be made into their wrongs.
[Sidenote: =The Bloemfontein Conference.=]
This appeal led to the "Bloemfontein Conference" of May, 1899, in which
Sir Alfred Milner met President Kruger, and tried to induce him to
grant the Uitlanders the power of obtaining civic rights after five
years' residence in the Transvaal. The president not only refused
this, but disputed the existence of the British suzerainty over the
Republic established by the convention of 1882. The negotiators parted
in a state of mutual exasperation, Milner reporting to London that the
British suzerainty was in danger, and that he could only get the most
vague and illusory promises of concession for the Uitlanders; while
Kruger told his _Raad_ that "though he did not desire war, he could not
give way an inch."
From this moment armed strife was inevitable, though the British
Government and nation do not seem to have realized the fact. Mr.
Chamberlain kept making proposals for a resumption of negotiations
during the summer, but, after long delays, received in September
nothing but a formal notice that the President disowned any British
suzerainty over the Transvaal. This looked ominous, and the cabinet
resolved to reinforce the garrisons of the Cape and Natal, where in
August there were in all only 6000 troops. By September this force
was nearly tripled by battalions sent in from India and from the home
stations.
[Sidenote: =Kruger declares war.=]
Then followed, to the intense surprise of all who had not been studying
African politics very closely, an insulting ultimatum from Pretoria,
to the effect that if the reinforcements were not at once withdrawn,
a declaration of war would follow in twenty-four hours (October 9,
1899). Next day hostilities began, and the Boer army, which had been
mobilizing for many days, crossed the frontier of Natal. The Orange
River Free State declared war on the same day.
The strength of the two republics had been utterly miscalculated by
the home authorities, even when they saw war impending. The Burghers
could put 70,000 well-armed mounted riflemen into the field, and were
supplied with superabundant stores of modern cannon and munitions. They
were also relying on the support of a general rebellion of the Cape
Dutch, who had been secretly armed and organized during the preceding
months.
[Sidenote: =Siege of Ladysmith.=]
It was fortunate for Britain that the Boers' strategy was very bad:
instead of entering Cape Colony, where they could have raised the
whole countryside in their aid, they sent their main army into Natal,
and most of their other forces to besiege the outlying garrisons of
Mafeking and Kimberley. This misdirection of their energy saved the
British domination in South Africa. After a few preliminary skirmishes,
the burghers beat Sir George White, our commander in Natal, at the
battle of Lombard's Kop (October 30). He retired into a fortified
position at Ladysmith, trusting that the enemy would gather round him
instead of pushing further into British territory. This expectation
was correct: the burghers surrounded the 12,000 men concentrated at
Ladysmith, built lines to shut them in, and worried them by a fruitless
bombardment; but they did not attempt to close, or to destroy the
army by a general assault. The same took place in the other centres of
strife: both at Mafeking and Kimberley the enemy wasted their strength
in tedious blockades, while the time of their predominance was passing
away. During the first two months of the war, they had a threefold
superiority of numbers, and only used it in shutting up the three
garrisons.
The British military authorities, still gravely underrating their
adversaries, had despatched in November an army corps of 40,000
men, which they thought sufficient to end the war. There was such a
misconception of the numbers and fighting power of the Boers, that when
the colonies began to offer aid, the War Office actually told them
that "infantry would be preferred," for a campaign in which the enemy
consisted entirely of lightly moving mounted riflemen! The command was
given to Sir Redvers Buller, a veteran of the Zulu and Soudan wars, of
whom much was expected.
[Sidenote: =The "Black Week."=]
Buller went to Natal himself with 18,000 men, sending the rest of his
troops to Cape Colony, where one column under Lord Methuen marched to
relieve Kimberley, while another under General Gatacre moved up to
suppress the rebellion already springing up in the northern parts of
Cape Colony. Then followed the "Black Week" of December 9-16, 1899.
The force under Lord Methuen forced its way almost to Kimberley,
after severe fighting, but on December 11 was beaten back with great
loss from an attempt to storm by night the lines of Magersfontein. At
the same time the column under Gatacre was routed by the rebels at
Stormberg. But the worst disaster was suffered by Buller himself. He
found the main Boer army still round Ladysmith, with a "covering force"
arranged behind the Tugela in the lines of Colenso. In an attempt to
break through, by a reckless and unskilful frontal attack, he suffered
a complete defeat, losing ten guns and 1000 men. So entirely was his
confidence destroyed, that he suggested to Sir George White that he
might have to surrender Ladysmith, and reported that the Colenso
position could not be forced.
Fortunately, the enemy did not take the offensive. Both at
Magersfontein and at Colenso they remained passive in their lines, and
allowed the British to rally and reform. The only wise move which
they made was to begin to send considerable forces into Cape Colony,
where many districts at once rose in rebellion to aid them. But their
main strength still lay round in the beleaguered towns of Ladysmith,
Mafeking, and Kimberley, where they accomplished nothing.
[Illustration: THEATRE OF
THE SOUTH AFRICAN
WAR
OF 1899-1902.]
The disasters of December caused intense dismay in England. But
the cabinet and the nation faced the situation with coolness and
determination; there was no panic, but only a resolve that the full
force of the empire should be turned upon South Africa. Not only were
the few remaining regular battalions from the home stations sent out,
and the militia mobilized for garrison duty, but a general appeal was
made for volunteers both in Britain and in the colonies. It was at last
realized that mounted men were required: the mother country gave 12,000
"yeomanry" at the first summons, but the colonies did even more, both
Canada and Australia contributing men and horses with a liberality that
was absolutely astounding. The Australian colonies and New Zealand
sent to South Africa, in the space of two years, no less than 22,000
mounted rifles; the South African loyalists gave 12,000, Canada 6000,
and other colonies smaller numbers.
[Sidenote: =Victories of Lord Roberts.=]
But a new commander was even more needed than new troops. Lord Roberts,
the hero of the Cabul-Candahar march, was sent out to take charge of
the war, with Lord Kitchener, the victor of Omdurman, as his chief of
the staff. Even before the bulk of the reinforcements had arrived,
the change in the direction of affairs was soon marked by a turn in
the tide of success. Lord Roberts massed 35,000 men on the western
line of advance, where Methuen was still standing at bay opposite the
entrenchments of Magersfontein. By a sudden flank march he evicted the
Boers from this position, relieved Kimberley, and captured General
Cronje and 4000 of the late besiegers at Paardeberg (February 27). Then
moving into the heart of the Orange Free State, he swept aside all
opposition and occupied Bloemfontein, its capital (March 11, 1900).
Buller meanwhile, with the army of Natal, made two more ill-managed
attempts to relieve Ladysmith. They failed, but a third assault was
more successful, and the Boer lines were pierced after much hard
fighting, ending in the battle of Pieter's Hill. The enemy withdrew to
defend the Transvaal, and Sir George White's garrison was relieved when
it had been reduced to starvation point, and was at the very end of its
resources (February 29, 1900).
[Sidenote: =The march to Pretoria.=]
The second period of the war had now arrived, in which the British
could take the offensive. They had by this time a vast superiority of
force, having 200,000 men in South Africa, while the Cape rebels had
mostly surrendered, and many even of the burghers of the two republics
had retired to their homes in despair. Lord Roberts brought the regular
fighting to an end in two campaigns: during the first (April-May, 1900)
he fought his way to Johannesburg and Pretoria, and captured both
places. After a short rest he marched against the main Boer army, which
had rallied in the Eastern Transvaal, and forced it to disperse or to
retire over the Portuguese frontier (August-September, 1900). President
Kruger fled to Europe with the state-chest of the republic, and devoted
himself to the task of stirring up public opinion on the Continent
against Great Britain--a task in which he had only too much success.
[Sidenote: =Guerilla warfare.=]
It had been hoped that when the regular resistance of the Boers ceased,
the war would come to a speedy end. After Lord Roberts returned to
England, the impression was strengthened almost to certainty. But a
bitter disappointment awaited the British cabinet and nation. Instead
of surrendering, the enemy broke up into guerilla bands, which rode
through the country cutting railways, capturing convoys, and destroying
isolated detachments and small garrisons. There were still 40,000 of
them in arms, and such a force ranging over a country as large as
France and Germany put together, was most difficult to deal with. They
maintained their desperate struggle for no less than nineteen months
(October, 1900-April, 1902). Lord Kitchener finally had to subdue
them by the "method of attrition." It was only by constant "drives,"
in which large numbers of mounted troops scoured the countryside to
catch the bands, and by the building of lines of block-houses across
their favourite spheres of action, that the burghers were finally
worn down. They displayed an enterprise and a reckless courage in
these last months of the war which they had been far from showing
at its commencement. But at last even their stubborn spirits were
humbled to the idea of surrender: after more than half of them had
been captured or slain, and when all their families had been removed
to "concentration camps," they opened negotiations (May, 1902), and
finally laid down their arms to the number of 21,000 men.
Under a wise and conciliatory government there seems no reason to
doubt that they may ultimately become useful and trustworthy citizens
of the British empire. But it will try all the wisdom of the able
administrator who now presides over all South Africa, from Cape Town
to the Zambesi, to settle the multifarious problems which the war
has left behind it. Meanwhile Britain is quit of the most dangerous
war which she has waged since Waterloo, a war which brought to light
many faults in her military system, and much incompetence among her
generals, but which also revealed that the heart of her people was
sound and the unity of her empire solid. It was a most reassuring sign
that the nation paid no attention to the desperate attempts made to
exploit the early disasters of the war for party purposes, and to get
up an agitation against the Government. The movement fell flat, and
at the General Election, which occurred in the middle of the war, the
Salisbury cabinet was replaced in power with a very large majority.
Still more notable was the splendid loyalty with which the colonies
rallied round the mother-country in her day of need, and poured in
their best fighting men for an imperial war, in which it might have
been pleaded that they were not directly concerned. Not even the
blindest observer can fail to see that it is futile to doubt any longer
the existence of the "imperial sentiment."
[Sidenote: =Death of Queen Victoria.=]
It was a source of regret to every loyal inhabitant of the British
dominions that the aged sovereign under whom the war began did not
survive to see its victorious termination, and to close her eyes on
a world at peace. But Queen Victoria, whose powers had been slowly
failing for the last year of her life, only just lived to see the new
century, and expired on the 22nd of January, 1901. She was followed
to the grave by the regrets of a people who realized fully what they
owed to one who had been the model of constitutional sovereigns, and
had set so high the standard of public as well of domestic duty.
Personally she had done more to secure the perpetuation of the British
monarchy than even the most sanguine observer could have hoped, when
she came to the throne, an unexperienced girl of eighteen, in the year
1837. Surveying her eventful reign of sixty-four years--the longest in
English history--with all its progress and endeavour, we trust that our
descendants may look upon the "Victorian Age" as not the least glorious
period in our country's annals.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] See p. 713.
[68] See p. 715.
CHAPTER XLIV.
INDIA AND THE COLONIES.
1815-1902.
Down to the end of the great struggle with Revolutionary and Imperial
France, the history of the rise and development of the British empire
beyond seas is intimately connected with the history of Britain's wars
in Europe. The contest for colonial and commercial supremacy is at the
root alike of the war of the Austrian succession, the Seven Years' War,
the war of American Independence, and the war with Bonaparte.
But after 1815 this close interpenetration of the European and colonial
affairs of England comes to an abrupt end. For the last eighty years
they have touched each other at very rare intervals; the only occasions
of importance when European complications have reacted on our dominions
over-sea have been when our strained relations with Russia have led to
troubles on the north-western frontier of India.
For the most part, the development of the colonial and Indian empire
of Britain has gone on unvexed by any interference from without. We
have therefore relegated our treatment of it to a separate chapter, set
apart from our domestic annals.
[Sidenote: =The British Empire in 1815.=]
In 1815 the British territories in India were already by far the
most important of our possessions, but they comprised not one-fourth
of the dominions which now acknowledge Edward VII. as their direct
sovereign. In Africa we owned only a few fever-smitten ports on the
Gulf of Guinea, and the newly annexed Dutch colony of the Cape of
Good Hope, inhabited by a scanty and disaffected population of Boers
and a multitude of wild Kaffirs. In Australia, the small convict
settlements of New South Wales and Tasmania gave little signs of
development, blighted as they were by the unsatisfactory character
of the unwilling emigrants. Our group of colonies in North America
was the most promising possession of the crown; granted a liberal
constitution by Pitt's wise Canada Act, they were growing rapidly in
wealth and population. They had shown a most commendable loyalty during
the American war of 1812-14, and the divergence in race and religion
between the old French _habitans_ of the province of Quebec and the new
English settlers in Upper Canada had not as yet brought any trouble.
But the greatest part of British North America was still a wilderness.
The limit of settled land was only just approaching Lake Huron; even
in the more eastern provinces, such as Quebec and Nova Scotia, there
were still vast unexplored tracts of waste and forest. Into the far
West, the basins of the Columbia and Mackenzie rivers, only a few
adventurers--fur-traders of the Hudson's Bay Company and French
half-breed trappers--had as yet penetrated.
[Sidenote: =The West Indian Islands.=]
The West Indian colonies, somewhat increased in number by the results
of our wars between 1793 and 1815, had suffered many evils from French
privateering and negro rebellions, but were now at the height of their
prosperity. Vigorously if recklessly developed by the slave-owning
planters, they were at this moment the main producers of sugar and
coffee for the whole world. The colonies of France and Spain had
suffered so fearfully that they could hardly attempt competition.
Other outlying possessions were in the hands of England, some destined
to prosperity, some to obscurity--such as Mauritius, the Falklands, St.
Helena, Bermuda--but we have no space for more than a hasty mention of
them.
The history of the more important groups--India, Australia, Canada, and
South Africa--requires a more detailed treatment.
[Sidenote: =British territorial possessions in India.=]
At the great peace of 1815 we were masters in Northern India of
the great province of Bengal, lately increased by the "North-West
Provinces," the territory between Allahabad and Delhi which we had
taken from Scindiah in 1801-3. We had also annexed in the same year
the possessions of the Rajah of Berar in Orissa. These three tracts
constituted the presidency of Bengal, and were governed from Calcutta.
South of Orissa the whole east coast of Hindostan was in our hands, the
Carnatic having been annexed in 1799. The Carnatic, the lands taken
from Sultan Tippoo, and the "Circars" which the Nizam had ceded to us,
formed the presidency of Madras. Our possessions in this quarter were
completed by Ceylon, which we had acquired from the Dutch at the treaty
of Amiens. In Western India the Bombay presidency consisted as yet of
no more than the islands of Bombay and Salsette and a few ports along
the coast.
[Illustration: INDIA
1815-90.]
[Sidenote: =The vassal states.=]
But in addition to these dominions, ruled directly by the Company,
English influence was predominant in a much larger tract of India.
The Nawab of Oude in the north, the Nizam in the Deccan, the Rajah of
Mysore in the south, the Peishwa in the west, and many smaller princes,
were all bound to us by subsidiary treaties; they had covenanted to
guide their foreign policy by our own, and to supply us with troops and
subsidies in time of war.
[Sidenote: =The Mahratta and Rajput states.=]
In all the Indian Peninsula there were only three groups of states
which were still independent of the British power. The more remote
Mahratta powers--the realms governed by Scindiah, Holkar, the Gaikwar,
and the Rajah of Berar--were still for all intents and purposes
autonomous. The treaties which Lord Wellesley had made with them
were not enforced by his weaker successors, and the Mahratta princes
continued their feuds with each other and their incursions into those
parts of India which were not yet under British control. Their chief
victims were the unfortunate states of Rajputana, where a cluster of
native princes of ancient stock were as yet unprotected by treaties
with the East India Company.
[Sidenote: =The Sikhs.--Runjit Singh.=]
Beyond the Rajputs lay the third district of India which was still
independent--the Sikh principality of the Punjab. The Sikhs were a sect
of religious enthusiasts who had revolted against the misgovernment
of the Great Mogul some fifty years before, and had formed themselves
into a disorderly commonwealth. But one great chief, Runjit Singh,
had taught them to combine, and forced them into union. He ruled
them for many years, and organized the whole sect into an army which
combined the courage of fanaticism with the strictest discipline. He
was friendly to the British, and took care never to come into collision
with them.
Thus in 1815 the British in India held a position dominating half the
peninsula, but unprovided with any solid frontier on the land side.
They were charged with the care of several weak and imbecile dependent
states, surrounded by greedy and vigorous neighbours. Unless they were
to make up their minds to go back, they were bound to go forward, for
no final peace was possible till it should be settled whether the East
India Company or the Mahrattas and Sikhs were to be the dominating
power in the whole land between the Indus and the Bay of Bengal.
[Sidenote: =Lord Hastings Governor-General.--The Nepaulese war.=]
The first important advance after the departure of Wellesley was made
by the Marquis of Hastings, Governor-General from 1814 to 1823. This
active ruler was resolved not to permit the petty insults to British
territory, and the plundering of British allies which the unsettled
condition of the frontier made possible. In 1814 he attacked and drove
back into their hills the Gurkhas, the hill tribes of Nepaul, who had
been wont to harass the northern frontier of Bengal and Oude. They
offered a desperate resistance, but when once beaten became the fast
friends of the British, and have given valuable aid in every war which
we have since waged in India.
[Sidenote: =Extinction of the Pindarees.=]
The Nepaul war having ended in 1815, Hastings took a larger matter in
hand: the dominions of our vassal the Nizam and of the other princes
of Central India were much vexed by the Pindarees, organized bands
of marauders--like the free companies of the Middle Ages--who found
harbourage in the territories of the Mahrattas, and, when not employed
in the civil wars of those chiefs, plundered on their own account all
over the Deccan. Under a great captain of adventurers named Cheetoo,
these hordes became a public danger to all India. Hastings had them
hunted down and destroyed by armies which started simultaneously from
Madras, Bengal, and Bombay. They were completely exterminated, and
their leader Cheetoo fled alone to the jungle, and was devoured by a
tiger.
[Sidenote: =The third Mahratta war.=]
The Pindarees had long received the secret countenance of the Mahratta
chiefs, and while the British were still engaged in chasing the
marauders, three of the great chiefs of Western India took arms. The
Peishwa Bajee Rao was anxious to free himself from the dependence which
Wellesley had imposed on him in 1801. He conspired with the Rajah of
Berar and the regents who ruled for the young Holkar. But the event of
the third Mahratta war (1817-18) was not for a moment doubtful. The
allied chiefs never succeeded in joining each other: Bajee Rao was
defeated in front of Poona by a mere handful of British troops, and
after long wanderings was forced to lay down his arms and surrender.
The army of the Holkar state was routed, after a much harder struggle,
at Mehidpore; the hordes of the Rajah of Berar fled before 1500 British
troops at Seetabuldee. Each of the confederates fought for his own hand
without aid from his neighbour, and all alike were crushed.
The campaign of 1817-18 made an end of the independence of the
Mahrattas. The Peishwa's whole realm was annexed to the Bombay
presidency: he himself was sent to live on a government pension at
Cawnpore, far away in Oude. One third of the dominions of Holkar
was confiscated; the Rajah of Berar was deposed. Stringent terms
of subjection were imposed on both their states. All the Mahratta
principalities now came under British control, for Scindiah and the
Gaikwar of Baroda, who had taken no part in the war, consented to sign
treaties which made them the vassals of the Company. The same position
was gladly assumed by the chiefs of Rajputana, who had suffered many
ills at the hands of their Mahratta neighbours, and were only too glad
to gain immunity from assault under the protection of the Company's
flag. In all India only the realm of Runjit Singh beyond the Sutlej was
now outside the sphere of British influence.
[Sidenote: =Internal tranquillity.--The Burmese war.=]
Owing to the wisdom of that aged prince, it was to be yet many years
before the English and the Sikhs came into collision. For some years
after the victories of Lord Hastings in 1817-18, India enjoyed a term
of comparative peace. Lord Amherst and Lord William Bentinck, the two
next Governor-Generals, were more noted for the internal reforms which
they carried out than for the wars which they waged. The only important
annexation of the period 1823-35 resulted from a struggle with a
power which lay altogether outside the bounds of India. The King of
Burmah assailed the eastern limits of Bengal and was punished by being
deprived of Assam and Aracan.
[Sidenote: =Reforms of Lord Amherst and Lord W. Bentinck.=]
But the times of Lord Amherst and Lord William Bentinck have a far
better distinction from the liberal measures of reform which they
introduced than from any annexations. The latter Governor-General, a
man of a strong will and a very enlightened mind, put down the horrible
practice of _suttee_, or widow-burning, and crushed the Thugs, the
disguised gang-robbers who infested the roads and took life half for
plunder and half as a religious Sacrifice. He lent his support to
Christian missions, which the Company had hitherto discouraged, from a
dread of offending native susceptibilities. He introduced steamships on
the Ganges, and worked out a scheme for the carrying of the mails to
Europe by way of the Red Sea and the short overland journey from Suez
to Alexandria. But this wise plan was not finally adopted till many
years after.
[Sidenote: =Renewal of the Company's charter.=]
In 1833, while Lord William Bentinck was still in power, the East India
Company's charter from the crown ran out, and was only renewed by the
Whig government of Lord Grey on the condition that the Company should
entirely give up its old commercial monopolies, and confine itself to
the exercise of patronage and the duties of administration. For the
last twenty-five years of its rule the tone of the great corporation
was vastly improved, now that dividends were not the sole aim of its
directors.
[Sidenote: =The First Afghan war.--Lord Auckland restores Shah Sujah.=]
In 1836 Lord Auckland took over the governor-generalship. His tenure of
power is mainly notable for the commencement of the disastrous first
Afghan war. Frightened by the intrigues of the Russians with Dost
Mohammed, the ruler of Afghanistan, Lord Auckland unwisely determined
to interfere with the internal politics of that barren and warlike
country. There was living in exile in India Shah Sujah, a prince
who had once ruled at Cabul, but had long been driven out by his
countrymen. The Governor-General determined to restore him by force
of arms, and to make him the vassal of England. Though we could only
approach Afghanistan by crossing the neutral territory of the Sikhs,
this distant enterprise was taken in hand. An English army passed the
Suleiman mountains, occupied Candahar, stormed Ghuznee, and finally
entered Cabul (1839). Shah Sujah was placed on his ancient throne, and
part of the victorious troops were withdrawn to India.
[Sidenote: =Destruction of the British force at Cabul.=]
But the Afghan tribes hated the nominee of the stranger, and refused
to obey the Shah. Lord Auckland was compelled to leave an English
force at Candahar and another at Cabul to support his feeble vassal.
For two uneasy years the garrison held its own (1839-41) against
sporadic risings. But in the winter of 1841-42 a general insurrection
of the whole of the tribes of Afghanistan swept all before it. The
very townsmen of Cabul took arms and murdered the English resident
almost under the eyes of the Shah. General Elphinstone, who commanded
the brigade at Cabul, was a feeble old invalid. He allowed himself
to be shut up in his entrenched camp, saw his supplies cut off, and
was finally compelled to make a retreat in the depth of winter, after
signing a humiliating treaty with the Afghan chiefs, and giving them
hostages. But the treacherous victors attacked the retreating army as
it struggled through the snow of the Khoord Cabul Pass, and massacred
the whole force. One British regiment, three sepoy regiments, and
12,000 camp-followers were cut to pieces. Only a single horseman,
Dr. Brydon, made his way through to Jelalabad, the nearest English
garrison, to bear the tidings of the annihilation of the whole army.
[Sidenote: =End of the war.--Dost Mohammed reinstated.=]
Shah Sujah was murdered by his rebellious subjects, and all Afghanistan
was lost save the two fortresses of Candahar and Jelalabad, whose
gallant defence forms the only redeeming episode in the war. But to
revenge our disaster, if for no better purpose, a new English army
under General Pollock forced the Khyber Pass, defeated the Afghans,
and reoccupied Cabul. They evacuated it after destroying its chief
buildings, and Dost Mohammed, whom we had deposed in 1839, was
permitted to return to the throne from which we had evicted him. For
long years after we left Afghanistan alone, the memory of the massacre
in the Khoord Cabul Pass sufficing to deter even the most enterprising
Governor-Generals from interfering with its treacherous and fanatical
tribes.
[Sidenote: =Lord Ellenborough annexes Scinde.=]
Ere the Afghan war was over, Lord Auckland had been superseded by Lord
Ellenborough, an able and active ruler, whose qualities were only
marred by a tendency to grandiloquence and proclamations in the style
of the Great Napoleon. He not only brought the Afghan war to its close,
but annexed Scinde, the barren lower valley of the Indus. We were drawn
into a quarrel with the Ameers of that country, and it was overrun by
a small army under Sir Charles Napier, who beat the Ameers at Meanee,
though their forces outnumbered him twelvefold. Scinde was annexed to
the Bombay Presidency, and by its possession we encompassed on two
sides the Punjab, the only remaining independent state in India.
[Sidenote: =Lord Hardinge and the Sikh invasion.=]
Runjit Singh had died in 1839, and his successors were weak princes who
perished in civil wars or by palace conspiracies. They were utterly
unable to restrain their arrogant and unruly army, which made and
unmade sovereigns at Lahore like the Roman praetorians of the third
century. In 1845 the rash and ignorant generals of the Sikhs resolved
to attack the British, and dreamed of overrunning all India. They
crossed the Sutlej and invaded the North-Western provinces ere the new
Governor-General, Lord Hardinge, had fully realized that war was at
hand.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Ferozeshah and Sobraon.=]
Our Sikh wars saw the hardest fighting which has ever taken place in
India. The army which Runjit Singh had spent his life in training
was a splendid force, and proved able in the shock of battle to beat
the sepoys of the Company. It was only by the desperate fighting of
the British troops, little aided by their native auxiliaries, that
the Sikhs were finally driven back. Unfortunately, Lord Gough, the
commander-in-chief, was a reckless general, whose only idea of tactics
was to dash his men at the centre of the enemy's position, regardless
of batteries, obstacles, and earthworks. A more circumspect officer
could probably have attained his end at a much less cost of life. At
Ferozeshah he was completely foiled in his first attempt to force
the entrenched camp of the Sikhs, and only succeeded on the next day
because the enemy, who had suffered as heavily as the British, had not
the heart to stand up to a second battle within twenty-four hours, and
retired from his position. Sobraon, the decisive engagement of the
campaign, was even more bloody; but on this occasion the Sikhs fought
with the Sutlej at their backs; and when at last they were driven from
their lines, a fourth of their army perished in the river (February 10,
1846). The Lahore government then asked for peace, which was granted
them on condition that Dhulip Singh, the young son of Runjit Singh,
should acknowledge the suzerainty of the British.
[Sidenote: =Battles of Chillianwallah and Guzerat.=]
But the brave and obstinate Sikhs did not yet consider themselves
beaten. Less than two years after the first struggle was over they
again tried the fortune of war. In March, 1848, Moolraj, the Governor
of Mooltan, rose in rebellion to throw off the British suzerainty. The
whole Sikh army fell away to him, and a campaign not less desperate
than that of 1845-6 began. Lord Gough, who was still in command,
repeated his former tactics at Chillianwallah, and flung his army
against a line of batteries hidden by jungle. The British only carried
them with heavy loss, the 24th foot being completely cut to pieces.
The old general's disregard for common prudence and the lives of his
men so irritated his officers, that when they again met the enemy at
the decisive battle of Guzerat (February 22, 1849) they clandestinely
confined him on a housetop, till the Sikh entrenchments had been
pounded for three hours by an overwhelming fire of artillery. The
British infantry were then let loose, carried the earthworks with
little loss, and brought the campaign to a prompt end, for the whole
Sikh army surrendered a few days later (March 12, 1849).
[Sidenote: =Lord Dalhousie annexes the Punjab.=]
The Punjab was now annexed, for Lord Dalhousie, the Governor-General
who had succeeded Lord Hardinge, did not intend to give the Sikhs
the opportunity of raising a third war. Dhulip Singh, the titular
Maharajah, was sent to live in England on a pension. Certain outlying
districts, such as Cashmere, were left to chiefs who had not opposed
us in the struggle of 1848; but Lahore and the whole of the plain of
the "Five Rivers" were put under British rule. The officers to whom
the settlement of the Punjab was given over were the picked men of
India: so ably and genially did they do their work, that the Sikhs
soon settled down into quiet and loyal subjects. When next the British
empire in Hindostan was in danger, it was largely saved by the gallant
aid of levies from the Punjab.
[Sidenote: =The second Burmese war.=]
After the great struggle with the Sikhs was over, the rest of Lord
Dalhousie's administration was comparatively uneventful. The second
Burmese war of 1852, provoked by the ill-treatment of English merchants
at Rangoon, was a short and easy campaign, which resulted in the
annexation of Pegu, the coast district of the Burmese kingdom, and the
mouths of the Irrawaddy.
[Sidenote: =Further annexations by Lord Dalhousie.=]
But some of the doings of Dalhousie in India itself, though they made
little noise at the time, were fated to have grave consequences. He
held strongly the doctrine that direct British administration was the
best thing for natives, and took every opportunity of annexing vassal
states where the ruling houses died out. This was much against the
prejudices of the Hindoos, who always try to perpetuate their family by
adoption when natural heirs fail. By refusing to allow of this custom
Lord Dalhousie was able to annex the great Mahratta state of the Rajahs
of Berar, the old opponents of Wellesley and Hastings. He also took
over the smaller Mahratta states of Jhansi and Satara, and refused to
allow the deposed peishwa, Bajee Rao, to pass on his title and pension
to his adopted son, the Nana Sahib. There is no doubt that these acts
gravely displeased pious Hindoos.
[Sidenote: =Dethronement of the King of Oude.=]
Moreover, in 1856, Dalhousie, more by the Company's wish than his own,
completed his wide annexations by dethroning the King of Oude, the
chief Moslem state of northern India, and the oldest of the vassals
of the British. His abominable misgovernment and folly drew down his
fate deservedly enough; but the seizure of Oude was not popular even
among the subjects who were delivered from the tyrant's rule, and it
created a feeling of distrust and resentment among all the surviving
feudatories of the Company.
[Sidenote: =Lord Canning Governor-General.=]
Lord Dalhousie, broken down by hard work, returned to England to die,
soon after the annexation of Oude. He was succeeded by Lord Canning,
the son of the great Tory prime minister of 1827. Scarcely had Canning
gathered up the reins of power when the terrible sepoy mutiny of 1857
broke out.
[Sidenote: =The native army in India.=]
A power which undertakes to hold down a vast empire by a great
mercenary army raised from among the peoples of the land, is always
exposed to the danger of military rebellion. The army has no other
incentives than its pay, its habit of disciplined obedience, and its
loyalty to its officers, to keep it true to its foreign masters. If the
soldiery realize their power, and are ready to unite with each other
for a common end, they may aspire to cast out their employers and rule
for their own benefit. Mutinies of single regiments were not unfrequent
episodes in the history of the Indian army, but hitherto no general
revolt had occurred.
In 1857 the proportion of British to native troops in India was
abnormally low. The regiments withdrawn for the Crimean war had never
been replaced, and small expeditions to Persia and China[69] were
absorbing many more. In the whole peninsula the European stood to the
sepoy troops in the ratio of only one to six--at present one to three
is considered the least that is safe. Moreover, the spirit of many of
the native troops was very bad. They had been so flattered and pampered
by the government that they believed themselves to be the masters of
the situation, and despised the few white regiments scattered among
them.
[Sidenote:=Outbreak of the mutiny.=]
The army was arrogant and discontented; the old ruling families of the
lately annexed states were intriguing and conspiring all over northern
India. A widely spread prophecy that the rule of the British was only
to last for a hundred years, dating from Plassey and the annexation of
Bengal, was disturbing the minds of the masses, when a trivial incident
let loose the elements of discord. The government was introducing among
the native troops the use of rifles, in place of the old musket. The
new weapons required greased cartridges, which were being duly issued,
when some mischievous incendiary spread among the Bengal sepoys the
rumour that they were being defiled. The cartridges, it was said,
were lubricated with the grease of pigs and cattle, in order that the
Hindoos might lose their caste by touching the flesh of the sacred
cow, and the Mussulmans might be polluted by the contamination of the
unholy swine. When all had become unclean, it was said, the government
intended to make Christians of them. This foolish rumour sufficed to
set the army in a flame. Two regiments which mutinied near Calcutta
were easily disbanded; but a formidable and successful revolt of the
sepoy brigade at Meerut, near Delhi (May 10, 1857), was the signal for
the outbreak of well-nigh the whole Bengal army.
[Sidenote: =The heir of the Moguls proclaimed Emperor at Delhi.=]
In the months of May and June, more than forty garrisons in the valleys
of the Ganges and the Jumna mutinied. In most cases their rising was
followed by hideous cruelty; the European officers were treacherously
shot, and hundreds of women and children massacred. Both Hindoos and
Mussulmans eagerly joined the rising, but the main guidance of the
mutiny was in the hands of the latter. They proclaimed the descendant
of the great Mogul, who still resided at Delhi, the heir of the empire
of his ancestors. Delhi itself, where there was no British garrison,
fell into their hands, after the great magazine had been blown up by
the desperate courage of Lieutenant Willoughby.
[Sidenote: =Rising in Oude.--Siege of Lucknow.=]
The ancient city became the centre of the rebellion in the north, while
further south, in Oude, the whole population rose in arms to restore
their late king, and beleaguered in the residency of Lucknow the one
British regiment which formed part of the garrison of the newly annexed
state.
[Sidenote: =Spread of the rebellion.=]
Except in Oude and certain parts of the North-West Provinces the
rebellion was purely military, and the peasantry preserved a timid
neutrality in the strife. But the whole Bengal army, with hardly an
exception, rose--or tried to rise--against its masters. Fortunately
for England, the mutiny did not affect the Madras presidency at
all, and only spread to a small corner of the Bombay presidency.
But all northern India from Benares to the Sutlej was lost for a
time. Unwarlike Bengal remained quiet, and the Punjab--where English
regiments were more numerous than in any other part of India--was
kept under control by its able governor, Sir John Lawrence. But all
that lay between them was a seething flood of rebellion, where a few
English garrisons lay scattered like islands in a tempestuous sea.
Agra, Cawnpore, Lucknow, Allahabad, were all insufficiently held--only
at the third of them was there so much as a single regiment of British
infantry.
[Sidenote: =The siege of Delhi.=]
While the authorities at Calcutta were collecting the few European
troops who could be gathered from Burmah and Madras, and were making
desperate appeals for prompt aid from home, the governor of the Punjab
struck the first blow for the reconquest of the lost provinces. Four
thousand Europeans and some hastily raised Sikh levies crossed the
Sutlej and marched on Delhi, now held by at least 30,000 mutineers.
They defeated the rebels in the field, and commenced the siege of the
royal city on June 10, 1857. This bold move threw the enemy on the
defensive, and the rising spread no further in the north. But Delhi was
beleaguered for fourteen weeks, and even when every available British
soldier had been drawn from the Punjab, the storming of the place was
a hazardous task, only carried to a successful end by the reckless
courage of the assailants. After six days of deadly street fighting
(September 14-20, 1857), the rebels were driven out, and their titular
leader, the aged Grand Mogul, with all his family, was captured.
Bahadur Shah himself was only banished to Burmah, but his sons and
grandson were shot without trial by Major Hodson, the daring cavalry
officer who had tracked and captured them.
[Sidenote: =The massacre of Cawnpore.=]
While the siege of Delhi was still in progress, a small force had been
collected at Calcutta and hurried northward to attack Oude and relieve
the beleaguered garrisons of Cawnpore and Lucknow. General Havelock
commanded this brigade, a mere handful of 1200 men. He pushed on from
Allahabad on June 30, but when he had cut his way to Cawnpore after
four considerable fights, he found that he was too late. The small
garrison there, hampered with many hundreds of women and children, had
held out for a month, but surrendered on June 27 to the chief of the
rebels, Nana Sahib, the adopted son of the late Peishwa, whose pension
and title had been denied him.[70] This revengeful and treacherous
ruffian promised the besieged a safe passage to Allahabad. But as soon
as they had evacuated their entrenchments, he massacred them all in
cold blood, save two hundred women and children, whom he saved alive.
When the news of Havelock's victorious advance was heard, he had these
poor survivors hacked to death and cast into the famous "well of
Cawnpore" (July 15). The British brigade cut its way into the city a
day too late to save the prisoners, but was able to wreak a terrible
vengeance on their murderers, though the Nana himself, to the bitter
disappointment of all, got safely away and died a fugitive in the
jungles of Nepaul.
[Sidenote: =The relief of Lucknow.=]
Havelock had to wait some time at Cawnpore for reinforcements before
he could march on Lucknow, where the garrison, some 1000 strong, had
maintained themselves for eighty-seven days behind the walls of the
hastily fortified Residency. The much-tried defenders were cheered by
the arrival of Havelock, who with 3000 men forced his way into the
Residency after a day's street fighting. But 60,000 rebels, the whole
fighting population of the province of Oude, still hung round the
place, and Havelock could not drive them away. The final relief of
Lucknow was only accomplished by Lord Clyde, the Colin Campbell of the
Crimean war, who had arrived in India with the first reinforcements
from home. On November 9 he swept away the rebels, and liberated the
garrison, but Havelock died the very day after he and his troops were
delivered.
[Sidenote: =Lord Clyde defeats the Mahrattas and the Oude rebels.=]
Lord Clyde drew back to Cawnpore with the rescued garrison, leaving
Lucknow to be reoccupied by the rebels. He was forced to turn because
the Mahratta army of Scindiah had just revolted and joined the Oude
insurgents. Clyde beat them on December 6, just outside Cawnpore, and
drove them back on to Central India.
[Sidenote: =Lucknow stormed.--Battles of Bareilly and Gwalior.=]
The final stage of the war was reached in March, 1858, when Clyde
marched for the second time against Lucknow, stormed the city, and
drove the remnants of the rebel army of Oude to Bareilly, where they
were crushed in the last general engagement but one of the war (May
7). Meanwhile Sir Hugh Rose had collected an army from the Bombay
presidency and overrun Scindiah's dominions and Bundelkund, where the
rebellion of the Mahrattas had been headed by the Ranee of Jhansi and
Tantia Topee, a clever leader of irregular troops. On June 16 he beat
them in front of Gwalior, the Ranee was slain, and her army dispersed.
But Tantia Topee took to the jungles, and was not finally caught and
hung till the spring of the succeeding year.
Thus ended the great mutiny of 1857-58, a ferocious struggle in which
the treachery and cruelty of the sepoys were amply punished by the
ruthless severity of their victors, who gave no quarter, blew prominent
traitors from the cannon's mouth, and hung meaner prisoners by the
hundred.
[Sidenote: =Abolition of the East India Company.=]
The English nation were convinced that something must be done to
reform the administration of India, and the East India Company was
abolished by Act of Parliament in 1858, the whole administration, civil
and military, of the peninsula being now taken over by the Queen's
government. To mark that no blame was thrown on the Governor-General,
Lord Canning, whose conduct all through the war had been most cool and
courageous, he was made the first viceroy of the new empire.
[Sidenote: =India under the rule of the Crown.=]
Since the Mutiny the annals of India have been comparatively peaceful,
and hardly a shot has been fired within the bounds of the peninsula.
The history of the last thirty years has been a record of growing
prosperity, of the development of trade and industries, the building of
railways and canals, and the marvellous increase of sea-borne trade.
Since the Suez Canal has brought India so close to Europe, the arable
land is everywhere encroaching on the jungle, and the main difficulty
of the future appears likely to be the overgrowth of population in the
thickly settled districts, where, more than once, a year of dearth has
slain thousands and brought tens of millions to the edge of starvation.
The terrible Madras famine of 1877, the worst of its kind, is said to
have cost the lives of 1,500,000 peasants.
[Sidenote: =The second Afghan war.=]
The one great warlike episode in the history of British India remaining
to be chronicled is the second Afghan war, of 1878-80. This struggle
was a consequence of the Russo-Turkish war of the previous year, and of
the estrangement between Russia and England which resulted therefrom.
Lord Lytton, the viceroy of the years 1876-80, was a disciple of Lord
Beaconsfield, and a believer in a spirited foreign policy. He found
that Shere Ali, the Ameer of Afghanistan, was intriguing with the
Russian governor of Turkestan, and promptly summoned him to sign a
treaty of alliance and receive a British resident at his court. The
Ameer refused, and at once saw his dominions invaded. When General
Roberts stormed the Peiwar Kotal and advanced within a few miles
of Cabul, the Ameer fled towards the Russian frontier, and died on
the way. His son, Yakoob Khan, accepted the British suzerainty,
and promised all that was required. But when the army had retired,
the populace of Cabul rose just as in 1842, and murdered Sir Lewis
Cavagnari, the British resident, and all his escort. A second invasion
at once began, and Yakoob Khan was deposed and sent to India. Lord
Lytton would probably have annexed the whole country but for the
troubles which broke out in the winter of 1879-80, when the Afghan
tribes took arms and assailed the garrisons of Cabul and Candahar.
Roberts was besieged in his entrenchments at Cabul, but finally drove
off the insurgents, and held his own. But in the south General Burrows,
advancing to attack the pretender Eyoob Khan, was totally defeated
at Maiwand, with the loss of half his brigade, and chased back into
Candahar. He was only saved by the rapid and masterly march of Roberts,
who in twenty-three days forced his way from Cabul to Candahar, routed
the army of Eyoob, and liberated the Candahar garrison (September 1,
1880). But the disaster of Maiwand had troubled English public opinion,
and a Liberal government had now replaced Lord Beaconsfield at home.
Afghanistan was evacuated, and Abdurrhaman Khan, a nephew of Shere
Ali, was recognized as ruler of the whole country, where he maintained
himself with success till his death in 1901, and proved faithful to the
English alliance.
[Sidenote: =The Queen proclaimed Empress of India.=]
Perhaps Lord Lytton's administration may ultimately be remembered less
for his unhappy Afghan war than for his proclamation of the Queen as
Empress of India in the great _Durbar_ held in Delhi in 1877. This step
marked the commencement of a new and more intimate relation of England
and India, of which an earnest had been given two years before by the
Prince of Wales's tour through the peninsula. Since then every attempt
has been made to enlist the sympathies of the natives on behalf of the
British rule. Their princes have been encouraged to visit England, to
interest themselves in public works, education, and internal reforms,
and to supply troops for the general service of the empire. Elective
municipalities have been created in the cities, to teach their motley
population the art of self-government--which they are still very far
from having learnt. A share in the administration--which some think
unduly large--is granted to native civil servants, and the native
press has been granted a liberty which it often abuses. All financial
and agrarian legislation is framed to press as lightly as possible
on the masses. But the results of these efforts are still somewhat
problematic, and the British bayonet is still needed to keep the peace
between contending races and creeds.
[Sidenote: =The Australian penal settlements.--New South Wales.=]
In strong contrast with the stirring annals of British India are the
unromantic details of the development of our Australian Colonies. We
have alluded to the unpromising foundation of our first establishment
in Botany Bay, by the despatch thither of the gangs of convicts who in
an earlier age used to be sent into servitude in America (1788). For
many years this annual crop of ruffianism swamped all attempts at real
colonization in New South Wales. But after a time the extraordinary
fertility of the soil began to attract more immigrants, while the
mitigation of the English penal law under the hands of Sir Robert Peel
decreased the number of convicts. As the free population grew they
began to protest so strongly against the companions who were drafted
in upon them, that the government diverted the stream of convicts to
new settlements in Tasmania and Western Australia. For long years New
South Wales remained a purely pastoral colony, and its immense plains
were inhabited only by the "squatters"--the proprietors who had bought
large tracts of land from the government. They dwelt in stations thinly
scattered over the face of the country, rearing vast herds of cattle
and sheep. It was as exporting wool, hides, and tallow alone that
Australia first became known to the commercial world of Europe.
[Sidenote: =Discovery of gold-fields.--Victoria.=]
In 1851, however, an enormous difference was made by the discovery of
rich alluvial gold deposits near Port Phillip, on the southern shore
of New South Wales. The washings proved so productive that thousands
of immigrants of all sorts and conditions poured in to profit by them.
The Port Phillip district was cut off from New South Wales, and made
into the new colony of Victoria (1851). Its population went up from
80,000 to 450,000 in the ten years that followed the discovery of gold.
When the alluvial deposits were exhausted, it was found that large
reefs of auriferous quartz lay below them, and a steady development of
scientific mining by machinery superseded the haphazard work of the
early diggers. Victoria still continues one of the great gold-producing
centres of the world.
[Sidenote: =Queensland.--The labour difficulty.=]
New South Wales still remains a mainly pastoral country, though
here too considerable gold-fields have been found. After throwing
off its southern districts to form the colony of Victoria, it ceded
its northern territory to form the colony of Queensland (1859). The
semi-tropical climate of this last province differentiates it from
the rest of Australia. The great heat makes European labour difficult
during the greater part of the year.
[Sidenote: =South Australia.--Western Australia.--Tasmania.=]
South Australia, settled in 1836, is mainly an agricultural country
with some copper-mines. Western Australia, originating in a convict
settlement in 1829, has lagged behind the rest of the sister colonies
for want of any of the natural advantages which attract immigrants,
but the tardy discovery of gold in 1892 may suffice at last to draw
thither the much-needed population. Tasmania, originating, like Western
Australia, in a penal colony, has developed into a small island
community of steady prosperity.
[Sidenote: =New Zealand.--The Maori war.=]
Far to the east of Australia lie the twin islands of New Zealand,
first explored by Captain Cook in 1773, but not planted with English
colonists till 1839. Unlike the aborigines of Australia, the lowest and
feeblest savages in the world, the natives of New Zealand were a fierce
and clever race of cannibals, named Maoris. They bitterly resented the
settlement of their islands, and raised two considerable wars, for the
second of which (1861-66) British troops had to be brought to this
remote colony, and had hard work to expel the Maoris from their _pahs_,
or stockades. After their defeat they quieted down, and are now slowly
dying out before the progress of civilization, which seems fatal to
them, though they are a vigorous and intelligent race. New Zealand more
resembles Great Britain in climate and situation than does any other
of our colonies, and has enjoyed a long career of prosperity, somewhat
checked of late by a tendency to a rash extension of the public debt.
[Sidenote: =The Cape Colony.--The Boers.=]
Passing westward across the Indian Ocean, we come to the second great
group of English colonies, those of South Africa. The old Dutch
dominion of the Cape of Good Hope was conquered by the British in 1806,
and secured to us by the treaty of Vienna in 1815. It reached only as
far as the Orange River, and was thinly settled by Dutch farmers, or
Boers, scattered among a population of Kaffirs, whom they had in many
cases reduced to slavery.
[Sidenote: =Natal.--The Orange Free State and the Transvaal.=]
When English emigration was directed to the Cape, the Boers resented
the intrusion of the foreigner, and many of them _trekked_, _i.e._
migrated, into the wilderness to conquer new homes among the Kaffirs.
But the British government followed them, and annexed their first
settlement in Natal (1843). They then moved inland, and finally
established (1852-54) the two republics of the Orange Free State and
the Transvaal, which still remain, though each of them was for a short
time under British control.
[Sidenote: =The Kaffir wars.=]
The history of the Cape Colony, till within the last few years, was one
of comparatively slow development and of frequent Kaffir wars. No less
than eight such struggles with the natives are recorded between 1815
and 1881, some of them of considerable length and difficulty.
[Sidenote: =The diamond mines.--Kimberley.=]
Each led to an annexation, till at last all the country south of the
Orange River had passed into the hands of the settlers, though large
reserved tracts were set aside for the native tribes. Meanwhile the
Dutch and English colonists held apart, and have always remained more
or less estranged. The first rapid development of the settlement began
in 1867, when the discovery of diamond-mines in Griqualand West,
beyond the Orange River, led to the northward extension of the British
boundary, to the grave discontent of the Boers of the Orange Free State
(1872). The great mining town of Kimberley has arisen as the centre of
this arid but busy district.
[Sidenote: =Annexation of the Transvaal.=]
The most formidable difficulty which the English have met in South
Africa came from the annexation of the Transvaal in 1877. The Boers
of that republic having engaged themselves in dangerous wars with the
natives, Lord Beaconsfield's government resolved to place them under
British rule. This was done, and, as heirs to the Boers' quarrels, we
fought out the sanguinary Zulu war of 1879.
[Sidenote: =The Zulu war.=]
The Zulus, an immigrant tribe from the north, had built up a military
monarchy over their neighbours under a despot named Chaka, who had
disciplined them and formed them into regiments in imitation of
European organization. We made war on his grandson Cetewayo, and
incurred, on our first meeting with the formidable Zulu army, the
disaster of Isandula, where a whole British battalion and 1000 native
auxiliaries were exterminated to the last man. It required the dispatch
of 10,000 men from England under Sir Garnet Wolseley, and three sharp
battles at Ekowe, Kambula, and Ulundi to break Cetewayo's army and
restore the prestige of the British arms.
Hardly was the Zulu war over when the Boers of the Transvaal revolted,
and defeated the small British force in Natal at Laing's Neck and
Majuba Hill. We have related elsewhere how the Gladstone government
thereupon made peace, and gave the Boers their independence.[71]
[Sidenote: =The scramble for Africa.=]
The history of British Africa during the years 1885-95 was mainly the
story of a scramble with the other European powers for the possession
of the unoccupied parts of the continent. Since the Germans began
to seize large tracts of southern Africa, and the French to extend
their power into the Sahara and the valley of the Niger, the British
government was forced in self-defence to make similar seizures, in
order to prevent its colonies from being cut off from the interior.
This has resulted in the annexation of three great tracts--one reaching
from the Orange River and Griqualand up to the Zambezi, and circling
round three sides of the Transvaal Republic; a second round Lake
Nyassa; a third further north, including a slip of coast about Mombasa
and Witu, and running up inland to the great equatorial lakes which
feed the Nile, so as to include the kingdom of Uganda. At the same
time the Niger Company has been allowed to establish a protectorate
over the lower valley of that great river, where a colony is being
built up which throws into the shade the old pestilential seaports at
Sierra Leone and on the Gold Coast, which were once the only British
possessions in Guinea. The annals of South Africa from the day of the
Jameson raid (December 29, 1895) onward have possessed so much more
than local importance, that they will be found recorded in the general
chapter dealing with the closing years of Queen Victoria.
[Sidenote: =Upper and Lower Canada.=]
The history of the British colonies in North America is of a very
different character from that of British South Africa. We have spoken
in an earlier page of the gallant aid which the colonists gave to
England in her struggle with the United States during the years
1812-15. When the excitement of this war had died down, there arose a
slowly increasing estrangement between the two provinces of Upper and
Lower Canada; the English settlers of the former and the old French
_habitans_ of the latter were separated from each other by race,
language, religion, and prejudices. They were, moreover, administered
as wholly different colonies. Gradually a dangerous spirit developed
itself among the French Canadians, who complained that their governors
and officials were unsympathetic, and chafed against the limited
self-government allowed them by Pitt's Canada Act of 1791. Even some of
the settlers of the Upper Province expressed disloyal sentiments on
this latter grievance, and spoke of asking for annexation to the United
States.
[Sidenote: =The Canadian rebellion.=]
This discontent took shape in the Canadian rebellion of 1837, a
movement almost entirely confined to the French-speaking districts,
and easily suppressed by the loyalists, aided by a few British troops.
After investigating the grievances which had led to the rising, the
Home Government resolved to unite the two provinces into a single
colony, that the French districts might be more closely linked to and
controlled by the English. At the same time a more liberal measure of
self-government was conceded. The constitution for the future comprised
an elective Lower House and an Upper House of life-members, who stood
to the governor much as the two Houses of the English Parliament stand
to the Queen (1840).
[Sidenote: =Canadian federation.=]
The most important event in the history of British North America has
been the federation of all its colonies into the single "Dominion
of Canada" in the years 1867-1871. The danger which the British
possessions had experienced during the threatened war with the
United States in 1862 and the Fenian invasions of 1866-7 impelled
the provinces towards the union which gives strength. Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, British Columbia, consented to
federate themselves with Canada. Only the remote and thinly populated
fishing-station of Newfoundland has preferred to remain outside the
alliance. The four other colonies send deputies to the Dominion
Parliament, which meets at Ottawa, though they retain for local
purposes provincial legislatures of their own.
[Sidenote: =The Canadian Pacific Railway.=]
The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed in 1885, so that free
communication exists across the whole continent from Nova Scotia to
British Columbia. Since then the broad plains between the great lakes
and the Rocky Mountains are being rapidly peopled. The old settlement
of Manitoba and the newer provinces of Assinboia, Saskatchewan, and
Alberta are all being put under the plough or turned into cattle runs.
[Sidenote: =Imperial federation.=]
Our general survey of the history of the British colonial empire
brings us to the topic which will be all-important in the twentieth
century--the practicability of Imperial Federation. At the present
moment the Crown is the only formal link between the many colonies
and possessions over which the Union Jack floats. Is a closer
connection desirable, and practicable? May we look forward to a firm
and well-compacted league of all the British lands? Such a union might
almost control the world, but it is hard to bring about. First among
the difficulties in the way is the doubt whether Great Britain would
ever allow herself to be outvoted by her colonies in an Imperial
Parliament, and whether Canada would submit to the dictation of
Australia, or Australia to the dictation of South Africa, in matters
where their interests clashed. Next comes the question of free trade
and protection. Most of the colonies are zealously protectionist
in spirit, and as a condition of federation they would probably
demand that the mother country should give their goods a preference
over those of foreign states, by means of a revised customs tariff.
A third set of objections turn on the likelihood of the colonies
refusing to countenance the purely European policy of England. A
fourth and formidable question is the place which India would have
to take in the confederacy; she is not yet fit for self-government
and equal partnership with the rest. If she were, the votes of her
250,000,000 inhabitants would swamp those of all the other members of
the league. Yet none of these difficulties appear wholly insuperable.
The idea of federation is in the air both in Great Britain and in her
daughter-states. The day has long gone by when a not inconsiderable
number of English statesmen looked forward to the time when the
colonies should, as it was phrased, "cut the painter" and steer their
own course. The consciousness of common origin and interests grows
stronger; the interdependence of the mother country and her colonies is
more realized; the development of rapid communication by sea and land
makes the distance between the various British communities in different
hemispheres less felt as every year rolls by. Facts like the splendid
aid granted by all the colonies for the late South African War, speak
for themselves. But there are still difficulties in the way. If local
jealousies prevail, and the English-speaking peoples drift asunder,
each must be content to play a comparatively unimportant part in the
annals of the twentieth century. If, on the other hand, the project of
federation can be worked out to a successful end, the future of the
world lies in the hands of the Anglo-Saxon race.
FOOTNOTES:
[69] See pp. 692, 693.
[70] See p. 739.
[71] See p. 713.
INDEX.
Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle), treaty of, 510
Abdullah, the Khalifa, crushed by Lord Kitchener, 726
Abercrombie, Sir Ralph, his victories in Egypt, 594
Aberdeen, Lord, joins the Whigs, 667;
prime minister, 681;
engages in Crimean war, 684;
resigns, 689
Abyssinian war, the, 705, 706
Acre, captured by Richard I., 117;
besieged by Bonaparte, 592;
taken by the English, 661
Addington, Henry, prime minister, 596;
resigns, 603;
frames the "Six Acts," 640;
resigns again, 641
Adrian IV., Pope, grants Ireland to Henry II., 99
Aelfthryth, Queen, murders Edward the Martyr, 52
Aella, South Saxon king, 15
----, Northumbrian king, slain by Danes, 36
Aethelbald, King of Wessex, 36
Aethelbert, King of Kent, 23;
converted by Augustine, 24
----, King of Wessex, 36
Aethelflaed, daughter of Alfred, subdues the Danes, 45
Aethelfrith, King of Northumbria, 19
Aethelred, King of Wessex, defeats the Danes, 37
---- the Redeless, 52;
raises Danegelt, 53;
deposed and recalled, 54
Aethelstan, King of England, 45;
beats the Danes at Brunanburgh, 46
Aethelwulf, King of Wessex, 34;
his Danish wars, 35, 36
Afghan war, the first, 724, 725;
the second, 733
Africa, S., English in, 724, 725, 727-733, 752-754
Agincourt, battle of, 224
Agricola, Julius, governor of Britain, 6
Aidan, St., Bishop of York, 27
_Alabama_, case of the, 697;
arbitration concerning, 707, 708
Alberoni, Cardinal, aids Jacobites, 490
Albert of Saxe-Coburg (the Prince Consort) marries Queen Victoria, 661
Albuera, battle of, 620
Alcuin at court of Charles the Great, 29
Alexander II., Pope, encourages William I. to invade England, 62
Alexander III., Pope, reconciled with Henry II., 109
---- VI., Pope, 289
Alexander I. of Russia, 595;
his wars with Napoleon, 608, 610, 623, 624
---- II. of Russia, his war with England, 690;
conquers Turkey, 710
Alfred, his wars with the Danes, 37, 39;
his government, 40-42;
greatness of, 43
----, son of Aethelred II., murdered, 56
Alma, battle of the, 685
Almanza, battle of, 470
America, English explorers in, 333;
English settlements in, 361;
wars with French in, 511, 519-521, 527-529.
_See under_ Canada and United States
American Colonies, disputes with the, 540-544
---- war of Independence, 546-552
Amherst, Lord, Viceroy of India, 739
Amiens, Mise of, 141
----, Peace of, 596
Angles, settlements of, in Britain, 14-16
Anne of Bohemia, wife of Richard II., 207
---- Neville, married to Prince Edward, 257;
married to Richard III., 263;
death of, 269
---- Boleyn, marries Henry VIII., 294;
divorced and executed, 300
---- of Cleves, married to and divorced by Henry VIII., 304
----, Queen, 461;
ruled by Lady Churchill, 461;
dismisses her, 475;
death, 480
----, Duchess of Brittany, 274-275
Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 84;
withstands William II., 85;
disputes with Henry I., 89
Anson, Commodore, voyage of, 511
Antoninus, wall of, 8
Appellants, Lords, rising of, 208;
punished by Richard II., 210
Aquitaine, united to England by Henry II., 97;
rebellions in, 109, 121, 139;
seized by Philip the Fair, 163;
recovered, 168;
enlarged by Edward III., 194;
falls away, 198;
lost by Henry VI., 244
Arabi Pasha stirs up rebellion in Egypt, 713
Argyle, Archibald, Earl of, leader of the Covenanters, 395;
execution of, 421
----, Archibald, Marquis of, rebellion and execution of, 437
----, John, Duke of, at death-bed of Queen Anne, 480;
wins battle of Sheriffmuir, 489
Armada, the Spanish, 337-339
Armagnac faction in France, 218, 222, 226
Armed Neutrality, the, 595
Arthur, legendary hero of Britain, 13
---- of Brittany, 111;
his claims on England, 122;
murdered by John, 124
----, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VII., marriage and death of, 280
Asaf-ud-Dowlab, Nawab of Oude, his dealings with Warren
Hastings, 568, 569
Ashdown, battle of, 37
Assaye, battle of, 604
Auckland, Lord, Viceroy of India, his Afghan war, 740, 741
Augustine, St., converts Kent, 23, 24
Aulus Plautius, Roman general, 5
Austerlitz, battle of, 608
Australia, British settlement in, 565;
history of the colonies of, 750-752
Austria, allied to William III., 447;
engages in war of Spanish Succession, 463, 477;
aided by England, 500-510;
wars of, with Frederic the Great, 522-537;
with French Republic, 579-594;
with Napoleon, 608-625;
wars of, in Italy, 670, 695;
with Prussia, 705
Austrian Succession, war of the, 500
Babington, Anthony, his plot against Elizabeth, 336
Bacon, Francis, Lord Verulam, 343;
impeached, 359
Baeda (Venerable Bede), 29
Balaclava, battle of, 687
Ball, John, Lollard preacher, 204, 206
Balliol, Edward, wins and loses Scottish throne, 182, 183
----, John, claims Scottish throne, 160;
his reign, 162, 163;
deposed by Edward I., 164
Bank of England founded, 456;
panic at, in 1797, 586
Bannockburn, battle of, 176
Bantry Bay, French fleet at, 588
Barbados colonized, 361
Bareilly, battle of, 732
Barnet, battle of, 258
Barons' war, the, 141-145
Bartholemew, St., Massacre of, 332
Bastille, storming of the, 576
Bastwick, John, cruel sentence on, 369
Bavaria, Charles, Elector of, claimant for the empire, 500
Bavaria, Joseph, Prince of, claims crown of Spain, 457, 458
----, Maximilian, Elector of, defeated by Marlborough, 466
Baylen, capitulation of, 614
Beaufort, family of, 217.
_See under_ Somerset, Dukes of
----, Cardinal, quarrels with Humphrey of Gloucester, 233;
advocates peace, 238;
dies, 240
Beaugé, battle of, 229
Becket, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, 100;
quarrels with Henry II., 101, 102;
exiled, 103, 104;
murdered, 105
Bedford, John, Duke of, regent of France, 231;
his victories, 233;
foiled by Jeanne d'Arc, 236, 237;
dies, 239
----, Russell, Duke of, minister of George III., 538, 539
Benevolences, raised by Edward IV., 261;
by Richard III., 269;
by Henry VIII., 288;
by Charles I., 364
Bentinck, Lord George, leader of Protectionists, 667, 680
----, Lord William, Governor-general of India, 739, 740
----, William, Duke of Portland, 609
Bermuda colonized, 361
Bible translated into English, 302
Bigod, Roger, Earl of Norfolk, resists Edward I., 166
Black Death, the, 189
---- Hole of Calcutta, the, 523
---- Prince, the. _See_ Edward the Black Prince
Bladensburg, battle of, 627
Blake, Admiral, defeats the Dutch, 409;
defeats Spaniards, 413
Blenheim, battle of, 466, 467
Blücher, Marshal, commands Prussians at Ligny and Waterloo, 628, 629
Boadicea. _See_ Boudicca
Boleyn. _See_ Anne
Bolingbroke, Henry of. _See_ Henry IV.
----, Henry St. John, Viscount of, minister under Queen Anne, 479;
Jacobite intrigues of, 480;
joins the Pretender, 486
Bonaparte, Jerome, King of Westphalia, 610
----, Joseph, King of Naples, 609;
of Spain, 613-625
----, Louis, King of Holland, 609;
dethroned, 622
----, Louis Napoleon. _See_ Napoleon III.
----, Napoleon. _See_ Napoleon I.
Bonner, Bishop, opposes Reformation, 308, 309;
persecutes Protestants, 319
Boscawen, Admiral, wins victory of Lagos, 526
Boston, riots in, 543, 545;
besieged and taken by Washington, 546, 547
Bothwell Brig, battle of, 433
----, James Hepburn, Earl of, murders
Darnley, 327;
marries Mary, Queen of Scots, 328
Boudicca, Queen, rebellion of, 6
Bouvines, battle of, 128
Boyne, battle of the, 451
Bradshaw, John, regicide, 401
Bramham Moor, battle of, 217
Breda, Declaration of, 419
----, Peace of, 428
Bretigny, Treaty of, 194
Bretwalda, meaning of title, 23
Britain, early inhabitants of, 1;
conquered by Romans, 5
Britons, occupy England and Wales, 2
Brittany, under Henry II., 106;
wars of Edward III. in, 186;
of Henry VII. in, 274
Broad Church Party, the, 677
Brooklyn, battle of, 547
Brougham, Henry Lord, chancellor, 648;
resigns, 657
Bruce, Edward, King of Ireland, 177
----, Robert, claims Scottish throne, 160;
slays Comyn, 168;
King of Scotland, 170;
wars with Edward II., 172-174;
victorious at Bannockburn, 176;
invades England, 177, 180
Brunanburgh, battle of, 46
Buckingham, George Villiers, Duke of, favourite of James I., 357;
his journey to Madrid, 360;
minister of Charles I., 363;
Rochelle expedition of, 364;
assassinated, 365
----, George, Duke of, minister of Charles II., 428
Buller, Sir R., defeats of, in S. Africa, 729, 730
Bunker's Hill, battle of, 546
Burgundy, Chas., Duke of, aids Edward IV., 258;
quarrels with him, 262
----, Philip, Duke of, allied to the English, 228, 233;
joins the French, 238
Burke, Edmund, advocates reform, 544;
speeches on French revolution, 577, 578;
joins Pitt, 580
Burleigh, Robert Cecil, Lord, minister of Elizabeth, 326;
dies, 348
Burmah, first war with, 739;
second war with, 743
Bute, John, Earl of, minister of George III., 535;
concludes peace of Paris, 537;
resigns, 538
Buxar, battle of, 566
Byng, Admiral, George, wins battle of Cape Passaro, 490
----, Admiral, John, fails at Minorca, 523;
executed, 523
Byron, George, Lord, joins Greeks, 643
Cabal, the, 428
Cabinet government, beginning of, 483
Cabul, British disaster at, 740, 741;
taken by General Roberts, 749
Cade, Jack, rebellion of, 242
Cadiz, Drake's expedition to, 337;
taken by Essex, 341
Cæsar, Julius, invades Britain, 4
Calais, captured by Edward III., 188;
lost under Mary, 321
Calder, Admiral, defeats Villeneuve off Finesterre, 606
Calendar, reform of the, 543
Cambridge, Richard, Earl of, conspires against Henry V., 222
Camden, battle of, 550
Campeggio, Cardinal, Papal legate to Henry VIII., 291, 292
Camperdown, battle of, 587
Campo Formio, treaty of, 585
Canada, French and English struggle for, 526, 529;
invaded by Americans, 626;
subsequent history of, 735
Canning, George, his war-policy, 614;
takes office under Lord Liverpool, 641;
his foreign policy, 643;
prime minister, 644
----, George, Lord, Governor-General of India, 744;
Viceroy, 748
Cape Colony, annexed by Britain, 631;
subsequent history of, 752, 753
Carausius, Emperor, in Britain, 11
Carnatic, the, wars of Clive in, 518, 519;
annexed by Wellesley, 594
Caroline of Anspach, Queen of George II., her influence, 495
---- of Brunswick, wife of George IV., 628;
quarrels with her husband, 641
Carpenter, General, wins battle of Preston, 488;
of Glenshiel, 490
Carteret, George Granville, Lord, minister of George II., 499;
his war-policy, 501;
at Congress of Worms, 502;
his fall, 503
Cassivelaunus, British chief, 4
Castlereagh, Viscount, reactionary policy of, 637;
frames the "Six Acts," 640;
commits suicide, 641
Catesby, William, favourite of Richard III., 270;
executed, 271
----, Thomas, frames Gunpowder Plot, 354
Catherine of France, marries Henry V., 228
---- of Aragon, married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, 280;
to Henry VIII., 291;
divorced by him, 294
---- Howard, married to Henry VIII., 304;
divorced and executed, 305
---- Parr, married to Henry VIII., 305
---- of Portugal, Queen of Charles II., 425
Cato Street conspiracy, 640
Cawnpore, massacre at, 747;
battle of, 748
Ceadda (St. Chad) converts Mercia, 27
Ceawlin, King of Wessex, 18
Cecil. _See_ Burleigh and Salisbury
Celts conquer Britain, 2
Cerdic, first King of Wessex, 16
Cetewayo, Zulu king, conquered, 753
Charles I., his journey to Madrid, 360;
accession of, 362;
character and policy of, 362-364;
his disputes with Parliament, 364-377;
misgovernment of, 366-370;
defeated by Scots, 371, 372;
engages in the Civil War, 379-396;
a prisoner, 396;
his intrigues, 396-399;
tried and executed, 401
---- II., in Scotland, 404;
defeated at Worcester, 405;
accession of, 420;
allied to France, 429;
unconstitutional rule of, 430-434;
dies, 435
---- Edward, Prince (the Young Pretender), invades Scotland, 504;
his successes, 505, 506;
defeated, 508;
dies, 509
---- V., King of France, his wars with England, 197, 198, 202
---- VI., King of France, miserable reign of, 218;
his madness, 228;
dies, 232
---- VII. of France, murders John of Burgundy, 228;
proclaimed king, 232;
crowned by Jeanne d'Arc, 235
---- VIII. of France, his wars with Henry VII., 274, 275
---- IX. of France, orders Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 332
---- X. of France, deposed, 647
Charles V., Emperor, allied to Henry VIII., 286;
his wars in Italy, 291;
abdication of, 320
---- VI., Emperor (Archduke Charles), claims the Spanish crown, 458;
becomes Emperor, 477;
dies, 500
---- VII., Emperor, his wars with Austria, 500-502
Charles II. of Spain, declares Philip of Anjou his heir, 458
---- III. of Spain, makes war on England, 535, 548
---- IV. of Spain, deposed by Napoleon, 613
Charles XII. of Sweden, his dealings with Marlborough, 470;
supports the Jacobites, 490
Charlotte, Princess, marriage and death of, 639
Charter, the Great, 130, 131;
confirmed by Edward I., 166
Chartist agitation, 660, 663, 670
Chatham, first Earl of. _See_ William Pitt
----, second Earl of, his expedition to Walcheren, 618
Chicheley, Archbishop, urges war with France, 221
Chillianwallah, battle of, 743
China, first war with, 661;
second war with, 693
Christianity, in early Britain, 13;
brought to the Saxons by Augustine, 23, 24;
in northern Britain, 25, 27
Churchill. _See_ Marlborough
Clarence, Edward of, Earl of Warwick, beheaded by Henry VII., 277
----, George, Duke of, conspires against Edward IV., 256;
executed, 263
----, Thomas, Duke of, slain at Beaugé, 229
----, William, Duke of. _See_ William IV.
Clarendon, Constitutions of, 102
----, Edward Hyde, Lord, minister of Charles II., 425;
his fall, 428
Claudius, Emperor, invades Britain, 5
Claverhouse, John Graham of, Viscount Dundee, leads Scottish
Jacobites, 448
Clement VII., Pope, his action on the divorce of Henry VIII., 291-294
_Clericis Laicos_, the Bull, 165
Clive, Robert Lord, his victories in British India, 519;
conquers Bengal, 530;
his second governorship in Bengal, 566
Clyde, Colin Campbell, Lord, in Crimea, 684;
suppresses Indian Mutiny, 748
Cnut, his war with Eadmund Ironside, 54;
his reign, 55
Coalition Ministry, the, 558;
its fall, 559
Cobden, Richard, Free Trader, 666
Cobham's plot, 354
Codrington, Admiral, wins battle of Navarino, 643
Colonies, rise of, under Elizabeth, 341;
under James I., 361;
history of the. _See under_ Canada, Australia, etc.
Columba, St., founds abbey of Iona, 26
Commonwealth, the, proclaimed, 403;
history of the, 403-419
Comyn, John, Regent of Scotland, 168;
slain by Bruce, 169
_Confirmatio Cartarum_, the, 166
Conservatives, name adopted by Tories, 656
Consols, creation of the, 513
Constance of Brittany, marries Geoffrey Plantagenet, 104
Constantine, Roman emperor, 11
----, King of Scots, 46
Conventicle Act, the, 424
Convention Parliament, the first, 421;
the second, 445
Convention, the French, 579;
declares war on England, 581
Cook, Captain, his discoveries, 752
Coote, Sir Eyre, wins battle of Wandewash, 531;
battle of Porto Novo, 569
Cope, Sir John, defeated at Prestonpans, 508
Copenhagen, battle of, 595
Coroners first instituted, 122
Corn Laws, the, 635;
repeal of the, 667
Cornwallis, Lord, his campaigns in America, 550, 551;
Governor-General of India, 571, 572;
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, 590
Corporation Act, the, 424
Corporations, reform of the, 654
Cotton Famine, the, 697
Courtenays, Earls of Devon. _See_ Devon
Covenant, the Scottish, 371
Covenanters, the, 371;
allied with Parliamentarians, 378;
risings of, in Scotland, 433;
join William of Orange, 448
Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, counsels Henry VIII.'s divorce, 293;
favours Protestantism, 302;
compiles the Prayer-book, 309;
deposed by Mary, 316;
burnt, 320
Crécy, battle of, 187, 188
Crimea, invasion of, 685. _See_ Russian War
Cromwell, Oliver, member for Huntingdon, 365;
his ability as cavalry leader, 387;
at Marston Moor, 390;
at Naseby, 395;
wins battle of Preston, 400;
campaign in Ireland, 403;
campaign of Dunbar and Worcester, 405;
character, 406;
dissolves the Rump, 410;
his rule as Protector, 412, 416
----, Richard, Protector, 416;
resigns, 417
----, Thomas, minister of Henry VIII., 293;
favours reformers, 302;
disgraced and executed, 304
Crusade, the first, 84;
the third, 111, 116
Culloden, battle of, 508
Cumberland, Ernest, Duke of, King of Hanover, 659
----, George, Duke of, defeated at Fontenoy, 503;
wins battle of Culloden, 508;
defeated at Lawfeldt, 510;
capitulates at Closter-Seven, 525
----, conquered by William II., 83
Cumbria, kingdom of. _See_ Strathclyde
Cunobelinus (Cymbeline), British king, 5
Dalhousie, Lord, Governor-General of India, 743;
his annexations, 744
Danby, Thomas Osborne, Lord, minister of Charles II., 431;
impeached, 431;
invites William of Orange, 442;
minister of William III., 455
Danegelt, raised by Aethelred, 53;
by William I., 78;
abolished by Henry II., 101
Danelagh, the, 40;
conquered by Edward the Elder, 45
Danes, incursions of, 32;
settle in England, 35;
conquer Northumbria, 36;
conquer Mercia, 38;
wars of, with Alfred, 39, 41;
conquered by Edward the Elder, 45;
conciliated by Eadgar, 49, 50;
invade England under Swegen, 53;
oppose William I., 70
Darien Scheme, the, 472
David I., King of Scotland, aids Queen Matilda, 73
---- II., King of Scotland, expelled by Balliol, 182;
defeated at Neville's Cross, 189;
prisoner in England, 193;
released, 195
Declaration of Right, the, 446
Delhi, captured by British, 604;
siege of, during mutiny, 746;
Durbar at, 750
Deorham, battle of, 18
Derby, Edward Stanley, Earl of, prime minister in 1852, 680;
in 1858, 694;
in 1866, 703
Dermot of Leinster, introduces English into Ireland, 107
Derry, siege of, 450
Derwentwater, Earl, Jacobite leader, 487-489
Desmond, Garrett, Earl of, rebellion of, 346
Despencer, Hugh, favourite of Edward II., 177-179
Dettingen, battle of, 502
Devon, John, Earl of, beheaded by Edward IV., 253;
Edward, Earl of, conspires against Queen Mary, 317
Directory, proclaimed in France, 584;
fall of, 593
Disraeli, Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, leads Protectionists,
666, 667;
minister under Lord Derby, 680;
his Reform Bills, 694, 703;
prime minister, 705;
second ministry of, 709;
at Congress of Berlin, 711;
loses office, 712;
dies, 716
Divine Right of kings, 351
Domesday Book, 70-78
Douglas, James, the Black, invades England, 180
----, Archibald, Earl of, captured at Homildon, 216;
at Shrewsbury, 216
Dover, riot at, 58;
naval battle of, 135;
treaty of, 429
Drake, Sir Francis, his voyages, 334, 335;
expedition of Cadiz, 337;
to South America, 341
Druids, the, 4
Dudley, Edmund, minister of Henry VII., 273;
beheaded, 283
----, Lord Guilford, marries Lady Jane Grey, 312;
beheaded, 318
----. _See_ Northumberland and Leicester
Dunbar, victory of Edward I. at, 164;
victory of Cromwell at, 405
Dundee. _See_ Claverhouse
Dunstan, Abbot of Glastonbury, his reforms, 47, 48;
exiled by Eadwig, 48;
archbishop and prime minister, 49;
exiled, 52
Dupleix, his career in Southern India, 512, 518;
recalled, 519
Eadgar, King of England, 48;
his prosperous reign, 49, 50
---- the Etheling, 61;
proclaimed king, 67;
risings in favour of, 69, 70
Eadmund (St.), King of East Anglia, martyred by Danes, 36
---- I., King of England, his reign, 47
---- II., Ironside, his wars with Cnut, 54
Eadred, King of England, his reign, 47
Eadric Streona, favourite of Aethelred II., 53;
his treachery, 54, 55
Eadric the Wild, his rebellion, 69
Eadwig, King of England, his reign, 48
Eadwine, King of Northumbria, 25;
slain at Heathfield, 26
----, Earl of Mercia, 60, 63, 64;
rebels against William I., 71
Ecclesiastical courts, founded by William I., 76;
claims of, urged by Becket, 101;
their powers restricted by Edward I., 150;
under Charles I., 369;
abolished, 374;
revived by James II., 440
Ecclesiastical Titles Act, the, 679
Ecgbert, King of Wessex, 31;
suzerain of all Britain, 32;
defeats the Danes, 34
Ecgfrith, King of Northumbria, slain by the Picts, 29
Edgehill, battle of, 383, 384
Education Act, the, 707
Edward the Elder, King of England, 44;
his victorious campaigns, 45
---- the Martyr, his reign and murder, 51
---- the Confessor, accession of, 57;
reign of, 58-61
---- I., at battle of Lewis, 142;
wins battle of Evesham, 146;
at the Crusades, 147;
King of England, 148;
character and policy of, 149-153;
conquers Wales, 153-157;
arbiter in Scotland, 159, 162;
war with France, 162;
his conflicts with the Church, 165;
with the barons, 165;
invades Scotland, 164, 168;
dies, 170
---- II. of Carnarvon, Prince of Wales, 157;
King of England, 171;
disastrous reign of, 173-178;
deposed and murdered, 179
---- III., King of England, 179;
crushes Mortimer, 181;
wins battle of Halidon Hill, 182;
his first war with France, 183-194;
contest with Parliament, 186;
misfortunes of his later years, 197-200
---- IV., Earl of March, leads Yorkists, 252;
proclaimed king, 253;
victorious at Towton, 254;
marriage of, 255;
his struggle with Warwick, 256, 257;
regains his throne, 258;
dies, 264
---- V., his short reign and death, 264-268
---- VI., birth of, 303; accession of, 308;
his reign, 308-312;
dies, 313
---- the Black Prince, at Crécy, 188;
his victory at Poictiers, 191, 192;
his wars in Spain, 196;
long illness and death of, 197
----, Prince of Wales, son of Henry VI., born, 248;
married to Anne Neville, 257;
slain at Tewkesbury, 258
Edward, Prince of Wales, son of Richard III., dies, 269
Egypt, Bonaparte in, 591;
taken by English, 595;
English interference in, 661;
under Ismail, 709;
conquered by Lord Wolseley, 713, 714
Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of Henry II., 97;
incites her sons to rebellion, 109;
supports King John, 122, 123
---- of Provence, queen of Henry III., 136
---- of Castille, queen of Edward I., 148
Eliot, Sir John, opposes Charles I., 365;
imprisoned, 366
Elizabeth Woodville, marries Edward IV., 255;
claims regency, 264
---- of York, heiress of Edward IV., 269;
marries Henry VII., 273
----, Queen, birth of, 294;
imprisoned by Mary, 320;
accession, 322;
religious policy of, 323-326;
troubles with Mary of Scotland, 327, 328;
foreign policy, 330;
her prosperous rule, 333;
war with Spain, 335, 341;
the "Elizabethan Age," 343-349;
her Irish policy, 345;
dies, 348
----, daughter of James I., marries Elector Palatine, 358
Ellenborough, Lord, Governor-General of India, 741
Elliot, General, defends Gibraltar, 552
Emancipation, Catholic, Pitt's scheme for, 590, 591;
vetoed by George III., 596;
again, 609;
granted by Wellington, 646
Emmet, Robert, his rebellion, 603
Empson, Richard, minister of Henry VII., 273;
beheaded by Henry VIII., 283
English, coming of the, to Britain, 14;
social organization of the, 20, 21;
religion of the, 22;
receive Christianity, 23
Enniskillen, siege of, 451
Essex, kingdom of East Saxons, 16
----, Robert Devereux, Earl of, his expedition to Cadiz, 341;
to Ireland, 347;
his intrigues and execution, 348
----, Robert Devereux, second Earl of, his divorce, 356;
leader of Parliamentarians, 379;
at Edgehill, 383, 384;
at Newbury, 387;
capitulates at Lostwithiel, 392;
removed by "Self-denying Ordinance," 393
----, Frances, Countess of, poisons Sir T. Overbury, 356
Ethandun, battle of, 39
Eugéne of Savoy, commands Austrian army, 463;
joins Marlborough before Blenheim, 456;
his campaigns in Italy, 469-470
Eustace of Boulogne, 58
Evesham, battle of, 145, 146
Excise Bill of Walpole, 495
Exclusion Bill, the, 433, 434
Exeter, taken by West Saxons, 31;
taken by William I., 69;
besieged by Warbeck, 276
----, Henry Courtenay, Marquis of, beheaded by Henry VIII., 301
Eylau, battle of, 610
Factory Acts, the, 675
Fairfax, Ferdinand, Lord, Parliamentary general, 386
----, Sir Thomas, besieged in Hull, 386;
wins battle of Nantwich, 390;
at Marston Moor, 391;
leader of the "New Model," 393;
wins Naseby fight, 395;
suppresses Royalist risings, 400;
refuses to try the king, 401;
resigns, 404
Falkirk, victory of Edward I. at, 168;
of Charles Edward at, 508
Falkland, Lord, slain at Newbury, 387
Family compact, the, 496
Fashoda difficulty, the, 726, 727
Fawkes, Guy, his plot, 354
Fenians, the, their outrages, 704, 705
Fenwick, Sir John, conspires against William III., 456
Ferdinand of Aragon, allied to Henry VII., 279, 280
---- of Brunswick, wins battle of Crefeldt, 526;
of Minden, 527
---- VII. of Spain, kidnapped by Napoleon, 613
Ferozeshah, battle of, 742
Feudalism, character of English, after the Conquest, 72
Finan, St., Bishop of York, 27
Fire, the Great, of London, 427
Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, executed by Henry VIII., 295
Fitzgerald, Garrett, rebellion of, 346
----, Lord Edward, heads "United Irishmen," 588;
slain, 589
"Five Boroughs," the, of Mercia, 38, 39;
conquered by Edward the Elder, 44
Five Mile Act, the, 424
Flambard, Ralf, minister of William II., 84
Flanders, alliance of Edward III. with, 184, 185;
English trade with, 195;
commercial treaty with, 279;
campaigns of Marlborough in, 468-472
Fontenoy, battle of, 503, 504
Formigny, battle of, 242
Fornham, battle of, 110
Forster, Thomas, leads Jacobite rising, 487;
defeated at Preston, 488
"Forty-Five, the," 504-508
Fox, Charles James, character of, 556;
his coalition with North, 557;
his India Bill, 558;
resigns, 559;
approves of French Revolution, 577, 581;
takes office with Grenville, 608;
dies, 609
Francis I. of France, 286, 287;
at Field of Cloth of Gold, 288;
wars of, with Henry VIII., 305
Francis II. of France, married to Mary, Queen of Scots, 310
Francis I., Emperor, 510
---- II., Emperor, makes war on France, 578;
surrenders imperial title, 608;
_See under_ Austria
----, Sir Philip, his "Letters of Junius," 567;
opposes Warren Hastings, 570
Fraternity, edict of, 579
Frederick Barbarossa, Emperor, goes on third crusade, 116
---- II. of Prussia, in war of Austrian Succession, 500, 502-510;
in Seven Years' war, 522, 537;
his victories of Rossbach and Leuthen, 525;
estranged from England, 537, 549
---- William III. of Prussia, his wars with Napoleon, 610, 631
Free Trade, advocated by William Pitt, 563;
by Huskisson, 642;
by Peel, 666
Frobisher, Martin, his voyages, 334
Fuentes d'Onoro, battle of, 620
Fyrd, the old English militia, 42
Gael, the, conquer Scotland and Ireland, 2
Gage, General, besieged in Boston, 546
Gardiner, Stephen, Bishop of Winchester, imprisoned by Somerset, 309;
restored by Mary, 316
Gates, General, defeats Burgoyne, 548;
defeated by Cornwallis, 556
Gaveston, Piers, favourite of Edward II., 171;
slain, 174
Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, son of Henry II., 106, 111
---- Plantagenet, Earl of Anjou, father of Henry II., 91, 93
George I., his character and policy, 482;
his reign, 480-494
---- II., his quarrels with his father, 483;
accession, 495;
his campaigns in Germany, 501;
victorious at Dettingen, 502;
dies, 531
---- III., accession of, 532;
his character and policy, 533, 534;
his struggles with the Whigs, 533, 538, 541, 543;
his American policy, 549;
action on the India Bill, 549;
vetoes Catholic Emancipation, 596;
his madness, 596;
final quarrel with the Whigs, 609;
renewed madness, 622;
dies, 641
---- IV., character of, 564;
his regency, 622;
abandons the Whigs, 638;
accession of, 641;
his quarrels with Queen Caroline, 641;
dies, 647
----, Prince of Denmark, husband of Queen Anne, deserts James
II., 443;
his character, 461
Gerberoi, battle of, 77
Ghuznee, stormed by the English, 740
Gibraltar, won by the English, 468;
great siege of, 532
Ginckel, General, commander in Ireland, 452
Gladstone, William E., a Peelite, 667;
Chancellor of the Exchequer, 698;
prime minister, 705;
his ministry, 706-709;
speeches on Bulgarian atrocities, 710;
second ministry of, 712-716;
introduces Home Rule, 717;
its rejection, 717;
his last ministry, 721;
fails to pass his second Home Rule Bill, 722;
dies, 726
Glencoe, massacre of, 453
Glenshiel, battle of, 490
Gloucester, taken by the Saxons, 18;
besieged by Charles I., 387
----, Gilbert (1) de Clare, Earl of, overthrows De Montfort, 145, 149
----, Gilbert (2) de Clare, Earl of, slain at Bannockburn, 175
----, Thomas, Duke of, rises against Richard II., 207;
dismissed from power, 209;
murdered, 210
----, Humphrey, Duke of, Protector of Henry VI., 231;
his expedition to Hainault, 232;
his war-policy, 238, 239;
dies, 240
----, Richard, Duke of. _See_ Richard III.
----, William, Duke of, son of Queen Anne, dies, 459
Glyndower, Owen, his rebellion against Henry IV., 214-216
Goderich, Lord, prime minister, 644
Godolphin, Lord, prime minister, 462;
his alliance with Marlborough, 472;
prosecutes Sacheverell, 474;
dismissed, 475
Godwine, Earl of Wessex, 55, 56, 57;
exiled, 58;
restored, 59
Gondomar, Spanish ambassador, 358
Gordon, Lord George, stirs up riots in London, 551
----, Charles George, General, his defence of Khartoum and
death, 714, 715
Goring, George, Lord, Cavalier general, 390;
defeated by Fairfax, 396
Gough, Hugh, Lord, commands against the Sikhs, 742, 743
Grafton, Augustus Fitzroy, Duke of, his ministry, 539-541;
American policy of, 542
Grand Remonstrance, the, 377
Great Council, the, under William I., 75
Greek war of independence, 642, 643
Gregory I., Pope, sends Augustine to England, 23
---- VII., Pope, quarrel of, with William I., 76
Grenville, George, prime minister, 538;
prosecutes Wilkes, 539;
his American policy, 539
----, William, Lord, prime minister, 608;
defeated on Catholic question, 609;
abolishes slave-trade, 609
Grey, Lady Jane, marries Guildford Dudley, 312;
proclaimed queen, 313;
imprisoned, 315;
executed, 317
Grey, Charles, Lord, leader of Whigs, 638;
prime minister, 648;
carries Reform Bill, 650;
his Poor Law, 654;
resigns, 656
----, John de, favourite of John, 125
----, Lord Leonard, his conquests in Ireland, 302
Griqualand, diamond-fields of, 753
Guesclin, Bertram du, prisoner at Navarette, 196;
his successes, 198
Gunpowder Plot, the, 354
Guthrum, Danish chief, 37, 39;
his treaty with Alfred, 40
Guzerat, battle of, 743
Gwalior, stormed by British, 568;
battle of, 748
Gwynedd, Welsh kingdom of, 18, 26, 59, 83;
conquered by Edward I., 156
Habeas Corpus Act, passed, 433;
suspended by Pitt, 580
Hadrian, Emperor, visits Britain, his wall, 7
Haider Ali, his wars with the British, 568, 569
Hale's Case, 439
Halidon Hill, battle of, 182
Hamilton, William, Duke of, invades England, 399;
defeated at Preston, 400
Hampden, John, opposes Charles I., 365;
refuses to pay ship-money, 369;
killed at Chalgrove, 386
Hampton Court Conference, the, 352, 353
Hanover, House of, become kings of England, 482
----, electorate of, overrun by French, 525;
separated from England, 659
Harald Hardrada, slain at Stamford Bridge, 63
Hardinge, Henry, Lord, Governor-General of India, 742
Harfleur, siege of, by Henry V., 223
Harley, Robert, Earl of Oxford. _See_ Oxford
Harold, son of Cnut, King of England, 56
----, son of Godwine, minister of Edward the Confessor, 58;
his oath to William of Normandy, 59;
King of England, 61;
defeats Hardrada, 63;
slain at Hastings, 65
Harthacnut, King of England, 56
Hastenbeck, battle of, 525
Hastings, battle of, 65
----, Francis, Marquis of, Governor-General of India, his Pindaree
and Mahratta wars, 738, 739
----, William, Lord, executed by Richard III., 266
----, Warren, Governor-General of India, 567;
his Mahratta and Mysore wars, 569;
his impeachment and acquittal, 570, 571
Havelock, General, at Cawnpore and Lucknow, 747, 748
Hawke, Admiral, wins battle of Quiberon, 527
Hawkins, Sir John, American explorer, 333
Heathfield, battle of, 26
Heavenfield, battle of the, 26
Hedgely Moor, battle of, 255
Heligoland, seized by British, 612;
secured by treaty of Vienna, 631
Hengist the Jute, conquers Kent, 14, 15
Hengistesdun, battle of, 34
Henrietta Maria, Queen of Charles I., 363;
raises supplies for the royal army, 378
Henry I., King of England, 84;
his wars with Robert of Normandy, 87;
quarrels with Anselm, 89;
dies, 92
---- II., declared heir of Stephen, 96;
his accession, 97;
his strong rule, 99;
quarrels with Becket, 100-105;
subdues Ireland, 108;
quells insurrection of his sons, 110, 111;
death, 113
---- III., King of England, 134;
his misgovernment, 137;
wars with France, 137;
his servility to the Pope, 138;
signs Provisions of Oxford, 140;
defeated and captured by de Montfort, 142;
restored to the throne, 146;
dies, 147
---- IV., plots against Richard II., 208;
exiled, 210;
seizes the crown, 211;
quells rebellion of Glyndower and Percy, 214-216;
dies, 219
---- V., at battle of Shrewsbury, 216;
his father's minister, 218;
accession of, 220;
persecutes Lollards, 221;
invades France, 222;
wins Agincourt, 224;
conquers Normandy, 227, 228;
master of Northern France, 229;
dies, 230
---- VI., King of England, 231;
his minority, 231-240;
weak rule of, 241-244;
his madness, 248;
in Wars of the Roses, 249-253;
imprisoned by Edward IV., 256;
restored to throne, 258;
murdered, 259
---- VII., Earl of Richmond, and heir of Lancaster, 260;
overthrows Richard III., 270, 271;
marries Elizabeth of York, 273;
suppresses Simnel and Warbeck, 274, 275;
his foreign policy, 277, 279;
dies, 281
---- VIII., wedded to Catherine of Aragon, 280;
character and policy of, 282;
his Scottish wars, 285;
his foreign policy, 288;
his divorce from Catherine of Aragon, 291-294;
quarrel with the Papacy, 292-295;
his religious changes, 297;
suppresses Pilgrimage of Grace, 301;
dissolves monasteries, 299-302;
his tyranny, 303-305;
later wars of, 305;
dies, 307
Henry, son of Henry II., crowned king, 104;
rebels against his father, 109;
dies, 111
----, Prince of Wales, son of James I., dies, 357
----, Cardinal of York, the last of the Stuarts, 509
Henry II., King of France, his wars with England, 310, 321
---- IV., King of France, aided by Elizabeth, 340
---- of Trastamara, King of Spain, his war with the Black Prince, 196
Hereford, Roger Bohun, Earl of, quarrels with Edward I., 166
----, Henry, Duke of. _See_ Henry IV.
_Heretico Comburendo_, statute _de_, 215;
revived by Mary Tudor, 319
Hereward the Wake, rebellion and submission of, 71
High Commission, court of, arbitrary acts of, 369, 370;
abolished, 374;
revived by James II., 440
Hexham, battle of, 255
Hoche, General, his attempts on Ireland, 588
Hogue, La, battle of, 454
Hohenlinden, battle of, 593
Holkar state, the, made vassal to the British, 739
Holland, Henry, Earl of, executed, 401
----, John and Thomas, 202;
rebel against Henry IV., 214
----, rebels against Philip of Spain, 330;
aided by Elizabeth, 332, 335;
aids England against the Armada, 339;
shelters Royalists, 408;
wars with Cromwell, 409, 410;
wars of, with Charles II., 426, 430;
invaded by Lewis XIV., 430;
in war of the Spanish Succession, 463-476;
makes war on George III., 548;
conquered by French republicans, 584;
at war with England, 586, 587;
annexed by Napoleon, 622;
restored to House of Orange, 632;
coerced by England in 1830, 656
Holy Alliance, the, 643
Home Rule, party in Ireland headed by Parnell, 709, 712;
bill for, proposed by Mr. Gladstone, 717;
second bill for, rejected, 722
Homildon Hill, battle of, 215
Honorius, Emperor, evacuates Britain, 12
Hooper, John, Bishop of Gloucester, martyred, 319
Horsa, Jutish leader, 14, 15
Hotham, Sir John, repels Charles I. from Hull, 379
Howard, Catherine, wife of Henry VIII., executed, 304
----, Lady Frances, her crime and trial, 356
---- of Effingham, Charles, Lord, defeats Armada, 338, 339
Howe, General, wins battle of Brooklyn, 547;
takes Philadelphia, 548
Howe, Richard, Lord, defeats the French fleet, 582
Hubba, Danish chief, 36, 38
Humble Petition and Advice, the, 415
Hundred Days, the, 628
----, Ordinance of the, 50
---- years' war, the, 183
Huskisson, William, president of the Board of Trade, 641;
his commercial policy, 642;
dismissed by Wellington, 645;
death of, 653
Hyde, Anne, marries James, Duke of York, 425
Imperial Federation, 756
Impey, Sir Elijah, condemns Nuncomar, 567
Income tax, origin of the, 663
Independence, American, declaration of the, 547
Independents, the, their disputes with the Presbyterians, 397;
offer terms to Charles I., 399;
in power, 401
India, first English trade to, 341;
Mogul empire in, 511;
first struggle of French and English in, 512;
Clive and Dupleix in, 518, 519;
English disasters in, 523;
conquests of English in, 529, 530;
governed by Clive and Warren Hastings, 566-570;
governed by Cornwallis, 571-573;
by Lord Wellesley, 594;
conquests of Lake and Wellesley in, 603, 604;
later history of, 735-749;
Indian Mutiny, the, 745
Indulgence, the Declaration of, 430
Ingwar, Danish chief, 36
Inkerman, battle of, 688
Innocent III., Pope, his quarrel with King John, 125;
John does homage to him, 132
Instrument of Government, the, 412
Investitures, contest about, 90
Ionian Islands, the, ceded to Britain, 631
Ireland, conquered by the Gaels, 2;
attacked by Norsemen, 34;
expedition of Strongbow to, 107;
does homage to Henry II., 108;
rebels against Edward II., 177;
expedition of Richard II. against, 211;
ruled by Earl of Kildare, 280;
conquests of Henry VIII. in, 302;
conquests of Elizabeth in, 345;
rebellions of Desmond and Tyrone, 346, 347;
Ulster colonized by James I., 361;
rule of Stafford in, 368;
the great rebellion, 376;
intrigues of Charles I. in, 389;
subdued by Cromwell, 403, 404;
James II.'s dealings with, 449;
conquered by William of Orange, 451, 452;
the Volunteers secure Home Rule for, 551, 552;
discontent in, 587;
the rebellion of '98, 590, 591;
the Union with England, 591;
Emmet's rebellion, 603;
O'Connell's agitation for Catholic Emancipation, 646;
the Repeal movement, 648;
the tithe war, 656;
the Young Ireland party, 664;
the potato famine, 668;
Smith O'Brien's rising, 669;
Fenianism, 704;
Gladstone's Irish Church Bill, 706;
his Land Act, 706;
the Home Rule agitation, 709;
the Irish parliamentary party, 715;
dealings of the second Gladstone cabinet with Ireland, 716;
Home Rule promised to, by Gladstone, 717;
rejected, 718;
second Home Rule Bill rejected, 722
Ireton, Henry, Parliamentary general, 404
Isabella of France, wife of Edward II., 179;
deposes him, 180;
imprisoned by her son, 181
Jacobins, in France, 581;
their atrocities, 582, 583
Jacobites, the, their strength, 448, 449;
conspire against William of Orange, 456;
intrigues of, at death of Queen Anne, 479;
raise the rebellion of 1715, 486, 487;
raise the rebellion of 1745, 504, 505;
gradual decay of, 509, 534
Jacquerie, the, 193
Jamaica taken by Cromwell, 415
James I., becomes King of Scotland, 328;
accession to English throne, 350;
his character, 351;
religious policy, 352;
disputes with the Commons, 355;
subservience to Spain, 357;
ruled by his favourites, 356-358;
dies, 361
---- II., attacked, in Exclusion Bill, 431;
his accession, 436;
character and policy, 437-439, 440;
his tyranny, 441-443;
his panic at invasion of William, 443;
flies to France, 444;
his campaign in Ireland, 450, 451;
dies, 460
----, Prince of Wales, the Old Pretender, his birth, 441;
proclaimed king by Lewis XIV., 460;
strict Romanism of, 478;
his campaign in Scotland, 489
James I. of Scotland, captured by Henry IV., 218;
returns to Scotland, 232
---- IV. of Scotland, aids Perkin Warbeck, 276;
slain at Flodden, 285
---- V. of Scotland, his wars with Henry VIII., 305
---- VI. of Scotland. _See_ James I. of England
Jameson, Dr., his piratical raid, 725
Jane Grey, Lady, her reign, 313;
her execution, 317
Jane Seymour, queen of Henry VIII., 300;
dies, 302
Jeanne d'Arc, raises siege of Orleans, 235;
crowns Charles VII., 236;
captured and burnt, 237
Jeffreys, Judge, his Bloody Assize, 438;
Lord Chancellor, 439
Jelalabad, siege of, 741
Jena, battle of, 610
Jenkins, Captain, his ear, 496
Jervis, Admiral, wins battle of Cape St. Vincent, 587
Jesuit intrigues against Elizabeth, 334
Jews, persecution of, 115;
expelled from England by Edward I., 152
John, made lord of Ireland, 111;
conspires against his father, 113;
intrigues against his brother Richard, 119;
King of England, 122;
loses his continental dominions, 124;
his quarrel with the Pope, 125;
with the baronage, 128;
signs Magna Carta, 130;
war with the barons, 132;
dies, 133
---- of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, son of Edward III., 195;
commands in France, 198;
favours the Lollards, 200;
rules for Richard II., 202;
invades Spain, 207;
dies, 210
----, King of France, his war with England, 190;
captured at Poictiers, 192;
released, 194
Joseph Bonaparte, King of Spain. _See_ Bonaparte
Josephine, Empress, divorced by Napoleon, 619
Jumièges, Robert of, Archbishop of Canterbury, expelled by Godwine, 85
Junius, letters of, 544, 567
Junot, General, invades Portugal, 611;
defeated at Vimiero, 617
Jutes, the, conquer Kent, 14, 15
Kaffir wars, 753
Kenilworth, dictum of, 147
Kenneth McAlpine, first King of Scotland, 47
Kent, kingdom of, founded by Hengist, 15;
converted to Christianity, 24;
annexed to Wessex, 31
----, Edmund, Earl of, executed, 181
----, Edward, Duke of, father of Queen Victoria, 639
----, Thomas Holland, Earl of, 202;
rising and death of, 214
Ker, Robert. _See_ Somerset
Ket, Robert, rebellion of, 310
Kildare, Gerald, Earl of, 280
Killiecrankie, battle of, 449
Kilsyth, battle of, 395
Kilwarden, Ld., murdered by Emmet, 603
King's Friends, the, 534
Kinsale, battle of, 347
Kirke, Colonel, his cruelty, 438
Kitchener, Herbert, Lord, destroys the Mahdists of the Soudan, 725;
commands in South Africa, 732
Kruger, Paul, President of Transvaal, his policy, 724, 725;
declares war on England, 727, 728;
flies to Europe, 731
La Fayette, defeated by Cornwallis, 552
Labourers, statute of, 190
Ladysmith, siege and relief of, 728-730
Lagos, battle of, 526
Lake, Gerald, Lord, his victories in India, 604
Lancaster, Thomas, Earl of, opposes Gaveston, 173;
government of, 176;
overthrown by Edward II., 178
----, John of Gaunt, Duke of. _See_ John
----, House of. See Henry IV., V., VI.
Landen, battle of, 454
Land League, the, in Ireland, 715
Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, 75;
dies, 84
Langton, Stephen, made Archbishop by Innocent III., 126;
his patriotism, 128;
draws up Magna Carta, 130
Lansdowne, battle of, 386
Latimer, Hugh, Bishop of Worcester, martyred, 319
Laud, William, Archbishop of Canterbury, his policy, 367;
his Court of High Commission, 369;
attempts to force Episcopacy on Scotland, 370;
impeached, 373;
executed, 393
Laudabiliter, the Bull, 99
Lawrence, Sir John, defends the Punjab, 746
Leicester, stormed by Charles I., 394
----, Robert Dudley, Earl of, favourite of Elizabeth, 324;
his expedition to Holland, 335;
dies, 348
----, Simon de Montfort, Earl of, rules Guienne, 139;
heads baronage against Henry III., 140;
victorious at Lewes, 142;
his rule, 143-145;
slain at Evesham, 146
Leofric, Earl of Mercia, 55
Leofwine, brother of Harold, slain at Hastings, 65
Leopold of Austria, his quarrel with Richard I., 117;
imprisons him, 118
---- of Saxe-Coburg, marries Princess Charlotte, 639;
King of Belgium, 656
Levellers, rising of the, 403
Lewes, battle of, 142
----, Mise of, 143
Lewis VII. of France, wars of, with Henry II., 100, 109
---- VIII. of France, elected King of England, 132;
expelled from England, 135
---- IX. of France, defeats Henry III. at Taillebourg, 137;
arbitrator between Henry and the barons, 141
---- XI. of France, aids Margaret of Anjou, 254, 255;
his treaty with Edward IV., 262
---- XII. of France, his wars with Henry VIII., 284;
marries Mary of England, 284
---- XIII. of France, war of Charles I. with, 364, 365
---- XIV. of France, his aggressive policy, 429, 447;
signs treaty of Ryswick, 455;
renews war with England, 463;
disastrous struggle of, with Marlborough, 466-476;
signs treaty of Utrecht, 476; dies, 486
Lewis XV. of France, joins Family Compact, 496;
makes war on Maria Theresa, 501, 503;
engages in Seven Years' War, 522
---- XVI. of France, aids American rebels, 548;
summons States-General, 574;
his flight to Varennes, 578;
execution, 581
---- XVIII. of France, restored to throne, 622;
expelled by Bonaparte, 628;
second restoration of, 631
Limerick, siege of, 452
Lincoln, taken by Edward the Elder, 45;
battle of, 134
----, Abraham, President of the United States, 696
----, John de la Pole, Earl of, declared heir of Richard III., 269;
rebels against Henry VII., 273;
slain at Stoke, 274
Lindsey, Lord, Royalist general, 382
Lisle, Alice, Lady, executed, 438
Liverpool, Robert Jenkinson, Earl of, prime minister, 622;
reactionary policy of, 637;
dealings with Reform agitation, 640;
takes Canning into partnership, 641;
retires, 644
Llewellyn, Prince of North Wales, 143;
defeated by Edward I., 155;
last rebellion and death of, 156
Locke, John, persecuted by Charles II., 440
Lollards, followers of Wicliffe, 199;
communistic doctrines of, 203;
power of, 209;
persecuted by Henry IV., 219;
by Henry V., 220
London, sacked by Boadicea, 6;
taken by East Saxons, 16;
taken by Danes, 38;
besieged by Swegen, 54;
taken by William the Conqueror, 67;
receives a charter from Henry I., 88;
expels Queen Matilda, 95;
Longbeard's riots in, 121;
sides with the barons, 142;
opposes Charles I., 381;
Great Plague of, 427;
Great Fire of, 427;
Gordon riots in, 551;
Parliamentary reform in, 650;
riots in, 639;
Chartists in, 670
Londonderry. _See_ Derry
Long Parliament, the. _See_ Parliament
Longchamp, William, justiciar of Richard I., 115;
expelled from England, 119
Lovel, Francis, Lord, favourite of Richard III., 270;
rebellion and death of, 273, 274
Lucknow, relieved by Havelock, 747;
taken by Lord Clyde, 748
Ludford, rout of, 249
Luther, Martin, preaches against papal abuses, 290
Luxembourg, Marshal, wins battles of Steenkerke and Landen, 454
Macbeth, crimes and death of, 59
Madoc, of Wales, rebellion of, 157, 163
Madras, English factory at, taken by Dupleix, 512;
presidency of, 594
Magersfontein, battle of, 729
Magna Carta, its provisions, 130, 131
Mahdi, the war with, 714, 715;
his followers crushed, 726
Mahrattas, the rise of, 511;
war of Hastings with, 568;
war of Wellesley with, 604;
conquered by Lord Hastings, 738, 739
Major-Generals, Cromwell governs England by, 413
Malcolm Canmore, wars of, with William I., 70;
with William II., 82, 83
Malplaquet, battle of, 471
Malta, captured by British, 594;
quarrels with Bonaparte about, 600
Mal-tolt levied by Edward I., 166;
by Edward III., 185
Manchester, Edward Montagu, Earl of, Parliamentary general, 387;
at Marston Moor, 390;
at Newbury, 392;
removed from command, 393
Manchester massacre, the, 639, 640
Maori wars, the, 752
Mar, John, Earl of, raises Jacobite rising, 487;
at Sheriffmuir, 489
Marat, Jacobin leader, 581
March, Edmund, Earl of, heir to Richard II., 212;
proclaimed king, 216;
released by Henry V., 220
----, Roger, Earl of, slain in Ireland, 211
Marengo, battle of, 503
Margaret, St., wife of Malcolm Canmore, 70, 83
----, the "Maid of Norway," 158
---- of Anjou, marries Henry VI., 240;
heads the Lancastrians, 240, 241;
her alliance with Warwick, 257;
defeated at Tewkesbury, 258
---- of York, marries Charles the Rash, 256;
suborns Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, 273-275
Maria Louisa, wife of Napoleon I., 619
Maria Theresa, war of succession of, 500-510;
her attack on Frederic II., 521, 522
Marlborough, John Churchill, Duke of, deserts James II., 443;
Jacobite intrigues of, 453;
his power under Queen Anne, 462;
his military and diplomatic genius, 464;
victorious campaigns of, 464-471;
superseded and disgraced, 475;
dies, 484
----, Sarah, Duchess of, her ascendency over Queen Anne, 462;
disgraced, 475
Marmont, Marshal, defeated at Salamanca, 624
Marston Moor, battle of, 390
Martin Mar-prelate, tracts of, 344
Mary I., Queen of England, 315;
crushes rebellion of Northumberland, 317;
marries Philip of Spain, 318;
her persecutions, 319;
war with France, 321;
death of, 321
Mary of Modena, wife of James II., 441, 444
Mary II., Queen, marries William of Orange, 431;
accession of, 445;
death of, 456
Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VII., her marriages, 284
Mary, Queen of Scots, 305;
marries Francis of France, 310;
heiress to English crown, 326;
marries Darnley, 327;
marries Bothwell, 327;
imprisoned at Lochleven, 328;
escapes to England, 329;
her conspiracies against Elizabeth, 332-336;
executed, 336
Maserfield, battle of, 27
Masham, Mrs., favourite of Queen Anne, 475
Massachusetts Government Act, 545
Masséna, Marshal, defeated by Wellington, 619, 620
Matilda of Scotland, queen of Henry I., 87
Matilda, daughter of Henry I., her marriages, 91;
claims English throne, 93, 94;
defeated by Stephen, 95, 96
Maurice of Saxony, wins the battle of Fontenoy, 503
Mauritius annexed by England, 631
Meanee, battle of, 741
Medina Sidonia, Duke of, commands the Armada, 337
Mehemet Ali, Pasha of Egypt, invades the Peloponnesus, 644;
his war with England, 661
Mehidpore, battle of, 739
Melbourne, William Lamb, Lord, joins Lord Grey's ministry, 648;
prime minister, 657-662
Mellitus, Bishop of Rochester, 24
Mercia, kingdom of, 17;
wars of, with Northumbria, 27;
supremacy of, 30, 31;
overrun by Danes, 37;
partitioned by treaty of Wedmore, 40
Methodist movement, the, 516
Militia, the (_see_ Fyrd), reorganized by Edward I., 152;
control of, disputed between Charles I. and Parliament, 378
Milner, Alfred, Lord, his policy in South Africa, 727
Milton, John, secretary to Cromwell, 414, 415
Minden, battle of, 527
Minorca, ceded to Britain, 476;
taken by Duc de Richelieu, 523;
finally taken from Britain, 551
Mir Jaffar, his treaty with Clive, 530
Mir Kassim, his war with England, 560
Mise of Amiens, 141
Mise of Lewes, 143
Mohammed Ali, Nawab of the Carnatic, 518;
restored by the British, 519;
dies, 566
Monasteries, suppression of the lesser, 298, 299;
of the greater, 302, 303
Monk, George, Governor of Scotland, 414;
restores Charles II., 418, 419;
commands fleet against Dutch, 426
Monmouth, James, Duke of, wins battle of Bothwell Brig, 433;
his rebellion and execution, 437, 438
Monopolies, abolished by Queen Elizabeth, 348;
favoured by Charles I., 368
Montcalm, Marquis of, his successes in Canada, 523, 526;
defeated at Quebec, 528
Montfort, Simon de. _See_ Leicester
Montrose, James, Marquis of, defeats Covenanters in Scotland, 395;
defeated at Philiphaugh, 396;
executed, 404
Moore, Sir John, General, in Spain, 615;
slain at Corunna, 616
Morcar, Earl of Northumbria, 60, 63, 64;
rebels against William I., 71
More, Sir Thomas, executed by Henry VIII., 295
Moreau, General, defeats the Austrians at Hohenlinden, 593
Mortimer, Roger, defeats Edward Bruce, 177;
exiled, 178;
his conspiracy with Queen Isabella, 178;
rules England, 180;
executed, 181
Mortimer's Cross, battle of, 252
Mortmain, statute of, 150
Morton, Bishop of Ely, 270, 273
Moscow, burning of, 624
Murray, James, Earl of, Regent of Scotland, 328
Mysore, wars of Warren Hastings with, 569;
of Cornwallis with, 571, 572;
of Wellesley with, 594
Najara, battle of, 196
Namur, taken by William III., 455
Nana Sahib, commits massacre of Cawnpore, 747
Napier, General Sir Charles, conquers Scinde, 741
----, Admiral Sir Charles, 655
----, Robert, Lord, of Magdala, invades Abyssinia, 705
Napoleon I. (_see_ Bonaparte), assumes title of Emperor, 604;
conquers Austria, 608;
conquers Prussia, 610;
his continental system, 611, 612;
campaign in Spain, 613-615;
campaign of Wagram, 619;
Russian campaign, 623;
defeated at Leipsic, 625;
first abdication, 626;
returns from Elba, 628;
the Hundred Days, 628-630;
second abdication, and exile to St. Helena, 631
---- III., Louis, President of French Republic, and Emperor, 671;
recognized by Palmerston, 672;
joins England in Crimean war, 683;
expels Austrians from Italy, 695;
his disastrous war against Germany, 707
Naseby, battle of, 394
Navarino, battle of, 643
Navigation Acts, the, 409
Nelson, Horatio, Lord, at battle of St. Vincent, 587;
wins battle of the Nile, 592;
wins battle of Copenhagen, 595;
pursues Villeneuve, 606;
dies victorious at Trafalgar, 609
Nepaul War, the, 738
Neville's Cross, battle of, 189
New England settled by Puritans, 361
New Model Army, the, formed by Fairfax and Cromwell, 393;
at Naseby, 395;
refuses to disband, 398;
seizes person of Charles I., 399
New Orleans, battle of, 627
New South Wales, colonized by British, 750;
later history of, 751
New Zealand, colonized by British, 752
Newburn, rout of, 372
Newbury, first battle of, 387;
second battle of, 392
Newcastle, William Cavendish, marquis of, his campaign in
Yorkshire, 386-389;
defeated at Marston Moor, 390
----, Thomas Hollis, Duke of, minister of George II., 499-503;
his fall, 524;
takes office with Pitt, 524;
dismissed by George III., 536
Newtown Butler, battle of, 451
Nile, battle of the, 592
Nithsdale, Earl of, Jacobite leader, 487;
escape of, from prison, 489
Nizam, the, dealings of Clive and Dupleix with, 518;
becomes a vassal of the East India Company, 603, 604
Nonconformists, rise of the, under Elizabeth, 344;
under James I., 352;
persecuted by Laud, 367;
legislation of Charles II. against, 423, 424;
intrigues of James II. with, 440;
legislation of Bolingbroke against, 479
Non-jurors, the, 448
Norfolk, settled by East Angles, 16
----, Roger Bigod, Earl of, opposes Edward I., 166
----, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of, a Lord Appellant, 208;
exiled by Richard II., 210
----, John Howard, Duke of, favoured by Richard III., 265;
slain at Bosworth, 271
----, Thomas Howard, Duke of, imprisoned by Henry VIII., 307;
released by Mary, 316
----, Thomas Howard, Duke of, conspires against Elizabeth, 329;
executed, 332
Norman Conquest, the, 67
Normandy, Ethelred II. takes refuge in, 54;
relations of, with Edward the Confessor, 57, 58;
united to England, 67;
conquered by William II., 84;
conquered by Henry I., 90;
lost by John, 124;
conquered by Henry V., 227;
reconquered by the French, 242
North, Frederick, Lord, minister of George III., 544;
his scheme for taxing America, 545;
brings on American war, 547;
resigns, 552;
takes office with Fox, 557;
dismissed by George III., 559
Northampton, council of, 103;
battle of, 250
Northumberland, Henry Percy, Earl of, rebels against Henry IV., 216;
slain at Bramham Moor, 217
----, Thomas Percy, Earl of, heads rising in the North, 329, 330
----, John Dudley, Duke of, minister of Edward VI., 308;
Protector, 310;
proclaims Lady Jane Grey queen, 313;
executed, 315
Northumbria, kingdom of, 17;
conversion of, 25;
supremacy of, in Britain, 27;
overrun by Danes, 36;
reconquered by Athelstan, 46
Nova Scotia, ceded to England, 476;
joins Dominion of Canada, 755
Nuncomar (Nandukumar) executed by Impey, 567
Oates, Titus, invents Popish Plot, 432
O'Brien, Smith, his rebellion, 669, 670
O'Connell, Daniel, leader of Irish party, 646;
enters Parliament, 647;
his tithe war, 657, 658;
agitates for repeal, 658, 664;
his power declines, 664
O'Connor, Feargus, Chartist leader, 660;
his abortive demonstration, 670
Oda, Archbishop of Canterbury, 48
Odo of Bayeux, regent for William I., 69;
imprisoned by William I., 77;
rebels against William II., 82
Offa, King of Mercia, 30
Oldcastle, Sir John, martyred, 221
Olive Branch Petition, the, 547
Omdurman, battle of, 726
Omichund deceived by Clive, 530
Orange, William I. of, leader of Dutch insurgents, 332;
assassinated, 335
----, William II. of, marries Mary, daughter of Charles I., 409
----, William III. _See_ William III., King of England
Orange Free State, origin of the, 752;
declares war on England, 728;
annexed, 731
Orangemen in Ireland, 589;
suppress the rebellion of '98, 590
Ordainers, the Lords, 173
Orders in Council, the, 611
Orleans, siege of, 234
----, Philip of, regent of France, 486
Ormond, James Butler, Marquis of, Lord Deputy of Ireland, aids
Charles I., 389;
resists Cromwell, 402
----, James Butler, Duke of, supersedes Marlborough, 477;
Jacobite intrigues of, 486
Orsini question, the, 693
Osbert, King of Northumbria, 36
Oswald, St., King of Northumbria, 26
Oswiu, King of Northumbria, slays Penda, 27;
at Synod of Whitby, 28
Oude, wars of English with, 566;
dealings of Warren Hastings with, 568;
annexed, 744;
the mutiny in, 746
Oudenarde, battle of, 470
Overbury, Sir Thomas, poisoned by Countess of Essex, 356
Oxford, Provisions of, 140;
Charles I. at, 383;
siege of, 396
----, Robert Harley, Earl of, prime minister, 474;
concludes treaty of Utrecht, 476;
ousted by Bolingbroke, 479
Paardeburg, battle of, 731
Paine, Tom, 580
Pale, the, 108, 177
Palmerston, Henry Temple, Lord, joins Lord Grey's cabinet 648;
his foreign policy, 654 661;
foreign secretary with Lord John Russell, 668;
dismissed, 672;
returns to office, 690;
his first premiership, 690-693;
his second premiership, 695-698;
dies, 699
Pandulf, papal legate to King John, 127
Papacy, first relations of England with, 24;
dealings of William I. with, 76;
quarrel of John with, 126, 127;
subservience of Henry III. to, 138;
Wicliffe and the, 199;
corruption of the, at Renaissance, 289;
quarrel of Henry VIII. with, 293;
Mary and the, 316;
quarrel of Elizabeth with the, 331
Paris, taken by Henry V., 228;
recovered by the French, 239;
Peace of, 536;
taken by the allies in 1814, 625;
by Wellington in 1815, 631;
treaty of, 691
Parker, Matthew, Archbishop of Canterbury, 323
Parker, John, mutineer leader at the Nore, 586
Parliament, the Mad, 140; de Montfort's, 144;
assumes its permanent shape under Edward I., 153;
assumes control of royal revenue, 166;
withstands Edward III., 185;
the Good, 200;
the Merciless, 208;
its impotence under the Tudors, 288-292;
Elizabeth's dealings with, 348;
quarrels of, with James I., 355;
early strife of Charles I. with, 363-365;
the Short, 371;
the Long, 372;
its reforms, 374-377;
the Rump, 401;
Barebones', 410;
the Long restored, 418;
the first Convention, 421;
the Cavalier, 422;
the second Convention, 445;
Whig management of, 484, 485;
reform of, proposed by Pitt, 558.
_See_ Reform Bill
Parnell, Charles Stuart, Irish leader, 712-715;
fall and death, 720, 721
Partition treaties, the Spanish, 458
Passaro, Cape, battle of, 490
Patay, battle of, 236
Patrick, St., apostle of Ireland, 13
Paul III., Pope, excommunicates Henry VIII., 295
----, Czar of Russia, his alliance with Bonaparte, 594;
murdered, 595
Paulinus, first Bishop of York, 25
Pedro the Cruel, of Castile, restored by the Black Prince, 196
Peel, Sir Robert, home secretary, 641;
leader of Tories, 656;
prime minister, 662;
imposes income tax, 663;
converted to Free Trade, 666;
resigns, 667;
dies, 680
Pelagius, heretic, 13
Pelham, Henry, minister of George II., 499-503;
overthrows Carteret, 503;
converts National Debt, 513
Pembroke, William Marshal, Earl of, regent for Henry III., 134
----, Aymer de Valence, Earl of, Regent of Scotland, 170, 172;
conspires against Gaveston, 173
Penda, King of Mercia, defeats Eadwine, 26;
defeats Oswald, 27;
slain by Oswiu, 27
Peninsular War, the, 614-625
Perceval, Spencer, minister of George III., 609;
assassinated, 622
Percy, Henry (Hotspur), rebellion of, 215;
slain at Shrewsbury, 216
----, Thomas, conspires with Fawkes, 354
Persian war, the, 692
Petition of Right, the, 366
Petitioners and Abhorrers, 434
Philip I. of France, aids rebels against William I., 77;
his war with William I., 79
---- II., Augustus, aids sons of Henry II., 112;
goes on third Crusade, 116;
his intrigues against Richard I., 119, 120;
supports Arthur of Brittany, 123;
conquers Normandy and Anjou, 124;
threatens to invade England, 127;
victorious at Bouvines, 128
---- IV., the Fair, his wars with Edward I., 162, 163, 168
---- VI. of France, his war with Edward III., 183;
defeated at Crécy, 187
---- II. of Spain, married to Queen Mary, 318;
proposes to marry Elizabeth, 324;
his plots against Elizabeth, 332-335;
sends out Armada, 337;
dies, 348
---- III. of Spain, his alliance with James I., 355, 358
---- IV. of Spain, and the Spanish marriages, 359
---- V. of Anjou, claims Spanish throne, 458;
acknowledged by England, 476
Philippa of Hainault, queen of Edward III., saves burghers of
Calais, 189;
wins battle of Neville's Cross, 189
Philiphaugh, battle of, 395
Picts, northern tribes of Britain, 3;
ravage Roman Britain, 11;
united to Scots, 47
Pilgrimage of Grace, the, 300
Pindarees, the, 738
Pinkie, battle of, 309
Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, attacks Carteret, 503;
his first ministry, 524;
alliance with Newcastle, 525;
warlike successes of, 526-531;
dismissed by George III., 535;
takes office with Grafton, 542;
made Earl of Chatham, 542;
last speech and death, 549
----, William, the younger, takes office with Shelburne, 556;
his Reform Bill, 558;
prime minister, 559;
his wise rule, 501-505;
his India Bill, 571;
his attitude towards French Revolution, 579;
his war-policy, 581-584;
his Union of Ireland and England, 590;
forms coalitions against France, 593-603;
resigns, 595;
recalled to office, 603;
dies, 608
Pius V., Pope, issues bull against Elizabeth, 331
"Plan of Campaign," the, 718
Plassey, battle of, 530
Poictiers, battle of, 191
Pole, Henry, Lord Montagu, executed by Henry VIII., 301
----, Reginald, papal legate, 318;
Archbishop of Canterbury, 319;
dies, 321
----, Michael de la, minister of Richard II., 207;
exiled, 208
Pole de la. _See under_ Suffolk and Lincoln, Earls of
Pondicherry, taken by the English, 531
Poor Laws, of Queen Elizabeth, 342;
evil working of, 635, 636;
reform of, in 1834, 654
Popish Plot, the, 432
Portland, William Bentinck, Duke of, prime minister, 609
Portobello, taken by Admiral Vernon, 499
Portugal, joins in war of Spanish Succession, 463;
invaded by Junot, 612;
freed by Wellesley, 615 (_see under_ Peninsular War);
civil wars in, 655
Poynings' Act, 281;
repealed, 552
Praemunire, statute of, 200
Pragmatic Sanction, the, 500
Prayer-book, first English, 308;
second, 311;
re-issued by Elizabeth, 324
Presbyterians, rise of the, 369;
their strife with Independents, 397;
their negotiations with Charles I., 398;
crushed by the army, 399
Preston, first battle of, 400;
second, 488
Preston Pans, battle of, 505
Pride's Purge, 401
Protectionists, the, 660, 680
Protestantism, origin of, in England, 308-311
Provisors, statute of, 200
Prussia, joins in war of Spanish Succession, 464;
wars of, with Austria, 500-502;
war with Austria and France, 522;
attacks French Republic, 578;
makes peace with France, 584;
wars of, with Napoleon, 610, 611, 624, 625, 629, 630;
under Bismarck, 705, 707
Prynne, William, condemned by Star Chamber, 270
Punjab, power of the Sikhs in, 737;
conquered by the British, 743
Puritans, rise of the, 314;
persecutions of, 344;
secede from Church of England, 353;
colonize New England, 361.
_See_ Presbyterians and Independents
Pym, John, Parliamentary leader, 365, 371, 372, 375
Pyrenees, battle of the, 625
Quatre Bras, battle of, 628
Quebec, battle of, 528
Queensland, colony of, 751
_Quia emptores_, statute of, 152
Quiberon, battle of, 527
_Quo warranto_, the writ of, 151
Raglan, Fitzroy, Lord, commands in the Crimea, 684-690
Rajputana, becomes vassal to East India Company, 739
Raleigh, Sir Walter, founds colony of Virginia, 341;
imprisoned for Cobham's plot, 344;
his voyage up the Orinoco and execution, 358
Ramillies, battle of, 468
Rangoon, captured by British, 743
Ratcliffe, Richard, favourite of Richard III., 270, 271
Reform, Parliamentary, agitation for, 638, 647
Reform Bill, the, of 1832, introduced by Lord John Russell, 648;
rejected by the Peers, 649;
passed, 650
----, the, of 1866, 703
----, the, of 1885, 716
Reformation, the, in Germany, 290, 296;
in England, 297, 302, 308, 311;
in Scotland, 326
Remonstrance, the Grand, 377
Renaissance, the, 290
Repeal, agitation in Ireland for, 657, 658, 664
Revolution, the, of 1688, 443-447
----, the French, 574
Rhodes, Cecil, his designs, 724, 725
Richard I., conspires against his father, 109-112;
his accession, 114;
at the Crusades, 115-118;
his imprisonment in Germany, 118;
return to England, 120;
his wars and death, 121, 122
---- II., 200;
his dealings with Tyler's rebellion, 206;
assumes the government, 207;
overruled by Lords Appellant, 208;
resumes power, 209;
his tyranny, 210;
expedition to Ireland and abdication, 211, 212;
murdered, 214
---- III., Duke of Gloucester, murders Henry VI., 259;
his campaign in Scotland, 263;
seizes regency, 265;
declared king, 267;
murders the princes, 268;
slain at Bosworth, 271
Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., 141-143
Ridley, Nicholas, Bishop of London, martyred, 319
Ridolfi's plot, 331
Rights, Bill of, 446
Rivers, Anthony, Earl, executed by Richard III., 264, 268
Rizzio, David, murder of, 327
Robert I., Bruce, rebels against Edward I., 168;
slays Comyn, 168;
crowned King of Scotland, 170;
his war against Edward I., 173;
victorious at Bannockburn, 176;
his invasions of England, 177, 180
---- III., of Scotland, 214, 218
----, son of William I., rebellion of, 77;
Duke of Normandy, 81;
goes on crusade, 84;
his wars with Henry I., 86;
imprisoned, 90
Roberts, Frederick, Lord, in Afghan war, 749, 750;
his victories in South Africa, 731, 732
Robespierre, Jacobin leader, 581;
fall of, 584
Robin of Redesdale, rebellion of, 257
Rochelle, La, Buckingham's expedition to, 365
Roches, Peter des, minister of Henry III., 137
Rockingham, Marquis of, prime minister, 539-541;
second ministry of, 542;
death of, 555
Rodney, George, Lord, wins battle of St. Lucia, 552
Rogers, John, martyred, 319
Rohilla war, the, 567-568
Romans, in Britain, the, 4-10
Root and Branch Bill, the, 375
Rosebery, Lord, prime minister, 722, 723
Roses, wars of the, 245-259;
their character, 247
Rossbach, battle of, 525
Rotten boroughs, 485;
abolished, 650
Roundheads, use of the term, 382
Rousseau, J. J., influence of, on French Revolution, 575, 576
Rumbold, Colonel, plans Rye House Plot, 435
Rump, the, remnant of Long Parliament, 401;
expelled by Cromwell, 410;
revived, 417
Runjit Singh, his rule in the Punjab, 737;
death of, 742
Rupert, Prince, leader of Royalist horse, 382.
_See_ Edgehill, Newbury, Marston Moor, Naseby
Russell, Lord John, introduces Reform Bill, 648;
his first ministry, 668-672;
his second ministry, 702
----, Lord William, executed, 435
----, Edward, Admiral, wins battle of La Hogue, 454
Russia, first trade of England with, 341;
joins in the Seven Years' War, 522;
joins armed neutrality, 596;
wars of, with Bonaparte, 608, 610, 623;
war of, with Turkey, 645;
engages in Crimean war, 683;
threatened by Lord Palmerston, 698;
Lord Beaconsfield and, 711;
stirs up Afghans, 733
Rutland, Edmund, Earl of, slain at Wakefield, 251
Ruyter, de, Dutch admiral, 426
Rye House Plot, the, 435
Ryswick, Peace of, 455
Sacheverell, Henry, his Tory sermons, 474
Saint Albans, first battle of, 249;
second battle of, 252
Saint Lucia, battle of, 552
Saint Vincent, battle of Cape, 587
Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, 117;
defeated by Richard I., 118
Salamanca, battle of, 624
Salisbury, Richard Neville, earl of, supports Yorkists, 246;
wins battle of Blore Heath, 247;
beheaded, 251
----, Robert Cecil, earl of, minister of James I., 353-356
----, Robert Cecil, marquis of, prime minister of Queen Victoria, 716;
his second ministry, 718-731;
his third ministry, 723-733
----, William Longsword, Earl of, defeated at Bouvines, 128
----, Great Moot of, 79
Sancroft, William, Archbishop, persecuted by James II., 441;
deposed as a Nonjuror, 448
Saratoga, battle of, 548
Saxons, the, ravage Britain, 11;
their conquests, 12-16
Schism Act, the, 479
Schleswig-Holstein question, the, 698
Schomburg, Frederick, Duke of, commands army in Ireland, 451
Scinde, conquered by Sir Charles Napier, 741
Scindiah, war of, with Warren Hastings, 568;
defeated by Wellesley, 604
Scotland. _See under_ names of kings;
_see also_ Covenanters, Jacobites
Scots, the, invade Britain, 11, 12;
unite with Picts, 47
Scrope, Richard, Archbishop of York, beheaded, 217
----, Henry, Lord, conspires against Henry V., 223
Scutage imposed by Henry II., 700
Sebastopol, siege of, 686-690
Sedgemoor, battle of, 438
Sepoys, first raised by Dupleix, 512;
great mutiny of the, 745
Septennial Act, the, 490
Seringapatam, treaty of, 572;
storming of, 594
Settlement, the Act of, 459
Seven Bishops, trial of the, 441
Seven Years' War, the, 517, 521, 537
Severus, Emperor, in Britain, 8
Seymour, Thomas, Lord, executed, 310
Shaftesbury, Anthony, Lord, minister of Charles II., 429;
leader of the country party, 431;
his agitation against Romanism, 433, 434;
his fall, 435
----, Anthony, earl of, philanthropic reforms of, 676
Shah Sujah, 740, 741
Shakespeare, William, 343
Shelburne, William, Lord, ministry of, 556;
resigns, 557
Shere Ali, his war with British, 749
Sheridan, Richard, Whig leader, 564, 638
Sheriffmuir, battle of, 489
Ship-money imposed by Charles I., 369
Shrewsbury, battle of, 216
----, Charles Talbot, earl of, at death-bed of Queen Anne, 480
Sidney, Algernon, executed, 435
----, Sir Philip, his "Arcadia," 335;
slain at Zutphen, 335
Sikhs, rise of the, 737;
first war of, with the British, 742;
second war of, 743;
their services in the Mutiny, 746
Simnel, Lambert, imposture of, 273
Siward, Earl of Northumbria, 58, 59
Six Acts, the, 640
Six Articles, the, 603
Slave trade, the, abolished, 609
Slavery, abolished in English possessions, 654
Sluys, naval victory at, 185
Smith, Adam, his "Wealth of Nations," 563
----, Sir Sidney, saves Acre from Bonaparte, 592
Sobraon, battle of, 726
Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, Duke of, minister of Henry VI., 241, 243;
slain at St. Albans, 246
----, Henry, Duke of, Lancastrian leader, 253-255
----, Edmund Seymour, Protector of England, 308;
his Protestantism, 309;
war with Scotland, 309;
deposed, 310;
executed, 313
----, Robert Ker, Earl of, favourite of James I., 356;
his trial and degradation, 357
Sophia, Electress of Hanover, 459
Soult, Marshal, defeated at Corunna, 616;
at Oporto, 618;
at Albuera, 620;
at Pyrenees, 625;
at Toulouse, 626
South African colonies, history of the, 752-754
South Sea Bubble, the, 491
Spa Fields riot, the, 639
Spain, the Black Prince in, 197;
dealings of Henry VII. with, 280;
dealings of Elizabeth with, 324, 330, 333, 337;
subservience of James I. to, 357;
Cromwell's war with, 415;
English invasion of, 468-470;
Walpole's war with, 490;
Pitt's war with, 535;
assists Americans, 548;
allied with French Republic, 585;
allied with Bonaparte, 604;
invaded by Bonaparte, 613 (_see_ Peninsular War);
civil wars in, 655
Spanish marriages, the, of 1846, 665
Spanish Succession, the, 456;
war of, 463
Spencean philanthropists, 639, 640
Spenser, Edmund, 343
Spurs, battle of the, 284
Stafford, William, Lord, executed, 434
Stamford Bridge, battle of, 63
Stamp Act, the, 539;
repealed, 541
Standard, battle of the, 94
Stanhope, James, Earl of, minister of George I., 484;
involved in South Sea Bubble, 491;
dies, 492
Stanley, Thomas, Lord, betrays Richard III. at Bosworth, 270, 271
----, Sir William, executed, 275
Steenkerke, battle of, 454
Stephen of Blois, elected King of England, 93;
his troubled reign, 93-97
Stoke, battle of, 274
Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of, his policy of "Thorough," 368;
his rule in Ireland, 368;
impeached and executed, 373, 374
Strathclyde, 45, 47, 83
Strongbow, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, his invasion of
Ireland, 107
Stuart, house of. _See under_ names of Kings
----, Arabella, imprisoned by James I., 354
Suetonius Paulinus, conquers Boadicea, 6
Suffolk, William de la Pole, Earl of, head of peace-party, 239, 241;
impeached and murdered, 242
----, Charles Brandon, Duke of, marries Mary Tudor, 284
----, Thomas Grey, Duke of, rebels against Mary, 317;
executed, 318
Suraj-ud-Dowlah, Nawab of Oude, his wars with the British, 566
Sunderland, Robert Spencer, Earl of, minister of James II., 439
----, Charles Spencer, Earl of, minister of George I., 483;
involved in South Sea Bubble, 491;
resigns, 492
Supremacy, Act of, 295
Suraj-ud-Dowlah, takes Calcutta, 523;
defeated and slain, 530
Surrey, Henry, Earl of, executed by Henry VIII., 306
----, Thomas, Earl of, wins battle of Flodden, 285
Sussex, kingdom of South Saxons, 15
Swegen, King of Denmark, expels Ethelred the Redeless, 54
Swift, Dean, his Tory pamphlets, 474
Talavera, battle of, 618
Tallard, Marshal, captured at Blenheim, 467
Tantia Topee, Sepoy leader, 748
Tasmania, colonization of, 752
Tea riots at Boston, 545
Tenant right, conceded to Ireland, 706
Terror, Reign of, in Paris, 583
Test Act, the, 430;
repealed by James II., 439
Tewkesbury, battle of, 258
Thanes or gesiths, followers of Anglo-Saxon king, 42
Theodore of Tarsus, Archbishop of Canterbury, 28
Thirty Years' War, the, 358
Thistlewood, Arthur, conspiracy of, 640
Throckmorton, Francis, conspiracy of, 335
Thugs suppressed, 739
Tilsit, treaty of, 610
Tinchebrai, battle of, 90
Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, wars with, 569, 571, 572;
subdued by Wellesley, 594
Tithe Act, Irish, passed, 658
Tithe war, the, 656
Torres Vedras, lines of, 619
Tory party, origin of name, 434;
power of, under James II., 437;
intrigues of, under William III., 455;
overthrow Godolphin, 474;
Jacobite tendencies of, 478;
weakness of, under George I. and II., 485;
reorganized by George III., 534;
Pitt and the, 561;
reactionary policy of the, 637.
_See_ Conservatives
Tostig, son of Godwine, 58, 59, 60;
slain at Stamford Bridge, 65
Toulon, siege of, 583
Toulouse, Henry II.'s war of, 99;
battle of, 626
Townshend, Ch., Lord, minister of Geo. I., 484;
colleague of Walpole, 493
Towton, battle of, 253
Trafalgar, battle of, 607
Transubstantiation, doctrine of, 297
Transvaal Republic, the, first annexation of, 753;
war with and second annexation of, 727-733
Trent, case of the, 696
"Triers," committee of, 412
Trinidad ceded to Britain, 597
Tromp, Van, Dutch Admiral, 409
Troyes, treaty of, 228
Tudor, house of. _See under_ names of kings and queens
Tyler, Wat, rebellion of, 204-206
Tyndale, William, translates Bible, 302
Tyrconnel, Richard, Earl of, Jacobite leader in Ireland, 450
Tyrone, Hugh O'Neil, Earl of, his rebellion, 346
Tyrrell, Walter, slays William II., 85
Ulm, capitulation of, 608
Ulster, planted by James I., 361
Uniformity, Act of, 423
Union with Scotland, the, 472;
with Ireland, the, 591
United Irishmen, the, 598
United States, declare their independence, 547;
recognized by George III., 552;
war of England with, 627, 628;
civil war in the, 696;
dispute with, as to the _Alabama_, 707
Utrecht, peace of, 476
Valence, Aymer de. _See_ Pembroke
Vane, Sir Henry, the younger, 373;
executed, 421
Vendôme, Marshal, defeated at Oudenarde, 470
Venezuela, quarrel with, 724
Vere, Robert de, favourite of Richard II., 207, 208
Verneuil, battle of, 233
Vernon, Admiral, takes Portobello, 499
Versailles, treaty of, 553
Victoria, Queen, accession of, 658;
married to Albert of Saxe-Coburg, 661;
her first and second Jubilees, 719, 725;
dies, 733
Vienna, congress of, 626-631
Vikings. _See_ Danes
Villars, Marshal, defeated at Malplaquet, 471
Villeinage, in England, 72;
abuses of, 203;
decay of, 206
Villeneuve, Adm., defeated by Nelson, 607
Villeroi, Marshal, defeated at Ramillies, 468
Villiers. _See_ Buckingham
Vimiero, battle of, 615
Vinegar Hill, battle of, 590
Vittoria, battle of, 625
Voltaire, influence of, in France, 575
Volunteers, the Irish, intrigues of, 551, 552;
the English, of 1803, 602, 603;
of 1860, 694
Vortigern calls in Saxons, 14
Wagram, battle of, 619
Wakefield, battle of, 251
Walcheren, expedition to, 618
Wales, unconquered by Saxons, 17;
wars of, with Northumbria, 26;
vassal to Edward the Elder, 44;
campaign of Harold in, 59;
Norman conquests in, 83, 92;
wars of Edward I. with, 153-157;
rebels against Edward I., 163;
rebels against Henry IV., 214;
supports Charles I., 381
Wallace, William, rising of, 167;
defeated at Falkirk, 168;
executed, 169
Waller, Sir William, Parliamentary general, 386, 391
Walpole, Sir Robert, minister of George I., 484;
prime minister, 491;
his character and policy, 493;
Excise Bill, 495;
fall of, 499
Walsingham, minister of Elizabeth, 326;
dies, 348
Walter, Hubert, archbishop and justiciar, 121;
dies, 125
Waltheof, Earl, rebellion of, 70;
executed, 77
Wandewash, battle of, 531
Warbeck, Perkin, imposture of, 275-277
Warenne, John, Earl of, opposes _quo warranto_, 151;
wins battle of Dunbar, 164;
regent of Scotland, 164;
defeated by Wallace, 167
Warwick, Guy, Earl of, opposes and slays Gaveston, 173, 174
----, Richard Neville, Earl of, "the King-maker," Yorkist
partisan, 246;
wins battle of St. Albans, 249;
of Northampton, 250;
defeated in second battle of St. Albans, 252;
wins battle of Towton, 253;
subdues the North, 255;
his struggle with Edward IV., 256-258;
slain at Barnet, 258
----, John Dudley, Earl of. _See_ Northumberland
Washington, George, early campaign of, 521;
commands American army, 546;
defeated at Brooklyn, 547;
forces Cornwallis to capitulate, 561
---- city of, burnt by British, 627
Waterloo, battle of, 629, 630
Wellesley, Richard, Marquis of, Governor-General of India, subdues
Tippoo, 594;
subdues Mahrattas, 604
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, at Seringapatam, 594;
wins battle of Assaye, 604;
commands in Portugal, 615;
victorious at Talavera, 618;
at Lines of Torres Vedras, 619;
takes Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajos, 624;
victorious at Salamanca, 624;
at Vittoria, 625;
invades France, 626;
commands in Belgium, 628;
wins battle of Waterloo, 629;
prime minister, 644;
grants Catholic emancipation, 646;
retires, 648;
death of, 680
Welsh, or Kymry, 17. _See_ Wales
Wesley, John, his life and work, 516
Wessex, kingdom of, founded by Cerdic, 16;
development of, 18;
western conquests of, 31;
supreme in England, 32
Westminster Abbey, founded by Edward the Confessor, 61;
rebuilt by Henry III., 136
----, Statute of, 152
Whig party, origin of name, 434;
discredited by Rye House Plot, 435;
war-policy, 472-474;
ascendency of, under George I., 482;
policy of, 484, 485;
changed character of, 555;
advocates Parly. reform, 628.
_See_ Liberals
Whitby, council of, 28
White, Sir G., defends Ladysmith, 728-31
Wicliffe, John, his teaching, 199
Wido, Count, imprisons Harold, 59
Wilkes, John, prosecuted by Grenville, 539;
member for Middlesex, 543
William I., extorts oath from Harold, 60;
claims English crown, 62;
victorious at Hastings, 65;
king of England, 68;
quells insurrection, 69, 70;
policy of, 74-79;
death, 79
William II., king of England, 81;
wars with Scots and Welsh, 81, 82;
quarrels with Anselm, 84, 85;
dies, 86
---- III., marries Mary of York, 431;
opposes Lewis XIV., 430-442;
lands in England, 443;
proclaimed king, 445;
his policy, 447;
campaign in Ireland, 451;
fights in Netherlands, 454;
dies, 460
---- IV., accession of, 647;
dealings of, with Reform Bill, 649, 650;
dies, 658
---- Clito, his wars with Henry I., 90
---- the Lion, King of Scotland, wars of, with Henry II., 110
---- the Silent, Dutch leader, 332;
assassinated, 335
Winchelsey, Archbishop, his quarrel with Edward I., 165, 166
Winchester, Statute of, 152
Winfrith (Boniface), missionary in Germany, 29
Witan, national council of the English, 20
Wolfe, General, captures Louisbourg, 526;
victory and death at Quebec, 528, 529
Wolsey, Thomas, minister of Henry VIII., 285-288;
his schemes for Church Reform, 289;
his dealings with Henry's divorce, 291;
his fall and death, 292
Woodville, Elizabeth. _See_ Elizabeth
Worcester, battle of, 405
Wordsworth, William, his attitude toward French revolution, 581
Worms, congress of, 502
Wren, Christopher, rebuilds St. Paul's, 427
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, rebellion and death of, 317, 318
Wykeham, William of, opposes John of Gaunt, 198;
minister of Richard II., 202;
recalled to office, 209
York, Edmund, Duke of, regent for Richard II., 211
York, Richard, Duke of, campaigns of, in Normandy, 239;
rises against Henry VI., 243;
his policy, 245;
Protector, 248;
in Wars of the Roses, 249, 250;
slain at Wakefield, 251
York, Richard, Duke of, son of Edward IV., imprisoned and slain by
Richard III., 266-268
York, Frederick, Duke of, disastrous campaigns of, in
Flanders, 583, 593, 594;
dies, 647
Yorktown, capitulation of, 559
Young Ireland Party, the, 664;
rising of, 669, 670
Zemindars, Cornwallis's dealings with, 572
Zulu war, the, 753
Zutphen, battle of, 335
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+----------------------------------------------------------------- +
| Transcriber's note: |
| |
| Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. |
| |
| Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant |
| form was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed. |
| |
| Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained. |
| |
| Mid-paragraph illustrations have been moved between paragraphs |
| and some illustrations have been moved closer to the text that |
| references them. The List of Illustrations and Genealogical |
| paginations were changed accordingly. |
| |
| Duplicated section headings have been omitted. |
| |
| Footnotes were moved to the end of chapters and numbered in one |
| continuous sequence. |
| |
| The Descendants of Edward III genealogical chart on p. 202 was |
| split in two for easier reading. |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "A History of England - Eleventh Edition" ***
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